Digital Media and Social Justice in Africa: Overcoming Challenges of an Unwired Continent
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The document discusses the state of social justice and digital media in Africa. It covers several topics: 1) The political and social context in Africa in the 1990s that led to the emergence of civil society organizations and new avenues for expression through the internet. 2) How civil society in Africa has utilized newer forms of social media and citizen journalism, though access remains limited due to low internet penetration on the continent. 3) The challenges African civil society faces in engaging digital audiences and overcoming the "digital disconnect" between online activists and offline communities. It provides examples of tools and best practices for effective digital activism.
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Digital Media and Social Justice in Africa: Overcoming Challenges of an Unwired Continent
- 1. Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa September 5, 2009 The State of Social Justice and Digital Media in Africa
- 4. The Issues Impact Potential Challenges Weaknesses Best Practices Lessons Learned What the Future Holds
- 12. Overcoming Technology Determinants “ In the context of political participation and social activism, fewer connections do not necessarily translate into limited political impact if these connections are used effectively and creatively… “
- 14. The Digital Activist Toolkit Blogging Tools Micro-blogging Mapping Podcasting Social Networking Blogger Wordpress Typepad Livejournal Twitter Afrigator Google Maps Ushahidi Blog Talk Radio Imeem MyPodcast.com Facebook MySpace Hi5 Ning
- 15. The Digital Activist Toolkit (cont) Don’t forget the power of the “boring” email! Design an email strategy for your organization Video Sharing Photo sharing Mapping Mobile activism Feeds & Aggregators Youtube Vimeo Daily Motion Animoto Flickr SmugMug Picassa Google Maps Ushahidi Frontline SMS Frontline Forms SixBlue Data RSS Friendfeed
- 17. SMS in Action: The Village Diary Project An open source web platform which integrates with FrontlineSMS to provide timely feedback to community members Custodian collects or creates source documents Fieldworker using laptop with Village Diary platform enters information Info uploaded to a web server or data repository state attorneys, social workers, health officials and aid organizations. Updates sent to beneficiaries via SMS
- 24. Crafting an Online Narrative – The Mara Triangle Twitter Fundraising http://twitter.com/maratriangle/status/1001836796 http://twitter.com/maratriangle/status/1002133440
- 30. Thank you for your attention… A Keynote Address by Dibussi Tande Blog: www.dibussi.com Email: [email_address]
Notes de l'éditeur
- My address will focus on the state of social justice and digital media in Africa. This is a topic that has become important as many African civil society organizations and activists increasingly appropriate tools of the so-called “New Media” to defend and promote social justice on the continent. So what exactly do we mean by social justice? It is about equality and justice for all, the rich and poor, the educated and the uneducated; it is about inclusion of individuals and groups on the margins of society; it is about leveling the playing field for all citizens in all aspects of society; it is about the respect of human rights. Today, the fight for social justice in Africa is the privileged domain of civil society organizations and social activists who working apart from state structures and are increasingly turning to Digital Media to promote their respective causes. Today digital media has become a vital and increasingly indispensible tool for individuals and organizations fighting for social justice on the continent And by Digital media, I am referring to the online tools and platforms used to store, retrieve and transmit information, audio-visual and data formats. With the definitional issues out of the way, I will take a quick look at the beginnings of the new African civil society and its gradual evolution towards technology-based activism and advocacy.
- The political liberalization and economic crisis of the 1990s in Africa led to the emergence of two socio-political phenomena on the continent: First, there was the opening up of the political space to non-state actors, particularly to the political groups, political activists and the press. Second was the widespread disengagement of the state from “key areas of social delivery such as basic services and health care” (Wasserman, 110). The result was the emergence of a wide variety of civil society groups established to fill in the gap. These civil society organizations focused on political issues such as human rights, democracy, rule of law, minority rights, press freedoms, etc., and non-political or development issues such as land rights, the environment, gender and sexual rights, HIV/AIDS, rural development, education, etc. The commercialization of the Internet and the creation of the World Wide Web in the 1990s was a major boost to civil society actors across the continent. The Internet, with its “Open, permissive architecture without central control presented important new opportunities for free expression by individuals and organizations operating outside conventional power structures”. By the end of the decade, the African civil society was making tentative steps towards creating a space for itself on the digital public sphere, particularly in Southern and East Africa. However, the real impetus for the African civil society would be the advent of what became known as web 2.0.
