Journalism « Sameer Padania

12/06/2010 • 21:13 1

WITNESS/YouTube blogging collaboration on human rights and video

Today, on the Google, YouTube and WITNESS blogs, I have co-written a new blog post with Steve Grove, YouTube’s Head of News and Politics. It’s the introductory post in a series about human rights and video, and sets the scene for why video – and citizen video – has become so integral to human rights advocacy work worldwide. Video has a particular and growing value in human rights work – it runs the gamut from evidence to emotion, from testimony to transparency, from social media to sousveillance – and it’s exciting to see YouTube giving this issue the space and prominence it needs, not least because YouTube is a key enabler and influencer of the human rights landscape, as Sam Gregory and I have argued increasingly vocally over the past year.

The remaining two posts in the series will offer first a practical run-through of how to create and share human rights video safely and effectively in the online environment, and then a piece looking at some of the ethical issues raised by presenting human rights videos online. Please do take a look at the outlet of your choice, and let us know what you think.

Filed under: Blogging, Cyber-Activism, Freedom of speech, Governance, Human Rights, Journalism, Mobile, Social Media, Video, Video Advocacy, cellphone, citizen journalism, internet, online video , burma, citizen journalism, google, Human Rights, iran, neda, technology, Tibet, Video, witness, youtube

10/01/2008 • 08:47 7

Kenya in crisis: a search for citizen cameras…

The crisis in Kenya may ultimately stem from a democratic failure, corruption and tribalism, or poverty and inequality, but either way, evidence of brutal violence continues to emerge, both in terms of killings and of violence against women and girls, and there’s news of an impending health crisis. For a quick tour d’horizon, including ways to act, click “more” below.

Some of the top Kenyan bloggers have been providing compelling updates since the beginning of the election campaign – of those that I read regularly, Kenyan Pundit and Mental Acrobatics particularly stand out – and it’s worth keeping an eye on Global Voices’ Kenya Elections page. That said, we’ve been finding it difficult to track down much citizen video or audio at all from Kenya thusfar – if you come across any, or we’re missing something obvious, please let me know via the comments, or upload it to the Hub. I’ve been wondering why it’s taking time for video to emerge – is the footage out there, but just not online yet? Was it just too insecure and dangerous to film during the first few days? Here’s a by no means comprehensive scour for video, audio and photos out of Kenya in recent days…

Video / Audio / Photos:

The only source providing genuine street-level citizen reporting that I can find is AfricaNews’ Voices Of Africa, which equips local reporters with cellphones, and dubs them “camjos”. It’s a general news site, using traditional media reporters, and the range of post-election reports includes police turning back protesters, and an interview with a Somali refugee, as well as an interview with a tourist industry representative and signs of daily life returning to normal in Nairobi. The reports are of varying quality and interest, but they provide a much more street-level view, and point to the potential video-enabled cellphones might bring to human rights reporting.

It’s not quite clear to me whether this is related to an initiative by Media Focus on Africa, a Dutch-Kenyan NGO, equipped several reporters around the country with high-end video-enabled mobile phones – the reports on this site appear to end on 21st December, before the election.

Over at YouTube, another Kenyan online effort, Kenya Votes, conducted vox pops with ordinary Kenyans in the run-up to the elections, including this young woman expressing her fears about tribalism:

As you might expect, there’s plenty of traditional media coverage on YouTube – Kenya’s own Nation TV, the BBC, Al Jazeera English, and CNN are all putting video reports and interviews online. Rocketboom’s Ruud Elmendorp has a short video report from the days before the election. Currently individual users, like YouTube newbie theweepingsoul, seem to be using news images culled from the web in homages to the photojournalists and other journalists getting images out and in pleas to end the violence.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Blogging, Human Rights, Journalism, Media, Protest, Social Media, Sousveillance, The Hub, Video, internet , africa, audio, citizen journalism, citizen media, democracy, elections, Human Rights, Journalism, kenya, kibera, maps, mashup, photojournalism, Video

22/11/2007 • 07:45 6

Wael Abbas’ YouTube channel suspended [UPDATED - 29 Nov 07]

News just in from Hossam El-Hamalawy…:

I’ve just received the following message from blogger and friend Wael Abbas…

disaster: youtube disables my account claiming there were complaints about my police torture videos!!!

This is un-bloody-believable. YouTube has just disabled probably the most important channel for the Egyptian blogosphere. Wael’s videos have been central in the fight against police brutality, and YouTube should be proud the Egyptian anti-torture activists have been using its channels in the current War on Torture…

Wael’s channel is, at the time of writing, still suspended. Clicking on any of the videos he uploaded results in the following message:

“This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

Whether it’s only Wael’s account, or others too, now several videos showing police brutality embedded on the Hub from YouTube are no longer playing – including this one, this one, and this one, and more here, here, here, and here. Most of these clips have been propagated far beyond Wael’s own YouTube account, so it’s not really a question of stopping these videos from circulating. Only last week, Wael received an award from the International Center for Journalists in honour of his work to promote and advance human rights in Egypt.

