Theme: Freedom of Information and Digital Citizens
Date: 19 September 2011
Venue: Cape Town International Convention Centre

1.    Background and objectives
The main objective of the Digital Citizens’ Indaba (DCI) is to bring together digital activists, (digital) media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives, as citizens who try to empower themselves and their community using new media technologies.

The purpose of bringing them together is to enable this empowerment to take place through participation in debate about the state of digital media, information sharing and skills transfer using experts in the field. The DCI was established after it was recognised that – given its focus on digital media and journalism – Highway Africa (HA) could do more to encourage digital media take-up by non-journalists, thereby ensuring that citizens have a digital voice too.

Besides panel discussions the DCI also offers practical sessions aimed at empowering participants with practical skills, ensuring that each digital citizen returns home with both newly acquired knowledge and skills. DCI furthermore encourages local participation in their event. During the fifth DCI in 2010, 20 citizen journalists from Grahamstown were invited to take part and produced a poster exhibiting their work.

DCI through the years
The first DCI was held in 2006, which took place immediately before the HA Conference in Grahamstown. The second DCI in 2007 attracted high-level speakers and participants, these included Africa’s foremost bloggers Ory Okolloh and Daudi Were. While the first DCI focussed on blogging in Africa, subsequent DCI ‘s focussed on a broader array of digital technologies used to promote citizen involvement, such as Web 2.0, mobile media and microblogs.

The third DCI in 2008 carried the theme ‘Technology for the Digital Citizens’, which complimented HA’s overall theme of ‘Citizen journalism, journalism for citizens’, while maintaining its focus on citizens rather than journalists.  This DCI focussed on questions of appropriate technology, and concentrated on the technologies that have proven to empower Africa’s digital citizens.

The fourth DCI in 2009 focussed less on technology questions, and more on the social appropriation of technology. This event had the theme ‘Digital Civil Society and Journalism in Africa’, and focussed on the explosion of digital media use at civil society level, and its impact on mainstream media reporting. It explored linguistic diversity in the blogosphere, gender and digital media, civil society use of mapping tools and technologies used for social change.

The fifth DCI in 2010 had the theme ‘Africa’s underdevelopment: Digital Citizens Speak Back’, and explored the role of citizen journalists in debating the state of Africa’s development, and factors impacting on underdevelopment. The DCI examined the role citizen journalists can play in making information available on natural resource exploitation on the continent, as well as in disaster situations. The development benefits of mega events such as the 2010 World Cup were also debated.

2.    Theme of 2011 DCI: freedom of information and digital citizens
The past year has been a momentous one for digital citizens worldwide, with online tools like Wikileaks being used to release masses of sensitive data into the public domain. Wikileaks’s release of diplomatic cables and documents on the Iraq “War on Terrorism” exposed diplomatic and military agendas in great detail, and the site has been lauded as a model for fighting corruption.

At the same time the site also earned the wrath of many governments, in particular the US administration, who have accused it of threatening national security and even the lives of those named in leaked documents. Some governments have censored the site, and the owners of country level domain names for Wikileaks have been harassed. Companies such as PayPal and Amazon.com also severed ties with the site in the wake of the diplomatic cables fallout.  The African continent wasn’t left untouched, though, as several African political leaders were embarrassed by the Wikileaks diplomatic revelations.

The Wikileaks saga has raised serious questions about how free the internet actually is, and what measures need to be taken to ensure online freedom of expression. A related set of questions is whether the internet is governed in a manner that ensures freedom and security for its users. Wikileaks’s activities have also raised fascinating questions about the relationship of journalists to online publishers and sources, and the possibilities and pitfalls of partnerships between the two. This year’s DCI will probe both questions, and their relevance for Africa.

The diplomatic cables revealed the extent of corruption in Tunisia’s government, which may well have been an aggravating factor in the revolution that swept the country early in 2011. Since then, revolutions spread across North Africa and the Middle East, leading to the removal of leaders in Tunisia and Egypt. Online social networks played a key role in these revolutions. Activists used Twitter to announce protests, Facebook to organize them, YouTube to ‘broadcast’ them, and Flickr to document them.

At the forefront of this were tech savvy young people, who are meant to be the most advantaged and employable citizens of the information society. Yet many have found themselves relegated to the margins of this very society through unemployment. The DCI will use the revolutions to raise questions about the nature of transformational change brought about by digital (online, social and mobile) media, and how inclusive the information society actually is in Africa.

The uprisings also raised debates whether these are Facebook or Twitter led revolutions, leading to questions about the perceived versus the actual role of technology in social change. The DCI will explore these questions too.

