GROUNDVIEWS
Website: http://www.groundviews.org
The Challenge
Promoting progressive communications within and between communities WITHIN cycles of violence and a context of gross human rights abuse, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org) aims to further the impact of citizen journalism (CJ) in peace building and conflict transformation. Groundviews was the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, a country wrecked by violent conflict for over 25 years. Its ability to feature content that questions the status quo and highlight voices rarely featured in traditional media has earned its Editor and his family death threats and public abuse, but importantly, forged best practices on editorializing and expanding the understanding and use of CJ to address violent conflict. Groundviews and its related sites, VOR Radio and Vikalpa, form a CJ eco-system that is challenging polity and traditional society through simple, personal and compelling stories. While CJ examples are aplenty, Groundviews is the only one set up in violent conflict to address the same.
The Ingenious Proposal
Feature stories via a blog that are vital pegs of hope, diversity and coexistence. They are those that will possibly never make it to mainstream media. Ordinary citizens, weary of violence, will write them. Artists, human rights and media activists, academics, young bloggers and thinkers, none of them with any journalism background or training, will write them. However, there is no guarantee that it will foster a new social movement in support of peace, when to do so is to risk one’s life. There is no guarantee it will secure peace and support real world conflict transformation initiatives. There is no guarantee that hate speech will not take over the timbre of online debate. Ironically, the more Groundviews is successful in fostering new voices in support of peace, the more it will be a target of concerted attacks to prevent it from growing further. And it is here that our greatest challenge lies. Not in the technology itself, but in the creation of a social and political movement, fostered by citizen journalism mediated through new media and new technology, that is able to maintain, in some small way, the hope of a just and lasting peace in Sri Lanka, even when the world around it is going to hell. And it is this hope that fuels Groundviews, not as a simplistic magic bullet against terrorism, but as an increasingly important vehicle for ordinary citizens to record their views in support democracy as the only way through which terrorism can be effectively combated.
The Call
The plan was simple – to use a blog to publish content (text, audio, video, photos) in English and the vernacular (Sinhala and Tamil). The technology they chose was Wordpress because of the ability to use custom plugins and themes to get the site operational in the manner they had envisaged. CPA approached InfoShare, a leading civil society technical support organization, to design and develop the site that, at the time, was the first tri-lingual blog in Sri Lanka. The strategy was to raise awareness of the blog virally. Aggregation of content on a well established Sri Lankan blog aggregator (www.kottu.org) guaranteed high visibility amongst the growing blogosphere locally as well as amongst the diaspora. Key authors were asked to contribute pithy and provocative articles that pushed the boundaries of polity and traditional media and forced readers to think outside their comfort zones. Measures were taken to register the site outside of Sri Lanka in light of the repressive regime in the country that could take steps to block the website. After the launch, fortnightly email updates on new content are sent to around 6,000 email addresses of donors, civil society organization, human rights activists and journalists based locally and internationally. Particular articles, such as those written by a noted personality or dealing with a significant issue or topic, are also sent out via email. These have resulted in a growing and faithful readership base for the website. A detailed set of guidelines for the publication of content and commenting on the site was drawn up that was the first of its kind on any media website in Sri Lanka. These guidelines allowed for progressive communication on highly contentious and emotional issues and at the same time kept the flamers and trolls away. Given the huge erosion of human rights and the culture of abductions and murder, the safety of contributors was guaranteed by anonymous postings, though the identity of each contributor was known to the Editor in order to guarantee trustworthy and high quality submissions. Finally, the groundbreaking content on the site itself resulted in increased visibility.
The Success Story
Groundviews commands name recognition amongst significant civil society actors and journalists in Sri Lanka for content that furthers democracy, peace building, reconciliation and human rights. The site has received over 75,000 page views since its launch in November 2006, which is significant for a blog in Sri Lanka. Groundviews generates around 500 page views a day, with roughly 60% of traffic from Sri Lanka and 40% from the diaspora. The website has been featured in local media, regional media as well as references in numerous blogs. Original news stories from grassroots have been republished globally. Articles on Groundviews have been republished in print and on the web by traditional media and other blogs; these articles were unique to Groundviews and on issues that exposed rights abuses, the absence of ethics in traditional media or the growing democratic deficit in Sri Lanka. Leading journalists and civil society activists have sent in content to be featured on the site and Groundviews is the only website in Sri Lanka that regularly features human interest stories from Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees from the embattled regions of the country. The respect for and recognition of insightful and courageous content on the site is growing amongst key stakeholders in polity and society in Sri Lanka. The primary objective of Groundviews was to set a standard for and raise awareness on citizen journalism supporting peace building through the publication of progressive multi-lingual content. The initiative has largely succeeded in this regard.
