CITATION

J. Lambiase. (2012). “Crisis and kairos: Social media activists exploit timing to support anti-government protests.” In A. George and C. Pratt’s (Ed.) Case Studies in Crisis Communication: International Perspectives on Hits and Misses. New York: Routledge. [A version of this chapter was presented as refereed research at the annual conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 2011, St. Louis.]

Crisis and kairos:

Social media activists exploit timing to support anti-government protests

Jacqueline Lambiase, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Texas Christian University

Moldova. Iran. Tunisia. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Sudan. Libya. These nations and their

citizens engaged in varying dialogues during 2009-2011, resulting in government

accommodations of demands, regime change, hard-line responses, or civil war. Frequently, these

dialogues occurred in computer-mediated spaces, especially blogs and social media. While all of

these engagements remain in online spaces, some burst into protests in public squares and most

resulted in violence writ small and large. This chapter primarily will trace social media efforts to

raise awareness of revolutionary ideas, garner support for these efforts, and transform this spirit

from digital expression to flesh-and-blood resistance. To a lesser extent, this project tracks

government efforts to suppress online activism, in order to capture activities of both activists and

their opponents. Except for a few recent studies, most crisis communication research has focused

on responses by companies and governments, rather than activists who oppose them (for a

review of activist-oriented studies, see Coombs and Holladay, 2010.)

Many political scientists, journalists, and their sources have commented on the ways that

social media sparked or supported these revolutions and protests (Agence France Presse, 2011;

Barry, 2009; Cohen, 2009; Eltahawy, 2011; Rich, 2011; Vick, 2011). One common objective of

social media efforts was to ignite and unite the body politic. One widely recognized strategy was

timing. Insiders and outsiders of these governments invoked “timing” as being right or wrong.

On Jan. 28, 2011, a minister in Israel’s government was quoted as saying, “I'm not sure the time

is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process" (Vick, 2011, pp. 3). One day

later, an Egyptian writer in Great Britain praised “Generation Facebook,” which has “kicked

aside the burden of history, determined to show us just how easy it is to tell the dictator it's time

to go” (Eltahawy, 2011, pp. 2). However, Libya’s citizens struggled to maintain opposition to

their dictator’s brutal crackdown, which turned into civil war; the press reported in March 2011

that the opportunity is slipping away, that “time (is) running out” (Reuters, 2011).

Much of crisis communication literature mentions time as an element for communication

professionals to ignore at their peril (Baron, 2003; Dilenschneider, 1990; Levine, 2002). In the

business culture of Westernized nations, “fast honesty” is a valued principle when compared to

stonewalling (Lambiase & Dempsey, 2006), and “tell it all and tell it fast” advice is common

among crisis communication experts (Dilenschneider, 1990, p. 169). The “golden hour” after a

crisis begins is perceived as the most critical time for an organization’s narrative to be

established (Baron, 2003, p. 251). In social media and online news media, with constant

deadlines and demand for new content, this short timeframe for making statements is seen as

more imperative than ever. Time, however, is reduced to the ticking of a stopwatch in this

conceptual framework. Yet seasoned crisis communicators know that while time is of the

essence, timing is everything. More important than the channel—whether radio, television,

newsreel, telephone, voice, mail, newspaper, social media, or copy machine—may be choosing

the correct message at the optimum time to communicate the most important information.

Known more commonly as analyzing the rhetorical situation, this ancient conceptual framework

is also known as kairos.

Kairos and crisis

What is kairos? In ancient Greece, rhetoricians used the term kairos to describe the

cultural circumstances that led to a “provisional truth” (Bizzell & Herzberg, 1990, p. 28). Other

scholars (Kinneavy & Eskin, 1994; Kinneavy, 1986) use the work of Aristotle to explore kairos

as situational context; Smith (1986) describes kairos as qualitative time “when something

appropriately happens that cannot happen just at ‘anytime’ … an opportunity which may not

recur” (p. 4). Lanham (1991) uses the work of sophist Gorgias to explain kairos as the means for

decision-making, since only time, place, and circumstance mattered when no absolute truth

exists. When this timing and circumstances fell into place, then a rhetorician who understood

kairos could use that opportunity to arrange words, images, and delivery for communicating

messages.

