@JHabermas: How Twitter Functioned as a

Democratic Tool During the 2012 #Egypt Protests

Carolien Lindeman S1565419

MA Journalism

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Supervisor: Prof. Dr. M.J. Broersma

Second Reader: Dr. A. Heinrich 31 August, 2015

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Abstract

Twitter’s democratic potential was first considered on a large scale after its visible role during

protests of the Arab Spring in 2010 and 2011 when citizens and journalists used it as a tool to connect. Using public sphere theory, this thesis also explores this democratic role. I argue for the existence of a virtual public sphere where citizens meet and deliberate so as to come to

well-informed opinions and decisions about the democracy they live in. I furthermore argue that the presence of network journalism is conducive to a well-working virtual public sphere.

Network journalism means the interaction between, among others, journalists and citizens who together in a processual nature bring and alter the news through Twitter.

Through a grounded theory analysis of fourteen elite tweeters during the November-

December 2012 protests in Egypt, this thesis finds that some of the behavior found on Twitter is in accordance with normative standards for a virtual public sphere. I theorize these to be

information dissemination; the possibility to ask critical questions; equality; accessibility; and the idea that deliberation can end in dissensus. Moreover, the role of network journalism within this virtual public sphere is of vital importance as it means that through the

interconnection of, in this case, citizens and journalists, citizens can come to more informed opinions. Lastly, I extrapolate three theoretical themes – power, emotion and morality – that

are important for a more effective use of Twitter. Exploring Twitter’s potential as a democratic tool for citizens and journalists advances

our theoretical knowledge of potential new public spheres. This leads to new insights of how

Twitter can be most advantageously used by journalists thus improving the quality of the virtual public sphere and democracies in general.

Keywords: network journalism, Habermas, public sphere, Twitter, democracy, Egypt

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List of Contents

Abstract 1

List of Contents 2

List of Figures 4

“What are you doing?”: Introducing Twitter’s democratic potential 5

Chapter 1 The Public Sphere and the News Media 10

1.1 An Ideal Public Sphere? 1.2 Transformations of the Habermasian Public Sphere

1.2.2 The two critiques 1.3 The News Media and the Public Sphere

1.3.2 Dismissing Lifeworld and System 1.3.3 Multiple Spheres and the Role of Journalism

Chapter 2 A Virtual Public Sphere 22

2.1 A Virtual Public Sphere 2.1.2 Arguments Against a Virtual Public Sphere 2.1.3 The Internet is a Public Sphere

2.1.4 A Normative Vision of the Virtual Public Sphere 2.2 Journalism in a Virtual Public Sphere

2.2.2 User Generated Content 2.2.3 Citizen Journalism 2.2.4 Participatory Journalism

Chapter 3 If Habermas Would Tweet 39

3.1 Twitter 3.2 Twitter as a tool of a Virtual Public Sphere

3.3 Twitter as a Tool in a Network 3.3.2 Journalists and Twitter

3.3.3 Citizens and Twitter 3.4 Twitter and Egypt

Chapter 4 An Egyptian Network: A Methodology 60

4.1 Grounded Theory 4.2 Developing the Codes 4.3 The Dataset

4.3.2 Elite tweeters 4.3.3 The Citizens

4.3.4 The Journalists

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Chapter 5 #MorsiMubarak: Analyzing the Egyptian Twitter Elite 78

5.1 Results 5.1.2 Citizens and Journalists

5.1.3 Main themes 5.2 Discussion 5.2.2 Twitter is a Tool in a Virtual Public Sphere

5.2.3 Network Journalism on Twitter 5.2.4 Learning from the Themes

5.3 Conclusion

Habermas Should Join: A Look at Twitter’s Democratic Potential 117

Bibliography 121

Appendices 132

Appendix A – Morsi’s consitutional decree issued on November 22 Appendix B – Number of connections between elite tweeters from the sample Appendix C – Coded Documents

Appendix D – Lists of Codes Appendix E – Categories and Themes

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List of Figures

Figure 5.1 Screencapture of Morsillini interactive poster 78 Figure 5.2 Percentage critical tweets of each user’s overall tweets 83

Figure 5.3 Twitter discussion Gsquare86 84

Figure 5.4 Twitter conversation between SherineT and 87

TheEvertBopp

Figure 5.5 EitenZeerban’s tweet and a four day later reaction 88

Figure 5.6 The interconnection between top citizen and journalist

Tweeters 90

Figure 5.7 Citizen discussion and analysis, including Mosaaberizing 91

Figure 5.8 Discussion between Mosaaberizing and Evanchill 92

Figure 5.9A Photo New York Times 93 Figure 5.9B Photo New York Times 93

Figure 5.10 The interconnection between elite citizen and journalist 94

tweeters from Cairo, Egypt

Figure 5.11 Number of total connections per elite tweeter 95

Figure 5.12 Distribution of categories over themes 97

Figure 5.13 Overview of the theme power and its categories 98

Figure 5.14 Overview of the theme emotion and its categories 101 Figure 5.15 Parody of Morsi’s Time cover 102

Figure 5.16 Overview of the theme morality and its categories 104

Figure 5.17 Percentage of tweets about the Egyptian political situation 111

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“What are you doing?”: Introducing Twitter’s democratic potential

A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?1

This was Twitter’s original tagline when it was launched in 2006. It was developed as a micro

blogging tool to stay in touch with friends. By posting 140 character messages users could let

their followers know what they were up to. These humble beginnings, however, have led to a

medium being used for far more wide-ranging political goals than simply letting each other

know what you are doing. In 2009 Twitter’s tagline had evolved to the question “What’s

happening?” thus subtly changing the focus from only personal experiences to engagement in

everything happening outside your own experience. This modification of the phrase was

mirrored by a changed use of the medium during protests in dictatorial countries. During the

2009 Iranian’s protests against their authoritarian government, Twitter was called the

“Medium of the Movement” as it functioned as a source for people to both post and read news

about the otherwise heavily censored protests.2 Similarly the protests of the Arab Spring in

many Arab countries were coined as the Facebook and Twitter Revolutions by many

observers.3 During these instances Twitter turned out to be the best place to get on the ground

reports that were not being censored. As such it was a source and tool for journalists and a

unique way for citizens to successfully organize and mobilize against repressive regimes.

A medium originally intended for chitchat among friends appears to have become a

powerful tool in the hands of repressed citizens. This could potentially have become the

twenty-first century version of the Habermasian coffee house. Jürgen Habermas theorized the

eighteenth century coffee houses as the ideal site for deliberation between citizens who were

well-informed through the information provision of the news media. Such deliberation and

news formation, Habermas poses, were necessary for what he termed a democratic public

sphere.4 Ever since the eighteenth century this model has been in crisis as citizens’ relation

toward both the state but also the media apparatus has compromised equal and universal

participation in the public sphere. Due to this downturn Habermas, but also other theorists like

Douglas Kellner, Nancy Fraser and Peter Dahlgren have been trying to define a new ideal

type model for democracy.

1 Twitter’s tagline as could be found on its homepage from 2006 until 2009. 2 Lev Grossman, “Iran’s Protests: Why Twitter is the Medium of the Movement,” Time Magazin U.S. June 17,

2009, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1905125,00.html (accessed June 6, 2011). 3 Brad Stone and Noam Cohen, “Social Networks Spread Defiance Online,” The New York Times. June 15, 2009,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/world/middleeast/16media.html?_r=0 (accessed July 14, 2013). 4 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois

society (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989), 60.

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Exploring Twitter’s potential as a democratic tool thus advances our theoretical

knowledge of potential new public spheres, befitting contemporary society instead of

eighteenth century bourgeois society. More practically this leads to an increasing

understanding of how Twitter can be most advantageously used by journalists, those who are

supposed to be information providers in a public sphere. Moreover, such research provides an

overview of how citizens are already using Twitter and thus answers what Twitter’s current

potential as a democratic tool is.

Twitter, despite having only been on the scene since 2006, has nonetheless already

been the subject of extensive research. To put my research within the context of previous

research it is necessary to focus both on the way Twitter has been looked at within the

political sciences and within journalism studies, as this thesis focuses on journalists’ use of

Twitter and democratic theoretical ideas of the Habermasian public sphere. Within the

political sciences, research on Twitter has been focused on Twitter’s democratizing role.

Twitter in this case has often been linked to Habermas in the sense that the interactions on it

reminds of the Habermasian eighteenth century coffee houses populated by citizens engaging

in critical rational deliberation. The coffeehouse served both as a place where citizens became

informed on their public sphere and a space to engage in deliberation with other citizens.

Twitter is also a space where information can be gathered and discussed. Moreover, on

Twitter citizens can also spread information themselves. They are no longer only dependent

on the news media, as was the case in the coffee houses of the eighteenth century. As such

political science research has focused Twitter’s potential to function as a forum for political

deliberation;5 it has discussed a too optimistic vision of the democratizing and empowering

functions of social media;6 and has developed theories on how Twitter might most effectively

help democratic innovation.7

Within journalism studies scholarly work into the democratic implications of Twitter

is also manifold. When considering the renewed interaction possible between journalists and

citizens, the main focus in early research on Twitter has been on its influence on journalistic

practices. This happened in the form of researching the way Twitter is challenging old

5 Andranik Tumasjan, “Predicting Elections with Twitter; What 140 Characters Reveal about Political

Sentiment,” (paper presented at the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media,

George Washington University, Washington, DC, 23 – 26 of May, 2010), 1. 6 Petros Iosofidis, “The Public Sphere, Social Networks and Public Service Media,” Information,

Communication and Society 14, no. 5 (2011), 619. 7 Andrew Chadwick, “Recent Shifts in the Relationship Between the Internet and Democratic Engagement in

Britain and the United States: Granularity, Infromational Exuberance, and Political Learning,” Website New

Political Communication Unit, 2010, http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/storage/ chadwick/Chadwick_Granularity_

Informational_Exuberance_Learning_in_Comparing_Digital_Polit ics.pdf (accessed July 19th, 2011), 30.

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journalistic values, such as verification;8 but also how journalists who microblog have to

negotiate their professional norms.9 Another type of analysis is how journalism can be

enhanced through the use of Twitter and other social media. For example, different studies

have considered the way Twitter helps with information dissemination;10 how social media

and Twitter can and should be adopted in newsrooms;11 how Twitter changes media ethics;12

in what manner Twitter discusses different topics compared to traditional media outlets;13 and

the effects Twitter might have on the diversity of the audience of news outlets.14

Taking this a step further is the research looking at the influence of Twitter on citizens

as well as journalists, which similar to this thesis automatically also considers the democratic

implications of this interaction. For example, it was researched how Twitter’s set-up

encourages citizens to act as journalists, especially during disasters or terrorist attacks,

therefore enriching and improving the news surrounding such events.15 More specifically,

such studies have considered what kind of news citizens on Twitter are producing and

whether this is so-called hard news or soft news.16

The implications of the use of Twitter by citizens is researched and also often linked to

Habermasian ideas on the public sphere. For example, Peter Dahlgren explores how Twitter

used by both citizens and journalists might enhance civic participation.17 Sue Robinson goes

even further by theorizing the implications of Twitter and social media for journalism. She

argues a new kind of journalism practiced both by journalists and citizens has come into being

largely due to social media and Twitter in the form of journalism as process where both

parties continuously work on and change the news that is available.18 Similar to this idea is

8 Alfred Hermida, “Tweets and Truth,” Journalism Practice iFirst Article (2012), 1. 9 Dominic L. Lasorsa et al., “Journalism Practice in an Emerging Communicaton Space,” Journalism Studies

iFirst Article (2011), 1. 10 Kristina Lerman and Rumi Ghosh, “Information Contagion: an Empirical Study of the Spread of News on

Digg and Twitter Social Networks”, in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Weblogs and Social

Media (2010): 1. 11 Nicola Bruno, “Tweet First, Verify Later? How real-time information is changing the coverage of worldwide

crisis events,” Reuters Institute Fellowship Paper (2010 – 2011). 12 Stephen J.A. Ward and Herman Wasserman, “Towards an Open Ethics: Implications of New Media Platforms

for Global Ethics Discourse,” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 25, no. 4 (2010), 292. 13 Wayne Xin Zhao and Jing Jiang, “An Empirical Comparison of Topics in Twitter and Traditional Media,”

Singapore Management University School of Information Systems Technical Paper Series (2011), 1. 14 Jisun An et al., “Media Landscape in Twitter: A World of New Conventions and Political Diversity,”

(presented at the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona July, 2011) 18. 15 Dhiraj Murthy, “Twitter: Microphone for the Masses?” Media Culture & Society 33, no. 5 (2011), 779. 16 Tyler J. Horan, “Soft Versus Hard News on Microblogging Networks: Semantic Analysis of Twitter

Produsage,” Information, Communication and Society iFirst Article (2012), 1. 17 Peter Dahlgren, “Online Journalism and Civic Cosmpolitanism: Professional vs. Participatory Ideals,”

Journalism Studies iFirst Article (2012), 1. 18 Sue Robinson, “’Journalism as Process’: The Organizational Implications of Participatory On line News,”

Journalism and Communication Monographs 13 (2011), 202.

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the concept of network or networked journalism, recently expounded both by Adrienne

Russell and Ansgard Heinrich.19 Russell and Heinrich both posit that journalism within a

networked sphere has become a horizontal instead of a vertical process. Moreover, network

journalism consists of many different players apart from journalists also citizens, NGOs,

government officials and corporations for example. All these actors function as a node within

a network, constantly contributing and changing the news within that network.20

This thesis fits into this earlier work on Twitter, firstly on a theoretical level because it

combines political science ideas about the Habermasian public sphere with the concept of

network journalism from journalism studies. By appropriating Habermas’ theory of the public

sphere and applying it in a new way to Twitter, this thesis contributes to the theory building

efforts surrounding public sphere theory. Moreover, my research adds to the emerging

published research on Twitter as I empirically research how it is being used by an

interconnected group of citizens and journalists. As opposed to most research that either

focuses on how journalists appropriate Twitter into their already existing journalistic practices

or on how citizens use it for mobilizing and information purposes among themselves, my

thesis focuses upon the interrelations between these two groups.

I thus answer the overarching question of how citizens and journalists may use Twitter

in the most democratic manner. To accomplish this, in chapter one I first define and

problematize what a democracy entails according to Habermasian public sphere theory.

Moreover this chapter also presents the normatively appointed role of both citizens and

journalists in such a sphere. Chapter two subsequently presents how this public sphere theory

can be appropriated to fit an idea of the internet functioning as a virtual public sphere. Within

this sphere I again problematize the specific roles of citizens and journalists by defining an

adapted normative vision for this virtual public sphere. This vision borrows from the

Habermasian conception of the public sphere, but incorporates contemporary ideas about the

internet such as the idea that a discussion does not need to take place in a small amount of

time but can be spread over several days or sometimes even weeks. Moreover, I incorporate

the idea that dissensus is also an acceptable outcome for discussions taking place in a virtual

public sphere. Chapter three builds on this by honing in on the specific role of Twitter and

defining how this could normatively be a tool for democracy.

19 Ansgard Heinrich, Network Journalism: Journalistic Practice in Interactive Spheres (New York City:

Routledge, 2011); Adrienne Russell, Networked: A Contemporary History of News in Transition (Cambridge,

UK: Polity Press, 2011). 20 Ansgard Heinrich, “Network Journalism: Moving towards a Global Journalism Culture.” (paper presented at

the RIPE conference in Mainz, October 9-11, 2008), 5-6.

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Having built up this theoretical framework of Twitter’s potential role within a virtual

public sphere, I then test whether this is actually the case and to what extent. For this I use the

case study of the November-December 2012 protests in Cairo, Egypt. These protests serve as

an example of citizens protesting their democratically elected government. During these

protests Twitter was again used by many citizens, as well as journalists, to connect. Of these

Twitter users I selected fourteen elite tweeters, seven of them citizens, the other seven

journalists. The elite tweeters had a large following, posted often and were retweeted often.

They were also highly interconnected therefore serving as an ideal sample of a close-knit

network. In chapter four I present how a grounded theory approach best suits my purpose of

assessing how Twitter served as a tool for democracy during these protests. By coding the

5299 English-language tweets sent by my elite tweeters I then developed categories as well as

three overarching themes to classify the democratic practices taking place via Twitter.

In chapter five, I present the finding that Twitter indeed contains a potential to act as a

tool for a virtual public sphere as the sample showed the presence of five requirements of

such a sphere, namely the presence of information dissemination; the possibility to ask critical

questions; equality; accessibility; and the idea that deliberation can end in dissensus.

Moreover, I also show that Twitter proves to be an effective tool for journalists seeking to

connect in a networked manner. Lastly, I pose that the three themes I extrapolated from the

tweets through the grounded theory approach – power, emotion and morality – provide useful

normative guidelines for journalists’ use of Twitter. My conclusion puts these findings in the

context of democracy and the public sphere and, more specifically, Twitter’s democratic role

within that sphere. As Twitter is thus a new space for critical rational debate, which

journalists can promote through specific networked use of the medium, I pose that it is a

valuable new medium to improve the quality of the public sphere and consequently the

quality of democracy. Now, however, it is first time to set up my specific take on public

sphere theory.

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Chapter 1 The Public Sphere and the News Media

Communication via the mass media plays an important role in the normative vision I advocate.21

Habermas’s initial theory about the public sphere, which he presented in his 1962 work The

Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere reserved a special place for the news media,

as can be seen in abovementioned quote. However, the Habermasian public sphere could not

have been meant as a normative model of the connection between social media, journalism

and democracy. Nevertheless, Jürgen Habermas as well as many other critical theorists since

the 1960s have developed and expanded on the original theory of the public sphere. Those

advances provide a useful theoretical framework to identify that a possible interplay of social

media users and journalists might improve the quality of democracy. In order to arrive at this

conclusion, however, it is first necessary to establish the claim that a certain kind of public

sphere is necessary for a healthy and thriving democracy.22

In this chapter I discuss Habermas’ theory of the public sphere and how within that

sphere democracy can be achieved. The main purpose of this chapter is to posit Habermas’s

theory as a normative ideal type for democracy that can similarly serve as a normative model

for contemporary journalism. This is the basis from which I will argue in the second chapter

that Habermas has indirectly also provided a normative model for new forms of journalism

which, among others, includes contributions to Twitter by both citizens and journalists during

the November-December revolts in Egypt. For now, however, I focus on Habermas’ original

theory of the public sphere and the additions and changes necessary for it to be normatively

applicable to contemporary societies and journalism.

1.1 An Ideal Public Sphere?

Habermas’ conception of the ideal public sphere is based on the social, political, economical

and historical situation in England, France and Germany in the eighteenth century. He poses

that in this time, for a short while, an effective bourgeois public sphere existed within these

three countries. This meant that a relatively large group of middle class men was able to come

together and engage in reasoned debate over key issues, resulting in new ideas, practices and

reasoned criticism of the state. The public sphere, consequently, was an effective place of

mediation between the state and the private individual. Habermas defined this ideal bourgeois

21 Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 9. 22 It is important to note that even though Habermas is not the only one to theorize and certainly not the one to

coin the term ‘public sphere’ he has been the main theorist to recognize the integral role of the (mass) media

within that sphere. It is also important to note that this thesis only considers the part of Habermas’ theory on the

political public sphere as opposed to the cultural public sphere in which literature and art play an important part.

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public sphere “above all as the sphere of private people com[ing] together as a public; they

soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities

themselves, to engage them in debate over the general rules governing relations in the

basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”23

While Habermas’ definition of the public sphere offers the basis of the discussion in this

chapter, for the purpose of this thesis a good working definition is provided by Peter

Dahlgren, who states that the public sphere is a “realm of social life where the exchange of

information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion

can be formed.”24 This means that a public sphere exists when citizens are able to interact and

discuss issues of political concern to reach informed decisions and conclusions. Participation

needs to be universal and equal.

John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley succinctly summarize the four most

important factors that allowed for the rise and existence of the bourgeois public sphere. First,

a differentiation of society, especially in the form of a separation of political authority from

that of everyday life provides the free space for citizens to deliberate. Secondly, the self and

subjectivity were newly privatized, effectively creating a self-conscious public seeking self-

cultivation and thus forced to rationally and reasonably think about and argue for their

specific private interests. Third, the emerging art and literature scene as developed in the

salons of the eighteenth century led to literary debate which generated the abilities and skills

for critical and rational political debate. Lastly, the new printing technologies and coming into

existence of popular newsletters and journals provided relative spaces of debate. What makes

these four factors important for Habermas is that they facilitated, generated and fostered what

he calls critical rationality, meaning a space that exists through critical rational deliberation.

Furthermore this space is relatively powerful and able to put pressure on the state and cause

political, social and economical change.25

The goal of identifying this functioning public sphere was for Habermas to criticize

contemporary democracies. He identifies an almost immediate downturn of the effective

bourgeois public sphere in the eighteenth century, which continues to modern day. Roberts

and Crossley summarize the four contributing factors to this downturn. First, the

differentiation between state and society almost immediately started to blur, resulting in an

23 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of

Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 27. 24 Peter Dahlgren, Television and the Public Sphere: citizenship, democracy and the media (London: SAGE

Publications, 2000), 195. 25 John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley, “Introduction”, in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public

Sphere, ed. Nick Crossley and John Michael Roberts (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 2-4.

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infiltration of the state in private interests. A dependency of individuals on the state has

created a client, or consumer, relationship between state and individual, instead of critical

citizens. Within this relationship interests in money and power have largely replaced critical

rationality, both are not conducive for a rational democracy. Secondly, politicians who are

part of the state have appropriated argumentation and debate; consequently debate has also

become subordinated to interests in power and money. Third, professional scientists have

degraded public opinion by reducing it to mere opinion polls. Fourth, media markets that are

supposed to provide a relatively free and open space for deliberation have been corrupted and

hijacked for the purpose of selling goods. In other words they have also been corrupted by the

power of money.26 In short this means that equal and universal participation in the critical

rational public sphere that Habermas imagines has become impossible.

One could easily dismiss Habermas’s view of the public sphere as mere nostalgia and

a doomsday image of contemporary democracy, but this would be too simple. Luke Goode

suggests that the theory of the public sphere offers a frame of reference for our current model

of democracy.27 Or as Nicholas Garnham puts it, it might be wise “not to see the public

sphere as a concrete space or set of discursive practices, but as a perspective from which to

think about the problem of democracy in the modern world.”28 The Habermasian public

sphere is therefore a normative ideal type of how a rational democratic should best be served.

The purpose of discussing this theory so far is to propose that the discussion of the

public sphere as a critical theoretical concept provides a fitting context to discuss the

democratic potential of social media. This is based on the premise that social media, through

the kind of new space it provides, has the potential to revive aspects of the long lost bourgeois

public sphere. On the internet citizens have the potential of letting their voice be heard and

deliberate critically because of the kind of forum, potentially free from the influence of the

state, that social media provide. It furthermore has the potential of allowing a semblance of

universal and equal participation in the public sphere. Also, deliberations on this forum could

possibly lead to social change. Because of the role that Habermas theorizes for the news

media, this discussion simultaneously also includes the role of journalists. Pulling social

media into the discussion of the public sphere therefore serves a dual purpose, not only to

ascertain a normatively proper role for citizens, but similarly for journalists.

26 Ibid, 4-6. 27 Ibid, 4. 28Nicholas Garnham, “Habermas and the public sphere,” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007): 203.

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1.2 Transformations of the Habermasian Public Sphere

This section discusses two big scholarly critiques on Habermas that both add some more flesh

to the theory of the public sphere so that it is more applicable to the role of both journalists

and citizens in our contemporary world. The first critique entails the idea that Habermas’s use

of specifically the bourgeois public sphere as an ideal type is false and participation has never

been universal and equal. In the small discussion that follows, the two main proponents of

these critiques, Douglas Kellner and Nancy Fraser, offer a solution to these critiques in the

form of a conception of multiple public spheres. The second critique is on the validity and

practicality of Habermas’s conception of critical rationality as a normative ideal type of

communication as expounded mainly by Nicholas Garnham and Seyla Benhabib.29 Habermas

has, in the course of the development of his theory acknowledged these critiques and has

subsequently made his theory more applicable to contemporary society. As Habermas puts it

himself: “My own theory, finally, has […] changed, albeit less in its fundamentals than in its

degree of complexity.”30 This increasing complexity of his theory means that it is also

applicable to multifaceted societies such as the Egyptian one during the protests of November

and December, 2012.

1.2.2 The Two Critiques

Most prominent and possibly the easiest criticism has been the clamor about his historical

misrepresentation of the bourgeois public sphere. First of all, Douglas Kellner argues that it is

unlikely that the ideal rationality Habermas subscribes to the bourgeois public sphere has ever

existed, “politics throughout the modern era have been subject to the play of interests and

power as well as discussion and debate.”31 This means that neither in the bourgeois public

sphere, nor in subsequent forms of the public sphere, has everybody participated in critical

rationality, but rather a privileged few. Nancy Fraser strengthens this argument by pointing

out that several historiographies prove that only a certain class of men participated in the

bourgeois public sphere.32 Furthermore, Fraser voices the concern that in the Habermasian

ideal public sphere women were excluded and uses Mary Ryan’s historiographies which

document “the variety of ways in which nineteenth century North American women of

29 Nicholas Garnham, “Habermas and the public sphere,” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007):

207. 30 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 422. 31 Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention,” in Perspectives on

Habermas, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000), 267. 32 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing

Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 60.

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various classes and ethnicities constructed access routes to public political life, even despite

their exclusion from the official public sphere.”33 Rational public participation has proven to

be possible then even if one is not part of the official public sphere.

In order to answer to this critique both Douglas Kellner and Nancy Fraser propose that

the existence of a single public sphere is insufficient. Kellner posits that “rather than

conceiving of one liberal or democratic public sphere, it is more productive to theorize a

multiplicity of public spheres, sometimes overlapping but also conflicting.”34 Within those

different public spheres different (excluded) groups, perhaps through the use of new

technologies, as for example new media, can express themselves and interact with each other.

Habermas eventually also addressed the issue himself and argues that his model works if

“from the very beginning one admits the coexistence of competing public spheres and takes

account of the dynamics of those processes of communication that are excluded from the

dominant public sphere.”35 With this exclusion he hints at those groups who might not be part

of the hegemonic public sphere but “additional subcultural or class-specific public spheres

[that] are constituted on the basis of their own and initially not easily reconcilable

premises.”36 In his latest book Time of Transitions Habermas recognizes that because of

globalization, taking as his main example the European Union, different public spheres need

to cooperate.37

Before presenting the second critique of the public sphere, that on the practical

application of rationality in it, it is helpful to understand the necessity of rationality in the

public sphere for Habermas, for this explains why the concept is still important to include but

perhaps in a different form. For Habermas rationality plays an important role in the public

sphere for, according to Nicholas Garnham, it provides “a normatively defensible form of

‘solidarity among strangers’ in modern conditions”38. Only through the existence of

rationality is it possible for Habermas to find a common ground and therefore a situation in

which informed public opinion comes into existence. For him the only possibility to come to

rational public opinion within the complex relations people maintain in current society is

through discourse and critical rationality. Garnham goes even further to suggest that only

33 Ibid, 61. 34 Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention,” in Perspectives on

Habermas, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000), 267. 35 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 425. 36 Ibid, 425. 37 Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 76. 38 Nicholas Garnham, “Habermas and the public sphere,” Global Media and Communication 3, no. 2 (2007):

210.

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through discourse citizens are able to identify themselves as opposed to others within that

society. Habermas himself poses that “the human mind encounters itself only indirectly

through symbolically mediated relations to the world; it does not exist ‘in the head’ but in the

totality of publicly accessible and intersubjectively comprehensible symbolic expressions and

practices.”39

Discourse allows anybody to participate in any public sphere, be it the political, but

also, for example, the cultural public sphere. It is necessary for the universal participation that

Habermas is seeking within his model. And as Seyla Benhabib points out, this model is

intended to function “democratically as the creation of procedures whereby those affected by

general social norms and by collective political decisions can have a say in their formulation,

stipulation and adoption”40. Also, “there may be as many publics as there are controversial

general debates about the validity of norms”41 which means that even though those discourses

are aimed at agreement, disagreement is fitted very well into the model as well. Habermas

himself posits that “This entropic state of a definitive consensus, which would make all

further communication superfluous, cannot be represented as a meaningful goal because it

would engender paradoxes” since disagreement is necessary for discourse to exist, the

existence of universal agreement would abolish the need for discourse.42 With this then

Habermas concedes that in addition to agreement, disagreement is a necessity within his

model of the public sphere.

Even though it is clear that Habermas’s perspective on discourse and critical

rationalization are not as naive as pictured, they do pose a problem for practical application

within a democratizing public sphere. Habermas concedes in 1992 that he has “considered the

state apparatus and economy to be systematically integrated action field that can no longer be

transformed democratically from within, ... without damage to their proper system logic and

therewith their ability to function.”43 In short this means that he does not see a possibility for

his public sphere that critical rationality employed by citizens will be able to cause real

change. The result of this is that “discourses do not govern. They generate a communicative

power that cannot take the place of administration but can only influence it. This influence is

39 Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 56. 40 Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 105. 41 Ibid, 105. 42 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy.

(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 101. 43 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 444.

16

limited to the procurement and withdrawal of legitimation.”44 In his changed model citizens

have lost a large part of their democratizing power.

These additions and caveats resulting from the two big critiques on his public sphere

theory have resulted in some interesting facts to be reconsidered when applying Habermas’

public sphere theory to the role of citizens and journalists and their use of social media. The

multiple public spheres give the opportunity to conceive of different counterpublics that can

manifest themselves online. And the focus on rationality and the concession of Habermas that

the power of citizens to cause actual change has diminished is interesting to compare and

contrast with the repercussions of the revolts in Egypt around January 25, 2011. I will

therefore now first incorporate these adaptations to the Habermasian public sphere in greater

detail with especially the normative role of journalists in mind.

1.3 The News Media and the Public Sphere

In the eighteenth century the news media in combination with critical rational citizens in “the

coffeehouses in Britain, salons in France and table societies in Germany” were the basis of

Habermas’ ideal public sphere.45 Within those coffee houses, newsletters and journals

encouraged critical rationalization among citizens by informing them and by providing a

forum for discussions. Those journals, or the early news media, provided a rational free space

for deliberation and information dissemination. This would allow citizens to be both informed

and to critically discuss key issues and subsequently be able to bring about societal change.

As Habermas put it: “The press was for the first time established as a genuinely critical organ

of a public engaged in critical political debate: as the fourth estate.”46 Stuart Allan poses that

“by conceiving of the news audience as citizens engaged in public dialogue, bringing to bear

the force of public opinions upon authority relations,”47 citizens supported and maintained a

perfect democratic system.

Unfortunately this ideal situation that presumably existed in the eighteenth century,

was maintained only temporarily, and it is questionable if it existed in the way Habermas

suggested as discussed in previous sections. What is certain, however, is that he paints a

rather grim picture of the role of the news media after the downfall of the bourgeois public

sphere:

44 Ibid, 452. 45 Lasse Thomassen, Habermas: A Guide for the Perplexed. (London: Continuum International Publishing

Group, 2010), 38. 46 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an inquiry into a category of

bourgeois society (Cambridge MA: MIT Press , 1989), 60. 47 Stuart Allan, News Culture. (Maidenhaid: McGraw-Hill Open UP, 2010), 4-5.

17

The communicative network of a public made up of rationally debating private

citizens has collapsed; the public opinion once emergent from it has partly decomposed into the informal opinions of publicistically effective institutions. Caught

in the vortex of publicity that is tagged for show or manipulation the public of non organized private people is laid claim to not by public communication but by the communication of publicly manifested opinions.48

Habermas contends that citizens who should behave in a rational-critical manner have become

mere consumers of news that has been offered to them by the commercial news media, which

in turn are not functioning the way they should be. Jürgen Gehrards and Mike Schäfer pose

that “the mass media drastically reduce social complexity - only a fraction of all available

topics, actors and arguments can get published.”49 In this public sphere Habermas recognizes

a shift away from critical publicity to manipulative publicity, meaning that those individual

preferences that people will expound in public are being influenced not by critical reflection

but by the whims of publicity industries, including the mass media.50 This growing uncritical

stance of citizens and badly functioning news media is what Habermas calls the

refeudalization of the public sphere.

