A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Platforms and the Effects of the Internet Cut-Off for Egypt's Social Transformation Movements

Social media have been implicated in the recent social movements in much of the Arab world. This study examines the use of social media (SM) platforms, namely Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, in the movements that took place in Egypt during 2011-2013. In particular, we explore the relative usefulness of SM affordances for each platform and relate to affordances that were reported to be significant during Egypt’s social transformation movement in a previous study. We also investigate usage levels for each platform over the period of our study and examine how SM users perceived the effects of the Internet cut-off, which blocked access to these platforms for several days at a critical point in the movement. We do so using a survey of university students, who formed a significant group in Egypt’s social movements.