CrowdVoice.org - Suivre les voix dissidentes
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Citizen Media: A Global Innovation Competition competition.
CrowdVoice offre une nouvelle façon d'accéder aux informations relatives aux mouvements en faveur des droits de l'homme et aux manifestations, de les partager,de les modérer et de les organiser.
A propos de vous
A propos de vous
Prénom
Esra'a
Nom
Al Shafei
URL Twitter
URL Facebook
A propos de votre organisation
Nom
Mideast Youth
Site Web
Pays
Bahrain, CAP
Pays dans lesquels ce projet crée un impact social
Votre organisation est-elle une
organisation à but non lucratif
Depuis combien de temps votre organisation opère-t-elle ?
1‐5 années
Les informations que vous fournissez ici seront utilisées pour combler toutes les parties de votre profil qui ont été laissées en blanc, comme les intérêts,les informations sur l'organisation, et le site Web. Aucune information de contact sera rendu publique. S'il vous plaît décochez ici si vous ne voulez pas que cela se produise..
Innovation
Titre du formulaire de participation
CrowdVoice.org - Suivre les voix dissidentes
Sélectionnez la phase qui s'applique le mieux à votre solution
Création (un pilote qui vient juste de démarrer)
Depuis combien de temps le projet existe-t-il ?
En place depuis moins d'un an
Le besoin : décrivez le besoin auquel répond votre solution et la taille/dynamique de la ou des communautés auxquelles vous vous adressez.
CrowdVoice.org is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information. Users create topics for current causes and demonstrations. Users worldwide then curate specific content on these issues from various sources (news, blogs, videos, photos and social media) - often from on-the-ground sources. CrowdVoice gives both active participants and visitors front-row seats to current events that are happening worldwide, allowing even more people to become engaged spectators. It continues to raise awareness especially about the many issues that go unnoticed by amplifying the participants' voices. It also helps to quicken and organize the dissemination of assorted information and current news.
La solution : expliquez en quoi consiste votre solution et dans quelle mesure elle est innovante. Comment comptez-vous mettre votre solution à disposition des utilisateurs et des bénéficiaires ? Soyez précis !
CrowdVoice made its mark with thousands of visitors when the revolutionary protests began in Tunisia and Egypt. Users of these pages were quick to curate various content, especially videos and photos from local sources. Collecting and organizing local videos and photos is important especially in cases such as the Libyan uprising, where the media blackout meant that even mainstream news outlets relied on YouTube videos and photos from local sources to accompany their reports. Because of this, CrowdVoice proved to be a useful tool for journalists as well.
Le modèle : donnez un exemple détaillé de la manière dont votre solution fait la différence grâce à l'utilisation des technologies de l'information et des médias.
When the protests were taking place here in Bahrain, there was a media blackout and widespread internet censorship. Journalists were not allowed near the protest areas and foreign journalists were not allowed into the countries. Bloggers were arrested, beaten and interrogated. CrowdVoice collected an endless amount of resources that was then used by The Guardian, the LA Times, UN Dispatch, amongst others who credited the site for finding important sources of info from witnesses. Al Jazeera also profiled CrowdVoice on a program about how crowdsourcing and organizing this type of content is crucial to compile evidence of abuse in the protests in Syria. Fast Company also listed the young site in an article titled "Google's Journalism Prize and the 5 Groups who should win it" for its short-term and long-term influences on how projects like these can impact the future of journalism.
Le marché : qui sont vos pairs et vos concurrents ? Comment ces acteurs peuvent-ils gêner votre réussite ou votre croissance ?
We partner with as many people as we can find, and have a healthy relationship with both Storify and Storyful, the latter of which we are exploring an extended partnership with as we both focus on current events. The biggest difference is that both of these services use a method that is not crowdsourced by the public, and rely on users to curate very specific content from one user's perspective, instead of a larger approach that we believe is faster and more balanced in its scope. Instead of picking only a handful of sources, we also rely on thousands per page, where users have the ability to view them by filtering the types of content they'd wish to explore.
Impact social
This Entry is about (Issues)
Point de départ : nous voulons que vous nous racontiez le moment où l'idée vous est venue. Racontez où et quand le ou les fondateurs ont compris dans quelle mesure cette solution pouvait changer le monde.
