Report: Was it Truly a Twitter Revolution?

While the debate continues regarding just how important social media has been in gathering dissidents during the Arab Spring, an analysis by Navid Hassanpour suggests that it was actually the absence of social media and cell phones that pushed Egypt’s people into the streets en masse.

Hassanpour contends “[severing internet and cell phone service] implicated many apolitical citizens unaware of or uninterested in the unrest; it forced more face-to-face communication, i.e., more physical presence in streets; and finally it effectively decentralized the rebellion on the 28th through new hybrid communication tactics, producing a quagmire much harder to control and repress than one massive gathering in Tahrir.”

Social media represents an unfamiliar and unprecedented facet of political unrest, and some analysts posit that social media played an integral role in the Arab Spring, while others remain unconvinced.