Rising Voices

How to Cover Elections With Social Media… Offline

Laura Morris — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:47:58 +0000

Reporting for this article was provided by GV'er Kofi Yeboah

Ghana Decides was an online project which aimed to cover the run up to the then upcoming presidential election of 2012, hoping to “foster a better-informed electorate for free, fair and safe elections,” using online social media as their primary tool. An initiative of Blogging Ghana, it built upon this existing community of social media users and enthusiasts in and out of the country. The project ended in January 2013, after the election was completed.

The editor of the project, Nana Yaw, wrote on the blog after the project had ended

When we began, it was with one purpose to ensure that the words of Ghanaians usually drowned and watered down by mainstream media would this time permeate social media, and augmented so much that it could not be ignored by media outlets and politicians. We are happy to have done simply that.

Online Advocacy Without the Internet

Ghana Decides often faced the difficult task of online advocacy in a country with very low internet coverage, at times working in rural locations without the coverage to post updates. However, they managed to turn this to their advantage. They say:

“Our strategy was this: the offline groups were the project's beneficiaries and the online community was our project audience.”

Ghana Decides travelled in-person to offline communities in nine out of Ghana’s ten regions – often focusing their attentions on socially excluded groups, women, and youth. Discussing these groups’ concerns and gathering information, they would later share results of these off-the-grid meetings with a wider online population once online access was regained. This allowed the Ghana Decides team to work towards broadening the range of issues discussed online, giving voice to certain communities whose challenges are not otherwise online – helping to paint a fuller, more inclusive picture of Ghana and its challenges online.

Ghana Decides had several strategies to promote their campaign. They say that gaining support of the existing online community – especially young people – was significant to much of their success. They also used a strategy of publicizing particularly poliarizing news events to work against apathy and to engage citizens (such as with President Mills’ death).

The group says,

“The success in Ghana Decides lies primarily in demonstrating that there is a Ghanaian online population that is willing to be engaged on issues pertaining to our democracy and socioeconomic life. This, of course, is evident to those of us who are active online! But to show this to civil society, to traditional media, and to political leadership, is huge and crucial.”

Ghana Decides also focused on creating partnerships with other Ghanaian organizations serving unheard communities, and trained many in the use of social media for elections related work. Some of these partners, such as Voice Ghana - working with physically challenged persons – are now online for the first time.

What's next?

They say, “Given the gap of access to internet and knowledge of social media, we just barely scratched the surface.” But, they emphasize, the results are encouraging.

To learn more about Ghana Decides’ work, you can find a number of videos up on youtube, including this video of their work “behind the scenes”

The Ghana Decides team is still posting information about their work on Facebook and they were recently awarded an innovation grant by the Ghanaian Trade Ministry, recognizing the impact of their work.

Images courtesy of Ghana Decides website and Facebook page.

Could Social Media Unlock Disaster Relief?

Laura Morris — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:22:34 +0000

As access to mobile technology continues to advance around the world, with a humanitarian disaster comes instant images and updates across the internet.
There are critical moments at which mass amounts of data appear on social media, posted moment by moment as the aftermaths unfold.

This potentially means a wealth of information for humanitarian response… as long as the information can be understood by responders.

Logging, identifying, and translating this type of data has been shown to be a effective but complicated and confusing tool. Processing of the information could happen with volunteers from around the world – useful, as long as it is well organized.

MicroMappers is a newly released set of apps, a project to provide the public with an extremely simple way to access and process this information. Its goal is, through this data processing, to identify the areas most effected by crises, and to help quickly and effectively to humanitarian relief teams.

Patrick Meier, the idea man behind the app, says that big data is key here:

“There were 20 million tweets during Hurricane Sandy, how are we going to go through that without sophisticated machine learning an advanced computing technologies?”

The idea is to democratize digital humanitarian efforts; to allow people to join in and help – in real time. As the website says…

The app is developed around microtasking, where the concept is to break a large and complex task down into a seires of much smaller and easier tasks.

The MicroMappers webiste gives an example:

The United Nations recently asked digital humanitarian volunteers to carry out a Twitter-based rapid damage assessment following the devastating typhoon that hit the Philippines. So volunteers used a Microtasking App to tag individual tweets if said tweets had a link that pointed to an image or video documenting typhoon damage.

This project, “to filter, classify, and geo-reference thousands of tweets” was created along with CrowdCrafting, and some of this information was also used on Google's Crisis Map of the event.

A map from OCHA's report on the typhoon in the Phillipines (2012) based entirely on data collected from social media

MicroMappers will have three main app components (with potentially more to come in future):

- translation of tweets into multiple languages
- access, linking to images and videos on-location
- location, allowing volunteers to geolocate where exactly the event is happening and to assess the level of damage in an image

If there are enough geotagged pictures within well-defined affected ares, this has the potnetial to move into an app like Photosynth for rapid damage assessment. This techonlogy would stitch together user-generated image content to create three dimensional generated images.

Meier notes it may be possible to address some of these issues through advanced and automated computing platforms – and it seems this could eventually work in tandem with volunteers to be as effective and fast as possible. He says the project will allow “the social network [to be] bearing witness to certain events… and collective documentation of events that are unfolding.”

Once the website is fully up and running (launched the date of publication of this article – the 15 May 2013 in conjunction with Meier’s TedX Talk), volunteers will be able to sign up to be notified when a disaster is occurring that they can join in on. There will also be a set of training data to practice the technology, based around the Philippines typhoon diasater of this past year.

