Technology in Support of Social Work Values: Digital Social Work Activism

If only it were as simple as:

"Take this video camera, It's the poverty-fighting one. Sorry, the gender and power leveling microphone is being used right now."

Even if it's not that simple, we believe that the power of digital media and technology can be harnessed in support of progressive and even radical social work values. 

Tiannenmen Square Video, June 1989;
AP Photographer Jeff Widener

What do we mean by digital media?  Broadly, "media" can be anything that assists in the transmission of ideas.  In the 21st century, we tend to think of media as any kind of audio or visual document, be it on VHS, DVD, CD or in an online streaming video on a website. 

We can also see examples before the technology era.  Folk songs, prison songs, work songs, African American spirituals, and generations of American gospel dealt directly with issues of social inequality, poverty, and racism.

Imagine our impression of the civil rights movement without the video clips of Martin Luther King at the Washington monument (right after a really, really, young Bob Dylan finished singing). Imagine the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 without the video and photographs of thousands of Berliners peacefully breaking down the wall section by section. It is these images and sounds that can break through to the majority of members of our communities.

Rodney King Video, 3/1991;
George Holliday

These images strike at the heart of why media is important to Social Workers and Social Work.  Media is a mode of communication, and it allows us to step back as advocates and say "Don't believe me? Look here."

This sort of guerrilla video activism continues to proliferate on the Internet. Musician Peter Gabriel has started a website called "Witness.org".  (Please Note: the films on witness.org can be very disturbing to watch). This site trains people around the world on how to use a video camera, make powerful documentaries of human rights violations, and how best to submit them to their governments and the United Nations. They are, in their own words, "Using Technology to Fight for Human Rights".

World Trade Center,
Sept. 11th Video

While "Witness" is international in scope, there is an organization called RAWA based in Pakistan, which taught women how to film from beneath their burqas in Afghanistan.   RAWA is one of the most well-known of the organizations that helped to educate the west on the plight of women under the Taliban.

From the local Seattle area, an audio example of using media in support of social work values is the radio program "Life on the Streets" which airs on KUOW.  "Life on the Streets" examines what life is like for homeless people in Seattle.  Also, a local photographer and documentarian has put together a 1 hour documentary on two homes for the mentally ill in the Capitol Hill neighborhood called "Dignity: A Study of Schizophrenia." The filmmaker used a digital video camera similar to the ones we have available for students to use.

More info on using digital video equipment:

• UW Catalyst Digital Video Overview (Through this class you will gain a better overall understanding of the technologies and the software involved with digital video.)