2009 was a banner year for me in terms of media development. It was not by any means my starting point in media, but it could go down as year in which my work achieved lift off. But all was done in the name of helping people spread information, express themselves, and/or strengthen their networks with other people to promote change. So, I thought I’d take a look back at my year in media development, get it all together in one place, take stock, establish something to compare 2010 to, reminisce a little.

Researching Extractive Industry Transparency and Journalism Development in Africa

I began the year leading a team through a study to assess needs and effective training practices to raise the level of business journalism in Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda. Our findings would then be synthesized into a report to provide training and media development recommendations to Revenue Watch Institute, which wanted to use training to improve business journalism, and promote extractive industry transparency. The best part of this project was that I got to spend two weeks in January in balmy Nigeria–a country the Bradt guide calls “Africa for the Advanced”–and meet face to face with Nigerian journalists, journalism educators, and media development experts. Lagos, in particular, was INTENSE. And fantastic. I also got a chance in this to bone up on my skills developing surveys and interview guides, building networks of contacts, designing a team research wiki, and producing a report of findings.

Blog posts on my adventures here:

• Slave to the Traffic Jam
• Electric Power to the People
• A Tale of Two Fridays
• Development Economics and the Rule of Murphy’s Law

Finishing The Morningside Post’s Redesign

One of my favorite moments during my time at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) was redesigning The Morningside Post. The Post was started as a simple blog on international affairs just a few years before. But, when I came aboard, I quickly began to see the technological limitations of the Typepad version that was in place–what we had made it difficult to manage content such that we could segment and differentiate it, making it difficult for people to find what they were looking for.  It was clear to me that we were on the cusp of opportunity to bring together many different stakeholders in the SIPA community, and yet what we had with the first version of the site made it so their content looked like everyone else’s. We also couldn’t really incorporate the latest Web 2.0 technologies as we wanted.

To overcome all of this, I led our team through a redesign to build a new interface on a WordPress platform to integrate all of these ideas and significantly expand our capabilities (which we completed in January 2009, and is what you see at the site today). Now, The Post is a much more effective content management system, in which users can view content based on their preferences (e.g. by region or by topic), many different groups in the SIPA community can post and manage their own content, and it is much easier to feature Web 2.0 content such as Google Calendar, YouTube, and CoveritLive liveblogging boxes. And I personally came away with more experience leading a team through creating a Web site concept, finding a vendor to design it, raising the necessary funds and managing the project budget, planning the production schedule, testing the end product, and publicizing the site through a launch event and other forms of publicity. Best part? We finished the site within our project schedule and came in within our budget.

Web Design by Donor Organizations for Low Bandwidth

I published a section of a wiki on New Media and Development Communication called “Web Design by Donor Organizations for Low Bandwidth“. The wiki was part of a course on new media and development taught by Anne Nelson at SIPA. My section of the wiki focused on providing recommendations on how international development organizations, particularly donors, should build their Web sites to make them more accessible in low bandwidth countries, in order to maximize the reach of their assistance. In my opinion, far too many development organizations design Web sites that make it virtually impossible for organizations in low bandwidth areas to access them, and thus they essentially cut off those most in need from assistance.

Web 2.0 in Egypt and Iran – Challenging Authority and Challenges to Expression

As part of my master’s degree coursework at Columbia, I researched how social media are being used to challenge authority and how authorities are using the Internet to challenge expression in Egypt and Iran (some of my findings can be found here: Egypt and Iran). This was a great opportunity to see what people are doing in these countries with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, in particular, to speak out against their governments, connect with the outside world, and organize movements. I also had a chance to dig into the issue of filtering and other technologies used by governments to clamp down on expression, and technologies like proxies used to counter this clamping down. With all that is happening in the Middle East right now (especially Iran’s election and Twitter, which was fascinating to watch shortly after this research), it has proven to be a great test case for Web 2.0 and challenging authority.

Liveblogging Events – Twitter and CoveritLive

One of the ways I built up my social media skills in 2009 was through liveblogging various events. Social media provide remarkable opportunities for people to gain access to at least the information of events they couldn’t attend an event, and give them an approximation of what it was like to be there. In real time, no less.

My particularly favorite tools have come to be Twitter and CoveritLive (CiL), used together. They sync up nicely. Just create a CiL box, assign it a hashtag of your choice, embed that box into a blog that is javascript enabled, and start tweeting. For example, while I was with The Morningside Post, we liveblogged New York University’s CATER Workshop on Technologies and Development in February 2009.

