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Digital Activism Survey Results

15 July 2009 in Educating, From the Field, Networking, Projects by Kate | View Comments

Colleagues Mary Joyce, Timo Zaeck and myself have just released the findings of a study on Digital Activism around the world through DigiActive’s Research@DigiActive (R@D).

To download the full report click here (in .pdf format):

Abstract:

Our goal in creating this survey was to collect the first international demographic data on the new group we call “digital activists”: people who use digital technology as part of grassroots campaigns for social and political change.

From late mid-February to mid-April of 2009, DigiActive collected 122 responses through an open online form, followed by three rounds of qualitative and quantitative analysis.  Despite the challenges of researching the world’s digital activists we felt a need to record – in some rough way – this evolving demographic.  Our original data set is available for download above and we welcome comments below through survey@digiactive.org.

Key Findings:

Economics Digital activists, particularly in developing countries, are much more likely than the population at large to pay a monthly subscription fee to have Internet at home, to be able to afford a high-speed connection, and to work in a white-collar job where Internet is also available. In short, digital activists are likely to be prosperous.

Access Intensity of use, rather than simple access, is critical as to whether or not a person is a digital activist. This high use is only possible for people with the ability to pay for it. The Internet may be democratizing, but its effects are felt most strongly in the global middle class.

Causes Across regions, “rights” emerged as the most popular cause, with 21 different types identified by respondents.

Broadcast The plurality of respondents (37%) believe digital technology’s greatest value for activism is one-way communication. What makes social media useful for digital activism may not be its interactivity but rather the fact that these technologies collapse the barrier to broadcast.

Mobiles Respondents with more features on their mobile phone – such as Internet, video, and GPS – are more likely to use their phones for activism. This is another indicator of the importance of financial resources for digital activists, both quantitatively, in terms of greater technology access, and qualitatively, in terms of better (mobile) hardware.

Platforms Social networks are the most common “gateway drug” into digital activism.

Skills Findings on technology and advocacy skills acquisition challenge the assumption that those who have a facility with technology are more likely to become digital activists and gives encouragement to programs that seek to teach technology skills to traditional activists.

Age Older activists in the respondent group are most likely to use digital technology to increase the efficiency of offline activities, such as training and evidence collection, and less likely to participate in activities which have gained popularity because of the availability of online tools, such as posting original content on web sites.

The purpose of Research@DigiActive (R@D) is to produce applied, thought-provoking, actionable research at the cutting edge of Digital Activism. It seeks to highlight and disseminate studies in the new academic field of digital activism by publishing short papers by promising scholars. To submit a paper or get more information, please contact our Director of Applied Research, Patrick Meier, at Patrick AT Digiactive.org.

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Documenting Kenya’s Elections using Crisis Mapping Techniques

23 October 2008 in Projects by Kate | View Comments

What are citizen journalists’ roles in documenting conflict and are those roles becoming more important?

Led by Patrick Meier, a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, I’m happy to report that we’ve just completed the first of (hopefully) several case studies that attempt to answer this question more concretely.

Supported by Humanity United, the project seeks to explore the changing role and impact of information communication technology in crisis early warning and humanitarian response.  The eventual goal is to identify ways in which citizen journalists and new communications tools can work more effectively in crisis situations.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBiCK-ybYpw[/youtube]

Patrick did a really good job of writing up the methodology at his blog, so I’m going to leave wheel inventing up to him.

The exciting thing for me was to see the way in which new media tools were being used by citizen journalists, specifically how much more effective they seemed to be in disseminating on-the-ground, real-time information than the mainstream media was.  The effects of efforts like Ushahidi also contain incredibly valuable information for future research.

Our preliminary findings:

  • Mainstream media reported actual death count before citizen journalists; however, on many accounts, mainstream media did not report on incidents leading to actual deaths, i.e., early warning signs;
  • Citizen journalist reports and Ushahidi reports did not overlap geographically with mainstream media reports;
  • Citizen journalists tended to report as soon as violence started, well before mainstream media;
  • The number of comments on citizen journalist blogs increased during the 30-day period, or during particular periods of violence;
  • The comment section was also used as a medium for real-time updating;
  • Many citizen journalist bloggers used real-time updates sent to them via SMS, primarily from rural areas;
  • Citizen journalism reports declined after the launch of Ushahidi;
  • Ushahidi reports document an important number of violent events not reported by the mainstream media and citizen journalists;
  • Contrary to news media and citizen journalist reports, Ushahidi data always had specific location information;
  • Ushahidi reports also covered a wider geographical area than both mainstream news and citizen journalist bloggers.

For further information on our project’s methodology and sources, please see this short powerpoint presentation (pdf) which we have also uploaded on Slideshare. For more on crisis mapping, please see this page.

Some follow up questions that we identified as being interesting off-shoots of this project are:

  1. What was the role of SMS messaging in the overall information chain?  How does it differ across the country (rural vs urban) and what are some of the most effective ways that this medium was (or could be) used?
  2. What was the role of blogs in mainstream media information gathering?  Were they a resource?  What about Human Rights organizations?  If so, is there anything we can learn about how to make that information more effective in terms of crisis response?
  3. Can efforts such as Ushahidi be replicated in other areas, or have there been similar efforts?

We hope to refine the process as we move forward, and with that being said, we’d love feedback as possible on both methodology and analysis, as well as the visualization.  We’re looking to clean the whole package up moving forward, so this would be very helpful.

Our next case study will be Georgia.  Please contact me if you’re interested in joining the team.

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