Social Networks: A Counter-Public Sphere or a Source of Fake News

A hot summer day in June 2010 sparked what would later be called the Arab Spring when a picture of a young Egyptian man, Khaled Saeed who was beaten to death by two police officers circulated on the internet, causing anger and distress. A Facebook page, “We Are All Khaled Saeed,” was launched that called for protests in Alexandria, Khaled’s hometown, demanding justice and exposing the severity of police brutality in Egypt.

Six months later, another young man kindled an outburst in the fellow Arab country. Tunisia. Bouazizi, a 26 year old man, was humiliated and had his vegetables cart confiscated by a policewoman. Trying to issue a complaint, he headed to the provincial headquarters, but officials refused to see him. One hour after the incident he poured paint thinner all over himself and set himself on fire right before that same building. The outrage over the young man’s tragic death spread far beyond his hometown, igniting the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution that ousted Bin Ali along with his 23-year-long dictatorship.

Back in Egypt, inspired by the events in Tunisia, the “We Are All Khaled Saeed” Facebook page called for countrywide protests on the 25th of January 2011, Police Day in Egypt, to protest police brutality. Events escalated resulting in an 18-day sit-in at Al Tahrir Square, the heart of the Egyptian Capital, which ended the 30-year-long Mubarak rule. Since then, social networks have cemented themselves as a source of information and a sphere for discussion.

The 2019 Milton Wolf Seminar’s theme was Digital Media Dystopia and the New Global Media (Dis)Order in International Relations. One of the main issues that dominated the two-day sessions was fake news on social networks, how to identify it, and how to counter it. A wave of disinformation, through Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and other social platforms continues to be a worldwide threat. Having said that, it is imperative to acknowledge the role they play as an alternative source of information and an arena for public debate. Given the continuous rise of worldwide media ownership concentration, having independent entities online that allow for deliberation and discussion is integral for the formation of a free public sphere.

Public spaces formed the public sphere Jürgen Habermas referred to in his 1962 book, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). Initially, the concept of public sphere was connected to the bourgeoisie. It competed with the dominant institutions in Europe, the Church and the State. Members of this class got together in public spaces such as libraries to form the public opinion which was then transferred to the general public using newspapers. The public opinion was protected from the interference of both the state and the church (Iosifidis, 2011).

In Egypt, Public spaces resembled Habermas’ public sphere where literary elite would participate in debates at Cairo’s coffeehouses and salons. In the late 1970s, political parties replaced the cafés as the new hub. In the 1990s, however, private publishing houses, where young writers published their books, became the new public sphere (Elsadda, 2010).

Habermas noted the rise of the mass media, the growing power of the state, and the capitalist monopoly over the media as large private media and advertising organizations overruled the bourgeois public sphere. The dominant institutions, which were once the church and the state, were now advertising and public relations agencies, which in turn formed conglomerates and, in the process, excluded the public. The role of the media shifted to shaping public opinion instead of being a mere means of transferring it to the general public (Iosifidis, 2011).

Egypt has a long history of media monopoly by the state. In the 1980s, the state used to own all television channels and newspapers and, therefore, had sole control on information and opinion dissemination. However, during the early 1990s, a “new media revolution” started with the launch of satellite television (Al-Nawawy and Khamis, 2013, Salvator, 2011). This started with the advent of Al-Jazeera and other Arab-based satellite television channels that provided an alternative space for political communication, alongside the state-owned media, and created a new Arab public sphere. Issues, that used to be neglected by state-owned media, were broadcast by private satellite channels. They helped the public to broaden their awareness and to question the legitimacy of the Arab governments (Lynch, 2011, Salvator, 2011).

Ten years before Mubarak was toppled by the 2011 uprisings, his regime opted to exclude disobedient actors from the public sphere. The launch of the first Egyptian privately-owned newspaper and the first private TV stations was considered a beacon of hope for a more representative scene. This market-driven liberalization of the media sector provided first-time access for new actors to the public sphere (Richter, 2010) and presented the public with some unprecedented choices (Abbott, 2016).

