Dr. Khalid Al-Shafi
A young man studying at Harvard University wanted to prove that he has the ability to review and show restraint. He hacked the site of the university and took the pictures of a group of students and put them on the site which he created on the Internet. He asked his colleagues in and outside the university to vote to compare the university’s girls with animals that are close to them in likeness. He surprised everyone by getting 22,000 votes in less than two hours and was almost dismissed from the university because of what he did.
When the story of the boy with the site and photos was published, two brothers who wanted to create a social networking site between friends and were looking for a programmer to help them in launching such website, contacted him but he kept the idea for himself and worked with a colleague to develop, simplify and launch it through a site in which the user will provide his data and delete the same whenever he wants. This website with the passage of days transferred into the first, most important and most used social networking website in the world, which is ‘Facebook’ (Facebook.com). The site began with US$ 85 rent occupancy of site on the Internet in 2004 and was launched by a young man Mark Zuckerberg from a small old bedroom at the University of Harvard. The value of the website became more than $15bn or more than one hundred times the annual return which is estimated at $150m.
According to Reuters’ report the use of the site in the Arab world has increased in an amazing degree, from 11.9 million users in January 2010 to 21.3 million in June of the same year, a growth rate of 78 per cent in just one year. A report of Asharq Al-Awsat on Egyptian revolution stated that ‘Facebook’ was the alternative media interface through which young people followed what was going on the field after these young people lost the confidence in the credibility of the official Egyptian media, which they said were highlighting the image of the government and ignoring the events. The millions of people from all over Egypt participated in contribution to the websites, especially the Facebook, with footage material, photographs and news reports on events. The site became an open forum for all views aimed to unite the political and social demands. The infinite space of the Internet provided an alternative to accommodate all views about them and the millions of young people followed the views of experts and public personalities. On the economic side, the report notes that none of the internet activists missed the opportunity to play a supportive role through Facebook by releasing the call to save the stock exchange from an imminent collapse after it lost about 70 billion pounds in the last period, through purchase of some shares with a value of 100 pounds in an attempt to restore the lost balance. The millions of well-known Egyptians also didn’t miss the opportunity when the website turned into a super cynical blog that criticizes all means of jokes or cartoons, videos and unedited pictures with programs such as Photoshop. Even some political analysts called on the youth revolution in Facebook. The youth who streered the revolution are still playing their role without interruption to take the revolution to safety and fight against counter-revolution.
Today in the case of the events in Syria and the revolutionary Arab states, states of defiance and resilience to address the people’s revolution and their killing in the streets by the army and tanks, Facebook is leading the real resistance against the oppression, violence, massacres by displaying the entire world the truth about what is happening there to the extent that internal TV stations such as CNN and Arabic channel such as Al-Jazeera are quoting it and not the vice versa. It is a real revolution in the concept of social media and street and citizen media, which made the official Syrian press accuse the administration of Facebook of conspiracy against the Syrian people in order to include the website in the long list of countries, forces and international media which have been accused of conspiracy against the regime. The Syrian official newspaper ‘Al-Thawra’ said that the management of Facebook “is conspiring with people of alleged revolution in Syria and its duplicity in standards”. There are pages that cannot be closed and there are pages that are closed without warning. The practices of retaliation are justified by the prejudice and conspiracy only.
The page of the European Parliament on the Facebook site became subject to Syrian piracy attack by the supporters of the Syrian president after the European Union imposed sanctions against 13 people close to him as well as the president himself. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Washington Post’ disclosed that the security forces in the Syrian regime began to resort to a new method for the suppression of the ongoing revolution, which began to torture the activists brutally in order to take their password on Facebook to cut off communication with each other and stop the dissemination of video, news clips of Syrian Revolution and the total blackout on what is happening. The paper explains that with prevention of foreign journalists from entering Syria they relied on the information which the citizens placed on Facebook. The organizers of the protests relied on the technology, while the regime tried to surround them by power cuts sometimes and means of communication at other times, but the activists managed to overcome these hurdles through the use of generators and satellite phones.
Why Facebook, twitter and YouTube became the square of Arab people in order to talk freely and without restrictions? The reason is that they are social sites and not a government newspaper or radio or TV. Jamal Banoon points out that the cause of the problem is that the Arab media remained absent from the concerns of people and citizens and even those states which are saying that they cancelled the Ministry of Information, have other supervisory authority either as the Ministry of Interior or other government agencies which controlled the media, exercised different types of restrictions and changed the facts. The Arab media is to serve the leaders, officials and influential personalities and keep the citizen, his voice and needs aside.
