I wondered how Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak eventually knew about the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets calling for his resignation. Surely, he had many agents on the streets providing him information, but how did he ever see the pictures? Egyptian State television was showing children's programming and soap operas while molotov cocktails were being hurled at government buildings outside its studios. Perhaps, just once, he took a quick sneak-peak at the stations run by those "saboteurs" at Al Jazeera or CNN? Did he, at the ripe old age of 82, ever log on to YouTube or Bamboozer to see one of the thousands of videos posted from Tahrir Square?

If he did, then Mr. Mubarak must have been shocked to see the gluttonous orgy of media being produced from his country. While Egypt lay dormant for 30 years, the media had metamorphosized from a larvae to a butterfly. It was no longer a one-dimensional, black-and-white tool to brainwash the populace, but a colorful cornucopia of apps, gadgets, and platforms, resulting in infinite bits of information. Simply by virtue of connecting to the outside world, Egypt's media landscape transformed along with it, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, the tables had turned. The more Mubarak tried to tighten the noose, the more bloggers he created.

For all the other despots out there who still think the media begins and ends with Channel 1, your Revolution will soon be shown on an iPhone near you. Qaddhafi is now finding this out in Libya. After his awkward appearance on Libyan state TV showing that he is still in Tripoli, there are now much higher quality productions being made on YouTube depicting his losing battle. For Mubarak and his ilk, it has become awfully difficult to completely suppress media. Even the most repressive regime in the world, North Korea, now allows limited cell phone use, but still blocks all Internet access. While the North Korea model may be the only way for these tyrants to hold onto power, I'm afraid it may be too late for most regimes who have already given their people a taste of cyber-freedom. The cat's already out of the bag. People who have searched on Google and have poked on Facebook aren't going to be satisfied with state TV any longer.

Read More of Jaron's Reports from Egypt

> One Journalist's Survival Guide to the Egyptian Revolution

> Egyptian 'Sandmonkey' Blogger Unmasks Himself in Cairo

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

But, thanks to the valiant efforts of journalists and the resilience of the protesters they were there to cover, the revolution was not only televised, it was also streamed, blogged, and tweeted. During 18 days of sustained resistance by the Egyptian people, the world was able to see what real bravery is -- in real time. This is one reporter's eyewitness recollection of the revolution and the coverage of it.

Dangerous Driving

I flew into Cairo on the night of February 1st. I counted 35 checkpoints from the airport to my hotel on the island of Zamalek, where many journalists and diplomats reside and work.

The drive, which normally takes 30 minutes, took nearly three hours. After dark there was a curfew in Cairo, and every block in the city seemingly had its own distinct checkpoint. Most of them were manned by civilians armed with all manner of improvised weapons: sticks, poles, machetes, and even a samurai sword. These men primarily wanted to prevent looting in their neighborhoods.

The Mukhabarat, Egypt's secret police, had also set up their own checkpoints. These were the most frightening, especially for a foreign journalist. Last year, I was detained by the Mukhabarat. I was in Rafah doing a story on the tunnels into the Gaza Strip. While shooting street scenes in broad daylight, they snatched me off the street. I was held captive for 12 hours and it was not pleasant.

I was luckier this time and made it to the hotel without incident. After checking into my hotel, I tried to check Twitter for the latest information from Tahrir Square, but the Internet was still shut down across the country. Fortunately, cell phones were working so I was still able to communicate with my editors and colleagues.

I watched Mubarak's second speech since the "Day of Rage" from my hotel room. It was broadcast on virtually every channel. CNN and BBC both offered a live English translation. He was defiant, stating that he would stay in power for another six months to oversee Egypt's transition.

A Wave of Thugs

Twenty minutes later I was on the streets of Cairo, producing a video for the New York Times with Nicholas Kristof. We didn't know yet that someone close to the regime was orchestrating a concerted, systematic effort to harass, arrest, and assault journalists.

As Kristof and I crossed the October 6th bridge on our way to Tahrir, we saw a mob of about 150 Mubarak supporters rushing towards us. It was nighttime and they were some 100 feet away, so initially I couldn't tell if they were friendly or not. They had already seen me filming and probably suspected I was a journalist, so I just kept the camera rolling.

Generally in these situations, I like to keep the camera out for two reasons: Evidence and self-defense. If I get beat up (or worse), I want it to be documented. I am also a trained martial artist and know how to use my Canon XHA1 to ward off attacks. (Don't bother looking in the manual for this.) My camera isn't one of those flimsy Flip cameras that are popular these days. It is hard and heavy and fully insured. It can be used for blocking punches, keeping a distance between me and a threat, or as my own kind of improvised weapon.

I stood my ground filming the mob as they swarmed me. They were chanting "Mu-bar-ak! Mu-ba-rak! Mu-bar-ak!" (I must say, the anti-Mubarak protesters had much more creative chants.) I breathed a huge sigh of relief when they went past me.

We filmed some interviews at the square, then left when an Egyptian colleague warned us that some dangerous elements had moved in.

Targeting the Media

I went home, slept, and woke up early the next morning to edit the material. I had to get to the New York Times bureau in order to upload it, since the Internet was still down. The Times and other news organizations used a satellite BGAN communications system to get around the web shutdown. After filing, I met up with Kristof and headed back to the square.

Reports of journalists being targeted by pro-Mubarak thugs had begun coming in. Our driver dropped us off as close as possible to Tahrir Square, but the area on its periphery was where journalists were the most vulnerable. I felt a bit like a seal swimming in Mosselbai, South Africa, a favored feeding ground for great white sharks.

With my camera in a student-like backpack, we walked up to an army checkpoint outside of Tahrir. They didn't let us in. We went to another and were again denied entry. At a third, the soldiers finally allowed us in. Past the army checkpoints, civilians were also stopping people in an effort to prevent armed thugs from entering the square.

The protesters' checkpoint was security with a smile. A man in Levis jeans took my passport, frisked me, opened up my camera bag, and said with the utmost sincerity, "I am so sorry. Welcome to Egypt."

In Tahrir Square

Inside, it was like a parallel universe. I walked past a Hardees restaurant that was being used as a station for processing medical equipment. The travel agency next door was a prison for captured Mukhabarat.

Tahrir Square was the one place in Cairo where I actually felt safe working as a journalist. I knew that every single one of these protesters would take a bullet to defend me and my right to film.

As is the case in many revolutions in history, journalists become part of the story. The protesters knew that we were not affiliated with Egyptian state media, and thus were likely to depict the strength and righteousness of their movement accurately. They did everything in their power to help us (which in turn would help them). They fed us, offered us cigarettes and tea, and then posed for our cameras.

