“This was not a Facebook revolution,” intoned Amira Maaty flatly, as she sat on a panel last night at Johns Hopkins University entitled “Social Media’s Role in Recent Events in the Middle East.”  Ms. Maaty, a program officer focusing on Egypt and Libya at the National Endowment for Democracy, was specifically referring to the recent revolution in Egypt, and her surprising remarks proved remarkably uncontroversial.

It seems that those who study North Africa haven’t been caught up in the rush to credit social media with catalyzing revolution. Instead, they take a more nuanced view.

The panel, which also included veteran journalist Jeffrey Ghannam and Jessica Dheere of the Social Media Exchange in Beirut, advocated the role of networks more broadly in bringing about the massive social change we have seen unfold over the last month.  Facebook and social media certainly played some role in helping to energize those networks, notably through the “we are Khaled Said” group, but it’s role in actually creating them is debatable.  Further, the daily coordination of demonstrators was more likely to be done via SMS, Google chat, or email.  It is easy to forget that, despite all the hype in the western media, the vast majority of Egyptians do not use Facebook.

Further, the panel explained, the lack of large and strong networks may play a role in explaining why upstart revolutions have been less successful elsewhere, even though indicators such as mobile penetration rates and facebook usage are similar.  In Bahrain, for example, it is likely that the state security apparatus can much more easily monitor the population because it is so small.  In Lebanon, fractures in the societal structure between Christians and Muslims prevent large networks from forming.  It could be that these social structures are more critical in allowing for successful revolution than any media, even if that media can play a complimentary role