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Social Media and ICT During the Arab Spring

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Social Media and ICT During the Arab Spring Social media and ICT during the Arab Spring MIKAEL ERIKSSON, ULRIK FRANKE, MAGDALENA GRANÅSEN, DAVID LINDAHL FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency, is a mainly assignment-funded agency under the Ministry of Defence. The core activities are research, method and technology development, as well as studies conducted in the interests of Swedish defence and the safety and security of society. The organisation employs approximately 1000 personnel of whom about 800 are scientists. This makes FOI Sweden’s largest research institute. FOI gives its customers access to leading-edge expertise in a large number of fi elds such as security policy studies, defence and security related analyses, the assessment of various types of threat, systems for control and management of crises, protection against and management of hazardous substances, IT security and the potential offered by new sensors. FOI Swedish Defence Research Agency Phone: +46 8 555 030 00 www.foi.se FOI-R--3702--SE SE-164 90 Stockholm Fax: +46 8 555 031 00 ISSN 1650-1942 July 2013 Mikael Eriksson, Ulrik Franke, Magdalena Granåsen, David Lindahl Social media and ICT during the Arab Spring Bild/Cover: Wikimedia Commons, Sherif9282 FOI-R--3702--SE Titel Sociala medier och ICT under den arabiska våren Title Social media and ICT during the Arab Spring Rapportnr/Report no FOI-R--3702--SE Månad/Month Juli/July Utgivningsår/Year 2013 Antal sidor/Pages 43 p ISSN 1650-1942 Kund/Customer FoT område Forskningsområde Informationssäkerhet och kommunikation Projektnr/Project no I35404 Godkänd av/Approved by Christian Jönsson Ansvarig avdelning Informations- och aerosystem Detta verk är skyddat enligt lagen (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk. All form av kopiering, översättning eller bearbetning utan medgivande är förbjuden This work is protected under the Act on Copyright in Literary and Artistic Works (SFS 1960:729). Any form of reproduction, translation or modification without permission is prohibited. FOI-R--3702--SE Sammanfattning Under den så kallade arabiska våren använde aktivister i hög grad öppet tillgängliga tekniska hjälpmedel som Facebook för att organisera sig och bekämpa regimerna. Regimerna i sin tur försökte med olika metoder att begränsa aktivisternas möjlighet att kommunicera med varandra och med utländsk media. Rapporten tar upp exempel på olika incidenter och diskuterar hur tekniken användes i de olika fallen. Slutsats är att ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) i vissa fall fungerade som en kraftig kapacitetshöjande faktor men att den inte i sig orsakade händelseförloppet. Nyckelord: Arabiska våren, internet, sociala medier, cyberkrig, distribuerade kommunikationssystem, övervakning, privatliv 3 FOI-R--3702--SE Summary During the so called Arab spring, activists made extensive use of openly available technical tools such as Facebook to organize and fight the regimes. The regimes in their turn took various actions to keep the activists from communicating with each other and with foreign media. This report gives examples of incidents and discusses how technology was used in various cases. The conclusion is that the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in some cases was a force multiplier for the opposition, but that it was not the cause of the uprisings. Keywords: Arab Spring, Internet, Social media, cyber war, distributed Command and Control, Surveillance, Privacy 4 FOI-R--3702--SE Preface This report has been produced within the National Security in the Information Society (SPIS) project at FOI. This project studies the complex interplay between our modern information society and national security, an evolving field that has attracted considerable attention in the wake of the Arab spring. The report has benefitted from the comments of Teodor Sommestad, who made valuable remarks as a reviewer. Stockholm, June 2013 Ulrik Franke, SPIS project manager 5 FOI-R--3702--SE 6 FOI-R--3702--SE Table of contents 1 Introduction 9 1.1 Aim and purpose ............................................................................... 9 1.2 Scope and delimitations .................................................................... 9 1.3 Method............................................................................................. 10 1.4 Reading instructions ........................................................................ 11 2 Related work 13 2.1 The importance of ICT for opposition, protests and revolutions ..... 13 2.2 Scepticism about the importance of ICT ......................................... 16 3 The Arab Revolts 19 3.1 Tunisia ............................................................................................. 19 3.1.1 Examples of ICT use ................................................................... 20 3.1.2 Wikileaks and social media ......................................................... 20 3.1.3 User defence ............................................................................... 21 3.1.4 Government attack ...................................................................... 21 3.1.5 Countermeasures by the international community ...................... 23 3.2 Egypt ............................................................................................... 23 3.2.1 Examples of ICT use ................................................................... 24 3.2.2 Whael Ghonim ............................................................................. 24 3.2.3 Asmaa Mahfouz .......................................................................... 24 3.2.4 Twitter down, Facebook follows .................................................. 25 3.2.5 International response ................................................................. 25 3.3 Libya ................................................................................................ 26 3.3.1 Examples of ICT use ................................................................... 26 3.3.2 Day of Anger ............................................................................... 27 3.3.3 Information disruption .................................................................. 27 3.3.4 Armed uprising ............................................................................ 27 3.3.5 Blackout ....................................................................................... 28 3.3.6 Ad Astra ....................................................................................... 28 3.3.7 Opposition nominating targets to NATO ..................................... 28 7 FOI-R--3702--SE 3.4 Syria ................................................................................................ 28 3.4.1 Examples of ICT use ................................................................... 31 3.4.2 Increasing freedom ..................................................................... 31 3.4.3 Internet Shutdown ....................................................................... 32 3.4.4 Telecomix and Anonymous ......................................................... 32 4 Effects of social media and ICT on the Arab Spring 33 4.1 How does ICT differ from other media? .......................................... 33 4.2 Common factors .............................................................................. 33 4.3 Activist use of ICT ........................................................................... 34 4.4 Regime use of ICT .......................................................................... 35 5 References 37 8 FOI-R--3702--SE 1 Introduction 1.1 Aim and purpose This study was conducted as part of the FOI project “National Security in the Information Society” (SPIS). SPIS is an internal competence-building project, intended to develop methods for studying the interplay between ICT and social and political events, as well as to explore the role and functions of modern ICTs in international relations. As such, this report is intended to document a part of a work in progress. The aim of this report is to describe how different actors used Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) during the Arab Spring and to discuss the effects of ICT on the outcomes of the Arab spring. The rationale for this is the widely diverging opinions found on the importance of ICT during these events in the literature and in the public debate. Some claim that ICT was essential to the revolutions (hence the term “Twitter revolution”), others maintain that ICT played a much less prominent role. This report aims to shed some light on this issue by a literature review, by examining a number of ICT-related episodes during the revolutions, and by expert interviews, thus putting the differing opinions into perspective. 1.2 Scope and delimitations The “Arab Spring” is a conceptual delineation of a series of social and political events across the Arab world starting in 2011. Scholars and participants of the Arab spring have different connotations of what these events actually entail as well as different opinions on when they started. While some experts suggest that the revolts were the culmination of prolonged underground opposition against incumbent regimes, others view the shift from covert social force to overt rebellion as virtually instantaneous. Despite differences, most observers agree that each Arab state in the Middle East and North Africa exhibited a political dynamic of its own. Hence, it is more precise to refer to the events in Tunisia as the Jasmine Revolution, to the events in Egypt as the 25 January revolt, etc. [30].
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