The internet went farther, giving a chance for anyone to access and participate in public debate. Being free from the control of a single entity or a certain political regime grants the internet a certain level of freedom that is nonexistent elsewhere (Hans, 2013). It has opened an arena to discuss issues considered taboo in Egyptian society (Mehanna, 2010). Egyptian youth used the internet to formulate and express their true identities independently from the state-owned media and the unified national identity this media created (Mehanna, 2010).

The internet has loosened the state grip on the public sphere in Egypt (Al Malky, 2007). Blogs served as an alternative news source during the last few years of Mubarak’s rule; they were among the first to publish stories about police brutality that were otherwise neglected by mainstream media. In 2006, Emad El Kebir, a 20-year-old driver in Egypt was tortured in a police station and his torture video was published in blogs that were later used as sources for Al Masry Al Youm and Al Fajr, private newspapers, in their coverage of the case (Ishterwood, 2008). Blogging was argued to have challenged official authority and blurred the boundaries between what is public and what is private in Egypt (Radsch, 2007). Also, having big private newspapers using blogs as news sources for their published news stories fortified their status among the public (Lynch, 2007).

Micro blogging, through Facebook and Twitter, had the potential of reaching more users because basically everyone with a computer, cell phone, and an internet connection can become a journalist. Social networks provide a space that allows an interaction between public and counter-public spheres.  However, Twitter offers more freedom as users can say whatever they want in their timelines without supervision unlike Facebook where admins have a control over what gets posted on their pages and groups (Chan, 2018).

The internet provided a window for an emerging counter-public (Douai, 2013). The term counter-public originated almost at the same time as the term public sphere. Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere was class-based and, therefore, was critiqued for excluding women and other social classes. It was argued that the public sphere included competing publics or counter-publics for nationalists, women, and the working class (Fraser, 1990).

Counter-publics are public platforms for individuals to take part in public debate using new means of communication without state supervision. In Egypt, counter-publics encompassed the repressed voices of opposition, young media-savvy generations, women, and Islamists (Douai, 2013). Cyberspace has provided women with a platform to create their own counter-publics (Elsadda, 2010). Blogs made it easier to form counter-public sphere for ideas that, eventually, managed to penetrate the mainstream media. They presented new idea which gradually which gradually remolded the non-inclusive dominant public sphere (Ajemian, 2008, Lynch, 2007).

In Egypt, internet penetration rates are increasing annually. There are 50 million internet users in 2019 compared to having only 34 million 6 years ago (as shown in the figure below). Daily Egyptian Facebook users, however, have reached 38 million according to Facebook’s Regional Director of Public Policies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Also, YouTube (2), Facebook (4), and Twitter (30) are all in the top-30 most visited websites in Egypt which gives us an indication to their status among Egyptian Internet users (Alexa, 2019).

Social networks, a form of micro blogging, constituted an alternative public sphere for Egyptian youth to escape the state’s control over information and gave them an access to freer political discussion (Zhuo, Wellman, & Yu, 2011). Social media allowed minorities– based on gender, geographic location, and/or religion–to access the Egyptian public sphere. It created counter-publics to empower the marginalized groups to express their needs and interests (Faris, 2010).

Social and political movements in Egypt resorted to social networks as a tool for mobilizing the public. The Egyptian Kefaya and the April 6 political movements reached the masses using social media and on-the-ground interactions. This was also used in the 2011 January 25th uprisings (Hafez, 2015, Sika, 2012). Nanabhay and Farmanfarmaian (2011) mentioned an “amplified public sphere” that emerged in Egypt amidst the uprisings. This sphere involved a three-way interaction among the people-occupied streets, the 24/7 mainstream coverage of the protests, and the activity on social networks (Nanabhay & Farmanfarmaian, 2011).

What made social networks an indispensable tool for the Egyptian people is the alienation practices of the Egyptian state-owned and privately-owned media; they misrepresent large clusters of the community. Despite the emergence of private media in the past two decades, they ceased to offer a sufficient alternative for the public as the media landscape continues to be dominated by the state and the commercial elites (Aly, 2011).

