Facebook rising: The U.S. media’s disproportionate emphasis on social media over mobile media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions
Introduction
As 2010 gave way to 2011, the political uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt caught the attention of the U.S. press. News coverage was extensive with the Egyptian Revolution garnering the most attention: the popular uprising that lead to the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the largest international news event covered by U.S. news organizations since 2007, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism (Jurkowitz, 2011). One of the story angles explored by U.S. news organizations was the role of new media and technology in the revolutions. Photojournalists working in Egypt captured images of people celebrating with mobile devices in hand (see Figure 1), and a CNN.com headline declared “Tunisian Protests Fueled by Social Media Networks” (Lister, 2011). This study uses discourse analysis to investigate how two prominent and politically divergent online news organizations in the United States, CNN.com and FoxNews.com, explained the role of technology during Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. In particular, this study aims to assess how mobile media was presented in news reports in comparison to other forms of new media, such as social media, and to document how the news sources frame the role of new media in political revolutions.
Figure 1: Reuters, telegraph.co.uk
Understanding how CNN.com and FoxNews.com covered mobile media in comparison to other types of new media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and how the news outlets’ framed the role of technology in the uprisings are important to communication research for several reasons. Scholars have explored mass media messages for nearly a decade because mass media provide consumers with knowledge about their environment (Lippmann, 1922). This knowledge includes information about foreign countries (Besova & Cooley, 2009; Rosengren, 2000). The way in which the news media frame that information has the potential to influence news consumers’ opinions of it (Brewer, 2006; Druckman, 2001; Entman, 1993; Evans, 2010). Little research exists regarding the framing of new media in news reports (Cornish, 2008), and because of the recency of the uprisings in North Africa, scholars have not had a chance to study the media reports regarding the revolutions. Mobile technology is a ubiquitous media throughout most of the world and has the potential to have political consequences (Nelimarkka, 2008). A handful of researchers have explored the use of mobile technology in political uprisings (e.g. Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu, & Sey, 2007; Pertierra, Ugarte, Pingol, Hernandez, & Dacanay, 2002; Rheingold, 2002), but no comparison of the portrayal of two types of media, for example mobile versus social media, during a recent revolution exists. And so, this study helps to fill a research void by providing an understanding of which new media U.S. news organizations cover and how they frame the role of new media during political uprisings in foreign countries.
Literature Review
Framing theory provides the theoretical base for this study. The creation of news is not an objective process in which detached journalists observe the world and pass unbiased information along to the public; rather, news is created through subjective journalistic practices affected by multiple influences including a society's dominant ideology and media routines (Gitlin, 1980; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Schudson, 1997). According to framing theory, these influences manifest themselves in media content through the elevated presentation of particular aspects of the subject of the news report and suppression of other factors (Gitlin, 1980; Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001). "Frames are principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters" (Gitlin, 1980, p. 6). The media frames found in news content, then, provide a limited view of a phenomenon, like the role of new media in a political uprising. Media framing of a particular subject is important because researchers have established that framing affects consumers' perceptions of the person, place, issue, or phenomenon ( Druckman, 2001; Entman, 1993; Entman & Rojecki, 1993; Evans, 2010). "Upon finishing a clear, well-constructed article, readers form opinions on the causes, actors and significance of the events reported. However, the apparently factual news items presented to the public often lead the public to understand events from a particular perspective, or frame, advanced by the media" (Evans, 2010, p. 210). And so, the study of media frames used to describe the role of new media in political uprisings is important because these frames have the potential to influence how the public may view new media within the context of revolution.
Since the writing of the Phaedrus, and possibly even prior, discourse regarding communication technology has reflected a "binary logic": technology can improve life or destroy it (Gunkel, 2007). This dialectic has been applied to the discussion of the impact new media has had and will continue to have on politics, particularly democracy (Papacharissi, 2010). Scholars and activists who argue new media has the power to improve the political system think that technology can create new space for civic discourse (Blumler & Gurevitch, 2001; Feenberg, 2009); increase dialogue between citizens and their leaders (Blumler & Gurevitch, 2001); enable direct democracy to replace representative democracy (Westen, 2000); and empower citizens to hold people in power responsible for their actions (Kann, Berry, Gant, & Zager, 2007). Social media has been framed as having the potential "for enhancing democracy on the one hand by providing new ways of inclusion and direct citizen participation and spreading democracy on the other by means of inhibiting secrecy by repressive governments and providing unprecedented possibilities to self-organize" (Hoffmann & Kornweitz, 2011, p. 7).
But other researchers have argued that new media do not lead to a revolution in the political process and, instead, maintain the status quo (Davis, 1999). These scholars frame the Internet as a crowded, imperfect place with a "cacophony of voices" (Sunstein, 2001, p. 56) in which no one’s opinion can be heard or people only listen to opinions similar to their own. New media also are framed as a threat to the autonomy in the political process: “Democracy is threatened above all by new technologies of surveillance that employ the network to concentrate information from many sources, exposing deviations from the norm through tracking and data mining” (Feenberg, 2009, p. 78).
As mobile technology has spread and replaced fixed forms of media, scholars have started to explore how mobile media and other emerging forms of new media, such as online social networks, affect the political process (e.g. Castells et al., 2007; Rheingold, 2002). Castells et al. (2007) explain that the coupling of mobile technology and social media has created a "new form of public space" that can be used for multiple purposes including the facilitation of political change (Castells et al., 2007, pg 185). The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are not the first popular uprisings to bring attention to the role of new media in modern politics. Mobile technology often is credited as playing an integral role in the overthrow of the Philippine president during the People Power II movement (Pertierra et al., 2002). But, Castells et al. (2007) and Pertierra et al. (2002) also caution that although new media was used in the facilitation of political change in the Philippines, it was not the sole factor that caused the uprising or forced the president from power.
Although scholars have explored societal views of new media, very little research exists regarding how news organizations frame new media technologies in general (Cornish, 2008) and how the press portrays new media during recent political uprisings in particular. Newspaper coverage of the Internet from 1988 through 1995 frame the emerging technology overall in a predominately negative manner (Cornish, 2008). News stories from this time period explore the connection between the Internet and democracy and frame the Internet as either an equalizer that could provide a path to democracy or a hurdle to the reasoned debate needed to sustain democracy (Cornish, 2008). Although not the aim of their research regarding the use of cell phones in the Philippines, Pertierra et al.’s (2002) limited analysis of the Philippine news media’s coverage of the role of mobile technology during the People Power II movement reveals that the popular press portrayed the cell phone as a “mysterious force” that should be credited with the formation and success of the political movement: “In short, it is the technology that does things – makes things happen – not the people who use it” (Pertierra et al., 2002, p. 104). Pertierra et al. (2002) point out that this portrayal is laden with a false “utopian understanding of technology” (p. 107) and conclude that although mobile technology was a factor in the uprising, it “was not the one for which it has usually been praised in the media since the event – namely, that of crowd drawer par excellence” (p. 123).
Given the dearth of research regarding how U.S. news organizations portray new media during political uprisings, the goal of this study is to provide a baseline of knowledge regarding which new media receive coverage and how U.S. news outlets frame the role of new media during the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. This study comes at a critical time in the history of North Africa and the Middle East. Following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, citizens in neighboring countries began protesting for government reform. As of the writing of this research, NATO was using force to protect Libyan rebels from acts of violence from their own government. The way in which U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and his decision to order the U.S. armed forces to take part in attacks on the Libyan government have become political hot buttons that may affect the 2012 presidential race. And so, the events in North Africa and the Middle East have had an impact throughout the world. Given the extensive media coverage of the uprisings, the ability of media frames to affect consumers' understanding and perceptions of a topic, the ubiquitous nature of mobile media and the lack of research comparing it with other media, the political context of the region and the world, and the lack of research regarding how news organizations frame new media during revolution, the exploration of media frames of new media's role in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings is warranted.