Western journalists knew we were being manipulated. But most of us didn't care because we believed in their cause. I didn't meet a single Western reporter who was not in favor of the revolution. Journalists cherish the same democratic ideals that these protesters were fighting and dying for. We were all touched in a very profound way and this resonated in all the reports coming out of Egypt.

I spotted Nawal Saddawi in Tahrir Square and we quickly darted over to interview her. Saddawi is an acclaimed writer and one of the leading women's rights advocates in the Arab world. In the middle of the interview, the frail, old lady nearly got knocked over by a group of protesters dragging in one of Mubarak's goons for interrogation.

But Saddawi is tough as nails. She recalled how she first protested against Nasser, then was arrested for opposing Sadat. Now here she was protesting against Mubarak with nearly a million Egyptians by her side. She claimed that this was the first time she could speak freely to a reporter in public. My spine still tingles just thinking about it.

I was in one of the many makeshift clinics in the square, filming a guy with deep lacerations all over his head and face from rocks, when I got a phone call from the Times' Cairo bureau. Two of their journalists had been detained by police. Anderson Cooper was beaten up by thugs. Reports of violence against journalists were now coming in by the minute.

The U.S. embassy warned the Times to get all their journalists off the streets. They were planning on evacuating the bureau in Zamalek. The situation seemed to be rapidly deteriorating. I passed on the information to Kristof and we immediately met up with Stephen Farrel, another Times journalist in Tahrir.

The three of us decided that Kristof and I should try and get all the video footage out so he and I could start feeding it to New York from our hotel rooms. The problem was, our Egyptian driver refused to come pick us up from the square, saying that it was too dangerous. We didn't have another exit plan.

Saved by Public Transit

Fortunately, two young Egyptian students overheard our conversation, and offered to help. They said the best way to get past the thugs on the streets was actually to go underground. I was amazed that throughout this revolution -- with the Internet and phones and the entire country basically shut down -- the Cairo subway system never stopped running!

I took my tapes and stuffed them deep inside of my socks. I always wear hiking boots and long socks in these situations. I did the same when leaving North Korea. My precious material always stays on my person, either in my socks or underwear. I put a blank tape in my camera and labeled it "Giza Pyramids 1."

Kristof and I followed these two guardian angels down a staircase and got on the train. We made one transfer at Mubarak Station and then reached our final destination, Opera Station, where our driver was waiting for us.

We went to Kristof's hotel, where we bumped into CNN's Anderson Cooper and Hala Gorani. They both looked visibly shaken from the day's events.

As a precautionary measure, we switched Kristof's hotel room to another one checked in under my name. At this point, he'd already penned three strongly anti-Mubarak op-eds. I could understand why Kristof didn't feel safe staying in a hotel with the president's mug staring down from a golden frame in the lobby.

An employee of the now-evacuated Times bureau in Cairo brought me my laptop so I could edit from the hotel. Unbelievably, after all the difficulties that day, my computer died on me when I tried to compress video. I was so frustrated that when we were told to evacuate, I just stayed in my bed. "If Mubarak's thugs find me here, then it was meant to be," I thought to myself.

Back to the square

Sleep didn't come, but neither did the Mukhabarat. The next day, I edited my footage on a friend's computer and went back to the square alone.

I walked briskly past several pro-Mubarak gangs. When eye contact was unavoidable, I flashed a fake, friendly smile. I find that in these situations smiling is the best way to alleviate anxiety. More importantly, it projects positive vibes to the people who otherwise may want to harm you. Smiling and maintaining positive, relaxed body language is often the best deterrent.

But that doesn't mean you should ever let your guard down. My eyes were always scanning 180 degrees for signs of danger. My ears were sensitive to increases in pitch or noises that would indicate violence. Probably due to the adrenaline, I could actually feel that my brain was processing data at a faster rate than normal.

I tried filming one of the pro-Mubarak groups, but within seconds was being threatened. One guy made a throat-slitting gesture and aggressively came towards me. I immediately assumed an apologetic posture, and said how sorry I was for filming.

He asked me in Arabic if I was from Al Jazeera. Omar Suleman, Mubarak's newly appointed vice president, accused the network of being foreign agents who were sowing the seeds of this revolution.

While I do speak rudimentary Arabic, I replied in English, "I'm American." My goal was to limit the conversation as much as possible.

Mass Bloodshed

As I got closer to the square, I witnessed scenes of horrible violence. Molotov cocktails lit up the night sky. I saw lacerated, bloody faces. The air smelled of smoke; sour, rotten tear gas; burning flesh.

Pro-Mubarak mobs ran into Tahrir making male guttural noises and screaming. Armed with broken glass bottles, poles, and anything that they could find, it felt like a scene from a cheap, Middle Eastern remake of "Braveheart."

I was too afraid to take out my camera, and it was too dark to film with my iPhone, so I just watched.

Feeling insecure, I used another important defense tactic, which I call "meet and greet." I found a group of pro-Mubarak guys around my age and asked them for a cigarette. I don't normally smoke, but I wanted to create a feeling of camaraderie with them in case the situation got much worse. For once, I really enjoyed a cigarette.

Change Over Night

By next day, the violence had waned considerably. It reminded me of how South Florida feels the day after a hurricane. The Internet was back on, the thugs were mostly off the streets, and a sense of tense normalcy returned to Cairo: I once again smelled the stench of Cairo pollution; drivers went back to using loud, obnoxious honking to communicate; street vendors hawked tissue boxes and Egyptian flags.

As days went by without mass violence, more and more people came to Tahrir Square, sensing that the protesters were on the right side of history. I even ran into many employees of the government controlled Al-Ahram newspaper. They told me that a similar mutiny was occurring inside their newsroom.

At this point, I was stringing for Time Magazine and PBS MediaShift. I bumped into some Times reporters I'd previously worked with and they told me that their bureau had reopened. I joked that it had been "a premature evacuation."

The mood had shifted from anxious to festive. Celebrations peaked on Friday night, when Mubarak finally stepped down.

After his resignation, foreign journalists seemed as confused as the Egyptian protesters about what to do next. The common refrain among reporters was, "Where should I fly to now?" Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Iran, Bahrain, Morocco, China, and even the West Bank have felt tremors from the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Protesters and journalists changed Egypt and have inspired other uprisings across the world.

The Middle East today feels kind of like a seventh grade classroom: It's a rapidly changing place with young countries at various stages of awkward transition. These transformations are happening faster than reporters, politicians, and intelligence services can process them. As Egypt steps into a very uncertain future with the world watching, I get the sense that the Middle East's coming of age story may have just begun.

