How the Rodney King Beating Video Changed Citizen Journalism

April 30, 2012 Leave a comment

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.”

Filed under Accountability/Transparency, Americas, Video, YouTube Tagged with , , , , ,

Broadband Initiative Seeks to Close Digital Gap in the Americas

April 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Improving broadband access throughout the Western Hemisphere was a hot topic at the Sixth Summit of the Americas this past weekend.  President Obama announced the creation of the Broadband Partnership of the Americas, a program set to improve Internet access across Latin America and the Caribbean.

From USAID:

…While approximately 80 percent of the Latin America and Caribbean population has access to mobile phones, only 40 percent has Internet access, with levels in Central America and the Caribbean at approximately 30 percent. Broadband penetration is estimated to be 29 percent, falling just below the global average.

Enhancing access to broadband improves development outcomes, fosters economic development and increases competitiveness. The Inter-American Development Bank reports that a 10 percent increase in the region’s broadband subscriptions would boost GDP growth by 3.19 percent and increase productivity by 2.6 percent…

The new partnership will be managed by USAID’s Global Broadband and Innovations Program, which will provide financial and technical support for improving broadband strategies.  The initiative also comes on the heels of the Obama administration’s other announcements – Small Business Network of the Americas and Women’s Entrepreneurship in the Americas – which will promote trade among small businesses throughout the Hemisphere.  There is a special interest in supporting “diaspora entrepreneurs” through the Latino American Idea Partnership (La IdEA) and the Caribbean Idea Marketplace (CIM) business competition platforms.

Of course, there are many critics of the new free trade agreements with Colombia and Panama and the “convenient timing” of all of these new initiatives from the White House. However, having better Internet access for budding entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean is a very important issue that needs to be addressed better, and the new partnership attempts to deal with the digital gap.

Global Wire Associates has done work in the past with activists and entrepreneurs in the region, like with Mariam Cotton, a Trinidadian who runs her own catering business outside of Port of Spain.  She is developing her own line of exotic fruit preserves.  When Cotton came to one of our trainings last February, she told us that she is dependent on her mobile phone for contacting clients and online banking.  However, because she doesn’t have regular Internet access, her ability to expand her business and stay current with her competition is limited.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, only 39.5 percent of citizens of Trinidad and Tobago have Internet access.  If there was a better broadband strategy in her community, she would be able to build a company website, do online research on how to improve her business and better market her services to potential clients.  We spoke to Cotton again yesterday about the prospects of better broadband access and the hopes that the Obama administration will stay true to their promises.

“I think it is a blessing for me to get online,” Cotton told GWA in a telephone interview.  “I want to be able to connect with more customers and open a restaurant and sell my preserves in Miami one day.  Having the Internet will help me feel more connected with the world.”

Filed under Americas, Entrepreneurship, Tech Disparities, Tech Life Tagged with , , , ,

Emphas.is Project Challenges Stereotypes About Arab Men

April 9, 2012 Leave a comment

The Trayvon Martin case has put the problem of racial profiling into the spotlight again.  Black males are generally portrayed in Western media as criminal, due largely to clothing perceived to be associated with “urban culture” like hoodies.  Just like black males, Arab (and some South Asian) males with beards and turbans are also judged negatively as having associations with terrorism, especially since the September 11 attacks.

Iraqi photojournalist Tamara Abdul Hadi has taken on the challenge to break this terrorist stereotype.  She created Picture an Arab Man, a photo slide show that really takes a look at the unexplored viewpoints of stereotypes in general.

The slide show uses Emphas.is, an online platform that allows photojournalists to submit projects for crowdfunding by viewers.  Crowdfunding is the hot thing to do in the business world these days, especially among tech entrepreneurs who are looking at nontraditional ways to fund their projects.  President Barack Obama recently signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law, which makes it easier for start-ups to raise money.  There are a growing number of crowdfunding platforms for creative professionals, including Emphas.is, which is the first such platform designed for photojournalists.

