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Campaign: Blogging for Equal Pay Day

Description: In 1996 the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE) created Equal Pay Day as a public awareness event to demonstrate the wage gap between men and women. Always observed on a Tuesday in April, the day symbolizes how far into the year women must work, on average, to earn as much as men earned the previous year. This year, Equal Pay Day took place on April 28^th, to highlight the current wage gap of women earning 78 cents to every man’s dollar. At this current rate, there will not be wage equality until 2057. While the NCPE is the major organizer of the campaign, coordinating rallies, lobby days, speak-outs, letter-writing campaigns, and workshops, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) has taken on the digital activism role for promoting the event with their blogging for equal pay campaign. The organization, which has been running the campaign for the past few years, called out to the digital community to blog, twitter, and use their Facebook profiles to raise awareness for wage disparity.

Digital Tools Being Used: Blogs, Twitter, Facebook

How These Tools Are Being Used: Running the campaign entirely through their website, the NWLC urged bloggers, tweeters, and Facebook users to raise their voice for fair pay for women. To organize the campaign, the website used a form for web users to sign up their blog, Twitter, or Facebook account with their name and URL so all posts could be aggregated during Equal Pay Day. To organize all tweets, the NWLC urged tweeters to tag their posts with #fairpay. The organization also created a button to be posted on blogs for bloggers to show their commitment to the campaign and spread the word.

Outcome: By the end of the day, April 28^th, over 660 tweets and 165 blog posts were written in association with the campaign to raise awareness for equal pay. To put this in perspective, last year the campaign generated 80 blog posts, an increase of at least 106 percent. It is difficult to quantify the reach of the campaign on Facebook, through notes or status updates, but it could reasonably be assumed to be used by those already tweeting and blogging and others who are not as active within the online community. More important is the reach of this campaign throughout the blogosphere. The campaign included the expected participation of women’s advocacy groups and feminist blogs, yet other participants included: major news sources (New York Times, Forbes, Huffington Post), religious sites (jewish and catholic), human rights groups, labor unions, affirmative action supporters, individuals’ blogs, celebrity blogs (Kenneth Cole), activist sites (change.org, care2.com, alternet.org), pension rights groups, industry focused sites (athletics, healthcare, finance, law, journalism), parental blogs, and government sponsored blogs.

Content within the blog posts varied. Most posts relayed data provided by women’s advocacy groups, regarding actual wage disparity by occupation, state, or race. Some urged readers to contact their Senators to press for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act (S.182). Others shared personal stories relating to their own experiences with unequal pay or wrote about the importance of the recent passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Many posts included videos to get their point across:

Women Museum video for Equal Pay Day

AAUW YouTube Video

In determining the success of the campaign, we must look to both the immediate and future impact. The immediate effect of the campaign seems to be successful, the campaign had a broad reach and grew exponentially over last years effort. In the long term, the goal of Equal Pay Day is to raise awareness of the problem and to ignite change. While awareness was definitely raised, it remains to be if and how soon the Paycheck Fairness Act will be passed by Congress. If this bill is indeed passed, partly due to the loud voice of activists, the wage gap will greatly decrease. This campaign idea seems transferable to various activist causes and can have an impact.

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.

Read the publication…

Action Alert: Day of Solidarity with Persecuted Bloggers

Background: Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, an Iranian blogger, died tragically in prison on March 18, demonstrating the sad fact that a blogger’s life can be lost as easily as a blog can be filtered by authorities.

Bloggers have been praised on many occasions for their contribution and value to the information society. They are admired in many cases as unheard voices but unfortunately most of the time, when a blogger faces persecution, his or her voice is not heard.

Sadly, Omid Reza’s case is not an exception and dozens of cyber dissidents are in jail around our globalized world and many more face political persecution.

When: I would like to propose March 18 every year as an International Day of Solidarity with Persecuted Bloggers.

Why: We can remember, talk and honor in this day jailed, tortured, killed and threatened bloggers, regardless of their political ideas and social or ethnic backgrounds. We can also discuss on this day what measures should be taken to support persecuted bloggers.

