My KYHOI is not merely a KYHOI, it’s a story of how the Egyptian Revolution came about in Egypt through Facebook, Twitter, and many other social networks (blogging, vlogging, etc…).  Everywhere I looked on the internet, I could not find exactly what I wanted, which was what I was trying to create.  In other words, I could not find an exact history or timeline of the events that led up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.  So there is where my KYHOI surfaced.  I figured since no one had a good history of the events lined up that I would do it myself.  In my first draft, I started the video with facts about Egypt’s history during the late 1800s and early-to-mid 1900s.  Unfortunately it made the video seem really slow and uninteresting.  So in my final draft, I wanted to emphasize that Egypt has had problems here and there (and what country hasn’t) but I didn’t go into really specific details.  My KYHOI enters with a picture of Khaled Mohamed Said.  Basically, I feel that his death is what sparked the Revolution to happen.  I was told that this was a bold statement, but I feel that it is true.  The reason being that Google marketing manager Wael Ghonim saw and heard about what happened to Said, and he created a Facebook page.  The page as over 115,000 followers.  This led to people becoming aware of what Egypt’s corrupt government/leader was doing to its people.  The Egyptians started blogging, vlogging, writing to people, discussing it in chat rooms, getting together in public and having conferences.  So although I am not saying that the revolution HAPPENED because of Said’s death (it was going to happen eventually, as soon as people opened their eyes), I am saying that it’s what caused the spark in Wael Ghonim’s heart that made him tell the world about how bad his country had gotten.  Also, as I’ve been making my video, I realized that it comes with an emotional sentiment that will really touch people’s hearts as they watch it.  The music and sequencing lines up perfectly, I feel. 

References:

Mona el-Shazly- Interviewer (Wael Ghonim)

Wael Ghonim

Mohamed El-Bendary- "The Egyptian Press and Coverage of Local and International Events"

Oliver Schlumberger- "Debating Arab Authoritarianism

Mike Giglio- Newsweek Article: "Inside Egypt's Facebook Revolt"

Hossam el-Hamalawy: "Egypt's Revolution has been 10 Years in the Making"

Geoffrey Blainey- "A Short History of the 20th Century" 

SCRIPT

• First 40-50 seconds
• Establish where the United States is, in terms of media by showing images of our past.  This will include images of wars, protests, riots, and political figures.
• This will give the message of how the United States' media was shaped and how we got to where we are at today.
• Most of the images/clips used will be bright, sunny, good-hearted, and hopeful
• 50-55 seconds
• Transition (dramatic, intense) to Egypt by asking the question, "How has media in Egypt been affected by what's happened IN Egypt?"
• 1:00
• Basically the format of how I show the content will be the same: using images of war, protests, riots--all of the things that shaped Egypt today.  The difference will be the feeling, or the "mood" of the content.  It will look darker, smoky, and fearful
• 1:30
• I will compare what famous people/authors/political figures from each country has said about their own country, showing that the experiences line up and are very similar.
• 1:45 
• The point of the video will start to come across here.
• The video has been a comparison/contrast, essentially, so why am I comparing?
• I will use a form of dialogue, where I will figure out how to say to the audience how Egypt will ultimately end up like the United States (just an idea right now) because the two countries have similar tumultuous histories, but the United States has had 300 years in the making of becoming a democracy lead by a president.
• I will end this with white text against black background.  The text will fade in and it will be my Knock Your Head Off Idea, which is still a work in progress, but will follow the lines of "Egypt is being mediated and might either end up like the United States, or it might destroy the country from the inside out.  And who's to say that isn't happening to the United States right now either?"
• 2:15
• "Hopeful" images and scenes will be displayed to show that although there might be big problems with Egypt's newfound sense of mediation, there is hope for the future.  
• I will most likely switch back and forth between images of the Revolution (which is mostly seen as riots and chaos) and images of a bright new future.
• 2:30
• Finish up with a dramatic scene of children waving (showing what the future of Egypt might become) and maybe a scene of a destroyed civilization/city (showing the other possibility of Egypt's-and maybe the world's-future).
• Credits

Vlogging at its Finest 2!

Preliminary KYHOI

I don’t know everything there is to know about what’s going on in Egypt. In fact, that’s one of the reasons that I’m so hesitant on even posting this message. I fear that someone somewhere is going to read it and think “wow, this guy has no idea what he’s talking about.” He’s going to reply to the post, and everyone will read it and agree with him. However, getting past all of that negative thought, I believe that I have finally come up with my Knock-your-head-off idea (KYHOI).
For the past 58 years, Egypt has been a republic (El-Bendary, 2010[pg 10]). Since its first legitimate ruler, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser (I say this because the first was General Mohamed Naguib, whom Nasser forced out of office), Egypt has faced more problems than a ten-year old lawn mower. Freedom of Speech, public protest, economic turbulence, and even private residency rights have all been ongoing problems, to name a few. I will post another blog explaining a giant well-structured background to try to fill in gaps, but for now I am just trying to introduce my KYHOI and back it up.

