This document discusses the rise of citizen journalism and user-generated media content. It notes how affordable technologies like smartphones and laptops have enabled people to document and share their own perspectives. Examples are given of activists in Egypt using these tools to spread information during the Arab Spring protests in 2011. The document also discusses how social media allows for new forms of "DIY" activism and civic engagement. It argues teachers should harness this energy by bringing play, arts, and hands-on activities into the classroom to engage students in self-directed learning.
5. E-GYPT 2011 ~ SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
ARAB SPRING: 18 DAYS OF REVOLUTION
TAHRIR SQUARE, CAIRO
25 JAN: “THE DAY OF REVOLT”
26 JAN: DAY OF THE DISCONNECT: MOBILE AND INTERNET
SERVICES SHUT DOWN FOR ONE WEEK BY DELETING THE
‘EGYPT’ DOMAIN
28 JAN: “DAY OF ANGER”
29 JAN: INCREASED MILITARY PRESENCE
01 FEB: MUBARAK MAKES CONCESSIONS
02 FEB: “INCIDENT OF THE CAMELS” IN TAHRIR SQUARE
06 FEB: MULTIFAITH SERVICE IN TAHRIR SQUARE
10 FEB: MUBARAK DELEGATES SOME POWERS
11 FEB: “FRIDAY OF DEPARTURE”: MUBARAK RESIGNS
6. AESTHETIC JOURNALISM,
A TERM COINED BY ALFREDO CRAMEROTTI
AND KHALED RAMADAN
“the blurring of margins between artistic and information practices is a
main feature of contemporary culture” ~ Alfredo Cramerotti
8. Video is now an accessible medium for anyone with a
laptop computer or a smartphone
Rachelle Chinnery’s The Alchemy of Craft
Watch to 3:50: https://vimeo.com/112782632
10. THIS IS FIRST RESPONSE
JOURNALISM OR GUERRILLA
JOURNALISM, RATHER THAN
REPORTING.
11. WHERE THESE JUST-IN-
TIME SOCIAL MEDIA
ACTIVITIES ARE MOST
EFFECTIVE IS AS TOOLS
FOR ACTIVISTS
New media are key at enabling:
1. Cyberactivism
2. Civic engagement
3. Promoting other acts of guerrilla journalism
12. Social media and affordable media platforms
new kinds of DIY, specifically DIWO
13. SOCIAL MEDIA PROVIDE A PLATFORM FOR ACTIVISTS TO
“EXPRESS THEMSELVES AND DOCUMENT THEIR OWN VERSIONS
OF REALITY” (KHAMIS & VAUGHN 5)
SUBJECTIVE POSITIONINGS
17. VIRAL MEDIA/MEMES
Two ways memes transmit themselves
1.replicate themselves as a product or
2.they can copy the instructions of their own creation (Blackmore, 1999,
288).
32. “Interface is content” (Brachet qtd Rose 208)
How do we harness this DIY energy in the classroom?
33. Total passion for a subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=62&v=u85ffOhLu-s
34. Set the bar low for access for your students:
to ensure self-expression versus the work
of learning a platform
In “The Author as Producer” (1934), Walter Benjamin
proposed that artist’s task is to:
“adapt ‘the production apparatus’ (Benjamin, 1977,
94) on behalf of the workers. ‘This apparatus will be
better,’ he continues, ‘the more consumers it brings
into contact with the production process—in short,
the more readers or spectators it turns into
collaborators’” (Benjamin, 98).