How: Please contact me at helpforbloggers@gmail.com if you’d like to get involved.   So far I have received very positive feedback from Committee to Protect Bloggers, Global Voices Advocacy, Freekareem, Mideast Youth and several bloggers and  I am ready to receive your comments, ideas, initiatives and words on this topic.

Campaign: Pink Panties to Fight Fundamentalism

Description: When a gang of politically well-connected Indian religious conservatives beat up women because they were in a
pub in the Indian city of Mangalore in end-January 2009, few expected the response to be so innovative and impactful.

Mixing Facebook and the bizarre, a group of young women (and some men backing them) launched the Consortium of Pub-going,
Loose and Forward Women. Not only was their name unusually self-deprecatory, but their action wholly unexpected. They
announced plans to send “pink underwear” in protest to the offices of the Rama Sene, one of the many sprouting groups
here that uses religiosity and the name of the Indian god Rama to justify its campaigns.

This caught on fast, and the Facebook group has currently grown to 56,160 members. The media loved the story, and literally hundreds of articles were written about it.

Its success came from the fact that the campaign was innovative, almost bizarre, and appealing to the youth too. The cause got wide coverage, embarrassing conservatives justifying restrictions on women or religious-infighting among different groups in this diverse country. For example, the ad from a billboard from a prominent Indian butter company (Amul), below, refers to the campaigners’ unusual act, drawing even more attention.

This has become one of India’s cause celebre in campaigning, though it has earned criticism from both Right (who see it as targeted against one important conservative party, in a key election year) and the Left (a section of which seems taken by surprise, or even inable to comprehend the kind of campaign involved).

Digital Tools Being Used: Facebook, blog

How These Tools are Being Used: Internet users can join a Facebook group. Real-world action involved actually posting pink ‘chaddis’ (underwear) to the fundamentalists. Off-line campaigns have continued, including Take Back The Night campaigns in States where conservative governments were in power, such as Karnataka. Groups are being formed in other parts of India too.

On Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=49641698651&ref=ts

Interesting analysis; Three Lessons Activists and Marketers Can Learn From India’s Valentine’s Day Pink Panty Campaign
http://tinyurl.com/d4znu4

Nisha Susan (group founder) explains: Valentine’ Warriors — The Pink Chaddi Campaign: why it began and how
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main41.asp?filename=Op280209valentine_warrior.asp

UPDATE: please also check out Gaurav Mishra’s excellent post on the many online responses to the Sri Rama Sene attacks, including several interesting videos:
http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/the-valentines-day-pink-chaddi-campaign-indian-pubgoing-women-vs-shri-ram-sena/

Tool: Iranian Google bomb to support Gaza

Description: The Gaza crisis and Israeli attacks have been a top story around the world, and it seems the story will not be over soon. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak referred to the situation as “all-out war” and told lawmakers the country’s military was prepared for more intense action in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in order to weaken Hamas’ ability to fire rockets into Israeli territory. Iranian islamists demonstarted in Iran against Israel and Iranian leaders are calling on Muslims to support Palestinans in any way they can. Islamist bloggers are fighting a virtual struggle too.

Tools: Google bomb

How tool is used: Iranian islamists are hopeful that people who are googling Gaza find their page, Gaza.Ir, on the top of the list. The site reads:

You oppressed people of Gaza know that we Muslims in Iran and all over the world haven’t forgotten you and will not cease until complete cessation of the blockade of your city. Along the path to Gaza’s freedom and our common goal, which is the freedom of Palestine, we will not cease and we will go on.

Impact: Google bombs can attract a lot of attention if they are able to climb to the top of reserarch results. So far this has not the case of Islamist Google bomb.

Action Alert: Facebook Campaign to Free Hoder

Update: Hoder’s detention has been confirmed by a family member.

What: a Facebook-based campaign to free the blogger Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, who has allegedly been in taken into custody by Iranian authorities on charges of spying for Israel. (There has been no official confirmation of Hoder’s arrest other than an article on the Jahan News site and the fact that he has not updated his blog for 2 weeks.)

When: Now!