- Web 2.0 refers to developments in web design in the past decade that facilitate “interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.” This new user-centric web design is based primarily on the creation of digital tools, referred to as Social Media driven by user-generated content –tools that have “democratized” cyberspace by transforming users from mere consumers to content producers. Out of Web 2.0 emerged grassroots or citizenship journalism. As Dan Gillmor, one of the pioneers of this brand of journalism put it: “What became known as citizen journalism is the result of the digital era’s democratization of media – wide access to powerful, inexpensive tools of media creation; and wide access to what people created, via digital networks.” Civil society organizations and groups also understood the potential and power of the new media and appropriated these tools to promote their causes. This interaction between the Internet/digital media and the civil society resulted in “Digital Civil Society” . “ Convergence In Africa the has been an obvious convergence on the digital public sphere of citizen journalism, represented mainly by bloggers and of (digital) social activists representing civil society organizations on the continent. This convergence is manifested in documented cases of African bloggers taking up the causes of the civil society, helping give civil society organizations an online presence, and teaming up them to organize online campaigns – these are the members of Africa’s Digital Civil Society So what are they key questions that come to mind when we think of social justice and digital media in Africa?
- Here are some the issues that I intend to address during this talk Can digital tools be effectively deployed in African contexts where access to new media infrastructure is limited? What has been the impact of digital media on social justice in Africa? How well has the African civil society appropriated digital tools? What have been some of the obstacles faced by the civil society in its attempt to join the digital public sphere? What are some of the lessons learned thus far and are there any good practices that can be implemented or adapted? Does this awareness of the global context mean that South African movements avail themselves of the same technologies of resistance that have been deployed by activist groupings in the global contexts mentioned above? In order to answer these questions in an informed manner, we have to first understand the technological landscape in which the African civil society operates.
- There is little or no disagreement over the fact that the ICT infrastructure is very underdeveloped in Africa. ICT development in Africa is hindered by issues of affordability, availability and accessibility. Regarding the Internet in particular, the continent is notorious for poor internet services coupled with exorbitant rates. The result is an alarmingly small number of Internet users on the continent, even in relatively well-connected countries such as South Africa. These recent Internet statistics from Internetworldstats.com tell us the story in graphic detail: Only 3.9% of the world’s internet users are in Africa Population estimate 997,269,930 (14.7%); Internet users 64,153,900 (3.9% users in the world)
- So how widespread is internet usage in Africa? Here is another graphic which tells the story: Internet penetration is 5.6% compared to the world average of 23.8% and the United States average of 73.9% It is a no-brainer that this has a negative effect on digital activist on the continents which depends primarily on the Internet to be successful. Inequalities of technological opportunity are emerging as important constraints in resolving such problems. Deprived of public goods such as information on their rights, or the opportunity to use cellular networks for enterprise, civil society is denied the chance to contribute to development and growth. http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/news/news/detail.cfm?id=193
- Another indicator of the challenges that digital activism faces in Africa is demonstrated here by this map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data* (June 2009) While every other continent is fully developed, the African map contain lots of blank spaces indicating that most of sub-Saharan Africa is virtually non-existent on social network sites – and these are sites that have become powerful tools for social justice activists around the world. Effect The effect of the unwired state of Africa is very telling from the muffled voice that African civil society has on the digital public sphere.