Communications networks have been censored in an attempt to quell the protests. In the case of Egypt, the internet was shut down. In Cameroon, MTN shut down Twitter SMS after it was ordered to do so by the government. The conduct of network providers and governments has raised questions about how committed they are to the principles of freedom of information and network neutrality. In response to greater attempts to control the flow of communications, cyberactivists have also played an increasingly important role in promoting the free flow of information, defending the right to anonymous free speech: a right that is increasingly under attack in the era of greater network surveillance. With these issues in mind, the DCI will explore ways of defending digital media freedom in times of social conflict.

Some of the questions to be dealt with include the following:
•    Is network neutrality a reality in Africa, and if not what needs to be done to guarantee network neutrality?
•    What are the responsibilities of network service providers to ensure the freedom and neutrality of the internet, especially in repressive countries?
•    Under what conditions, if any, should national security and personal safety trump freedom of information?
•    How central are social networking tools to the protests in Africa?
•    What role can and should digital media play in Africa in facilitating access to information, especially information on malgovernance, corruption and other abuses of power?
•    How can the safety of whistleblowers be guaranteed?
•    How inclusive is the African information society?
•    What role can cyberactivists play, and what can they do, in promoting freedom of expression and information?
•    What kind of internet governance is needed to ensure the communications rights of its users?
•    Are online and mobile tools replacing, enriching or compromising journalism?
•    Are journalists doing enough to defend digital media freedom, including the freedom of their sources?
DCI will explore these questions through a series of practical sessions with experts, eye-witnesses and digital citizens while at the same time ensuring there’s enough time too for knowledge and skills exchange through socializing – as citizens should.

3.    Venue & Participants
This year the DCI will not take place in Grahamstown, but at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, close to Cape Town’s city centre and V&A Waterfront. This was decided by HA management for logistical reasons. DCI is part of HA and agreed to, for this year only, move to Cape Town as well. Additional costs of the venue are covered by HA.

Accommodation ranges from B&B’s, guest houses and hotels to backpackers. The Indaba is open to bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile reporters, citizen journalists, new media practitioners, new media students, online industry experts and civil society representatives. All participants can visit the website, follow us on Twitter (@DCIndaba with #dci11) and receive our newsletters through dcindaba[at]gmail.com.

4.    Parallel and linked events
•    Highway Africa Conference, 17 & 18 September 2011
•    Pan African Conference on Access to Information in Africa (PACAIA), 19 September 2011

Theme: Africa’s Underdevelopment: Digital Citizens Talk Back
Date: 7 July 2010
Venue: Eden Grove Complex, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

1.    Background and objectives
The main objective of the Digital Citizens Indaba (DCI) is to bring together bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile media users, citizen journalists, new media practitioners, online industry experts and civil society representatives, as citizens who try to empower themselves using new media technologies.

The purpose of bringing them together is to enable this empowerment to take place through participation in debate about the state of digital media, information sharing and skills transfer using experts in the field. The DCI was established after it was recognised that – given its focus on new media and journalism – Highway Africa (HA) could do more to encourage new media take-up by non-journalists, thereby ensuring that citizens have a digital voice too.

The first DCI was held in 2006, which took place immediately before the HA Conference in Grahamstown, 14-15 September 2006, and since then has taken place shortly before the HA conference so that HA delegates can also participate in DCI if they so wish. The second DCI attracted high-level speakers and participants and these included Africa’s foremost bloggers, Ory Okolloh and Daudi Were. While the first DCI focussed on blogging in Africa, subsequent DCI ‘s focussed on a broader array of digital technologies used to promote citizen involvement, such as Web 2.0, mobile media and microblogs.

This DCI also held debates on the conditions needed for activist digital media to flourish, and focussed on the myriad restrictive laws and policies constraining the development of a digital public sphere.
The third DCI in 2008 had the theme ‘Technology for the digital citizen’, which complimented HA’s overall theme of ‘Citizen journalism, journalism for citizens’, while maintaining its focus on citizens rather than journalists.  This DCI focussed on questions of appropriate technology: with all the new media technologies available to citizens it has become increasingly difficult to identify the technologies we should take note of and those we shouldn’t spend any time on. Therefore, the DCI concentrated on the technologies that have proven to empower Africa’s digital citizens.
The fourth DCI in 2008 focussed less on technology questions, and more on the social appropriation of technology. This event had the theme ‘Digital civil society and journalism in Africa’, and focussed on the explosion of new media at civil society level, and its impact on mainstream media reporting. It explored linguistic diversity in the blogosphere, gender and digital media, civil society use of mapping tools and technology for social change. It also explored how much of a voice civil society has in the digital public sphere, whose voices are represented and whose voices are under (or un) represented. These questions were explored via formal presentations, interactive panels and workshops.