MicroMappers is a partnership between United Nations, QCRI, and CrowdCrafting. You can learn more about other efforts in digital humanitarian response at Meier's organization Crisis Mappers.

Note: All images are reproduced with permission from MicroMappers and irevolution.net.

Dominican Republic's Community Technology Centers Fight Digital Poverty

L. Finch — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:49:06 +0000

[All links lead to Spanish-language webpages unless otherwise noted.]

In an area of the Dominican Republic where poverty is rampant, illiteracy is commonplace, and clean drinking water is not even a guarantee, residents can now count on free access to a computer and the Internet.

The country's Vice President, Margarita Cedeño de Fernandez, inaugurated one of the latest community technology centers, known as CTCs, in this municipality of San Antonio de Guerra in February, with four more opening in the months that followed.

The bright orange and green centers are part of a nationwide effort to bring computer and Internet access to even the most remote corners of the Dominican Republic, a 13-year old project that has blossomed under Cedeño de Fernández. So far, there are 93 of these community centers throughout the Dominican Republic.

Children and staff post in front of a community technology center in Peralta Azua, Dominican Republic. Photo from the official Facebook page for Centros Tecnológicos Comunitarios.

According to the latest data [en] from the World Bank, about 40 percent of the country lives below the poverty line. The country also records a 15.1 percent rate of unemployment rate [en].

And only 35.5 percent of the population have access to the Internet, according to a United Nations report last year.

With education as a central focus, the CTC initiative aims to tackle these problems, offering computers for the community to use in addition to courses in reading and digital literacy, a community radio station, English immersion classes, a childcare center, a library, meeting rooms, and even programs in gardening vegetables.

The vice president addressed the heart of the program during her inauguration speech for the center in San Antonio de Guerra, known simply as Guerra, which perhaps appropriately means “war” in Spanish:

Desde hoy Guerra le hace la guerra al analfabetismo, a la pobreza, al ocio y a la exclusión. Desde hoy estamos abriendo una guerra contra las inequidades sociales que se producen por la falta de espacios y de oportunidades que ustedes deben de tener para desarrollar sus habilidades y sus competencias, y así propiciar una vida digna y productiva como la que merecemos como seres humanos

Today, Guerra declares war on illiteracy, on poverty, on idleness, and on exclusion. Today, we are declaring war against the social inequality that arises from the lack of spaces and opportunities which you all should have to develop your skills and your abilities, and in that way attain a dignified and productive life like we all deserve as human beings

In a world where the Internet is becoming mandatory for economic success, the CTCs are a leg-up for the less-fortunate, wrote Amaury Ortega Chestaro, an information technology specialist who works for the CTC project, in an editorial published on March 30, 2013 on Dominican newspaper El Nuevo Diario:

[...] con ese ideal, esa visión y ese enfoque fueron creados los centros tecnológicos comunitarios, pensando en los que tienen menos para de una forma o de otra insertarlos al mundo globalizado, competitivo y a la herramienta más poderosa actual que es la que está moviendo al mundo, EL INTERNET.

[...it is] with that ideal, that vision and that focus the community technology centers were created, having those who have less in mind so they can in one way or another insert themselves into a globalized, competitive world and into the most powerful current tool that is moving the world, THE INTERNET.

A group of young people in a community technology center in Cutupú, Dominican Republic learning how to read books online. Photo from @CTCCutupu Twitter account.

But much more is required than a speedy Internet connection for these centers to do good — they rely on the support of the community. Rosa Maria Hernandez, who lists herself on Facebook as an administrative manager for a CTC, assessed the feeling among those who work in the centers in a comment on Ortega Chestaro's editorial:

las personas que estamos involucradas en este proyecto es porque tenemos un sentido de pertenencia de masiado grande por nuestra comunidad, que nos sentimos 100% comprometido a su desarrollo e integración de las familias dominicana

We are the people involved in this project because we have a feeling of belonging that is too big for our community, we feel 100% committed to the development and integration of Dominican families

The increasing momentum behind the project hasn't gone unnoticed. In 2011, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales paid a visit to a CTC in the southern coastal city of Boca Chica and promised to send the initiative a team of collaborators to teach them the ins and outs of editing Wikipedia.

And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2012 awarded [en] the effort with its Access to Learning award of one million US dollars:

In partnership with the foundation, Microsoft donated [en] 18 million US dollars worth of software to the CTCs, and on April 9, 2013 the company's Dominican Republic branch signed on to collaborate with the CTC initiative to support programs that help young people become technologically savvy.

The digital divide in the Dominican Republic is particularly stark when it comes to the country's women — about three-fourths of the female population don't use the Internet. The CTC effort has a particular focus on empowering women and people with disabilities.

On March 19, 2013, 700 women graduated from literacy and technological education programs within the centers, and about a month later, the vice president gathered 150 girls for a chat on technology to promote its use among the students.

The program also works with the Partnership in Opportunities for Employment through Technology in the Americas (POETA), an organization that gives people with disabilities job training so that they can be more active in their communities.

The centers appear to be popular throughout the country, even a source of pride for rural communities, and online commentary tends to be positive. Commenting on a story about the new center in Guerra on news website listindiaro.com, “carolinaberas” wrote:

Una herramienta excelente para el apoyo de los estudiantes y que tengan más fuentes de información.

