Innovative online activism mashup
Ethan Zuckerman presents a great example of on-line activism; this time on the President of Tunisia. It is a video made by Astrubal about the Tunisian presidential airplane. Although the President has been only out of the country three times in the last years, the airplane has been sighted all over Europe. As people all over the world make photos of airplanes and upload them to websites, the presidential airplane has been identified in different locations many times throughout the last years.
But Ben Ali’s plane has been to Europe far more often, raising questions about whether the official plane, fueled at taxpayer expense, is being used to accomodate vacations in the south of Spain or shopping excursions in the fashion centers of Europe.
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It seems to me that this great video shows the power of the web within different dimensions:
- Using the rich data and information available in the web (airplane photos)
- Collaboratively investigating background information (presidential flights)
- Using available tools to produce a striking video (Google maps)
- Offering this movie to a worldwide audience on video sharing sites
- Advocating for the cause in different networks through blogging