The new video orientated site, ‘Gabura‘ by Oxfam UK has received a lot of attention in the last week, a rightly so. Not only is it timely, as you might expect with a seasoned INGO with Copenhagen just round the corner, but it also ticks most of the right boxes where visual media for social activism is concerned.
The site opens with a video showing what happened on the ground in Gabura when a cyclone hit in May 2009.
This ticks the first box – being on the ground when what ever it is you are trying to bring to people’s attention happens. This is usually the realm of journalists, but the world is changing. The only complaint is that the people of Gabura are largely silent throughout the short video (though to be fair this is made up for in other parts of the site). Obviously, the professional crew paid for by an INGO will not always be there at the opportune moment, so there is an argument that the people of Gabura themselves are provided with training and equipment to document their lives in future.
Moving on from the opening video you are then invited to either ‘Take Action‘ or continue exploring Gabura. By exploring you come to a page of ‘Daily Life‘ (17 videos) & ‘Disaster‘ (11 videos – which shows you the aftermath) that do ‘what it says on the tin‘ i.e. show people going about their business, either before or after the storm.
Each of the videos in the ‘Daily Life‘ section links to how the changing climate has impacted on their routines.
This ticks the second box – showing the broader picture of people’s everyday lives and how the issue you are trying to highlight fits into this. Too often NGOs serve us up a diet of dispare or over optimism. Here the balance is better because we have context, and it is presented in accessible, to the point bites. Compare this with the, quite frankly, rather dry and unnecessaryily long ActionAid video – ‘Hunger Inquest‘ – on why over 1 billion people are hungry (clocking in a over 20mins) and you will see my point. It starts in a similar way, focussing on the impact on farmers lives but I wonder who the audience is? I am probably one of a small minority interested in land productivity but even I couldn’t make it past 5mins. ActionAid have produced some good visual products in the past but this isn’t one of them.
Any way, back to ‘Gabura’ – It is not until you eventually ‘Take Action‘ that the site does something unusual. It doesn’t ask you to write to your political representative (in this case UK parliamentarians) but allows you to send them a link to the video.
What this is doing is doing is making the focus of public action the dissemination of a video. Now, we are all used to sharing videos on various sites, and politicians have been lobbied many times with visuals at meetings. But in my experience few INGOs actually ask the public to send the video (or a link to it) to their MP. What this is doing is investing in the power of witnessing – seeing what the macro issue of, in this case climate change, means to individual lives. This is powerful not only because it is more accessible than yet another research report (which they will not read) but that it tries to bridge the gap between those making decisions and those impacted by them, recognising them as humans rather than bureaucrats. I covered this in a recent post on Kashmir ‘cyber activists’ where the contexualisation was used to legitimise and contextualise the hard research findings being presented at the European Parliament and US Congress.
The only down side, highlighted by duckrabbit, is that the videos are a pain in the arse to share. There is no embed feature, and although it is possible to rip the video using RealPlayer this is an unnecessary chore.
And if you are still unconvinced that the ‘Gabura’ site is so good compare it with this offering from Oxfam Ireland, which although a different type of product (cinema ad) is way off the mark.
Filed under: Campaigning, Video | Tagged: Asia, Bangladesh, NGO, South Asia
