Reporting breaking news online: Lessons from #BostonBombing

As we at Meedan followed the tragic and dramatic events as they unfolded today in Boston through both mainstream media (BBC, CBS Boston) and social media (Twitter) we noticed a couple of things that are worth recording: - If you Googled the name of the second suspect, which was first announced by the AP at 11:45 UTC then there was plenty of information to be found right away. Within 60 seconds of the name coming out, we could see where the 19 year old had gone to high school, that... Read The Rest →

Translatedesk: Social Translation for Social Media

co-written by Ed Bice, Tom Trewinnard and An Xiao Mina When Barack Obama made his first visit to Israel as president, the whole world, and especially the Middle East, paid attention. And as he took to lectern before a packed hall of students at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, the world watched. And they tweeted. They tweeted in Arabic, in Hebrew, in English, commenting in real-time and in dialogue, using Twitter for what it’s so well designed for. We saw a variety of tweets, like the ones below, that discussed... Read The Rest →

Pop-up newsrooms spring to life in Cairo for #EgyPresElex

The candidates have been named, symbols have been assigned (Will Moussa’s sun leave Shafiq on a ladder to nowhere?) and ballot boxes are being prepared across Egypt for the country’s first presidential election of the post-Mubarak era. The stage has been set for this historic poll, and we want you to help us cover the events as they’re happening on the ground. Join us at a pop-up newsroom For both daysp we’ll be hosting a pop-up newsroom, where you can get together with fellow citizen journalists and members of our... Read The Rest →

Red Hat calling @Pilgrim: Bing can’t do it alone

Our English-speaking ears pricked up earlier this morning, as we overheard a strange and troubling conversation taking place between two regulars in one of our favorite haunts: A:”And the idea to pass through us state security and change its name to the national security state security roles ended most bureaucratic de gain important o need protection” B:”De you keep optimistic industry” A:”Roles of bureaucracy, Red Hat is an example of security approval bitalb place before appointment?” B:”Less its Pilgrim … Hat one bikodm mabikodmsh military college and its answer file... Read The Rest →

Cairo journalist and Twitter supremo Lilian Wagdy trains budding citizen reporters at Tahrir Lounge

Last week I took part in the first of a series of workshops organized by Meedan and the Birmingham City University Centre for Media and Cultural Research that aim to train citizen journalists in verification techniques for  social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The ultimate goal of these workshops is to introduce trainees to a reporting platform developed by Meedan and adopted by one of Egypt’s best-known independent newspapers, Al-Masry Al-Youm.  The platform, http://liveblog.almasryalyoum.com, is designed to support citizen journalists to verify and disseminate important citizen reporting, and... Read The Rest →

Translating Tweets from the Arab Spring: Towards a Translation Workbench for Twitter

Think about the Arab Spring and you probably think about citizen media.  Syrians, Egyptians, Libyans, Bahrainis, Tunisians have not just been taking to the streets over the past year, but documenting their experiences in text, image and video – even building whole new social movements with a digital dimension. Has there ever been a historic moment of this scale unfold before our eyes through new media publishing tools? Surely this is inspiring to the rest of us who are not in the Middle East.  More than ever before, an American... Read The Rest →

Rethinking how @Meedan tweets

Meedan loves Twitter. Since 2008 Meedanis from around the world have been logging on every day to our organizational account and tweeting and retweeting on news, tech, translation and social media every day. As Meedan grows, and as we approach out 7,000th tweet, we’ve decided to rethink some of our strategies for how we use Twitter both as a means to engage our community, and as a way of discovering and sharing top content in Arabic and English. In the coming weeks followers of @Meedan will notice a few changes... Read The Rest →

Meedan at the Oxford Internet Institute: Understanding the role of the internet in Egypt's revolution

The role that social media played in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions is one question among many in understanding these profoundly important social events.  But perhaps it is a particularly important one for Meedan – after all we are strategically wedded to the idea that the web makes possible a more networked world in which information and ideas can be exchanged more freely.  That this debate has gathered such steam through the Arab revolutions is in part a feature of the newness of social media, but also the extent to... Read The Rest →

You can help translate 7iber's #HashtagDebates!

At Meedan we love 7iber’s #HashtagDebates model! We want your help to try to take the debates across languages using our super simple Twitter translation plan: We have 9 easy steps to start translating tweets: 1. Sign up for Curated.By – http://curated.by – a tool we’re using to pull and translate tweets 2. Add your Twitter account details 3. Visit our bundle of Tweets: http://www.curated.by/meedan/7iber-hashtagdebates-april-11 4. Find a tweet to translate and hit “Comment” 5. Check the “Tweet this comment to …” box. This is important because it means your... Read The Rest →

WARNING: Social media is dangerous. Here's how you can reduce the risks.

Social Media in Repressive States: The Risks Egyptians could never have removed Hosni Mubarak, or even made the case for deep reform, without reclaiming the streets.  Much of the struggle of the January 25 protests centred on whether protesters could maintain a popular presence in public space.  The violence meted out by police and regime supporters sought to remove people from public space, and scare away those who were thinking of joining. It is widely thought social media played an important role in galvanizing protesters to take part. But social media... Read The Rest →

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