Workers’ strikes and Facebook likes

Research on Egypt is looking at how to read revolution and grass roots opposition through social media. Social media allows access to datasets with an unprecedented range of detail, but presents a host of new challenges for researchers - Anne Alexander 25 January 2011 was the day Egypt's revolt began. People flooded the streets of cities across the country, calling for an end to the Mubarak regime. Two days later - in a moment unprecedented in history - the government turned off Egypt's internet, in the hope of quelling massive civil unrest. It didn't work. Two weeks later Mubarak stepped down. The Western media relished portraying the Egyptian uprising as the 'Facebook revolution', a digital epoch securing social media's place in history as a vehicle for political change - an unstoppable galvanising force.