Cyber Sha’bi: The Role of Egyptian Cyberactivists in Vernacularising Human Rights Law in Relation to the January Revolution

In this dissertation, I examine how Egyptian cyberactivists applies the concept of vernacularisation of human rights as explained by late Dr. Sally Engle Merry. I also studied how this vernacularisation process played a role in mobilising Egyptian masses to take it to the streets in what is called the Egyptian Revolution of 25 January 2011. Through this study, I presented six prominent Egyptian cyberactivists, studied their background, their influence, activism, and the security risks they faced. The core of this study is applying a discourse analysis approach to selected social media content posted by the six selected cyberactivists, running in parallel with semi-structured interviews with them to draw their reflection on the content they created in the frame of vernacularisation of human rights concept. The aim of this analysis is to study how those cyberactivists vernacularised human rights on social media. This analysis examined how those cyberactivists used vernacularisation to put messages from one of the concepts of international human rights law into a local context that resonates with Egyptian audience. Through this analysis, I examined in detail all vernacular references that were included in the selected posts, putting these references within their local frame, and connecting them to the human rights message that the author of the post intended to convey.
The influence of social media on the Egyptian Revolution was in question and it created a controversy around it that inspired many research papers. In this paper, I am trying to highlight the use of the concept of vernacularisation of human rights by the selected cyberactivists in connection to the social media mobilisation that accompanied the Egyptian Revolution. This dissertation aimed to examine the actual content of the social media posts in their original language and their vernacular frame to shed the light on the mobilisation elements that this content had within the local vernacular frame that resonated with local social media users.