Graduating Columbia University with a Master’s Degree in Media Development

In May 2009, I graduated Columbia University with a Master of International Affairs degree. My concentration was Economic and Political Development (EPD), and within that concentration was a focus on Media and Development. I could have also changed that concentration to International Media and Communications (IMC) along the way, had I wanted to–I had the courses to do it. But, I stuck with EPD for consistency with what I had studied. When I first enrolled at Columbia, I knew exactly what I wanted to get out of it:  take advantage of Columbia’s vast media resources, study and get my hands on as many new media as possible (I came in with more of a traditional media background), and do whatever it took to participate in a media development-related workshop. EPD made the most sense at the time, because I could study international development itself, and with the focus component that was part of going EPD, I had a lot of flexibility to study media, and keep it connected to international development.

My plan worked like clockwork. I studied a comprehensive range of media and development topics: media for advocacy and communications, new media and development, international media business, international news reporting, social media for communications and organizing, Web 2.0 under authoritarian regimes, and journalism development and transparency in Africa. And, I got that media development-related workshop (mentioned above in the section “Researching Extractive Industry Transparency and Journalism Development in Africa”).

It’s a pretty broad range of topics, to be certain. But, I wanted to leave Columbia with as comprehensive and far-reaching an understanding of media as they pertain to development, communication, and expression as one could fit into two years. As I see it, these issues are all so intermingled and pervasive within all social, political, and economic development matters, and that the only way to be truly effective in media development is to have this degree of understanding. Mission accomplished.

Training Social Media in Ukraine

Almost immediately after graduation, I was flown to Ukraine by the European Journalism Centre to conduct a series of social media training seminars throughout Ukraine. This was an epic adventure, indeed. First, I was training social media, which were designed for personal expression, in the former Soviet Union, which had a long history imprinting a fear of personal expression. Second, while my Ukrainian is still pretty good, it made sense for me to present through a translator (something I hadn’t done before), given that we were dealing with a lot of new technology. Third, I would train with two other people I’d never met before. Fourth, I felt that the absolute imperative technologies to train were Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, which meant that I had some serious work ahead of me to prep for these seminars to fit these social media into the context of the training needs of journalists and NGOs in Ukraine.

Of course, I blogged heavily on this adventure, its tribulations and its triumphs:

• A New Ukrainian Adventure in New Media
• A New Ukrainian Adventure in New Media (Continued)
• The Internet Is Not Your Friend
• Some Resources From Our Training in Kyiv
• Onward to Donestk!
• If You Can Play Donetsk, You Can Play Anywhere
• Teaching Twitter in Ukraine, Convincing the Skeptics of Its Power
• Training Online Social Networking in Ukraine, Americanskiy Style
• Heading Back to Ukraine
• Training Facebook in the Land of Vkontakte
• Training Materials for Facebook Pages and Groups, in Russian and Ukrainian
• Web 2.0 and Blogging – Training Links I Used in Ukraine
• YouTube and Video – Training Links I Used in Ukraine
• Twitter – Training Links I Used in Ukraine
• Facebook and Social Networking – Training Links I Used in Ukraine
• Facebook Pages for Journalists and NGOs in Ukraine

Incessant Viewing of Webinars on Social Media

I spent the summer of 2009 voraciously devouring webinars on social media (and still do, though not quite voraciously–my media development rapacity knows no satiety). The big winner this summer in receiving my traffic was HubSpot, which has been steadily producing great webinars on marketing. But, if you were airing a webinar on how to use social media for marketing, communications, advocacy, organizing, networking, blogging, whatever, chances are I was one of your viewers. I ended up with a “social media gut”, I consumed so much. And if you’ve been following me on Twitter, or happened upon my Delicious, you have probably noticed I’ve been regurgitating social media, as well. I’ve come out of this pretty well armed with social media strategy, to say the least. Delicious is my arsenal, Twitter is my howitzer.

Evaluating Journalism Training Programs in Africa

For the last month or so of 2009, I consulted on a project (ongoing) to evaluate business journalism training programs conducted by Thomson Reuters Foundation in a number of countries in Africa, including Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, Mozambique, Cote d’Ivoire, and Zambia. This has been a great opportunity to advance my skills in guiding a team through an evaluation, and deepen my understanding of media training in Africa. I discovered in this that I get a somewhat strange enjoyment out of designing online surveys (thank you, Survey Monkey, I owe you a Christmas card!), and then seeing what responses they get. Other than designing surveys, I’ve also worked on our interview guides and coached our team on doing this kind of study in an African setting.

