Al Jazeera has launched a video campaign to teach people how to use Twitter and Facebook, with the ultimate aim of empowering them as citizen journalists.

The Qatar-based news organisation has started a new YouTube Channel named Al Jazeera Unplugged to distribute videos, teaching users the basics of social networking. 

For the moment, the information is very basic indeed. “Twitter is a website where people can send and receive ultra-short messages called Tweets,” begins one clip.

Users might question the wisdom of running an educational campaign about how to use social media on a social media platform – surely most people who are on YouTube already know how to use Facebook?

The online reaction to the rebellion in Libya has been huge; and even if you don't follow him on Twitter, you will probably have heard about Andy Carvin's record total of 1,200 tweets over the weekend, documenting both the Libya situation and the earthquake on the East Coast of the U.S.A.

Tweets from officials and from foreign correspondents have all been standard components of many live blogs, helping to keep people all over the globe informed.

Yet again, social media has proved essential in forming both journalists' and the public's understanding of a dramatic and rapidly unfolding political situation.

In recognition of the power of social media, Al Jazeera has now decided to dedicate large amounts of airtime to news brought directly and exclusively from Twitter, according to The International Journalists Network.

Al Jazeera's extensive coverage of the unrest in the Arab world has helped the news agency become something of an authority on issues relating to the region. Riyaad Minty, Al Jazeera's head of social media, recently took part in the Media140 conference in Barcelona. One of the discussed topics, Journalism.co.uk reported, was the network's approach of making use of on-location sources.

A key strategy for Al Jazeera, Minty said, was to get in early and make contact with important bloggers and sources. The idea was to identify key bloggers before protests broke out, so they could help verify information later on and act as citizen reporters.

"The key to getting in early is verifying information before the noise gets out," Minty said. "We had peoples' phone numbers, we could call them up and get things verified by them."

Al Jazeera has created a Twitter Dashboard to illustrate what is being tweeted about in the Middle East, and about where. The Qatar-based news organisation has attracted international attention for its coverage of the Middle East protests and revolutions, during which it had the advantage of being already well-installed in the region.

As well as a Twitter stream of all tweets about Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain, the dashboard shows the total number of tweets sent that day about each of these countries, and the average number of tweets per minute. It also graphs the number of tweets about these countries in the last hour.

Today, Libya is by far the most talked about, with an average of 90 tweets a minute at the time of writing, compared to about 50 for Egypt, 15 for Bahrain and 5 for Yemen.

The dashboard also shows the distribution of keywords (hashtags) in tweets about each country.

The scale of the graph is not very clear, and the Twitter stream moves so fast that it can be difficult to follow, but overall the dashboard provides a useful resource for getting an overview of what people are talking about on Twitter in the region.