FOSS, Audio and Video for Activism and Advocacy

“I am calling from Port Hedland Detention Centre” a voice crackles over computer speakers. It's a phone message made by an asylum seeker inside one of Australia's harsh immigration detention centres. The message was made from a pay phone inside the centre and uploaded automatically onto an Indymedia website as an mp3. As part of protest actions in 2002 it was a way to bridge the wall of secrecy enforced by the government and create communication between different social actors, emphasising a way for people to tell their story for themselves.

Similarly, in 2003 activists set up a micro radio transmitter and broadcast into another detention centre: Baxter. Detainees rang the station via smuggled in mobile phones and had their voices broadcast to the protest camp. The audio was then uploaded onto the internet.

A few simple consumer gadgets, do-it-yourself technologies and software tools made it possible to reach a global, and simultaneously, very local audience with first hand accounts of people's situations, creating a far more powerful account of conditions than that mediated by any journalist.

This is just one example of the way new democratic spaces for social, political and cultural expression are being created where ordinary people can talk back to power. Traditional hierarchies are being overturned as suddenly millions of people are able to communicate and create their own media to share with millions of others. This is particularly significant for NGOs, non-profits and grassroots activists who no longer need huge budgets to use sophisticated media tools to make an impact.

The idea that media production is the exclusive domain of professional journalists, television producers or newscasters is in rapid decline. Even large companies like Apple now encourage us to make our own media and share it with the world, if within certain safe boundaries.

Three key tools sets are creating the possibility for this shift. Those tools are ever more affordable access to computers, cameras and mobile phones, the Internet and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). When combined with the ethics of participatory and tactical media and a well-told story about a crucial issue, journalists can now near compete with even the biggest media conglomerates.

What's FOSS got to do with it?
Free and Open Source Software is software that anyone is free to share and modify. Unlike proprietary software where the code that runs a programme is hidden, with FOSS you are able to view that code and make your own modifications to it, often on the proviso that you allow others to also modify the code you have contributed. Proprietary software is like buying a car where you can't open the bonnet and see the engine, let alone have access to the engine's plans or share them with others. FOSS on the other hand encourages you to know how the engine works, gives you the plans for it and wants you to share and modify them. It aims to empower users rather than keep them ignorant.

FOSS offers us several advantages in using audio and video for social change. The first, and most obvious, is a huge range of programmes to produce and distribute that media, most of which are available free of charge. A full suite of propriety multimedia software can run into tens of thousands of dollars. The second is an ethic of free collaboration that forms the basis for both a new method of production and a new set of social relations that encourages cooperation over competition, and the commons over the private. Third is the ability to adapt the software to your local needs, by translating it into your native language for instance, or if you have programming skills by adding additional functionality.

The ethics of FOSS meld well with the ideas of participatory and citizen media. Both emphasise notions of access and the idea that it's not just experts that have something to contribute. Both build upon the collective intelligence of their participants and break down the distinction between producer and consumer. The erasure of this distinction is more than just a democratic afterthought, it can also be more productive. FOSS has proved that having huge amounts of money is not necessary to produce great software, having an active and passionate community is just as big an asset.

Ultimately however, for all its good intentions FOSS tools have to work. There are some amazing FOSS tools in the realm of audio and video that are as good as anything the propriety software world can offer. Programmes such as Audacity, Video Lan Client and Blender come immediately to mind. However there is still much work to be done and room to grow. We've put together a toolkit of what we believe are the best FOSS audio and video tools currently available. We've tried to indicate where we see room for improvement and where you may unfortunately still need to be both patient and quite technical to use the tools.

Audio and Video for Social Change: What are the possibilities?
These days having a sophisticated media strategy for your campaign or action is a must. For activist and advocacy organisations, whose main task is often to communicate with the public or decision makers, finding the best possible way to reach your key audience is a major concern. Think of Greenpeace and the way they organise their own camera people and editors to feed images to the media, or of social movements and the many media activists who swarm around at a demonstration capturing audio and video and uploading it onto the net to give people a first hand perspective of events.

Other groups like Witness specialise in training communities and human rights groups to document their experiences both to share their plight with the world and to hold those in power accountable. The mere presence of a camera often acts as a shield against possible abuses. This also points to an advantage of audio and video. Allowing people to tell their own story in their own words, without the traditional mediation of journalists or bureaucrats.

It's now possible to capture audio and video in a host of ways. You can put it on the web in a myriad ways, distribute it across the world and have it re-broadcast via radio or television, screen the video in a local hall or distribute it via DVD, VCD or CD. Many of these options, previously only available to media professionals, just touch the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, as mobile phones become mini-PCs the possibilities will open up even further as they become the most accessible way for people with limited resources to access the net and produce audio, video and photos. The idea of “we speak, you listen” is fading rapidly as activists even turn their common rooftop TV antennas into micro-broadcasting stations.

