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07.04.2011

REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTS IN ARAB WORLD AND ACCOMPANYING INFORMATION FLOWS

   

Samvel Martirosyan

S.Martirosyan - Expert of the Center for Information Studies at “Noravank” Foundation

The processes in the Arab world are accompanied by large-scale, global information flows in which not only the larges world mass media are involved but also huge masses of social networks’ users which try to participate in the informational and propaganda confrontation. The involvement of a large number of the voluntary participants in information exchange through the social networks brought to the situation that many mass media called events particularly in Tunisia and Egypt Facebook revolution or Twitter revolution. Both the opponents of the social networks and their supporters all over the world used those networks and blogs rather eagerly in order to carry out information and propaganda actions.

Of course the usage of the social networks was not a driving force of the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab countries. Even more, the impact of the Internet and various means of communication in different countries differed. Thus, the prevelence of Facebook in Egypt approached 7%; there are more than 5 million users of that network. At the same time the prevalence of Facebook in Tunisia reached 20%, i.e. more than 2 million users. In thinly populated Bahrain more than one third of the 800 thousand population uses Facebook and in Libya less than 5%. i.e. about 300 thousand people. To compare let us mention that in Armenia 135 thousand people use Facebook and this index in percentage coincides with Libyan.

Social networks in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries in the region played the role of both the ground for mobilization and the alternative source of information under the blockade of traditional mass media by the authorities. Besides, social networks were used to spread operative information in the outer space which, in its turn, caused counteractions by the power agencies, which tried to take under control information flows in the critical situation.

In Tunisia special services initiated a muss break-in of the profiles of the pro-opposition activists on Facebook, Gmail and Yahoo. The special services took advantage of the fact that there is only one monopolist internet provider and with its help they managed to break the profiles of the users1. But as soon as the actions of the special services were revealed the administration of Facebook immediately assumed technical measures to prevent those cracks. Besides the cyber-anarchists of Anonymous global organization delivered a counter strike. Anonymous started operation “Tunisia”; it derailed Tunisia Internet Agency site on one day and asked the local users to set special extension for the browser which cut out malicious script placed by the special services to break-in2.

In Egypt the special services also blocked Facebook, Twitter and Google on a national level. As a response the Internet giants started using alternative IP-addresses, which allowed the users from Egypt to avoid blocking and get access to the social networks3.

However, the authorities in Egypt began to panic for a while and instead of blocking some definite grounds they just turned off the Internet connection. This was noticed by Internet Society international organization which observed a slump and further disappearance of the output traffic from 80 Egyptian Internet providers on January 27. On February 2nd Internet connection with Egypt restored4 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

In order to fully suppress the communication of the rebels the power agencies also closed access to the mobile communications and mobile Internet. Blocking of the access to the mobile communications and mobile Internet today is also transparent to the outer world, as people use software available on their mobile phones and Smartphones. Thus the most widespread mobile browser in Egypt is Opera Mini5 and its usage has specificity – all the traffic goes through the servers of Opera Company. And the company has registered a slump in the traffic coming from Egypt; then the communication disappeared and was restored only on February 26.

In the same way the authorities of Egypt had blocked from time to time the Internet communication in the country in connection with the escalation of the situation. Thus, on February 19 and 20 the communication was blocked at nights, and on February 4 the access to the Internet was also closed7 (see Figure 2).

Figure 2
The slump of mobile Internet traffic in Egypt according to Opera Software Company

However, the experience of Internet connection blocking came to prove the inefficiency of this method, which focuses the attention of the public at the sources of the alternative information. Even more, the involvement of the world community in the conflict through the social media caused the situation when the issue of the Internet connection blocking in Egypt and Libya was efficiently solved on an international level. Thus, some companies offered dial-up remote access through the fixed line telephony. E.g. Telecomix Group8, which supports web activists, enabled clear channel of Internet access and spread that information through the social networks and Twitter9.

Google, in its turn, over the period of full Internet blockade in Egypt enabled Speak To Tweet service, which allowed users to call by a fixed line to definite numbers and both listen to the messages of other users and to submit by voice information which was later placed on web.

Conclusion

The information flows accompanying disturbances in the Arab world and reaction of the three actors (authorities, their opponents and world community) come to prove that:

  1. Blocking of the Internet grounds is a short-term measure. In a long-term aspect (in this case due to the swiftness of the progress, the developments, which last several days, may be considered long-term) it causes discredit to the traditional information sources, consolidated the positions of the Internet activists who in their turn find way to avoid blocking. Over the period of blocking of the Internet the interests towards the web resources irrupted.
  2. The total blocking of the Internet does not solve problems as there are possibilities to avoid that blocking with the help of fixed line telephony or even mobile networks of the neighbouring countries (as in the border areas you can use mobile connections and mobile Internet of the neigbouring state).
  3. The total blocking of the Internet in reality deprives the authorities of the platform for turning to their supporters as the traditional mass media in some moment lose their weight in the information flows. Besides the influence of the gossips, fast disseminating verbal information, which may become uncontrollable, irrupts.

1To see the mechanisms of the break-in in details visit http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201101/6651/Tunisian-government-harvesting-usernames-and-passwords

2http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/infosecurity/111759/

3E.g. user from Egypt could enter IP-address 128.2242.240.52 in a browser instead of Twitter.com and get to the site avoiding blocking.

4http://isoc.org/wp/newsletter/?p=3100

5http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/03/03/opera-mini-domination

6http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/02/02/egypt-is-back-online-2

7http://www.renesys.com/blog/2011/02/libyan-disconnect-1.shtml

8http://www.telecomix.org/

9http://twitter.com/#!/telecomix/status/38697836929355776

“Globus National Security”, issue 2, 2011

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