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I recently spoke at a panel on “Online Activism Around the World” with Nancy Scola, Ralf Bendrath and Jon Pincus at the Computers Freedom and Privacy 2009 Conference.

Although I was supposed to speak about Vote Report India and digital activism in India, I ended up speaking about how social technologies are value-agnostic.

At each of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, social technologies can lead to both good and bad outcomes.

User generated content can be used to break news or spread propaganda. Collective action can be used to organize protests against a totalitarian regime or perpetrate violence against its detractors. Online communities can create cosmopolitan open societies or cult-like closed ones. Collective intelligence can be used to benefit consumers and citizens or profile them for surveillance or commercial exploitation.

Some highlights from the talks and the panel –

- Why real political change will not be brought about by online activism, but by using online engagement to build real world institutions.

- Why digital technologies don’t necessarily distribute power by default, but can also be used to centralize power.  Read More

DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce will be hosting a DigiActive DC meetup on May 29th.

DigiActive is a community of volunteer thinkers and practitioners (like yours truly) dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact.

I have been involved with DigiActive for more than a month now and I must say that I’m impressed both by the community they have created and the content they manage to churn out on a regular basis.

The meet-up itself is designed for people who are new to digital activism. Mary will make a short presentation introducing DigiActive.org and explaining how digital tools are being used for social change campaigns around the world, followed by a Q&A and an optional meet-and-greet for those who don’t have to rush back to work.

When? 12:30pm – 1:30pm on Friday, May 29th.

Where? Pact headquarters at 1828 L St, NW on the 3d floor (map and directions).

If you’d like to come, please RSVP on the event’s Facebook page.

As I wrote my analysis of the Valentine’s Day Pink Chaddi Campaign, I realized that it only appealed to the small minority of well-to-do, urban, English-speaking men and women in India who are amused by the irony of a woman being called ‘Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward’ in the same sentence. It also self-consciously distanced itself from the Indian mainstream which still wants its Bollywood heroines to be virginal and associates ‘Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women’ with the Bollywood vamps of yesteryears. The choice of sending pink panties to Shri Ram Sena further reinforced this self-consciously us versus them positioning.

I had earlier done a roundup of the discussions on the Pink Chaddi Campaign in the English language news media and the English blogosphere in India. To prove my hypothesis, I decided to test the limits of my Hindi and do a roundup of the discussions on the Pink Chaddi Campaign in the Hindi language news media and the Hindi blogosphere in India. I haven’t been able to search for Hindi news stories on the campaign, but the discussion on Hindi blogs did support my hypothesis.  Read More

Introduction: The Pink Chaddi Campaign as a case study of online citizen activism in India.

Last week, I wrote a longish roundup of the discussions in Indian mainstream and participatory media around the controversial Pink Chaddi Campaign.

Briefly, journalist Nisha Susan set up The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women on Facebook and urged women to gift pink panties to Pramod Mutalik, the head of the ultra-conservative Hindu group Shri Ram Sena, in order to shame him into backing down from his threats to disrupt Valentine’s Day celebrations.

The campaign has become one of the best Indian examples of how a grassroots community can come together, collaborate and take collective action using social media tools.

I have written before that managing collaboration in an online community is a cloud problem (irregular and unpredictable) rather than a clock problem.

We know the boundary conditions which are necessary for a vibrant community, but we also know that these conditions are not sufficient. So, most social media “initiatives” are trial and error affairs. Most websites fail to become vibrant communities. Most communities fail to collaborate towards a shared objective. Most collaboration fails to produce collective action. Most collective action fails to achieve the desired results.  Read More

Update: You should also see my post on Three Lessons Activists and Marketers Can Learn From India’s Valentine’s Day Pink Panty Campaign

The Pink Chaddi Campaign — organized on Valentines Day by The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women to protest against the right wing Hindu group Shri Ram Sena — has become one of the best Indian examples of how a grassroots community can come together, collaborate and take collective action using social media tools.

It all started on January 24th when a group of 40 activists of the Shri Ram Sena (also spelled as Sri Ram Sena, Shri Rama Sena, Sri Rama Sena, Sri Ram Sene, Shri Ram Sene and Sriram Sena) barged into a Mangalore pub and beat up a group of young women and men, claiming that the women were violating traditional Indian values by wearing Western clothes and drinking alcohol with men (Wikipedia). The video of the incident was repeatedly shown on Indian TV channels and widely shared online and became the focal point of a nationwide outrage against the incident (Global Voices) –  Read More