This week, we distill insights around Shahbag Movement - a grassroots change movement sparked by bloggers and online activists in Bangladesh, to drive government action and policy change. 100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every week, we pick up one project and do a deep dive into conversations around it -- on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web -- to distill insights and foresights. We share these insights and foresights with you on our People’s Insights blog and compile the best insights from the network and the blog in the iPad-friendly People’s Lab Quarterly Magazine, as a showcase of our capabilities. For more, see: http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com

1. crowdsourcing | storytelling | citizenship | social data
People’s Insights Volume 2, Issue 3
Shahbag Movement

2. People’s Insights
100+ thinkers and planners within MSL- In 2013, we continue to track inspiring
GROUP share and discuss inspiring proj- projects at the intersection of social data,
ects on social data, crowdsourcing, story- crowdsourcing and storytelling, with a fo-
telling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP cus on projects that are shaping the Future
Insights Network. Every week, we pick up of Citizenship.
one project and curate the conversations
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Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engage-
ment.
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Volume 2, Issue 3, Future of Shahbag Movement
January - March, 2013 Citizenship

3. What is the Shahbag Movement?
In February 2013, Bangladeshis around the world the verdict have come to be known, were organized
united around a shared purpose, to demand cap- by bloggers and have attracted poets, artists, social
ital punishment for those found guilty of 1971 war activists and untold numbers of other citizens.”
crimes. The movement was sparked by bloggers
and online activists, mobilized both online and Unlike other uprisings, western media and activ-
offline participation, and has resulted in national ists were not initially supportive of the protesters’
discourse and government action. demands of capital punishment. This resulted in
a grassroots effort to educate people and foreign
Like other global uprisings, the Shahbag Move- journalists about the 1971 war crimes, through the
ment was organized by the youth and amplified use of multimedia content and social media.
by the use of social media.
How the movement began
Hours after the Mollah verdict was announced,
the Blogger and Online Activists Network (BOAN)
created a Facebook event and invited people to
join an offline protest on February 5, 2013.
Bangladesh writer Tahmima Anam described the
momentum:
“They set up camp in Shahbag, an intersection at
the heart of Dhaka, near the university campus,
and staged a small sit-in. They collected a few do-
nations and ordered khichuri (a mixture of rice and
Source: technorati.com
lentils) to keep them going through the night. Word
spread on Facebook and Twitter. The next day, a few
New York Times’ Jim Yardley wrote:
news channels began covering their protest. By the
“Protests and strikes, common in Dhaka, are often end of the week, they had managed to put together
coordinated and organized by political parties. But the biggest mass demonstration the country has
the Shahbagh protests, as the demonstrations over seen in 20 years.”
Source: 115,000 people were invited to the event. 14,000 RSVP-ed yes (via https://www.facebook.com/events/500274583347447)
3

4. Live coverage at Shahbag Square
Like their Occupy and Tahrir Square counterparts, account to document events taking place at the
the Shahbag protesters declared they would not Square and around the movement in general. Yet
vacate Shahbag Square until their demands were others have created websites (Shahbag Movement,
addressed, and used digital technology to docu- Shahbag Protest, Shahbag Mass Movement) to
ment activities taking place at the square. curate content around the movement, and Face-
book pages (Shahbag Movement) to keep people
One individual set up a live webcam to stream
up-to-date on latest news and events.
events in real time. Another created a Twitter
Source: twitter.com/ShahbagInfo
This coverage serves not only local Bangladeshis, but also involves the Bangladeshi diaspora. As
Sabrina Rashid commented:
“On behalf of many expatriates like us.. thanks a lot.. it makes us feel a lot closer to the protest..”
Volume 2, Issue 3, Future of Shahbag Movement
January - March, 2013 Citizenship

5. Nidhi Makhija, member of the MSLGROUP In- Content to set context
sights Network commented:
Shahbag protesters created articles, infographics
“In the recent Mumbai protests for women’s safety, and videos to educate people about the history
people wanted to know what was happening on of the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, and dis-
ground before they joined. If a crowd had gathered persed these using social media.
offline, people were inspired to join. If the crowd
seemed violent, people preferred to stay home. Here is a video that explains the shared purpose
Shahbag’s live webcam was a great tool to gath- that unites the protesters:
er media attention, energize supporters and help
maintain safety.”
A column in the Indian Express comments on the
larger impact of this type of activity:
“A protest on such a scale is partly self-organising.
It uses the internet like a decentralised command
and control system and the media, traditional and
social, as amplifiers. By bridging online and offline
methods in a never-ending feedback loop, they are Source: https://www.facebook.com/photo.
able to do a new kind of democratic politics in which php?v=4815339455061&set=vb.416320125123087&type
the visible perception of numbers matters more Here is an infographic created by the Internation-
than actual political leverage.” al Crimes Strategy Forum, a “global coalition of
independent activists and organisations committed
to the cause of bringing to justice the perpetrators
of war crimes during the Bangladesh Liberation
War in 1971.” ICSF was set up in 2009 and organizes
projects such as monitoring of related Wiki pages,
creating factsheets and managing media archives.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/icsforum
5

