DigiActive.org

DigiActive News: Seeking Africa Correspondents

DigiActive.org is seeking volunteer correspondents to write about digital activism in Africa. Please direct inqueries to Mary Joyce (Mary@digiactive.org).

What will the DigiActive Africa Correspondent(s) write about? The Africa Correspondent(s) will write posts for DigiActive about how activists in Africa are using digital technology in their campaigns for social and political change. Some African digital activism cases that have previously been featured on DigiActive include the No More than 24 campaign from Kenya and the Election Watch Map from Zimbabwe. And we expect more to come!

What about cross-posting? The Africa Correspondent(s) will also be responsible for cross-posting on Kabissa.org, an NGO which provides civil society organizations in Africa with Internet services and training in order to help each one achieve their mission. This means that you get to be publish each post you write on two web sites for double the authorship credit!

How often should I write? Ideally we ask correspondents to write one post per week, though there is some flexibility depending on your schedule and other commitments.

Sounds great! Where to I sign up? If you are interested in becoming a volunteer correspondent for DigiActive (for Africa or anywhere else), please contact Mary@digiactive.org. We look forward to hearing from you!

DigiActive News: Interview (in German)

On Tuesday, DigiActive writer Simon Columbus was interviewed by Frédéric Valin of Spreeblick, which is one of Germany’s top three blogs, about digital activism.

If you understand German, you can read the whole interview on Spreeblick.

Topics included a review of last September’s “Free Burma” action lead by German bloggers and a look at the power of digital activism.

DigiActive News: Radio Interview (in Australia!)

Last week, DigiActive Co-Founder Mary Joyce was interviewed for the Australian community radio program The Fourth Estate with Daz Chandler. You can take a listen below by clicking the green arrow:

Topics discussed include the motivation for founding DigiActive, examples of how activists are using Facebook to organize international protests, whether digital activism is elitist, and why it’s a good idea to use online commercial tools for activism.

DigiActive News: DigiActive Top 50 Web 2.0 Challenge

Part of what we do at DigiActive is figure out how to use otherwise innocent commercial online platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter for activism. However, there are tons of interactive online tools out there and we can’t review all of them. We need your help!

Fortunately, we are not alone in this effort to co-opt the Internet for the purposes of social justice. If you are one of those people that likes to figure out the activist use of new online tools, we invite you to watch the following slide presentation, which features the top 50 Web 2.0 tools to support teaching an learning (it was creating by technology instructors in a school district).

Our challenge to you: figure out how digital activists can use these tools. Watch the slide show and then investigate the tools that interest you most and think about how an activist might be able to use that tools in a campaign for social change. E-mail your suggestions to Mary @ DigiActive.org and we will post the most creative activist tool use suggestions on DigiActive.

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DigiActive News: New Team Member Dan Schultz

We’re pleased to welcome Dan Schultz from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, to the DigiActive team. In 2007 he was one of 27 individuals to win the first Knight News Challenge and he is currently an active blogger for the MediaShift Idea Lab. He is still discovering new interests, but digital media as a community facilitation device has been a driving directional force since he started using the Internet. He believes that activism and community often go hand in hand, so writing for Digiactive provides a perfect opportunity to explore the community dynamics of digital media.

We look forward to his contribution and would like to invite all those interested to check out the different ways to get involved with DigiActive!

DigiActive News: New Team Member Simon Columbus

We are very pleased to welcome a new team member to the DigiActive project:

Simon Columbus from Siegen, Germany, started blogging in early 2007, and has been involved in several human & civil rights projects. He is part of the Free Burma Action, and is a member of the German anti-data retention movement. In the wake of the bloggers’ response to Burma’s saffron revolution, Simon co-founded the digital activism site Blogger for Freedom. He is also a member of the international Blog4Burma Coalition and an editor for FreeKareem. Additionally, Simon co-founded the Waldorf blog Namenstänzer and has a personal blog at simoncolumbus.de.

We look forward to his contribution and would like to invite all those interested to check out the different ways to get involved with DigiActive:

DigiActive isn’t a web site. It’s a community of people who care passionately about digital activism, who are creating a world of activists empowered by digital technology. It’s a community by and for activists. Come join us! Here’s how to get involved.

1. Sign Yourself Up

Enter your e-mail address on the DigiActive homepage in the field labeled “Join Us!” Then we will keep you up date by sending you news of the latest cool things happening at DigiActive. We give you our solemn promise that we will not send you spam or other e-mail annoyances.

2. Write for DigiActive

The primary means we have for spreading the word about digital activism is by writing about it. We are always looking for people to write about a new digital activism tool, tactic, campaign, action, guide… the list goes on. And you don’t need to write in English! We are looking for writers in all languages, Read more »

DigiActive News: in The New York Times’ blog

We at DigiActive like to think of ourselves as pretty humble, but we were so thrilled when we saw this that we just had to share it:

DigiActive received a link, a quote, and an image in the New York Times‘ blog, The Lede. (According to them, we’re a “rights group”.) Click the image to read their full post on Fouad.

DigiActive News: Fouad Mourtada is Free!

It is with great joy that we break this story. This is a huge victory for digital activism. Thank you to all the people who supported the campaign, both online and offline!

CASABLANCA, March 18 - Fouad Mourtada was released from Oukacha Prison at approximately 8:00pm local time today, having received a royal pardon.

Mr. Mourtada, a 26-year old IT engineer, was taken into custody on February 5th, 2008, and was questioned regarding a fake Facebook profile of King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, which he had created on January 15. During his interrogation, Mr. Mourtada reports that he was beaten, spat on and insulted.

On February 22, Mr. Mourtada was sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of $1350 for creating the fake profile. The official charge was identity fraud of an electronic document.

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