The ongoing revolutions in Tunis, Egypt and Libya owe their success to social websites like Twitter as much as they do to the oppressive regimes of these countries and the irrepressible resistance of its people. Would it be possible to bring the change without the latest means of communication? The answer to this question is simple and quick: without the force of communication no campaign or movement can attain success.

A parallel can be drawn from the Russian Revolution. On December 14, 1825, Czar Nicholas of Russia issued the order for his artillery to open fire upon the crowd protesting against him. An estimated 70 to 80 deaths occurred. Within ten days the news reached the other parts of Russia and the North and South secret societies against the emperor joined ranks and rose in rebellion. That was the beginning of the December Revolution.

The difference between that and the revolutions in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt today are the means of communication. Today’s revolutions are being called the ‘Twitter revolutions’.  News reports from the Middle East disclose how anti-government activists are using the web. Images from these countries show a young people using a smartphone or Blackberry to send out pictures or videos of barricades, instances of firing, people falling down wounded or dead, to the world.

In fact they are fighting their war with phones, not guns. Wikileak, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook replace firearms and missiles. Viral spreads across the world are winning sympathies of the people and the governments for the revolutionists. ‘Techno-realism’ has become an affordable and effective tool as measures of the dictatorial regimes to suppress communication via web meets failure. Will Twitter revolution spread to the rest of Middle East? Maybe not entirely spearheading the movement for freedom of speech but to a vital extent—yes.

The fact is that neither Twitter nor WikiLeaks played much of a part in Tunisia. Before the revolution, there were about 2,000 registered Tweeters in Tunisia out of which only 200 were active.

The WikiLeaks pages on Tunisian corruption, says Khaled Koubaa, president of the Internet Society in Tunisia. He and his friends attempted to set up sites supporting the revolutionists. He argues that social media existed on two levels. A few thousand geeks like him communicated via Twitter, while perhaps two million talked on Facebook. The Tweeters sent out the messages to the Facebookers who actually spread it out. The images of Mohammed Bouazizi who had burned himself in Sidi Bouzid were put on Facebook. In a country where censors worked overtime, Facebook worked like the mass media. The regime, which was used to imprisoning and torturing bloggers, launched a full-blown attack against Facebook in December. But by then it was too late.

“We still don’t believe the news and television,” says a communications professional in Tunisia after the revolution, “but we know what’s happening through Facebook and the internet.”

Twitter had negligible influence on events in Tunisia but for Egypt a far more mature and extensive social media environment played a crucial role in organising the uprising against Hosni Mubarak. His government ordered mobile service providers to send text messages in support of his supporters. The same trick was replicated by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

The trick did not work in Egypt as details of demonstrations were circulated by both Facebook and Twitter and the activists’ 12-page guide to confronting the regime was distributed by email. The Mubarak regime pulled the plug on internet services and 3G network. It was too late, again.

Today Libya is facing an even more severe internet disruption but the movement continues to pick up pace. Where social media had a major impact on conveying the news to the outside world, bloggers and Twitter users were able to transmit news bites that would otherwise never make it to mainstream news media. With official blockage of the internet, Libyan activists are asking Egyptians to send their Sim cards across the border so they could communicate without being bugged.

Information material is being smuggled out of countries where the censor is tight and placed on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Pakistan, too, has tried and failed placing restrictions on Facebook under another pretext and messages against the corrupt government are rife. So the fact is communicating tools like: Facebook, YouTube and internet mail are more successful in spreading awareness and calling for social and political change than Twitter.