An interesting information policy has arisen in Egypt. All communication via twitter has been stopped (while twitter API still works).
I’m reading a TechCrunch article in which they state Twitter has been blocked in Egypt. It adds “Increasingly, social media is playing an important role in organizing and broadcasting protests against governments around the world. Unlike television or newspapers, Twitter and Facebook are not so easy to control other than blocking them entirely because of their distributed nature. By the time a regime realizes its only option is to block a service like Twitter, the protests are usually already well under way. And reports keep coming out via these channels anyway, making them the most immediate way to watch the protests (and sometimes subsequent uprisings) unfold. The reports may not always be accurate right away (confusing rubber bullets for “live ammunition,” for instance, but they tend to self-correct quickly.”
It has turned out that while the government can block Twitter and it’s mobile site, the API sites that seamlessly work with Twitter are all still fine (and too numerous to realistically block). As I think about the last classes discussion on information policy, it is clearly governmental censorship and distributive flow in Egypt.
You can watch video of the protests on Facebook and Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtTUsqra-MU.
What an interesting world we now live in. Where Social Media organizes the masses and spreads the word of atrocities being carried out. The days of isolating people are quickly coming to a close and the rise of information to the people is coming to the fore.
The Information Activist Librarian 