Social Media Uses and their Perceived Outcome Satisfaction in the pre-Egyptian Revolt Context

Many commentators (i.e., Aouragh & Alexander, 2011; Tufekci & Wilson, 2012; Wilson & Dunn, 2011; Wall & Zahed, 2011) have remarked upon the role played by social media in the mobilisation that preceded the eruption of the massive demonstrations which took place in Egypt in early 2011, one of a number in the region that became known as the Arab Spring. This article was designed to address the question: “how do young Egyptian activists perceive the potential of social media for mobilising collective action?” The findings outlined in this article make a unique contribution to contemporary debates about social media and the Egyptian mobilisations, since the data was gathered prior to the uprising of 25th January 2011. Consequently, it provides us with a clear understanding of what Egyptian activists actually thought and said about the potential value of social media, both for the organisation and the mobilisation of protests, rather than as retrospective judgments which may be subject to selective interpretations. This article highlights the perception trends of a sample of young Egyptian activists to whom the credit for igniting the two waves of uprisings (25th January 2011 and 30th June 2013) has been widely attributed. Data from questionnaires followed by focus group discussions indicate that young activists use social media as instruments to achieve their goals in order to inform and influence other non-politicised users’ decisions, rather than being directed at achieving individualistic goals. Several limitations were also highlighted; some of which relate to the constituency, while others are mainly related to the media.


Introduction
Political mobilisation that Egypt has witnessed over the last decade could be ascribed to a binary set of factors; the first set includes internal reasons and the second, external ones which are basically centred on pressures and incentives stemming from the international environment. Under U.S pressure to put the freedom agenda into effect (Tisdall, 2011), along with other internal and external stimuli, some Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia have seen the emergence of many new change movements at the beginning of the current decade. A number of these movements, including, for example, the Egyptian Movement for Change (EMC), known as 'Kefaya,' has managed to impose themselves strongly on the political arena, through promoting and implementing non-traditional theses among broad and important sectors of the community, which makes these movements an important variable in the political reality in these countries, and a phenomenon worthy of research and study.
In the social sphere, Egypt has witnessed significant developments that have had direct repercussions for political mobilisation. For example, the major development in the field of education and the eradication of illiteracy in the past two decades; the increasing rate of urbanisation; the growing role of women in society; prominent improvements in the health field, and the media boom. Among the main social factors is the contradiction between Egypt's socio-economic structure and developments arising from the growing sector of the younger generations who have studied abroad. These generations have accumulated a sense of alienation from their society, and desperation at the political elite's inability to achieve the goals of reform. Additionally, corruption in many sectors of the state has reflected on citizens' lives and has pushed them to despair of the possibility of solving their problems at the hands of the ruling regime. (Sha'ban, 2005).
In this article, a special focus is paid to politically-active young Egyptians and their active use of social media. The aim is to shed light on their evaluations of the role these media may have plaid in the emergence and development of these movements which led to the eruption of two waves of massive protests. The first wave broke out in 25 th January 2011 and led to the toppling of former President Mubarak, and the second erupted on 30 th June 2013, leading to the ousting of the elected President, Mohamed Morsi, after only a year in office. The aim is to better understand how these media might have contributed to creating opportunities for, or putting obstacles before, the development and growth of political mobilisation in Egypt over the past decade.

Social Media Functions
The last decade has witnessed a digital media boom that has significantly affected interest in the impact that information and communication technologies (ICTs) might have on several domains of life. This information revolution has particular implications on politics (DiMaggio, Hargittai, Neuman, & Robinson, 2001) as it is creating an environment for political practice that is distinguished by being information-rich and communicationintensive (Bimber, 2001). It has been argued that studying motivation rather than impact (boyd, 2008), and patterns of use rather than gross hours of use (Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001) aids a better understanding of the potentials that certain modalities of media consumption hold for enabling political actions. The uses and gratifications (U&G) perspective reinforces active images of audiences, specifying that individuals select and use media based on needs and on their perceptions of media attributes that might help to satisfy those needs. Social media have received a level of U&G attention. Albeit, this attention has by and large been focused on the general audience, usually college students who tend to be heavy users of social media (Cheung, Chiu, & Lee, 2011;Liu, Cheung, & Lee, 2010;Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008;Stoeckl, Rohrmeie, & Hess, 2007).
Few studies have applied the U&G rationale to politically interested Internet users (Kaye & Johnson, 2002, and only a small, yet growing, body of studies have deployed the approach to explain how Internet users utilise social networking sites (SNSs)-in particular-to fulfill political needs (Leung, 2009;Cozma & Ancu, 2009;Park, Kee, & Valenzuela, 2009;Gary, Paul, & Rekha Sharma, 2008).
The applicable studies of new media functions and their influence on individuals' political practices to date fall into two groups. Some researchers have looked at media uses in their relation to conventional political practices and to enhancing democracy that is focused primarily on voting and building social capital. A smaller, yet rapidly growing, body of research has investigated new media's potential for mobilisation and democratic transformation, which comprises the main focus of this article.

