The Blog — Crisis
“After Egypt’s revolution, I never expected to be back in Mubarak’s jails” #FreeAlaa
"I have been locked up, again on a set of flimsy charges, five years after imprisonment for supporting the judiciary" says Alaa Abd El Fattah. The Guardian has published a letter Alaa snuck out of his prision cell to his pregnant wife and we've republished it here.
#LondonRiots: Its Impunity Not Protest that is Causing the Riots to Spread
Joel Braunold responds to Erin Wolson's previous blog post about #LondonRiots.
Hackney riot aftermath, by StolenGolem (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
United Kingdom: Time for #RiotCleanup in London?
After extensive looting and rioting across London and other cities in the United Kingdom since Saturday night, ordinary citizens are now looking for ways to help their cities heal.
On Tuesday morning the hashtags #prayforlondon and #riotcleanup have overtaken #londonriots on Twitter, showing the conciliatory mood of all those eager to move on.
The #prayforlondon hashtag is a nod to the #prayforjapan hashtag that became hugely popular after the March earthquake in Japan. World citizens (including teenage superstar Justin Bieber who has 11.6 million followers on Twitter) are using it to show solidarity with citizens of London.
Inspired by other recent crises, there is now also a London Riots page on Crisis Commons, a wiki website mapping technology use in disasters.
Residents of Mumbai and their supporters all over the world are turning to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to share information a
#MumbaiBlasts
Residents of Mumbai and their supporters all over the world are turning to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to share information about the #MumbaiBlasts: numbers for help lines, connecting families, information for contacting the police, and more. We've compiled some of the useful information here, please Tweet or Message us @aym if you have information you'd like us to add.
From Flickr user Ramy Raoof
Timeline of the January 25 Revolution in Egypt
Over the course of 18 days, Egyptian citizens took to the streets demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. Check out our detailed timeline of the day-to-day events that both challenged and inspired Egyptians to rise up against the authoritarian regime, ultimately resulting in Mubarak's resignation.
From Flickr user Ramy Raoof
Powerful Videos From Inside Egypt and Supporters Abroad
We've compiled videos from inside Egypt and supporters abroad to show what's happening on the ground and the swell of international support for Egyptian demonstrators. We'll continue to update this page with the latest videos.
What Makes a Twitter Hashtag Successful?
One of the great mysteries about Twitter is figuring out what makes a hashtag successful. Which hashtags catch on with Twitter users and spread virally? How can hashtags be used effectively for advocacy and activism and not just add to the noise? Nowadays, hashtags are a ubiquitous part of the Twitter experience. In the world of social change and digital activism, they are most often used to organize and aggregate Tweets around particular campaigns and events or to share news and knowledge. Hashtags have also become an effective way to gather information and provide aid during times of crisis, and many Twitter users have found themselves acting as citizen journalists, using hashtags in Tweets to share news on the ground during an emergency. Our latest how-to guide looks at using hashtags to spread, share and organize information.
Checking in With the Pakistan Youth Alliance
The Pakistan Youth Alliance (PYA) is one of a cluster of civil society groups that emerged on Facebook during 2007’s emergency rule. The organization focuses on strengthening Pakistani civil society, ensuring that young people—a demographic that the alliance sees as largely indifferent to social or political causes—are its biggest contingent.
Since emergency rule ended, PYA’s presence on Facebook has grown into three separate groups with over 5,000-plus members and a fanpage with 7,000 members. “Facebook is a gift from God,” PYA’s chairperson, Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi, told me. The social network serves as the cornerstone of the group’s efforts—they use it for everything from recruiting, communicating with members, fund-raising, and outsourcing expertise. They also have a nearly 20,000-strong email list and an SMS list with between 10,000 and 12,000 numbers.
When this summer’s heavy monsoon season turned into the worst disaster in Pakistan’s history, all these resources were diverted to flood relief. Since July, PYA has been delivering the basic goods and services that flood victims initially hoped to see come from the government. As one anonymous organizer told Foreign Policy: "A few of us thought that if no one is willing to help our own people—not the world community, not our own government—then it's our job."
How has its foray into relief efforts impacted the PYA as a civil society organization? Will they be able to redirect attention generated by the disaster back into their pro-democracy efforts? I caught up with Syed Ali Abbas Zaidi this week.
From Flickr user cvconnell
Drawing Lessons From CrisisCamp: Haiti
Following the earthquake in Haiti, volunteers gathered at CrisisCamps to lend their tech skills and help the relief efforts. Our new case study highlights their work.
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