The Google News Lab Fellowship is a 10-week fellowship program designed for students interested in the intersection of media and technology. Successful applicants join a three-day workshop at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA where they receive training on a number of digital tools before they join their partner institutions.

Erin is a researcher and technologist working in data science, information ethics, and algorithmic bias. During her time as an undergraduate student, she worked in the Paris newsroom of the International New York Times and was an editor for a nonprofit street paper that provided employment and an outlet for the marginalized homeless population in her community. She has since pursued her Master’s in Information Science from the University of Washington Information school where she studied data science and human-computer interaction. Before coming to WITNESS she conducted research with the Technology and Social Change research group as well as the Mobile and Accessible Design Lab at the University of Washington and was recently a research fellow for the Information Interaction Lab at the University of Michigan.

The Google News Lab fellowship has allowed Erin to continue exploring the design and use of accessible and ethical information systems for journalists and citizens alike. Erin is conducting a 10-week project involving network analysis of manipulated visual content and context targeting immigrants and activists which will culminate into a report for WITNESS partners and a publication on computational propaganda.

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to advancing the role of eyewitness video in human rights documentation and advocacy through innovative video curation as well as resource development and thought leadership.

“Eyes in the Sky: Drones at Standing Rock and the Next Frontier of Human Rights Video,” a new report published today by the WITNESS Media Lab, examines how activists and journalists used drones to document the protests by Native American tribes and other advocates against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Based on extensive research and interviews with drone pilots who operated at Standing Rock and drone experts, the report surveys the benefits, challenges and legal concerns associated with unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as providing tips and further resources.  

Until relatively recently, drones were most commonly associated with targeted killings or surveillance. As technology and regulatory policies have evolved to make them more accessible, drones and their recording capabilities have been broadly adopted across a number of industries. But Standing Rock may be the most wide-ranging example yet of activists and journalists using drones for documentation, storytelling and advocacy purposes. Their successes, as well as the many obstacles they encountered, offer broad lessons for social movements and journalists around the globe who look to add drones to their toolkit going forward.   

In many ways, Standing Rock offered the ideal environment in which to experiment with drones. From a visual and logistical standpoint, the vast, unpopulated North Dakota plains were optimal for the sweeping aerial shots drones excel at and allowed the community to see what was happening on land where they were not allowed to step foot. Footage that showed the proximity of the pipeline’s drill pad to the Missouri River and the tribe’s water source, for example, provided compelling visual evidence for a central advocacy issue. But while many environmental groups have used drones to document land and nature issues, the most innovative use of drones at Standing Rock may have been to record clashes with the police from above.

Much as the proliferation of mobile phone cameras has shifted the debate on police abuse on the ground, at Standing Rock, the drone operators documented chaotic confrontations between law enforcement and activists from the skies. Using Facebook Live and other livestreaming technologies,  journalists such as Myron Dewey of the indigenous media platform Digital Smoke Signals instantaneously distributed footage to thousands of viewers that provided convincing counter-evidence to law enforcement’s version of the clashes. In tandem with on the ground cameras and eyewitness testimony, the drones’ wide-angle, aerial vantage point repeatedly served as a powerful evidentiary tool for reconstructing events.

The successes of and challenges faced by the Standing Rock drone pilots offers important lessons as drones increasingly become part of the documentation toolkit.

Check out our new report!

“Eyes in the Sky: Drones at Standing Rock and the Next Frontier of Human Rights Video”

Featured Image: Still from Standing Rock drone footage by Myron Dewey.

In the United States, it is bystander footage of fatal police encounters. In Syria, it is YouTube videos of chemical weapons attacks. In the Ukraine, it is Instagram feeds of soldiers showing the movement of Russian military vehicles.

Around the world, activists, journalists, and human rights investigators are using citizen reports to monitor human rights violations. While any one report may document a single moment, perspective, or abuse, collectively they can show trends over time and geography, corroborate other reports, provide multiple perspectives of one event, and reveal patterns that only emerge by looking at large datasets.

But the process of compiling and verifying dozens, or hundreds, of those reports is not as intuitive as the process of taking out a phone, hitting record, and sharing a single photo or video online. Many of WITNESS’s peers around the world are developing ways to curate citizen footage and other open-source reports, and are looking for models to replicate, tools to use, and resources to help guide their own process.

So we are reaching out to our network of human rights activists with the question: Do you curate online reports to document human rights abuses?