But wherever the plot leads next, it's likely that journalists, bloggers, and social networkers will be there to share it with the world.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

I received an email from a man calling himself Sam Adam, claiming to be the author of the blog. He had been beaten up by Egyptian State police on February 3 while delivering medical supplies to Tahrir Square. He said that he got beat up pretty badly, and was in hiding with his family in Heliopolis, a Cairo neighborhood. I got the impression that he was summoning up the courage to go back to Tahrir Square.

I would end up meeting him there three days later, on February 6. He felt emboldened by the bravery of his fellow pro-democracy activists and wanted to come out to the media in order to seek justice for his assailants. He revealed his identity for the first time to Eliot Spitzer on CNN in an audio-only interview. My interview with Sam Adam, a.k.a. the Sandmonkey was his first on-camera interview. It turns out his real name is Mahmoud Salem.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

TV Debate, Bigot-Gate

It wasn't Twitter or YouTube but rather the television that most shaped the 2010 election in the U.K. Fifty years after the Kennedy-Nixon debates were beamed into living rooms across the U.S., for the first time in its history the U.K. staged a live television debate between party leaders.

Britain's cacophonous 24-hour news channels then scrutinized the debate, which was also put up on YouTube. Major newspapers gave away their inky analysis for free outside subway stations. Large-font tabloids captured pedestrians' attention as they walked by street vendors.

Thanks to the Bigot-gate episode, there were also some scandalous things for professional pundits to dig their teeth into. "Bigot-gate" occurred when Labour leader Gordon Brown forgot that his microphone was still on when he called a 65-year old Labour supporter, Gillian Duffy, a "bigoted woman." This clip was then re-broadcast ad nauseum by the 24-hour news networks.

Yes, it was TV that most changed the game this time around.

As Rory Cellan Jones, the BBC's chief technology correspondent, wrote on his blog after the polls closed, "This was not an Internet election, and all those who had suggested it might be had got it completely wrong. It was a television election, and all of those tweeters and bloggers were sad political obsessives talking to each other."

Watch this special MediaShift video report I made about the impact of new media on the U.K. election, including interviews with various British people on how they decided to vote:

New Media Activity

But don't run from the pews of the church of new media just yet. Some snippets of new media activity are worth looking into. The two dominant news TV channels, the BBC and Sky News, both saw an increase in traffic to the their websites during the election. This was also true for the websites of all the daily newspapers.

There were also examples of top-down, directed efforts from the campaigns to galvanize support online. Most of this was done by the Conservative party, who built an Obama-esque website to fundraise and generate PR.

They pushed a website called WebCameron, which showed the Tory leader having breakfast with his kids while giving political sermons. They also launched a grassroots fundraising initiative. But with only three weeks of actual campaign time in the British parliamentary system, compared to nearly two years in the U.S. system, the website failed to gather the necessary momentum to reach critical mass. (Cameron has been pushing new media for some time, as you can read about in this MediaShift story about politicians using online video from 2007.)

Still, the conservatives managed to raise more money than any other party -- though it came mostly through traditional channels. They also spent the most on their digital marketing advertising campaign, according to ClickZ, which also profiled the party's digital plans.

The U.K. is the first country in the world in which digital advertising has surpassed television advertising, and the Tories certainly made their presence felt on Google. Their paid spots came up on the sidebar of my browser after entering various election-related search terms. The Tories also boldly paid for placement on the front page of YouTube on Election Day, urging viewers to vote for their party.

By comparison, the Labour party did not appear to make much of an effort online. Their Twitter and Facebook pages were not as popular, nor were they updated as regularly as the pages of their conservative or Liberal Democrat counterparts, according to ClickZ. They were also plagued by two embarrassing online faux pas. One Labour candidate used his Twitter account to curse out political opponents, and was consequently relieved of his position. Another Labour candidate was suspended after boasting of his sexual exploits online.

The Liberal Democrats, typically an inconspicuous third party, were made more visible due to their inclusion in the television debates. The party also hired a new media manager to organize their online efforts. Their official website was linked to their Twitter, Facebook, and YouYube pages, all of which were updated regularly. The Lib Dems also used their Facebook page to promote a day of flash mobs all over the U.K. on the Bank Holiday just before the elections.

Unofficial Online Activity

There were also plenty of unofficial, partisan websites created just for the election. One was a semi-satirical site that mocked the Conservative leader in every way possible. Several ad hoc online groups also were launched on Twitter and Facebook.

One of the more popular Facebook groups was called Vandalised Conservative Billboards, which showed pictures of defaced Tory ads. This group was twice as popular as the official Conservative Facebook page. Another Facebook group, We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office had over 165,000 followers -- also twice as many as the Liberal Democrats' official Facebook page. Then there was the Twitter hashtag #iblamenickclegg, which made fun of the mainstream media's slurs against the candidate:

Facebook also created a U.K. Democracy page and linked British users -- all 25 million of them -- to a poll if they signed into the social network on Election Day. (Even though I'm not a U.K. citizen or resident, my Facebook page was directed to the poll since my IP address indicated that I was in the U.K. on May 6, so technically I could have even participated.)

Of the half a million who cast a vote in this unofficial poll, 42 percent supported Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats to become prime minister, ahead of 31 percent who supported David Cameron and 27 percent who supported Gordon Brown. This poll proved to be off the mark when compared to the actual results, which placed Clegg firmly in third place.

This disparity is explained pretty easily. The demographics of the average Facebook user versus the average British voter are quite different. In the U.K., 4 out of 10 votes cast are by people aged 55 years or older. The largest segment of Facebook users in the U.K., however, is the 20-29 age range. Echo Research, an organization which conducted a nationwide telephone survey on how social media affected voters, found that social media ranked highest in importance among 18-24 year olds. The fact remains that the older you are in Britain, the less likely you are to engage in social media -- and the more likely you are to vote.

TV Still Reigns

While the impact of media on politics is always subject to debate, TV clearly still reigns in the U.K. in terms of popularity. In the same Echo Research survey, 85 percent of the populace used the TV to get information on candidates and issues, compared to 48 percent for Internet sites, 32 percent for social media, and 19 percent for the local pub. Over 8 million people watched the third debate live on television all across the U.K. During that debate, according to Tweetminster, a digital monitoring site, there were 154,342 tweets relating to various terms around the leaders' debate, coming at 26.77 tweets a second, spread among 33,095 people.

How many people were influenced by the televised debates and the tweets is difficult to know. While the debates did lead to wild swings in the opinion polls, particularly for the formerly unnoticed Liberal Democrat candidate Nick Clegg, the changes may not have been meaningful when it came time to tick the ballot box. Even TV's impact on this election is questionable.

