primer: new and social media

Primer:New and social media

Sanjana Hattotuwa

TED FellowArchitect and Curator, Groundviews

what is social media?

• Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

• It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. (Wikipedia)

social media landscape early 2011

social media landscape today

+

plus.google.com

social media foundations• Blogs

• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook)

• Mobiles: SMS to social networking sites, mobile photography and video

• Wired (ADSL) and wireless broadband (3G etc)

• Greater content creation in local languages

• Lower transactional cost (cost per SMS, subscription for ADSL, cost per dongle, data subscriptions)

creating relationships

producing content

engaging with content

what’s really new?

• Ubiquity of two way communications

• Addressable peoples, even those who IDPs or refugees

• Both news generation and dissemination leverages new media

• Disintermediated models vs. traditional media model

• Citizens as producers

• Low resolution, hyperlocal helps focus and granularity

• Aggregation of low resolution helps macro analysis and strategy

sous-veillence

• Sous-veillance (observing from underneath, anchored to human security) in place of, or in addition to, surveillance (often from centralised loci, anchored to national security)

• Sous-veillance is crowd based intelligence, generally open data (though analysis can be bounded). Surveillance ranges from sig-int and psy-ops to information espionage, almost always bounded.

• Important to understand Arab Spring, and situational awareness in sudden onset disasters

New information networksFluid, spontaneous, viral, short-term spikes, long tail

Event / Issue

Closed Intel

Witness / Victim Citizen media

Army / Govt / UN system

Members states /

Global / Local audiences

the new voiceshttps://twitter.com/#!/combatjourno

the new voiceshttp://mashable.com/2012/02/20/afghanistan-twitter/

the new revolutionshttp://revolution2book.com

the new revolutionshttp://revolution2book.com

"I don't personally trust any tool," he said. "I trust the people behind the tool." And that remains the most important lesson of Revolution 2.0. Technology is just an enabler. It is what people decide to do with it that matters most.

Wael Ghonim

before ‘arab spring’

power of sms: post tsunami

• The web is littered with examples on how SMS helped in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

• “I'm standing on the Galle road in Aluthgama and looking at 5 ton trawlers tossed onto the road. Scary shit.”

• “Found 5 of my friends, 2 dead. Of the 5, 4 are back in Colombo. The last one is stranded because of a broken bridge. Broken his leg. But he's alive.”

• “Made contact. He got swept away but swam ashore. Said he's been burying people all day.”

• “Just dragging them off the beach and digging holes with his hands.”

bombings in london

• 7 July 2005

• Within 24 hours, the BBC had received 1,000 stills and videos, 3,000 texts and 20,000 e-mails.

“saffron revolution” in myanmar, 2007

• 100,000 people joined a Facebook group supporting the monks

• No international TV crews allowed in the country

• Mobile phone cameras were the first footage of the monks protest

• Blogs from Rangoon were the only sources of information

• The junta shut down all Internet and mobile communications

burma vj: reporting from a closed country

the ‘green revolution’: post-election Iran, 2009

The use of social media in Sri LankaPresidential Campaign 2010

flickr for sarath fonseka

flickr for the president

facebook for president

facebook for sarath fonseka

more local examples

groundviews citizen journalism bearing witness

readership and reach: web media

From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka.

Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of commentary.

Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since.

groundviews.org: participatory journalismhttp://www.groundviews.org/2010/03/15/strengthening-democracy-in-sri-lanka-an-open-invitation-to-generate-fresh-ideas/

Mapping election violencehttp://cmev.wordpress.com/maps

iBookshttp://groundviews.org/2012/02/07/the-end-of-war-in-sri-lanka-reflections-and-challenges-released-as-ibook

Google EarthEnd of the war in Sri Lanka

Google EarthMass graves in Sri Lanka

new demographicssocial witnessing

new cartographiescrowdsourcing and crisis mapping

grassroots mapping | new cartographieshttp://publiclaboratory.org/sites/default/files/4445981062_73945db207_b_2.jpg

http://grassrootsmapping.org

grassroots mapping | new cartographieshttp://grassrootsmapping.org/gulf-oil-spill

map kibera community mappinghttp://mapkibera.org

seeingdata visualisation

Infogram: data driven narrativeshttp://infogr.am/beta

Easel.ly: data driven narrativeshttp://www.easel.ly

timeline: temporal narrativeshttp://timeline.verite.co

timetoast: temporal narrativeshttp://www.timetoast.com

wordle.net: word cloudshttp://groundviews.org/2011/05/11/from-draft-to-official-text-wikileaks-reveals-the-us-response-to-the-end-of-war-in-sri-lanka/

bundling social media, adding value through curationhttp://www.bundlr.com | http://www.storify.com

plotting, panning, zooming

infoviz & zui’s

photosynth: many eyes, context provisioninghttp://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=f3a648b8-7a4c-4bc4-8396-5746d86225b6

prezi: scale and contexthttp://prezi.com/4cghil5ghukn/iccm-day-1/

prezi: scale and contexthttp://prezi.com/4cghil5ghukn/iccm-day-1/

silverlight: scale and contexthttp://memorabilia.hardrock.com

Tablets and mobiles are driving creation and consumption

Post PC world

iPhone 5 | 5 million+, launch weekend

the enduring challenges will be

• New media savvy repressive governments

• Privacy controls, in the age of Facebook

• Contest between culture and context, actors and process, physical vs. virtual

• Engendering the political will to transform complex conflict

• The emphasis on the process, as opposed to the technology - people as opposed to the platform

• Bearing witness during violence

limitations

limitations

thank yousanjanahattotuwa@ict4peace.org