Eyewitness: Platform Design for Visualizing and Synthesizing Media Video Content of Political Significance

New strategies of societal control are emerging as a result of citizens’ growing access to information facilitated by the Internet. These strategies are used to subvert the positive effects of information democratization and Citizen Media disseminated by Social Media platforms. The increasing quantities and idiosyncratic qualities of citizen media are challenging characteristics that stand in the way of its exploration, perception, and interpretation. I propose the Eyewitness Visualization and Platform design that adapts meta-design frameworks to contextualize, synthesize, and leverage citizen media video content (CMVC). Eyewitness participants will be able to construct a synthetic, comprehensive representation of a politically significant event from the view point of multiple witnesses (including themselves). The designed platform empowers citizens by mobilizing their efforts to achieve a common goal: reconstructing a historical record of a politically charged event as documented by average citizens’ media video content rather than state and corporatized media. The platform focuses on CMVC that does not carry any meta-data due to technological and/or governmental restrictions. The design prototypes focus on CMVC capturing the recent events of the Arab Awakening in Egypt. Factors that support cultures of participation and meta-design methodologies will be studied in light of Eyewitness. Based on these insights, I argue that a meta-design framework can play a role in neutralizing the negative effects of information overload on citizen media video content.