"TV changed the game but probably didn't change the result," Charlie Beckett, director of the U.K. think-tank Polis, told me in an interview. Evidence of this may be the fact that the actual voting results mostly reflected the polls conducted before the debates.

But it may just be the TV debate that will pave the way for social media in future elections. According to Beckett, the TV debate heralded in a new type of interaction between politicians and voters.

"For the first time ever in Britain, voters were able to hear the direct messages of the candidates without any journalistic filters," he said.

This demand for a more personal, direct approach to politician-voter interactions may soon be met with a greater presence on social media sites, shifting the dynamic between voters and political parties.

Social media has also altered the dynamic between the mainstream media and the public. In this election it served as a check and balance system against the mainstream media, as well as a sounding board to be used by the mainstream media. Social media has the power to serve as a catalyst for stories that might otherwise fizzle out. At the same time, it can also provide alternate viewpoints for biased stories that might otherwise be unchallenged.

Beckett said that social media did impact this election, although probably not the results, in several ways. Here's a summary of his points:

1. Social media served as an amplifier for the discussion created by the mainstream media.
2. While there was no blogger who came out and broke an important story, the political parties were very cautious about making mistakes that could haunt them in the blogosphere.
3. Journalists had their Twitter pages updated regularly, using social media to promote their stories.
4. Mainstream media smear campaigns were kept in check by blogs and Facebook groups who could provide another perspective.
5. The Net provided additional exposure for minority parties who don't receive adequate coverage in mainstream media.

The impact of social media on this election is analogous to learning how to ride a bike for the first time. It is important to remember that Facebook and Twitter didn't exist as valid options the last time Britain went to the polls. The politicians, the media, and the public were all eager to try out all these new tools at their disposal. They jumped right into it, some slower than others, and experimented with different ideas. But this new world of social media, like riding a bike, can be a tricky one to master.

Now is the time for the various players to absorb the lessons from this election, and get back on the bike. Perhaps in five years time, the training wheels will finally come off.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron is the founder of Falafel TV, a documentary production company, and regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

I was shocked and outraged by the death of Neda. I felt a sense of awe watching a group of women defiantly walking the streets without head coverings as if they were in a Pantene shampoo commercial.

I often felt bewildered watching these videos, for I consider myself to be somewhat worldly, and while I always assumed there to be Iranian dissenters, I had precious little knowledge about them. It turns out I'm not the only one who was in the dark. The image that most of the world has been getting about Iran just does not match up with the one that we've only recently been receiving via social media. But the tools for ordinary Iranians to get their stories out have existed for a while -- so why is it only now that Iranian citizen journalists are using them? And how is the work of citizen journalists in Iran changing the way the world sees their country?

What the world sees

Being a citizen of the U.S. currently based in Israel, I am generally shuttling back and forth between Iran's two greatest enemies.

While it can be expected that Iran would cast both "Big and Little Satan" as a monolithic evil entity in its media, I doubt that either the U.S. or Israeli media do a much better job showing Iran for what it actually is: a culturally rich country with an educated populace with varying political and social views.

I find this a bit disturbing, especially in this day and age.

This formula sums up what the average Israeli knows about Iran:

Iran = Ahmadinejad = Crazy = Holocaust Denier = Hamas and Hezbollah Financier = Finger on Red Button = Nuclear Armageddon = Mommy, I'm Scared = Vote for a Right Wing Government to Assuage Fears

Of course, Iran does a great job bolstering this viewpoint, by acting the part of a maniacal regime bested only by North Korea.

Yet in Israel, one gets the sense that the snake has finally been let out of the bag, and it's not that big and bad and poisonous after all.

While many Israelis I've spoken to are using the current events to validate their claims that the Iranian government is out of its mind, the overriding sense is one of surprise that the Iranian people are saner than previously thought.

Who knew that most Iranians support women's liberation, a more compassionate Islam, and a free press?

A month ago, most Israelis couldn't name one Iranian besides Ahmadinejad. Now some here have actually started wearing green in solidarity with Mousavi and company. Israelis are now realizing that they actually have a lot in common with Iranians, which I imagine is true across much of the world.

Why Now?

The big question I have is why did it take so long?

Couldn't these iReporters, as CNN calls citizen journalists, have uploaded anonymous stories a month or a year ago? Why did it take a fraudulent election and street riots to get the world's attention about the repressed majority in Iran?

I suppose the answer might have to do with the "if it bleeds it leads" business model in news journalism.

Iranian bloggers have long been the only truly independent journalists Iran has to offer, yet they have been largely ignored by the Western media as either not credible or not relevant. It's funny how quickly breaking news and street riots mitigate both of these factors.

The Iranian government, on the other hand, has always taken bloggers very seriously. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent non-profit organization, Iran is considering passing a law that would make the creation of blogs promoting "corruption, prostitution, and apostasy" punishable by death. To date, millions of websites have been blocked, and hundreds of bloggers have been arrested. In March, cultural blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi died in prison under suspicious circumstances. He was only 29.

If these intrepid citizen journalists are willing to sacrifice their lives to report from Iran, the least we can do is extend them a hand and publicize their work as much as possible, even if it's not about violent or sexy topics.

In general, it would be nice to read and see reports from despotic regimes during times of peace, so that we can have a window into their world before the blood spills. (One good example of seeing into the lives of people in a war zone is the "Gaza Sderot" video show that I profiled on MediaShift.)

Let this be a wakeup call for the Western media that has been collectively hitting the snooze button on Iran since 1979.

Tapping into Citizen Journalism

It's high time to tap into the plentiful and natural resource known as citizen journalists. The advantages are numerous: There's no need for an expensive bureau. They're already on the ground. Plus, they speak the language.

It should also be a stern warning to other governments that forcefully control their people and their outlets for free expression. From here on out, the relationship between press freedom and citizen journalism campaigns will be inversely proportional.

Whether it be China, Egypt, Cuba, or Burma, totalitarian states should note the futility in stripping the powers of professional journalists, because citizen journalists have the tools, the resolve, and the tenacity to fill the void.

Kudos to the brave citizen journalists of Iran who have used their cell phone cameras to finally give us a more complete picture of their country. While this may not be the revolution many Iranians were waiting for, we will look back at the events of 2009 as a watershed of sorts for citizen journalists across the globe, who got the attention of the wider global audience.

Thank you. We've gotten the message. And now let the draconian regimes of the world get theirs: If you don't change your ways, the revolution will be uploaded to the Internet, and then televised.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron is the founder of Falafel TV, a documentary production company, and regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

Iran protest photos collected but not taken by Misterarasmus via Flickr.

