18 Days in Egypt came up with the Egyptians during the process of the revolution to give and interactive documentary. This illustrated the story of the revolution which was told through various mediums including Tweeters, Facebook posts, YouTube, cell phone videos, blog posts, international press, photojournalists, and various firsthand accounts (Jigar M & Yasmin e, 2012) . The project was founded to expand the idea documentary creation and its accomplishment when the Egyptians tell their original story individually on the ongoing revolution. The base of 18 Days in Egypt team is in Cairo and Silicon Valley, where they engaged to regain the stories and some segments which were then classified and combined into particular parts that composed the foundation of a corresponding website where they could be watched and shared.

The slogan on the 18 Days in Egypt official website showed that “For the first time in the country’s history, the citizens are recording an actual revolution in real time” ( Yasmin E, 2012). Throughout the 18 days of the 2011 uprising – in the year since – and now – Egyptians are filming pivotal events on their cell phones, taking pictures, texting, tweeting and facebooking their extraordinary bid for freedom.” ( Yasmin, E. 2012). As the most iconic image went on for 18 days in Egypt, thousands of Egyptians did actions that other revolutionaries have never done. This involved documenting the actions as they were happening and the information could be retrieved easily for future reference. It was therefore necessary to act in haste to retrieve the information before it could be lost (Jigar &Yasmin,2012).

“18 Days in Egypt”, the collaborative documentary project aimed to capture the events of the revolution right then in an interactive documentary website that everyone could access at that time and in the future. It was powered by GroupStream, an innovative new platform for group storytelling. GroupStream believed that the best stories are told together. The stories are presented in written words, pictures and audiovisual enhancements. The work of the editor was just to “segway correctly between the pictures and the videos (Delshad, 2012).

The traditional documentary creation involved the filmmakers only as the main contributors of the film contents. This limited themselves to little linear information. The team members of emerge technology group believed that there is lot of information in the street. Every member of the community can play a major role to become a film maker. All they needed to do is to create a platform where everyone had a chance to contribute to the film making. The stories in the site are given directly by the community and are relatable to the human side. This makes the visitors of the site to be engaged emotionally and hence become regular visitor (Kylie, 2014). This website is able to reach a wider number of audiences and to get great source of ideas from the community. (Kylie, 2014).

The community will document events which will be beneficial to the future generation. Apart from the launch of the 18 days in Egypt, others events like the presidential elections, ongoing clashes, upcoming political players, new street art movements and various initiatives in the country will remain in the history of Egypt. This will be the power of storytelling using technology in that original information will be captured and stored for other generations (Emerge technology group, 2011).

As any other project, there were challenges that the emerge technology group faced in its own unique ways. It was difficult to determine the audience, the manner in which to approach the audience, how to engage them in your project, how to give the audience the tools so as to properly experience the project. Moreover, it was challenging to know the manner in which the contributors would be taught the new behaviours. However being flexible and open to various ideas helped the group to reach the community and test their ideas. They were able to know the ideas that were working and the ideas that were not successful.

There were two audiences for the information in the website. This included the Egyptian community and the entire global world audience. Unfortunately, there was low internet penetration in the country that is 25% of the population was online. This limited the number of audience from whom the information could be collected. The group came up with a strategy to solve this problem which involved creating an on-ground outreach group call “18 days in Egypt fellow program” (Mallinsson, 2012). It involved young journalist and students who after training went out to the street to gather stories from the community. Their main target was the population that could not easily access internet due to various reasons. Mallinsson, (2012) indicated that the cost of sending the text messages was too high to be met by most people in Egypt. The journalists made some shops called “pop-up” shops where people could reach and share out their stories. The goal of the young journalist was to collect at least 50000 unique stories from different sources and to encourage the story tellers that it would of huge benefit for the future generation (Madahali, 2014). It gave the young journalists good platform for developing their careers and they became good story tellers for the project. The group developed and was called “the Egypt journalism project”. They went to further miles to educate and to train more young journalists who later become good sources of stories for the community.

Elayat and Jigar, (2013) merged with Emerge technology to create a platform from which they could upload, filter and store the user generated stories as they occurred in the first 18 days. The importance of creating a platform was to allow the witnesses to be the actual story tellers and furthermore to be the film makers. They would upload the stories from their devices as it is recommended or which would be popular to the audience. The project was always at the mercy of the current issues whether political or initiatives. This meant that many stories would revolve around the issue under discussion at the moment. It would be difficult to discuss other stories when the audience were so eager to learn more on the current political uprising issues on “heat” in the country. Other issues were ignored or could be kept for later dates when the issues on debate have ended.

In a country where media is used as a tool for propaganda, it is rely important to come up with the project 18 days in Egypt. Some people would entirely rely on the mainstream as the source of information. They would miss some information because the mainstream does not give all the stories including those that occurred during the 18 days of revolution, in Egypt (Mallisson, 2012).

Mallisson (2012) further states that the revolution meant giving out information from a person’s point of view. If the individual failed to give the information, then others would remain in the darkness. The eighteen days in Egypt acted as the mouthpieces for the people but not of the government.

Mehta, (2011) affirmed that the world cycles available information to make it richer and more lively narratives. He called this “remix culture”. The online project combines all the stories in one gathering of online information. When the individuals were given the opportunity to give out their information it was the time to realise the dynamism and volatility of human communication. The overall point is not which country is affected, which event is covered or the time frame taken but the ability of human beings to communicate and recreate and store the information for future reference.

Many young people below the age of 30 are highly educated and can easily use the technology. This is thought to be a cause of facebook revolution that happened in Egypt that lead to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. Despite there being small number of facebook users in Egypt, they still managed to discuss the meeting points and the actions to be done. This was suspended when the government shut down the internet services in the whole country (Mohammed & Sahar, 2012). It was however difficult to determine if the social media had a role in the succeeding to overthrow the Egyptian president as the same failed in Iran during the so called twitter uprising. Mohammed & sahar (2012) concluded that the social media cannot assume any relationship with political reforms despite playing a key role in political upheavals. They can only play such a role only under certain circumstances and under complex network forces, events and people.

In conclusion, we as the humans shape the world around us by construction of the virtual reality all around us. Communication itself is an addiction, but the information transmitted through the media should be meaningful, colourful and convey great interaction among people.

The main task in the current moment was to address the question on where the world will be in future in regards to communication. In the world of technology and revolution we will have made our lives better especially in the field of communication.

REFERENCES

Jigar M &Yasmin, 2012. 18 days in Egypt. Retrieved from www.kickstarter.com/projects/18days/18-days-in-egypt. On 14-01-2014

Kylie. C, 2014. 18 days in Egypt, interview with Elayat Yasmin. Retrieved from www.sbs.com. viewed on14-01-2014

Mardahal, 2014. A crowdsourcing lesson from 18 days in Egypt. Web www.mardahal.dk. 14-4-2014

Mallisson, 2012. Revolutionary story telling.Eighteen days in Egypt.com

Mohamed E & Sahar K, 2012. Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s “Facebook Revolution” and Iran’s “Twitter Uprising” Vol.6 viewed 14-01-2014 www.cyberorient.net.

Mcmahan,2012.The power of collaborative social media. Journal of international relations. Vol 6. 22-23. Retrieved online from prospectjournal.org. viewedd on 14-01-2014

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