Preserving the Online Legacy of the Egyptian Revolution

An interesting read from The Atlantic on how the Egyptian revolution is being digitally preserved.

Regardless of how much you think social media aided the revolution in Egypt, one thing we know for sure is that Egyptians uploaded videos, posted pictures, and tweeted hundreds of thousands of times during the 18 days between the January 25 protests that invigorated the movement and the the day Hosni Mubarak stepped down.

Somewhere in all that real-time information sharing, there are deep and important stories about how the revolution played out in the streets and hearts of Egypt.

But the problem is, there's no single place where one could find all of that information, particularly with any kind of metadata attached about where it came from and who made it. Worse, Twitter's search function only works for a limited amount of time, which means that searches for #Jan25 or other popular hashtags will soon come up empty. Facebook shares will melt down timelines.

The online life of the revolution is in danger of slipping away from easy retrieval. It's being buried under the avalanche of always-new events. But a few people are trying to preserve what happened.

Read full article.

emily | 8:49 PM | Citizens as Camera Phone Reporters |
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