I'm almost 22 years. I lived in Egypt since I was 5 (the first was in France). I joined Twitter I think two years ago or so, but I started using it intensely in the last 7 or 8 months.
Twitter is a very important tool for the demonstrators, as evidenced by the fact that Twitter and Facebook have been repeatedly blocked in Egypt while the protests raged. We use it to make information and announce new events (the labels are invaluable in this respect) and to share information quickly and efficiently, with our comments of 140 characters and then have conversations with other people and strangers. But the most important thing is that we can share information from the frontlines as police brutality, things to watch out for, the arrests of activists, etc.. Some activists are armed with smart phones, enabling them to live tweet protests (for example, some people mad because of the choirs tweet are often fun and interesting). When it comes to organization, I think that Facebook is the main instrument. Trends of Twitter help us measure how we are visible to the international community (my tendencies are set for the whole world and I know a lot of people checking the trends in cities across the United States). Making our voices heard, make sure that people out of Egypt are aware of what is happening is very important to us, especially with the recent blocking of cell lines and the Internet last weekend.
Another thing is that the government has recently attempted to make use of social media - in a rough (but not surprising). I have seen with a few different Twitter account and tweet no more than 5 players try to tweet about what the protests are bad for the stability of the country, how big is the president, and so on. It is always the same pair of tweets, with the same wording, sent several accounts. But most of the government's propaganda has been done on TV, which unfortunately is far more convincing to the average citizen of a group of Egyptian young people on the Internet. At this time, we are thinking about how to use social media to counter the government propaganda that portrays the violent demonstrators, young people confused and misled by "foreign elements" to harm our country. We need to get into conversation with who believe in what is said on TV, and the best way to do this is to use social media to present our arguments in a calm, peaceful sense.
For years, the ruling party has portrayed the political scene in Egypt as a fight between them, the secular National Democratic Party and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian left wing completely marginalized due to lack of leaders. We, the non-Brotherhood opposition, we were waiting for a magical spiritual leader, a-la Obama, who inspire us to revolt against the PND. The Tunisia has shown us that a popular revolution can take place and to topple a regime controlled. On January 14 was the day we started to believe in the January 25.
back to Twitter, the Tunisian revolution was barely mentioned by mainstream media until Ben Ali has fled, but the labels and # # Tunisia sidibouzid allowed us to follow the events throughout the month. I think this further convinced us of the ability that each of us has to bring about change.
on Twitter started a conversation to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. Starting from an idea launched by @ linkiesta , the community of Twitter users began using the tag # Italia150 to catalog Tweet about the celebrations of Italy. From today until March 17, the official date of the celebration, anyone who wants to wish Italy, share a comment, a picture or video, may do so using # Italia150 to join the conversation.
On Twitter conversations appear spontaneously and anyone can participate: this is the beauty of Twitter, the information service that helps you find out what's new and interesting to you now. Using labels (or hashtag, in English) can be captured in conversations on Twitter quickly and easily. The label widget can be integrated on any website, simply configure the widget as we did above to # Italia150 .
Join us in Italy to wish: you are beautiful, young and have a long way in front Italia150 #!
