Empowerment Technologies

ICT as Platform for Change

 There are far bigger things this world would
have missed without the Internet. In fact, ICT in
general has played a key role in our history.
The Role of ICT in Recent History

Throughout recent history, the

Philippines has been one of a few nations
that demonstrates unity for a call to
action or social change. These campaigns
for social change would not have been
successful if it were not for ICT.
1. EDSA (People Power Revolution). The People Power Revolution
lasted from 1983 to 1986.
During a radio broadcast of Radyo
Veritas, Cardinal Sin encouraged the
Filipinos to help end the regime of
then President Ferdinand Marcos. A
major protest took place along EDSA from
February 22 to 25, 1986 involving two million Filipinos from
different sectors. These included civilians, political parties, the
military, and religious groups. The radio broadcast helped change
the course of history. Without it, Filipinos would not have been
moved into action.
2. EDSA DOS.

This is also known as the 2001 EDSA Revolution,

happened during January 17 to 21, 2001. It was fueled
after 11 prosecutors of then President Joseph Estrada
walked out of the impeachment trial. As a result, the
crowd in EDSA grew over the course of a few days
through text brigades. Like the first People Power
Revolution, EDSA DOS would not have been successful
without the text brigades.
3. Million People March.

This is a series of protests that mainly took place in Luneta Park

from August 22 to 26, 2013. There were also several demonstrations
that happened around key cities in the Philippines and some locations
overseas. It was to condemn the misuse of the Priority Development
Assistance Fund (PDAF). Though dubbed as the Million People
March, the number of total attendees was only around 400,000. Despite
that, it was still considered a success and clearly demonstrated how
powerful social media campaigns are. The organizers and promoters of
the Million People March used Facebook and Change.org as their
mediums.
4. Yolanda People Finder

Recent storms in Philippine history gave birth to the

People finder database powered by Google. During the
super typhoon Yolanda, the People Finder was a vital
tool for people across the globe to track the situation of
their relatives. This proved to be successful and is now
adapted by more organizations to help people track
relatives during calamities.
 ICT as a medium for Advocacy
Ritu R. Sharma (1997) from the Academy for Educational
Development in her book “An Introduction to Advocacy Training
Guide” describes advocacy as a tool for “putting a problem on the
agenda, providing a solution to that problem and building support for
acting on both the problem and the solution”.
This definition expresses an important idea: In a digital and
networked age, advocacy is not just about influencing public policy, but
also and first of all about influencing public opinion.
Advocacy is a process of supporting and enabling people to
express their views and concerns, access information and services,
defend and promote their rights and responsibilities.
Change.org

Change.org is dubbed as the “world’s platform for

change” where anyone from the online community
can create a petition and ask others to sign it. During
the past times, petitions were only done through
signing a paper, usually done by a group asking for
signatures via travel. Change.org gives access to more
people by allowing the online community to affix their
digital signatures on a petition.
 Change.org’s mission is to help people from
around the world create the change they want to
see. For years, Change.org hosted several
petitions that help solve the following problems:
economic problems, criminal injustice, abuse of
human rights, lack of education, environmental
concerns, animal abuse, human health concerns,
and world hunger.
Signing an Online Petition
1. Visit Change.org.
2. Change.org works this way. If this is your first time to
use Change.org, click Sign up or log in with Facebook.
Otherwise, just input your login details.
3. You can then start your own petition, but for now,
click on any petition you want under popular petitions.
4. Read the petition description to see if this petition
matters to you. If it is, sign the petition by filling up the
information on the right side of the screen.
5. Share the petition on Facebook
to promote it.
Alternatively, you can check out
petitions of your friends on
Facebook, then click on those
petitions to read about it and
sign it.
Have you imagined our country without ICT? Does the
Philippines we know today become what it is without ICT?
When it comes to technological advancements, most people
would claim that we are far behind by other Asian countries
but, that does not mean that we have not used what we have
to our benefit. For a moment, imagine the Internet has
disappeared and will never be back. What do you think will
happen? List down your thoughts.
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Digital Citizenship

It refers to the utilization of information

technology (IT) to engage in society, politics, and
government. K. Mossberger, et.al. define digital citizens
as ‘those who use the internet regularly and
effectively’.
Digital Citizenship Principles
1. Engage positively.
• Respect the rights of others to participate and have an
opinion.
• Ask before tagging other people or posting photos.
• Report offensive or illegal content
• Stand up and speak out about cyberbullying
• Do not respond to hurtful or nasty comments
• Speak to your parents or trusted adult about upsetting online
experiences.
• Report threats of violence to the police and collect evidence to
show them.
2. Know your online world.
• Learn how new skills will help you explore the online
world.
• Recognize online risks and how to manage them.
• Look out for suspicious emails and scams.
• Use secure websites for financial and retail services.
• Keep passwords secret, strong and unique.
• Know how to report bullying behavior on social media
sites.
3. Choose consciously.
• Choose privacy and security settings carefully and check
them regularly.
• Choose friends wisely online.
• Regularly review your connections and remove people.
• If you have made a mistake, apologize, and take down
offensive
material as soon as possible.
• Ask for permission before uploading pictures of your
friends.
9 Elements of Digital Citizenship
1. Digital Access.

This is perhaps one of the most fundamental

blocks to being a digital citizen. However, due to
socio-economic status, location, and other
disabilities, some individuals may not have digital
access. Digital access is available in many remote
countries via cyber cafés and small coffee shops.
2. Digital Commerce.

This is the ability for users to recognize that much

of the economy is regulated online. It also deals with
the understanding of the dangers and benefits of
online buying like in Shopee, using credit cards online,
online banking like G-cash etc.
3. Digital Communication.

This element deals with understanding the

variety of online communication mediums such as
email (Gmail, Yahoo mail), instant messaging, FB
messenger, the variety of apps, etc. There is a
standard of etiquette associated with each medium.
4. Digital Literacy.
This deals with the understanding of how to use
various digital services. It is the ability and knowledge
needed to learn and teach using technology tools.
5. Digital Etiquette.
This is the expectation that various mediums
require a variety of etiquette. Certain mediums demand
more appropriate behavior and language than others.
6. Digital Law.

This is where enforcement occurs for illegal

downloads, plagiarizing, hacking, creating viruses,
sending spams, identity theft, cyberbullying, etc.

7. Digital Rights and Responsibilities.

This is the set of rights that digital citizens have

such as privacy, speech, etc.
8. Digital Health and Wellness.
Digital citizens must be aware of the physical stress
placed on their bodies by internet usage. They must be
aware to not become overly dependent on the internet
causing eye strain, headaches, stress problems, and so
on.
9. Digital Security.
This simply means that citizens must take measures
to be safe by practicing using difficult passwords, virus
protection, backing up data, etc.
Answer the following questions:

1. Share your stories of how you have used ICTs to be

part of a social movement, change, or cause to
illustrate aspects of digital citizenship. Examples of
such are creating poetry online, writing blogs on belief
systems, politics, or about environmental concerns,
and participating in a clean-up drive or a fund-raising
for typhoon victims.
 If you have no social change or cause involvement, any
social event like a class project, a family affair, or a
celebration where you have used ICTs to contribute your
knowledge to make an announcement, a meme, or a video
clip. In a paragraph form, write your experiences on a 1
whole sheet of paper.
2. How was your ICT experience? Was it positive or
negative?
3. How did ICT change the way people communicated?
4. Compare and contrast how things would have been done
had there been no ICTs used and had ICTs been used.