10

tactics
tactic 1
to print
page 1 of 3

(
dfY`c`j\
g\fgc\
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD TO
USE WHEN YOU WANT TO
SUPPORT PEOPLE TO COME
TOGETHER, ONLINE AND IN
PERSON, AROUND A CAUSE

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Video Volunteers Demand Land Rights
Citizen journalists in India
After a community-made video on land rights in
Gujarat, India, was screened in 25 nearby villages,
700 people rallied and filed complaints with the local
Lebanon and it served to direct people to the
organisation’s website, without threatening people’s
security or anonymity by publicly linking them with
an LGBT organisation.
VIDEO VOLUNTEERS

government to have land fairly distributed to them. TOOLS USED: Facebook

TOOLS USED: Digital video cameras, editing LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

software, YouTube, widescreen projectors,
VCD/DVDs for video screenings in villages and to
community networks.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Video Volunteers: http://www.videovolunteers.org/
● Using a Friendless Profile for Visibility
LGBT advocates in Lebanon
A lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy
(LGBT) organisation (which is not named here for
privacy reasons) created a Facebook profile with
Creating a Facebook profile: http://bit.ly/w1dTv
● Pink Chaddi Campaign
Women’s advocates in India
By organising through Facebook and their blogs,
women’s advocates in India asked supporters to
send pink chaddis (panties) to members of a right
wing group who had sponsored attacks of women
drinking in pubs.
TOOLS USED: Facebook, Blogspot, Flickr, posters,
digital cameras
PINK CHADDI CAMPAIGN

no photo and no friends to safely mobilise people

who needed support and/or wanted to advocate for LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
LGBT rights. The profile was easily found by Campaign blog: http://thepinkchaddicampaign.
people looking for LGBT friends and support in blogspot.com/

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g(
10
tactics
tactic 1
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● These campaigns blend digital information with in-person action:
projecting videos made by advocates in India in their villages as well
as online, or sharing photos of the many pairs of pink panties mailed in
protest on the campaign’s blog and on social network site profiles.

● If you want to use a social network site like Facebook or Orkut to

gather supporters, you may face challenges in sending mass messages
to all of them at once. Plan for other ways to collect people’s contact
information so that you can also message people outside the social
network site.

● Using humour or surprise can help to get people’s attention and can
increase the chances that they will spread your call to action to their
friends. Hearing about your campaign from social network site friends
can make your issues more personal and easier to relate to.

● When asking people to submit photos or videos as part of the action

itself, as with the Pink Chaddi campaign, be mindful of communicating
clearly with them how these images will be used. This can be especially
important if you draw media attention to your campaign.

VIDEO VOLUNTEERS
● Consider how you can monitor the reach of your campaign, including
how people understand and respond to your message or call to action.
Video Volunteers use an outreach volunteer to contextualise their
media to target audiences and offer workshops with their screenings.

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g)

.org
CASE STUDY
TITLE: TheyWorkForYou to send a few thousand emails to MPs about this
WHO: MySociety issue. It might not sound like a lot, but these were .org
WHERE: UK all individual messages from constituents that went
WEBSITE: http://www.TheyWorkForYou.com to 95% of MPs. Extremely targeted emails have got
to be the most effective form of email campaigns.”
DESCRIPTION Soon after this campaign, the UK government
MYSOCIETY

In 2009, MySociety launched a campaign which agreed to disclose data on MP expenses.

supported voters in the UK to send emails to
their Members of Parliament (MP), demanding
transparency in the use of public funds. “We send
tens of thousands of email alerts every day to
readers of our website TheyWorkForYou.com” says
Tom Steinberg of MySociety. Each email gives a
link to a website, where people can find their MP
and write him or her a custom email. After sending
the email, people are invited to join a Facebook
group, which, when they join, will post a link in
their Facebook profile to publicise their own email
campaign. In 2009 the government sought to have
MPs’ expenses claims kept secret, despite successful
Freedom of Information requests. TheyWorkForYou
mobilised people to demand transparency. Tom
says, “Whether our email campaign was decisive
in influencing Parliament, we’ll never know, with
Parliament being so secretive. But we were able
TOOLS USED: Custom-built content management
system (CMS) and contact management system
made from open source software components
was used to make TheyWorkForYou. Wordpress
and Facebook were also used for the MP expenses
campaign.
REACH: The campaign was focused on UK citizens
and politicians. The website had 500,000 visitors
the month the story broke in the UK press, and it
receives an average of 250,000 visitors per month.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
About the campaign effectiveness:
http://bit.ly/5ECg, http://bit.ly/DYbiG
About MySociety:
http://www.mysociety.org/about/
TIME: From planning to completion,
the MP expenses campaign took five
days. The CMS was already developed
and installed.
RESOURCES: Web hosting donated.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY:
2 with contact management tools in
place, 4 if you must develop them.
COST: USD$1700 in staff salary to
run the campaign.

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g*
10
tactics
tactic 1
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● Is there a timely event or news hook you can use to draw more
people’s attention to your action?
● What is the simplest symbol or visual you could use for your
campaign that would encourage people to spread your message,
and how will you let people personalise this?
● Does your action communicate with the people who have the
power to make the direct change you seek (your target), or with the
people you can mobilise to influence your target?
Different ways you can do this
1 Create a short slogan that is easy to translate. Ask people to
photograph themselves holding a sign with the slogan in their own
language and send you the photo to share on your website or in a
video or slideshow.
2 Make a profile or a fan page on a social network site to parody a public
figure you seek to influence, and ask supporters to become friends
with this profile. But be aware of who has ownership over content
created in groups you establish on commercial websites and consider
who will own contact details of people that become group members.

● How can you capitalise on the attention you already have from
people on your website, or on social network sites, to direct them to
take an action?
● What is the easiest way for people to spread your message: on
social network sites, by email or by text message, by in-person
gatherings, by phone calls?
3 Host a competition for short videos about your issue and ask people
to vote on their favourites. Host screenings of the winning videos
in-person and online. You can hold a screening in a public building and
invite local media.
4 If you don’t already have a list of contacts interested in your
campaign, partner with an organisation that sends out emails to its
supporters and ask them to direct its members towards your action.

5 If supporters must remain anonymous, you can make this anonymity

part of your campaign imagery: for example, by asking people for
photos of their hands or feet, or of objects that can become symbolic
of an issue. You can then use these images in your campaign.

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Collaborate on a photo slideshow
You can use images that you and other people have
uploaded to the free photo sharing website Flickr to
create an animated online slideshow (http://www.
flickr.com/help/groups/). You will need a free Flickr
account to create a group that will allow multiple
people to share photos. The group administrator
can decide who can post photos to the pool. This
means anybody with a Flickr account that you
accept to the group can contribute photos to your
slideshow, which can allow you to get a wide range
of submissions for your campaign. Before you accept
submissions, let people know what you want, so that
the slideshow reflects a diversity of people doing
one unified action. When you are ready to share it, it
can be embedded in your own website using a Flash
animation that Flickr generates for you.
NAMITA SINGH, VIDEO VOLUNTEERS, ON YOUR CALL TO ACTION:
“There is no campaign without an action. So one piece of advice is to have a really strong
and meaningful call to action, which gets people to do something. Also consider that the
actions of one village can be used to inspire people in other villages to speak out, so be
sure to share your success stories.”
REBECCA SAAB SAADE, TECHNOLOGIST, ON RISK AND DISCLOSURE:
“I would advise anyone working on sensitive issues to think of their target group
first, media second. Closed societies tend to have strong word-of-mouth kind of
communication. Addressing public opinion comes later. In order to mobilise people you
need to understand that even if you don’t mind being vocal and visible, others do. If you
promised you won’t compromise people’s privacy, then you never should or they won’t
trust you anymore. So study the people you are working for, think of what message
needs to get across, then think of what media to use.”

NAMITA MALHOTRA, ALTERNATIVE LAW FORUM, ON USING ONLINE TOOLS FOR

OFFLINE ACTION:
“Online activism is a fairly new phenomenon in India. What was so unique about the Pink
Chaddi campaign is that it used online tools to ask people to take an action offline. There
were various problems with the online activism that made it difficult to translate into an
offline mode and one of them was the fact that it was on facebook.”

dfY`c`j\g\fgc\1g,
10
tactics
tactic 2
to print
page 1 of 3

n`ke\jjXe[
i\Zfi[
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD

)
FOR ENSURING THAT
PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER
TO CAPTURE RIGHTS
ABUSES AS THEY HAPPEN

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● The Targuist Sniper ● The Saffron Revolution

Anonymous advocate in Morocco Bloggers and advocates in Burma
An advocate took video of police officers in Morocco Advocates use blogs to get around the military

TARGUIST SNIPER, YOUTUBE

repeatedly demanding bribes from motorists and
published them on YouTube, where they were
viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Not only
did the government take action against the police
officers, but it used the same technique as the
“Targuist Sniper” by installing video cameras to
catch police in the future.
TOOLS USED: Video camera, video editing software,
YouTube, blogs
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Videos: http://bit.ly/H8rlj (youtube.com)
Blog story: http://bit.ly/1uOFyB (menassat.com)
junta’s censorship of news from Burma, and to
spread the word about human rights abuses.
Bloggers were able to spread news about two critical
events by circulating photos taken with cheap
digital and mobile phone cameras: citizen protests
against the abrupt end of fuel subsidies, and the
resulting increase in military violence against
citizens. Burmese images of Buddhist monks and
nuns on the streets became very popular online, and
helped spread reports about what was happening
from Burma to the rest of the world.
TOOLS USED: Blogs, news reports, digital cameras,
mobile phones, photos
RACOLES’ (FLICKR)

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

Blog, images, videos: http://ratchasima.net/
saffron-revolution/

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g(
10
tactics
tactic 2
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● In Burma, bloggers and rights advocates faced significant risks in
coming forward with their testimonies and evidence. How will you
protect yourself and others involved in and supporting your campaign?
Consider the digital trail you may leave: your IP address, email
accounts, passwords, lists of friends you have on social network sites,
the names that your mobile phones and SIM cards were purchased
under, and the names and organisations that websites’ domain names
have been registered to.

● Develop criteria for verifying the witness reports you collect and
publish. Some citizen reporting platforms have been abused to accuse
innocent people and expose dissidents’ identities.

● One way that WITNESS has protected the identities of people in video
testimony is to not record their faces. By backlighting a person, you
can record a silhouette of his or her face without showing revealing
details. In this way, even if your tapes were seized, there would be no
visual record of the people in them.

