The Collapse of Social Media-Based Movements and the Dilemma of Democracy in Egypt 1

More than a decade after the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), social media-based movements have come under closer scrutiny. It has become clear to many scholars that the movements, facilitated by social media, in the region have collapsed, thus making the democratic transition in the whole region more complex than ever before. From a political communication perspective, this chapter examines the nature of social movements’ actions that could involve the circumstances of their failure. In doing so, it investigates the characteristics of political actions and their participants, attempting to better understand the organizational nature of each of them which can explain the effectiveness of social movements. A survey was conducted in Egypt (as a representative case of the MENA movements) on 527 respondents. The results show that the Egyptian political actions that took place after the 2011 revolution were mainly connective actions, and the majority of the actions participants were connective individuals. As connectivity has been considered unsustainable and unproductive in the long run, it is reasonable to attribute the failure of social movements in Egypt, and perhaps to other social movements in the MENA region, to the connective nature of actions and their participants.