Media Uses and Protesting
Social movement organisations and individual activists seem to be ardent adopters of new communication technologies (Bennett, 2003;van de Donk, Loader, Nixon, and Rucht, 2004).
Functional categorisation of media uses, similar to those linked to political participation and civic engagement, has been linked, on a narrower scale, to social movement organisation and the mobilisation of unconventional collective practices. For example, in his critique of the Internet's and social media's potential to enhance democracy and undermine authoritarianism, Morozov (2012) distinguishes between the 'instrumental' and 'ecological' uses of social media. Instrumental uses, according to Morozov, mean that the Internet is just a neutral tool and an amplifier, and all that matters is how people utilise it to achieve good or bad ends. Ecological uses, on the other hand, mean that the Internet transforms both the environment where politics is made, and those who participate in politics (p. 8, 12).
It is inferred from Morozov (2012) and others' (e.g., Diani, 2000) that instrumental uses of media function differently in the realm of social movements. As instrumental uses imply a more active role of media users and so entail a positive association with political participation, instrumentality may help activists to achieve certain goals that are related to organising their movement and to creating positive dispositions that help the movement thrive. Yet, as compared to symbolic uses of media, using new media as a means to certain ends does not necessarily help to develop and sustain social movements as, compared to symbolic uses, they do not feed into building identities and developing feelings of commitment to movements. These different implications for social movements might have an impact on activists' evaluations of social media's contribution to movement development. To inquire into these assumptions, I start by asking the question:

RQ1:
Why do young Egyptian activists use social media?

