Draft Paper on Mobile Phones and Activism

Ethan Zuckerman has a thought-provoking draft paper on Mobile Phones and activism that echoes much of my earlier writing on this blog. He notes,

Ask an activist from the developing world the same question and you’ll get a different answer: the most important activist technology of the last five years is the mobile phone. The reasons for this are simple – for most of the world, mobile phone penetration vastly exceeds internet usage. (In China in 2005, there were 350 million mobile phone users, and 100 million internet users. In sub-Saharan Africa in 2004, there were 52 million mobile phone users and approximately 5-8 million internet users.) While analysts in the North talk about users receiving information on three screens – the computer, the television and the mobile – users in the South are usually looking at two screens, and users in rural areas of the South are looking at one: a mobile phone that might be shared by all the residents of a village.

Mobiles are powerful because they’re pervasive, personal and capable of authoring content. An intriguing new dimension emerges as they become systems of payment as well. Kenyan mobile company Safaricom has introduced a new system allowing mobile phone users to send money to other users of the network – it’s called M-PESA and has moved from pilot to full-scale implementation rapidly.

Read the full post here.

Related posts:
Mobile phones for advocacy and social transformation
Strengthening governance and fighting crime with mobile phones
Are mobile phones a basic human right?
Cellphones for civic engagement
Mobile phones for greater access : But where is the content for peacebuilding?
Defeating repressive regimes
Mobile phone futures

Technorati Tags: Mobiles, Mobile Phone, Cellphones, Mobile Phones and Activism

Remixing the web for social change

NetSquared has a very impressive collection of websites that in one way or another seek to secure and support social transformation. A PDF file lists all of them, but far more convenient and useful is to browser through the projects on the site itself.

There are a couple of known gems such as Martus, TakingITGlobal and Democracy Player, but there are also a few sites that I hadn’t heard of before, doing some seriously interesting and innovative stuff.

The only caveat – most of the sites are based in, and focused on, America and American issues. However, the manner in which the sites have been set up, and the issues they deal with – poverty, corruption, human rights violations, marginalisation, adult education etc – are deeply resonant in many other countries around the world.

This is a site that links to inspired thinking and inspirational websites. Visit it today.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

Critical thoughts on the Liverpool ODR Forum – April 2007

The 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Liverpool, England was above all else, a chance to see Beatles memorabilia and have a pint at The Cavern.

Richard Susskind made an appearance, and the conference started off with a statement by Daewon Choi, who set the stage for my panel on ODR and Conflict Transformation.

Two of Daewon’s points are worth repeating here:

Paragraph 13 of the Geneva Plan of Action of the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) encourages “the ongoing work in the area of effective dispute settlement systems, notably Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which can promote settlement of disputes.” And the WSIS went further, as Paragraph 36 of the Tunis Commitment states that the Members States “value the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to promote peace and to prevent conflict which, inter alia, negatively affects achieving development goals.’ We can thus consider ODR as a tool not just for economic dispute resolutions, but as a tool for peace, health and social development.

and

In the Asia and Pacific region, ODR also has an enhanced role as an empowerment tool for rural and poor people who have little access to dispute resolution by other means.

In return, the rest of the world will benefit, as the next generation of online dispute resolution systems emerge from Asia and the Pacific, that will reflect cultural diversity of the region, its unique socio-political textures, and the specificity of its ICT, more mobile phone oriented than PC oriented.

These echoed what I’ve submitted as ideas to this august & expanding group of lawyers, mediators, negotiators, system designers and ADR practitioners since 2004. Sadly, not a single of the systems that were displayed during the sessions were sensitive to these points.

I begin then with the worst. All of the ODR systems showcased in Liverpool were around 4 years behind the curve of current developments in technology. Juripax was the most interesting, and most in tune with tenets of inter-cultural negotiations and new media. The rest of the systems looked (and indeed were) old, based on legacy databases, textual, visually unappealing, horrendously complex, operated largely in English and in general, no better than the Groove based One Text system we developed, with absolutely no international support for the design or implementation of, in Sri Lanka 4 years ago.

