By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education correspondent
Mobile phones have brought information and images from conflict zones
An
international training institute to teach online tactics for human
rights campaigners is being set up in the Italian city of Florence.
The first students, starting in the new year, will be drawn
from human rights activists around the world - with the aim of arming
them with the latest tools for digital dissent.
As the Arab spring showed, protests are as likely to be about
individuals using social networking as much as public demonstrations.
Street protests have become Tweet protests.
And repressive regimes are as likely to be hunting through Facebook as they are raiding underground meetings.
There is a dangerous, high-stakes, hi-tech game of cat and
mouse being played - with protesters needing to balance their secrecy
and safety with their need to achieve the maximum public impact.
This training centre, being set up by the European wing of
the US-based Robert Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, wants
to combine academic study with practical skills and training.
Screen secrets
With an appropriate symbolism, the training institute is based in a former prison building, donated by the city of Florence.
The formidable jail doors, with their hatches and bolts, are still visible.
A former prison building in Florence will be the base for the training institute
Federico Moro, the director of the project, says the intention
is to use "technology to promote democracy, human rights and justice".
"The idea is that with social media you can achieve change," he says.
He says campaigners might have passion and belief in their struggles, but they also need practical knowledge.
"Human rights leaders might dedicate themselves to a cause,
they might give their soul and their life - but you still need the
skills to generate change," he says.
These students will be blog writers and campaigners, who will
be able to study in Florence on scholarships provided by the Robert
Kennedy Center. Recruiting will be complicated by the need to protect
the privacy of people who might be put at risk even by applying.
Mr Moro says the institute will not be partisan in supporting
either right- or left-wing causes - but will act in defence of
individuals facing violations of their human rights, whether it is
political oppression or domestic violence.
Beating the censor
As well as teaching individuals, the institute wants to
provide information for organisations and businesses, advising on areas
such as human rights legislation and ethical investment.
But what does a digital activist - or a so-called "smart dissident" - need to know?
Chris Michael, from the Brooklyn-based human rights group
Witness, describes the practical steps that protesters are using to stay
ahead.
Kerry Kennedy leads the human rights foundation set up in memory of her father, Robert Kennedy
There are websites that allow for anonymous internet access,
allowing people to organise without revealing identities. There are also
means of circumventing censors' attempts at blocking websites.
The Tor project software, an unexpected spin-off from military technology, is favoured by human rights campaigners.
Mr Michael says there are also "work arounds" to make online video and phone calls more secure from surveillance.
Another practical development is software that can easily
pixellate faces in video footage, protecting bystanders who might be put
at risk by identification.
In terms of posting videos of protests or repression, Witness is working with YouTube on a dedicated human rights channel.
It's already hosting hundreds of user-generated videos from a
wide number of countries, at the moment including Syria, Pakistan,
Libya, Burma, Chile, Spain, Russia, China and the United States. There's
a daily update of video reports which include anything from student
protests to forcible evictions.
Selecting and showcasing the most relevant videos is important to make an impact on YouTube's global audience, Mr Michael says.
"Very few people are going to watch for hours. You might be
able to get their attention for 45 seconds, that's the world people live
in," he says.
Mobile range
The spread of mobile phones means there is an unprecedented
ability for recording and distributing evidence of violence against
citizens. We're living in a global goldfish bowl.
But is this making the world a safer place? Can cheap video
and social networking defrost dictatorships? To put it bluntly, could
Hitler and Stalin have been exposed at an earlier stage by Twitter and
YouTube?
The Arab Spring saw social networking becoming a forum for protest
Does a modern revolution really come from the lens of an iPhone rather than the barrel of a gun?
It's not that simple, cautions Mr Michael, speaking at an event in Pisa, Italy, debating the impact of digital activism.
"In one word, Syria," he says. There has been video evidence
of wrongdoing and violence, but little sign that public scrutiny is
acting as a deterrent.
"Just because you can document something, it doesn't meant that you change anything in real terms."
But he says the sheer scale of video and information - and
the ability to keep in touch with those under attack - does make a
difference.
"Because so many people are documenting, seeing is not only
believing, we're also able to act and communicate with people who are
affected - and that can be very powerful."
'Slacktivism'
But the question remains whether Facebook really enabled Arab
revolutions, or whether it enabled the rest of the world to find out
more about a revolution that was going to happen anyway.
Federico Moro, director of the training institute project, with a statue of Robert Kennedy
Stephen Bradbury, a community activist in New Orleans in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina, uses the word "slacktivism" - as a caution
for the idea that clicking on a "like" button is a sufficient
alternative to grassroots organisation.
He also makes the point that while the internet makes so much
information accessible, the power to find it is handed over to the
search engines and their algorithms.
Rana Husseini, a Jordanian activist and journalist who
uncovered stories about honour killings, says the internet has given a
voice to public opinion.
She also shares concerns that digital technology can be used
as tools for surveillance and control as well as openness and
investigation.
But she speaks passionately about the way that ordinary
people risk their lives to record video clips on their mobile phones in
conflicts such as Syria.
"This couldn't have happened in the past - and probably this person will vanish."
But the act of documenting is an important statement in its
own right, she says. The idea of so many individuals making their own
video history in this way is "something new and important".
Outsiders' voices
As an educational project, the human rights training institute
project in Florence is an unlikely collision of influences. It's a
highly individual project.
Stephen Bradbury warns of the risk of relying on online campaigns instead of grassroots protests
Inside the sturdy medieval prison walls, in the birthplace of
the European renaissance, there is this hi-tech centre for online civil
rights, awaiting students from around the world.
Into this mix is added the legacy of Robert Kennedy's 1960s
idealism. The foundation was set up in memory of the assassinated
senator and is now headed by his daughter, Kerry Kennedy.
She recently had her own brush with the secret police when she headed a human rights delegation to the Western Sahara.
A trademark of Robert Kennedy's campaigning was to get
information first hand, often from people excluded from the political
mainstream.
And there is some kind of symmetry here - with social
networking and blogging representing an instant electronic version of
accumulating the authority of many individual voices.
They want to harness these new digital technologies to old causes.
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