DigiActive.org

Campaign: Nestle Gets Crushed Online by Green Activists

Description: Global food giant Nestlé has been under a critical spotlight for alleged poor corporate and social practices for many years. Recently, activists have accused the company of several problems, including only one percent of Nestlé cocoa products are FairTrade certified, continued child slavery in the cocoa supply chain, and its baby milk products not meeting international standards. The latest accusation of Nestlé’s bad practices is now being seen loud and clear through a viral video, which is another great example of digital activism.

Digital Tools Being Used: Video, Facebook

What Are They Doing: Greenpeace UK uploaded a video on Youtube, showing an office worker opening a Kit Kat and finding an orangutan’s finger. Nestlé, which produces the popular chocolate bar, is being blamed by the green justice group of buying palm oil, which is used in many of its products, from Indonesian producer Sinar Mar. As a result, Greenpeace claims that this partnership has resulted in destroyed rainforests where Indonesia’s last orangutans live and has created a devastating carbon footprint.

In the last 50 years, an area more than twice the size of Germany has been logged, burned or otherwise degraded, with palm oil plantations being a major cause, according to Greenpeace.

On Wednesday, Nestlé released a statement denying it buys palm oil from Sinar Mar for any of its products, including Kit Kats.

“We do purchase palm oil from Cargill and we have sought assurances from them about their supply chain,” it said.

“Cargill has informed us that Sinar Mas needs to answer Greenpeace’s allegations by the end of April. They have indicated that they will de-list Sinar Mas if they do not take corrective action by then.

“Nestlé recently undertook a detailed review of its supply chain to establish the source of its palm oil supplies and we have made a commitment to using only ‘Certified Sustainable Palm Oil’ by 2015, when sufficient quantities should be available.”

Greenpeace claims that Nestlé asked YouTube to remove the video citing copyright concerns. Specifically Nestlé was bothered by the twist on the Kit Kat’s famous slogan used at the end of the video: “Have a break? Give orangutans a break.” However, the video was reposted the next day. Greenpeace said the video being taken down was a censorship attempt, which was “a pretext for stopping the word being spread and an apparent attempt to silence us.”

Elsewhere online, approximately 90,000 Nestle protesters have taken over the company’s Facebook page, to make their grievances clear, creating possibly one of the largest digital protests since last summer’s Iranian election protests. In the long run, the Nestle debacle might show other companies how not to deal with online crisis communications. While Greenpeace created a very effective and (very graphic) video, the question always remains: Will digital activists take their protests offline and actually stop eating Kit Kats in the long term? Only time will tell.

Campaign:”I Know” Targets US Young Adults on HIV

Description: According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), over 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV. In the United States most aid for preventing and treating the virus tends to go towards those living in the developing world. However, there has been criticism by many American advocates that the U.S. government has neglected to provide the same aid to a group in its own country which has been the most affected by the virus – African Americans. While African Americans represent over 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for over half of all those being infected yearly and living in the United States with HIV. As the Obama administration starts to put together a national HIV/AIDS strategy – the first one in 20 years, other HIV activists are taking their message directly to the people via digital activism.

Digital Tools Being Used: Facebook, Twitter, Text Message, Radio & Video

What Are They Doing: The “i know” effort is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Act Against AIDS campaign, which uses multiple social media platforms to reach out to African American youth with facts about HIV/AIDS with the aim to engage them in open conversation.

“By supporting frank conversations through social media, ‘i know’ creates an opportunity for young people to talk directly with each other about the issues that fuel this still-deadly disease,” said Kevin Fenton, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention. “Their ideas and involvement will be a critical part of the solution.”

The campaign uses a mix of both old and new media. Followers have a choice of using Twitter, Facebook and texting to get alerts and status updates on HIV knowledge and attitudes, as well as links to information about HIV testing and prevention. The campaign’s website allows users to identify local HIV testing sites and campaign events and video stories of those living with HIV. There are also radio and online video public service announcements that has actor Jamie Foxx calling for a new discussion on HIV.