At the time we had (through the features built into Groove Virtual Office) secure VoIP, synchronous & asynchronous data communications, multimedia support, multi-lingual support through PDF’s, Instant Messaging, direct Windows XP operating system integration for folder content synchronisation, GIS and decision support tools, with more security for on disk storage as well as point to point communications than any one of the current crop of ODR solution can speak of. Though InfoShare soon outgrew the limitations of our Groove based platform, and its a singular pity that leading systems designers and ODR platforms have yet to avail themselves of developments in technology such as Skype, AJAX and new media to create systems that are easier to use, faster to respond, adaptive, multi-lingual, visually appealing and above all else, more effective.

This is not the first time I’ve strongly encouraged ODR developers to take heed of these new developments, but the resistance to change from those who are conceptually prisoners of the PC-based ODR solutions paradigm is significant. Clearly, the need to raise awareness on and develop solutions for mobile phones for ODR is yet to fully take root.

Two other points are worth mentioning. One, as I’ve noted earlier, not a single  mainstream ODR system was geared to address, even in a small way, the needs of those who are differently abled and visually challenged. Two, the lack of a standards based data format for ODR makes it impossible to migrate information from one system to another. Although ODR XML standards have been discussed in the past, nothing seems to have been developed to date that provides a standard for information & data exchange between various ODR systems.

On the positive side, this was the most interesting Forum in terms of those who were genuinely interested in the use of technology for peacebuilding. My presentation and ideas resulted in an offer to contribute two chapters on ICT4Peace and Serious Games for Peacebuilding, topics which I’ve covered extensively on this blog, in an up-coming publication on ODR by the University of Liverpool. It was also a pleasure meeting Leah Wing, whose presentation on Northern Ireland’s reconciliation process was insightful and instructive for those who sought to develop technology to support such fragile processes. At the end of my presentation, I urged those present to think of a larger humanity and of more urgent crises such as Darfur.

I hope the message was heard.

Daewon’s points about the use of technology in Asia serving as an example to the rest of the world are prescient. While on the one hand ODR has matured tremendously from even 3 years ago, there’s much to be unlearnt and learnt by this community if mainstream solutions are going to address the protracted and complex ethnic, social & political conflicts I’ve proposed ODR needs to deal with.

Not all have to join in. But the development of better ODR systems will require the collective wisdom of all those who are already designing, implementing & using such systems.

On balance, I think Liverpool was a turning point in the acceptance & awareness of conflict transformation in ODR, which as I said in my presentation, will possibly always remain at the periphery of mainstream ODR, but will be increasingly an important part of the overall body of practice and theory. As ever, the aisle, mens-room and hotel corridor conversations were the most delightful – such as dealing with the English Barrister who came up to me and said that he loved my presentation, but thought that using Second Life for conflict transformation was quite silly given that cricket was a far better way of resolving disputes!

Most everyone quoted their favourite Beatles song’s during their presentations and intros, and I finally found one by John Lennon that captures the essence of what I’ve for years said at these Forums.

Imagine.

Technorati Tags: ODR, Conflict Transformation, ICT4Peace

Online Dispute Resolution and Second Life

A presentation I gave at the 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Liverpool, England, April 19 – 20, 2007.Technorati Tags: ODR, Second Life, Peacebuilding, ICT4Peace, Serious Games

Online Dispute Resolution: Where to now?

The main presentation I gave at the 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Liverpool, England, April 19 – 20, 2007.Technorati Tags: ODR, Peacebuilding, ICT4Peace

Beyond O’Reilly’s online civility dictum: Fostering healthy debate on the web and internet

The Kathy Sierra incident sparked a global debate on online civility that in turn resulted in the contentious proposal by Tim O’Reilly on a voluntary Code of Conduct for Bloggers. My first response to the proposed Code was to mirror those who said it was an overbearing effort to promote civility online, and accordingly, doomed to fail. In that first post, I noted my own travails with fostering progressive conversations online from a Sri Lankan perspective, from the erstwhile Moju to the present-day Groundviews and VOR Radio.

