Social Media – Going Beyond Entertainment and Looking at The Tool that is Even Changing Countries

It is really interesting to see how the so-called social media goes beyond mere entertainment and has become a political weapon.
In the case of Egypt, a young man named Al Khale Saeed (identified in different articles as Khali Said) posted an online video showing police corruption that caused him to be killed.
A Facebook page was created in honor of Saed’s death, and thousands of people joined the webpage to show discontentment and anger about the political corruption in Egypt, a country that at the time (January 2011) was under the dictatorial mandate of Husmy Mubarak. Egypt was a country submerged in poverty, where citizens were without benefits or protection, where the average income was $2 dollars a day. It was a country under an “Emergency Law” that would give extended powers to the police, suspended constitutional rights to citizens, where censorship is legalized, and also where the government could imprison citizens without any reason.
People grew tired and got together to protest; they were courageous as they spoke through blogs about the injustices. Blogs began to acquire more power than ever since television was handled and censored by the government. As one activist said “we use Facebook to schedule protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” This was the tool used to tear apart the Mubarak’s government, not ignoring that thousands of people have been killed in the process, and even the actual government has not been a good change. However, this has proven the efficiency of social media for the people to have a voice against the injustices of governments such the one in Egypt.