Activist Mapping

Slide 1: Activist Mapping Erik Hersman erik@ushahidi.com

Slide 3: Stuff I’m Excited About

Slide 4: geotate.com

Slide 5: AfricaMap http://africamap.harvard.edu

Slide 6: buglabs.net

Slide 7: diydrones.com

Slide 8: Kenya Elections 2007 Getting from here To here

Slide 9: President Mwai Kibaki Raila Odinga incumbent opposition

Slide 10: Ethnicities vs Election

Slide 11: Media Blackout traditional media blogs/social media

Slide 12: Ory Okolloh kenyanpundit.com

Slide 13: 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

Slide 14: 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?

Slide 15: 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

Slide 19: 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

Slide 20: juliana rotich erik hersman ory okolloh david kobia

Slide 21: On Activism

Slide 26: Activist Issue Antagonist

Slide 27: It turns out activists are just everyday people, most with limited technical acumen.

Slide 28: Global Activist Maps

Slide 29: Crisis in Darfur - http://www.ushmm.org/maps/projects/darfur

Slide 30: Sudan ICC War Criminals - http://www.wantedforwarcrimes.org

Slide 31: Global Voices Online Censorship - http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/projects/maps

Slide 32: Tunisia Prisons Map - http://kitab.nl/tunisianprisonersmap

Slide 33: Bahrain Land Rights (PDF) - http://elijahzarwan.net/blog/?p=268

Slide 34: Chicago Idealist Network - http://www.chicagoidealistnetwork.org/2007/03/spaces.html

Slide 35: before after Operation Murambatsvina (Zimbabwe) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina

Slide 36: Sokwanele “All Breaches” - http://www.sokwanele.com/map/all_breaches

Slide 37: Green Peace - http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/whaling/great-whale-trail/map

Slide 38: Planet Action - http://www.planet-action.org

Slide 39: I Love Mountains - http://www.ilovemountains.org

Slide 40: Mapping for human rights violations vs Mapping for activism (activists are not the authority)

Slide 41: Think about how you can use your skills to help in a cause that is important to you

Slide 42: Thank You