PAPER WITHDRAWN--Citizen Activism: Peer Production of Human Rights Reporting.

The very same technologies that enable ordinary citizens to become creators as well as consumers of media content are fostering a quiet revolution in another area—namely, human rights advocacy. On websites such as 24 Hours for Darfur and The Hub, citizens are engaging in work formerly done primarily by human rights professionals. Moreover, the kind of advocacy in which they are engaging is—like the content produced on Flickr, Craigslist, and YouTube—fundamentally social, multidirectional, and participatory. The social nature of these interactions offers the potential to transform human rights advocacy. Citizens are not only becoming involved in discussions previously dominated by political elites, but also engaging directly with those who are affected by the policies in question.In attempting to democratize political activism on human rights issues, these websites have necessarily taken on tasks previously fulfilled by human rights professionals. This paper will evaluate three central challenges associated with this shift. First, although citizen activism has great potential to mobilize constituencies, can it also transform the energy generated by those constituencies into political power? That is, how can a model of citizen activism retain the benefits of peer-produced reporting while providing enough organization to be politically effective? Second, can amateur human rights reporting provide enough indicia of reliability without the strict methodological control on which human rights organizations have historically based their legitimacy? Third, what functions will continue to be filled most effectively by human rights professionals and how can professionals and amateurs collaborate most effectively? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]