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R&D Projects
Documentation of innovative, joint research projects that extend how we understand and learn about the Middle East now and into the future |
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 by: Laila بناء المنظومة الالكترونية اللي يمكنها تخزين المفردات والجمل باللغة العربية. والمرادفات ودلالات كل منها. استخراج هذه المفردات والجمل من التغريدات التي قام أرشيف بتجميهعا لاضافتها الى المنظومة الالكترونية تصنيف كل من البيانات في القاموس وتحديد مدلولاتها لاعطاء المنظومة الخبرة اللازمة لفهم المحتوى استخدام هذه المنظومة لتحليل وابراز نتائج المحتوى العربي وابراز معانيه بصورة فورية جعل هذه الخدمة متاحة الى غيرنا من الفرق والمؤسسات. 438 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila Art critic Hal Foster began his article, "The Artist as Ethnographer," by claiming, "one of the most important interventions in the relation between artistic authorship and cultural politics in ‘The Author as Producer’ by Walter Benjamin, first presented as a lecture in April 1934 at the Institute for the Study of Fascism…Benjamin urged the "advanced" artist to intervene, like the revolutionary worker, in the means of artistic production—to change the "technique" of traditional media, to transform the "apparatus" of the bourgeois culture.” In Egypt during the Nasser era, a period in which a military regime embarked upon the construction of a new civic identity for an independent Egypt, filmmakers began to explore issues of social inequity, colonial and feudal exploitation, changing gender roles, religious and cultural traditions and, finally, the disappointments of the revolutionary project itself. In a recursive fashion, these same social justice and human rights issues have continued to reemerge in waves through 2011 and beyond. More recently aimed against the military regime, the cultural production—stories, symbols, and popular imagination—has again played a significant role in shaping the evolving national identity. However, during these revolutionary times, the cultural logic of our contemporary Egyptian national identity is not only articulated through cinema or broadcast TV as it was in the mid-20th century. Platforms of social media authored by everyone and disseminated to the world through the Internet have also become a powerful medium through which the messages are being broadcast. By the end of this century’s first decade we had already moved from “new media” to “more media.” When the Egyptian revolution began, the ubiquity of computers, digital media software, and computer networks had led to the exponential rise in the numbers of cultural producers worldwide and the media they create—making it very difficult, if not impossible, to understand global cultural developments and dynamics in any substantial details using 20th century theoretical tools and methods. In this investigation, I will introduce a new approach to studying culture that is produced at such large, computational scales and authored by many people. Alongside various ethnographic and film studies methodologies, cultural analytics provide new methods and intuitive visual techniques to address both the new and existing research questions, which currently drive the humanities. To demonstrate this approach, I will analyze the visual elements, icons, symbols embedded in the many YouTube videos that have been collected on the Arab news feed and cultural aggregator, R-Shief, in particular, from YouTube channel Mosireen (with over 2.6 million views). Taking into consideration Walter Benjamin’s contribution to cultural politics, this examination will contextualize the new cultural memes in contrast with symbols from Nasser’s era, the “golden age” in the history of Egyptian cinema. Ultimately, this research seeks to understand the sensibilities and cultural logic(s) that are being expressed by the people. In what terms is the argument for human rights and social justice being expressed? What are the terms of these cultural productions on the Egyptian revolution? 264 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila This two-phase project with The American University in Cairo’s (AUC) Access to Knowledge for Development Center and Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society will run through October 2012 and includes the following activities: theoretical grounding and literature review, collection of online data tools and refinement, building community of scholars, structures interviews with activists. Phase II would focus on community building, refinement and sharing of data sets, hypothesis testing and more in-depth research that builds off of Phase I learning and outreach. R-Shief will build portals on the existing R-Shief.org that will enable international collaborators to run web crawls and exchange data sets. R-Shief will also build visualizers for the data and work with AUC and Berkman to build custom data models. Among R-Shief’s contribution to the research objectives is to provide various web analytics and multiple methodologies to study the social significance of digital structure. 