Beyond Tunis: ICT4Peace before ICT4D?

“It is inevitable that advancements in technology find their way into peacebuilding – we are not even scratching the surface of what is possible today. The future of ICT4Peace, however, is pegged to the availability of funding to explore ways that technology can best help communities transform violent conflict. To date, donors, international agencies and local bodies are reluctant, at best, to approach ICT4Peace initiatives. This needs to change, and soon.

Precisely because of its growing importance and global recognition, ICT4Peace is no longer the domain of geeks or early visionaries. Ranging from Online Dispute Resolution (ODR), inter-cultural mediation, and virtual secure spaces for international collaboration to decision support systems in peace negotiations and advanced information visualisation, ICT4Peace spans a gamut of technologies, theories and communities of practice. From mobile phones to PC’s, from wireless to wired, from the village to the city, from citizen to politician, the future of ICTs in general, and ICT4Peace in particular, is invariably entwined with how well it vitiates violent conflict that mars our world today.

So much of ICT these days is about the use of big words. The core vision and raison d’etre of ICT4Peace however is quite simple.

It exists to generate hope, where little or none exists.

And that’s something truly worth supporting, for all our futures.”

Read my article in full here.

The pitfalls and future of social networking

An  article in The Economist highlights the pitfalls of social networking platforms and technologies today and their possible evolution in the future.

“We will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to be social,” says Charlene Li at Forrester Research, a consultancy. Future social networks, she thinks, “will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.” No more logging on to Facebook just to see the “news feed” of updates from your friends; instead it will come straight to your e-mail inbox, RSS reader or instant messenger. No need to upload photos to Facebook to show them to friends, since those with privacy permissions in your electronic address book can automatically get them.

The problem with today’s social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks’ lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users’ information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.

Dataportability seems to be a key initiative in addressing the information silos of social networks as they stand today noted above. See their fascinating video here or from below.

“Customs Official” responds to Government censorship

There is a delightful comment by a “Customs Official” on Lirneasia’s blog today that may, tragically, not be far from the truth as Rohan alludes to earlier in the thread.

Censorship is growing in Sri Lanka. It’s good to sometimes laugh about it since it helps to countenance a more stark reality.

Hometown Baghdad and a similar idea for Sri Lanka

It’s not the first time that I’ve written here on the power of video to transform conflict, facilitate reconciliation and highlight insights and facets to war not often covered by traditional media. I guess the most well known of exercises in recent times was by Kevin Sikes and his compelling work with Yahoo to document life in conflict zones. There is also the example of Videoletters, the website of which sadly does not exist anymore (another write up of the erstwhile initiative can be found here). The WITNESS Video Hub is yet another example. And in Sri Lanka, I’ve pioneered the Vikalpa Video Channel, that’s already got tens of thousands of views.

Its in this vein that I was happy to come across, admittedly rather late in the day, Hometown Baghdad that is an “online web series about life in Baghdad. It tells the stories of three young Iraqis struggling to survive during the war”.

The videos, all online but not downloadable, are really interesting to watch – even though on my ADSL connection, they were really choppy. As noted in the Guardian review of the initiative and the videos:

In contrast to mainstream media reports, the short clips – a mixture of home-made diaries and professionally- shot footage – offer viewers an alternative Iraqi reality, as the trio confront the everyday challenges posed by living in Baghdad amid spiralling sectarian violence last summer.

Sadly, the three key voices from the ground are all male – it would have been interesting to see what a female, of a similar age and middle-class background, would have brought to the commentary and perspectives offered by the videos.

An idea for Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, Dialog was the first to create a mobile phone based video competition.

While extremely commendable for raising the awareness of the potential for user generated content through mobiles in Sri Lanka (and some neat guidelines), the content generated by this competition would have been largely limited to an English speaking audience, if only to first comprehend understand the legal argot of the Rules and Regulations published only in English.

Here’s the challenge. No corporate entity is going to be interested in a competition that strengthens the type of content Hometown Baghdad is about or even what Vikalpa Video today generates. There are media houses in Sri Lanka that do some interesting terrestrial broadcasts in a similar vein, but their impact is minimal at best. Further, as I’ve noted earlier, the problem with these productions is that they are hidden – once broadcast, there is no way to access them.

Which agency I wonder, and here I’m thinking perhaps of the marketing and advertising community, can step up to a competition on vital and challenging issues such as corruption, human rights, language rights and local government that asks citizens to record through their mobiles phones what they experience? A combination of SMS, MMS and mobile video could be used, with web, mobile and print media used and in all three languages.

We need to emphasise the good as well as the bad, so the competition could be in two parts or have two prizes – one for the best video that highlights an aspect of say governance that actually works (and there are hugely under-recognised public servants out there committed to public service), the other for weak or failed governance mechanisms.

If anyone is up to the task, call me!

State of the News Media and Citizen Journalism 2008

At over 700 pages and with more than 180,000 words, the State of the News Media 2008 report by the Project for Excellent in Journalism in the US brings new meaning to the word comprehensive. There’s no printed version to be found, but the entire report is online here. The content is largely US centric, yet the section on Citizen Media makes for some extremely interesting reading.

A few points from the chapter are worth highlighting.

Consumers of CJ and User Generated Content

• As of spring 2006, according to a study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 37% of all Americans who go online were engaged with user-generated content.
• The percentage is even higher for teenagers. According to survey data collected by Pew Internet in the fall of 2006, 64% of 12- to 17-year-olds say they have created content for the Internet, up from 57% in 2004

What is news and who defines news? Is user governed and user generated content inherently more insightful than traditional media coverage?

