#CheckCon Beirut, April 20-22, 2017
Rethinking the interplay between media, tech & social change in post-2011 MENA
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January 25, 2017 marks the sixth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution. While Syria’s and Yemen’s wars, Libya’s political uncertainties, and Egypt’s rising authoritarianism have made some doubt the significance and legacies of the 2011 Arab uprisings, now is a good time to convene and assess the future of media, technology and social impact in the MENA region.
CheckCon is a 3-day event that aims at bringing together grassroots media collectives, digital technology enthusiasts, professional journalists, and media students & scholars from across the Arab region to reflect on the experiences, successes, challenges and lessons learnt since 2011. The conference builds on five years of work on the Check project in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, the US and the UK, and brings together everyone who has contributed to the project since 2011, including speakers and participants from Check partners’ network.
Participation on Thursday and Friday of CheckCon (April 20-21, 2017) is by invitation only. If you are interested in attending, please email Dima Saber <dima.saber@bcu.ac.uk>
Participation on Saturday of CheckCon (April 22, 2017) is open to the public, and will be run as an ‘unconference’.
Please submit a pitch to the CheckCon Unconference at the bottom of this wiki.
We invite session pitches that explore and address topics such as:
- The human, social, economic and political legacies of the 2011 Arab uprisings
- The relation between digital media and social change in the MENA
- The role of the media (mainstream and alternative) in the coverage of revolutions, conflicts, displacements and social turmoil
- Fact-checking and the importance of investigative reporting in the age of media convergence
- Ways in which digital technologies can help raise awareness of and address the challenges posed by conflict and rising authoritarianism
- The interplay between digital technologies, ethics and the media representation of wars, refugees and forced displacements
- The future of digital technologies amidst the Arab region’s political and social uncertainties
In the meantime, please help us spread the word amongst your networks of activists, media practitioners, students and lecturers. In order to make all postings related to this event searchable, please tag everything with: #CheckCon
We look forward to working with you and hope to see you in April!
Who should come?
This event is an opportunity to informally exchange ideas and information with leading academics, research students, political activists and media practitioners, and is aimed at anyone interested in the role of media in building communities, supporting development or bringing about political change.
RSVP on Eventbrite here
You can RSVP on Eventbrite or add session suggestions to this wiki.
Team
Session Suggestions
The following are just a selection of the suggestions for talks we have had at CheckCon, to give you a flavour of what to expect at the conference/unconference.
| Suggested sessions |
Description |
Suggested by (Add your name here) |
|
Does Digitalisation Harm Social Movements?
|
Digitalisation of a movement is using of digital technologies to facilitate its activities, but does it always happen smoothly? Is it beneficial?
Who should decide and lead the digitalisation with asocial movement, all members or technology experts? What are the shortcomings of digitalisation? And how it may influence the organisation of the movement?
|
Noha Atef
|
|
Online Cause Campaigning, Clicktivism, and Impact
|
The session would explore different practical models of online cause campaigning, and would touch upon audience identification, engagement, and how to reach the critical mass that tips a campaign.
|
AbdelHalim AbdAllah
|
| Impact of investigate journalism and activism in Beirut |
How investigative journalism and activism are having an impact in Beirut and why we need to find ways to fund better reporting. Also are we looking past these slow subtle changes in how our practice of politics and media are changing in favor of our desire to gauge arab uprisings on a simplistic pass/fail basis lacking nuance as many in the mainstream media have done. |
Habib Battah |
| Citizen journalism and marginalized areas |
As i work as managing editor of "sharek.almasryalyoum.com", which is a project for citizen journalism, I'll talk about how can citizen journalism brings help for people in the marginalized & discriminated areas and how it can makes their life better. how it's gives them the power to impose their own observation.. Also i intend to talk about verification within that, how we encourage people to get involved in our mission. |
Mohmed Kassab |
| Experiences from the Field: Using Video for Change in the MENA |
Digital media continues to play a central role in shaping public debate and discourse in the Middle East and North Africa . Through a series of case studies, we will examine how video is directly feeding into media advocacy, human rights advocacy and justice and accountability efforts in the region . We will spotlight contexts where we've identified emerging and innovative uses of human rights video, as well as common challenges (and lessons learned). |
Raja Althaibani |
| Digital and social media as historical information |
It is often said that history is recorded by victors. Now history is recorded by computers and anyone can pick up that data and come to their own conclusions.
Does digital/social media and user generated content facilitate the job of historians? When information is archived, easily organized and a large stock of it is readily available to the public, does it reduce the risk of amnesia and history repeating itself?
|
Dara Mouracade |
| The role of audio storytelling in social change |
The role of audio storytelling and podcasts can have in combing social change, traditional media and new on-demand audio content to reach a large audience hungry for innovative content. |
Ramsey Tesdell |
| The role of social media personalization in polarization and lessons |
The role of personalization of social media in creating bubbles separating different communities on the internet, leading to opposition to change in post-ArabSpring countries. |
Mohamed ElGohary |
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