DigiActive.org

DigiActive’s Introduction to Digital Activism

It’s been a long time in coming, but here is DigiActive’s official introduction to digital activism.  This short presentation (19 slides) includes the following content:

• definition of digital activism
• examples from 3 countries (Colombia, Pakistan, China) including 3 different tools (social networks, mobile SMS, blogs)
• qualities of good digital activism: sustainability, effectiveness, reproducibility
• challenges to digital activism: the need for online-offline coordination, elitism and inequality of access, hype and tool transience, and persecution of digital activists
• what DigiActive does in this space and ways to get involved

Like all DigiActive content, the presentation is created under a Creative Commons Attribution License, so we encourage you to download it, use it, and remix it with your own content.  You can download the presentation here.

DigiActive training for women’s associations

Trainers Mary (standing) and Zineb (front seat on the right) with association members in Rabat.

On Tuesday, DigiActive conducted a training for Moroccan women’s rights associations.  The training, organized by the international human rights organization Global Rights, sought to give these associations new tools for their lobbying campaign in support of a domestic violence law in Morocco.   

The half-day training covered digital strategy for using blogs, video,  social networks, and mobile phones in campaining and was lead by DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce and a local Moroccan trainer, Lalla Zineb El Alaoui, who led a presentation on how to use Facebook for activism.  

The training was giving using simultaneous English-Arabic translation, thus the head sets.  Mary presented in English, and Zineb in Arabic, with Powerpoint slides in French (Morocco’s second language). At DigiActive, we roll international.

Report from DigiActive’s Rabat Meet-up

It was only our second meet-up, but also our biggest yet.  Eighteen digital activists and fans invaded the second floor of Cafe 8ieme in central Rabat.  Topics of conversation, mostly in Arabic, included the outlook for digital activism in Morocco, whether hacking is a form of activism (particularly with regard to attacks on Israeli sites during the current war) and, finally, whether it is possible to define truth or whether all history is subjective.  I’m not sure how the conversation reached that final philosophical topic (my Arabic is a bit shaky).

DigiActive Meet-up: Rabat

What? An informal meeting of digital activists and fans
When? Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
Where? Café 8ieme Art, across from Ciné 7ieme Art in Rabat, Morocco
Why? meet DigiActive team members Mary (Co-Founder) to talk about digital activism over a warm cut of shay bi nana.
How? If you’d like to come, please sign up on the event’s Facebook page.

DigiActive News: 1st training - Morocco

Participants during a personal security module (trainer Mary is on the far right)

Last weekend, DigiActive held its first digital activism training. The event was conducted over 3 days in Rabat, Morocco, and included modules on DigiActive’s top tools - Facebook, blogs, and mobile - as well as personal security and strategy.

The participants’ dinner at Dar Naji (thanks to management assistant Laila for organizing it)

DigiActive co-founder Mary conducted the training with the help of six of the participants: Said, Nada, Zineb, Abdessamad, Laila, and Chakib. The group became very close over the course of the training, and plans to keep in touch - via a Google Group, of course! Thanks to our official photographer, Chakib, photos from the training and participants’ dinner have been posted here on Flickr (and the two above).  The training was even filmed by 2M, Morocco’s official TV channel! (The news segment, in Arabic, is available on the 2M site and occurs about half-way through the show.)

Participants chatting before the training begins. (Photo:  Lalla Zineb el Alaoui)

All in all, it was a great event. Here are some comments from the participants:

• “I appreciated the training because of the amount of knowledge I learned, [the] interaction between participants, [the] quality of interventions.”
• “I appreciated the group work, the tutorials, and the method of running the training. It is a rich experience that I was able to share.” *
• “Thanks, Mary, it was very enriching and I am sure to share what I have learned… in order to lead our social actions is the right direction.” *
• “This training was a great opportunity to develop our digital skills and also to be aware how effectively the should be used.”
• “This training was very interactive and it pushed participants to create and produce, which is amazing!”