An excellent tool for supporting students so that they may have more sources of information.

On El Nuevo Diario, another user responded to the news of the Guerra CTC:

Excelente proyecto para motivar la educación dominicana, a continuar con su desarrollo.

Excellent project to motivate Dominican education, let its development continue.

But are the centers making a measurable difference in the fight against digital illiteracy? It appears so [en]. A 2009 study by Paulo Prado from the University of Miami found that the Dominican CTC model “successfully promoted digital literacy through the use of [information and communication technologies] in the rural communities it serves”:

The CTCs were thus found to address, in multiple ways, the information and self-improvement needs and
goals of individuals in remote rural areas of the Dominican Republic.

Marco Antonio Linares sums up that idea. Linares was 15-years-old at the time when he was interviewed about his education at a CTC for a short documentary in 2007 available on YouTube:

Me siento bien porque he aprendido mucho. Yo no sabía nada y ya sé muchísimas cosas.

I feel good because I've learned a lot. Before I knew nothing and now I know lots of things.

Remembering Dennis Kimambo

Janet Feldman — Fri, 03 May 2013 14:26:34 +0000

Rising Voices note: This tribute post was written by Janet Feldman, upon learning about the death of Dennis Kimambo of the Rising Voices grantee project REPACTED on April 29, 2013. At the time of publication, the circumstances surrounding his death are still being investigated.

When I first heard the news that Dennis Kimambo had been missing for over a week, I was worried, but envisioned him in a rural part of Kenya, conducting an HIV/AIDS educational outreach, or in Dubai, where he had been invited at one point to play in a golf tournament, one of his favorite pastimes.

After the news came that his body had been discovered on April 29, and that he had met a violent death, I could not fathom or accept it. Stan Tuvako, a close friend of ours and the person who actually introduced us, said in the aftermath of the announcement: “it was shocking how much violence this man of peace encountered.” That this courageous soul faced violence and death again and again over the decade I knew him, and continued to do the work for which he seemed born, was just one of the remarkable qualities we so loved and admired in him.

Dennis Kimambo

Dennis had a motto: “humanity before politics.” During the 2007-2008 post-election conflict in Kenya, which threatened to spiral into civil war, Dennis and many others faced threats to their lives and safety on a daily basis, yet continued to reach across political and cultural lines in attempts to quell the violence and encourage tolerance, understanding, and cooperation.

I knew Dennis virtually for many years before we met in 2007, the only time I would ever see him in person. Our relationship was forged via email and phone, and built on several mutual passions, including the use of arts and media to address HIV/AIDS and health issues, the empowerment of young people, and the peaceful resolution of conflict. I was a mentor in the beginning, but felt like a student myself as he forged ahead in the many forms of activism that distinguished his brief but meaningful life.

Dennis began his career in several youth groups based in his hometown of Nakuru, Kenya. After we met, he became one of the mainstays in the ActALIVE arts coalition I founded in 2002, whose mission was to bring together artists and others using creative approaches to health and development issues, specifically focusing on HIV/AIDS.

In 2001, Dennis and young theatre artists from the Nakuru Players Theatre Club founded the theatre-for-development nonprofit, REPACTED (Rapid Effective Participatory Action in Community Theatre Education and Development), which uses a new and unique form of audience participation and interaction–called “magnet theatre”–to educate young and old, women and men, prisoners, and people already HIV-positive on health issues, behavior change, stigma and discrimination, and self-empowerment. The “Mr. and Miss Red Ribbon” contest, held each year on World AIDS Day (December 1), is an innovative beauty pageant emphasizing the importance of self-esteem and healthy lifestyles for those who are HIV-positive.

Several other opportunities emerged that would carry Dennis and his peers in new directions, including a grant from the MTV “Staying Alive” Foundation that funded HIV/AIDS education and prevention efforts among the male and female inmates at the prison in Nakuru. The grant also allowed community-theatre outreaches to young people to educate them about HIV/AIDS, encourage use of prevention measures, and promote voluntary counselling and testing (VCT).

Dennis (on the right) and colleagues at the REPACTED offices in Nakuru. Photo by David Sasaki and used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Dennis and other members of ActALIVE in Kenya, India, Thailand, Nigeria, USA, Uganda, South Africa, and elsewhere became involved in 2005 in the first World AIDS Day activities of the Global Peace Tiles Project, an arts endeavor using collaged tiles as a means to convey messages about peace, health education, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sustainable development.

In 2007-2008, Dennis and other peace activists in Kenya faced perhaps their greatest challenge to date: quelling the violence that was threatening to kill thousands and destroy the fabric of Kenyan society. He and a group of Kenyans and others from around the world, myself included, became involved in a project called “Pyramid of Peace,” a name coined from an acrobatic act created by the Nafsi Afrika Acrobats based in Nairobi, whose theme is peaceful co-existence among the various tribal groups in Kenya.

Dennis Kimambo. Photo by David Sasaki and used under a CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

The Pyramid of Peace, created under the auspices of the Lithuania-based think-tank Minciu Sodas, helped members in Kenya to confront violence and seek peaceful resolution to conflict. One unique feature of this endeavor was the use of cellphone credits to help us communicate with each other and also to distribute within areas of conflict to the various factions. Dennis credited this approach with saving his life at one point, when he was confronted by an angry mob.

