- Kony 2012: Juggling Advocacy, Audience and Agency When Using #Video4Change "Kony 2012" is now the most rapidly disseminated human rights video ever. In six days it reached an aggregate 100 million views – faster than other pop culture phenomena like Susan Boyle (9 days), Rebecca Black (45 days) and ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ (445 days).
- Our Responsibility To ‘Bear Witness’ Today is justifiably a day of euphoria for many Egyptians following the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, and for many people around the world (myself included) who have been following events in Cairo, Alexandria and across Egypt on Twitter, via the continuous coverage of Al-Jazeera English, via the nightly news in many countries (with some conspicious exceptions) and through videos on YouTube.
- Habermas, Rheingold and the Internet as public sphere The upcoming World Electronic Media Forum includes a session called “Explosion and Fracturing of Public Sphere“, featuring my old boss, James Deane (alongside Aida Opoku Mensah of the Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Sharmini Boyle of Young Asia TV). This Howard Rheingold piece (hat-tip, Ethan Z) is a must-read prior to that, particularly the […]
- Does The Number have a lesson for human rights activists? Our good friend Ethan has done it again, drawing the connection between a recent viral meme, anti-censorship, and human rights in an article on World Changing. A 16 digit number used as a key to decrypt HD-DVDs became the center of an online revolt against internet censorship yesterday, when it was posted on several blogs, […]