This refeudalization of the public sphere results in public sphere that is no longer

universally accessible and does not promote equality among those who participate.

Incidentally, those are two important premises of a healthy democratic public sphere. The

non-universality means that the public sphere is no longer a place in which all citizens are

able to discuss and deliberate issues that are important to everyone, but now due to “the

growing concentration of conglomerations of ownership in the media sectors of most

industrialized societies” it is the news media, motivated by interests in money and power,

instead of critical rational citizens, who decide what the content of the public sphere will be.51

These practices threaten the universality of the public sphere, but the equality within it

is also below par. First of all Stuart Allan rightly poses that “it is evident that the social

division between those with ‘information capital’ and those without are widening.”52

Especially because of rapid technological developments not everybody has equal access to or

the right knowledge of participation on, for example, the internet. This leads to inequality in

participation and therefore results in little or no participation in the sphere that has come into

48 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: an inquiry into a category of

bourgeois society (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989), 247-8. 49 Jürgen Gerhards and Mike S. Schäfer, “Is the internet a better public sphere? Comparing old and new media in

the USA and Germany,” New Media and Society 12, no. 1 (2010): 144. 50 Luke Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere (Pluto Press: London, 2005), 24. 51 Stuart Allan, News Culture. (Maidenhaid: McGraw-Hill Open UP, 2010), 16. 52 Stuart Allan, News Culture. (Maidenhaid: McGraw-Hill Open UP, 2010), 16.

18

existence online: the virtual public sphere. This both means that not everyone has equal

access to online forms of journalism that should inform them, but also that not everyone can

participate as a critical rational citizen online by contributing material themselves or reacting

to others. Moreover, Nancy Fraser points out that the news media are generally in the hands

of the dominant groups, which means that the mass media in this way stifles the voices of

subordinated groups.53

Habermas concludes thus that the public sphere is in crisis. In the last pages of

Structural Transformation, however, he takes up a hopeful tone when he poses that

institutions that are part of the public sphere could and should try to enact critical publicity,

this includes the news media.54 This would mean, for example, that journalists should adhere

to certain moral and ethical norms to promote open dialogue amongst members of the public

sphere. Following, therefore, is a discussion of the different ways that the notion of the public

sphere has been reworked to accommodate contemporary changes in the public sphere. I

moreover discuss why the Habermasian theory remains a useful analytical tool not only to

envision a well working democracy but also as a normative model for the functioning of

journalism in such a democracy. More precisely the following discussion conceptualizes the

role of journalism in a public sphere permeated by new technologies such as the internet.

1.3.2 Dismissing Lifeworld and System

While Habermas contends that the public sphere is in crisis and that the media play a crucial

role both in being the cause of that crisis but also partly in solving it, he fails to give a

sufficient theoretical framework on how the media, or other forms of journalism could do this.

In Between Facts and Norms he again discusses the media and the public sphere, but

according to Douglas Kellner “he does not discuss the normative character of communication

media in democracy or suggest how a progressive media politics could evolve.”55 Kellner

therefore argues that for the public sphere theory to work in the current age of new media a

shift in Habermas’s theoretical framework is necessary.

In order to succinctly explain and lay out Kellner’s critique let me define the

definitions of the lifeworld and the system in the public sphere. The lifeworld encompasses all

the societal processes that are being produced by social actors’ intentions. The result of those

53 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing

Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 64. 54 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of

Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 198. 55 Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention,” in Perspectives on

Habermas, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000), 275.

19

intentions might surpass the intentions of active agents, that is, the system in which social

actors live and that transcends their purposeful actions. It is in the system that Habermas

locates such inevitable steering institutions like money and power. This concept is applicable

to the interplay of social media, journalists and democracy in the sense that specific actions

either by citizens or journalists online have the potential of systemically influencing society

even though the online environment in which they have been made would be counted as the

lifeworld.

Habermas, in his critique of the current public sphere is sceptic of the critical and

potentially democratic role that citizens can play through their actions in the lifeworld. As for

the news media, he places these as functioning only on a systemic level, meaning that they are

driven by abstract systemic forces, such as money and power, instead of being checked and

influenced by citizens in the lifeworld. Habermas therefore overlooks the influence the news

media have in both the lifeworld and the system. Kellner argues that “new technologies are

permeating and dramatically transforming every aspect of what Habermas discusses as system

and lifeworld, or earlier production and interaction, and that such a dualistic and quasi-

transcendental categorical distinction can no longer be maintained.”56 According to Kellner, it

is possible for the news media, while being part of the system to still influence democracy

within the lifeworld. He suggests a model for a so-called radical democracy in which “the

media are part of a constitutional balance of power, providing checks and balances against the

other political spheres and should perform a crucial function of informing and cultivating a

citizenry capable of actively participating in democratic politics.”57

At the same time Kellner also imagines individuals organizing “democratically to

transform the media, technology and the various institutions of social life.”58 Theoretically

this is an opportunity for subordinated groups, as mentioned by Nancy Fraser, to mobilize,

educate and organize opposition from within the lifeworld to the public sphere and therefore

contribute to the democratization of that sphere. Kellner envisions this to be possible through

the use of new media, including the internet, he argues that new media has “multiplied

information and discussion, of an admittedly varied sort, and thus provide potential for a more

informed citizenry and more extensive democratic participation.”59

56 Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention,” in Perspectives on

Habermas, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000), 271. 57 Ibid, 269. 58 Ibid, 269. 59 Ibid, 278.

20

Kellner goes even further by suggesting that not only new media will empower

citizens, but that in order for it to do so and to be explained theoretically Habermas’s model

needs to be adapted. Habermas’s strict division of lifeworld and system does not work in the

time of new technology. As Kellner has posed, citizens are able to influence the system

through their actions in their lifeworld, in other words critical rationality is permeating the

system through information technology. These same information technologies hold a promise

in them for individual journalists to escape the systemic forces of which news media are a part

and instead contribute to a critical rational debate in the lifeworld as envisioned by Habermas.

This different conception of Habermas’ theory turns it from a theory that conceives citizens as

disempowered into one in which they are empowered. Within this different understanding of

the theory subordinate groups are able to discuss and actively challenge the goings on in the

public sphere with the help of new technologies. An example of how this might play out is

embodied by the use of Twitter and Facebook during and leading up to the revolts against the

authoritarian government in Cairo that started on January 25th, 2011 in Cairo and are still

continuing as of writing this thesis. However, not only the dismissal of a strict boundary

between system and lifeworld is necessary, the acknowledgment of multiple spheres is also

vital to incorporate both the role of journalists and citizens in contemporary society.

1.3.3 Multiple Spheres and the Role of Journalism

To conceive of a normative role for journalism within Habermas’ public sphere, we need to

look further than just the interplay between system and lifeworld. The existence of multiple

spheres, as argued for both by Kellner and Fraser, and conceded to be necessary within his

theory by Habermas himself, is the second necessary re-interpretation to the public sphere

theory. When acknowledging that the public sphere exists of different spheres this leaves

space for a normative model of how the news media should act in contemporary society. At

first glance such a conception opens the opportunity for different kinds of media operating in

different spheres. These counter public spheres could include opportunities for discourse

between the members of a specific counter public. These members could consist not only of

specific citizens but also of certain parts of the news media, such as online journalists and

citizen journalists who are active online.60

Taking this a step further, Curran conceptualizes a model to foster democracy that

theorizes the role of the news media more explicitly. Taking Great Britain as an example, he

60 Paul Jones, “Democratic Norms and Means of Communication: Public Sphere, Fourth Estate, Freedom of

Communication,” Critical Horizons 1, no. 2 (2000): 315.

21

theorizes that the public service broadcasting should provide the core of the media system,

which is the public dialogue. Then he envisions four big sectors, or alternative spheres if you

will, that “serve ‘decentred’ publics.”61 Within these alternative spheres he reserves key roles

not only for professional journalism and commercial journalism, but also within the civic

media sector for citizens who want to make contributions to journalism. The intention is that

those spheres around the core “would need to provide and circulate inwardly affirming

discourses within the emergent social grouping, but, equally, their members would also need

to find a means of addressing the broader public of which they are also members.”62

The big difference here with Habermas is not the fact that there are multiple spheres,

but that those spheres interact. Habermas focused not on this interaction but on the role of

professional journalism as gatekeeper, through the use of professional norms, between the

counter public spheres and the political public sphere. In Curran’s and Fraser’s conceptions,

however, it is an interaction between those spheres, meaning that, as Kellner suggests,

citizens can influence the political sphere through their actions such as education and

mobilization. This opens up the possibilities for the democratizing role of new media like

Twitter and Facebook in the hands of both citizens and journalists.

In short, this chapter has added three important ideas to the public sphere theory of

Habermas. First, that multiple spheres exist and can interact. Secondly that critical rationality

in the practice of the lifeworld has its limits and needs to be re-interpreted in contemporary

society. And lastly that journalism can be active both in the system and the lifeworld through

practices of both journalists and citizens. With this basis it is possible to proceed to the next

chapter where the Habermasian theory will be set up as a theory suitable for the conception of

a virtual public sphere.

61 Ibid, 314. 62 Ibid, 315.

22

Chapter 2 A Virtual Public Sphere

The age of the public sphere as face-to-face talk is clearly over: the question of democracy must henceforth take into account new forms of electronically mediated discourse.63

Mark Poster stated this back in 1995. And while this might be too crude there is no denying

that people all around the world are connected and communicating through an intricate

network stretching from so-called democratic countries to those ruled by dictators. This

interconnectedness suggests a renewed possibility of critical rational debate among citizens

who are no longer bound by space and to a lesser degree time. This leaves a lot of room to

discuss the possible democratic implications of the internet and demands an answer to the

question if the internet in any way can be regarded as a virtual public sphere. While

Habermas’ public sphere theory is based on the bourgeois discussions that took place in

coffee houses, he also poses how the public sphere could blossom through contemporary new

techniques. He envisions that “a dispersed public interconnected almost exclusively through

the electronic media can keep up to date on all kinds of issues and contributions in the mass

media with a minimum of attention,”64 which can lead to democratic public opinion

formation. The fact that he proposes this himself shows that his theory needs some more

additions than only those discussed in the past chapter where it was established that there are

multiple spheres and that there is no strict dualism between system and lifeworld.

In this chapter I therefore continue with the adaptation of the Habermasian public

sphere theory to fit contemporary society. Building on the idea that the public sphere consists

of multiple public spheres, I present and elaborate on a specific shape one of those spheres

can take, namely the virtual public sphere. As I cannot discuss all scholarly positions to the

fullest I focus on those that are specifically related to the place of journalism in that virtual

public sphere. This means that this chapter is an exploration of the kinds of journalism that

have come into existence or have flourished due to the existence of the internet, such as

online professional journalism and citizen journalism. The idea is that these different forms of

journalism are the key ingredients for a new healthy virtual public sphere.

2.1 A Virtual Public Sphere

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Habermas sees the possibility of the existence of a

virtual public sphere, he however doubts its democratic potential:

63 Mark Poster, “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.” Website of University of California, Irvine,

1995, www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html (accessed July 19th, 2011), 8. 64 Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 9.

23

Of course, the spontaneous and egalitarian nature of unlimited communication can have subversive effects under authoritarian regimes. But the web itself does not

produce any public spheres. Its structure is not suited to focusing the attention of a dispersed public of citizens who form opinions simultaneously on the same topics and contributions which have been scrutinized and filtered by experts.65

Believing this, Habermas has not explored the possibility and width of a virtual public sphere

as a normative model for contemporary democracies. However, considering the three big

conclusions of the last chapter and seeing the possibilities offered by the internet it is not far-

fetched to argue the existence of a virtual public sphere. First of all, one of the multiple

spheres of the public sphere could be the virtual public sphere in which online critical

rationalization could reverberate in the offline spheres of the public sphere.66 Furthermore,

new forms of interaction that have come into existence on the internet allow for new ways to

interpret critical rationalization as it is taking form in contemporary society. Lastly, the

interaction of, among others, citizens and journalists online fit well with the idea that

journalism can be active both in the system and the lifeworld.

Because of these connections between the Habermasian theory of the public sphere

and the aspects of the internet, and then mainly social media, there have already been debates

on the existence of a virtual public sphere. Mark Poster, Zizi Papachirissi, Jane B. Singer,

Peter Dahlgren, James Slevin and Andrew Chadwick lead the discussion among others. I

therefore address those different scholarly standpoints through a literature review. This allows

for a conception of how such a virtual public sphere should at least normatively look.

2.1.2 Arguments Against a Virtual Public Sphere

The first main argument against the possible existence of a virtual public sphere is the idea

that it does not live up to the standards of critical rational debate that Habermas has set for a

healthy public sphere. Firstly, there are dominating elites, which are also present in the offline

public sphere, who do not allow for a healthy environment for critical rational deliberation.

Zizi Papacharissi poses that most discussions on the internet are “amorphous, fragmented,

dominated by a few, and too specific to live up to the Habermasian ideal of rational accord.”67

65 Stuart Jeffries, “A rare interview with Jürgen Habermas,” Financial Times Magazine April 30, 2010,

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/eda3bcd8-5327-11df-813e-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Z7a9p5gA (accessed 15

July, 2013). 66 To take this thinking even further I could also suggest that there are multiple spheres within the virtual public

sphere. However, to keep this discussion a little more simple I will address the issue as if there is merely one

virtual public sphere. 67 Zizi Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a digital age. (Cambridge: Polity, 2010),122.

24

Secondly, Mark Poster also poses that Habermas envisions a public sphere as a homogeneous

place inhabited by citizens on a quest for consensus.68 However, Poster supposes this situation

is not the case on the internet because “it installs a new regime of relations between humans

and matter and between matter and nonmatter, reconfiguring the relation of technology to

culture and thereby undermining the standpoint from within which, in the past, a discourse

developed.”69 By this he means that the internet shapes its users instead of it being a tool for

the critical discourse necessary for a well functioning public sphere. Thirdly, Peter Dahlgren

argues that deliberation on the internet is taking place in fragmented forums among groups of

people who are already working towards a consensus.70 This means that discussions will

rarely go in-depth in the critical-rational manner that Habermas advocates because those

involved in the forum already greatly share the same opinion.

A second major argument against the existence of a healthy virtual public sphere is the

so-called digital divide which seems to influence the democratic potentiality of the internet.

The digital divide means that equal access does not exist on the internet or in social media. In

2005 Bart Cammaerts and Leo van Audenhove already stressed that “online engagement in

forums is cyclical, tends to be dominated by those already politically active in the offline

world and functions within a homogeneous ideological framework.”71 Gehrards and Schäfer

also point out the lack of inclusion in the virtual public sphere by comparing inclusion of

minor actors both in the print media and on the internet. They conclude that there is “minimal

evidence to support the idea that the internet is a better communication as compared to print

media. In both media, communication is dominated by (bio- and natural) scientific actors;

popular inclusion does not occur.”72 Their conclusion is based on the fact that search engines

on the internet exclude much of the diversity of opinion on the internet which consequently

leads to a framing of search results supported by the dominant culture. This makes it harder

for small actors to be heard on the internet.73

In addition to difficulties with accessibility and real critical rational debate,

commodification is also viewed as a major factor in diminishing the internet as a public

68 Mark Poster, “CyberDemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere.” Website of University of California, Irvine,

1995, www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/writings/democ.html (accessed July 19th, 2011), 8. 69 Ibid, 4. 70 Peter Dahlgren, Television and the Public Sphere: citizenship, democracy and the media , (SAGE Publications:

London, 2000), 158. 71 Bart Cammaerts and Leo Audenhove, “Online Political Debate, Unbounded Citizenship, and the Problematic

Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere,” Political Communication 22, no. 2 (2005): 193. 72 Jürgen Gerhards and Mike S. Schäfer, “Is the internet a better public sphere? Comparing old and new media in

the USA and Germany,” New Media and Society 12, no. 1 (2010): 155. 73 Ibid, 155.

25

sphere. Habermas already theorized commodification of the public sphere, he concedes the

public sphere has two functions: self-regulation and inclusiveness and he states that “while

those aiming to influence are implemented by organizations that aim to promote purchasing

power, loyalty or conformist behavior. These two functions compete with each other. The

principle of publicity turns ‘against itself and thereby reduces its critical efficacy’”74 As for a

possible digital public sphere W.L. Bennett stated: “The great weakness of the idea of

electronic democracy is that it can be more easily commodified than explained.” 75 By this he

means that when it is suggested that the internet is inherently democratic instead of

recognizing that it is its participants that should make it democratic through hard work, they

can become agents of commodification.

2.1.3 The Internet is a Public Sphere

While commodification, the digital divide and a potentially hostile environment for critical

rational discussions are all valid arguments against a virtual public sphere, the following

section discusses scholar’s counter-arguments to these critiques. By discussing these it is

possible to set up a model of a virtual public sphere that is still in accordance with the basic

principles of the Habermasian public sphere as established in the first chapter of this thesis.

First, I briefly point out the counter-argument against the danger of commodification

of the internet. Alinta Thornton counters Bennett’s doomsday idea of the internet as a

commodified virtual sphere. She does concede that within political rhetoric and decision-

making citizens are often viewed as consumers, however, she believes that the internet offers

the possibility to subvert this effect because there is room for dissenting voices that are not

backed by commercial interests.76

Apart from arguments against the commodification of the virtual public sphere, many

scholars also theorize how this sphere can actually be a breeding ground of critical rational

debate. Firstly, James Slevin discusses the possibility of the internet being a forum of critical

rational debate, something which Papacharissi, Poster and Dahlgren hold impossible. Slevin,

however, makes a strong case for the existence of what he calls a “deliberative conception of

mediated publicness” on the internet.77 He does concede that the internet as a public space is

74 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 437. 75 W. Lance Bennett, “New Media Power: The Internet and Global Activism,” in Contesting Media Power, ed.

Nick Couldry and James Curran (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 248. 76 Alinta Thornton, “Does Internet Create Democracy?” Equid Novi: South African Journalism Studies 22, no. 2

(2002): 138. 77 James Slevin, The Internet and Society. (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 185.

26

problematic because of its size. Firstly this size means that there is no central authority to

steer the discussion. Secondly this size entails that online discussions are of a mediated

nature, meaning that most information on the internet is not produced for immediate

response.78 Discussions are not likely to play out at one place and time. Nevertheless, he

argues that the internet offers a space where people can find information; differing views and

they are able to construct their own informed decisions. However, as many arguing for the

internet as a public sphere he also theorizes that behavior and relations within the digital

public sphere have to meet certain criteria: keeping open the possibility of controversial

questions, criticizable rationality, equality among participants and skills to recognize moral

standpoints.79

James Bohman adds to Slevin’s arguments of the possibility of critical rational debate

in a virtual public sphere by posing that we need to step away from the face-to-face

deliberative model that would fit the coffee house or the market place. Once we accept that on

the internet different rules of time and space exist than in real life, it is, according to him, not

difficult to argue that the internet provides ample opportunity for democratic rational critical

discussion. An answer to a comment can come much later, given by someone who the initial

speaker was not directing his or her attention to.80

Both Slevin and Bohman see a real possibility for critical rational debate on the

internet. Unfortunately they do not elaborate from their rather theoretical positions to specify

practical ways of how this critical rational debate can be realized. Their arguments are

backed, however, by such empirical research as has been done by Renée van Os et al. who

conclude that politicians’ websites during the 2004 European election contributed to a

European public sphere. Those politicians addressed those issues that were not being covered

by the news media and got them to be part of the public debate.81 Cammaerts and Van

Audenhove conclude after researching three different internet forums that already politically

active citizens “contribute to ongoing debates within the public sphere on local, but also on a

whole range of transnational or unbounded issues.”82 In my own analysis in this thesis I also

seek to show that such a critical rational debate was set up on Twitter during the Egyptian

revolts of November and December, 2012.

78 Ibid, 185. 79 Ibid, 187. 80 Ibid, 134. 81 Renée Van Os et al., “Political communication about Europe on the Internet during the 2004 European

Parliament election campaign in nine EU member states,” European Societies 9, no. 5 (2007): 11. 82 Bart Cammaerts and Leo Audenhove, “Online Political Debate, Unbounded Citizenship, and the Problematic

Nature of a Transnational Public Sphere,” Political Communication 22, no. 2 (2005): 194.

27

Lastly, Luke Goode adds the insight that through using the internet, people are

confronted with other opinions and thoughts which will have the effect of making them accept

that dissent and difference are part of a functioning public sphere. 83 This means that within

that public sphere there is space for dissensus, which can bring, according to Goode, “new

possibilities for self-understanding, reflection and adjustment.”84 These are all things that are

necessary within a public sphere according to Habermas. No longer, if it has ever been, is the

goal of the public sphere for citizens to reach total consensus, but it has to become a forum in

which people have the freedom, space and opportunity to engage with those who have other

opinions so as to understand that dissent is also a part of a healthy democracy.

Having conceived of these ways of constructing real critical rational deliberation,

Lincoln Dahlberg automatically also incorporates an answer to the critique of the digital

divide. By using Goode’s model as a starting point he argues that such an agonistic

understanding of the public sphere is necessary in order for the public sphere theory to be

properly theorized for democratic uses of the internet. By this he means that one of the major

roles of the public sphere should be the producing of counter-publics that will challenge

dominant discourse. 85 Consequently he argues that the internet through fostering counter

publics enables those publics to produce a counter-hegemonic discourse to oppose dominant

discourse. This disruption of dominant discourse is the only way, he argues, to produce

legitimate critical-rational debate, which is essential to a healthy public sphere.

Also countering the arguments of the digital divide is Andrew Chadwick. He

recognizes that the internet is encouraging what he calls informational exuberance which is

“the increasing willingness of novelties to contribute to the collective production, reworking,

and sharing of media content, with the conscious or unconscious aim of creating public

goods.”86 The internet, by its open character encourages citizens who normally would not

have contributed to a discussion to do so now. Since participation is one of the requirements

for a functioning public sphere it is certainly a good start when the internet is encouraging

this.

83 Luke Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere . (Pluto Press: London, 2005), 119. 84 Ibid, 76. 85 Lincoln Dahlberg, “The Internet, deliberative democracy, and power: Radicalizing the public sphere,”

International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 3, no. 1 (2007): 60. 86 Andrew Chadwick, “Recent Shifts in the Relationship Between the Internet andDemocratic Engagement in

Britain and the United States: Granularity, Informational Exuberance, and Political Learning,” Website New

Political Communication Unit, 2010.

http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/storage/chadwick/Chadwick_Granularity_Informat ional_Exuberance_ Learning_in_

Comparing_Digital_Politics.pdf, (accessed July 19th, 2011), 4

28

2.1.4 A Normative Vision of the Virtual Public Sphere

Summarizing, a normative form of a virtual public sphere can be extrapolated from the

different scholarly debates discussed in the previous two sections. The pitfalls that should be

looked out for in this sphere are that the fragmented, open character of the internet should not

be hijacked by dominating elites who are not discussing in a critical rational manner.

Moreover, and really a similar problem, is the danger of commodification of the internet

which could potentially also stifle real critical rational deliberation and counterhegemonic

voices which are so necessary for a healthy public sphere, or perhaps better put, within an

interacting healthy public spheres.

Therefore, a virtual public sphere should first of all lend room for dissenting voices

that are not backed by commercial interests so as to oppose commodification. The open

character of the internet allows for this, and I pose in the third chapter of this thesis that

especially the way that Twitter is built up allows for these non-commercialized voices to take

an important part in the public discussion. This open character similarly counteracts the fear

of a so-called digital divide in that it potentially gives access to anyone willing to participate

in discussions.

Then, in order to reach a satisfactory level of critical rational debate the internet

should allow firstly for information dissemination; the possibility to ask controversial

questions and thus acceptance that dissensus is also a valid outcome of deliberation;

accountability among participating members in the form of criticizable rationality; equality

among participants and skills to recognize moral standpoints. Lastly, it is necessary in

conceiving this critical rational debate to let go of the idea of face-to-face deliberation and

therefore accept a different model of space and time where comments and reactions are

fragmented.

2.2 Journalism in a Virtual Public Sphere

Having established that a virtual public sphere is a theoretical possibility when the

Habermasian conception of such a sphere is slightly altered, we now also need to summarize

the role and requirements for journalism within that virtual public sphere. For this sphere to

be healthy, journalists have to encourage critical rationalization which they can do first of all

through informing citizens, and secondly by providing forums for discussion. Furthermore,

journalism should act like a fourth estate, a concept I have not really delved too deeply into in

the past paragraphs. This means that the news media have to act as a kind of checks and

balances on governments, big business and other powerful players in society. Consequently

29

the news media as a fourth estate, or watchdog, means journalists have to commit to “critical

scrutiny of the powerful, be they in government, business or other influential spheres of

society.”87 This is a strong countercurrent to the fears of commodification of the virtual public

sphere. Lastly, when informing and providing forums for public discussion, journalists have

to try and be as accessible as possible so as to cross the digital divide. In short, for a healthy

public sphere the news media have to: inform, provide a forum, be a fourth estate and

encourage equal and universal participation. Having these concepts in mind we can now move

on to the actual role of the media within the virtual sphere.

There have been many conceptions of how journalism should function and what place

it should take within society so as to enable and encourage the existence of a healthy virtual

public sphere. I have divided these conceptions up into three main themes, all three of which I

will address. The first is user generated content (UGC) which lends itself to the notion of

newsrooms adopting UGC. By UGC is meant all the content produced by non-professional

journalists on the internet. This, for example, includes movies put on YouTube, profile pages,

including pictures on Facebook and MySpace, Tweets on Twitter and blogs made by citizens.

The second theme on journalism in the virtual sphere is journalism conducted by citizens

themselves, also called citizen journalism. And the third is a hybrid of the two: a journalism

created by professional journalists and citizens together within a network: participatory

journalism. All three insinuate the participation of citizens in news making instead of

journalists simply providing news to users. They also imply a big role for the internet, and

such services as Twitter, as a tool for both professional journalists as citizens. Therefore all

three different conceptions of the modern role of journalists and citizens within journalism are

relevant for a discussion of the democratic potential of the internet within Habermasian public

sphere theory.

2.2.2 User Generated Content

The upcoming popularity of the internet and its promises of interactivity, speed and space

have prompted discussion on how the internet might change professional journalism. Joyce

Nip poses that because of the interactive opportunities of the internet, newsmakers are being

forced to include the user in their news making.88 This has important implications for an

improvement of the public sphere since inclusion of citizens, or accessibility, is one of the

87 Brian McNair, “Journalism and Democracy,” in The Handbook of Journalism Studies, ed. Karin Wahl-

Jorgensen and Thomas Hanitzsch (New York: Routledge, 2009), 239. 88 Joyce Y.M. Nip, “Exploring the second phase of public journalism,” Journalism Studies 7, no. 2 (2006):

230.

30

necessary features of a well-functioning public sphere. Or in even more utopian views: the

internet provides citizens with the tools to “get a better, timelier report. It’s also learning how

to join the process of journalism, helping to create a massive conversation and, in some cases,

doing a better job than the professionals.”89 I will call this form of journalism: user generated

content (UGC). In the case of UGC “members’ contributions take place within the framework

of professional journalism; news organizations control the audience involvement and

participation.”90

While inclusion of citizen’s opinions and arguments by professional journalists might

theoretically seem easier with the internet as a tool, it is hard to find many practical examples

of journalists actually doing so. Wilson Lowrey and Jean Burleson Mackay offer one of those

few examples. They argue that bloggers are capable of influencing the media’s agenda. They

state: “Journalists working in a community with active bloggers are more likely to track

blogging commentary as they work to determine what news to provide the community.”91

John O’Sullivan and Ari Heinonen also find that journalists have little trouble adopting the

internet as a source, a research tool, a way to connect to audiences and “overall, they do not

perceive a threat from the internet to the quality of journalism.”92 Leopoldina Fortunati et al.

underscore this finding since their research pointed out that when it comes to practical matters

editors view the internet as a helpful tool for “speed, breadth of diffusion, additional

information and interactivity with readers.”93 Furthermore, Mark Deuze et al. give examples

of online projects set up by newspapers in different countries proving that certain UGC

projects are already working. Within those projects citizens are adding to mainstream news

media, for example, by fighting the so-called hard-news bias as citizens seem to focus more

on soft news items to contribute.94 Jönssen and Örnebring pose that this user focus on soft

news has “democratic potential in terms not of political influence but instead of cultural

equality.”95 This means that by redefining private issues, that would normally be considered

89 Dan Gillmor, We the media: grassroots journalism by the people, for the people . (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly,

2004), xiv. 90 Mervi Pantti and Piet Bakker, “Misfortunes , memories and sunsets: Non-professional images in Dutch news

media,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 12, no. 5 (2009): 474. 91 Wilson Lowrey and Jenn Burleson Mackay, “Journalism and Blogging: A test of a model of occupational

competition,” Journalism Practice 2, no. 1 (2008): 75. 92 John O’Sullivan and Ari Heinonen, “Old Values, New Media: Journalism role perceptions in a changing

world,” Journalism Practice 2, no. 3 (2008): 367. 93 Leopoldina Fortunati et al., “The influence of the Internet on European Journalism,” Journal of Computer-

Mediated Communication 14 (2009): 935. 94 Mark Deuze et al., “Preparing for an age of participatory news,” Journalism Practice 1, no. 3 (2007): 334. 95 Anna Maria Jönsson and Henrik Örnebring, “User-generated content and the news,” Journalism Practice 5,

no. 2 (2011): 140.

31

soft news and therefore less important, citizens reposition those issues as public concern. By

doing so they are influencing the subjects that are being talked about within the public sphere.

However, many scholars have found unwillingness among professional journalists to

adopt the internet as a tool and to include UGC in their news making. O’Sullivan and

Heinonen, for example, found that even though, as stated above, journalists do feel free to

adopt the internet in certain ways, many of the most important journalistic practices are not

associated with the internet, such as face-to-face communication and telephone conversation.

And, more importantly, professional journalists tend to mistrust UGC and the quality of

online research methods, which leaves food for thought in considering how flexible

journalists would be in adopting UGC in their news reports and articles.96 Fortunati et al. even

go as far to say that most journalists are not willing to work together with citizens.97

Journalists seem to generally adopt a stoic stance when it comes to the changes that the

internet is potentially offering for a renewed journalism. Or as Fortunati et al. put it, they have

failed to put “themselves in a new leading role i.e. as professionals who are the principal point

of reference, able to select, to frame, and to interpret relevant news within the overwhelming

chaos of information.”98

Steve Paulussen and Pieter Ugille found that mainstream journalists had trouble

integrating user generated content in their news making because of three factors:

organizational structures, work practices and professional attitude.99 Especially difficulty with

adapting to the technical aspects of online reporting is holding journalists back in

incorporating users in their news making process. Interaction with users, either offline or

online, is simply not part of the journalist’s tasks and is hard to incorporate now.100 And then

lastly, journalists are afraid if they do use UGC it does not comply to their own standards of

objectivity, independence and accountability.101 It is not necessarily journalists’ skepticism

but the entire existing institution of journalism that is holding back quick adoption of online

UGC. Neil Thurman adds to this that cost limitations and legal liabilities are holding

journalists back in using user generated content. Costs are high since most websites want to

96 John O’Sullivan and Ari Heinonen, “Old Values, New Media: Journalism role perceptions in a changing

world,” Journalism Practice 2, no. 3 (2008): 368. 97 Leopoldina Fortunati et al., “The influence of the Internet on European Journalism,” Journal of Computer-

Mediated Communication 14 (2009): 953. 98 Ibid, 954. 99 Steve Paulussen and Pieter Ugille, “User Generated Content in the Newsroom: Professional and

Organisational Constraints on Participatory Journalism,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 5,

no. 2 (2008): 32. 100 Ibid, 33. 101 Ibid, 36.

