Activist Mapping
Erik Hersman
erik@ushahidi.com

Stuff I’m Excited About

geotate.com

AfricaMap
http://africamap.harvard.edu

buglabs.net

diydrones.com

Kenya Elections 2007
Getting from here
To here

President Mwai Kibaki Raila Odinga
incumbent opposition

Ethnicities vs Election

Media Blackout
traditional media blogs/social media

Ory Okolloh
kenyanpundit.com

Our Goals
• Create a way for everyday Kenyans to
report incidents of violence that they saw
• Create an archive of news and reports
around those same events
• Show where the majority of the violence
was happening

Building It
• Detailed geospatial data is hard to come
by in Africa
• How much should it be web-based in a
mobile phone culture?
• Mobile phones - getting a full report in 140
characters is not easy
• What data points do we need?

Ushahidi Calendar
27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 27 27
idea, production, launch blogging and media
violence
Dec. 27 - Kenyan Elections Jan. 10 - 75% of Kenyan bloggers write about Ushahidi
Dec. 27 - Dec. 30 - Period of uncertainty Jan. 12 - MSM pickup: BBC, NPR, Guardian, etc...
Dec. 30 - Jan. 1 - Media blackout
Jan. 3 - The idea of Ushahidi
Jan. 5 - Ushahidi discussed
Jan. 6 - Ushahidi prototype
Jan. 9 - Ushahidi launched
Jan.10 - Added functionality (RSS, SMS, etc...)
Jan. 10 - Kenyan SMS shortcode partnership
Jan. 22 - Ushahidi blog added
Jan. 26 - Ushahidi timeline feature

Lessons Learned
• The importance of mapping accuracy
• Data poisoning - what happens when
your antagonist starts using it?
• Verification is difficult
• Clarify why it was created and make that
inescapably obvious
• Create a feedback loop to end users

juliana rotich erik hersman ory okolloh david kobia

On Activism

Activist Issue Antagonist

It turns out activists are just everyday people,
most with limited technical acumen.

Global Activist Maps

Crisis in Darfur - http://www.ushmm.org/maps/projects/darfur

Sudan ICC War Criminals - http://www.wantedforwarcrimes.org

Global Voices Online Censorship - http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/maps

Tunisia Prisons Map - http://kitab.nl/tunisianprisonersmap

Bahrain Land Rights (PDF) - http://elijahzarwan.net/blog/?p=268

Chicago Idealist Network - http://www.chicagoidealistnetwork.org/2007/03/spaces.html

before after
Operation Murambatsvina (Zimbabwe) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina

Sokwanele “All Breaches” - http://www.sokwanele.com/map/all_breaches

Green Peace - http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/whaling/great-whale-trail/map

Planet Action - http://www.planet-action.org

I Love Mountains - http://www.ilovemountains.org

Mapping for human rights violations
vs
Mapping for activism
(activists are not the authority)

Think about how you can use your skills to help
in a cause that is important to you

Thank You