>>Ahmed Shihab-Eldin: So my name is Ahmed.
I'm Arab.
I'm American.
And I produce and cohost a show on Al Jazeera
called "The Stream."
Now, it's important that I start there, because
in the past ten years since 9/11, my name,
my heritage, and even my employer was known
to be a subject of discrimination, controversy,
and fear.
Now, on YouTube, if you type "Ahmed" in the
search results, the first video that comes
up, with almost seven million views and one
of the most watched, is called "Ahmed the
Terrorist."
Now, it's an act where a ventriloquist has
a puppet called -- forgive me -- okay, a ventriloquist
has a puppet called Ahmed and he claims to
be a terrifying terrorist.
There's a lot of times in my life, especially
on my show where I feel like a puppet.
But I've certainly never felt like a terrorist.
But it's true, in the past ten years, I've
had to endure countless terrorist jokes, racial
slurs at weddings, at schools, anywhere you
can imagine.
And even had a police officer in Boston once
yell to me, and this is the PG version, "Shut
up, you bleep, bleep, bleep Arab towel head,"
as he arrested me and put me in the back of
his cop car, only to have the charges dropped
later.
Now, I'm not going to go into that story,
but you can talk to me afterwards about it.
I've also met many Arabs who have changed
their names from Ahmed to Tony, or from Josef
to Joe.
There are many stories similar to that which
have been perpetuated in part by the media.
But I am fortunately not here to tell you
those stories, for me and for you.
I'm here to tell you the story of how my name,
Ahmed, but, more importantly, my heritage
and my Arab and Muslim identity, is being
reclaimed by a new generation, a generation
that is connected through the democratization
of media.
Now, the Arab world is undergoing social and
political revolution, challenging the role
of women, religion, and, yes, even democracy
in society.
For example, in June, in Saudi Arabia, a couple
of brave women got in the cars with their
father in the passenger seat, some of them,
and videoed themselves driving, which is banned
in Saudi Arabia.
And they uploaded it to YouTube.
And in doing so, this act of bravery, let's
fast forward to just the day before yesterday,
the king of Saudi Arabia finally announced
that women in 2011 have the right to vote
in municipal elections -- this was two days
ago -- and they can even run in municipal
elections.
Now, in these countries, for decades, civic
engagement was not only not tolerated; it
was suppressed and oppressed, at times, brutally.
But just as the Arab world is undergoing a
revolution, so is the media.
It's going through a revolution that in a
large part is fueling the Arab revolution,
or what we call here in the U.S. the Arab
Spring.
Now -- okay.
Back to this slide -- 50% of the world is
under 30.
I'm included, if you haven't noticed.
70% of the Arab world is under 30.
I mean, really think about that for a minute.
And these young people have turned to the
Internet to engage with others, to share ideas
and grievances and, eventually, to mobilize.
And as the Internet penetration grew and economic
situations worsened, millions of educated
but unemployed and frustrated youth, including
one notable man in Tunisia in late December
acted out.
This is the name.
His name is Mohamed Bouazizi.
Now, he was a fruit and vegetable seller who
set himself on fire as a policewoman confiscated
his food cart and perhaps took away his will
to live as well.
Now I'd like to play you a video, but I'm
just going to preface it by letting you know
that just a week before Bouazizi set himself
on fire, that's when I arrived, as he said,
to Washington, D.C., to launch this show that
would tap into conversations that are already
happening in social media and really leverage
those voices that you don't hear from, because
Al Jazeera's mantra, our mission, if you will,
is to give voice to the voiceless.
Now, our show gives people that platform.
We aggregate tweets, Facebook posts, conversations
that are already happening on YouTube, and
our guests all join us via Skype.
No satellite feeds.
It's all via Skype.
So the news of what was happening in Tunisia
was already being discussed and reported,
I found, and shared and reposted and criticized
online long before the man stream media.
So there I was, building this show, producing
the show, and coming across all this information.
Now, in the first week of January, -- we've
lost a slide.
It's okay -- came across a hash tag called
Sidi Bouzid.
Now, with images of student protests and injured
demonstrators and police abuses, I was able
on Twitter and through Facebook as well to
see these images.
