There has been a surge of citizen journalism and information-centred activism in Egypt in the recent years and this has greatly influenced journalism in the country. Activists and other citizen journalists are influencing the news agenda and pushing at the limits of what can be and is being said in mainstream media.
While the influence of social media in breaking news events has gotten much attention, journalists also use social media in other situations, such as when public figures make statements on Twitter, activists call for press conferences on Facebook or when documentation and information is circulated via different social media.
In this presentation I will argue that journalists are in an adaptive phase, trying to figure out how to use social media in their work, giving attention to the new voices and information, which is available, while at the same time trying to adjust their processes of validation and finding new ways of building trust. I also argue that activists are most influential when they work as aggregators.
This presentation is based on 4 months ethnographic research in Egypt in 2012 and thus I will exemplify my argument with empirical data. I have carried out participant observation and interviews with activists and journalists with the goal of understanding how the two often overlapping groups use each other in their work.