Observers of the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries in the Arab world have focused with great excitement on the role played by new media, suggesting the events demonstrate the power of social networks to build a revolution. The rebellion, they say, was a uniquely 21st-century product of Twitter, Facebook and even Wikileaks. The reality, however, is much more complex. Many factors came into play to unleash the chain reaction that came crashing into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Some of those factors are as new as the iPhone, others as old as the slingshot. But what made the long-simmering popular […]