origin

Guestpost by David Sasaki

Spanish-Syrian activist and journalist, Leila Nachawati, has found herself at the center of the largest protest movements in recent years in both countries. As a veteran social media strategist — and a fluent speaker of Spanish, Arabic, and English — Leila has a unique perspective of the events unfolding in Spain and Syria, and their causes. She will join us at the Public Square Squared symposium on September 4th at the Brucknerhaus. The following interview took place over email.

Read More »

Guestpost by David Sasaki

Depending on who you ask, social media and greater access to information are leading us either to liberation or chaos. In a matter of weeks, Egyptians and Tunisians organized massive revolutionary movements to remove longstanding dictatorial regimes — and to open the door to meaningful democratic reforms. However, social media also facilitated the coordination of violent rioting in London, while right-wing, extremist bloggers are said to have influenced Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik.

Read More »

This is a guestpost by David Sasaki, together with Isaac Mao he’s responsible for Public Square Squared

I first met Lina Ben Mhenni at the 2nd Arab Bloggers Meeting in Beirut, Lebanon about two years ago. The meeting, organized by Global Voices Advocacy and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, aimed to strengthen a regional network of Arab bloggers, online activists, and civil society organizations. Lina had been blogging from Tunisia since 2006 — frequently about freedom of speech issues — but it wasn’t until late 2009 when she became a full fledged online activist; coordinating the campaign to free Mohamed Soudani, a young Tunisian student who was imprisoned after giving interviews to international media.

Read More »

Two years ago Isaac Mao and I curated the Ars Electronica Symposium on Cloud Intelligence. Among the many questions to which we sought answers: “Does online activism using server-based tools lead to offline social change, or to increased apathy?” Two of the day’s speakers, Xiao Qiang, a native of China, and Evgeny Morozov, a native of Belarus, offered their “dueling views of digital activism.”

Read More »

The “uprisings” occurring throughout the world in 2011 have not only amazed amateur politicians, but also radically changed the global perception of the role of global social media in times of radical social change.

Read More »