- The Hunt for Digital Evidence of the Rohingya Genocide In documenting historical records of destruction or grievous danger to a peoples over time, digital trails are a human rights crusader’s best–sometimes most accurate–source of evidence. And yet at the same time, such data can fall into the wrong hands, putting the lives of the persecuted, and those fighting for their rights, at grave risk. […]
- Video Evidence and the Case for the Rohingya How eyewitness video and digital evidence verification work together to corroborate violence and destruction in Burma.
- Recording Resistance We interviewed British filmmaker Max Stahl about his role in documenting and preserving footage of the Santa Cruz Massacre, and how his visual account helped propel Timor-Leste back into the world spotlight.
- Four Ways to Save Live Video Broadcasts You shouldn't necessarily rely on the platforms and apps you are using to live stream to save your content, whether you're broadcasting from Facebook or Periscope. We share tips for alternative saving methods.
- Digitizing WITNESS Videotapes Through a Community Partnership Digitizing videotape collections can be a lot of work, but it can be made more manageable by selecting and prioritizing, doing what you can in-house, and collaborating and sharing resources within a community.
- Ethical Wednesdays: Archives and Our Ethical Guidelines for Using Eyewitness Videos As archives start to collect, provide access to, and present social media collections, many ethical issues arise that need to be addressed.
- Community-Based Approaches to Archives From the Black Lives Matter Movement Archivist Yvonne Ng discusses new initiatives out of Ferguson, Baltimore and Cleveland to collect and preserve records of police abuse and protest movements.
- The (Unexpected) Emotional Impact of Archiving Should more be done to prepare archivists for the unexpected emotional impact of working with human rights media?
- WITNESS Talks to Patrick Otim of the Refugee Law Project about Video Archiving The Refugee Law Project (RLP) is a human rights organization in Uganda that recently undertook a video archiving project with the help of the Activist’s Guide to Archiving Video. Patrick Otim talks to WITNESS about RLP's experience with archiving, the difficulties RLP faced, and why it is such an important project.
- What is Video Metadata? Our New Video Explains A new video from WITNESS explains the basics -- how video metadata is created, why it’s valuable, and what risks and benefits activists might need to balance.
- Format, Frame Size and More: Digital Video Basics for Activists We're launching a new video in our series for activists on video archiving and preservation, which covers digital video basics including file formats, encoding, and more.
- What Activists Need to Know About Video Archiving and Preservation Advocacy campaigns can take time to achieve results, so it’s important that your videos remain available after they are filmed. A new video series from WITNESS shares tips with activists about video archiving and preservation.
- Preserving Videos from Ferguson for Justice and Accountability Basic tips that activists can take towards properly preserving the authenticity and context of human rights videos, strengthening the likelihood that the videos could someday be used as evidence in the fight for justice and accountability.
- Highlights from our Video Archiving Q&A Earlier this month, we hosted a lively online Q&A on all aspects of human rights video archiving and preservation. Activists and archivists from around the world participated, sharing their practical ideas and knowledge on how to safeguard video collections.
- List of Free or Low-cost Tools and Resources for Video Activists This list of free or low-cost tools and resources for video activists is curated from participants who joined our Live Video Archive #AskMeAnything event on our Facebook page.
Archiving Human Rights
Posts from the WITNESS Media Archive whose mission is to collect, document, preserve and provide access to audiovisual human rights media in the support of advocacy, prosecution of justice, truthtelling and the historical record.
These posts are devoted to news of our activities and work, and to discussion of topics relevant to it, including human rights archives and documentation, audiovisual archiving, social issue documentary, the social justice responsibilities of archives and archivists, etc.
Posts are written by Grace Lile, Director of Operations; Yvonne Ng, Archivist; and occasional other contributors.