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Tactic: Saudi Activist Uses Youtube to Advocate for Womens’ Right to Drive…

Description: On International Women’s Rights day, a video of a woman in Saudi Arabia defying the country’s ban on female drivers in urban areas was posted on the video-sharing site YouTube. At the wheel of her car, rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider, describes the injustice and appeals to the Saudi Government to expand women’s rights in the country and lift the ban.

Organizer: Human Rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider. 125 other people signed an accompanying petition that was delivered to the Saudi Ministry of interior that same day.

Purpose of Action: To celebrate International Women’s Rights day and call for the lifting of the ban on female drivers in Saudi Arabia.

Organizing Tools: The video was uploaded to and posted on the video-sharing site Youtube.com

Outcome: The story was picked up by all major international news organizations which has helped to widely publicize the action. Bloggers around the world have also helped amplify the message by writing on the story and posting links to the video, which has so far been viewed more than 120,000 times.

Link to Video with English dubbing

DigiActive News: DigiActive Top 50 Web 2.0 Challenge

Part of what we do at DigiActive is figure out how to use otherwise innocent commercial online platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter for activism. However, there are tons of interactive online tools out there and we can’t review all of them. We need your help!

Fortunately, we are not alone in this effort to co-opt the Internet for the purposes of social justice. If you are one of those people that likes to figure out the activist use of new online tools, we invite you to watch the following slide presentation, which features the top 50 Web 2.0 tools to support teaching an learning (it was creating by technology instructors in a school district).

Our challenge to you: figure out how digital activists can use these tools. Watch the slide show and then investigate the tools that interest you most and think about how an activist might be able to use that tools in a campaign for social change. E-mail your suggestions to Mary @ DigiActive.org and we will post the most creative activist tool use suggestions on DigiActive.

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Tactics: Tibetans Get the News Out Despite Media Censorship

Description: Last week hundreds of Tibetan monks took to the streets in and near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to protest Chinese rule. Although the heavily censored Chinese media refused to cover the story, both Tibetans and foreign tourists used the Internet to get the news out. According to the Vancouver Sun, “Amateur cellphone photos and video clips showing what were described as confrontations between police and Tibetans protesting Chinese rule poured onto websites big and small, including those for major news media, Tibetan rights groups and tourist blogs.”

Organizer: unclear

Purpose of Action: To protest Chinese rule of Tibet.

Organizing Tools: e-mail, digital photos, mainstream media sites that accept user-generated content (like BBC), web sites of sympathetic NGOs, travel blogs of tourists, cell phone video uploaded to YouTube.com,

Outcome: Bringing global attention to protests that the Chinese government would prefer to silence.

Ease of Replication: Unless the government shuts down the Internet, as occurred during the recent protests in Burma, using individual e-mail accounts, cell phones, and blogs to distribute information and images is an effective way to get around domestic media censorship.

cell phone image of protests published on the site of a Tibetan rights NGO based in India

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Campaign: Save St. Petersburg’s European University!

Description of Campaign: Earlier this month, Russian authorities shut down the European University at St. Petersburg on the pretense that the building had fire code violations. Students and faculty saw this as a effort to shut down the school and are fighting online to re-open the university and maintain their academic community.

Digital Activism Tools: YouTube, LiveJournal

How These Tools Are Being Used: The goal of the campaign is to draw attention to the persecution of the university, a particularly difficult task since the mainstream media in Russia is all state-controlled and is ignoring the issue. For this reason, members of the university community are using alternative media to raise awareness of the situation. One professor, Ilya Utekhin, has started a blog on LiveJournal. (Unfortunately LiveJournal, which is Russia’s most popular blogging platform, is owned SUP, a company allied with Vladimir Putin.) Another LiveJournal blog, Save_EU, has become an online community for people who are fighting for the university.

students and faculty put on a theater production to protest the university’s closing

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Campaign: Help Fouad Mourtada

Description of Campaign: On February 5, Moroccan Fouad Mourtada was taken into custody for posting a joke profile of Prince Rachid (the King’s brother). Two weeks later, he was sentenced to three years in prison and fined over $1000 on a false charge of document identity fraud. The goal of this campaign is to reverse this sentence, which is horribly out of proportion to the offense committed.

