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James Karl Buck’s Twitter Updates in Egypt
James Karl Buck
“Arrested”
That was all that the first message, James Karl Buck to micro-blogging service Twitter, had to say.
Buck was in Mahalla, Egypt working on a project on Egypt’s new leftists and the blogosphere as part of his master’s thesis at the University of California-Berkeley when he and his translator were arrested at an anti-government protest.
Moments after sending his first message, several of Buck’s colleagues in the U.S. and blogger-friends in Egypt were alerted about his situation.
One of those people, Hossam el-Hamalawy, a Cairo-based blogger started blogging about his friend’s predicament, updating it with the messages -or “tweets” - that Buck was able to continue sending from his cell.
A swarm of social media attention caused the situation to be elevated to an international web story. Thanks to the bevy of attention he received, within 24 hours James Karl Buck was released and he marked the occasion with another one word message to Twitter.
“Free.”