Social Media Uses and Identification With and Commitment to Social Movements
Unlike mass media, "social movements not only seek [audience] attention but also support and commitment" (Rucht, 2004, p. 33). Understanding how individuals identify with social movements has been increasingly discussed through the media lens (see, e.g. Castells, 2010;Pini, Brown, & Previte, 2004;van Zoonen, 1992). Bennett (2005) (2005) terms "tolerant identities", enables individuals with varied positions to join in remarkably large actions. In fact, the Internet has promoted a form of "individualised identities," an archetype of a networked society, that can nurture, discover and deploy creative forms of organisation through the Web (Castells, 1997).
As for commitment to movements, it has generally been suggested that research on social movements has raised some normative rather than instrumental constraints that influence different social movements' use of the media (della Porta, 2012, p. 52). A valid question here, then, is how these newly-formed, loose, manifold identities might reflect on social movements and the sustainable practice of collective action 1 . A range of empirical studies indicates that the digital media are unable to serve sustained collective action or to guarantee participants' commitment to social movement. The abundance of the alternatives of associations that are available online might foster low level of commitment that links individuals to such fluid structures. As Norris (2004) writes; "commitments to any particular online group can often be shallow and transient when another is but a mouse click away.
van Laer (2010) studied motivations to participate in collective action and Internet use by both online and off-line activists. He found that both instrumental motives and collective identity motives to participate in collective action only slightly drive activists' use of the Internet, i.e., the belief that something can be changed and that participation in demonstrations is an effective way to do so (instrumental motives), and participants' feeling of group belonging and-group solidarity do not significantly differ between off-line and online activists. van Laer has thus conversely suggested that using the Internet does not particularly fertilise stronger collective identity nor the perceived efficacy of collective action. Earl and Schussman (2002) earlier raised the problem of the strength of commitment to social movements. They contended that the rise of "e-activism" has created movement "users" rather than "members." They argue that while using the Internet has enabled the fast growth and wide spread of protests, this boom is usually followed by a faster decline in commitment. Along the same line, Garrett (2006) argues that technology-enabled additions to the repertoire of collective action might constrain the set of actions an activist can perform and may eventually formalise the role of activists and limit them. van Laer and van Aelst (2010), although confirming the role of the Internet in creating new opportunities for collective engagement, think that the Internet has made political action too easy, in some cases limiting the final impact of a certain action. As they write "it seems that the new media … .. more fundamentally are unable to create stable ties between activists that are necessary for sustained collective action" (p. 1146). Using the Internet for political purposes might, then, result in a state of motivational dissonance; where participants have the motives for participation, yet these motivations might be spurred by media deficits such as ease of use or the lower cost of online practices. Individuals, therefore, may relent on online practices and prefer them to taking to the streets, which could hamper the sustainability of the political process, since it might not support the creation (or reinforcement) of significant participatory parameters such as collective identity and political efficacy.
Scholars also disagree about the potential of new communication technologies for empowering poorer people. While some emphasise a possible equalisation (Myers, 2002), others instead suggest either a neutral impact or the normalisation of political activity (Margolis & Resnick, 2000), or even more concentration of power (McChesney, 1996). CMC seems to favour the elite over the masses, and it tends to reproduce the digital divide and hierarchy, and develops vertical relations instead of interactive, horizontal relationships (Rucht, 2003, p. 28). Rucht further suggests that "online activism could become a low-cost but also a low-effect substitute for off-line protest (p. 31).
These speculations about transcending traditional hierarchical models of social movement organisation lead to asking the question: This study examined 367 responses from a self-administered survey that assessed activists' perceptions of social media's use for political communication. Certain attributes were selected to build the profile of respondents. According to the U&G approach, the needs that individuals seek to satisfy are determined by their social environment, which includes their age, gender and group affiliation (Morris & Ogan, 1996). Accordingly, the selected demographic variables correspond to certain issues in the Egyptian polity that are relevant to young Egyptians' geographical availability and related tendency to practise politics. Uses of social media were adapted from previous U&G research (e.g., Kaye & Johnson, 2004;Kim & Kim, 2007). 'Networking' was added to the scale to allow respondents to indicate whether they use social media to build their own community of friends and aquaintances in order to reach a larger group of potential supporters with their mobilising messages. For each set of uses, Cronbach's α (alpha) was measured to determine the internal consistency of reliability of media uses test scores (Zinbarg, Revelle, Yovel, & Li, 2005).
The gender ratio in the research sample is 39.8 % male and 60.2 % female (n = 362, missing = 5) 2 . 64.9 percent are university students, 24.3 % are university graduates, and only 8.2 % hold higher degrees (n = 357, missing = 10). Consistently, more than half of the participants fall into the age cohort between 18 and 22, while only 4.4 % are between 30 and 35 years of age (n = 362, missing = 5). 38.1 % of participants reported a monthly income range between 1000 and less than 3000 EGP. Equal proportions of respondents (21 %) reported that they earned between 3000 and less than 5000 EGP, and 5000 -7000 EGP, and the smallest proportion of respondents fell into the higher income category of more than 7000 EGP (n = 346, missing = 21). Participants who expressed their willingness to take a further step in the research by providing their contact information in the questionnaire represented the sampling frame for the subsequent qualitative part of the research. Besides homogeneity and trust between members of each discussion group, selection from among willing respondents was directed by diversity in gender, age, income, and political background within the assigned homogenous groups, as revealed from preliminary analysis of the quantitative data. This yielded three complete FGDs with 20 participants and an average group size of seven participants. I made the choice to use participants' pseudonyms rather than revealing their real names as a precaution to assure their safety.
I used descriptive statistics to build up a profile of the participants. Frequencies were run on demographics, uses of social media, social media satisfaction. Mean and standard deviation were calculated to rank the social media use incentives participants reported. They describe the central location of the data and its spread, respectively. Qualitative data were analysed simply by listening repeatedly to discussions and transcribing them. Then I went over them several times to organise quotations and identify themes that emerge from activists' repertoires and correspond to each research question.

Understanding what young activists use social media for
Respondents indicated purposes for using social media on an index of 19 items that was split into six media usage categories: guidance, surveillance, networking, social utility, entertainment, and convenience, where 1 meant 'strongly disagree' and 5 meant 'strongly agree.' Table 1 shows that information-related usage of social media ranked first across the media usage board. Politically active Internet users primarily used SOCIAL MEDIA for political guidance and surveillance and entertainment was the least significant reason for practicing political communication through social media. The needs that activists sought to fulfill weighed differently in leading their active utilisation of the social media apparatuses. Figure 1 illustrates the proportional weight of each social media use construct as reported by the young activist participants.

