WATANI International
12 December 2010
The recent parliamentary elections witnessed the exploitation of online tools in campaigning, a first in Egyptian elections. Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter were widely used by political party candidates and independents alike to reach a wide base of the electorates in urban and rural Egypt. The easy-to-use-and-access Internet and its relatively minimal cost made it an attractive platform for electioneering, especially since it allows a wide margin of interaction with the public.
Blogs and networks
It was in 2004 when it all started. According to Samy Abdel-Aziz, dean of Cairo University’s Media College, the Internet then became a viable political and social venue with the spearheading of blogs and social networks such as You Tube and Facebook. Various groups began to coalesce around specific targets or causes, initiating an unprecedented condition of social and political mobility.
In 2005, Dr Abdel-Aziz proceeds, several bloggers took it upon themselves to monitor the parliamentary elections. The result, he says, was a deluge of blogs which documented a huge number of violations and which, contrary to supposedly impartial official reports that brim with figures, were more personal, intimate, incidents cited with passion. In addition to the text describing the incident, the blogs usually included images or video footage clandestinely shot by tools as inconspicuous as cell phones. It is not surprising that these blogs were pivotal in forming public opinion.
For its part, Facebook has become the arena of an online battle between the supporters of various candidates, and even between possible contenders for the 2011 presidential elections, including Gamal Mubarak and Mohamed ElBaradie.
The Internet also became a venue for the broadcast of several radio stations. In what Saïd Shoeb, managing editor of the news site al-Youm al-Sabei, considers a positive move which took off in 2007, the Internet provided a wide space of freedom with no ceiling of restrictions. Prominent among these stations are Radio Hurriyatina (Radio our freedom), Banat we Bass (Girls only), and Ithaaet al-Mustaqbal (The Future Broadcast). All these and other broadcasts, Shoeb says, served to enlighten young people about many issues and to promote interaction, thus promoting positive participation.
Dynamic Campaigning
The websites of political parties, according to Shoeb, reflect their political reality. The ruling National Democratic Party is the one which most exploits the Internet to its advantage. It campaigned successfully for the parliamentary elections through its website and Facebook, and conducted counter-campaigns against the opposition. It is also conducting a very dynamic, interactive campaign for Gamal Mubarak for Egypt’s next president.
Other parties merely use their websites to window-case their weekly or daily papers. The only opposition group with an attractive, informative and interactive site is the Muslim Brotherhood which is legally banned from political practice on grounds that it is a religious group.
According to columnist and prominent media figure Yusri Fouda, the candidates who most exploited the Internet in campaigning were those who were journalists and media persons. Several of them made it to Parliament; in all cases they publicised online their experiences all through the election process.