If you have used or created a platform to track open-source reports of a particular human rights issue, we want to hear from you. It could be a map that plots verified tweets of election irregularities, or a database of documented violence against protesters. You don’t need to use a custom-made tool or website–though it is fine if you do–as we hope to share models of open-source curation that are easily replicated. The purpose of this survey is to connect practitioners with one another, share tools, resources, and learnings, and identify shared objectives and challenges. We’ll share findings in the fall on the WITNESS blog.

The only requirements are that:

1.  The project gathers eyewitness reports created by average people, not necessarily with the intended purpose of such a database. Such reports, for example, may be YouTube videos, Tweets, photos shared on WhatsApp, or other such online data often described as “citizen reporting.” This means that finding and verifying the reports will be a necessary part of the data collection process, and safety and ethics may be important considerations in using the data.
2. By organizing such reports into a database, you are able to provide greater context about the human rights issue.

Have you developed a project that fits the bill? Share your work with us by completing the form below.

Feature Image: Flickr/Intel Free Press (CC BY-SA 2.0)

That next year, as the importance of eyewitness video was elevated to the national conversation, WITNESS was founded with the mission of equipping communities on the frontlines of abuse with cameras and training to help expose violence and work for justice.

Today, eyewitness videos continue to be at the heart of the global conversation about police violence, and WITNESS remains committed to standing with those working to document and end this abuse. We know that awareness does not always lead to justice. Through our Caught on Camera: Police Violence in the United States project we worked to challenge assumptions about the role of video in attaining accountability for abuse, and point to ways filmers, advocates, journalists, and the justice system can use video effectively for change. And we are partnering with communities from Ferguson to Rio de Janeiro to create multilingual resources to equip people anywhere to document police abuse safely and effectively.

As we mark the 26th anniversary of this brutal incident, and the struggle against police violence continues, we are reminded of the crucial role of eyewitness video as a tool to expose abuse and demand accountability.

Thursday, February 16, 2017
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College
47-49 East 65th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues)
New York City

For 40 years the Saharawi people have been caught between two harsh realities: life in desert refugee camps and life under Moroccan occupation. These realities go largely unreported, and the voices of those living in Western Sahara go unheard. Moroccan authorities deny entry to foreign journalists and strictly prohibit press freedoms in the territory. Despite the media blackout, courageous Saharawi media activists document life under occupation. Watching Western Sahara curates and shares videos from Saharawi media activists. These videos provide a rare window into the day-to-day life of Saharawi people who take risks to expose human rights abuses in Western Sahara.

Please join us for a viewing of these videos and a panel discussion which will contextualize the footage, providing insights into the realities of the often silenced Saharawi and the human rights implications in what a UN commission considers the last colony in Africa.

PANELISTS INCLUDE:

• Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now!
• Madeleine Bair, Managing Editor, Watching Western Sahara
• Sandra Lynn Babcock, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell University
• Mohammed Ali Arkoukoum, President of the Saharawi Association in New York
• Katlyn Thomas, former Chair of the United Nations Committee of the New York City Bar Association 
• Eric Goldstein, Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch(Moderator) 

Click here to RSVP

WITNESS is proud to cosponsor this event together with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, the Hunter College Human Rights Program, and FiSahara.

Since late 2015, WITNESS and FiSahara have together leveraged online videos to support more effective reporting on Western Sahara – a territory that is nearly invisible to the outside world. The two organizations have trained at-risk Sahrawi media activists and human rights defenders on safe and effective documentation, and utilized the curation platform Checkdesk to curate, verify, and contextualize online reports.

Watching Western Sahara Silk compiles nearly 100 online videos recorded between December 2015 and June 2016, and allows users to view them within the context of larger stories of human rights in Western Sahara. In addition to other issues, these videos collectively expose a pattern of police intervention of peaceful protests, a large social movement calling for economic opportunities, ongoing demands for self-determination, and women-led demonstrations addressing the treatment of political prisoners. Click here to explore interactive reports and find videos based on location, time of recording, and other data points.   

The United Nations considers Western Sahara one of the world’s last “non-self-governing territories.” The Sahrawi population has lived under Moroccan rule for more than 40 years, despite a 1991 UN-brokered agreement to hold a referendum for self-determination. Due to strict limitations on the press, foreigners, and international human rights monitors, very rarely does footage or other reporting from the territory come to the attention of the international community.

More on this project and media activism in Western Sahara can be found here.