● Talk people through the “worst case scenario” if they told their story

ANTHONY TURBA (FLICKR)

and their identity was compromised or revealed. This discussion allows
you to get informed consent from people and can help you plan how
to minimise risk.

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: Remembering Neda need to respect Neda’s dignity as she dies, as well as
WHO: Advocates in Iran the grief of her family faced with such tragedy?” As
WHERE: Tehran people’s ability to capture eye-witness reports and
WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/Kpcsu (wikipedia.org) live events with mobile phones and digital cameras
increases, the video footage of Neda challenges
DESCRIPTION us to decide how to sensitively and strategically
Two short videos showing the death of Neda Agha- publicise these accounts, especially in volatile and
Soltan during Iran’s post-election protests attained high-pressure moments. It also illustrates the danger
worldwide attention in June 2009. One video (http:// people can be put in when they post and re-post
ABCNT WWW.ABCNT.INFO

bit.ly/10FpwN) was shot by an anonymous man,
and was then emailed to supporters and spread
quickly to Facebook. The decision to email the video,
rather than directly upload it, was made to protect
the man who shot it, and also to circumvent the
Iranian government’s censorship of the internet
after the election. In addition, a second eyewitness
video of Neda’s death (http://bit.ly/yyvoM)
appeared on CNN within hours of being uploaded
to YouTube. Because the videos were posted and
spread so quickly, there was little time to consider
the implications of such a rapid spread of unedited,
first-hand footage. Writing at WITNESS, Priscila Néri
asks “As concerned citizens, activists, and fellow
human beings, how do we balance the need to
‘spread the word’ of what’s unfolding in Iran with the
footage online: advocates and protesters have since
been detained by the government in Iran, and Twitter
and Facebook were named in trials against them.
TOOLS USED: Mobile phone cameras, email, YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook, blogs
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 2 out of 5
REACH: Hundreds of thousands to millions of people
worldwide. COST: N/A
RESOURCES: Access to data network on mobile LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
phones and internet. New York Times blog: http://bit.ly/
TqGnG
TIME: A few hours, from the footage being shot to Global Voices: http://bit.ly/FK51f,
when it was uploaded. A few more hours before it http://bit.ly/LLAbx
was broadcast on international media. WITNESS: http://bit.ly/gtyPz

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g*
10
tactics
tactic 2
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● Are you going to have time to plan how to collect witness
testimonies? Or are you preparing advocates and supporters to
spontaneously collect material in the most ethical and strategic
way?
● What tools do people most impacted by your issues already have
available to them to document rights abuses – mobile phones,
digital cameras, access to social network sites and blogging?
● How can you respect the integrity of the people whose stories your
campaign is sharing with a much broader audience?
● What is your media and outreach strategy? How will you respond
to the press rapidly should your materials become part of a
breaking news story?
● Who are you in relationship to the issue or community you are
working with?
● How will you respond to requests for you to take down materials
from your or others’ websites, either from governments, commercial
web services, or people impacted by the images, videos, and blog
posts?
Different ways you can do this
1 You don’t need to use video. Ask people to use their mobile phones
to send photos by email or if possible by multimedia message (MMS),
which can later be made into a slideshow or published on their own.
2 If it’s not possible to conceal people’s identities visually, you can use
animation, puppetry, or photo montage as a way of digital storytelling.
3 Being able to witness events first-hand is rarely possible. You can
reconstruct some events later through interviews, and by being
introduced to people involved through trusted allies and contacts.
4 Rather than recording the faces of people at live events, consider
alternative, safer ways to get footage that will tell the story of an
action or protest.
5 For video intended to bring corruption to light, think about how you
can explain clearly the roles of the people in it and their relationships
to each other. By visually mapping these relationships you can
highlight links between people, organisations, and corruption.

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

A trusted video sharing community for human
rights advocates
WITNESS, an NGO for video advocacy, hosts its
own video sharing website, The Hub (http://http://
hub.witness.org/), where anyone can upload videos
related to human rights. On The Hub, a community
of advocates receptive to rights issues are already
gathered, and WITNESS has a history of protecting
advocates’ right to free expression. One drawback
is that The Hub does not have the massive, diverse
audience that other very popular video sites have;
so you may want to use it as well as popular sites
like YouTube if your aim is to get as big an audience
as possible.
VIOLETA KRASNIC, FROM WITNESS, ON CONCEALING IDENTITY:
“Filming concealed identity interviews is a matter of trust, in people and in technology.
Our consent process conveys the purpose of the video and its intended use in the video
advocacy campaign and is built on an understanding of the security implications of
the interview.”
AUNG, BURMESE RIGHTS ADVOCATE, ON GETTING INFORMATION OUT:
“The Saffron Revolution clearly indicated how citizen journalists are powerful for our
country. Sometimes we bring information across the border using recording devices, and
sometimes we use email or FTP – these are the sorts of methods we are using so far. Even
though the regime has tried to shut down everything, bloggers and citizen journalists
have been able to bring information to the outside media.”

PRISCILLA NERI, FROM WITNESS, ON ETHICS AND PUBLICATION:

“With so many questions unanswered in the video of Neda, I find myself without a good
solution [for] what to do with it. What I know for sure is that it must be seen, and the
young woman’s dignity must be respected. Perhaps this delicate balance can be achieved
by blurring her identity in the video, or by thinking twice before selecting the image of
her bloodied face as your new Facebook status.”

n`ke\jjXe[i\Zfi[1g,
10
tactics
tactic 3
to print
page 1 of 3

* m`jlXc`j\pfli
d\jjX^\
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD
FOR COMMUNICATING
CREATIVELY ACROSS
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES
AND LITERACIES, AND FOR
CAPTURING PEOPLE’S
ATTENTION

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Animating Folklore with a Feminist Twist
Women and Memory Forum, Cairo, Egypt
Artists and advocates created a short animated
video based on traditional Arabic stories re-told
from a feminist perspective. The video uses animals
and objects to approach gender inequality in a
creative way that is also sensitive to its audience.
TOOLS USED: Adobe software (Photoshop, After
Effects and Premiere) to animate hand-drawn
sketches scanned into the computer
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Women & Memory Forum: http://www.wmf.org.eg/
TOOLS USED: Adobe Illustrator, Blogspot, Wordpress
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Samidoun: http://www.samidoun.org/
● Putting Torture on the President’s Map
Tunisian advocates with Nawaat.org
The Tunisian government blocked video sharing
websites YouTube and Dailymotion to prevent
people from seeing video testimonies from
people who implicated the government in human
rights abuses. Advocates responded by making an
interactive Google Earth mashup, plotting human
rights videos on a 3D map in the same location as
SAMIDOUN

the Presidential Palace. This also allowed people

● Mapping a Conflict in Real Time to still see the videos even though direct access to
Samidoun, Lebanon YouTube had been denied.
During the 2006 Israel invasion, advocates
collaborated to create and update maps of TOOLS USED: Google Earth, Google Maps, YouTube
bombings and damage to Lebanon’s infrastructure.
These maps were used for organising recovery work LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
WWW.NAWAAT.ORG

and advocacy efforts. Video map: http://bit.ly/1a2OrH (nawaat.org)

m`jlXc`j\pflid\jjX^\1g(
10
tactics
tactic 3
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● The animated folktales from Cairo (right) used symbols or characters,
as a way to take a volatile issue and turn it into something easier for a
reluctant audience to approach.

● The visuals and materials you create can be quite practical. For

WOMEN AND MEMORY FORUM

example, the maps from Lebanon had multiple uses: as a historical
record, for crisis reporting, and to plan relief and aid work.

● Interactive visuals can use photos, illustrations, videos, and other

submissions contributed by many different people. With the
Tunisian Google Earth and YouTube mashup, new videos were added
automatically as people posted them online and geo-tagged them.

● To reach people without fast internet connections, complex

visualisations can also be shared offline: as videos for download or
on VCD/DVDs, as large-scale posters, printed flyers or public space
projections, or on USB memory sticks.

● Effective visualisations should not just make something visually

WOMEN AND MEMORY FORUM

appealing or entertaining. What’s more important is that they shape
understanding and clarify meaning.

m`jlXc`j\pflid\jjX^\1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: 350: International Day of Climate Action
WHO: 350.org
WHERE: Actions in nearly 100 countries
WEBSITE: http://www.350.org
DESCRIPTION
To inspire people to organise climate change actions
around the world, 350.org created an animated
video about climate change. The animation uses
strong visuals and does not use any words, meaning
that no one language is required to understand
it. The primary concept is the number 350, which
refers to “the number scientists say is the safe limit
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” says Phil
Aroneanu of 350.org. “We knew if we were going to
do this campaign globally, we could use this number
to get everybody talking about it.” After 350.org
made a mock-up of the video using Microsoft Paint
software, Free Range Studios designed and produced
the full animated version using Flash. The animation
was published on 350.org, as well as on YouTube and
Facebook. DVDs of the video were sent to groups
and television stations in regions where internet
access made downloading the video difficult. On the
success of the animation, Phil says, “It’s hard to call
it an organising tool, but it’s a way to hook people
in, get them to the website so they can think
about what they want to do. It also has that cool
factor – people feel like they are in on something.
On the downside though, it doesn’t actually help
people understand 350 as much as I’d like, since it
is so quick.” Though the animation was expensive
for 350 to produce, it established a strong graphic
identity, and they are now able to use this imagery
consistently in all of their materials.
TOOLS USED: YouTube and Facebook Page with
10,000 members. Orkut, MySpace, Twitter. Zandy,
an “event-organising tool like Facebook Events,
translated into many different languages.”
REACH: Video had 100,000 views over one year on
YouTube. Campaign is global, with nearly 30 staff
and interns and close to 100 live actions planned
worldwide.
COST: USD$10,000 for the video. Ongoing staff
costs to manage and implement the project.
RESOURCES: The outreach campaign was built from
networks of campus-based activists in
the US, and expanded internationally
through climate change summits and
conferences. “Collaboration is what
lets us run on almost no budget,” says
Phil. “We’re not just using a network,
but creating one.”
TIME: Three months to create the
video. Campaign total time from end
of 2008 to early 2010.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 3 out of 5
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
350 animated video: http://bit.ly/
89GA8 (youtube.com)
350 YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/
Ai4hl (youtube.com)

m`jlXc`j\pflid\jjX^\1g*
10
tactics
tactic 3
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask Different ways you can do this
● What’s most important for your visual campaign: to communicate 1 Make your own version of a tourist or city map that not only includes
across languages, to present dense information in simple graphics, key landmarks but also information about your own specific campaign
and/or to surprise and engage people with creative, appealing issue. Hand it out to visitors to the city, students or others who can be
visuals? mobilised to take action.

