[lbo-talk] FP: The Muslim Brotherhood takes Twitter

[Joseph Catron]

"Miriam can't stop talking. And when she does, it's mostly to look down at
a torrent of emails, SMSs, and tweets flooding her smartphone. It's been a
heady nine months for the soft-spoken but sharp-witted 24-year-old Egyptian
student turned activist. She's juggling the ordinary demands of a heavy
course-load at Egypt's top university with a slew of extracurriculars
(she's embarrassed to admit she's an avid squash player), but also working
through the existential hangover of heavily participating in a leaderless
revolution that's now causing more of a headache than a thrill. While
polishing some academic work on the role of social media in Egypt's
uprising, she's been ferociously tweeting on the country's virtual
front-lines, fielding 140-character blows left and right. And she's doing
it for the Muslim Brotherhood.

"'Miriam' (she prefers to use a pseudonym, for 'security reasons') is one
of the admins of
@Ikhwanweb,<http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/18/the_muslim_brotherhood_takes_twitter#%21/Ikhwanweb>the
official English-language Twitter page for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood,
one of the most prominent Islamist organizations in the world.
Ikhwanweb<http://www.ikhwanweb.com/>,
the Muslim Brotherhood's official English website, started the twitter
account @Ikhwanweb<http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/18/the_muslim_brotherhood_takes_twitter#%21/Ikhwanweb>back
in 2009. For years, the account was a robotic-curated Twitter feed
which did little more than link to the website's posts. But Miriam has
recently helped transform the account into a virtual coliseum for some of
Egypt's most heated debates ..."
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/18/the_muslim_brotherhood_takes_twitter

-- 
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen
lytlað."