Analysis
Discourse analysis is used to identify the different types of new media covered by U.S. news organizations and the media frames of new media’s role during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Discourse analysis involves the study of texts that can be written, spoken, or visual (Fairclough, 1995). For this study, texts are written news stories regarding the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions that include references to or are about new media, are produced by journalists working for the study publications, and are not opinion pieces. CNN.com and FoxNews.com were selected as the study texts for several reasons. American media consumers are increasingly obtaining their news online: In 2010, approximately 6 out of every 10 news consumers obtained their news from an online source, and two of the most prominent online news outlets are CNN.com and FoxNews.com, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Furthermore, the news organizations have a reputation for portraying political news differently. CNN is regarded as being a centrist news organization while Fox News is often viewed as having a conservative bent.
For CNN.com, the study texts were obtained from LexisNexis Academic using the keywords Tunisia and Egypt. FoxNews.com is not part of the LexisNexis database, and texts from this source were obtained from the news website. FoxNews.com does not have an advanced search feature on its site, so multiple keyword searches based on key people, places, and possible technology used in the uprisings had to be conducted to collect the study sample: “Tunisia and Bouazizi,” “Tunisia and Ben Ali,” “Tunisia and Twitter,” “Tunisia and phone,” “Tunisia and social media,” “Tunisia and Facebook,” “Tunisia and mobile,” “Hosni Mubarak,” “Tahrir Square,” “Muslim Brotherhood,” “ElBaradei,” “Wael Ghonim,” “Egypt and Twitter,” “Egypt and phone,” “Egypt and social media,” “Egypt and Facebook,” and “Egypt and mobile.” The study time period was the beginning of the formal protests in each country through one week after each country’s leader left power. One week was added at the end of each revolution to allow for analysis stories that typically come after an event. The study dates for Tunisia were Dec. 17, 2010 – Jan. 21, 2011 and for Egypt, Jan. 25 – Feb. 18, 2011.
The sampling procedures yielded an unequal amount of stories for each news organization and for each event. For both publications, the amount of coverage devoted to Egypt dwarfed the amount of coverage allotted to the Tunisian Revolution. There are several explanations for the disparity. Two of the most likely explanations are that Egypt is a larger country with greater power in the region and the Tunisian Revolution occurred first and alerted the U.S. media to unrest in the region. The organization of each news outlet also affected the amount of stories produced. CNN.com has an internal wire service and staff writers, but FoxNews.com relies heavily on the Associated Press for stories from other parts of the world. Based on the sampling criteria, stories from the Associated Press were excluded from the study because they were not authored by someone at FoxNews.com. Nine stories about the Tunisian Revolution and some form of new media were studied from CNN.com, and only one story was available from FoxNews.com. For the Egyptian Revolution, 31 stories from CNN.com and 15 stories from FoxNews.com were reviewed.
Several thematic questions, based on the goals of this study, guided the discourse analysis: What types of new media do news outlets identify in connection with the revolutions? How is mobile media portrayed in the stories in comparison to other types of new media? How do news outlets explain the connection between new media and the revolutions? How does coverage of new media and the revolutions change over time? To what extent is framing of new media’s connection to revolution similar for each uprising? To address these questions, study texts first were examined for references to new media and explanations of new media’s connection to the revolutions. Next, the texts were examined for the presence of patterns regarding the descriptions of new media’s connection to the revolutions and repetition of these patterns over time.
New media coverage
Both websites contained stories about the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions that discussed new media’s role or mentioned a particular type of new media. Coverage of new media took two forms: new media were either the focus of the story, as in CNN.com’s “Making Sense of the Internet and Egypt” (Sutter, 2011 January 31), or, more frequently, were mentioned in passing as part of a story regarding a different aspect of the revolution. New media were not discussed throughout the entire revolution; Instead, a few stories about or including new media would appear, and then coverage would drop off for a few days, only to come back into focus later. Part of this ebb and flow of new media coverage had to do with the events occurring during the revolutions. At one point, the Egyptian government shut off Internet and mobile phone service, a move that spawned several stories about these outages; however, after data services were curtailed, stories discussing new media declined because the Internet could not play a role in the revolutions. The inconsistent media coverage also can be attributed to the degree of awareness each news outlet had of the revolutions. CNN.com’s first story that mentioned a type of new media in connection with the Tunisian uprising didn’t come until January 10, three weeks after the protests started. FoxNews.com’s only story on the subject was on January 17, three days after Tunisia’s leader left the country. In comparison, references to new media during the Egyptian Revolution popped up on the first day on CNN.com and within three days on FoxNews.com. New media were most likely discussed earlier in the Egyptian uprising because the events of the Tunisian Revolution had primed the news outlets to look for similarities in Egypt. In addition, Tunisia is a small country in North Africa, and its uprising might not have been covered heavily at first because it was not as great of a consequence to the U.S. as other world events.
The types of new media and particular applications and services discussed include “social media,” Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, the internet (general reference), specific websites (like WikiLeaks), Blackberry messenger, and text messaging. Although different types of new media were covered during each uprising and by each news outlet, “social media” and the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter dominated the media coverage. Social media and specific social media sites not only were mentioned most often in stories about the revolutions but also were the main focus of the majority of CNN.com new stories aimed at explaining technology’s connection to the uprisings. Out of CNN.com’s nine stories regarding Tunisia’s uprising that mentioned some form of new media, two of them centered on the role of social media in the revolution: “Tunisian Protests Fueled by Social Media Networks” (Lister, 2011) and “Tunisians Abroad: Facebook, Regular Citizens Key to Revolution” (Yan, 2011). Several of CNN.com’s stories regarding the Egyptian Revolution also looked at social media’s role in the revolution: “Social Media @ the Front Line in Egypt” (Lister & Smith, 2011) and “Google, Twitter Help Give Voice to Egyptians” (Gross, 2011).
In contrast, mobile media received minimal coverage by each news outlet. Only one news story regarding the Tunisian Revolution from either FoxNews.com or CNN.com mentions mobile devices, and then, the reference is brief. In a first-person narrative of arriving in Tunisia, a journalist describes how after the plane landed, the cell phones of passengers lit up with the news that the president had fled the country (Wedeman, 2011). A single story by FoxNews.com, “Vodafone: Egypt Forced Us to Send Pro-Mubarak Text Messages,” centers on mobile technology and the Egyptian Revolution (Doocy, 2011). It details how the Egyptian government ordered mobile service providers to send out several pro-government text messages but does not explain whether the messages were effective or whether protesters also used mobile media to distribute messages.
Mobile media are discussed most in connection with the Egyptian Revolution in stories regarding the government’s decision to block Internet and cell services, and the role mobile media may have had in the revolution often is implied. For example, in “Internet, Phones Down as Egypt Braces for `Day of Rage,’” FoxNews.com (2011 January 28) states, “The Internet appeared to remain cut off Friday morning, and cell-phone text and Blackberry messenger services were all cut or operating sporadically in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations” (par. 8). The preceding text indicates that text-messaging and mobile devices were somehow involved in organizing the protests but does not provide any additional information on how the process of organizing an uprising via mobile device or the Internet occurs. A reader can assume that if the government took the step of cutting off mobile service, then it must have had some importance to the demonstrations, but the role of mobile media in the revolution is not clear.