There was much that was wrong with the original proposal of O’Reilly and many bloggers took him to task for trying to dictate the terms of civility, to which he thoughtfully responded to in a post that acknowledged that he could have done better, but that the essential need to envision ways through which online communications could be made more civil and less vituperative was still valid.

The Statement on Respectful Online Communication was drafted by Colin Rule and accepted by participants at the Fifth International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution – Liverpool, England April 19-20, 2007. The statement was drafted to reflect the interest amongst participants, many of whom did not have any direct experience of being attacked online but had nevertheless read reports of the growing rate of online abuse, to draft a statement that they could all sign up to that avoided the prescriptive and normative pitfalls of O’Reilly’s proposal and could in turn foster progressive debate that explored how and why we could create healthy debate in fora such as blogs, websites and public discussion forums. The last paragraph of the statement is accordingly very important:

We embrace full and open communication and recognize the unique
opportunity for expression in the online environment. We support
freedom of speech and reject censorship. These principles are not
intended to address what ideas can be expressed, but rather the tone
with which communications take place.

Government’s around the world that have little regard for the freedom of expression, and I’ve noted in The limits of online freedom and activism are vaunt to use any code that tries to prescribe civility to their own ends to curtail the right of citizens to say what they want and express dissent to practices inimical to democracy, good governance, justice, the Rule of Law and peace. This must be avoided at all costs, and the Liverpool Statement’s rejection of censorship and emphasis on the tone of communication is fundamental to its understanding of civility in terms of delivery, not content.

Ultimately, it may be impossible to draw up a global standard for civility, respect or progressive communications. All of these are rooted in time, context and place and it is impossible to construct a code that applies, without significant adaptation and revision to fit a particular region or context, worldwide.

Or is it?

The basic premise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is that all human beings, irrespective of where they live and what conditions they live under, have the same fundamental and inviolable rights. Clearly, polite discourse, respect and civility may be expressed differently around the world, but universal standards do exist – such as active listening, engaging with the issues rather than abusive personal attacks, acknowledging the other’s right to say and think in the manner he / she does, and recognising that there is always more than one truth and that compromise is at the heart of all negotiations. All these influence the manner in which we communicate if we are interested in fostering progressive dialogue.

There’s another dimension to whatever code proposed to foment online civility – most of what I’ve read, including that which I drew up for Groundviews, is in English. As the latest State of the Blogosphere report by Technorati avers:

In terms of blog posts by language, Japanese retakes the top spot from
our last report, with 37% (up from 33%) of the posts followed closely
by English at 36% (down from 39%). Additionally there was movement in
the middle of the top 10 languages, highlighted by Italian overtaking
Spanish for the number four spot.

The newcomer to the top 10 languages is Farsi, just joining the
list at #10. It has been very interesting to watch the growth of the
blogging world in the middle east, especially in countries like Iran…

There are literally millions of users who primarily communicate in languages other than English, and it’s vital that what we propose as guidelines for respect and civility online are, like the UDHR, translated into other languages.

Finally, there’s a need to stimulate discussions in our blogs on what constitutes acceptable behaviour. For those of us who moderate contentious websites that deal with highly emotive issues in a violent context, it’s something we’ve grappled with for far longer than the recent attention of leading bloggers in the West. However, now that for better or for worse, attention is galvanised by Kathy Sierra’s sordid experience, it’s time we all stepped up to a serious and sustained global conversation to determine how we move forward as a global community of practitioners and theorists dedicated to conflict transformation and online dispute resolution to flesh out a foundation of communications that facilitates progressive debate, and eschews personal invective.

It’s no doubt a significant challenge, and one I trust the thought-leadership of those such as Colin Rule will inspire us to address.

