Bahrain Propaganda 101: Regime Looking for a Few Good Women on Twitter

Bahraini Ministry of Interior message, February 2012

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Young women will get training on how to use Twitter to help combat false information being circulated about Bahrain.

"We are holding a series of training sessions for young Bahraini women who have shown an interest in making their thoughts about the situation in Bahrain heard on social media," said society cultural committee head Ebtisam Al Jamea.

"The social committee is honouring these young women for their efforts to spread the good word about Bahrain, and provide them with the means necessary to make a difference."

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Bahrain Feature: The Long Tentacles of the Regime's PR Octopus (Owen Jones)

The CEO of Bell Pottinger PR with Bahrain's Minister of EnergyThe BBC World Service show "World Have Your Say" broadcast a show last week that concerned the media war in Bahrain. Among the topics discussed was the government PR machine, though unbeknownst to the BBC, one of the guests on the show is the managing director of a company who receives money from the government to do PR. Another guest on the show was also suggested to the BBC by a PR company connected to the royal family, though the BBC were quick to emphasise that she was not representing the royal family.

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Syria Interview: Activist "LeShaque" on Social Media and the Syrian Revolution

LeShaque's Avatar on TwitterIn Syria, we are unbelievably dependent on social media. For organizing, you create a Facebook group. For calling a protest, you create a Facebook page. For reporting news, you create a Twitter account. For communicating with other activists, you use Skype. For showing the protest to the world, you use YouTube. There are signs in Syria that say, “Thank you, YouTube.”

If this didn’t exist, the revolution would’ve been crushed immediately. There would’ve been another Hama massacre [the killing of tens of thousands in a rising in 1982] and the regime would have gotten away with it. Look at their behavior. Listen to the regime’s spokespersons. Listen to how much they complain about the media. They don’t complain about the protests as much as they complain about media.

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Bahrain Feature: #StolenByMOI --- Bahrainis Tell the World "This is What Has Been Taken From Us"

See also Bahrain Opinion: An Open Letter to Journalists "Get The Story Right"

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Yesterday, whilst searching Twitter for news from Bahrain, I discovered the hashtag campaign #StolenByMOI

Scores of Bahraini citizens were sending out poignant messages to the world about what had been stolen from them by the Ministry of Interior (MOI). For many, this was an opportunity to document specific crimes. For others, more personal, emotional messages were sent. I spent a long time reading the tweets, each offering a glimpse into the sadness, anger, and fear, but also the humour and hope. Brought together, they are a collective call for little more than a better life.

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Meet EA's Newest Correspondent: Dear Leader Kim Jong Un on the Iowa Caucus

We were all very sad at EA WorldView when we heard the news that Glorious Leader Kim Jong Il of North Korea would be looking at things no more.

However, we were soon cheered up. Kim Jong Un, the new Dear Leader, has joined EA in embracing social media to comment on all the news that is fit to satirise, taking to Twitter like a Republican no-hoper to a Presidential election year. This week, between sharing his love for the band Creed and the actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kim Jong Un --- or @KimJongNumberUn to his followers --- offered the following rather acute overview of the Iowa Caucus and ongoing Republican campaign:

We promise more nuggets of analysis from this brilliant, youthful, dictatorial mind over the coming months.

The Real Net Effect: Andy Carvin & the Power of Twitter

Many readers who follow EAWorldview (@EANewsFeed) on Twitter are likely to know the name Andy Carvin (@acarvin). Carvin, the senior social media strategist at NPR and an established foreign policy journalist, has spent the last year Tweeting the revolutions and uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.

And few would dispute Andy's prowess on the social media platform. In 2011, The Daily Dot said that no one had done more to transform Twitter than Carvin and the hacking group Anonymous. The Columbia Journalism Review even asked, "Is This the World’s Best Twitter Account?" Carvin has been called a "living, breathing real-time verification system," and has often spoke about the power, and sometimes the pitfalls, of using social media to spread the news.

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The Real Net Effect: Can Social Media Make A Difference in Yemen? (Alwazir)

Yemeni Activist Tawakkul KarmanSocial media is not a silent witness, nor is the cause of the mass people’s movement. Twitter and Facebook do not cause revolutions, people do. These people, fueled by years of injustice and wide grievances, are the true agents of change.

The power of these revolutions lies in the people’s strength to collaborate together. While the bulk of mobilization efforts in Yemen happen through word of mouth, radio, brochures and SMS services; sites such as Facebook helped people meet each other with one click, without having to travel great distances between cities.

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EA Twitter Special: Is the CIA Following Your Tweets? (Dozier)

A big Saturday morning hello to our readers at the CIA, who are not shy about following EA --- no "Anonymous Proxy" or "Unknown" in our StatCounter, just the straightforward "Central Intelligence Agency". 

As for all the other Twitter users they are watching.... Well, here's a message from Kimberly Dozier of the Associated Press:

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

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US Feature: How #OccupyWallStreet Became #OccupyEverywhere (Schneider)

It all started with an e-mail. On July 13 Adbusters magazine sent out a call to its 90,000-strong list proclaiming a Twitter hashtag (#OccupyWallStreet) and a date, September 17. It quickly spread among the mostly young, tech-savvy radical set, along with an especially alluring poster the magazine put together of a ballerina atop the Charging Bull statue, the financial district’s totem to testosterone.

The idea became a meme, and the angel of history (or at least of the Internet) was somehow ready. Halfway into a revolutionary year—after the Arab Spring and Europe’s tumultuous summer—cyberactivists in the United States were primed for a piece of the action. The Adbusters editors weren’t the only ones organizing; similar occupations were already in the works, including a very well-laid plan to occupy Freedom Plaza in Washington, starting October 6.

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The Real Net Effect: Social Media and the Changing Middle East (Murphy)

Dedicated users of social media are a small vanguard in the Arab world, where access to the Internet and digital literacy levels are still low. But the number of people flocking to social media in the region is rising rapidly. This trend accelerated in the first quarter of this year, most notably in countries where protests occurred, according to the ASMR.

Facebook is the most popular social networking tool in Arab countries, with 27,711,503 users as of April 2011. That is almost double the 14,791,972 on Facebook in April 2010, the ASMR found. In the first four months of 2011, Facebook users in the Arab world grew by 30 percent, with Egypt accounting for most newcomers in this time period (2 million). Egypt’s 6.5 million Facebook users comprise about a quarter of all users in the region.

As for Twitter, the ASMR estimates there are about 6.5 million users in the Arab world, of whom 1.5 million are frequent tweeters. The countries with the most users and tweets are United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In Saudi Arabia, tweets went up 400 percent in one year (the average increase in the same time period in the rest of the world was 90 per cent).

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