The Whistle is a digital platform under development for the civilian witness reporting of human rights violations. Much optimism exists around social media as a channel for the civilian reporting of human rights violations from closed contexts, such as the torrent of YouTube videos emanating from Syria. Yet the verification of this social media information takes time and expertise – and human rights NGOs must be able to verify it to act on it. The Whistle aims to support the verification process to make it easier for human rights NGOs to use digital information from civilian witnesses. Ella McPherson and Scott Limbrick are working on developing The Whistle prototype with funding from Cambridge’s ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.
