Recommended podcast: Capturing Egypt's neverending story (9:54)

Brooke Gladstone of On The Media interviews Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, the producer and director of The Square, an Oscar nominated documentary on the Arab Spring. They speak of the Arab Spring and the global paradigm shift social media is causing.

Producer Karim Amer on the importance of social media:

And we look today at what’s happening in Kiev, we see the same exact image. We look at Caracas last week, and the same thing is happening. We look at Istanbul. And we start to realize that this isn’t just the Arab Spring, Winter or Summer. This is a global paradigm shift. When it started off in Egypt it was a very lonely fight between the Egyptian dictator versus the Egyptian protester, but when all of you and the rest of the world started watching what was happening, you leveled the playing field. Your witness provided protection for us. And that’s the way that we can change the world today.

(For what was perhaps the first example of political citizen journalism on the Internet, see this discussion of Usenet during the 1991 Soviet Coup attempt).