Instrumental uses of social media
Online non-politicised users

Informational Uses of Social Media
Respondents indicated that they used social media for unbiased views and to decide on important issues. Guidance could be pursued by reviewing other users' comments on certain news stories. HA. expressed typical participants' views on the viability of electronic newspapers in making sense of the public sphere and informing activists' political decisions: I always login to the websites of electronic newspapers like al Masry al Youm and read the readers' comments to build an impression of what people think and whether they are with or against posted news. When it comes to issues that concern public opinion, I think it is useful to visit those interactive websites to see how the collective thinks.

RA. agreed with HA.:
I also use websites like Masrawy and electronic newspapers for the reasons mentioned by HA.; to read people's comments and to know how the collective thinks. Although social media may not be perceived as a primary source of news, since they were created primarily as platforms where friends could meet and connect, this finding is, on the one hand, consistent with previous research on Internet use for political information. For example, Kaye and Johnson (2004) found in their survey on politically-interested Internet users during the 2000 presidential election that users were primarily drawn to online sites for voting advice, followed by entertainment/social utility reasons, then convenience. Zhang et al. (2010)  The core of the mobilisation process is the capability to convince people. The Internet users can judge its content and choose whether to believe it or not. This level of trust and reliability is the determinant of whether a further action will be taken or not. In other words, if a million individuals read a certain statement on the Internet and did not believe it, they would not take action, but if they do believe it, we expect that an average of 10.000 will react to it. This is the way things happen, not all people move.
But, I believe that the real value does not lie in the number in itself, rather, it lies in our credibility and our capability to mobilise people. If we can really mobilise 1 % of the population, we can definitely make the 'ageing' regime fall.
Using social media to convince and mobilise others, rather than to inform young activists' political decisions, was supported by previous research. For example, Feezell, Conroy and Guerrero (2009) argue that "information is more likely to be reinforcing and therefore mobilising, but not enlightening and therefore educational" (p. 16). I think that social networking sites play a significant role as alternative media. It can be said that the traditional media outlets are blocked. It is also almost the same case even for the independent or the (opposition) press, which does not operate objectively or reveal facts as they are. Social networking sites could thus serve as ideologypromotion forums for certain movements. It has more credibility in broadcasting events.
Activists have been utilising social media as "primary sources" (Dahlgren & Olsson, 2009, p. 202) for disseminating, rather than gaining, information. They uploaded first-hand information relevant to their activities that might differ from state-run media representations, or highlight a different angle of events. H.B. started by stating that he 'thinks' that SNSs are important alternative platforms that enable activists to deliver quality information that is more credible, reliable, and far reaching than the traditional media, which serve the terms of elite interests and allow no, or limited, space in which they can let their voices be heard.
Moreover, social media not only substitute for state-run media, but also for independent media, which are supposed to present a different point of view but are still perceived as being unbalanced in their coverage.
The young activists' primary concern is to address others and illuminate areas that might be dimmed or smeared by other media sources. Direction is very significant in this regard, while previous studies have found that different uses of the Internet are mainly focused on gathering various kinds of information (i.e., Shah, Kwak, & Holbert, 2001), participants in the current study stated that they used social media as a means to disseminate information.
The young activists diffused informative messages to raise others' consciousness of certain incidents relevant to their activism. They also circulated technical information to achieve certain goals, like urging others to conduct certain course of actions, or giving instructions on how to particpate in certain events.
Using social media to address and mobilise others has benefitted activists in many ways.
Immediacy of information delivery is an additional advantage that social media have afforded activists and, hence, it has enabled them to take timely informed decisions and act promptly.

