Speech Story

Stephanie Schendel
Journalism 305
Speech story

Social media networks like Facebook and Twitter fueled the recent revolution in Egypt and uprisings throughout the Middle East, Lawrence Pintak, former CBS Middle East correspondent and founding dean of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication said in a lecture Tuesday.

“The dominoes aren’t falling, but the wave of change is coming to the Middle East,” he said. “And that wave of change is a perfect storm that brings together media, a new resurgent form of journalism, the new uses of social media and the years and decades of anger and frustration in the Arab world.”

It began in Tunisia, he said, when a fruit stand vendor lit himself on fire after the police had harassed him on several occasions, and finally took away his cart.
“This revolt was literally sparked by flames,” he said.

Cell phone video footage and pictures of the man engulfed in flames were spread onto the internet, which caused protests throughout Tunisia, he said.

That is when social media kicked in, Pintak said. The media in Tunisia, like many Arab countries, is primarily dominated by the government, he said. The government however, was unable to control social media sites such as Youtube and Facebook, which spread the video.

Though the revolution in Tunisia lasted only a few weeks, Pintak said, it sent shockwaves throughout the region, and in the last two weeks there has been protests in a number of different Middle Eastern countries.

Social and political activists in Egypt were particularly inspired by the success in Tunisia, he said.

“The Egyptian bloggers are the most active in the Arab world,” he said.

He said sites like Twitter allowed activists in Egypt to be in “constant conversation” with one another and to coordinate meeting places and times.

While protesting, activists were simultaneously “tweeting the revolution,” Pintak said.

He said the activists in Egypt had previously worked with other governments and organizations overseas to learn how to surpass their government’s firewalls and blocks on the internet.

“It was an 18 day revolution, but it was years in the making,” he said.

He also said the Egyptian activists learned from the mistakes of the Iranian “revolution that wasn’t” two years ago.

For example, in order to avoid getting their videos and pictures confiscated, they switched memory cards out of their cameras mid-protest and gave it to someone else to upload onto the internet almost immediately, Pintak said.

By the time the government “pulled the plug” on the internet, it was too late to stop the effects of the protests and they were being broadcasted on the satellite TV channels, he said.

Even without social media, Pintak said, revolution and change would have eventually come to Egypt and the Middle East.

“You can’t have a revolution without people,” he said. “(But) you can have a revolution without technology.”

All technology did was speed up the process, he said.

At this point in time, the future of Egypt still remains uncertain, he said, and it now depends on how the citizens decide to restructure their government.

“It is easy to all be united when there is somebody to hate,” he said.

The real challenge comes in deciding what needs to happen next, Pintak said.

Pintak has recently been featured on news networks such as NPR, CNN, PBS, BBC and the New York Times due to his expertise on the Middle East, Karen Weathermon the co-director of the common reading program said.

He also served as the director for journalism training at the American University in Ciaro, Egypt, she said.

“This news story is very relevant for college students because they are so immersed in social media,” Weathermon said. “We think of it generally as entertainment but to see social media and its potential political power, it provides most students with a different take on the methods of communication and connection.”

The lecture was a part of the year long event series hosted by WSU’s Common Reading Program. It was open to the public and he addressed a group of students, faculty and community members.

Weathermon said there were 123 people in the audience.

“He is a very good speaker (and) he is very knowledgeable about this topic,” she said.

Sarah Robinson, a senior journalism major said she enjoyed Pintak’s lecture and how he understood the situation from an Arab perspective.

“He had a lot of insight I had not heard,” she said.

She also said it was interesting how he talked about how social media, such as Facebook, facilitated the revolution.

Outline
1.How the revolution in the Middle East started
a.Tunisia, how he lit himself on fire
b.Relationship between the media and the government
c.Role of social networking/cell phones
2.Tunisia’s effect on Egypt
a.Youtube, cell phone videos
b.Activists in Egypt
cBlogging and Twitter
3.What’s next in Egypt?
4.About the lecture
5.Student reaction.


Sources
Speaker: Lawrence Pintak

Karen Weathermon
kweathermon@wsu.edu
509 335-5488

Sarah Robinson
Sarah.robinson@email.wsu.edu