- HOW MUCH VOICE DOES THE AFRICAN CIVIL SOCIETY HAVE IN THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE? Today, the voice of the African civil society barely registers on the digital public sphere. In most of Africa, particularly sub-Saharan African, civil society barely has a voice on the digital public sphere. In fact, what we hear is a barely audible whisper. The main reason being that the majority of civil society organizations, even when they have an online presence are a generation behind in terms of technology – they are still stuck in the one-way Web 1.0. Activist organizations generally go through three phases of Internet use: The first is the Experimental Retrieval phase where they use the internet for email and basic research. The next is the Broadcast Power phase: This is when the organization establishes its online presence by creating a website. This is usually an 'online brochure' which outlines the organizations mission, structure and things of the sort. Wagner (1998) commented that "charities offer mainly online versions of their brochures with vanilla HTML content and interactivity limited to sending an e-mail for more information". Jamieson (2000), in reviewing Canadian non-profit sites, noted that with few exceptions they are "half hearted, unsophisticated and largely ineffective efforts". The last phase is Interactive Dialog: This is when organizations move from “vanilla HTML content” to a full blown use of digital tools Most African civil society organizations stuck in the second phase, making them marginal players on the digital public sphere.
- WHOSE VOICES ARE REPRESENTED IN THE NEW MEDIA? WHOSE VOICES ARE UNDER- OR UNREPRESENTED, AND NEED TO BE REPRESENTED? ARE MARGINALIZED GROUPS FINDING A VOICE IN THE DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE? Those with Access Urban, Educated, Affluent The marginal or silent voice s(gender and class inequalities) The rural and illiterate Funding as a tool for control Most civil society groups that have access to the Internet have it through western NGOs. Most of these are in South Africa The Way Forward In order to give a voice to marginalized groups, there is an imperative to democratize the African digital public sphere by Breaking women’s traditional resistance to technology through training Creating gender-sensitive tools Packaging information in ways that is meaningful and accessible to the non literate Need for full African Appropriation of African digital sphere to give it a uniquely African voice and content; using existing tools not to mimic what has worked in the west, but create innovative and creative spaces most relevant to Africa
- In the developed world the digital civil society shares the same geographical and digital space as the people they are either trying to inform, influence and mobilize. In Africa, there is a double disconnect: On the one hand, civil society groups going digital are dealing with a crowd that is largely unwired. On the other the African digital public space is peculiar in that, save for a few countries such as SA, the majority of its digital activists (particularly its bloggers), live in the west, far away from the “Real Africa”. So even when African activists build global alliances around African causes they still fail to impact the ground. This reminds me of Ethan’s quote: It’s unlikely that most people living in Kibera slums are aware of the work that Kenyan bloggers are doing on Ushahidi. To make these projects work for most Kenyans, we can’t deliver content over the Internet – it has to reach people via mobile phones and radio.” Ethan Zuckerman And I might add deliver the content in person. This is what I term the “African digital disconnect. Key Questions How do you engage people when the majority of them are not wired? How do you give the marginalized a voice in the digital public sphere? How do you use digital tools to reach “those at the bottom of the pyramid” How Africa resolves this “Digital Disconnect” will largely determine how much voice the African civil society will in the digital public sphere and how well the digital civil society will mature.
- In 2007, following a spate of police killings of unarmed demonstrators across Cameroon, Cameroonian digital activists created a website “Let them Account” - http://www.letthemaccount.com/ - to serve as repository audio-visual and textual evidence of police brutality and human rights abuses in Cameroon, particularly the former British Southern Cameroons which has seen an upsurge in nationalist tendencies in the past couple of decades. It was a concept that has been used with great success by activists in different parts of the world. However, track and trace never got off the ground because its target community was completely unaware of its existence. And its creators in the Diaspora failed to link up with activist groups on the ground to use the site as planned. RESULT: After over 2 years in existence, only 1 picture and 1 report of police brutality were reported not because there were no human rights abuses in Cameroon, but because the target population was not aware of the existence of this tool.
