Social Media as a Recruitment Tool to High-Risk Movements in Gender Restrictive Regimes: The Case of the 2011 Egyptian Uprising
FRI Lecture Series
Social movements have used social media for recruitment since the mid-2000s. Scholars agree that Facebook and Twitter especially mobilized people during the 2011 world-wide protest wave. However, the literature largely ignores the gendered effect of social media on mobilization. I argue that social media is especially mobilizing for women in high-risk gender restrictive contexts. In such instances, on-line ties with fellow citizens offer women access to information about political issues in their countries, opportunity to articulate political views, and a space to interact with activists. I investigate this claim using the Arab Democracy Barometer survey (2011), a representative sample of Egyptians administered five months after the 18-day anti-regime uprising of 2011. I find that social media mobilized women but not men. My findings challenge the Western perception of Egyptian women as either Westernized protestors or oppressed non-activists and emphasize the gendered nature of social media.