I.Z. typically asserted that:
The immediate delivery of information has advantaged us a lot in the first wave of the demonstrations we staged to support Khaled Said's cause in Lazoghly and in the march in Sherief Street … .. The idea is that: such incidents should be published instantly on the Internet to draw people's attention and assert that the game is not yet over.
I.Z. made the point that activists used social media platforms to send a strong message to authorities and to challenge their manipulative ways of obliterating facts and enforcing certain agendas on the so-called 'national' media and, hence, on public opinion. Forcing certain content onto the mainstream media might result in reaching less technologically advantaged citizens. New media 'fluid' technologies may help citizens to interrupt the manipulated agenda of the national media to "support a greater variety of issue agendas and information access points" (Papacharissi, 2010, p. 120).
In such case, people tend to mistrust the 'national' media and to turn to the Internet as an alternative source of information (Tsfati, 2003;Tsfati & Cappella, 2003).
Participants think that social media serve as on the run news portals that aggregate several sources of news on one portal for their rapid consumption. As W.B. remarked, "Facebook, of course, enables us to catch up with the news and interact with people promptly" especially when it comes to their activism and unconventional practices.   (Shapiro, 2009). For example, the case of the brutal murder of the young businessman, Khaled Said, was also taken to court after a photo of his mangled face was leaked from the mortuary and uploaded onto Facebook, which vehemently brought the cause to the focus of mainstream media and the broader public. This direction of information flow (Internet-mainstream) may be beneficial in a society with high rates of illiteracy and low levels of Internet penetration, as well as moderate levels of Internet self-efficiency, which makes mobilisation solely through social media a harder goal to achieve. For example, independent newspapers like al-Dustur have brought the Internet experience to readers without Internet access by re-printing the important weblogs on a special page (Shapiro, 2009).
Conversely, forming a bridge between traditional media content and new media platforms, or what has been labeled the "internetisation" of the media (Dahlgren, 2009, p.40) with social media variously acting as a watchdog of state controlled national media, alerting international news media to growing opposition and dissent events and providing raw images of these for wider dissemination.

Collective Action
The degree to which individuals are satisfied with a certain action influences their intentions to continue, stop or change the way they perform this action (Klandermans, 2004, p. 372).
From a rational action perspective, individuals decide to practise and/or to continue practicing a certain action upon comparing the demands and supply of such an action. As for media use, the U&G approach similarly suggests that users continue to use a certain medium based on the degree to which such a medium serves to gratify their pre-assessed needs (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000). It is to be expected, then, that such assessments of social media influence would reflect on young activists' future decisions about using social media to resource their activism and also about the goals which they utilise media tools to achieve.
Participants were asked to indicate the extent to which they believe that social media are providing them with the things they are seeking. Table 3 shows young activists' distribution according to their reported feelings of satisfaction about social media's contribution. As discussed in Section 4.2, influencing others' political decisions and disseminating information were the strongest reasons for the participant young activists use of social media.
However, while there are several functions that social media contributed to achieving for young activists, data from FGDs also revealed that there are some aspects related to social media's influence on the young activists' movements, which they believe that social media did not necessarily contribute to gratification. Several themes about the perceived limitations of social media as tools for mobilising collective action emerged during the FGDs.

Structural Fluidity and Defective Social Media Culture
Young activists believe that there are several pitfalls that may dissolve their media-enabled mobilisation repertoire and, hence, deter social media's contribution to citizens' empowerment. The first deficit is related to the non-centralised organising structure of social media, which relates to the way users communicate over social media platforms, or what SO.
termed a lack of social media culture. SO. suggested a convergent approach to better utilise social media affordances: Utilising social networking sites for political mobilisation lacks two important aspects: a higher degree of organisation in regard to the way political activists use the medium, and a fundamental level of social media culture. I mean, how to supplement the use of a social media platform by convergence with other social media. For example, I can use Twitter as an add-on to Facebook, and improve practice by uploading related videos on YouTube … .. I cannot expect efficient performance when 20 groups are created to discuss the same issues and to accomplish the same goals. We should create a system of alternative media that we can use when independent media channels and significant talk shows are suppressed. This will enable an autonomous institutional form of alternative media that can reach the broader public (emphasis added).
SO. believes that the polycentric organisation of the Internet results in structural fluidity.
Thanks to the Internet, creating groups online has never been easier. Users can create groups online for all sorts of reasons which render some of these groups void of essence and meaningful influence. Instead of defective social media culture, SO. suggested a convergence culture that would fine-tune the focus of their message to their supporters.
Convergence culture allows for "the flow of content across multiple media platforms," (Jenkins, 2005, p. 2) and hence makes possible a holistic media experience and a stronger mobilising message. Providing multiple communicative cues was found to create a rich media experience in which immediate feedback, variety of language, and a personal focus are provided (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Jenkins and Deuze (2008, p. 6) explain how shifts in media infrastructure have allowed grassroots to practise bottom-up consumer-driven processes of control that might circumvent traditional gatekeepers' and agenda setters' monopoly over the media.
Taking the lead from SO.'s views, M.S. added that social media's potential for empowerment could be raised by applying 'efficient economy of the Web:' I believe that social networking sites could be the most important mobilising platform in Egypt if invested efficiently. … .. As for the limited proportional numbers of those who take to the streets when compared to online supporters of a certain cause, I think this difference is due to the irrational use of the medium. Creating a group and inviting people to related events only because you are fascinated about a freak idea and want to aggregate people to come and applaud this idea, no matter how silly it is, will eventually mar the credibility of the source and the medium. Moreover, the abundance of groups will result in a disturbing glut of messages and notifications, which might lead users to abandon most of these groups (emphasis added).
An abundance of online groups, in participants' points of view, might on the one hand polarise potential supporters, who would be stratified between multiple online groups that support the same cause. On the other, this structural fluidity of the Web would also put members of online groups off by the gush of messages they receive from these very similar groups. Taking a lead from SO.'s argument, M.S. suggests that similar groups should coordinate their efforts and mobilise for their cause harmoniously.

