CAIRO: Google recently hosted a series of workshops in Cairo on how to use YouTube for news and politics, conducted by Steve Grove, head of news and politics for YouTube at Google USA, and Samir Bahie of Public Policy and Government Relations at Google Middle East and North Africa.
On June 23, Grove met with journalists and other media professionals from various print, broadcast, and online news organizations in Egypt to conduct a two-hour training on how to use YouTube for gathering news. Grove also met with several Egyptian bloggers and political parties.
The workshop offered training on how to utilize the features and services available on the video-sharing platform.
“The aim of YouTube is to develop and promote user content to increase access to information and improve public interest,” Grove said.
Grove demonstrated how to use features such as YouTube Direct, YouTube Moderator, YouTube Trends, and YouTube Trends dashboard, which he hopes will connect YouTube’s vast user community directly with news organizations and political leaders.
News organizations can use YouTube Direct, its citizen-reporting platform, to “crowd source” relevant news content by filtering the millions of videos uploaded and then link the videos to their organization website. Through this, “a new ecosystem for information sharing” is created, according to Grove.
Other features such as YouTube Trends and YouTube Trends dashboard display trending viral videos on the site. YouTube Moderator, on the other hand, was designed to serve as a communicative platform for soliciting questions submitted by users.
Grove highlighted the usage of YouTube in the MENA region, especially in Egypt, linking YouTube’s role in citizen journalism with the upcoming 2011 Egyptian presidential elections.
According to Grove, a total of 1.2 million videos were uploaded on YouTube from Egypt in the current year of which 14 percent were classified as “news and politics.” This is significantly higher compared to other countries that also generate a lot of news like Turkey, where only 5 percent of the total uploads were news and politics related.
Egypt’s high percentage of news upload remained consistent both before and after the January 25 Revolution, he said. “The creative community in Egypt is alive and strong,” he added.
Grove encouraged participants to come up with ideas on how to use YouTube to cover the 2011 presidential elections through citizen-generated reporting, for example getting videos from the polls. He said it is possible by “giving citizens very specific assignments with distinct guidelines.”
In addition to directing news and politics for YouTube, Grove developed CitizenTube, YouTube’s platform for breaking citizen-generated news videos, which in 2011 focused heavily on videos from the protests of the Arab spring.