32

moderate user comments.102 At the same time journalists also want to use contributions as a

valuable and plentiful source for stories, which leaves them in a bind and generally leads them

choosing not to use user generated content.103

When professional journalists do successfully and consistently include online user

generated content it mainly stays limited to just one aspect of journalism, namely that of

interpretation. In practice this means letting users comment on articles in a comment thread

underneath an article or letting them discuss it in a special forum provided for online by the

newspaper in question.104 Hermida et al. conclude that even though many projects and

initiatives exist to include citizens in online publications of newspapers, journalists are still

unwilling to hand over editorial power of the news.105

Summarizing the primary thrust of these findings, we could say that when one speaks

to journalists about their recognition of the value of UGC, the journalistic process has

definitely not been democratized. As a matter of fact, such studies more often state that

journalists have made a conscious effort to “[retain] control over the stages of identifying,

gathering, filtering, producing and distributing news.”106 Jönssen and Örnebring go even

further in assessing that by asking citizens to comment, news organizations are trying to brand

themselves as democratic organizations. At the same time, however, since citizens are only

allowed to comment or just marginally contribute to the news making process, Jönssen and

Örnebring pose that “users are identified as consumers but approached as citizens.”107

The consequences these developments have for our normative vision of a healthy

virtual public sphere are that journalists in this setting do not include citizens in their

contribution to the public sphere by dismissing a role for citizens within news making, or

within the discussions that ensue after that news making. Consequently they are not

encouraging online critical rationalization as necessary for a well functioning virtual public

sphere. Moreover, journalists do not manage to cross the digital divide by not properly

including citizens. Only the role as a fourth estate is potentially, and probably partly, fulfilled

by merely trusting on one’s own standards of objectivity, independence and accountability.

102 Neil Thurman, “Forums for citizen journalists? Adoption of user generated content initiatives by online news

media,” New Media and Society 10, no. 1 (2008): 24. 103 Ibid, 23. 104 David Domingo et al., “Participatory Journalism Practices in the media and beyond: An international

comparative study of initiatives in online newspapers,” Journalism Practice 2, no. 3 (2008): 338. 105Alfred Hermida et al., “The Active Recipient: Participatory Journalism Through the Lens of the Dewey -

Lippmann Debate.” (paper presented at International Symposium on Online Journalism 2011, University of

Texas, Austin, April 2011), 16. 106 Ibid, 16. 107 Anna Maria Jönsson and Henrik Örnebring, “User-generated content and the news,” Journalism Practice 5,

no. 2 (2011): 141.

33

All in all, this set-up of the relation between citizens and journalists and the way it has been

practically applied is not the best form to encourage a healthy virtual public sphere.

2.2.3 Citizen Journalism

A far more radical view of the place of journalism and its practices in the public sphere is that

of citizen journalism. To define it I will use the one formulated by Bowman and Willis: “The

act of a citizen, or a group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting,

reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information ... [in order to] provide

independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy

requires.”108 While there are many different terms for citizen journalism, I will use this term

since it highlights the civic role of citizens in journalism. Seen by some as a positive addition

to mainstream media, many also see citizen online journalism as a contestation of traditional

journalism. According to proponents of citizen online journalism it is ideal to contest the

supposed corrupt mainstream news media because it is a democratic counterweight to

mainstream journalism, fulfilling the roles that that journalism should actually be fulfilling.109

As Ronald Jacobs rightfully notes: “A civil society consisting of multiple publics requires a

media system consisting of multiple media,” not merely the dominant mainstream

journalism.110 New technological developments online are allowing for alternative discourses.

This section will explain in which ways citizen journalism is proposed to improve the public

sphere.

A first role of citizen journalism on the internet is its provision of a forum of

deliberation. As citizen journalists are taking on the role of gatekeeper by highlighting,

commenting and discussing journalistic material, they have found a platform for deliberation

as well as providing context to news stories in a way professional journalists could never

provide by themselves. 111 Axel Bruns even suggests a so-called deliberative journalism that

assumes that the framing of an issue can take place after reporting on it. Macy Grace Antony

and Ryan J. Thomas, for example, point out that the discussions they found going on in the

108 S. Bowman and C. Willis, “We media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information.”

NDN. Available at: www.hypergene.net/wemedia/download/we_media.pdf (accessed April 29th, 2011), 9. 109 Donald Matheson, “Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: some trends in online journalism,” New

Media and Society 6, no. 4, 2004: 452. 110 Ronald N. Jacobs, Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2000), 25. 111 Axel Bruns, “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: new Direction for e-journalism,” in E-Journalism: new

Directions in Electronic News Media , ed. by K. Prasad (New Delhi: BR Publishing, 2008), available at:

http://spurb.info/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalis m.pdf (accessed August 13th, 2011), 5.

34

comment section of YouTube reminded them of the Habermasian rational critical

deliberation.112

Only when citizens participate in news making does a real critical rational debate

come into existence. Robinson found that during the reporting on the disaster caused by

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 citizen journalists re-articulated the narrative of the disaster. Not

only were they expounding what the disaster was about in their own words they also “wrote

about the press as an entity whose authority is not inevitably entrenched in society.”113 This

suggests that in some cases citizen journalists manage to re-articulate their own role, not

merely as commentator on news provided by mainstream journalists, but as active producers

of news themselves. In other words: the public, in a process, form the news. The traditional

model, of professional journalists as producers and citizens as mere consumers of their

product, is done away with when one conceives of journalism as a process, a view that fits

better in the Habermasian conception of the public sphere since that eschews the idea of

citizens as consumers.

A second role of citizen journalists is taken on in the task of further discussing,

analyzing and critiquing reports made by professional journalists, which Bruns believes will

act as a correction of the mainstream media.114 As mainstream journalism was meant to act as

a fourth estate but has failed to do so, Bruns, as well as Jane Singer, argue that citizen

journalism could take on that responsibility, becoming, as Singer calls it, Estate 4.5.115 And as

pointed out by Bruns: “user-led gatewatching is by no means incompatible with conventional

journalism, but may instead serve as an additional source of information,” which is necessary

for quality control of writing, accuracy and balance.116 Donald Matheson researched the

impact of weblogs on mainstream journalism and agrees with Bruns and Singer when stating

that “weblogs are seen as marshalling the knowledge and resources of large numbers of

people and thereby displacing elite sources.”117 The same seems to be the case during crises:

“The internet allows both organizations and the general public to bypass the traditional

112 Mary Grace Antony and Ryan J. Thomas, “‘This is citizen journalism at its finest’: YouTube and the pu blic

sphere in the Oscar Grant shooting incident,” New Media Society 12, no. 8 (2010): 1291. 113 Sue Robinson, “‘If you had been with us’: mainstream press and citizen journalists jockey for authority over

the collective memory of Hurricane Katrina,” New Media and Society 11, no. 5 (2009): 808. 114 Ibid, 8-9. 115 Jane B. Singer, “Journalists and News Bloggers: Complements, Contradictions and Challenges,” in Uses of

Blogs, ed. Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), 28. 116 Axel Bruns, “News Blogs and Citizen Journalism: new Direction for e-journalism,” in E-Journalism: new

Directions in Electronic News Media , ed. by K. Prasad (New Delhi: BR Publishing, 2008), available at:

http://spurb.info/News%20Blogs%20and%20Citizen%20Journalis m.pdf (accessed August 13th, 2011), 6. 117 Donald Matheson, “Weblogs and the epistemology of the news: some trends in online journalism,” New

Media and Society 6, no. 4, 2004: 453.

35

media’s gatekeeper function and enables them to communicate without the intervention of

organized journalism, albeit with uneven quality.”118

Lastly, online citizen journalism appears to be improving political participation, both

on- and offline. Mohammed el-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis found that bloggers in the virtual

public sphere are enhancing popular participation in political life “through encouraging a

more active and dynamic civil society, as well as bringing to life the concept of citizen

journalism.”119 In the case of the Egyptian blogs studied by el-Nawawy and Khamis, bloggers

try to encourage citizens to take on both the government and the mainstream media in

improving the democracy in Egypt.120 Kelly Kaufhold et al. pose that people who trust the

information of citizen journalism “are motivated to seek it out, engage with it, and may feel

more compelled to mobilize accordingly.”121 This might have something to do with the

oftentimes hyperlocal nature of citizen journalism, which makes political mobilization easier

for some.122 Nevertheless, Rodriguez suggests that actually being a citizen journalist is more

important than the persuasiveness of the output of citizen journalists. One of her respondents

of a community radio station states that “it’s more important to get five new people to

participate than to get a thousand new listeners.”123

Clearly this form of journalism is far more effective than UGC in creating the critical

rationalization advocated by theorists of a healthy virtual public sphere. Citizen journalism is

mainly very strong in helping to construct critical rationalization among those citizens

participating. The problem remains with this form of journalism, however, that there is little

to no cooperation with journalists, even though Habermas and other theorists advocate an

important role for the news media, especially as informers but also as catalysts of ongoing

deliberations in the public sphere.

2.2.4 Participatory Journalism

Many scholars theorize in which way citizen journalism can be a useful addition to

mainstream news. The answer can be found in what will be termed participatory journalism.

118 Michael Bo Karlsson, “Participatory Journalism and Crisis Communications: A Swedish Case Study of

Swine Flu Coverage,” Observatorio Journal 4, no. 1 (2010): 203. 119 Mohammed el-Nawawy and Sahar Khamis, “Political Blogging and (Re) Envisioning the Virtual Public

Sphere: Muslim-Christian Discourses in Two Egyptian Blogs,” The International Journal of Press/Politics

(2010): 15. 120 Ibid, 15. 121 Kelly Kaufhold et al., “Citizen Journalism and Democracy: How User-generated News Use Relates to

Political Knowledge and Participation,” J & MC Quarterly 87, no. 3/4 (2010): 524. 122 Ibid, 524. 123 C. Rodriguez, “The bishop and his star: Citizens’ communication in southern Chile,” in Contesting media

power: Alternative media in a networked world , ed. N. Couldry and J. Curran (Lanham: MD, 2003), 191.

36

By this I mean “the idea of collaborative and collective – not simply parallel – action. People

inside and outside the newsroom are engaged in communicating not only to, but also with,

one another. In doing so, they are all participating in the ongoing processes of creating a news

website and building a multifaceted community.”124 This way of collaborating has been

theorized to have many advantages that I will expound in this section.

First of all, participatory journalism might result in a more interactive and therefore

democratic form of journalism. Luke Goode envisions a future democratic role for social

media through what he calls metajournalism of social news. He suggests a complementary

role for citizen journalists active on social media.125 Professional journalists still provide the

biggest bulk of the news but it is then mediated by citizens through ratings, blogposts, tweets,

likes and dislikes or even just simple linking on social networking websites. News in this case

has changed from a top-down process into a conversation between different actors:

professional journalists, citizens, celebrities, organizations and the government, to name a

few.126 This has democratic implications because it provides the opportunity for genuine

conversation, and hopefully deliberation among citizens.

Furthermore, it is believed that citizens through their participation in the newsmaking

process on all kinds of levels can be a check on the mainstream media. Bill Kovach and Tom

Rosentiel propose that journalists should include and invite citizens into the process of news

production. By being as transparent as possible, citizens can keep a check on mainstream

journalism. As a result journalism will be a more valid part of democracy.127 Also Bowman et

al. suggest that if news companies want to be successful in their interaction with the public on

the internet, they should make sure that they support social interaction around their stories.

They argue that “media whose primary value lies in its ability to connect people will win.”128

Bowman et al. envision several positive effects of citizen participation through user-

generated content. First, they imagine that a crowd knows more and that this wisdom of the

crowd will yield better stories. Secondly, citizen participation means in effect that you have a

large number of cheap reporters since you can ask anyone, anywhere to contribute. And lastly

and most in keeping with the Habermasian ideal of critical rationalization: “An audience that

124 Jane B. Singer et al., “Introduction” in Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online

Newspapers. (Malden, Ma: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 2. 125 Luke Goode, “Social news, citizen journalism and democracy,” New media & society 11, no. 8 (2009):1291. 126 Ibid, 1293. 127 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. The elements of journalism: what newspeople should know and the public

should expect, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), 13. 128S. Bowman and C. Willis, “We media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information.” NDN.

Available at: www.hypergene.net/wemedia/download/we_media.pdf (accessed April 29th, 2011), 53.

37

participates in the journalistic process is more demanding than passive consumers of news.

But they may also feel empowered to make a difference.”129

Those suggesting the existence of network journalism make the most radical shift in

the discussion on the virtual public sphere and forms of participatory journalism. Papacharissi

poses that “democratizing potential rests not solely with net-based citizen media, but rather

with the collaborative environments created.”130 Because journalists and citizens are

“networked” through the internet they are able to collectively “record, reflect on, and react on

our collective existence.”131 However, taking the theory further is Ansgard Heinrich who

holds that professional journalism is merely a part of an intricate network, or a journalism

sphere. She formulates it as follows:

a shared information sphere in which ‘traditional’ journalistic outlets such as corporate or public service news providers operate side by side with an innumerable number of

other information providers from citizen journalists to alternative news organizations. Each of these information providers in fact constitute a node within an ever more complex system of information exchange.132

This suggests a radical change in thinking about journalism, instead of it being a top down

process with professional journalists acting as gatekeepers and agenda-setters, it has become a

horizontal process in which different actors, or nodes, add and alter the information provision

within that system. Heinrich argues that when conceiving of network journalism as a global

communication space this results in multilayered and multiple interpretive frameworks for

news stories.133 This means that network journalism enriches the debate because of the

multiple standpoints presented. These are so rich because they are no longer simply presented

by professional journalists but also by citizens, or re-interpreted and discussed by those same

citizens.

Network journalism is a form of journalism that, through its set-up has the most

potential of approaching the norms of a healthy virtual public sphere. The idea of UGC still

puts this task of encouraging critical rationalization in the sole hands of journalists and in the

case of citizen journalism there is little to no interaction between journalists. The idea of

network journalism, however, gives this responsibility both to citizens and journalists,

129 Ibid, 53 - 55. 130 Zizi Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a digital age. (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 157. 131 Ibid, 157. 132 Ansgard Heinrich, “Network Journalism: Moving towards a Global Journalism Culture.” (paper presented at

the RIPE conference in Mainz, October 9-11, 2008), 5-6. 133 Ansgard Heinrich, “Foreign Reporting in the Sphere of Network Journalism,” Journalism Practice iFirst

Article (2012), 2.

38

interacting in a network. The activities of citizens in this case are not necessarily actively

encouraged by journalists, they are already present and engaging in critical rationalization

simply because they are using Twitter as a tool. I must point out that this is the ideal situation

and that more often than not interaction on the internet does not adhere to these norms. My

case study in the fifth chapter of this thesis will show, practically to what extent there is

critical rational interaction on Twitter between journalists and citizens.

As for the digital divide that needs to be bridged through the accessibility of

journalists, while realistically only a portion of citizens will be active on the internet, this

form of journalism still includes most citizens who then have access to at least an interaction

with journalists. Lastly, commodification, a threat to a healthy virtual sphere, is best battled

by network journalism. Because not only mass media and journalists who possibly have a

commercial interest in using the internet but also citizens who are not backed by commercial

interests are active on the internet. Different interests are represented.

Concluding, of all three types of journalism possible in a virtual public sphere,

network journalism is most suited to live up to the normative requirements of such a sphere.

While this networked interaction can take place through many different tools, such as

Facebook, Youtube and internet forums, I will delve deeper into its execution on Twitter. The

next chapter will therefore specifically expound the role of Twitter in the formation of a well-

working virtual public sphere and the manner in which journalists should be using this tool in

order to connect to citizens and for it to be a tool for a well-working virtual sphere.

39

Chapter 3 If Habermas Would Tweet

@acarvin: Tunisia: 4 weeks. Egypt: 4 days. Will the next revolt wherever it may be take only 4 hours? #jan25

This tweet by journalist Andy Carvin on January 25th, 2011 shows the possible speed of

revolutions in a digital age. And, as of writing this thesis, Egyptians have again been revolting

against their government and toppled it. These revolts are not only taking place in the streets

but also online on social media, such as Twitter, where journalists, but also citizens, are still

asking questions like Carvin did in 2011. In this respect, Egypt provides a salient case study

to show whether and how technological shifts, such as a growing use of Twitter, can influence

democratic processes. Carvin, furthermore, shows there is a role for journalists within these

relatively new technologies.

Social media can provide new interpretations on the democratic potential of the

internet. This is the case, first of all, because through user generated content, people are

creating their own virtual public space. Tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube make

that possible.134 Moreover, these tools provide users with new ways of connecting and

communicating with each other. This means that citizens can gain access to information with

which they can influence both media and governments. Someone, for example, could tweet

and comment on a mistake in a journalistic article from a mainstream media source after

which this is changed. Or much attention for faulty government policy on Twitter can lead to

offline public discussions or even changes in such policy. This thesis therefore wants to

explore the changing ways that Twitter impacts journalism and discussions in the public

sphere. Indirectly Twitter might thus impact democracy.

Twitter is specifically under scrutiny here for it has played a ubiquitous role within

many of the revolts that belong to the Arab Spring. The uprisings in Iran are an example in

2009 and the revolts during the Arab Spring in such countries as Egypt, Libya and Syria also.

Some have even called these revolts the Twitter uprisings or Facebook uprisings because

many protesters used these social media for communication, information dissemination and

mobilization.135 The more recent November-December 2012 revolts in Egypt also provide a

salient case study for this democratic potential of Twitter as both citizens and journalists used

Twitter to connect, inform, mobilize and organize.

134 Axel Bruns et al., “Mapping the Australian Networked Public Sphere” (paper presented at the International

Communication Association conference, Singapore, 25 June, 2010), 9. 135 Walid El Hamamsy, “BB = BlackBerry or Big Brother: Digital media and the Egyptian revolution,” Journal

of Postcolonial Writing 47, no. 4 (2011): 454.

40

Before getting to this specific case study, however, this chapter continues the debate

that I put forward in the first two chapters of this thesis. Where the first and the second talked

about the public sphere and subsequently the virtual public sphere, I will continue in this

chapter to discuss the specific democratic potential of Twitter as a tool for both citizens and

journalists in a virtual public sphere. As such, in this chapter I first explore how tweeting

complements journalism and how interaction between professional journalists and Twitter-

users enhances democracy. I do this by contrasting Twitter’s characteristics to the necessary

qualities of a healthy virtual public sphere that I extrapolated in chapter two. By doing this I

can pose that Twitter, when fulfilling these criteria, can potentially be used as a tool for

healthy participation in the public sphere. In the end, such healthy participation is the goal of

a well-working, democratic Habermasian public sphere. Having established this I move on to

a literature review of the use of Twitter in earlier revolts in Egypt. This literature review sets

the scene for the situation in Egypt during the November-December 2012 revolts, and thus

allows me to segue into that specific case study in the chapters after this one.

3.1 Twitter

The online Merriam-Webster dictionary describes to twitter as: “utter[ing] successive chirping

noises”136. In a sense, this is what users of Twitter do. Tweeters are allowed to post 140-

character tweets. Anyone who follows the person posting them can read those tweets. This

means a Twitter-user follows others to read their tweets and also has followers of his or her

own. This is how Twitter was essentially meant to be used: tweeting your messages about

what you were doing so your friends, or followers, could read them. At the same time, it is

possible to see the tweets of people you are not following, as long as the tweeter has not put

his or her account on private. Twitter in this sense only vaguely reminds of the bourgeois

coffee house that Habermas imagined to be ideal for the critical rational debate necessary for

a well-functioning public sphere. Nevertheless I argue in this section that Twitter has some

inherent traits that do potentially make it suitable to function as such a tool.

The first of such a trait is the “@-sign”, this sign allows users to address each other or

include other people in a post. I might for example post “@acarvin where will the next revolt

be?” and this way journalist Andy Carvin (whose Twitter-alias is @acarvin) will see this on

his own Twitterpage. In the same way one could include multiple names of Twitter-users to

include them in a conversation, or make them aware of something happening on or outside

136 www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twitter

41

Twitter. Moreover, others can also read these discussions or questions and can join by

replying to them. Thus enabling the possibilities of conversations on Twitter. Whenever users

are in a conversation anyone else can re-read this conversation easily by clicking “view

conversation” which appears underneath every tweet from the specific conversation. This

relatively new feature did not yet exist during the 2010 revolts in Egypt, but it did during the

2012 November-December protests and thus easily allows for conversations to be seen. The

value of this for a virtual public sphere is that people can really address each other, thereby

slightly organizing that disorganized digital coffee house.

What makes Twitter more special that the bourgeois coffeehouse, however, are two

other features that allow conversations to be spread quickly and easily among thousands or

even millions of tweeters. The first of these features is the hashtag. In the case of the

November-December protests the hashtag #Egypt was mainly attached. This meant that

whenever anyone was interested in tweets about the events in Egypt they could search #Egypt

and find tweets about Egypt. The results either show the top tweets, so those that are most

often retweeted or responded to, or the most recent tweets with that hashtag. Finding these

tweets also implicates that you have found the conversations on the same subject. The hashtag

thus ensures the quick dissemination of conversations among a large group of tweeters. The

earlier mentioned retweet does something similar. By retweeting a message, and thus

indirectly a conversation whenever people have reacted to that tweet, it is spread among a

larger network.

The technology has thus been provided for. Twitter offers the possibility of addressing

each other, easily finding tweets on one conversation topic, and even finding specific

conversations between two or more tweeters. Moreover, conversations are easily and quickly

spread over a network thus enabling others to also join in. Such conversations make Twitter a

tool for possible critical rational debate. I use the word possible, because the technology in

itself certainly does not make up for a well-functioning virtual public sphere. Twitter is

merely a tool that should be appropriated in a specific manner by, for example, citizens and

journalists. The next section therefore addresses how Twitter, theoretically, extends beyond

merely being a purveyor of chirping sounds into a tool that enhances democracy.

3.2 Twitter as a tool of a Virtual Public Sphere

The way Twitter is built up allows it to be a tool for a well-functioning virtual public sphere.

Reiterating my summary in the section on a normative vision of the virtual public sphere in

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the second chapter of this thesis, a well-working virtual public sphere should include the

following five requirements:

1. information dissemination

2. the possibility to ask controversial questions and thus acceptance that dissensus is also

a valid outcome of deliberation that will lead to new forms of self-understanding,

reflection and adjustment

3. accountability among participants

4. equality among participants

5. a letting go of face-to-face deliberation and thus an acceptance of a different model of

space and time, meaning that deliberation does not necessarily have to happen in a

fixed place during a specific amount of time. Instead it can happen between several

geographically separated individuals over a larger span of time than say, a few hours.

Firstly, Twitter offers possibilities for quick and often effective information dissemination.

The extent to which Twitter is facilitating the exchange of information is necessary to

ascertain, since the quality and quantity of this exchange influences public opinion formation.

First of all, both retweets and linking allow for quick information dissemination. When a

tweet, retweeted often, can travel with great speed across Twitter, it soon reaches many

people, spreading information quickly. Moreover, Kristina Lerman and Rumi Ghosh found

that news stories produced by the mainstream media spread easily and especially for a long

time, through a heterogeneous network of Twitter users.137 By retweeting tweets that contain

links to mainstream productions tweeters spread the information that is contained in them

through a large network of other Twitter users. As a result those publications are read more

widely and information is similarly spread more widely as well. This implicates that Twitter

improves the information dissemination of mainstream media.

Information dissemination is especially effective when such a tweet also contains a

link to a longer article or other information source. This is the case because that way not only

the 140 characters of the tweet are spread but an entire article or other mainstream news

production. Hashtags also encourage easy and quick information dissemination, someone

seeking information on the November-December 2012 Egyptian revolts would quickly find

137 Kristina Lerman and Rumi Ghosh, “Information Contagion: an Empirical Study of the Spread of News on

Digg and Twitter Social Networks”, in Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Weblogs and Social

Media, 2010, 7.

43

out that a major hashtag people used to report about this was #Egypt. They would as most

people in their timeline either tweeting or retweeting about these events would have used that

hashtag. Or, if someone’s timeline does not already include tweets with such a hashtag, such a

major event will most probably be a trending topic. Trending topics are the ten most used

hashtags of that moment. While you can set them for a specific region, there is also a

worldwide trending topic list. If this list does not contain the hashtag a last option would be to

do the search by yourself through the search option by for example looking for posts

containing the words protest, Egypt, Cairo or Morsi. This all essentially means that when

someone is looking for information about a certain subject it is easily found on Twitter,

making it a well-functioning information disseminator. When someone knows the popular

hashtag for a certain subject allows anyone to request tweets by everyone made with that

hashtag. As explained in the earlier section this results in either a list of the most popular

tweets with that hashtag or the most recent ones. Thus, anyone interested in a certain subject

may easily find information on it through Twitter.

Besides the hashtag and the retweet, the @-sign also potentially allows people to

disseminate information more quickly. For example, a tweeter with a smaller following might

address someone on Twitter with a larger following. When doing this they can share

information with that person in the hope that that more influential tweeter might also retweet

the post and thus spread it among a larger network of people. Moreover, even when this more

influential person does not retweet the post it will appear in their timeline for their entire

following to see.

Several researchers have proven that many tweets are in fact sent for informational

purposes and Twitter is thus already being used as a tool for information dissemination.

Ashkay Java et al. found, for example that Twitter users’ main intention, after daily chatter, is

sharing information.138 Amanda Hughes and Leysia Palen similarly concluded that during

emergency events a large percentage of tweets is sent for informational purposes. They draw

this conclusion because many of the tweets contained links to websites providing more

information about the emergency event.139 I can thus briefly conclude that Twitter not only

provides useful tools for information dissemination, tweeters are also using them. This fits

with the finding that one of the main intentions of tweeters is to dispense information.

138 Ashkay Java et al., “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities,” (paper

presented at the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, San Jose, California, 12 August, 2007), 8-9. 139 Amanda Lee Hughes and Leysia Palen, “Twitter Adoption and Use in Mass Convergence and Emergency

Events,” (paper presented at the 6th International ISCRAM Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, May 2009), 9.

44

Information dissemination alone does not create a well-working tool for a virtual public

sphere. Therefore, there is the second requirement of asking controversial questions, and in

line with that, the acceptance of dissensus. In light of Kellner and Fraser’s idea of multiple

public spheres, the necessity of asking controversial questions for a healthy virtual public

sphere becomes obvious. This is the case because only asking such different and controversial

questions allows for other public spheres to exist. The theory of multiple public spheres holds

that several different public spheres can exist next to each other, sometimes conflicting. In

those alternative public spheres, different groups can voice their concerns, ask controversial

questions and therefore oppose dominant discourse. In this way such an alternative public

sphere can become a place for counter-publics. This ties in with the idea that dissensus is also

part of a public sphere.

Proof that Twitter is already being used as a tool for an alternative sphere, are the

continuous revolts that were part of the Arab Spring. Those revolts in many Arab countries

offer concrete examples of citizen-organized initiatives through Twitter (and also Facebook)

as a tool for opposition to oppressive governments. In a research report on the use of social

media in the Arab world Jeffrey Ghannam concludes: “These social networks inform,

mobilize, entertain, create communities, increase transparency, and seek to hold governments

accountable.”140 José van Dijck opposes this view when she poses that social media

platforms, instead of fostering critical rational debate, merely “formalize and inscribe a

heretofore informal discourse that was always already part of the public sphere.”141 Van Dijck

is thus saying that Twitter is not functioning as a tool for a well functioning virtual public

sphere, but as a tool for informal conversation that has nothing to do with democratic

deliberation.

Nevertheless, Twitter’s design supports the possibility of posting anonymously thus

making it easier on those living under repressive regimes to either ask controversial questions

or at least be confronted with them when others ask them on Twitter. Similarly, the

anonymity on Twitter allows users, especially in repressive regimes, to take a position

opposed to that of their government or other large, influential groups. People can disagree and

argue their disagreement on Twitter without being afraid that opponents might target them in

real life. While this makes these same people less accountable, it does provide a relative free

space for discussion and deliberation, also in a dissenting form. Moreover, the discussions

140 Jeffrey Ghannam, “Social Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011. A Report to the

Center for International Media Assistance,” Washington DC: Center for International Media Assistance, 2011: 4. 141 José van Dijck, “Facebook as a Tool for Producing Sociality and Connectivity,” Television and New Media

13, no. 2 (2012), 165.

45

that are held on Twitter sometimes end in consensus but also many times in an agreement that

the participants disagree. Twitter’s design thus enables users to ask critical questions and

accept dissensus, meaning that it theoretically can act as a tool for such goals. In my case

study of the November-December 2012 protests I ascertain whether or not such a level of

deliberation is taking place through Twitter.

The third aspect of a virtual public sphere is accountability among participants, a

requirement that is not easily reached on Twitter. Accountability is low, because anyone can

create an anonymous Twitter-account and make claims. In the case of the 2012 revolts in

Egypt it was easy to pose as someone present on for example Tahrir Square (the most well-

known place in Cairo where people protested), while not actually being there. Adi Kuntsman

and Rebecca Stein, furthermore, rightfully point out that “banished from popular discussion

was a sense of the ways in which the digital documents emanating from Tahrir Square …

were often the subject of considerable negotiation and contention…Largely missing was a

sense of the interpretive communities that these tools and documents produced.”142 This

critique of the lack of accountability on Twitter also extends to the insufficiency of the news

media to critically interpret this lack of accountability present on the internet. An example of

this is the A Gay Girl in Damascus-hoax. This was a blog allegedly written by a homosexual

Syrian girl during the Arab Spring. The blog was quickly picked up by the international news

media and she was heralded as an example of a “hero of the social media revolution.” The

real author turned out to be a Scottish blogger, Tom MacMaster.143 This example and

Kuntsman and Stein’s critique thus show that the general lack of accountability on the internet

is worsened through uncritical appropriation of internet information by the news media. This

thus poses a double problem with regard to unaccountability.

When appropriating this to the specific case of Twitter it seems that the problem of

accountability can only be partly bypassed. The individual user who wants to know if he or

she is reading verified information on a certain topic should, when possible, always check if a

tweeter who has proven trustworthy in the past is also tweeting about that subject. This is a

space that could be most logically occupied by both professional and amateur journalists.

Andy Carvin is an example of a journalist who is already functioning as a trustworthy tweeter

who verifies things he posts on Twitter, often through the use of his own following.

142 Adi Kuntsman and Rebecca L. Stein, “Digital Suspicion, Politics, and the Middle East,” Critical Inquiry

(2011), 1. 143 Jeffrey Ghannam, “Social Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011. A Report to the

Center for International Media Assistance,” Washington DC: Center for International Media Assistance, 2011: 4.

46

At the same time any tweeter who has built a large following and a good reputation could

occupy this space. Furthermore, tweeters can also crowdsource their own Twitter followers by

asking them if they know a certain issue to be true or whether someone can verify this. Lastly,

as I will show in chapter five, there are several elite tweeters who are known outside of

Twitter and therefore have a reputation to uphold, it is likely that these tweeters are more

careful about what they tweet and who they retweet. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is

rather easy to post hoaxes or untruthful things on Twitter thereby damaging the potential

critical rational debate.

The fourth requirement, equality, is also difficult to reach. Twitter’s design is not

conducive to this requirement as tweeters need access to the internet to be able to participate.