2.    Theme: Africa’s Underdevelopment: Digital Citizens Talk Back
According to Wikipedia, Africa is the world’s second largest continent, and accounts for just under 15 per cent of the world’s population. The continent is extremely rich in natural resources, yet it remains the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped continent. The average poor person is likely to be poorer than s/he was two decades ago. Much of the continent’s natural wealth is exported out of the continent; some have referred to a ‘new scramble for Africa’ among the world’s big powers, as they seek to benefit from the continent’s resources.
Citizen journalists have become central to exposing the ‘development of underdevelopment’ in many countries, often giving a voice to communities that would otherwise not be heard and exposing deals that may be against their interests. In Nigeria, for instance, citizen journalist are tracking and analysing the exploitation of the country’s oil reserves, the complicity of local elites in negotiating deals with multinational corporations that may be disadvantageous to many, and local resistance to these deals using digital media. The Congo has been described by local citizen media as ‘the central storehouse of strategic minerals for the functioning of the information society’, and is home to a large deposit of coltan.

Bloggers have exposed the extent of natural resource exploitation by foreign companies, the ways in which these activities fuel conflict, and China’s role in the new scramble for Africa. In these situations, citizen media fills a media void on these issues, as mainstream media may be too afraid to expose powerful actors in these industries, or may be unable to owing to censorship. The DCI will profile some of the most important citizen media projects in this regard, and encourage an interaction between these projects and full-time journalists.
When disaster strikes in underdeveloped countries, whether in Africa or not, the consequences can be even more severe than for developed countries, as an afflicted country may lack the essential facilities to respond effectively: the recent earthquake in Haiti is a case in point. Citizen media played a crucial role in exposing the conditions in the country after the earthquake, and provided a space for analyses not carried in the mainstream media about why the country lacked the resources to defend its people from disaster.  With climate change, natural disasters such as droughts and floods are likely to occur more frequently in Africa. The DCI will extract some of the lessons of Haiti’s recent experience for African citizen media, to ensure that they are equipped to tell the stories of those who are worst affected by disasters.
In an attempt to address their myriad development challenges, African countries may look to mega-events to assist them to create employment and infrastructural development. Mega events may also present opportunities to challenge negative perceptions of Africa as a continent of wars and disaster. Africa will host the FIFA World Cup for the first time in 2010. Many hope that the event will bring massive development benefits to Africa generally, and South Africa specifically, and will lead to positive images of Africa to the international community. Yet the true development benefits of mega-events are contested. These events involve huge financial outlays on facilities that may barely be used afterwards, and they may further lead to mass evictions and the criminalisation of the poor. The DCI will focus on how citizen media is being used to give a voice to critical perspectives on these important questions.
The questions to be addressed include:
•    How can citizen media tell the development story?
•    Should citizen media tell the development story differently from mainstream media?
•    Which new media tools are most effective in exposing crucial information about natural resource exploitation, mega-events and disasters?
•    What role should citizen media play in exposing how Africa’s rich natural resources are being used?
•    What is the role of citizen media in natural disasters? Which stories are important to tell, and how? What technologies enable effective communication after disasters?
•    How does Africa perceive mega-events generally, and South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup specifically?
•    What debates are taking place about the development benefits of the 2010 World Cup, which media enable these debates, and whose voices are heard ? Are these the voices that should be heard?
•    How can the mainstream media and individuals therein work with others in raising neglected issues and viewpoints in the public sphere?
These questions will be explored through panel sessions in the morning, where citizen media projects and bloggers will be invited to share their experiences. In the afternoon, there will be three practical themed workshops to assist citizen journalists to develop skills to blog, tweet, build sites and more, on natural resource exploitation, disasters and mega-events.

3.    Venue and participants
The DCI takes place in Grahamstown, close to the South African city of Port Elizabeth. The venue is the Rhodes university campus which provides access to state-of-the-art facilities. These include the ‘intelligent’ building called the ‘Africa Media Matrix’ which houses the School of Media Studies and Journalism. The Rhodes campus also has a number of wireless internet access points, including the Eden Grove complex.
Accommodation ranges from University residence rooms through to B&B’s, guest houses, hotels and two backpackers. The Indaba is open to bloggers, podcasters, vodcasters, mobile reporters, citizen journalists, new media practitioners, new media students, online industry experts and civil society representatives.

4.    Parallel and linked events

•    Highway Africa Conference 5 & 6 July 2010
•    World Journalism Education Conference, 5 & 6 July 2010