Across these definitions, kairos also indicates understanding of the audience’s frames of

mind and reference at a particular moment in time. If competing speakers vie for the attention of

the same audience, then one of those speakers could gain an advantage by grasping that cultural

moment through use of the rhetorical situation, in which timing, message, channel, and style of

delivery meet with an audience through kairos. Kinneavy and Eskin (1994) use Aristotle’s The

Rhetoric to argue that kairos may include a crisis situation tinged with emotion. In this

circumstance, “those … who have been wronged in the past should be feared because ‘they are

forever on the lookout for an opportunity’” (Aristotle, qtd. in Kinneavy & Eskin, 1994, p. 138).

Kairos, then, seems especially apt for describing the crisis communication feats used

during citizen demonstrations of nations in northern Africa, the Arab world, and eastern Europe

starting in 2009 through 2011. In these disparate nations, citizens gained power through social

media, and hierarchies shifted. Hierarchies between major news media and their audiences have

been leveled, too. One early social media example in the U.S. occurred when a bystander’s cell

phone video and student-generated online discussions rivaled major news media for attention

during the Virginia Tech shootings of 2007 (Palen, Vieweg, Sutton, Liu, & Hughes, 2007).

In much the same way, a few activist groups in Moldova in 2009 crafted messages and

scheduled protests, “making” content. A large number of others “moved” this content, sharing it

with their networks. Thus, movers are as important, perhaps more important, than the makers of

the original content. While some observers called the actions of these movers and makers

“Twitter Revolutions,” that moniker trivializes the risks, relationship-building, and hard work

behind the messaging and planning made visible through social media (Gladwell, 2010, 2011;

Rich, 2011; for more on this debate, see Agence France Presse, 2011). Even Twitter co-founder

Biz Stone downplays his company’s role in the real actions required for revolution (Gross,

2011). Yet there is no doubt that through social media, these political movements were nurtured

and enlarged through blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter messages. Alec Ross, senior

innovation adviser for the U.S. Department of State, said social media helped to accelerate

revolutions and merged protest efforts across tribal, class, and racial groups (Agence France

Presse, 2011).

For this moment of revolutions and protests, kairos includes the many voices advocating

freedom in social media, competing successfully with one-voice, state-controlled media. As a

nation surrounded by revolutions and protests in early 2011, at least one Saudi Arabian official

seemed to understand the moment. In an interview with Public Radio International’s program

The World in early March 2011, Saudi Arabia’s minister of information, Abdul Aziz Khoja, said

“we have to talk with (young people) in Facebook, in Twitter, and on Youtube. We have to know

how they think. They now represent 60 percent of our population and they are the future of our

country” (Lynch, 2011).

Saudi Arabia’s information minister most certainly did not mean his nation will engage in

two-way symmetrical conversation with younger citizens. In fact, many nations responded not by

embracing social media, but by blocking access to it. Yet Saudi Arabia’s Khoja clearly

recognized what that moment in history demanded, that communication with younger Saudis

must involve communication within their channels, rather than through his state-owned

traditional media. And he clearly recognized a moment that requires words, not weapons.

Perhaps he came late to the conversation, but Khoja knew the implications of kairos. Like much

of rhetorical theory, kairos first and foremost demands an understanding of audience needs and

desires.

Overview of social media’s role during protests and revolutions

Social media’s contours include the best and worst that computer-mediated

communication can offer. Some organizations and people use social media as monologue, as a

one-way channel, as a primitive mass media form. In this model, social media can be silencing

and authoritative, not unlike traditional mass media; in fact, Twitter serves as a propaganda tool

of dictators, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (Rich, 2011). At its best, social media is richly

interactive and multidimensional, serving as a network of relationships, voices, and resolve.

Activists and revolutionaries of many nations used strategies and tactics during 2009-2011 with

one goal in mind: freedom. The objective of some protesters was regime change, pure and

simple, while for others, the objective was more accommodating government that allowed for

free speech and open debate, transparent elections, economic assistance, more jobs, and other

demands.

The reactions of these governments ranged from civil war in Libya, to crackdowns and

censorship (Moldova, Iran, Sudan), to acquiescence to some demands by a ruling family in Saudi

Arabia, to ousters of dictators (Tunisia, Egypt). The first two types of results—civil war,

crackdowns, and censorship—are timeless tactics of totalitarian regimes. The last two results—

acquiescence and regime change—illustrate the power of kairos. These governments understood

some sort of temporal, provisional truth from the many voices calling for freedom, assisted in

part through the multiplication of voices and amplification of demands carried in social media.