A disturbing number of these violent incidents are filmed by bystanders who capture and then share the footage as a source of entertainment. Use the right search terms on the most popular video hosting sites and you’ll find thousands of them.

The WITNESS Media Lab and WML Curation Fellow Karen Stevenson have just announced a new project which will source and analyze “data from eyewitness videos of violent acts against transgender and gender-nonconforming people that have been captured, posted, engaged with, and shared for entertainment.” From the announcement blog, Karen continues:

We believe that the findings can raise greater awareness and spark discussion of the cultural and political climate that is fostering discrimination, dehumanizing victims, and encouraging violence. In partnership with advocacy groups, activists, and academics, we will review and distribute the data along with resources and tools that will help them more effectively use eyewitness videos for their work.

Our aim is to share this information to inform and create guidance for advocacy groups, journalists, law enforcement, tech companies and more to help prevent re-victimization and end this discrimination.

Read the full announcement here and stay tuned for more analysis coming during Pride Month and into July.

Niko Efstahiou, the first Google News Fellow working with the WITNESS Media Lab

The Google News Lab Fellowship is a 10-week fellowship program designed for students interested in the intersection of media and technology. Successful applicants join a three-day workshop at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA where they receive training on a number of digital tools before they join their partner institutions.

Niko holds a B.A. in Political Science from Yale and is currently a second-year student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he is specializing in International Media, Advocacy and Technology. Prior to his Google News Lab Fellowship with WITNESS, he has served as Director of Communications for the NO Project, an award-winning, global educational campaign that targets youth awareness of human trafficking and modern-day slavery, as well as Visual Media Director for NaTakallam, an online platform which pairs displaced Syrians with Arabic learners around the world for language practice. Niko has also worked as a parliamentary advisor intern for the European Parliament, as well as a reporting intern for the Foreign Affairs desk of Kathimerini, Greece’s most circulated newspaper.

Using his experience in digital mapping and data visualization, Niko will be assisting the WITNESS Media Lab in a number of projects, such as the creation of an interactive platform of eyewitness videos documenting human rights abuses in Western Sahara, as well as an overview of existing practices and digital tools for collaborative Human Rights research and documentation projects.

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to advancing the role of eyewitness video in human rights documentation and advocacy through innovative video curation as well as resource development and thought leadership.

Western Sahara is one of the world’s last remaining colonies, included in the UN’s list of 17 “non-self-governing territories.” Human rights violations are routinely committed by the occupying country, Morocco, against its indigenous Sahrawi population. Yet, due to the strict limitations imposed on the press, foreigners, and human rights monitors, very rarely do reports, footage, testimony or other evidence of abuse emerge and come  to the attention of the international community.

Watching Western Sahara aims to ensure that these videos are seen and used to monitor human rights in Western Sahara–something traditional institutions of human rights investigators and international correspondents have thus far been prevented from doing.

The project launch comes just weeks before the annual United Nations Security Council vote on whether to continue the peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, known as MINURSO. The April 28 vote will mark the 25th anniversary of the ceasefire and the creation of MINURSO   which, as many advocates have pointed out, is the only modern UN peacekeeping mission that does not include a human rights monitoring mandate. It also comes weeks after Morocco expelled a large part of MINURSO staff from the territory, sparking the most serious diplomatic and military crisis since the 1991 ceasefire. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of Morocco’s occupation.

More about this project and Western Sahara can be found here: https://lab.witness.org/launching-watching-western-sahara/ and https://lab.witness.org/projects/citizen-video-in-western-sahara/

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FiSahara uses film to entertain, convey knowledge and empower refugees from the Western Sahara, who have lived in exile in remote camps in Southwestern Algeria since 1975. @FiSahara

Meedan (creators of Checkdesk platform) builds digital tools for global journalism and translation with a focus on open source investigation of digital media and crowdsourced translation of social media. With commercial, media and university partners, we support research, curriculum development, and new forms of digital storytelling. Other Checkdesk projects include Bellingcat. @Checkdesk

The WITNESS Media Lab is dedicated to addressing the challenges of finding, verifying, and contextualizing eyewitness videos to advance its use as a powerful tool for human rights documentation and advocacy. It is a project of WITNESS and collaboration with the News Lab at Google. @WITNESS_Lab

Top still from an Equipe Media video of a protest in Laayoune in response to the death of political prisoner Brahim Saika on April 15, 2016.