The engine room has blogged about the way that the April 6th Youth Movement in Egypt has evolved since the uprising. But even before the uprising, Facebook was changing the way political groups organized. My work on this topic was presented at the New Media Alternative Politics conference at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge in 2010, and was just published in a working paper series at the university.

In 2009, I explored how organized activity in political Facebook groups arises without hierarchy, and conducted research analyzing April 6th Youth Movement Facebook group. This research and analysis on the pre-uprising use of Facebook will hopefully be useful for comparative assessments. We’re glad it has finally been reviewed and released open access – the paper can be found here and is embedded below. Other, great papers from the conference can be found here.