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R@D: Mobile Phones as a Tool for Civil Resistance - Case Studies from Serbia and Belarus

The purpose of Research@DigiActive (R@D) is to produce applied, thought-provoking, actionable research at the cutting edge of Digital Activism. It seeks to highlight and disseminate studies in the new academic field of digital activism by publishing short papers by promising scholars. To submit a paper or get more information, please contact our Director of Applied Research, Patrick Meier, at Patrick AT Digiactive.org.

Title: Mobile Phones as a Tool for Civil Resistance - Case Studies from Serbia and Belarus

Author: Fabien Miard

Abstract: The recent so-called “Twitter Revolutions” in Moldova and Iran have created a renewed interest in the role of new communication technologies in civil resistance and social protest activities. It is a new example in a growing list of events where such technologies played an important role in facilitating protests. Twitter and other microblogging platforms represent a new phenomenon because they easily work across different types of communication technologies such as instant messaging, blogging, and text messaging. This convergence also draws attention to the wide-spread use of mobile phones in civil resistance, a factor often overlooked by Internet enthusiasts. This R@D product summarizes some key insights from interviews with civil activists in both Serbia and Belarus that were part of a master thesis project on mobile phone usage in protest movements, and it links them to insights gained from the recent “Twitter Revolutions”. Although the cases of Serbia and Belarus might initially seem similar because of their geographic proximity, struggles with dictatorial leaders, and historical Communist dominance, mobile phone use by activists in these countries is markedly different. Mobile phones were a critical tactical tool in bringing down Milosevic in 2000. However, only 8 years later, mobiles are less useful to anti-Lukashenka Belarusian activists in the present day because of the state’s increasingly effective surveillance of mobile communication.

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R@D: Case Study on Vietnam’s Blogger Movement

Note: Although this article was not produced for R@D, we found it to be an excellent overview of the digital activism context in Vietnam and are publishing it here with the consent of the authors.

The purpose of Research@DigiActive (R@D) is to produce applied, thought-provoking, actionable research at the cutting edge of Digital Activism. It seeks to highlight and disseminate studies in the new academic field of digital activism by publishing short papers by promising scholars. To submit a paper or get more information, please contact our Director of Applied Research, Patrick Meier, at Patrick AT Digiactive.org.

Title: Vietnam’s Blogger Movement: A Virtual Civil Society in the Midst of Government Repression

Authors: Duy Hoang, Cuong Nguyen, and Angelina Huynh
of the pro-democracy organization Viet Tan

Abstract: Despite the increasing popularity of social media in Vietnam, government persecution of online political activists have put significant limitations on digital activism in that country. The paper begins by discussing popular technology platforms and summarizing the success stories of online citizen journalism. However, the actions of the government to curtail online activism - blocking of critical sites, collaboration with foreign companies to create a censorship mechanism similar to the Great Firewall of China, and imprisonment of digital activists - has made the overall outlook bleak. The paper ends with policy recommendations for those outside the country who wish to support the human rights of and online freedom of expression of those in Vietnam.

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R@D: Mobile Activism in African Elections - a Comparative Case Study

The purpose of Research@DigiActive (R@D) is to produce applied, thought-provoking, actionable research at the cutting edge of Digital Activism. It seeks to highlight and disseminate studies in the new academic field of digital activism by publishing short papers by promising scholars. To submit a paper or get more information, please contact our Director of Applied Research, Patrick Meier, at Patrick AT Digiactive.org.

Title: Mobile Technology in African Elections: a Comparative Case Study

Author: Rebekah Heacok

Abstract: The proliferation of mobile phones in Africa is transforming the political and social landscape of the developing world, empowering people to source and share their own information and to have a greater say in what comes to international attention. This R@D product compare the use and impact of mobile technology in three recent African elections: Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Kenya.

In Nigeria’s April 2007 presidential election, a local civil society organization used free software to collect over 10,000 text message reports from voters around the country, boosting citizen participation in a political process many Nigerians doubted. In Sierra Leone’s August-September 2007 elections, trained local monitors used mobile phones to collect data from designated polling sites, enabling the independent National Election Watch to compile and release an accurate, comprehensive analysis of the election almost two weeks before the official report. And in Kenya’s December 2007 election, a group of local digital activists developed and implemented a citizen reporting platform to allow Kenyans to report and track post-election violence during a month-long media blackout, collecting and publishing a comprehensive account of riots, displacement and human rights abuses that serves as one of the best available records of the crisis.

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R@D: Facebook and the anti-FARC Rallies

The purpose of Research@DigiActive (R@D) is to produce applied, thought-provoking, actionable research at the cutting edge of Digital Activism. It seeks to highlight and disseminate studies in the new academic field of digital activism by publishing short papers by promising scholars. To submit a paper or get more information, please contact our Director of Applied Research, Patrick Meier, at Patrick AT Digiactive.org.

Title: Facebook for Protest? The Value of Social Software for Political Activism in the Anti-FARC Rallies

Authors: Christina Neumayer, Celina Raffl
ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg, Austria

Abstract: How do real and virtual spaces influence on another in the field of political activism? This R@D research product draws on the Facebook-mediated anti-FARC protests in Colombia to assess the potential of the Internet in globalizing geographically specific political contests. One of the key factors used in quantifying this relationship is access: who has the ability to express themselves politically in a virtual space?

In order to bring quantitative analysis to bear on this question, this research cross-references rally locations to rankings on the Human Development Index and finds a high correlation between the incidence of rallies and high ranking on the index, implying that Internet-mediated activism is to some extent contingent on economic class (a proxy for technology access, among other things). The paper concludes by reaffirming that the use of social software for political protest is dependent on the ideologies and the cultural and political contexts of its users and developers.

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