New digital community mobilises from street level to cover the Egyptian election

In order to properly make use of Egypt’s vast bank of social media users, Google and Storyful are partnering to launch Open Elections Egypt, a real-time eyewitness community sourcing and verifying online content. The platform targets news organisations, journalists, bloggers, activists and others monitoring the controversial elections.

In a blog post on Storyful’s website, Wais Bashir tells more about the idea, and connects it to the 2011 uprising against Mubarak.

“As the revolution progressed, sources like HarassMap emerged, reporting and flagging incidents of sexual harassment against women. Mainstream media began using photos and videos taken by citizen journalists on the ground, with mobile phone footage a staple of prime-time television news reports worldwide. Formed at the time by a team of citizen journalists, the RNN news network is now the 6th most influential in the Arab World and has over a million fans on Facebook.

Open Elections Egypt will be a multilingual destination and a source of essential UGC (User Generated Content), delivered and discussed in real-time by a team of hand-picked local journalists, researchers, analysts, NGOs, activists, campaigners and bloggers.”

New digital community mobilises from street level to cover the Egyptian election