The potential of social media in political campaigns has quickly been realized in Israel, where candidates took note of online media's big impact on the recent U.S. election. Internet connectivity in the solitary Middle Eastern democracy is higher than any country in the region, and is on par with much of Europe. More than half of Israel's 7 million people have Internet access, either at home or at work.

The recently held Israeli parliamentary election was a hotly contested race, between leading candidates Tzipi Livni of the Kadima Party and Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud Party. According to pollsters, 30 percent of Israelis were undecided just a few weeks before the election. Each candidate knew the importance of the Internet in winning the hearts and minds of Israeli voters.

Tzipi Livni

"We were all affected by Obama-mania," said the editor of the official Kadima website, Sa'ar Vardi, in an interview at Kadima Party headquarters in Tel Aviv on the eve of the February 10 Israeli elections. Obama's campaign did more than just transcend the racial barrier in the U.S. It also transcended the online barrier in a campaign the entire world was watching.

Here's more of my interview with Vardi:

Sarit Harel, a professional digital campaigner for the PR/advertising firm EuroRSCG-Israel, was the woman behind Livni's social media campaign. Her first step, even before creating the official Kadima Party website, was creating Livni's personal blog. This became the centerpiece of the online campaign, receiving around 20,000 unique hits a day leading up to the election. "The idea was to put Tzipi's videos and message everywhere Israelis can be found on the Internet, and always mirror this same information on the blog," Harel told me in an interview.

Harel's strategy proved to be both effective and cheap. She found the most popular Israeli websites that allowed free, user generated content -- Tapuz, Israblog, and The Marker -- and uploaded videos of Tzipi Livni there for all of Israel to see. The videos were short, personal appeals to Israeli voters shot in intimate locations such as her home staircase or the inside of her limousine.

Here's one of Livni's videos:

"Tzipi (Livni) understood the power of the Internet in this election," said Harel, "That's why she allowed a camera crew and photographers into her house almost every single day." The photos were posted to Flickr, while the videos were posted to YouTube and Facebook. Real time updates were provided on Twitter. All this was done for free; the only direct digital marketing cost incurred by Kadima was to pay Google for their search ads.

The digital effort brought 1.2 million unique visitors to the blog (nearly 20 percent of Israel's population) in the 90 days leading up to the election. Most significantly, it was done with almost no direct marketing costs. The bulk of Kadima's advertising budget was spent on television, print, radio, and billboard ads. There is a growing sense that the traditional political advertising methods may not yield the best bang for the buck (or Israeli shekel). "The return on investment (ROI) when it comes to digital campaigns makes it a much more attractive option than the mainstream media, and it will become more and more popular in the future," said Harel.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu's website designer, Kobi Haddad, CEO of KCSnet, an Israeli web design company, boasted of similar success. "We had to host our site on two servers to deal with the number of hits we were getting," he said in an interview. Haddad admits that Likud asked him to take the main concept design from Barack Obama's campaign website. But digging deeper, the Likud site revealed some unique social functions that the Obama's site didn't have. (For Netanyahu's more bare-bones English website, click here.)

Haddad's crew essentially designed the site to become an automated virtual campaign headquarters. They built a system where surfers could log in, create a pro-Netanyahu blog, post a pro-Netanyahu video, or host a non-virtual, pro-Netanyahu event. "There were a lot of people that wanted to help but didn't know how," said Haddad, "so we provided the tools."

The website enabled users to become their own regional campaign managers, allowing them to connect to other people in their region and enlist them for the cause. One unique tool was a system where volunteers could receive up to 30 telephone numbers a day and a dynamic script for each one that varied according to the person's location and gender. The volunteer would then mark how responsive the person was to a pro-Netanyahu message. That information would automatically be relayed to Likud headquarters, which would follow up with an email or SMS. The more enthusiastic supporters were then urged to enlist as real-life or cyber-campaigners.

"Our online effort was not just to get votes, but to motivate supporters to volunteer for us," said Sani Sanilevich, Likud's digital campaign manager. According to Sanilevich, the effort paid off, and Likud was able to amass 12,000 volunteers, many of whom were operating from home, following the website-generated script, making 30 phone calls a day.

Netanyahu delivered daily Internet video messages that appeared on his website, YouTube, and Facebook. In the video below, he speaks from the Southern Israeli city of Ashkelon about a grad missile that landed there that morning:

Election Day

On election day, the website of each candidate's site transformed itself into a fresh, exciting version of itself. Both had new videos of the candidates voting at their polling stations, and last minute online pleas for votes. Despite being favored in the polls for weeks leading up to the elections, Netanyahu received one less mandate than Livni on election day. Still, under Israel's parliamentary system, Netanyahu has been charged with forming the next government, and will likely become the country's next prime minister. He will be joined there by his digital campaign manager Sanilevich, a valuable asset in today's political environment. And like Obama, Netanyahu doesn't plan on burning his digital bridges once he's in the government. "We are keeping the website going," said Sanilevich, "and will be brainstorming even more ways to connect with people online."

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron is the founder of Falafel TV, a documentary production company, and regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

Help Us Win

Niv Calderon, 29, commanded an Israeli social media war room. The day before the war broke out, he was worried about his high-tech start up and moving apartments. But once bombs began falling, he dropped his daily activities and connected himself with Stand With Us, a U.S.-based Israel advocacy group. They hired him to organize an ad-hoc social media "command center" to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint.

"It wasn't about the money at all. I would have done it for free. It was all from the heart," Calderon told me in an interview. Calderon's first step was to organize a group of about 20 media-savvy internationals who spoke French, German, Dutch, Russian, English and Spanish and were willing to go AWOL from their day jobs for a few weeks. Ahuva Berger, an American immigrant to Israel now working in Israeli startups, regularly reported for duty.

"We are fighting against the mainstream media who prefer to ignore certain bits of information about Israel," Berger told me in an interview, "and social media is an effective way of providing the right information passively."

The group called themselves "Help Us Win," and created a website with the same name, serving as an online database for news with a pro-Israel viewpoint. They worked in an office donated by a local college, the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya, which also provided office equipment and Internet access. There they spent countless hours scanning the Internet for what they saw as biased blog posts and erroneous news stories, as well as other opportunities to tell their side of the story.

The group hoped to show the world that Israel was fighting Hamas rather than regular Palestinians. They worked to influence online discussions on YouTube, Facebook, and Al Jazeera, and tried to change the commonly used language of the war -- they referred to Hamas as terrorists rather than fighters and to the "War on Hamas" rather than the "War on Gaza."