This means a user needs at least access to a device that allows him or her access to the

internet. Moreover and maybe more importantly, a user also needs the necessary skill set to

understand and work with Twitter. A further restraint to equality on Twitter is the presence of

commercialization. Bernard Jansen et al., for example, show how companies can use Twitter

as an electronic word-of-mouth, in short: how to use Twitter for marketing purposes.144 Such

commercialization means there are players on Twitter who are not participating in potential

critical rational debate but with commercial purposes, potentially harming critical rational

debate. This is the same process of commodification that Habermas criticized about the public

sphere, he states that “while those aiming to influence are implemented by organizations that

aim to promote purchasing power, loyalty or conformist behavior. These two functions

compete with each other. The principle of publicity turns ‘against itself and thereby reduces

its critical efficacy’”145

At the same time I pose that while it is relatively easy to recognize trustworthy

tweeters, it is similarly possible to weed out most untrustworthy tweeters. Moreover, Axel

Bruns and Jean Burgess make a valid point in assessing that the bottom-up nature of Twitter

and its use by so many different actors means that not one institutional participant can

dominate or effectively influence the discourse.146 This would mean that commercialization is

not a main threat to a well-working virtual public sphere. This does not mean, however, that

Twitter provides entirely equal opportunities for everyone. The mere use of the words elite

144 Bernard J. Jansen et al., “Twitter Power: tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth,” Journal of the American

Society for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 11 (2009): 2169. 145 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 437. 146 Axel Bruns and Jean E. Burgess, “The Use of Twitter Hashtags in the Formation of Ad Hoc Publics”, (paper

presented at the 6th European Consortium for Political Research General Conference, University of Iceland,

Reykjavik, August 2011), 7.

47

tweeter in this thesis shows that hierarchy exists on Twitter, similar to the offline world. The

most that can be strived for with regard to equality on Twitter is thus the formation of

networks of users who are relatively equal within such a network. For this reason I analyze a

small group of users in this thesis who are equal in their use and popularity on Twitter.

The fifth and last requirement of a well-working virtual public sphere that I

summarized in chapter two is a letting go of face-to-face communication that should result in

the acceptance of a different model of space and time. As I posed in chapter two, this different

model of space and time is necessary for discussion to even exist on the internet as much

interaction is fragmented and happening over a large span of both time and space. At the same

time Twitter is also a tool that actually allows for a form of face-to-face communication,

namely through the @-sign, albeit not in the strict physical sense of the term. At the same

time Bernardo Huberman et al. pose that “a link between any two people does not necessarily

imply an interaction between them.”147 Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan Herring, on the other

hand, argue that by using the “@ symbol” users of Twitter are engaging in conversations and

collaboration.148 This is based on their finding that when users use the @-sign in their posts

they are mostly replying or addressing another specific Twitter user.149 They do concede,

however, that especially a better archiving of tweets would improve such interaction since

that would enable users to look back further and re-read discussions they can in turn respond

to.150 After their research this has in fact become a feature of Twitter. By clicking on “show

conversation”, the discussion belonging to the tweet expands underneath it. This allows any

Twitter user to follow a discussion or conversation after it has been constructed. Moreover,

anyone, at any time, can also contribute to these discussions, resulting sometimes in page-

long deliberations on certain issues. Such conversations, as argued earlier in this chapter, have

the potential of being the kind of critical rational debate that is necessary for a healthy virtual

public sphere. Twitter thus holds this potential in its design.

Similarly this design satisfies the requirement of the acceptance of a different model of

space and time. A tweet can linger for a long time when retweeted, thereby defying the

original space and time it was posted in. An example is a tweet made by an Egyptian

revolutionary that may be retweeted for days by people all over the world and perhaps later

147 Bernardo A. Huberman et al., “Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope,” First Monday 14,

no. 1 (2009): 8. 148 Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan C. Herring, “Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via

Twitter,” (paper presented at the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Big Island, Hawaii,

January 5-8, 2009), 9. 149 Ibid, 5. 150 Ibid, 10.

48

repeated by news outlets on radio, television or other websites than Twitter. In this manner

one tweet can create a far greater impact beyond the original space and time in which it was

created. Furthermore, Sartia Yardi and Danah Boyd have analyzed tweets and have come to

the conclusion that Twitter-users are confronted with many different views, also those

opposing their own. This has the potential of influencing the way they think, the information

they themselves spread and it can widen the group of people they interact with.151 The large

space over which tweets travel likewise enlarges the possible views and thoughts that Twitter

users come into contact with. In the Twitter sample of this thesis, for example, there is a small

deliberation and exchange of information between a Dutch man wondering about the situation

in Egypt and an Egyptian journalist explaining it to him. As such, both the lingering of tweets

and their digital travel over long distances makes Twitter a potentially valuable tool for online

critical rational debate that is more diverse than offline deliberation.

Concluding, I pose that Twitter, despite some of its weaker aspects is a promising tool

for a well-working virtual public sphere. It does not score well on the aspects of equality and

accountability but in return it is a real space to ask controversial questions and argue along the

lines of dissensus. It is a strong tool for information dissemination and allows us to embrace a

new use of space and time. Do all these aspects in itself make it a well-working tool for a

public sphere though? Not necessarily. It all depends on who is wielding this tool and why.

As Zizi Papachirissi concludes about all digital technologies, and therefore also about Twitter:

They “create a public space, but do not inevitably enable a public sphere.”152 For example, the

fact that users are active on Twitter and therefore active within a public space does not

automatically mean that this space adheres to all or several of the requirements for a well-

working virtual public sphere. Who or what is it then that changes such a digital public space

into a public sphere? At least one important factor is its users, as we have assessed in the case

of Twitter. In Habermas original theory this more specifically means citizens, as those are

supposed to benefit from critical deliberation and consequently live in a more democratic

public sphere. However, equally important contributors to a healthy public sphere, as already

posed by Habermas, are professional journalists. In his conception journalists are to provide

citizens with the information needed in order to engage in critical rational deliberation.153 In

151 Sartia Yardi and Danah Boyd, “Dynamic Debates: An Analysis of Group Polarization Over Time on

Twitter,” Bulletin of Science Technology & Society. 30, no. 5 (2010): 325. 152 Zizi Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a digital age. (Cambridge: Polity, 2010),124. 153 Lasse Thomassen, Habermas: A Guide for the Perplexed. (London: Continuum International Publishing

Group, 2010), 38.

49

the next section I will therefore discuss how this role can be construed when both those

journalists and citizens are active on Twitter.

3.3 Twitter as a Tool in a Network

Within a virtual public sphere, the ideal role of news media has changed. In chapter two I

summarized that in order to encourage critical rationalization journalists have to inform,

provide a forum be a fourth estate and encourage equal and universal participation. Of the

different types of journalism possible through the internet, namely user generated content

(UGC), citizen journalism and participatory journalism, the last turns out to be best suited for

these four requirements. In short, the use of UGC by journalists, and the participation of

citizens through citizen journalism are both too one-sided. The one focuses still on the

gatekeeping function of journalist, not including citizens. At the same time the other does

away with the role of journalists, even though journalists are important within the

Habermasian normative idea of a public sphere. Participatory journalism, and then

specifically in the form of network journalism fits best within the idea of a virtual public

sphere. To recapitulate, I use Ansgard Heinrich’s concept of network journalism in this thesis.

In short it means that different information providers interact within a shared information

sphere as specific nodes in a complex system of information exchange.154 The information

providers within a network are not only professional journalists but also citizens who are

active on the internet. The encouragement of critical rationalization is thus in the hands of

both actors. Moreover, journalists keep their informative and watchdog function as a fourth

estate but include citizens in this process thus at the same time improving their accessibility

and equality in participation. Most importantly for this thesis network journalism holds the

biggest potential for successfully including increasingly significant digital social networks

such as Twitter as this medium encourages horizontal instead of vertical participation. All

users on Twitter are theoretically participating under the same conditions.

In the upcoming two sections I therefore discuss how this interaction between citizens

and journalists should normatively play out for Twitter to be a tool of a networked sphere. I

namely pose that conceiving and theorizing Twitter as a tool within a network can help create

a new and more elaborate normative model for a Habermasian public sphere. In order to think

of the place of Twitter and its relation to professional journalism within a network, one should

envision a field existing of several interconnected nodes. One of those nodes represents

154 Ansgard Heinrich, “Network Journalism: Moving towards a Global Journalism Culture.” (paper presented at

the RIPE conference in Mainz, October 9-11, 2008), 5-6.

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Twitter-users and another one professional journalists.155 It is interesting to discuss these two

specific nodes since there is so much interaction between the two. Other nodes that one could

imagine on Twitter are government officials, politicians or even celebrities. Adrienne Russell

also points out there is important interaction between activists, specifically, and journalists

from traditional news sources. She describes how these two groups reported news during the

2011 UN Climate summit. She found that unlike mainstream media sources “NGO coverage

was exhaustive and included the actions and comments of high-profile international and

national officials, scientists, civil society, and locally focused grassroots groups.”156 Such

activist coverage was of such high quality that mainstream sources even started referring to it

as better sources for certain parts of the Summit. Russell thus shows how activists can provide

both additional news sources while all the while also interacting with journalists from

mainstream media.

For the purpose of this thesis, however, I choose to limit the scope to citizens and

professional journalists. The main reason for this limitation is because these are the two most

important groups within Habermasian public sphere theory. Citizens are important for this

theory because they can, and normatively should, benefit most from a democratic sphere. It

should also be noted that because the line between activist and citizen is vague it could be

argued that the citizens from the sample that I use in my analysis in chapter five are actually

activists because they are so intent on changing aspects of their society. This means that

involved citizens can be given the label activist, this nevertheless changes nothing about their

actual action in the public sphere, namely that of a citizen concerned about his or her society.

It is important in this case, though, that such activists are not backed by an organization as

that would mean they could employ the rhetoric and/or tactics of that organization. However,

as long as citizens are engaged on Twitter about issues concerning their own society, without

being backed by an organization, I count them as citizens. Journalists are equally important

for this thesis because they need to interact, inform, act as a watchdog and encourage equal

participation among citizens. Within Habermasian theory citizens and journalists are thus

supposed to already be highly interconnected for such a sphere to be healthy. Thus a focus on

155 This is a very simplified explanation of the nodes within network journalism, in practice the re are many more

nodes. Different news media organizations and citizen groups can belong to different specific nodes within the

network. An obvious example of this could be public service media organizations in one node and commercial

media organizations in another. A certain group of civically organized citizens could also belong to a specific

node. However, for the sake of clarity this discussion will conceive of citizens who use Twitter as one node and

media organizations as another. While this simplifies the discussion it does sufficiently show the interplay

between citizens and journalists. 156 Adrienne Russell, “Innovation in hybrid space: 2011 UN Climate Summit and the expanding journalism

landscape,” Journalism published online (2013), 14.

51

these two actors results in rearticulating their places within a networked, and preferably well-

working virtual public sphere, through their use of Twitter.

3.3.2 Journalists and Twitter

Journalists are already increasingly using Twitter in their news making. Nic Newman, utilized

the Iranian street protests of 2009 as a case study, and poses that Twitter makes

newsgathering easier, it saves time and gets more visitors to a news website through links on

Twitter.157 Alfred Hermida summarizes that in the United States, already in 2010, all but one

of the top 198 TV stations and newspapers had an official Twitter account.158 However, only

using Twitter to gather news or find contacts is not enough for it to be a tool of a virtual

public sphere. The entire idea is that such a sphere will only exist when there is network

journalism, meaning that journalists themselves are only one part of the equation. Journalists

merely represent one node within an information network that also includes many others.159

In order to understand the paradigm shift in which journalists now find themselves

entangled it is helpful to understand journalism within a network as, what Sue Robinson

coins, journalism as a process. She argues that journalists should accept that their product is

never finished and will be commented on, reinterpreted, re-published and disseminated

online. She argues that they should therefore have an active presence online, not just on the

website or through the official Twitter feed of their medium, but also by commenting and

posting in different places.160 This could be a Facebook page or through their personal Twitter

account. The fact that many journalists are not ready for such a role is supported by research

by Dominic L. Lasorsa et al.. They pose that the journalists from their sample had trouble

letting go of their gatekeeping position as they were making little use of the tweeting,

retweeting and linking features to “open the gates to non-professional participants in the news

157 Nic Newman, “The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism: A study of how newspapers

and broadcasters in the UK and US are responding to a wave of participatory social media, and a historic shift in

control towards individual consumers,” Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Working Paper, 2009,

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/The_rise_of_social_media_and_its_im

pact_on_mainstream_journalism.pdf, accessed October 12, 2009. 158 Alfred Hermida, “Tweets and Truth: Journalism as a discipline of collaborative verification.” Journalism

Practice iFirst Article (2012), 4-5. 159 As mentioned earlier, due to the scope of this thesis the only other players accounted for are citizens, even

though there are many more such as politicians, NGO’s, grassroots organizations and large corporations. 160 Sue Robinson, “’Journalism as a Process’: The Organizational Implications of Participatory Online News,”

Journalism & Communication Monographs 13, no.3 (2011), 202 – 203.

52

production process or to offer information that could contribute to their accountability or

transparency.”161

Andy Carvin is an example of a journalist who has found a productive way of

participating in the manner Robinson is propagating. He is a journalist for National Public

Radio in the United States. Ansgard Heinrich analyzes him as an example of a journalist who

has altered his journalistic practices so as to fit the new possibilities of a networked sphere.

During the uprisings that were part of the Arab Spring he used Twitter as a tool to “distribute

news, gather information, verify and knit together many large and small nodes.”162 He does

this by creating lists of tweeters in specific regions thereby building a vast network of

information gatherers. He filters this information by retweeting and he even goes as far as to

ask his followers to help establish the accuracy of tweets that he retweets.163 Hermida et al.

found that Carvin in his sourcing through Twitter used a much wider variety of voices than

would normally happen in the mainstream media. And many of those voices were non-elite.

Hermida et al. conclude: “The analysis of his choice of actor types and the frequency of

citation suggest there was a new paradigm of sourcing at play.”164 Carvin is an example, then,

of a journalist acting as a node within the information network on the internet, using Twitter

as the ultimate tool for information dissemination, prompting discussion, equality and

assessing accuracy. These are all important aspects of a virtual public sphere. He has also

found a way to integrate traditional news making values such as sourcing, filtering and fact

checking into his interaction with other tweeters. Carvin is thus an example of a journalist not

only using Twitter as a tool for a well-functioning public sphere, but going further by

integrating traditional news values within this interaction.

Peter Dahlgren also recognizes the monumental shift in journalism due to the

influence of the internet. He therefore theorizes a new journalistic practice which he calls

cosmopolitan reflection, meaning that anyone active online, be it professional journalists or

citizens, need to mentally understand and respect that everyone’s reality is shaped by a range

of factors and that this results in alternative ways of looking at the world.165 This should

161 Dominic L. Lasorsa et al., “Normalizing Twitter: Journalism Practice in an Emerging Communication

Space,” Journalism Studies iFirst Article (2011), 13. 162 Ansgard Heinrich, “Foreign Reporting in the Sphere of Network Journalism,” Journalism Practice iFirst

Article (2012), 7. 163 Ibid., 8. 164 Alfred Hermida et al., “Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the

Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,” Paper presented at the International Symposium on Online Journalism,

University of Texas, Austin (2012), 11. 165 Peter Dahlgren, “Online Journalism and Civic Cosmopolitanism,” Journalism Practice iFirst Article (2012),

13.

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automatically result in an understanding of the different viewpoints as they are presented

online, at least adding to the arguably more limited viewpoints presented by the mainstream

media. As an example of this understanding already being enacted he gives Al Jazeera, a

news station located in the Middle East that makes use of bloggers and reporters of many

different nationalities, resulting in news broadcasts that appeal to many globally.166

Hermida recognizes the same paradigm shift but has a less positive outlook on the way

journalists are handling this shift. He does acknowledge that journalists are adapting to the

fluidity of news subjects through the extensive use of the liveblog. The liveblog is a constant

play-by-play of events surrounding a certain subject, generally on the official website of the

respective news outlet. At the same time he identifies that most professional journalists are

unwilling to go as far as Andy Carvin in using the collective knowledge found online to check

the veracity of certain tweets or information.167 This limitation is worthwhile to notice but

does not mean a well-working virtual public sphere cannot exist as long as there are

journalists such as Carvin who do take their place within the network. When there are only a

few key journalists who act as connecting nodes between other nodes interacting in a

network, say on Twitter, they are still connecting a large group of people and other interested

parties. As such, they act as both source and catalyst of information and deliberation.

3.3.3 Citizens and Twitter

So far I have accounted for the role of journalists within a virtual public sphere using Twitter

as their tool, but what about citizens? It is first worthwhile to note that worldwide only ten

percent of all Twitter-users produce ninety percent of all the content.168 This means that most

people on Twitter do not actively participate in the making and maintaining of a virtual public

sphere. However, those who do participate tend to become more committed in their

interaction the longer they have been active on Twitter. This means that the network of such a

tweeter grows, that he or she produces more on Twitter and also posts more.

Then a second note is that the majority of those who produce on Twitter do certainly

not do so with the goal of acting as a concerned citizen. The earlier cited research by Ashkay

Java et al. found, for example that Twitter users’ main intention is daily chatter. However,

166 Ibid., 14. 167 Alfred Hermida, “Tweets and Truth: Journalism as a discipline of collaborative verification.” Journalism

Practice iFirst Article (2012), 6 – 8. 168 Tyler J. Horan, “’Soft’ Versus ‘Hard’ News on Microblogging Networks: Semantic Analysis of Twitter

Produsage,” Information, Community and Society iFirst Article (2012), 14.

54

their second main intention is the sharing of information.169 While this is one of the

requirements for a virtual public sphere it does not mean that citizen users who are spreading

this information are necessarily doing this with the intention of letting their civic voice be

heard. It is likely that most tweeters are participating on Twitter never have the intention to

democratically contribute to a discussion like the bourgeois coffee house visitors of

Habermas’ ideal public sphere must have had. Then why am I discussing their democratic

role in a virtual public sphere if the majority of tweeters probably do not have the intention of

democratically participating? Because their initial intention does not mean that their actual

behavior on Twitter is not contributing to critical rational debate. The point of this section is

thus to formulate how citizens’ current behavior is, sometimes indirectly, contributing to a

well-working virtual public sphere.

As summarized earlier in this chapter Twitter allows users to participate in

information dissemination, they can ask controversial questions, embrace a new use of space

and time and argue along the lines of dissensus. These four aspects are more likely met when

considering that those participating are confronted with many different standpoints, as

Michael Conover et al. found that the use of hashtags results in a heterogeneous public as

opposed to the normally very polarized groups in society. They do point out that in the end

Twitter-users still tend to look up and address those who already agree with them, which

limits discussion.170 Nevertheless, the Twitter’s technology allows for a heterogeneous public

necessary for information dissemination, critical questions and dissensus.

The kinds of users described so far are thus, while maybe not all intending to do so,

contributing to a virtual public sphere because their posts are part of critical rational debate or

encouraging such debate. However, a different group of citizens on Twitter might feel or want

to function as co-creators of news. The citizens from the sample of this thesis, for example, all

had some extracurricular activities as opinion writer or guest editorialist in both national and

international media. This group of tweeters is more familiar with journalistic mores and may

consciously want to function as co-creators of news using Twitter as one of their tools. When

participating on Twitter with this intention Robinson poses that these citizens need to find

their civic voice, meaning that they should be able to gauge credibility and to not be satisfied

169 Ashkay Java et al., “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities,” (paper

presented at the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, San Jose, California, 12 August, 2007), 8-9. 170 Michael D. Conover et al., “Political Polarization on Twitter,” (paper presented at the Fifth International

AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona, July 17-21, 2011), 95.

55

with just one source and follow other links in pursuit of knowledge and information.171 This

responsibility is thus no longer only that of journalists but has become a shared responsibility

with a group of citizens on Twitter. This is also something that Andy Carvin as a journalist

encourages through his collaboration with anyone willing to find out the accuracy of a tweet.

Concluding, both journalists and citizens are part of a network in which each plays

their own role. The journalists’ role within such a sphere is much clearer to formulate, as it is

possible to define a normative vision from a professional viewpoint. When doing the same for

citizens, this all to soon leads to a far too media-centric moral vision for behavior that is in

large part done with the intention to socialize. Therefore I have summarized in this section

that citizens can be grouped into three kinds of tweeters. The first are those using Twitter

mainly for daily chatter and thus as a social tool. Secondly, tweeters participating in the form

of critical rational debate as it can be found on Twitter. This means that they are also using

Twitter mainly as a social tool but with indirect political implications. And lastly, there are

those who, in the relatively new tradition of citizen journalism, act as co-creator of news. It is

specifically this last group and their potential as co-constructors of a healthy virtual public

sphere that I am interested in. As such, the group of citizens that I analyze in chapter five are

all elite tweeters who belong to this last group. Before going into this analysis, however, I set

up a section that discusses the general internet use and the role of Twitter in Egypt in the

period before the November-December 2012 protests.

3.4 Twitter and Egypt

Setting the scene for the start of the revolts at the end of 2012, it is necessary to consider the

role that the internet already played in Egypt. The fact that Twitter could even be a tool during

the revolts finds its basis in an earlier government policy based both on censorship of the

national media and promotion of internet technologies. The Egyptian dictatorial government

promoted information technologies early on for socio-economic development. The

telecommunication industry was liberalized, skills training were initiated nationwide and a

free access to internet model was established, among others.172 At the same time the

government censured national television news stations and newspapers, giving citizens a

171 Sue Robinson, “’Journalism as a Process’: The Organizational Implications of Participatory Online News,”

Journalism & Communication Monographs 13, no.3 (2011), 203. 172 Naila Hamdy, “Arab Citizen Journalism in Action: Challenging Mainstream Media, Authorities and Media

Laws,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 6, no. 1 (2009), 98.

56

strong incentive and also the skills, to search for credible sources of information.173 These

sources could be found through satellite television in the form of Al Jazeera. Satellite

networks such as Al Jazeera had already broken the state’s monopoly on information

dissemination.174

However, the internet also became a potent source. In 2011, already a quarter of the

Egyptian population was connected to the internet, of which five percent of the population

had a Facebook account.175 During that same time an estimated 1,1 million unique Egyptian

users were actively participating on Twitter. 176 As the government tried to control the internet

and thus social media, the image of such media as a conveyer of an honest and accurate

picture of the events in Egypt was strengthened among its citizens.177

The earlier mentioned government’s promotion of communication technologies

resulted in a relatively large amount of social media users, when compared to other countries

in the Arab world. Egypt, for example, constituted about a quarter of the total Facebook users

in the Arab world in 2011.178 At first this became apparent through a rich blog culture.

Egyptian bloggers are among the first in the Arab world. Egypt has even been called the

blogosphere’s breeding ground because of its effectiveness in 2005 in the organization of the

protests by the Kefaya movement.179 The blogosphere that started to come into existence was

very effective both within as well as outside of Egypt. Examples of blog posts that eventually

influenced national laws are ones on police brutality and sexual harassment.180 So-called

public sphere bloggers used their blogs to function as a type of forum to engage in issues

surrounding activism in Egypt. Moreover, Egyptian bloggers were not only influential in their

own country, many of them were so-called bridge-bloggers, meaning that they blogged

deliberately in English in order to advance Egyptian issues.181

173 Philip Howard et al., “Opening Closed Regimes: What Was the Role of Social Media During the Arab

Spring?” Working Paper 2011.1 http://pitpi.org/index.php/2011/09/11/opening-closed-regimes-what-was-the-

role-of-social-media-during-the-arab-spring/ (accessed September 14, 2012), 6. 174 Halim Rane and Sumra Salem. “Social Media, Social Movements and the Diffusion of Ideas in the Arab

Uprisings,” Journal of International Communication 18, no. 1 (2012), 102. 175 Ibid, 104. 176 Essam Mansour, “The role of social networking sites (SNSs) in the January 25th Revolution in Egypt,”

Library Review 61, no. 2 (2012), 145. 177 Halim Rane and Sumra Salem. “Social Media, Social Movements and the Diffusion of Ideas in the Arab

Uprisings,” Journal of International Communication 18, no. 1 (2012), 104. 178 Jeffrey Ghannam, “Social Media in the Arab World: Leading up to the Uprisings of 2011. A Report to the

Center for International Media Assistance,” Washington DC: Center for International Media Assistance (2011),

12. 179 Naila Hamdy, “Arab Citizen Journalism in Action: Challenging Mainstream Media, Authorities and Media

Laws,” Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 6, no. 1 (2009), 94. 180 Ibid, 102. 181 Ibid, 95.

57

Egypt is also well known for its examples of successful Facebook activism, for

example a general textile worker strike was organized through the Facebook group The April

6 youth Movement and rapidly attracted 70,000 persons.182 Moreover, one of the main tools

in mobilizing people during the first revolts in 2011 is said to be the Facebook page “We are

all Khaled Said”, this page referred to the man who had been beaten to death by the police

just weeks earlier.183 It functioned as one of the focal points from where the 2011 protests

were planned online.184

Thus, right before the first protests in 2011 that toppled Hosni Mubarak’s regime, both

blogs and Facebook had become main staples for internet savvy Egyptians. Activists who

wanted to cause change within their oppressed society used both tools. Here again it is

important to note that the blogs and Facebook pages that caused change were used by citizens

who were doing this from an activist standpoint with the deliberate goal of letting their civic

voice be heard. This thought is supported by Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn’s position

that social media was a catalyst for the revolts, but argue they were only effective tools

“because of the willingness of large numbers of people to physically engage in and support

peaceful social protest.”185 These people using Facebook, Twitter and other internet tools

represent a specific group of activist citizens, willing to also go into the streets to physically

fight for change. This group is only a very small portion of all Egyptians. This becomes clear

when you consider that social media is the source of information for only eight percent of

Egyptians. This not only includes Twitter but also Facebook, YouTube and Flickr.186 While I

do not have a percentage, the number of active users on these social media tools is thus even

smaller. However, Twitter does appear to be used as a tool for democracy by a minority of

activist Egyptian citizens. It is the use by this group of citizens, and their interaction with

journalists and the media that is of particular interest to this thesis.

The 2011 revolts are a good example of how these activist Egyptians used Twitter and

what their interaction with journalists was. Merlyna Lim summarizes that social media were

crucial during these protests: “Social media functioned to broker connections between

182 Ibid, 99. 183 Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn, “’We Are All Khaled Said’: The potentials and limitations of

cyberactivism in triggering public mobilization and promoting political change,” Journal of Arab and Muslim

Media Research 4, no. 2 and 3 (2011), 146. 184 Essam Mansour, “The role of social networking sites (SNSs) in the January 25th Revolution in Egypt,”

Library Review 61, no. 2 (2012), 135. 185 Sahar Khamis and Katherine Vaughn, “Cyberactivism in the Eygptian Revolution: How Civic Engagement

and Citizen Journalism Tilted the Balance,” Arab Media and Society 13 (2011), 25. 186 Halim Rane and Sumra Salem. “Social Media, Social Movements and the Diffusion of Ideas in the Arab

Uprisings,” Journal of International Communication 18, no. 1 (2012), 101.

58

previously disconnected groups, to spread shared grievances beyond the small community of

activist leaders, and to globalize the reach and appeal of the domestic movement for

democratic change.”187 Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson pose that “social media in

Egypt mediated many kinds of ties and brought individuals news, information, and the social

support needed to spur participation in political protest.”188 Twitter thus first of all functioned

as a tool for information. Moreover, local mobilization and connection between citizens was

also an important feature of Twitter during these protests. More significant for this thesis,

however, is Lim’s observation of Twitter’s globalized reach. By this she means the global

network that can be found on Twitter, causing messages from Egyptians about the revolution

to quickly spread worldwide.

Mark Allen Peterson argues for the importance of international media in shaping

public opinion outside of Egypt, these media helped frame the message that was being spread

on Twitter and in the streets for a global audience. As Al Jazeera framed the protests as a

genuine popular uprising, using Twitter and tweeters as part of its sources, CNN and BBC

also picked this up. This in turn influenced US foreign policy to lessen its support for the

Mubarak government.189 This implies that the interplay of citizens and journalists on Twitter

both had democratic effects, on the one hand within Egypt, on the other outside of Egypt in

the formation of public opinion. Furthermore, Alfred Hermida’s analysis of sourcing by

National Public Radio journalist Andy Carvin, also previously mentioned, shows that he

mainly used non-elite sources.190 This implies that through the interplay between tweeters and

journalists it has become more likely that activist citizens, in this case Egyptians, have more

influence on both national and even international public opinion. This suggests that even

though a relatively small number of Egyptians is active on Twitter with an activist intention,

they influenced public opinion formation. Such an influence had, in the case of the 2011

protests, indirect democratic consequences as the US changed it foreign policy to benefit the

general appeal of the activists, namely no more support for Mubarak’s dictatorial regime.

Therefore, even though only a small portion of Egyptians are active on Twitter, and as

a tool it is mostly used for daily chatter and not democratic purposes, it still does offer

187 Merlyna Lim, “Clicks, Cabs, and Coffee Houses: Social Media and Oppositional Mov ements in Egypt, 2004

– 2011,” Journal of Communication 62 (2012), 244. 188 Zeynep Tufekci and Christopher Wilson, “Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest:

Observations From Tahrir Square,” Journal of Communication 62 (2012), 376. 189 Mark Allen Peterson, “Egypt’s Media Ecology in a Time of Revolution,” Arab Media and Society 14 (2011),

8. 190 Alfred Hermida et al., “Sourcing the Arab Spring: A Case Study of Andy Carvin’s Sources During the

Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions,” (paper presented at the International Symposium on Online Journalism in

Austin, TX, April, 2012), 1.

59

possibilities for anyone who wishes to use Twitter as such a tool. In fact, during the 2011

protests in Egypt, the small portion of activist citizens who chose to try and further their cause

on Twitter, had a relatively large influence on the events unfolding. This was the case even

more so because of the presence of journalists on Twitter who interconnected with citizens. In

the case of Carvin citizens were included in the process of his news making in a manner that

fits the idea of network journalism. A different interplay between large (international)

television networks and tweeters even caused a change in global opinion formation and

subsequent democratic change in Egypt. Twitter thus not only theoretically presents

possibilities as a tool for democracy but has already proven to already do so to a certain

degree during earlier protests in Egypt. However, whether or not Twitter can in fact function

as such a tool while at the same time also being a tool for a well-working virtual public

sphere, meeting the five requirements discussed in this chapter has not been ascertained yet.

Therefore, in the coming chapters I present the case study of the November-December 2012

protests and a sample of seven journalists and seven activist citizens to research whether and

how they are meeting the standards of a virtual public sphere.

j kl

60

Chapter 4 An Egyptian Network: A Methodology

Media content analysis is a non-intrusive research method that allows examination of a wide range of data over

an extensive period to identify popular discourses and their likely meanings .191

This quote by Jim Macnamara neatly captures the methodological goal of this thesis, namely

to infer meanings from popular discourses. As argued in the previous chapters, the popular

discourse found on Twitter can potentially contribute to democracy. In order to test this,

however, I need to empirically research the available data. Therefore a methodological tool is

needed to extrapolate the democratic ideals that a society can live up to, which allows me to

investigate Twitter as a tool of communication and discussion. This chapter presents the

qualitative media content analysis method of grounded theory as such as tool. Grounded

theory is defined as “theory that was derived from data systematically gathered and analyzed

through the research process. In this method, data collection analysis and eventual theory

stand in close relationship to one another.”192 Grounded theory thus allows for a qualitative

extraction of meaning from data. Furthermore, as I will later explain in more detail, through

the coding of data it becomes possible to extract theoretical concepts. As such grounded

theory is an appropriate method to analyze Tweets and extract new theoretical ideas on how it

contributes to democracy.

The protests of the Arab Spring that started in Tunisia in 2010 and spread to many

Arab countries such as Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt, were one of the first

instances of the role Twitter could play in the organization, mobilization and connecting of

citizens against oppressive regimes. More recent protests in Egypt, namely in November and

December 2012, offer a new opportunity to analyze the role of Twitter. This period marks an

important example of attempts by both citizens and journalists to democratically change and

influence Egyptian society. In this period citizens revolted and protested against their

government as their elected President tried to pass changes in the country’s constitution and

tried to extend his own powers to the judicial and legislative branches of government. As this

period was quite recent it allowed me to gather all the available data from seven elite citizen

and seven elite journalist tweeters. In general Twitter limits the amount of data that can be

gathered from their servers, the way to bypass this was to select these protests and collect the

sent tweets in real-time. The data gained from this period functions as the basis of my

grounded theory analysis in the next chapter.

