This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots, which resulted in 54 deaths, thousands of injuries, nearly a US$1 billion in property damages and a renewed discussion on American race relations. This was all sparked by a private citizen named George Holliday, who videotaped Rodney King’s encounter with the Los Angeles police on his Sony Handycam. The blurry video turned what would have otherwise been a little known scuffle into a worldwide media sensation.
Particularly, the case highlighted the allegations of racial profiling and police brutality within African-American communities. As a matter of fact, Holliday said he tried to reach the Los Angeles Police Department to find out what had happened to King. When he was unable to get answers, he contacted his local TV news station, KTLA, and sold his video to them for US$500.
During the riots, there were also other citizen journalists, like Timothy Goldman, a then unemployed former Air Force officer, who videotaped the violence, including the beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny.
The videos were revolutionary at the time because this happened long before YouTube, Twitter and the Internet in general came into existence. Without these videos, history would have reflected differently today.
A few days ago King reflected on the significance of the videotape and the Trayvon Martin case.
“I’m hoping he [Trayvon] gets justice for his family, ’cause he’s no longer here, so for his family,” he said, adding, “Luckily, I got [my attack] seen on tape.”
When King said this, it made us think about the initial reaction to Martin’s murder. When the Martin case first gained mainstream media attention, we were actually looking for a video, a photo or some kind of strong documentation online that showed the altercation between Martin and shooter George Zimmerman.
In this age of everything being caught on video and distributed throughout social media, we automatically expected that there was a video of Martin’s shooting somewhere on YouTube. This isn’t because we have a creepy desire to see someone’s gruesome death, but we could have used a video to see evidence of what really happened that night, which would have help bring justice to the case. The only circumstantial evidence is the 911 call, which has also come into question for its credibility.
So this is why Holliday plays such an important role in this case and its impact in mobilizing citizen journalism.
According to Holliday, he met face to face with King several years after the beating. They ran into each other at a gas station one night. As Holliday describes it, “He says, ‘Yeah, you don’t recognize me.’ And I said, ‘No,’ and he says, ‘Yeah, you saved my life.’ And so then I knew who he was.”
Global Wire Associates Founder Talia Whyte originally wrote this post on Global Wire’s companion blog.
Lately, there has been a lot of talk about how to be “more green” in our everyday lives, and in particular how to improve the global economy. In the last year, I have looked at the ways my company Global Wire Associates and my freelance journalism workoperate and how I can create a smaller carbon footprint.
As a new media consulting firm, Global Wire Associates is in the business of using technology. However, with the growing problem of e-waste, we felt that it was our responsibility to use electronics with more mindfulness. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme, it is estimated that 20-50 million tons of discarded electronics are dumped into landfills around the world, mostly in developing countries, every year. Electronics include old mobiles, televisions, microwaves, computers and more. However, most of the time it’s not because these gadgets are broken; they’re being dumped in favor of newer versions.
Landfills with e-waste create serious problems in the long run. Toxic chemicals in electronics can leach into the land over time or are released into the atmosphere, creating severe health and environmental hazards in nearby communities.
Even if you take your old electronics to recycling sites, there is no guarantee they will be recycled properly. This is partly because it is expensive and labor-intensive to properly recycle e-waste in many developed countries, as most environmental laws in these countries require e-recyclers to use environmentally friendly processes.
So, for the last year, my company decided that when it is time to purchase any new equipment – cameras, computers, mobiles – we made sure that old or broken equipment was repairable first. We also donate old electronics that are not deemed useful for our purposes to other needy individuals or organizations. Before we consider making new purchases, we try to buy older but usable models whenever possible. If the electronics are beyond repairable, we properly recycle them.
Not only are we doing our little part to save the health of the planet and its people, but it has also made us feel really good about ourselves and wanting to extend our enthusiasm with others. So this year we launched our Recharge E-Waste campaign to make others aware of the global tech waste problem. We not only plan to use our website to have discussions about proper recycling, donating and/or selling of used electronics, and turning electronics into art and design models, but we are also seriously thinking about launching an e-waste management initiative later this year.
Our green awareness has also extended to other areas in our operations, like doing more web conferencing with clients instead of traveling, cloud computing and using green office supplies. Of course, I also use recycled cameras for my freelance video journalistic gigs. Sometimes it’s the smallest things that can make a big difference in our world.
The recent surge to “make famous” Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has also put focus on the importance of being knowledgeable about an online campaign before throwing one’s support behind it. While social media has proven to be a unique platform for organizations to campaign directly to other likely supporters, there is also another side to online organizing that can have a negative long-term effect.
The above film created by the California-based organization Invisible Children has been seen by millions of viewers since it was posted last week. The filmmaker says it was made to bring more awareness of the “crisis” to more people through social media. However, many activists feel the campaign is manipulating the facts. For one thing, the LRA has been around for nearly 30 years and Kony has allegedly not been seen in the country since 2007. However, the film presents this issue as if the LRA just came on the scene and that these crimes are currently happening. Kony’s power has since been reduced significantly as he allegedly only has a couple hundred soldiers on his side. While the crimes against his victims were very real and deserve legal recourse, many activists don’t see the Kony cause as being important today as other current global disputes like in Syria. Michael Deibert, author of Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, says in the Huffington Post that Kony isn’t the only one to blame for the suffering in Uganda.
The problem with Invisible Children’s whitewashing of the role of the government of Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni in the violence of Central Africa is that it gives Museveni and company a free pass, and added ammunition with which to bludgeon virtually any domestic opposition, such as Kizza Besigye and the Forum for Democratic Change.