Furthermore, stories regarding the Egyptian government’s shut down of communication services emphasize the loss of the Internet and an inability to connect to social media over the mobile media blackout. Most of the space in these reports is dedicated to discussing the implications of the Internet going dark with little space allotted to discussing the loss of mobile services. Journalists also present the inability to use social media as the main consequence of the communication shutdown. A FoxNews.com report about the outage states, “Those who had been using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to distribute images and video to the outside world have had to come up [with] more creative ways to communicate after the Egyptian government blocked Internet and cell service…” (Macedo, 2011 January 28, par. 2). Another CNN.com story also explains that “many in Egypt were lamenting their inability to access Facebook and Twitter on Thursday” (Lister & Smith, 2011, par. 15).
The brief exception to the presentation of social media as more important than mobile technology comes several paragraphs into the CNN.com story “Reports say Egypt Web Shutdown is Coordinated, Extensive” (Milian, 2011). The story dedicates three of 28 paragraphs to presenting an Egyptian activist’s opinion that cell phone service is used more by Egyptians than social media. Milian (2011) quotes activist Parvez Sharma: “`These people,’ Sharma said of Egypt’s low-income population, ‘are not Twittering and Facebooking and e-mailing. They’ve never even heard of the damned internet, most of them’” (par. 8). Sharma explains that Egyptians rely most on cell phones and text messages to communicate and that protest organizers have used mobile services to coordinate protests. Milian, however, seems to immediately discount Sharma’s claims by following his comments with, “But social media sites have been used by key event organizers to reach other visible activists with Web access and to get the word back to other parts of the world” (par. 28). In addition, other paragraphs that precede and follow Sharma’s statements emphasize social media. As a result, Sharma’s opinions are presented as a minority viewpoint that is questionable, and mobile media again is portrayed as lesser to social media. Overall, the news outlets’ emphasis on social media and the importance of Facebook and Twitter portrays mobile media, as well as other new media, as less important to the revolutions than social media.
New media frames
Analysis of the study texts yielded numerous media frames, but because of time and space constraints, only the most prominent frames are discussed here. The role of new media during the revolution is framed as a generation shaper, a weapon, a revolutionary force, and a tool. As discussed previously, social media were featured more prominently than any other new media, and so, readers should keep in mind that the media frames identified here most closely reflect the portrayal of social media. The media frames are discussed below in order of their frequency with new media as generation shaper being the least used of the prominent frames and new media as a tool being the most common.
New media as generation shaper
One of the frames of new media’s role in the revolution is that of a force that shaped a generation of protesters calling for democracy. This frame is found only in CNN.com’s stories about the Egyptian revolution. Part of CNN.com’s coverage included a focus on exploring why protesters, particularly young and educated citizens, were suddenly marching for government reform in a country that had been ruled by an autocrat for decades. One of the explanations given for the sudden revolt was that the young people taking part in the protests were part of a new generation – a generation influenced by and formed around the Internet and social media. One way in which the Internet is alleged to have shaped the protest generation is through instilling the young people with the belief that answers to questions and solutions to problems should be instantaneous, like Internet communication. This portrayal is found in a quote by Kamal Zakher, a Coptic Christian leader, regarding the protesters: "`These protests are a part of a phenomenon created by the youth – not affected by anypolitical leadership. There is a black hole between these protesters and the current regime because these youthful protesters are a part of the internet generation who is used to quick responses. This black hole is created due to the regime’s slow response to the demonstrations’" (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 February 1, par. 12). CNN.com also portrays the demonstrators as youth who have been shaped by the revolutionary power of social media. The news outlet quotes an explanation of the protesters’ motives by Eric Trager, a scholar and a student who studied in Egypt: “`Egypt’s liberal activists overwhelmingly come from the wired generation of Twitter and Facebook, and this makes them optimistic that pro-democratic movements can go viral…’” (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 January 25, par. 10). CNN.com further shows how social media have shaped a generation in its portrayal of Wael Ghonim, one of the revolution’s leaders who maintained a Facebook page popular with the revolutionaries. In an article about Ghonim, CNN.com identifies one of Ghonim’s heroes as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Watson, 2011). The news organization also uses naming terms for the protesters, like “young digital revolutionaries” (Labott & Levs, 2011, par. 3) that further add to the framing of new media as a generation-shaping force.
New media as weapon
In her analysis of the framing of the Internet by newspaper journalists, Cornish (2008) found the press portrayed the Internet as “war.” A similar frame can be identified in CNN.com and FoxNews.com’s portrayal of the use of new media as a weapon during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. This frame is built by the naming terms each website uses for new media as well as the actions associated with new media. The clearest example of how CNN.com frames the role of new media as a weapon is through its description of social media as “another important weapon for the demonstrators” (Milian, 2011, par. 2). FoxNews.com also compares the protesters to soldiers and their use of social media to the use of military arms: “The tyrants’ antagonists are not conventional armies or coup plotters but literate and disaffected young people, more of them than ever before, armed with access to instant, global communications in the form of social networking media like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and the Internet” (Rosen, 2011, par. 4). The news websites use other terms in reference to new media like attack, launch, salvo, and combat that also are commonly associated with weapons. For example, an effort by the hacking organization Anonymous to help Tunisians retaliate against their government is described by CNN.com as carrying out an attack (Lister, 2011).
New media as revolutionary force
Another frame found in CNN.com and FoxNews.com’s coverage of both uprisings is new media as a revolutionary force. The press build this frame by presenting new media as separate from their human users and as operating as autonomous entities that can influence the revolution. CNN.com uses the term “fueled” in stories regarding both Tunisia and Egypt to describe how social media, and not its users, propelled the revolution: “The protest movement in Egypt has been fueled by blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook” (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 January 27, par. 42). In this statement, the technology, and not humans, is driving the revolution. In fact, the term “drive” is used several times by the news outlets in reference to new media’s role. Journalists also endow new media with the ability to create themselves and the revolution: “A Facebook page called `We Are All Khaled Said’ – named after a 27-year-old Egyptian businessman from Alexandria who was beaten to death by police last June – sprung up, calling for protests on January 25” (CNN Staff, 2011 February 10, par. 9). In FoxNews.com (2011 February 9), the same Facebook page that spontaneously created itself also is credited with having “rallied support for the protest movement” (par. 19). And Facebook is credited with not only starting the Egyptian Revolution but also ending it according to a quote by Sally Toma, one of the protest organizers: “Facebook brought down the regime” (FoxNews.com, 2011 February 11, par. 18).
New media as tool
The most pervasive frame in the news organizations’ coverage of both revolutions is that of new media as a tool. Through this frame, CNN.com and FoxNews.com portray new media as technology used by protesters or the government to obtain a goal. Unlike the revolutionary force frame in which technology acts on its own, the tool frame positions action with the human users of the new media. The news outlets frame new media as a tool that helps protesters organize demonstrations and disseminate information and that aids the embattled governments in their suppression of protesters.
