The simple act of dissent can be powerful:
In a society like Ethiopia, where the media is heavily state controlled and censored, the ability to write online may be the only way to criticize the government. In the case of Ethiopia, speaking out often leads to arrest and imprisonment. But the imprisonment of figures like Eskinder Nega, an independent journalist who’s been sentenced to 18 years in prison for “treason”, has called international attention to Ethiopia’s dreadful human rights record. And we’re seeing brave individuals step up and share their voices, like the bloggers behind Zone 9, a new blog dedicated to freedom of speech in Ethiopia. (Zone 8 is the wing of Ethiopia’s most notorious prison, where journalists and political prisoners are held, so Zone 9 is a step beyond that system of control.)
Amplifying voices makes them more powerful:
The protests in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia would probably have been snuffed out, like earlier protests in the city of Gafsa. Instead, they spread throughout the country and ultimately took down Ben Ali’s government. Sidi Bouzid’s protests were documented, posted to Facebook, translated and contextualized by activists at Nawaat, and amplified by Al Jazeera, which helped other Tunisians see what was taking place and join in the protest movement. This has lessons for us in the power of documenting grievances and our responses to them, in curating and contextualizing for a wider audience, and in learning to use broadcast media to create broader audiences and build popular movements.
Small acts can build a coherent, influential whole:
Ushahidi began as a project designed to ensure that stories of individual Kenyans affected by post-election violence didn’t go unheard. It’s turned into something even more powerful – a platform that tells stories through pointillism, turning small, individual reports into a broader picture.
Sometimes, the state is listening:
Ipaidabribe is a crowdsourcing platform designed to document bribery in India. As with Ushahidi installations, it’s designed to give a picture of a broad phenomenon through individual reports. But sometimes those individual reports can lead to action: recently, a Bangalore-based software engineer was shaken down for a bribe when bringing an expensive kayak into India from the US. He used the platform to post a report, and the customs official was censured and suspended. It’s not always possible for people to post signed reports, as this engineer did, nor is it always possible to verify anonymous reports. But creating spaces where people can post about mistreatment and demand government response is a way of using extra-governmental systems to pressure the state.
We can propose interventions and converge on solutions:
My colleague Yochai Benkler has been conducting extensive research on the success of the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement in the US, and offers the idea that what made the movement so powerful was the fact that lots of actors were able to propose possible protest actions. Movement actors voted by amplifying proposals they liked and ignoring (or criticizing) others. The success of protests like the Wikipedia blackout came about after a long process of convergence on paths forward.
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