I undertook this project as the basis of my master's thesis. This online space is a supplemental to the text of that paper. In time, I will post visualizations and resources for the data that I could not include in the paper because of space and technological constraints.
April 6 User Activity Visualization: A visualization of how users entered and exited the discussions on the Facebook wall on the April 6 group during its first two months.
In March 2008, two Egyptian youths started a group on the popular social networking website, Facebook, to support the strike of textile workers in the industry city of Mahalla al-Kobra. They named the group the "April 6 Strike" to note the strike date, and also to organize political action on that date. Within several days, a group envisioned to attract several hundred political activists mushroomed to over 70,000 members. Along with the group's dramatic growth, there grew a vibrant discussion of its goals, principles, and tactics. The political substance of discussion messages was broad, including support for free speech, economic improvement, and condemnation of the corrupt Mubarak government. A general strike was the agreed-upon action for the day, if one could have been said to emerge. When the day of action came, workers in Mahalla visibly went on strike en masse. In Cairo and Alexandria, the strike was considered successful by activists, with independent newspapers reporting a high absence level for public employees and very few people in street markets. However, the state-run press claims that things were more or less operating at the status quo.
I've collected all the Facebook wall messages from the original 6 April Strike group from March 23, 2008 to late May 2008. Included in this time period is the planning of the strike, the strike itself, the imprisonment of Israa Abdel Fattah, the subsequent strike planned for Mubarak's birthday of 4 May, and then some discussion afterward.
During this time period, activists were trying to organize to get people to observe the general strike, to come to demonstrations, and to discuss the various topics related to political issues in Egypt. The messages are broad-ranging, from dialogue with other group members and calls to action, to spam and advertisements. Messages in the group are in a mix of languages, namely English, Arabic, and Franco-Arabic. There are some 64,000 messages in the dataset.
The goal of my project is to get a sense of what is happening in this group. Facebook was also a relatively new social media platform in Egypt (not officially released into Arabic until 2009) , so the terms of its use were also being negotiated.