As digital activists who have been running grassroots initiatives for years, amplifying voices of dissent proved increasingly difficult. We thought that perhaps the popularity of sites like Twitter and Facebook might make this easier, but it partly added to our frustrations, as the information spread throughout these services was overwhelming and disorganized. Organizing the content was time-consuming and with more information it kept becoming more difficult to stream what was worth reading and what wasn't. During these human rights campaigns, we were exhausted and overworked. We needed to improve the way we were receiving and sharing news with our members and readers, and we felt the best way to do so was to involve an open community that could submit pieces of news that grabbed their attention and which they wanted to share. We created CrowdVoice to address this very need, because the tools already available to us were increasingly insufficient. We realized that apart from organizing the content, it was also important to diversify sources, as it's crucial for people to constantly be exposed to various perspectives on a particular issue.
Précisez l'ampleur et la portée de l'impact social de votre solution à ce jour.
CrowdVoice was initially intended to be for the Middle East, as this is where we are based and where most of our campaigns are focused. However, weeks after we launched, activists from countries such as Russia, China, Kenya and others were requesting invites as they felt the project was useful to them as well. The site was used in prominent papers in Russia, Germany and others and used as resource on where to find the best information about particular causes, namely the Arab Spring revolutions. The pages were shared thousands of times via Twitter and Facebook during these events and was also facing censorship from the governments of Yemen and Bahrain, however we offered our users ways to bypass this censorship and they were able to continue their participation.
Quel est l'impact envisagé de votre projet dans les un à cinq ans à venir ? Votre idée peut-elle être reproduite ? Si oui, comment ?
CrowdVoice is open sourced, so people can use this concept and application to repurpose it however they want. It's already been the inspiration for several organizations in the works, such as PenPal News. The application doesn't have to be used for just human rights or activism, the source code is also being applied on a sports website to crowdsource news about sports events worldwide. We have an established community that we're eager to continue growing through things such as mobile applications, continued improvements on our user interface, as well as better ways to integrate with the growing number of social media sources, and finding a solid business model to sustain future development.
Les projets gagnants sont ceux qui expliquent clairement comment ils comptent assurer et maintenir leur croissance. Indiquez votre plan de développement de l'impact sur six mois.
Les tâches de 6 mois
Tâche 1
Mobile apps and making the site compatible for mobile usage and the iPad
Tâche 2
Better and more flexible widget for embedding purposes
Tâche 3
Toolbar for people to implement on their own sites, personalized for the causes that they follow on CrowdVoice
Et maintenant, voyez plus grand ! Indiquez votre plan de développement de l'impact sur 12 mois.
Les tâches de 12 mois
Tâche 1
Business model (customizing the app for other orgs or businesses for a fee)
Tâche 2
Bigger improvements on UI (more features)
Tâche 3
Better way to organize the topics by the languages they're available in
Combien de personnes ont été touchées par votre projet ?
1,001 - 10,000
Combien de personnes pourraient être touchées par votre projet au cours des trois prochaines années ?
Plus de 10,000
Viabilité
Expliquez comment votre entreprise, programme, service ou produit est structuré.
ONG
Quels obstacles ont freiné la réussite de votre projet jusqu'à présent ? Comment prévoyez-vous de surmonter ces problèmes et les autres à mesure que votre projet se développera ?
Censorship really slowed down our growth and while it is possible to bypass it, it still requires a lot of marketing and a lot of networking with the activists who make use of this platform and providing some level of training on the various ways to access this site. We're going to be implementing a way to do this much more simply, such as hosting the site at different IPs so that it gets more challenging to censor, amongst other potential solutions.
Comment voyez-vous l'évolution des secteurs des technologies de l'information et des médias sur les 10 prochaines années ? Comment votre solution s'adaptera-t-elle à cet environnement changeant ? De quelle manière votre solution pourrait-elle entraîner ce changement ?
At CrowdVoice we are huge believers in the power of information-technology as we have been implementing all our solutions online and we do our best to quickly adapt to all the recent tools and platforms and integrating the ones most useful to our mission. This calls for constant iterations and improvements and building upon the existing platform, which we have been doing for many months.
L'échec n'est pas toujours une option. Si votre solution ne parvient pas à prendre de la vitesse au cours des deux prochaines années, quelles sont les autres applications de l'idée que vous pourriez explorer ?
