The goal of the Content Construction Kit is to provide a foundation for publishing semantic content.
The philosophical foundations of Amnesty International Canada's content strategy are based on:
- Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE), an approach to digital production that emphasizes creating content parity across all platforms
- Lossless, Open, Flexible, Independant (LO-FI), "principles of digital production that are essential for the advancement, extension, and long-term preservation of digital discourse"
- LOVE. Yes, love: a community of people, brought together by purpose, to make the world a better place. Remember, “justice is what love looks like in public” and our solidarity is our strength.
The technical foundations of our publishing ecosystem are simple, yet powerful, standard systems:
- YAML, a format for writing metadata (contextual information) designed for human readability and interaction with scripting languages
- Markdown, an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format that converts easily to HTML (and other formats).
- File System as Information Management, a platform-independant method of organizing digital assets
- Git, a version control system
- Jekyll, a static website publishing tool
Amnesty International works towards universal human rights. We are a global movement of over 3 million people committed to defending those who are denied justice or freedom.
People and organizations use the words “strategies” and “tactics” in different ways. Understanding what they are and how they are connected is important to the success of your work.
To achieve a goal, you need a strategy. To carry out your strategy, you need tactics. Tactics are the specific actions that help you fulfill your strategy so you can achieve your goals.
source: newtactics.org
The CCK encourages use of the Strategic Effectiveness Method for human rights.
- Identify the problem. What do you want to change? What human rights violation would you like to address?
- Build a common vision in order to determine goals. What do you want to be different in the future? What is inspiring you in your work? How will you know you are successful?
- Define the context. How do you evaluate your situation? What individuals and groups are connected to this problem? How do the individuals and groups relate and interact with each other? What are their goals?
- Explore and select the tactics to help you achieve your goal. What is your focus? Which tactics can have the greatest impact?
- Develop a plan of action. How are you going to put the tactics together in a plan so you can achieve your goal?
The CCK builds on strategic and tactical thinking from several sources:
- Little Yellow Book (Amnesty internal document)
- New Tactics for human rights
- 10 Tactics
- mobilise people
- witness and record
- visualise your message
- amplify personal stories
- just add humour
- manage your contacts
- use complex data
- use collective intelligence
- let people ask the questions
- investigate and expose
- 10 Tactics Remixed
- 10 Tactics Unstitched
Maintaining relevant critical content is an ongoing struggle. To focus our efforts, we look for three key elements in content: expression of the Critical Pathways, social significance of the "News Peg", and importance to the health of the Movement.
Amnesty International’s Integrated Strategic Plan outlines the parameters of our human rights work. Two other pieces map how we achieve the human rights goals of the Plan: the 12 Critical Pathways (which define the thematic areas of human rights focus), and the identification of country priorities.
- Armed Conflict
- Death Penalty
- Criminal Justice
- Ending Discrimination
- Freedom of Expression
- International Justice
- Make Corporates Accountable
- Maternal health and Sexual and Reproductive Rights (SRR)
- People on the Move
- Security and Human Rights
- Slums
- Control Arms
- Indigenous peoples (priority for Canada)
Part of being relevant is responding to "news pegs." A news peg is a subject that reflects "the rhythms and accents of the news cycle, events beyond your control that are of societal significance and coincide with when the public tunes in to find information."
We take a proactive approach to identifying news pegs on the horizon and incorporating them into our publishing schedule. After we have identified a news peg, we add it on-the-fly set of to our active keywords.
These keywords function separately from the catalogue, and do not the replace or negate the importance of catalogueing content using the catalgoue. Keywords evolve rapidly and fall out of use, the catalogue is a long-term classification tool. Using both makes a piece of content semantic: relatable to current events, history, the internet, and all our other content.
Amnesty International Canada is also part of a global movement. We are responsive to our membership, aware of emerging human rights situations, and responsible for local delivering of Amnesty International's global campaigns.
- International solidarity
- Membership
- Activism
Whenever possible, we A/B test our content.
We are working towards using Hadoop data analysis and measurement. For now, we use Google Analytics and in-house tools.
Working in a human rights framework means measuring our success against real-world outcomes, some of which are hard to measure. Nonetheless, our tactical goals all lead to the universal adoption and protection of human rights. We measure the success of our digital programs for the role they play in achieving our tactical goals.
- Public & civil society organization engagement
- Media engagement
- Engagement by key actors; allies; second governments; diplomats; IGOs
- Key target decision makers’ attitudes and engagement with AI positions
- Introduction, amendment, repeal of laws policies & standards
- Actual implementation of laws policies & standards
- Accountability towards implementation
- People able to claim rights
- People able to enjoy rights
