Setting the stage GPP Bellagio Meeting – July 2010

The overall framework for setting the stage

1. Strawman for the GPP Vision and Value proposition

3. Map of existing online SNS and other platforms – and some case studies

2. ICT and Social Media trends

4. Participant survey on the need and content of a GPP

Note: ICT and Social Media trends will be presented at Bellagio

The Strawman

GPP Vision :

To empower every single citizen in the world to voice their free opinion and build collective solutions and influence whatever policy decisions in the World that concern them.

.Value Proposition:

GPP’s main value is to mobilize and organize people, and aggregate and channel their voices into formal political processes

It must provide feedback to users on impact, connect people and movements, be universally adopted, independent, focus on the ‘other half, and promote communication rights

GPP’s Distinct value is: Effective last mile; accessible to all; open-source; and gradual functionality

- The last mile - GPP should connect to formal political processes by feeding relevant ‘polling’ results into channels that influence public opinion /decision-makers (e.g. political parties, media, NGOs)

GPP Participant Survey SummaryBackground material for GPP Bellagio meeting, July 2010

GPP participant survey Executive Summary (1/2)High-level findings:

The overall survey result indicated that most participants actually shared a common view on most questions. There were only two questions where the group was overall divided:

a)Top-down vs. Bottom-up approaches;

b)Content immediacy vs. Content richness.

Value proposition

As stated in the Strawman, the participants’ views could be clusted in four distinct components: 1) Last mile, 2) open source, 3) accessibility and 4) gradual roll-out/functionality

Priority GPP roles:

Citizen inclusion and empowerment:- Enable any stakeholder to provide a voice and resources- Open safer channels in authoritarian states- Bring more perspectives to help citizen nuance policy views- Counter-weight special interests by syndicating other views

Media Enhancement:- Provide global exposure of local/national media on globally relevant stories

Policy formulation and decision-making:- Provide crowd-sourcing mechanisms for practical solutions

GPP participant survey Executive Summary (2/2)

Key Design elements

• Agenda source: GPP should both contain a Top-Down & Bottom-Up agenda-setting, starting with efficient direction but leaning to crowd-sourcing and high user ownership

• Target causes: Majority considered Global to be suitable for the GPP at the beginning vs. local or national

• Audience focus: Majority considered GPP priority target should be the average citizen and students, the business community seems less important to most. Different views on NGOs and minority groups.

• Key Functionalities: Broad access (languages and mobile), online network, polling/voting and dialogue forums seems priority. Contention on petitions, education tools, offline engagement and microfinance

• Other functionalities: Feedback to users, best practices, online support center and promoting communication rights were also suggested for GPP

• Breadth vs. depth: Majority feels that GPP should focus more on Audience Reach over the Depth of Engagement at the initial stage

• Richness vs. immediacy: In a close poll, more participants felt that Content Richness should have precedence over the Immediacy of content delivery while designing the GPP

GPP’s main value should be to Mobilize & Organize people & Aggregate and Channel their voices into formal political processes

• “Providing feedback to participants as far as the impact their voice had.”

• “Connecting movements, voices and resources to strengthen collective demand”

• “Serving as an universally adopted independent voting platform”

• “Focus on the ‘other half’”

• “Making access to these tools a right that is an extension of the other human rights that the tools now facilitate.”

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Other suggested roles

What should be the GPP distinctive value proposition?

Give effective participation to those not presently able to participate in issues that effect their lives.

Channeling voice into action Affecting measurable outcomes, especially through engaging policymakers Integrated into current political processes

Other half focus, professional political platform.

An easy to use, independent, secure, accessible democratic platform

The GPP should be reliable in its deployment model like the internet ( meshed and resilient), adaptive to

prevailing communication platform of target citizenry & accessible for easy implementation ( Open, low cost and low tech barrier)

Emphasis on being an enabling open-source platform that can be used by many in many ways. It

is the tools and high-profile backing of GPP that will be key, vs the brand Diversity is key to success, promoting initial topics and allowing people to post more

according to their interest

Not replicating work of existing organizations

Allow people move between basic empowerment, engagement and more sophisticated "how to" and link up to others.

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The last mile - GPP should connect to formal political processes by feeding relevant polling results into channels that influence public opinion /decision-makers (e.g. media, NGOs)

• Publication of the results of the poll to influence public opinion

• The polling results can be picked up by the media and serve to influence the agenda and ultimately policy making

• GPP needs to massively influence the local and national debate in order to sway popular opinion and give politicians a much greater mandate for change

• Creating alliances with NGOs, newspapers, influential groups that could support in promoting a cause

• GPP must provide timely aggregation of sentiments and near real-time trending.

• GPP must also be credible and therefore must have safeguards against hacking and robotic access to the polling systems.

