Top Goon: Diaries of a Little Dictator is a 13-episode series, broadcast on Youtube, that was created by an anonymous group of actors from within Syria who go by the name of Masasit Mati. With a simple set and finger puppet characters they impersonate Assad, along with generic figures such as “the peaceful protester” and “Shabih”, a member of the state-sponsored militia.
ZA news is a satirical web-tv show that lampoons South Africa's politicians and current affairs. First aired in 2009, its format is a news show made to look and sound like the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). After commissioning the pilot, the SABC refused to air it. It is now shown online reaching 10% of the South African population who have access to internet.
In February 2011, after watching the late Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi give an hour-long speech in an attempt to regain control, Israeli DJ Noy Alooshe acted quickly. Using video software and Auto-Tune, a tool to digitally distort voices, Alooshe spliced snippets of Gaddafi's speech with beats from American rappers T Pain and Pitbull's hit 'Hey Baby'. Within 24 hours he had uploaded the mash-up to YouTube. After just one week, the video had been viewed 2.7 million times.
The website Iamjan25.com collects images and videos captured by demonstrators in Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians gathered on 25 January 2011 to protest against the regime of then-president Hosni Mubarak. It is a collection of eye-witness accounts recording this significant piece of history from the point of view of the people on the ground. Containing over 7,000 videos and pictures, the website is the largest online archive of its kind.
To provide a visual representation of the problems that the 1.7 million Gaza Strip residents encounter on a daily basis, an Israeli NGO, Gisha, created a Virtual Tour of Gaza. Through an interactive map of the Strip containing text, images and video, viewers can see how restricted access policies have affected local infrastructure and education, as well as the economy.
Taking up the baton from Areej Khan's 'We the Women' campaign against the fatwa on women driving in Saudi Arabia, the Women2Drive campaign has used Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter to mobilise support and take a stronger stand against the ban. I
A mashup or video remix is created by taking multiple sources of video, audio or stills and mixing them up.
'Found footage' (footage got from the internet) placed strategically with other images can create a new message through their juxtaposition. Mashups are usually short and simple – prerequisites for viral media. Repurposing footage in creative ways allows humour and irreverence to breathe new life into an issue.
Case studies
ObscuraCam is an Android application that allows you to obscure faces or objects in photos or videos to keep certain information private. It allows you to black out or pixelate certain areas of an image. You can also reverse pixelate, so that only the person is visible and the background becomes blurred.
The application also allows you to remove telltale metadata such as GPS location, phone make and model, and author information.
It was developed in partnership between human rights video organisation Witness.org and the Guardian Project.
Bambuser is a live video service that allows you to capture, upload and store video from a mobile phone or webcam.
You can set up broadcasts, like channels, and share them publicly using social media, or share privately with just certain users. You can also view videos on your phone, and chat in real time.
Geo-tagging is possible. With certain platforms, you can also save a recording and upload it at a later time.
Video recording techniques
An introduction to basic campaigning how-tos. This content is based on material from our previous guides, and 10 Tactics.
An introduction to basic campaigning how-tos. This content is based on material from our previous guides, and 10 Tactics.
How to identify the people who will support your cause or help make a change
How to craft your campaign message to motivate change
How to expand and organise your network for effective outreach
Strategies and practical tips on creating effective digital advocacy campaigns.
Strategies and practical tips on creating effective digital advocacy campaigns.
How to draw attention to an issue or bypass censorship using creativity and humour
How to create an impact offline with tried and true print-based techniques
How to make your message stand out in the sea of mass media
How to transform your content into rich and detailed stories.
How to react immediately and effectively to an event happening in the present.
How to use the power of shared knowledge and community participation.
How to harness mobile phone technology to innovate and reach out to a wider audience.
There are many online services that can convert webpages to PDF files. These may be of use for printing or archiving internet pages.
A mashup or video remix is created by taking multiple sources of video, audio or stills and mixing them up.
Jitsi is a communications program that allows you to chat securely using well-supported protocols like SIP, XMPP / Jabber, AIM / ICQ, Windows Live,
ObscuraCam is an Android application that allows you to obscure faces or objects in photos or videos to keep certain information private.
The details of users using live chat provided by Yahoo, Windows, Skype and Gmail are readily made available to law enforcement agencies by the comp
The proliferation of mobile computing devices in recent years has meant that websites can no longer remain static or stick to one screen resolution
Bambuser is a live video service that allows you to capture, upload and store video from a mobile phone or webcam.