Using audio and video doesn't always have to be about reaching huge audiences. You might want to reach a specific group of key decision makers or a particular community to educate them about a local issue.

Below are some brief examples of the ways organisations with limited budgets are able to harness the power of communications technologies to further their aims and objectives.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo Ajedi-Ka have used video as an education tool in an effort to stop the recruitment of child soldiers. The videos screen to local communities and aim to highlight the dangers the children face by providing vivid accounts of their experiences. In this instance the video work has a very specific aim and a very specific audience. Video can also be a good way to reach an audience that often has quite low literacy rates. Their first video, “On The Frontlines” has screened to over five thousand people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi.

In Uruguay Radio Mundo Real (RMR) are using podcasting as a way to reach their membership, new audiences and local community radio stations (Podcasting is a way of distributing audio over the internet; people can subscribe to a radio show and have it delivered automatically to their computer or mp3 player whenever a new episode is created). RMR translate their programmes about ecology and globalisation into English, Spanish and Portuguese and put them online. Local analog stations receive the podcast of this audio (or get mailed a CD) and re-broadcast it in their area. It's a great way to share audio between stations without the need for often expensive satellite distribution and it means the audio also reaches those without internet access.

These are just brief illustrations of how audio and video can be employed to create new communities, or facilitate communication between social actors or with the public. Your aims might vary considerably from these but the key consideration always needs to be who are you trying to reach, how will you reach them and what are you hoping they will do with the information you give them?

Audio and video are not necessarily a quick fix. Moments where a single piece of footage brings world attention to a situation and immediately causes action to change it are rare. The changes media bring about are much slower, as they aim to create a shift in perspective and understanding. The medium may not be the entire message but it creates a particular social relation. Will they be relations directed from the bottom up based on free collaboration, conversation and the sharing of knowledges or will they be top down, where they speak and we listen? Both FOSS and participatory media aim to change the social relations of how media is produced.

Getting your content out there
Whilst the Internet means anyone online can potentially watch or listen to your work getting someone to access it is an entirely different story, and one where those with million dollar budgets have a considerable advantage.

There are however some projects that are taking the ethics of open source to the realms of publicity. The “Spread Firefox” campaign is a good example of people using the ethic of participation and viral marketing to raise awareness of the open source Firefox web browser. By building a user community who feel a sense of ownership over the tool (everyone has access to the source code) those users are happy to participate in a form of community-based marketing, promoting the web browser on websites and producing videos and advertising campaigns about it for free.

If you have limited resources you need to think of ways of getting other people to participate in promoting your audio or video. Well-produced videos for example can become instant hits if they press the right buttons and get picked up by bloggers and news sites. If your media doesn't reach people and get them to act all the FOSS software in the world won't help you.

Wide scale distribution might not be your goal however. You might, for example, want to produce a weekly podcast that provides support for people dealing with domestic violence. In this case publicising your show to a mass audience won't necessarily be effective as it's quality, not quantity you are aiming for. By podcasting you can “narrow-cast” to specific audiences without the need to have access to a radio station. All you need is an Internet connection and some basic audio production skills.

It's not just the net that is enabling the easier dissemination of audio and video. The digital nature of media makes sharing and reproducing it very easy. Compared to analog tape where making a copy of a one hour film would take an hour or more producing a copy on CD and DVD can take just minutes and it's also much cheaper. Instead of spending a day making 10 copies from one tape to the other or paying a professional dubbing company to make the copies for you, you can now make those ten copies yourself in an hour and those copies are easy again for others to make duplicates.

The fact that digital media is so easily reproducible is a great asset for those working on social change media where the main aim is to disseminate information, rather than for profit media who often have a host of copyright concerns they must consider. By licensing your work using Creative Commons people immediately know they have permission to share your media for non-profit purposes or even remix it into new works.

Conclusion
The conclusion to draw here isn't one of out with the old and in with the new. Analog media forms still remain relevant. Traditional radio is still one of the best and cheapest ways to reach an audience, particularly in areas where few people have access to computers, the internet or where literacy levels are low. The key is choosing the right media tools for the terrain, to reach your audience and ultimately to have the effect you desire. Be strategic about how you use media. High tech solutions aren't always applicable or practical. The most important thing is an adaptable attitude and skill set. There is no one way of doing things.

The audio/video NGO-in-a-box aims to foster this attitude by providing not just a toolkit of software tools but of conceptual tools also. The melding of FOSS ideas and ethics with those of citizen journalism is a very powerful recipe for producing better software, better media, and ultimately more effective social change.

by Andrew Lowenthal