A year at the click of a mouse

What issues most grasped the attention of web-surfing Egyptians and Arabs in 2011, asks Omneya Yousry

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Clockwise from top left: man in galabeya; Discovery on its last mission to the International space station; most discussed on Twitter; 25 January Revolution; American army back; Japan earthquake; Gilaad Shalit; Egyptian army soldiers

2011, the year of the Arab Spring, was a special year for the Egyptians and the Arabs. Politics affected people's choices of what to watch, read or hear, and it dictated their interests to an unusual degree, thanks to the political changes taking place across the Arab world. This meant that in addition to sharing in the international interests of others, Egyptians and Arabs had their own reasons for finding 2011 a particularly fascinating year.

For Egyptians, the 25 January Revolution was a dramatic start to the year, and the Internet is now awash with references to Egypt's revolution, swiftly followed by the Libyan and Tunisian revolutions, all events that changed the region and the world.

Though the most searched-for terms on the web in February tend to be related to Valentine's Day on the 14th, searches this year took a different turn, with Libya and Egypt being the most searched-for terms on Google in February 2011, according to research carried out in Ghana.

"Over the past month, the world has been focussed on the potential of citizens to bring about positive change in their lives when they act as a united force. It is not surprising that Ghanaians, like people across the world, closely monitored the developments in Egypt and Libya and that the Internet was the best source of news and events as they unfolded. Who would have thought that posts on Facebook could be a key driver behind a change in leadership of a country? Well Egypt and the resignation of Hosni Mubarak just proved it's possible," commented Estelle Akofio Sowah, Google Ghana country representative, earlier in the year.

Another area of interest in Google searches was the year's celebrities, and here too 2011 was different from other years. This was because in 2011 many Egyptians gained international fame for their political activities, among them Wael Ghoneim, considered by some as the spark that led to January's revolution and founder of the Facebook page "We Are All Khaled Said." Ghoneim was arrested by the authorities for his activities and released a few days later.

Second place in Google searches went to the man behind former vice-president Omar Suleiman, Colonel Hussein Sherif, leader of Egypt's special forces, who appeared behind Suleiman during the proclamation of former president Hosni Mubarak's stepping down from power on 11 February.

The third celebrity was "the guy who came to the football match wearing the galabeya," Houzayfa. After being shown on TV wearing a galabeya to a Zamalek football match, Houzayfa, a student at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, explained that he had just wanted to shake hands with the players.

Fourth place went to Ahmed Harara, who lost his sight after being shot by police during demonstrations in Cairo. Then came Alia El-Mahdi, who appeared naked on her Facebook page, followed by Ghada Kamal, who defended the veiled girl who was dragged and beaten in front of the cabinet building in Cairo, and finally there was Tawfik Okasha, owner of the Al-Faraeen TV channel.

According to Google's annual "zeitgeist" survey, the Top 10 Most Popular Search Terms in Egypt in 2011 were: the 25 January Revolution, Midan Al-Tahrir, Facebook, Jokes 2011, the Mubarak Trial, Twitter, the Finance Ministry, Google Gravity, and the Love is Forbidden series. Egypt's fastest-rising people were: Mubarak, Wael Ghoneim, Hisham El-Gokh, Essam Sharaf, Tamer Ashour, Amr Katamesh, Hussein Salem, Ahmed El-Shahat, Ahmed Ezz and Gamal Mubarak.

Facebook now attracts search volumes of over 25 billion hits a year, followed by YouTube, with 10 billion a year. Some of the other highly Googled words were Twitter, money, cheap, lose weight, and of course the names of celebrities.

However, the Five Most Important and Memorable Middle East Events in 2011, according to Google, were Libya's successful uprising, Egypt's ongoing revolution, Syria's unending revolt, the death of prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia and the Iran nuclear crisis.

In no particular order, a list of the top 10 stories of the year were chosen by editors at the St Petersburg Times in Russia. This revealed that Osama bin Laden came at the top of the list, the Al-Qaeda leader's killing by US forces earlier in the year bringing one of the longest and costliest manhunts in modern history to a close. In a dramatic middle-of-the-night raid, US commandos had burst into an upstairs room in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on 2 May to end Bin Laden's life in a storm of gunfire.

The terms tsunami/nuclear disaster took second place, with Japan still struggling to rebuild after a magnitude nine earthquake struck off its shores on 11 March. Then came a story about police violence in St Petersburg, followed by the Arab Spring, which began with Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit-seller, setting himself on fire to protest against mistreatment by the police and the lack of opportunities in his native country.

The rest of the top 10 stories included the British royal wedding, NASA retiring its space shuttle fleet, the death of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the Occupy Wall Street movement and economic problems two and half years into the present economic crisis and with no end in sight.

Highlighted among the Most Famous Statements of the Year in 2011 was former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi asking his people "who are you?"

Afaf Shoeib, the Egyptian actress, lost a lot of her popularity after complaining on TV that she could not buy her niece pizza because of the curfew in Egypt. After the events in Cairo's Tahrir Square, actor Talaat Zakaria described what was going on by saying that "there are drums and different factions, boys and girls, drugs and sexual relationships." And not only Zakaria expressed strong opposition to the revolutionary youth: actor Samah Anwar also did so, saying that "there would be no problem if someone burnt the place down," referring to the revolutionary encampments.

As for the most powerful images to hit the web in 2011, the picture of the young Egyptian woman seen being brutally beaten by the military during the Qasr Al-Aini street demonstrations must be somewhere near the top of the list. In the images, the unconscious young woman is seen lying on her back, surrounded by baton-wielding soldiers with her torso and bra exposed.

Other photographs of the Tunisian, Syrian, Libyan and Egyptian revolutions are also among the web's most powerful images of the year, including a picture of an Egyptian anti-government activist kissing a riot police officer to express his happiness and support for the army. This photograph was one of the most discussed Twitter pictures of 2011. Photographs of the Japanese earthquake, US troops withdrawing from Iraq, and the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the US, were all heavily clicked on.

Apart from politics, 2011 saw some unusual events in the celebrity world, with more than 25 Arab celebrities dying over the course of the year, including Hassan El-Asmar, Hend Rostum, Talaat Zein, the Algerian actress Nagham Fatouki, Kamal El-Shenawi, Omar El-Hariri, Anis Mansour, Faida Kamel, Khaireya Ahmed, Amer Monib, Ramadan Khater, Mohamed El-Dafrawi, Amal Sukar, Mohamed Dagher, Talaat El-Sadat, the caricaturist Hegazi and Soad Mohamed.

2011 was a challenging year, not only for the Egyptians and the Arabs, but also for the whole world. It saw many unforgettable events take place. Anyone looking forward to the year from the perspective of early January 2011 could scarcely have predicted any of them.