REPACTED began to incorporate the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) during this time, and the two Rising Voices grants the group received helped immensely to increase and improve their efforts. The first grant enabled the purchase of equipment (video and photo cameras, a computer, and a modem) that allowed REPACTED to introduce a group of 27 young people to the digital world. Blogging was a focal point, and this resulted in invaluable participation in RV's “Blogging Positively” project, which has produced an e-guide, a map of bloggers who write on HIV/AIDS themes, and follow-on discussions about next steps, such as development of a curriculum.

The Rising Voices grant also allowed REPACTED to organize a Youth Media Consultative Forum, to train local residents to gather news and stories and share them with an international audience. Various forms of citizen media were envisioned and used in this project, and magnet theatre formed a central part of these efforts. In addition, REPACTED helped Kenyans displaced by the civil disruptions of 2007-2008 to tell their stories, and in more recent times has organized civic-education activities regarding elections, voting, and constitutional matters, all in hopes of ensuring that history does not repeat itself.

The REPACTED weblog at RV contains four years (2007-2011) of informative and insightful postings about the group and their work.

“Denno,” as his friends often called him, has been described in recent days as a loving father, a wonderful husband, a leader of great vision, a cherished friend, a person of “light,” a force for good, an activist who helped change hearts and minds. He had the dreams of a Martin Luther King, and the courage and determination of a Gandhi. He was a hero to so many of us, and he will be always.

In trying to find a way to recover the inspiration and hopefulness he embodied, and move forward with the work to which Dennis gave his life–and perhaps for which he gave his life (a police investigation is now ongoing as to the motives behind his death)–I am reminded of the lyrics to a song I know he would have loved, called “Times Like These” (Foo Fighters): “it's times like these you learn to live again, it's times like these you give and give again, it's times like these you learn to love again, time and time again.”

Thanks so much for teaching us how to live, to give, and to love, Dennis! You were and always will be a man for times like these, and what you gave to the world will be remembered and cherished time and time again.

Where Does Citizen Media Go From Here? An Interview with Turi Munthe of Demotix

Laura Morris — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:27:00 +0000

Demotix is a photo agency launched in 2009 through which citizen journalists can post and sell their breaking news content to the international mainstream media. The name comes from the Greek word “demos” which means “the people.”

The company has developed a record of success in providing news coverage which the mainstream media cannot reach. Photographs from some of these events are included in this article.

Demotix was recently acquired by Corbis Images, a sale which perhaps could be seen as a recognition of the importance of citizen media's role within mainstream journalism.

I spoke with Turi Munthe in London, the founder and former CEO of Demotix (he has recently left the company). I asked Turi about the ideas behind Demotix and on what basis it was founded, as well as for his opinion on how the landscape of citizen media has changed in the last few years.

The following is an edited version of the transcript of our interview. All images are, of course, courtesy of Demotix.

- Laura Morris, Rising Voices blog editor

TURI MUNTHE: I had the idea in late 2007 for Demotix, and I was essentially trying to put together two different problems, and solve them by association.

One problem was the hemorrhaging of resources within in mainstream media, which meant there were fewer and fewer reporters, photojournalists, and videographers working for the big organizations anywhere… on a domestic level as well as international. There was a time when, for example, The Nahar in Lebanon had not just a bureau in every other capital, but they had 20 regular bureaus around Lebanon. Today, they have nobody and they get their news from within Lebanon via AFP. But, it's the same thing as BBC – the BBC doesn't even have a full time staff in Latin America… So, it's mass shrink in international reporting [and] the absence of national journalists everywhere…

Problem two is that, counter-intuitively, ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall there has been a decrease in global freedom as measured by Freedom House. Those indices point to a decrease in freedom of speech…

The idea of Demotix: could you create a free speech platform which would allow people to tell stories that were not being reported, check them, verify them, do it in such a way to ensure your contributors were as safe as they possibly can be, and then ship that news through to mainstream media?

We had a business model on the principle that we needed to create a virtuous circle which would incentivize more people to get involved in the whole business of journalism…

[2007, the beginning of Demotix] was in a sense an interesting cultural period, where we all still believed in 2.0, and that mass groups of people do really interesting stuff online. But it turns out that wasn't true. What we realised, and what everyone ended up realising, was that there is a very small percentage of people anywhere, in any space, virtual, practical, real or not, that actually do anything. Poking and updating one's Facebook status is one thing, and contributing to serious news is a completely different kettle of fish… [We realised] we were building a network of freelancers.

Because of our business model we were having to go harder and harder into images and video as it is verifiable and copyrightable, where text is not). Our approach was that it allowed us to get our stories into mainstream news and organisations through the back door…

A Demotix photographer captured the beginnings of the London riots, 2011 (Matthew Aslett)

What we've seen over the last few years is that the tools have changed. One of the things we realised was that for an enormous amount of the hyper-breaking, citizen witnessing of the kind that Demotix thought it might do at the beginning no longer needs to happen via a platform. [Now, news] doesn't need a contributor to Demotix to be reported because two of the biggest publishers of content in the world run essentially all content: Facebook and Twitter.

The key point here is that the biggest distributors are Facebook and Twitter, because everybody's on Facebook and Twitter. The community of people that is news-savvy and engaged, they're also on Twitter, and that is where they're posting most immediately.