What is the Impact:Since the campaign’s launch on March 4, hundreds of users have become followers of the various platforms and it seems that the campaign has initially succeeded in engaging users, as can be seen with the many status re-tweets and discussion. While it is good that social media is being used in this campaign, it should also be highlighted that the campaign’s radio use is just as important, as many African-Americans still see the significance of this medium for getting out information within their community. However, it will take a longer amount of time to actually determine if both the online and radio efforts turn into offline actions.

Against Crowdsourced Politics

The last post begins with the seemingly benign phrase “the promise of digital activism is to crowdsource global political transformation.”  I wrote it and I was pretty proud of myself.  I thought it succinctly summed up the potential of decentralized politics, where power is defined at the edge and by the grassroot, by thousands of ordinary citizens mobilizing together.   Well, Michel Bauwens set me straight.

Michel is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives.  I heard him speak yesterday at the great Internet as Factory and Playground conference in New York.  Michel didn’t set me straight directly, but his definition of crowdsourcing, and its distinction from peer-to-peer collaboration, made me see the error of my ways.

The key is that crowdsourcing is still centralized: the producer is still a cog in a machine, only the machine is bigger.  It’s not a factory, it’s the entire world, and producers are connected by the network, not be shared physical space.  The individual producer chooses which part of the task she will take, she takes a much smaller part, and she decides whether or not to participate, but she does not decide what the overall project is.  Whether the task is something as malevolent as identifying Iranian protesters for the government or as benign as fans re-shooting Star Wars, the task is defined at the center, produced at the edge.   It is no coincidence that the term crowdsourcing derives from another practice of hierarchical labor distribution: outsourcing.

Peer to peer production is different:  it is center-less and it is non-hierarchical.  Even if someone is organizing, that person has no more power than any other member of the project.  There is no center and edge.  There is only the network.  The web site doesn’t make the origins clear, but if Star Wars: Uncut is organized by a group of fans, then their project to re-shoot their favorite movie by piecing together thousands of scenes re-staged by other fans is peer-to-peer.  If the project is organized by Lucasfilm Ltd., then it is being crowdsourced.  It is all about who benefits and where the power lies.

What would this mean in the political realm? Crowdsourced politics means that the center benefits ultimately from the divided labor: for example, a political campaign asking supporters to host fundraisers in their homes or directing citizens to call their Congressman to support or  opposed a piece of legislation.   The effects of crowdsourcing might be in the public interest, but even though execution of the task occurs at the edge, the ultimate decision of what the activity will be is decided at the center.

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Social Media for Social Change in the 1800’s

A massive system of human rights abuse is occurring in the United States.  Activists, intent on putting a human face on the mass tragedy, appropriate photographs of victims and disseminate them through their social networks.  Soon the mainstream media catches on, furthering the outcry.  The year is 1863 and the human right abuse is slavery.

When we think about “social media” we most often think about digital applications: blogs, social networks, wikis, SMS.  Yet Wikipedia defines social media as “media designed to be disseminated through social interaction,” and these practices have existed for centuries.  Looking at historical cases of social media outside the digital context can help to clarify underlying mechanics which are often lost in the hype surrounding current tools.

The image I referred to in the first paragraph is above at left: a man named Gordon who was formerly  enslaved in Mississippi before escaping and taking refuge with the Union Army in Louisiana during the American Civil War.  The photograph was taken by an army doctor and used by activists to vividly illustrate the inhumanity and cruelty and slavery.  While the image was disseminated in mainstream media outlets like The New York Independent and Harper’s Weekly newspapers, and as a projected image in lectures by abolitionists, the social media aspect of the campaign was the “carte to visite”. (source)

Cartes de visites – French for “visiting card” – were a very popular social practice among wealthy and middle class Americans in the 19th century.   The cards, which used to simply bear a visitor’s name,  were originally used in the social protocol of aristocrat Europe.  They became popularized with the advent and increasing affordability of photography and were collected among friends and neighbors.  It would not be uncommon for a collection of cartes de visites to be displayed in the parlor.  Photos of political celebrities were particularly popular and social campaigns also used the practice to spread their message. (source)

So what can we learn about modern social media activism from the analogue social media of the visiting card?  Here are 3 lessons:

1. Effective social media campaigns are built on top of robust social practices.

In this day and age we tend to focus on new tools and what they can do.  We pay less attention to the social practices that surround these tools.  Many nonprofits create Facebook and Twitter accounts because of the hype surrounding them, even if their target audience is not using the application and if there is no clear connection between the organization’s strategic goals and the application’s capacities.

The first cartes de visites were created in 1854 in France, but did not arrive in the US until several years later.  If American abolitionists had come up with a campaign in which people distributed photos of  slaves through their social networks in the early 1850s, the campaign would have fallen flat on its face.   The success of the abolitionists’ carte de visite campaign was reliant on the practice of carte de visite just as much as  the technology of the photograph.

2. Technology creates affordances, making new outcomes possible but not certain

In his great book, The Wealth of Networks, Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler describes technology as creating “affordances”, qualities of the object that make an action possible.   Just as the technology of the social network today allows for free international collaboration and event organization, the photograph allowed middle class urban people in the 1800’s who had never visited a plantation to see the horrors of slavery.  The key here is possibility.   The technology of  the photograph made the grassroots carte de visite campaign possible, but the it was the practice of sharing cartes de visites that made it a success.

3. A successful social media campaign will give equal weight to the technologies available and the practices of the target audience.

Recent history has taught us that successful social media campaigns occur in the sweet spot of social practices and available technology: the American middle class and online campaign donations, Facebook and expatriate communities,  SideWiki and British news junkies.

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NY-23: Looking into the Future of Power

DigiActive’s slogan is “a world of digital activists” and our goal is a world of citizens politically empowered by digital technology.  I often wonder what that world would look like.  I envision independent communication, mobilization, and information dissemination, citizens creating new and powerful organizations independent of – and sometimes threatening to – existing institutions.  In the United States, in the 23rd district of New York state, we are seeing this future right now.

In NY-23, a rural congressional district in the north of the state, conservative grassroots activists are organizing a nationwide campaign to get a Conservative party candidate into office, this in a district that has sent a Republican to Congress consistently since the 19th century.   Conservative activists across the country, ignoring the central organization of the Republican party, began sending massive amounts of online donations to the Conservative party candidate, Dough Hofffman, and attacking the Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava.  In part because of the gap in fundraising, Scozzafava suspended her campaign on Saturday and threw her support to the Democratic candidate, further enraging grassroots activists.

When I attended the Personal Democracy Forum in New York last June Mark Pesce, a futurist and pioneer in virtual reality, spoke about the tension between vertical and horizontal power structures that the Internet was producing.   He gave the example of the Church of Scientology (vertical hierarchy) vs. Wikipedia (horizontal collaboration).  The case of the New York election is even more interesting as the Republican Party (vertical hierarchy) tries unsuccessfully to organize or control conservative activists (horizontal collaboration).

It is more interesting because it is political, and shows us the possible re-balancing of power made possible by an internet that allows for quick resource transfer and accumulation (online donations) and organizing through alternative broadcast channels (conservative blogs).   And, unlike the Obama campaign, which used these tactics as part of a top-down campaign that included grassroots participation, the national conservative movement is truly beyond the control of the political institution of the American right: the Republican party.

It is a sign of power shifts to come, with all the chaos  associated with democracy.  It is also not clear whether these citizen actions are beneficial, either for the citizens organizing them, the other citizens of New York state, or for America.  Is this movement a sign of the potential empowerment of all citizens through similar tactics or an example of a minority empowering itself to the detriment of the majority?  A pluralistic nonviolent power environment where citizens can successful challenge political institutions might be advantageous in an authoritarian regime when the government holds an abusive monopoly on power, but in a state like the US, where power is more evenly apportioned, are these movements beneficial to the political whole?   In both cases, a disruption of the current political structure occurs, which can have both positive and negative outcomes.  I am eager to see the next case study in the story of the networked power shift and see how this trend develops.