191 Jim Macnamara, “Media content analysis: Its uses; benefits and best practice methodology,” Asia Pacific

Public Relations Journal 6, no. 1 (2005), 6. 192 Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for

Developing Grounded Theory (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1990), 12.

61

This methodological chapter first presents and explains why grounded theory is an

appropriate method for researching my data, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of the

approach. I then continue in further detail to explain how I coded the tweets and why in that

manner. Lastly, I present the choice for my specific dataset. This also includes a short

overview of the Twitter-users whose tweets will be analyzed in the next chapter. This

explains why I chose these citizens and journalists and what I knew about them before coding

their tweets. However, I will now first present my methodological approach.

4.1 Grounded Theory

Even though Twitter has become a major tool for journalists in the past years, methodology

for media analysis of Twitter is still in its infancy. Most research published is of a quantitative

rather than a qualitative nature. Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess have made a thorough overview

of ways to quantitatively research large samples of tweets, identifying methods entailing

either statistical and textual analysis that mainly necessitate the counting of certain tweets,

retweets, or key concepts used in tweets and making inferences from that.193 These

quantitative analysis methods provide clear insights into the scope of actors and their

sentiment of the Tweets as they participate in the Twitter community. They can also help in

identifying the key players within such a community, an essential method when figuring out

the networked nature of a community surrounding a certain subject. However, there is a

necessity to take this even further to be able to say something about the nature of the

interaction of such actors. In that sense the qualitative analysis that I propose now, would be

an enriching addition to the already existing quantitative methods and the insights that those

have brought.

Qualitative analysis will never yield the scientific accuracy of quantitative analysis.

However, the main forte of qualitative analysis is that it allows looking for deeper meanings

of texts.194 Qualitative analysis thus goes further than merely counting, in this case, tweets,

but looks for their meaning and the way they are used in interactions between tweeters. As

such this helps me analyze whether the tweets sent during the period under analysis are in

accordance with the five requirements of a well-working virtual public sphere, namely

information dissemination; the possibility to ask controversial questions and thus acceptance

that dissensus is a valid outcome of deliberation; accountability; equality; and letting go of

193 Axel Bruns and Jean Burgess, “New Methodologies for Researching News Discussion on Twitter,” pape r

presented at The Future of Journalism 2011, 8 – 9 September, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK (2011), 5 – 8. 194 Jim Macnamara, “Media content analysis: Its uses; benefits and best practice methodology,” Asia Pacific

Public Relations Journal 6, no. 1 (2005), 5.

62

fact-to-face deliberation leading to the acceptance of a different model of space and time.

Furthermore, as Macnamara poses: “It is not valid to assume that quantitative factors such as

size and frequency of media messages equate to impact. Nor is it valid to assume that these

quantitative factors are the only or even the main determinants of media impact.”195 This

leads to qualitative analysis as a necessary complement to the already existing quantitative

analysis on Twitter use during the Arab Spring.

Unfortunately, not much research on Twitter using qualitative analysis has been

published. So far I have only encountered Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan Herring’s research

on the possibility that Twitter offers for conversations. They use grounded theory “allowing

categories relevant to @ use to emerge from the data.”196 I use this same qualitative method to

analyze my tweets. However, no definite account of the method exists. Even its creators

Barney G. Glaser and Anselm Strauss could not agree in later publications on a single

approach.197 Even so, Alan Bryman identifies grounded theory as the most often used

approach in qualitative data analysis.198 It should be understood as a method that helps

generating theory out of data. Kathy Charmaz and Antony Bryant specify: “The grounded

theory method consists of a set of systematic, but flexible, guidelines for conducting inductive

qualitative inquiry aimed toward theory construction.”199 Inductive analysis means that theory

is gained from data, this generalization of the data functions as the foundation of theory. Thus

similar to Honeycutt and Herring I let categories emerge from the data. By building levels of

analysis to become ever more abstract I build theoretical concepts from the data, in this case

the tweets. To show how I did this I will now turn to a description of the “set of systematic,

but flexible, guidelines” of which this grounded theory consists.

Since the specific approach of grounded theory is not something that is agreed upon I

borrow from different insights into this method. At the heart of grounded theory lies the

practice of coding. For this research I gathered PDF’s with tweets that I coded by hand.

Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin distinguish between three different kinds of coding, namely:

open coding, axial coding and selective coding. In the next section I explain in more detail

what these stages of coding entail, for now it is enough to understand that each stage means a

195 Jim Macnamara, “Media content analysis: Its uses; benefits and best practice methodology,” Asia Pacific

Public Relations Journal 6, no. 1 (2005), 5. 196 Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan Herring, “Beyond Microbloggin: Conversation and Collaboration via

Twitter,” paper presented at Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , Big

Island, Hawaii (January 5 – 8, 2009), 4. 197 Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods, 3rd ed. (Oxford UP: Oxford, 2008), 541. 198 Ibid. 199 Kathy Charmaz and Antony Bryant, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods (London,

Sage Publications, 2008), 375.

63

larger abstraction from the data toward abstract theoretical concepts. Every stage of this

coding process also meant going back and forth between my theoretical concepts and my

data. This results in a strong connection between the two while still allowing the concepts to

be abstract and thus a contribution to the theory building around the possibilities of Twitter as

a tool for democracy.

4.2 Developing the codes

As posed above, at the heart of grounded theory lies the practice of coding. Moreover, in the

case of grounded theory this coding is “the process of generating ideas and concepts from raw

data.”200 Before explaining how I coded the data sample I need to point out that while

grounded theory suggests that theory is extrapolated from data, it is also argued that grounded

theory “often generate[s] grounded concepts rather than grounded theory as such.”201 This is

also the case in this thesis as I extrapolate concepts relevant to the idea of a virtual public

sphere, rather than theory, from the tweets under analysis.

I did this through the use of open, axial and selective coding. However, in the creation

of these codes I used the theory from the first three chapters as a guiding principle so as to

link the theory and data from this thesis. Together they thus contribute new concepts to the

theory on the virtual public sphere. Letting myself be influenced in such a manner by other

theories or theoretical ideas in the formation of my codes would not have been considered to

be grounded theory at the time this approach was designed in 1967. Founders Glaser and

Strauss developed grounded theory as the counterpart of testing hypotheses to existing

theories. As such, researchers employing grounded theory were supposed to construct

“analytic codes and categories from data, not from preconceived logically-deduced

hypotheses.”202 Therefore using my previous theoretical knowledge on virtual public spheres

and network journalism would not have been allowed in the original conception of grounded

theory. However, I employ a newer and more constructivist idea of grounded theory, a

position well argued by Kathy Charmaz. She poses that she reinterprets the original theory by

Glaser and Strauss and says: “I assume that neither data nor theories are discovered. Rather

we are part of the world we study and the data we collect. We construct our grounded theories

through our past and present involvements and interactions with people, perspectives and

200 Lucia Benaquisto, “Codes and Coding,” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods

(Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2008), 85. 201 Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 547. 202 Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis , (London:

Sage Publications, 2006), 5.

64

research practices.”203 Within such an idea of grounded theory it is inescapable and even

desirable to use previous knowledge as it enriches the new theoretical concepts that are to

flow from the tweets that I analyze. At the same time the original intention of the theoretical

approach is still honored as it allows me to extract abstract theoretical concepts from data.

Moreover, by including such reflexive factors as prior knowledge and existing literature in the

formation of grounded theory I make my theoretical process more transparent.

Therefore, the five requirements for a virtual public sphere are the theoretical guiding

principle, as I extrapolated them from previous scholarly literature in chapter two. Moreover,

another important idea that informed the codes was network journalism, which in chapter two

I present to be the most constructive form of journalism for a well-functioning virtual public

sphere. Within this idea of journalism co-operation and connection between journalists and

citizens is required. These guiding principles thus give a focus to the developing of the codes

and later the overarching categories and concepts that can be extracted from these codes. And,

perhaps more importantly, they provide help in a theoretical understanding of empirical data

and place this within historical and social contexts.

I began by using open coding which Strauss and Corbin define as “the process of

breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing and categorizing data.”204 In practice

this meant that I first coded the tweets under different kinds of concepts that were not

necessarily specific to every different tweet and were thus mainly overlapping. The purpose

of this is that new ideas and thoughts could occur around these tweets, meaning that many

different codes are possible and sometimes also multiple codes for one tweet. However,

during this stage I did not yet assign these codes to the individual tweets. I did write down the

common codes that would return in a later stage. Moreover, in this stage there were also some

in vivo codes that I extracted. Such codes correspond to certain terms used in the tweets, the

use of this kind of code “help[s] us to preserve participants’ meanings of their views and

actions in the coding itself.”205 In my sample such codes mainly reflected strong emotions

expressed in words such as anger and disappointment.

Most of these in vivo codes I then also adopted in the second stage of coding, axial

coding. This entailed going through all the PDF’s and assigning each tweet a code, meaning

that a tweet could now not have more than one different code. The coding thus becomes more

203 Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis, (London:

Sage Publications, 2006), 10. 204 Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques

(London: Sage Publications, 1990), 61. 205 Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis , (London:

Sage Publications, 2006), 55.

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abstract. Charmaz argues that such axial coding “requires decisions about which initial codes

make the most analytic sense to categorize your data incisively and completely.”206 Appendix

C shows an example of this part of the axial coding stage.

Having established the codes of the tweets I subsequently ordered these under larger

and more abstract categories. That is the last step in coding, called selective coding. This

involves a great deal of analysis as during these steps the codes are linked and contrasted to

each other to form overarching categories. After this the abstraction becomes even larger by

now linking the categories into greater themes. Appendix E shows the categorization of these

tweets and which categories and themes emerged from the tweets that I analyzed. Chapter

five discusses in greater detail how I came to these specific categories and themes. From these

themes, or concepts, I drew inferences about how Twitter contributed to a virtual public

sphere during the revolts in Egypt. More importantly, I was thus able to extract key concepts

that can be added to further research into the democratic potential of Twitter. The following

section presents how and why I chose the dataset from which I extracted these key concepts.

4.3 The dataset

A clearly delimited time in Egypt’s recent history functioned as the period from which I

gathered data. It starts on November 22, 2012, the date that President Muhammed Morsi

issued a decree giving himself “powers above any court as the guardian of Egypt’s

revolution,” thereby eliminating any judicial oversight of him or the constitutional assembly

drafting Egypt’s new constitution.207 On December 8, 2012 Morsi rescinded his decree after

heavy protests that “drew tens of thousands of protesters into the streets calling for his

downfall,” according to The New York Times.208

An English translation of President Morsi’s decree, made by the Egyptian online

newspaper Ahram Online, can be found in Appendix A. The main issues for the opposition

are article II and VI. Article II holds that earlier “declarations, laws, and decrees made by the

president” are binding and not subject to judicial oversight until there is a new Egyptian

constitution.209 Article VI states: “The President may take the necessary actions and measures

206 Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide through Qualitative Analysis , (London:

Sage Publications, 2006), 57-58. 207 David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy El Sheikh, “Citing Deadlock, Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power and Plans

Mubarak Retrial,” New York Times November 22, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/world/middleeast/

egypts-president-morsi-gives-himself-new-powers.html?_r=0 208 David D. Kirkpatrick, “Backing off Added Powers, Egypt’s Leader Presses Vote,” The New York Times

December 8, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/world/middleeast/egypt -protests.html?_r=0 209 Appendix A – Article II

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to protect the country and the goals of the revolution.”210 This in effect means a total

disregard of the democratic idea of checks and balances as all three powers, judicial,

executive and administrative, are in the hands of one single person. The opposition thus

mainly protested against these powers combined in one man. This reminded most of the

sweeping powers the previous ruler, Hosni Mubarak, used to have before he was brought

down with the help of civil revolts.211

I chose this period to study, firstly, for its natural boundaries. The issuing of the decree

and the almost immediate protests that ensued is a clear beginning, while the rescinding of the

decree on December 8, 2012 demarcates a clear boundary to end the period. This means that

the deliberations and posts on this period are easy to find and assess, as they do not continue

over a longer period of time. While Egyptian citizens of course continued and still continue to

discuss the events in their county, the opposition to President Morsi’s government and the

shape this was taking was the main, and in the case of almost all the tweeters that I studied,

only, subject that was discussed on Twitter. This thus results in a rich dataset of which almost

all the tweets gathered pertain to one specific subject.

Another reason to choose this period was the fact that it functions as an example of

civic unrest translated into online discourses on Twitter. This thus provides me with the

opportunity to test whether these discourses were critical in the Habermasian sense of the

word. I ascertain this in the upcoming analysis, by testing whether the kinds of tweets adhere

to the five requirements of a virtual public sphere. I must emphasize that I do not research

whether the online discussion contributed to the rescinding of the decree. This is not possible

for too many factors are potentially responsible for that. The first of which is the physical

violence by protesters that is cited to be an important one, for example in The New York Times

article quoted earlier. Another factor is the international pressure on Morsi to rescind his

decree. During this period the United States, France, Germany, Europe in general and the

United Nations all expressed their concerns over the constitutionality of the decree and the

ensuing unrest.212 Tied in with these concerns in other countries are Egypt’s economic

210 Appendix A – Article VI 211 While the decree was the reason for the initial protests, it should be noted that the vote of the Constituent

Assembly (CA) on the draft constitution on November 30th gave an extra spark to these protests. Similarly,

counter-reactions by Muslim Brotherhood members and other Islamists also influenced the ongoing protests

during this period. While these were all important factors for the protests to continue and at times strengthen, I

keep the explanation in this thesis limited to the decree itself as that was the clear trigger, but also clear end of

the November-December protests. As when it was rescinded by Morsi, the protests stopped even though the draft

constitution and the subsequent controversial referendum on December 15th stayed. 212 Molloy, Connor, “US attempts friendly condemnation,” Daily News Egypt 5 December, 2012

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2012/12/05/clinton-calls-for-two-way-dialogue-in-egypt/; “Merkel expresses

concern over developments in Egypt,” Egypt Independent 26 November, 2012

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interests. Firstly the protests caused tourism to fall during the period but also led to less

bookings for December and January.213 Moreover, some members of the European Parliament

suggesting cutting aid to Egypt as it was no longer satisfying the conditions for democracy

that the EU had set for it.214 Similarly, IMF funds were being delayed in this period due to the

unrest.215 A last factor influencing Morsi to rescind his decree, were the national political

pressures both from the opposition as well as the powerful army might have contributed to

him rescinding the decree. The opposition led by known leaders such as Mohamed ElBaradei,

Ayman Nour, Hamdeen Sabbahy and Amr Mousa organized the day after Morsi issued his

decree.216 Moreover, as these national players opposed themselves against Morsi, the

judiciary protested his decree by striking.217

Thus, the physical presence of protesters, international and national pressures and

economic considerations were are all factors that contributed to the rescinding of the decree

and which cannot be accounted for in this thesis. However, the separate role of Twitter is still

interesting to research as a tool for a contesting alternative sphere and this analysis does

account for the factors significant for the Twittersphere. As such, a goal of my analysis is to

assess whether the Twitter discourses align with the requirements of online critical rational

debate as argued in chapter two and three. As such I can assess whether and how much

Twitter is living up to this potential of being a tool for critical rational debate.

4.3.2 Elite tweeters

Since I am seeking to research the dimensions of the actual interaction between citizens and

journalists and whether this fits the democratic ideal of a Habermasian public sphere, the data

has been further limited to the top contributors of the Twitter debate during the upheavals.

The analyzed tweets were restricted to those made by the two groups within network

journalism that were the focus of this thesis so far: citizens and journalists. While this

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/merkel-expresses-concern-over-developments-egypt; “France: Europe

to try to convince Morsi to backtrack on new powers,” Egypt Independent 26 November, 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/france-europe-try-convince-Morsi-backtrack-new-powers; “UN

expresses alarm over unrest and draft constitution,” Egypt Independent 7 December, 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/un-expresses-alarm-over-unrest-and-draft-constitution 213 “Tourism falls amid political tension,” Egypt Independent 28 November, 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/tourism-falls-amid-political-tension 214 Joel Gulhane, “EU concerned by Morsi’s decree,” Daily News Egypt 4 December, 2012

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2012/12/04/eu-concerned-by-Morsis-decree/ 215 “Egypt requests delay of IMF loan approval,” Egypt Independent 11 December, 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/egypt-requests-delay-imf-loan-approval 216 “ElBaradei, Sabbahy and others call for anti-Morsi protests on Friday,” Egypt Independent 23 November,

2012 http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/elbaradei-sabbahy-and-others-call-anti-Morsi-protests-friday 217 “Judges rise against Morsi’s power grab, announces strike,” Egypt Independent 24 November, 2012

http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/judges-rise-against-Morsi-s-power-grab-announce-strike

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excludes other very important players within network journalism such as NGO’s, social

(grassroots) movements, politicians and government players, it does allow for a focused

analysis of the ways in which these two specific groups are able to interact and contribute on

Twitter. This also excludes all non-elite tweeters thus limiting the analysis of larger Twitter

networks and whether they can function as tools for a virtual public sphere. At the same time,

however, this limitation allows for a focus on the functioning of small networks to satisfy the

needs of such a tool.

I ascertained the so-called Twitter elite, both citizens and journalists, through the use

of the website Tweetgrader (tweet.grader.com). This website calculates what it calls a Twitter

Grade which reflects how influential someone is on Twitter. It is based on an algorithm that

weighs the following factors: number of followers; power of followers (if they also have a

high Twitter grade); number of updates; update recency; follower/following ratio; and

engagement (number of times retweeted and by whom).218 This grade is meant to calculate

the impact of a person’s tweets. It allows for a search based on location and generates the top

fifty elite Twitter users for that location at that specific time. I used this website on December

13, 2012 to ascertain the most influential persons on Twitter with their location settings on

Cairo, Egypt, which gave me a list of the fifty most influential Twitter-users in the period

under analysis.

The specific set consisted of a large quantity of Arabic tweeting users. Unfortunately I

can only analyze tweets made in English as I cannot read Arabic. However, this does not limit

this dataset too severely but merely binds it in a specific way. It does this by allowing me to

focus on a network that was not only local and Arabic speaking, but one that was

transnational and to which actors outside of Egypt were also invited to make a contribution.

Consequently, the result was a dataset consisting of seven Egyptian citizens, some of them

tweeting from Cairo, others from places outside of Cairo, such as Berlin, London and Paris.

Seven journalists, both Egyptian as well as international, were also extrapolated from this list

of Cairo’s Twitter elite.

I did not choose this number of Twitter users randomly. As already explained, these

were the only fourteen from the fifty that tweeted in English. While there were also two extra

journalists, one for CNN and one for The New York Times on this list, both had been recently

transferred to a different location. Therefore they barely tweeted about Egypt anymore during

the period of analysis, which is why I excluded them from the sample. Coincidentally the

218 http://graderblog.grader.com/twitter-grader-api/bid/19046/How-Does-Twitter-Grader-Calculate-Twitter-

Rankings

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distribution of citizens and journalists thus ended up the same. This means my focus during

the analysis is equally divided between the two groups, which fits the theoretical premise

from the past chapter that these two form equally important parts of an intricate network as

can be found on Twitter. Moreover, the total of 5299 tweets was almost equally distributed

over the citizens and journalists with the citizens having only slightly over a hundred tweets

more.

I captured the tweets of the key Tweeters with the help of www.allmytweets.net (All

My Tweets). This website captures up to 3200 tweets from one specific user from the moment

of recording. This includes both the replies and retweets made by that user. I captured all the

tweets for the key users dating back from December 13th. Depending on the amount of

Tweets made per day this meant that the data gathered per person went back a larger or

shorter amount in time. However, all recorded Tweets from every Tweeter encompassed the

period from November 22, 2012 to December 8, 2012. Thus for each key player I captured all

the tweets, including replies and retweets, made during the period that I am studying. After

this I saved the tweets as a PDF-file, resulting in a digital archive of the tweets of the fourteen

English tweeting elite Tweeters in Cairo, Egypt. I discounted the Arabic tweets and tweets

that did not pertain to the current political, social or economic situation in Egypt.

The next section introduces these key users, their personal positions toward the

political situation that they are tweeting on and if possible their view on tweeting about

Egypt’s political circumstances. Understanding this context fits the idea that the theory

flowing from the data, in this case the tweets, is firmly based within a social, political and

historical context. The senders of these tweets do so because of certain social, political, and

even historical reasons. Even though I cannot ascertain these specific reasons as those would

be too personal, I can place the abstract theoretical concepts that their tweets yield within a

context.

4.3.3 The Citizens

Of the Egyptian citizens active on Twitter I chose, among the English typing ones, seven

contributors who could be relatively reliably traced to be the persons they claim they are. This

is based on the fact that they are not tweeting anonymously or if they are, have been tweeting

for a long time under that specific alias. Most of them also have links to personal websites.

Not all of them were based in Cairo in January of 2011, but they all participated in

discussions on Twitter about the Egyptian public sphere, whether present at the time of the

revolts or not. Furthermore, they all also claim to be Egyptian citizens. Admittedly, citizens

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from other countries probably also contributed greatly to the discussion surrounding the

revolts. However, in order to limit the sample I chose to focus only on Egyptian citizens, who

due to their knowledge of the Egyptian public sphere are generally well-informed contributors

and thus viable candidates for contributing to critical rational debate. It is also important to

keep in mind that some of these citizens would be understood to be activists. As I argued in

the past chapter, these activist citizens can still be counted as citizens as they are posting their

tweets from a personal interest in their society. Only when they are backed by certain

companies, governments or NGOs would I discount them as citizens as that would mean they

could be employing the rhetoric and tactics and strategies of that specific organization. That

would mean they were acting as a member, or even spokesperson of that organization instead

of acting as a concerned citizen.

I will briefly present the seven citizens whose tweets I analyzed. Included is their

Twitter alias and Twitter description under that alias; their real name (if included); their

Twitter-ranking, meaning the place among the 13.429.019 Twitter users that had been graded

by 13 December, 2012 so as to show their relative influence on Twitter. They are presented in

order of highest ranking on Tweetgrader. The lower the number of the ranking the more

influential they are.

1. @sandmonkey; Twitter grade: 2.109

Mahmoud Salem contributes opinion pieces to Egyptian English-language news website

Daily News Egypt. However, he does not describe himself as a journalist on Twitter. There his

profile reads: “Extremely secular, Blogger, activist, writer, author of two books, New Media

douchebag, Pain in the ass! I wasn’t born with enough middle fingers.” Instead he might be

best known online for his blog “Rantings of a Sandmonkey” (sandmonkey.org) which he

updates nearly every day. He “has been active in the struggle for freedom of speech, human

rights, religious rights, and women’s rights …[and] is currently creating a political party.”219

During the November and December protests, Salem was in Rome until November

25th and returned to Cairo, because of the protests, on November 26th. In the meantime,

however, he did participate in the discussions about Egypt. December 5th and 6th he was in

Brussels but also continued tweeting about the protests. Most of the days between November

22 and December 8, he was present on Tahrir Square to protest against President Morsi.

219 “Speaker – Mahmoud Salem” Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy http://www.genevasummit.

org/speaker/72

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2. @gsquare86; Twitter grade: 4.172

Gigi Ibrahim’s Twitter profile simply states “Revolutionary Socialist,” the far left group of

which she is a member just like her husband Hossam el-Hamalawy who is also part of this

dataset. In December 2012 she wrote on her blog (theangryegyptian.wordpress.com): “We,

the people, are applying all the pressure in our hands to object, protest, and revolt against this

dictatorship [Morsi] and continuing the revolution until all of our demands are met; bread

freedom, social equality.”220 She is internationally oriented as she spent her high school years

in California and studied at American University in Cairo.221 She also tweets in English

mainly, about which she says “I’m trying to spread accurate information and paint a picture at

the ground for people who aren’t here, via Twitter and Facebook.”222

3. @tarekshalaby; Twitter grade: 12.412

Tarek Shalaby’s Twitter profile reads “Egyptian blogger from Cairo. Revolutionary Socialist.

Partner and Creative Director at planet360.” Apart from Twitter, Shalaby is active on his own

website (tarekshalaby.com) where he blogs not only on conflicts in Egypt but also

international revolutionary tensions. He updates this blog about once every month. During an

interview with BBC’s Hardtalk in January 2012 he was shown to be fluent in English and

explained that he had studied in the United States for a while and is called Westernized.223 He

is a member of the far left Revolutionary Socialists just like his sister Nora Shalaby,

Mahmoud Salem, Gigi Ibrahim and her husband Hossam El-Hamalawy, whose Tweets are all

part of this dataset.

4. @norashalaby; Twitter grade: 13.634

Nora Shalaby describes herself as an “Archaeologist. Berliner for now…” on her Twitter

account. She was thus not in Cairo during the unrest regarding Morsi’s decree although she

did participate in the online discussion during that period and repeatedly tweeted that she

would have liked to have been there. She is Tarek Shalaby’s sister and journalist Evan Hill,

220 Gigi Ibrahim, “2012: The Year of Persistance,” Blog: The Angry Egyptian 31 December, 2012 http://www.

theangryegyptian.wordpress.com/2012/12/ 221 Tony Rogers, “Citizen Journalist Gigi Ibrahim Uses Tools of the Web to Spread News of Cairo Protests,”

About.com Guide January 28, 2011 http://journalism.about.com/b/2011/01/28/citizen-journalist-gigi-ibrahim-

uses-tools-of-the-web-to-spread-news-of-cairo-protests.htm 222 Rob Mackey “Interview with an Egyptian Blogger,” The New York Times 27 January, 2011 http://www.

nytimes.com/video/2011/01/27/world/middleeast/1248069593977/ interview-with-an-egyptian-blogger.html 223 Tarek Shalaby’s YouTube Channel, “Hardtalk On the Road in Eygpt – With Tarek Shalaby,” 18 January,

2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSsKLfhPlh0

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who is one of the journalists in this dataset, interviewed her for an Al Jazeera article.224

Shalaby has her own blog (almahrusa.blogspot.com), however, she did not write on that blog

in 2012. She also contributed two articles to Egyptian news website Egypt Independent where

she calls herself a freelance writer.225

5. @mosaaberizing; Twitter grade: 34.137

Mosa’ab Elshamy is an Egyptian Cairo-based photojournalist whose pictures have appeared

in many national as well as international publications.226 Because he is a photojournalist and I

included him for his words and contribution on Twitter he is counted here as a citizen and not

a journalist. Moreover, he did not tweet for a news medium but as an Egyptian citizen. On his

Twitter profile he writes: “I revolted and overthrew a dictator”. Yet in his tweets he seems far

more moderate than the other Egyptian citizens under study. Right after Morsi’s decree he

does not immediately opposes it as being unconstitutional. Moreover, he does not take to the

street to protest like Sandmonkey, Tarekshalaby, Gsquare86 or Norashalaby would she have

been in Egypt at the time.

6. @egyptocracy; Twitter grade: 35.195

Egyptocracy is the only Twitter-user whose offline identity I could not find. Her Twitter

profile reads: “I tweet about Egypt and the world. Politics, culture and beyond. Do not take

me too seriously, I will surprise you at times. RTs are not always endorsements”. She was

interviewed by ABC’s Jess Hill where she revealed that she protested on Tahrir Square in

June of 2011 about which she says: “I’m not in this protest hoping for a specific outcome. I’m

actually here showing solidarity to the martyrs’ families.”227 Her political orientation

therefore remains somewhat unclear although in her blog posts she is both critical of Mubarak

as well as Morsi. She was not in Egypt during the protests and it remains unclear where she

was exactly.

224 Evan Hill, “Egypt’s crackdown now wears camouflage,” Al Jazeera 20 May 2011 http://www.aljazeera.com/

indepth/features/2011/05/2011519172611166398.ht ml 225 http://www.egyptindependent.com/staff/nora-shalaby 226 http://www.worldpressphoto.org/people/mosa’ab-elshamy 227 Jess Hill, “Egyptian protesters clash with security forces in Cairo,” ABC The World Today June 29, 2011

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2011/s3256549.htm

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7. @riverdryfilm; Twitter grade: 61.596

Omar Robert Hamilton is an Egyptian independent filmmaker who lives both in London and

Cairo, during the protests he was in London until December 7th, when he arrived in Cairo.228

He studied English Literature in Oxford and founded the Mosireen film collective that came

into existence after the first Egyptian revolts. This collective aggregates media made by

citizens with the goal to “challenge state media narratives.”229 He also made the crowd-

funded, independent film Though I Know the River is Dry about the post-Arab Spring Middle

East.230 He takes pictures and writes stories that appear in different international publications

such as the Guardian, The Economist and the Daily Beast. His documentary films are shown

on Al Jazeera and Tahrir TV.231

An important deduction from these biographies is that all citizens are very media savvy. Most

of them occasionally write for news media, some of them have appeared in Western television

shows to explain the Egyptian situation. This implies that on Twitter these citizens are equals

to the journalists of the sample whom most are also interacting with. Such equality makes the

citizens from the sample more suitable to function as a sample for a possible well-functioning

virtual public sphere as participants in such a sphere need to be equal. This also means that

these citizens are not in the least representative of the Egyptian population of which most

people will not be as media savvy. A trait that further delineates these citizens from other

Egyptians is the fact that they have great affinity with the western world. Many of them have

either lived or studied abroad, mainly in Great Britain and the United States. Therefore they

are very proficient English speakers. Also, except for Egyptocracy all citizens from this group

are known outside of Twitter which makes them much more accountable when tweeting. This

also differs from the majority of Egyptian tweeters who can do so anonymously. As such, this

group is not very representative of Egyptian citizens in general as their status as elite tweeters

already suggests. However, as posed before, their special position means they are interesting

for understanding how Twitter can ideally function as a tool for democracy.

The citizen tweeters from this sample do represent two different positions toward

Morsi’s government that are also held widely among Egyptian citizens. Gsquare86,

Tarekshalaby and Norashalaby are Revolutionary Socialists, meaning that they are secularists

228 http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/omar-robert-hamilton 229 http://mosireen.org/?page_id=6 230 http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/nl/persons/omar-robert-hamilton/ 231

http://www.tacticalmediafiles.net/article.jsp;jsessionid=035DABB6D2A0CA1EB8DBE386A3A7FA84?object

number=55217

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who have always vehemently opposed Morsi. Sandmonkey calls himself extremely secular,

which means he can be put in the same category as the Revolutionary Socialists with regard to

his position toward Morsi. Lastly, Mosaaberizing, Egyptocracy and Riverdryfilm take in a far

more moderate stance, even though they are still critical of their government. This means that

there are not Muslims (even though Egyptocracy could be one, however she is not clear on

this) or supporters of Morsi among this sample. This slant toward opposition to the

government is made up by their numerous interactions with tweeters who are supportive of

the government. This shows that even though the citizens from the sample do not represent all

the different positions on the issue, in this case Morsi issuing his decree, they do engage in

deliberations with those who oppose them.

4.3.4 The Journalists

As journalist I counted those either working for a known media company such as CNN, Al

Jazeera or The Times or freelance journalists whose publications could be found online. As

opposed to the citizens from this data sample they did not necessarily have to be Egyptian but

merely a top contributor on Twitter with their location settings to Egypt, Cairo. I made this

choice with journalist Andy Carvin in mind. As he is an American journalist functioning as an

important connecting node on Twitter during the Arab Spring, I argue that the nationality of

the journalist is not particularly relevant for their potentially democratic role on Twitter. At

the same time their presence in Cairo is important as this gives them the added quality of

being able to report from the ground. During the selection of elite journalist tweeters it turned

out that some of them, who still had their location setting on Cairo, Egypt, were not there at

the moment of the protests. NadiaE was in England and Sharifkouddous was in Gaza for the

first two days of the revolts. As both of these journalists are Egyptian and thus know Egypt

well and have a large network on site I did choose to include them as they could potentially

still fulfill such a role as Andy Carvin did during the first protests of the Arab Spring. I

present these journalists in a similar fashion as the citizens of the previous section.