The following five short case studies of social media usage in Moldova and Iran during

2009, and in Tunisia, Egypt, and Sudan during 2010 and 2011, are based on keyword searches in

Google and in Lexis-Nexis Academic using the nations’ names plus the words “social media,”

“Twitter,” “Facebook,” and “YouTube.” In addition, the author collected articles on these

revolutions during early 2011 and tweets containing these hashtags: #Tunisia, #Egypt, and

#Jan25. To avoid redundant observations about activities used by citizens in all five nations, each

short case study focuses primarily on strategies and tactics different from those discussed in the

other cases. In this way, saturation occurred so that the variety of social media activities could be

discussed, rather than trying to determine which were the most popular or most successful

strategies and tactics.

Moldova, April 2009

When communists won a national election in Moldova in spring 2009, young activists

organized protests against the long-standing Communist Party, in part using a blog on

LiveJournal.com, Facebook postings, tweets, and phone text messaging (Barry 2009). While

Twitter was credited with helping to organize the protests, it was used mainly to keep people

outside of Moldova informed of events in the nation’s capital, Chisinau, even though Internet

access had been curtailed by the government (Cohen 2009). One of the organizers of

ThinkMoldova, Natalia Morar, created a protest movement called “I am a not a Communist,”

describing it on her blog as “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making,

several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-

mails” (Barry 2009). In speculating about ThinkMoldova’s efforts, which turned into a

sometimes violent protest with thousands of people, an English-language Twitter user from

Moldova attributed it to trust, saying “when you follow somebody, you usually know this person,

so you trust this person. It is coming from a real person, not an institution” (Cohen 2009).

Strategy 1: Involve disparate citizens in a common movement.

Tactic 1: Create a website or blog attached to a movement called “I am not a

Communist.” Ask for pledges of support, by adding names to a petition or voices within

comment sections of websites.

Strategy 2: Keep the outside world informed of protests inside a nation.

Tactic 2A: Use Twitter messages as testimony, providing eyewitness accounts, photos to

outsiders, and links to video.

Tactic 2B: Use Twitter hashtags (#Moldova) so that others may follow events within that

nation.

Tactic 2C: Use activists in Twitter who can tweet in multiple languages, including

English.

Iran, June 2009

Just a few months after Moldovans protested their election results, so too did Iranians

after their presidential election on Friday, June 12, 2009. Relying on text messaging and Twitter,

supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi began to panic when Twitter

announced that it would be shut down for maintenance during protests. Many users—including

Iranian activists, their supporters worldwide, and the U.S. government—appealed to the U.S.-

based company and one of its founders, Biz Stone, to delay maintenance (Gross, 2011). Twitter

complied with these requests. In the meantime, Iranian newspapers ran blank spaces where

government censorship had occurred (Grossman, 2009).

During the Iranian protests, journalists and pundits offered more testimonials to the

power of Twitter over traditional media. Time magazine’s lead technology writer called it “the

medium of the moment” because “it's free, highly mobile, very personal and very quick. It's also

built to spread, and fast” (Grossman, 2009). In his analysis, he describes Twitter as “promiscuous

by nature: tweets go out over two networks, the Internet and SMS, the network that cell phones

use for text messages, and they can be received and read on practically anything with a screen

and a network connection” (Grossman, 2009). One of those tweeting and retweeting information

about the Iranian protests, “jennyrae,” asked Twitter users worldwide to “change ur location

timezone to Iran/Tehran (GMT +3:30) make it harder to track Iranians #IranElection” (Latest

tweets, 2009). In other ways, protestors stayed ahead of censors and government surveillance by

accepting outside dissidents’ help. According to the London Times, “an ad hoc network of

volunteer Internet users outside Iran has been creating proxy servers, or false IP (Internet

protocol) addresses to reroute online traffic and fox censorship software” (Evans, 2009).

Strategy 3: Build redundancy into the system of communication.

Tactic 3: Use both Twitter and phone text messages for information about timing of

protests and events.

Strategy 4: Acknowledge surveillance within social media and protect communicators.

Tactic 4A: Ask outsiders to help insiders in social media, by establishing false IP

addresses, false accounts, and other diversionary actions.

Tactic 4B: Shut down government computing systems, through the anonymous

“hacktivist” network, using denial of service strategies (Proudfoot, 2009).

Tunisia, December 2010 and January 2011

In late 2010, activist bloggers and online videos shared dramatic stories occurring in

Tunisia, with little or no coverage in traditional Western print or broadcast media (Hopkins,

2011). One story seemed to capture the brutal essence of daily life in that nation, when on

December 17, 2010, a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire. About an

hour before this act, Bouazizi’s fruit and vegetables had been confiscated, followed by a fine,

and then he was humiliated or ignored by Tunisian authorities. Following Bouazizi’s death in

early January 2011 and after four weeks of protests against his government, Tunisian President

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali left office, and the nation began the process of writing a new

constitution and holding elections.