DigiActive Memo: US Embargoes Harm Activists

DigiActive’s Mary Joyce, Andreas Jungherr and Daniel Schultz recently created a policy memo on the harmful effects of American software embargoes on digital activists around the world. It was presented for a Congressional hearing before the US Helsinki Commission.

A brief overview:

In the digital age, where a “good” is a string of code that can be delivered anywhere in the world with the click of a mouse, even today’s smart sanctions are not smart enough.  By preventing access to blogging platforms, social networks, and other types of new media, current embargo policies harm the very activists who are furthering our common goals of democracy promotion, while leaving authoritarian governments free to spread propaganda through a range of state-controlled media outlets.

The full version is below.  Click to download the .pdf:

Not Smart Enough:
How America’s “Smart” Sanctions Harm the World’s Digital Activists

by Mary Joyce, Andreas Jungherr and Daniel Schultz[1]
The DigiActive Working Group on Sanction Reform for the Digital Age

A Wave of Attacks on the World’s Digital Activists

In the winter and spring of this year, a wave of attacks on digital activists began.  In Zimbabwe, the web site of one the nation’s strongest pro-democracy groups, Kubatana, was threatened with being shut down.  In Belarus, another pro-democracy web site, this one representing the Belarussian American Association, received the same threat.  In February bloggers in Iran received a similar notice that their blogs would be suspended, this in spite of research by the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society that the Iranian blogosphere is a vibrant arena for both supporters and opponents of the current regime.  In Sudan, aid workers are unable to download Google Earth and its “Crisis in Darfur” map, which would give them important information on sites of violence.  In April users in Syria were temporarily blocked from using the social network LinkedIn, though social networks have played an important role in organizing grassroots citizen movements in countries from Egypt and Morocco to Colombia.

… Perpetrated by United States’ Embargo Policies

Who was behind this wave of attacks?  Was it President Mugabe? President Lukashenko? President Assad?  No.  The perpetrator of these attacks on pro-democracy activists was none other than the United States government and American companies adhering to its embargo regimes.

The United States has several embargo regimes related both to particular products (such as encryption software) and to individuals.  These sanctions were designed to protect US interests while limiting the effect of these measures to our nation’s enemies.  Yet in the digital age, where a “good” is a string of code that can be delivered anywhere in the world with the click of a mouse, even today’s smart sanctions are not smart enough.  By preventing access to blogging platforms, social networks, and other types of new media, current embargo policies harm the very activists who are furthering our common goals of democracy promotion, while leaving authoritarian governments free to spread propaganda through a range of state-controlled media outlets.

… With American Firms Caught in an Untenable Position

These embargo policies leave American firms in a difficult position.  Overwhelmed by a mass of overlapping sanctions, many take the most conservative position and simply cut off all clients in targeted countries, even though sanctions target only a few individuals.  This was the policy of the Utah-based company Bluehost, which was responsible for cutting off users in Zimbabwe, Belarus, and Iran earlier this year.  Especially in light of potential fines, Bluehost decided to play it safe by cutting off all users in embargoed countries, rather than constantly cross-check their users against Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) lists.

Though activists may be frustrated with this kind of corporate decision-making, it is consistent with the firm’s role as a profit-making entity.  American companies may choose to promote ethical activity and protect activists in foreign nations, but this is hardly their purpose.  When protecting activists means potentially running afoul of the US government, it is not surprising that many firms choose to cut off activists to protect shareholder interests.

New Embargo Policies for the Digital Age

In light of these private-sector realities, responsibility for protecting foreign democracy activists falls to the US government.  DigiActive’s Working Group on Sanction Reform for the Digital Age recommends the following steps in order to bring about this reform:

