This is a two-year project funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA). BCU-based staff from the Interactive Cultures research group work in partnership with the US-based technology company Meedan.
The project, which builds on our existing SIDA-funded initiative in Egypt, works with citizens in Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, and with Syrian citizens in Lebanon, to help citizen journalists to be come trusted sources. This will contribute to strengthening democratic media in these places, so helping people to sort fact from rumour, make informed political choices, and hold their governments to account. Our work will empower citizens to use social media technology to collaboratively report and verify news stories, and fact-check political statements.
The BCU project team is led by Prof Tim Wall, and we hope to make appointments for a new senior researcher in Citizen Journalism and Media for Social Change and research assistant to work with partners in Arab countries. The new project will benefit greatly from the success of the existing citizen journalism project we worked on in collaboration with Meedan, in which Noha Atef was a vital team member, supported by Paul Bradshaw, BCU Reader in Citizen Journalism.
We would be really interested to talk to your team about the citizen journalists project in relation to a cultural programme we are finalising for May 2013. Our approach is to reflect artists responses and dissemination to events during the initial Arab Spring, to date.