• GPP must have a very broad access to the constituents to reflect "true sentiment"

• Creating alliances with local and national governments as well as international organizations such as the UN, African Union, the OAS

• Political decisions source their energy from both formal and informal channels, GPP should provide tools that can be used in specific contexts and at that level see what will work best

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Which of these roles/services should the GPP perform?

CITIZEN INCLUSION AND EMPOWERMENT.More agree it’s more important

Which of these roles should the GPP perform? (cont.)

MEDIA ENHANCEMENT

POLICY FORMULATION AND DECISION-MAKING

More agree it’s more important

GPP should be between Top-Down & Bottom-Up, starting with efficient direction but leaning to crowd-sourcing and high user ownership

Why Top-Down?• On policy feedback

need a filter / way to prioritize

• Translation of interest into agenda can be coordinated by a steering committee

• It cannot start effectively bottom-up

• Should establish strategic alliances

• Once launched , through evolution find the answer

• Develop "push" campaign to attract many users and "pull" mechanism to attract thought leaders

• Success in online organizing is a back and forth dynamic

• The lion's share of Wikipedia is actually written by a comparatively small group of people.

Why Midway?

• 'voicing the voiceless‘, something that everyone feels their own

• If we build a compelling product, then the super users will be created or activated

• Neutrality of GPP key to universal adoption.

• Need crowd-sourcing and grassroots connection for success

Why Bottom-Up?

Should GPP be a Top-Down movement or a Bottom-Up open-source platform?

Top-Down Bottom-Up

Most considered a Global beginning to be suitable for the GPP

Most considered GPP priority target should be the average citizen and students, the business community seems less important to most

• “The media will be critical”

• “If the intention is to provide everyone with a voice, why are groups being prioritized?”

• “People who have an interest in being politically active and interested in both local and international affairs - with focus on those with limited real access today.”

What should be the priority groups the GPP should aim to empower/mobilize?

Comments

More agree it’s more important

Broad access (languages and mobile), online network, polling/voting and dialogue forums seems priority. Contention on petitions, education tools, offline engagement and microfinance

More agree it’s more importantWhich of the following features/services should the GPP provide to its users?

Which additional functions/services should be included?

• Feedback loop, how can people tell if an action was successful

• A catalog of best practices and successful case studies

• Online support center: legal implications on protesting, and info about our

rights. resources for policymakers such as data analytics on what standards are

in place/are effective in other locales Strong identity management and security

management legal and technical framework that enables the above as

enshrined as a right.

• Promote/respect communications rights as human rights, (anonymity,

privacy, access, price, speed, lack of censorship, etc.)

• Avaaz,

• MoveOn

• MomsRising

• Meet-up

• 10:10

• One World.net

• Causecast.

• One Million Voices Against Farc.

• Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Suggested Best Practices

Feedback to users, best practices, online support center and promoting communication rights were also suggested for GPP

Most feel that GPP should focus more on Audience Reach over the Depth of Engagement at the initial stage

In a close poll, more participants felt that Content Richness should have precedence over the Immediacy of content delivery while designing the GPP

Annex

19

Notes on methodology

• The survey was sent to all GPP meeting participants*

• Most, 17 out of 23, responded the survey

• All analysis and messages in this summary pack are based on participants responses

• The results are only directional, and of course are not representative of GPP

stakeholders or of GPP-field experts

• Collective views from all the participants are mostly illustrated through aggregations of

scores on each question to capture both number of respondents and their opinion

• These results are meant to inform the definition of a GPP straw-man, and focus the

discussion at the meeting around both consensus and disagreement areas* Confirmed participants at the time the survey was sent

Most participants (17) responded the survey

LIST OF RESPONDENTS

•Sean Cleary •Joan Blades •Ory Okolloh •Irfan Mufti •Robin Shelley •Beatrice Schell •Ben Margolis •Geraldine Alvarez •Henrik Skovby•Heiko Roehl •Calvin Chin •Nicolai Peitersen•Kevin Bohrer •Jeremy Heimans •Jens C Wandel •Jenny Toomey •Winston Damarillo

Benchmark of selected online platforms plus example case studiesGPP Bellagio Meeting – July 2010

Content

• Executive summary

• Overview and Platform benchmarks (being revised)

• Case Studies

Benchmark Executive Summary (1/2)

Objective: The benchmark provide s a quick overview of selected existing platforms that can help identify:

1. Who is doing something similar to GPP?2. What GPP relevant functionalities have been successfully deployed and could be leveraged in partnership?

1. Who is doing something similar to GPP?There is no platform to date that “empowers every citizen in the world to voice their free opinion and build collective solutions to influence whatever policy decisions in the World that concern them”. That mobilizes, organizes , aggregates voices and channels them into political processes.

