Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916ORIGINAL ARTICLEClicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Mediaand Oppositional Movements in Egypt,2004–2011Merlyna LimConsortium of Science, Policy & Outcomes and the School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University,Tempe, AZ 85281, USATo deepen our understanding of the relationship between social media and political changeduring the Egyptian uprising of early 2011, events in Tahrir Square must be situated in alarger context of media use and recent history of online activism. For several years, the mostsuccessful social movements in Egypt, including Kefaya, the April 6th Youth, and We areall Khaled Said, were those using social media to expand networks of disaffected Egyptians,broker relations between activists, and globalize the resources and reach of oppositionleaders. Social media afforded these opposition leaders the means to shape repertoires ofcontention, frame the issues, propagate unifying symbols, and transform online activisminto offline protests.doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01628.xHosni Mubarak, Anwar Sadat, and Gamal Abdel Nasser are having tea in theafterlife. Mubarak asks Nasser, ‘‘How did you end up here?’’ ‘‘Poison,’’ Nasseranswers. Mubarak then turns to Sadat. ‘‘What about you?’’ he asks. ‘‘Anassassin’s bullet,’’ Sadat says. Sadat and Nasser then turn to Mubarak, ‘‘Andyou?’’ To which Mubarak replies: ‘‘Facebook.’’This joke has been making the rounds in Egypt since the resignation of PresidentMubarak on 11 February 2011. While amusing, the joke epitomizes the prevalentperception about the role of social media, particularly Facebook, in the Arabuprisings. Some observers deem social media as the main force behind the popularmovement against authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africanregion (Cohen, 2011; Webster, 2011). Wael Ghonim, a marketing manager forGoogle and an online activist who created the Facebook page that helped organizeCorresponding author: Merlyna Lim; e-mail: [email protected] of Communication 62 (2012) 231–248 © 2012 International Communication Association 231Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses M. Limthe protest, called the Egypt uprising ‘‘Revolution 2.0’’ and said, ‘‘I want to meetMark Zuckerberg one day and thank him ... if you want to liberate a society justgive them the Internet’’ (Cooper, 2011).However, others dismiss the role of social media and argue that the revolutionwould have happened without the Internet and had little to do with Twitter andFacebook (Rich, 2011; York, 2011). These polarized opinions reflect ongoing debateover the impact of the Internet on politics and democracy. Techno-utopian scholarsview the Internet’s expansion in access to information and exchanges of ideas asenhancing political participation, civil society, and democracy (Hague & Loader,1999; Kamarck & Nye, 1999; Locke, 1998). In contrast, techno-dystopians see theInternet as posing a threat to democracy through the ways in which governmentsand corporations use it to manipulate users and legitimize their identities (Barber,1996; Fox, 1994) and by demeaning political discourse (Gutstein, 1999; Moore, 1999;Wilhelm, 1998). In The Net Delusion, Morozov (2011), for instance, argues thatthe Internet easily lends itself to the repressive control and the abuse of power byauthoritarian governments.It is an oversimplification to frame the Egyptian revolt exclusively as either a‘‘Facebook revolution’’ or a ‘‘people’s revolution.’’ People and social media are notdetached from each other (Zhuo, Wellman, & Yu, 2011). To provide a context forunderstanding media use and recent history of online activism in Egypt, Figure 1offers a timeline of the most important social movement actions, street protests, onlinemobilizations, policy successes, and strategic defeats for the Egyptian opposition.Informed by a wide range of scholarly sources, archival materials, and personalcommunications, this figure helps fill out the narrative of social media use andpolitical change in Egypt. Most important, it illustrates that social media have beenan integral part of political activism of the Egyptian for years, showing, for instancethat 54 out of 70 recorded street protests from 2004 to 2011 substantially involvedonline activism. Hence, the power of networked individuals and groups who toppledMubarak presidency cannot be separated from the power of social media thatfacilitated the formation and the expansion of the networks themselves.To fully understand phenomena such as the Tahrir revolt, we need to look beyondthe period of late January and early February 2011 and beyond Facebook and Twitter.Every moment has a history, including the Tahrir Square. The Arab uprisings werebuilt on years of civil society movements in the region, online and offline. Althoughthis article focuses specifically on Egypt, the Tunisian revolt did not happen instanta-neously either. It also had deep historical roots in years in the hard work of Tunisiancivil society and in the long established digital activism in the country, especially thevibrant activism of the online anticensorship movement (Randeree, 2011).The genesis of online activism in Egypt can be traced to the rise of the Kefayamovement in 2004, followed by the emergence of oppositional activists in theEgyptian blogosphere. This was well before Facebook and Twitter became available inthe country. By delving into the history of online activism in Egypt from 2004 to 2011(Figure 1), my goal is to locate the actual role of social media in mobilizing populist232 Journal of Communication 62 (2012) 231–248 © 2012 International Communication AssociationM. Lim Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee HousesFigure 1 Timeline of street activisms in Egypt (2003–2011). *Substantially organized online.Journal of Communication 62 (2012) 231–248 © 2012 International Communication Association 233Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses M. Limmovements over a broad geography and longer space of time. I contend that the roleof social media in the Egypt revolt was not merely technological but also sociopolitical.Social media represent tools and spaces in which various communication networksthat make up social movement emerge, connect, collapse, and expand.Grievances, movements, and social networksSocial media were not the singular cause of the Egypt uprising and Arab Spring ingeneral. Longstanding grievances concerning corrupt and oppressive