No Laughing Matter CONTINUES

Bassem Youssef pushed through fans to enter courthouse

On April 1, I posted "No Laughing Matter," chronicling the recent charges filed against Bassem Youssef, "the Egyptian Jon Stewart" (Stewart is a popular US comedian and host of the political satire, "The Daily Show").

Bassem Youssef, formerly a heart surgeon who began by making political satire YouTube videos from his flat, is host of a similar political satire/comedy show here in Egypt and has grown in popularity enormously since the revolution. Bassem was charged with crimes of insulting the President, Islam, and potentially (varying reports) contributing to an environment of unrest. The summons to face the charges led to a mob of supporters outside of the court, and a series of articles, tweets, blogs, and international media responding--including John Stewart himself on a recent episode.

Stewart's 10 minute clip was posted and recirculated via YouTube by many--Viacomm, who has rights to the program, was able to bring down all the links within a day, but not before the links were reposted on Facebook, Twitter, and various blogs. We ourselves sent out a link via Twitter, which are automatically posted on our Facebook account. (Thanks to our friend Jacob who gave us the links to the Daily Show's website who still have the clip available: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-april-1-2013/morsi--viva-hate----egyptian-democracy ).

Apparently, Stewart's little segment was not only tweeted by 20-somethings (and us), but also in a RT (retweet) by the official US Embassy in Cairo. This led to an international set of responses from the US State Department, the Cairo Embassy, and the Egyptian government, the Freedom and Justice Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood--beginning through their Twitter accounts and continuing in other means. Here's an interesting article, first seen in a Tweet by Tahrir Squared, on the whole international incident.

Though I'm sure it will all be sorted out without too much further incident, it is a unique situation in which social media has had international political implications. As social media is used increasingly by governments, it seems that there has to be growing stacks of policy & procedure manuals on what to do, what not to do, and what to do when the policies and procedures are blown! The older, officials and policymakers in international affairs are likely outsourcing a lot of this "new wave, tech savvy" stuff to younger interns and staff members who do not necessarily have the years of experience in diplomacy to handle such popular, and potentially volatile means of communication--and, the appropriate disclaimers themselves cannot possibly fit in "140 characters or less", much less the retractions that may be necessary to prevent international incidents.

Think before you tweet, follow, like, or post!

Pray for Egypt...