However, multiple platforms exist that have either parts of the GPP’s vision or some of its expected functionalities Facebook, Twitter, YouTube: The most popular social media platforms enable users to voice their opinion on just about

anything and on various mediums (text, photos, videos) Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs. (Facebook also allows to organize in groups around causes)

Avaaz and MoveOn: Online political activism platforms empower users to aggregate their voices (e.g. through petitions, polls), and organize /campaign /fundraise for platform-determined causes

OhmyNews and Global Voices: citizen journalism blogs and platforms provide an avenue for anyone /often ignore citizens to become citizen journalists and reach out to a wider audience and contribute to public opinion forming

Ushahidi, FontlineSMS: these social-mission driven platforms/software provide solutions to enhance social activism and accountability, enabling the “other half” to easily interact through mobile technology – SMS

MySociety: connects citizens with their local politicians and enables them to become part of the solution to local problems

Which functionality is most critical and missing today to realize the GPP? The last mile to translate online mobilization and activism into action on the ground. This requires mechanisms and

structures to influence decision-makers and requires critical mass (the type achieved by popular platforms , which requires easy technological, cost and language access)

Benchmark Executive Summary (2/2)

2. What GPP relevant functionalities have been successfully deployed and could be leveraged (examples)?

• While this benchmark is a brief and quick mapping, it is clear that various platforms and technologies exist that can in combination fulfill many GPP requirements. A deeper and broader analysis will be required when designing GPP

• Broad access , multiple languages and mobile access: (Twitter, Ushahidi)

• Online network: (Facebook)

• Dialogue forums: (OhmyNews)

• Open-source: (Ushahidi)

• Polling/vote: ((FrontlineSMS)

• Fundraising: (MoveOn, Avaaz)

• Off-line engagement: (Avaaz)

• User-led initiatives for fundraising, self-organizing, etc: (Facebook, Ushahidi)

• At Bellagio several of the featured platforms will be presented by their own founders which will enrich the discussion

• The three case studies presented (No Mas FARC, Iran &Twitter, Burma and Korea and OhmyNews) are further evidence that existing platforms and technologies have the potential to be used for generating social/political changes. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from these and other experiences, which should be further reviewed to inform the GPP development

Content

• Executive summary

• Overview and Platform benchmarks (being revised)

• Case Studies• Burma• Iran• Korea• Colombia

Situation Action• ICT was employed more in reporting and less in

organizing. The main participants were citizen journalists, Internet cafe users inside Burma, pro-democracy bloggers from across the globe, and online newspapers based abroad in collaboration with offline advocacy organizations.

• Protest reporting became visual as images and videos from handled camera & cell phones came to be uploaded on services like youtube & flickr.

• Burma has been ruled by an oppressive military dictatorship, since 1962.

• The 2007 revolution started as a general public protest against a hike in oil price which had inflationary effect on other prices of household commodities.

• Eventually became a nation wide protest for democracy involving general public, democracy advocates and most notably Buddhist Monks. Often compared to a similar large scale protest in 1988.

Source: Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University

Case study 1: Burma’s Saffron Revolution & ICT (1/2)

Impact Lessons Learned

• Burmese junta shuts down the internet

• An interesting extrapolation is that because of the increasing exposure the junta killed fewer people than during the 1988 protest.

• Global Live Protests in major cities organised via online platforms like Avaaz & Facebook (particular mention of a facebook group with 300,000+ members)

• Impact could be felt in the way some countries (eg. Australia) & companies (eg Total Oil) handled their interest in Burma.

• In a tightly controlled media environment, citizen journalism is even more important than in countries with a free press.

• Ensuring access to ICT is key, especially where the regime has tight access control.

• Even the most authoritarian regimes are sensitive to international public opinion.

• Online & offline groups acting together is likely to have a more significant and sustained impact than purely online movements with limited attention span.

Source: Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University

Case study 1: Burma’s Saffron Revolution & ICT (2/2)

Situation Action• While the protest was not triggered by social

media, Social Media – in particular twitter – became critical in shaping the way in which information was being gathered, communicated & eventually transmitted.

• Pictures & videos were being posted on sites like facebook, youtube, flickr – a particular mention must be made of the video of the killing of Neda Agha Sultan.

• Cell Phone & SMS played a more important role in protest organization – a rather poorly reported fact.

• Activist Bloggers from outside became crucial in aggregating & analyzing the ‘tweets’.

• On paper an Islamic Democracy, Iran has been under the autocratic regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad & the Revolutionary Guards.

• The 2009 election results were much disputed with the opposition, particularly Mousavi’s Green Party, accusing the ruling party of vote rigging. This issue became the source of the public protest against the regime.

• It was eventually termed the “Green Revolution” & the “Twitter Revolution” by the western media largely because of the way social media came to be utilized in organizing & reporting the protest

Source: Foreign Policy Magazine, Business Week, Prospect Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times

Case study 2: Iran’s Twitter Revolution (1/2)

Impact Lessons Learned• The impact of micro-blogging service like twitter as

an organizational tool is highly debatable, but as an information gathering tool it became a medium of paramount importance, especially for western media.

