CONNECTIVITY. IS FACEBOOK BECOMING A GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?
. Samantha Shapiro: "Revolution, Facebook-Style", The New York Times

Samantha Shapiro tells the story of Egyptian pro-democracy activist Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed Rashid. Shapiro quotes Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University), and his "cute-cat theory of digital activism":

Web sites or proxy servers created specifically for activists are easy for a government to shut down, Zuckerman says, but around the world, dissidents thrive on sites, like Facebook, that are used primarily for more mundane purposes (like exchanging pictures of cute cats). Authoritarian regimes can’t block political Facebook groups without blocking all the “American Idol” fans and cat lovers as well. “The government can’t simply shut down Facebook, because doing so would alert a large group of people who they can’t afford to radicalize,” Zuckerman explained.