CAPULET COMMUNICATIONS!
Website: http://www.capulet.com, http://www.desmogblog.com
The Challenge
DeSmogBlog.com is an advocacy website and weblog, dedicated to “clearing the PR pollution that clouds the science of climate change.” An overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists agree that the globe is warming – the world’s climate is changing – and that the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels is to blame. DeSmogBlog knows that the risks are incalculable and, increasingly, they understand that the solutions are affordable. DeSmogBlog exists to shine the light on techniques and tactics that reflect badly on the PR industry and are, ultimately, bad for the planet. The challenge for Capulet Communications was to extend DeSmogBlog’s online marketing reach and drive more visitors, including journalists, academics, online influencers, environmental and climate change bloggers, to their website.
The Ingenious Proposal
DeSmogBlog engaged Capulet Communications to increase their online visibility. Capulet applied a variety of web and social media marketing strategies and viral campaigns to bolster DeSmogBlog’s web presence.
The Call
Capulet started a weekly ‘best of’ newsletter, created MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr profiles for DeSmogBlog, and consulted on a site redesign. In addition, the following are three viral campaigns that Capulet created that have worked like gangbusters for DeSmogBlog. They built a desktop widget (http://www.desmogblog.com/widget) that displayed recent DeSmogBlog news, as well as a climate footprint counter. They launched a contest, hosted on Flickr, called The Greenest Photo Ever (http://www.flickr.com/groups/greenest/). Why host it on Flickr? Social media marketing works best when you go to the content creators, instead of trying to drag them back to your own site and through a complex submission process. Maybe DeSmogBlog receives fewer visitors during the contest, but they earn more visibility and credibility in the long term. They also devised and built Stars and Stinkers (http://www.desmogblog.com/stars_and_stinkers), a Flash game where visitors rated celebrities based on their environmental-friendliness. They enabled bloggers to embed the game on their own site like a YouTube video, and also released the source code so that designers could build their climate change mash-ups.
The Success Story
When Capulet submitted the desktop widget to Apple’s Dashboard library, it was featured on the site’s home page. For the thousands who have downloaded the widget, DeSmogBlog has been moved out of the browser and onto their desktops. So far, 15,000 people have played the Stars and Stinkers game. While these campaigns have all driven plenty of visitors to DeSmogBlog,
Capulet satisfied a more crucial objective: to bring new visitors from outside the site’s core readership. Over the past year, they’ve had a radical impact on DeSmogBlog’s visitors, increasing them by nearly 300%.
THE CENTRE FOR POVERTY ANALYSIS (CEPA)
Website: http://www.cepa.lk, http://www.pact.lk
The Challenge
The history of the Sri Lankan conflict is complex, not only because of the length of time that has passed since its origins, but also the existence of a myriad of perspectives on peace and conflict events. But any dialogue on the origins, manifestation and trajectory of the conflict is limited to certain circles. Bringing the dialogue outside of these limited forums would help to encourage a broader audience to take the first steps in acknowledging the existence of different perspectives and, in time, to understand them. The need to have this dialogue, particularly amongst the Sri Lankan diaspora groups, is clear: much of the different diaspora communities seem completely oblivious to any other viewpoint besides their own. And yet many feel that they should do more to promote understanding between their respective groups, both home and abroad.
The Ingenious Proposal
In order to provide a space for constructive dialogue on the origins, current manifestation and trajectory of the Sri Lankan conflict amongst diaspora communities, the Peace and Conflict Timeline (PACT) initiative was conceptualized. A conflict timeline has a number of uses. It is commonly used by researchers to examine the history of a given conflict and to improve their understanding of the sequence of events that led up to it. Conflict timelines increasingly feature in conflict transformation workshops, where participants are asked to collectively put together a timeline of key conflict events, to prompt exchanges around them. The PACT project takes the conflict timeline tool from the workshop to the web, where participants are free to voice their convictions while not having to step out of their comfort zone. The overall goal of PACT is to encourage dialogue and foster mutual understanding of different perspectives concerning the Sri Lankan conflict amongst the diaspora. It has two broad aims: (1) to be used as a resource to help those with an interest in the Sri Lankan conflict gain a deeper understanding of the history of the conflict; and (2) to encourage dialogue between stakeholders to the Sri Lankan conflict in order to elicit different perspectives on events relating to peace and conflict. Engagement with PACT, if encouraged, can open up new spaces for new sorts of conversations and an opportunity particularly for the diaspora groups to come to understand each others’ perspectives. Diaspora groups from conflict-affected countries run the risk of becoming spoilers to the achievement of peace back home unless they are constructively engaged in dialogue, particularly with the unlike minded, about the critical issues concerning the conflict. In seeking to address this concern, the key audience for (PACT) will be the Muslim, Tamil and Sinhala diaspora communities living outside of Sri Lanka, in various parts of the world.
The Call
The first phase is the development and online presentation of the peace and conflict timeline the tool upon which the whole initiative is anchored. Users of the PACT website are encouraged to engage constructively with the timeline. They will have views on what is missing – whether the timeline looks sufficiently back in history – and be given the opportunity to add new events. The juxtaposition of peace initiatives alongside conflict events will prompt comments on the missed opportunities and hopefully draw out lessons for the future. Users may also like to pose questions for others to address. There is also space here for people to give their personal experience of an event, which beyond a clinical analysis, will make users stop and think about the impact of the conflict on ordinary peoples’ lives. A prototype version of PACT (still in its pilot phase) can be accessed at www.pact.lk/. Currently, the events (both historic and contemporary) are presented on the timeline like newspaper headlines, calling for deeper analysis and understanding from users engaging with the timeline. During a second phase, this initial layer of engagement will be supported by primary research that will feed into the initiative, seeking to collect the spectrum of viewpoints on any given issue. Akin to an oral history project, individuals who can give greater insights into historical events – who have lived through them – will be specifically targeted to give their perspectives. A third phase of PACT will take the dialogue further and facilitate online Dialogue Sessions, inviting skilled mediators to facilitate conversations around specific events presented on PACT between individuals representing different views on the Sri Lankan conflict, including its triggers and trajectory. The team that will work on the project will be the Poverty and Conflict team, which specializes in applied research, conflict sensitivity and promotion of dialogue and exchange on poverty and conflict related issues. The team has undergone training in conflict transformation skills and a particular strength of the team is its gender balance and composition: all ethnic communities of Sri Lanka are represented.
The Success Story
PACT’s success will be measured using qualitative and quantitative indicators. Objective (1) will be measured using quantitative indicators, including the number of user registrations, number of hits to the website, number of postings made by users and the number of returning guests who were initially invited to take part in the Dialogue Sessions. Achievement of objective (2) and progress towards the goal will use more qualitative analyses of users’ posts. As the project is aiming to elicit the full spectrum of perspectives, users’ posts will be categorized according to the possible breadth of opinion on a conflict event or issue. A sample of users’ comments will be monitored for their openness to understanding the different perspectives of others. Qualitative analysis of the exchanges during the structured Dialogue Sessions will be useful in monitoring: do they indicate that even the unlike minded are nevertheless open to hearing about and understanding the other’s perspective? Another facet of the monitoring exercise will be to see whether, as the project progresses, users are positively influenced by reading the views of others, and use language that is respectful, abiding by the rules of engagement.
LIFELUBE
Website: http://lifelube.blogspot.com
The Challenge
The communication challenge is to find a way to engage gay and bisexual men in overall sexual health and wellness issues – above the navel, not just below.
The Ingenious Proposal
Create a blog to engage gay and bisexual men in their overall, holistic health as both a means of preventing HIV as well as a way to promote health and wellness in general. The audience is international gay and bisexual men. LifeLube strives to address mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and sexual health in a culturally competent manner.
The Call
LifeLube was developed by a new collaboration of gay men’s health and AIDS organizations called Sexual Health Xchange (SHX) made up of AIDS Project Los Angeles, AIDS Action Committee in Boston, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Philadelphia’s Black Gay Men’s Leadership Council. The group created a website – www.LifeLube.org and a companion blog as online portals to connect with gay and bisexual men. Both were launched on Valentine’s Day of 2007 with the tagline “Gay, sexy, healthy.” Jim Pickett serves as web and blog master and the other entities help with providing content and marketing.
The Success Story
A snapshot of LifeLube.blogspot.com from April 26 through September 26, 2007 revealed: 15,037 visits from 126 countries, an average of 97 per day – in the last month, the average has been 146 per day; 4,250 were return visits, 522 people have visited over 200 times, 965 have visited twice, the average time on site was 2:15 minutes, the top traffic source was Google, responsible for 3,439 visits, the top key words were “gay sexy,” and “GMHC’s statement on male circumcision for gay men" was the URL with the highest number of clicks.
