Images of Egypt (digitised)

digitalcollections.aucegypt.edu, Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews "The Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews digital collection includes 101 images of Egypt commissioned by the Underwood & Underwood publishing company in the 1890s." (via Christof Galli on Facebook)

aQ use Internet Archive

Steven Stalinsky, MEMRI, Al-Qaeda, Jihadis Infest the San Francisco, California-Based 'Internet Archive' Library, 17 August 2011

Committee to Document the 25th January Revolution

This is a really important issue. I have been writing (briefly) on the so-called 'Arab spring' for a couple of forthcoming chapters, drawing on my own very limited archive - building a proper archive is essential, especially as so much digital content goes missing.

Jack Shenker, Guardian, The struggle to document Egypt's revolution, 15 Jul 2011 " ... And so the Committee to Document the 25th January Revolution was born. Staffed by volunteers and drawing on everything from official records and insurrectionary pamphlets to multimedia footage and updates on Twitter and Facebook, the project aims, in Fahmy's words, "to gather as much primary data on the revolution as possible and deposit it in the archives so that Egyptians now and in the future can construct their own narratives about this pivotal period.""

R-Shief

Lina Attalah, almasryalyoum.com, VJ Um Amel hits ‘the social’ in media "R-Shief, which is the Arabic word for archive, is a digital lab based in Los Angeles that produces real-time analysis of online social media content in the Arab world, most notably on the revolutions. It aggregates the web, Facebook, Twitter and blogs into a database archive, then provides different statistical analyses of all the data, posts with the most visits, etc. It also has been data mining Twitter by hashtag every two minutes since August 2010. R-Shief’s Twittermine tool allows users to access the data through multiple search criteria."

I have mentioned this in previous posts. Check out R-Shief, in particular Twitterminer.

Also see Liz Losh, dmlcentral.net, Digital Learning and the Arab Spring "Shereen Sakr claims that too much of how conventional information literacy is constituted overvalues “the idea of finding the source,” one that is authoritative, credible in all cases, and definitive as a point of origin. Says Shereen Sakr, “political speech online is not an epidemic; there is no methodology of Patient Zero; there are many sources speaking in simultaneity. They are echoing and keep changing each time they echo.” “If you have tools, that’s where analytics with digital technology is really helpful. Technology has created scales beyond human computability; we only have human filters.”"

I'd be interested in hearing from any prospective PhD candidate, wanting to do research in this area in relation to the study of Islam and Muslims in contemporary contexts.

Social media influences documentary-makers

Meg Carter, Guardian, Social media influences documentary-makers, 6 Jun 2011

"With built-in video cameras now the norm for mobile phones, anyone can be a film-maker – a fact proven by the role social content played in TV news coverage of the recent uprisings in the Middle East. As the dust settles, however, social media is influencing documentary-makers, too."

Not sure the dust has settled yet, but it's an interesting article. Reference is made to #18DaysInEgypt and One Day on Earth.