Bearing all the aforementioned in mind, it is also imperative to point out that despite the importance of social networks as counter-publics, there is a certain level of literacy required to be able to differentiate between facts and disinformation. In a country like Egypt, with a high level of illiteracy, it is going to be very challenging to ask people to acquire a certain level of media and internet literacy sufficient to double-check the accuracy of the information they receive/share online. The threat social networks impose as a source of fake news lives on with the lack of fact-checking skills and knowledge among mass users.

Some would advocate for stricter regulations on social networks to control the flow of information and to limit the spread of disinformation. For instance, media laws in Egypt treat social networks pages, blogs, or websites with five thousand followers or more as a media entity, which are therefore not allowed to spread fake news, disinformation, hate speech, discrimination, violence, etc. Although these are all rules that all entities and individuals should abide by, it is hard to determine the parameters of these violations and the punishments they deserve. Therefore, before we resort to stern regulations that could result in blocking or closing webpages or social media accounts, more resources should be dedicated to internet literacy and fact-checking mechanisms. Rather than fearing the reach and capabilities of social networking sites, we should thrive to embrace and harness their potential for a more representative public sphere and a more democratic society.

References

Abbott, L. M. (2016). The conceptual public sphere and its problems: Habermas, political action and the Arab states. Journal of International Political Theory, 12(3), 365-379.

Ajemian, P. (2008). The Islamist opposition online in Egypt and Jordan. Arab Media & Society, 4.

Al Malky, R. (2007). Blogging for reform: the case of Egypt. Arab Media & Society, 1(1).

Aly, R. (2011). Rebuilding Egyptian media for a democratic future. Arab Media and Society, 14.

Chan, M. (2018). Networked counterpublics and discursive contestation in the agonistic public sphere: political jamming a police force Facebook Page. Asian Journal of Communication(6), 561-578.

Douai, A. (2013). “Seeds of change” in Tahrir Square and beyond: People power or technological convergence?. American Communication Journal, 15(1).

El-Nawawy, M., & Khamis, S. (2016). Egyptian revolution 2.0: Political blogging, civic engagement, and citizen journalism. Springer.

Elsadda, H. (2010). Arab women bloggers: The emergence of literary counterpublics. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 3(3), 312-332.

Faris, D. (2010). Revolutions without Revolutionaries? Social Media Networks and Regime Response in Egypt. Doctoral Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social text, (25/26), 56-80.

Hafez, K. (2015). Radically Polarized Publics and the Demise of Media Freedom in Egypt‪. Egypte/Monde Arabe, (1), 37-49.

Hans, L. B. (2013). The internet as a public sphere: Democracy and communication (undergraduate thesis). Wilson College, Mumbai.

Iosifidis, P. (2011). The public sphere, social networks and public service media. Information Communication and Society, 14(5), 619-637.

Isherwood, T. (2008). A new direction or more of the same? Political blogging in Egypt. Arab Media & Society, 6(9).

Lynch, M. (2007). Blogging the new Arab public. Arab Media & Society, 1(1).

Lynch, M. (2011). After Egypt: The limits and promise of online challenges to the authoritarian Arab state. Perspectives on politics, 9(2), 301-310.

Mehanna, O. (2010). Internet and the Egyptian public sphere. Africa Development, 35(4), 195-209.

Nanabhay, M., & Farmanfarmaian, R. (2011). From spectacle to spectacular: How physical space, social media and mainstream broadcast amplified the public sphere in Egypt’s ‘Revolution.’ The Journal of North African Studies, 16(4), 573-603.

Radsch, C. (2007). Speaking truth to power: The changing role of journalism in Egypt. International Studies Association, Chicago, 28.

Richter, C. (2010). Virtual Mobilisation: The Internet and Political Activism in Egypt. Orient I, 51, 16-23.

Salvatore, A. (2011). Before (and after) the ‘Arab spring’: from connectedness to mobilization in the public sphere. Oriente Moderno, 91(1), 5-12.

Sika, N. (2012). Dynamics of a stagnant religious discourse and the rise of new secular movements in Egypt. Arab spring in Egypt: Revolution and beyond, 63-81.

Zhuo, X., Wellman, B., & Yu, J. (2011). Egypt: the first Internet revolt?. Peace magazine, 27(3), 6-10.