During those weeks surrounding Bouazizi’s death, protesters used Facebook and Twitter

to organize and to announce protest locations, but those online actions were not easy. The

Committee to Protect Journalists reported that the Tunisian government blocked sites (including

access to WikiLeaks), inserted script into Facebook pages to harvest user names and passwords,

and arrested bloggers, journalists, and activists (Anderson, 2011). One activist blogger who was

arrested was Slim Amamou, who used the geolocation service FourSquare to let his colleagues

know that he was at the Ministry of the Interior after his arrest (Malek, 2011). However, despite

these government tactics, those using social media “gave us a front seat in this uprising,” said

London-based Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy (Brown, 2011). Eltahawy noted Twitter

helped those inside Tunisia, too, when “Tunisians were warning each other of where the regime

snipers were, using Twitter” (Brown, 2011).

Strategy 5: Use emotional appeals and storytelling to garner support.

Tactic 5: Provide online stories, testimony, and videos focused on revolution martyrs

such as Mohamed Bouazizi or on those arrested such as activist blogger Slim Amamou.

Tactic 6: Publicize arrests and government activities related to snipers, police actions,

barricades, and tanks.

Strategy 6: Use geolocation and digital mapping to track arrests and to chart movement

of government snipers, troops, and tanks.

[Insert Figure 1 about here]

Egypt, Summer 2010 and January-February 2011

Kairos seems most apt for explaining communication successes that supported the

Egyptian revolution. In June and August 2010, a few thousand people protested the beating death

of Khaled Said, who had been dragged from an Internet café by police for posting videos online

about police brutality. This incident was chronicled on a Facebook fan page called “We are all

Khaled Said” and later that fall, it was linked to more stories of police brutality (“Egypt police,”

2010; see Figure 1). These publicity campaigns were then followed by Tunisia’s successful use

of nonviolent tactics in early 2011. At that moment, new and long-time activists seized on the

“collective hope” that permeated Egyptian society after the Tunisian success in January 2011,

and online organizers and activists each were asked to “bring ten non-connected people” to the

protests (Graham-Felsen, 2011). “People who are on Twitter or Facebook in Egypt are often

active in various other ways” and these influencers included Wael Ghonim, a Google employee,

and Alaa Abd el Fattah, a long-time blogger who has been imprisoned for advocating for human

rights (Connelly, 2011).

Using Facebook—plus Google Docs with guidelines and collateral for protests, emailing

lists, and much offline planning—a massive demonstration against the government was set for

January 25, 2011, led in part by Ghonim, who had created the “We are all Khaled Said” fan page

and who was later arrested and released, just before Hosni Mubarak’s resignation (Graham-

Felsen, 2011; see Figure 2). Because of the combination of robust offline activists’ networks and

online organization starting in late January, protests continued despite the government’s

shutdown of Internet and phone services for several days, until Mubarak’s resignation February

11.

[Insert Figure 2 about here]

Many other political, religious, and cultural efforts in Cairo’s Tahrir Square helped to

bridge differences and were featured online, such as Egyptian Rami Issam’s “#Jan25 Tahrir,”

one of several protest anthems either performed in the square or uploaded to YouTube, or both

(“Protest singer,” 2011; “Rami,” 2011). A popular retweet from January 27, 2011, also

demonstrates this solidarity: "Egyptian Christians said they will guard the Muslims from the

police while they on Friday Pray. Amazing solidarity. #Egypt #Jan25.”

Strategy 7: Gain momentum and support for risky internal protests by connecting them

to successful events in other nations.

Tactic 7: Use blogs, video, and tweets to share the stories from Tunisia and to showcase

the successes that are possible.

Strategy 8: Publicize patterns of brutality and human-rights’ abuses to national and

international audiences

Tactic 8: Create videos and blog postings about stories of people’s arrests, killings by

police, and experiences of torture, and seed them into social networks and video-sharing

sites, which may be viewed by citizens and traditional media.

Strategy 9: Reach out to those not connected to online activism.

Tactic 9: Invite protesters who are not online to attend a protest or to provide support in

other ways, through monetary donations and support for activism.

Strategy 10: Bind protestors together in a common cause.

Tactic 10: Feature protest songs and other signs of solidarity, such as common slogans,

by offering online videos or downloadable collateral. Create stories, tweets, and

photographs that feature examples of solidarity.