And eventually, within a matter of, I think,
35 minutes, I was able to find this guy on
Twitter and Skype with him.
And he was a Tunisian young student who was
telling me about how school was cancelled
and explaining to me why.
We were Skypeing from our offices in Al Jazeera.
And it's worth mentioning his name is also
Ahmed.
On a side note, I grew up in Egypt, so you
can imagine, whether I was in a math class
or in a café, someone would say "Ahmed,"
you would see 12 people turn around.
Although in this crowd, in this country, it's
not quite the same problem.
But on a serious note, I learned that something
very serious was happening, and I felt as
though the mainstream media or the world needed
to hear about it.
So me and a colleague created a video, which
I'm going to play you a very short clip of,
in order to share with the world what we were
witnessing at a time when the mainstream media
was largely missing the story.
So let's just play that video.
>>Video: A fruit and vegetable seller from
Sidi Bouzid had set himself on fire on December
18th, and suddenly, reactions on the Twitterverse
were exploding.
Following the hash tag "Sidibouzid," I called
up hundreds of photos and videos showing students
protesting, police abuses, and sporadic gunfire.
As the messages went viral, protests broke
out across the world showing solidarity with
Tunisia.
>>> Tunisian unrest makes waves in Lausanne.
>>> Demo tomorrow for the Tunisian embassy
in London.
>>> A flash mob is planned in Berlin on Saturday.
>>> The beginning of a revolution was unfolding,
and the mainstream media was just beginning
to catch up.
>>> There are no reporters in Tunisia to tell
us what is really happening.
>>> -- write about this sooner.
Mass media has totally failed.
>>> Terrorism equals lots of media coverage.
Democratic revolution equals little media
coverage.
>>Ahmed Shihab-Eldin: Terrorism equals lots
of media coverage; democratic revolution equals
little media coverage.
It's true, in the ten years since 9/11, the
media, and media consumers, therefore, have
become so used to associating Arabs and Muslims
with images of terrorism, destruction, and
sectarian conflict.
But what was emerging in Tunisia and Egypt
was a popular uprising that was independent
of religion, was independent of politics,
and was even independent of class.
They wanted the old leadership out.
That was their simple goal, their uniform,
you know, goal.
And they wanted the promise, at least, of
a new future.
And since then, we've seen that spirit of
civic engagement spill from, you know -- you
know, nearly every aspect of society -- we've
seen it spill from the virtual realm into
the streets, into the courtrooms.
I mean, literally in every spectrum of society.
And in Egypt now, there are these events called
tweet neduins (phonetic).
This is just one example you can see behind
me.
It's basically, the word neduin (phonetic)
in Arabic means gathering, much like the disappearing
we all are having now.
So it's hundreds of netizens or tweeters or
tweets or whatever you want to call them meeting
in public life and answering questions that
are sourced from online.
Now, the first event happened just after the
revolution, and it addressed the role of the
Muslim Brotherhood in politics and public
life, or Islam in general.
And it was based on the rules of Twitter.
As you know, in Twitter, you have 140-character
limit.
So, you know, all the guests who were speaking,
they would get a panel of guests.
They would have to speak for 140 seconds.
And, you know, those in the audience who agreed
with them, you know, in the form of a re-Tweet,
as it would be online, would shake their hands
and go like this (indicating) in order to
indicate that they agreed.
As you can see, they have the tweets up on
the monitor right there.
So today, a new generation, as I said -- forgive
me.
I think this is the old slide.
But we'll make do -- a connected generation,
inspired in part by universal human values,
and universal human aspirations are reclaiming
both our reputation and our right to self-determination.
Now just so you know, this is a makeshift
computer lab in Tahrir Square, because people
refused to leave in Egypt during the protests.
As you can see, they have their laptops and
wires.
I mean, Egyptians are kind of commonly known
in the Arab world to be very resourceful.
And the New York Times called this "Al Jazeera's
moment."
This isn't Al Jazeera's moment.
This is the people's moment.
As you can see, these people right here, Al
Jazeera, like Twitter, like Facebook, was
just a vehicle.
It just accelerated and amplified their messages.
And it connected them to more people in both
English and Arabic.
Their voices were the ones echoing from rooftops
across the region.
