Rebuilding the country after the January 2011 revolution needed a platform for people to address their outstanding grievances and make them visible to authorities. That idea drove Mohamed Salah and Mahmoud Fathi in March 2011 to establish a news update page on Facebook aimed at highlighting the plight of the Al-Omraniya neighborhood residents in Giza, and bring their complaints before the ruling elite. It also aimed at scandalizing corruption in that neighborhood and encouraged people to contribute to initiatives for finding solutions.
Rebuilding the country after the January 2011 revolution needed a platform for people to address their outstanding grievances and make them visible to authorities. That idea drove Mohamed Salah and Mahmoud Fathi in March 2011 to establish a news update page on Facebook aimed at highlighting the plight of the Al-Omraniya neighborhood residents in Giza, and bring their complaints before the ruling elite. It also aimed at scandalizing corruption in that neighborhood and encouraged people to contribute to initiatives for finding solutions.
Omraniya News Network (ONN) was the result, spurred by the youth revolution alliances that emerged from Tahrir Square and the popular committees that protected Egypt following the forced police withdrawal on 28 January 2011.
Mohamed Salah and his friend took advantage of the prevailing state of optimism within the youth circles and visited coffee shops, streets and youth centers to search for volunteers to provide a large audience of nearly 800,000 inhabitants of Omraniya neighborhood with news updates. They succeeded in mobilizing 70 volunteers, who did not only contributed with street visits and ‘shift’ work but also paid a monthly subscription fee of EGP 20 (US $ 2.25) per month to finance their Facebook page project.
Neither was a journalist, media student or even newspaper apprentice, therefore they relied on pictures and video clips to present the news in the form of short anecdotes or ‘tweets’. Several months later, this news network attracted thousands of followers due their focusing on many negligence files including Al-Sadr Hospital, cleaning and sanitation sector, traffic and corruption in their neighborhood. They received blackmail, threats and prosecution attempts from the executive bodies, which they ignored and kept their page at the same level of focus and follow-ups by other newspapers, pursued their neighborhood problems and gained readers.
A year since it was first launched, Omraniya News Network experiment attracted tens of thousands of followers. This success story made their page the focal point of several politicians and parties in the context of their youth integration efforts after the January revolution. However, ONN team did not accept that tendency because they hailed from diverse political trends and movements. Any attempt to identify themselves with a particular party or accept support from certain candidates was likely to disintegrate their project.
They have also refused to take any advertisements after a two-month experience, which they believe adversely reflected the independent nature of their network page. So far their news network is still active although it has been impacted by the lack of cash flow, the state of frustration within youth ranks and the violent divisions under the Muslim Brotherhood. Its team has been reduced to only 12 members, but they have spread their concept to other neighborhoods like Ahram Gardens, Boulak Dakrour and Qena governorate. They offered their new colleagues technical support and training based on their experience and advertising support.
Unfettered news reporting
Browsing the Internet across the Egyptian governorates, one comes across several Facebook pages geared toward presenting news updates from a local perspective.
There are several reasons for young people’s attempts to set up news outlets on social networking sites. One reason is the lack of printed newspapers for presenting the aspired service and citizens’ eagerness to search for substantive news reports, especially during crises. The most important reason however is people’s desire to free themselves from the fetters of regular newspapers or restricted websites. There is a strong tendency to avoid licensing requirements and even to follow the standards of journalistic reporting methods and use of formal language. Most pages mix opinion with news and information and do not deal with original and official sources. They are also spared the expenses of establishing offices or website.
Although this liberal trend is viewed as an advantage for developing a new reporting genre and exploring novel methods for news transmission, relying on video clips, pictures and mixing information with satire, it prejudices credibility and impartiality when covering controversial issues. It also frees itself from the restriction of using official language as a means of expressing opinion, which attracts more followers in a local environment that seeks to address serious problems without legal responsibilities.
In addition, this new trend attracts the dissatisfaction of executive bodies, which cannot legally prosecute and ban Facebook publications and resort to pressurizing those responsible for these pages in other ways. The page titled ‘Live from Ismailia’, which is followed by more than 100,000 followers, highlighted earlier the issue of inadequate choice and execution of statues in the governorate’s main squares. That news coverage led to the publication of the so-called statue ‘scandal’ including ‘Mazinger Grip and Sea Bride’ by the Cairo newspapers. Consequently, the official authorities in the governorate violently dealt with the founder of the page who happened to be a member of the opposition Al-Dostour Party and a supporter of January ‘revolutionaries’. The security forces arrested Mahmoud Abdelazim last February on charges of publishing false news, jeopardizing public peace and inciting people against the army and police. He was released four days later after paying an EGP 5000 (US $563) bail.
Al-Dostour Party published a statement: “The governor himself informed against the party member who worked as an executive officer of a social insurance establishment.” The page, which was first launched in March 2013 during the Muslim Brotherhood era by a number of volunteers is still active despite pressure and prosecution.
The same situation applies to the news pages in Northern Sinai, which are often accused of supporting terrorists and sympathizing with the Muslim Brotherhood groups. Their administrators keep their names and identities undisclosed.
Community-based news sources and movement
In the early stages of creating the news Facebook pages, it was impossible for their initiators to get any useful sources of information. The executive bodies including neighborhoods and directorates especially the security authorities and even the parties and civil society refused to deal with an anonymous entity, let alone the fact that their creators did not belong to official press circles and were primarily dependent on personal and family connections.
This situation urged the volunteers in these pages to assert themselves so as to encourage news sources to talk to them, given that self-assertion generates action and help them gain access to public sources, take photographs, increase their readership, become more integrated with the public and win people’s credibility.
Journalists who work for newspapers rely on media statements provided by the sources. In areas other than events and investigations, journalists depend on narratives and official information related to news reports. On the other hand, Facebook news pages depend on eyewitness reports, live pictures and video clips as major sources for credibility. In addition, journalists very often depend on Facebook page volunteers for collecting people’s reports, live pictures and related video clips.
In Dakahliya governorate, journalists often seek the help of Mustafa Al-Far, a volunteer at Facebook page ‘Mansoura Today’ which is followed by more than a quarter of a million readers as a source of pictures and video clips. Al-Far is famous for his direct coverage of events, his professional snapshots and video clips using simple tools.
‘Mansoura Today’ was launched in 2012 and provides news updates to the governorate’s population. Like other pages, it covers local developments and offers vital services for its audience including a search for missing people and alerting drivers about traffic jams. It also covers news about Egypt and the world and provides coverage about light news derived from foreign newspapers. Facebook news pages in the governorates and major neighborhoods provide reliable citizens’ journalism, which can be further verified and investigated by professional journalists through official sources. This applies to certain issues as a kind of cooperation and exchange of information between journalists and volunteers. It is believed that the most important aspect of Facebook news is sorting out the new journalist-oriented talents. It also acts, to a certain extent, as an independent and impartial forum that takes advantage of a highly competitive open market that allows the audience to classify efficient Facebook news providers. This new genre of social media journalism has greater chances to progress and develop than the local newspapers.