6. Activist Jillian C. York points out that such on- access real time updates on Twitter, tweet using
line efforts plays a huge role in the lead up to an #Shahbag and tag foreign journalists to create
offline movement: international awareness.
“Last year in Egypt the world watched, stunned, The Shahbag.org team even posted a ‘how-to’
as a city, then a country rose up against the twen- guide for people new to Twitter, and listed Twitter
ty-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, handles of foreign journalists.
what the world saw was a mass of humans con-
verging upon a city square in protest. But what
they missed was everything else: Offline actions—
such as labor strikes—and online ones, such as the
years of collective blogging about police brutality,
torture, and other human rights violations. The
online actions in particular served a dual purpose:
They raised awareness amongst a certain subset of
the population, certainly, but perhaps more impor-
tantly, they confirmed for many what they always
knew but couldn’t talk about.”
Creating an army of supporters
on Twitter
Shahbag protesters encouraged supporters to Source: shahbag.org/participate
Source: shahbag.org/participate
In an analysis of conversations taking place around #shahbag, CNN iReporter awalin noted:
“Many of the tweets are from very new users, those “Misrepresented by foreign
people joined Twitter with the spirit to share the
words, to tell the world how they feel about this
media”
movement, I could see that they still do not have Shahbag protesters also reached out to foreign
any profile picture, so Twitter used the default ‘egg’ media to report inaccuracies and dissatisfaction
icon for their profile pictures.” with international coverage.
Bangladesh-born journalist Anushay Hossain
observed:
“most of the “western media” has either ignored the
swelling numbers of ordinary Bangladeshis joining
the movement, others have wrongly labeled it as a
mass demand for capital punishment.”
Online activist Tomal Dutt wrote:
“Many human rights activists are protesting them-
selves against the death penalty of the war crim-
inals, to which Bangladeshi Facebook users are
growing furious.”
Source: rss.ireport.com
Volume 2, Issue 3, Future of Shahbag Movement
January - March, 2013 Citizenship

7. Protesters addressed banners to foreign media
companies and circulated photos of these to con-
vey their point of view.
Source: shahbagmovement.com
Source: shahbagmassmovement
In addition, protesters urged foreign govern-
ments to express solidarity with the Shahbag
Movement using online petition tools. An online
Source: globalvoicesonline.org petition to the White House collected 25,515
signatures.
Inaccurate media coverage was also one of the
reasons Matir Manush set up the live webcam at Some of these activities were successful in at-
Shahbag: tracting local coverage.
“We just tried to speared (sic) this worldwide, cause
media is not presenting right information.”
Expressing Solidarity
Acts of solidarity amplified the movement,
increasing its reach and showcasing the scale of
support. In Bangladesh, the Shahbag protest-
ers organized candle light vigils and called for
3 minutes of silence nation-wide in memory of
the deaths of 1971 and to show solidarity with the
movement. Politicians, teachers, students, Ban-
gladesh Premiere League cricketers and support-
ers observed the silence.
Overseas, Bangladeshis organized solidarity
events and uploaded photos of themselves in
front of global landmarks and important build-
ings. Online activists mapped the images to show
the scale of global support.
Source: guardian.co.uk
7

8. These activities show, yet again, that movements Online and offline activism
in the digital era have no boundaries and that
social media has created a role for global citizens The Shahbag Movement used both digital media
who share the same purpose. and technology as well as on-ground activations
to gather momentum and drive policy change.
As Anushay Hossain wrote: The initial success of the movement implies that
“Trying to gage the emotion, and somehow partake both online and offline activism is necessary to
in what is clearly a historic moment in Dhaka as a achieve scale and drive change.
Bangladeshi abroad is both frustrating and exhila- Daaimah S. Etheridge, a program coordinator at
rating. Your friend’s Twitter & Facebook feeds keep the Drexel Radiological Department, wrote:
you updated, yet angers you simultaneously for not
being in your country right now. Perhaps like me, “For a movement to really work, it has to connect
with what’s going on in the streets. Social media is
you feel like you are missing out.” designed to share information, but that’s only one
aspect of activism. In order to create a sustainable
Individual contributions movement, there must be on-the-ground organiz-
The Shahbag Movement seems to have no single ing and people mobilizing in real space.”
public leader, but is made up of collection of
(The Shahbag Movement is ongoing and shows
passionate and united individuals who launched
signs of a local revolution as people demand
or supported a host of initiatives.
justice and clash with opposition forces. The pro-
Some decided to document action with a live testers have given the government a deadline of
webcam set up. Bizon Shariar commented: March 26, 2013 to begin implementation of their
demands.)
“To everyone: This whole thing was hosted and
co-ordinated by 6 very young people and the whole
idea was implemented in 2-3 hours. a 1Mbps Ban-
glalion net was used. And these guys were roaming
Shahbag whole day long carrying a web cam and a
Laptop.”
Others offered to fund initiatives. Abu Sufean
Khan commented:
“I am more than happy to Donate if you guys need
funding for better streaming..”
Yet others strived to create an independent
archive of the movement. The founding editor of
ShahbagMovement.com wrote:
“Heads up photographers, bloggers and everybody
else. Let’s not forget a single moment and docu-
ment everything; A single page in Wikipedia is not
enough, neither are Facebook Fan-pages – they
will get washed out soon with time. So,register
and start contributing event timelines, description
of developments, photos, videos and everything
else at this site. Keep every moment and progress
documented.”
Songs from Shahbag is a collaborative initiative
to compile an album of all the songs created with
the spirit of Shahbag.
Volume 2, Issue 3, Future of Shahbag Movement
January - March, 2013 Citizenship

9. People’s Lab:
Crowdsourcing Innovation & Insights
People’s Lab is MSLGROUP’s proprietary comment on other people’s content and
crowdsourcing platform and approach that collaborate to find innovative solutions.
helps organizations tap into people’s insights for
innovation, storytelling and change. The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
and approach forms the core of our distinctive
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helps organizations build and nurture public of four elements: organic conversation analysis,
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10. For People’s Lab solutions, contact
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