Last week, Heads of State from over 100 countries met in Copenhagen to negotiate an International agreement to tackle climate change in what has been described as humanity’s last chance to deal with the crisis.

As millions watched in hope, citizens’ organisations launched an unprecedented global effort to influence the summit, and ensure a fair and binding treaty.

The ‘ tck tck tck ‘ campaign, an alliance of over 200 organisations working together for climate justice has created a unique campaigning platform, to mobilise over 100, 000 people on the streets of Copenhagen, and a further 15 million people around the world in a range of actions from candlelight vigils to flash mobs and street marches.

Describing the approach, Campaign Director Ben Margolis explains how they have used a combination of offline action and online coordination mobilise strategically with targeted campaigns: “On December 12^th we launched a global day of action called ‘The World Wants a Real Deal’, over  3000 candlelight vigils were organised in 139 countries. If it wasn’t for digital media our efforts may have gone unnoticed, but we were heard loud and clear and images of citizen action were broadcast across the world.”

To capture images from local events the campaign set up a flickr photostream, all partner websites contained an email link where event organisers could send photos, which were automatically added to the photostream.  Teams of digital campaigners in various time zones would then tag and sort the photographs according to media relevance, country and picture quality.

While photos provided a useful resource, video content was also seen as crucial for securing press coverage. However the campaign team faced the triple challenge of collecting video, accessing suitable formats finding capacity for professional editing.

To address this, tck tck tck subscribed to a new online service hosted by ‘Citizen Global’. This web-based service allowed the team to create a collaborative online studio including the necessary tools to edit, mix and remix clips at broadcast quality. Individuals and partners were able to upload video content directly to a climate change project space, where staff and volunteers could also edit and process incoming content and issue it for distribution to media networks through RSS and other forms of syndication.

”Within a matter of hours, 526 videos were uploaded to Citizen Global and over 12, 000 photographs were received on our flickr photostream. We were all quite astonished, we could never have collated this much content in such a short time without these tools, we received hundreds of incredible videos we could then use for advocacy”, explained Sam Mclean, a digital campaigner for partner organisation, Avaaz.org.

(To see an example of what can be produced see The World Wants a Real Deal Video )

In order to promote these digital assets, tck tck tck harnessed the power of social media releases (SMRs) using a web-based tool call ‘Pitch Engine’. This allowed any supporter or partner to produce their own press release instantly co branded with tck tck tck; this release could be indexed by Google within hours and posted to twitter, digg and other social media sites, linking to relevant digital assets on flickr and Citizen Global. Journalists could access a suite of content to support their stories whether they were reporting locally, nationally or internationally. Bloggers supporting the campaign were also able to use this content in their posts and generate ‘chatter’ which is often picked up by mainstream media.

“This was the first time we used this strategy. Our goal was to deliver a powerful message and it was of course very risky. We effectively relinquished control of media production and messaging, but our reach and influence increased significantly and we provided people with the logos and a broad template” Said Karina Brisby, Head of Digital for partner organisation Oxfam.

SMS text messaging also played a role. The Clickatel service allowed tck tck tck partners to communicate with each other, organise flash mobs and respond rapidly to developments at the summit. In one instance where negotiations were ignoring the needs of Small Island States, vulnerable to climate change, the campaign team were able to organise a flash mob using SMS to contact accredited civil society delegates inside the conference centre.

‘Google sites’ allowed organisers to develop a knowledge hub with contact details, key documents, schedules, location maps, news updates and meeting minutes as well as a rapid response list serve.. “The Google site provided an instant intranet for partners and organisations to work together in our advocacy efforts and share intelligence. This had a significant impact on our ability to respond rapidly to developments within the summit and deploy resources as needed” explained Jean-Marc Mangin, Executive Director of the Global Call for Climate Action (GCCA).

Looking under the hood of civil society campaigning at Copenhagen, it is clear that a new form of advocacy is emerging, mobilisation has moved beyond national campaigns, global challenges have necessitated a new form of citizen action, where digital technology is enabling people to act together across borders. Organisations are developing the capacity to respond rapidly and build targeted campaigns to influence change.

As the dust settles on a Summit and hope of a fair and legally binding climate deal fades, perhaps new hope lies not in the capacity of world leaders to find solutions, but in the power of the new global activism. Was Copenhagen simply a moment in the political calendar, or the birth of a new and powerfully equipped citizens movement?

This year NGOs campaigning for action against poverty and climate change watched in awe as developed world governments mobilized over $8.43 trillion to bail out financial institutions and stabilize their economies.

