The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Youth power to the fore
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS
Egypt's on-going revolt is the result of careful planning on Facebook and other social media tools by a young group of bright people, who have managed to draw all major societal groups — the working class, government employees, professionals including lawyers and journalists, students and women — into a new age movement for fundamental change.
The build-up to the uprising has been the result of a collective exercise in which the April 6 Youth Movement appears to have played a leading role. This movement is essentially represented by a Facebook group started in early 2008 by Ahmed Maher and Ahmad Salah. It took root when in April that year, it supported an industrial strike in the Nile delta town of El-Mahalla El-Kubra. The organisers established a network of bloggers and citizen journalists and with their support publicised the strike by posting pictures on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. They also sent out alerts about police movements and mobilised legal aid for the strikers.
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