Where: On your Facebook profile page

How: There are several ways you can support Hoder. A message from the Facebook group, Free Hossein Derakhshan // Libérez Hossein Derakhshan, asks supporters to do the following:

1. Invite your friend list to join this group
2. Download and Add this picture to your profile picture: http://tinyurl.com/5983v3
3. Tell your friends, family, and colleagues about the situation
4. Write the Canadian Embassy in Iran (address below) notifying them of Hossein’s condition: teran@international.gc.ca.

You can also get news about Hoder on the Twitter channel http://twitter.com/freehoder.

Why: Because Hoder’s alleged arrest is illegal and he deserves his freedom.

Hat-tip: Hamid Tehrani for Global Voices Advocacy

What actually happened in Bakassi?

Description: Did you hear? The oil rich peninsula of Bakassi was handed to Cameroon by Nigeria on the 14th of August. The event was unmarked and forgotten by the international press, the Cameroonian military is shy of neutral monitoring and the Cameroonian press is heavily muzzled. Yet, through the use of blogs the true nature of events has been noted.

Tools: Blogs

How these tools are being used: ConnectAfrica is a group of professional journalists based in Lagos, Nigeria whose focus is on covering development issues in Africa. ConnectAfrica has been blogging about Bakassi during and since the handover. They report unprovoked shootings and aggression by the Cameroonian gendarmes.

Campaign: Half a Million Kenyans to Unite

Description: It is an unfortunate fact that abuse of power particularly by politicians is normality in Africa. Most Africans feel disempowered by such widespread institutional corruption and unfair distribution of wealth. They are overwhelmed by a system that does not allow such injustices to be expressed, let alone redressed. Activism is the cause of much personal risk, not only to oneself but also to loved ones.

Yet they would do well to learn from the actions of their Kenyan brothers and sisters. Within months of the establishment of the coalition government, corruption amongst government officials has begun to become apparent. As a result activists are using on-line tools to challenge the system and raise international awareness.

Tools: blogs, facebook

How these tools are being used: The Sukuma Kenya project was launched in the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis at the beginning of the year. The project is an online donation blog that was launched to raise funds for the thousands of people displaced by the crisis. Within 24 hours of its launch the blog raised US$ 1,500.

Online activist Michael Bomet  launched a Half a Million Kenyans Unite campaign to unite the people of Kenya against the corruption of the government. The campaign unites people through Facebook and through an on-line petition. The goal is to unite half a million Kenyans in a petition to reduce MPs salaries and privileges. The campaign was launched on the 5th of June 2008 and at the time of writing had registered 4,613 Kenyans. The Sukuma Kenya project used their blog to amplify the message and helped raise 12,000 USD in around a month. 

From Blogs to Facebook: A shift in Kurdish online activity

Description: Last year at this time, one could have counted a few hundred active and decently-read blogs coming from the Kurdish population, primarily in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey (see the Global Voices report from 2005). But now, their activity level has greatly diminished, with some not having posted in several months. A look at the comments sections of many of the blogs reveals often harsh and nationalistic responses by those not in support of Kurdish culture or society, which may have been a deterrent to keeping up the posting.

Did the bloggers disappear? Were they discouraged enough with the results of their efforts to decrease internet activity altogether? No, they found a new place to focus those efforts, one they find more conducive to their cause.

Tool: Facebook

How this tool is being used: With groups such as Sign a Petition Against Killings and Stoning of Women in Kurdistan (3 533 members as of this posting) and Free Kurdistan (1 556 members as of this posting) having become much more trafficked and updated in the past year, Kurdish activists are finding that their efforts are not only gaining more traffic, but also avoiding a reasonable amount of outside harassment.

Many of these pages encourage bloggers to continue voicing their opinions through their blogs, stating the importance of a broader presence. While there is yet to be a resurgence in activity in the blogsphere, it is clear the population is adapting to the changing dynamics of internet spaces in a way that can better support their cause.

Listen to the voice of the people

Description: The major factor that will shape the future evolution of the developing world is in the education and sensitisation of the people. A commonly cited example is the AIDs epidemic. Over 20 years after its outbreak, ignorance and stigma still surround the epidemic to the point where AIDs victims are unable to openly talk about their struggles for fear of discrimination or violence. AIDs workers still encounter examples of HIV patients who are ignorant of how they contracted the disease.