مدونة رامي رؤوف حليم

The Global Information Society Watch ( GISWatch ) is a space for collaborative monitoring of implementation of international (and national) commitments made by governments towards the creation of an inclusive information society. The GISWatch publish a yearly report on wide range of topics and by team of authors from different countries. This year i contributed to GISWatch 2011 report by a thematic report on internet and social movements in North Africa:

Since 2004, Egyptian netizens and bloggers were able to highly utilize online platforms in different areas. Many taboos were broken through online spaces enabling offline media to address several topics that where considered “red-line”. These topics included torture in police stations, sexual harassment issues, religious minorities, violations committed by personages pro-Mubarak… etc. During the revolution, the Egyptian cyberspace was extremely rich in terms of content provided which took different forms of text, videos and pictures. Two main things affected the content of the cyberspace, the first was what’s happened on the ground and the second was the accessibility to communications platforms. The time from 14 January to 24 January 2011, netizens kept sending invitations to demonstrate on 25 January, which is the National Police Day in Egypt, against corruption, unemployment and torture. Netizens posted human rights reports and statements on human rights status, video-clips of d...

If you are participating in a peaceful assembly as a journalists, rights defender, or activists, your mobile phone is an invaluable asset. It allows you to communicate with allies, to document the event, and bear witness to what is happening around you. At the same time, you should take certain precautions in your mobile use and communications.  The Mobile Tactics for Participants in Peaceful Assemblies guide published via Mobile Active can help you to utilize your mobile phone during peaceful assemblies effectively and, at the same time, better protect yourself. The guide will help you to understand the value of information on your mobile phone, assess mobile risks, know what to do before joining a peaceful assembly and during it, and to be more familiar with your mobile phone as well as 10 useful tips. You can read the guide online on Mobile Active here and download it here .

One of the first tents set late January in Tahrir Square was by group of friends (including bloggers, human rights defenders, political activists...etc) and most of us were there with our personal laptops, cameras, memory-readers, hard-disks, cables and devices that we might need.  The Media Tent in Tahrir Square With a sign on the tent that says "point to gather pictures and videos", the main thing we did was gathering all kind of multimedia from demonstrators in Tahrir Square then making the content available online once its possible. For me, gathering content from people and making it available online via different means was very important because i believed that making those pictures and videos public will help everyone to really understand whats happening on the ground, follow-up the situation and be able to judge, as well as have an overview of what happened in different cities in Egypt as those people who had pictures or videos were not only from Cairo.  ...