- Without doubt, the challenges facing the African civil society from a technological perspective are huge. However, rather than giving in to despair, the African civil society should look for innovative and out-of-the-box strategies for working around the technological and infrastructural obstacles on its path. As Wasserman has stated “ In the context of political participation and social activism, fewer connections do not necessarily translate into limited political impact if these connections are used effectively and creatively… While… infrastructural problems and material inequalities should always be recognized … room should also be left for the display of agency by local activists…. African ICT users [are] actors in their own political destinies rather than as victims of technological determinants.” (Wasserman, 114)
- QUESTION: DOES HAVING A DIGITAL VOICE MAKE CIVIL SOCIETY MORE EFFECTIVE? Lobbying elected representatives, public officials and policy elites. Networking with related associations and organizations, mobilizing organizers, activist, and members. Mobilizing: Generating online engagement and offline Collective Action To this we can add two broad categories of digital activism: Cross-border activism Localities are connected with each other across a region, country or world around common issues – human rights, HIV/AIDS, etc. “cross-border political work centered on the fact that specific types of local issues recur in localities across the world”. Ex: SPARC, started by and centered on women, began as an effort to organize slum-dwellers in Bombay to get housing. Now it has a network of such groups throughout Asia, and some cities in Latin America and Africa. Wholly Online activism Campaigns organized primarily, if not exclusively in the digital public sphere: The anti-globalization protests of the late nineties, particularly the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle in 1999. Having established why it is imperative for the African civil society to have a strong digital voice, let’s look at some of the challenges specific to the civil society creating a space for itself on the digital public sphere.
- WHAT NEW MEDIA TOOLS ARE AVAILABLE TO AFRICAN CIVIL SOCIETY AND WHICH HAVE PROVED TO BE THE MOST EFFECTIVE? There is an overwhelming number of digital tools that can be used for social activism. It is futile trying to master or know all of these. However, digital activists should at least be familiar some of the main tool categories so that they can make informed decisions when determining what tools they need for their campaigns. I will not conduct a detailed review because of time constraints and the fact that there will be a workshop tomorrow on digital tools. Blogging Micro-blogging Mapping Podcasting Social Networks
- Video Sharing Photo Sharing Mapping Mobile Activism Feeds and Social Network Aggregators Let us not forget less glamorous tools such ad the good old email e-groups!
- SOME SMS USES Fahamu campaigns Domestic violence and land rights: Fahamu is developing programs in in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, with the Rural Women’s Movement, under the Umnyango project, on the use of SMS to help women report and act on violence against women and on land rights. Election Monitoring in Nigeria and Sierra Leone In Nigeria’s April 2007 presidential election, a local civil society organization used free software to collect over 10,000 text message reports from voters around the country, boosting citizen participation in a political process many Nigerians doubted. In Sierra Leone’s August-September 2007 elections, trained local monitors used mobile phones to collect data from designated polling sites, enabling the independent National Election Watch to compile and release an accurate, comprehensive analysis of the election almost two weeks before the official report. Mobile monitoring is too informal to replace international monitoring missions, but the ability of cell-phone equipped observers to collect and disseminate accurate election results to the public quickly and cheaply helped ease tensions that may have otherwise lead to conflict. Main tool Frontline SMS [and its sister application, Frontline Forms] used by a variety of organizations
- Village Diary Project – Cameroon We seek to assist in formalizing family institutions through establishment of marriage licenses, birth certificates and last wills and testaments. By providing secure access to digital backups of these documents to authorized case workers, we aim to alleviate the problems that arise after the death of a leading family member. The Village Diary Platform The Village Diary is a free and open source (FOSS) software platform designed for any organization to download, use and modify to suit their needs. The system is designed from the ground up to work in conditions where resources such as Internet bandwidth and computing power is limited. In most cases, any available computer can be made to function with the platform with minimal setup time. It is equally available in a portable mode that may be run from a USB device. A secure and confidential repository which stores information about a parent or guardian’s wishes for their children, spouses and personal property Tracks vital information about succession, inheritance rights and child custody Any other information related to the care and rights of children and widows
- FOCUS Crisis Reporting Madagascar 2009 – Information Newspapers / breaking news; info about organization Vote Report, Fund raising Stoves for Rwanda - http://www.stovesforrwanda.com/-25_000_Disney_Award__MTA3.html Twitter is a microblogging service that enables its users to publish short messages, up to 140 characters in length, on a personalized news feed. Users can update their feed directly through the Twitter web site, or they can use various desktop and mobile applications, including SMS messaging These news feeds can be accessed directly through a member's web page, but Twitter also allows users to receive updates on a mobile or desktop application of their choosing. This syndication process is called “following”. If a user “follows” the Twitter feed of another user, she receives that person’s updates through her Twitter web page, desktop or mobile applications and, if she is a resident of the USA, Canada, or India, via SMS. In the age of smart phones and localized services this immediate distribution of personalized news is very powerful.
