Third Party Event: Trumping Democracy
Real Money. Fake News. Your Data. This explosive documentary showcases how Trump won the 2016 Presidential Election.
The Trade Off: Individual Privacy and National Security
Privacy of the individual, secrecy of the state and national security have been in sharp focus in past weeks due to the leak of material from the US’s National Security Agency (NSA). We will be joined by a panel of experts to ask whether it is possible to strike a balance.
From Cast Lead to Pillar of Defense: How the IDF has learnt to communicate war in Gaza online
In 2009, I wrote a blog post arguing that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had “fallen off the social media bandwagon”. Their digital media campaign in support of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza was hastily conceived, unimaginative and anti-‘social’. New tools were used to disseminate traditional military messages with little regard for a new online […]
#FCBBCA Cyber snooping: In whose hands should internet governance be entrusted?
In Iran it is reported that the government are building a national intranet that adheres to Islamic values and is isolated from the World Wide Web, in the UK the government is proposing a communications bill that will see an increase in monitoring of emails and social media by the police and intelligence agencies’.
With companies’ interests lying in the commercial gains of data and governments’ in the ability to monitor populations, join us as we ask to whose hands internet governance should be entrusted.
British Army investigating ‘racist’ tweet to Lily Allen
A Twitter user claiming to be serving in the British Army has sent an allegedly racist tweet to Lily Allen. Earlier today, Harry Wilson sent the following message to the singer (@lilyrosecooper) who has 3.5 million followers: Allen subsequently complained to the British Army indicating that Wilson should be "disciplined". Wilson initially retweeted reaction […]
ForesightNews world briefing: upcoming events 14 – 20 May
A weekly round up of world events from Monday, 14 to Sunday, 20 May from Foresight News By Nicole Hunt All eyes will be on newly-elected French President François Hollande and the euro zone this week, kicking off with a meeting of euro group finance ministers in Brussels on Monday ahead of a wider ECOFIN […]
Taliban take questions using online forum
Reuters is reporting that the Taliban have started answering queries submitted to an online forum on their website. Questions have been asked on topics ranging from the Taliban’s negotiations with the United States to their position on educating girls. The Taliban banned girls from schools while they were in power, although there were reports in […]
Five links from 2011: ‘War Reporting’
This year I bookmarked at least 530 links on delicious. I know that because I try to tag each bookmark by year – I’m three hundred or so links down on last year’s total of 854. Seeing as we’re coming to the end of the year I thought I’d pick out a few of the […]
The role of social media in the UK riots
"The ability to communicate to groups of people easily and on a regular basis is more powerful than previous incarnations of ‘word of mouth’ technologies." Click here for more on the BBC College of Journalism website…
Egypt’s digital revolutionaries: It’s not about the technology
The special joint event organised by the Frontline Club and the BBC Arabic Service brought together some of the key players, journalists and experts to discuss what has taken place in Egypt over the last few months. The first half of the evening at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, considered the role of technology […]
FRONTLINE CLUB SPECIAL: Protest, technology and the end of fear
EXTERNAL EVENT AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN
The start of 2011 will be remembered as a period in which the barrier of fear fell across the Middle East and North Africa as people took to the streets demanding freedom from the tyrants who had governed for so long.
No one can predict where these momentous events will lead and what the repercussions will be for years to come.
For this special event held at the The Royal Institution of Great Britain the Frontline Club and BBC Arabic Service will be bringing together some of the key players, journalists and experts to discuss what has taken place so far and to try to gauge what the future might hold.
Exploring the role of Twitter and social media in revolutions
I’m afraid I haven’t been able to follow events in Tunisia and Egypt as closely as I would have liked as I was determined to enjoy an overdue holiday and a break from computer screens. And my mission was largely accomplished. As part of an attempt to catch up, I’ve just been reading Jeff Jarvis, […]
The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent on new tools for journalists
Harriet Sherwood reflects on life as a foreign correspondent after four months in Jerusalem for The Guardian. Here she offers an assessment of the new platforms available to journalists: "…in the digital age, there are other platforms to consider. I have flirted with Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. The former seems a useful […]
How Facebook users can report casualties in Afghanistan before the military
Recently Facebook changed its privacy settings which meant that a lot of people’s profile information is now far more public than they might realise. Facebook users who joined with the expectation that their information was only going to be shared with a select group of online ‘friends’ are finding that all sorts of other people […]
Admiral Mullen’s social media strategy
The Public Affairs Office looking after Admiral Mullen has revealed his social media strategy for 2010 by sticking it up on Slideshare. Admiral Mullen is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for US forces and admitted a while ago that his wife reminded him to use his Twitter account. Some interesting bits […]
Round up: Marjah; war reporting; Facebook and the IDF.
Fighting the Taliban in Marjah, Afghanistan. There was an interesting little sub-plot in this article in The Times about the aim of protecting and winning over the population in a counterinsurgency operation. On the one hand these US Marines were being asked to exercise some level of restraint: "The new rules of engagement, dubbed “Courageous […]
Department of Defense switches default policy on social media to ‘open’
As of last Friday, all US servicemen have been able to update social networks like Twitter and Facebook from non-classified military network computers. The announcement by the Department of Defense is the first time a single policy has been used across all branches of the Armed Forces and effectively reverses a Marine Corps ban on […]
‘Tweetwife’ application reminds US Admiral to use Twitter
The United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says his wife, a regular Twitter user, reminds him to tweet. Admiral Mike Mullen believes Twitter and other social networking sites like Facebook are important forms of communication which enable him to stay in touch with younger members of the US military…(or at least that […]
‘In Facebook, it is not me,’ says Azeri politician
Recently, one Azeri politician and analyst Ilgar Mammadov called another politician and analyst Eldar Namazov: “I’ve sent you a friendship request through Facebook, accept it please.” Eldar Namazov raised his eyebrows in surprise: “But I have no profile in Facebook!”
MoD (sort of) “encourages” use of Twitter, blogs, Facebook
The Ministry of Defence has issued a new set of social media guidelines "encouraging" their personnel to "talk about what they do, but within certain limits to protect security, reputation and privacy". In a notable development the policy allows soldiers to dicuss "their work online without prior authorisation from their chain of command" as long […]
Read beyond the “Marines ban Twitter…” headline
Articles like this one with the headline ‘Marines Ban Twitter, Facebook, MySpace" have been doing the rounds in the media. But it’s important to read beyond the headline. Because if you just read headlines you end up with a really distorted picture of the world. (You always did but I’d suggest it’s even worse in […]
Blogging NATO Sec General calls for openness
NATO’s new Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has used a video blog to call for NATO to be "as open and transparent as possible". Fogh Rasmussen, who took up his post on Saturday and has been outlining NATO’s strategic priorities today, said he wants to use the blog "to have a discussion" about the security […]
Republic of Facebook
Following the beating and arrest of two youth activists and bloggers in Baku, who were using new media as well as Facebook to spread their ideas among their followers, the local online community has exploded in a way that prompted support from global community ifor the arrested bloggers and in general, the freedom of speech […]
Battle of the Queens
The YouTube Queen of Jordan has taken another step towards becoming the world’s most technologically connected Royal. She’s now posting minute-by-minute updates on Twitter. In a couple of days she’s rocketed up from a handful of followers to around four thousand. So far, we’ve heard of her ariel acrobatics, as her husband pilots the royal […]