Fahamu is committed to using ICTs to support the development and growth of a powerful social justice movement that is committed to self determination in Africa. But given poor access to the internet in most of Africa, such ambitions have not been easy to realise. I will be discussing Fahamu's experiences in Africa of using ICTs in distance learning, the development of Pambazuka News, podcasts, film documentaries, mobile phone initiatives, and the book publishing program ‘Pambazuka Press', and will touch upon some of our ambitions in the future, especially in the the development of an interactive community on the Pambazuka 2.0 platform that is currently being developed.

Firoze Manji, a Kenyan with more than 30 years experience in international development, health and human rights, is founding Executive Director of Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organisation with bases in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and the UK. Fahamu aims to support the building of progressive pan-African social movements by stimulating debate, discussion and analysis, building through training a culture of respect for human rights and human dignity, supporting social justice advocacy and publishing and disseminating information using both new and conventional media. 

Manji has previously worked as Africa Programme Director for Amnesty International; Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK); and Regional Representative for Health Sciences in Eastern and Southern Africa for the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

He is a member of the editorial board of "Development in Practice", a member of the steering group on the campaign for the ratification of the protocol on the rights of women in Africa (Solidarity for African Women's Rights), and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy, Goldsmiths College, University of London.  
 
As founder and editor in chief of the prize-winning pan African social justice newsletter and website Pambazuka News, he oversees the production by a pan-African community of more than 1800 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators, with a readership estimated at over 500,000, and a website with more than 55,000 articles and news items on social justice in Africa.

Also he is commissioning editor of Pambazuka Press / Fahamu Books, a pan African publisher of books on freedom and justice in Africa.

Currently a Visiting Fellow in International Human Rights at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, Manji holds a PhD and MSc from the University of London, and a BDS from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The rise of Web 2.0 means that anyone with internet access can become a publisher. Throughout the developing world, people have used these tools to call attention to political movements, natural disasters, and to under-reported news stories. While more voices from the developing world can - potentially - be heard, it's unclear that citizen media is changing the news agenda, bringing important, undercovered stories to the forefront. Based on his experiences with citizen media network, Global Voices, Ethan Zuckerman will talk about online speech in the developing world and the complicated relationship between citizen and professional media in reporting international news.

Ethan Zuckerman is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. His research focuses on the distribution of attention in mainstream and new media, the use of technology for international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists.

With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Global Voices showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages, publishing editions in twenty languages.

In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously Ethan helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. He blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog and lives in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts, USA with his wife, son and a small, fluffy cat.

Patrick Meier will be presenting the preliminary results of his dissertation research that draws on a nested analysis approach. The results are from the first half of his dissertation research--namely a large-N study to determine whether technology  access is a statistically significant predictor of protest frequency in countries under repressive rule.

Patrick Meier is a PhD Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI). Patrick's dissertation research seeks to determine whether local access to new media and digital technologies changes the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil resistance movements. He also co-authored an applied econometric study related to his research for Harvard University's Berkman Center for the Study of Internet and Society. Patrick has consulted on projects directly related to his dissertation research. Patrick is on the Boards of Ushahidi, DigiActive and Digital Democracy, and a graduate of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Patrick has presented his research worldwide and is regularly interviewed by specialized and popular press.

http://www.thetibetconnection.org/ournextprogram.html

Summary of the Seminar
Patrick Meier, a PhD Candidate at Fletcher School, Tufts University introduced his research to investigate the relationship between increased availability of ICTs and popular resistance movements.

A key question in the relatively new field of digital activism is whether new technologies will help or hinder efforts to remove authoritarian governments. What we tend to see are patterns of repression by regimes, followed by circumvention as activists find ways to work around new restrictions. The ability to learn and adapt would seem to be crucial in determining whether activists or governments gain the upper hand.

When studying this area more closely, a number of research gaps emerge. Firstly, many studies use ‘information revolution' and ‘internet' interchangeably; this fails to recognize the importance of other technologies such as mobile phones. Secondly, discourses from complexity science that model how networks operate have not yet been brought into this literature. Thirdly, since the majority of studies to date are qualitative in nature, there is a real lack of quantitative analysis. The result is that we are left with a collection of anecdotes, some demonstrating that technology has promoted activism, and others detailing how repressive regimes are using technology successfully for their own ends. This anecdotal approach produces little clarity about the relationship between technology and political activism.

One of the aims of Patrick's dissertation research is to help fill this quantitative void. He is currently conducting a large-N study that will try to answer the question: are ICTs a statistically significant predictor of protest activism? The study looks at 38 countries between1990 and 2007. Countries were selected using two criteria: first, whether they were defined as having a score in the range -5 to -10 on the Polity IV measure of autocratic tendency; second, whether they were featured amongst the prominent examples in the existing literature about digital activism. To measure levels of protest activity, Patrick will be using a data set that uses Reuters newswire reports. Control variables include population, levels of unemployment, internal wars and elections.

Preliminary findings are quite counter intuitive, suggesting that there is a negative relationship between increasing use of technologies like mobile phones and numbers of protests. Recognizing some of t he inherent problems and limitations associated with a large-N study, Patrick will also be conducting detailed qualitative research into four case study countries to gain a better understanding of how technology impacts activism in different contexts.

Patrick will be updating progress and results of his research at his blog iRevolution.