Facebooking the Egyptian elections: Framing the 2012 presidential race

Abstract

While most previous research on cyberactivism in the Arab Spring, in general, and the Egyptian revolution, in particular, focused on analysing the role of social media in mobilizing the masses for political action, coordinating protest movements and rallying support for regime change. Other aspects of social media use for different purposes, such as online campaigning and framing the image of presidential candidates who are running for office and competing in elections after regime change, have been largely understudied. Similarly, most previous research which tackled framing focused on ‘news framing’, rather than ‘image framing’, or how different media can be used to create images and conceptions of different individuals or groups. Therefore, this study tries to fill these gaps in prior research through conducting a content analysis of the Facebook pages of the five top runners in the Egyptian presidential race of 2012 to find out how and why they used them to frame their own images online before, during and after the elections. In doing so, it revealed how this process was influenced by several factors, such as emerging events, and how it had distinct functions, such as asserting the unique identity of each candidate, juxtaposing and comparing the ‘self’ to the ‘Others’, and launching attacks on other candidates.

Social Media and Social Change

“…Further compelling evidence of social media networks in action can be traced to various other studies, such as the work of Khamis and Mahmoud () entitled Facebooking the Egyptian Elections: Framing the 2012 Presidential Race . In their work, Khamis and Mahmoud revealed compelling evidence regarding the potential of social network activists in mobilizing the voters and the emerging decisiveness of new technologies in political campaigns.…”

Citizenship Imaginaries and Electoral Mobilization in the Egyptian Uprising

“…The slogan "Bread, freedom, social justice" is the central slogan capturing the amalgamation of the Revolution's demands and acting as a unifier for the variety of political forces and people during the protests (Roccu, 2013). Social justice and freedom were the key themes of the electoral programs of both Sabahi and Abul-Futuh (Khamis and Mahmoud, 2013). The two demands have their roots in the lived experiences and narratives of citizenship under Mubarak (1981Mubarak ( -2011.…”

“…Very few peer-reviewed studies have dealt with this electoral episode. A number of studies have provided empirical analysis of elections results (Elsayyad and Hanafy, 2014;Al-Ississ and Atallah, 2014;Alfy, 2013), while others have addressed issues of salience and the institutional engineering of the elections (Kohstall, 2014) and the social media messaging (Khamis and Mahmoud 2013) and professionalism (ElSheikh, 2018) of the five main campaigns. Other work has addressed the broader contextual aspects of voter preferences in the transitional period (Abadeer et al, 2019;El-Agati, Sigler and Harvey, 2014;Beissinger, Jamal and Mazur, 2015;Hassan, Kendall and Whitefield, 2018;Ketchley and El-Rayyes, 2021;Masoud, 2014;Teti, Abbott and Cavatorta, 2019;Wessel, 2021).…”

“…Abul-Futuh's electoral promises focused more on "achieving the goals of the Revolution," while Sabahi put social justice first(Khamis and Mahmoud 2013).6 Amr Moussa, ex-Foreign Minister and then serving Secretary-General of the Arab League, positioned himself as facilitating a smoother transition between the old regime and the Revolution, while Ahmed Shafik, ex-Civil Aviation Minister and ex-Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, was the more obvious candidate for continuity and restoration of the old regime.…”

Integrative Framing Analysis

“…Despite the low number of studies, the identification of similarities and differences in the way empirical research was conducted is possible. To date, most of these studies focused on the media coverage; topics included environmental matters (Dotson, Jacobson, Kaid, & Carlton, 2012;Liebler & Bendix, 1996;Wessler, Wozniak, Hofer, & Lück, 2016), unemployment (Dan & Ihlen, 2011b), terrorist attacks (Reynolds & Barnett, 2003), elections (Dan & Iorgoveanu, 2013;Khamis & Mahmoud, 2013;Van Hoof, Takens, & Oegema, 2010), the asylum issue (Van Gorp, 2005), military operations (Entman, 1991), Sub-Saharan Africa (Mellese & Müller, 2012), and sporting events (Huang & Fahmy, 2011).…”