• A snapshot study by the Project in the summer of 2007 found the top stories on popular user-driven news sites – Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us – were very different than those of the mainstream media.
• In the week studied (June 24 to June 29, 2007), the release of Apple’s new iPhone was the most popular story on Digg, while the mainstream press focused on the immigration debate in Washington. Coverage of the war in Iraq accounted for 10% of all articles in the traditional press that week, but across the three user-news sites that PEJ studied, it made up just 1% of all stories.
• PEJ’s one-week study also found the sources for stories on these sites tended to differ from the mainstream press. Blogs by non-journalists proved to be the most popular source, making up 40% of the stories. Nearly 31% of stories originated on sites such as YouTube and Technorati that also offer citizen-generated content.
• Mainstream media, by contrast, made up just 25% of articles on these sites. Wire services, such as the Associated Press Reuters, accounted for 5% of them.
• Newsmakers themselves, from the Pentagon to the presidential candidates to humanitarian and activist groups, began placing content directly on YouTube and MySpace as a way of countering what might be in the mainstream press or even beating the press to the punch.

Growth and influence of Blogs and blogging

• Data from Technorati, a blogging search engine, found in the spring of 2007 that the number of blogs was doubling every 320 days. According to the research, there were 70 million blogs produced worldwide at that time.
• Despite the proliferation of blogs, survey data suggest most Americans have yet to accept them as significant news sources. According to a winter 2007 Zogby Poll, blogs were the lowest on the list of “important” sources of news, coming in at 30%, well after Web sites (81%), television (78%), radio (73%), newspapers (69%) and magazines (38%). More Americans, 39%, chose friends and neighbors over blogs as an important informational source.
• The Pew Internet & American Life Project found in 2006 that most bloggers wrote about issues other than news. Nearly four in ten (37%) said they blogged mainly about their “life and experiences,” with issues of public life (11%) cited as the second most popular topic area. Just 5% said they concentrated primarily on news and current events.

Wikipedia for news?

• Survey research from the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 36% of Americans who go online have consulted the site, with nearly one in ten (8%) doing so on typical day in the winter of 2007. The same survey also found that Wikipedia’s highest use came from those with at least a college degree.

Citizen Journalism sites

• In the absence of revenue, most appear to be running on the owners’ blood, sweat and tears. (I can personally attest to this!)
• In the midst of the uncertainty that surrounds the business model for citizen journalism sites, nonprofits have become a more visible presence in online journalism. This is especially true at the hyperlocal level, where nonprofits have contributed money to encourage and support citizen reporting.

How open are Citizen Journalism sites?

• The other discovery was that, for all that citizen journalism might imply openness and interactivity, the majority of sites analyzed tended to demonstrate the instincts of “strong gatekeepers” who control the content and are somewhat more difficult to interact with than the ideals of citizen journalism suggest. Now, instead of professionals, those gatekeepers were the bloggers or citizens who ran the sites.
• The one form of openness was that the majority, indeed almost all, did allow users to post comments about the material on the site, but the staff reserved the right to edit or otherwise screen the comments to meet its standards of civility.
• The 2007 PEJ Report included a content study of 38 news Web sites and found the participatory nature of the Web was more theoretical than tangible.

iConflict – Great idea, but where’s the content?

I was intimated to iConflict from a post on the excellent unpegged blog (which by the way has some of the most compelling writing I have encountered on the challenges of independent journalism and new media adoption in the midst of violence).

iConflict promises much. Their Facebook group states:

Other unique features will exist as well, including: originally produced video newscasts that will be syndicated on itunes and youtube, online discussion and commentary on user submitted news stories, interactive data mashups on countries in conflict, applications on external social networking sites, and other innovations that will make iConflict the premiere destination for users seeking information on international conflicts.  

the fanfaronade goes on to proclaim that the site will “act as a fulcrum for change by increasing global awareness on important issues“. Clearly, those behind the site talk the talk.

But where it all comes crumbling down is when you actually visit the site. For starters, it looks terrible. When you are now competing with the likes of traditional media who have sophisticated citizen journalism initiatives as well as other, well set up, respected and meaningful citizen journalism initiatives, setting up yourself in the manner that iConflict does needs serious follow through in every single aspect of the site to make it exceptionally good – from design to content.

On all counts, iConflict fails. Miserably.

The site design looks amateurish and is cluttered with ads that are larger than some of the content features. All the stories are just plain links to news wire sites – where’s the citizen journalism in that?! Ditto with the videos. The photos section does not seem to have any. There is an annoying woman who plugs the site on a video that serves no real purpose other than to drive users away. Clicking on the Hot Spots section and on Sri Lanka, which by all accounts is one of the world’s most bloody conflicts today, brings up a SINGLE story. Sudan fares a little better – it gets all of two stories.

And they expect us to take iConflict seriously? On its Facebook page, it’s said that:

iConflict is dedicated to empowering people to share information, and discuss conflicts and crises, wherever they arise.

Frankly, this seems to be a page out of some spiel for venture capital that bears no relation whatsoever to the site and the content therein.

Sadly, I have seen this before – sites that promise much but actually deliver little or nothing. Visitors come at first, attracted by the marketing spiel but areangered or disappointed at what they see and never return.

Soft launches, waiting until the content is ripe, viral marketing, letting the content promote itself, cross fertilisation of and integration with other CJ sites, true mashups (there is not a shred of evidence on iConflict of mashups of any kind) are all marketing strategies, amongst many others, that are far more sustainable and effective than the exceedingly vulgar hype that iConflict expects us to believe that is a far cry from reality.

If you’re doing something, to it right and do it well. Else, don’t do it at all. I’ll be visiting iConflict again in a few months time (if it exists) but for the moment, this site is worth visiting for one reason only.

It is a text book example of everything a serious Citizen Journalism site and initiative should not be.