Last night, jhr (Journalists for Human Rights) hosted its first ever tweet-up at the Cryptic Canvas Art Gallery. Now I already know the first thought that just ran through all of your minds: “What the hell is a tweet-up?”. Well, it’s a social gathering that gives the local online community the chance to come together and meet face to face…and if you’ve read any of my previous posts here at blogUT, you’ll know I’ve written a few posts about events like these.

As the co-organizer of #tweet4rights, let me give you the low down on what the whole night was about. The premise behind #tweet4rights was to educate jhr’s online followers, many of whom are avid users of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, of how they could use social media as a means of sharing and promoting Rights Media – media pieces that create societal dialogue on human rights related issues. The whole idea for the event emerged with the realization that more and more ordinary citizens all around the world are using social media tools to reach out to a global audience to report on and expose the rampant human rights violations that are occurring every day. In the past few months, examples of this have been taking the headlines of major news sources (does Iran or China ring a bell?). The use of social media as a tool to raise and spread human rights awareness is becoming so much more prevalent these days that in 2009, a study by the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that for the first time, more online based reporters were arrested and detained that traditional mainstream journalists.

Thus, sets the background for last night’s #tweet4rights event. Despite weather constraints and an incredibly significant hockey game for our lovely nation, people slowly streamed in to the Cryptic Canvas to learn more about this newly developing concept and how they can make a difference. The evening was started by the Managing Editor of digitaljournal.com and Artistic Director and Founder of Toronto Poetry Slam, David Silverberg, who performed a spoken word piece on the importance of journalism and the media in our society. His performance was then followed by Education Specialist, Carissa Maclennan, who educated attendees of the concept of Rights Media and its place in the social media landscape. Her presentation even asked audience members to develop a 140 character Rights Media piece, which tweeps obviously had fun with!  The rest of the night, attendees had the chance to mix and mingle getting to know fellow catalysts for change.

Being jhr’s first tweet-up, the event was undoubtedly experimental. With such a new and uncertain phenomenon as social media, there is definitely lots of room to improve for the next event but nevertheless, the night can be considered yet another success for jhr (but again, I’m a co-organizer and thus potentially biased!).

If you were unable to attend the event but would like to learn more about Rights Media, you can find more information on jhr’s website here.