According to Oxfam, this would be ‘enough to end global extreme poverty for 50 years and a massive step towards ending it forever’.

“Developing economies have been left reeling from a crisis they had no responsibility in causing. The actions of the G20 so far have been like rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic, and now they are running for the lifeboats leaving the rest of us to drown. The biggest problem is a lack of accountability at these meetings. Peoples voices are totally excluded.”  (Dr. Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace)

After years of traditional advocacy at international summits and limited traction, Oxfam and other NGOs are now looking to the online world as a way of bringing voice, transparency and accountability to global forums to help mobilize political will and action.

‘Voice’, an initiative lead by Oxfam, and hosted on ‘writespeakact.org’, seeks to connect bloggers to important political events, where they can gain unprecedented access to policy makers and world leaders.

‘We assist bloggers with gaining accreditation to international summits, arrange briefings, interviews and press conferences. We want to amplify existing voices and support new ones in order to build greater participation and representation“(Jason Wojciechowski, Voice Project lead)

The project launched with “G20 Voice” in April 2009 at the G20’s London Summit, an online election was organized for 50 blogger spaces; ‘widgets’ were placed across partners’ websites.  The ‘Voice’ project team invited people to nominate and vote for their ‘Voice at the G20’.

Blog writers hailing from “bitchbuzz.com” and ‘jackandjillpolitics.com’ to “saudijeans.org’ and ‘oneworldsouthasia.net’ were accredited and brought to the summit to cover proceedings and share their analysis with the world.  The hope was that blog coverage of these events would generate greater awareness of the issues discussed and increase public pressure on world leaders to act against poverty and climate change.

“This was the first time bloggers were able to gain access to the G20, we received a huge amount of media coverage and interest in our bloggers perspectives on the issues being discussed. We set up meetings between the bloggers and lead G20 negotiators for the US and UK and one of the bloggers even asked a question at the closing summit press conference.” (Jason Wojciehowski)

In September 2009, the project evolved further, and ‘ClimateVoice’ was born along with ‘HerVoice’ as a way of bringing bloggers into UN Meetings on Climate Change and amplifying the voices of women at the UN. Bloggers were able to register at ‘writespeakact.org’ where they could sign up for specific events, see their custom schedule along with schedules of other bloggers, whom they could then communicate and connect with. The new format enabled greater collaboration and coordination amongst the bloggers who could discuss which events they would like to attend, request more information and post links to their content. Partner organizations were able to invite bloggers to come and cover their events and organise ‘blogger briefings’ on key development issues.

Bloggers would tag all of their content with either ‘ClimateVoice’ or ‘HerVoice’ which allowed the project team to aggregate all the blogs and   link to them using twitter and facebook. The initiative provided over 100 bloggers with access to a range of events including round table meetings of world leaders, press conferences, film screenings, debates and panel discussions.

“However we still haven’t managed to build a large enough blogging community that can continually follow these summits and generate enough chatter to make a significant media impact.”

The next phase for the voice team, 9 months into the project, will come next month in Copenhagen, where Oxfam is partnering with members of the ‘tcktcktck’ campaign to launch a blog space at the Cop15 climate summit which will be called the ‘Fresh Air Center”. The plan is to create a digital space for accredited bloggers within the summit to use for rapid response press conferences, interviews and meetings with brought-in experts, whilst also attracting the interest of Cop15 delegates. In order to reach a wider audience, digital campaigners from the following organisation will support the Fresh Air center and ensure bloggers are connected to developments as they occur:

• Avaaz
• Greenpeace
• Oxfam
• CAN
• IndyAct
• NRDC
• 1Sky
• UN Foundation
• 350.org

Bloggers form the following organizations have agreed to join the initiative:

• Huffington Post
• Treehugger
• OneWorld
• CampusProgress
• GlobalVoices
• TheUptake
• ClimateProgress
• Adopt-a-Netogiator

In a short period of time, the ‘Voice’ project has become a standard feature of international summits on poverty and climate change, it has empowered bloggers from over 50 countries and reached thousands of people across the world with diverse perspectives of what is happening in the worlds most powerful forums. While this initiative is still in its infancy, it represents a growing trend, an online revolution, which is now spreading offline, and affecting the way people participate in fundamental ways. Voice at global summits which once belonged to invited elites, is now available to thousands of people, following the actions of world leaders, sharing their perspectives and increasing accountability by one more notch. What comes next? Governments: Watch this space!