Digital Activism Tools: YouTube, web site, G-Chat, Skype, Facebook, digital video, digital photography

How These Tools Are Being Used: First there was the official web site, www.HelpFouad.com with an e-petition asking for Fouad’s release. Members of the campaign both inside and outside Morocco communicated using G-Chat and Skype. Then there was the Facebook group, Help Fouad Mourtada. Through the Facebook group and offline social networks, rallies were organized this past Saturday at Moroccan embassies and consulates in 8 cities around the world (Rabat, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Washington DC, Montreal, Madrid, and London). Digital video and photographs were collected from these rallies made into a video to promote the cause (see below).

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Campaign: A Protest Movement Against Scientology

Description of Campaign: An online community called Anonymous draws other online users into a global campaign against the controversial religion Scientology. (Note: This post is not a criticism of Scientology, merely a study of the digital means used by its critics,)

Digital Activism Tools: Youtube, Digg (social bookmarking), wikis, online forums

How These Tools are Being Used: After announcing their campaign against Scientology via an ominous YouTube video on January 21st (see below), a group of nameless hackers used open forums like the alternative news site Digg to spread their message of protest against what they see as the exploitive and untruthful practices of Scientology. Their movement is very interactive. As it is based on a wiki, new members were able to leave feedback for the original founders and the founders listened. (In particular, they cut back on the illegal harassment of Scientologists, which many would-be supporters felt was illegitimate “cyber-terrorism.”) Anonymous, whose leaders and members are unknown, experienced a great success on February 10, when 6,000 supporters participated in anti-Scientology rallies in more than 70 cities around the world.

After the break I’ll quote a long passage of excellent background and analysis from Carnegie Mellon student Dan Schultz, originally published on MediaShift Idea Lab under the title “Anonymous vs. Scientology: A Case of Digital Media.”
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Tactic: Using Digital Video to Oppose Racism on TV

Description: A video shows a clip of a caller using a racial slur on a Fox sports call-in show and then asks viewers to lodge a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Fox News for not deleting the comment from their broadcast.
Organizer: the video has appeared on several blogs, but it is unclear who created it.
Purpose of Action: To punish Fox for airing the racist comment.
Organizing Tools: YouTube
Outcome: The showed aired on December 23rd and no action has yet been taken against the network by the FCC.
Ease of Replication: The is a pretty basic - yet highly effective - style of advocacy video, which cuts between live action clips and white text on a black screen. You will need to video editing skills to create it.

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Tool: Can Activists Trust YouTube?

In late November, Egyptian activist Wael Abbas‘ YouTube account was suspended due to videos of torture which he had posted. Though his account was re-activated a few days later, all his videos had been removed. YouTube’s side of the story is that Abbas had violated their terms of use by posting videos of “graphic or gratuitous violence” (many of Abbas’ video depict police torture, including sodomy. ) However, other videos, of police brutality, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins and election irregularities were also deleted when his account was restored.

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Tactic: Using Online Games for Organizing

Organizer: Ron Paul fan site Revolutioni.st
Purpose of Action: Revolutioni.st organized a march in World of Warcraft, the purpose of which was to raise awareness of the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul.
Organizing Tools: World of Warcraft, web site, YouTube
Outcome: About 150 players attended the march, though the effect on Ron Paul’s candidacy was negligible.
Ease of Replication: Extremely easy if you are already a member of the game. You just need to e-mail your friends in the game and tell them to appear at a certain location at a certain time.

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Tool: YouTube

Name: YouTube

Website: http://www.youtube.com

What it is: YouTube is a site where you can upload your digital video for all the world to see

Rating:

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