They were the ones confronting the governments
in the street.
As you can see, this is an iconic photo of
protesters praying and enduring water cannons
being sprayed upon them.
Now, Google, to be fair, did not play a small
part.
They worked with Twitter to launch Speak to
Tweet, allowing voice messages from mobile
phones to be translated into tweets in order
to be -- in order to make sure that the voices
in Egypt, their voices would get heard even
in the advent that Mubarak would shut down
the Internet.
And even our reporters on the ground used
Twitter as a publishing platform.
When our signal was scrambled by governments
or when there was no Internet, they would
text message their friends abroad, they would
find someone who was reliable in order to
tweet on their behalf.
But it really was, again, as I said, the people
that were the reporters in Tunisia and Egypt,
sending Al Jazeera thousands of pictures and
videos documenting, you know, the faceoff
with government troops.
Now, even in Bahrain, -- there you go -- even
in Bahrain, we have hundreds and hundreds
of videos, as you can see right here, that
are sent to us every week.
Just this morning, we had 33 videos from the
Shia villages.
These stories that don't exist in the mainstream
media.
Thanks to social media, they send it to us
on our show and we try to bring them to a
wider audience on our TV show.
There you go, there's 33 videos just this
morning from Bahrain documenting police abuses,
including the use of tear gas inside of homes.
Now, there's been much speculation as to what
role, you know, social media has played in
all of this, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
And while critics like Evgeny Morozov are
right to point out that there certainly is
a dark side to the Internet, for example,
governments using these very tools to target
through targeted phishing operations activists,
lure them into the streets, publishing false
reports of protests on Twitter, and then arresting
them and in some cases, killing them.
But still, overwhelmingly, these tools are
being used to expose corrupt government officials
and document police and military abuses.
Now, this is one quick example.
Right here, you see this is called harass
map.
And it's based on the Ushahidi platform.
It emerged out of revolution that allows women
or anybody in Egypt to document sexual harassment.
In 2008, there's a statistic that 90% of women
have reported sexual harassment.
So this tool allows you to not only say if
it's a cat call or a comment or, you know,
if it's some sort of sexual invitation, but
these tools are so powerful because you can
do it from your mobile phone.
And in Egypt, even though the Internet penetration's
only 20%, everybody, nearly or practically,
has a cell phone, at least in the major cities.
Now, I grew up in Egypt for nearly a decade.
I moved there with my family in the summer
of 1992.
The Internet would arrive one year later,
in 1993.
But it would be two decades later, 2011, in
January, that the Internet would virtually
be shut down in Egypt.
I mean, Mubarak really pulled four ISP providers
and took the Internet offline.
Ironically, when he did that, you can imagine
what happened.
You have people who are so accustomed to using
the Internet to discuss things, to meet with
people, to congregate, to share ideas, to
criticize the government through anonymity,
because you can't do it in the streets.
So when the Internet was shut down, what did
they do?
He just sent thousands and thousands and thousands
of more people into the streets.
Now, the Internet launched in the early '80s
with the idea of being a global village, a
place for people to connect, share ideas,
and discuss things.
But never before has that global village been
as ubiquitous and accessible as it is today.
And on our show, "The Stream," we not only
source stories from social media communities,
we nurture the growing reality that we are
all media consumers.
Everyone in this room, everyone on television,
everyone who writes an article or a blog post.
And so, you know, the democratization of media
is nothing more than the manifestation of
technology and human curiosity.
The media is changing.
We all know this.
I'm not telling you anything new.
And, hopefully, it is becoming more honest
and more transparent in the process.
The whole notion of objectivity -- I went
to Columbia Journalism School.
They are going to hate me for saying this
now.
I also taught a couple of classes there, and
that's where I learned -- it was engrained
into me -- objectivity, objectivity, objectivity.
Well, you know what?
Objectivity doesn't exist.
It might sound blasphemous.
But Fox News is not objective.
CNN is not objective.
MSNBC is not objective.
Lean forward.
NBC is not objective.
Al-Jazeera is certainly not objective.
There are so many variables that influence
what you're reporting, what language you speak,
what you choose to include in a piece or an
article, what you don't include, how many
times you repeat it on the network.
