YouTube for Human Rights
I recently discovered The Click Heard Round the World, a blog about technology and politics. Rik seems to me to be really forward thinking it tackling a range of issues. Today his blog has a link to a interview he did with Deadline LA. Anyway this led me to witness.org. Think of this as a YouTube which will host video about human rights abuses. Given the recent use of YouTube to bring to light the stories of those in Guantanamo Bay (discussed in this interview). This site has a range of pedagogical uses, especially for those whose classes cover human rights and globalization. YouTube has a policy or removing videos which it deems as overly violent (understandably given the presence of teens filming themselves conducting “beat-downs” and posting it on the web). Right now the site is still developing, but there is already a great deal here for classroom use.
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:00 am
Although video documentation of abuses is important, I’m more worried about what is under the radar - what we don’t know about or is underpublicized.
The human rights abuses in the People’s Republic of China, for example, are vastly ignored. We are sweeping what happens there under the rug, because we are pretending China is a good steward of its people so we can benefit from the cheap labor/manufacturing there.
And certainly there are actions performed in the name of the “War on Terror”, or by any number of repressive regimes that are not documented by video. We shouldn’t give these short shrift.
April 2nd, 2007 at 3:53 am
Who is so naive to pretend that “China is a good steward of its people”?
With the growing access to cheap video cameras and camera phones, there is less and less possibility that gross violations can just slip under the radar, even in China.
True, we can choose to look away. But at least now we can’t say that we didn’t have the opportunity to find out the truth, in living color.
Thanks for the link!
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Fiedler:
Good point, listen to the interview though. It seems to be one of the central goals of this organization to address these issues. For example, they are trying to figure out ways to make video available in China, for as you point out they have a rather severe history of oppressing speech. There is a certain “privilege” in having video documentation, but as these technologies become more ubiquitous I think we will see a flattening out of this divide. But as you point out there are certain places cameras can’t go—inside Gitmo for one.