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This chapter examines the role of youth movements and youth activists in the making and the unfolding of the January 25 revolution. While recognizing that youth is a disputed unit of analysis and affirming that the revolution was made possible by the coming together of different social and political movements; this chapter nonetheless maintains that youth activists and youth movements played a critical role in creating a revolutionary condition in Egypt. This chapter argues that the 25 January revolution was the tipping point of a series of protest actions which began with the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada and the war on Iraq in 2000 and 2003 and which gained momentum with the creation of the kifaya movement in 2004 and 2005 and which spread to various social sectors with the mobilization of various labor and professional groups starting 2006. I argue that youth activists were an integral part of these cycles of mobilization and that the emergence of a number of youth led movements such youth for change, April 6, and We Are All Khaled Said was instrumental in the emergence of new modes of mobilization and new discourses which helped foment the revolution.

This chapter continues the previous chapter’s analysis of the evolution of the protest networks that initiated the ‘25 January revolution’. It examines the workers’ protests that became the heart of the protest movement from 2006 onwards, after the demise of the pro-democracy wave of 2004-2005. It then turns to the anti-police and anti-regime/election protests of 2010 and the networks and alliances that grew out of that protest wave. The questions we address include: How did the networks, tactics, frames and people involved change over time? What innovations took place within and between waves? In what ways were the different activist networks and waves connected to each other?

This chapter starts by briefly situating Al-Midan (Tahrir Square) in Egypt’s modern social history, emphasizing its practicality as the meeting place of nine main arteries. This practicality helped the protesters overpower police forces and consequently compelled the security forces to flee as early as the evening of January 27, 2011. The second section explicates contentious politics as the chapter’s analytical framework and the third section focuses on what the chapter identifies as the three Ms: the Military; the Mosque; and the (Liberal-Leftist) Masses. The chapter argues that, group diversity notwithstanding, the initial spark of the Al-Midan protests was dominated by youth organizations like Kefaya and the National Coalition for Change (NCC) and their political socialization into mass protest groups. The emphasis here is on the contribution of these political socializing agents. However, disillusionment pushed the youth to establish their own organizations, such as Harakat Shabab 6 Abril (April 6 Youth Movement), and We Are All Khaled Sa’eed. The chapter also investigates the impact of new techniques of mobilization and framing, especially social media, in what has sometimes been dubbed the “republic of Facebook.”

Our analysis of the ‘25 January revolution’ — or rather the mass protests, occupations and strikes that forced members of the ruling elite, primarily the army, to choose between loyalty to the regime and forcing regime change — has thrown up a number of insights. We have shown how by January 2011 a number of structural crises combined with a series of precipitating events and an unprecedented level of activism to create a potentially volatile situation. The ousting of President Ben Ali in Tunisia provided a catalyst and it was a combination of resurgent hope and long-term outrage, channeled by the protest networks, that turned January 2011 into a potentially revolutionary situation. That it became a revolutionary situation (though fell short of a revolution) was itself highly contingent on the actions and reactions of protesters and authorities alike. We conclude the chapter with reflections on what social movement theory can add to the study of revolutions more broadly, and what challenges our analysis of the ‘25 January revolution’ throws up for social movement theory.

The emergence of journalism as a profession in the Arab region dates back to the nineteenth century with the establishment of newspapers and presses in Iraq, Egypt, and Syria under Ottoman rule. Since the colonial powers did not encourage freedom of expression, Arab journalism developed unique characteristics, with journalists negotiating their roles by circumventing or accepting censorship and authoritarianism. This chapter explores the evolution of Arab journalism from its infancy during the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the changing media politics of the twentieth century. It examines the role of different technological innovations, such as satellite television and the internet, and how they impacted the media environment and development of Arab journalism.