In a CNN.com article regarding the role of new media during the revolutions, several experts rebuke technology as the cause of the uprisings, and instead directly refer to new media as a “tool” used by both protesters and governments (Sutter, 2011). Both news outlets frame new media as a tool for organizing the protesters’ actions. CNN.com portrays social media as “a critical tool for arranging rendezvous” for Egyptian protesters (Lister & Smith, 2011, par. 6), and FoxNews.com explains that the Egyptian “protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet…” (2011 February 11, par. 17). CNN.com describes demonstrations in Tunisia as “being organized and supported through online networks centered on Twitter and Facebook” (Lister, 2011, par. 1).
The news outlets also frame new media as a tool used to disseminate information among protesters and from the protesters to the outside world. A CNN.com article explains, “Young digital revolutionaries are using social networking to both share their best practices and inspire would-be activists throughout the region – so-called `liberation technology’” (Milian, 2011, par. 10). During the Tunisian Revolution, protesters are described as using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to disseminate information, photos, and video about the uprising (Lister, 2011). Stories from CNN.com and FoxNews.com regarding the Egyptian Revolution contain numerous references to how key protest leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei and Wael Ghonim, use Twitter to communicate with other demonstrators and the media.
The majority of coverage on CNN.com and FoxNews.com ties the use of new media to the protesters, but the governments of Egypt and Tunisia also used new media to advance their own causes. When the press discussed the governments’ use of technology, they framed new media as a tool of suppression. Stories from both news sources regarding Tunisia explain how “activists in Tunisia had digital technology turned on them when the government allegedly captured its citizens’ usernames and passwords on various e-mail and social media sites in order to spy on them and squelch dissenting speech” (Macedo, 2011 February 4, par. 3). They also portray the Tunisian government as using Internet filters to bock citizens’ access to particular websites. The press also focuses on how the Egyptian government used technology to stop Internet and cell phone service, and thus, the flow of information between organizers: “Cell-phone text and Blackberry Messenger services were all cut or operating sporadically in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations. Authorities appear to have been disrupting social networking sites, used as an organizing tool by protesters, throughout the week” (FoxNews.com, 2011 January 28, pars. 48-49).
Discussion and Conclusion
New media coverage
Examination of the study texts revealed that CNN.com and FoxNews.com stress the role of social media in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions over the contributions of other types of technology, including mobile media. Although outside the scope of this study, there are several explanations for the press’s emphasis on social media versus mobile media. The most obvious reason the news outlets may have focused most on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook is that social media actually was a greater factor in the revolutions than other types of new media. However, the extreme effort by the Egyptian government to block cell phone service; the comments by at least one Egyptian about the importance of text-messaging and phone calls to the revolution; and previous research regarding the role of mobile media coupled with social networks in political uprisings (e.g. Castells et al., 2007; Pertierra et al., 2002; Rheingold, 2002) seem to indicate that mobile media also may have played a vital role in the revolutions and the importance of social media may have been exaggerated.
The role of social media and, in particular, sites like Twitter and Facebook may have been overemphasized for several reasons. Twitter and Facebook, the two most commonly referenced SNS in U.S. news coverage of the events, are run by U.S. companies. In addition, the services are popular in the U.S. and during the past year have garnered a great deal of attention from the U.S. press. In December 2010, Time named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg its Person of the Year – a title the magazine bestows on the most influential newsmaker for the year, according to Time’s website. Furthermore, journalists covering the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings followed the events via social media. CNN.com explains that reporters cannot always make it to foreign countries where news is happening but, in the case of the Egyptian Revolution, “social media can help tip off journalists about developments in places they can’t get to” (Lister & Smith, par. 5). The U.S. news media’s familiarity with social media and their reliance on it as a source may have primed journalists to the role of social media in political events. As a result they focused on the accessible and familiar new media while ignoring other technology.
The nature of mobile media and technology in general may also have contributed to the news media’s downplay of mobile technology. According to the most recent data available from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2010), 85 percent of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone, making the cell phone the most ubiquitous mobile device in the nation. In his book about ubiquitous computing, Everyware, Greenfield (2006) states that well-designed digital devices reach a state where they become such a part of people’s lives that they “abscond from awareness” (p. 26). Given the ubiquitous nature of the cell phone, journalists working for CNN.com and FoxNews.com may have overlooked contributions to the revolution by cell phones because mobile technology is such a pervasive part of the American lifestyle that people forget the importance and consequences of mobile technology.
At this point, explanations for why CNN.com and FoxNews.com focused on social media over other technology, namely mobile media, are conjecture. And so, further research is needed regarding why social media is portrayed more prominently in news coverage of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. If scholars uncover that social media received a disproportionate amount of coverage when compared to their actual contribution to the revolutions, then additional studies exploring why this occurred are warranted.
New media frames
Four prominent media frames regarding the role of new media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were identified: new media as generation shaper; new media as weapon; new media as revolutionary force; and new media as tool. Of the four, new media as tool was the most pervasive frame and the only frame applied to the use of new media by both the protesters calling for reform and the governments trying to keep control of their countries.
The press’s framing of new media can best be explained by two divergent theories regarding the integration, use, and impact of technology: technological determinism versus social constructivism. Technological determinism can be defined as the theoretical position “that certain technologies are bound to produce certain social, cultural, and political effects” (Morozov, 2011, p. 289). Technology is “an autonomous object, not in itself subject to social forces” (Lax, 2009, p. 212) that shapes how people live (Perusco & Michael, 2007, p. 11). A technological determinist perspective can be found in the frames of new media as generation shaper and new media as revolutionary force. In both frames, the press give technology autonomy and position new media as the impetus behind the views of a particular generation and the spark and engine for political uprisings. A social constructivist viewpoint, however, holds that social forces shape technology and its uses (Lax, 2009, p. 212). The social constructivist perspective is reflected in the framing of new media as weapon and tool: In both frames, people and the capability of the technology determine how it is used.
Pertierra et al.’s (2002) research regarding the use of mobile phones during the Philippines People Power II movement found that the news media portrayed the ability of mobile media to promote democracy from a utopian perspective. Likewise, FoxNews.com and CNN.com both present the role of new media in the two revolutions in a predominantly positive light. The media frames of generation shaper and revolutionary force attribute the democratic gains made by the protesters to the technology. As a result, new media is portrayed as a force that spreads democracy to people who are oppressed. The frames of new media as weapon and as tool demonstrate how technology assisted the protesters in reaching their goals of freedom. True, part of the press’s coverage showed how the government can use technology to suppress opposition; however, the amount of coverage allotted to this negative consequence of technology was far surpassed by the number of stories and references to new media’s role in supporting the democratic revolution. More importantly, protesters in both Egypt and Tunisia defeated their governments. As a result, the positive uses of technology are seen as triumphing over any negative uses.
Limitations
This study’s main limitation is its focus on only two U.S. news websites. Although, many people obtain their news from CNN.com and FoxNews.com, numerous other news outlets covered both revolutions. This study only looked at text produced by each news organization, but each outlet’s website contains text, video, audio, and images. The argument could be made that when audiences visit the sites, they obtain their information from a multimedia blend of sources, and a research focus on written text alone is not representative of the user experience. As a result, further research is needed that includes written text along with sound and image. Because online news sites are themselves an example of new media content and are shaped by new media practices, the content produced by an Internet-based publication may be biased toward new media. Therefore, further research is needed regarding how traditional media such as newspapers, TV, and radio cover and frame new media.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to form a baseline of knowledge regarding U.S. news coverage of new media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Discourse analysis was used to examine the written texts on CNN.com and FoxNews.com and revealed that the news outlets gave the greatest coverage to social media while downplaying the role of other technology, like mobile media, during the revolutions. The role of new media in the revolutions was framed as generation shaper, weapon, revolutionary force, and tool. The framing of new media reveals the perpetuation of the technological determinism versus social constructivism perspectives of technology and the utopian view of new media as a facilitator of democracy. When the research project began, several North African and Middle Eastern countries were paralyzed by popular political revolts, and as the project came to a close, those conflicts remain unresolved. The additional research questions raised by this research as well as the ongoing political struggles of this portion of the world should serve as an impetus for new media scholars to continue investigating the roles of new media in these conflicts and their portrayal within the press.
