Riyaad Minty, head of social media for Al Jazeera, said the Arab Spring taught all mainstream media a lesson, as citizens have risen to do exactly what journalists do. (Photo by Taein Park, Missouri School of Journalism)

SEOUL (June 22, 2012) — Speaking at a pace that mirrored the speed of a Twitter feed, Riyaad Minty, head of social media for Al Jazeera, shared lessons from the Arab Spring with more than 300 journalists at the East-West Center’s 2012 International Media Conference at Yonsei University in Seoul.

To an engaged audience, Minty said it is not merely protesters or media that change the faces of regimes. In fact, it was a simple hashtag, he said, that rose from the death of a Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi, that effected change in the 2011 Arab Uprising. Continue reading »