- Websites, blogs, social network sites are replete with valuable information that never reaches groups on the ground and are simply lost in cyberspace Repackaging and publishing this information in book or pamphlet form Let us now turn our attention to a few best practices which civil society organizations and activists can use to ensure that their actions for social justice in
- “ If organizers limit themselves to seeing [tools] as a strategy in and of itself — without considering the strategy apart from the tool — they risk overlooking ways to run a more effective campaign on other platforms, or augmenting a campaign using multiple platforms.” The strategy always comes first, and then you figure out which tool fits. In my field of instruction we design lots of web-based and mobile-based training for corporations around the world and one of the key lessons is that the latest technological infatuation is not always the answer to an instructional problem. Analyze the problem before designing and developing the appropriate instructional approach which in some cases may turn out to be a brief Instructor-led or classroom training rather than a web-based training. Similarly, activists should not go for tools simply because they are in vogue If you plan to use twitter, for example, for your campaign or organization, you should be clear about your expectations: “ Do you use Twitter to get your message out, increase your area of influence, keep an existing community informed or to organize collective action? Each of these aims has consequences for your use of Twitter. There is no right or wrong way to Twitter. The only way to evaluate your efforts in the Twitterverse is to be clear about your purpose before you start.” One way to avoid the tool fixation trap is to use the POST strategy for each campaign.
- POST Framework (Groundswell from Forrester). Consider the following before adopting a technology : People, Objectives, Strategy and LAST Technology: “groups jump right to a cool technology without fully understanding how to use it, what they want to accomplish and who they are going to reach.” P is People. Don't start a social strategy until you know the capabilities of your audience. If you're targeting college students, use social networks. If you're reaching out business travelers, consider ratings and reviews. Forrester has great data to help with this, but you can make some estimates on your own. Just don't start without thinking about it. O is objectives. Pick one. Are you starting an application to listen to your customers, or to talk with them? To support them, or to energize your best customers to evangelize others? Or are you trying to collaborate with them? Decide on your objective before you decide on a technology. Then figure out how you will measure it. S is Strategy. Strategy here means figuring out what will be different after you're done. Do you want a closer, two-way relationship with your best customers? Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones? Imagine you succeed. How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you'll know where to begin. T is Technology. A community. A wiki. A blog or a hundred blogs. Once you know your people, objectives, and strategy, then you can decide with confidence.
- Once you’ve figured out what tools to use, you have to use them to tell a story, a compelling narrative which clearly transmits the message that you intend to send out Are you trying to raise money for an orphanage? What is it about the orphanage that you want people to know about? What narrative strategy will you use to evoke the appropriate response? It is not enough to have a blog or a Facebook page or twitter account – your online presence must be meaningful enough to build a community. This is where your narrative comes in…
- The Mara Conservancy The Mara Triangle is the North-Western part of the Masai Mara game reserve, Kenya, and is managed by the not-for-profit organization The Mara Conservancy on behalf of Trans-Mara County Council (Trans Mara District). The agreement mandates the Mara Conservancy to undertake all aspects of protected area management including: revenue collection and distribution, security, tourism development and management, infrastructure maintenance and development (all new projects require an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and approval by a joint committee comprising members of the Conservancy and County Council). The Mara triangle uses digital tools in tandem to tell their story and have built that narrative through their blog , pictures , videos and, of course, Twitter . Each tool tells a story The blog The pictures on Flickr Videos on Vimeo The twitter account
- The Mara Triangle narrative was so compelling that that when they announced they were looking for donations for village latrines they actually had to tell people to stop giving only four hours later.