Social Media's Perceived Credibility and Reliability
Using social media as a means to influence others' decisions and to address them with certain information, rather than to inform activists' decisions and gain information, is thought to be the reason behind the precedence of informational uses of social media over other use factors.
Participants expressed several views during the FGDs that support these inferences. It seems that relying on social media to support activists' own decisions does not explain much of participants' use of these media. Lack of social media's perceived credibility as a primary source of information was the most reported explanation for this finding during the FGDs.
Recent research shows that perceived credibility is an essential parameter that guides the selection of different types of media sources for news consumption in an information-rich environment (Yuan, 2011). However, this significant condition does not apply to social media from the participants' points of view. The role that social media might play in stimulating, or enhancing, their political participation by "enabling them to encounter and make sense of events, relationships and cultures of which they have no direct experience" (Coleman & Blumler, 2009, pp. 42, 43) was often criticised by young activists.
Activists think social media are reliable tools for disseminating functional information relevant to their activism. However, as primary sources of information, participant activists think that social media are less credible, less organised and, hence, less reliable sources of news compared to more traditional sources. W.B. started by telling that Facebook 'of course' is a valuable resource when it comes to keeping updated on current events and timely engagement with the content, as well as other users. He compared electronic newspapers and SNSs as sources of self-political guidance: Sometimes news presented on Facebook is not always accurate. It is more a kind of 'public journalism', this is why I sometimes find it more appealing to interact with, but when I seek more credible information, I log into electronic newspapers' websites which are more organised.
The young activists criticised social media as platforms for informing political discussions, for lacking professional mediation. Social media allow for political deliberation that is hardly "… .. mediated, with professional communicators rather than ordinary citizens talking to each other and to the public through mass media of communications" (Page, 1996, p. 1). This means that for the politically experienced citizens, social media are not perceived in and of itself as an efficient arena for comprehending the political sphere. They realise social media's deficiencies in terms of offering a "central organising idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events [and a coherent frame that] suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue" (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987, p. 143). They believe that news frames are better presented on the electronic newspapers, where journalists can identify and classify information and "package it for efficient relay to their audiences" (Gitlin, 2003, p. 7). More recent research shows that reliability is one of the problems that computermediated-communication raises within social movements (e.g., Rucht 2003). Clark and Themudo (2003) arrived at a similar conclusion. They argue that Internet campaigns have "inherently weak mechanisms of information quality control," and the "Internet is a better medium for disseminating information and opinions than for building trust, developing coherence and resolving controversies" (p. 114).
Accordingly, participants tend to selectively consume news on social media as they stressed the importance of dealing cautiously with social media as primary news sources, and the necessity to consume their content through a critical lens. A.Ma. cited several reasons for preferring electronic newspapers over Facebook as a platform for gaining constructive political guidance: Electronic newspapers are more organised than Facebook. Writers have certain ideas that they discuss, and users who post comments on the news stories show a level of awareness.
Participants think that political discussions on social media platforms are polarised, which makes it harder for media users to follow these discussions and extract valuable information from them. Similarly, Johnson and Kaye (2010) found in the study they conducted during the 2004 U.S.A. presidential election that politically interested Web users perceived all online media as being only moderately credible. It was also found that news gathered from SNSs, like MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, did not add much to users' political knowledge or to democratic discourse when compared with the impact of using other news sources, like cable news and traditional media (Baumgartner & Morris, 2010 follow a certain theme and they lack professionalism, which affects the quality of discussions on these platforms and may cause polarisation, rather than developing the communicative exchange. This obscuring divergence of online discussions was ascribed to the nature of the digital world as a fragmented, hyper-pluralistic space. Heterogeneity and disagreements are expected to arouse cognitive dissonance which, again, feeds into more withdrawals from discussions, as "to avoid cognitive dissonance, it is simpler to exit than to work through any messy bargaining and conflictual disagreements within the group" (Norris, 2004, p. 4). Similarly, Smitten (2008) argues that although the Internet has leverages that may enable online communities to act politically, there are also limitations that can make the "… .. predominant effect of political action of online communities [is] the arousal of public attention as a sign of successful articulation of interests" (p.51). Some political online communities, according to Smitten, lack organisation around well-defined political objectives, and even if they assess those objectives, they may face the difficulty of accessing the political system, especially in dictatorships and non-pluralist societies. This may impose difficulties on bridging online activism to the off-line context to make social and political change feasible. Additionally, the inner structure of online communities does not follow a certain law of organisation. The aforementioned non-centralised form of Internet organisation poses questions on the quality of the "decision-making" and "policy-formation" of these communities and serves as a justification for taking them lightly in the political arena. (Smitten, 2008, p. 51). boyd further (2008) argues that activists are not being realistic in their evaluations of the potential of SNSs for empowering ordinary citizens.

