DigiActive.org

Livestream presentation on digital activism

Tune in today at 10:30 am EST to see  a livestreamed presentation by DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce and correspondent Gaurav Mishra from Participation Camp in New York City.    Mary will be giving an introduction to the field of digital activism and Gaurav will focus on digital activism in India.  (Slides for Mary’s introduction to digital activism are available here.)

Click here for livestream

UPDATE: It appears that part of the presentation is still available on Livestream.  If you click the link above or the image you will see the end of the Q&A session and then the video cycles back to the beginning of Gaurav’s talk. 

DigiActive’s Introduction to Digital Activism

It’s been a long time in coming, but here is DigiActive’s official introduction to digital activism.  This short presentation (19 slides) includes the following content:

• definition of digital activism
• examples from 3 countries (Colombia, Pakistan, China) including 3 different tools (social networks, mobile SMS, blogs)
• qualities of good digital activism: sustainability, effectiveness, reproducibility
• challenges to digital activism: the need for online-offline coordination, elitism and inequality of access, hype and tool transience, and persecution of digital activists
• what DigiActive does in this space and ways to get involved

Like all DigiActive content, the presentation is created under a Creative Commons Attribution License, so we encourage you to download it, use it, and remix it with your own content.  You can download the presentation here.

DigiActive Meet-up: Washington DC

What? Ever wondered what digital activism is?  Interested in learning what DigiActive is doing to better understand and promote this field?  This meet-up is designed for people who are new to digital activism.  DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce will make a short presentation introducing DigiActive and explaining how digital tools are being used for social change campaigns around the world, followed by a Q&A and an optional meet-and-greet for those who don’t have to rush back to work.

When? 12:30pm - 1:30pm on Friday, May 29th.
This event is a brown-bag lunch so please bring something to munch on.

Where? Pact headquarters at 1828 L St, NW on the 3d floor (map and directions). We are really happy to be partnering with Pact on this event.  Pact is an international non-profit organization which seeks to build empowered communities, effective governments and responsible private institutions by strengthening the capacity of local organizations and institutions.  You can learn more about their programs here.

Why? Get your lunch to go on Friday, learn about digital activism, and meet some cool people.

How? If you’d like to come, please RSVP on the event’s Facebook page.

DigiActive will be @ NetSquared

Thanks to a generous scholarship from the organizers, DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce will be traveling to San Jose next week on behalf of DigiActive to attend the NetSquared Conference, an event which brings together people who support the “distribution and use of social technologies for progressive change.” If you see her, stop by and say “hi”. As always, she’ll have a bunch of DigiActive laptop stickers and you might even get a hug.

The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism

We are very excited to announce the release of The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism.  Following the recent protests in Moldova, the value of Twitter as a tool for digital activism is more prominent than ever.  Yet in addition to bringing greater awareness to that tool, the hype surrounding Moldova revealed misunderstanding of the value of of Twitter for activism and, even though the realists responded strongly, there was not a stand-alone resource which clearly defined how Twitter could be used by activists.  We hope this guide will fill that void.

Click the cover image to download the guide (PDF format)

The guide provides a wealth of information on Twitter activism.  It  begins with an introduction to the platform (p. 5) and its terminology (p. 6) and then lays out five uses of Twitter for activists, each illustrated by a case study (p. 6-11).  The guide then presents a step-by-step strategy for using Twitter for political and social change (p. 12) along with a list of do’s and don’ts (p. 14) for campaigners.  The guide ends with additional resources for Twitterers, such as applications that help you use Twitter (p. 16), further reading (p. 20), and even alternatives to Twitter (p. 18).

The guide was written by Andreas Jungherr, a master’s candidate in political science at the University of Mainz in Germany, and was reviewed and improved by scholars, activists, and the DigiActive team, all for your reading enjoyment.  Please respond with your feedback in the comments section below.

A Note for Translators:  The guide is published under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial Attribution license and we welcome translation by individuals and organizations who will release their version under the same conditions. To receive a copy of the guide in an editable format, please e-mail Contact AT DigiActive DOT org.

Video: What is DigiActive?

Here is a short video of DigiActive co-founder Mary explaining what DigiActive is all about. It was made at the Info-Activism Camp last month by Frederick Noronha, co-founder of Bytes for All. You can see the rest of Frederick’s videos here.

Report from DigiActive’s Bangalore Meet-up

We had a great meet-up yesterday at the offices of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore (thanks so much to Sunil, Pranesh,  Sanchia, and Deepika for making it possible!)  It was a very diverse group, with participants from Indian and international NGOs, techies from Yahoo!, and even a radio producer and film-maker.

We started out by dissecting this Pink Chaddis campaign, a very popular women’s rights campaign organized through Facebook that had just organized a big action on Valentines’ Day.  (I’ll be posting on the campaign a little later - it’s a great one.)

However, when we went about creating a definition for digital activism, the discussion became more theoretical.  Although DigiActive is optimistic about the possibility of digital tools to empower those fighting injustice, this meet-up group decided that digital activism was value neutral and that it simply mapped onto the existing goals and motives within a society.  It is a technique that can be used for constructive or destructive ends.

At the end of the event, some participants came up to me to make sure my feelings weren’t hurt by the disagreement, but I assured them I was really happy with the result.  Only if digital activism is debated and dissected will we be able to understand and use it well.

The Digital Activism Survey 2009

UPDATE:  The survey closed to new response on April13, 2009.

As far as we know, there has never been an international survey of the people who use digital tools for activism and advocacy.  As we think this is a pretty important area of inquiry, we decided to create a survey to collect some basic data on this new and dynamic group.  We call it the:

Digital Activism Survey

If you use digital tools like blogs, Facebook, e-mail, and mobile in a campaign for change or other political or social cause, please take a moment to fill out our survey. It has approximately 20 questions, mostly multiple choice, and should take 25 minutes to complete.

Click HERE to complete the survey.

Thanks for your participation!  We will publish the results of the survey on this site.

In addition to the online survey, you can also click here to download a soft copy, if you prefer.  If you fill out the soft copy, which is in Word form,  please send it to Mary@DigiActive.org.

DigiActive training for women’s associations

Trainers Mary (standing) and Zineb (front seat on the right) with association members in Rabat.

On Tuesday, DigiActive conducted a training for Moroccan women’s rights associations.  The training, organized by the international human rights organization Global Rights, sought to give these associations new tools for their lobbying campaign in support of a domestic violence law in Morocco.   

The half-day training covered digital strategy for using blogs, video,  social networks, and mobile phones in campaining and was lead by DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce and a local Moroccan trainer, Lalla Zineb El Alaoui, who led a presentation on how to use Facebook for activism.  

The training was giving using simultaneous English-Arabic translation, thus the head sets.  Mary presented in English, and Zineb in Arabic, with Powerpoint slides in French (Morocco’s second language). At DigiActive, we roll international.

Report from DigiActive’s Rabat Meet-up

It was only our second meet-up, but also our biggest yet.  Eighteen digital activists and fans invaded the second floor of Cafe 8ieme in central Rabat.  Topics of conversation, mostly in Arabic, included the outlook for digital activism in Morocco, whether hacking is a form of activism (particularly with regard to attacks on Israeli sites during the current war) and, finally, whether it is possible to define truth or whether all history is subjective.  I’m not sure how the conversation reached that final philosophical topic (my Arabic is a bit shaky).