Revealing the news: How online news changes without you noticing

This paper describes an ongoing design project relating to online news and how alterations to news stories are hidden from the reader. As the delivery and consumption of news content online continues to overtake other channels in reader numbers and market penetration, so methods of transparency and reliability developed over centuries continue also to be tested by digital media. We have conducted content analysis on existing stories and examined how news organisations and channels handle rapidly evolving news stories. We have proceeded to develop low-fidelity prototypes and an interaction model to test our design approach. The outcomes are in production and will result in a digital artifact that reveals editorial changes to news items (the News Inspector). These changes will be made visible within the browser. The implications of the project relate to the wider question of news truth-telling, trust and online news credibility

Public service broadcasting in Egypt: Strategies for media reform

[no abstract provided]https://fount.aucegypt.edu/faculty_book_chapters/1004/thumbnail.jp

Mapping Digital Media: Egypt

The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs.Egypt has a young population, high rates of unemployment and inflation, and a long history of state control over the media. In this mix, the rise of digital media has been widely considered an engine of radical social and political change, not least in respect of the popular uprisings that led to the January 25 revolution in 2011.This report suggests that new technologies of communication have had an enabling rather than a determining effect. They have acted as a catalyst to facilitate and accelerate social change already happening on the ground for years. Crucially, these technologies gave unprecedented opportunities for lateral communication and self-expression outside the regime's control.Moreover, the half a million Egyptians who clicked "I am attending the revolution" on Facebook gave each other the feeling that "I am not alone. If I go out on the streets on January 25, I am not going to be with 200 people; I am going to be with thousands, or as it happened, with millions."This report offers a detailed analysis of digitization that chronicles both what has and has not changed in Egypt against a backdrop of unprecedented political and social instability, and the ongoing struggle for democracy

Facebook polls as proto-democratic instruments in the Egyptian revolution: The ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook page

This article examines the dynamics of political participation on the ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ Facebook page, which hosted the call for Egypt’s 25 January 2011 revolution. It shows that the page served as a proto-democratic instrument by introducing both qualitative and quantitative polls and following up with actions based on majority opinion. This argument is developed through an analysis of discussion threads and polls from the page, selected from a data set of 14,072 posts, 6,810,357 comments and 32,030,731 likes made by 1,892,118 users, extracted via a customized version of Netvizz. The analysis demonstrates that the page provided a basic lesson in democratic participation to its users. ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ constituted an unprecedented public space for active discussions on fighting corruption, torture and police brutality. Moreover, it served as a practical example of shared governance and political participation, which became a model for its users to strive to apply to their country

The uses and gratifications of the Internet among Arab students in Egypt

Internet use by Arab students in Egypt was examined from a uses and gratifications perspective. An online survey was administered to 502 students at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Principal components factor analysis resulted in five motives for using the Internet among respondents. Those were: information seeking, surveillance, entertainment, personal utility, and social interaction. Several variables were investigated in relation to the five motives, including gender, year in school, type of Internet connection, level of Internet operational skills, Internet exposure, Internet affinity, and Internet satisfaction.Gender was found to be a significant factor, as males were more likely to use the Internet for social interaction, and females were more likely to use it for information. Freshmen were more likely to use the Internet for personal utility than seniors and graduate students. Internet affinity was significantly correlated with all Internet use motives. There was also a significant positive correlation between Internet satisfaction and Internet use motives of entertainment, surveillance, and information. Internet exposure was positively correlated to personal utility, social interaction, and entertainment. Exposure and satisfaction were significantly related to affinity, but not to each other. Regression analysis models were utilized to predict Internet use