Tweeting the Kampala Riots: Access to Information

So, it's official. I love Twitter. Love it love it love it. As does my blogging buddy Toaf and I echo his sentiments when he said, everyone is blogging about twitter, I will too. His blog post ends up being something I am thinking about myself but just in Afghanistan instead of Kampala.  It's true - everyone is writing about Twitter, Facebook, blogging and the power of social media, so why not me too?

I had joined Twitter about two years ago but didn't tweet for ages or check it or anything, and then all of a sudden, on moving to Kampala, not sure why, but I got active on it again. Actually, I do know why. Same reason my Facebooking and my blogging had a resurgence. It's a great way, a one stop shop for me to stay in touch with friends and family. It's fantastic, especially when you are on slow internet and you DO want to stay in touch. People are not an easy phone call away (not on a 7 hour difference, anyhow!)...

So I had been tweeting along and adding people selectively, and I even read a book about twitter All a Twitter by @TeeMonster (Tee Morris), which I mentioned last time and I keep saying I will write a review about (yeah, some day).

The real power of tweeting came to me during the last few days of rioting we've had in Kampala. Quick background on the riots:  The Buganda King wanted to visit a part of his kingdom and Museveni, the President said, no, you can't until you meet two conditions, so pick up the phone and talk to me.  The Buganda's in Uganda (6 mil in a country of about 30 mil) took offense and started rioting.  Short and sweet.  Google it to get more stories/background/in depth analysis if you really need to.  Back to why I love twitter:

I remember when the Iranian election violence was going on and hearing about how everyone was using twitter and keeping abreast of things but I didn't really take it seriously. It was removed from me and I didn't get into it at that point. But this time, obviously, as I live quite close to where everything was going down, twitter became a lifeline.  

I am working as a consultant out here in Kampala and normally, I am used to being a full fledged member of a delegation and being plugged into everything. (I wrote about it here and as it says, Kampala is totally safe and a lovely place to live). Not this time. Micky, my husband of three weeks, was away in the UK for a week and I was by myself and had no access to radio and no local TV channels. In case you think I'm a total loser, I would like to clarify that I did just move here (and that includes a three week break outside of the country for my wedding).

I heard about the rioting but the first day just thought, yeah ok, it's just protestors in town. I took it easy on Thursday and since I work from home, it didn't really bother me. Friday, when I had to go to the office, I asked my maid who came in that morning, all OK outside? And she was like, NO, it's not. I called up the woman I was supposed to meet, to cancel the meeting and she was like, yeah yeah, it's fine - come on out. Lessons learned here: TRIANGULATE your information. How MANY times have I done this?? Always always always hunt for the third opinion. Sheesh.

I went out to the office and was driving in eerily quiet streets (it's just a ten minute drive) and was standing in the office and all of a sudden heard a rat ta tat tat. No one else really blinked, so I was like, hmm, OK, my imagination. Second time I heard the sound, I was like, umm, guys, what's that? Answer: Police firing live rounds into crowds to disperse them.

Great. I am close enough to hear the shots and in about five minutes, there were shots on the street the office was on. Really, that's fantastic. For someone like ME, who takes security so super seriously, I was really out of the loop and annoyed about it. I still finished up my meetings and then headed home (with a pit stop to stock up on groceries for the weekend).

I came home and tweeted about it. Just one message. And all of a sudden, got a response from someone I didn't know. How @UgInsomniac found my tweet, was a mystery to me but then I saw the hash tag. I did a search on Kampala on twitter and was plugged in BIG time to everything. I spent the next day and a half glued to twitter and watched as the Kampala stories came flooding in.

It was incredible. There has been a media blackout and the only way for me and lots of others, including major newspapers to follow what was going on was through twitter. There was a map on Uganda Witness that very clearly showed where riots, civilians, deaths, military presence etc all were and it was information being received through twitter that filled it in . And it's not that it was just news flowing in. It was about the community of news and the support I felt from everyone who was tweeting. We were all in it together. Every once in a while, someone would crack a joke, or respond to yours and it helped in a situation where I felt like I didn't have anyone really, to turn to and I could have been living in a vacuum.

In the past two days of calm, the Kampala forum on twitter is posting blogs (two excellent ones that write about tweeting and the riots, WAY better than I have can be found here and here) and recapping what happened and staying in touch sporadically. The BEST thing I have seen though, is one I was thinking about last night: access to information.

This is something we think about a lot now in humanitarian work. Be it riots that we just had in Kampala or after a natural disaster: How does the communication flow to people? To the general public. Not as @CamaraAfrica rightly points out, to just the 'elite' who have access to twitter?

My friend Imogen Wall and her colleage Lisa Robinson, post tsunami, wrote this excellent paper on communication with affected populations. Great title, by the way. Left in the Dark: The Unmet need for information in humanitarian response. The link will take you to ODI’s website where you can get a synopsis of the arguments put forth not just in her paper but also what others think need to be done. Imo is a journalist and was working in Aceh at the time of the tsunami and this was a hot topic. It was a hot topic everywhere and something we were consistently failing on. Keeping people we were there to serve abreast and informed of developments. The World Disasters Report 2005, a publication of the Red Cross, stated access to information as a basic right and one that we had to look at more seriously (which, I think, is what also triggered Imo et al to write the paper).

A quote from John Mitchell Head of ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) to start off the report says:

The flow of information throughout the disaster cycle is crucial for effective humanitarian operations. This year's report, with illuminating examples from before, during and after emergencies, will be welcomed by practitioners and policy-makers.

It took about THREE years, but last year, in New York, hosted by OCHA, there was a srious discussion about access to communication and from it, started a group. I have my issues with the group (it’s primarily journos and comms people within agencies and there needs to be more field practioners) and I know they have set up a working group etc to start to deal with how to improve communication. I will try and get permission to get emails etc IF people are interested in how to join or contribute to the group. Leave me a comment if you want the info.

Having said ALL this, I think there are important lessons to be learned and ways to move forward from the riots. I think the most important thing coming out of this is that communication was down. TV and radio were just not working and there was a media blackout. There was some of us, with internet access and twitter access who were able to stay in the loop but we were literally a HAND FULL of people. As @CamaraAfrica tweeted just this morning, her taxi driver was saying, yeah yeah, it’s fine, nothing wrong. (She also gave a rec for a great place to have a massage post riots...YAY!). There is a gap in communication and there are ways to be able to fix that, be it in a situation of a natural disaster or something like the Kampala riots. You could easily be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was, but got lucky.