The Blog — Mobile
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.
#LondonRiots: Youth use #Twitter and #BBM to Organize, Identify Looters, & Share Opinions
In London this weekend riots, vandalism, looting erupted in a disadvantaged London neighborhood just miles (kilometers) from the site of next year's Olympic Games.
Flickr user: tomsun
This Live Broadcast Is Brought To You By Bambuser: Streaming Video for Activists
A great compliment our guide, How to Broadcast Live Video from your Mobile Phone with Bambuser, TechChange shares more details about how activists can use Bambuser.
How to Choose the Right Host For Your Online Video
Capturing scenes from the street, especially when there is an absence of journalists such as in Syria and Libya, is important for activists trying to get their stories out. But after you've shot your video on your cellphone or handheld camera- where do you put it?Robin Miller explains how to choose the right platform to host your online video for ReadWriteWeb
Technology, Social Media, and Nigeria’s Elections
Asch Harwood and John Campbell of the Council on Foreign Relations introduces a study by Judith Asuni of Academic Associates Peaceworks and Jacqueline Farris of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Foundation, “Tracking Social Media: the Social Media Tracking Centre and the 2011 Nigerian Election” (PDF), where they attempt to evaluate the impact of social media and information communication technologies such as mobile phones, SMS, Facebook, and Twitter on Nigeria’s recent elections.
What Does Foursquare Have to do With Organizing and Activism?
In the summer of 2010, Chinese protesters incorporated Foursquare into their actions around the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. During the U.S. midterm elections that fall, Foursquare generated a lot of buzz for melding online activities (checking in, commenting on other peoples' check-ins) with offline action (namely, voting).
Here's a look at how campaigners have used and will probably be using the platform in the near future.
Color: Another Tool That Overlooks Clear Uses for Activism?
A new tool called Color wants to spark flash mobs. Unfortunately, it also wants to collect all your data. That's what has emerged in coverage of the app, which received $41 million dollars of funding, and it is indicative of the larger challenge of reconciling activism with technology platforms, an issue which Jennifer Preston reports on today in the New York Times.
Cameroon Suspends SMS-to-Tweet
Since late February, Cameroonians have been organizing a protest movement against the government of President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982 and is running for re-election later this year. In an effort to further stifle opposition members from organizing demonstrations, the Cameroonian government suspended access to Twitter via SMS for MTN Telecom customers "for security reasons."
Sukey: A New Mobile App to Keep Demonstrators Safe and Informed
Following a number of protests held in the United Kingdom against increases to tuition fees, a group of tech-savvy activists have created a new mobile app to help keep demonstrators informed while on the ground and to avoid kettling. Sukey takes reports fielded through a number of tools, filters out misinformation, and updates what's happening in real time on a map. Smartphone users can check updates on the live map, while feature phone users can receive SMS from Sukey with frequent updates.
Speak2Tweet and Alive In Egypt - What’d They Learn from Their Reactions to Egypt’s Net Shut Down
Soon after Egyptians lost access to the Internet on the second day of their revolution, a grad student in California began prompting friends within the country to call him on their landlines (which still worked) so he could publish their messages to the world on Twitter [link handle]. Then, that weekend, engineers at Google, Twitter and a company Google had just acquired called SayNow, decided to build a tool that would allow this to happen at a greater scale.
In reaction, the creators of Alive in Baghad and Alive in Afghanistan launched Alive in Egypt as part of their broader mission to help citizens to get more and better quality media out to the world. On that Sunday night they issued a call for people to start helping them translate the voice messages and get them up on the Alive in Egypt site and Twitter feed.
Now, Google has launched a speak2tweet number for Bahrain (88% net users), Libya (5.51 net users) and Algeria (12% net users). But you can’t really assume that it’ll be equally successful across the board, can you? What are the lessons learned from speak2tweet and Alive in Egypt’s and can they be applied to other contexts?
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