A young man studying at Harvard University wanted to prove that he has the ability to review and show restraint. He hacked the site of the university and took the pictures of a group of students and put them on the site which he created on the Internet. He asked his colleagues in and outside the university to vote to compare the university’s girls with animals that are close to them in likeness. He surprised everyone by getting 22,000 votes in less than two hours and was almost dismissed from the university because of what he did.
When the story of the boy with the site and photos was published, two brothers who wanted to create a social networking site between friends and were looking for a programmer to help them in launching such website, contacted him but he kept the idea for himself and worked with a colleague to develop, simplify and launch it through a site in which the user will provide his data and delete the same whenever he wants. This website with the passage of days transferred into the first, most important and most used social networking website in the world, which is ‘Facebook’ (Facebook.com). The site began with US$ 85 rent occupancy of site on the Internet in 2004 and was launched by a young man Mark Zuckerberg from a small old bedroom at the University of Harvard. The value of the website became more than $15bn or more than one hundred times the annual return which is estimated at $150m.
According to Reuters’ report the use of the site in the Arab world has increased in an amazing degree, from 11.9 million users in January 2010 to 21.3 million in June of the same year, a growth rate of 78 per cent in just one year. A report of Asharq Al-Awsat on Egyptian revolution stated that ‘Facebook’ was the alternative media interface through which young people followed what was going on the field after these young people lost the confidence in the credibility of the official Egyptian media, which they said were highlighting the image of the government and ignoring the events. The millions of people from all over Egypt participated in contribution to the websites, especially the Facebook, with footage material, photographs and news reports on events. The site became an open forum for all views aimed to unite the political and social demands. The infinite space of the Internet provided an alternative to accommodate all views about them and the millions of young people followed the views of experts and public personalities. On the economic side, the report notes that none of the internet activists missed the opportunity to play a supportive role through Facebook by releasing the call to save the stock exchange from an imminent collapse after it lost about 70 billion pounds in the last period, through purchase of some shares with a value of 100 pounds in an attempt to restore the lost balance. The millions of well-known Egyptians also didn’t miss the opportunity when the website turned into a super cynical blog that criticizes all means of jokes or cartoons, videos and unedited pictures with programs such as Photoshop. Even some political analysts called on the youth revolution in Facebook. The youth who streered the revolution are still playing their role without interruption to take the revolution to safety and fight against counter-revolution.
Today in the case of the events in Syria and the revolutionary Arab states, states of defiance and resilience to address the people’s revolution and their killing in the streets by the army and tanks, Facebook is leading the real resistance against the oppression, violence, massacres by displaying the entire world the truth about what is happening there to the extent that internal TV stations such as CNN and Arabic channel such as Al-Jazeera are quoting it and not the vice versa. It is a real revolution in the concept of social media and street and citizen media, which made the official Syrian press accuse the administration of Facebook of conspiracy against the Syrian people in order to include the website in the long list of countries, forces and international media which have been accused of conspiracy against the regime. The Syrian official newspaper ‘Al-Thawra’ said that the management of Facebook “is conspiring with people of alleged revolution in Syria and its duplicity in standards”. There are pages that cannot be closed and there are pages that are closed without warning. The practices of retaliation are justified by the prejudice and conspiracy only.
The page of the European Parliament on the Facebook site became subject to Syrian piracy attack by the supporters of the Syrian president after the European Union imposed sanctions against 13 people close to him as well as the president himself. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ and ‘Washington Post’ disclosed that the security forces in the Syrian regime began to resort to a new method for the suppression of the ongoing revolution, which began to torture the activists brutally in order to take their password on Facebook to cut off communication with each other and stop the dissemination of video, news clips of Syrian Revolution and the total blackout on what is happening. The paper explains that with prevention of foreign journalists from entering Syria they relied on the information which the citizens placed on Facebook. The organizers of the protests relied on the technology, while the regime tried to surround them by power cuts sometimes and means of communication at other times, but the activists managed to overcome these hurdles through the use of generators and satellite phones.
Why Facebook, twitter and YouTube became the square of Arab people in order to talk freely and without restrictions? The reason is that they are social sites and not a government newspaper or radio or TV. Jamal Banoon points out that the cause of the problem is that the Arab media remained absent from the concerns of people and citizens and even those states which are saying that they cancelled the Ministry of Information, have other supervisory authority either as the Ministry of Interior or other government agencies which controlled the media, exercised different types of restrictions and changed the facts. The Arab media is to serve the leaders, officials and influential personalities and keep the citizen, his voice and needs aside.
