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Attempt to Validate the Hypothesis
This hypothesis is corroborated by the results of the Arab Social Media Report
updated in the 2 nd issue of May 2011. If we compare the language of the interface,
and the language used by users in Egypt and in Tunisia to communicate during
the civil movement of the first quarter of 2011, we see a huge difference.
The interface language distribution 73 is as follows:
Country
Arabic
(% of FB users)
English
(% of FB users)
French
(% of FB users)
Egypt 49.88 48.98 0.39
Tunisia 1.56 2.72 94.60
However, questioned 74 about the primary language they used to communicate
on Facebook during the civil movement, citizens of Egypt and Tunisia
responded like this:
Country
Arabic
(% of FB users)
English
(% of FB users)
French
(% of FB users)
Egypt 75.40 25.60 0
Tunisia 51.43 0.95 47.62
The difference between the language of the interface and the language of
communication is accentuated since the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.
As an empirical way to validate that hypothesis, I tried to examine the twits
about #CairoExplosion happened on July 6, 2011. Cairo and suburbs residents
heard on Wednesday, July 6, a big explosion. For hours nobody was able to
guess what it was exactly. Rapidly, a hashtag was created on Twitter and users
started sending messages asking or guessing or retwitting what they heard. In
less than an hour, that hashtag started to trend (becoming a trend on Twitter),
creating a sort of panic among the tweeps in Egypt. I copied randomly 500
twits with the hashtag #CairoExplosion sent in two hours approximately, and
classified them in terms of languages. I obtained the following distribution:
Arabic
Arabic in latin
characters
English Mixed Not
determined
Total
353 33 89 19 6 (smiles) 500
Despite the interests of those numbers, the observation is still limited and needs
to be systematically examined and validated. There are some initiatives like
73
Arab Social Media Report, Issue 2, May 2011, http://www.dsg.ae/portals/0/ASMR2.pdf, page 14.
74
Arab Social Media Report, Issue 2, May 2011, http://www.dsg.ae/portals/0/ASMR2.pdf, page 7.
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