- People are not just satisfied with more information. Civil society must avoid a feel-good activism which is passive rather than active, which gives the false impression that knowing what is going on is the end goal.
- The ultimate goal for civil society is of an online campaign or initiative sustained by a dedicated band of online – and offline – activists. What is the Two-step Flow Model? This is a model whereby “mass media information is channeled to the ‘masses’ through opinion leadership. The people with most access to media, and having a more literate understanding of media content, explain and diffuse the content to others.” The African civil society should use this model to involve community leaders and organizations on the ground thereby ensuring that its online activities translate into successful actions in the offline world. This method combines older, more traditional forms of communication with new media technologies (Wasserman) : Ex: “E-mails get sent to provincial offices, who contact branches, who contact districts, who distribute posters and pamphlets at train stations and taxi ranks. We go to churches on foot”(Ahmed & Swart 2003). Lessons from the Obama Campaign Online and offline integration was key — “ offline recruiting yielded online activists, which in turn yielded more recruiting in the physical world. For all the attention we’ll pay to online outreach, remember that much of the work of building Obama’s supporter list took place face-to-face.”
- African bloggers and digital activists, particularly those in the Diaspora, must play a more frontline role in promoting social justice in Africa by partnering with Civil Society Organizations They can put their technical skills at the disposal of the civil society (providing a digital component to offline action (overcoming “skills inadequacy”.) Giving CSOs an effective digital presence In return, the CSOs will be providing a platform on the ground for digital activists, particularly those in the Diaspora to contribute to and influence what is going on in the continent This would be a way to resolve the digital disconnect which we discussed earlier The example of JimbiMedia, a multimedia company created by Cameroonian digital activists in the Diaspora: JimbiMedia has so far created blogs for 4 Cameroonian newspapers, 3 online and print magazines, about 30 academics and opinion, and 5 civil society organizations. It has also created one activist blog, France Watch and 2 collective blog, Imhotep and Up Station Mountain Club. JimbiMedia’s main achievement – apart from giving African intellectuals, groups and newspapers a larger audience than they would have ever imagined – is its introduction of the concept of personal websites and blogging to Cameroonians, particularly the Cameroonian Diaspora.
- From Guvra Mishra’s blog: Taken together, these four themes constitute the value system of social media. I believe that the tools are transient, the buzzwords will change, but the value system embedded in these 4Cs is here to stay. So, let's look at these 4Cs in some detail. Content Many digital activism initiatives like Social Documentary and Witness primarily focus on using social media tools to create and share compelling multimedia Content. Some of this Content generates Conversations and becomes viral and some of it might even lead to Collective Action. However, the focus is on Content. Collaboration Other initiatives, like Vote Report India or the Pink Chaddi Campaign , start off with a strong focus on Collaboration around a specific event. In its first iteration, Vote Report India leveraged Co-creation by creating a platform for collectively tracking irregularities in the 2009 Indian elections. The Pink Chaddi Campaign leveraged Collective Action by asking its supporters to send pink panties to the Sri Ram Sena as Valentine’s Day gifts. As these campaigns become successful, they try to move to the next Community level, but don’t always succeed in building a long-term community. Community Very few digital activism initiatives are able to leverage the Community or Collective Intelligence layers. The Netroots community in the US, especially Daily Kos , Talking Points Memo and MoveOn.org , have been able to build a strong Community around progressive politics in the US. Collective Intelligence My Barack Obama leverage some aspects of Collective Intelligence during the 2008 presidential campaign. How to use the model:
- It is time to transform the African digital public sphere from a largely "performative“ space where views are expressed, into an “Active” space characterized by collective engagement and action, thereby transforming it into a veritable tool for the promotion of social justice in Africa. For this to happen the digital civil society must focus on 3 key issues which have been highlighted throughout this presentation: Information Community Collective Action Compelling Content; Viable and sustained virtual community (dialogue and engagement ); and offline collective action That is our hope, that is our dream for a revitalized digital civil society in Africa. Let’s all work together to make it happen!