Tweets on "Egypt"
I love engaging in meaningful debate. I love when different sides present compelling arguments. I come away feeling better informed.
I especially love challenging conventional wisdom with counterpoints. Not for argument’s sake alone, but to keep the thinking fresh and unstuck inside boxes.
But I have to say, the prevailing debate I’m hearing on what role, if any, social media have played in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Moldova, etc. is really getting annoying. Somehow, many prominent voices are blowing social media’s importance AND irrelevance way out of proportion. I think they are missing the point. [click to continue…]
I know it’s no longer new news, but so what? I know some people weren’t keen on what it ended up being, but so what? I loved the Rally to Restore Sanity for all its greatness and imperfection. And here’s why.
Okay, I will admit, it was a logistical nightmare. Washington, DC, was anything but ready for it. Public transport was a mess. The area where it was staged was overrun with people, making it basically impossible to really hear or see unless you happened to get there earlier than what seemed like half of everyone who showed up, and afterward, a tidal wave of hungry ralliers struck Chinatown, rendering it virtually impossible to get even a chair.
So what? Something kinda cool happened in DC on October 30th. [click to continue…]
by bencolmery4 on January 4, 2010
in Advocacy & Activism,Bangladesh,Cote d'Ivoire,Egypt,Ghana,Iran,Kenya,Monitoring & Evaluation,Mozambique,Nigeria,Social Media,Training & Education,Uganda,Web Design,Zambia,Zimbabwe
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. [click to continue…]