1. Creation of a Single Body of Software Regulations: Members of the government bodies responsible for promulgating sanctions should conduct a thorough review of all regulations and legislation related to embargoes on software including, but not limited to, the Commerce Department’s Export Administration Regulations and the sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.  This review would result in the creation of a single volume of software policies which, at a minimum, will make it easier for US firms to abide by current rules and, by clarifying their responsibilities, would allow them to follow the letter of the law rather than taking the unnecessarily conservative positions they are currently applying to avoid the risk of transgressing unclear embargo regulations.
2. Stakeholder Review of Software Regulations:  Once this single body of regulation is created, stakeholders should be invited to comment and suggest modifications to the existing rules.  This stakeholder group should include, but not be limited to, representatives of the agencies responsible for promulgating and enforcing the sanctions, representatives of American firms who must abide by the sanctions, and experts in digital activism and democracy promotion.
3. Promulgation of New Regulations:  Based on this stakeholder review, DigiActive suggests that a new set of sanctions be promulgated that recognize 1) that software embargoes function quite differently than embargoes on physical goods 2) that any software embargo is highly susceptible to failure because of the ease in circumventing online blocks to digital goods and 3) that access to new media tools is a great benefit to democracy activists, who lack other means of organization and message dissemination, while being of little use to authoritarian regimes, who have entire state apparatuses at their disposal.

We at the DigiActive Working Group on Sanction Reform for the Digital Age are optimistic about the positive outcome of this process and would like to offer our continuing assistance.  You may contact us through our web site at www.DigiActive.org .

[1] This policy memo was originally written for a Congressional briefing panel before the Commission
on Security and Cooperation in Europe (October 22, 2009)

To download the full version, please click

Action Alert: Help Detained Vietnamese Bloggers

Background: The web has become a critical tool for over 20 million Vietnamese internet users to access and share information beyond the censorship of the state-run media.  Since September 2008, the authorities in Vietnam have unleashed a massive campaign against Vietnamese bloggers and cyber activists. In the last 12 months at least 15 bloggers have been arrested and harassed. According to Viet Tan, a Vietnamese pro-democracy group based outside the country, these bloggers  were simply posting their writings critical of the government’s handling of the land sovereignty disputes with China and bauxite mining. For example blogger Sphinx was detained for posting on his blog a picture of himself wearing a T-shirt saying “Paracel and Spratly islands belong to Vietnam. ”

How to Help: People can download the internet freedom poster and publish it on FaceBook, blogs and so on. People who live in America can send a pre-written letter to their Representative and urge him/her to support internet freedom in Vietnam.

Impact: The bloggers do not belong to any association or organization and it will be easy for them to be forgotten. Any international campaign can be helpful to create a virtual shield to protect them or at least keep their presence alive.

15andCounting: Strategy Behind a Social Media Campaign

video introduction to the 15andcounting campaign

15andCounting is a campaign by the International Planned Parenthood Foundation demanding better access to sexual health services for youth.  They are using a mix of old and new social media tools, from an e-petition and Flickr to Twitter, the SMS platform Mxit, and the music platform Dopetracks.

In this interview I ask Paul Bell, a campaign representative, about the strategic thinking behind their tool choice and how their use of these  online and mobile tools will lead to offline change in government policies towards youth.

What is the 15andCounting campaign?

15andCounting is a global campaign to demand better access to sexual health services and education for everyone. We’re now 15 years into a 20 year commitment signed by 179 governments to improve the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all young people. Only five years remain and many governments are seriously failing to make progress against their goals. 15andCounting is encouraging young people to call their governments to task on their grave failings

How have governments failed to make progress to promote, protect, and provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services?

There are 1.5 billion young people in the world today and the majority of them live without access to condoms or contraception. This is contributing to: the spread of HIV, millions of unwanted pregnancies, millions of women continuing to die from pregnancy related causes every year, and millions of young people having to drop out of education at an early age.

Any attachment to the choice of the name?

Fifteen years ago, at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, 179 governments signed up to a Programme of Action to improve the sexual and reproductive health of everyone. 2009 is the 15 year mark. People born in that year (1994) at the time of the ICPD, are now 15 years old and form part of the largest cohort of young people the world has ever seen – some 1.5 billion – who have a right to sexual and reproductive health services and information.

Why run the campaign now?