By blindly supporting Uganda’s current government and its military adventures beyond its borders, as Invisible Children suggests that people do, Invisible Children is in fact guaranteeing that there will be more violence, not less, in Central Africa.
I have seen the well-meaning foreigners do plenty of damage before, so that is why people understanding the context and the history of the region is important before they blunder blindly forward to “help” a people they don’t understand.
Then there are others like Visible Children who question the process of the campaign.
“These problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow.”
“In our quest to garner wide public support of nuanced policy, Invisible Children has sought to explain the conflict in an easily understandable format, focusing on the core attributes of LRA leadership that infringe upon the most basic of human rights,’’ Invisible Children says on its website. “In a 30-minute film, however, many nuances of the 26-year conflict are admittedly lost or overlooked.’’
This is certainly not the first online campaign to be criticized for simplifying the central cause of concern. A few months ago we discussed the lessons learned from the Troy Davis campaign. A memorable quote came from Flip the Media’s Jonathan Cunningham.
…Many of the people retweeting petitions and posting notices on their social media accounts had never heard of Davis until a week ago — or less. Reading and signing a physical petition, or writing a parole board takes effort and research at the very least. Retweeting a petition for clemency in a capital murder case only takes dexterity in one finger as you click a button. Online activism, while noble and potentially powerful, typically involves the short-winded enthusiasm of the uninformed. If Troy Davis is the triggerman and he’s guiltier than sin, there would still be just as many wide-eyed folks on Twitter sending around links to save his life today. Frankly, that’s uneducated and unwise at the very least and potentially dangerous at the extreme…
Capital punishment and proof of guilt are very complex issues. The Haiti earthquake was also not so simple. When the disaster struck, the natural instinct everyone had was to donate anything that would help the victims as soon as possible. So many people began to donate large sums of money quickly, thanks to the convenience of giving money online or via text message. Many people donated to the Yele Foundation, a charity founded by musician Wyclef Jean, who asked his Twitter followers to text in US$5 and was able to raise US$1 million in one day. Donors felt they could trust Jean with their money since he was Haitian-American and at the time seemed to be credible and had a real connection with his home country. The good feelings all changed a short time later when Yele was accused of poor and unethical accounting, including allowing Jean to use the money for personal use.
Invisible Children’s finances are also coming under question. According to the organization’s most recent financial statements, it spent $8,676,614 last year, but only 32 percent of it went to direct services in Uganda. The rest of it went to staff salaries, overhead and film equipment. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if Invisible Children presented itself as an online video advocacy group. However, IC’s programs description and about pages on their website presents the organization as a humanitarian aid group working full-time on the ground helping Ugandans, comparably to Oxfam or ActionAid. Even Charity Navigator rates IC’s accountability at two of four stars because the charity has only four independent board members instead of five.
To sum it up, as easy as it is to retweet a YouTube video or sign an e-petition these days, the Internet has also made it easier to find out everything you need to know about a social issue beforehand. This is why it is still very important to do both online and offline research about any campaign or organization before becoming a supporter.
While many attendees at the Mobile World Congress have focused mainly on all the latest and greatest mobile tools, a discussion that has gone largely under the radar is the so-called “digital caste system.” Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt said in his keynote before MWC12 that for the “aspiring majority” of five out of seven billion global citizens, “the web is still a scarce resource.”
“For most people the digital revolution has not arrived yet. Every revolution begins with a small group of people. Imagine how much better it would be with another five billion people online,” he said. “Smartphones are part of the solution, but having a smartphone is not enough to get you online.”
The International Telecommunication Union — the U.N.’s specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICT) — launched the Broadband Commission for Digital Development to help evaluate how to not only make mobile broadband more accessible worldwide, but also how to better incorporate such policies into the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
Target 1: Making broadband policy universal. By 2015, all countries should have a national broadband plan or strategy or include broadband in their universal access/service definitions.
Target 2: Making broadband affordable. By 2015, entry-level broadband services should cost less than 5% of average monthly income.
Target 3: Connecting homes to broadband. By 2015, 40% of households in developing countries should have internet access.
Target 4: Getting people online. By 2015, internet user penetration should reach 60% worldwide, 50% in developing countries and 15% in least-developed countries.
The digital gap is particularly wider for rural women who face the barriers of poverty, illiteracy and language. The UN General Assembly Resolution 58/146 of 2004 recognized the need to provide rural women with better ICT, which has led to the growth of UN-supported ICT programs in rural communities.
There is significant evidence of how this resolution has improved the lives of many women, particularly in Latin America. According to Martin Hilbert, researcher at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the programs help women become leaders in their communities, by allowing them to search for jobs, access education through online trainings and software, and increase their income. “ICTs are a tool to fight discrimination against women in a holistic way,” he said.
Women accessing mobile technology can also become citizen journalists in their communities. Mobile journalism played a large role in the Arab Spring. Yemen’s Nadia Abdullah became an unlikely reporter covering events in her country.
“I didn’t imagine that my father, brother or the family would accept that I go out and do an interview on camera” Abdullah said to Voice of America. “This was almost impossible to do because of the norms and traditions. They are closed and conservative traditions. It is not proper for a woman to appear in public.”
Eventually with the approval of her family, Abdullah used an amateur video camera to document events throughout Sanaa, ranging from crackdowns by government troops to a man cradling the dead body of a loved one. She not only helped to topple Yemen’s long time ruler, but she is now also seriously pursuing a journalism career.
“With a camera and a picture,” she said, “you can silence anyone.”