Abdul Hadi started her project in 2009 to collect photos of Arab men for an upcoming book.  She turned to Emphas.is for crowdfunding when she was ready to publish her work.  In an interview with IJNet, She said that there was not a more important time than now to get her work out.

Arab men have been stereotyped in Western media for a very long time through films, literature, theater etc.  They are branded as hyper-masculine, violent and dangerous. The word “terrorist” is used a lot, especially in Western media…  Arab women are definitely also misrepresented in Western media, but in a very different way than Arab men. While men are seen as oppressive and violent, women are seen as oppressed and powerless. There is a big disconnect when it comes to media representation. I decided to tackle the subject of Arab men first.

The men in her photos are from many countries throughout the Arab world.  She said her subjects are shot semi nude “because my portraits focus mainly on the face and having no distinguishing clothing/jewelry and accessories helps keep the focus on that.”  Much of the online buzz for this project is really promising, and it looks like Abdul Hadi is both on her way to raising her money, as well as raising awareness.

“I strive to do what I can to redefine the image of the Arab man for an audience so accustomed to one-dimensional stereotypes,” Abdul Hadi said.  “Most importantly, I hope to properly represent my subjects as diverse and candid men whose only thing in common is their rich Middle Eastern heritage.”

Filed under Americas, Entrepreneurship, Middle East, Online Journalism, Photography Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Using Pinterest To “Pin” For Digital Activism

April 2, 2012 1 Comment

Pinterest, a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects, has become all the rage on the Internet.  As a matter of fact, Pinterest is currently the fastest growing social network.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, it is “currently netting 11 million visitors per month (68 percent of whom are reported to be female)…  Just a month after opening the site to the public, the founders were shocked to have a waiting list they say is in the tens of thousands.”

Pinterest is best known for its many pins of wedding dresses and interior decorating, but we have been playing around with it and have found a few ways to use it for digital activism.  Since there is a larger number of women using the platform, many women’s rights activists has used Pinterest to organize around their causes.  Most recently, when Susan G. Komen for the Cure was accused of undermining women’s reproductive health, pro-choice activists created the Komen Can Kiss My Mammagram pinboard, where supporters posted various images and videos acknowledging their grievances with Komen.

Pinterest member Jennifer Stauss Windrum used the platform to create another movement.  Her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, although she never smoked a cigarette in her life.  Windrum create the WTF? (Where’s the Funding) for Lung Cancer pinboard to show that anyone can get lung cancer, and that it should be as well-funded as other types of cancer.  Windrum discussed how Pinterest has helped her on the Daily Dot.

To enable others to become great advocates for a cause, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to access and share content. With the boards, I can curate a lot of content from my blog and other resources and neatly place it in one spot. Pinterest has not only helped advance our advocacy efforts, but also has introduced us to a new set of advocates as well.

The Flaming Vegan, a blog dedicated to the vegan lifestyle, recently discussed using Pinterest for promoting veganism and animal rights.  The author states that photos can speak larger than words to change perceptions.

…Many people have a distorted image of what a vegan eats and getting your carnivore friends excited about Tempah or tofu is a fantastic way to promote vegan meals. As mentioned, I pin photos from all my blog posts and once visitors arrive at my blog they can find out more information on veganism and why I’m a vegan…  You’ll also notice that cute photos of dogs and cats are very popular on Pinterest. So I regularly post videos and images of lambs, cows, and pigs playing in an open environment. The people who view the videos have no idea that I’m trying to promote compassion and understanding but these images begin to undo previous misconceptions. My goal is that they remember the video of the cow playing with a ball in a field instead of being in a pen standing in their own manure the next time they are looking at a menu…

The Trayvon Martin case has largely been a social media-driven campaign.  Liberal blog Think Progress created the Hoodies for Trayvon pinboard, where users can find photos of celebrities and journalists wearing hoodies, demonstrating the harmlessness of the clothing.  Doing a search for “trayvon” on Pinterest will bring up hundreds of similar pins, giving an overview of this online movement.

Pinterest has only been around for a few short months, but it has already made an impact in many lives.

Filed under Americas, Pinterest Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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