Rahman, Samir History 362 Tweets From Tahrir Questions 1.

Written evidence is so central to the historians work that what we call history only begins when we have written records. Tweets are a new form of writing. What do they have in common with the written sources about the Conquest of Mexico we have just read? What are the important differences? Be specific. These tweets are similar to the sources we read for the Conquest of Mexico because they do form a somewhat coherent narrative of the events that occurred during the Egyptian Revolution. For example, using the tweets, we can tell that Mubarak presented a speech to the people on February 10th around 10:46 PM where he informed the people that he would not step down from his position as Egypts President. I use the term somewhat above because, as there were in the Mexico sources, there are points of disagreement in the tweets where different information is present regarding the same event. For example, on February 10th, there are inconsistencies in the number of people who were at Tahrir square. On p. 201, 3arabwy writes that there are 3 million people in Tahrir. However, on p. 205, MohammedY tweets that there are 1 million people present in the square. This discrepancy in the tweets can also force a historian to ask the same historiographical questions as we did for the Mexico paper, such as which tweets are reliable and which ones are not? There are three solutions to this question if we have it refer to the number of people in Tahrir on February the 10th: first, 3arabwy is correct and MohammedY is wrong, second, MohammedY is correct and 3arabwy is wrong, third, they are both correct because the tweets were written at different times, implying that 2 million people left Tahrir square (with army checkpoints) over the course of 3 hours. However, these questions are much easier to answer with the tweets than with the Mexico sources. These tweets are different from the Mexico sources because of the sheer volume of tweets in regard to the subject. If anyone wanted to clear out discrepancies between two particular tweets, all one would have to do was look through all the tweets with the hashtag #Jan25 and that person will have access to thousands of tweets that can be used to wither support or disclaim a particular piece of information. The number of primary sources regarding Cortess expedition into Mexico is very limited. This difference in volume makes each historiographical question we ask regarding the Mexico sources have much more meaning and much more difficult. For example, if we were to ask, Where did Cortes make his decision to capture Mexico? Did he obtain the idea from Velazques or his crew? we would have to analyze the small number of sources we have and either favor one source over the other or construct a historical narrative combining the sources as best as we could. However, with the tweets, we can use the enormous number of tweets to either support or disclaim a piece of information. For example, in reference to the question above regarding the number of people in Tahrir on February 10th, if thousands of tweets support one number and hundreds of tweets support another number, than the information with a

thousand supporters would most likely be true. If the same number of tweets support each number, than option 3 (above) may be true. 2. Articulate the argument of the introduction in 140 characters or less. Social media networks played a big role in spreading the Egypt Rev. These networks were used 2 plan protests. Tweets r good primary sources -139 characters (with spaces) 3) From the information available to you in the Tweets themselves, who do you think the Tweeters are? How does this affect our use of these sources? At first glance, the tweeters are the people who sat in Tahrir Square during the Revolution. However, if we think further in, some of the tweeters might also be people who have residences over Tahrir Square, people who are related to someone in the square, (if we want to get adventurous) the some of the tweeters might even be part of the army who was stationed at the square, and some of the tweeters might be trolls who pretend to be a part of the event but are not and are tweeting to get followers. Of all tweeters described above, the most dangerous one to the historian are trolls. These people pretend to be a part of the event but are not, meaning that some of the information that they tweet might be inaccurate, which can directly affect the history that is written about the event. For example, using the question presented in #1 about the number of people in Tahrir Square on February 10th, if a historian wanted to clarify a certain fact and thousands of trolls (not being a part of the event but researching it via the hashtag) copied the wrong information from a tweeter who was at Tahrir who (lets say) made a typo and wrote one million instead of three million (or vice versa), the historian might conclude that the wrong number of people were at Tahrir and record the false number. This leads us to very important realization that a historian must have if using twitter as a source. This realization is that, with the introduction of online names (such as 3arabwy), the historian cannot confirm exactly who wrote a certain tweet. This anonymity allows anyone, even those who were not a part of the protests, to post regarding the protest. In the Mexico sources, we knew exactly who was writing the sources, making it easier for a historian to evaluate its authenticity. It was also harder to fake authenticity in the Mexico sources because there was not a large media that publicized the events that occurred in the sources (such as the internet that we have today) and also, the ability to read and write was very limited. It is insightful to realize that tweets can be used as a primary source, but it is more important to realize the potential dangers of using twitter as a primary source.