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Six Steps for Fact Checking Citizen Media

Anyone can be a publisher today – thanks to the web. As a result, there are so many more sources of news and information, which makes fact checking all the more critical in fast moving news stories. When disinformation gets into the news cycle, it can lead to people being put in harm’s way. Here, then, is a set of six tips to help you get it right. 1. Who is the original source? Every piece of news has a source – the person who told you the news. Who... Read The Rest →

Mansoura training workshop: On improving citizen media in Egypt’s governorates

This is a guest post on the Meedan blog by Nehal el-Sherif. How do you verify news on social networks? How do you build your network and provide accurate reporting? What makes a good photo? Last week, I went to the city of Mansoura to help 14 young Egyptians answer these questions and develop their analytical skills and sense of judgment in order to become better citizen journalists. The training in Mansoura was part of a series of workshops organized by Meedan and Birmingham City University to train citizen journalists... Read The Rest →

Meedan wins International Press Instiitute News Innovation Contest 2012

Meedan Checkdesk, a platform facilitating collaborative journalism for Middle East new media, has been named as one of 14 winners of the 2012 IPI News Innovation Contest. The award will support Meedan designers and developers to tackle one of the very thorniest problems of the social web: how news teams can better verify breaking stories from the Middle East using citizen reporting. We are honored to count IPI as a funding partner, putting us as it does in the company of some very high profile grantees, including AFP Foundation, Media... Read The Rest →

Ramy Raoof trains Alexandria’s citizen journalists on verifying citizen media

This is a guest post for the Meedan blog, written by human rights activist and citizen journalist Ramy Raoof. Many thanks to Ramy and to Sa7afat Welad el-Balad for hosting the workshop. Yesterday I came back from Alexandria after spending two days in a workshop with an amazing group of young men and women. The workshop is one of a series of workshops organized by Meedan and Birmingham City University to enhance the skills of citizen journalists in generating content on and from online media and train them on verification... Read The Rest →

@Gr33nData on training citizen journalists in Mahalla

This post was originally published by Tarek Amr at tarekamr.com A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Egyptian city of Mahalla El-Kubra for the first time, to lead one of a series of workshops organized by Meedan and Birmingham City University that aim to train citizen journalists in how to look at citizen media with a journalistic eye. The prominent blogger and tweep, Lilian Wagdy, gave the first training in Tahrir Lounge in Cairo, and then came my turn to give the second training in the Egyptian Democratic Academy... Read The Rest →

Global Censorship: Case Studies from Syria and Egypt

“The ubiquity of the Internet has added an additional layer of complexity to issues of government censorship. It is both an unrivaled tool for speech and an incredible tool for monitoring and surveillance.” The above paragraph is an excerpt of the description of the Global Censorship Conference that was held at Yale Law School March 30 – April 1. I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Lina Attalah, Managing Editor of Al Masry Al Youm (AMAY), discussing case studies of censorship. The panel discussed censorship in different... Read The Rest →

Meedan partners with Go Local and Egyptian Democratic Academy for Egypt citizen journalism training

As part of our ongoing project in support of citizen media verification in the Middle East, Meedan is currently running a series of training workshops for citizen journalists in Egypt. From the outset, we knew that for our training to be a valuable resource for Egypt’s citizen journalists, we would need to reach beyond the Cairo megalopolis. To help us with our outreach to citizen journalist and training logistics for our workshops outside of Cairo, we found two fabulous partners working on truly inspiring projects in Egypt’s governorates: Go Local,... Read The Rest →

Meedan Community Partner to catalyze4change.org

Meedan is a community partner to the the @catalyze4 effort – our good friends at the Institute for the Future have partnered with Rockefeller Foundation on this effort. On April 3, at 4 pm in San Francisco, Dr. Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation will be hosting a conversation with three Bay Area leaders to discuss innovative approaches to social change. We will be LIVE-STREAMING this conversation with Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the Level Playing Field Institute); game designer Jane McGonigal, and Shannon Spanhake, Deputy... Read The Rest →

Ma’an News Agency to partner with Meedan on Middle East citizen journalism project

If you are following today’s Palestinian Land Day protests in the West Bank, an event which marks the 1976 killings of Arab demonstrators protesting Israel’s land appropriation, you may well be following the #LandDay hashtag on Twitter. “4 injuries in #IraqBorin near #Nablus .one of them is serious and one serious injury in #KuforQaddoum weekly demo #LandDay,” reports one user. But how do you sort the accurate and important reporting in this stream? And how do you corroborate these reports with other citizen media on YouTube, Facebook and Flickr? As... Read The Rest →

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