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Facebook rising: The U.S. media’s disproportionate emphasis on social media over mobile media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions
Introduction
As 2010 gave way to 2011, the political uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt caught the attention of the U.S. press. News coverage was extensive with the Egyptian Revolution garnering the most attention: the popular uprising that lead to the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the largest international news event covered by U.S. news organizations since 2007, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism (Jurkowitz, 2011). One of the story angles explored by U.S. news organizations was the role of new media and technology in the revolutions. Photojournalists working in Egypt captured images of people celebrating with mobile devices in hand (see Figure 1), and a CNN.com headline declared “Tunisian Protests Fueled by Social Media Networks” (Lister, 2011). This study uses discourse analysis to investigate how two prominent and politically divergent online news organizations in the United States, CNN.com and FoxNews.com, explained the role of technology during Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution and the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. In particular, this study aims to assess how mobile media was presented in news reports in comparison to other forms of new media, such as social media, and to document how the news sources frame the role of new media in political revolutions.
Literature Review
Framing theory provides the theoretical base for this study. The creation of news is not an objective process in which detached journalists observe the world and pass unbiased information along to the public; rather, news is created through subjective journalistic practices affected by multiple influences including a society's dominant ideology and media routines (Gitlin, 1980; Shoemaker & Reese, 1996; Schudson, 1997). According to framing theory, these influences manifest themselves in media content through the elevated presentation of particular aspects of the subject of the news report and suppression of other factors (Gitlin, 1980; Entman, 1993; Reese, 2001). "Frames are principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens, and what matters" (Gitlin, 1980, p. 6). The media frames found in news content, then, provide a limited view of a phenomenon, like the role of new media in a political uprising. Media framing of a particular subject is important because researchers have established that framing affects consumers' perceptions of the person, place, issue, or phenomenon ( Druckman, 2001; Entman, 1993; Entman & Rojecki, 1993; Evans, 2010). "Upon finishing a clear, well-constructed article, readers form opinions on the causes, actors and significance of the events reported. However, the apparently factual news items presented to the public often lead the public to understand events from a particular perspective, or frame, advanced by the media" (Evans, 2010, p. 210). And so, the study of media frames used to describe the role of new media in political uprisings is important because these frames have the potential to influence how the public may view new media within the context of revolution.
Since the writing of the Phaedrus, and possibly even prior, discourse regarding communication technology has reflected a "binary logic": technology can improve life or destroy it (Gunkel, 2007). This dialectic has been applied to the discussion of the impact new media has had and will continue to have on politics, particularly democracy (Papacharissi, 2010). Scholars and activists who argue new media has the power to improve the political system think that technology can create new space for civic discourse (Blumler & Gurevitch, 2001; Feenberg, 2009); increase dialogue between citizens and their leaders (Blumler & Gurevitch, 2001); enable direct democracy to replace representative democracy (Westen, 2000); and empower citizens to hold people in power responsible for their actions (Kann, Berry, Gant, & Zager, 2007). Social media has been framed as having the potential "for enhancing democracy on the one hand by providing new ways of inclusion and direct citizen participation and spreading democracy on the other by means of inhibiting secrecy by repressive governments and providing unprecedented possibilities to self-organize" (Hoffmann & Kornweitz, 2011, p. 7).
But other researchers have argued that new media do not lead to a revolution in the political process and, instead, maintain the status quo (Davis, 1999). These scholars frame the Internet as a crowded, imperfect place with a "cacophony of voices" (Sunstein, 2001, p. 56) in which no one’s opinion can be heard or people only listen to opinions similar to their own. New media also are framed as a threat to the autonomy in the political process: “Democracy is threatened above all by new technologies of surveillance that employ the network to concentrate information from many sources, exposing deviations from the norm through tracking and data mining” (Feenberg, 2009, p. 78).
As mobile technology has spread and replaced fixed forms of media, scholars have started to explore how mobile media and other emerging forms of new media, such as online social networks, affect the political process (e.g. Castells et al., 2007; Rheingold, 2002). Castells et al. (2007) explain that the coupling of mobile technology and social media has created a "new form of public space" that can be used for multiple purposes including the facilitation of political change (Castells et al., 2007, pg 185). The Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions are not the first popular uprisings to bring attention to the role of new media in modern politics. Mobile technology often is credited as playing an integral role in the overthrow of the Philippine president during the People Power II movement (Pertierra et al., 2002). But, Castells et al. (2007) and Pertierra et al. (2002) also caution that although new media was used in the facilitation of political change in the Philippines, it was not the sole factor that caused the uprising or forced the president from power.
Although scholars have explored societal views of new media, very little research exists regarding how news organizations frame new media technologies in general (Cornish, 2008) and how the press portrays new media during recent political uprisings in particular. Newspaper coverage of the Internet from 1988 through 1995 frame the emerging technology overall in a predominately negative manner (Cornish, 2008). News stories from this time period explore the connection between the Internet and democracy and frame the Internet as either an equalizer that could provide a path to democracy or a hurdle to the reasoned debate needed to sustain democracy (Cornish, 2008). Although not the aim of their research regarding the use of cell phones in the Philippines, Pertierra et al.’s (2002) limited analysis of the Philippine news media’s coverage of the role of mobile technology during the People Power II movement reveals that the popular press portrayed the cell phone as a “mysterious force” that should be credited with the formation and success of the political movement: “In short, it is the technology that does things – makes things happen – not the people who use it” (Pertierra et al., 2002, p. 104). Pertierra et al. (2002) point out that this portrayal is laden with a false “utopian understanding of technology” (p. 107) and conclude that although mobile technology was a factor in the uprising, it “was not the one for which it has usually been praised in the media since the event – namely, that of crowd drawer par excellence” (p. 123).
Given the dearth of research regarding how U.S. news organizations portray new media during political uprisings, the goal of this study is to provide a baseline of knowledge regarding which new media receive coverage and how U.S. news outlets frame the role of new media during the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. This study comes at a critical time in the history of North Africa and the Middle East. Following the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, citizens in neighboring countries began protesting for government reform. As of the writing of this research, NATO was using force to protect Libyan rebels from acts of violence from their own government. The way in which U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions and his decision to order the U.S. armed forces to take part in attacks on the Libyan government have become political hot buttons that may affect the 2012 presidential race. And so, the events in North Africa and the Middle East have had an impact throughout the world. Given the extensive media coverage of the uprisings, the ability of media frames to affect consumers' understanding and perceptions of a topic, the ubiquitous nature of mobile media and the lack of research comparing it with other media, the political context of the region and the world, and the lack of research regarding how news organizations frame new media during revolution, the exploration of media frames of new media's role in the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings is warranted.
