The women were subject to the same or worse treatment as the male protesters, including being "harassed, tortured, shot by snipers, and teargassed." Women who were imprisoned were threatened with sexual violence or subject to virginity tests, and in Libya there were reports of mass rape committed by government mercenaries. Coverage of women in the Arab spring came at a somewhat perplexing rate. While CNN and other major American news outlets covered muslim women more, they often gave them a passive role in the commentary of their coverage. Most of the women were also shown wearing hijabs and more traditional muslim clothing than before, pointing to a change in coverage by US media outlets. This, however, was not reflective of the realities of the Arab Spring. New technologies, particularly social media, enabled women to participate in the Arab Spring as organizers, journalists, and activists. Protesters used Facebook to mobilize supporters and organize events, and YouTube videos and Flickr photos gave the rest of the world visuals of the events of the Spring. Twitter functioned as a live newsfeed for other domestic and international activists as well as international media organizations. Mobile phones, especially those with cameras and Internet access, served as a key tool for cyber-activists. Blogs were another vital method for women to disseminate information. The numbers of female and male bloggers from Arab Spring countries were relatively even. Since older males dominate most conventional media networks in the Arab Spring countries, cyber-activism gave women their own voice, both domestically and abroad. Younger women, generally the most excluded from traditional news outlets, thus benefited the most from the rise of social media. The new platforms also enabled protesters, both male and female, to get their messages out without the filter of state-run media. Social media helped women engage more people in the revolutions by reducing distinctions between social and political networks. While internet access remains relatively low in most of the Spring countries, the people whom online activities reached included key groups like power brokers, journalists, the intelligentsia, and Western governments and media. Women split their messaging evenly between raising domestic awareness of their causes and sharing information about the Spring with other countries, while men tended to focus only on domestic awareness. The use of social media allowed for an increased awareness of the contributions of individual women in the demonstrations. The women's updates ensured that the West's 24-hour news cycle always had firsthand sources. Bahraini activists Maryam Al-Khawaja and Zainab Al-Khawaja, Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy, and Libyan activist Danya Bashir were called the "Twitterati" (a portmanteau of "Twitter" and "literati") because their Twitter accounts of the revolutions were praised by international media outlets.