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A short review on the book "SMS Uprising: Mobile activism in Africa" which is series of essays about the usage of SMS for citizen activism in Africa including in Zimbabwe.

Social media's role in the organisation and communication of the protests in Thailand is still small compared to the role traditional forms of media have played. This article however is a good primer on the details of how social media has been used - citizen journalism, regular journalism that is now "on the fly", amplification of messages via social media channels. Censorship by the government has also been a factor in the unrest.

The head of new media for Middle East broadcaster and news service Al Jazeera has poured cold water on the much-hyped role of Twitter as the technology that started grass-roots revolution in Iran. Despite the US government's moves to prevent scheduled maintenance of the site to enabled Iranians to "Tweet out" to the world about the election, it seems a torrent of on-the-ground Tweets simply doesn't add up. After analyzing information about the alleged Iranian-based Tweeters, just 6 accounts could be verified as actually being on the ground.