Their greatest social media success in the war may have been the creation of the Qassam Counter Facebook tool. Every time a Qassam rocket fell in Israel during the war, the Qassam Counter account would tweet another rocket, automatically changing the Facebook status of anyone who subscribed. The Qassam Counter became infectious. At its peak, 75,000 users from 150 countries had "donated" their Facebook status to the Qassam Counter. Calderon knew it was a success when a woman from Thailand wrote to him asking, "What is a Qassam?"

Israeli Defense Forces on YouTube

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) also plunged into new media during this war. Their drones filmed many of the targeted strikes on Gaza, releasing the video to the general public on a YouTube channel. This channel became an instant hit, with nearly 5 million views in its first week. The most popular videos on the site were the surreal aerial-cam attack videos, which have a detached, robotic feel that provides a stark contrast to the more palpable videos filmed on the Gaza streets.

The site also features the IDF's lone Arabic spokesmen, Avichai Adraee, who addressed the Arab world by playing Quranic excerpts over IDF footage in an attempt to prove that Hamas violated Islamic Law by fighting out of mosques. The IDF said it had learned many media lessons from the Lebanon War in 2006. The major lesson, according to IDF spokeswoman Major Avital Leibovich, was "transparency." Leibovich said in an interview that they hoped the YouTube channel would show the world that "Israel is a moral army with nothing to hide."

But if this is so, why were accredited foreign journalists banned from entering the Gaza Strip during the war? Leibovich declined to comment on this, saying that was a government -- not a military -- decision. Other sources have reported that this was another strategic lesson from Lebanon, when journalists gave away army positions on live TV and distracted military operations, but also that the move may have had more to do with public relations than military tactics.

[Editor's Note: As Aram Zucker-Scharff points out in comments, another watershed moment of the war was when the Israeli Foreign Ministry had a press conference on Twitter, and he covered it for the UPI.]

Gaza Strip: The Untold Story

"Israel didn't let in the foreign journalists because they didn't want the world to see a massacre," Gazan blogger Sameh Habeeb told me in an interview. Habeeb, 23, from the eastern suburbs of Gaza City, had just graduated with a B.A. in English Literature at the Islamic University in Gaza when he began writing his blog to show the world what it is like for "Palestinians living under siege."

Before the war, Habeeb described himself as a humanitarian aid worker, a peace activist, and a part-time photojournalist. But during the war he described himself as a sleep deprived, manic 24-hour reporter for many of the world's top media outlets: "CNN, CBC, CBS, BBC, Sky News, Brazilian media, Liberacion, Le Monde, the Independent, South African News, Indonesian News, and some more that I can't remember, I worked for all of them." With their reporters locked out of Gaza, these foreign agencies were scrambling to find new sources of information, and, upon searching the Internet, Sameh's blog, Gaza Strip: The Untold Story, came up.

Between doing live stand-ups for Dutch TV for the first time and dodging Israeli tank shells, Habeeb somehow managed to update his blog daily during the war. Each day, he provided daily feeds with statistics that were relied upon by the mainstream media. The grim numbers were trusted by many of the mainstream news outlets. Habeeb operated just like a regular journalist would. His home became a very busy one-man international news bureau. His home phone and cell phone rang off the hook. He monitored several local radio stations which were run either by Hamas, Fatah, or the Popular Front.

He regularly checked in with contacts in human rights organizations. He tapped into an organically fused network of local Palestinian journalists, each one passing on data to the next. At night, when the reporters for Al Jazeera slept, he was their stand-by reporter should anything happen. Once a new incident occurred that involved casualties, he would call one of his contacts in the Shifa Hospital, or the head of the ambulance service, to verify the number of wounded or dead. On several occasions he visited the hospital in person. He remembers on the first day of the war being shocked after seeing "rows of people missing legs, heads, arms, or all three." He cried on his first day in the hospital, but hasn't shed a tear since then.

During the war he received numerous threatening emails from extremists. They didn't identify themselves, but they always wrote the same thing, which can be summarized as: "Stop writing lies or you will pay for it." Habeeb was not intimidated by these threats nor the IDF drones hovering over his house. He didn't miss a single day's post during the war.

Now that it is over, and the international news media is allowed back into Gaza, Habeeb is less busy. Life has gone back to normal in Gaza and Southern Israel, which means a rocket here, a missile there. But Habeeb seems changed by the experience, and may find himself in this role again should another full scale war break out. The likelihood of this happening is very high due to the very fragile and oft-violated ceasefire in place between the two sides.

"I didn't approach my work as a Palestinian but as an objective journalist," Habeeb said. "It was most important to me that my information be credible and reliable." His blog broke through the fog of war and became a powerful news-gathering and distribution tool. Sometimes he got paid for his work, sometimes he didn't, but Habeeb said he didn't care.

"I didn't work for the money, but so the world could see what was going on here on our side. This is what motivated me." The popularity of his blog soared during the war, attracting hundreds of new visitors a day. Most significantly, a blogger had bypassed efforts to hermetically seal the Gaza Strip from the world.

Al Qassam's Website

It turns out that Hamas' military wing also has an official and active Internet presence, the Ezzeddeen Al Qassam Martyrs Brigades Information Office, which links up to a website. The site also offers statistics and numbers from the war, which, of course, do not match up to those of the IDF. The home page features pictures of "martyrs," links to an English forum, and a poll where one can vote whether Hamas should continue the resistance, pursue a political path, or both.

It's not clear whether these votes will have any effect on Hamas policy, because my numerous attempts to interview them were declined. Clearly though, the rules of public opinion warfare have changed due to the emergence of new, social media tools.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Time, the New York Times, and Current TV, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron is the founder of Falafel TV, a documentary production company, and regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

The collaborative effort is a web series called, Gaza Sderot: Life in Spite of Everything.

French executive producer Serge Gordey, who has produced documentaries from both Israel and the Palestinian territories, told me in a telephone interview that the series is not just for Israelis and Palestinians, but for anyone in the world with access to the Internet who wants to better understand the region. Gordey believes that the media's obsession with carnage in the Middle East has spawned a global thirst for another type of coverage.

"France is not the only country in the world with a fetish for stories with unhappy endings when it comes to the Middle East," he said. "Our assumption is that this particular fetish can be broken."

So Gordey flew down to the Middle East, hired some local production crews, and instructed them to make films that feel more like "slices of life." Each day for two months, the crews produce brief two-minute glimpses into two people's lives, one from Gaza and the other from Sderot. They upload the material to a server in France with either Hebrew or Arabic language subtitles. The piece is downloaded and translated into English, German, French, Arabic, and Hebrew.

It is then broadcast on the web using an ingenuous split screen interface, that allows you to easily bounce back and forth between Gaza and Sderot without worrying about electrical fences. Plus, you can click on the timeline that runs between the split-screen to look through the archives by date. There's even a great annotated map that shows where each video is shot using satellite images.

