DigiActive.org

21st Century Segregation: Google Reviews and an e-Boycott

Background: On July 9, news broke on NBC Philadelphia that the Valley Swim Club had discriminated against summer camp groups because they had African-American members. The campers were asked to leave the club when they came to use the pool and their money was refunded.

The President of the Valley Swim Club responded with the following video:

Swim_Club_President_Talks__Racial_Comments.html

Swim_Club_President_Talks__Gives_Apology.html

The club sustains that the children were turned away due to overcrowding, not racial composition.

How these tools are being used: This club was listed in Google Maps as a business, but did not have any reviews until the controversy. Now it has over 125 reviews, with the overwhelming majority being negative reviews. A pattern emerged were positive reviews were voted down, and negative reviews voted up. This is a new type of boycott, where a business is targeted through their online presence on Google, one of the most popular crowd-sourced business review sites.

In addition, the reviews were used to convey useful information, in the style usually reserved for Twitter or blogs. For example, one comment seems to support the arguments of both sides of the controversy: there probably was no racial animosity on the part of the management but that the lack of racism the management claims is probably disingenuous:

I worked here for about a month and I really liked the people and the place was always clean and organized, but I can tell you that the surrounding community is generally racist. The management of the club was surely under pressure from the majority of their customers, and no, I’m not excusing them at all. This is not uncommon is this particular community… you will find the same thing in local bars and stores. African Americans followed, neglected or otherwise harassed until they leave). I wish I could give them a higher rating, but there’s no excuse for racism in these supposedly enlightened times.

http://maps.google.com/maps/user?uid=118012252010721318550&hl=en&gl=us

As a result of the controversy, the club blanked their website with a brief statement denying the affair. However their website, including contact information, is archived in the Wayback Machine, and so this information was made available in forums and other social internet media.

Analysis: I think it is an interesting use of Google Reviews, and while there doesn’t seem to be any organized effort, and that this is entirely impromptu, there might be a lesson here to future activist efforts around boycotts. In particular, the voting pattern is very similar to that of social-bookmarking sites like Digg, were activists for Ron Paul and Barack Obama consistently managed to get their candidate’s articles to the featured page – which means that the experiences from social-bookmarking can be applied to e-boycotts in social-review sites.

I also found it very interesting as a creative use of technology the use of the reviews to convey information, there might be lessons here for activists facing lack of social tools due to access constraints.

Screen Capture of the Wayback Machine search

Lastly, in an already classic move, the club deleted their page with a statement, but online communities quickly found and disseminated the archived version in the ever handy Wayback Machine. There is an old lesson here: once out in the web, in all probability it cannot be undone – all one has to do is look.

Valley Swim Club's webpage from archive

Tags: Google Maps, racism, segregation, USA, Valley Swim Club, waybackmachine
Posted in Americas, Campaigns, Discussion Boards, Mashups | 1 Comment »

Action Alert: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring With Vote Report India

What: Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct. The platform aggregates these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

Vote Report India aims to not only increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process, but also provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the month long elections.

Vote Report India is built on the Ushahidi and Swift platforms and managed by eMoksha, a non-profit organization that aims to enable stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and engagement.

When: The month-long Indian Lok Sabha elections will be held in five phases on April 16, April 22/ 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.

Why: This is an important election for India, in the context of a series of terrorist attacks last year that shook up the country, and a worldwide financial crisis that threatens to derail its strong economic growth.

However, as India’s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, and allegations of violence, intimidation and other irregularities during the elections.

Vote Report India will provide a platform to report and track these irregularities, and help to increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process.

How: You can help Vote Report India in three ways.

Step 1: Evangelize It

We would encourage you to spend some time at our website and project wiki to get a sense of what we are doing. If you like what we are doing, please join the Vote Report India community at Twitter (@votereportindia), Facebook, Orkut, SMSGupShup or Google Groups and subscribe to our blog. If you have a blog or a website, please consider writing about Vote Report India and displaying our banners (200X200 and 150X150) on your blog or website.

Step 2: Use It

The next step is to actually use the Vote Report India platform and encourage others to use it.

Incidents can be reported in four ways –

- By sending a message starting with VoteReport to 5676785
- By sending an email to report@votereport.in
- By filling a form on the Vote Report India website.
- By sending a tweet with the hashtag #votereport

Step 3: Volunteer

We can use all the help we can get. Volunteer opportunities are available in many areas, especially for software developers, designers and journalists. Please email us at votereportindia@gmail.com to explore these opportunities.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Twitter Vote Report monitors the US election via micro-blogging

Description: Discriminating officials, fraudulent voting machines or simply long wait times are some of the problems voters may be facing on November 4th. Twitter Vote Report gives American voters an opportunity to report incidents on Election Day using their mobile phones and share them with others.

Digital Tools Being Used: Mobile phones, Twitter, Google Maps mashup, Plodt, iPhone app.

What Are They Doing: Twitter Vote Report aggregates short messages from people all over the US during the election.

Twitterers can use the hash tag “votereport” to let Twitter Vote Report know about an incident. But reports can also be submitted by sending a SMS to the organizers, using an iPhone / Android app or simply calling them.

