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Social Media Toolkit – Mitigating Electoral Violence in Africa Prof. Pearl T. Robinson, Political Science, Tufts University
This course includes a social media component. The Social Media Toolkit enables the user to connect theories with contemporary African realities. It is designed to facilitate identification and sorting of postings on twitter and facebook that relate to the following prescriptive readings: 1) Jendayi E. Frazer & E. Gyimah-Boadi, eds., Preventing Electoral Violence in Africa, APPENDIX A - Key Findings and Recommendations from the Conference on Preventing Electoral Violence and Instituting Good Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa, pp. 99-103 2) Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, "International Norm Dynamics and Political Change," International Organization 52, 4 (Autumn 1998) pp. 887-917 See especially, the section "The Norm Lifecycle," 895-905.
iPads for Education Pilot SOCIAL MEDIA: Tools for Engagement & Collaboration
I. Social Media should be thought of as Tools
A. Many tools are available – SOCIAL APPs 1. Apps – e.g., HootSuite, Flipboard, TweetDeck 2. Platforms – e.g., twitter, facebook, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn
B. These tools are designed to work together, and to enable the users to share. C. Social media tools enable the user to aggregate, centralize, and bring things together – people as
well as information. D. We want to use these tools pedagogically for Engagement & Collaboration, rather than soap-‐boxing.
II. twitter and facebook: 2 Frequently Used Social Media Platforms A. twitter
1. Real-‐time in nature 2. Provides the ability to track certain trends 3. Facilitates Engagement 4. Facilitates Collaboration 5. Gets people talking about ideas; bounce ideas off of each other
B. facebook 1. A common pool for people who are commenting within a specific page 2. Information comes out from the source, which is the facebook page 3. One has to go to the source to find the material easily. Content can get lost in the news
feed. 4. A place to post things you want people to keep coming back to 5. It’s static in the sense that it is easy to refer back to a previous posting. 6. Can be used as an archive
III. Incorporating Social Media into Curriculum Design
A. PROS: 1. Can use social media to let students engage with each other, initiate conversations, collaborate among themselves, and with larger communities 2. Can follow certain topics or events using hash tags, keywords, etc. 3. Can have access to real-‐time information as it happens, often before official websites or other formal sources 4. Takes traditional word-‐of-‐mouth communications and amplifies it, expands its reach 5. Informal communities get created easily 6. Content is highly shareable 7. Many tools are available, that work together and facilitate sharing B. CONS:
1. Finding the social network or platform that has the features most suited to your needs can be difficult. E.g., “trending” is twitter-‐specific. If you choose a different platform, this feature won’t be available.
2. Anybody can jump into the conversation and steer it in a different direction. 3. Can be hard to check credentials and filter out things in real-‐time 4. Can open up a can of worms for disinformation, and even violence 5. The Internet is forever! Once posted, you can delete. But if someone saves the information, takes a picture or screen shot, shares (re-‐tweet, etc.), or search engines a cache of the information, it is still accessible. 10/13/12 Pearl T. Robinson, Political Science Department, Tufts University With the assistance of Christopher Dousharm, graduate student in Corporate & Organizational Communication (concentration in Social Media), Northeastern University
Websites for Monitoring on-the-ground Election Campaign Activities in Africa
Name Description URL Social Media Hash Tags Donors/ Sponsor
Ghana Elections 2012
An African Election Political Safari
A Political Safari journeys across Ghana to bring Jarreth Merz' film, An African Election, to people in Ghana. Merz & team work with international partners and local democracy trainers to create non-‐partisan voter education workshops and training tools specifically designed to equip youth and women in marginalized communities to vote democratically in the December 2012 elections.
http://www.politicalsafari.org/TAKE_ACTION.html facebook page: An African Election
twitter facebook
#PoliticalSafari #AnAfricanElection
Kickstarter Sundance Foundation
Ghana Elections 2012
This is the official online portal for the African Elections Project “Enabling Peaceful Transparent and Credible Elections in Ghana Using New Media Project,” coordinated by the International Institute for ICT Journalism (Penplusbytes) with funding from STAR-‐Ghana. http://www.africanelections.org/ghana/
facebook twitter #Ghanaelections
Website developed in partnershp with African Elections Project & STAR-‐Ghana (Strengthening Responsibility, Accountabilty & Responsiveness in Ghana.)
