Content submitted by Mary tagged with "youtube"

Barack Brushes It Off

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 19/04/2008 at 23:54
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Tibetans Use the Internet to Get the News Out

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 17/03/2008 at 13:25

Last week hundreds of Tibetan monks took to the streets in and near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to protest Chinese rule. Although the heavily censored Chinese media refused to cover the story, both Tibetans and foreign tourists used the Internet to get the news out.


cell phone image of protests published on the site of a Tibetan rights NGO based in India

According to the Vancouver Sun, “Amateur cellphone photos and video clips showing what were described as confrontations between police and Tibetans protesting Chinese rule poured onto websites big and small, including those for major news media,

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Viral Video for Obama: Yes We Can

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 04/02/2008 at 12:07


A recent video made by some celebs for Obama.  Certainly elegant, hopefully inspirationl (of course, I was already inspired before I saw it).  This version on the video has been viewed over 500,000 times and it was posted 2 days ago.

If you are an American citizen and a resident of any of the following states, please vote in your state primary on Tuesday, February 5 (Super Duper Tuesday).  Particularly for the Democrats, the race between the presidential candidates is very tight, so please take a moment out of your work day to participate in our democracy.  We

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Can Activists Trust YouTube?

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 08/01/2008 at 19:37

In late November, Egyptian activist Wael Abbas' YouTube account was suspended due to videos of torture which he had posted. Though his account was re-activated a few days later, all his videos had been removed. YouTube's side of the story is that Abbas had violated their terms of use by posting videos of "graphic or gratuitous violence" (many of Abbas' video depict police torture, including sodomy. ) However, other videos, of police brutality, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and election irregularities were also deleted when his account was restored.

 

This case clearly put YouTube in an awkward situation. Clearly

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Semiotic Democracy on YouTube

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 15/09/2007 at 18:04

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post that not many people read about semiotic democracy, the defining of culture by ordinary people who reinterpret and disseminate their own interpretations about what cultural elements. Yeah, it was really theoretical. Maybe it was even boring. Well, these two videos provide an example that I think really drives home what semiotic democracy is all about.

This is a video made a crazed fan of Britney Spears defending her against her detractors. The over-the-top melodrama made it an instant hit and the creator, Chris Crocker, gained his 15 seconds of fame,

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Semiotic Democracy and Rayt

Posted by Mary in Rayt it! on 30/08/2007 at 10:40 AM

The theory of semiotic democracy states that ordinary people can re-define and create culture. We are not merely the passive receptacles of judgements, beliefs, and traditions. We can re-work these semiotics (signs) and in so doing re-work culture.

screenshot of Rayt comments at the top of www.whitehouse.gov: One thousand comments on the White House web site is like one thousand people with megaphones knocking on White House door.


In the broadcast age of radio, television, and newspapers it was not so easy to publicly present a personal interpretation of culture. We received our information and entertainment through technology controlled by

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Who's afraid of a curveball question?

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 23/07/2007 at 14:46

Why can't today's candidates handle a curveball question? (see full video here)

Tonight, beginning at 7pm EST, CNN will broadcast a new kind of debate in which people send in their questions to presidential candidates as YouTube videos. Here comes the new debate, same as the old debate.

The reason that this debate structure isn't really so revolutionary is that CNN will still be picking the questions, continuing a style of "filtered" debates that make us forget what a real no-holds-barred debate is like. Media critic Jeff Jarvis parses this issue quite well:

CNN did give itself too

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From Egypt: "A Call to Blogging... A Call to Freedom"

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 20/07/2007 at 15:21

Abdel-Monem Mahmoud is a prolific Egyptian blogger. Though an outspoken member of the Muslim Brotherhood, his message of greater political freedoms for all Egyptians has made him an admired figure across the political spectrum. He has been imprisoned by the Mubarak regime several times and was once tortured while in police custody. His most recent arrested in mid-April of this year resulted in a global Free Monem campaign.

After approximately six weeks in jail, Monem was released from prision and got right back to blogging. His time in jail did not temper his strong criticism of the Egyptian government

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The Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism

Posted by Mary in ZapBoom on 19/07/2007 at 18:17


"Just one moment, let me come over there and help you with your e-petition."


I like to pay credit where credit is due. Not many people are treating digital activism with the rigor of deep intellectual analysis, so I'd like to point out Ethan Zuckerman's contribution to this area. Ethan, co-founder of Geek Corps and Global Voices, is also the originator of the Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism.

This theory states that while many Web 2.0 tools were created to help people share information about their cats (Flickr: look at my cute cat!, blogging: read about what my

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