● Is your campaign focusing on a single concept or slogan? How 2 If you don’t know how to make an animated video, you can make a
might you design it so that it is understood quickly by the people video from a series of still photos, adding music, subtitles and voice-
you most need to reach? over to unite the images around one story.

● How can you involve people in adding to your campaign – by
contributing photos and videos, by collaborating over distance or in
person, or by sharing your videos, maps, or animations with others?
● What action will you ask people to support or take based on your
campaign? Is sharing your media the action? Who are you asking
them to share your media with – key people in government, local or
community organisations, the media?
3 Design graphic stickers that can be used to re-label products with
information that corporations don’t readily make available: for
example, criminal investigations into the company, or ways the
manufacturer supports armed conflict.
4 Give people cheap video cameras to record personal stories and use
the videos to build an interactive map showing how different people in
different regions are impacted by the same issue.

● How will you publicise your campaign’s visual media for those who 5 You don’t have to be an expert with graphics to create visualisations.
do not have internet or computer access? A tag cloud – a cluster of words that represents a larger body of text –
can be a simple way to visually explain your issue by highlighting key
words from an important document or website.

m`jlXc`j\pflid\jjX^\1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Create a dynamic tag cloud
Without doing any visual design yourself, you can
create an info-graphic for your campaign. Wordle
(www.wordle.net/) is a web-based application that
creates a ‘tag cloud’ for you from either a static,
finished document or from dynamic text, like a blog
or news feed from a news site. Wordle uses the text
to make a graphic, displaying in larger font sizes the
words that are most often repeated. The tag clouds
can be saved as PDF files and printed, or posted as
images online. You have limited control over the
colours and fonts that Wordle chooses, but you can
use this application to give you ideas about how
to design a more elaborate tag cloud of your own
in a free graphics programme like InkSkape
(http://www.inkscape.org/).
PHIL ARONEANU, 350.ORG, ON KEEPING IT SIMPLE:
“Using iconic images is really good. Look at the video ‘It’s my future (http://bit.ly/
mV4mb)’. It was made by students in a few days using one camera, simple editing
software, and one iconic slogan – ‘It’s my future’ – that appears in different contexts and
languages. It becomes iconic, and it’s educational for people even if they don’t know
everything about the campaign.”
TESSA LEWIN, PATHWAYS OF WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT:
“For animation and editing videos, there are some low-cost solutions, but not so many
free ones. Although a lot of the work I do personally is about drawing frames and
scanning them in and then playing around with them in Adobe software, all of that could
also be done with free and open source software Gimp or Kino (http://bit.ly/13V9fW).”
PHIL ARONEANU, 350.ORG, ON BRANDING AND IDENTITY:
“We thought it was important to have a steady graphic identity in our campaign. We
decided to use professional designers, but could only afford to have them do the one
campaign video for us. But, we got them to send us the files for all of the graphics used
in the video so I can use them for lots of different stuff: logos, blog posts, print materials.
For us, it ended up being a way to save money.”

m`jlXc`j\pflid\jjX^\1g,
10
tactics
tactic 4
to print
page 1 of 3

Xdgc`]p
g\ijfeXc
jkfi`\j
THIS TACTIC IS USEFUL WHEN
PEOPLE AFFECTED BY THE ISSUE
ARE NOT BEING CONSULTED,

+
AND AS A WAY TO GIVE AN
ISSUE DEPTH THAT RESONATES
WITH THE TARGET AUDIENCE

Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Women’sNet: Digital Storytelling to them, post photographs of places where they

By women who have experienced violence were harassed, and tell stories of how they reacted
This project shares personal experiences of surviving to street harassment.
violence using digital storytelling, an approach which
allows people to use animation, photos, music, and TOOLS USED: Blogspot.com, Facebook, Flickr WOMEN’SNET
live video to tell first-person stories. These were
then distributed to human rights advocates, policy- LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
makers, and service and aid workers. Blogs: http://blog.blanknoise.org/

TOOLS USED: video cameras, digital animation,
digital video editing software, YouTube, blip.tv
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
● A Duty to Protect: Justice for Child Soldiers
in the D.R.C.
By Ajedi-Ka PES/Child Soldier Project and WITNESS
This documentary film represents the personal
BLANK NOISE

Digital Stories: http://www.justassociates.org/
digitalstories.htm
Website: http://www.womensnet.org.za
● Blank Noise
By women against urban street harassment in India
This project explores the issue of sexual harassment
of women by combining personal storytelling with
public actions. women tell their stories by sending
garments that they wore when harassed, blog
stories of child soldiers. after the release of the
video, the international criminal court brought
charges against those in the congolese military who
had enlisted child soldiers.
TOOLS USED: video cameras, digital video editing
software, website
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Website: http://www.ajedika.org/
WITNESS

together during a ‘blogathon’ about what happened

Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g(
10
tactics
tactic 4
to print
page 2 of 3

1000
PLAN YOUR ACTION
● In the videos of the lives of child soldiers in the Congo, the same
story was told in two ways: one story was for local people, to raise
awareness, and one was to influence the courts. Think ahead about
how the raw material you gather could be crafted to tell different
stories for different target audiences.
report

● For Blank Noise, collecting people’s stories and amplifying them on

Send in 1
one website created a sense of community for those who contributed. clothes received will be

WANTED
garment you wore installed on the streets of
when you were various cities
What incentive is there for the people you work with and/or your sexually violated
on the street.
collectively challenging
the notion that women
community to tell a story? How will you support people to stay ‘ask’ to be sexually violated.

connected to each other? testimonial

your garment
discard
is your witness a garment. blurtblanknoise@gmail.co
m
http://blog.blanknoise.org

● Personal stories can be very revealing. If you ask people to share their
I IT’

BLANK NOISE
stories, you have a responsibility to protect their privacy and safety.
When telling a personal story could introduce risks to someone,
narrate
NEVER
‘ASK FOR Blank Noise
take a stand. be an Action Hero
IS A VOLUNTEER LED PUBLIC ARTS PROJECT
TRIGGEREING DEBATES ABOUT STREET
SEXUIAL VIOLENCE AS EXPERIENCED BY WOMEN.

discuss these risks in detail with them. You may need to conceal
people’s identities by excluding their name, location, image, and voice.

● Working with people to tell their stories is in itself a process. Ajedi Ka

in the Congo spent months getting to know the children and soldiers
before using the video camera. Think about how you will build trust
and help people tell their own stories.

● Telling stories online is one form of collective action, but what else
might you ask your contributors to do? Will they help lead a campaign
in their local area, promote the initiative, create content?

Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: We the Women I think or am attached to.” Although the project gets
WHO: Areej Khan, project director many comments opposing women driving in Saudi
WHERE: Women in Saudi Arabia and Saudi women Arabia, Arjeej finds that, “a lot of people say they
abroad think that will change soon, because of the voice
WEBSITE: http://www.n7nudrive.com/ given to women by projects like this.”

DESCRIPTION: TOOLS USED: Facebook, Flickr, YouTube. Stickers can

To draw attention to laws banning women from be downloaded from Flickr and printed. The website
HTTP://WWW.N7NUDRIVE.COM/

driving cars in Saudi Arabia, Areej Khan, a Saudi
artist and graphic designer living in the US, created
the ‘We the Women’ campaign. The project asks
women to respond to the question, “To drive or
not drive?” by writing their answers on stickers
that they can post in public spaces. Areej asked
participants to photograph their stickers and email
or post the photos to its Flickr photo group and on
its Facebook page. “People preferred to post the
stickers anonymously, by email to me, and then I
posted them”, Areej said. The project received news
media attention in Saudi Arabia and in the US. “Most
of the people participating on the Facebook page
are against women driving,” said Areej. “There’s
back and forth and debate on the group. I had to be
prepared that I can’t control what this is at the end.
It’s about finding a solution as community, not what
used HTML, JavaScript.
REACH: Over 2000 people participated on the
Facebook page in the first three months of the
project (April-June 2009), with 25 sticker designs
submitted. Most of the sticker images were sent
from Saudi Arabia.
COST: USD$2000 (web hosting, sticker printing) LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 2 out of 5.
RESOURCES: One volunteer staffs the project. A LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
local printer in Saudi Arabia made 3000 stickers for New York Times blog: http://bit.ly/
the project for free. luKpW
Sticker photos: http://bit.ly/xksVb
TIME: Seven months to learn web-design, plan and (flickr.com)
execute. After the launch, it took only two days for
the first participant to post a photo.

Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g*
10
tactics
DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● What is your role in the community about which you want to share
stories: who are you to them and how will they see you?
● What reward will this community or group get from opening up
their personal experiences in front of a larger audience, and what
risks might this entail?
● Will you share these personal stories in a closed setting, like a
workshop, or will you publish them online for a wide audience who
may also republish them in a different context?
● What are the potential privacy and security risks surrounding these
stories?
● Is there a timely issue that you can connect the stories to?
● Will the stories you gather be relevant for different audiences, for
example, both policy-makers and members of the community?
Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g+
FEATURED TOOL
Creating a mash-up site:
We the Women’s website pulls many people’s
stories from Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Google
News in to one space. If you want to put together
a simple website, you can use a free blog, like
WordPress, and add content from other websites
so that your site updates automatically when
new stories are added elsewhere. If you are not
working on sensitive issues where content must be
moderated before being published, a mash-up site
can bring many voices together quickly and simply.
HTTP://WWW.ILOVEMOUNTAINS.ORG/
Help your friends find THEIR
connection
Pin this badge on your MySpace page,
Facebook page, website, or blog
Xdgc`]pg\ijfeXcjkfi`\j1g,
tactic 4
to print
page 3 of 3
Different ways you can do this
1 Stories can be told with objects as well as words. Blank Noise posted
photos of clothing that women were wearing when they were
harassed, and also used them in street demonstrations.
2 People can tell a personal story anonymously by mobile phone, either
with a voice call or a text message. These stories can then be sent from
their phones to your campaign, or uploaded directly from their phones,
and shared on one website.
3 Tagging, or labeling a piece of online content with a keyword, can let
you aggregate many stories on one website. You can ask people to
upload photos, videos, and blog posts on different websites and all use
the same unique tag for these posts. On your website, you can display
all the stories with that tag.
4 Many people in different regions can each contribute a short video or
sequence of photos to make one longer video. This allows people who
do not know how to edit video or add music and effects to collaborate
over distance.
5 For videos where participants cannot show their faces on film, using
animation or puppetry, if appropriate for the tone of the video, can still
feel very personal.
TIPS
AREEJ KHAN OF ‘WE, THE WOMEN,’ ON KEEPING IT LOCAL:
“If I had the chance, I’d have launched the initiative when I was in Saudi Arabia. I’m
from there, but some people suggested that I was an outsider because I was living in
the United States at the time I began the project. I’ll be going back to Saudi Arabia to
continue it.”
SALLY-JEAN SHACKLETON OF WOMEN’SNET, ON PERSONAL STORIES:
“This is about people taking ownership over their own stories. It also means that the
media is something that we don’t dictate. The media comes from people themselves.”
SAM GREGORY OF WITNESS, ON RISK:
“In a digital era, anyone can see a piece of footage, and it just takes one person to make
a copy and it could be up online. We encourage people to really think through and
understand the potential consequences and to make an informed choice.”
 10
tactics
tactic 5
to print
page 1 of 3

