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April / May
The dos and don’ts of video campaigning
At this stage nearly everyone will have heard of the video produced by an organisation called Invisible Children which aimed to raised awareness of the atrocities committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army, especially in relation to the use of child soldiers. Reactions have been mixed, to say the least, with a number of organisations putting together very good link pages covering both supporting stories and detracting stories (see Dóchas, some African responses collated at Rosebell’s blog, and Building a Better World).
So I thought it might be worth looking at the use of social media especially in relation to development education. Is it a useful tool? Can we really adhere to the Code of Conduct on Images and Messages in a tweet of 140 characters? Should we censor information put up on our blogs / facebooks etc if we feel it contravenes the Code and or our own ethics? And maybe more importantly – do we have the resources and know-how to make social media work for us? Or will it just become expected that people tweet, facebook and blog about issues irrespective of what should be achieved – and irrespective of work hours?
I don’t have any answers of course – just a few links that look at video activism and clicktivism (or whatever you want to call it).
A general response to some of the issues raised in the video at Aidspeak
Where is the line between journalism and activism? Ethan Zuckerman blogs about all things media and had this to say …
There’re a few people worth following on Twitter in relation to social media - Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ), TMS Ruge (@tmsruge), and Beth Kanter (@kanter) to mention but a few …