Initial indications of our evaluation have shown our methods to be effective–results of the survey have been quite revealing. This is happy news, given that with any evaluation of a training program, it would be unrealistic for participant to say, “Everything was great, no complaints”. Reality is always a little harsh. As an evaluator, you hope to provide an accurate picture of what happened. It appears we are doing that.

Assessing More Journalism Training Needs in Africa, With a Side of Bangladesh

I also spent the last month or so of 2009 on a project (ongoing) to  conduct an initial assessment of journalism training needs, and identify potential training partners, in a number of African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia), as well as Bangladesh. This is to support a potential European Journalism Centre initiative to promote press freedom and economic development in these countries.

Admittedly, it has been somewhat of a tricky affair. I have done this research from New Jersey, without funds to fly to all of these countries. So, I’ve had to be resourceful and a little creative. Ghana and Nigeria were already very familiar to me, so they have only needed a little supplemental research. But the other countries were new to me. And there aren’t a lot of great Web sites among the universities in these countries. They tend not to have a lot of journalism program information, if any info at all. This is a little crazy to me, given that they are the top media universities in their countries–you start to notice the gap immediately (great opportunity for media development projects, hint hint hint!). Fortunately, as a Columbia alum who has been working in international media development for a while now, I have a network of people in the industry I can tap into. They have been key to my assessment (a huge thank you to all!). Particularly in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe (as one journalism educator in Zimbabwe colorfully and tragically put it, “Journalism education here is all needs and challenges”). Expect some blog posts on this research soon.
Yeah, 2009 was a big year. I’m not sure there is much more I could have covered in media development in a single year (and even this isn’t every last morsel). Let’s see what 2010 brings.

I understand why The Washington Post would want to come up with the social media guidelines they recently set for their journalists that greatly constrain their use of social media. At least, I think I do.

They want to remain a reputable source of objective news (if objective news is even possible). And, they’d like to discourage the potential for their journalists to go “rogue” with their opinions and personal lives such that it could digitally be traced back to WaPo, and damage that reputation. Understandable. Social media are still kind of in their “Wild West” phase, and the technology makes it MUCH easier to publish online than to consider the implications of publishing online. Definitely a recipe for potential disaster in an industry in which reputation can be everything.

However, there are implications of instituting the guidelines they chose that could dramatically impact the future of media in a very negative way.

Sure, there’s the question of whether or not this violates the First Amendment rights of journalists (speech, press, petition, religion, assembly—all five are impacted by these guidelines). Does WaPo really have a right to restrict a journalist’s participation in an advocacy group, for instance? Probably. The First Amendment applies to the government, not private corporations. Still, even if it is allowed, it doesn’t mean it is okay.

If I’m WaPo journalist X, and I am a supporter of, say, Committee to Protect Journalists, are you saying I can’t “become a fan” of CPJ on Facebook or say even a “hello” on CPJ’s wall? If WaPo can restrict this, can they also restrict me from having a CPJ sticker on my car, or even mentioning my agreement with CPJ in public? After all, someone could easily record my conversation from the next table over, and upload it to the Internet, thanks to the wonders of today’s digital technology. Am I not allowed to donate to CPJ? What if THAT gets out?

I don’t usually like to play the slippery slope game, but I am afraid I have to in this case. Especially given the implications abroad.

United States organizations and government agencies have long been among the top international media developers in developing countries. And, our news media have often been a model that news media in developing countries have looked up to. Especially news media like The New York Times and the Washington Post.

If WaPo’s position as an industry leader pushes others to follow this social media lead, what could that mean for the international media development money flowing out of our country, and the example our media set?

Why would this be such a bad thing?

Social media, as we have seen so far, are most interesting and engaging when people share their views and reactions, as if they are having, well, a conversation. They are SOCIAL media, after all. And most people don’t sit around having conversations that are just an exchange of objective news report.

WaPo’s social media guidelines very clearly place tremendous constraints on the ability for its journalists to truly engage people through social media, because they will not be able to use them in an engaging way. Chances are, these guidelines will probably just discourage its journalists from even using them altogether.

