Sarah Linesch Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin 28 October 2013 Exploratory Draft In this paper, I plan to explain how social media helped spread and influence the Egyptian protests of 2011. This topic is interesting to me because Egypt is always on the news, and I have never understood what is going on. I am also interested in the way that the Egyptian protestors used social media and the internet to help spread their message and to increase support for the revolution. The use of social media in Egypt helps reflect a growing trend around the world, where people use the internet and social media for activism. It is important to research this trend because it is becoming increasingly prominent as more areas of the world gain access to social media. The audience of this research paper is all of the people who use social media in their daily lives. This paper will inform these people on the different ways that social media can be used, and how they should be cautious with social media because of the effect that it can have. This research paper is also directed at those people who believe that social media does not have an effect on social and political movements. This paper will convince those people that social media can have a major effect on these movements and that it is a powerful tool to organize protests and spread information.

So far I have found sources that discuss the positive and negative impacts of social media on the Egyptian protests. Most of the sources I have found are very broad, so I would like to find some more specific sources. I also need to find sources that explain the background of the Egyptian protests so that I can explain to the audience why the protests were occurring and give background on the situation in Egypt. The subject that I am researching is a hot subject and many people have written opinion articles and blogs about it, so I will make sure to sort the facts from the bias in my research paper so that the audience is getting informative information that is argumentative but not biased. I will also try to condense the material so that it is easier to understand, because the politics and reasoning behind these protests and the revolution are somewhat complicated. From the course, I will discuss the impact of multimedia literacy and convergence culture, and I will apply these topics to the social media techniques used in Egypt. I think that it will be hard to find information in the form of a book, because this is such a recent event and books may not have been written about it yet. I think that I will have trouble sorting out the facts from the opinions when doing my research, because this is such a widely talked about topic. I am also concerned about the depths that I will need to go in order to understand the politics and social functions that led to these protests and the revolution. I have read about the revolution on the news a little bit, but it is a complicated matter and it may be a little hard for me to fully understand it. I am also concerned about finding book sources because it is such a recent event. It will be easy for me to find newspaper, journal, and online articles, but it may be harder to find a book.