Really good piece of research from Kathryn Corrick looking at real-time reporting during the Egyptian uprising and showing ways in which social media is being integrated into journalism.

I’ve also included here a really good data visualisation video of how the use of Twitter unfolded in Egypt.  There are also some interesting use of the web coming out of Libya as protesters turn to dating websites to get around the watchful eyes of Colonel Gaddafi.

The same thing we saw in Egypt has since played out,  an is continuing to do so, to varying degrees across the middle east as people in Libya and Barhrain  continue to struggle.

Libya, however, isn’t like Egypt. It is more autocratic with a much smaller population six million versus 80 million and use of social media and the web is far less widespread partly because they are so closely monitored by Colonel Moammar Gaddafi’s regime.

But according to this Philadelphia Inquirer piece people signing up to Twitter has gone up exponentially in the last few days.

“A clever Twitter user named Arasmus assembled a mash-up map of Libya showing the location of anonymous tweeters. Users could click on icons for each region and get information about police activity and protests.

“Twitter is playing a huge role with people getting images of violence out to the outside world. Its main value has been to bear witness,” said Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam.

What role did social media play in the news coverage of 2011 Egyptian revolution?

The Washington Times spoke to one Libyan-American in Tripoli, who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing a fear for his life, said he was terrified when security forces raided his neighbour’s house: “I thought they were coming to get me because I have been posting messages on Facebook,” he said.

As a result Libyans have found an innovative use for a dating website, www.mawada.net, which is being used by anti-Gaddafi protesters to pass messages to one another because of the fear that they were being monitored on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

According to an AOL story one user wrote, “I LLLLLove you,” the five Ls in the posting meant he had five people with him, ready to join the protests.

“A Libyan businessman turned opposition leader told ABC News he used the Muslim dating website Mawada.net to pass secret messages to other revolutionaries. Omar Shibliy Mahmoudi, the leader of Libya’s opposition Ekhtalef Movement, which means “difference” in Arabic, said he created a profile supposedly looking for a wife and then received messages from other men posing as female respondents,” AOL reported.

As the New York Times reported one of the most popular sites for the protesters has become libyaFeb17.com, which agregates Twitter posts and organises anti Gaddafi’s protesters. It also lists others sites such as Almanara and Libya Alyoum, based in London.

“These have carried statements and reports from Libya and are widely credited with spurring support for the protests among Libyans abroad, especially in the United States and Europe. Among their most powerful weapons have been crudely filmed videos and images of civilian deaths and injuries. The amateurish quality of these has given them an added psychological strength and impact in contradicting the clean and professional pictures on Libyan television.”

In the data visualistion video below every dot you see is a tweet and every connecting dot is a retweet with the hashtag #jan25. It is a thing of (data) beauty.

The above is a preliminary result of the network of retweets as of February 11 2011, at the time of the announcement of Mubarak’s resignation. If you retweeted someone, or has been retweeted, it is possible that your username is in this network.

“The data was collected through the Twitter streaming and search APIs by André Panisson, and is part of a research project involving the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin (www.di.unito.it), the Complex Networks and Systems Group of the ISI Foundation (www.isi.it), and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research of Indiana University (cnets.indiana.edu).”