1. #youthmedialab #youthmedialabsilla
2nd MEDIALAB
Training Course
Silla, 15th May 12

2. Bring them to the action
Mobilise people
Source: informationactivism.org

3. Strong message, clear
objectives and good plan.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- Host a competition for short videos about your issue
and ask people to vote on their favourites. You can
hold a screening in a public building and invite local
media.
- 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.

4. Strong message, clear
objectives and good plan.
CASE STUDY:
In 2009, MySociety launched a campaign which
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”.
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.

5. Someone is whatching
Witness and record
Source: informationactivism.org

6. People have the power to
capture as they happen.
IDEAS:
- You don’t need always 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.
- 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.
- 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, etc.

7. People have the power to
capture as they happen.
CASE STUDY:
Two short videos showing the death of Neda Agha-
Soltan during Iran’s post-election protests attained
worldwide attention in June 2009.
Tools used: Mobile phone cameras, email, YouTube,
Twitter, Facebook, blogs
Reach: Hundreds of thousands to millions of people
worldwide.
Links to learn more:
- New York Times blog: http://bit.ly/TqGnG
- Global Voices: http://bit.ly/FK51f
- WITNESS: http://bit.ly/gtyPzABCNT

8. Picture it
Visualice your message
Source: informationactivism.org

9. Communicating creatively
across different languages.
IDEAS:
- Make your own version of a tourist or city map also
includes information about your specific campaign
issue. Hand it out to visitors to the city, students or
others who can be mobilised to take action.
- If you don’t know how to make an animated video,
you can make a video from a series of still photos,
adding music, subtitles and voice-over to unite the
images around one story.
- Design graphic stickers that can be used to re-label
products with information that corporations or
institutions don’t readily make available.
- 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.

10. Communicating creatively
across different languages.
CASE STUDY:
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”.
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.

11. No one is listening
Amplify personal stories
Source: informationactivism.org

12. Resonates when people
are not being consulted.
IDEAS:
- Stories can be told with objects as well as words.
Blank Noise posted photos of clothing that women
were wearing when they were harassed.
- 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.
- Tagging, or labeling a piece of online content with a
keyword, can let you aggregate many stories on one
website.
- Many people in different regions can each
contribute a short video or sequence of photos to
make one longer video.

13. Resonates when people
are not being consulted.
CASE STUDY:
To draw attention to laws banning women from
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.
Tools used: Facebook, Flickr, YouTube. Stickers can be
downloaded from Flickr and printed. The website
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.

14. Provoke a smile
Just add humour
Source: informationactivism.org

15. Good for reaching out to
diverse audiences.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- In addition to creating parody websites you can
make parody news websites that critique the
censored media, and also give practical information
and facts in a clever or surprising way.

16. Good for reaching out to
diverse audiences.
CASE STUDY:
Españistan, The real state bubble and the Spanish
crisis in comic version, by Aleix Salo.
Aleix Salo prepares the output of a comic strip set in
the Spanish real estate bubble and the subsequent
crisis Spain suffers from 2008.
For its launch has ben created a very interesting video
that illustrates the process lived in Spain, and that in
2011 It is still suffered.

17. Understad your connections
Manage your contacts
Source: informationactivism.org

18. Connections, relationships
and networks.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- Create a support-base map, of where your
supporters are most concentrated, based on
information they provided you with consent.
- Help supporters to organise their own campaign
events by offering to connect them with other people
in your campaign near to them.
- 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.

19. Connections, relationships
and networks.
CASE STUDY:
Kleercut is a campaign implemented by Greenpeace
to end the use of virgin wood fi bre 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.
Tools used: Drupal for the website and CiviCRM to
manage contacts. More tools became available, like
Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter.
Reach: Over fi ve years of the campaign, 30,000
people signed up, with most in North America.
Website was available in English and French.

20. Make it simple
How to use complex data
Source: informationactivism.org

21. Present and share complex
information.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- You can use maps to make a network map, that
illustrates the power relationships and transactions
between corporations, individuals, donors, and
others.

22. Present and share complex
information.
CASE STUDY:
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.
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.

23. Report it live
Use collective intelligence
Source: informationactivism.org

24. Reporting public events
and responding.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

25. Reporting public events
and responding.
CASE STUDY:
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.
Tools used: Ushahidi, mobile phones, Facebook,
website.
Reach: National. Over 500 nominations in one month,
with peaks of 80 per day after Kenyan press coverage.

26. Technology that listens
Let people ask the questions
Source: informationactivism.org

27. Getting complete
information to people.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- At an action or demonstration, ask supporters to
send a text message if they would like you to send
them alerts during the action: about police activity,
safety measures they can take, and legal or medical
support.

28. Getting complete
information to people.
CASE STUDY:
Recomendaciones para huelguistas y piquetes
http://elteleoperador.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/reco
mendaciones-para-huelguistas-y.html

29. Reveal the truth
Investigate and expose
Source: informationactivism.org

30. Identify, share and act on
evidence.
IDEAS:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

31. Identify, share and act on
evidence.
CASE STUDY:
Members of the Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers
(APNSW) used digital video to document abusive
conditions and human rights violations reported by
sex workers detained in so-called ’rehabilitation’
centers in Cambodia. While local media and politicians
claimed that these centers 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.
Tools used: Flip video cameras, digital video editing
software (Final Cut Pro), blip.tv, YouTube.
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.

32. informationactivism.org

33. Juan Ángel Conca
@jaconca
jaconca@gmail.com
@youthmedialab
www.youthmedialab.eu