,
cartoon: copyright zapiro: For more Zapiro cartoons, visit www.zapiro.com

aljkX[[
_ldfli
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD FOR
REACHING OUT TO DIVERSE
AUDIENCES AND FOR
ENCOURAGING PEOPLE TO
SPREAD YOUR MESSAGES

aljkX[[_ldfli1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Remixed Presidential Posters TOOLS USED: Digital video cameras, video editing

FREE EGYPT YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Artists and Advocates in Egypt software, blip.tv, YouTube, blogs
TITLE PAGE IMAGE: COPYRIGHT ZAPIRO: FOR MORE ZAPIRO CARTOONS, VISIT WWW.ZAPIRO.COM

Egyptians remixed images of President Mubarak into

popular film posters. The images spread quickly on
the internet. The humour in the posters took away
from Mubarak’s mystique, and allowed people who
did not think of themselves as activists to stand up
to their President, even in a joking way.
TOOLS USED: Digital photo editing software,
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Website: http://apnsw.org/
Video: http://bit.ly/1CIB7N (youtube.com)
● “Give Lukashenko his own Lu-net!”
Advocates in Belarus
Belarusians created a group of websites they called
ASIA PACIFIC NETWORK OF SEX WORKERS

Facebook, blogs, email, YouTube

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Video slideshow: http://bit.ly/363qyA (youtube.com)
● Karaoke Videos for Human Rights
Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers
Responding to laws that discriminate against them,
sex workers produced satirical karaoke videos
using prominent political figures as characters. By
screening these videos at bars, clubs, and parties,
sex workers educated each other in their own
workplaces. The videos were also shown at advocacy
meetings and conferences to expose policy-makers
to sex worker communities and issues. One video
received nearly10,000 views online.
aljkX[[_ldfli1g(
LuNet, in mock honour of President Alexander
Lukashenko’s birthday, after he promised to increase
internet censorship. Two of the LuNet sites were
called LuJournal and LuTube, instead of LiveJournal
and YouTube, and they were packed with government
propaganda amid ironic posts. This drew attention to
internet censorship and the detention of bloggers for
political purposes.
TOOLS USED: Blogs, LiveJournal, YouTube
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
LuNet: http://fromlu.net/
Interview: http://bit.ly/mNFV3 (globalvoicesonline.
org)
10
tactics
tactic 5
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● Even when using humour, it is best to match your campaign’s tactics
to the strengths of the people you want to mobilise. The Egyptian
poster campaign took advantage of young people’s knowledge of how
to edit images together and their desire to spread funny images on
the internet.

● With the LuNet actions, no one person or campaign was in charge.

This led to many more people being able to participate in making
and sharing parody images and websites, and decentralised the
image-making so that no one person bore all the risk of satirising a
powerful figure.

● The kinds of messages you can communicate in an informal setting –

like a karaoke bar or pub – can be very powerful in reducing people’s
fear and getting them to feel included in the issue. The same is true

WWW.TANTAWY.TK
for basing your action in places where people socialise online.

● Having a good time and getting social recognition can be an effective

motivator. As part of remixing President Mubarak into movie posters
or creating President Lukashenko’s internet, people left comments for
each other on their social network site profiles, blogs, and video and
photo sharing websites with positive feedback on each new image
they posted. This informal reward for being part of a campaign can
keep people invested in even a very challenging or serious issue.

aljkX[[_ldfli1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: Flash mobs in Belarus
WHO: Belarusian advocates
WHERE: Public squares in Belarus, 2006
WEBSITE: http://community.livejournal.com/
by_mob/
DESCRIPTION
In a response to the contested Presidential
elections in Belarus in 2006, advocates used the
internet to organise gatherings to oppose President
Lukashenko’s administration. The gatherings they
organised were ‘flash mobs’ – brief, sudden actions
performed by a large group of people who assemble
in a public place before quickly dispersing. These
flash mobs were mostly organised a day or two
before they happened through websites, blogs,
SMS, and online chat programmes. They had special
significance in Belarus because unauthorised group
public actions are prohibited by the government.
At one flash mob, 40 to 50 people entered a public
square eating ice creams, humourously drawing
attention to the restrictions on the right to public
gatherings. While the young people involved had
done nothing except eat ice cream together, several
were arrested. Others took photographs of the
arrests and these circulated widely on LiveJournal
and other websites. The flash mob received
significant international media attention. Zhenya
Mantsevich, a journalist and blogger in Belarus, says,
“The result of the flash mobs was that many people
HTTP://BIT.LY/19ZKTI
saw how cruel and stupid our authorities can be, if
they detain even people eating ice cream. People
saw that something is wrong in our society.”
TOOLS USED: Both personal and community
pages on LiveJournal. ICQ (chat programme). Text coordinate enough people for the
messages on mobile phones. flash mob, but not more than that,
as word could reach authorities if
REACH: 12 flash mobs as a reaction to the 2006 too much time is taken to announce
elections, with 100-200 people at the most well- the gathering.
attended flash mobs. Most participants were
from Minsk. LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 1
COST: Free, with small individual cost of sending LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
text messages via SMS. Blogs & photos: http://community.
livejournal.com/by_mob/
RESOURCES: Internet access and mobile phone Article: http://bit.ly/11hBvm
access for the people who gathered. and more critical analysis:
http://bit.ly/3pmAPN (neteffect.
TIME: Anywhere from a few hours to a few days to foreignpolicy.com)

aljkX[[_ldfli1g*
10
tactics
tactic 5
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● Will you be asking people to make things – images, videos, cartoons
– as part of your campaign? How will you share them online and
what do you need to do protect people’s anonymity?
● It can be difficult to keep track of all the images and videos people
make as part of a humour or parody campaign. How will you
archive people’s contributions?
● How will you balance respect for the people involved in the issues
with the satirical content? How much can you joke and still be
trustworthy to people?
● Are there serious consequences in the regions you are working in
for those who criticise the government and others in positions of
power?
Different ways you can do this
1 If you can’t use Twitter or another service to send messages to a group
to coordinate an action quickly, or you need to keep communication
more private, send text messages directly to your supporters’ mobile
phones. Sex workers have done this to create a flash mob of open red
umbrellas – their campaign symbol – in front of public administration
buildings with just a few hours notice.
2 You can spread messages using mobile phone ringtones. After the 2004
election in the Philippines, a ringtone was made which used a recorded
phone conversation with the President that appeared to provide
evidence of vote-rigging, and this was re-mixed with music. It became
one of the world’s most downloaded ringtones. One organisation
provided the supposed original phone recording and invited people to
create their own ringtone remixes.

● Will you directly approach the media to publicise your actions and
your campaign?
● What relationship does your spontaneous or parody campaign have
with rights organisations doing more ‘traditional’ campaigning?
Should you try to connect with those organisations in any way?
● How will you bridge the gap between people’s online posts with
offline actions?
3 Use remixed or parody images that have been posted to blogs and
social network sites for your campaign by adapting them to create
street art, posters, and handbills.
4 In addition to creating parody websites like LuNet, you can make
parody news websites that critique the censored media, and also give
practical information and facts in a clever or surprising way.

aljkX[[_ldfli1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Mix your own ringtone and raise awareness
using humour
If you want to draw attention to comments made
by a politician or public figure, you can edit these
from a radio or television broadcast and re-mix this
with music to make your own ringtone. Audacity
(http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a free and
open source software that will help you to do this.
It is easy to use and it allows you to make new
and mix multiple recordings together. For detailed
instructions on how to make your own ringtone
see the Audacity Wiki (http://bit.ly/6i3wS). You can
share your ringtone on your website and on popular
ringtone sharing sites like http://www.phonezoo.
com/ to help them spread further.
ALAA, OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPER AND TECHNOLOGIST, ON HUMOUR AND VIRAL
MESSAGING:
“In Egypt we have had a dictatorial regime for 25 years. If I get a joke about my President
and forward it to 10 of my friends and each of them forwards it their friends, the joke
might get modified on the way, but it is spreading virally and very quickly.”
ADVOCATE IN BELARUS, ON THE LIMITATIONS OF THE INTERNET:
“The flash mobs in Belarus weren’t very popular in all regions, because they depended
on the active online community, and internet penetration wasn’t that strong outside of
the capital back then. But they were important because they showed fresh and creative
thinking, and brought together a lot of the young people who likely never before
participated in any political or civic actions.”
SAMI GHARBIA, GLOBAL VOICES ON CHALLENGING POWER:
“Humour is the first step to break taboos and to fears. Making people laugh about
dangerous stuff like dictatorship, repression, censorship is a first weapon against those
fears…without beating fear you can not make any change. So humour is very effective.”

aljkX[[_ldfli1g,
10
tactics
tactic 6
to print
page 1 of 3

- dXeX^\pfli
ZfekXZkj
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD
FOR UNDERSTANDING
YOUR CONNECTIONS AND
RELATIONSHIPS SO YOU CAN
MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR
NETWORKS

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Organise and mobilise your contacts ● Providing targeted reconstruction

Open source software advocates and programmers
CiviCRM is a free and open source software tool
that can be used to manage your relationships.
It can send and track responses from bulk emails
and be used to help plan events and fundraise. Like
an address book, CiviCRM organises constituents’
contact information in a database, but it also
tracks interactions with people (emails sent, emails
responded to, live events attended) and people’s
information
Mercy Corps and FrontlineSMS
As part of reconstruction work after the Asian
tsunami, Mercy Corps used FrontlineSMS to provide
people with highly targeted relief information by
mobile phone. FrontlineSMS is a free and open
source software tool that allows you to send text
messages to customised groups of contacts. In this
way, Mercy Corps could send different information
CIVICRM

relationships with each other. CiviCRM stores this
data on your own web server, which means you can
install security to ensure the information is private
and you can access it anywhere with an internet
connection.
to different groups of people; by using their mobile
phones, tsunami-effected people had access to up-
to-date information.
TOOLS USED: FrontlineSMS, mobile phones

TOOLS USED: CiviCRM requires a web server running LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
FRONTLINESMS

PHP and MySQL, with an option to use Drupal FrontlineSMS: http://www.frontlinesms.com/

or Joomla or a standalone content management Mercy Corps & FrontlineSMS: http://bit.ly/21og3e
system (CMS). (ictupdate.cta.int)

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

Website: http://civicrm.org/
Free manual: http://bit.ly/h1ecw (flossmanuals.net)

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g(
10
tactics
tactic 6
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● Building a database of contacts can be challenging. How will you know

6A A.82@
the relationship people want to have with you? Do they want one-
off information about a specific action, or are they happy to receive
regular news on more general or ongoing campaign issues?

& F2.?@
● The more accurate the data you have about your contacts, the more
powerful the connections with them will be. Evaluate how to keep
your database of contacts as current and as complete as possible.

A< 4?<D
● Is gathering people’s contact information using email more reliable
than using a sign-up form on a website? Can posting a profile for
your campaign on social network sites be a way to ask supporters

. /<E <3
to join you? It is important to plan carefully how you will collect
contact information from people and that you tell people why you are
collecting it and how you will use it.

8922;2E
● Customise the information you provide to people as much as possible.
Sending out a mass message to all your supporters may cause people
to ignore all of your messages and end their relationship with you.
You can ask your supporters what format (an email, a text message,
a video), type (newsletter, specific types of campaigns, events), and 86:/2?9F09.?8 A52 :.82? <3 8922;2E /?.;1 A<692A =.=2? 3.06.9 A6@@B2 .;1 ;.=86;@ B@2@ <C2? " :6996<; A<;;2@
frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) of communication they prefer. <3 =B9= 3?<: A?22@ A< :.82 6A@ =?<1B0A@ 2C2?F F2.? 0.;.1.À@ .;062;A /<?2.9 3<?2@A@ .?2 /26;4 092.?0BA A< :.82
=?<1B0A@ A5.A .?2 B@21 <;02 .;1 A52; 39B@521 1<D; A52 A<692A
DDD8922?0BA;2A

GREENPEACE USA
529= B@ @A<= 86:/2?9F09.?8 .;1 8922;2E 3?<: D6=6;4 .D.F .;062;A 3<?2@A@

● In addition to sending information to your contacts, you can also

connect people to one another to engage in live events or actions, or
to form local or more specific actions or campaigns.

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g)

CASE STUDY CiviCRM was used to track people’s engagement

and Kleercut could see that 15-20% of the people
TITLE: Kleercut it emailed took a follow-up action – “a higher

WHO: Greenpeace
WHERE: North America
URL: http://kleercut.net/
DESCRIPTION
Kleercut is a campaign implemented by Greenpeace
to end the use of virgin wood fibre in Kimberly-
Clark products. CiviCRM was used to collect contact
information from people who visited the Kleercut
website and to send them email alerts once or twice
a month. In these alerts, people were asked to take
an action, for example, to return to the Kleercut
website to send a targeted email to Kimberly-Clark
shareholders, or to attend a direct action near them.
Kleercut also connected advocates to one another,
allowing them to create regional and city-based
email lists that they managed themselves. Richard
Brooks who worked on the campaign says, “We
couldn’t organise every protest in every town and
city, so it was important to give people tools to
self-organise. Instead of five campaigners, we had
10,000 people able to do things in the physical
world because of tools we made available: a Kleercut
action pack, a toolbook, posters, media releases.”
HTTP://KLEERCUT.NET/EN/STICKERS
response rate than the general Greenpeace list,”
says Richard. In August 2009, the Kleercut campaign
ended successfully when Kimberly-Clark agreed to
introduce standards for fibre content in its products.
TOOLS USED: Drupal for the website and CiviCRM
to manage contacts. Richard says: “As more tools
became available, like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace
and Twitter, we started using those as well.” stories, blogs, and action items – 80%
of that was done by campaigners,”
REACH: Over five years of the campaign, 30,000 says Richard.
people signed up, with most in North America.
Website was available in English and French. TIME: 4 to 5 months to implement
and customise website and
COST: Several thousand US dollars for outside constituent management systems.
contractors to create the website, integrate Drupal Campaign launched November 2004,
and CiviCRM, and design logo. Web hosting cost ended August 2009.
USD$50-$60 per month. Plus ongoing staff costs to
manage and implement the project. LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 3 out of 5
RESOURCES: Once publishing and contact LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
management tools were launched, there was no Kleercut’s open source campaigning:
additional significant cost to support the technology http://www.kleercut.net/en/open-
behind the campaign. “A lot of the web content – source-campaigning

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g*
10
tactics
tactic 6
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● What people do you most need to add to your contact database,
and how will you reach them? Once recruited, how will you
continue to engage them in your campaign?
● How will you use the media to draw attention to your campaign
and to bring more people into it?
Different ways you can do this
1 In addition to tracking your supporters, organise the contact
information for those who have the power to make the change you
want to see – even if these people are opposed to your campaign. You
will then have this information on hand when you need to send (or get
your supporters to send) these people targeted campaign emails and
you can find ways to track their responses.

● How can you use people, already recruited to the campaign, to 2 Recruit people to sign up for mobile alerts from your campaign by
recruit others by forwarding your email alerts, sharing videos, conducting a poll on your issue that they can respond to with a text
posting images to their blogs and social network site profiles? message.

● What is the process by which people can be removed from your 3 Create a support-base map, of where your supporters are most
database in an easy way? concentrated, based on information they provided you with consent.

● What steps will you take to ensure that your group’s data is secure
and kept private? Will you host this data on your own server? How
will it be backed up in case of seizure or loss?
● What kinds of actions that you want people to take are most
important to track – events organised, new contacts recruited,
petitions signed, emails sent?
4 Help supporters to organise their own campaign events by offering to
connect them with other people in your campaign near to them. By
using contact management tools, you can do this without revealing
people’s contact information to others.
5 At a live event related to your campaign, ask people to sign up to
receive targeted text message or email alerts that provide live reports
or relay information you have already prepared.

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Keep in contact with the people who
support you
The Organizers’ Database (http://organizersdb.
org/) is free software for making it easier to track
your communications with your constituents,
campaigners, and other contacts. In addition to
storing your contacts’ names and addresses, the
Organizers’ Database is also good for formatting this
contact information into emails, letters, and mailing
address labels. It can also be used to track donations
made and follow-up communications sent. This
programme works only on computers running the
Windows operating system. CiviCRM can also be
used for all operating systems (http://civicrm.org/)’
RICHARD BROOKS, FROM KLEERCUT AND GREENPEACE, ON CAPACITY:
“If organising people online is an important tool for your campaign, make sure you have
the capacity to continue. We expected the campaign to finish earlier than it did, and
when we had to shift our focus to include other tactics, we didn’t have the capacity to
continue the online organising as much as we had when we began.”
KEN BANKS, FROM FRONTLINESMS, ON TARGETING YOUR MESSAGE:
“In terms of building relationships with people it is clearly important that you do not
upset them, annoy them or antagonise them by sending information to them that they
do not actually want. From the operational side, to make sure that doesn’t happen, it’s
important that you group people. Depending on what software or system you are using,
you can very easily identify and target specific people depending on what specific mes-
sage you are planning to send.”

MICHAL MACH, OF CIVICRM, ON GETTING SUPPORT WHEN USING OPEN

SOURCE TOOLS:
“Online communities exist around many tools, especially open source software tools,
and these communities play an important role by helping people to customise software
to meet their own needs and contexts. So when you do use a particular tool for manag-
ing your contacts, my advice would be to share your experiences with others so they can
also benefit.”

dXeX^\pfliZfekXZkj1g,
10
tactics
tactic 7
to print
page 1 of 3

. _fnkflj\
Zfdgc\o[XkX
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD TO
USE WHEN YOU NEED TO
PRESENT AND SHARE COMPLEX
OR HARD-TO-ACCESS
INFORMATION WITH THE
PEOPLE WHO NEED IT MOST

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Mapping Farm Subsidy Payments in Sweden ● Visualising the Crisis in Darfur

By FarmSubsidy.org and advocates in Sweden
After FarmSubsidy.org began compiling information
on farm subsidy funds from Swedish government
sources, it had so much data it was difficult to make
sense of it. To understand this data and present it in
a powerful way, it plotted farm subsidy payments
By advocates/technologists working with the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum
A team of advocates and technologists collaborated
on a complex 3D map to display the damage to
over 2000 villages; show the location of 2.5 million
internally displaced persons and refugees; and
FARMSUBSIDY.ORG

on a Google Map so that people could zoom in to
see what money went where to carry out their own
investigations and draw their own conclusions.
TOOLS USED: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests, Xapian database (open source software),
Google Maps, website
provide open access to numerous photos, videos,
and testimonies from Darfur.
TOOLS USED: Google Earth, data from the United
Nations and Amnesty International, photos and
videos, website
CRISIS IN DARFUR/GOOGLE EARTH

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

LINKS TO LEARN MORE: Map: http://bit.ly/jVYmX (ushmm.org)
Website: http://farmsubsidy.org/ Holocaust Memorial Museum website:
Presentation: http://bit.ly/gLV8Q (slideshare.com) http://www.ushmm.org/

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g(
10
tactics
tactic 7
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● Research the relevant Freedom of Information access guidelines in
your campaign’s region. There may be people with whom you can
collaborate outside your country who can get you the data you need
by requesting information from their own governments.

● Develop criteria and clear processes for verifying the data that you will
use in your campaign. Who can help you make sense of the data?

● If your data uses specialised jargon that’s difficult for most people to

CRISIS IN DARFUR/GOOGLE EARTH

understand, who can help you translate this into plain language?

● Sometimes data is accessible to the public, but it may be hard for the
public to draw conclusions because it is published in static documents
that cannot be searched or cross-referenced. How will your campaign
make this data more useful?

● Some tools, like Google Maps and Google Earth, can require a lot of
computing power and internet bandwidth. Think about the people you
want to take action in your campaign: what tools will be easiest for
them to access and use?

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: Fair Play
WHO: Fair Play Alliance
WHERE: Bratislava, Slovakia
WEBSITE: http://www.fair-play.sk/
DESCRIPTION:
Using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests,
Fair Play gathers invoices and other documents
that show how the Slovakian government spends
its money, adds this material to a database
connected to its website, and invites people to
use this information to influence political change.
Zuzana Wienk from Fair Play says, “We started to
experiment with this during a huge scandal we had
in Slovakia recently concerning European Union
(EU) funding. The media learnt that contracts were
given to companies that are closely connected
to the government’s leaders. Using FOI laws we
started to request more and more data about
contracts between these companies and Ministers,
also requesting invoices and other accounting data.
We produced graphs from this information and put
them online, and we also scanned all the invoices
and made them available.” Soon after doing this,
NGOs, journalists, concerned citizens and academics
started to analyse the data themselves and write
about it. “There were very active forums based on
these articles”, says Zuzana. “This made us feel
it was important to include the public in these
investigations – that people have the interest, skills
and expertise”. By making the information easy to
access, a debate was created around public spending
and pressure for change became so great that one
Slovak construction minister had to resign.
TOOLS USED: Custom-built database, using open
source tools (mySQL, Apache server, and PHP). Data
imported from Freedom of Information (FOIA)
requests, in Excel spreadsheets, but sometimes they
needed to be scanned or retyped. Web-scrapers are
used to bring in data from online sources.
REACH: The project tracks public spending in the
Slovakian government. It is now expanding to track
assets of Slovak members of European Parliament.
During the EU funding scandal, the Fair Play website
was one of the top three most visited in Slovakia.
COST: USD$4000 in 2003 for the first programming
and technical phase. One coordinator was employed
in 2004 to update the database,
costing USD$12,000.
RESOURCES: Student volunteers assist
in updating the database. Volunteer
developers and programmers
attended a BarCamp organised by Fair
Play to plan the project.
TIME: Nine months to get the first
database up in 2003. Updated con-
tinuously, every three to 12 months,
with data from new FOIA requests.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 4.5
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Story in the Slovak press: http://bit.
ly/1lFfVG (www.fair-play.sk)
Fair Play database: http://bit.ly/
wKqch (www.fair-play.sk)

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g*
10
tactics
tactic 7
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● What specific data do you need access to and how can you get it?
● How will you use the media to draw attention to your information
requests or to your findings?
● How can you involve your group in gathering, verifying and
publicising data?
● If you do not have a Freedom of Information Act in your region,
what other forms of public pressure can you use to access data?
● Is there a visual way to present your data - on a 2D or 3D map, using
animation, a video, or poster?
● What action will you ask people to support or implement based on
your findings?
● Will you be able to open the data you gather to other advocates
who might want to build upon your findings? How will this effect
how you store and index the data?
Different ways you can do this
1 If a government makes data available on an issue but it is spread
across multiple websites, you can aggregate it on your website with
your own tools for searching and commenting on it.
2 For campaigns where total anonymity is not necessary, you can crowd-
source the gathering of images, stories, and videos for your campaign
by using a wiki – a website you can give anyone permission to edit.
On the wiki, people can post items that need verification, and you can
work with others to investigate and share findings. You should always
carefully consider how you will verify information and ensure people
are not portrayed wrongly.
3 If you aren’t skilled at graphic design, you can pose your campaign as
an invitation to others to create a visualisation or map from your data
to best reach your target audience.
4 You can use maps to make a network map, that illustrates the power
relationships and transactions between corporations, individuals,
donors, and others.
5 Think about whether your campaign or project is dynamic or static.
Making it dynamic will take more time, but it may be vital if you are
trying to report on rights abuses. Either way, be open and clear on
what you are trying to achieve and how quickly you will respond.

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Visualise data over time
Google Motion Chart (http://bit.ly/oaiFU) can use
your data to make an animated graph showing how
different sets of information relate to one another
over time. Motion Chart can display data from
any Google Spreadsheet that you link to the chart.
The chart can then be shared on your website as a
Flash animation. As Google Motion Chart relies on
data saved in Google Spreadsheet, this means that
you must be connected to the internet to update
data, and that your data will be stored on servers
maintained by Google. For very sensitive data, this
may not be an ideal tool. This video (http://bit.ly/
Wufe5) guides you through how to install and use
the chart.
ZUZANA WIENK FROM FAIR PLAY ALLIANCE, ON LOCALISATION:
“Be sensitive to what tools are best in your country or region. In Poland, we couldn’t
create an online database as we had done in Slovakia because they didn’t have access to
this kind of data – for example, we could not create a database to show both donations
to political parties and public procurement. Also, FOIA laws will be different in each
region.”
JACK FROM FARMSUBSIDY.ORG, ON GETTING ACCESS:
“It’s really important to know exactly what you’re asking for. You’ve got to know that
government holds this data, and that requires a bit of research on what the government
holds - you may also develop relationships with friendly civil servants who can tell you, or
you can look at the laws to find out what they are required to hold.”
ZUZANA WIENK FROM FAIR PLAY ALLIANCE, ON CROWD-SOURCING:
“My feeling is society is really changing towards more informal collaboration and ad-hoc
activism. People are skilled and open to interact and contribute, but we have to create
spaces for that, and that space has to be attractive and give people some kind of public
recognition or their work. A web space is great for that.”

_fnkflj\Zfdgc\o[XkX1g,
10
tactics
/ lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\
lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g(
EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO
● Field Reporting the 2008 Mumbai
Terror Attacks
By citizens of Mumbai
Using text messages and mobile phone photos, local
people self-organised to find and share information
that wasn’t available in the media during the
Mumbai terrorist attacks. This spontaneous
community reporting identified injuries and deaths
and supported coordinated donations of blood and
other relief efforts.
TOOLS USED: Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, blogging,
mobile phones
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Photos: http://bit.ly/TiYzh (flickr.com)
Twitter messages: http://bit.ly/nOAiD (flickr.com)
lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g(
tactic 8
to print
page 1 of 3
`ek\cc`^\eZ\
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD FOR
CREATING OR GATHERING
INFORMATION, REPORTING
ON PUBLIC EVENTS SUCH AS
ELECTIONS OR PROTESTS AND
RESPONDING TO DISASTERS
OR OUTBREAKS
● Gathering Citizen Reports of Violence
By Foko and the Citizens of Madagascar
Citizens of Madagascar sent SMS messages to Foko
about reports of violence by the military and police
during demonstrations against a takeover of the
government. These reports were published on an
TWITTER
online map, and a team of local bloggers checked
the messages for accuracy. As traditional media was
compromised at the time, Foko’s website alerted
citizens to trouble spots and gave a richer picture of
the crisis than traditional reporting while ensuring
an independent information source existed to report
on events.
TOOLS USED: IntelliSMS, FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi,
FOKO
Twitter, mobile phones, blogging
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
FOKO website: http://foko.ushahidi.com/
Interview with Foko: http://bit.ly/QZvvM
(globalvoicesonline.org)
10
tactics
tactic 8
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● Citizen reporting can work in many regions, although there will be
differences based on both technology and your community’s ease with
using certain tools. This is one reason why Twitter is an effective tool
in India: Indian Twitter users can post updates by text message on their
mobile phones using a free short code, a service which is not available
for all Twitter users worldwide.

● You may not need to create a tool from scratch. Ushahidi, which
was used to track violence in Madagascar, was first built for a similar
project in Kenya. The Foko team didn’t have to create custom software,
but they did need to adapt it to their campaign.

● One form of live reporting is to collect spontaneous reports of current

events, as the Mumbai attacks did. For this form of reporting to work,
it’s important to have in place a network of bloggers and citizen
reporters ready to publicise and respond to the live reporters’ updates.

● Another way of live reporting is to coordinate reporting in advance,

like the Madagascar campaign did. This kind of reporting needs a
strong outreach plan to engage potential citizen reporters. Traditional

UNSUNG PEACE HEROES

media can be used to raise awareness about the initiative.

● There’s growing power in community reporting. In the past 10

years, how news is made has changed considerably. Not only are
communities making news of their own, but traditional media from
radio to television are also including citizen reporting.

lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: Unsung Peace Heroes
WHO: Butterfly Works and Media Focus on
Africa Foundation
WHERE: Kenya
WEBSITE: http://peaceheroes.ushahidi.com
DESCRIPTION:
Unsung Peace Heroes honoured those who worked
for peace after post-election violence in Kenya
in December 2007. Kenyans could nominate
people and organisations by text message and
email, and with paper forms at peace events.
The groups Butterfly Works and Media Focus on
Africa collected these nominations. Working with
a local design school, Nairobits, nominations were
translated, verified and added to a map, using the
community reporting tool, Ushahidi. In addition to
online outreach, Peace Heroes placed newspaper,
radio, and television advertisements, and Nairobits
students distributed paper handouts. In 2009 the
eight winning Peace Heroes were recognised on
national television, and they used their prize money
to support their communities and peace projects.
One winner, Joel, hid 18 people for two weeks in his
compound to protect them from violence. He says,
“I received congratulations through telephone and
text messages from diverse communities from far
and near. As a family, we decided to throw a party
and invite these people, those from my community,
a local councillor, and the administration to
celebrate. The need to form a peace initiative
emerged during the party, and they mandated me
to register a peace group and recruit members to
address the violence.” Marten Schoonman of Media RESOURCES: Local staff, volunteers
Focus on Africa says, “The aim was to spread a and partner organisations to publicise
message of hope and focus on the good in this time the campaign and design the Facebook
of trouble. The conflicts are far from solved, even page. Local balanced expert jury.
today. Like the butterfly effect, a relatively small
initiative like this has potential spin-off effects and TIME: One month to collect
unexpected benefits.” nominations; three months later,
awards and recognition given to Peace
TOOLS USED: Ushahidi, mobile phones, Facebook, Heroes at ceremony.
website.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 3 out of 5
REACH: National. Over 500 nominations in one
month, with peaks of 80 per day after Kenyan press LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
coverage. Heroes’ Projects: http://bit.ly/3T67Xo
(mediafocusonafrica.org)
COST: USD$18,000 (SMS system was USD$3000; Article: http://bit.ly/7UdtG
remainder for publicity and awards for participants) (butterflyworks.org)

lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g*
10
tactics
tactic 8
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● How will field reporters get information to each other? Will you
focus on mobile phones or the internet as a way of getting and
sharing information?
● Will you be trying to coordinate spontaneous reporting, or will you
make a plan in advance with citizen journalists?
● Is there an out-of-the-box tool you can use to compile reports, or
will you need to make something of your own?
● What’s your media plan/outreach plan? Live reporting campaigns
tend to get as much press for the technology they use as for the
issues they are raising. How will you manage this kind of media
attention and the increase in reports it might bring?
● For live reporting to have a strong impact, it must be connected to
a timely or hot issue. What’s the timely event you can use to best
engage your audience?
● Consider the appropriate use of live reporting tools. What context
does something like Ushahidi work best in? What limitations does it
have for your campaign?
● How can you avoid the problem that some of these systems only
work when there are a lot of people become involved?
lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g+
Different ways you can do this
1 You can use mobile reporting to draw collective attention to an issue.
Ask people to answer questions related to your campaign by sending
in text messages or photos with their mobile phones. You can share
these reports on a website or a mobile phone accessible website.
2 Live reporting can keep advocates safe during a protest or action. Two
tools people have used for this are Twitter and a mobile video program
called Qik.com, with which advocates can share text and video
updates on who may have been arrested, and draw attention to this
news from supporters around the world.
3 If mass media are not listening, or if your campaign faces censorship,
advocates can use tools like Twitter or Ushahidi to report on direct
actions. These reports can be used to leverage international media
attention.
4 If you have a fast connection to the internet, you can use live video
to broadcast a campaign event live to the internet with a computer,
a video camera (which may be built into your computer), and a live
video program like Ustream.tv or Livestream.com.
5 You can protect information from being confiscated by sharing it
across a network of trusted supporters. if people have captured photos
or videos they can share them with others located outside of the risk
area by phone-to-phone file transfer, or by email, and can then delete
them from their phones.

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Live reporting and managing your contacts
FrontlineSMS (http://www.frontlinesms.org)
allows large numbers of people to communicate
without an internet connection. Advocates can use
FrontlineSMS to send messages from their laptops
over mobile phone networks, which are received
as text messages. It can be used for both one-way
and two-way communication. Advocates have
used FrontlineSMS for human rights monitoring,
organising protests, conducting public surveys, and
emergency alerts. An active online community
provides various support to first-time users.
KEN BANKS OF FRONTLINESMS, ON COLLABORATION:
“Using technologies, you can combine the collective voice of people. You can aggregate
information from live reporting with news coming in from the mainstream. Bringing that
all together you get a much bigger picture of what is happening on the ground.”
DINA MEHTA, TECHNOLOGY RESEARCHER, ON THE POWER OF COMMUNITY:
“We have communities that we have developed over time in several spaces on the
web – on blogs, Facebook, Twitter. What these tools allow you to do is network with
all of your online communities, to operate as hubs of connected people. So when
something happens and you need to respond, it’s about the spontaneous mobilisation
of a community that already exists online, through the multiple nodes and hubs that you
have created as you leave your footprints on the web.

SAMI GHARBIA, OF GLOBAL VOICES, ON LIVE REPORTING ARRESTS:

“Activists are using Twitter to alert their fellow bloggers and activists about the case
of arrests of bloggers. We’ve seen the case of a US journalist who was witnessing a
demonstration in Mahala city in Egypt during the 6th April strike. When he was arrested
he just sent a message to Twitter with the text ”arrested” and that alerted his friends, his
relatives, and even the US embassy to intervene and get him released from prison.”

lj\Zfcc\Zk`m\`ek\cc`^\eZ\1g,
 10
tactics
tactic 9
to print
page 1 of 3

0
Stephen Roy from http://almy.us/image/dungeon.jpg, tactical tech was unable to locate the artist

c\kg\fgc\
Xjbk_\
hl\jk`fej
THIS TACTIC IS GOOD FOR
GETTING VITAL INFORMATION
TO PEOPLE WHEN POPULAR
INFORMATION SOURCES ARE
INCOMPLETE OR MISLEADING,
OR WHEN OTHER FORMS OF
DIRECT COMMUNICATION
ARE DIFFICULT

c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg(

EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO

● Infonet ● Freedom Fone

By Social Development Network, East Africa
Citizens can get information on government funding
for development projects by sending a text message
to Infonet’s Budget Tracking platform. Users’
questions provide data to help build a picture of
By advocates in Zimbabwe
Kubatana is a media and communication project that
aggregates, amplifies and disseminates information
generated by the civil society sector in Zimbabwe.
Materials are published on www.kubatana.net and
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT NETWORK

which government funds are most under scrutiny in
different areas. People can also leave comments on
each project added to the website to verify, contest,
or add information, or connect with a local social
development group who can help them query the
FRONT PAGE IMAGE BY STEPHEN ROY FROM HTTP://ALMY.US/IMAGE/
DUNGEON.JPG, TACTICAL TECH WAS UNABLE TO LOCATE THE ARTIST
publicised through a regular email newsletter and
SMS alerts. A variety of materials including printed
articles, reports, CDs and DVDs are distributed to
individuals and organisations throughout Zimbabwe
via post. To address the growing use of mobile

allocation and use of public funds. To date, over
36,000 development projects have been listed. In
its first month, 25,000 people used the tool on their
mobile phones, and there were 15,000 website hits.
TOOLS USED: database (WampServer: Apache, PHP,
MySQL), website, mobile phones
phones in developing countries, Kubatana is creating
an open source software platform called Freedom
Fone to promote the use of interactive voice
response (IVR) by community and development
oriented organisations. Freedom Fone will empower
organisations to generate call-in information-on-
demand in any language.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE: TOOLS USED: FrontlineSMS, mobile phones, desktop

Budget Tracking Tool: http://bit.ly/QSfO2 computers to run Freedom Fone call-in system
FREEDOM FONE

(opengovernance.info)
Social Development Network: LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
http://www.sodnet.org/ Freedom Fone: www.freedomfone.org

c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg(
10
tactics
tactic 9
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● Find a way to source your information. Infonet’s Budget Tracking
campaign consisted of government data, data collected by local social
development groups and information from text message queries and
visitors to the website. In this way Infonet used crowd-sourcing to
collect data that helped create new information, as well as to verify
existing data.

ONEWORLD UK/EDUCATION AS A VACCINE AGAINST AIDS

● Any text message platform you choose will need to be customised in
order to meet your users’ needs. Some platforms work well for relaying
current news by sending the same messages to many people and
others are better for providing unique answers to questions asked by
different people.

● Working with text messages, data, or voice transmission for mobile

phones may require negotiations with telecommunications companies
which can be time-consuming and costly. Ask other people in your
country how they have achieved this and see which providers may
offer a bulk or discount rate to not-for-profit organisations.

● Some information may be better conveyed on websites or spoken

through voice services like Freedom Fone. Many campaigns use a
combination of methods to maximise reach.

● While tracking, you may be able to ascertain which regions have the
greatest participation based on mobile numbers or by using quick
surveys sent via text message.
c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: MyQuestion, MyAnswer most important thing,” says project manager Uju
WHO: OneWorld UK/Education as a Vaccine Ofomata. “Then getting people to use the service
Against AIDS wasn’t a problem.” Nearly 60,000 questions have
WHERE: Nigeria been sent to the service in its first two years.

WEBSITE: http://mobile.oneworld.net
DESCRIPTION:
Young people in Nigeria face obstacles in
getting accurate sexual and reproductive
health information, due to stigma and taboos.
A collaboration between OneWorld UK and
local NGO, Education as a Vaccine Against AIDS,
produced ‘MyQuestion/MyAnswer,’ a mobile phone
campaign that lets young people take control over
their own sexual health education anonymously
and securely. ‘MyQuestion/MyAnswer’ relies on
its audience’s familiarity with mobile phones and
the sense that the information they get on their
mobiles is private and will not be judged by adults.
Questions may be sent in via text message and
responses can include health facts, links to local
clinics, or a chance to speak directly by phone to a
counsellor. The questions are later aggregated into
a frequently-asked questions database. “Getting
someone to talk to them straight – that was the
TOOLS USED: mobile platform customised from
open source software (Apache web server, PHP
application, MySql database), website, mobile
phones.
REACH: National, with a concentration of users
in urban and suburban settings and a majority in
southern Nigeria.
COST: USD$30,000 for telecom costs, USD$10,000
for publicity, USD$60,000 for salary and project
management.
RESOURCES: Local partners, press campaign.
By partnering with a local NGO with extensive
experience working locally with young people, the
campaign was regarded as trusted and reliable.
A major press campaign, in print news, radio, and
television media spread information about the
service to young people.
HTTP://MOBILE.ONEWORLD.NET
TIME: Five months to build and
launch the mobile platform. The
negotiations with the telecom
companies took at least three
months. Project ongoing.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 4 out of 5
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Video about project:
http://bit.ly/WxXsS (youtube.com)
E-learning site: http://www.
learningaboutliving.org/south

c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg*
10
tactics
tactic 9
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● How will you collect the data you will be making available to
people, and what sources can you trust?
● Will you permit people to add their own data to your campaign?
● Is there an out-of-the-box tool you can use to collect queries and
transmit information, or will you need to create a tool of your own?
● What’s your media/outreach plan to maximise participation?
Different ways you can do this
1 To prevent users being charged for mobile messages to you, you can
buy a short code from a telecommunications provider. Short codes are
designed to be shorter and easier to remember than normal mobile
numbers. Shared short codes can be much more affordable than
dedicated numbers.
2 To engage audiences where a straightforward question-and-answer
approach may not be persuasive, you can offer information in the form
of entertaining and educational quizzes.

● Is there a timely event that your campaign can connect with to
encourage more people to pay attention to your issue?
● In addition to putting needed facts in people’s hands, is there a
target, (a person or organisation) who can make the change you
want to see, that you can ask people to speak to directly?
3 Pose a question on a controversial topic and collect opinions through
text or voice messages. In response, send back a fact or a resource to
connect your audience to more information.
4 If you get consent from people, you can use their contact information
to re-connect with them for future actions.

