Sherief Gaber is a researcher in issues related to the right to the city and socially just cities and a member of the Mosireen Independent Media Collective in Cairo. Mosireen documented the protests during the ‘Egyptian revolution’.

At a conference in Berlin you said the internet’s influence on the protests and revolution in Egypt was overrated. How would you describe its impact and why do you think others exaggerate it?

There’s a great many people out there who want to believe that the internet and social media tools caused the revolution, I think because it allows one to paint a picture that’s familiar, accessible and unthreatening to audiences without context or understanding of Egypt or similar social struggles elsewhere. I think that because people were writing about or posting updates regarding the ongoing events during the 18 days in 2011 using Facebook, twitter, and the like, it allowed journalists an easy way to project understanding of events, and sympathetic, largely middle class protagonists to be seen as the centre of those events.