471 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila This project led by USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab is producing a set of Semantic Analyses on the 2011 Arab Spring by creating a data model that will provide lexical analyses for Arabic-only sites, English-only sites, and Arabic-English sites based on language specific set of rules and dictionaries that are applied. This will enable the Annenberg Innovation Lab and R-Shief to perform significant semantic content analysis on Arabic language on the web. Using R-Shief’s Twitter hashtag archive, Sakr has determined that the majority of tweets are in Arabic. Without being able to pre-process Arabic language content in its native language, sentiment and semantic analyses cannot be properly performed. Rather, users will only be able to provide the usual content analyses on not-so-usual material. Our collaborative sentiment and semantic analyses will be a great contribution to the scholars, artists and journalists using R-Shief's Twitter data. The end result will be a series of visualizations and extensive semantic analysis of the rapidly unfolding current events in the Middle East. 1,037 views COMMENT(S) |
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 by: abuyemen الآن سميرة رجب على العربيه منصور الجمري يقولكم نبي ندش الجيش "حق ضياع الديره!"!!وانتوا ماتخلون الشيعه يشتغلون ف شيء! استغرب من ماكل الوزارات غيركم ابو يمن،بو يمن،منتديات اليمن ,منتديات السعيدة,اليمن,اليمن السعيدة,منتديات ابو يمن منصور الجمري في العربية اﻻن: على الدولة أن تدمج الشيعة في الدولة بعد أن تم إقصائهم منصور الجمري على العربية: الشيعي يجب ان يعامل كمواطن من اليوم.. اعتقد انه يقصد انهم كانوا يعاملون قبل ذلك كشيوخ! الحقير منصور الجمري يقول التعنت والمتعصبين من السنةهم السبب في الازمة , المصالحة الوطنية تعتمد على مبادرات جلالة الملك منصور الجمري سمعوا منصور الجمري على العربيه مستذبح شوي ويصيح يبي درع الجزيره يطلع من البحرين ليكون قاعدين في بيتكم يالجعو منصور الجمري يقول لازم يخرطون البحآرنه في الجيش .. اتخيلني اقول حق جعفرو ولا مكي عمي الضابط ههههههههههههههههههه استريح ابو يمن،بو يمن،منتديات اليمن ,منتديات السعيدة,اليمن,اليمن السعيدة,منتديات ابو يمناعتراف منصور الجمري بأنهم نجسين حيث صرح في العربية بأن الأجهزة الأمنية طهرت نفسها من الشيعه هههههه منصور الجمري لي متى الچذب!!! الشيعه تطهروا من كل المناصب!! حسبي الله عليك من ادمي شل الله لسانك 210 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila R-Shief will place a call for submissions to produce micro budget feature-length films. Our initial call in Fall 2011 will go out to professors, students, journalists, and artists who have already developed a piece of work in context of the current Arab Spring. R-Shief’s objective is to produce a bold and unique motion picture experience, through the latest methods of micro-budget filmmaking. R-Shief will form a committee of academics and filmmakers to make its selection . R-Shief will use the "Arab Spring" research piece as the basis of narrative film of which it will develop, produce, and distribute. R-Shief will own the project, and revenues generated by the film will be used to sustain R-Shief and to potentially fund other like projects. Criteria for selection will include the following: 1) the research project’s unique and universal application in theme of the “Arab Spring,” 2) adherence of project with R-Shief’s objectives, 3) the project’s ability to be produced within a micro-budget, 5) overall quality, and 6) educational applicability. At this point in time, R-Shief is not collecting submissions. A formal announcement about submission dates and the submission process will be announced shortly. 520 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila R-Shief is working with Rosemary Sayigh to digitize and catalogue the audio cassette recordings of interviews for her research on The Palestinians: from Peasants to Revolutionaries. This work is in collaboration with The Institue for Palestine Studies. 365 views COMMENT(S) |
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by: Laila In partnership with The Institute for Palestine Studies, R-Shief would extend the research to digitize the various personal photos, family mementos, and other transmediale texts that accompany the Palestinian Village Books and interviews. 1,622 views COMMENT(S) |
