From spectacle to spectacular: How physical space, social media and mainstream broadcast amplified the public sphere in Egypt's ‘Revolution’

This study examines the impact of the media during the Egyptian uprising of 2011 and the extent that amplification occurred between the inter-related spaces of the physical (protests), the analogue (satellite television and other mainstream media) and the digital (internet and social media). Specifically, it analyses the intersection of these three spaces in what we label the ‘amplified public sphere’ and define as the information environment created when each space informs the other. Analysis begins by drawing on Bruce D'Arcus' notion of ‘spectacles of dissent’, in which activists renegotiate the visibility of the public sphere through protest and media networking. It then expands the concept, arguing that the Egyptian uprisings took it to the next level, transforming the ‘spectacle’ into a ‘media spectacular’, which globalised the public sphere through 24/7 coverage of what became an ‘internationalised’ physical space of Tahrir amplified by social media into mainstream blanket coverage. In analysis of a database of YouTube videos, the move from spectacle to spectacular was identified as coincident with a move from social media dominance to mainstream media amplification, even as the latter itself shifted how media was produced and consumed.