• In terms of the actual impact on the politics, there were none, rather internet filtering increased and there was much restrictions on cell phone signals as well.

• Proxy servers became an option to circumvent the censorship.

• To argue that Social Media/twitter is a strong organizational tool would be premature, rather its utility lies in it being a source of information in the absence of information from the ground.

• Tweeter in the end didn’t have enough Iranian users. Lowering the technological barrier is crucial to ensure participation of a critical mass for greater impact.

• Greater openness of the platform translates to easier access & more difficulty of censorship, but it could also means greater information for the regime to initiate targeted oppression as evident by attacks on key university campuses & blocking of new proxy server as it appeared on twitter.

Source: Foreign Policy Magazine, Business Week, Prospect Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times

Case study 2: Iran’s Twitter Revolution (2/2)

Situation Action• South Korean media fell under political control

during the period of military dictatorship from 1961 to 1987, & later during the democratic period suffered from cronyism. In the absence of a credible, unbiased media, citizen journalism evolved to fill the void. Ohmynews, which began in 2000, became the most popular news website in Korea.

• It is widely credited with rallying young Korean voters in the final days of the 2002 presidential election, aiding then-underdog liberal candidate Roh Moo Hyun to get elected with its nonstop reporting of a last minute crisis in which Roh's election partner, Mr Chung, suddenly withdrew his support

Source: Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University

Case study 3: OhmyNews.Kr & and citizen journalism (1/2)

• As a platform, Ohmynews could be compared to a community blog. The OhmyNews model uses editors to lend both credibility & readability. Regular citizens are motivated to contribute by monetary incentives & high levels of interactivity with readers. It has 35,000 citizen reporters and 40 staff reporter.

• Mr Roh’s young supporters were crucial in using OhmyNews to relay information. It reported Mr. Chung's withdrawal & updated the story of netizens' reactions every 30 minutes. The number of hits was 720,000 in just 10 hours. Thanks to the nonstop reporting through the night, OhmyNews was the epicenter of reform-minded netizens

Impact Lessons Learned

Source: Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University

• It is credited with the election of the present incumbent president by mobilizing young voters who otherwise would have refrained, especially with the aforementioned reporting of the defection. The president, in recognition of the impact it made, gave his first post election interview to Ohmynews.

• While its popularity surged in Korea with even more people engaged in its reporting, its Japanese site failed & its international version has not been able to draw as many reporter as its domestics version. Current report indicate poor financial health, leading critics to question the sustainability of the news site.

• Openness of media ensures greater participation, while the presence of experts – the editorial staff – ensures credibility in the face of critics

• Its success in Korea & failure elsewhere, suggest the notion that a critical mass of people engaged in the internet is required for citizen journalism to succeed. Perhaps Korea being one of the most broadband penetrated nations in the world was a factor.

• Youth, who are online in greater numbers than older demographics, may be more easily mobilized through and by the Internet.

Case study 3: OhmyNews.Kr & and citizen journalism (1/2)

Situation Action The FARC is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary

guerilla group operating in Colombia for the last 40 years, mainly funded through ransom kidnappings and taxation of the illegal drug trade.

FARC held around 700 hostages in 2007, including one with a child (Emmanuel), generating very negative popular sentiment

FARC had repeatedly said it would release the child, mother and other hostages, but never did, and in fact didn’t even have the child

Colombia's government discovered the truth and that shocked the whole Nation

Oscar Morales , feeling the importance of the moment, decided to create a group on Facebook to express people's frustration and 2 days later decided, with other group members, to stage a march against FARC

Within a day the group had already 1500 members and it just kept growing in and outside Colombia

When the press heard about the group (a week later) they decided to join. Press, TV. radio, companies and citizens where involved.

Source: Oscar Morales, Dalberg Team analysis

Case Study 4: Colombia – Rally against FARC (1/2)

Impact Lessons Learned More than 13 million people marched that day

around the world and millions of photos where all over the internet

Based on the social mobilization, the government felt it had strong popular support which facilitated it to deploy many successful hostage rescue operations

Everyone felt the march as their own success. They felt empowered against the FARC , they felt that the FARC would never silence the Colombian people again

Source: Oscar Morales, Dalberg Team analysis

Case Study 4: Colombia – Rally against FARC (1/2)

Working together as a whole, as connected citizens for a common cause, can create great influence on the FARC specially with their moral

The citizens showed the world that FARC are criminals and not just a “revolutionary” group

The effort showed the power of a strong local cause to mobilize people and get them to contribute from donating paper flags, t-shirts, time and specialized sound.

Facebook enabled to very quickly amass a very large local and global audience, demonstrating its utility for online organizing