Now think about this in the context of developing countries. So many of them are governed by military dictatorships, or at the very least, authoritarian systems that go to great lengths to discourage any form of public expression, participation, and citizen engagement, if they don’t outright crush them. Development funding directed at these countries tends to toward advocating for legal reform and promoting, well, public expression, participation, and citizen engagement. A lot of THAT money is going into media development, particularly involving news media. News media have long been seen as primary tools for promoting these things in democratic and independent societies, after all.

As I’ve pretty frequently blogged about, Ukraine has a culture that is still evolving out of its Soviet past of total media control by the government and rampant humiliation (and worse) of those who dared to speak up. In my years of work there, I still see prevalence among many of the people I worked with of fear to express oneself publicly with the same kind of fearlessness we enjoy in America (assuming, of course, that our fearlessness in America is a good thing).

In June and July, I was training journalists how to use social media to engage their audiences, to share their views, to add a human side to their work. The whole reason that news media are hemorrhaging audiences to social media is because their dead, boring, “objective” news is simply not as engaging as social media content. If these journalists want to continue to attract new audiences, and keep their current ones, they would have to become more engaging. And social media are the perfect tools for this.

All WaPo’s social media guidelines are going to do is give journalists in places like Ukraine one more reason to be afraid to use social media socially, and express themselves publicly, in an engaging way.

Think of Iran, and the tremendous Internet filtering and censorship that go on there every day. All WaPo’s social media guidelines do is affirm Iranian authoritarianism. Authorities can say to opponents of media censorship in Iran, “See, they do it at The Washington Post“.

Then think of what journalists might be able to do to deliver information to the public, that it has a right to know, in a place like Nigeria, where government and corporate pressures squash any real reporting on the oil industry, banks, or multinational corporations that are basically stealing from the public. Maybe nothing. But are these WaPo guidelines really going to help us find out?

These issues I’ve raised in Ukraine, Iran, and Nigeria apply, some or all, to much of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and parts of Africa. Likely more regions. These are the only ones I’ve studied at length. I could go on about these regions, with more examples, but I’ll save the post length for another time.

Instead of telling journalists they couldn’t be human beings on social media, why not require them to post a PROMINENT disclaimer saying that their views are their own and in no way represent WaPo’s. And then periodically take additional steps to MAKE THAT VERY CLEAR.

Sadly, that is not the decision WaPo made. They chose to go the road that says to the world, “It’s okay to censor your journalists on social media, it’s okay to discourage them from promoting real transparency, it’s okay to discourage the many potential societal benefits of social media in the name of protecting our business”. In the developing world, far too many news media already protect their businesses at the expense of social benefits. Just what they need is more disincentive to change this practice.

Boo, WaPo. Boo.

Photo 1: “Last Conversation Piece”. Courtesy of joelogon.

This is another installment in my series of posts on examples of ways new media are being used to challenge authority in the Middle East. This post will focus on Iran.

Internet access in Iran has seen a particular explosion, growing faster than any other Middle Eastern country, according to Reporters Without Borders.  ”From 2000 to 2007,” reported Sepideh Parsa, “the number of users grew from 250,000 to 18 million, which accounts for 53.7% of users in the region”.

Within this explosion has been the rise of blogging in Iran, with the blogosphere becoming such a phenomenon as to warrant its current nickname, “Weblogistan”.  This rise in blogging is having political ramifications for the Iranian State.  “Blogs have become an essential medium for dissidence against the autocratic regime and its state-controlled media”, said Parsa.  “Iran has one of the strictest censorship policies in the Middle East. Thus, blogs offer Iranians the only platform to peacefully exchange their political thought, emotions, and opinions while overcoming the boundaries that have been imposed by the government”.

However, the Iranian government is not letting this trend go unabated.  Iran has put in place “one of the most extensive and sophisticated operations to censor and filter Internet content of any country in the world—second only to China”, according to Curt Hopkins, director of Committee to Protect Bloggers.  Freedom House reported in its “Freedom on the Net: A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media” report that Iran’s general techniques include automated filtering, manually produced blacklists, and active posting of pro-government information.  According to the report:

The government is especially sensitive to Internet organizing by student activists, women’s rights groups, and ethnic and religious minorities. It blocks, arrests, and otherwise threatens content producers who post news about the statements and organizing activities of these highly mobilized but repressed groups.  Sites concerning gays and lesbians are routinely censored, though the Iranian homosexual community has gained an unprecedented voice via the Internet (these sites are mostly based abroad), and has publicized the execution of homosexuals. Sites are also hacked and disabled when they become popular or feature politically provocative content.

