DigiActive.org

Tactic: Jamaicans blog for Prison Reform

 
view of the entrance area of Tower Street Adult Correctional Center in Jamaica

Description: Jamaica has one of the most controversial criminal justice systems in the world.   There have been reports of overcrowded prisons throughout the Caribbean island.  In recent months a Jamaican nonprofit has made strides to give prisoners training on how to use citizen media to document their grievances.

Tools Being Used: blogs, Flickr, podcast

What They Are Doing: The S.E.T Foundation, a grantee of Rising Voices, is a program that works with prisons to reduce recidivism, by helping prisoners become productive citizens after they are released.  As part of the Prison Diaries project, prisoners will be trained on how to use the group blog, as well as edit their own audio and video clips.   Prisoners are also using Flickr to post photos.  The goal of the project is to give the world a reality check about Jamaica’s prison system.

“Through blogging, inmates are able to tell their stories,” said SET Foundation leader Kevin Wallen.  ”They are able to paint a realistic picture of life behind bars and the consequences of crime. Currently, Jamaica’s music and media idolize the ‘badman’ or ’shotta’ and portray as role models those who have been incarcerated. Many of our youths now think that prison is a ‘cool’ place to be, until they themselves are faced with the harsh truth. The Diary of an Inmate blog will allow all Jamaicans to learn about the realities of Jamaica’s overcrowded prison system with the hope that this will counteract the false ideas implanted by the media.”

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Campaign: Brazilian bloggers vs. a WordPress ban

Description: After an unauthorized sex tape was posted on a Brazilian WordPress blog, a judicial order to shut down the blog was issued. This would mean a block on all WordPress blogs in Brazil, as they all share the same IP address.  Blocking that one IP would mean that no blogs on the WordPress platform would be accessible from within Brazil. Similar blocks have been imposed before in Brazil, and bloggers want to make sure it won’t happen again.

Digital Activism tools: blog, Orkut group, blog badge

How These Tools Are Being Used: The social networking site Orkut is extremely popular in Brazil, so an Orkut group has been formed (you need a Gmail account to access the page).   There is also an anti-ban blog, which explains the issue.  Finally, as it is an issue that affects bloggers, a blog badge has been created to oppose the potential ban.

Outcome: WordPress has not yet been blocked in Brazil, but it is too early to judge the success of the campaign.

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Tactic: Why Don’t Chilean Parties Use Web Tools?

Description: Last week El Mercurio (one of the oldest newspapers in Chile) published a report about the use of Web technologies by political parties in the country (original source in Spanish). The article stated that what the parties were using was very very basic and lacks the “social” element. Even though each one of these parties have a website (list here), they don’t apply the latest interactive Web 2.0 technologies.

Organizer: The political parties of Chile

Purpose of Action: To win elections and gain voter support

Organizing tools not used: YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, or blogging

Outcome: The impact of this new situation is uncertain, but if access to the Internet increases and the activities of young voters online continue to increase, we will see a very different electional process in 2009. The fewer the number of parties that understand this, the lower the probability that they will understand the phenomenon of “Politics 2.0″ that is consolidating around the world and may produce very deep changes in the way we understand “Government”.

Ease of Replication: If we look at the political campaigns in the US, and search a bit about the use of this tools, we can see that, for example, Obama has more than 800,000 followers in Facebook and Ms. Clinton has 150,000. In the past presidential elections in France, the Internet was not only important in the campaigns (in fact Nicolas Sarkozy opposed using it to debate with other candidates), but also it allowed to spread the news who was the winner, due to the bloggers who had fresh info that the media couldn’t get at the same time.

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Tactic: Gazans Phone-Bank for Obama Online

Description: Palestinian youth are using the Internet to run an informal phone bank to call voters in the US before every primary in order to convince them to vote for Barack Obama. (see video)

Organizer: Ibrahim Abu Jayab and 17 of his friends (Gaza, Palestine)

Purpose of Action: To convince American voters to elect Obama as president. Ibrahim believe that an Obama presidency would have a positive effect on the Middle East peace process.

Organizing Tools: Internet telephony

Outcome: We have yet to see whether Obama will win the election.

Ease of Replication: Internet telephony services, like Skype, are great because you can make calls internationally while paying local rates for calling cell phones and land lines. If you are speaking computer-to-computer (using a head set) you can talk for free.

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Theory: The Streisand Effect

The Streisand Effect refers to instances when Internet censorship has the opposite effect, actually increasing distribution and awareness of the censored material.

Origin of the Term: In 2003 singer Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for $50 million dollars to force them to remove a picture of her home (see above) from a series of 12,000 pictures of the California coast taken to study the effects of beach erosion. As a result of this peculiar law suit, the picture of her home was disseminated on the Internet and many more people saw it than would have if she had not tried to censor the image.

Application for Activists: How can activists apply the Streisand Effect as a means of countering Internet censorship? The key to the Streisand Effect is distributing the censored material and publicizing the instance of censorship. Without these two elements - distribution and publicity - censored material will not be viewed by a wide enough audience to counteract the original effect of the censorship. The end goal is to show your government that censoring content has the reverse effect, and thus discourage your government from censoring

From a technical perspective, the best way to distribute censored content is by e-mail, though feeds can also be used, as in the case of Amnesty International’s Irrepressible campaign, which allows bloggers to publish a feed of censored blog content on their own blog.

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Campaign: E-petition Saves Rainforest in French Guiana

Description: The French government was scheduled to start gold mining in a nature reserve in French Guiana, but an email campaign started by a concerned scientist and his student made all the difference in saving the ecosystem in this South American protectorate. The duo started the campaign with organization Ecological Internet weeks before the French Government gave the final contract to Canadian gold corporation Cambior.

