Last year, I attended an interesting panel at the NAC called New Media vs Repressive Regimes: Democratic Development and the Freedom of Expression. There were a few speakers, but the one who caught my attention was Wael Abbas, an Egyptian journalist and blogger. At the time, I had been quite blissfully unaware of the situation in Egypt. He spoke about how his Youtube and Facebook accounts had be deleted after he’d posted a number of citizen videos which showed injustices that were occurring in the country, but he stressed the importance of blogging and social media, because they are the one of the only vehicles through which uncensored information can get out to the world.
So what happens when the government orders the ISPs to shut down? About 93% of the Egyptian networks are unreachable right now. I have been sitting at work today with the Al Jazeera English livestream open in one tab, and the #Egypt hashtag open in another.
With the events going on today, it’s worthwhile to take a look back at the footage from the event (you can watch it online or download the video). CNN also has an interesting article about the role social media is playing in the Egyptian protests today. Mashable also has a post up about how Twitter users in Egypt are bypassing the blocks the government has placed on Facebook/Twitter.
Read More