Rebuilding Iraq, Blog By Blog

A recent uptick in violence in Iraq is threatening the streetlife and commerce that some areas have enjoyed of late. In a country that is striving to keep its people safe and the electricity turned on, social media might not seem like the highest priority.

It's not that Iraqis aren’t active online. An estimated 100 Iraqis blog about everything from politics to classical music. It’s a small portion of the population, and posts are intermittent at best. But the U.S. government is hoping to change that.

In an effort to encourage Iraq to use social media to rebuild itself, the State Department sent representatives from Twitter, Google, YouTube and WordPress to Baghdad in late April. For five days, they visited universities, met with technology companies, and sat down with Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

Raanan Bar-Cohen was there. He’s vice president of Automattic, which leads the WordPress open-source project, a blog-publishing tool. Raanan spoke with Word of Mouth about how he observed Iraqis using social networks during his visit.

Time Magazine: Is Iraq Ready for Twitter? New Media in a War Zone

Guardian UK: How Twitter is going to save Iraq... Not.

(Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense)