[janet gunter]

photo from dili, east timor used with cc license from Flickr...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 07:44:16 +0100

photo from dili, east timor used with cc license from Flickr user United Nations Photo, by martine perret

social movements + e-activists

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:08:00 +0100

Years of working alongside movements in Mozambique and Brazil have given me an appreciation of their importance and complexity. Linking traditional movements — their powerful, sustained, offline organizing — with bloggers, online activists, and hackers is a huge challenge.

I previously worked with Diego Casaes at the firm Esfera in São Paulo to explore this issue, and think about how to nurture and sustain bridges between the two. Together we conceived of and created an online case study on the Ficha Limpa anti-corruption campaign. I also hosted a small breakout session at the 2010 Global Voices summit on a related topic.

One of my ongoing fascinations with linking online collaboration with traditional social organizing is the potential of crowdfunding. I hosted a breakout session at Barcamp Nonprofits in which some pioneering NGOs shared their experiences.

And most recently, I have started working with the International Land Coalition to link #opendata activists with groups working to monitor large-scale land concessions in Peru, Cambodia, and Tanzania. The project I am working on is a pilot, part of the longer-term Land Matrix.

I recently hosted a panel at the Global Land Forum on “Transparency, Accountability, Open data and Land” - documented here on Storify.

Restart

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:06:00 +0100

I am working with a friend from London’s ICT4D community on a project which uses fun, creativity and smarts to fight electronics obsolescence. We are working to bring online and offline communities coming together. Our motto: “repair, don’t despair!”

Underpinning this idea would be a move towards ethical consumption and production of electronics. As we are facing ecological and economic meltdowns, what better time? Check out the project’s site. If you are interested in more, please contact me.

bottom-up bailout

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:06:00 +0100

The bailouts are not for the people of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, who are bearing the brunt of austerity measures. There is a democratic deficit and growing pent-up frustration in these countries, and few outlets for those who would like to create alternatives.

There is also a sense of disconnect between people in the core and periphery - this sense of “us” and “them” - when in fact, the Euro currency has unavoidably bound people’s economic futures together - including even non-Euro zone countries.

Sara Moreira and I presented some of our ideas about linking periphery countries more effectively, and linking core and periphery to a Greek audience at the PechaKucha Heraklion in September 2011. We talked about bridge blogging, focusing on tourism, and new, innovation and idea based economies.

Linked to this, I am promoting Global Voices special coverage of Europe in Crisis. Our coverage recently was named a national winner of the Charlemagne Youth Prize.

(citizen) media networking

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 10:07:00 +0100

Through my work with Global Voices, I have collaborated with some really inspiring people working to promote citizen voices, people expanding the definitions of media. This is an area where I am constantly learning and working, in quite diverse contexts.

Brazilian friends Amanda Rossi and Jamila Venturini successfully designed and raised money in Brazil and internationally for a project in a smalltown in the interior plagued by corruption. “Friends of Januária” will train up youth reporters in online tools to monitor budgets, spending and provision of services in their town.

I have also learned a great deal about citizen reporting from work advising a Brazilian deployment of Ushahidi - Eleitor2010 - a collaborative mapping platform, as well as creating my own mini-deployment during the London riots.

Erik Charas and Adérito Caldeira, the brains behind the innovative @Verdade newspaper in Maputo serve as another great inspiration. Their work with their readers to report on daily life in Mozambique has found an international channel with Global Voices, but we are keen to invest more in their citizen reporter network and promote a new “networked” journalism.

I worked with @Verdade on this from October to December 2011, which led to a series of posts at Mobileactive.org. We documented our crashcourse in the Maputo newsroom at this Tumblr blog “Novo jornalismo em Moçambique”.

In 2012, I shared the @Verdade story at a number of industry, internet and innovation related events, and out of this arose a partnership with Sourcefabric and a winning application to the African News Innovation Challenge.

Taken in Majune, Mozambique. August 2007.

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 07:43:00 +0100

Taken in Majune, Mozambique. August 2007.