* = translated from French

Theory: Poverty & Digital Activism

As our contribution to Blog Action Day, I’d like to offer a response to a common question I receive: “How can you promote digital activism in resource-constrained societies if poor people don’t have access to digital tools?”

In answering this question, it isn’t sufficient to respond with the multiple examples of activists without substantial resources mounting brilliantly creative and successful campaigns for social an internet center supported by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and political change like the strikers in Egypt using Facebook, the Help Fouad campaign in Morocco, and anti-FARC activists in Colombia.

Answering this question in a persuasive way requires a more thorough analysis of how access to digital tools is changing and what this means for political activism.  The key trends here are sky-rocketing increases in mobile phone subscriptions in developing countries and more shared mobile phones and computers.  The digital divide is no longer defined by computer ownership.  There are simply too many other ways to get on the network.

Let’s take Brazil as an example.  To quote an article from World Politics Review from earlier this year: “In Brazil, the spread of communications technology is proceeding at breakneck speed. Internet usage statistics are breaking records every month.  As a result, Brazilian society is changing in ways that have hardly begun to be understood.”
Read more »

Action Alert: 4 Ways You Can Help Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji

As you may have been following through the DigiActive Twitter Feed, Moroccan blogger Mohammed Erraji was arrested last Friday, September 5th following the publication on the online news site Hespress.com of an article entitled “The King Encourages His Subject’s Dependency” (English) He was sentenced 72 hours later, in an expedited trial without assitance from a lawyer, to two years in jail and a fine of 5000MAD for “failure to uphold the respect due to the king”.

In a movement of solidarity reminiscent of the one which surrounded the campaign to help free Facebook prisonner Fouad Mourtada earlier this year,  the Moroccan blogosphere was quick to mobilize and condemn the arrest. Various international organizations such as Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and IFEX also issued statements calling for his immediate release. On Thursday September 11th, citing procedural misteps, a court in the southern city of Agadir granted him bail and he has been “provisionally released” pending his appeal trial next Tuesday.

Supporters who have set up www.HelpErraji.com , Moroccan bloggers and online activists are circulating messages calling all who support Mohammed Erraji to express their solidarity and contribute to the international mobilisation to free him. They have outlined a series of steps and actions including signing an online petition, joining a facebook group, sending photo messages and participating in a blog strike next monday:

1. Express Support by Sending Photo Messages:

You can display your solidarity by taking a picture of yourself with a message to Free Mohammed Erraji. Please also write where you are from in the message then send the photo to PhotoErraji@gmail.com, everyone who has a camera should participate! All the submitted photos can be viewed on this Flickr account.

2. Join the Facebook Group:

Express your support by joining the “Free Moroccan Blogger Mohammed Erraji” group and help amplify the message by changing your profile picture to the following. Don’t forget to also invite your friends!

3. Sign the Petition:

A petition calling for the immediate acquittal of Mohammed Erraji and the suspension of his sentence is available at www.helperraji.com

4. Participate in the Blogoma (Moroccan Blogsphere) Blog Strike :

Monday September 15th, on the eve of the appeal trial, several Moroccan bloggers and others around the world will start a blog strike that will last 24 hours. Those who wish to join to this movement will announce that their blog is on strike, indicate the reason they chose to participate in the strike, mention the details of the case and link back to the site put up in support for Mohammad Erraji. To introduce others to the strike several bloggers are ciculating a short descriptive text, and the english translation has been made available by blogger Jillian York.

Using a Camera Phone and Youtube to Document Police Brutality in Morocco

Description: The small southern port city of Sidi Ifni in Morocco has recently seen recurrent clashes between the country’s security forces and protesters denouncing rampant unemployment and corruption.  While Le Matin, the country’s leading pro-government newspaper was headlining that calm and normalcy had returned to the city (See Article in French here) a video taken using a cell phone camera was posted on Youtube showing the shocking brutality of police forces and the disproportionate use of force and violence during arrests.

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: 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.

Read more »