Information Technology Reference
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repression, arrests, etc. (Pearson, 2007). This is
particularly true in parts of the world where there
is limited Internet access, as information can be
received as well as updated via a mobile phone.
empower oppressed communities.
Citizens in Sri Lanka who have been effectively
cut out of mainstream media, for example, have
found new ways of expressing themselves, their
concerns, their aspirations and their ideas for
resolving conflict through a citizen journalism
initiative called Groundviews (Hattotuwa, 2007).
This tri-lingual website (http://www.groundviews.
org) features a range of ideas, opinions and
analyses on humanitarian issues, media freedom,
human rights, peace, democratic governance and
constitutional reform. It was set up as a means
through which citizens could document their own
perspectives on life in conflict zones, call attention
to humanitarian emergencies, and give information
on security conditions. It also acts as a forum for
the type of critical debate that does not take place
in mainstream Sri Lankan media today.
The Groundviews conversation is still largely
in English and is limited to urban areas. It lacks the
grammar of age-old diplomacy and sociopolitical
norms and is 'raw, visceral, impatient, irreverent,
pithy [and] provocative' according to Hattotuwa
(2007). Nonetheless in the context of Sri Lanka,
where two decades of war have resulted in an
ongoing series of struggles to secure human rights,
basic human needs and a sustainable peace, citizen
journalism initiatives like this play an important
role as they have the potential to provide a forum
for all citizens to express themselves and their
ideas freely.
Another example of how citizens can benefit
from ICTs is the Israeli human rights organization
B'Tselem's Shooting Back project. The project
which was launched in January 2007 provides
Palestinians with video cameras to capture and
expose human rights violations in the Occupied
Territories. Most of what has been filmed is Israeli
settler violence in the West Bank, done with the
complicity of the army and police. Some of it has
been aired on Israeli and international television
networks and is made available on the Internet,
giving global audiences an opportunity to see what
is happening to Palestinians on the ground.
tHe benefitS anD pitfallS of
ictS for Human rigHtS Work
ICTs improve the ability of human rights orga-
nizations to marshal the facts into a persuasive
logical argument (Weyker, 2002). Incident reports
gathered over time and linked together using an
appropriate information management system
can enable an organization to make comparative
analyses of patterns of violation in time, space,
and social structure (Ball, 1996). The kinds of
organizations interested in doing this type of work
include grassroots human rights NGOs, United
Nations human rights monitoring missions, gov-
ernment human rights bodies and truth commis-
sions. In some cases the focus is on monitoring
ongoing conditions; in others it is on studying
historical events.
The rise of global communications and media
has afforded oppressed groups and individuals
better opportunities to pitch their causes to dis-
tant audiences (Bob, 2002). With the advent of
email and the World Wide Web in the mid 1990's
the dissemination of human rights information
was no longer restricted to the traditional media
and the well-resourced international NGOs like
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
More recently, a range of online reporting options
including message boards, wikis, chat rooms and
blogs have enabled activists and reporters to reach a
global audience directly within minutes of a human
rights violation occurring. Emergent practices of
citizen journalism where ordinary people play an
active role in the process of collecting, reporting,
analyzing and disseminating news and information
(Bowman & Willis, 2003) not only get informa-
tion out quickly and cheaply; they also challenge
the traditional approaches to news reporting and
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