5 April 2011
“We are all Khaled Said”. There was a young 28-year-old man who kept united the protesters filling the Egyptian squares to oppose Mubarak. Tortured and killed by policemen who wanted to search him at an internet café in the suburbs of Alexandria last June, Khaled was at the heart of mobilization. His name united an entire people, who allowed him to speak out with one single voice to say “enough” to the regime’s abuse of power. The images of his tortured body circulated the country and were shared online by millions of Egyptians. Beaten up and killed, probably because he wanted to post online a video showing two policemen involved in drug trafficking, Khaled’s name has been used for the Facebook page around which protesters gathered to then physically take to the streets to oppose Mubarak and his system. Would all this have taken place even without Facebook, Twitter and other social networks? According to Steven Livingston, professor at George Washington University and an expert on the way in which the media influences mechanisms in democracies, the answer is linked to technology, more specifically to multiple technologies, such as mobile phones, computers, satellites and cables for the high-speed transmission of data. All this creates a new environment for news that allows citizens to be more aware of what is happening around them and demand power to be more transparent, open and efficient. This provides an immense opportunity for democracies in emerging countries, as the American professor stated in a recent study entitled Africa’s Evolving Infosystems: A Pathway to Stability and Development. He emphasizes the manner in which digital media increase the possibility of creating health systems, helping the agricultural produce market, setting up banking services as well as improving public security and the very quality of democracy itself.