[Insert Table 1 about here.]

Sudan, February 2011

Activists in northern Sudan arranged protests against the government in February 2011

through Facebook and text messaging by cell phone, according to Voice of America reporter

Alsanosi Ahmed and Agence France Presse (“Journalists arrested,” 2011). Ahmed also reported

newspapers had been censored, with journalists and other media employees arrested, as well as

protestors. Some activists were reported missing. In addition, security forces used social media to

trick people about a protest location, so that “when people went there to protest they saw the

security forces arresting them immediately when they arrived in the area” (“Journalists arrested,”

2011). “Future protests will probably be planned over different channels,” Ahmed reported.

Strategy 11: Keep protestors’ communication networks safe from disinformation of the

ruling state.

Tactic 11: Protect planning by shifting channels of communication away from open

social media.

Lessons learned

The outcomes of these citizen protest movements differed by nation, but the stunning

successes in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate that social media efforts make a good partner for

old-fashioned revolution when the circumstances and timing are right. Even lesser successes in

nations such as Moldova and Iran show that social media offer a robust counterpoint to

government suppression of dissent and communications technology. The lessons of other

nations, such as Sudan or Libya, are less clear, since real-life protests were met with

overwhelming shows of state power. Perhaps social media in those states can play a part in

maintaining resistance until the right time, until kairos. In the case of Saudi Arabia and less

brutal regimes, even the threat of prolonged demonstrations and social media campaigns can be

an effective way to open dialogue and to gain concessions. In these latter examples, kairos may

mean waiting, patience, and issues management for activists.

Another lesson may be the mental socialization that occurs in social media, where

discourse is free. When people are able to operate under conditions when discourse is

democratic, they are in effect practicing for their own projected futures. In Juergen Habermas's

reformulation of Robert Alexy's rules of reason, discourse is democratic when:

Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse;

Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever;

Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse;

Everyone is allowed to express his (sic) attitudes, desires, and needs;

No speaker may be prevented, by internal or external coercion, from exercising his (sic)

rights as laid down in the first guidelines (from “Discourse Ethics,” qtd. in Herring 1993,

p. 1).

In these free frontiers of computer-mediated communication, people may get used to

speaking their minds. Indeed, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube may be training grounds for the

discourse required in developing democracies. Ong (1981) discusses this socialization of people

in agonistic situations, who not only make themselves known to their adversaries, but who also

“call their own attention to their own existence” (p. 203). Part of attending to their own existence

may include attending to and getting used to their own democratic voices, and social media gave

these activists space and time for this attention and nurturing.

In terms of kairos, it may be claimed as a more suitable explanation than Malcolm

Gladwell’s “tipping point,” an explanation that even Gladwell himself has rejected. The tipping

point for these events, using Gladwell’s formulation, might be the combination of the right kinds

and numbers of citizens plus their networks in social media (Gladwell 2000). In this scheme,

influential people collectively asserted their power when communicating within these networks,

which were cobbled together before and during crises by activists, opinion leaders, and

revolutionaries.

Yet, Gladwell had already disavowed social media’s power to influence revolutions, just

a few months before Egypt’s 25 January Revolution. In a New Yorker article in October 2010,

Gladwell discounted so-called “Twitter revolutions,” writing that while social media make

expression easier, it is “harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social

media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural

enemy of the status quo” (Gladwell, 2010). After his article was published, Gladwell was

criticized by columnists and bloggers, and his comments received more scrutiny during the

December 2010-January 2011 demonstrations in Tunisia (Rich, 2011; for review, see Case,

2011). After the 25 January Revolution in Egypt, Gladwell responded to critics once again:

“People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they

choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place”

(Gladwell, 2011).

Yale genocide scholar Ben Kiernan disagrees with Gladwell’s insistence that social

media didn’t matter much to these protests and revolutions:

Whatever the grievances, a key political issue determining the outcome is the scale of

mobilization. Other things being equal, additional or faster means of communication

(social media offer both) will make mass actions easier and more likely, if not broader-

based and more effective as well. (qtd. in Case, 2011).

Certainly, social media provided crucial support for activists in Moldova, Iran, Tunisia, and

Egypt. Yet, equating any one activity as the make-or-break happening in these revolutions

shortchanges activists’ hearts, minds, and spirits. A tipping point of any kind places too much

emphasis on just one factor that makes a difference. Kairos, as a rhetorical strategy, simply

recognizes that many situational and cultural elements must be aligned in time, and that all of

these elements together work to enable the most proper and most effective persuasive

communication.