[Side note: the funny thing about coming up with a KYHOI, is the fact that I have to drop the voice in the back of my head telling me it’s an assignment for a college class, and rewire myself to think about how to try to enlighten people. It’s an amazing feeling, because it’s become something I care about instead of something I “have to do.” So not only do I feel bad when I post something lame, but I also think about how I might be giving my audience material that is subpar.]

My KYHOI is very simple. I came up with it when I was going through a bunch of reading material in my library. Huge books, filled with valuable information that probably took years to research, and even longer to put on paper. The only problem with the research that I’ve looked at is that none of the books in any way are tied together with a common statement. A thesis if you will. Mind you that they are all written by different authors. My KYHOI is basically the idea of putting the contexts of many texts together as a solid statement that points out a common ground for all of these books. It won’t be just any common ground though. It will be the common ground of how Egypt ultimately became mediated through Facebook, Twitter, the internet, tv, radio, and even the people’s interactions with each other.

I won’t lie: right now, I feel like I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the research that I can cover. By Friday, April 15th, 2011, I will summarize 5 to 8, 200-page books that cover diverse subjects such as war, newspapers, and Egypt’s interactions with other countries. Stay tuned folks.

Egyptian Social Movement: The Origin

My vision encompasses the definitive origin of the Egyptian Social Movement. As far as I've read, I can tell that the establishment of Egypt's media dates all the way back to 1952, when Egypt abolished its Monarchy system in place of a Republic. Over the last 60 years, Egypt has had three presidents (Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak) and in all that time, the freedom of press in Egypt has been thrown to the dogs and resuscitated on numerous occasions. Basically, what I got out of the book The Egyptian Press and Coverage of Local and National Events (by Mohamed El-Bendary)is that Egypt has never had a really strong system of support for free media. It hasn't been until Mubarak's rule that the right was even established (and even then, the government eventually found itself mediating the press). This book has given me a lot to base what I want to say about what's happened in Egypt in the past 3 or 4 years. Egypt has shown many ups and downs when dealing with freedom of speech, and that has not changed in these modern times. I hope to read more in depth and find out more history about Egypt's press. The article that I chose is Revolutions Without Revolutionaries? Network Theory, Facebook, and the Egyptian Blogosphere by David Faris. This article, in a nutshell, is the story of the beginning of the Social Revolution in Egypt. It tells of the woman who first created a Facebook group in 2008, and that group grew from just being on Facebook/online, to a physical entity of people gathering to discuss where they are at in terms of freedom. It goes on to tell how this movement created many other movements of blogging, publishing stories, and telling the world about what's wrong with the so-called rights that the Egyptians had. My favorite line from this article describes the kind of power Facebook has when it comes to building relationships among people, "...Facebook takes dormant social ties and makes them active, takes musty acquaintances
and wipes the cobwebs from them, and can potentially plug you into social networks you
never even knew you wanted to be a part of." My vision for the final project is basically to enlighten everyone in the class on how Egypt came to be what it is, whether you see it as torn, dead, or even beginning anew. I plan on creating an "epic" trailer to accompany my vision.

Surviving Time AND Humanity

In case someone reading this didn't know, let me fill in a little back-story. The setting takes place in Egypt, and there were a lot of problems going on within the last several weeks. Ex-President Hosni Mubarak has lead Egypt for the last 30 years. In all of that time, he has done nothing for the economy other than let it slowly slide to deficit. The people finally became fed up. They wanted him gone, and to prove it they held protests in major cities such as Cairo and Suez. These protests were not peaceful in their entirety. People were harassed, beaten, and even killed. Among all of this chaos, one issue really stuck out to me. The Egyptian Museum of Cairo was burned and looted. It did not burn down completely of course. The major issue happens to be that artifacts that have been kept for decades, after being uncovered from millennia of slumber, were stolen. This problem shows once more that in the darkest hour (no pun intended) of the museum's life, humans have no honor in leaving sacred artifacts unscathed. The reason that this bodes ill for me is because I love the arts. I'm more of a music-lover myself, but art is art, and history is a form of art that needs to be left alone. What really surprised me is the fact that all of the Islamic monuments and artifacts were left alone. They must really mean something to the citizens of Cairo...