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Stopping the Construction of a Dam to Prevent Your Home from Being Flooded
The roughly 300 families that live in Temacapulín – a tiny town nestled between four green hills along the Verde River in the state of Jalisco, Mexico – have been fighting against big odds for the past five years for the basic right to stay in their homes.
Priscila Néri
April 12, 2011
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Cameras Everywhere: Our New Leadership Initiative
Here at WITNESS we're in the midst of exciting development on all our new programmatic initiatives. One of these is our 'Cameras Everywhere' Leadership initiative, which we'd like to introduce in this blog.
Sam Gregory
January 19, 2011
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The Ethical Engagements of Human Rights Social Media
The explosion of digital media on human rights pushes us all to rethink how documentary film ethics apply in a more networked, social media-driven era.
Sam Gregory
November 22, 2010
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What do you think about human rights (and your rights) online?
Government police shutting down farmer’s protests in China. A tobacco company employing under-age workers in Kazakhstan. Iranian merchants striking to protest tax increases in Tehran.
WITNESS
August 24, 2010
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What We’re Reading + Watching, July 19-23, 2010
This week we're sharing more 'tweeted' bits of news and resources including a guide to mobile phone video journalism, a discussion about the ethics of video in the "YouTube era," an award given to our partners at HOPS in Macedonia, a new audio archive of the world's language, and a new shareable video and education campaign about how cosmetics are made, packaged and sold:
Matisse Bustos Hawkes
July 23, 2010
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Protecting yourself, your subjects and your human rights videos on YouTube
Last week we started a blog series with YouTube, highlighting the role that online video is playing in human rights advocacy. And though activists around the world have shown how powerful YouTube can be as a tool to raise awareness of human rights violations, this kind of work opens up new risks, online and offline.
WITNESS
June 21, 2010
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A Peek Behind the Digital Curtain – Discussing YouTube’s Take Down Policy
As my colleagues Sameer Padania, Priscila Néri and Chris Michael who worked on The Hub can attest, curating online video is difficult to say the least. While considering questions on ethics, revictimization, consent, dignity, and security, the Hub staff at WITNESS aimed to highlight relevant human rights-related video that, at times, contained disturbing or very graphic imagery (see the example of the Neda video from Iran: 'A Woman Dies on Camera - To Post or Not to Post?') .
Matisse Bustos Hawkes
June 2, 2010
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BAVC Producers Institute for New Media Technologies
Well, I'm in the midst of having a great ten days! I'm in San Francisco participating at the Bay Area Video Coalition's (BAVC) fourth annual Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. It is an intensive ten-day residency for eight creative teams (see this year's projects below!) with a shared goal of developing and prototyping a multi-platform project inspired by, or based on a significant documentary project.
WITNESS
June 1, 2010
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An Archivist’s Perspective on Access and Privacy
The New York Times reports that earlier this month, a US District Court granted a petition by Chevron to subpoena 600 hours of footage from Crude: The Real Price of Oil. The film, by director Joe Berlinger, documents a landmark lawsuit filed by 30,000 Ecuadorean Amazon residents against the oil company for allegedly contaminating the jungle and creating a “death zone” the size of Rhode Island.
Yvonne Ng
May 23, 2010
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Live Streaming Resistance: A Replicable Video Advocacy Model
During April in the United States, 92,432 homes were repossessed. Only one homeowner got a weeks' worth of news coverage. Read how he used video and why his model is worth replicating...
WITNESS
May 19, 2010
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Looking Back at 2 Years of the Hub – 10 Editor’s Picks
NOTE: As part of my job here at WITNESS, I have watched more than 2,000 videos on the Hub alone since I joined the team in mid-2008. Different videos have stuck with me for different reasons – some visceral, others more rational. Selecting just ten of these – and you’ll see I also snuck in […]
Priscila Néri
December 22, 2009
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2 years of the Hub: a look back
December 2009 marks the Hub’s official two-year anniversary and we’re looking back at the most popular videos, issues, campaigns, and blog posts since our launch. There’s a lot to cover – the Hub is now home to 3,000 videos on a range of human rights issues from all around the world. Since 2007, more than […]
Priscila Néri
December 21, 2009
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New & of Note
An update on the disposition of the archives of the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda is available; see The Documentalist for a good summary, courtesy of James Simon.
WITNESS
December 7, 2009
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Building a Network for Human Rights Archives and Archivists
In recent years, archival institutions and organizations have become increasingly concerned with issues regarding human rights records and archival collections.
WITNESS
October 28, 2009
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User-generated video & authentication: Sri Lanka
In August a video showing what appeared to be the cold-blooded execution of Tamils by Sri Lankan soldiers was released by the group Democracy in Sri Lanka and aired on Channel 4 news in the UK.
WITNESS
October 14, 2009