Last Minute Links Before the New Year
by Latoya Peterson
Alright people, we are officially on vacation, starting now. Comment moderation will be spotty until January 4th, when we resume regular schedule. Until then, a couple things to mull over.
Nisha over at Politicoholic mentioned the Twitter based campaign to remember Gaza on December 27th.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of the 22-day Israeli military raid on Gaza. Gaza, one of the two Palestinian territories currently under Israeli occupation.
I know Gaza is not a topic of polite cocktail party or happy hour conversation for most people. Most people probably aren’t quite aware of where Gaza is (here is a map for that), especially since it’s a tiny territory that’s only about 139 square miles on the coast of the Mediterranean.
So it is probably not widely known that one year ago, Israeli military forces killed 1,400 Palestinians, of which over 900 were civilians and over 300 were children. And considerable damage was done to Gazan roads, houses, and infrastructure — most of which has still not been repaired. [...]
Buoyed by the success of the Iran election activists, who tweeted their observations about the controversial Iranian election and subsequent protests using the hashtag #iranelection, and capured the world’s attention — now Palestinian activists are hoping to start a movement of their own using Twitter as their primary tool of communication.
Their hashtag is #gaza, and today, December 27, from 3 pm – 7 pm GMT, they are encouraging everyone they know to tweet using the hashtag #gaza in the hopes of making Gaza the #1 trending topic on Twitter — which is no easy feat, given the millions of people using Twitter everyday.
But that didn’t quite happen. Last night, Global Voices posted a report by Anton Issa, explaining how the campaign did not go as planned:
Twitter has been accused of attempting to silence tributes to Gaza one-year after an Israeli onslaught devastated the Palestinian enclave.
Pro-Palestinian and human rights activists used the influential Twitter portal to mark the one-year anniversary of the Gaza War, and express support for the besieged territory.
Tweets using the hashtag #Gaza flooded in on December 27th, peaking at number 3 on Twitter’s top ten Trending Topics list.
However, complaints emerged of users being briefly blocked from tweeting #Gaza, with the trend being forced downwards and off the Trending Topics.
Bloggers all over the world speculated about why this happened. According to Issa, some thought that it was Twitter editors suppressing the topic, others thought that pro-Zionist activists were reporting the tweets as spam, others thought it was due to Twitter’s algorithms balancing the discussions differently. However, it does shed some light on the issues with using New Media to organize – I’ll expand on this a little more in the New Year.
Some other reading.
Erica Gonazles points us to this opinion piece in the NY Daily News that argues that MTV isn’t to blame for Jersey Shore – it’s the self-proclaimed guidos and guidettes:
[O]n Monday, the Borough of Seaside Heights felt compelled to announce that it “did not solicit, promote or participate in the filming” of the trash-tastic reality show.
It’s the latest bit of silly handwringing in the name of Italian-American pride. But we Italians shouldn’t be mad at MTV over “Jersey Shore.” We should be grateful for the network for performing a public service. [...]
Somebody needs to explain to me how it’s MTV’s fault that the subjects of its reality show behave like stereotypical idiots. In fact, “Jersey Shore” is proof that some stereotypes, while not representative, are in some cases real.
That’s an important lesson in a politically correct world.
No one scripted Pauly D’s now-famous line, “I was born and raised a guido. It’s just a lifestyle. It’s being Italian, it’s representing, family, friends, tanning, gel, everything.”
Who could write such poetry?
And the rest of the cast seems genuinely to share his world-view. Anyone who’s been to certain parts of the New York metropolitan area knows it probably wasn’t too hard to find these kids.
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