Magpi (formerly Episurveyor), is a web-based application that enables anyone to create a data entry form online, and then use this form to collect
Ushahidi is a highly flexible platform for information collection, visualisation and interactive mapping.
Scribus is a page layout program. It can be compared to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a way of tracking a company’s interactions with customers and clients.
Skype is the most popular service around for voice calls over the internet. You can also use live text chat and send files.
Cloud computing, where data and services are stored online instead of on your local computer, offers a lot of advantages.
Status.net is an internet-based piece of software for microblogging, and is an alternative to Twitter.
Brdcst.it & ifttt are two online services that provide essentially the same thing.
Screencasting software lets you record what is happening on the screen of your computer as a video file.
Because of some of the challenges of editing video on the desktop, it may be a good idea to try an online video editor.
HandBrake was created to convert DVD discs into smaller video files suitable for viewing and sharing on the Internet.
Pixlr is one of many online browser-based photo and image manipulation services. It stands out as the fastest and most flexible.
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editing application, with capabilities similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw.
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) can do just about everything that Adobe Photoshop can do, and it's free for anyone to use.
Making a CD with audio files can involve two kinds of CDs. One type is a data CD, which is suitable for reading on other computers.
Mobile Media Converter is a free software application originally created to allow the transcoding of audio from early mobile phones into a format w
Audio Boo has taken advantage of the recording and internet capabilities of smartphones and created a service which publishes audio to the internet
Info-activism examples from around the world.
To honor people and cities that had a profound effect on the course of the Syrian revolution, anonymous artists created special stamps and publishe
Journalist Noha Atef created TortureInEgypt.net in 2006 to document human rights abuses co
Egyptians remixed images of President Mubarak into popular film posters. The images spread quickly on the internet.
The Bell Bajao campaign was conceived by Mumbai-based NGO
The Zero Rupee Note is a campaign tool that Vijay Anand created through his organisati
Info-activism examples from around the world.
To honor people and cities that had a profound effect on the course of the Syrian revolution, anonymous artists created special stamps and publishe
Journalist Noha Atef created TortureInEgypt.net in 2006 to document human rights abuses co
Egyptians remixed images of President Mubarak into popular film posters. The images spread quickly on the internet.
The Bell Bajao campaign was conceived by Mumbai-based NGO
The Zero Rupee Note is a campaign tool that Vijay Anand created through his organisati
An Italian software collective, Molleindustria, in collaboration with Ame
Sheno Ya3ni (which translates as “What’s that?” or “So what?”) is a group of actors from the Arab Gulf and the Middle East who created a series of
In response to the Syrian regime's brutal suppression of the revolution, a group of artists are producing political cartoons and comic strips and p
As the Syrian regime continued its brutal suppression of the revolution, while publicly denying such violent actions, anonymous activists launched
Using text messages and mobile phone photos, local people self-organised to find and share information that wasn’t available in the media during th
Tunisian bloggers collaborated on a mapping project that revealed the presidential plane was being used for extensive personal travel.
The Targuist Sniper was an advocate who filmed police officers in Morocco repeatedly demanding bribes from motorists and published them on YouTube
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Citizens of Madagascar sent SMS messages to Foko about reports of violence by the military and police during demonstrations against a takeover of t
Digital Stories for Transformation documents stories rarely told, and rarely heard.
Wanting to raise public interest around the funding crisis for health in Sub-Saharan Africa and extend their support base to a young audience who w
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Artists and advocates from Egypt created a short animated video based on traditional Arabic stories re-told from a feminist perspective.
In Lebanon, an LGBT advocacy organisation (not to be named here for privacy reasons) created a Facebook profile with no photo and no friends to saf
This documentary film produced by Witness in partnership with AJEDI-Ka,
The Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers (APNSW) used digital video to document abusive c
Young people in Nigeria face obstables in getting accurate sexual and reproductive health information, due to stigma and taboos. A collaboration b
TheyWorkForYou is a website that connects citizens with Members of Parliament in the U
Belarusians created a group of websites they called LuNet, in mock honour of President Ale
In February 2011, after watching the late Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi give an hour-long speech in an attempt to regain control, Israeli D
The website Iamjan25.com collects images and videos captured by demonstrators in Tahrir Square,
In 2010, a community monitoring project in New Orleans led by activist group Louisiana Bucket
In order to circumvent internet censorship in China, bloggers have created a lexicon which makes puns out of words and phrases in the Chinese langu
Before the Egyptian presidential elections in May 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Morsi, proposed a 100-day plan for reinvigoratin
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