Case Study: IFIWatch.tv
About IFIWatch.tv
Independent video shines light on the problems and practices of development finance institutions worldwide. Critical documentary, protest reports, animations, meetings, interviews and more: this is video that governments and corporations would often rather was not shared. IFIWatch.TV collects and shares media for educators, activists, journalists, filmmakers, students, officials and anyone else interested in what multilateral bodies are doing with our money, our neighbours, and our planet.
I am a woman working through informal networks to help spread awareness of grassroots online video and information on big public finance, the environment, development, human rights etc. this approach to sharing internet video is, I find, a particularly female way of working; it certainly seems to be different to the more 'empire building' approach of most other online video projects I come across in this field - almost all run by men.
Zoe is based in London, currently as a consultant with the Bretton Woods Project (BWP), which initiated IFIWatchnet.org about 5 years ago. IFIWatch.tv focuses on the tools needed to share video, and was intended to be integrated with the text based ifiwatchnet. BWP works as a networker, information-provider, media informant and watchdog to scrutinise and influence the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Created as an independent initiative by a group of British non-governmental organisations (NGOs), it works with an extensive network to press for increased transparency and civil society participation, with a focus on environment and development issues, plus increasingly human rights.
Around 3 years ago IFIWatchnet's management was shifted to ITeM in Uruguay but they were not keen to take on management of the video section, so that is how Zoe continued to develop that from London.
What is IFIWatch.tv?
IFIWatch focuses on helping users to find the video material they want, wherever it is published on the net, and presenting it alongside relevant news, documents, conferences etc. The original goal was networking media for IFIwatchnet participant organisations.
IFIWatch.tv is not just an online project, as the content management system is intended to offer an information service and “back up” for many, many kinds of offline work – research, teaching, public screenings etc.
Strategies that can be seen as feminist and the impact of interventions on women’s rights and empowerment
Zoe speaks about helping others to look after and inform each other, making life easier for good people who are doing hard work to raise the living standards of women and men worldwide and promoting the health and education of all through understanding the causes of illness, ignorance and injustice.
IFIWatch can be seen as feminist as it is not about saying to everyone “look at MY films, MY brand, MY campaign”, but to create collective ground for all campaigners, film makers, etc in this field to share and co-promote their materials, understandings etc
Zoe got into this work as a film maker connected with campaigns as people kept asking her at screenings etc “where do I find more information, more films like this?” and rather than sending them to one new film, one new campaign, she created a database of related films on IFIs that she had come across, and invited others to contribute.
“I used to feel as if my writings, my films were like my children
SO MUCH work would go into them, so much love and staying up all night... and then they would go out in the world and be up against the big money, the big boys..they'd hardly get a hearing, an audience because they were low budget and didn't 'play the game' of simplifying environmental issues, or treating audiences as fools. But they were not alone, my films would find friends.. Little low budget films with passionate interest and belief in justice, ecology, compassion... and rather than see them all try to find their way in the world separately, I wanted to help these films to find each other, find their audience... so it's a website even for the smallest, lowest budget Southern production to sit alongside a blockbuster like 'The Corporation'. And then when I promote my own films, I can point people at the same time to my friends' and colleagues' work.”
What are the challenges and consequent responses to working as a feminist in this environment?
Zoe alluded to a few challenges. Being a woman in an online video networking environment where Zoe works some of the time alongside men who develop and push their own free softwares and where there are so many web video publishing platforms, each of which seem to want everyone to come to them to give them online video content, so that users all have to go to their site or subscribe to their feed to find films of interest, whatever their issue or area. As part of this, they will push only that brand, that model of work, partly to gain control or reputation. So many people (mainly men) involved in the work would rather create a new tool and be known by their peers as the one who did this rather than make it easy for non-geeks – such as often busy, multi-tasking women activists and film makers- to use the last tool they made.
Zoe describes this as like people wanting to be pioneers in the wild, wild west. This attitude to developing tools and online territory can be almost macho... maybe it's the only way to get a firm foothold at the 'bleeding edge' of video sharing technologies - Zoe has adopted it at times also as to some extent and for now is promoting ifiwatch.tv as a brand - until or unless 1. it is reabsorbed into ifiwatchnet.org, and/or 2. the networking model of video sharing it pilots actually takes off, and the networking hub can disappear into the background, one among many in the mesh of media RSS feed flows. To approach this goal she is learning to ‘speak geek’, but trying not to get caught up in the culture of being online all the time, while your body, soul and surroundings gradually disintegrate!
How do you understand the role of technology in the work you do?
Zoe sees technology as central to her work. For example without the FLOSS Drupal Content Management System and other online tools, there would be no network in this electronic form. In order to make films, she needs cameras and related gear, editing softwares etc. Many aspects of this work are almost entirely technology based.
The technology to make good films costs a lot. In order to enable the films to be free politically from any chance of commercial influence, one has no recourse to advertising revenues.
Zoe sees an important role being in demystifying software programmes, human to machine interfaces and agitating for better documentation
Would you see the use of FOSS as a feminist practice of technology?
“Why would I work hard to make a brilliant tool for sharing media that no one else could use?”
Here Zoe emphasized that half of the joy of the work she does is to know that even if or when IFIWatch.tv ceases to be, the practice and spirit of sharing independent media in decentralised ways, without the intervention of big business and the profit motive, can continue to be developed at least based on the work she and her colleagues have done.
Creativity as part of a feminist practice of technology.
This is definitely part of the work IFIWatch.tv are doing. They are building new models for sharing media and the choice and shaping of technologies is a creative process. There is also co-creation of products with other members of the transmission.cc network, the network of online social justice video distribution projects in which IFIWatch.tv is active. So the process of technology choice and the strategy to implement the vision is creative.
Processes of decision-making
IFIWatchnet started off being run by a core group with facilitators both doing work and making decisions in consultation with others. That shifted to practical decisions being dominated by one person, who did not effectively support others, which led to Zoe working independently to maintain and develop the video networking tools.
In response she has looked for different ways of networking to escape from old models of hierarchy and branding and ownership and challenge the territoriality of polarising North-South politics within some networks.
Zoe pointed out how work in online video disrupts and confuses people as they are challenging assumptions. The assumptions include that IFIWatch.tv should want everyone to upload video to their site, and to assume their site treats media produced by others in an acquisitive and controlling way. But instead they have been pushing for people to take responsibility and, for example, use clear, substantial metadata and to generate media RSS feeds and use taxonomies to generate specific media RSS feeds from searches of the ifiwatch.tv video platforms.
Often in hierarchically organised campaigning groups that are not mainly focused on networking, the techies will not do this without political commitment and direction from more senior staff who are wary of losing scope for branding and political control of where their movies appear.
How does your work with technology contribute to women’s empowerment?
IFIWatch.tv helps women get their films seen in context with other related films, it publicises documentaries etc that raises women's voices, among other perspectives which have been effectively marginalised in mainstream media. They are challenging current financial architecture and pushing priorities that can benefit women worldwide. They are promoting and emphasizing the countless studies that have shown that women are disproportionately affected by IMF structural adjustment policies etc.
