On January 25th 2011, Egyptians revolted, thereby making history. Before the date, roads to political activism were being incrementally built towards their eventual converging on Tahrir Square. This chapter argues that “nodes of convergence,” defined as shared political and economic grievances, as well as shared virtual and physical spaces, had to be created first before mass mobilization for a collective action of millions on the street could ensue. Providing in-depth examination of events leading to January 25th, this chapter offers a case study for mobilization, from which generalized theory is extrapolated about online communities' convergence, networking, and coalition building. Two main Facebook pages were studied: April 6th Youth Movement and We Are All Khaled Said-- both in Arabic. The conceptualization is built on anthropological fieldwork trips in Egypt since March 2011. This covered ethnographic participant-observations and interviewing. For evidence triangulation purposes of the “convergence effect”, the authors conducted qualitative content analysis of significant posts.
How historical analogies in newspapers of five countries make sense of major events: 9/11, Mumbai and Tahrir Square
