The Practical Radical
Whose Tweet Counts Anyways? A response to Malcolm Gladwell.
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Recently the twitter/facebooker/bloggers sphere has all been a-twitter about Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point fame’s slam of social media as a tool for advocacy. Seems Gladwell does not believe that social media creates very strong “links”, which especially effects those who would wish to use twitter as an advocacy tool. He states that the twitter revolutions that happened in Moldova or Iran were overstated; siting the fact that there are very few twitter users in these countries.He gives some detailed overviews of how REAL advocacy happens in the form of recounting key events in the civil rights movement.
I agree with him on some counts – technological advances in my mind are always overhyped – and there is nothing more hyped than facbook and twitter. Yet, I think that his analysis is flawed in one way -it is written almost solely from a developed world perspective. Yes, we in the developed world might be spoilt with our ubiquitous bandwidth, but it is not in the developed world that social media is having the biggest impact. It is the developing world, those places where millions upon millions of people are queuing to buy mobile phones, getting on the internet and social media, and using those phones for all there worth. I have written a few posts on the impact of mobile technologies which you can link to here.
So I have posted my response on the Social Capital blog (a great blog by the way). Here is a brief on the blog and my response to it.
Why the revolution won’t be tweeted
Twitter Revolution – Flickr Photo by FrauleinSchiller
Malcolm Gladwell has an interesting column in the October 4, 2010 New Yorker called “Small Change.”
Gladwell asserts that claims of Twitter’s role in various uprisings in developing countries (like Moldova or Iran) have been exaggerated. He cited Evgeny Morozov, a Stanford-based scholar who notes that “Twitter had scant internal significance in Moldova, a country where very few Twitter accounts exist.” And he cites Anne Applebaum who suggested in the Washington Post that the protest “may well have been a bit of stage-craft cooked up by the government.” Golnaz Esfandiari in Foreign Policy wrote in Summer 2010 about Iran: “It is time to get Twitter’s role in the events of Iran right…Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran.”
Stupid Pet Tricks … Google style
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Lost your watch? Your flight itinerary (do you really know where your passport is)? Want to know the what you can get $1 US in Iranian Rial (other than thrown in jail)?
Here are some Google style stupid pet tricks, enjoy!
What time is it??
Status of my flight??
How much is my money worth in Iranian Rial?
Thanks to lifehacker.com for these …
MapAfghan Update: New Maps from Afghanistanelectiondata.org
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I decided to do a specific blog on mapping of Afghan data, especially now since Afghanistanelectiondata.org has put together all the open source data that is related to the Afghan elections into one nicely laid out page.
I think this is a very nice example of what can be done again with keeping electoral processes transparent. We saw something in the same vein with the maps during the Kenyan referendum (see my blog post Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style). What is as well exciting is that the data is provided – gotta love that opensource!
The new maps are really interesting. As well as the basic landcover maps, there is one on ethnic groups. experiences of corruption and female candidates. I have put a few snapshots of the maps below. If you click on them you will go to the actual map.
Ethnic Groups
2009 Experience of Corruption
I have as well left the old blog post on the Afghan insurgency in this blog – it is an interesting reference point on how far mapping has come in so short a time.
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Mapping the War in Afghanistan
This is an interesting map visualization of the presence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan from 2007 to August 2009. The maps are based on insurgent activity reports. They give a probable snapshot of “how things are going” in the war (not well me thinks). The use of maps combined with reporting is informative over time, though clearly there are possible issues with both data validity and overlap in time periods.
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during 2007 – November 2008
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan between January and November 2008
- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during January – August 2009
** Taken from the International Council on Security and Development website. The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) is an international policy think tank working to combine grassroots research and policy innovation at the intersections of security, development, counter-narcotics and public health issues.
Tags: Afghanistan, Afghanistanelectiondata.org, Mapping, opensource, OSM, politics, Taliban, The International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), transparency, United States, War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Warfare and Conflict
Speed Bump Girl – $15,000 worth of Hype
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Speed Bump Girl
Speed kills, and speed is especially dangerous in relation to children. A Canadian organization has recognized this and is working with the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School in West Vancouver, British Columbia to test an innovative way to slow people down.
Dubbed by ABCnews “the Speed Bump Girl“, BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation and Preventable.ca have created a 3D optical illusion of a little girl chasing a ball on the road in front of the school. There has been a huge outcry online about how this image is absurd and dangerous, with many critics writing that the image could make people slam on the brakes or even swerve off the road.
Unfortunately, what is illusory is Speed Bump Girl’s supposed 3D effect, what is not illusory is the projected $15,000 cost for the project.
I went down to École Pauline Johnson just the other day to check out this project. Please watch my video and see what I found.
Mobile Phones Improve Health Services in Africa
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Having worked with youth to establish One Stop Youth Centres in Kampala, Uganda, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Nairobi, Kenya, and Kigali, Rwanda, I have seen the power of mobile phones both to convene people as well as disseminate important information. What I find really exciting is to see how quickly and to what success mobile phones are being adopted in the health field, especially around the prevention of HIV/AIDS, an issue so important to youth in this region.
Here are four posts from the last 24 hours on mobile phones and health from the Urban Health blog of USAID:
- Mobile learning for HIV/AIDS healthcare in peri-urban clinics
- Mobile phone-based interventions India
- Mobile direct observation treatment for tuberculosis patients
- Uganda – Challenges in Using Mobile Phones for Data Collection
Usahidi – Mapping the world one SMS at a time
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Usahidi - Mapping the world one SMS at a time
I have been struggling to get my head around Usahidi, the Swahili for “witness” or “testimony.”
I knew it was created during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. I had many friends who went through that terrible time, and felt equally horrified and powerless.
Tags: #ushahidi, @openstreetmap, Africa, Crisis Management, Erik Hersman, kenya, kibera, map kibera, Mapping, Text messaging, UN-HABITAT, Urban Planning
Doug Ragan
practicalradical
The Practical Radical 