Social Media Go to War: Rage, Rebellion and Revolution in the Age of Twitter

This new book includes a chapter co-authored by Treepon Kirdnark, an alum of our MA program, on Thailand’s Red Shirt Uprising and YouTube.  Other chapters cover social media and dissent in countries ranging from Cuba to Georgia and, of course, a number of pieces on the Arab Spring by authors such as Catherine Cassara and Lara  Lengel, Sadaf Ali and Shahira Fahmy, Elizabeth  Iskander and Mina Monir,  Naila Hamdy and Lindsey Conlin and more.

New study by @shannonsindorf confirms: w/online news forums, handful of voices do all the talking

A study of the Greeley (Colo.) newspaper by our former grad student, Shannon Sindorf, confirms, when it comes to online news forums, most people like to watch (lurk) while a small minority comment.

A doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Shannon is co-authoring the study conducted for the Digital News Test Kitchen in response to the newspaper shutting down its comments section in 2011 after deciding the commenters were getting out of control.

Seems kinda extreme to me.

Geotagging Muslims in Thailand

Image via Wikipedia

My paper co-authored with Treepon Kirdnark about geotagging Flickr photographs of Muslims will appear in a forthcoming issue of new Media &  Society.

We argue that geotags  - markers designating longitude and latitude on an online map – associated with photographs of Thailand’s Muslims might be replicating common stereotypes of that minority group.  LIke in the US, most Thais are part of a majority religion (for them, Buddhism) but there is in fact a diverse range of Muslims in Thailand (ethnically Malay Muslims, Chinese Muslims, South Asian and Middle Eastern Muslims, etc.)

Our findings are interesting in part because the arguments about participatory media are that they open up new spaces and news ways of representing previously ignored groups.  Yet our research suggests that isn’t necessarily so.   One reason may be the lack of Thai participation on Flickr and similar sites.

YouTube & the Egyptian Revolution

Do social media such as YouTube embody a new political language for Egyptians?

That’s one of the questions answered in an article I wrote with Sahar El Zahed, “I’ll Be Waiting for You Guys”: A YouTube Call to Action in the Egyptian Revolution, which will appear in an upcoming issue of the International Journal of Communication‘s special issue on The Arab Spring: The Role of ICTs.

You can judge for yourself by watching the video below of Asmaa Mahfouz, a member of the April 6 movement who was one of thousands of Egyptian youth who took to Tahrir Square to overthrow the government.

Cool stuff about our grads

News about alums of our graduate program:

Seth Koury’s thesis project, the documentary, “Sounds of Beirut”:

• won a Park City Music Film Festival Gold Medal for Excellence
• was nominated for Best Documentary-Political and Best Cinematography at the Action on Film Festival in Pasadena
• won an “Award of Merit” from the Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood
• was accepted at the Flagstaff Film Festival; the International Film Festival of Ireland; and the Kansas International Film Festival.

Watch the trailer for the film.

Claire Rietmann-Grout’s thesis project, the documentary, “Dear Devils,” about her time on a Swiss softball team, screened at the All Sports Film Festival in Los Angeles, and on a local television channel in Half Moon Bay.

Sahar El Zahed has been accepted into the PhD program in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate School for this fall.

Liz Ohanesian, a writer with LA Weekly online, was invited to guest blog with  Boing Boing.

A study of geotagging conducted by Bangkok U’s Treepon Kirdknark  (& me) was presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in Denver in August.

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