[For example] what happens with Boston [marathon bombings], is that all the [photographic news content] doesn't go to Demotix, doesn't get sent to the BBC or the Boston Globe, but it just goes on Facebook and Twitter, where the news organisations will jump in and verify, parse, conjugate, put together, etcetera… but everybody goes to those sources for the news…

And what we're seeing is that tech has gotten considerably more sophisticated in surfacing these news events. If suddenly you find there is an enormous number of tweets coming out of Central Boston, those tracking devices which are looking at Twitter will be able say that there’s a news event happening here… just because there are so many people posting.

So in a sense, all that breaking news stuff – as the world gets more and more online and as the spread of mobile camera technology continues – that is being covered. So the question at this point in terms of citizen media is: where are are the real gaps? And how do you fill them?…

[The problem] is that the availability of this kind of content [social media images and tweets] exacerbates the the original problem… the most interesting news is usually that which you cannot capture in a crowd-sourced, everybody-and-their cellphone kind of way… Every so often this can tell an extraordinarily powerful story, but those occasions are very very few and far between – the capture of Gaddafi, for example, was an absolutely seminal movement which was captured by cellphone, and it’s an extraordinary important document. But, more sophisticated news happens elsewhere, and, that's what I'm most excited about what citizen media can achieve, and has to look towards. [This means] using the tech at its disposal, whether it’s google docs for crowd-powered collaborative journalism, or Yammer in terms of building communities with key verticals so people can do investigative journalism in groups.. and the Kickstarters and the funding processes and everything else.

Demotix was one of the first at the scene at the contentious arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr in 2009 – a prominent researcher at Harvard University's Institute for African and African-American Research (Bill Carter)

…The big holes [in journalism] are the ones you cannot address with citizen media. And those are investigative journalism in all forms… We need to move away from what Demotix originally thought was going to be the problem because the tech has changed so radically, and the modes of distribution have changed so radically… Its not simply covering that there was a protest in Mogadishu, its why was that protest there, who are these people, how does it work, what are the key causes… And there, the advantage of being in groups is potentially enormous. Especially for collaborative investigative journalism.

RV: So, what do we need to look at now, in order to get to the next step with citizen journalism?

TM: … An enormous amount of [raw] content is now being produced by everybody… The key point now is figuring out how to tell the story.

Syria is the classic example, and a heartbreaking example. There are an obscene number of citizen journalists who have sacrificed their lives to tell the story in Syria, unlike anywhere else, on a scale which is incomprehensible. And, for reasons which have nothing to do with them, the story has failed to be told [in mainstream, global media] in ways which are impactful… [information coming out of Syria is] not geographically linked: they simply sit on YouTube in ways that doesn't particularly make sense. There is a stream of atrocity, but it doesn't tell a story; it gives you no sense of what's happening. It's provided no real insight – not just for the newspapers but also the policy advisers and foreign governments.

It just hasn't fulfilled that role because they haven't told stories… it's narratives: chronological, thematic, that's the absolutely key function. That’s how you get noticed – that's how you make a story happen. There are very few bits of straight content: the snapshot, the YouTube video, that are going to do that and that becomes ever more the case, the more content is produced.

London, United Kingdom. 26th March 2011 — photos of police in riot gear clashing with protesters at anti-cuts protest (Alex Milan Tracy)

RV: What has Demotix’ role been in this process of bringing citizen media stories forward?

TM: …Demotix has achieved a few things which I am enormously proud to be associated with. The role we played in Iran in 2009 was kind of extraordinary, because we were the extraordinarily lucky brokers of two dozen exceptionally brave Iranians on the streets of Tehran shipping their stories out through us, getting to first front page of the New York Times. That was extremely, extremely moving to be a part of. We were very involved, obviously, in much of the Arab Revolutionary movements that have taken place in the last three years. We've continued to be involved, often when other news organisations were not there… I think we did serve a purpose.

I think that what Demotix absolutely has learned is that the story is what’s most important. When we've had an impact, it's where we've managed to slightly tweak the general narrative. That's the only place you can have an impact; its not a picture here, a picture there… It's in storytelling where you can have an impact.

Green Movement supporters in Tehran in 2009, rallying days before the election opposing Ahmanidejad (anonymousIran)

RV: What is the most appealing thing about Demotix?

[Demotix] built on the only thing that had anything of any real value: the network of contributors. This is something that was always spectacularly and explicitly obvious [to its organizers] – that Demotix was really nothing at all, simply a network of exceptional people…

We had to sell to mainstream media, that was the whole principle of it. But some of the media we pulled in we couldn't sell. I remember one particular occasion: on the same day one of our contributors in Somalia spent the morning with the al-Shabaab militia in Mogadishu, and took some great pictures and amazing information about what was happening there.

Teenage Al-Shabaab Soldiers in Training in Mogadishu, 2010. Al-Shabaab (Arabic – ‘The Youth') call young children and teenagers from the countryside using the Propaganda department of the Executive Council of Al-Shabaab. They who reject face the death penalty (Abdul. A)

Simultaneously, one of our contributors in London had… walked home through Green Park, which was next to Buckingham palace. And there was a guy on a bench feeding a pelican. He took some great shots of this guy with the pelican, which we sold to every single UK newspaper (except the Guardian). And these Somalia shots [which were not bought by any mainstream media] still continue to gather cyber dust somewhere.

Michael Ellis with Willy the Pelican, London 2010 (Craig Shepheard)

That's when we changed our policy. That's when I – against all previous impulses – brought advertising on to the site… I just couldn't bear it anymore, that this fantastic content was not getting remunerated in any way… So you can make money from your story being seen on Demotix, not just your story getting sold to the New York Times or BBC.