Whatever the reason – a misunderstanding, a systematic campaign, something else entirely – it shows how vulnerable human rights-related media content can be in the online environment, and that the minimal extra work of uploading human rights media to dedicated sites like the Hub, or the Internet Archive, rather than just embedding it from other sites, is clearly worth it.

UPDATE on 27 November 2007:

Since this happened, I’ve been in contact with YouTube to find out why Wael’s account was suspended, and will post an update when I receive one. The Guardian’s Brian Whitaker also reported the story (one commenter mentions the Hub) and now Reuters has covered the story too:

Elijah Zarwan, a prominent blogger and activist in Egypt, said he thought it was unlikely that YouTube had come under official Egyptian pressure, and was more likely reacting to the graphic nature of the videos.

“I suspect they are doing it not under pressure from the Egyptian government but rather because it made American viewers squeamish,” he said. “But to shut them down because some people might find the truth disturbing is unconscionable.”

UPDATE on 29 November 2007:

Nothing to report from YouTube yet, but increasing speculation/coverage in the blogosphere: Amira Al-Hussaini at GV (pt/ar/de), Kevin Anderson at The Guardian (my comment here), and Stan Schroeder at Mashable.

Filed under: Freedom of speech, Human Rights, Journalism, Legal issues, The Hub, Video , blogs, egypt, freedom of expression, Freedom of speech, icfj, Journalism, police, police brutality, torture, wael abbas, waelabbas, youtube

• 07:45 6

Wael Abbas' YouTube channel suspended [UPDATED - 29 Nov 07]

News just in from Hossam El-Hamalawy…:

I’ve just received the following message from blogger and friend Wael Abbas…

disaster: youtube disables my account claiming there were complaints about my police torture videos!!!

Wael’s channel is, at the time of writing, still suspended. Clicking on any of the videos he uploaded results in the following message:

“This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.”

UPDATE on 27 November 2007:

Elijah Zarwan, a prominent blogger and activist in Egypt, said he thought it was unlikely that YouTube had come under official Egyptian pressure, and was more likely reacting to the graphic nature of the videos.

“I suspect they are doing it not under pressure from the Egyptian government but rather because it made American viewers squeamish,” he said. “But to shut them down because some people might find the truth disturbing is unconscionable.”

UPDATE on 29 November 2007:

20/11/2007 • 23:23 0

Free To Speak (on BBC World Service)

[Slight changes below, after a second look at the project...]

For me, the 2002 series I Have A Right To… still represents a good benchmark for how the BBC’s World Service can knit together human rights resources of real and lasting value – and that others can use and build on.

Now, the World Service is celebrating its 75th Anniversary with a season of programmes, debates and chunks of participation related to freedom of speech, in an upcoming season called Free To Speak [thanks, Solana].

As usual, no one does global broadcasting quite like the World Service, with Roy Greenslade fronting a four-part radio series on the freedom of the press, for example, but the online experience feels pretty disjointed by comparison. There are elements in the online parts of the season that hold useful nuggets, however:

- A timeline of the history of broadcasting, including “media minutes” for each year, and which at the time of writing stretches up to the 1970s. There’s a lot of conflict, a lot of politics, and perhaps a bit too much of the presenter, and not enough of the actual audio, but it’s still of value, as this audio clip from 1965 shows, attesting to the power of the televised image in galvanizing the civil rights struggle in the USA…

- A selection of six conflict-related images from Magnum Photos (a Hub participant) from an exhibition at Bush House, the central London building where BBC World Service is housed…

- Photographs sent in by people holding their favourite political protest slogans… [all seemingly outside Bush House..]

- And a request for people to contribute their stories of freedom of speech to the MemoryShare timeline…

Care to point us to any current (and more effective) examples of this kind of online initiative from local media around the world?

Filed under: Freedom of speech, Human Rights, Journalism, Media , bbc, broadcasting, derechos humanos, droits humains, freedom of expression, history, Human Rights, Journalism, Media, participation, world service

15/11/2007 • 21:22 0

NewAssignment.net’s 6 lessons

Another nugget via Andy Carvin – I’d welcome comments on how this might look different when applied to the Hub:

Jay Rosen of NewAssignment.net is talking about some of the lessons learned from their first networked journalism experiment with Wired News, which focused on trends in crowdsourcing. He said there were six lessons, but he threw in a seventh for good measure.

1. Division of labor is key in distributed reporting projects. You need to think about what task, and what size of task, you expect people to do.

2. You have to get the motivations right. If you don’t understand participants’ motivations, you can’t figure out how to define the work.

3. Watch for rising coordination costs. More users=more costs, ie answering questions, giving out instructions, etc. You can get your project run into the ground by succeeding with lots of people.

4. If I go off and do something for you, now I have to come back and give you that data. When this happens, people need to see how their contribution fits into the puzzle.

5. Share background knowledge. The more background they have, the easier it’ll be to find data that’s significant.

6. Existing communities already know how to interact and work. They’re better than starting from scratch.

7. The one percent rule – only about one percent of users will actively get involved in creating content, while 10 percent might be involved in peripheral activities like commenting.

Filed under: Blogging, Journalism , crowdsourcing, distributed effort, newassignment

• 21:22 0

NewAssignment.net's 6 lessons