Arab Bloggers Meet in Tunis
On Monday in Tunis, the 3rd Arab Bloggers Meeting kicked off with a day-long public conference. The meeting is co-hosted by Global Voices, Nawaat and Heinrich Böll Foundation and is attended by around 100 bloggers from nearly all Arab countries. Naturally, the conference was well-blogged, not only on the official Arab Bloggers blog, but also by many participants.
Links to media and blog coverage are being collected here (please post in the comments section to let us know what we may have missed).
An Al Jazeera story about the meeting proclaimed: “Arab bloggers say Arab Spring has gone global“. English-language blog coverage included Jillian York's posts on Day 1, Part 1 and a special panel featuring Tunisian bloggers who are now involved with Tunisian politics in various ways. The biggest news came from a ground-breaking talk by the new president of the Tunisian Internet Agency, in which he revealed that Tunisia secretly tested censorship software for Western companies.
Mohamed ElGohary, co-editor of Lingua Arabic. Photo by Mohamed Alâa Guedich (used with permission)
The meeting continues in a smaller, invitation-only workshop setting for the next three days. Participants continue to tweet about the discussions in multiple languages using the #AB11 hashtag, and the conference blog will continue to post updates. So stay tuned.
The 2nd Arab Bloggers Meeting, held in Beirut in 2009, is believed by many bloggers to have played an important role in building personal ties and trust among bloggers throughout the region – ties which enabled them to coordinate more easily during the Arab Spring.
8 comments