Introduction

Western media reported on the January 2011 uprising as the revolution of the youth and the rebellion of the masses (often referred to as the ‘Arab Street’), which is associated with chaos and irrationality. Khalil (2012) attempts to trace the term ‘Arab Street’ to the nineteenth century writing of Gustav Le Bon in his famous thesis, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, published in 1895. Le Bon's idea is that the crowd reflects an irrational mob that could exert a destructive power. Khalil (2012) extends Le Bon's argument to include Western media's coverage of the so-called ‘Arab Street’ with its derogatory depiction of irrational mobs. This view is no longer associated with the Western concept of ‘mob’, as Abrahamian (2009: 13) explains: ‘Although the stereotypical view has been widely discarded for European crowds, it continues to be alive and well in Western perceptions of the Middle East’. Bayat (2003: 11) emphasises the same point when he argues that ‘Arab Street’ is usually not seen as a genuine expression of local public opinion. The image of the ‘Arab Street’ in Western media is often that of a volatile mob, a rabble that reacts violently and irrationally; according to this image, the ‘Arab Street’ may wish to topple Arab governments, but it is seen as lacking the focus, intelligence, organisation and discipline to actually accomplish this. It is not conceived as the voice of the people who are engaged with a legitimate stake in the future of the Arab world; instead, it is seen as an unruly and irresponsible force that must be carefully restrained. Furthermore, in Egypt, the word ‘street’ has also come to correlate ‘with crime, vagrancy and deviance’ (Bibars 1998: 201).