Analysis
Discourse analysis is used to identify the different types of new media covered by U.S. news organizations and the media frames of new media’s role during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Discourse analysis involves the study of texts that can be written, spoken, or visual (Fairclough, 1995). For this study, texts are written news stories regarding the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions that include references to or are about new media, are produced by journalists working for the study publications, and are not opinion pieces. CNN.com and FoxNews.com were selected as the study texts for several reasons. American media consumers are increasingly obtaining their news online: In 2010, approximately 6 out of every 10 news consumers obtained their news from an online source, and two of the most prominent online news outlets are CNN.com and FoxNews.com, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Furthermore, the news organizations have a reputation for portraying political news differently. CNN is regarded as being a centrist news organization while Fox News is often viewed as having a conservative bent.
For CNN.com, the study texts were obtained from LexisNexis Academic using the keywords Tunisia and Egypt. FoxNews.com is not part of the LexisNexis database, and texts from this source were obtained from the news website. FoxNews.com does not have an advanced search feature on its site, so multiple keyword searches based on key people, places, and possible technology used in the uprisings had to be conducted to collect the study sample: “Tunisia and Bouazizi,” “Tunisia and Ben Ali,” “Tunisia and Twitter,” “Tunisia and phone,” “Tunisia and social media,” “Tunisia and Facebook,” “Tunisia and mobile,” “Hosni Mubarak,” “Tahrir Square,” “Muslim Brotherhood,” “ElBaradei,” “Wael Ghonim,” “Egypt and Twitter,” “Egypt and phone,” “Egypt and social media,” “Egypt and Facebook,” and “Egypt and mobile.” The study time period was the beginning of the formal protests in each country through one week after each country’s leader left power. One week was added at the end of each revolution to allow for analysis stories that typically come after an event. The study dates for Tunisia were Dec. 17, 2010 – Jan. 21, 2011 and for Egypt, Jan. 25 – Feb. 18, 2011.
The sampling procedures yielded an unequal amount of stories for each news organization and for each event. For both publications, the amount of coverage devoted to Egypt dwarfed the amount of coverage allotted to the Tunisian Revolution. There are several explanations for the disparity. Two of the most likely explanations are that Egypt is a larger country with greater power in the region and the Tunisian Revolution occurred first and alerted the U.S. media to unrest in the region. The organization of each news outlet also affected the amount of stories produced. CNN.com has an internal wire service and staff writers, but FoxNews.com relies heavily on the Associated Press for stories from other parts of the world. Based on the sampling criteria, stories from the Associated Press were excluded from the study because they were not authored by someone at FoxNews.com. Nine stories about the Tunisian Revolution and some form of new media were studied from CNN.com, and only one story was available from FoxNews.com. For the Egyptian Revolution, 31 stories from CNN.com and 15 stories from FoxNews.com were reviewed.
Several thematic questions, based on the goals of this study, guided the discourse analysis: What types of new media do news outlets identify in connection with the revolutions? How is mobile media portrayed in the stories in comparison to other types of new media? How do news outlets explain the connection between new media and the revolutions? How does coverage of new media and the revolutions change over time? To what extent is framing of new media’s connection to revolution similar for each uprising? To address these questions, study texts first were examined for references to new media and explanations of new media’s connection to the revolutions. Next, the texts were examined for the presence of patterns regarding the descriptions of new media’s connection to the revolutions and repetition of these patterns over time.
New media coverage
Both websites contained stories about the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions that discussed new media’s role or mentioned a particular type of new media. Coverage of new media took two forms: new media were either the focus of the story, as in CNN.com’s “Making Sense of the Internet and Egypt” (Sutter, 2011 January 31), or, more frequently, were mentioned in passing as part of a story regarding a different aspect of the revolution. New media were not discussed throughout the entire revolution; Instead, a few stories about or including new media would appear, and then coverage would drop off for a few days, only to come back into focus later. Part of this ebb and flow of new media coverage had to do with the events occurring during the revolutions. At one point, the Egyptian government shut off Internet and mobile phone service, a move that spawned several stories about these outages; however, after data services were curtailed, stories discussing new media declined because the Internet could not play a role in the revolutions. The inconsistent media coverage also can be attributed to the degree of awareness each news outlet had of the revolutions. CNN.com’s first story that mentioned a type of new media in connection with the Tunisian uprising didn’t come until January 10, three weeks after the protests started. FoxNews.com’s only story on the subject was on January 17, three days after Tunisia’s leader left the country. In comparison, references to new media during the Egyptian Revolution popped up on the first day on CNN.com and within three days on FoxNews.com. New media were most likely discussed earlier in the Egyptian uprising because the events of the Tunisian Revolution had primed the news outlets to look for similarities in Egypt. In addition, Tunisia is a small country in North Africa, and its uprising might not have been covered heavily at first because it was not as great of a consequence to the U.S. as other world events.
The types of new media and particular applications and services discussed include “social media,” Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, the internet (general reference), specific websites (like WikiLeaks), Blackberry messenger, and text messaging. Although different types of new media were covered during each uprising and by each news outlet, “social media” and the social networking sites Facebook and Twitter dominated the media coverage. Social media and specific social media sites not only were mentioned most often in stories about the revolutions but also were the main focus of the majority of CNN.com new stories aimed at explaining technology’s connection to the uprisings. Out of CNN.com’s nine stories regarding Tunisia’s uprising that mentioned some form of new media, two of them centered on the role of social media in the revolution: “Tunisian Protests Fueled by Social Media Networks” (Lister, 2011) and “Tunisians Abroad: Facebook, Regular Citizens Key to Revolution” (Yan, 2011). Several of CNN.com’s stories regarding the Egyptian Revolution also looked at social media’s role in the revolution: “Social Media @ the Front Line in Egypt” (Lister & Smith, 2011) and “Google, Twitter Help Give Voice to Egyptians” (Gross, 2011).
In contrast, mobile media received minimal coverage by each news outlet. Only one news story regarding the Tunisian Revolution from either FoxNews.com or CNN.com mentions mobile devices, and then, the reference is brief. In a first-person narrative of arriving in Tunisia, a journalist describes how after the plane landed, the cell phones of passengers lit up with the news that the president had fled the country (Wedeman, 2011). A single story by FoxNews.com, “Vodafone: Egypt Forced Us to Send Pro-Mubarak Text Messages,” centers on mobile technology and the Egyptian Revolution (Doocy, 2011). It details how the Egyptian government ordered mobile service providers to send out several pro-government text messages but does not explain whether the messages were effective or whether protesters also used mobile media to distribute messages.
Mobile media are discussed most in connection with the Egyptian Revolution in stories regarding the government’s decision to block Internet and cell services, and the role mobile media may have had in the revolution often is implied. For example, in “Internet, Phones Down as Egypt Braces for `Day of Rage,’” FoxNews.com (2011 January 28) states, “The Internet appeared to remain cut off Friday morning, and cell-phone text and Blackberry messenger services were all cut or operating sporadically in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations” (par. 8). The preceding text indicates that text-messaging and mobile devices were somehow involved in organizing the protests but does not provide any additional information on how the process of organizing an uprising via mobile device or the Internet occurs. A reader can assume that if the government took the step of cutting off mobile service, then it must have had some importance to the demonstrations, but the role of mobile media in the revolution is not clear.
Furthermore, stories regarding the Egyptian government’s shut down of communication services emphasize the loss of the Internet and an inability to connect to social media over the mobile media blackout. Most of the space in these reports is dedicated to discussing the implications of the Internet going dark with little space allotted to discussing the loss of mobile services. Journalists also present the inability to use social media as the main consequence of the communication shutdown. A FoxNews.com report about the outage states, “Those who had been using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to distribute images and video to the outside world have had to come up [with] more creative ways to communicate after the Egyptian government blocked Internet and cell service…” (Macedo, 2011 January 28, par. 2). Another CNN.com story also explains that “many in Egypt were lamenting their inability to access Facebook and Twitter on Thursday” (Lister & Smith, 2011, par. 15).