There are certain things that haven't worked with the very first version of CrowdVoice, we spent weeks making a lot of changes, and we spent the months after that making even more changes until the site gains more traction and membership. We'll just continue doing that until we get closer and closer to our goals. Failure is not an option for us and this is a big idea that has already proved its significance, so if at any time we lose traction we will simply keep growing aggressively until we earn it back. It's our philosophy never to give up on a big idea.
Donnez des détails sur vos choix en expliquant votre plan de financement.
CrowdVoice has come a long way with very little funding. When no one believed in the idea of CrowdVoice or agreed to fund it, I emptied out my life's savings to get the prototype up and running because it was a solution for a need that I really needed. Since then CrowdVoice experienced tremendous growth and Mideast Youth (the parent organization of CrowdVoice) has gotten funding from respected organizations such as the Omidyar Network. We're using the funds to sustain the growth of our projects by providing our skills to other organizations and companies for a fee, as well as building for-profit applications (such as Naseemi.com) and exploring other business models or potentially lucrative partnerships, such as the one we secured with the sports startup that is using the CrowdVoice app.
Quels sont vos différents partenariats ?
70 mots ou moins.
Quel type d'équipe (salariés, volontaires, etc.) vous permettra d'atteindre les objectifs de croissance décrits à la section Impact social ?
As a primary team, there's 4 of us, two of us manage user participation, one does outreach and moderation, and one does product management (taking care of hosting, development, security and product growth.) The number of volunteers however are numerous and we rely on their ongoing support by continuing to grow our community of active participants.
Changemakers est un espace de collaboration et de soutien. Indiquez les ressources communautaires dont vous auriez besoin pour développer durablement votre initiative. Sélectionnez toutes les réponses qui s'appliquent
Investissement, Marketing/médias, Collaboration/réseautage.
Indiquez les ressources que vous pourriez offrir pour aider d'autres initiatives. Sélectionnez toutes les réponses qui s'appliquent
Recherche/informations, Innovation/idées.
Détaillez les besoins ou les offres d'aide indiqués ci-dessus et/ou suggérez d'autres catégories de soutien qui ne figurent pas dans la liste.
100 mots ou moins (800 caractères)
Résumé
Définissez votre entreprise, programme, service ou produit en une ou deux phrases courtes.
CrowdVoice.org is a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing information.
Expliquez en quoi votre solution est innovante en une ou deux phrases courtes.
CrowdVoice offre une nouvelle façon d'accéder aux informations relatives aux mouvements en faveur des droits de l'homme et aux manifestations, de les partager,de les modérer et de les organiser.
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Commentaires
Esra,
I went through your site, and am impressed by the work you are doing. I recently had the opportunity at the Global Media Forum 2011 in Germany to meet a few bloggers/citizen journalists who were active at the onset of the Arab Spring. In my conversations with them, there was a common theme of how effective the citizen media can be when living with oppressive regimes, and to find a way around censorship. I am sure your solution carries impact in such an environment.
My question is regarding your plan for mobile apps. We at Gawaahi have been thinking of creating such an app, but wonder about access. Having said that, we thought it may be possible for those who can afford the app to record testimonies (as we do) of those who cannot get their voices across to the power-bearers.
Is access something you have been thinking about, and if yes, what is your solution?
Look forward to your reply.
Naveen
Hey Naveen! Sorry, I must've missed this comment. Hope you excuse the delay in getting back to you!
Access to mobile apps is always an issue, but over time it becomes less of an issue as these devices become more and more widespread. I think the challenge is primarily compatibility with the types of devices that the majority of people would have access to vs. the fact that they would have any access at all to such tools. I also think the Arab world in particular proved itself as "connected" considering the number of people who were actively publishing videos and photos from their mobile phones as more and more phones provided such swift access to these features. 10 years ago the protests here wouldn't have been as documented as they are today - completely bypassing state censorship and being televised to millions of people worldwide. I am sure we would have completely different footage of the Gulf Wars if people had the kind of access that they have today.
Access to mobile apps is always an issue, but over time it becomes less of a problem as these devices become more and more widespread (which is the case.) I think the other half is figuring out what to do when that ideal access level is reached, and that's just as significant. So to answer your question, yes we do think about access very often! But we think more about the level of access that already exists, and the kinds of powerful tools we can build for these users.
