Egyptian bloggers & "Facebookers" led pro-democracy uprising

With the Mubarak dictatorship in control of all major media in Egypt, brave Egyptian "citizen journalists" risked imprisonment and torture to blog or tweet about human rights abuses. Here's renowned Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas interviewed on BBC in January 2010. Over the years, Abbas was harassed, censored and assaulted by authorities -- and was briefly detained in Feb 2011 during the uprising.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous covered the 18-day uprising in 2011 for Democracy Now!, and he was the central character in an HBO documentary about the Egyptian revolution. For his work in Egypt, he was awarded (on IC campus in April 2012) the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.  (Here's a paperback "Tweets from Tahrir.")

Nick Fustor wrote an important blog post on social media activism today and Facebook.

In June, 2010, Khaled Said was beaten to death by police in public for the crime of Internet use and, apparently, exposing police corruption. His martyrdom inspired protests and Internet organizing that led to the uprising six months later that ended the Mubarak dictatorship. Middle East-based Google exec and activist Wael Ghonim set up the galvanizing "We Are All Khaled Said" Facebook page in Arabic.  (Here's an English FB version of "We Are All Khaled Said.")