Transparency, not objectivity, in today's
age in journalism is replacing objectivity,
or at least it should be.
So if you're to remember anything from this
presentation, for those of you who are still
awake, which is hopefully a majority of you,
I want you to remember this.
The democratization of the Arab world or any
potential for the democratization of the Arab
world is directly related to the democratization
of media.
And our show cultivates that relationship.
It is my job on the show as co-host to monitor
what our community is saying, you know, in
realtime and bring that to the conversation,
to challenge our guests, to challenge the
discussion.
Ordinary people from all over the world challenging
what we are discussing on our show.
Now, while editorial oversight rests with
us, we use aggregation tools like Storify
which allow you to use tweets, photos, videos,
and bring them into a story using what we
call editorial connectors, right there as
you can see at the top, to curate a conversation
that's being crowd sourced from the entire
community, the online community.
We also invite our community to do the same,
so they submit Storifys to us.
And in a couple instances, we then choose
the best and then they appear on our show
for 25 minutes.
It is a daily live talk show, and they talk
to us about their Storify and about their
stories.
I can't tell you how many times I've been
on this Web site.
It is called Bamboozer.
Now, Bamboozer is a live streaming cell phone
service.
From across the Arab world, as you can see,
this was, I think, currently where people
are live streaming from and broadcasting.
Now, of course, the quality of these videos
are very low.
But at the end of the day, let's be honest,
because of the economy and because of so many
things, reporters can't get to every corner
of the world.
So, you know, it might be 5:00 a.m. and I
have been sitting there for three hours watching
a Bamboozer live feed from Morocco.
But, forgive me, that helps me feel more informed.
I think that goes to say with a lot of people
who use these kinds of tools because for far
too long, the dominating narrative around
Arabs was one of oppression, terrorism and
lost opportunities.
I'm 27.
My formative years growing up in this country,
that's what I witnessed.
But now young Arabs and Muslims everywhere
in this country and around the world are finding
opportunities in technology.
I was asked to come here and share something
with you that inspires me in the hopes of
inspiring you.
Well, if anyone symbolizes that spirit of
change, that right to self-determination to
choose your own destiny rather than let a
dictator dictate your future, it is Egypt's
new revolutionary comic superhero named Flagman.
Now, there he is.
He emerged in July on top of a lamppost in
Tahrir waving the Egyptian flag as protestors
continued their calls for reform.
You will notice in one of the photos, the
first time he climbed up there and he was
documented and it was shared on Twitter, he
was wearing a ratty old Nike T-shirt by coincidence
that said "Just Do It."
I mean, you can't script that, right?
[ Laughter ]
>>Ahmed Shihab-Eldin: And he did just do it.
And every time there was a protest, he would
appear, he would emerge, and he would climb
to the top of a lamp post, a building.
I mean, this guy literally was at first being
called Spiderman and eventually it evolved
into Flagman.
But it soon became clear that the Egyptian
government, even after Mubarak fell, the military
was not reflecting the people's interests.
They wanted the people to be charged, the
criminals who had tortured people, and so
on and forth.
So whenever there would be a large protest,
he became a symbol of the people.
People would look to find him, to see him,
not only to the Egyptian people but to the
millions of people who were following this
captivating story around the world using the
hash-tag, for example, "Flagman."
Now, he is also the symbol of why, perhaps,
I'm standing here before you and why I'm all
the more proud to be who I am, to be Arab,
to be Muslim, and also to be named Ahmed.
Because his name, like mine, is Ahmed.
His name is Ahmed Shahat.
Just one of millions of young Arabs and, perhaps,
as many Ahmeds in the world, who are reclaiming
what it means to be Arab.
And I must say that I am looking forward to
the day that this Ahmed and this video -- which
if we could just roll the video, I want to
share with you.
It is a stop-motion video that appeared on
YouTube.
There it is.
This is just to give you a sense of how celebrated
he was.
There were countless videos like this that
were uploaded to YouTube.
And what I was saying was I really look forward
to the day that either this video of this
Ahmed or another Ahmed gets as many hits,
if not many, many, many more, than the Ahmed,
the terrorist video I shared at the beginning
of this presentation.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
