Queen of Jordan Calls on Blogger Friends

Dana Oshiro — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:59:00 -0800

This morning in her address to LeWeb conference attendees, her majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan asked the audience, "Did Michael Jackson change the fate of the green revolution?" While CNN was slow to report on this year's Iranian election protests, Twitter became a powerful news vehicle. Nevertheless, after a week of "Tehran" as Twitter's top trending topics, Michael Jackson's sudden death quickly replaced it.

]]> Interested in the power of activism and social change, Queen Rania tweeted the question, "Can the real-time web change the world?" Inundated with answers, the Queen was surprised to find that 60% of those who replied answered no.

As one way to rally netizens to participate in life-changing social action, Rania called upon today's attendees to join in her mission of universal education for children. In participation with the 1Goal project, the Queen appealed to bloggers for their help. As part of her campaign to collect more than 300 million signatures in support of universal childhood education, she is asking bloggers to devote one day of tweeting and blogging to the 1Goal project.

Said Rania, "The classroom can be a chrysalis for change... We can be lifestreaming and life changing."

For more information on how you can participate visit join1goal.org.

Photo Credit: Chris Heuer

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Queen Uses YouTube to Break Down Stereotypes

Josh Catone — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:51:20 -0800

Queen Rania of Jordan, the current queen consort of King Abdullah II, has launched a YouTube channel on which she intends to break down Western stereotypes about the Arab world. The Queen, who has been an outspoken advocate of women's rights and education reform in the Arab world, hopes to use the channel to facilitate a conversation with people in the West to dispel negative stereotypes about the Arabs and Muslims that have become especially prevalent over the past several years.

]]> "In a world where it’s so easy to connect to one another, we still remain very much disconnected. There’s a whole world of wonder out there that we cannot appreciate with stereotypes," said the Queen in an introductory video that has received over 80,000 views since being uploaded on Sunday. "I want people to know the real Arab world - to see it unedited, unscripted and unfiltered - to see the personal side of my region - to know the places and faces and rituals and culture that shape the part of the world I call home."

Rania hopes that the video will encourage users to respond and voice the types of stereotypes they have heard. "I will try to break them one by one," she said. The conversation will go until August 12, which is International Youth Day. So far, Rania, who has previously argued that it is right to question Western governments but also urged Arabs and Muslims to reject extremism and violence, has received hundreds of comments but no video replies.

YouTube is potentially good at facilitating serious discourse, however. For the most recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland -- where Rania is a yearly fixture -- YouTube gave users the opportunity to respond to the question: "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?" The video inspired hundreds of responses, with the most popular receiving hundreds of thousands of views.

The Queen's introduction video is embedded below:

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queen rania - ReadWriteWeb

Queen of Jordan Calls on Blogger Friends

Queen Uses YouTube to Break Down Stereotypes