The Facebook Revolution

Andrew Sullivan is blogging today about the role of Facebook and Twitter in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions (also here and here). Despite the doubts of Malcolm Gladwell and a bunch of curmudgeons, it seems that the young organizers of these protest movements relied very heavily on Facebook to get things started, and that in the days leading up to the protests Facebook use soared in both countries. At a deeper level, we are hearing now that young Arabs interested in freedom and democracy have been contacting each other via Facebook for years, developing international links and spreading ideas. To take just one example, there were major protests in Tunisia two years ago, triggered by Facebook calls from Egyptian activists for expressions of outrage against the murder of two young Egyptians.