Committee to Protect Journalists pointed out in a piece called “10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger” that the state has blocked millions of Web sites, regularly detains and harasses bloggers, and even has pending legislation that could make promoting “corruption, prostitution, and apostasy” punishable by death.  Online oppression in Iran is so bad that Committee to Protect Journalists has named it the second worst country in the world to be a blogger, behind only Burma.

Since 2006, Iran has undertaken significant actions that have greatly expanded its ability to control and oppress expression through the Internet.  That year, according to Reporters Without Borders, authorities banned broadband, making it very difficult to download music and videos that could challenge the government.  Open Net Initiative’s country profile on Iran stated that in November 2006, the government established regulations requiring owners of blogs and websites to register, and abstain from content deemed illegal.  It also set up an “Internet surveillance body” under the umbrella of the Ministry for Culture and Islamic Orientation to monitor “false news”.

Access providers are now required, according to Reporters Without Borders, to ensure that banned content “insulting Islam or monotheist religions, those which disseminate separatist ideologies, those publishing false news or damaging private life” are not published by their servers. In fact, access providers been made criminally liable for it under the Cyber Crimes Bill, Open Net Initiative has reported.

Websites like Flickr and YouTube have been blocked, making it more difficult for Iranians to share photos and videos (as in the Egyptian case).

“The Iranian government had more than ten bloggers arrested in 2007,” according to Reporters Without Borders, “chiefly women demanding their rights through feminist publications such as Tagir Bary Barbary (Change for Equality) and Zanestan (The City of Women),” which is significant in part because women’s magazines have made their way to the Internet, being hard to find on newsstands.  All of this is taking place in a country that Freedom House has deemed “Not Free” in each of its 2008 reports “Freedom on the Net”, “Freedom of the Press”, and “Freedom in the World”.

And with all that surrounded the 2009 election in Iran, new media were utilized in a way that ensured the whole world was watching. Blogs, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter all provided a mechanism for getting information in and out of the country, as Mashable provided a nice snapshot of. On Twitter, the hashtag #iranelection—which quickly joined the trending topics on Twitter as protests erupted during the election—is still going strong in the Twittersphere.

That Iran is going to such great lengths to attempt to control new media and how people express themselves reflects just how much of a threat these tools are to their authority.  New media don’t simply represent the threat of political dissent, but also the infiltration of western influence and culture in the eyes of Iran.  As Iranians download music and videos, and correspond with people from other countries, the New Media that facilitate this necessarily make this an international issue.  Blogging, in particular, carries an association in Iran with civil society and the West, contend Elizabeth Bucar and Roja Fazaeli in their article “Free Speech in Weblogistan? The Offline Consequences of Online Communication“.

The reality is that the Internet was designed in a way to make completely censoring it virtually impossible.  Users in Iran, according to Freedom House, are able to circumvent filters by using proxies and make use of temporary openings in subversive, innovative ways.  For instance, an Iranian named Hamed Saber developed an extension that turns Firefox into a proxy that bypasses censorship on popular Web 2.0 websites such as YouTube, del.icio.us, Flickr, Technorati.com, Friendster.com, livejournal.com, MySpace, Hi5 and others, many of which are barred in Iran (Sami Ben Charbia, Global Voices).  Moreover, as long as it is relatively easy to create a website, and as long as people in Iran, and outside its borders, can save a copy to their hard drives, that information can always be republished and accessed in some form.

Unless Iran is willing to shut down the Internet altogether, it will never be able to stop the Internet from being a tool for dissent and access to foreign cultures.  Therefore, as long as dissent and foreign cultures are seen as a threat to the states of authoritarian regimes like Iran, the Internet will be a threat to them, as well.

Photo 1:  Courtesy of Bloggers Unite for a Free Iran.

New media, especially social media, are playing a significant role in challenging authority and states in the Middle East. This is the first post in a series I will publish on examples of how new media are being used toward this end. Egypt will start off this series.

Egyptians have begun using online social-networking tools like blogs, Facebook, and YouTube as tools of dissent against the existing authority.  This is significant given that the reigning president, Hosni Mubarak, is seen as a dictator—in fact, one of the world’s ten worst dictators—and his reign has been marked by human rights abuses and acts against freedom of expression that have warranted calling him one.

