In preparation for Wednesday's class, please review the press coverage around the "Voices of Jan 25th" project (see posts below).
Also, go through the tweets that John posted for the Jan25voices (especially the early ones when the Internet was "turned off" in Egypt (Jan. 28-Feb. 1) and also the tweets for the Libya project, Feb17voices.
Everyone in the class should post a question and a comment about the twitter project for John (who will be visiting us in class this week). Please think about questions that will open up the discussion and debate the central issues around social media and the political revolutions in the Middle East.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Map of Facebook, Internet, and Cell Phone Penetration in Middle East
This interactive CNN map shows the percentage of the population of each country that uses Facebook, the Internet, and cell phones.
Monday, April 18, 2011
April 20th -- Tweeting the Revolution in Egypt and Libya
Over the next three sessions, we will be looking at the specific role played by social media technologies in disseminating information about the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions. To this end, we will have a special guest in class (starting April 27th): John Scott Railton, founder of the "Jan25Voices" project. The site documents the revolution in Egypt through blogs, photos, video, audio, and twitter feeds. It gives voice to those people who were denied voices when Egypt decided to "shut down" the Internet.
In preparation for class, please read the following articles about John's work:
1. Time Magazine article: "Meet the Man Tweeting Egypt's Voices to the World"
2. Watch this video about John's work:
3. Listen to phone calls with young activists from the Jan25Voices site, look at the pictures and video.
Questions: What is the "new" public sphere? How has social media expanded the public sphere? Are there ways that the public sphere has also been constricted?
Also, please spend some time looking at the "Google Transparency Reports" by country (Libya, Egypt, China, etc): Figure out when the Internet was "turned off" and what services were shut down and when.
Links to the audio recordings on "Audioboo" can be found here.
Finally, all of John's tweets can be found here: http://twitter.com/#!/jan25voices
In preparation for class, please read the following articles about John's work:
1. Time Magazine article: "Meet the Man Tweeting Egypt's Voices to the World"
2. Watch this video about John's work:
3. Listen to phone calls with young activists from the Jan25Voices site, look at the pictures and video.
Questions: What is the "new" public sphere? How has social media expanded the public sphere? Are there ways that the public sphere has also been constricted?
Also, please spend some time looking at the "Google Transparency Reports" by country (Libya, Egypt, China, etc): Figure out when the Internet was "turned off" and what services were shut down and when.
Links to the audio recordings on "Audioboo" can be found here.
Finally, all of John's tweets can be found here: http://twitter.com/#!/jan25voices
Impact of Social Media on Revolutions
I felt these articles I read for another class are also pretty relevant here. They're interesting in that they present differing opinions on the ways social media affects the relationships of cultural sects within the population.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
April 13th -- Developing Mash-ups using Twitter
This class will delve into the technology behind twitter and applications built using the twitter and Google Maps APIs. An "API" is an "application programming interface," which allows software developers to create new tools and applications using existing programs. These new tools are sometimes called "Mash-ups". For example, the twitter mapping projects (Egypt, Sendai, Libya) are all built on the Google Maps API and Twitter API. You don't need to read through all this information, but I wanted you to begin to understand how someone designs and programs a "social media mash-up."
We will have a special guest visitor on Wed: David Shepard, English PhD student and technical lead of the "HyperCities" digital mapping project. He is also the lead developer for the "HyperCities Now" twitter projects. He will take you through process of creating social media mash-ups.
Preparation for class:
From this list of Twitter mash-ups, examine one or two mash-ups in detail. How do they utilize twitter and extend its capacities? Do they develop a new "interface" for interacting with tweets? Do they develop new ways to visualize tweets? Do they add another social media dimension to twitter? What technologies do you think they use in order to do this?
We will have a special guest visitor on Wed: David Shepard, English PhD student and technical lead of the "HyperCities" digital mapping project. He is also the lead developer for the "HyperCities Now" twitter projects. He will take you through process of creating social media mash-ups.
Preparation for class:
From this list of Twitter mash-ups, examine one or two mash-ups in detail. How do they utilize twitter and extend its capacities? Do they develop a new "interface" for interacting with tweets? Do they develop new ways to visualize tweets? Do they add another social media dimension to twitter? What technologies do you think they use in order to do this?
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