Social Media and the Perceived Erosion of the Off-Line Practice of Collective Action
Although social media have provided activists with more convenient tools of organisation and participation, as individuals practicing politics, conveniently they may run the risk of perceiving themselves to be active participators or political players, while they are actually debating about politics rather than taking part in it. Participants believe that practising politics on soial media platforms may erode actual participation and limit collective action to the virtual sphere. Relying on Jenkin's notions about media convergent culture, drawing an analogy between Jenkin's notions about the influence of media convergence on media use (new and traditional) and participants' perceptions of the influence of onand off-line mashups on political practice (virtual and real), delineates participant activists' views about proportional differences between online interactors and off-line actors. Jenkins (2005, p. 6) argues that: On the one hand, convergence represents an expanded opportunity, since content which succeeds in one sector can spread across other platforms. On the other, convergence represents a risk since once you move filmgoers from theaters to cells one wonders if they will return again.
Similarly, it can be said that once you move protesters from streets to social media one wonders if they will return again. Based on the results discussed hitherto, Table 4 summarises social media's perceived deficiencies in relation to different categories of media use. The aim of this study is to understand what drives young Egyptian activists' use of the apparatuses of social media for their political activism, and how they evaluate media's contribution to gratifying their sought goals. The findings revealed several needs that young Egyptian activists use social media as instruments to achieve. These goals are more directed at disseminating information in order to inform and influence other non-politicised users' decisions, rather than being directed at achieving individualistic goals. This is evident from activists' critique of social media affordances and their perceived influence in fulfilling activists' pre-assessed needs.
Those underpinnings of media use were found to be moderated by activists' perceptions of social media as being 'somewhat' reliable sources of information. Censorship also emerged as an incentive to information seeking and dissemination purposes. The results confirm that young Egyptian activists are only moderately satisfied with the political outcome that can be achieved from social media use. Some central themes emerged in the current difficulties facing mobilisation through the purposive use of social media as perceived by young Egyptian activists. It could be said that while there have been some interesting changes in the way activism is practised, especially in terms of disseminating information and aggregating support at lower price, yet the importance of social media is modest. Digital social networks are not deemed yet to be a factor of mobilisation. Young activists realise that using social media for mobilising collective action suffers a number of deficits both on the user and the medium sides. Such deficits may limit the impact, if any, of activists' online political efforts.
The argument is that the way social media are currently utilised, especially by the nonpoliticised, may cause polarisation rather than aggregation. Media dissatisfaction is expected hence, to have its impact on users' decisions to continue, stop using or to alter the way they utilise these platforms to better achieve political change.
This study contributes to understanding the escalating allegations about the contribution of social networking sites to provoking collective action and therefore to realistically addressing claims about 'Facebook and Twitter revolutions.' It also delineates the perceived difference between activists and non-activists in terms of needs that social media may contribute to fulfilling. Accordingly, this study suggests that young activists need to deploy a number of best practice tactics and know how strategies that may help them overcome social media deficits and better approach potential supporters.