Technorati Tags: O’Reilly, Blogging, Code, Blogs, Civility, Online Conduct, Respect, Tolerance

Statement on Respectful Online Communication

Participants at the recently concluded Fifth International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution – Liverpool, England April 19-20, 2007 agreed to the following statement, to help progressive debates in support of online civility and respectful communications:

Drafted jointly and agreed to by consensus April 20, 2007 at the 5th International Forum on Online Dispute Resolution in Liverpool, England – held in collaboration with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific

“While information and communications technologies (ICT) enable unprecedented interactions between individuals around the world, they also introduce some dynamics that can degrade dialogue.

ICT enables people to communicate immediately and anonymously, often without moderation, and in some circumstances this encourages behavior (such as threats or insults) that most individuals would never engage in face-to-face.

This behavior may make people feel unwelcome, disrespected, or harassed in their online interactions. Ultimately, individuals may be dissuaded by these dynamics from participating, which undermines the vibrancy of our global conversation.

As a result, we encourage individuals to:

• communicate online with respect

• listen carefully to others in order to understand their perspectives

• take responsibility for their words and actions

• keep criticism constructive

• respect diversity and be tolerant of differences

We embrace full and open communication and recognize the unique opportunity for expression in the online environment. We support freedom of speech and reject censorship. These principles are not intended to address what ideas can be expressed, but rather the tone with which communications take place.

See here for full text.

Reuters AlertNet: Interactive maps on conflict, humanitarian crises and more

Reuters AlertNet is a humanitarian news network that aims to keep relief professionals and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe. It’s an almost daily visit for me to catch up on global crises, and according to its site, attracts over 3 million users a year.

Complementing initiatives such as Crisis in Darfur, though expanding it to a global scale, AlertNet has launched an interactive global map with information on conflict, food security, sudden disasters and health crises. Though yet in beta, this is yet another example of technology helping non-experts visualise multiple & complex datasets on the state of the world today.

Based on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, zooming in on a region or country brings up alongside the map related information in the form of news stories and analysis from Reuters and other sources such as Human Rights Watch.

Technorati Tags: Humanitarian ICT, Maps, Data Visualisation, AlertNet, ICT4Peace

Auteurs and amateurs: The debates on citizen journalism continue…

Steven Levy’s recent article in the Newsweek highlights the frictional nature of debates in favour of and opposed to citizen journalism. Levy flags an upcoming book by Andrew Keen titled The Cult of the Amateur as the latest voice against the participatory media trends and social networking that have resulted from the growth of blogs and new media.

I find it interesting how a lot of discussions on citizen journalism are informed by what is possible (or not) from a US perspective. What is more disturbing is that authors both for and against citizen journalism rarely take into account developments outside the US (and the oft quoted examples of Europe and South Korea) that have resulted in mobiles, blogs and new media in general being used to create alternative voices that critique the sickening bias and partiality in mainstream media.

Clearly, this new journalism has its problems – an inherent parochialism being one of them. The subjective, partial and provincial nature of citizen journalism, if we recognise it for what it is, isn’t necessarily proof that it is useless. As I’ve argued earlier, it’s precisely these individual viewpoints of citizens that the mainstream media, controlled often by interests that have their own parochial agenda, seek to marginalise and over time, erase. Standards matter – and the same standards that we ask for and seek, but rarely find in mainstream media, need to be instilled in citizen journalism that aims to be a cut above the dross that often colours individual blogs. However, the visceral and unpolished nature of citizen journalism is to me what gives it an edge over that which we generally see, hear and read in mainstream media – in stories that are raw and unsanitised by the cynicism, partisan bias or sheer boredom of journalists and Editors who have for too long controlled what we should consume, and how.

To this end, it is necessary that we engage not just with citizen journalism as it is evolving in the US and more developed nations, but also how through mobiles, the growing availability and use of wireless internet and the increasing availability of PCs either through personal ownership or through cybercafes, citizens have access to platforms and media through which even if they are illiterate, they can share their stories.

