bq. While media reports on the Arab uprisings discussed the difficulty of estimating crowd size and pondered what percentage of the population they represented, much of the current media coverage of the recent riots that erupted throughout the Muslim world on September 11, 2012 in response to the anti-Islam film, “Innocence of Muslim,” has described the events as “days of rage” and violence “sweeping” the entirety of almost a quarter of the world’s population.
bq. A simple comparison of the smallest estimates of the crowds that turned out in the early days of the socalled “Arab Spring” in late 2010 and 2011 in the Middle East and North Africa shows that those crowds were much larger than the ones that have formed in the past few days, except in Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait, and Qatar.
That is political scientist Megan Reif, writing here (link via Jay Ulfelder). Further discussion and data at the link.