GhanaElections 2012 blog
Sarah Brierley and George Ofosu, 2 UCLA grad students studying elections & election management in Ghana. This is their blog. Spotty for now. They invite comments and discussion. http://ghanaelection2012.blogspot.com
twitter facebook
Ghana Votes 2012
An election instance map designed to display reports from the election management body, civil society groups and citizens on the upcoming Ghana elections. Provide information about security issues, polling station logistics, and voter education activities. Also displays all the polling stations, parliamentary and presidential candidates and political parties by constituency and regions. http://ghvotes2012.com/main
twitter facebook
Ghana DecidesAn @BloggingGhana nonpartisan project to foster a better informed electorate for a free & fair Ghana. http://ghanadecides.com twitter #Ghanadecides Funded by @STAR-‐Ghana
Kenya Elections 2013Name Description URL Social Media Hash Tags Donors/ Sponsor
Kenya government Commission responsible for conducting or supervising referenda and elections to any constitutionally established elective body or office, and any other elections prescribed by an Act of Parliament.
http://www.iebc.or.ke facebook page: Independent Electoral and Boundaies Commission(IEBC)
twitter facebook #iecb Government of Kenya
IFES Kenya country programs
International Foundation for Eletoral Systes programs provide support and training related to Election Procedures, Election Disputes, and Post-‐conflict adjustments. Good stories of election work in Kenya. http://www.ifes.org/countries/Kenya.aspx
twitter facebook
Open Society Institute of East Africa (OSIEA)
NDI -‐ National Democratc Institute, Kenya Initiatives
Brief overview of the political system in Kenya. Current NDI activities re political parties, election administration. Election stories on maps. http://www.ndi.org/Kenya
twitter facebook
NDI (US Gov) Patrick Merloe, Director of Elections Programs 202.728.5500 |
EISA -‐ Kenya field office
EISA Kenya is implementing activities aimed at strengthening and sustaining democratic institutions and electoral processes. {Note: not an active site} http://www.eisa.org.za/EISA/kenyaa.htm
twitter facebook
NTV
NTV Kenya is the leading television broadcasting station covering a large part of Kenya and the region. Read the POLITICS stream for election news. {Note: a great site for sorting & filtering}
http://www.ntv.co.ke/#politics (Note: This site directs you to news videos on YouTube)
twitter facebook
The Daily Nation newspaper
Kenya's most popular newspaper. Breaking news Kenya, Africa, politics, business. Site includes editorials and blogs.
http://www.nation.co.ke {Note: on the dashboard, click NEWS, then POLITICS} twitter
African Elections Project
African Elections Project established 2008 with the vision of enhancing the ability of journalists,citizen journalists and the news media to provide more timely and relevant elections information and knowledge while undertaking monitoring of specific and important aspects of governance. http://www.africanelections.org/facts.php?fid=11
twitter facebook
Open Society Initiative for West Africa & OSI Southern Africa Akwe Omosu -‐ OSI-‐DC
Apps for Organizing Tweets and Facebook PostingeHootsuite For orgainizing Twitter streams on a dashboard. Can
search within a stream using keywords on a computer, but not on iPad or smart phones.
Flipboard For collecting and organizing blog posts and other readings in a magazine format.
Sites Providing Ground-level Information & Assessments of the Eletoral Systems in Ghana & Kenya
Instructions for Preparing to Follow African Elections on Social Media
TWITTER • Students should use or create their own accounts. Go to Twitter.com • The keyword for this course is #TufsAfElections (not case sensitive). When composing a
message, always include the keyword as part of the message. Note that this keyword will use 16 characters. The maximum number of characters in a tweet is 140.
• If you want to mention someone who has a Twitter account, include @username in the message. People who are following your account can see that user, and then follow that person as well. For example, you might want to follow the journalist who appears in the movie, An African Election.
{Note: Only start messages with @ when you want to narrow the audience and target the comment to a particular person. Only people who follow both sender and target will see this comment in their twitter feeds.}
HOOTSUITE
• You can use HootSuite to manage social media networks with a dashboard. It enables you to efficiently track keywords, mentions, and trending topics. Go to HootSuite.com
• Your Tweets are streamed into columns on a dashboard. • Once you have a column, you can tell it to filer by keywords. Note: the filtering a column by
keyword is not available in the iPad version of HootSuite. • Now you are ready to reply to a favorite Tweet under one of the hash tags we are following
for this course. • Follow these hash tags:
#PoliticalSafari #AnAfricanElection #Ghanaelections #Ghanadecides #kenyaelections #iebc
#TuftsAfElections • Note: We are interested in tweets that show evidence of engagement, rather than soap boxing.
• “Like” the following pages: An African Election A Political Safari Photo Blog Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission(IEBC) KENYA MEDIA SITES
• NTV Kenya – the leading television broadcasting station http://www.ntv.co.ke/#politics {This site takes you to political news videos on YouTube. Read the POLITICS stream for election news.} • The Daily Nation newspaper http://www.nation.co.ke {Kenya’s most popular newspaper. On the dashboard, click NEWS, then POLITICS.}
10/12/12 Pearl T. Robinson, Political Science Department, Tufts University