RV: How can Demotix help people to put their stories forward?

We realised we could achieve certain things, and we couldn't achieve certain things. If your contributors are only interested in the money, then they need to figure out financial ways of doing that, and Demotix is one of those. If what you're interested in is getting that story out as broadly as possible and you are repeatedly bringing those stories, all you need is a WordPress blog, and to market the stories you're telling. There are two ways to do that – one is Facebook, and one is Twitter… Or, use Demotix and other things like that as springboards. Demotix has, of course, relationships with publishers, so there's a reason to do that, to link in with them.

Our ultimate goal is impact and change. Sometimes that impact is simply voicing, airing, and shining light into darker corners. Sometimes its about having people sacked! Sometimes, its about getting things fixed. So, I think one needs to bear in mind what one's ultimate goals are.

RV: Would you say it is possible to support oneself as a citizen journalist?

…It’s a sliding scale. There is somebody standing out with a cell phone camera at a protest, and there is somebody who is not employed by the New York Times but is doing journalism and reporting all the time. There is an enormous grey scale. What I'd say – within citizen journalism – is that journalism is a craft [and] requires all sorts of skills, commitment, understanding storytelling, understanding presentation, all those things. You don't have to go to journalism school for that – I didn't go to journalism school. You need to be connected to what you're doing, and to try to be engaging.

Demotix has sold all types of news photos… including the Royal Wedding (James Lumb)

So, yes, if you're doing all those things, then absolutely there are all sorts of ways in which you can make money and a lot of people do. The key thing I find is making sure you're not putting yourself in situations of real danger to ensure that you get that money. And that's one of the things we see over and over again in the past few years, precisely this problem which is that freelancers without the right kind of hazardous environment training, insurance, or backup, putting themselves in danger to get reports. This is what war correspondents do… but they're not necessarily going in without backup.

What are the tools you use to make money as a journalist… essentially, you build up your relationship directly with clients of your work. Have a very strong line for story, always think about story. A thick skin for rejection letters, and pitch two or three stories every day. And use tools at your disposal, like Demotix, where you can sell your stories and the rights.

Announcing the Official Wikimedia Commons App

Rising Voices — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:33:00 +0000

Rising Voices note: This article written by Maryana Pinchuk was originally published on the Wikimedia blog and re-published under a CC BY 3.0 license.

Love taking photos on your smartphone? Now you don’t need to wait to get home to upload your high quality educational photos to Wikimedia Commons, the free image repository used by Wikipedia and many other projects.

The official Wikimedia Commons app for iOS and Android allows you to quickly and easily upload your photos to Commons. You can also upload multiple files and add categories (Android only so far) and share your uploads through your favorite image sharing sites. Your contributions to Commons can help illustrate the world’s largest encyclopedia and make knowledge come to life for millions of readers around the globe.

In the future, we hope to add more features and make it easier to browse and discover all the great content Commons has to offer. We also look forward to being able to run more campaigns like Wiki Loves Monuments, encouraging expert Commons users and people new to Wikimedia projects alike to contribute to high-need content areas.

As always, we need your help and input to make these apps better. Take the apps for a test drive and let us know if you encounter bugs, or if you have great ideas for features we should add in the future.

And if you don’t have an iOS or Android device, don’t feel left out! Uploads to Commons for a wider selection of phones and browsers are supported on the mobile version of all Wikimedia projects.

Copyright notes: File:Wikimedia Commons Android App – Login Screen.png 01.png by Yuvipanda, under CC-BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons, iOS contribs by Brion Vibber, under CC-BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons

Storymaking in Erbil

Ramsey George — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:51:42 +0000

Last month, we published an introduction to Storymaker, a mobile app currently in development. Intended to enable existing and aspiring journalists around the world to develop their digital storytelling skills, the project is supported by Global Voices, Free Press Unlimited, The International Center for Journalism, Small World News and the Guardian Project. Updates will be published as the project continues.

In a land as old as history itself, there are many stories to discover. The Storymaker team arrived in Erbil in Kurdistan in the North of Iraq, to work with 20 inspiring journalists and citizen journalists from around Iraq. Each armed with a new mobile device and the latest version of the app, the participants spent 5 days discussing journalistic standards and making stories around and about Erbil.

Located northern Iraq, Erbil is one of the world's oldest continuosuly inhabited cities. Historically an important trading center, Erbil connected Baghdad and Mosul. The largest city in the Kurdish autonomous region and governed by the Kurdish regional government, Iraqis traveling north to avoid both summer heat and sectarian violence often come to Erbil for its relative calm and safety.

The region is not an easy one to work in, from slow Internet to rising regional tensions. Hoping to move beyond these concerns, the goal of the training was to create a hub of users that could produce stories and provide feedback on the newly released beta version of Storymaker. The participants were chosen by the Independant Media Centre of Kurdistan (IMCK), and included Arabic and Kurdish students and professional journalists. Rising Voices was on hand to provide story ideas and mentoring.

The trainings touched on a series of topics, pressing participants to think beyond the typical news article and to consider how the digital world has impacted news making. Another class discussed how the framing of a photograph affects the story, while a third presented a detailed step-by-step guide on how to use the Storymaker app, connecting a phone to a projector and walking participants through the different features.