Hello Esra & Naveen,
If you are looking for access, we are the solution for you. On our globally innovative, technology-enabled, citizen media platform the local becomes global!
Kindly, take few moments to see our entry in this competition. 'Bolo'-The Human Voice Initiative (where local becomes global).
Regards,
Kamran Iqbal
Hi Esra,
The site is looking great! I love the integration with Facebook/Twitter. I was curious if you could give more details on how the site was used by newspapers and journalists? Also - what do you project your volunteer and funding needs will be for this project to expand in the next year?
Ravi
Hi Ravi, thanks for checking out the site and for your interest!
Sure, I will use Bahrain as an example for now. When the protests took place here, there was a media blackout. Journalists were not allowed into the countries and the ones that were here, had limited access to protest areas. For this reason, protesters relied on getting the information out via YouTube, tweets, images, blog posts, and the like. Some would include these in a CrowdVoice page that contains all of these sources in one place. This link would then be sent to journalists, tweeted out, blogged about, people would have the page widgets on their sidebar, etc. A reporter on The Guardian who was doing the live updates on the Bahrain protests said this about the site:
"Crowdvoice.org has pictures of teargas being used in Bahrain today and of injured protesters. It is a good resource for photos and videos of protests as well as links to news stories and reports."
Here it is being used on the UN Dispatch site and what the writer said:
"Crowdvoice’s Human Rights Crackdown in Bahrain is a must visit site for images and videos of the bravery of protesters set against brutality and depravity of Bahrain’s security forces."
The writer was crediting CrowdVoice for finding the protest videos and images, which were hidden between thousands of tweets or were otherwise not yet picked up by the mainstream media. It shows the power of amplifying this material, to serve as evidence of a human rights abuse, etc.
Al Jazeera also featured CrowdVoice.org as an important tool in crowdsourcing protest videos from Syria, and on its shows it featured a few videos from CrowdVoice on it. They also noted on one of their programs at Al Jazeera English that CrowdVoice was collecting important videos of women protesters in Yemen.
The LA Times also credited CrowdVoice in finding some of the videos from the Bahrain protests which they featured in their own reporting.
There were also links of CrowdVoice material from Russian and Italian papers online.
And on a blog called Cartography, which contains blog posts about the Arab Spring, etc, a writer said this:
"CrowdVoice is one of the best sites currently available for keeping track of recent developments in human rights movements around the world"
It shows how bloggers also make use of it, along with journalists, activists and anyone else looking for valuable information that would otherwise be difficult to find.
As for our volunteer needs, the site has been gradually growing with more content, thanks to our users. With more content comes the challenge of finding more moderators to help us maintain the relevance and accuracy of that content. As for funding, our budget is flexible because our platform is open source which allows other developers to adopt it, build upon it or repurpose it for their own needs or causes. However, the more funding we have, the more options we have in terms of new functionality (toolbars, faster engine, ability to feature more than just existing content on the web) as well as people we can bring on board to commit to ongoing development - which means we will have a much more solid product on our hands as a result, as well as a mobile optimized version. Wwe are currently working on a CrowdVoice version specifically for the iPad as it was a simpler challenge to tackle, but we're really eager for mobile compatibility.
We're also making various improvements to the site in the coming weeks to make the frontpage less overwhelming and easier to find content based on location or specific causes, and all of this could get done significantly better and faster if we had sufficient funding on our hands.
I hope that answers your question!
I'm a social activist and working for human rights, global peace, harmony,and education to all for a period of twenty years. I'm campaigning against death penalty. I'm very glad to join with you. Please visit www.facebook.com/saeedfalahi, www.facebook.com/haiyaalalfalahmovement, www.twitter.com/saeedfalahi
with well wishes,
regards,
saeed khan falahi, India.
Hello Saeed! We'd love to be of service to your cause. Feel free to sign up at CrowdVoice.org and creating a new 'voice' for the struggle against the death penalty in India. This will help gather information for your movement to increase further awareness.
Thanks a lot for yours quick response. I am going to do the same as you have stated.
Thanks once again,
Saeed Khan Falahi, India.
Thanks Saeed for your interest!
you are welcome. Yours support and cooperation is highly needed.
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