People born in 1994 at the time of the ICPD are now 15 years old and form part of the largest cohort of young people the world has ever seen – some 1.5 billion – who have a right to sexual and reproductive health services and information. Fifteen years after ICPD too many governments have failed to make good on their promises. Only five years remain for the vision of ICPD to become reality. Unless governments deliver on their promises young people will be denied services and information critical to their health and wellbeing.

What’s the motive for running the petition now?

The Count Me In petition will be delivered to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the 12^th of October, in an attempt to help persuade governments to promote, protect and fulfil their promise to provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services for all young people. October marks the 15^th anniversary of the ICPD conference in Cairo.

What are the network platforms you’re using to attain the goal of the campaign?

Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/15-and-counting)

Twitter (http://twitter.com/15andcounting)

Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDGoFfvvIXY&feature=channel_page)

Dopetracks (http://www.dopetracks.com/forums/4/topics/13784)

Millions of young people across the world do not have access to a computer, but do have a mobile phone. Therefore we are also working with MXit, an instant message provider to reach young people primarily in Africa through their mobile phones via a WAP site (www.15andcounting.mobi).  We are also launching SMS campaigns in Kenya, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico.

With a lot of social network sites, why did you choose these particular networks over the other network platforms?

Twitter has been used as a way to get buy-in form professional stakeholders in the charity/care sector and to connect with bloggers and influential voices in the conversation: we feel that Twitter is the ideal for this purpose, but as a secondary function it also works to extend the outreach direct to people for petition signatures.

Youtube was purely there to host the video, which is easily embedded into other sites.

Dopetracks is a unique online proposition: a community of beat-makers, singers, poets, rappers, all collaborating online via their online music player/recorder (so that people don’t need any proprietary kit). We felt that the target market will be able to express themselves effectively – and engage with – the campaign though music. These people are very active promoters of their music and it encourages brand advocates to raise awareness with their peers.

How is each of the networks used?

http://twitter.com/15andcounting – we’ve built up a following or stakeholders and interested parties, which has stimulated wider distribution through blog posts and ‘retweeting’ of the 15&Counting messages. We have used Twitter as a distribution channel, not as a content channel.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/15-and-counting/56924592285?_fb_noscript=1 – a Facebook group has been set up and is used to flag up news and drive discussion amongst members and an ‘Are you a Sexpert?’ application was developed to further engage our audience. This is designed to pull together a community of supporters and drove people to complete the survey.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDGoFfvvIXY A video on what the campaign is all about was put together and uploaded onto Youtube – this is video is embedded into the 15andCounting homepage, and is used as an background information piece for the blog outreach.

http://www.dopetracks.com – We’re setting up a competition on Dopetracks – a large online music collaboration network so that young people can create and distribute tracks with a 15andCounting theme within the network and in other networks: These people are very active promoters of their music and it encourages brand advocates to raise awareness with their peers. They frequently use twitter, myspace and other networks to increase the distribution of their music. We’ll also be encouraging people to collaborate with other people in different countries, using our blog/ partner network.

We’ll also be using the collateral created to promote into local radio and with a ‘mixtape’ of the featured tracks.

How effective will these platforms be for your cause?

The web is essential for IPPF to reach the target audience. These social platforms allow the campaign to engage directly with young people and allow them to get connected to groups in their country or region who are working towards improving sexual and reproductive health and rights. More than anything, we’re looking at how to facilitate people to become advocates for the campaign and motivate others. We have created an instruction/ training blog to show our partners around the world to engage with social media http://15andcountinglearn.wordpress.com/

We’ve been effective in activating community support for our campaigns, including driving support for ‘buzz marketing’ initiatives. We have had two Digg.com front pages: http://digg.com/health/Best_Condom_Adverts_Ever (this drove 22,000 people to the site in 24 hours) and http://digg.com/educational/Teach_5_to_8_year_olds_masturbation_says_UN_agency (this encouraged 6000 people to bookmark the site and broke traffic figures for the site).

You realize that their many online petitions, most of which unfortunately have failed to make impact, what have you done not to suffer similar fate?