I’ve noted in an earlier post that it only takes one story – a single photo, a single podcast, a single mobile phone video – to change a regime and hold those responsible for abuses of human rights, and corruption, accountable. Initiatives such as Witness have shown us the way. This is citizen journalism in support of conflict transformation, good governance and democracy – a far cry from the essentially communitarian notion of citizen journalism prevelent in the US that is more about strengthening local voices. Citizen journalism in failing states, or in those that exercise repression, is also about securing and strengthening local voices, but is also about a restoration of civil order, the Rule of Law and democracy.

This nuanced and global perspective is that which I find lacking in much of the online discussion I read on citizen media. Clearly, both sides have much to offer to the debate, and a naiveté of citizen journalism can get one into serious trouble (I should know). There are also significant challenges to online civility brought about by the millions of new creators and consumers of new media content, as those such as Andrew Keen are also quick to point out.

However, the manner in he and others like Amanda Chapel (who strikes me as a woman tragically blinkered by her own genius) and Loren Feldman (who desperately needs to learn that the repetitive use of the f-word is no substitute for essentially vacuous commentary) flag the shortcomings of citizen journalism glaringly ignore the potential of new media, and citizens who find expression through new media, to change the dynamics of polity and society in countries such as Sri Lanka where as Nalaka Gunawardene pointed out in this blog, traditional mainstream media is mainly located in and published through just two urban locations, necessarily marginalising the aspirations, ideas and voices of those resident elsewhere in the country.

Amanda Chapel however does raise a fundamental point – what is the economic basis of citizen journalism?

You cannot have an economic system where half of it is not economic. You can’t have a boat with holes in it! You can’t have a store where you charge at the front door and customers take whatever they want out the backdoor for free. In short order, there will be NO paying customers. And without paying customers, you can’t make anything to sell or give away.

Amanda is surprisingly oblivious to the spirit of the Free and Open Source software development community, the viability of products and services created through open source software development processes, or indeed, the spirit of volunteerism in general.

That said, if citizen journalism initiatives are to scale up and become sustainable over the long-term, there exists a need to create multiple revenue streams, not just from advertising or donor funding. I believe there is an eventual market for the monetisation of citizen journalism content that based on say the ground-rules of content creation I’ve tried to foment in Groundviews, provided that mainstream media is willing to pay for and publish this content, advertisers are convinced that content is read by those with purchasing power for the products and services they seek to advertise and ordinary citizens themselves (based on through models of subscription that operate of scale rather than high-entry costs) see the benefits of subscribing to content that is geared to their interest and have a mix of local, national and global news, analysis and information. The last point would require, especially in countries like Sri Lanka, citizen journalism also engages with the mainstream media in order to tap into their distribution networks and broadcast footprints, which in turn requires a multi-media approach that isn’t solely based on accessing content online.

This is an evolving debate, and through praxis (particularly in the Global South) and the thrust and parry of wit online, I look forward to an evolving understanding of how new media & new technology can support the basic democratic aspirations of all communities and peoples, irrespective of where they live, or who they vote for.

Addition: Just came across Principles of Citizen Journalism, launched recently, which I think is essential reading for anyone interested in the topic.

Technorati Tags: ICT4Peace, Citizen Journalism, Media, Journalism, New Media

Civil strife holds back IT growth

Springboard Research, a market research company recently had this to say of PC growth in Sri Lanka:

“The Sri Lankan PC/Server market offers substantial untapped growth opportunities for both domestic as well as foreign IT vendors,” said Manish Bahl, Springboard’s AEC Research Manager. “The biggest impediment to this growth is the ongoing civil strife of the past few months which has further deteriorated the country’s security condition. While Sri Lanka’s PC/Server market has become quite competitive in recent years, any escalation in political conflict will hold back the ambitious IT plans of both the government and large corporations, which in turn will dampen PC/Server market growth,” Bahl noted. (Emphasis mine)

Read the full report here.

Technorati Tags: Sri Lanka, PC, Conflict, ICT