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Free Alaa. Again.

Last week, Alaa Abd El Fattah was staying at my house, playing with all of the toys and things (and the enormous all-terrain stroller he’s taken to referring to as Khaled’s SUV) he and his wife, Manal had sent to our house and today he’s in prison. When he arrived at my house last Monday, [...]

30.10.2011

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Carlos Latuff’s Talk at 1º Encontro Mundial de Blogueiros (Brazil)

Brazilian activist cartoonist Carlos Latuff, whose work has been regularly featured on Global Voices, particularly throughout the ‘Arab Spring,’ starts the Brazilian panel thanking his country for “bringing Latin America here,” stating that Brazil tends to turn its back on the rest of Latin America. “In the Arab Spring,” says Latuff, “I’ve used Twitter heavily [...]

29.10.2011

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Does ‘Trending’ a Topic Matter?

This week, my friend Gilad Lotan of SocialFlow wrote an excellent blog post explaining how trending topics really work, in an attempt it seems, to put rumors of censorship to rest. Twitter has been dealing with these rumors for quite some time, and last December publicly explained that Trending Topics are about velocity, not volume, [...]

18.10.2011

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The Writing Life

This year, I have written 7 journal articles, 40 articles for mainstream publications, 76 posts for this blog, 25 posts for the EFF blog, 54 posts for Global Voices, and two academic papers, to a total of 204 decently-sized pieces of writing. With an average length of say, 800 words, that comes to about 163,000 [...]

17.10.2011

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#Hashtagging Real Life

Ever since my good friend Zeynep Tufekci brought me a revolutionary t-shirt from Egypt, I’ve been fascinated by the popularization of hashtags outside of Twitter. And by outside, I don’t mean on blogs, Facebook, and Flickr, where they’re increasingly appearing, but offline. T-shirts, posters, graffiti, and protest signs all make use of hashtag symbolism; rather [...]

16.10.2011

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Twitter Trolling as Propaganda Tactic: Bahrain and Syria

First, a note: I’m no expert on either of the two countries that are a focus of this piece, nor do I intend to be comprehensive in my analysis. I know a bit more about Syria than I do about Bahrain, having studied its history closely and traveled there, but nonetheless, I intend purely to [...]

12.10.2011

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Disillusionment*

There are these humans scattered across the earth who know me better, perhaps, than even those I grew up with. Who are able to recognize when I am three seconds away from tears, and who whisper tiny bits of wisdom to me, shattering my façade of serenity. Who stand in as my surrogate mother, or [...]

09.10.2011

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This is Why I Love the Internet!

We’re closing up the Third Arab Bloggers Meeting and will soon be heading out for a final dinner. I’m just as sad as I am every time, but even sadder this time around because of Syria. While the meeting was dampened by the denial of visas to Palestinian bloggers, it was perhaps even more so [...]

06.10.2011

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In Solidarity with Palestinian Bloggers Denied Visas to Tunisia

Monday, on the first day of the Third Arab Bloggers Meeting, I learned that as many as 12 Palestinian bloggers were denied visas to Tunisia to attend. According to some of the bloggers, the embassies in Ramallah and Cairo (where one blogger was based) claimed that Nawaat is unlicensed (false) and that the conference was [...]

05.10.2011

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Arabloggers 2011: Tunisian Voices

Tunisian bloggers & Politics, featuring Riadh Guerfali (@Astrubaal), Amira Yahyaoui (@mira404), Tarek Kahlaoui (@t_kahlaoui), Mehdi Lamloum (@MehdiLamloum) and Slim Amamou (@Slim404), moderated by Malek Khadraoui. The panelists spoke in French and Arabic, so all quotes below are an approximation. Some background: Tunisia is preparing to write its constitution, and both political parties and independent “lists” [...]

03.10.2011

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Arabloggers 2011 – Day One, Part One

I wasn’t able to liveblog the first few panels due to limited connectivity, but we’re now fully connected, and I’ll do my best to round up each session thus far, and liveblog those to come. Session One: Rebecca MacKinnon The inimitable Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices and free expression expert in her own right, [...]

03.10.2011

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