The Storymaker app is designed to help citizen journalists tell stories more effectively for a digital audience, and includes lessons, templates, and basic editing capabilities. Stories are uploaded to Youtube and displayed on Storymaker.cc. To ensure privacy, it is possible to use a secure Tor network connection to protect the user’s identity.

Ali, a participant from Najaf, said that he found the app to be very useful. “For me, it will be useful if something suddenly happens, and we can’t have a photographer present,” said Ali. “I can see our viewers using it and sending clips in to play on TV.”

As this was the first deployment of the app, several difficulties had to be addressed, including language and a variety of phone models. For example, the app runs best on Android, but as there are many phone models, problems can occur for the user.

Simultaneously, Storymaker colleagues in Egypt from Sawt Hurr, organized a training in Minya, about 5 hours south of Cairo. As the project kicks off, there will be more trainings taking place around the world. Next stops: Morocco and Tunisia.

Spark13: 4th Global Forum on Telecentres

Eddie Avila — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:50:27 +0000

Rising Voices is pleased to announce that we will be a media partner for the 4th Global Forum on Telecentres to be held in Granada, Spain on May 28-29, 2013. This gathering called Spark13 will focus on three main discussion topics: people, innovation, and sustainability. Particpants from the Global Telecentre Network, which is comprised of approximately 500,000 telecenters serving around 1 billion users around the world, will be able to take part in small group sessions, workshops, and other participatory activities to explore the discussion topics.

According to Telecentre.org:

A telecentre is a public place where people can find information, create, learn, and communicate with others while developing digital skills through access to information and communication technology.

Organized by Telecentre.org Foundation, Telecentres Europe, Consorcio Fernando de los Rios-Red Guadalinfo, and the National Information Society Agency of Korea, Spark13 is expected to bring together 1300 participants from around the world.

The winners of the 1st Global Telecentre Awards will also be announced at Spark13. Awards will be given in the following categories: The Awards feature 6 main categories: Telecentre, Telecentre Manager, Telecentre Network, Telecentre Initiative, Telecentre Innovation, and Information Access Center.

Rising Voices has become very interested in how physical spaces, such as telecenters, libraries, and hack labs can be important resources for local communities as a way to encourage citizen participation through the use of digital media tools. Certainly providing internet access is an important step, but many of these spaces also provide important training and mentoring for users.

In August 2012, together with New Tactics and Social Media Exchange, Rising Voices co-hosted an online dialogue called “Physical spaces as catalysts for greater digital citizen participation.” During this virtual conversation, we brought together experts and other practitioners to share their experiences, challenges, and success stories:

Across the globe, new physical spaces are emerging that are acting as catalysts for greater citizen participation using digital technologies. Community libraries are rethinking their traditional role, and many are now offering internet access to their users in order to provide opportunities to gather around local issues where they can produce, not simply consume information. Telecenters are going beyond providing computer access to communities, to providing workshops to train citizens on how to use digital technology effectively to promote change. Hacklabs offer a physical space where activists and technologists can come together to find innovative solutions to local problems. These are just a few examples of the innovative use of physical space to encourage and empower greater digital citizen participation.

Before, during, and after Spark13, Rising Voices will be featuring some of these innovative Telecentres that are playing important roles in helping their local communities access digital media tools to tell their own stories or participate more fully online.

Announcing the 2013 Rising Voices Grantees

Eddie Avila — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:46:19 +0000

Rising Voices is pleased to announce the five winners of the 2013 microgrant competition for citizen media outreach projects. This year, we received 870 proposals for citizen media projects from 97 countries from around the world. This outpouring of interest continues to demonstrate the ongoing need for this type engagement of local underrepresented communities. It also shows that there are hundreds of individuals and organizations eager to help their local communities join the global online conversation through the use of citizen media. We were honored that they chose to share their ideas with the Rising Voices community.

This year marked a major change in the way that Rising Voices collected these proposals for sharing on a public platform designed to facilitate networking and peer exchange. Thanks to the new WordPress-supported site designed by Global Voices’ Code and Design chief Jeremy Clarke, we were able to offer a new website that published the proposal submitted by each applicant. Each applicant was given the option whether or not to display their proposal publicly.

After the proposal was categorized by geographic location, topic, and tools to be used in the trainings, the application was visually mapped as accurately as possible to show the location where the project would take place. Visitors to the website could then search the public proposals according to these different categories or by focusing on a particular place on the map. We were also pleased to see interaction in the comments section among the applicants, who also shared their ideas on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

From this group of public and private proposals, our volunteers from the Global Voices community helped review and select 74 shortlisted candidates, who were then invited to submit a more detailed proposal for further consideration. After an additional round of review of these candidates, our selection committee chose five new grantees to be awarded a microgrant to implement their project. These new projects are diverse in their approach, and have demonstrated a commitment to work in their unique context. We are thrilled that they will join the Rising Voices community of grantee projects.

The five winners (in alphabetical order):

Argentina: Los Inestables Radio

In Córdoba, Argentina, a local team of volunteers had been making regular visits to the public psychiatric hospital where they got to know many of the patients on a more personal level. They found that much of the external perception by the local community of those hospitalized at the facility was either incorrect or the result of stereotypes. From this experience, the volunteers and the patients decided to produce a weekly live radio program called “Radio Los Inestables” broadcasted from the hospital's outside patio and transmitted over a local radio station. The content ranges from serious topics such as exploring the relationship between mental health, poverty, and discrmination, to more light-hearted features in the form of radio theater or poetry readings. The project seeks to place more of the responsibility for managing the radio program into the hands of the patients by adding an online component where they can reach a national and global audience. The participants will learn how to record, edit, and upload audio podcasts, and manage the radio program's social media accounts to have regular interaction with listeners around the world.

