On the Meedan Radar – April 2013
Journalism & Tech - Meedan-translated post from the Witness blog (shared last bulletin) now published: فيديو المواطن للصحفيين: التحقق http://meedan.org/ar/2013/03/citizen_video - Two good references on the amazing work carried out by British amateur newshound Elliot Higgins aka @Brown_Moses who has made some important findings using YouTube videos to research weapons proliferation in Syria: Guardian report: How Brown Moses exposed Syrian arms trafficking from his front room - BBC College of Journalism post on searching social media for news: It is a bit like playing the piano. On an average day... Read The Rest →
On the Meedan Radar – February 2013
Journalism & Tech - Blog by general manager of French newspaper Les Echos on the need for a Digital “New Journalism” – interesting insight into how he views audience source awareness and trust: http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/02/17/the-need-for-a-digital-new-journalism/ - One to watch out for here, with a new series of posts by the team at Witness + special guests (Andy Carvin, Liam Stack etc) on citizen video for journalists http://blog.witness.org/2013/02/citizen-video-for-journalists-1/ - Twitter Devolutions – post by Marc Lynch assessing whether social media was doing harm to the Arab Spring http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/07/twitter_devolutions_arab_spring_social_media There’s also an interesting... Read The Rest →
On the Meedan Radar – July 2012
This post is going to be a monthly round up of projects we’ve been talking about at the Meedan watercooler, research that is guiding our work, and links that have us hitting “share” - BBC publishes major report on Arab Spring coverage (http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/arabspring_impartiality/arab_spring.pdf ) What is generally apparent is that the BBC are doing good things with UGC verification, but lack policy and structure to handle this issue of “caveat” in a consistent and methodical way. At the same time, though much of the process has been written in blog... Read The Rest →
Meedan partners with Syrian citizen news outlet Al-Ayyam
Meedan is working with the news newtork Al-Ayyam to bolster public voice, free expression and accountability in Syria. In a joint initiative that is designed to be responsive to critical and fast-changing needs on the ground, we seek to strengthen the role of citizen journalists to act together as a watchdog documenting the actions of the Syrian regime and armed groups operating in the country. Our objective is to provide a model for an investigative, citizen-led media in Syria and a building block of future reconciliation efforts. The partnership is... Read The Rest →
Checkdesk: A new approach to fact-checking citizen media of the Arab Spring
The advent of new media has ended the scarcity in which mass media journalism functioned, with repercussions for both newsgathering and publishing. No longer are audiences solely reliant on foreign reporters to tell the story of Homs or Hama. No longer is news delivered solely to the tempo demanded by the evening newscast or first edition. At both ends of the news workflow, journalists are playing catch up, chasing the barrage of content being published on the web in a bid to keep ‘on top of the story’ and publishing... Read The Rest →
Middle East Protests: Follow Voices on the Ground
The protests sweeping the Middle East have taken much of the world by surprise. But perhaps that just means those of us outside the region need to listen better. We now have the opportunity to learn about emerging currents in societies in the region from the people who live there. Social media and the emerging independent press give us that opportunity. So in an effort to help you discover new people to follow on Twitter, new blogs and columnists to watch and new Facebook pages to fan, we have created... Read The Rest →
Yahoo's Maktoob buyout points to potential for growth in Arabic web
The big news today is that s Yahoo has bought Maktoob. If you ever needed reminding that the Arabic web is a real growth area, this surely is it. Maktoob has seen almost fourfold growth over the last year, growing from 6 million unique visitors in June 2008 to 21.8 million a year later, according to comScore. Yahoo is making a big deal out of this – proving that the Arabic speaking world is seen as an important emerging player in the social web. But possibly it bucks a trend. ... Read The Rest →
Meedan's Arab Media Sources Database is now up on Freebase
Yesterday was a hugely important day in the Meedan calendar for two connected reasons. First, our data thinker Will Ward presented his findings on the potential for Meedan analytics to improve social science study of the Arabic and Islamic web (expect a post shortly). Will gave his talk to staff and students at Copenhagen University’s New Islamic Public Sphere Programme where he’s doing a fellowship co-sponsored by Meedan. He thinks better data on Arabic media sources combined with tools for searching and aggregating it could make a big contribution to... Read The Rest →
Arab opinion on Iraq is slanted, Iraqi academics tell Aswat al Iraq
Read the Arabic original on Aswat al Iraq here. Translated into English by Alison. Baghdad, Voices of Iraq : A number of Iraqi academics and researchers agreed that the Arab fear of the situation in Iraq will persist, despite “positive indicators” from the Iraqi provincial elections, and their views were proven by the coverage of these elections by Arab media. Dr. Hashem Hassan, a professor of media philosophy at the School of Media at Baghdad University, told Voices of Iraq that these elections played upon regional and Arab fears and... Read The Rest →
'The renaissance has ended, only the police remain' – Al Akhbar review of 41st Cairo Book Fair in English
Read the original in Al Akhbar here. Translated into English by Asma. “The Cairo International Book Fair” didn’t retain anything of the golden age except some superlatives. While waiting for a real revival of the cultural institution to happen, and for what it needs of diverse intellectual and political conditions to take place, the 41st edition of the book fair witnessed some changes that deserve some reflection: Political and intellectual works have declined, leaving more space for various trends and generations of literary works. Mohammed Khir Pages of thousands of... Read The Rest →