The problem is the media just doesnt get online organising. They look at it and think, Oh, clicktivism! They just dont understand it, [...] This stuff really does make a difference. You can raise more money online faster than any other model. You can mobilise people offline in the streets and protests faster. Speed is certainly a quality that Avaaz has displayed in abundance – a product, Patel says, of its results-oriented culture. [...] The group was quicker on the draw in responding to the first signs of the protest movement than most aid organisations, even than most media outlets that pride themselves in getting speedily to difficult places. To begin with, Avaaz sent a team of staff organisers to Lebanon after spotting the first signs of a nascent protest movement in Syria. Contact was then made with Syrian activists inside the country, and go-betweens recruited, notably Wissam Tarif, a highly respected Syrian pro-democracy leader who is widely consulted by journalists and senior western diplomats. From there its involvement in the Syrian Arab spring drew it steadily further and further into the conflict. First off Avaaz sent in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of communications equipment – satellite phones and internet connections known as BGANs – that gave the protesters a link to the outside world. As with earlier Arab spring engagements in Tunisia and Libya, they realised that equipment alone was not enough: the protesters needed to know how to use it if they were to be effective. So Avaaz sent in trainers who could give grounding in how to use the satphones as well as basic training in citizen journalism. Verification was a key element, says Patel. We could get stuff out, but the media didnt know what they were looking at, or couldnt be sure where it had come from. So we began playing the middle man, verifying information. -how miserably they failed. theguardian/world/2012/mar/02/avaaz-activist-group-syria
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:33:43 +0000
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