Social Media & the Arab Spring: First Looks

16 new research articles about the roles of social media and the Arab Spring have been published in the International Journal of Communication.  All of the articles can be viewed for free online and are linked to  below.

Of particular note is “The Revolutions Were Tweeted,” which is presented here in a very cool graphic.

Also, my paper co-authored with Sahar El Zahed, ” “I’ll Be Waiting for You Guys”: A YouTube Call to Action in the Egyptian Revolution,” which focuses on the videos created by youth activist Asmaa Mahfouz and argues that a new political media logic has formed in Egypt, is part of the collection. (See original video below.)

The Arab Spring & the Role of ICTs| Introduction	PDF
Ilhem Allagui, Johanne Kuebler	8 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0	Abstract PDF
Albrecht Hofheinz	18 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Analyzing the Role of ICTs in the Tunisian and Egyptian Unrest from an Information Warfare Perspective	Abstract PDF
Brett van Niekerk, Kiru Pillay, Manoj Maharaj	11 pgs.

The Arab Spring| The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions	Abstract PDF
Gilad Lotan, Erhardt Graeff, Mike Ananny, Devin Gaffney, Ian Pearce, danah boyd	31 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Overthrowing the Protest Paradigm? How The New York Times, Global Voices and Twitter Covered the Egyptian Revolution	Abstract PDF
Summer Harlow, Thomas J. Johnson	16 pgs.

The Arab Spring| The Egyptian Experience: Sense and Nonsense of the Internet Revolution	Abstract PDF
Miriyam Aouragh, Anne Alexander	15 pgs.

The Arab Spring| WikiRevolutions: Wikipedia as a Lens for Studying the Real-Time Formation of Collective Memories of Revolutions	Abstract PDF
Michela Ferron, Paolo Massa	20 pgs.

The Arab Spring| “I’ll Be Waiting for You Guys”: A YouTube Call to Action in the Egyptian Revolution	Abstract PDF
Melissa Wall, Sahar El Zahed	11 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Local Knowledge and the Revolutions: A Framework for Social Media Information Flow	Abstract PDF
Victoria Ann Newsom, Lara Lengel, Catherine Cassara	10 pgs.

The Arab Spring| “I Have Understood You”: The Co-evolution of Expression and Control on the Internet, Television and Mobile Phones During the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia	Abstract PDF
Ben Wagner	8 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Politics through Social Networks and Politics by Government Blocking: Do We Need New Rules?	Abstract PDF
Rolf H. Weber	9 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Media Ecologies, Communication Culture, and Temporal-spatial Unfolding: Three Components in a Communication Model of the Egyptian Regime Change	Abstract PDF
Eike M. Rinke, Maria Röder	13 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Digital Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Descriptive Analysis from the Tahrir Data Set	Abstract PDF
Christopher Wilson, Alexandra Dunn	25 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Extra-National Information Flows, Social Media and the 2011 Egyptian Uprising	Abstract PDF
Adrienne Russell	10 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Connecting the National and the Virtual: Can Social Media Have a Role in Institution-building After Egypt’s January 25 Uprising?	Abstract PDF
Elizabeth Iskander	13 pgs.

The Arab Spring| Social Media in the Egyptian Revolution: Reconsidering Resource Mobilization Theory	Abstract PDF
Nahed Eltantawy, Julie B. Wiest	18 pgs.

The Arab Spring| A Revolution of the Imagination	Abstract PDF
Tarik Ahmed Elseewi	10 pgs.

Guerrilla Video

Spent last Sunday at the West Hollywood Book Fair helping video poets and writers for the online literary site, Guerrilla Reads (that would be guerrilla as in DIY/indy media – no freedom fighters were involved in the making of this production).

Here’s a nifty write-up of how to pull off a half-day guerrilla performance session.

The photos are of Pamela August Russell (aka The Very Bad Poet), who authored “B is for Bad Poetry,” and Kathy Charles, the Melbourne novelist whose most recent book is “John Belushi is Dead.”

Short attention span lectures

Here is a Powerpoint presentation of recommendations for print journos learning to use video — the slides have been remixed via a website called Animoto.  You upload the slides, they let you select some music and viola — a 30-second music video.  Is this the future or I am just a sucker for glitzy toys?

Update: The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that students watching videos of professors’ lectures are running them at up to twice their normal speed.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3