In terms of modern issues management theory, kairos might be most akin to the catalytic

model, through which activists gain power. This model “is rooted in legitimacy, the perception

that something is appropriate,” and in terms of the time element, this model also seeks to “build

urgency by creating pressure to take action” (Coombs & Holladay, 2010, p. 93). In future

research, scholars will certainly explore these revolutions in terms of catalytic theory, diffusion

theory, or any number of other political, historical, economic, sociological, anthropological, or

communication models. Certainly, studying the strategies and tactics used by activists, and

sharing those activities, is important to the discipline of crisis communication and to an

understanding of kairos. Yet unknowns will remain. "How a revolution comes to be is a mystery

to me," says Twitter founder Biz Stone. "It's important to credit the brave people that take

chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star” (Gross, 2011). Twitter, says one of its founders,

is simply in a supporting role.

Discussion questions

1. Why do you think so few scholars have studied crisis communication from the point of

view of activists?

2. What is social media’s role in revolutions and protests? Is it a neutral tool? Or does it

demonstrate democratic or totalitarian qualities? If you choose one, explain why.

3. Explain your own understanding of kairos? Can you think of a crisis communication

situation in which kairos played a part, when an organization decided to communicate at

exactly the right time or cultural moment, or perhaps at the wrong time?

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Figure 1

From YouTube, “Egypt Police Tortures Ahmed Saaban to Death”

Ahmed Shaaban's death was publicized by Mohamed Abdelfattah, an Egyptian blogger from

Alexandria who made and posted to YouTube a video featuring interviews with Shaaban’s

family.

Figure 2

YouTube Analytics for the “Arrest of Wael Ghonim,” with Nearly 600,000 Page Views

Web analytics from YouTube show the numbers of views of a video showing the “Arrest of

Wael Ghonim,” growing from the tens of thousands on Feb. 3, 2011, to more than 150,000 later

that day after the video was embedded within Facebook. As of early March 2011, nearly 600,000

people had viewed the video.

Table 1

#Jan25 Twitter Search on Feb. 1, 2011, with Top Tweets from Prior Days Included

andrewbonar Andrew Bonar

Everything ██is█████ ████ ████fine ███ █ ████ love. ████ █████ the ███

Egypt ███ ████ government ██ #jan25 #Egypt #censorship

27 Jan Top Tweet

Khaledtron Khaled Akbik

This is #Epic, Fox News has no idea where Egypt is on a map: http://plixi.com/p/73294801

#jan25 #egypt #USA (via @cheeseycelt)

30 Jan Top Tweet

ChristinaTwal Christina Twal

Retweeted by Adi_Khair

written on one banner: "،بارك قد م نا ل ت ل ع حب ج نا ن ض ع or "Mubarak, you made us love each " ب

other" #Egyptians #Jan25

LOV3RENI Reni

Inspiring RT @jay2the9: "I dnt need Obama I dnt need Clinton,I will free Egypt with my

mom&dad" - Young Child at Tahrir Square #egypt #jan25

weddady weddady

Retweeted by CineversityTV

RT @acarvin 100's of thousands of protesters @ Tahrir chanting"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!

May God make it happen!May it be tonight!" #jan25

dougvought Doug Vought

ة اجمل ما حري egypt #jan25# ال

ramiar ramiar

Retweeted by Jethro_Aryeh

BBC says Mubarak will announce he will not run for sept elections, but he wants to stay until

then #jan25, #cairo, #egypt,

Pharaonick Nick Rowlands

RT @arabian_babbler Ahmed Moor, Cairo: The people here determined & have reached point of

no return http://tinyurl.com/48er6yc #Egypt #Jan25

LaraABCNews Lara Setrakian

The crowd in Tahrir Square is going wild anticipating reported Mubarak speech tonight #Jan25

ReemAbdellatif Reem Abdellatif

Egypt State TV: Mubarak to make statement shortly #Jan25 #Egypt

AfriNomad Amine

Retweeted by usSup

1st they say they won't run in next elections. Then they offer to organize early elections. Then

they flee to S. Arabia #Jan25

medeabenjamin Medea Benjamin

Retweeted by joscottcoe

The US gives $1.3 billion a year to #Egypt. Tell the US govt: Stop funding the Mubarak regime

now! http://bit.ly/fMEcC5 #Jan25

noornet Noor Al-Hajri

RT @HaninSh: Awww must be feeling left out now. its now Mu without Barack! RT

@JawazSafar: Obama is officially not supporting mubarak #Jan25