We have done everything we can to ensure that the petition makes an impact by supplementing it with a number of elements – we have created a dedicated website for the campaign, used social networking sites (as detailed above) to target a wide variety of youth, and used mobile phones to reach the population who have less access to the internet. In this way we hope that we have ‘randomized’ our petition as much as possible, making it available to the widest possible net, without targeting specific communities. As such we believe we have compiled a very robust study, for example in Africa we have had 94,000 people sign the petition through the .mobi site. Furthermore we know that the activists involved in this campaign will continue to work hard on the ground in their countries to ensure the message stays alive.

How will you reach the larger population, which is not much involved in using digital tools?

A combination of the below:

Advocacy programmes are being undertaken by IPPF member associations – IPPF works in 176 countries worldwide and a global leader in providing and advocating for the right to improved sexual and reproductive health. Here we

Mobile phones – as mentioned above, we are targeting millions of young people across the world who do not have access to a computer, but do have a mobile phone – both through SMS and instant messaging.

Postcards – postcards which allow people to sign the petition have been distributed in key communities across the globe

Critics say online polls are highly non-representative of the population, and the respondents are self-selected.  Isn’t this also a pseudo-petition?

To get truly representative engagement with the target audience, we would have to spend a huge amount of valuable resources engaging people on the ground in each country: that money would better be spent campaigning. Online is the most cost effective way to run the petition, and we’ve addressed the differing ways that people engage with the net in different countries (e.g. via mobile phone) and sought to facilitate signatures in non digital formats (eg. postcards).

How will it be delivered to government heads, especially those who signed the memorandum? And what is your expected outcome thereafter?

The Count Me In petition will be delivered to high-level United Nations officials on the 12^th of October, in an attempt to help persuade governments to promote, protect and fulfil their promise to provide better access to sexual and reproductive health services for all young people.

Through the 15andCounting campaign we will have engaged with a whole new generation and cohort of committed young advocates around the globe and we hope that these advocates will remain engaged with the issues 15andCounting addresses. We will continue to empower our youth advocates to become highly effective network builders and advocacy experts into the future.

Campaign:Brits use Twitter in support of NHS

Description: Relations between Americans and the British have not always been the greatest. From the American Revolutionary War to the disagreement over the military campaign in Iraq, sometimes it might have seem like a good idea by Mother Nature that the Atlantic Ocean separates the two warring factions.

The latest battle has been taking place online. Currently, Americans are debating the future of its health care system. President Barack Obama has stated that he would like all Americans to have access to quality health care within the next decade. However, not only are Americans fighting each other over this issue in town hall meetings, Republican politicians have also accused Obama’s plan to be a reflection of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), which has been viewed by some as being “socialist” at best and similar to a “death panel” at worst.

Of course, the Brits are not taking this laying down.

Digital Tools Being Used: Twitter
What Are They Doing: Over the last couple of days British and some Canadian folks have gotten onto Twitter, using the hashtag #welovetheNHS to campaign in support of their health care system against verbal attacks from their American counterparts. Here are a just few of the millions of tweets that have come up on this topic:

lollaloves: NHS free? You gotta be kidding me. You’re all taxed through your nose for a health care with Third World standards. #welovethenhs

dontgetfooled: My grandmother had a major heart op on the NHS, for free, in her 80s. “Death panels” are a big fat lie… #welovethenhs

jetersfan: #welovethenhs NOT IF UR DEALING W/ A TERMINAL DISEASE AND NEVER SEE THE SAME DOCTOR TWICE!!!

editoriale: My son was premature, couldn’t swallow, underweight and yellow. He’d have died without the NHS. Didn’t cost me a f**king dime #WeLoveTheNHS

girlonasoapbox: #welovethenhs I wouldn’t be typing this if it wasn’t for free prescriptions and good care I have received from the NHS. Leave off you prats.

Pro-NHS campaigners are also adding “Twibbons” to their avatars to show their support. Last night, even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Sarah got into the debate with his own tweets.

@DowningStreet PM:NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there #welovetheNHS

@SarahBrown10 #welovetheNHS – more than words can say

The White House has put out generic rebuttals on their Twitter account about the attacks.

