Political Conversation

Between November 2010 and May 2011, the amount of content produced

online by major Egyptian political actors increased significantly as they reacted

to events on the street and adjusted strategy to compete for the affinities of

newly freed Egyptian voters. Some observers have been skeptical of social

media’s relevance to the evolution of political conversations in Egypt. But we

find that in Egypt, Facebook and Western news media are central to online political discourse. We mapped the digital space in Egypt twice, once in

November 2010 and a second time in May 2011. What we found was that

Egypt’s major political actors often linked to social networking and news

services. In fact, major Egyptian political Websites were far more likely to

link to Facebook or Western media like CNN than they were to each other. For

Egyptians, Facebook and other social media are not simply sites used for

entertainment or managing their personal lives. These social media are

where Egyptians go to do politics. Political parties have learned this over

the past few months, and are working hard to put new content online and

connect with potential supporters some of whom may be voters in upcoming elections. In November 2010, the Websites of major political actors had more links to Facebook and other Western media than they had to each other. Over 20

percent of the 928 links going out of Egyptian party Websites were to social

media such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and to blogging tools or Western

news Websites such as the BBC or CNN.

By May 2011, however, this had dropped to 15 percent of 1,332 outgoing links. Table 1 highlights the number of pages, unique external links, and overall size of the Websites of major political groups in Egypt, both before the revolution and after. Groups that were unlicensed by Mubarak’s government are indicated with an asterisk (*). Both the number of pagesand the volume (in megabytes) are good

indicators of the overall size of theWebsite, though the first may be a goodmeasure of text content and the seconda measure of multimedia content. The

number of unique external links is agood indicator of how much a political

party connects its ideas and content tolarger political conversations.

The network structure of Egypt’s onlinepolitical parties and pressure groups,

along with the unique external Websitesoriginating from a group’s homepage, is

mapped in Figures 5 and 6. The shadedcircle around a group’s origin node

represents the volume of pages withinthat site (the diameter of each circle

directly represents the amount ofcontent, in megabytes, that each site

hosts). Comparing the ratio of uniqueexternal pages to a site’s volume

indicates how much any given site isrelying on external and self-produced

content. In the network map of Egypt’sonline political sphere, each dot

represents an external link originatingfrom the political parties.’ Websites.

When two dots connect, it is a site thattwo parties linked to and any links

position political parties closer togetherbased on the program’s algorithm. We

can see the clear arrangement aroundblogs and state-run media sites.

In May 2011, Western social media andnews outlets are still at the center of the

online Egyptian political network. Themajority of common links between

Egypt’s political parties are commercial,Western sites. Most central, we see:

Facebook, Google, YouTube, CNN,Yahoo!, Blogger, BBC, Flickr, Twitter and

Wordpress. Notably, none of theWebsites crawled in November 2010

linked to al Jazeera, and there were onlysix outgoing links to al Jazeera when the

crawl was repeated in May 2011.

The results of the May 2011 networkgeneration show that the same Western

media are still present, but are noworiented along the periphery of theMuslim Brotherhood’s Websites. Andwhile links to Western media are foundon many Egyptian sites, the MuslimBrotherhood provides a surprisingamount of new content in both itsArabic and English language sites. Interms of pages, the Arabic version grewby almost 60 percent, and in terms ofsize it more than tripled. Consideringhow large the Muslim Brotherhood’sArabic language Website is, it isinteresting to note how relatively fewlinks it makes to outside news sourcesor content from other political actors.

The National Democratic Party'sWebsite is no longer inservice. The last publicly availableversions of the site were cached inGoogle's search engine on February 26,2011. There is no redirect, so itappears that the host servers havebeen taken offline. The April 6Movement, which had a central role inthe uprising, barely existed as astandalone URL in November 2010because most of its content was not onits own Website but almost exclusivelyon social networking platforms likeFacebook and Twitter. The NationalAssociation for Change and the National

Democratic Party ceased to exist afterthe uprising.

Table 1.

Before Revolution After Revolution

Note: Groups marked with an asterisk (*) were illegal political parties until recently.

Figure 5.

Figure 6.

PROJECT FOCUS

Choose a country and write a 1500 word research report on the topic “Cybersecurity policy in …” Collect and analyze the data, reflecting the governmental policy towards cybersecurity in this particular country.

Mind the structure of the report as follows:

1) title page

2) Contents

3) Summary (150 words)

4) Introduction/Background (introduce topic; background information). Not: no substantial information, this belongs to the body of the report!

5) Method (research questions; how research was carried out)

6) Findings/results (answers to research questions)

7) Conclusion (summary of main findings; implications; recommendation) . Note:No new information, all the main points should be in the body of the report.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 867