1. @3arabawy; Twitter grade: 1.673

Hossam El-Hamalawy is an Egyptian who freelances for several international publications

and writes for both state-owned English-language Egyptian news website Ahram Online and

privately owned Egyptian news website Egypt Independent.232 233 He furthermore writes on

232 Hossam el-Hamalawy Twitterpost “@EgyCommunist yep, I was one of the founding editorial team members

at @ahramonline :)” https://twitter.com/3arabawy/status/174288054293512194

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his own English-language blog arabawy.org which was built by Tarek Shalaby, one of the

citizens whose tweets I also analyze. El-Hamalawy is a member of the far left Revolutionary

Socialists as can be read in his Twitter profile: “In a dictatorship independent journalism by

default becomes a form of activism & the spread of information is essentially an act of

agitation #RevSoc #Editor.” He is married to Gigi Ibrahim, whose tweets I also analyze.

2. @sarahcarr; Twitter grade: 5.645

Sarah Carr is half-English, half-Egyptian and works as a journalist at Egypt Independent,

although she also writes for other Egyptian publications such as Daily News Egypt and The

Arabist. She blogs on inanities.org where “she takes a sarcastic, cynical approach, and

manages to inject humor into topics where you wouldn’t think you could find it.”234 Her

critical stance is directed in favor of what she calls the revolution and she is critical of the

Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi.

3. @nadiae; Twitter grade: 10.895

Nadia El-Awady is an Egyptian freelance science journalist who lived in London during the

protests. She formed the Arab Science Journalists Association. She also contributes as a travel

writer to Egypt Independent and as a freelance journalist to international media. In the

International Centre for Journalists she among other things taught Egyptian journalists how to

use social media and citizen journalism.235 She participated in the revolts that toppled

Mubarak and in her tweets is now taking a critical stance to the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in

Egypt’s politics. She is Muslim and in her tweets focuses on the question of religion during

the November-December revolts. She was in Paris and England while tweeting about the

November-December revolts.

4. @mfatta7; Twitter grade: 13.133

Mohamed Abdelfattah, a native Egyptian from Alexandria though based in Cairo, works as

video journalist and reporter for Deutsche Welle TV. He previously also reported for both

Egyptian and international news organizations such as Ahram Online, Al Jazeera English and

CNN. He earned a press freedom award for his reports on human rights violations in 2010

233 http://www.egyptindependent.com/staff/hossam-el-hamalawy 234 Rachel Krantz, “Six Best Egypt Bloggers to Follows,” The Daily Beast January 30, 2013 http://www.

thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/30/six-best-egypt-bloggers-to-follow.html 235 Kemi Ajumobi, “Nadia El-Awady, medic with a journalistic flair,” Businessday December 31, 2010

http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17047:nadia -el-

awady-medic-with-a-journalistic-flair-&cat id=165:inspiring-woman&Itemid=608

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during Mubarak’s reign.236 Now his motto is, as stated in his Twitter profile: “Journalism is

about challenging the powers that be.”

5. @evanchill; Twitter grade: 23.480

Evan Hill, who is American, is a “Cairo-based journalist and correspondent @TheTimes” as

is stated in his Twitter profile. He blogs on evanchill.com and he won the Online News

Association award for reporting on the Egyptian revolts around January 25, 2011. During

these revolts he worked for Al Jazeera English.237 November 22, the day of President Morsi’s

decree was his first day reporting for The Times in Cairo.

6. @sherinet; Twitter grade: 37.196

Sherine Tadros, who is Arab-British and based in Cairo, reports on the Middle East and North

Africa for Al Jazeera. Her Twitter profile reads that the views on her Twitter account are hers.

She also covered the 2011 Egyptian unrests.238

7. @sharifkouddous; Twitter grade: 45.358

Sharif Kouddous, an Egyptian from Cairo, describes himself on his Twitter profile as:

“Independent journalist. Democracy Now! Correspondent. Nation Institute fellow.” As such

he has written for The Nation, Foreign Policy, The Progressive, Al-Masry Al Youm and Al-

Ahram Weekly. He also writes on his blog EgyptReports.net. He has studied at Duke

University in the United States. He reported on the 2011 uprisings in Egypt and is currently

still based in Cairo.239 During the revolts he was reporting in Gaza and returned to Cairo on

November 24.

These seven journalists present an eclectic group in several ways. First of all, five of them are

Egyptian and two of them are international journalists from both the United States and Great

Britain. Secondly, their positions on the events in Egypt are different. Firstly there is NadiaE,

incidentally the only Muslim from the sample, would like to give President Morsi and his

decisions the benefit of the doubt although she maintains a critical stance. The two

international journalists are furthest removed from having a personal opinion on the matters

236 http://www.anegyptianjournalist.com/about-2 237 http://evanchill.com/about/ 238 http://blogs.aljazeera.com/profile/sherine-tadros 239 Matthew Rothschild, “An Interview with Sharif Abdel Kouddous,” The Progressive (2011) http://progressive.

org/kouddous0511.html

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as they try to highlight all opinions without giving their own. Three Egyptian journalists,

Sarahcarr, Mfatta7 and Sharifkouddous are critical of Morsi and are not afraid to show this

personal opinion in their tweets. Lastly 3arabawy, a Revolutionary Socialist, is heavily

opposed to President Morsi and lets his personal opinions be well known through his tweets.

Concluding, both the citizens and the journalists have a similar affinity with the

Western world and Western culture. All fourteen tweeters from the sample are an elite group

of people who are all very media savvy, well versed in English, highly educated and open to

Western culture and influences. This makes both the citizens as well as the journalists a group

very separate of most Egyptian citizens. In chapter five I show how such an elite group is

suitable to function as an ideal type group using Twitter in a potentially democratic way.

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Chapter 5 #Morsillini: Analyzing the Egyptian Twitter Elite

This’s an interactive poster concept that you can dowload from this link & write on it the message or slogan you

wanna tell to the new dictator of Egypt Morsillini – as we now call him -, please dowload and write the slogan

and publish it Twitter.240

This sentence was written underneath the following poster on Egyptian citizen’s Mohamed

Gaber’s blog:

Figure 5.1 Screencapture of interactive poster Morsillini

Mohamed Gaber is an Egyptian citizen who presents himself on his blog as a “26 year old

visual artist …[who produces] artworks that agitates and do social and political awareness.”241

His interactive poster of Morsi, or Morsillini as he calls him, is such an artwork. This poster,

depicted in figure 5.1 was spread through Twitter during the November-December 2012

protests and appeared in my data sample in 3arabawy’s tweets on November 28. It is an

example of the resistance to Morsi and his decree during this period. It is also an example of

the kind of deliberation, or at least input, that was shared on Twitter during the protests.

Moreover, Gaber shows his commitment to creating political and social awareness among

Egyptians through Twitter. This is also a key part of the Habermasian public sphere: creating

awareness, which arguably is a form of critical rational debate, through the informing of users

of that sphere. In chapter one I explained the crucial role of journalists as informers,

240 Mohamed Gaber, “Interactive poster: Morsillini,” Gaber blog 27 November, 2012

gaberism.net/blog/2012/11/27/interactive-poster-morsillin i/ 241 Mohamed Gaber, “About,” Gaber blog gaberism.net/blog/about

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encourager of deliberation, equality and accessibility in this process. The fact that Gaber is

trying to create such awareness through Twitter shows the complementary role that citizens

can play on Twitter in these tasks. This corresponds to the theoretical idea that for a well

functioning virtual public sphere, network journalism is the ideal form of interaction between

citizens and journalists. Such journalism entails that both citizens and journalists act as nodes

within a network and both contribute to the spread and ever changing news formation. As

such, Gaber is facilitating a new form of the spread of information, thus contributing to the

network of news found through Twitter. That he uses Twitter for this brings me to the point I

made in my third chapter that Twitter could be a viable tool for a well working virtual public

sphere.

Gaber’s interactive poster is only one example of the kind of interaction possible on

Twitter. I extracted it, however, from a data sample of 5299 English-language tweets. The

fourteen most influential tweeters sent these tweets from this sample during the November-

December 2012 protests in Egypt and these thus serve as the data for my research. I first test

whether the twitter behavior of the users corresponds to the ideals of a virtual public sphere.

These are information dissemination; the possibility to ask controversial questions and thus

acceptance that dissensus is a valid outcome of deliberation; accountability; equality; and

letting go of fact-to-face deliberation leading to the acceptance of a different model of space

and time. Moreover, I analyse whether there is a presence of network journalism in the tweets

and tweeting behavior found in the sample. This means that I test in what manner the

journalists and citizens of the sample are interacting and what this interaction consists of. As a

last step I use a grounded theory approach to extract theoretical concepts on how the seven

elite citizens interact with the seven elite journalists, and also how these fourteen users used

Twitter during this period.

As such, the research in this chapter consists of two analytical steps. The first level

entails testing the data to previously summarized theoretical hypotheses, namely the

theoretical ideals of both a well-working public sphere and network journalism. The second

analytical step goes further than testing other theoretical ideas by forming new theoretical

concepts. Grounded theory allows me to extract such concepts from the data that I study.

Together these steps thus not only test existing theory on Twitter’s democratic potential, but

also add to this theory.

These two analytical steps, that both test and add to existing research, are necessary to

expand the existing knowledge of Twitter’s qualities as a democratic tool. Moreover, it

introduces a method to qualitatively research tweets, which can benefit future research. Lastly

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it provides insights into the actual use and interconnection of Twitter by citizens and

journalists who are all already prolific users of Twitter. This analysis consequently serves as a

contemporary ideal example of a well-functioning virtual public sphere. A more in-depth

theoretical understanding of how journalists should normatively act for a well-functioning

virtual public sphere to exist could be translated into actual journalistic practices on Twitter.

Therefore, I first present a short overview of the presence of the five previously mentioned

requirements of such a sphere. I then analyze how the top citizen and journalist tweeters under

analysis were connected and how this fits the idea of network journalism. After that I

introduce the key concepts deduced from the codes that I inductively extracted from the

tweets. Lastly I discuss the implications of these findings and formulate an ideal type of a

virtual public sphere with Twitter as a tool to be used by both journalists and citizens.

5.1 Findings

In this section I discuss the presence in the data sample of the earlier theorized five

requirements of a well-functioning virtual public sphere. To reiterate, these five are:

information dissemination; the possibility to ask controversial questions which should include

dissenting voices; accountability among participants; equality among participants; and a

letting go of face-to-face deliberation and thus acceptance of a different model of space and

time. If present, these requirements on Twitter mean that it is a viable tool for democracy,

which has the potential to encourage critical rational debate. Critical rational debate is

essential for a public sphere to exist. It means that citizens can critically engage in discussions

because they are free, equal, can be held accountable and have access to information.

1. Information dissemination

Information is the first important aspect of the Habermasian ideal of critical rational debate. It

allows people to participate meaningfully in debates because they are fully informed on the

matters they are discussing. Informing was the most prolific code present in the sample, 788

tweets of the 5299 were coded as such. This data sample also allowed me to identify different

kinds of information dissemination possible on Twitter. The ones found in the data sample

can be divided up into breaking news; minute-by-minute reporting; helping; answering; and

asking.

Firstly, breaking news is most often a retweet of another tweet that starts with the

word breaking, and contains the newest information on a subject. An example of this is: “RT

Eng: #BreakingNews: Explosion destroys part of intelligence building in Egypt’s Rafah”

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(Sandmonkey, p. 68-69).242 Sometimes a Twitter user also breaks news him- or herself and it

is not a retweet. Minute-by-minute reporting is reporting what one is experiencing at that very

moment, often tweeting every minute or so. In the data sample this either meant someone was

in the streets during a protest or watching a televised event such as a speech by Morsi or a

protest. An example of this is Gsquare86’s reports of a march going up to the presidential

palace on December 4, 2012 (Gsquare86 p. 23 – 24). Such minute-by-minute reporting was

thus not only reserved to journalists in the sample such as Evanchill and Sarahcarr but also

citizens like abovementioned Gsquare86. This kind of reporting and sharing of information

might not have been very conducive to critical-rational debate. However, Sarah Carr, for

example, followed an interview with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Nader Bakkar on TV and

while reporting what was happening also provided background and critical remarks

(Sarahcarr p. 22 – 24). Such reporting does expands Twitter-users knowledge of, and insight

into, at least one position on the issue.

There is also helping on Twitter, meaning that people retweet cries for help, thereby

informing others where help is needed. For example, one of the most retweeted tweets in the

sample was a retweet of a woman’s cry for help. She asked other tweeters to help her locate

her lost cousin (Pls RT this pic of “Hassan Maamoun” he’s my cousin, 12 yrs old & disabled,

got kidnapped last Sat in Alex”). This was retweeted by four of the elite tweeters

(Sandmonkey, Gsquare86, SarahCarr and NadiaE).

The last two types of information dissemination are answering, and also asking,

specific questions. An example of answering is the continuous answering of questions by user

Egyptocracy on how Eygptians abroad can vote on the referendum (Egyptocracy, p. 16). An

example of asking, or also fact checking, is a person asking whether someone knows the

answer. In the sample both journalists and citizens did this. As a tool to inform people Twitter

thus offers several kinds of information that can be employed when participating in a

discussion, either online or offline. Moreover, this kind of information is always added to and

changed, either by others or the tweeter him- or herself, thus making it a dynamic and often

up-to-date information dissemination.

242 During the entirety of this chapter I will annotate the tweets from the sample that I quote in the following

way: name of tweeter, page within the PDF document of that tweeter. This results in, for example:

(Sandmonkey, p. 68-69).

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2. Possibility to ask controversial questions and acceptance of dissensus

Informed participants of a public sphere should be able to adopt a critical stance on an issue,

or issues, that they are discussing. Only with such a critical stance can they engage in the

critical rational debate for such a sphere to exist. Therefore, the second requirement for a

virtual public sphere entails the possibility to ask controversial questions. Tied in with this

requirement is Luke Goode’s argument that coming in touch with dissenting voices on the

internet increases understanding of the entire issue. This happens because this leads to a

confrontation with different opinions and thoughts and thus also “new possibilities for self-

understanding, reflection and adjustment.”243 Moreover, Goode adds, being open to dissensus

improves a person’s reflection on issues and might perhaps result in an adjustment of

opinion.244 This requirement improves the level of critical rational debate and thus enhances

the democratic quality of the virtual public sphere. Moreover, dissenting voices in the virtual

public sphere are less likely to be influenced by commercial interests, as those who employ

such a critical stance are less likely to function as mere consumers only backing commercial

interests.245 This is the case because whenever someone takes a critical stance toward their

own interaction in a public sphere they will more likely participate as a concerned citizen

instead of an uncritical consumer. Thus critical voices allow for a more democratic virtual

public sphere as commercial interests get less space.

Figure 5.2 shows that within the sample all users were able to post critical tweets. This

graph represents each user’s tweets that I coded with the codes critical, see through and

insight. These three codes represent tweets that presented a critical stance or showed through

insight that the tweeter was taking a critical position within Twitter discourse. As the graph

shows the percentage of critical tweets of the tweeters total number of tweets, it becomes easy

to see that most tweeters share a relatively similar percentage of critical tweets, with citizens

Gsquare86 and Norashalaby perhaps lagging a bit behind. However, as this is not a

quantitative analysis, this difference with the others is not that important. However, more

noticeable is the large percentage of critical tweets by citizen Mosaaberizing which is more

than double that of the other citizens and journalists. An explanation for this could be his

somewhat moderate stance, meaning that he is both critical of the opposition as well as the

government. This resulted in critical tweets addressed at both parties instead of only one.

However, the overall message of this graph is that the elite tweeters from the sample, be they

243 Luke Goode, Jürgen Habermas: Democracy and the Public Sphere. (Pluto Press: London, 2005), 76. 244 Ibid, 76. 245 Zizi Papacharissi, A Private Sphere: Democracy in a digital age. (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 124.

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citizens or journalists, have the opportunity to tweet critically. More importantly, all of them

also seize this opportunity.

Figure 5.2 Percentage critical tweets of each user’s overall tweets

Thus, all elite users were critical of the political situation; they also took diverse positions

between being very critical of Morsi to wanting to give him another chance. This is in

accordance with my assessment in chapter four that the political positions of the elite tweeters

can be divided into the Revolutionary Socialists who are on the far left; the critical moderates;

the journalists who try to stay neutral and balanced and one Muslim who is critical but willing

to give Morsi the benefit of the doubt. These different positions on the issue allow for

different kinds of critical tweets in themselves. Moreover, due to this diversity of voices on

Twitter a tweet expounding an opinion invites reactions by people who do not share that

opinion. For example, the Revolutionary Socialists expound tweets that are critical of the

regime. These tweets sometimes elicit discussions with people who are pro-Morsi. Such as

this discussion resulting from Revolutionary Socialist’s Gigi Ibrahim’s post to which both

pro-Morsi and other revolutionary socialists reacted:

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Figure 5.3 Twitter discussion Gsquare86

As figure 5.3 shows, the tweets sent in reaction to Gsquare86’s initial tweet contain both

dissenting and supportive tweets of the political situation. As such, different stances and

arguments can be elicited by just one tweet. Also someone with a less extreme stance, like

NadiaE, can post her opinion on Twitter eliciting a discussion. As a result these Twitter

discussions are breeding grounds for dissenting voices. Moreover, the relatively new feature

that you can click on a tweet and see the entire discussion from which it flows has improved

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Twitter’s ability to act as a tool for finding and seeing dissenting voices. This thus means that

anyone can step into such a discussion and participate and include their own opinion,

argument or viewpoint. As such this feature on Twitter improves the identification of

dissensus and makes the inclusion of your own dissenting, and also critical rational, voice

easier.

3. Accountability among participants

Informed and critical participants need to be accountable as they can otherwise pose as

anyone on Twitter and easily lie, consequently impairing critical rational debate.

Unfortunately, as already touched upon in chapter three, most Twitter users could be someone

else than they are claiming to be. This is an issue that is not easily solved, although in the case

of the elite tweeters whose tweets comprise my dataset it is easier. The seven citizens, except

for Egyptocracy, have either appeared in television shows or have written guest editorials for

mainstream media. The seven journalists all write for a medium and are known through there.

As such, thirteen of the fourteen elite tweeters are identifiable outside of Twitter. This means

that what they say on Twitter reflects on their offline persona that is known to anyone who

wants to. To protect their offline image or status this most likely results in more responsible

and thus more accountable behavior online.

Thus, in the case of all fourteen, except for Egyptocracy, their offline persona is well-

known to anyone willing to do a quick internet search consequently making them identifiable

and thus also more accountable. Egyptocracy, however, shows that it is possible to be an

influential tweeter and still be anonymous. Accountability thus remains a difficult

requirement for participants on Twitter. At the same time, the fact that thirteen of the fourteen

elite tweeters are accountable for what they type shows that generally when someone gains in

influence online it becomes more likely that their offline person is also known. This results, at

least in the case of the elite tweeters from the sample, in accountable behavior.

4. Equality among participants

Equality is a fourth requirement for well-informed, critical, accountable participants of a

virtual public sphere. This requirement is based on Habermas’ idea of critical rational debate

present in the coffee houses of the eighteenth century bourgeois public sphere. While it is

doubtful this equality actually existed back then, it is certain that it is not up to par on the

contemporary internet. As for the specific case of Twitter in Egypt, a relative low number of

the population is participating on Twitter, in 2011 this was 1,1 million unique Egyptian users

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from about 80 million Egyptians in total.246 Of these people the majority is male, younger

than 30, well educated and earning a relatively high income.247 Certain groups are thus more

likely to participate on Twitter and overall participation is low, making equality on Twitter

less likely as not everyone participates. As I posed before, in Egypt this is in large part due to

people lacking in the necessary skill set to use the internet, or sometimes even a computer.

Moreover, due to poverty there are enough Egyptians who do not have access to a computer

or other digital device, let alone Twitter.

The Egyptian Twitter users who are studied here are prime examples of users who are

wealthy enough to have access to such devices and who have mastered a skill set to

effectively use Twitter. Moreover, the division in gender (six female and eight male users)

shows that among the elite the gender distinction is not necessarily there. They are therefore

also a prime example of the possibilities that Twitter does offer to a potentially larger group

with such a digital skill set and where at least more women are participating.

5. A letting go of face-to-face deliberation and acceptance of a different model of space and

time

A last requirement is an acceptance of a different model of space and time as real face-to-face

deliberation is no longer possible. James Bohman articulated this requirement stating that we

need to accept that reactions to others can come at a later time and from another place.248

Subsequently, it should then be easier to accept the internet, and thus indirectly also Twitter,

as a place for critical rational debate. Within the data-sample this idea was mainly displayed

by the questions asked by people outside of Egypt.

For example, figure 5.4 shows a small discussion between SherineT, from the sample,

and Dutch TheEvertbopp who is trying to understand the Egyptian situation. It illustrates how

someone relatively far away from Egypt can deliberate with an Egyptian on the current

political situation there. Space, meaning someone’s physical space, has become much more

relative due to such internet tools as Twitter. While this assessment is relevant to all internet

tools and the internet itself, Twitter has made connecting over large distances easier. For

example, Twitter, due to its open character, allows for people to be relatively easily found.

246 Essam Mansour, “The role of social networking sites (SNSs) in the January 25th Revolution in Egypt,”

Library Review 61, no. 2 (2012), 145. 247 Ibid, 137 – 138. 248 James Bohman, “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and prospects for transnational

democracy,” in After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere ed. Nick Crossley and John Michael

Roberts (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004),134.

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Moreover, when connecting to someone on Twitter it is likely that others, who are possibly

also geographically far away, will join in.

Figure 5.4 Twitter conversation between SherineT and TheEvertBopp

However, Twitter has not necessarily changed the experience of time. Tweets that were

responded to much later than they were sent were very rare. An example is the tweet of a

woman asking for help in finding her kidnapped cousin. Figure 5.5 shows that this woman,

EitenZeerban, sent a tweet directed to Sarahcarr, from the sample, who responded to it almost

immediately. Four days later another person also responded. Discussions taking place in the

data sample did only very rarely stretch over days as the one in figure 5.5 If a discussion was

spread over time it was mostly only over several hours. Even though Twitter users now have

the possibility to look back on discussions and commenting on them later, this did not really

happen in the sample. This proves that Twitter is rather more like the eighteenth century

bourgeois coffee house that Habermas had in mind as the perfect place for critical rational

debate. Debate is taking place in a sort of face-to-face manner as people are addressing each

other with the @-sign and are generally responding almost immediately. This means that

critical rational debate can happen in a similar fashion as it did in those coffee houses,

meaning that Twitter in this respect functions as a tool for a well-working virtual public

sphere.

So far the findings thus show that all five requirements are met, although

accountability and equality only to a certain degree. While this underscores previous research

that Twitter has a potential for being a democratic tool, it does not yet expose the specific

relationships between citizens and journalists while they are using such a tool. However, the

Habermasian idea of the public sphere and my subsequent understanding of a virtual public

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sphere, hold a special place for journalists. In a virtual public sphere it is still journalists who,

in interconnection with citizens and other nodes within the network, need to encourage critical

rational debate. The next section will therefore present the kinds and amount of

interconnection found between the citizens and the journalists of my data sample.

Furthermore, it will put this into the earlier discussed context of the role of network

journalism within a well-working virtual public sphere.

Figure 5.5 EitenZeerban’s tweet and a reaction four days later

5.1.2 Citizens and journalists

Habermas reserves a special place for the news media in his idea of a well-functioning public

sphere. In such a sphere journalists are supposed to inform citizens who are then able to

deliberate in a critical rational manner. In chapter two I presented the idea that a virtual public

sphere needs network journalism. This concept captures the importance of an (online)

interconnection between citizens and journalists and new forms of information dissemination

and deliberation through the internet. In the same chapter, Ansgard Heinrich’s vision of

network journalism is presented as a horizontal process consisting of different actors who add

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and alter the information provision. Professional journalists are no longer functioning in a top-

down construction in the form of gatekeepers, agenda-setters and sole information providers,

but have become one of the nodes within a network. Citizens represent another node, and

many other actors fulfil their own role as a node within network journalism. Within that

network, information dissemination has become fluid and part of an ongoing process that is

added to and altered by all the different nodes within the system.

The Twitter elite of my data sample serves as a small, possible, ideal type of a network

of journalists and citizens who are interacting, informing, adding and altering news on one

certain subject. In this case the political situation in Egypt, Cairo between November 22, 2012

and December 8, 2012. Admittedly there are many other actors who function within this

network, such as non-Egyptian citizens, government agencies, NGOs, foreign governments

and commercial companies. However, the select group of my data sample allow for a

visualization of a small network. Moreover it shows the interaction between journalists and

citizens who are both important pillars of the traditional Habermasian public sphere. This idea

of network journalism means a shift from Habermas’ original idea of the news media

functioning to provide news to citizens. Instead, those citizens have become part of the

process of information dissemination and are thus taking a different position within a

democratic (virtual) public sphere. An understanding of the forms their actual interaction on

Twitter is taking, improves insights into possible journalistic practices through the use of

Twitter. This section therefore presents the way the citizens and journalists from the sample

interacted with each other and how they were interconnected.

1. Blurring lines

This section explains how the blurring lines between journalistic practices and citizen online

practices show that two actors are functioning as nodes within a network. Journalists but also

citizens engage in minute-by-minute reporting. In the sample it was found with Gsquare86

(p.23 - 24); Tarekshalaby (p. 2-3) and Egyptocracy (p. 3-4). Citizens are taking it upon

themselves to report events as thoroughly as possible in the same manner as, for example,

many mainstream media liveblogs also do. Journalists and citizens thus share this role on

Twitter. In the same vein, many of the online citizens from the sample also write guest

editorials for different, sometimes international, publications. Some of them have also

appeared in (international) television news shows. These appearances in their turn are also

linked and spread through Twitter.

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The citizens from the sample furthermore employ fact checking, a traditional

journalistic practice. Appendix D shows that of the tweets coded with the code fact checking,

citizens made 21 of the 42. This is also one of the practices that Andy Carvin employed

during the 2011 Egyptian protests, as I touched upon in chapter three. By doing this he uses

network journalism to fulfil a key part of the traditional journalistic production process.

Figure 5.6 Count of the codes fact-checking and asking among the citizens and journalists

Figure 5.6 shows how many of each user’s tweets were used for fact-checking purposes; it is

a count of the codes fact-checking and asking. My sample now shows that not only the

journalists among the top tweeters in Egypt engage in fact-checking, citizens are also doing

that, thus also blurring the line between journalistic and citizen practices on Twitter.

Similarly citizens are using Twitter to ask others if they know more. Both use the

crowd on Twitter to get answers to questions, which they then also often fact-check. Notable

in this graph is that mainstream news journalist Sherinet, who works for Al Jazeera, does not

fact-check through Twitter, nor asks other users anything. This finding is underscored by

Fortunati et al’s conclusion that I presented in chapter two that most journalists are not

willing to work together with citizens.249 However, all the other journalists from the sample

249 Leopoldina Fortunati et al., “The influence of the Internet on European Journalism,” Journal of Computer-

Mediated Communication 14 (2009): 953.

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show that they are, to different degrees, willing to import such a traditional journalistic

practice as fact-checking into their practices on Twitter.

Figure 5.7 – Citizen discussion and analysis including Mosaaberizing

Another blurring line between journalists’ practices and those of citizens is that the latter also

provide analyses through Twitter, similar to those done by journalists. Mosaaberizing, a

citizen from the sample for example, expounds these analyses through discussions with

others. Figure 5.7 shows such a discussion between him and other citizens. Together they

analyze the importance and implications of the number of opposing citizens present at a

specific demonstration. Citizens within the sample did not only use Twitter itself to analyze

like Mosaaberizing, but also to spread their analyses as they expounded them in those earlier

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mentioned guest editorials or appearances in television news shows. For example

Sandmonkey who wrote an opinion piece “Tuesday is the New Friday!” during that period for

Daily News Egypt.250

Another initiative that was shared by one of the citizens from the sample, shows the

way the internet has given citizens the opportunity to use film to report the news online.

Riverdryfilm, a filmmaker who set up the film collective Mosireen during the Egyptian

protests in 2011, also added movies about the November-December 2012 protests to the

website of that collective. Through Twitter he spreads the word on the films made by this

collective thereby adding to the moving images also made by journalists. Citizens from the

sample thus use old (editorials; reporting events; analyses; fact-checking) and new (film

collective) journalistic methods thereby blurring the lines between practices of professional

journalists and citizens

2. Cooperation

Not only are citizens taking on certain journalistic tasks, citizens and journalists also

cooperate. This happens firstly through discussions between journalists and citizens.

Figure 5.8 Discussion between Mosaaberizing and Evanchill

250 Mahmoud Salem, “Tuesday is the new Friday!” Daily News Egypt December 5, 2012

http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2012/12/05/tuesday-is-the-new-friday/

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An example from the sample is one between citizen Mosaaberizing and journalist Evanchill,

both from the sample as shown in figure 5.8.

Similarly the journalists and citizens from the sample also ask each other questions on

issues. Furthermore, citizens often retweet articles from the mainstream media together with

their own comments. They are thus not only spreading such publications but also adding their

own value and knowledge. Some take this further by acting as a checks and balances on the

news media. For example Egyptocracy retweeted a Tweet by SciencePyramid who had

complained that The New York Times had used an unrepresentative photo of a protest shown

in figure 5.9A. Less than two hours later SciencePyramid addressed Egyptocracy, among

others, to show that The New York Times had changed the picture to a more representative one

as shown in figure 5.9B.

Through questions, discussion and thus a checks and balances, citizens and journalists

use Twitter as a tool to cooperate and improve the information dissemination both on Twitter

and outside of it in online and offline news media publications.

Figure 5.9A Photo New York Times Figure 5.9B Photo New York Times

3. Interconnection

That abovementioned cooperation was also present within the sample can be visualized

through a count of the interactions between the citizens and journalists from the sample.

Figure 5.10 shows who of the fourteen elite English-tweeting tweeters from the sample were

connected with each other.

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Figure 5.10 The interconnection between elite citizen and journalist tweeters from Cairo, Egypt

When there is a line between two tweeters it means they were connected either by a retweet

the other, because they retweeted the other themself or because one of them addressed the

other. Appendix B shows the exact number of retweets and discussions between the different

elite tweeters. This appendix thus also conveys the strength of the connections between the

different tweeters as the figure does not do this.

A Twitter elite is not representative of the entire group of people active on Twitter.

However, they are, due to their high activity on Twitter, a prime example of Twitter’s

possibilities as a tool for a virtual public sphere. The interconnection that figure 5.10

visualizes, shows that two of the nodes of network journalism, citizens and journalists, were

already well connected among the Twitter elite of Cairo, Egypt. This implies that both

journalists (A, B, C, D, E, F and G), as well as citizens (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) are using the

opportunities offered by network journalism. As I posed in chapter three, Andy Carvin served

as an example of a network journalist during the 2011 Egyptian protests. One of the aspects of

his journalism was interconnecting many different groups on Twitter and using the knowledge

of these different groups for his journalism. The interconnection of my sample suggest that

the potential of Twitter as it was used by Andy Carvin in the Eygptian protests of 2011 has

been appropriated by both citizens as well as more (international) journalists among the

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Twitter elite of Cairo. While this group only includes fourteen tweeters it shows that it is

possible for an interconnected community to exist on Twitter. Those belonging to the Twitter

elite are informing each other through retweets and they are also discussing those issues

through Twitter. In that sense Twitter proves to be a place suitable for deliberation.

While figure 5.10 thus shows to whom the elite users are connected, figure 5.11

additionally portrays who were most often connected. The citizens are all grouped together on

the right side of the pie in red and yellow colours, while the journalists are on the left in green

colours. This pie thus first shows that the total of connections is almost equally divided over

the journalists and the citizens. This shows that the connections are not only coming from one

side but that these elite tweeters are all interconnected. Moreover, on each side there are three

users who are far more connected than the other four. This visualizes the degrees of

appropriation of Twitter’s features by the different users. Retweets and discussions improve

the quality of critical rational debate. As retweets spread debates, discussions are places

where users can contribute their opinion, information or viewpoint as part of critical rational

deliberation. Thus more retweets and discussions would mean that Twitter is being used as a

tool for democracy. Figure 5.11, however, shows that even among elite citizens and

journalists, this level of interaction is not very high yet.

