"I think we're agreed: Without the new media the Egyptian Revolution could not have happened in the way that it did", writes Ahdaf Soueif in her forward to this book, which documents the terror and joy of the uprising in 140-character sentences. The material is angry, mobilising, resilent ("praying wt tear gas around"; "water being shot at us. Protestors throwing rocks"; "Fuck you Mubarak!"). For Egyptians who doubted the revolution was being accurately televised by state-run stations, Twitter provided the rolling news narrative. Even Hosni Mubarak joined in (some of his tweets are included). The ephemeral, rushed nature of the tweets can't provide a total picture of events but do have a raw emotional impact.
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