There was a world of difference between the two, but in their fall, one striking similarity: The embattled administrations of Mubarak and de la Torre succumbed to grassroots movements that, however different in scale, were organized by young people who used social media as a weapon.
Hours before de la Torre's resignation became official – and prior to officials' denials to the contrary – the news hit the Facebook fan page page of Estudiantes de la UPR Informan.
The 1:11 p.m. post on Friday spread like wildfire, quickly tallying 500 "likes" and dozens of comments in a matter of two hours.
"Thank God," one of the comments read in Spanish, "a new dawn for our University!"
“You saw this with the disputed Iranian election, with Egypt,” said Wasim Ahmad online journalism professor at Stony Brook University. “It’s a way for other points of view to get out there in a more instantaneous fashion.”
UPR students, who for months have protested the university's imposition of an $800 special fee tacked on to tuition and a heavy police presence on campus, have circumvented a lack of U.S. media attention by getting the word out through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Though difficult to quantify the tangible effects of social media on grassroots demonstrations, UPR students have tried to leverage social media tools to disseminate images, video and messages without filters.
Students, alumni and professors, for instance, launched the Estudiantes de la UPR Informan Facebook page in April to counter "UPR Informa," the University of Puerto Rico's official page.
The protestors' version, a page by students for students, has been a destination for news favorable to the social movement. With more than 32,000 Facebook fans, the page has easily outpaced its official counterpart – which launched first – by 8,000 fans.
On Twitter, students and a community of followers of developments on campus have used three hashtags to relay news stories, pictures of rallies and protests, and a home for the discourse to flow freely. #UPR, #HuelgaUPR and #LuchaUPR are three conversations on Twitter that are all University of Puerto Rico, all the time.
Postings have ranged from a flier for a vigil for UPR ("Bring a black shirt," it reads in part), to sharing an image of a police officer yelling in the face of a female student, to just giving opinions about the latest developments.
Enrique Oropeza, a student reached through Twitter, shared photos he took at a protest last month.
Even celebrities like "Residente," the lead singer and social activist of international band Calle 13 whose real name is René Pérez Joglar, tweeted in Spanish about the struggles of the protestors.
While Iranian government media claimed that Sane Jaleh, one of those killed during protests on 14 February in Tehran, was a member of the Basij paramilitary forces, a member of the Tahkim-e Vahdat student organization told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that Jaleh was not a Basiji. In fact, he told the Campaign, Jaleh was a member of the Tehran Arts University’s Islamic Association, and that he had attended previous demonstrations as well. He told the Campaign that Jaleh was directly shot at while trying to run away from armed plainclothes forces.
