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sites need to be monitored by the government in order to ensure the accuracy of the information circulating on these networks. “I want to help make the media more reliable,” he said, adding that, “I’m not talking about individuals. I’m talking about journalists who use Facebook and all types of social media. They must be sure not to release false information that could subvert the facts and divide Tunisia.”

It’s a matter of organizing things to make the media seem more ordered and reliable

the commission would not supervise individuals, only news sources. It would be tasked with monitoring Tunisian media in all of its forms, including things that are published by journalists on websites like Twitter and Facebook

In the absence of protest workshops and ‘how-to’ manuals, video footage captured on mobile phones in Kiev (and elsewhere) and uploaded to social media sites now serves as a repository for protest tactics, to be studied and adapted by anti-coup protesters thousands of miles away in Cairo. These instances of unsentimental appropriation mark an interesting departure from previous patterns of resource sharing and border-crossing diffusion of protest tactics, patterns which saw Egyptian activists cultivate a series of formative linkages with pro-democracy movements such as Serbia’s Otpor movement in the years before the Jan. 25 revolution.

We have teams of people who go on YouTube and search for videos of other protests around the world and when they come across a new tactic, they post it on the Facebook page. If we find a good tutorial video, we translate it into Arabic

The co-ordination of protests themselves, however, is increasingly occurring offline: Egyptian state security has grown so adept at infiltrating online groups, that mosques and university campuses are now the two most important associational spaces in which to organize. In many neighborhoods, certain mosques have a reputation for playing host to rallies that are launched after prayer. Here, would-be protesters do not need access to formal protest networks to participate; they simply need to turn up. These are often the same mosques from where protests were launched during the Jan. 25 revolution. If the protests begin elsewhere, the relevant times and locations are distributed to a trusted list of regular protest-goers who then relay the information to friends and relatives

We've heard these pleas before. The BBC reports regularly from inside Syria, as do several American papers, and although coverage of the Syrian war is not wall-to-wall on American networks, it gets regular, consistent attention. So where is the public outrage about a war so chaotic and dangerous that even the UN has stopped keeping track of the death toll? Have we all become numb to the pain of others?

The world inevitably tires of complex, long conflicts where there are no clear answers about how to end the violence. This cartoon in the New Yorker is a harsh but perhaps accurate look at how the collective conscience deals with the relentless stream of bad news from Syria.

Spare a thought for the North Koreans, too. A UN report out last week, too horrific even to read, compares the abuses committee by the government to Nazi Germany. I have yet to see much outrage or calls for action

The government has tried all manner of methods to mute what has become known as “resistance music.” It has blocked Web sites used to download songs and shut down social networking sites, which the opposition also used to organize protests and distribute videos of government and paramilitary violence.

lamping down on music in the digital age is like squeezing a wet sponge. Protest songs are downloaded on the Internet, sold in the black market or shared via Bluetooth, a wireless technology that Iranians have adapted to share files on cellphones, bypassing the Internet altogether. Fans have also made dozens of homemade videos, setting montages of protest images to music and posting them online.

“Music has become a tool for resisting the regime,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. “Music has never been as extensive and diverse as it is today.”

“Awesomeness” doesn’t necessarily have to mean “life-changing wisdom from the fountain of genius.” Sometimes it just means holding yourself to a higher standard in your day-to-day content and avoiding getting into a rut just for the sake of consistency. And wherever you produce content — videos, podcasts, blogs, ads, Facebook — it’s more important than ever that you focus on what you have to offer instead of searching for widgets and plug-ins and toolbars to help you offer it slightly better. The days when people would idly surf the Web, grazing on what they could find, are largely over. Today, we've largely surrendered the discovery process to our social networks, feeding off the great links our friends have found and liked enough to share. Which means that consistency and audience loyalty aren't going to be enough anymore. You're going to need to make sure that everything you create is erupting with potential to be shared. Then you'll find the process is all around a heck of a lot easier. 

a medium without a message is little more than static

A couple Pakistani papers and TV networks were deceived by false US diplomatic cables [EPA] Several leading Pakistani newspapers have acknowledged that they were hoaxed, after publishing reports based on fake WikiLeaks cables that contained crude anti-India propaganda. The reports, which featured prominently in several papers on Thursday, cited alleged US diplomatic cables as confirming many right-wing Pakistani views and conspiracy theories about the country's arch enemy India and the disputed Kashmir region. Much of Pakistan's media toes a pro-military, anti-Indian line, which was reflected by the papers' extensive coverage of the fake memos. The instigators of the hoax remain unclear, though the material appeared to have originated on a news website that features anti-Indian and pro-Pakistani articles.