On Tuesday, April 3, the WVU P.I. Reed School of Journalism will co-sponsor the moderated panel discussion “The Revolution Will Be Tweeted: Social Media and Free Speech in the Middle East,” which will examine the impact of social media on democracy movements in the Middle East and around the world. Many of the panelists were involved with the Arab Spring.
Panelist include:
Andy Carvin, senior strategist for National Public Radio’s social media desk. When a revolution began to spread across the Arab world in the spring of 2011, Carvin gathered, vetted and tweeted the breaking news in real time – from his computer in Washington, D.C. Called the “go-to curator” on Twitter, Carvin has more than 60,000 followers. He is the former director of the Digital Divide Network.
Issandr El Amrani, a Cairo-based writer, blogger and consultant, whose reporting and commentary on the Middle East and North Africa has appeared in The Economist, London Review of Books, Financial Times, The National, The Guardian, Time and many other publications. He also publishes one of the longest-running blogs in the region, The Arabist.
Jigar Mehta, a digital entrepreneur, video journalist and documentary filmmaker, co-created the crowd-sourced website documentary “18 Days in Egypt,” a collection of stories from revolutionaries across Egypt. Mehta is also the president of the South Asian Journalist Association and co-founder of GroupStream, an online collaborative storytelling platform.
Nasser Weddady is the civil rights outreach director at the American Islamic Congress. As one of the few activists working in both the Middle East South Africa region and the United States, Weddady has developed a unique perspective on the global struggle for human and civil rights. He has been published in the International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and Baltimore Sun; appeared on Hannity & Colmes, BBC World Service, Al Jazeera and Radio Liberty; and testified to Congress’ Human Rights Caucus.
Jillian York, director of international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes regularly about free expression, politics and the Internet, with particular focus on the Arab world. She is on the board of directors of Global Voices Online and has written for a variety of publications, including Al Jazeera, Al Akhbar, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Bloomberg.
The event, co-sponsored by the Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism’s Ogden Newspapers Seminar, will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Mountainlair Ballrooms and is free to the public.
The David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas, organized by the Office of University Events, brings key figures from politics, business, entertainment, research, sports, scholarship and culture Morgantown to share their wisdom. Speakers in the series open doors to thoughtful discussions about important issues and facilitate the free exchange of ideas and knowledge. A complete list of Festival of Ideas events is available online.