Why Facebook Is Not a Revolutionaries Tool

Many a pundit has put forward that Facebook  played a vital role in the Arab Spring and in 2009 in the failed Iranian revolution, that it will increasingly play an important role in organizing revolutions in repressed regimes and developing nations. We beg to differ on that point and here’s why.

Facebook is Not the Hub of the Online Protest
Contrary to popular perception by pundits et al, Facebook plays a lesser role than other social networks and social technologies from our research. When we looked at the Arab Spring and the tools used in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain…it was Ning networks, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and blogs that drove more traffic and were used for reporting and organizing over 78% more than Facebook.

Why Other Channels?
One of the conclusions we’ve drawn from why so many other tools take the majority of traffic and engagement is that there are always a number of different groups involved for different reasons. Coordinated groups in any uprising is rare. There may be a lead interest group and eventually one does come out on top, but in the early phases and during the depths of an uprising, there are multiple parties involved with different priorities. Hence a number of different tools and channels are used.

The Visibility Factor of Facebook = Liability
As easy as it is for a group to organize and protest on Facebook, so it is for the group in power to search and view that information and who is involved. Today, as Iranian students studying abroad go home to visit family in Iran, the security forces check their Facebook profiles for who they are connected to. A hostile government can quickly determine key players through Facebook. With blogs, Twitter accounts and private Ning groups, this becomes harder.

Online Information Warfare Tactics
Expanding on the visibility factor of Facebook issue, at the start of a drive for societal change, the fomenting groups can push an agenda and ideas into the social web while gaining some degree of anonymity or at least protecting their families and themselves. Using a tool like Ning affords some level of security by enabling the group administrator(s) to vet any requesting members. As an issue progresses, the government under attack my also deploy tactics to create counter-messages on the social web. This is quite easy with Facebook, a little harder with blogging and Twitter and how these engagements can be countered by the protestors or antagonists. Egypt chose to shut down the Web, as did al-Assad in Syria, but then Syria started engaging online and countering the claims made by protestors – information warfare in social media then escalates.

Conclusion
While Facebook is a valuable tool in planning a revolution and communicating, it actually becomes a liability as a protest action escalates. Anti-government organizers understand this. In the case of Egypt, Syria and Bahrain, Facebook became less and less popular for the revolutionaries. We found use of Facebook by organizers in a country in question dropped over 90% once the protest spilled into the real-world through actions. For observers and westerners, they used Facebook to share information, views and opinions and content pushed out onto YouTube, Flickr and Twitter, but the revolutionaries were rarely there. So Facebook is a liability for the revolutionaries and a news and opinion channel for the non-participants.