Linesch 1 Sarah Linesch Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric, Section 13 Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin 8 November 2013 Annotated Bibliography This research paper is about the effects of social media on democracy in Egypt and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. During this time, the President of Egypt was Hosni Mubarak who had been president for 30 years and governed with an authoritative nature. The government controlled all of the media in Egypt and there were reports of government corruption, so the citizens of Egypt did not have many democratic rights under the Mubarak administration. Through the use of social mediaspecifically blogging, Facebook, and Twitterthe Egyptian people were able to express their frustrations online without government constraints and were able to form an opposition movement to the Mubarak administration. I chose to research this topic because it was a very hot topic in the news when it happened and I have always been interested in this event. When I first began to research this topic, I wondered how social media effected the revolution and what impact did it have on the Egyptian citizens. Many of the sources I found agreed that social media contributed to the success of the revolution, but I also found many sources that argued that the revolution would have happened regardless of the use of social media. My research paper argues that social media increased the Egyptian citizens democratic rights by giving them freedom of speech and therefore added power to the opposition movement by giving the people a means to actively participate in the political process.

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El-Nawawy, Mohammed, and Sahar Khamis. Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement, and Citizen Journalism. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print. This source is a book that examines how political blogging aided the Egyptian Revolution. The authors of the book argue that political blogging and the Internet helped the revolution succeed by uniting people with common views online. the government controlled all media, this source argues that the internet showed people that there were others who shared their frustrations and this gave people more of an incentive to form an opposition movement. The book also argues that the Internet is democratic because race, gender, class, and other social conventions are less noticed and people are able to express their ideas freely without restriction. This book examines the five main political blogs during the Egyptian Revolution and uses these blogs to counter the idea that social media did not influence the Egyptian Revolution. After the Egyptian Revolution occurred, many people were concerned about the effects of social media on revolutions and how it would affect future revolutions, so the authors of this book are addressing this notion in order to convince the concerned audience that social media has a positive influence on revolutions. This source is useful for my paper because it provides examples of five important blogs in Egypt and argues how these blogs influenced the revolution and increased democracy in Egypt. These examples contribute to my paper by providing evidence to my argument. Papic, Marko, and Sean Noonan. Social Media as a Tool for Protest. Stratfor. Stratfor, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

This source is a web article that writes about social media and its effects on protests. This article states that in order for a protest to be successful through social media, it must use social media to

Linesch 3 convey information and organize, but must execute and gain support in real life. If there is no motivation for people to be involved, then they will just follow the revolution through their computers and will not actually help the cause. The audience for this article is the people who believe that social media controls the impact of revolutions. The purpose of this article serves to inform people that although social media is a very useful tool, it is not the driving force that causes revolutions and protests to be successful. This article is a counter argument to the central argument of my paper, and it will be useful because I will be able to contrast my ideas with the ideas of this article and then use evidence to disprove the ideas that this article suggests.

Timeline: Egypts Revolution Middle East Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera English. Al Jazeera, 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.

This source is a web article that outlines a timeline of the events that occurred during the Egyptian Revolution. This article is an informative article that is aimed towards an audience who does not know much about the Egyptian Revolution. The purpose of this article is to inform the audience about the events that occurred during the Egyptian Revolution, and to do it in a way that is easy for the audience to understand. This article is not argumentative, but it is useful to my research paper because it will help me keep track of the events that occurred during the revolution. This article will also help me to introduce the revolution and to provide a background of the revolution so that the audience of my research paper will understand the Egyptian Revolution before I present my argument. It is important to provide a brief background of the revolution because if my audience does not understand the causes for the revolution, then my argument will not make sense to them.

Lim, Merlyna. Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional

Linesch 4 Movements in Egypt, 2004-2011. Journal of Communication 62.2 (2012): 1-23. Wiley Online Library. John Wiley and Sons, 23 Feb. 2012. Web. 30 Oct. 2011.

This source is a journal that I found online that is associated with Arizona State University. The author explains how the use of social media greatly influenced and helped the Egyptian Revolution. The intended audience of this journal is those people who believe that social media did not have an effect on the Egyptian Revolution, and the purpose of this article is to persuade those people that social media had a great influence on the success of the Egyptian Revolution. This article examines the usage of social media starting from the year 2004 until the revolution in 2011 in order to examine the roots of where online activism began in Egypt. The author addresses many counter arguments that have been made against the effects of social media in Egypt, such as the one that social media didnt help the revolution succeed because the majority of Egypts population doesnt have internet access. The author argues that although internet access was low across the country, access was high among young urbanites, who were the type of people who began and participated in the revolution (235). This article is useful for my paper because it examines the beginnings of social activism in Egypt and how the internet and media were used. This article also addresses various counter arguments which is beneficial to my paper because it shows me both sides of the issue and how each side responds to this argument.

Choudhary, Alok, et al. "Social Media Evolution of the Egyptian Revolution." Communications of the ACM 55.5 (2012): 74-80. Print.

This article examines the usage of twitter during the time period of January 25-February 11,

Linesch 5 2011, which was the most active time of the revolution. The authors examines the highest trending topics on Twitter that related to Egypt and then compared them to other trending topics on Twitter. The study found that the words egypt, cairo, hosni_mubarak, and tahir were the highest trending topics that related to Egypt during this time (77). The study related these trending topics to other ones at the time and concluded that the topics relating to Egypt had more action (tweeting, retweeting and mentions) than other trending topics at the time (80). It was also concluded that most of these tweets related to negatives sentiments (80). This source is helpful for my paper because it examines Twitter usage data and concludes that there was a large population of the people tweeting about Egypt, both in and outside of the country. This is helpful to my argument because it proves that Twitter was used extensively during this time to relay information, both inside and outside of Egypt, and that many of the tweets were angry at the injustices that were occurring in Egypt at the time.

Hamdy, Naila. "Framing the Egyptian Uprising in Arabic Language Newspapers and Social Media.(Report)." Journal of communication 62.2 (2012): 195. Print.

This article compares different media usage in Egypt during the revolution and the effect of each media on the revolution. The article compares three different media: semiofficial newspapers, independent newspapers, and social media. The authors of this article wanted to conduct a study to inform their audience about the different media that was used during the revolution and how they differed. This article is geared towards an academic audience who is researching the Egyptian Revolution. The study concluded that social media wrote more about revolutionary topics whereas the other newspapers wrote more about conspiracy and did not recognize the protests as a revolution (205). This article is useful to my research paper because it shows the

Linesch 6 different effects that social media and newspapers had on reporting the news. This article will benefit my research paper because it proves that the official newspapers in Egypt were distorting the news, and that social media was necessary for the revolution because it reported the true news.