The brief exception to the presentation of social media as more important than mobile technology comes several paragraphs into the CNN.com story “Reports say Egypt Web Shutdown is Coordinated, Extensive” (Milian, 2011). The story dedicates three of 28 paragraphs to presenting an Egyptian activist’s opinion that cell phone service is used more by Egyptians than social media. Milian (2011) quotes activist Parvez Sharma: “`These people,’ Sharma said of Egypt’s low-income population, ‘are not Twittering and Facebooking and e-mailing. They’ve never even heard of the damned internet, most of them’” (par. 8). Sharma explains that Egyptians rely most on cell phones and text messages to communicate and that protest organizers have used mobile services to coordinate protests. Milian, however, seems to immediately discount Sharma’s claims by following his comments with, “But social media sites have been used by key event organizers to reach other visible activists with Web access and to get the word back to other parts of the world” (par. 28). In addition, other paragraphs that precede and follow Sharma’s statements emphasize social media. As a result, Sharma’s opinions are presented as a minority viewpoint that is questionable, and mobile media again is portrayed as lesser to social media. Overall, the news outlets’ emphasis on social media and the importance of Facebook and Twitter portrays mobile media, as well as other new media, as less important to the revolutions than social media.
New media frames
Analysis of the study texts yielded numerous media frames, but because of time and space constraints, only the most prominent frames are discussed here. The role of new media during the revolution is framed as a generation shaper, a weapon, a revolutionary force, and a tool. As discussed previously, social media were featured more prominently than any other new media, and so, readers should keep in mind that the media frames identified here most closely reflect the portrayal of social media. The media frames are discussed below in order of their frequency with new media as generation shaper being the least used of the prominent frames and new media as a tool being the most common.
New media as generation shaper
One of the frames of new media’s role in the revolution is that of a force that shaped a generation of protesters calling for democracy. This frame is found only in CNN.com’s stories about the Egyptian revolution. Part of CNN.com’s coverage included a focus on exploring why protesters, particularly young and educated citizens, were suddenly marching for government reform in a country that had been ruled by an autocrat for decades. One of the explanations given for the sudden revolt was that the young people taking part in the protests were part of a new generation – a generation influenced by and formed around the Internet and social media. One way in which the Internet is alleged to have shaped the protest generation is through instilling the young people with the belief that answers to questions and solutions to problems should be instantaneous, like Internet communication. This portrayal is found in a quote by Kamal Zakher, a Coptic Christian leader, regarding the protesters:
"`These protests are a part of a phenomenon created by the youth – not affected by anypolitical leadership. There is a black hole between these protesters and the current regime because these youthful protesters are a part of the internet generation who is used to quick responses. This black hole is created due to the regime’s slow response to the demonstrations’" (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 February 1, par. 12). CNN.com also portrays the demonstrators as youth who have been shaped by the revolutionary power of social media. The news outlet quotes an explanation of the protesters’ motives by Eric Trager, a scholar and a student who studied in Egypt: “`Egypt’s liberal activists overwhelmingly come from the wired generation of Twitter and Facebook, and this makes them optimistic that pro-democratic movements can go viral…’” (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 January 25, par. 10). CNN.com further shows how social media have shaped a generation in its portrayal of Wael Ghonim, one of the revolution’s leaders who maintained a Facebook page popular with the revolutionaries. In an article about Ghonim, CNN.com identifies one of Ghonim’s heroes as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Watson, 2011). The news organization also uses naming terms for the protesters, like “young digital revolutionaries” (Labott & Levs, 2011, par. 3) that further add to the framing of new media as a generation-shaping force.
New media as weapon
In her analysis of the framing of the Internet by newspaper journalists, Cornish (2008) found the press portrayed the Internet as “war.” A similar frame can be identified in CNN.com and FoxNews.com’s portrayal of the use of new media as a weapon during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. This frame is built by the naming terms each website uses for new media as well as the actions associated with new media. The clearest example of how CNN.com frames the role of new media as a weapon is through its description of social media as “another important weapon for the demonstrators” (Milian, 2011, par. 2). FoxNews.com also compares the protesters to soldiers and their use of social media to the use of military arms: “The tyrants’ antagonists are not conventional armies or coup plotters but literate and disaffected young people, more of them than ever before, armed with access to instant, global communications in the form of social networking media like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and the Internet” (Rosen, 2011, par. 4). The news websites use other terms in reference to new media like attack, launch, salvo, and combat that also are commonly associated with weapons. For example, an effort by the hacking organization Anonymous to help Tunisians retaliate against their government is described by CNN.com as carrying out an attack (Lister, 2011).
New media as revolutionary force
Another frame found in CNN.com and FoxNews.com’s coverage of both uprisings is new media as a revolutionary force. The press build this frame by presenting new media as separate from their human users and as operating as autonomous entities that can influence the revolution. CNN.com uses the term “fueled” in stories regarding both Tunisia and Egypt to describe how social media, and not its users, propelled the revolution: “The protest movement in Egypt has been fueled by blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook” (CNN Wire Staff, 2011 January 27, par. 42). In this statement, the technology, and not humans, is driving the revolution. In fact, the term “drive” is used several times by the news outlets in reference to new media’s role. Journalists also endow new media with the ability to create themselves and the revolution: “A Facebook page called `We Are All Khaled Said’ – named after a 27-year-old Egyptian businessman from Alexandria who was beaten to death by police last June – sprung up, calling for protests on January 25” (CNN Staff, 2011 February 10, par. 9). In FoxNews.com (2011 February 9), the same Facebook page that spontaneously created itself also is credited with having “rallied support for the protest movement” (par. 19). And Facebook is credited with not only starting the Egyptian Revolution but also ending it according to a quote by Sally Toma, one of the protest organizers: “Facebook brought down the regime” (FoxNews.com, 2011 February 11, par. 18).
New media as tool
The most pervasive frame in the news organizations’ coverage of both revolutions is that of new media as a tool. Through this frame, CNN.com and FoxNews.com portray new media as technology used by protesters or the government to obtain a goal. Unlike the revolutionary force frame in which technology acts on its own, the tool frame positions action with the human users of the new media. The news outlets frame new media as a tool that helps protesters organize demonstrations and disseminate information and that aids the embattled governments in their suppression of protesters.
In a CNN.com article regarding the role of new media during the revolutions, several experts rebuke technology as the cause of the uprisings, and instead directly refer to new media as a “tool” used by both protesters and governments (Sutter, 2011). Both news outlets frame new media as a tool for organizing the protesters’ actions. CNN.com portrays social media as “a critical tool for arranging rendezvous” for Egyptian protesters (Lister & Smith, 2011, par. 6), and FoxNews.com explains that the Egyptian “protests were started by a small core of secular, liberal youth activists organizing on the Internet…” (2011 February 11, par. 17). CNN.com describes demonstrations in Tunisia as “being organized and supported through online networks centered on Twitter and Facebook” (Lister, 2011, par. 1).