Meeting the Other

The result is a project that is changing perceptions of these two places. According to Gordey, the site is getting an average of 10,000 hits per day with people spending an average of eight minutes on the site, or watching about four webisodes. The videos are mostly shot in cinema verite, which provide a voyeuristic, front row seat into someone else's everyday life.

The November 26 episode follows wedding singer Khalaf Qassim to a jubilant musical performance, powered by a diesel generator due to Gaza's electricity crisis. Producer Osnat Trabelsi speaks for all Israelis when she asks rhetorically, "We all know that there is an electricity crisis in Gaza, but what does it really mean for the people living there? Our news never shows us that."

On December 8, we see Gaza resident Madeha Abu Nada sitting in the dark with a blazing fireplace providing heat and light, complaining that she is living 50 years in the past. A gentle scroll of the mouse takes you to the well lit beauty parlor of Yafa Malka, a longtime Sderot resident, who is complaining that so much of the younger generation has left Sderot due to the Qassam rockets as she gently applies mascara to a woman's eyelashes.

The characters also include a fisherman, a strawberry farmer, a doctor, a grocery store owner running for mayor, a young immigrant boxer, a musician, an aspiring filmmaker, and a housewife with 10 children. Each one is profiled every few days when something happens in their lives -- or even when nothing happens at all.

We are in Sason Sara's living room at the pivotal moment when he learns that he lost the race for Sderot mayor and needs a hug from his wife. We join Heba Safi and her three girlfriends at a quiet moment, as they just sit around talking about weddings in Gaza. Yet, even when nothing really exciting happens, you want to watch.

Finding the Story

"The most difficult part of this process, like in any film, is finding the story," says Israeli producer Arik Bernstein, one of the visionaries behind the project. He added, "Whether a film is 90 minutes or two minutes, you need a narrative that will keep the audience's attention." While some narratives are certainly stronger than others, the goal, according to Bernstein, "is for the audience to identify and build an emotional bond with these characters across several episodes."

Before we see Heba Safi with her friends, we already know from previous episodes that she is a relatively affluent, amateur film director who has joined the Young Journalists Club in Gaza, has had her tonsils out, and is worried that her career choice is too bold for a female in a religiously conservative society.

Gazan producer Yousef Atwa, who works for Ramatan news agency, prefers this production to his day job. "It is less risky and more rewarding," he told me. The two-man production crews are equipped with discreet prosumer cameras, which provide a cheap and simple format suitable for web delivery.

Atwa initially had difficulty getting access to the subjects living in a restrictive media environment under Hamas.

"They were initially concerned about opening up their homes and personal lives to us, but we reassured them by telling them that we will not be political." There was also the issue that Muslim women are generally reluctant to appear on film -- an obstacle he managed to overcome by choosing less religious characters.

Common Ground

Atwa is not only a producer, but also a keen watcher, who is learning a lot about life in Israel from the series. He said he didn't realize that so many people in Sderot were of Moroccan origins. He also didn't realize the similarities with people in Gaza.

"We are both victims of this terrible situation. Both our governments don't really listen to us." He then added, "but the main difference is that our suffering in Gaza is much worse than in Sderot."

Osnat Trabelsi, his Israeli counterpart, has in turn been learning about life on the Palestinian side. A few years ago she made a feature documentary about Madeha, the Gazan strawberry farmer. But since then a lot has changed, and Israelis are no longer allowed to enter Gaza.

"This is my only way of connecting to Madeha, and seeing that she is okay," Trabelsi said. "Through these Internet videos, I am taken into this virtual world that would otherwise be forbidden to me because I am Israeli."

There is another side effect to this project worth mentioning. It not only blurs borders between Israelis and Palestinians, but amongst them. A significant share of the site's daily hits comes from the West Bank and Israel (outside of Sderot). West Bank Palestinians are, of course, forbidden from entering Gaza without special permission. Most Israelis, especially the Tel Aviv crowd, see Sderot as a backwater, frontier town to be avoided at all costs. While website visits won't contribute to the local tourism industries, they may bolster a sense of national unity among Israelis and Palestinians.

"Life in Spite of Everything" reminds me of two sparring neighbors who are invited into each others' homes for the first time and are each shocked to learn just how normal the other is. But for the general public accustomed to gory images and loud explosions from these places, I offer a caveat: What you see may bore you. It may also leave you feeling inspired. In spite of everything, there is a beautiful and fragile humanity that continues to thrive in this godforsaken land.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. As a freelance video correspondent for Current TV, CNN World Report, and the New York Times, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron is the founder of Falafel TV, a documentary production company, and regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

That's one of the reasons he keeps coming back to the "Silicon Wadi" (Wadi is Arabic for valley), the nickname for the Israeli coastal plain that boasts the highest concentration of high-tech companies in the world. Last Wednesday, nearly 150 people from the technology and new media worlds in Israel collided over cappuccino at the port of Tel Aviv. This is what happens when Jeff posts his breakfast plans to 4,997 of his closest friends on Facebook:

Links to some sites mentioned in the video report:

Jeff Pulver's Pulver.com
Work Light social media company
Intellect or Insanity blog
Mel Rosenberg's bad breath website

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. Jaron is the founder and editor of Falafel TV, a breakthrough Middle East video cooperative. As a freelance video correspondent for Current TV, CNN World Report, and the New York Times, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

Recently, MediaShift started running reports from correspondents and embeds around the world. This report comes from Jaron Gilinsky, a journalist and documentary filmmaker in Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM -- Blogs exemplify the best and worst attributes of the Internet (and human nature). At their worst, blogs can be untruthful, bad sources of news and gossip. But without the profit motive, the need for immediacy, and the thirst for conflict, blogs can also help show a more complete picture of the Middle East. At their best, they can be a great source of anti-news and help demystify this murky region.

If you can find the good blogs, you will be exposed to a very real slice of Middle Eastern reality that wasn't possible 10 years ago. And that slice of life is more than just suicide bombings, radicalism and ethnic strife -- which most outsiders assume is what we encounter every day living here.

It's always an enlightening experience leaving Jerusalem to visit my hometown of Miami, Florida. Based on numerous encounters with fellow Americans, I inevitably learn many new things that I never knew about the Middle East. I learn that there are bullets whizzing through the air at all times. I learn that there are bombs exploding in a crowded market right now as you read this. And I learn that I am totally insane for choosing, under my own free will, to live in the Middle East.

I actually feel quite safe living in the city of Jerusalem. Yes, there is tension and ethnic strife. And yes, there is violence here, but it is rare and isolated. It is really no different than living in Miami, where incidentally I have been held up at gunpoint, knifepoint, and have been beaten up by thugs.