Figure 5.11 Number of total connections per elite tweeter

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Concluding, the interactions between citizens and journalists from the sample show that both

actors were functioning within network journalism. Citizens did this, first of all, by blurring

the lines between journalistic practices and their own behavior on Twitter. They did this

through the use of traditional journalistic practices. Examples of this are fact checking,

minute-by-minute reporting, writing analyses and reporting on situations through the

uploading of movies. Moreover, citizens cooperated with journalists through discussion,

asking questions, giving answers and by taking a critical look at journalists’ reporting. Lastly,

the specific actors that were studied in this sample who represent the Twitter elite on one

specific subject were interconnected. Such interconnection is one of the requirements of

network journalism as it was already practiced earlier by journalist Andy Carvin during the

Egyptian protests in 2011. This shows that among the sample both citizens and journalists are

already using Twitter as a tool to improve and sustain network journalism. Such an

employment of network journalism by two important nodes within a networked sphere

increases Twitter’s likelihood of functioning as a tool for a well-functioning virtual public

sphere. Figure 5.11, however, shows that even elite Twitter users who use it often and are

knowledgeable about its possibilities, are not yet very well connected through retweets and

deliberation. To expand the knowledge of how journalists could use Twitter in a more

interconnected way, the following section addresses the results of the grounded theory

approach to the tweets from the sample. Through this approach three main themes emerged

that expand already existing knowledge on the role of Twitter as a tool for democracy.

5.1.3 Main themes: Power, Emotion and Morality

As explained in chapter four, I inductively coded all 5299 tweets in the sample. I started with

open coding by reading through all the tweets to form a first idea about the most important

concepts flowing from the tweets. Using these preliminary ideas I switched to axial coding,

meaning that I coded each tweet with an individual code. Using a constructivist approach of

grounded theory I did this with the theoretical knowledge of the previous chapters in mind.

This meant that during the coding process I focused on how and whether tweets could

contribute to a well-working virtual public sphere and furthermore function as a tool for

network journalism. Appendix C shows an example of the PDF documents containing the

tweets and their codes. This resulted in a list of 255 individual codes that can be found in

Appendix D. This list also shows how often these codes appeared in the sample so that it is

clear that the more prolific codes were given preference in the subsequent overarching eight

categories that I developed (Appendix E). These categories were: conflict, trauma, strong

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emotions, community, humor, negativity, symbolism and morality. Through an even more

abstracting step in selective coding I also developed three themes, namely power, emotion

and morality.

Figure 5.12 Distribution of categories over themes

The themes can be seen as larger overarching concepts that still represent the categories that I

developed from the codes that, in their turn, are representatives of the tweets from the sample.

As such, the overarching themes are the abstract theoretical concepts that I inductively gained

from my data. Figure 5.12 shows the distribution of the categories over the themes.

Noticeably the theme morality consists of three very large categories that together represent

three quarters of all the codes. As this is not a quantitative study this unequal distribution of

the categories is not problematic since the meaning of the tweets and the subsequent codes,

categories and themes are far more relevant. Of course this does not mean that I will easily

gloss over large categories or codes, but it also does not mean that the theme morality is more

important than the other two themes. It must be added that this distribution is in large part

unequal because two very large codes, namely informing and connecting, both belong to

morality. Together these codes represent 1474 tweets. Figure 5.12 is thus mainly useful as

visualization of the themes and categories and to get a quick idea of the distribution of the

categories. However, as said before, the meaning of these codes, categories and themes are of

more importance to this thesis as the theoretical concepts of power, morality and emotion add

to the understanding of interaction on Twitter and its possibility to be used as a tool for

democracy. As such, the next sections explicate for each theme individually what kind of

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codes its categories encompass and subsequently what each theme means for the democratic

use of Twitter.

Power

Power is the first theme and emerged from three categories: conflict, trauma and negativity.

What these categories have in common is that they all represent codes that in their turn

illustrate a power struggle. Such a struggle can be physically fought in the street, intellectually

on Twitter or, for example in politics.

Figure 5.13 Overview of the theme power and its categories

Firstly, the category conflict holds such codes as violence, opposition, politics, battle, avenge

and victory. I assigned these codes to tweets where the person who posted it was describing,

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seeing (live or on television), participating in, analyzing or condemning a certain power

struggle. In the case of the category conflict this power struggle could also be called a battle.

Many such battles were part of the tweets from the sample. They take the shape of political

battles being fought on television, literal battles in the street, battles over who should lead the

country and win possible elections, and sometimes even a battle on Twitter itself. A first

example of this is the following tweet: “Dear Islamists, u know u r the minority now. U will

not win this war even if u win this battle. It’s already over, u just don’t know it”

(Sandmonkey, p. 47). That tweet is an example of a tweet literally talking of war and battle.

“Tear gas is choking people in clashes over in Zagazig, even hospital, police are beating and

arresting many including women” (Gsquare86, p. 8) is one of the many tweets talking about

violence and injustices during protests which can also be seen as battles. And this last tweet,

“Tonight’s chaos creates perhaps the best conditions for cancelling/postponing referendum.

Hard to see as anything but big Islamist mistake” (Evanchill, p. 5), shows how the tweeter

connects battles in the street to a political battle over a referendum. I chose to groups these

kinds of battles under the theme power as they are contestations of power on all different

levels, both personal but also national. Such contestations are an important part of a

Habermasian public sphere where informed citizens should be able to contest the state

through deliberation. In my discussion I will position the importance of the role of power

within the theoretical idea of Twitter as a tool for a virtual public sphere.

The second category, trauma, addresses the consequences of struggles over power.

The struggles themselves are thus conveyed indirectly through the pain it has caused people.

This category fittingly consists of such codes as harm, death, destruction and suffering. These

codes describe the pain, or trauma, that the previously mentioned battles have caused. This

either means the literal trauma caused to, for example, protesters in the street, but it can also

mean the pain among the Twitter elite themselves over the events in Egypt. For example user

NadiaE, who is not in Egypt during the protests, is distressed and posted this on Twitter: “The

things I’m hearing from the Cairo Uni demo are physically nauseating me. This is a sad day

for #Egypt” (NadiaE, p. 19). Most tweets belonging to this category, however, speak of the

physical harm done to protesters such as “4 killed, over 300 injured in clashes at #PrezPalace

#Egypt according to hospital sources (confirmed by AJ police source)” (SherineT, p. 3). Also

included in this category is the destruction of, and damage to, the physical space of many

Cairenes: “Pic: The ruling MB headquarter in Kafr el-Sheikh destroyed by opposition

protesters http://t.co/JkaFVkmo” (3arabawy, p. 18). The tweets from this category thus

address both the consequences of, and reasons for struggles over power, namely the harm,

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death and destruction it is causing. By presenting these issues on Twitter and confronting

other users with these consequences these tweeters create awareness under a larger group of

tweeters. Such awareness could become part of online discussions, which, when critical

rational, could ensure a healthy virtual public sphere. In such a sphere, Twitter is thus being

used as a tool.

Negativity is the last category that is part of the theme power and consists of such

codes as ridiculing, blaming and sceptic. Many of these codes represent actions having to do

with power struggles on Twitter, such as arguing and blaming. Those two specific codes

represent tweets where one tweeter is fighting with another. An example is Egyptocracy’s

tweet addressed to other tweeters: “Spare me your revolutionary virtuousness. Thank you

very much. #Egypt” (Egyptocracy, p. 43). Codes such as ridiculing and scepticism mostly

represent tweets about those that the tweeter is opposed to outside of Twitter. In the sample

this mostly meant Morsi and other members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Take for example

this tweet by Mfatta7 right after Morsi extended an invitation to the opposition to talk:

“@MuhammadMorsi That wasn’t even a proper way to ask someone out for coffee. Let alone

Egypt opposition” (mfatta7, p. 10).

Tweets in the category negativity represent comments that fall under already ongoing

critical rational debate as they address power struggles and invite deliberation about such

struggles. At the same time tweets like Egyptocracy’s show that tweets from this category can

also cut short such debate by posing anyone who disagrees with her should not talk to her. In

the discussion section of this chapter I discuss what this means for Twitter as a tool for a

virtual public sphere.

Power as a theme thus encompasses descriptions of power struggles, deliberations on

such struggles and their consequences. Figure 5.13 displays an overview of the formation of

both the theme power and its categories. Surrounding the categories are a few examples of

codes of which the respective categories consist. Before going into a discussion of what this

theme might mean for future journalistic practices on Twitter and, more importantly, how

Twitter can be employed as a tool for democracy, I first also present the other two themes,

emotion and morality.

Emotion

The second theme, emotion, is constructed from the two categories (strong) emotions and

humor. Together these two categories embody an important aspect of Twitter and, more

importantly, the tweeters using Twitter. Well spread tweets were those either containing an

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emotional statement or a very funny one. A country’s democracy, including a person’s sense

of freedom and people’s fights for that freedom are very personal and emotional subjects and

it is therefore not surprised that discussions on these topics resulted in emotional tweets. A

few examples of such personal emotional statements are: “I’m sitting on my couch with my

laptop on my lap in a small town in England and all I can do is cry over what is happening in

#Egypt” (NadiaE, p. 10); “RT @sallyzohney: #Egypt 2012: 6 women in nikab attacked,

beating mirette, another women and burned her hair infront of high court! Disgust and outrage

eat me” (Sandmonkey, p. 67); and “Thank you #Morsi for making heros out of cunts like

Abdel-Meguid and al-Zend” (norashalaby, p. 12). The emotions in the sample range from

sadness to disgust to anger. Sometimes the Twitter users also described other people’s

emotions, like that of opposition leader Mohammed el-Baradei: “http://t.co/rxXqUJ0y ElBadz

is super pissed off” (Sarahcarr, p. 34).

Figure 5.14 Overview of the theme emotion and its categories

Similar to the tweets from the category trauma, which belongs to the theme power, these

kinds of tweets also invite deliberation. While those in the category trauma did so because of

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their often shocking nature or the injustice that was conveyed in them, the tweets in the

category strong emotions do so because they invoke a sense of morality and ethics. Such a

sense of morality is important in critical rational debate as it means that users are thinking of

what is normatively acceptable. A presence of both emotion and morality should thus improve

the quality of a virtual public sphere. The next section discusses the theme morality, and

therefore the importance of its appearance in a virtual public sphere in greater detail.

The second category, humor, includes codes such as sarcasm, wit(ty) and irony.

Humor could have been grouped under the category (strong) emotions had it not jumped out

as a prolific and important separate category. Firstly, such tweets had large audiences due to

many retweets and it is thus not strange that the specific code humor appeared 165 times in

the sample. This means it was a much-employed strategy by the elite tweeters from the

sample. Secondly, using humor had a couple of different functions that made it an interesting

separate category, such as ridiculing, to critically comment and to put in a historical

perspective. Sarahcarr, for example, used humor, mostly in the form of sarcasm, to critically

comment. Her tweet “Question is how these thousand of pros will leave the area since they

like to move in bussed groups” (Sarahcarr, p. 9), for example, critiques the Muslim

Brotherhood’s practice of bussing in protestors. However, ridicule was also part of her

repertoire: “Morsi says Egpytian citizens are both his brothers & sisters AND his kids which

means some kind of incest happened if I’m not mistaken” (Sarahcarr, p. 27). She is one of the

few journalists in the sample who uses insight through humor and ridicule in her posts.

Sometimes humoristic comments were accompanied by pictures such as the one in figure 5.15

of Morsi being compared to a monkey, or ape.

Figure 5.15 Parody of Morsi’s Time cover

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This referred to a controversial interview with Morsi in Time Magazine in which he talked

about the movie Planet of the Apes. At other times humoristic images and comments put

things that are going on in a historical perspective such as the interactive poster of Morsillini,

presented at the beginning of this chapter. In this case referring to fascist dictator Mussolini

by changing President Morsi’s name to Morsillini, puts the events in Egypt in comparison to

the Italian fascist dictator and his dictatorship. As such, humor provided a way to criticize

Morsi through comparisons to earlier historical events.

The theme emotion thus encompasses kinds of tweets that invite critical rational

deliberation, which figure 5.14 also summarizes. The tweets in the category humor do this by

providing critical commentary, by putting events in a historical context or through ridicule.

The tweets in the category (strong) emotions do this by evoking a sense of morality or ethics.

This last process is also strongly connected to the last theme I wish to discuss, namely that of

morality.

Morality

Morality as an overarching theme includes morals and ideas about community, which is also

one of the categories; ideas about morality itself; and morals and views as expounded through

symbols and symbolism. This very broad theme thus encompasses the categories community,

morality and symbolism. Figure 5.16 gives an overview of the categories and some of the

codes that this theme also includes. Moreover, this section explains in more detail how the

theme morality and its categories are interrelated.

Firstly, community was an apparent category from early on, as there is a large

emphasis on the people, we, and also often on how many people are participating, which I

assigned the code numbers. The following tweet by Gsquare86 shows how she not only

identifies with a community, she also excludes specific others: “The difference b/w Islamists

protesting and others (at any moment) is that we are there by choice, we are free, they are

ordered! #Egypt” (Gsquare86, p. 7). I accorded the same code, we, to a tweet by Egyptocracy

who defined we as the people of Egypt: “Revolutionaries” is such an overused media term.

We are simply the people of #Egypt” (Egyptocracy, p. 3). The previous two tweets convey a

feeling of belonging to a community. This is not only a community outside of Twitter. The

online community on Twitter is emphasized through the two most popular codes from the

sample, informing and connecting, which respectively appeared 788 and 686 times in the

sample (Appendix D). Tweets that I accorded these categories were aimed at informing,

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communicating with, explaining, thanking, in short: interacting, with the Twitter community.

Figure 5.16 Overview of the theme morality and its categories

Being part of such a community means acting according to a certain morale. This is, for

example, conveyed in Egyptocracy’s tweet saying that the people of Egypt should not be

called revolutionaries. She defines that she does not want to belong to the group of Egyptians

who present themselves as revolutionaries, a term also appropriated by many mainstream

media. She refers here to the group of people who protested during the January 25th protests in

2011 and toppled the Mubarak regime. Similarly, this group sought to topple Morsi during the

November-December 2012 protests. The Revolutionary Socialists from the sample, such as

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Gsquare86 and 3arabawy, are examples of people who would call themselves revolutionaries.

Calling yourself this and belonging to that community means that you stand for the idea that it

is right to protest and subsequently topple an elected official when you feel he or she has

misused their powers. Egyptocracy opposes this and distances herself from that specific

community through her tweet. Similarly Gsquare86 defines her group as being everyone who

is opposed to Islamists and freely participates in the street protests. This free participation is

thus the morale that she defines as part of belonging to her community. The presence of such

indirect morals and ethics through the definition of a community, are the basis for taking a

position within critical rational debate.

The category morality also belongs to the overarching theme morality. This category

is narrower than the overarching theme as it excludes the morals that are part of belonging to

a certain community, which is addressed by the category community. Instead it focuses on a

more abstract notion and even indirect referrals to morality. This category is captured by such

codes as insight, critical, history and process(es). I attached these codes to tweets where the

tweeter indirectly displayed a certain sense of morality by noticing or commenting on

something that was happening. Two examples of this are: “@erictrager18 Erian publicly

stated it was wrong of demonstrators to block court’s work. There’s opportunism on both

sides right now” (Evanchill, p. 11); and “@RaynerSkyNews the decree was a gun against

people’s heads: vote yes or deal with pres with enormous powers” (Riverdryfilm, p. 1). The

first tweet is part of a discussion on the moral judgment whether protesting in front of the

court, thus blocking its people from work, is right to do. The second shows Riverdryfilm

expounding his own moral judgment on what he thinks is wrong with Morsi’s decree from

November 22.

The codes history and processes deserve special attention as they appeared often and

depict a deep level of analysis in some of the tweets. They both represent tweets that put the

events happening at that moment in a historical perspective, or emphasised the processual

nature of history and the place of contemporary events within those processes. A first

example is a tweet that compares the Muslim Brotherhood to the Mubarak regime and its

followers (also called feloul): “The feloul are arguing that we need them just like the Muslim

Brotherhood tried to argue that we can’t revolt without them. #Jan25 continues”

(Tarekshalaby, p. 2). Tarek Shalaby thus recognizes the same patterns of behavior between

the Brotherhood and former Mubarak followers. Mfatta7 recognizes even larger patterns of

political behavior: “Egypt has always been living through a stream of political deadlocks

disrupted by intervals of perceived stability” (Mfatta7, p. 3). Lastly, Sandmonkey uses other

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historical events, namely previous fascist regimes and their actions, to compare the

contemporary Muslim Brotherhood’s actions to: “RT @betsy_hiel: ‘Granting yourself this

level of power is so in the essence of fascism’ http://t.co/5v60ZFVg by @sandmonkey”

(Sandmonkey, p. 61).

The category morality can also be applied to users’ behavior online. This is seen in

tweets that I coded with the codes thanking and arguing which show that certain behavior on

Twitter is acceptable. These two codes cover two sides of the spectrum of acceptable Twitter

behavior. The first code covers a positive and considerate action, to thank someone, and the

other covers an inconsiderate way of interacting. An extreme example of this is a discussion

that is ended by Gsquare86 in the following manner: “@KAFJR don’t talk to me and just shut

up plz” (Gsquare86, p. 16). On the other hand, part of functioning on Twitter means helping

others as this tweet by NadiaE shows where she has tried, but was unable, to help a journalist:

“@christoffler Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to help. The few people I know personally and I

was able to reach are unenthusiastic” (NadiaE, p. 2).

To summarize, the function of the category morality is to capture tweets that expound

a moral vision on the offline or online world and these often include tweets that put events

within a historical context. The tweets belonging to this category are thus critical of political

and social events during the November-December protests. Posting tweets that are arguing

from such a moral standpoint is the kind of input necessary for the critical rational debate of a

Habermasian public sphere as such deliberation needs to be normatively informed.

Lastly, the category symbolism is part of the theme morality. This category captures

those tweets that use strong symbols to show that its poster is disapproving of something that

is happening. This thus conveys an unspoken moral or ethical code. The symbol used most

often in the sample is the street, which I thus also appropriated as a code. The street is used

not only to describe the physical space of protests, but also as a metaphorical space where a

free individual can fight for his or her right to live in a democracy. Gsquare86’s following

tweet captures this sentiment: “Constitutions are just ink on paper after all, we have the street

and you have a meaningless paper. All your legitimacy vanished #Morsi” (Gsquare86, p. 33).

Other symbols used are revolution, the west and colonialism. An example of a tweet with the

code colonialism is this one using the words white man: “And the local Egyptian press will,

again, fall for whatever the white man is saying” (Mfatta7, p. 4). Using such symbols

conveys, similar to tweets belonging to the category community, a moral vision of how

society should be. Therefore, critical rational debate similarly on Twitter benefits from the use

of such symbolic language in tweets.

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Concluding, the last theme, morality, encompasses a wide code of morals. Firstly, it

includes a code of ethics that are involved in being part of a community, either online or

offline. There is also an unspoken morality that can be read through the lines, such as ideas

about Egypt’s place in history but also the right moment for a protest. Moreover, this

unspoken morality can also be expounded through the use of such symbols as the west,

the street and colonialism. In the next section I discuss what the implications of the presence

of the three themes – power, emotion and morality – are for Twitter’s potential to be a tool for

democracy. I furthermore incorporate the findings on interconnectedness among the Twitter

elite and the five requirements of a well-working virtual public sphere.

5.2 Discussion

My main findings show the presence of the five requirements for a virtual public sphere; the

interconnection necessary for network journalism; and the presence of three theoretical

themes within the tweets of the sample: power, emotion and morality. I extrapolated these

findings from a sample of 5299 tweets made by the fourteen most influential tweeters in

Cairo, Egypt. In this section I discuss whether that use has either a potential or is already

adhering to certain tenets of a well-working virtual public sphere and if so, what forms this is

taking. I do this from the premise that part of such a virtual public sphere is the practice of

network journalism, which has to be employed by, at least, citizens and journalists. Before

doing that I would like to point out some of the weaknesses that I encountered during this

research.

Firstly, the sample only encompasses an elite and their practices and not the general

behavior on Twitter. This is the case because I sought to continue in the Habermasian vein,

thus extrapolating an ideal version of a public sphere, in this case a virtual public sphere. To

do this I used the Twitter elite to show how the most engaged, highest participating, and most

well connected citizens and journalists on Twitter are using it. Keeping the idea of network

journalism in mind, I want to come to some normative ideas on how journalists could use

Twitter and what in that case their interaction with citizens could be. Unfortunately this is

thus also a very exclusionary view. However, it does offer insights into how Twitter can

function as a tool for a virtual public sphere thus contributing to democracy. Moreover,

especially journalists could use these insights gained from the Twitter elite to improve their

interactions on Twitter and thus improve their journalism.

A second weakness is the impossibility of discussing how the digital divide on Twitter

can be crossed. This issue was addressed in chapter two as one of the main reasons against a

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virtual public sphere. About this Stuart Allan posed: “it is evident that the social division

between those with ‘information capital’ and those without are widening.”251 However, I am

only studying the Twitter elite and the focus is more on the kind of use they are making of

Twitter than on who are also participating on Twitter. As such, this case study leaves open

this important question. At the same time, as also already posed in chapter two, for a virtual

public sphere to exist, not necessarily everyone needs to participate. Consequently, to map

how a virtual public sphere can exist does not necessitate an immediate answer to the question

who should be participating.

A last and third weakness is the fact that I only researched the Twitter behavior of

Egyptians and journalists affiliated with Egypt. The same approach used in other regions

where citizens are fighting for democratic rights could expand on the kinds of strategies used

on Twitter and whether others, on a larger scale, also adhere to the requirements of network

journalism and a virtual public sphere. Nevertheless, this limited scope, ensures an overview

of a network surrounding one specific subject, in this case the Egyptian political situation

during the time that Morsi issued his decree. Such an overview thus shows already existing

interactions on Twitter that, while they may be different elsewhere, are of valuable

information for anybody using Twitter anywhere. The following discussion elaborates on how

Twitter as an ideal type can function as a democratic tool for citizens and journalists.

5.2.2 Twitter is a Tool for a Virtual Public Sphere

The first discussion point is the overarching finding that all the participants in the sample

adhere in their behavior, although some to a lesser degree, to the five requirements of a virtual

public sphere. They even employ accountability and, to a lesser degree, equality. Moreover,

information dissemination is shown to take many different forms, used both by citizens and

journalists. Lastly, perhaps most importantly, there was a presence of discussion. This is

important because the presence of such discussion is proof that there is a basis for a virtual

public sphere in which Habermas locates the importance of critical rational deliberation.

Firstly, other researchers have identified the presence of information dissemination as

an important function of Twitter. Andrew Chadwick, for example, poses that the openness of

the internet increases the willingness of ordinary citizens “to contribute to the collective

251 Stuart Allan, News Culture. (Maidenhaid: McGraw-Hill Open UP, 2010), 16.

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production, reworking, and sharing of media content.”252 Moreover, Ashkay Java et al. found

that, after daily chatter, informing is the most common intention of Twitter users.253 The fact,

however, that so many different forms of information dissemination are employed by citizens,

and not only journalists, is a new finding that makes the idea of Twitter as a tool for

democracy in a virtual public sphere more likely. Also, the fact that citizens are taking over

such behavior as it was originally only intended for journalists, proves the presence of

network journalism within my sample of elite-tweeters as the elite citizens are also

appropriating journalistic practices. Moreover, journalists in their turn are interacting with

citizens through retweets and deliberations.

The second issue, namely the presence of discussions on Twitter, is not supported as

much by previous research. Older research by both Peter Dahlgren and James Slevin, that

focused on the presence of such discussions on older social media such as blogs and internet

forums, found that critical discussions are hard to find on the internet. According to Dahlgren

this is because of people’s tendency “to group themselves into networks of like-

mindedness.”254 Similarly, James Slevin argues this is the case because discussion is not

possible to take place at the same time. Both these arguments are reputed by my findings,

which show that there are dissenting voices and critical stances within the Twitter network of

elite tweeters that I analyzed. Moreover, most discussions were held on the same day, mostly

only spanning over a few hours thus taking place at the same time, perhaps with a slight

delay.

Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan Herring researched Twitter specifically and posed

that, while they did not find much discussion or deliberation, they thought it possible if

Twitter improved its archiving feature.255 During the period under analysis Twitter had

changed this feature. Now, a user can click on a comment and the entire discussion to which it

belongs folds out around it, making it possible for another user to also contribute to the

existing discussion.

252 Andrew Chadwick, “Recent Shifts in the Relationship Between the Internet andDemocratic Engagement in

Britain and the United States: Granularity, Informational Exuberance, and Political Learning,” Website New

Political Communication Unit, 2010. http://newpolcom.rhul.ac.uk/storage/chadwick/Chadwick_Granularity_

Informational_Exuberance_Learning_in_Comparing_Digital_Polit ics.pdf, (accessed July 19th, 2011), 4 253 Ashkay Java et al., “Why we Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities,” (paper

presented at the Joint 9th WEBKDD and 1st SNA-KDD Workshop, San Jose, California, 12 August, 2007), 8-9. 254 Peter Dahlgren, “Participation and Alternative Democracy: Social Media and their Contingencies,” in

Paricipação Política e Web 2.0 , ed. by Paulo Serra et al. (Covilhã: Livros LabCom, 2013), 74. 255 Courtenay Honeycutt and Susan C. Herring, “Beyond Microblogging: Conversation and Collaboration via

Twitter,” (paper presented at the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Big Island, Hawaii,

January 5-8, 2009), 10

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Added to these thoughts should be the more recent research by José van Dijck, who

poses that Twitter has shifted from a tool for conversation to a tool that is only suitable for

large-scale one-way communication. This takes the form of users not interacting with, but

merely following lists of other users and the other way around, other users merely addressing

their followers instead of interacting with them.256 Van Dijck thus sees a movement away

from the online discussion that is so necessary for a virtual public sphere. Her assessment is

supported by Kwak et al. who found in 2010 that of all Twitter users, only 22 percent have

reciprocal relationships of the kind that are necessary to foster discussion.257 These findings

thus do not support the idea of large-scale interaction resulting in critical-rational deliberation.

At the same time Van Dijck keeps open the question of the possibility of small-scale

deliberation. As she poses that the question remains open “whether Twitter will retain its

capability for two-way communication for collaboration in small groups and restricted

circles.”258 Such is the kind of deliberation I have found present within my small elite network

of tweeters. Although most people from the sample deliberated with people from their own

bigger network, thus making that small-scale network still larger than merely the fourteen

tweeters who I analyzed. My findings furthermore showed, that the elite discussing or

posting about the November-December 2012 protests include critical tweets. Figure 5.2 even

shows that about ten percent of their tweets are ones that include an openly critical stance.

This does not mean that their other tweets did not go beyond chitchat, as all tweets that were

not coded with the code connecting pertained to the political situation in Egypt. Figure 5.17

shows the percentage of tweets per elite tweeter that were posted in connection to the protests

and the political situation in Egypt at that time, meaning all the tweets made by that tweeter

minus those with the code connecting.

This figure shows that the lowest amount of tweets pertaining to the political situation

were still 80 percent of the total tweets of that person. Thus not only are the tweeters from the

elite group still engaging in a networked form of deliberation, also most of their tweets meant

that they were in some form either bringing up or discussing the political situation at hand.

The fact that such discussion and posts were present in the sample, against all theoretical

odds, might have several explanations. Firstly the Twitter users from the sample are so active

on Twitter that they have adopted a large skill set. This means they have the means to employ

256 José van Dijck, “Tracing Twitter: The Rise of a Microblogging platform,” International Journal of Media

and Cultural Politics 7, no. 3 (2012), 10. 257 Haewoon Lee Kwak et al, “What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?” in Proceedings of the 19 th

International World Wide Web (WWW) Conference, Raleigh, NC, 26 – 30 April (2010): 594. 258 José van Dijck, “Tracing Twitter: The Rise of a Microblogging platform,” International Journal of Media

and Cultural Politics 7, no. 3 (2012), 19.

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different kinds of strategies to connect and interact with others, which makes it more likely

they will also use the possibility to start a discussion and use the different kinds of

information dissemination. Secondly, the citizens from the sample almost all have a history of

being active in other journalistic media. Most of them have written opinion pieces and/or have

appeared in television shows to explain their ideas on certain matters. This means that not

only the journalists from the sample, but also the citizens are above average media savvy,

which also makes it more likely that they participate on Twitter according to more traditional

journalistic norms which in their turn improve the quality of democracy on Twitter.

Figure 5.17 Percentage of tweets about the Egyptian political situation

Lastly, the main goal of the users in the sample, during the time the sample was taken, was to

discuss the political situation of Egypt. This shared focus of them and some of their followers

is bound to elicit discussions and deliberations on the events that are unfolding. Thus, also

meaning a presence of critical rational debate so important for a well-working virtual public

sphere.

5.2.3 Network Journalism on Twitter

A second noteworthy finding is the high level of interconnection among journalists and the

citizens of the sample. Within this interaction citizens have also adopted traditional

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journalistic practices such as fact checking. Moreover, citizens are acting as a check on

journalists and the mainstream media. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosentiel already predicted that

when citizens are really part of the news making process that they could act as a check on

mainstream media.259 An example of this in the sample is the changed picture on the website

of The New York Times, although I must add that the newspaper did not react to the tweet on

Twitter or acknowledge the tweet in the rectification that they published with the changed

photo. The findings do suggest that through the use of Twitter, citizens have had the

opportunity of becoming a part of the news making process. The example of the picture also

shows that the influence is almost instantaneous as less than two hours later the picture was

changed. In the past a citizen would have had to write an email, or even earlier a letter, after

which the newspaper, or the website, would have placed either a rectification or changed the

picture retroactively. The interaction on Twitter, and the immediacy that is part of that

interaction, really makes citizens a part of the news making process.

The interaction goes further, however, not only are citizens functioning as a check on

journalists, the citizens from the sample were discussing with journalists, informing each

other and helping each other fact-check. Moreover, the citizens themselves were bringing and

sometimes even breaking news. The citizens from the sample are thus not functioning as mere

one-way helpers in a top-down process but are interacting in a side-by-side process which is

in line with the ideal of network journalism where different nodes are interacting in an

information sphere. Twitter is functioning both as the platform for such an information

sphere, as well as the tool enabling the different players, in this case journalists and citizens,

to interact.

The importance of such forms of network journalism for a well-working democratic

virtual public sphere are voiced by Douglas Kellner who poses that social media should

function as a place of “multiplied information and discussion, of an admittedly varied sort,

and thus provid[ing] potential for a more informed citizenry and more extensive democratic

participation.”260 While Kellner only touched upon the behavior of citizens in social media,

and thus also Twitter, this idea of a democratic sphere becomes more advanced when the

interaction between journalists and citizens is also included. Both types of actor in the sample

have become information disseminators, participate in journalistic practices, and critically

deliberate. Network journalism thus allows citizens to be well informed and critical.

259 Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel. The elements of journalism: what newspeople should know and the public

should expect, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), 13. 260 Douglas Kellner, “Habermas, the Public Sphere, and Democracy: A Critical Intervention,” in Perspectives on

Habermas, ed. by Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court Press, 2000), 278.

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Moreover it enables critical rational debate. Twitter acts in this case as a tool for establishing

both a networked sphere as well as a platform to enact all the behavior necessary for network

journalism. In that sense Twitter thus becomes a tool for a well-functioning online public

sphere.

