Debate Shirky / Morozov. Stanford Social Innovation Review : Opinion Blog : Twitter Diplo. Marcia Stepanek reports back on the Alliance for Youth Movements conference and the power of social media in modern politics. Ever since young activists around the world started using Twitter and Facebook last year to organize massively successful pro-democracy protests against their governments—unemployed engineer Oscar Morales’ 30-day Facebook campaign that turned out 14 million against FARC in Colombia was the first such mass-scale effort—the U.S. State Department has been sitting up, taking notice, and reaching out to join the party. In the days after last fall’s presidential election, President Obama’s social media team began organizing a nonprofit coalition of these cause-wired, global youth activists, inviting the most powerful to Columbia University last December for a conference cosponsored by Facebook, Google, MTV, and Howcast Media.
Among the more than 40 youth leaders attending AYM 2009 were: Blogs and Bullets: Evaluating the Impact of New Media on Conflic. The Center of Innovation for Science, Technology, and Peacebuilding at the U.S. Institute of Peace and George Washington University's Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication hosted a public event exploring the role of new media in contested politics around the world. From Iran to Kenya to Colombia, the impact of new and social media on movements for political and social change has been the subject of much discussion, and controversy. In a USIP report (draft) released at the conference, a team of scholars from GWU, in cooperation with scholars from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and from Morningside Analytics, take a fresh theoretical, and empirical approach to answering this question.The report critically assesseses both the “cyberutopian” and “cyberskeptic” perspectives, and proposes a new framework for assessing the role of new media in contentious politics.
This event explored these themes in three panels.
Governance and the Small, Religiously Affiliated Social Service Provider. Citizens' Constitutional Forum (CCF) | Democracy and Governance. The Citizens' Constitutional Forum Limited (CCF) is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that advocates and educates for good governance, human rights, and multiculturalism in the Republic of Fiji. CCF works with women, youth, and other marginalised groups, as well as politicians and community leaders. CCF also networks with other local and international NGOs to share experiences and lessons learned on peace building, participatory democracy, human rights, and social justice. Communication Strategies: CCF draws on a variety of communication modes and strategies to empower people with knowledge on good governance, human rights, and multiculturalism. CCF's Education Program is committed to promoting peace and multiculturalism where people live in equality and respecting the rule of law.
CCF has made media productions such as the following: "The Looting", a 20-minute radio play on events of looting and destruction of property in Muaniweni, Fiji in 2000. Development Issues: Key Points: