How social media will transform the fight against corruption Georg Neumann Senior Communications Coordinator Transparency International What - the environment • Some numbers – Mobile phones: 4 billion (2008, ITU) – Internet users: 1.8 billion (25%) – Facebook users: 350 million – Bloggers: 200 million (est.) – Twitter users: 18 million • Or from the user perspective: – 2 billion photos uploaded to Flickr – 750 photos per second on Facebook – 20 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute – 1.4 million blog posts per day Why Transparency International does what it does • Transparency International is an advocacy organisation – Measuring global corruption: Global Corruption Barometer (public opinion survey), Corruption Perceptions Index, Bribe Payers Index – In-depth research of the state of corruption in specific themes and on the national level • Putting the issue of corruption on the agenda of the media and of governments • Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI): measures perceived level of public-sector corruption in 180 countries around the world. The CPI is a "survey of surveys", based on 13 different expert and business surveys. CPI IMAGE Launch: TI Corruption Perceptions Index Traditionally Now • Press conference • Traditional press conferences • Press release work less and less • Web presence • Information is consumed through • Simple table with CPI score blogs and distributed through twitter • Information is commented on by • One-way communication lay audiences in blog posts, twitter & comments • Data is used to produce mash-ups • Need for engagement in two-way communication Enter Social Media • Engaging into a conversation on the effects of corruption • Showing the impact of corruption on everyone„s lives • With a special attention of the TI communities on – Facebook – Twitter – Blog – Youtube Results • Over 300,000 visits of the TI website in only two days • But, more importantly: – Huffington Post: over 300 comments – Blog visits: about 10,000 in the first days – Blog comments: more than 30 – Twitter mentions of CPI/Transparency International: more than 300 – Twitter “ReTweets”: more than 80 – External Blog post: more than 30 in the first 3 days • CPI is important tool, but not the only and much less the most „rich“ Transforming fighting corruption Main trends • Collaborative and crowd-based. Activists, victims and small groups working on the same issue link up more easily, and gather in a bigger anti-corruption movement (collective information gathering (“crowdsourcing”), mapping, community journalism) • De-centralised & hyper-local. De-centralised action such as global protests and new forms of organisation are being developed where necessary (social networks such as Facebook, maps). • Empowering. Social media empowers citizens that want to change things, giving voice to the people affected most bottom-up to hold leaders accountable (blogs, twitter, flickr, citizen journalism) Questions • How much do journalist use social media tools such as blogs for their research? • How can organisations learn and adapt to the following resulting effects of social media – Organisation needs to be prepared to engage in a conversation – Organisations need to learn they can not control the conversation – Organisations need to learn that everybody is already taking part in the new online world in either personal and/or professional capacity – Organisations need to be prepared to offer something „valuable“ to engage, if they are looking for engagement • How to engage sustainibly with this new group of digital activists? Thank you. And some links Transparency International • www.transparency.org • http://blog.transparency.org • www.twitter.com/anticorruption Social media and fighting corruption • http://socialtransparency.wordpress.com • http://transparency.globalvoicesonline.org • www.twitter.com/georg_neu.