An explanation for the existence and quality of these interactions lies, first of all, in a

similar reason that the five requirements of a virtual public sphere are met. The users who are

part of the sample are all media savvy, half of them are journalists and the other half are

citizens who also occasionally participate in other media as guest editorialists. Secondly, as

remarked earlier, this elite network is rather small, should someone not participate according

to unwritten rules he or she may be unfollowed. For example, should someone often post

tweets that later turn out to be untrue this person will be retweeted less often and followed

less, resulting in a decline in popularity and thus influence on Twitter. If someone wants to be

influential, or heard by a large group on Twitter, they have to continuously prove themselves

to stay influential. This works within a smaller network such as the one surrounding the

political situation in Egypt. However, I must concede that it is less likely that such a self-

regulating mechanism can exist in larger or more abstract networks that are less focused on

one particular subject. However, even on a smaller scale such self-regulation would mean that

smaller networks on Twitter geared to a specific subject offer the kind of discussion space

that Habermas had originally theorized about as he expounded that a public sphere should be

self-regulating.261

5.2.4 Learning from the Themes

The three themes that I attained out of the sample through the grounded theory approach –

power, emotion and morality – together form the third important finding. These abstract

theoretical overarching themes are not present in the previous empirical research on Twitter

and the public sphere. However, the more theoretical ruminations on these two subjects have

touched on the presence of these themes, although admittedly sometimes indirectly.

Understanding and discussing the presence of these themes in the sample increases insight

into the practices of both citizens and journalists on Twitter. Moreover, it results in ideas on

how to improve the democratic participation of journalists in the virtual public sphere.

Power, firstly, is an important subject for theoretical understandings of both a public

sphere and a virtual public sphere. This theme is of influence when discussing the potential

261 Jürgen Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. by

Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 437.

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free and open state of such spheres. Powerful institutions like governments and big companies

are a threat to the open and thus democratic nature of these spheres. José van Dijck discusses

the commodification of Twitter and argues that Twitter’s business model, and its goal of

profitability, are inevitably geared toward commercialization of the platform.262 She poses

that this process has been set in motion ever since “Twitter paved the way to include

sponsored content – push-based, pull-based or geo-based – next to Twitter messages. Indeed,

almost immediately, the company introduced Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends … in

order to insert promoted tweets into the stream of real-life conversation.”263

Commodification means that there are actors in such a public sphere who are participating

with commercial instead of democratic intentions, thus diluting the critical rational debate

present. However, the sample is a great example of users who are accountable and are not

representing a commercial party.

The power struggle for a free, open, democratic public sphere is exactly the kind of

struggle that is captured by the theme of power. This also captures Habermas original intent

of theorizing an ideal type of a public sphere. To reiterate his argument that I presented in

chapter one, a well-working public sphere functions as an effective place of mediation

between the state and individual. This is possible when in the public sphere, through debate,

an individual can come to new ideas, practices and reasoned criticism of the state.264 As such,

a citizen is thus contributing to a democracy, meaning that the goals of a well-working public

sphere are being conducive to a healthy democracy. The tweets belonging to the theme power

also cover this idea of a sphere in which people, both citizens as well as journalists, are

informing and deliberating on the actions of the state.

Morality, the second theme, is also an important aspect of the Habermasian public

sphere. Habermas says that one of the solutions for a public sphere in crisis is critical

publicity. This critical publicity should consist of journalists adhering to moral and ethical

norms to promote open dialogue.265 This translates to the tweets in the sense that befitting this

normative ideal, some of the journalists of the sample have included their judgment and thus

underlying morals to their tweets. However, most tweets that fall under the theme morality

belong to citizens. Especially the journalists working for non-Egyptian news media, namely

Evanchill and SherineT, did not often include a moral judgment in their tweets, while

262 José van Dijck, “Tracing Twitter: The Rise of a Microblogging platform,” International Journal of Media

and Cultural Politics 7, no. 3 (2012), 19. 263 Ibid, 17. 264 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of

Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 27. 265 Ibid, 198.

115

Egyptian journalists have more tweets belonging to this category. I pose that the presence of

this theme shows that a moral judgment in a tweet is not only already an accepted practice

among the Twitter elite, but also a normative ideal. Journalists who include such judgment in

a tweet participate in a morally engaged manner on Twitter, which normatively makes them

better participants in a virtual public sphere. While not discussing the normative implications,

Domini L. Lasorsa et al. have found that many journalists are already including more of their

own opinions in their tweets. They argue that Twitter, because of the small posts, generally

encourages the offering of opinions as there is little space for nuance.266

Emotion is the last theme that came from the sample. Peter Dahlgren’s idea of

cosmopolitan reflection, introduced in chapter three, captures the importance of the presence

of emotion in the virtual public sphere. This concept holds that anyone who participates

online needs to understand and respect another’s reality, which is shaped by a range of factors

and can result in a different view of the world.267 The emotions so generously spread through

Twitter are such conveyors of Egyptians’ current reality. Journalists can use this in their

reporting outside of Twitter to convey the realities of the world. Moreover, journalist Sarah

Carr, an Egyptian journalist in the sample is an example of a journalist effectively using

humor, meant to evoke emotion, in her tweets in the form of sarcasm and ridicule. Through

this strategy she communicates sharp observations but also criticism, which result in her posts

being spread to a large public.

5.3 Conclusion

To conclude, I summarized in the discussion of this chapter that within the sample of elite

tweeters a certain degree of behavior is reached resulting in a normative adherence, more or

less, to the five requirements of a virtual public sphere. While this does not mean that all users

behave in an ideal way thus creating a perfect virtual public sphere, it does show that an elite

group of people use Twitter’s current features in such a manner that it can be called a tool for

a virtual public sphere. Moreover, in this sphere there is space for network journalism. At

least the nodes representing citizens and journalists are interconnected and side-by-side

producing and changing the Twitter news cycle.

I therefore pose that this small sample shows that deliberation is possible in a

relatively small network that is focused on talking about one certain issue occurring at a

266 Dominic L. Lasorsa et al., “Normalizing Twitter: Journalism Practice in an Emerging Communication

Space,” Journalism Studies iFirst Article (2011), 12. 267 Peter Dahlgren, “Online Journalism and Civic Cosmopolitanism,” Journalism Practice iFirst Article (2012),

13.

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specific moment in time. This insight adds to the possibilities of Twitter as a tool for

democracy. In practice this means that journalists, if they want to participate in the form of

network journalism and use Twitter as a tool within a virtual public sphere, one of their

strategies can be to seek out a network of elite tweeters. For example, would a journalist

quickly wanted to reap the benefits of a Twitter network during the November- December

2012 protests they could have looked for elite tweeters on the subject. Consequently they

would have first become familiar with these elite tweeters and easily also with the larger

networks of these tweeters. In such a manner a journalist, or anyone interested in a specific

situation, can quickly become part of a network discussing that subject on Twitter. Moreover,

this insight that small networks are sites of deliberation is equally valuable for citizen tweeters

looking for possibilities of engaging in critical rational debate. They are, as it happens, also a

node within network journalism next to journalists, who can seek to use Twitter as a tool for

democracy. Even though this means a focus on elite tweeters, these people do not necessarily

belong to the elite outside of Twitter, thus not only limiting the discussion to elite players

within society.

Lastly, the three themes that I extrapolated from the tweets from these elite players

give some indication of the kind of behavior and patterns that result in effective interaction

between citizens and journalists on Twitter. Mainly behavior that falls under the themes of

morality and emotion result in a higher spread and interconnection between users. As the elite

journalists who already included more of these posts had a higher interconnection than those

who did not, I pose that inclusion of tweets containing a journalist’s own moral or emotional

judgement would improve the democratic quality of tweets, thus improving Twitter’s ability

to function as a tool for a virtual public sphere.

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Habermas Should Join: A Look at Twitter’s Democratic Potential The web itself does not produce any public spheres. Its structure is not suited to focusing the attention of a dispersed public of citizens who form opinions simultaneously on the same topics and contributions which have been scrutinized and filtered by experts.268

This quote from an interview with Jürgen Habermas, the theoretical founder of public

sphere theory, refers back to the starting point of this thesis. This point of departure was

Habermas’ assessment that a public sphere is supposed to encourage, support but also

exist through critical rational deliberation among informed citizens. When such

deliberation is present a public sphere and thus a society has a qualitatively high level of

democracy. In this sphere the news media traditionally have the important role of

gatekeeper of the news. This news trickles down to well-informed citizens and functions

as a checks and balances on the state. Habermas poses that this interaction between

state, citizens and journalists has been in crisis since the eighteenth century as citizens

are no longer able to, and enabled to, engage in critical rational deliberation. As

abovementioned quote suggests, Habermas does not see the internet as a possible

addition to existing public spheres. This thesis poses the opposite. Building upon the

work of contemporary theorists who have adapted public sphere theory, I redefined its

understanding to provide a theoretical place which allows us to recognize the

democratic potential of social media applications, such as Twitter.

Within this adapted understanding of the public sphere several spheres interact

with and sometimes also contest the dominant public sphere. The deliberations and

interactions on Twitter embody a virtual public sphere. This is marked by an exclusively

online existence on the internet through the use of Twitter. As this virtual public sphere

serves as a public communal space that could potentially improve democracy, the

functioning of Twitter according to the norms of such a sphere could resu lt in it being a

tool for democracy. The opportunity for Twitter to fulfill such a function opens up many

new democratic possibilities for both citizens and journalists. Thus the question asked

and answered by this thesis was: How can Twitter act as a tool for democracy?

In order to answer this question I looked at The Twitter behavior of an elite

group of tweeters, both citizens as well as journalists, during the November-December

2012 protests in Egypt. These show that they adhered to the normative requirements of

268 Stuart Jeffries, “A rare interview with Jürgen Habermas,” Financial Times Magazine April 30, 2010,

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/eda3bcd8-5327-11df-813e-00144feab49a.html#axzz2Z7a9p5gA (accessed 15

July, 2013).

118

a virtual public sphere. This means that they employed information dissemination;

asked critical questions; were mostly equal and accountable; and accepted dissensus as

the outcome of discussions. The reason for that kind of participation on Twitter lies

mainly in the media savviness of the tweeters that I analyzed. As such this finding shows

that elite tweeters are able to appropriate Twitter in such a manner that it functions as a

tool that improves democracy. The implications of this finding are that Twitter, when

used by a small, perhaps elite, group, fosters the critical rational debate that Habermas

has argued to be in crisis since the eighteenth century. This is an interesting finding as it

suggests that Twitter facilitates small oppositional public spheres to come into

existence. As such, I pose that Twitter is a tool for democracy when it is in the hands of a

small group of users who intentionally discuss one specific subject. In this case the

protests in Egypt.

Strengthening the democratic potential of such a tight-knit group is the presence

of journalists enacting network journalism. The second major finding in this thesis

shows the presence of such networked relations on Twitter. This means that both the

citizen tweeters as well as the journalist tweeters from my sample were highly

interconnected by following each other, retweeting each other and, most importantly,

deliberating with each other and their broader network. Thus, as the first finding in this

thesis merely suggests the presence of a virtual public sphere due to Twitter, this second

finding suggests a certain high quality of that virtual public sphere as both the

information dissemination as well as the deliberation are influenced positively by

network journalism. Differently put, both citizens and journalists within a tight-knit

group identified in the first finding, are contributing to qualitatively high interactions on

Twitter due to their interconnectedness. This second finding thus shows that Twitter

not only facilitates the existence of a virtual public sphere but also fruitful connections

between citizens and journalists, in the end resulting in a more democratic virtual public

sphere.

Both the presence and potential quality of a virtual public sphere through Twitter

have thus been established by the first two findings of this thesis. At the same time my

research also showed that some journalists were more effectively interconnected than

others. This means that some of the journalists from the sample were retweeted more

often, deliberated more often with others or were retweeted more by others.

119

To propose ways for journalists to more effectively use Twitter as a tool for

democracy, meaning that they are more interconnected resulting in online deliberations,

I want to refer to my third major finding, the three overarching themes – power,

emotion and morality – extracted from the tweets in the sample. Especially the two

themes emotion and morality provide insights into journalists’ optimal use of Twitter.

Firstly the theme emotion showed that when users, either citizens or journalists,

conveyed their emotions when tweeting, this evoked more reactions and interactions

than the users who kept their posts neutral. As the citizens in the sample were all

personally affected by the events in Egypt, all of them conveyed their emotions through

Twitter. Among the journalists, however, the two foreign correspondents from the

sample were the two who remained more neutral in their Tweets. At the same time one

of their Egyptian colleagues, Sarah Carr, was very open about her emotions, resulting in

many retweets of her tweets and reactions to them. Her interconnectedness was the

highest.

Similarly, the theme morality showed that users who included moral judgments

on events were also more interconnected. Again, the two foreign correspondents from

the sample were the two who did this the least. A withholding of both opinion and

emotion on Twitter is consistent with traditional journalistic practices of trying to

report as balanced and neutrally as possible. However, the (perhaps moderate)

inclusion of moral judgment and emotion makes journalists more interconnected and

their use of Twitter more networked. A more networked use of Twitter improves the

level of deliberation and information dissemination found there, consequently

improving the democratic nature of the virtual public sphere created. I therefore pose

that when journalists include more of their emotions and moral judgments into their

tweets instead of trying to stay as neutral as possible, they improve the quality of the

virtual public sphere created through Twitter.

Naturally these normative ideals for journalists’ use of Twitter posed here are

just that, ideals. This more theoretically focused thesis could thus be supplemented by

such research as has been done earlier by Sue Robinson. She interviewed journalists on

their use of Twitter and other online tools.269 The journalists from my sample showed

differences in their use of Twitter, interviewing journalists who show such differences

269 Sue Robinson, “’Journalism as a Process’: The Organizational Implications of Participatory Online News,”

Journalism & Communication Monographs 13, no.3 (2011), 202 – 203.

120

could improve insight into why and how the adoption of Twitter differs within

journalism. Moreover, combining this with the theoretical insights of this thesis, namely

the use of emotion and morality in tweets, could enhance knowledge of why journalists

are employing those strategies or not. Moreover, more extensive qualitative research

into the kind of interactions that journalists are having could certainly improve the

empirical knowledge on network journalism. Thus, not only their kind of connection to

citizens but also other important nodes within network journalism such as government

officials and NGOs.

As the journalists discussed in this thesis tweeted in Egypt, and a large portion

was from Egypt, an interesting supplementary study could entail a similar grounded

theory analysis of journalists and citizens in contemporary Turkey. As of writing Turkish

citizens are also protesting their elected President both offline as well as online. A

grounded theory analysis of an elite Twitter group about the Turkish protests to test

whether the same themes emerge, and whether there are new ones that I did not

identify in Egypt.

While there is thus still much to add to our knowledge about Twitter, this thesis

has contributed to the understanding of Twitter’s democratic potential firstly by

defining what a well-functioning virtual public sphere actually is. Users’ activity on

Twitter subsequently showed that their behavior more or less fits this definition,

therefore opening up the discussion of what shape Twitter’s democratic potential can

take in practice. By focusing on the interrelation between journalists and citizens within

the framework of existing public sphere theory this thesis has also suggested ways for

journalists to more effectively use Twitter and become more interconnected with other

users on Twitter.

I conclude that tweeters, both citizens and journalists, have appropriated a

relatively new tool for creating alternative virtual public spheres. While these are small,

specialized groups of users, they do help shape opinion on important issues. They are

consequently an integrated part of contesting public spheres in society, sometimes

critically opposing economic, political and societal processes. All in all, the internet has

thus provided us with a new tool to contribute to democracy. A tool now also worthy of

Habermas’ own participation, perhaps even as a contributor to the loaded deliberations

on the future of Egypt.

121

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Appendix A – Morsi’s consitutional decree issued November 22 (translated by Ahram Online; english.ahram.org.eg/News/585947.aspx)

We have decided the following: Article I Reopen the investigations and prosecutions in the cases of the murder, the attempote d murder and the wounding of protesters as well as the crimes of terror committed against the revolutionaries by anyone who held a political or executive position under the former regime, according to the Law of the Protection of the Revolution and other lasws. Article II Previous consitutional declarations, laws, and decrees mad by the president since he took office in 2012, until the consitution is approrved and a new People’s Assembly (lower house of parliament) is elected, are final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way or to any entity. Nor shall they be suspended or canceled and all lawsuits related to them and brought before any judicial body against these decisions are annulled. Article III The prosecutor-general is to be appointed from among the members of the judiciary by the President of the Republic for a period of four years commencing from the date of office and is subject to the general conditions of being appointed as a judge and should not be under the age of 40. This provision applies to the one currently holding the position with immediate effect. Article IV The text of the article on the formation of the Consituent Assembly in the 30 March 2011 Consitutional Declaration that reads, “it shall prepare a draft of a new consitution in a period of six months from the date it was formed” is to be amended to “it shale prepare the draft of a new consitution for the country no later than eight months from the date of its formation.” Article V No judicial body can dissolve the Shura Council (upper house of parliament) or the Constituent Assembly. Article VI The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution. Article VII This Consitutional Declaration is valid from the date of its pulication in the official gazette.

133

Appendix B – Number of connections between elite tweeters from the sample

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 A B C D E F G 1 x R 1

D 3 4

D5 5

R1 1

R1 1

R1 D1 2

R1 1

R6 D4 10

R1 1

2 x R11 11

D3 3

R14 D2 16

R2 2

R5 D4 9

R1 1

R2 2

R1 1

3 D1 1

R1 1

x D17 17

R5 5

D2 2

R1 1

4 R12 D10 22

x R1 D1 2

R2 2

R6 6

R2 2

R2 2

R4 D1 5

R2 D2 4

5 D1 1

D1 1

x D1 1

D1 1

D6 6

R1 1

6 R1 1

D2 2

R1 1

x R1 1

R4 D6 10

7 x R3 3

R1 1

A R13 D3 16

R20 D1 21

x R2 2

R12 D2 14

B R2 2

R1 1

R2 2

R1 1

x R1 1

R1 1

R5 D2 7

R2 D1 3

R2 2

C R1 1

R2 2

R1 D2 3

x D3 3

R17 17

D x

E D1 1

R1 D2 3

D1 1

R1 D1 2

R1 1

R1 D5 6

x

F R1 1

x R1 1

G D1 1

R3 3

x

R = number of retweets D = number of comments within a discussion with that person Bold number = number of total interactions from that specific person to the other *In these (inter)actions Arabic tweets were counted, as this is about the amount of interactions and not their content

134

Citizens Journalists 1 = Sandmonkey A = 3arabawy 2 = Gsquare86 B = Sarahcarr 3 = Tarekshalaby C = NadiaE 4 = Norashalaby D = Mfatta7 5 = Mosaaberizing E = Evanchill 6 = Egyptocracy F = Sharifkouddous 7 = Riverdryfilm G = SherineT Elite users in order of how many people they were connected to and how many connections they made in total:

User Journalist/Citizen Number of people Number of connections Sarahcarr journalist 11 42 Gsquare86 citizen 9 69 Norashalaby citizen 9 67 Sandmonkey citizen 9 28 Mfatta7 journalist 8 50 Sharifkouddous journalist 8 21 Tarekshalaby citizen 7 90 3Arabawy journalist 7 80

Evanchill journalist 7 49 Mosaaberizing citizen 7 18

NadiaE journalist 6 28 Egyptocracy citizen 5 19

SherineT journalist 5 13 Riverdryfilm citizen 4 8

135

Appendix C – Coded Documents In the open coding stage I coded every tweet individually by digitally writing a code next to the Tweet as it was displayed in the PDF document. I also sometimes highlighted important tweets. The following is an example of a page of tweets by user Gsquare86 as coded by me. The complete data set has been archived by me on June 14, 2013 and may be reviewed by committee members upon request.

136

Appendix D – List of codes A list of the codes applied to the data sample in the axial coding stage, including how often they appeared. And two separate lists, one depicting the citizens’ codes and how often they appeared and the other depicting the journalists’ codes and how often they appeared. All the codes: informing 788

connecting 686

insight 327

violence 289

the street 228

numbers 186

humor 165

asking 155

the people 132

critical 116

we 106

history 88

oppression 84

ridiculing 84

community 72

religion 72

contempt 61

opposition 57

see through 57

disbelief 55

symbol(s)/symbolic/symbolism 55

the west 43

fact-checking 42

help(ing) 42

betrayal 41

emotion(s/al) 38

137

harm 36

death 35

doom 32

mobilizing 32

hypocrisy 30

process(es) 30

revolution(ary) 29

rights 29

sarcasm 28

swearing 28

rational 27

anger 24

fight(ing) 24

disappointment 23

power 22

sharing 22

dictator(ial/ship) 21

worry/ied 21

protect(ing/ion) 19

morals 18

peace(ful) 18

reporting 18

wit(ty) 18

democracy 17

injustice 17

polarisation/polarising 17

impressed/ impressive 16

inclusion/inclusive 15

disgust 13

hope 13

logic(al) 13

138

aesthetic(s) 12

atmosphere 12

explaining 11

freedom 11

organize/organizing 11

politics 11

ward(ing) 11

watching 11

battle 10

blaming 10

foresight 10

indignant/indignation 10

shock(ed) 10

irony 9

pride/proud 9

arguing 8

leader(ship) 8

liars/lies/lying 8

realist(ic) 8

resistance 8

confused/ing 7

defending 7

hurt 7

personal 7

spreading 7

balanced 6

correction 6

nuanced 6

us 6

blaming 10

calm 5

139

optimism 5

protest(ing) 5

provok(e/ing) 5

skepticism 5

solidarity 5

thank(ing) 5

accountability 4

allies 4

appearances 4

caring 4

demand(s/ing) 4

destruction 4

disillusion(ed) 4

guiding 4

home 4

injury 4

listening 4

narrative 4

openness 4

positive 4

sad(ness) 4

attack 3

avenge 3

beauty 3

change 3

concern(ed) 3

distraction 3

ethics 3

excited 3

fun(ny) 3

joking 3

140

justice 3

losses 3

perspective 3

practical 3

relative/relativizing 3

relief 3

scared 3

sides 3

surprise(d) 3

them 3

understanding 3

unfair 3

victory 3

admiration/ admiring 2

aggression 2

analysis 2

background 2

comparison 2

compliment(ing) 2

damage 2

decisive 2

denial 2

deserting 2

discredit 2

discussing/discussion 2

disintegrating 2

distress(ed) 2

encouraging 2

exhilarated 2

exposing 2

fairness 2

141

happiness 2

harassment 2

hate 2

hopeless 2

ideals 2

pain 2

participate 2

pessimistic 2

pragmatic 2

predicting 2

shame 2

space 2

speculating 2

suffering 2

threat 2

torture 2

truth 2

undemocratic 2

war 2

accuse 1

action 1

agreement 1

answering 1

appreciative 1

awareness 1

belief 1

careless 1

challenge 1

check 1

claiming 1

colonialism 1

142

compassion 1

compromise 1

confronting 1

conspiracy 1

creativity 1

daily life 1

deceiving 1

demoralizing 1

dialogue 1

division 1

doubting 1

down-to-earth 1

embarrassment 1

empathy 1

endurance 1

exaggerating 1

exclusive 1

expectations 1

extreme 1

falling 1

family 1

farce 1

frustration 1

honest 1

I 1

identity 1

intimidation 1

inventive 1

Islamist 1

lost 1

melancholy 1

143

miracle 1

mistake 1

murder 1

negative 1

nervous 1

neutral 1

nuisance 1

ongoing 1

opportunistic 1

out of touch 1

outraged 1

perceptive 1

persistent 1

prepared 1

principles 1

problem 1

punishment 1

questioning 1

rebellious 1

recognition 1

relations 1

rigid 1

secularism 1

sick 1

spirit 1

stop 1

strength 1

strict 1

strong 1

surrender 1

tenacious 1

144

tense 1

tension 1

the nation 1

together 1

tolerance 1

ultimatum 1

undermine 1

united 1

unrest 1

women 1

wondering 1

wounded 1

you 1

5299

145

The citizens’ codes: connecting 314

informing 306

insight 138

violence 120

(the) street 119

numbers 91

we 80

(the) people 60

humor 55

asking 46

critical 46

history 46

community 41

disbelief 38

oppression 34

see through 34

revolution(ary) 29

mobilizing 28

opposition 28

contempt 27

symbols/symbolic/symbolism 26

ridiculing 25

swearing 25

betrayal 21

fact-checking 21

(the) west 20

religion 20

dictator(ial/ship) 19

help(ing) 19

death 17

146

anger 16

emotion(al) 16

fight(ing) 16

process(es) 14

rights 14

doom 13

hypocrisy 12

sarcasm 12

disgust 11

impressed/impressive 11

power 11

ward(ing) 11

watching 11

inclusion/inclusive 10

organize 10

worry/ied 10

hope 9

protect(ing/ion) 9

shock(ed) 9

battle 8

morals 8

rational 8

sharing 8

indignant/indignation 7

injustice 7

pride/proud 7

atmosphere 6

disappointment 6

freedom 6

liars/lies/lying 6

nuanced 6

147

us 6

wit 6

arguing 5

democracy 5

harm 5

protest(ing) 5

spreading 5

aesthetics 4

allies 4

demand(s/ing) 4

explaining 4

injury 4

leader(ship) 4

listening 4

openness 4

optimism 4

personal 4

polarisation/polarising 4

avenge 3

beauty 3

caring 3

disillusioned 3

distraction 3

excited 3

home 3

hurt 3

logic 3

politics 3

positive 3

resistance 3

solidarity 3

148

thank(ing) 3

them 3

understanding 3

unfair 3

aggression 2

confused 2

decisive 2

defending 2

destruction 2

discredit 2

discussing/discussion 2

encouraging 2

exhilarated 2

harassment 2

hopeless 2

ideals 2

joking 2

pain 2

participate 2

perspective 2

pessimistic 2

pragmatic 2

predicting 2

relativizing 2

relief 2

sad 2

sceptic 2

surprise 2

threat 2

truth 2

victory 2

149

accountability 1

accuse 1

action 1

agreement 1

analysis 1

answering 1

attack 1

awareness 1

balanced 1

belief 1

change 1

check 1

compassion 1

complimenting 1

compromise 1

confronting 1

creativity 1

daily life 1

deceiving 1

denial 1

disintegration 1

division 1

doubting 1

down-to-earth 1

embarrassment 1

empathy 1

ethics 1

exaggerating 1

exclusive 1

extreme 1

falling 1

150

farce 1

foresight 1

I 1

identity 1

inventive 1

Islamist 1

justice 1

melancholy 1

mistake 1

murder 1

negative 1

nervous 1

outraged 1

peaceful 1

practical 1

provoking 1

punishment 1

questioning 1

realistic 1

rebellious 1

rigid 1

scared 1

shame 1

sick 1

space 1

speculating 1

spirit 1

strength 1

surrender 1

tenacious 1

tension 1

151

together 1

ultimatum 1

undermine 1

united 1

wounded 1

you 1

152

The journalists’ codes informing 482

connecting 372

insight 189

violence 169

humor 110

asking 109

numbers 95

the people 72

critical 70

the street 68

ridiculing 59

religion 52

oppression 50

history 42

the street 41

contempt 34

community 31

harm 31

opposition 29

symbol(s)/symbolic/symbolism 29

we 26

helping 23

see through 23

the west 23

emotion(s/ial) 22

fact-checking 21

betrayal 20

doom 19

rational 19

death 18

153

hypocrisy 18

reporting 18

disappointment 17

disbelief 17

peace(ful) 17

process(es) 16

sarcasm 16

rights 15

sharing 14

polarisation 13

democracy 12

wit(ty) 12

power 11

worry 11

injustice 10

logic(al) 10

morals 10

protecting/protection 10

foresight 9

irony 9

aesthetic(s) 8

anger 8

fight(ing) 8

politics 8

explaining 7

realist(ic) 7

atmosphere 6

correction 6

balanced 5

calm 5

confused/ing 5

154

defending 5

freedom 5

impressed/ impressive 5

inclusive 5

resistance 5

appearances 4

guiding 4

hope 4

hurt 4

leader(ship) 4

mobilizing 4

narrative 4

provok(e/ing) 4

accountability 3

arguing 3

concern(ed) 3

fun(ny) 3

indignation 3

losses 3

personal 3

sceptic 3

sides 3

swearing 3

admiration/ admiring 2

attack 2

background 2

battle 2

change 2

comparison 2

damage 2

deserting 2

155

destruction 2

dictatorial 2

disgust 2

distress(ed) 2

ethics 2

exposing 2

fairness 2

happiness 2

hate 2

justice 2

lies/lying 2

practical 2

pride 2

sadness 2

scared 2

solidarity 2

spreading 2

suffering 2

thanking 2

torture 2

undemocratic 2

analysis 1

appreciative 1

careless 1

caring 1

challenge 1

claiming 1

colonialism 1

compliment 1

conspiracy 1

demoralizing 1

156

denial 1

dialogue 1

disillusion 1

disintegrating 1

endurance 1

expectations 1

family 1

frustration 1

home 1

honest 1

intimidation 1

joking 1

lost 1

miracle 1

neutral 1

nuisance 1

ongoing 1

opportunistic 1

optimism 1

organizing 1

out of touch 1

perceptive 1

persistent 1

perspective 1

positive 1

prepared 1

principles 1

problem 1

recognition 1

relations 1

relative 1

157

relief 1

secularism 1

shame 1

shock 1

space 1

speculating 1

stop 1

strict 1

strong 1

surprised 1

tense 1

the nation 1

tolerance 1

unrest 1

victory 1

war 1

war 1

women 1

wondering 1

158

Appendix E – Categories and themes This appendix presents an overview of the eight categories that I extrapolated from the codes. I have indented and printed the codes that turned up only once in a smaller font to emphasize that they are relatively less important. These less important codes were coupled with those that did appear more often so as to give those more importance in the formation of the categories. All the codes are ordered under one of the three overarching themes.

THEME: POWER 1. Conflict violence opposition fight(ing)

rebellious

power intimidation stop strength strong surrender

polarisation/polarising division exclusive women you

politics battle leader(ship) provoke/ing allies demand(s/ing)

ultimatum

attack action challenge confronting prepared unrest

avenge sides Islamist secularism

them victory agression extreme

deserting threat war

2. Trauma harm death murder

hurt wounded

destruction injury damage harassment pain suffering torture 3. negativity oppression ridiculing careless undermine

doom indignant/indignation blaming accuse claiming exaggerating nuisance punishment

skepticism problem disillusioned demoralizing losses falling discredit disintegrating pessimistic negative rigid

159

THEME: EMOTION 4. (strong) emotions emotions/emotional swearing anger outraged worry/ied nervous impressed/impressive disgust sick atmosphere tension shock(ed) pride/proud confused/ing doubting sad(ness) melancholy concern(ed) excited relief scared surprise(d) distress(ed) tense exhilirated hate hopeless lost shame embarassment 5. humor humor sarcasm wit(ty) irony fun(ny) joking

160

THEME: MORALITY

6. Community informing connecting numbers asking answering the people we family relations the nation together united

community help(ing) mobilizing sharing protect(ing/ion) peace(ful) reporting inclusion agreement

explaining organize/organizing ward(ing) watching resistance

inventive defending endurance ongoing persistent tenacious

personal I identity

spreading us protest(ing) solidarity caring guiding home listening understanding compassion empathy recognition

compliment(ing) discussing/discussion dialogue encouraging participate

7. symbolism the street daily life symbol(s)/symbolism miracle the west colonialism revolution(ary) aesthetic(s) creativity space

161

8. Morality insight perceptive critical questioning wondering history religion contempt see through awareness farce out of touch

disbelief frustration fact-checking check betrayal conspiracy deceiving

hypocrisy opportunistic process(es) rights rational disappointment expectations dictator(ial/ship) morals democracy injustice hope logic(al) freedom foresight arguing liars/lies/lying realist(ic) balanced compromise neutral

correction mistake nuanced calm optimism thank(ing) appreciative accountability appearances narrative

openness positive beauty change distraction ethics justice tolerance perspective practical relative/relativeness unfair admiration/admiring analysis background comparison decisive denial exposing fairness happiness ideals belief principles spirit strict

pragmatic down-to-earth

predicting speculating truth honest undemocratic