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The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square: Social Movements in Convergence, Coalitions and Networks

The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square: Social Movements in Convergence, Coalitions and Networks

Marwa Maziad, Norah Abokhodair, Maria Garrido
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 43
ISBN13: 9781522524953|ISBN10: 1522524959|EISBN13: 9781522524960
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2495-3.ch001
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MLA

Maziad, Marwa, et al. "The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square: Social Movements in Convergence, Coalitions and Networks." Online Communities as Agents of Change and Social Movements, edited by Steven Gordon, IGI Global, 2017, pp. 1-43. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2495-3.ch001

APA

Maziad, M., Abokhodair, N., & Garrido, M. (2017). The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square: Social Movements in Convergence, Coalitions and Networks. In S. Gordon (Ed.), Online Communities as Agents of Change and Social Movements (pp. 1-43). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2495-3.ch001

Chicago

Maziad, Marwa, Norah Abokhodair, and Maria Garrido. "The Road to Egypt's Tahrir Square: Social Movements in Convergence, Coalitions and Networks." In Online Communities as Agents of Change and Social Movements, edited by Steven Gordon, 1-43. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2495-3.ch001

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Abstract

On January 25th 2011, Egyptians revolted, thereby making history. Before the date, roads to political activism were being incrementally built towards their eventual converging on Tahrir Square. This chapter argues that “nodes of convergence,” defined as shared political and economic grievances, as well as shared virtual and physical spaces, had to be created first before mass mobilization for a collective action of millions on the street could ensue. Providing in-depth examination of events leading to January 25th, this chapter offers a case study for mobilization, from which generalized theory is extrapolated about online communities' convergence, networking, and coalition building. Two main Facebook pages were studied: April 6th Youth Movement and We Are All Khaled Said-- both in Arabic. The conceptualization is built on anthropological fieldwork trips in Egypt since March 2011. This covered ethnographic participant-observations and interviewing. For evidence triangulation purposes of the “convergence effect”, the authors conducted qualitative content analysis of significant posts.

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