May 25, 2012, 7:27 PM

New YouTube Channel Aims to Add Context to Activist Videos

By JENNIFER PRESTON

A new YouTube channel devoted to human rights was introduced this week to help raise awareness and provide context for the growing number of videos created by citizen journalists and activists all over the world, YouTube announced in a blog post.

“In the case of human rights, video plays a particularly important role in illuminating what occurs when governments and individuals in power abuse their positions,” the blog post says.

“Nonprofits and activism” is one of the fastest-growing categories on YouTube, according to Olivia Ma, YouTube’s news manager. At the height of the Arab Spring last year, she said, 100,000 videos were uploaded from Egypt, representing a 72 percent increase in uploads from the previous three months, even after the government shut down the Internet for five days.

In Syria, where foreign journalists have been barred from covering the violent clashes, activists have uploaded tens of thousands of videos on YouTube in the past year, allowing the world to see the horrific violence unfolding inside their country. Among them is a graphic video uploaded on Friday showing a young boy lying in a pool of blood after he was shot dead in the street by soldiers.

In this video, millions watched the activist Syriapioneer’s channel appealing for medical attention for the wounded journalist Edith Bouvier.

The Human Rights Channel will be overseen by Witness, an international nonprofit organization that has been using video to help activists document human rights abuses for almost 20 years. They are working with Storyful, a news gathering and curation operation that will help provide verification of videos uploaded onto the platform.

Sam Gregory, program director for Witness, said the goal was to not only help surface videos produced about human rights violations that might not otherwise be seen, but also to provide context for users looking at a video by providing background information.

He cited, for example, recent videos uploaded to the channel from Cambodia showing protests about the recent killings resulting from clashes between protesters and government forces over land rights.

In addition to providing a playlist of recent videos uploaded from the region, the channel also gives written information about the conflict, explaining the death of Chut Wutty, a prominent environmental activist who was killed while fighting for the preservation of Prey Lang forest in the Cardamom Mountains.

In this video, Loun Sovath can be seen as he was forcibly taken away by religious authorities while he was supporting a peaceful gathering of Boeung Kak lake villagers in front of the Phnom Penh court.

Mr. Gregory said the channel would also provide information and tools to help people use video safely and more effectively. “We want to enable them to tell their stories,” he said.