For Citizen Journalists, Digital Tools Give Real-Time Voice

While I was watching President Obama speak last night, I was struck by the thought that his speech was likely being broadcast on UStream, Twittered about, clips posted to Facebook and the like.

This morning, I came across a great post from the PopTech blog about the use of social media tools by citizen journalists to reports on crises worldwide, including humanitarian ones.

President Obama doesn't have to worry about not getting a camera pointed in his direction -- his speeches inspire thousands, probably millions of tweets. Others worldwide do not have this rapt attention.

Here's how they're getting their voices heard (all information below from PopTech blog, as posted by Kate Brodock, founder of the Other Side Group):

CrisisWire: Officially launched in late Fall 2008, Crisiswire is the brain child of Nate Ritter, who popularized the hashtag on Twitter. During the San Diego fires of 2007, he used #sandiegofire to document his experience and offer on-the-ground updates during the crisis. This combined with Twitter's various search capabilities enabled people in the area to receive pertinent information about what was happening in real-time.

Ushahidi: Meaning ''testimony'' in Swahili, this website was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. Follow them on Twitter.

DigiActive: This all-volunteer organization is dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact. Their goal is a world of activists made more powerful and more effective through the use of digital technology.

For World's Poor, A Doctor In Your Pocket

This is the kind of corporate social responsibility that's great to see -- technology answering a pressing social need. Vodafone has teamed up with the United Nations and the Rockerfeller Foundation's mHealth Alliance to connect the use of mobile phones to healthcare in the developing world.

mHealth Alliance uses the technology to provide virtual doctors to those living in rural areas, particularly in India, Uganda and South Africa. Mobile devices allow for:

• Sending mobile phone owners updates on diseases via SMS.
• Letting health workers in Uganda log data on mobile devices from the field.
• In South Africa, the SIMpill is a sensor-equipped pill bottle with a SIM card that informs doctors whether patients are taking their tuberculosis medicine.
• In Uganda, a multiple-choice quiz about HIV/AIDS was sent to 15,000 subscribers inviting them to answer questions and seek tests. Those who completed the quiz were given free airtime minutes. At the end of the quiz, a final SMS encouraged participants to go for voluntary testing. The number of people who did so increased from 1000 to 1400 over a 6-week period.
• In the Amazonas state of Brazil, health workers filled in surveys on their phones about the incidences of mosquito-borne dengue fever.
• In Mexico, a medical hotline called MedicallHome lets patients send medical questions via SMS.

Watch this video to learn more.



You can also read more at ReadWriteWeb.

Twenty-Five Percent

"Of the 14,400 candidates, 4,000 of them were women. Originally the Iraqi Constitution, responding to the demand of women, called for a 25 percent quota for women. Without explanation, the Electoral Commission interpreted the law to mean that this percentage is not guaranteed. Nevertheless, women stepped forward. Their courage is awe-inspiring."
-Madeleine Kunin-

Kunin, the former governor of Vermont and the author or Pearls, Politics and Power: How Women Can Win and Lead, has a nice editorial with Vermont Public Radio about the recent provincial elections in Iraq.

With the serious threats facing those courageous Iraqi women who choose to live political lives, Kunin wonders: "Why, in comparison, are American women so accepting of the political status quo?" (The percentage of women in the Congress is 17 percent, an all-time high; the U.S. ranks 72nd out of 142 countries in the percentage of women in Parliaments).

She challenges women not only to demand 25 percent representation, but to work themselves to achieve that 25 percent goal, then push it to 50 percent. It's a theme we as women can apply to our own everyday lives: how many women are achieving parity in our everyday environs? How many are taking on leadership roles?

We have to start asking the questions, to get to the tougher work of providing solid answers.

Inside Tehran

On the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Wall Street Journal profiles five Iranians and their disparate views on the upcoming presidential election in their country.

All under 36 (more than 70 percent of Iran's 70 million people are), each faces a crossroads. To quote the article, "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hard-line regime has put pressure on young people, particularly student activists, and cracked down on signs of rebellion from clothing to social activism. The price of oil, Iran's economic mainstay, has plummeted. Inflation and unemployment are high."

Click here to read about Alma Bahmanpour, 23, a student; Mostafa Sodoghi, 36, a cleric; Shadi Sadr, 35, a human rights lawyer; and Mahdi Moradani, 22, a shopkeeper; and Mohammad Vojdani, 23, a student.

Green Jobs for Whom?

Over at In These Times, Christopher Weber explores the development of green jobs and asks such questions as: "Will these jobs be as plentiful--and as worker-friendly--as the new administration and environmentalists would have us believe? And can green businesses really create opportunities for workers given the current economic crisis?"

Good news for Christopher and others in the green-jobs movement: today, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (that would be the other guy John McCain kept referring to as a "socialist" in last year's campaign) was named chairman of the new Senate subcommittee on green jobs.

"We're going to use this subcommittee to do everything we can to create millions of good-paying jobs in the United States as we move forward to a new energy system based on efficiency and sustainable energy," Sanders said Tuesday. "The potential for job growth in this area is bigger than almost anything else I can think of."

You go, Bernie!

P.S. For actual green jobs, check out greenjobs.com.

Twestivals, Tweets for Zimbabwe and Truth Commissions

If you haven't already succumbed to the addictive micro-blogging site, Twitter, like I have, nor dismissed it as a time and energy wasting medium, you'll be pleased, as I was, to see its founders endorsing it as a platform with democratic aims.

Founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams recently cited the "tweets" that first reported the terrorist attacks in Mumbai as support for Twitter's ability to break news and views from around the world. (In the news this week: Congress may want to add a new rule to its security guidelines for official overseas trips: No twittering from war zones.)


Now, more users are realizing and testing the potential of charity and awareness campaigns launched within Twitter.

On February 12, 2009, 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals to bring together Twitter communities to raise money and awareness for the organization charity: water. The volunteer-run fundraising meet-ups will connect people who know each other through Twitter to com together to "tweet.meet.give."

Others, including Joe Trippi, are getting in on the social action side of Twitter too. Trippi has a fledgling page through which he hopes "to encourage non-partisan support to bring attention to Zimbabwe." Click here to help him out.

In other news, Senator Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, called yesterday for a truth commission to conduct inquiries into legal oversight at the Justice Department and various other decisions about interrogation procedures and other practices. More on that here. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Should Dean replace Daschle? Facebook says yes, The Nation not so sure

Now that Tom Daschle and his funny red glasses have been jettisoned from consideration for the Obama administration's Secretary of Health and Human Services position, a logical replacement seems to be the passionate former Vermont governor (and physician) Howard Dean.

In fact, the Facebook group "Appoint Howard Dean to HHS" has, as of this writing, picked up nearly 2500 members in its first day of existence (including yours truly).

However, The Nation's John Nichols, a fan of Dean's, has reservations about the good doctor: namely, that he has historically not been an advocate for a single-payer healthcare system:

"While it certainly makes sense to consider Dean--and while he would be a dramatically better HHS Secretary than Daschle--it also makes sense to consider others, including those who have been stalwarts in the fight for real reform."

Nichols believes that Representatives such as Washington's Jim McDermott and Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin may be more inclined to actualize the dream (at this point, it really does look like a fantasy) of bringing single-payer, universal healthcare to the wealthiest nation on Earth.