Freedom House’s 2009 “Freedom in the World” report that evaluates political freedom in countries listed Egypt as “Not Free”, and their 2008 “Freedom of the Press” report that evaluates press freedom labeled the country “Partly Free”.  However, this “Partly Free” score came with a caveat demonstrating what expression is up against in Eqypt:

Egypt’s status improved from Not Free to Partly Free in recognition of the courage of Egyptian journalists to cross “red lines” that previously restricted their work and in recognition of the greater range of viewpoints represented in the Egyptian media and blogosphere.

This progress occurred in spite of the government’s ongoing—and in some cases increasing—harassment, repression, and imprisonment of journalists.  While Egyptian journalists succeeded in expanding the diversity of media coverage by pushing back the “red lines” that previously restricted their work, press freedom continued to suffer owing to the government’s repressive laws and the extralegal intimidation of journalists.  The Emergency Law, the Press Law, and other provisions of the penal code circumscribe the press, despite constitutional guarantees of press freedom.  Even after the 2006 amendments to the Press Law, dissemination of “false news”, criticism of the president and foreign leaders, and publication of material that constitutes “an attack against the dignity and honor of individuals” or an “outrage of the reputation of families” remain criminal offenses that are prosecuted opportunistically by the authorities.

These realities are no exception for online expression in Egypt.  Committee to Protect Journalists called Egypt one of the ten worst countries in the world to be a blogger, and describes a rather bleak reality for the battle ahead:

Authorities monitor Internet activity on a regular basis. Traffic from all Internet service providers passes through the state-run Egypt Telecom. Authorities regularly detain critical bloggers for open-ended periods. Local press freedom groups documented the detention of more than 100 bloggers in 2008 alone. Although most bloggers were released after short periods, some were held for months and many were kept without judicial order. Most detained bloggers report mistreatment, and a number have been tortured.

Despite this bleak reality, people are using new media to challenge Mubarak and his government’s authority.  One significant example of this is the “6 April” strike inspired by protests against skyrocketing food prices.  A Facebook group “6 April Youth Movement” was created in 2008 to call for this strike, and has since become a youth movement for political action, that as of this writing had over 76,000 members.  Taking this one step further, the group is also spreading its viewpoints through the blog shabab6april.wordpress.com.

Another method of challenging authority is to show evidence of it abusing its power.  A very important way that this is happening in Egypt is through YouTube.  Anyone in the world with a decent Internet connection and a political establishment that does not block YouTube can watch videos, shot on cell phones, of Egyptian police brutally beating and torturing Egyptians, for instance.

In fact, IFEX reported that Egyptian bloggers had planned a festival of online torture videos for late 2007 to show “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities”.  IFEX even reported that two policeman had been sentenced to three years in jail as a result of nationwide and international outrage in reaction to YouTube videos depicting their crime.

Online video sites are not the only way to gather evidence on abuses by Egyptian authorities.  Flickr, a social-networking website for sharing digital photographs, is another tool being used.  Go to www.flickr.com and type “Egypt protest” into the search box, and you will find a bevy of digital evidence.  This has tremendous possibilities for raising awareness, and creating advocacy campaigns, in real time considering that it is possible to upload photos to Flickr using a cell phone.

Finally, one other example of new media being used to challenge Egyptian authority came when James Buck, a student from Berkeley who was in Egypt to photograph protests, used Twitter to “Twitter his way out of jail”.  He was arrested by authorities, and tweeted the word “Arrested” to colleagues and Egyptian blogger friends, who then contacted his university and the US Embassy on the matter, which helped him out of jail just 24 hours later.

This is especially significant given that Twitter has become the technology de jour for communicating globally during times of unrest, as we saw in Dubai and Moldova.  Egypt is another member on that list, with Egyptians taking to Twitter as another way of spreading information on protests.

Egyptians might live under a dictatorship, and see their freedom of expression constantly threatened. However, the reality is that social media are making it increasingly difficult for authorities to mitigate (as we will see in the case of Iran, as well) the ability for the public to spread information that threatens and ultimately weakens the strength of that dictatorship. After all, information uncontrolled is the enemy of authoritarianism. Ideas spread, seep in, disturb status quo, and motivate people to take action as they see they are not alone in their unrest. Social media make disturbing status quo and communicating with motivated people easier than any other technology we’ve seen yet.