@whitehouse Don’t believe everything you see on the web about health insurance reform. Pls share: http://bit.ly/maVkF #healthreform #hc09

What is the Impact: U.S. Congress is expected to vote on health reform in the next few weeks, and many analysts say that Obama’s plan might have an uphill battle to face, despite having a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate. Nonetheless, this Twitter face-off might be the first of many examples where people with disagreeing views might engage each other in civil debate.

Mobile Activism in Uganda: Environmental Issue Touches Ethnic Nerve

Part of Mabira forest

Background: In an attempt to increase its sugar production, the Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd., which produces Lugazi Sugar, sought government permission to clear and annex about 71,000 square km of the adjacent Mabira forest.  Mabira forest is one of Uganda’s largest natural tropical forests.

There is has been a period of government offering prime pieces of land to investors. This has attracted widespread criticism from the opposition politicians, civil organizations and the media.

The National Association of Professional Environmentalists, under the banner “Save Mabira Crusade”, organized the demonstration in April. The demonstration took place in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda.

Tools: Mobile Phones

Police men facing demonstrators

How tools were used: Messages were sent to people’s phones. One of the messages read; “Save Mabira. Don’t Buy Lugazi Sugar.”

Outcome: After the protest, their continued tense debates on broadcast stations. The government announced that the proposal had been suspended. Also, the Indian community in Uganda appealed to Mehta Group, the Indian parent company of Sugar Corporation of Uganda Ltd., to drop the request. This was after the local population turned hostile on Indians during the riot.

The organizers were overwhelmed by the numbers that turned up. Wielding banners, posters and tree branches, the demonstrators planned to walk to Parliament to present their petition to the speaker of Parliament. These were ordinary people, most of them casual labourers who joined the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, students and politicians showing their solidarity. The police who had earlier permitted the demonstration tried to stop the protesters from reaching the gates of Parliament. This led to running battles between the protesters and police in the streets. Military police armed with peppered tear gas, water cannons and heavy ammunition were poured onto the streets. Town business was heavily destabilized, traders hurriedly crossed their shops to guard against the looters. But still some shops were vandalized, especially those that belonged to Indians.

Impact: The demonstration was successful, despite the violence, as the main cause of saving Mabira was achieved, thanks to the use of digital means – mobile phones. However, the leaders of the crusade were temporarily held by police.  

Sugar Corporation of Uganda had low sales of their Lugazi Sugar in the following months, and the company had to do some re-branding. This further forced Mehta Group to devise other means of increasing their production capacity.

Analysis: Using the complex configuration and composition of Save Mabira Crusade community Ugandans took advantage of an opportunity in crisis to learn much more about community dynamics in environment and development.

One important lesson was that it is possible to have unity in diversity and diversity in unity and that no power under the sun can crash these dualisms when a people is determined to defend its collective interest. This was a beautiful aspect of the Mabira demonstration.

Exogenous factors beyond crusaders’ control penetrated and marred the demonstration. Until then, the crusaders were in charge of it while government was in charge of security, which unfortunately broke down. Sadly some people died, others got injured and many properties were destroyed. This was the ugly part of the demonstration.

Crusaders, as an emergent, issue-focused community, learnt that, for Mabira, they had to empower themselves to act; that empowerment goes beyond political or legal permission to participate in civic activities; that empowerment includes capacity to do things that citizens want to do or be done; and that community capacity-building and strengthening for action by the community itself work where government has failed to act or discourages such action.

It was a truly socio-environmental movement for sanity in environmental governance. Despite official perception it had nothing direct to do with politics although (i) civic political leaders of diverse political orientations and association participated and may have, as they often do, developed opportunistic tendencies; and (ii) it is difficult to separate civil society work and activism from politics. Indeed civil society (organized or not organized) is part and parcel of a country’s political stream, not only to vote but also to demand good governance -environmental, political or otherwise. The accountability of non-governmental organizations is also linked to and influenced by politics and political processes.

Image Source: ugpulse.com,

Tags: Mabira, Uganda
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