● Your campaign may involve collecting and broadcasting sensitive 5 At an action or demonstration, ask supporters to send a text message
information over telecommunications networks. What security and if they would like you to send them alerts during the action: about
privacy concerns exist and how will you address them? police activity, safety measures they can take, and legal or medical
support.

c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Create a free call-in centre and interactive voice
menu system:
FreeSwitch (http://www.freeswitch.org/) is a free,
open source software system that allows you to
give people information through voicemail and
interactive voice response menus. Once installed,
you can create interactive voice response (IVR)
menus, and the system will respond to unique
questions spoken by users or typed on their phone’s
keypad. The IVR gives people answers that you have
programmed it to – either dynamically based on the
question or pre-recorded.
BRENDA BURRELL OF KUBATANA, ON MOBILES:
“The largest growing technology tool in use in the world is the mobile phone, particularly
in the developing world where mobiles have become the tool of communication of the
ordinary person. People have focused on text messaging for campaigns, but there are a
lot of other things that we can do to innovate.”
UJU OFOMATA OF MYQUESTION, MY ANSWER, ON CONNECTING PEOPLE ACROSS
PLATFORMS:
“In our campaign, text, voice and the web were all connected – some questions can’t
be answered in the 160 characters that text messages are limited to. Sometimes we ask
people to call a toll-free line so they can speak directly to us. You might need to probe a
bit more before giving someone the right answer.”

EVAN ‘RABBLE’ HENSHAW-PLATH, TECHNOLOGIST, ON THE POWER OF VOICE:

“Text messaging seems like a technology of the developing world but it’s also important
to realise that people use mobile phones for actual phone calls. The phone used to be
something that was controlled by the telecommunications monopolies and over the last
few years there has been a whole renaissance in telephony that has seen voice services
built over the internet. You can now run your own phone company on free software.”

c\kg\fgc\Xjbk_\hl\jk`fejg,
10
tactics
('
`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g(
EXAMPLES FROM THE VIDEO
● Exposing Torture by Police in Egypt
By citizens/journalists in Egypt
Journalist Noha Atef created TortureInEgypt.net to
document human rights abuses committed by police
against Egyptian citizens, using photos and videos
submitted by readers. In some cases, the videos are
shot by the police themselves. Noha also follows up
on accounts of unlawful imprisonment and police
corruption sent in by readers. After she drew local
media attention to her stories, an innocent man
who had been jailed for 14 years was released from
prison.
TOOLS USED: Drupal for creating the website (before
that, Blogspot), photos and videos, usually shot on
and sent from mobile phones.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Website: http://tortureinegypt.net/
`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g(
tactic 10
to print
page 1 of 3
`em\jk`^Xk\
Xe[\ogfj\
THIS TACTIC IS USEFUL WHEN
YOU ARE ABLE TO COLLABORATE
WITH OTHERS TO IDENTIFY,
SHARE, AND ACT ON EVIDENCE
THAT IS BEING CONCEALED
FROM THE PUBLIC OR IGNORED
BY THOSE WHO NEED TO ACT
● Presidential Plane Spotting
By advocates in Tunisia
Tunisian bloggers collaborated on a mapping project
that revealed the presidential plane was being used
for extensive personal travel. Their campaign began HTTP://TORTUREINEGYPT.NET/
when a blogger, Astrubal, discovered images of the
Tunisian president’s plane on websites devoted to
tracking air traffic. Using this data, Astrubal combined
the plane photos with a visualisation created using
Google Earth to show which airports the plane had
been seen at and when. The video spread on
YouTube, which led to the mainstream media
investigating further. As a result, the issue of misuse
ASTRUBEL (HTTP://BIT.LY/1QZYFT)
of public property by government officials received
much attention, but as another consequence the
Tunisian government blocked YouTube and another
video sharing site, DailyMotion.
TOOLS USED: planespotters’ websites (like
Airliners.net) Google Earth, YouTube, Flickr
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Global Voices story: http://bit.ly/cOUSo
Foreign Policy how-to article: http://bit.ly/15LxV3
10
tactics
tactic 10
to print
page 2 of 3

PLAN YOUR ACTION

● If you don’t yet have access to all the data you need to prove abuse or
corruption, your campaign can start by presenting available data and
posing some questions to readers or public officials. This can inspire
others to carry out further investigations.

● Some campaigns must rely on reports and testimonies submitted

anonymously, but sometimes you might be given direct access to
people closely involved in an issue. Both types of testimony carry risks
for the people sharing their stories. Think about how to protect your
sources: their names and locations, but also their IP addresses, email
addresses, or identities on social network sites.

● Once your reports, videos, or stories are picked up and republished by

others, that attention can bring in new information which adds to your
original story. You will need to track how your media spreads and what
coverage it receives, and plan how you will use new information as it
becomes available.

● In Egypt, where police themselves used mobile phones to exchange

WWW.TORTUREINEGYPR.NET
videos of abuse they perpetrated, advocates were able to get access
to those videos and publish them online. How can you design your
campaign to take advantage of existing documentation that you can
republish?

`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g)

CASE STUDY
TITLE: Caught Between the Tiger and the who wanted to help fight the law directly agreed to
Crocodile the on-camera interview.” APNSW posted the video
WHO: Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers on YouTube and blip.tv, and presented it at a day
(APNSW) & Women’s Network for Unity of action for 500 sex workers in Phnom Penh. Dale
(WNU) says, “One of the two centres was closed because of
WHERE: Asia Pacific region, focused in Cambodia combined efforts of APNSW, WNU, and local human
WEBSITE: http://apnsw.org rights groups working together to provide evidence
of the abuses that took place.”
DESCRIPTION:
Members of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers TOOLS USED: Flip video cameras, digital video
APNSW

(APNSW) used digital video to document abusive
conditions and human rights violations reported
by sex workers detained in so-called ’rehabilitation’
centres in Cambodia. While local media and
politicians claimed that these centres were set up
to teach vocational skills, sex workers interviewed
after their release and escape told personal stories
of assault, rape, and denial of access to clean food,
water, and medicine. “We worked with a local
APNSW member group, Women’s Network for
Unity (WNU),” says Dale Kongmont, a member of
APNSW and the producer of the video. “The people
we interviewed are members of WNU and we have
worked with them for many years. We explained to
them what the video is about, and some of those
editing software (Final Cut Pro), blip.tv, YouTube,
website
REACH: Video launched at the International AIDS
Conference in 2008. The target audience at the
AIDS conference was UN agencies, but the video
was shown to several thousand people during the
event. The video has received over 3000 views on
YouTube and blip.tv.
COST: USD$15,000 (with USD$7000 for staff,
USD$5000 for production)
RESOURCES: Local partners to host a Day of Action
and implement a media campaign, attendance at
conferences to show video to policy-
makers, video training from WITNESS.
TIME: Just under one year to collect
footage and edit, with two weeks of
training from WITNESS.
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: 2 out of 5
LINKS TO LEARN MORE:
Campaign video: http://bit.ly/1TdEOf
(blip.tv)

`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g*
10
tactics
tactic 10
to print
page 3 of 3

DO IT YOURSELF
Ask
● Is your campaign focussed on producing one piece of media – such
as a video or a mash-up – or on giving regular updates using a blog
or website?
● Is the media your campaign produces connected to a one-time
event, or an ongoing issue?
● How can you involve your group in gathering facts and collecting
testimonies?
● In what ways will you respect the safety and, if needed, anonymity,
of those who give your campaign reports, testimonies, and sensitive
data?
● Who are your allies in the mainstream media and among other
rights organisations that can help you spread a story to a wider
audience? How will you target them and what action will you ask
them to support?
● What backup plan do you have to keep your data safe and secure if
your computers, hard drives, or servers are seized?
Different ways you can do this
1 If you want to make a video but don’t have enough video footage
available, search Flickr, Google Images, or Wikipedia for open-licensed
photos available for remix and reuse, and use them to edit into a video
with music or a voiceover.
2 For campaigns where total anonymity is not necessary, you can crowd-
source the gathering of images, stories, and videos for your campaign
by using a wiki – a page you can give anyone permission to edit. You
should always carefully consider how you will verify information where
necessary to ensure people and events are not wrongly portrayed.
3 If video testimony from witnesses or survivors of rights abuses is very
sensitive, you may not want to release your video online. You can
instead arrange closed screenings to rights groups or to key people and
organisations with influence.
4 Not all campaigns need a mass audience – finding the right audience
matters more. You can mobilise the power of a small, passionate
audience, and take your findings to key policy-makers or the press
later.
5 Humour, surprise and popular culture can help you reach a wider
audience. You can use cartoons and street art to convey your findings in
a direct way and to get your message to those without internet access.

`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g+

FEATURED TOOL TIPS

Encrypt your email
Keeping communications secure can be essential to
protecting your sources and witnesses. Encrypting
email can be difficult, but if you use webmail
programmes like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or SquirrelMail
in your work, you can use the web browser plugin
FireGPG (www.getfiregpg.org/). FireGPG will encrypt
your email without your to having to leave the
browser. It is available in over 25 languages. In order
to use FireGPG you must first install GPG on your
computer (http://www.gnupg.org/) and create a
key, a unique identifier that allows you to encrypt
and share your communications securely. Tactical
Tech’s Security in-a-box (http://bit.ly/SBqNH)
provides more detailed instructions on this and
other security software.
DALE KONGMONT FROM APNSW, ON COLLABORATION:
“It’s important to work closely with human rights groups and others to get your message
out more widely, but at the same time it is important to try to make sure key people hear
you. We arranged for some senior UN staff to watch our video at the International AIDS
Conference in 2008. People said they didn’t really understand how serious the police
abuses we were reporting were until they saw the video, which gave them the incentive
to take action.”
SAMI BEN GHARBIA FROM GLOBAL VOICES, ON ENGAGEMENT:
“The ability to access information online is in itself a power. But you also need to fill the
gap between online and offline activism. If you are unable to reach audiences that do not
have access to the internet, you need to find other ways to disseminate information of-
fline: using USB memory sticks, DVDs, CDs, posters, flyers and other tools. Finding ways
to bridge online and offline activism is critical.”

NOHA ATEF FROM TORTUREINEGYPT.NET, ON BLOGS:

“Blogs are a good tool in info-activism because they are easy to use, they don’t require a
broad technical knowledge, and they are free and quite popular, especially in the Arab
world. They can be really effective at making change, especially when they establish
credibility and respect among a large number of readers or even among a small audience
with influence.”

`em\jk`^Xk\Xe[\ogfj\1g,