A month or so ago, just down the street from my Jerusalem apartment, a construction worker used a bulldozer to kill and maim people. That may have been the most dangerous civilian encounter I've had in 7 years in the region, and it wasn't even that close. True, life in Gaza City, Sderot, and Baghdad are not pictures of serenity. I don't suggest vacationing in those hotspots, but I also don't recommend walking through certain neighborhoods in many U.S. cities.

The numbers don't lie. Take the year of 2006 as an example. Israel was fighting and being attacked on two fronts in Lebanon and Gaza. Still, comparative homicide rates make Israel seem like Disney World compared with many U.S. cities. That year Israel had 5.4 deaths due to war, terrorism, and crime per 100,000 citizens, according to Israeli government statistics. Metropolitan Miami, on the other hand, had 19.6 homicides per 100,000 citizens during that same year, according to the FBI's accounting.

Even in the densely populated and seemingly dangerous Gaza Strip, which was frequently bombed by the Israeli Air Force, the percentage of people killed was on par with that of "Charm City," Baltimore, Maryland, the murder capital of America. (Those numbers come from Palestinian Authority figures, Btselem Human Rights Organization, and the FBI.)

Media Feeding Misconceptions

So why is the average American's perception of the Middle East so negative? Well, the answer is obvious. The media is to blame. If you've never visited a place, and don't know anyone who has, then your perception of that place comes solely from the media. And the media seems obsessed with violence, not just in the Middle East, but wherever it may rear its ugly head.

"If it bleeds, it leads," is the old adage in U.S. newsrooms. When was the last time you read an article or saw a report about the country of Jordan? Yes, it still exists. In case you've never heard of Jordan, it is a relatively peaceful monarchy with about 6 million people, sandwiched between Israel and Palestine on one side, and Iraq on the other. It is prospering, in reality, but with so much action going on all around it, the story of Jordan's recent business development and economic growth is overshadowed by more "newsworthy" stories.

"Peace isn't sexy," said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a Hebrew University communications professor, MIT grad, and expert on media and the Middle East, "and that's one reason peace journalism doesn't sell papers."

This was the first I'd heard of the concept of "peace journalism," which is not as simple as it sounds. It constitutes, in a nutshell, both an editorial shift to more stories of peacemaking and co-existence, as well as an entirely new framework for reporting about conflict. According to Wolfsfeld's fascinating book, "Media and the Path to Peace," news reporting does more than just shape perceptions abroad. It is also a key factor in determining the region's ability to make peace with itself. In this respect, journalism is failing the Middle East.

Besides profit, Wolfsfeld breaks down three other incompatibilities that prevent journalism from delving too deeply into the peace arena. News is immediate. It is about what's happening right now. Peace is as slow as molasses. News is about drama. Conflict has lots of drama. Peace, on the other hand, is usually boring.

Finally, news reporting, especially in local, non-international media, is often ethno-centric. This region is a great example. Story selection and editorial lines in Israeli and Palestinian news outlets are generally miles apart. The "other" is usually the perpetrator, whereas "your side" is generally the victim. Even reporting about the same events can lead you to think you're reading about two separate events due to the inconsistent terminology, narratives, and facts on the ground. Traditional conflict journalism does more than just affect perceptions abroad. It also perpetuates the conflict locally.

Can New Media Make a Difference?

The real question is whether the proliferation of high speed Internet connections, digital cameras, and user-friendly blog publishing tools can change the game. There are now countless blogs in Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Kurdish, and English -- each with its own unique style and perspective. Peace blogs are becoming more and more prevalent.

Life Must Go On In Sderot and Gaza is a blog written by two anonymous voices for peace, one an Israeli from the city of Sderot, another a Palestinian from the Sajaia refugee camp in Gaza. There is also EMS Peace, a personal blog written by an Australian surfing expat, now a peace activist living in Jaffa. He uses his blog both for his own cathartic release, and to reach out to a small, but growing niche of peace activists in the region.

The blog is also becoming a tool for free speech in a region where media is sometimes controlled or intimidated by the government. When a story leaked that incriminated the Bahraini government, the only person that would touch it was a 30-year-old blogger named Ali Abduleman. Although Ali has spent some time in jail for blog posts that insulted the monarchy, it hasn't stopped him from running Bahrain Online, a web hub for the Bahraini blogging community.

There have been numerous reports of bloggers being arrested in Egypt and Syria, but none recently. It still remains to be seen whether governments are even capable of censoring the limitless amount of information that exists on the Internet, which is by its very nature an unstoppable grassroots force. I am surprised the Egyptian government hasn't questioned this English language blog, Baheyya, a reasoned voice that regularly reports on anti-government protests and acts of civil disobedience against Hosni Mubarak's government. Perhaps governments are realizing their limitations in this age of information run amok.

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" should be the new motto for governments concerned with keeping citizens informed. Instead of plucking out thousands of frail and frightened bloggers from their basements, why not incorporate a blog into your propaganda machine and then just use it as a cyber-steamroller to counter your dissidents? An interesting new development is the use of blogs by politicians and world leaders. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has even entered the blogosphere, with a personal blog available in four languages that he promises to write for 15 minutes each day.

As more readers move away from print, mainstream newspapers are beefing up their online media sections. The LA Times has a fascinating "behind the scenes" blog written by their Middle East correspondents called Babylon and Beyond. The style of this blog seems to be in step with a different type of news consumer. Its news stories are shorter, more visual, not so hard, and not so bloody. Whether you're a jihadist or a peacenik, an Egyptian Coptic Christian or a Lebanese Druze, a journalist or a conspiracy theorist, there is probably an existing blog written by someone like you in the Middle East. If not, just wait a couple years and chances are there will be.

Professor Wolfsfeld, who is now doing research on new media, told me that the trouble with blogs is that "there are more people writing them today than there are reading them."

Wolfsfeld's use of hyperbole was to emphasize that, despite their meteoric rise in recent years, new media still has a lot of catching up to do with respect to the number of readers that still frequent the mainstream media. Still I do suspect the gap is closing, and as that gap closes, I suspect the perception gap surrounding the Middle East will also close. Maybe one day I will come visit Miami and people will call me crazy for ever leaving the Middle East.

Jaron Gilinsky is a journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. Jaron is the founder and editor of Falafel TV, a breakthrough Middle East video cooperative. As a freelance video correspondent for Current TV, CNN World Report, and the New York Times, he has produced and directed scores of documentaries on a range of international topics. Jaron regularly posts his videos and articles on his personal blog.

Photo of Museum of Jerusalem by Viktor Kaposi via Flickr.