(Qtd in Rose 207)
35. Unleashing Readers:
Classroom Discussion Techniques
1. Old fashioned circle
(with a twist)
2. Fishbowl
3. Socratic Seminar
4. Jigsaw
5. Concentric Circles
6. Give One, Get One
7. Post-It Walk
8. Pass The Butcher Paper
9. Four Corners
10. Facts of Five
http://www.unleashingreaders.com/?p=6955
36. Bringing play back into the high school
classroom
1. Free choice time: Student-directed learning
2. Blocks and Legos: Maker spaces and fab labs
3. Playground: Pick-up sports and jam sessions
4. Finger-painting: Arts integration
5. Make-Believe: Problem-based learning: (see in
particular Jackie Gerstein’s books and Institute of
Play: http://www.instituteofplay.org/2013/05/resources-for-educators/ )
6. Rice Tables and Sandboxes: Science Through Inquiry
http://bit.ly/1Jm1yMP
38. Drake changed the dialogue about
women in hip-hop
http://mic.com/articles/122515/7-ways-drake-revolutionized-hip-hop
39. Collecting as DIY activity?
Jarod Charzewski builds from discarded objects
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/sculptor-jarod-charzewski-uses-everyday-objects-to-explore-our-need-to-collect/Content?oid=5327908
40. Personal objects as vehicles of identity
and self-expression
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/four-dudes-from-el-salvador-are-skating-to-america-20150717
41. • Winning start-up, O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2011
• 15th Annual Webby Awards Official Honoree in the "Youth" category.
• 2011 Los Angeles Times Innovator's Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The
award honors “cutting edge work to bring books, publishing, and storytelling into
the future.”
• 2014 Best Websites for Teaching and Learning, American Association of School
Librarians
http://dailyfig.figment.com/category/contests/
46. Open source media tools:
Quotable, Factlist and Waterbug
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/npr-release-open-source-social-media-tools-for-newsrooms/s2/a565922/
Editor's Notes
On January 25th, my former student Khaled Hafez posted on facebook that the citizenry of Cairo had poured into the streets by the thousands to protest the Muburak Regime.
The importance of domain names was made dramatically clear during the 2011 protests in Egypt where the deletion of a domain name wiped out a nation. It is believed that access in Egypt was terminated by shutting down the DNS, leaving 93 percent of the networks inaccessible (Domain Registration News).
Hafez grabs and remixes footage from television, surveillance cameras, from satellite feeds, amateur video, and professional news sources with his own footage to construct a situation for himself to speak against official and unofficial narratives. His “stance reiterates Cramerotti’s basic thesis that ‘the blurring of margins between artistic and information practices is a main feature of contemporary culture’” (press release). An accomplished remixer and found-footage manipulator, Hafez has already explored levels of discourse and the commingling of highbrow and lowbrow images in his earlier paintings and multimedia works. The role of social media in the political events has generally been celebrated uncritically. Hafez urges us to look and look again at the visual rhetorical inherent in the environment that is the politics of revolution.
“The Video Diaries project combines video footage taken by Hafez with stock footage extracted from social media and from several other sources. These are assembled to create several parallel narratives that intertwine on the three screens as the real footage of collective” acts and violent events. The flux of information disseminated by the media footage, the lack of structured dialogue combined with real sounds from the Tahrir Square, where the 2011 revolution takes place, all are pasted with the sound of solo guitar music. Through this use of music, the idea of “revolution” is romanticized, adding a simulated fictitious atmosphere to the very real footage, to represent intimacy and personal nostalgia” according to the artist. Hafez’s choice of medium blurs the distinction between the artist as detached observer and active participant in the events of revolution.
It supplements rather than replaces other kinds of journalism.
New media have been key at Enabling cyberactivism
Encouraging civic engagement (particularly thru aiding the mobilization and organization of protests and other forms of political expression)
And Promoting this new form of guerrilla journalism.
witnessing
Circulate via memes – there are two ways memes transmit themselves
replicate themselves as a product or
they can copy the instructions of their own creation (Blackmore, 1999, 288).
Circulate via memes – there are two ways memes transmit themselves
replicate themselves as a product or
they can copy the instructions of their own creation (Blackmore, 1999, 288).
Formula - captions
For young people, the perfect storm had arisen
with the combined events of bank bail-outs, the ongoing mortgage crisis and
the execution of an African-American man named Troy Davis, for a crime it is
widely believed he did not commit.