Fiji: Tukuni Yadua (Talking about Yadua)

For the past forty years, residents of the community of Denimanu on the isolated island of Yadua in Fiji have been committed in their efforts to protect the endangered Crested Iguana. These creatures have been threatened by external pressures and by climate change, making their protection much more urgent. The protection of the wildlife and the villagers’ traditional way of life has been one of the defining characteristics of the community's identity. However, due to the island's isolation some of these stories depicting the challenges, as well as the successes of these efforts have not been adequately told. Now the residents want to pass this passion for conservation along to the next generation with the hopes that they will continue this work. The National Trust of Fiji (NTF) will work in conjunction with the local community to train young villagers to tell this story through the use of digital video and photography. This digital imagery will showcase the unique biodiversity located on the island, and how the relationship between humans and nature is such an integral part of the community's past, present, and future.

Mapping for Niger

Through a partnership with the Department of Geography at the Abdou Moumouni University in Niamey, Niger, students from the campus Geography Club will come together to form a Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) to discover the needs and the stories of their surrounding community. Using OpenStreetMap tools, the team will learn skills needed to take part in a collaborative open-source humanitarian mapping project. Once they learn these mapping and citizen media skills, the participants will set off around the capital city and surrounding rural villages to map key landmarks such as schools, streets, and hospitals. They will also use other forms of citizen media to link the objects that they map with the needs of these communities. By accompanying this mapping process through regular updates to the project's blog and Twitter and Facebook accounts, this map will come to life with the stories and realities of Niger.

Mexico: Dizha Kieru for SMS

Dizha Kieru (“Our Voice” in the Zapotec language) is a local community radio station located in the indigenous Zapotec village of Talea de Castro that sits in the Juarez mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. The town owns and operates its own GSM mobile network that provides low-cost cellular service to the approximately 2,500 residents. The radio station, together with the organization Rhizomatica, will train local residents to become community news gatherers through in-person reporting or through collection via SMS or phone calls from citizens. The Dizha Kieru team, who run both the radio and GSM base-station will collect, synthesize, format, and send out the news reports to residents twice a day via mass SMS and posted online for emigrants living abroad via Twitter. The community mobile network will help reduce the costs for this form of news gathering and distribution, and can help enrich the dialogue between those in the community and the diaspora.

Youth Stories from Bhutan's Maturing Democracy

Bhutan is home to one of the youngest democracies in the world, when in 2008 it transitioned from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Since then, many organizations such as the Centre for Media and Democracy based in the capital city of Thimpu have been playing its part in helping citizens take a more active role in this new society. Through the establishment of local Media Clubs, the CMD has been providing citizen journalism workshops to college-aged youth giving them the opportunity to add their voice to the national debate and conversation related to these democratic changes. With this new project, the CMD plans to expand their reach by offering audio podcasting workshops to the communities of Samtse, Trongsa, Kanglung, and Paro. Much of the content created by these young podcasters will focus on the country's second-ever national elections and will be shared online and on local airwaves.

Over the next few weeks, we will be providing a more in-depth introduction to each of the new projects.

Even though this cycle of funding has been completed, our platform will remain available for the foreseeable future. We invite you to continue to explore the many ideas presented on the site, and reach out to those that share your interests or if you have a proposal for collaboration.

Please join us in congratulating and welcoming the five newest Rising Voices grantees.

No Digital Camera? No Problem. Create Your Own Language Video

Eddie Avila — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:38:55 +0000

Thanks to a new feature on the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) website, language activists who may not have ready access to a digital video camera can now make their own contribution towards the revitalization of their endangered language online. The new “Add a Video” feature allows users to create their own citizen media by recording a video directly from their computer's webcam for upload and sharing with the wider community.

This project from the Alliance of Linguistic Diversity seeks to “put technology at the service of organizations and individuals working to confront the language endangerment by documenting, preserving, and teaching them.” Originally launched by Google, the ELP is now administered by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council and the Institute for Language Information and Technology (The Linguist List) at Eastern Michigan University.

In addition to allowing for the uploading of other videos or sharing links to videos already available on YouTube, this option for direct recording can be an opportunity to hear more voices from diverse language communities. Once the video is recorded, it can be uploaded, tagged, and shared with the growing ELP community. Video creators can choose from a particular theme such as Food, Humor, Greetings, or Songs, as a way to group their content with others. The themes can also jumpstart the creative process by offering suggestions for a new topic to film. Once the video is uploaded and categorized it will be displayed on the respective languages's page.

ELP has been careful by encouraging users to only upload or create videos that respect the privacy of the language communities, and ask that any videos have the consent of those individuals displayed. There is also a content guidelines section that outlines some of these recommendations. The system also has a flagging option where others can notify the site if there is content that does not follow the guidelines. Once reported, it will be reviewed by expert moderators who can decide to permanently take down content that is found to be inappropriate or videos that show sacred or private content.

This new feature is relatively new, but the hope is that it will open up new citizen media access to emerging activists interested in taking the first step towards making their own contribution for the preservation and revitalization of their native languages.