The news outlets also frame new media as a tool used to disseminate information among protesters and from the protesters to the outside world. A CNN.com article explains, “Young digital revolutionaries are using social networking to both share their best practices and inspire would-be activists throughout the region – so-called `liberation technology’” (Milian, 2011, par. 10). During the Tunisian Revolution, protesters are described as using blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to disseminate information, photos, and video about the uprising (Lister, 2011). Stories from CNN.com and FoxNews.com regarding the Egyptian Revolution contain numerous references to how key protest leaders, including Mohamed ElBaradei and Wael Ghonim, use Twitter to communicate with other demonstrators and the media.
The majority of coverage on CNN.com and FoxNews.com ties the use of new media to the protesters, but the governments of Egypt and Tunisia also used new media to advance their own causes. When the press discussed the governments’ use of technology, they framed new media as a tool of suppression. Stories from both news sources regarding Tunisia explain how “activists in Tunisia had digital technology turned on them when the government allegedly captured its citizens’ usernames and passwords on various e-mail and social media sites in order to spy on them and squelch dissenting speech” (Macedo, 2011 February 4, par. 3). They also portray the Tunisian government as using Internet filters to bock citizens’ access to particular websites. The press also focuses on how the Egyptian government used technology to stop Internet and cell phone service, and thus, the flow of information between organizers: “Cell-phone text and Blackberry Messenger services were all cut or operating sporadically in what appeared to be a move by authorities to disrupt the organization of demonstrations. Authorities appear to have been disrupting social networking sites, used as an organizing tool by protesters, throughout the week” (FoxNews.com, 2011 January 28, pars. 48-49).
Discussion and Conclusion
New media coverage
Examination of the study texts revealed that CNN.com and FoxNews.com stress the role of social media in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions over the contributions of other types of technology, including mobile media. Although outside the scope of this study, there are several explanations for the press’s emphasis on social media versus mobile media. The most obvious reason the news outlets may have focused most on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook is that social media actually was a greater factor in the revolutions than other types of new media. However, the extreme effort by the Egyptian government to block cell phone service; the comments by at least one Egyptian about the importance of text-messaging and phone calls to the revolution; and previous research regarding the role of mobile media coupled with social networks in political uprisings (e.g. Castells et al., 2007; Pertierra et al., 2002; Rheingold, 2002) seem to indicate that mobile media also may have played a vital role in the revolutions and the importance of social media may have been exaggerated.
The role of social media and, in particular, sites like Twitter and Facebook may have been overemphasized for several reasons. Twitter and Facebook, the two most commonly referenced SNS in U.S. news coverage of the events, are run by U.S. companies. In addition, the services are popular in the U.S. and during the past year have garnered a great deal of attention from the U.S. press. In December 2010, Time named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg its Person of the Year – a title the magazine bestows on the most influential newsmaker for the year, according to Time’s website. Furthermore, journalists covering the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings followed the events via social media. CNN.com explains that reporters cannot always make it to foreign countries where news is happening but, in the case of the Egyptian Revolution, “social media can help tip off journalists about developments in places they can’t get to” (Lister & Smith, par. 5). The U.S. news media’s familiarity with social media and their reliance on it as a source may have primed journalists to the role of social media in political events. As a result they focused on the accessible and familiar new media while ignoring other technology.
The nature of mobile media and technology in general may also have contributed to the news media’s downplay of mobile technology. According to the most recent data available from the Pew Internet & American Life Project (2010), 85 percent of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone, making the cell phone the most ubiquitous mobile device in the nation. In his book about ubiquitous computing, Everyware, Greenfield (2006) states that well-designed digital devices reach a state where they become such a part of people’s lives that they “abscond from awareness” (p. 26). Given the ubiquitous nature of the cell phone, journalists working for CNN.com and FoxNews.com may have overlooked contributions to the revolution by cell phones because mobile technology is such a pervasive part of the American lifestyle that people forget the importance and consequences of mobile technology.
At this point, explanations for why CNN.com and FoxNews.com focused on social media over other technology, namely mobile media, are conjecture. And so, further research is needed regarding why social media is portrayed more prominently in news coverage of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. If scholars uncover that social media received a disproportionate amount of coverage when compared to their actual contribution to the revolutions, then additional studies exploring why this occurred are warranted.
New media frames
Four prominent media frames regarding the role of new media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were identified: new media as generation shaper; new media as weapon; new media as revolutionary force; and new media as tool. Of the four, new media as tool was the most pervasive frame and the only frame applied to the use of new media by both the protesters calling for reform and the governments trying to keep control of their countries.
The press’s framing of new media can best be explained by two divergent theories regarding the integration, use, and impact of technology: technological determinism versus social constructivism. Technological determinism can be defined as the theoretical position “that certain technologies are bound to produce certain social, cultural, and political effects” (Morozov, 2011, p. 289). Technology is “an autonomous object, not in itself subject to social forces” (Lax, 2009, p. 212) that shapes how people live (Perusco & Michael, 2007, p. 11). A technological determinist perspective can be found in the frames of new media as generation shaper and new media as revolutionary force. In both frames, the press give technology autonomy and position new media as the impetus behind the views of a particular generation and the spark and engine for political uprisings. A social constructivist viewpoint, however, holds that social forces shape technology and its uses (Lax, 2009, p. 212). The social constructivist perspective is reflected in the framing of new media as weapon and tool: In both frames, people and the capability of the technology determine how it is used.
Pertierra et al.’s (2002) research regarding the use of mobile phones during the Philippines People Power II movement found that the news media portrayed the ability of mobile media to promote democracy from a utopian perspective. Likewise, FoxNews.com and CNN.com both present the role of new media in the two revolutions in a predominantly positive light. The media frames of generation shaper and revolutionary force attribute the democratic gains made by the protesters to the technology. As a result, new media is portrayed as a force that spreads democracy to people who are oppressed. The frames of new media as weapon and as tool demonstrate how technology assisted the protesters in reaching their goals of freedom. True, part of the press’s coverage showed how the government can use technology to suppress opposition; however, the amount of coverage allotted to this negative consequence of technology was far surpassed by the number of stories and references to new media’s role in supporting the democratic revolution. More importantly, protesters in both Egypt and Tunisia defeated their governments. As a result, the positive uses of technology are seen as triumphing over any negative uses.
Limitations
This study’s main limitation is its focus on only two U.S. news websites. Although, many people obtain their news from CNN.com and FoxNews.com, numerous other news outlets covered both revolutions. This study only looked at text produced by each news organization, but each outlet’s website contains text, video, audio, and images. The argument could be made that when audiences visit the sites, they obtain their information from a multimedia blend of sources, and a research focus on written text alone is not representative of the user experience. As a result, further research is needed that includes written text along with sound and image. Because online news sites are themselves an example of new media content and are shaped by new media practices, the content produced by an Internet-based publication may be biased toward new media. Therefore, further research is needed regarding how traditional media such as newspapers, TV, and radio cover and frame new media.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to form a baseline of knowledge regarding U.S. news coverage of new media during the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. Discourse analysis was used to examine the written texts on CNN.com and FoxNews.com and revealed that the news outlets gave the greatest coverage to social media while downplaying the role of other technology, like mobile media, during the revolutions. The role of new media in the revolutions was framed as generation shaper, weapon, revolutionary force, and tool. The framing of new media reveals the perpetuation of the technological determinism versus social constructivism perspectives of technology and the utopian view of new media as a facilitator of democracy. When the research project began, several North African and Middle Eastern countries were paralyzed by popular political revolts, and as the project came to a close, those conflicts remain unresolved. The additional research questions raised by this research as well as the ongoing political struggles of this portion of the world should serve as an impetus for new media scholars to continue investigating the roles of new media in these conflicts and their portrayal within the press.
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