Twitter Vote Report will aggregate all messages sent to them and display them on their front page. They also offer a RSS feed for those who want to receive all the messages. But to make more use of the information sent in, Twitter Vote Report offers some additional tags that can be added to a tweet to indicate a specific problem: Read more »

Tactic: Online Video Protest in (Virtual) Tunisia

You can see a larger version of the video on the Nawaat site.

Description: In 2007, the Tunisian government, led by President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, blocked the video-sharing site DailyMotion.com, in part because the site hosted video testimony of Tunisian political prisoners. In response, the human rights organization Nawaat has created an online video protest on Google Earth. If you visit the Tunisian presidential palace on Google Earth, you will see that it is covered with links to the same videos of political prisoners which President Ben Ali was trying to block (see video above). Now, at least online, evidence of Tunisia’s political prisoners are right in the President’s front yard!

Organizer: Nawaat (“the core”), a Tunisian human rights site, co-founded by Tunisian digital activist Sami Ben Gharbia, creator of the video above.

Purpose of Action: To show President Ben Ali that he cannot censor the truth about Tunisian political prisoners, that the truth will come right to his front door.

Organizing Tools: Google Earth, YouTube

Outcome: Unknown.

Ease of Replication: Pretty easy. You can add the Google Earth video geo-tags through YouTube. when you upload a video to YouTube you have the option to specify the date and the location of the video. When you click on that option, you will find a Google map which you can zoom in on. Then you place the geo-tag marker on the location you want the video to be associated with, in this case, the Tunisian presidential palace in Carthage. You can also place the geo-tag marker by inputting the longitude and latitude of the location. There is such easy interactivity between Google Earth, Google Maps, and YouTube because all three applications are owned by Google.

Tactic: Mapping Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

Description: United for Africa is a South African web site that records reports of violence sent by SMS and e-mail on a Google Earth map. It provides living testimony to the atrocities committed during the xenophobic riots of May 2008 in South Africa. United for Africa is build upon the engine of Kenyan riot-tracking site Ushahidi.

Organizer: Quirk, a web marketing agency in Cape Town is leading this charge. Quirk will act as administrators on this build, and the Ushahidi team will step away from it as soon as the build is done.

Purpose of Action: To create a visual map of human rights abuses.

Organizing Tools: SMS, Google Earth, web site

Outcome: The xenophobic riots in South Africa are still continuing.

Ease of Replication: It is rather difficult to replicate the Ushahidi map, but their authors offer help to interested activists. United for Africa is actually the second rip-off build upon the Ushahidi engine after Sokwanele from Zimbabwe. The initiators of Ushahidi are developing their project as a free and open source tool for crowdsourcing crisis information and then visualizing that on a map. They hope that they will soon be able to provide this tool for any national or international conflict. To reach that goal they are still seeking for more developers.

via White African

Resource: Digital Activism for the Environment

Title: Green Global Voices: Web 2.0 Environmental Activism

Author: Juliana Rotich, editor of Green Global Voices

Published by: Reuters Blog (2008)

What is it?: A detailed post reviewing how activists are using digital tools to protect the environment. Featured tools include blogs and video, Flickr, data mashups, and mobile phones.

Read more »

Tactic: Zimbabwe Election Watch Map

Description: This mashup overlays a Google map of Zimbabwe with information about breaches in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections* since July 2007.

Map URL: http://www.sokwanele.com/map/all_breaches

Organizer: Zimbabwe Election Watch, a project of the Zimbabwean movement blog www.Sokwanele.com

Purpose of Action: To make an accessible visual representation of complex longitudinal data about breaches in electoral standards.

Organizing Tools: Google maps, a blog

Outcome: Results of the March 29, 2008 election will be announced on Monday, March 31..

Ease of Replication: Creating a basic Google map with your own locations is pretty easy. Adding customizable icons and creating preferences that allow you to display only certain icons takes a little more skill.

Read more »

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 »

Tactic: SMS/Map Mashup Protects Human Rights in Kenya

Description: Ushahidi.com is a Kenyan web site that records reports of violence sent by SMS and e-mail on a Google Earth map. It provides living testimony to the atrocities committed following the recent presidential elections in that country. (“Ushahidi” means “testimony” in Kiswahili.)

Organizer: The idea for the Ushahidi web site was created by the bloggers behind KenyanPundit.com, WhiteAfrican.com, MentalAcrobatics.com, AfroMusing.com, and Skunkworks and was built by developer David Kobia.

Purpose of Action: To create a visual map of human rights abuses.

Organizing Tools: SMS, Google Earth, web site

Outcome: A political resolution to the election crisis has not yet been reached.

Ease of Replication: Replicating the Ushahidi map is rather difficult, as it is actually a mash-up of SMS messages and a Google map. You will need a developer friend to make it. However, other digital map applications, like Frappr, are quite easy to use.

Read more »

Tactic: Protecting Whales with Digital Maps

Organizer: Greenpeace
Purpose of Action: To make the protection of whales a global effort by allowing activists to track the migration of 20 humpback whales online in order to ensure that they are not killed by whalers.
Organizing Tools: web site with digital map
Outcome: Japan has agreed not to hunt humpback whales this year (though other whales are still in danger)
Ease of Replication: Replicating the Greenpeace whale map is quite difficult, but other digital map applications, like Frappr, are quite easy to use.