Tara Harms's List: Digital Citizenship Positive Effects

• it is undeniable that the use of the web to organize and sustain many of the protests has been critica
• of ordinary people claiming their rights of free expression and assembly and using the platform of the new technologies to make this happen.
• young cyber-activists in Cairo are showing the rest of the world what it means to be a digital citizen
• ordinary people, without direct leadership or guidance from oppositional parties, have self-organized, acted, engaged and participated in a series of protests and demonstrations in order to bring about change.
• But what is more remarkable is that these self-organizing digital citizens have also taken it upon themselves to remove litter from the streets, protect their national treasures, direct traffic and create local pseudo-police forces in the absence of any credible law enforcement help.
• They have also demanded their rights while also accepting their responsibilities. They have used Twitter and Facebook in ways that were unimaginable to their respective founders and shown these and other social networking tools in a light contrary to their portrayal as time-wasting sink holes for narcissistic teens and adults who should know better

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• What's more, many citizens in Arab countries are not yet online. But these social media tools could be far more useful than people realize.
• The Internet offers a new platform for people to collaborate and think seriously about what kind of government they want. Enabling people to discuss political issues openly, without fear of retribution from the top, would help to build the active political culture that is vital for a workable democracy. It's an essential first step toward an election, and along the way it can bring into the discussion people who have been excluded so far.
• But how? Consider a digital brainstorm, an online discussion involving the whole country. Digital brainstorms have been used extensively in the private sector -- by IBM, for example, when it held one for 400,000 people. So why not hold a digital brainstorm to talk about a new form of government in Arab countries?
• In Egypt, a brainstorm could be led by five Arab-speaking scholars of politics.
• Over several weeks, let them inform the public of the advantages and disadvantages of the different systems, debate the choices very publicly -- on the radio, TV or internet video -- inviting comments and questions.
• the interested public would hear concrete ideas, debate the choices and look to possible compromises.
• holding a challenge to describe some of the founding principles of the new society? Public challenges have been hugely successful in the past.
• Challenges and digital brainstorms are working elsewhere, so why not use them in Arab countries to get the public thinking about the kind of society they want to live in? People could be invited to submit a short essay, or perhaps a two-minute video, which could be posted online. The public could pick the winner.
• That's why we should encourage the use of social media to change this story's ending by engaging people in a discussion about their collective future, perhaps for the first time.

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• Ghonim went online and created a Facebook page. “Today they killed Khaled,” he wrote. “If I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.”
• Two minutes after he started his Facebook page, 300 people had joined it. Three months later, that number had grown to more than 250,000.
• “Silent Stands” that culminated in a massive and historic rally at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.
• helped ignite an uprising that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and the dissolution of the ruling National Democratic Party.
• Facebook accounts and Twitter profiles” dedicated to covering and organizing the Arab Spring.
• Though only a fraction of Egyptians have Internet access, Ghonim writes, the number of Web users in the country increased to 13.6 million in 2008 from 1.5 million in 2004. Through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the Web has become a haven for a young, educated class yearning to express its worries and anxieties.
• s simply a place for venting the outrage resulting from years of repression, economic instability and individual frustration.

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• He polled the page’s users and sought ideas from others, like how best to publicize a rally — through printed fliers and mass text messaging, it turned out.

• While new online tools are used to strengthen civil society, activists are still struggling with the digital divide when it comes to mobilizing masses against the army and the remains of the old administration.
• a digital campaign against military trials for civilians is on. Activists are posting comments on the Facebook site of the Egyptian Armed Forces, whose Supreme Council — the SCAF — holds power in Egypt. SCAF took over after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in the revolution in February.
• The campaign was announced on a Facebook page and about 8,000 participants have joined. After bombarding the SCAF’s site with comments for 15 minutes, the crowd moved on to criticizing the ministries’ sites.
• After a while, an official closed the comments sections on the Facebook sites. Activists continued the discussion, however, on Twitter with the hashtag #nomiltrials.

• “Twitter and Facebook are the ways we keep the momentum going. We protect and defend people. We campaign there,” said Salma el Daly, an Egyptian videoblogger.

   
• Facebook pages, such as We are all Khaleed Said, with more than 1.6 million followers, are used for spreading the message about protests and campaigns.
• Almost everything that is posted there goes viral instantly,”

• Five minutes from Tahrir Square, young Egyptian activists gather for TweetNadwas, a series of online and offline meetings, to discuss the next steps in campaigning.

   
• An estimated 10 percent of 80 million Egyptians are on Facebook.
• Ibrahim also gathers pictures of accused human rights violators on Piggipedia, which is a Flickr collection of pictures of policemen, soldiers, and other officialdom.
• One strategy for the change is to make wrongdoings in society visible, and “crowdpower” is a way to make this happen; there is a TortureMap for crowdmapping torture and another one for corruption.
• Crowdfunding initiatives in Egypt also have been organized through social media. In an online event called Tweetback, Egyptians gathered funds for humanitarian projects. Companies, non-profits and individuals were invited to donate.
• . Tweetback raised 2 million Egyptian pounds (more than $330,000), and the money was directed to support an impoverished neighborhood in Cairo.

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• vast web of instantaneous information lines into and out of Egypt that connected the protesters to each other and to the outside world in the run-up to the street protests we’re seeing.