Scientist Pita Verweij and her student Liesbeth Fontein researched consequences of gold mining, like deforestation and water pollution and took action.

Digital Activism tools: website, e-petition campaign

How These Tools Are Being Used: An action alert was post on Ecological Internet’s website in September 2006, describing the detrimental effects of industrial mining on the area’s environment and indigenous people. Below the action alert is space for activists to co-sign their names to a pre-generated protest letter that would automatically be emailed to then French President Jacques Chirac.

Outcome: According to Verweij, tens of thousands of protest mails were sent to the French government. The project stalled in October 2006 due to the volume of emails. The government finally decided not to grant the contract and cancelled the project in February 2008.

“The world needs to stop looking for easy answers to failing global ecosystems; and commence radical, even revolutionary, means to protect our atmosphere, land, water and oceans,” said Ecological Internet president Glen Barry in a statement.“The Earth and humanity’s very survival — being — depends upon protecting and restoring intact ecosystems, ending burning of fossil fuels, reducing human population and consumption, and other sufficient actions to avert global ecological collapse.”

Campaign: “Justice Now!” for a Girl in El Salvador

Description of Campaign: In 1999 a 9-year-old girl named Katya (also Katia) Miranda was raped and murdered. Charges against the suspects, all members of the country’s military elite, were dismissed in 2000 and there is a feeling that judicial corruption was at play. Now bloggers are taking up the cause in order to bring the case back to court before the 10 year statute of limitations runs out.

Digital Activism Tools: digital images, blogs, YouTube video, count-down timer, e-petition, offline action

How These Tools Are Being Used: This campaign uses a range of digital activism techniques, some more familiar, and other more creative and unusual. Among the more familiar tactics, supporters of the campaign posted a YouTube video in which Katya’s mother explains the details of the case. There is also an e-petition demanding that attorney general of the province of La Libertad, where the murder occurred, bring the case to trial again.

The campaign also uses images effectively. They have created a logo for their campaign (image above) which bloggers can post to show their support. The graphic is well-designed in that it is simple yet has a clear emotional message, showing only a picture of Katya with the words “justice now!” below.

The campaign also uses some more creative and unusual techniques. The campaign is also asking people to take a picture of themselves in their town or city with a picture of Katya. These images will be used to create a “virtual mural” to be posted on the causes official web site (which I could not locate) and will be presented with the attorney general via CD. Participants are asked to send these images to the e-mail address comunica.idhuca@gmail.com with name and location in which the photo was taken.

text reads “time remaining to prosecute the Katya Miranda crime”

Another creative element of the campaign is a count-down timer which marks the exact time, down to the second, before the statute of limitations runs out on Katya’s case (see above).This is a particularly pertinent to this cause because of the critical element of time.The campaign must succeed before the clock runs out, or Katya’s case cannot be brought to trial.

Significantly, the campaign also includes offline action, a “Day of Roses”, Read more »

Theory: Tactics Are Not Strategy

So far I have been writing about the tactics of digital activism without explicitly stating what a “tactic” is. However, a recent e-mail from a DigiActive team member showed me that in fact the definition of what a tactic is - and how it is different from strategy - is not clear. The purpose of this post is to clarify that critical difference between tactics and strategy and how they relate to digital activism.

When explaining the difference between tactics and strategy, I find an analysis of the roots of the two words extremely helpful. Strategy comes from the Greek work “strategos” meaning “general.” Tactic comes from the Greek work “taktikas” meaning “foot soldier”.

As you can see from the image below, the strategy (general) guides the tactics (foot soldiers) within an activist campaign. Tactics are the actions which allow you to achieve your strategic goal.

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Con: “Nothing Can Substitute for the Street”

Although this site is about how technology empowers activists on a global scale, we must not be blind optimists or think of digital activism as a panacea. For this reason we include thoughtful criticism of digital activism. If we want to make truly meaningful change we must address the Pros & Cons of digital activism.

The following quote is from a profile in the New York Times of Jessie Cagan (pictured above), the leader of the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice. She is talking about the use of the Internet in protesting the Iraq war.

“On the one hand, it’s a terrific tool,” she said. “We are able to get word out to massive numbers of people like that.” She snapped her fingers to make the point. “But the downside is that some people think that if they sign an online petition, that’s it.”

Whether one is for or against the war, nothing can substitute for the street.

“When you do something online, you do it in your home or your office,” Ms. Cagan said. “It’s not public.

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Guide: Designing an Advocacy Video

All the cool digital tools in the world aren’t much help without an effective strategy. Posts in the new “Strategy” topic will present ideas for how to fit digital tools into your overarching strategy for change.

In this first post, we will present a strategy for designing a YouTube-style video to promote your cause. A good advocacy video should contain the following elements:

1. Start With Background Info

Assume the person viewing the video knows nothing about your cause. You need to tell the viewer who, what, when, why, and where of the cause you are fighting for. The goal of presenting this information is for the person to understand the injustice that has occurred and why action is needed.

There are two options for presenting this information: slides and voice-over. If you are using slides, just type the information (white text on a back background looks nice). Then animate the slides. For voice-over, you need to write a script of the information and then record it and layer the audio over the video. The slides option is easier as you do not need to edit the audio track.

• EXAMPLE: Video Denouncing Homophobia

This video denounces the homophobic statements of Sally Kern, an elected representative from the state of Oklahoma in the USA. The first 33 seconds show the use of black-and-white slides to give background information about the issue. Specifically: Who? a State Legislator. What? a speech delivered at a gathering in her district. When? (doesn’t say) Why? she thought only 50 people were listening to her speech. Where? the state of Oklahoma. Read more »