Social media and social justice

Social media and social justice movements
Contextualization, history and activism
Barry Saunders - http://engagemedia.org @barrysaunders

It's about uncovering thatwhich someone wants to keep hidden

A good-faith attempt to make sense of the world

journalism
Trade journalism – press releases + commentary
On the ground reporting
Social conversation – blogging, editorial
Data journalism
Documentary / contextual journalism

Social media
Outside West – focus is on war and disaster
On the ground reporting from locals, less parachute journalism
Outsiders – curatorial or gatewatchingjournalism, expert commentary

‘Edge of the net’
Low connectivity
Low penetration of smartphones
Low bandwidth

Indonesia
Poor internet
History of video activism via DV and VCD
Powerful history of independent journalism and activism
Needs outreach to digitize and share this material

Outreach
Burnstation and local LAN capture
Upload to outside servers
Low bandwidth social media and social networking to provide context for current debate
Archiving of important history
Contextualization of current struggles

Temporality
Temptation is to focus on the new, rapid – ignores history of technologies, struggles and ideas
Social media and online publishing extends temporality beyond speed, allows annotation, discussion, multiple perspectives, contextualization
Keeps history fresh and provides complementary coverage to mainstream coverage