Tahrir crowds were middle-class, TV-informed, and economic-motivated

Evidence

Empirical analysis of the biggest crowds, which came out later, indicated that participation was more complex than initial narratives would have suggested—most people cited economic concerns as their primary motivation, far ahead of democracy; around 25 percent of people in the Square supported the Muslim Brotherhood; more were middle-class, rather than poor and unemployed, and a majority got their primary information from television (especially Al Jazeera), rather than the internet. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 239

Categorization

• QUESTION: The empirical crowd data contradicts the ‘Facebook revolution’ and ‘the poor rose up’ narratives — worth checking what study produced these numbers and whether they’ve been contested.
• XREF: Directly undercuts the book’s earlier claim (ch8) that media-created reputations exceed actual membership — here the media narrative overstated the revolutionaries’ identity relative to actual crowd composition. — connects to: Western media favored liberal pro-Western voices inside the uprisings; Egyptian organizers were astonished by their own protest’s turnout — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 220; Tahrir protesters cited economic concerns more than democracy as their motivation — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 239 (+1 more)