"Human Rights Go Viral"

There is an interesting article on Slate.com about the use of "new media," such as YouTube, to promote human rights. It focuses particularly on a video created to highlight the case of one Guantanamo Bay detainee, a Sudanese named Adel Hamad. Apparently, after the video was posted and viewed more than 70,000 times in one month, the government added Hamad to a list of people slated to be released (not sure about the causal connection between those two things). As the author, a student at Harvard Law School, points out:

YouTube and its ilk mean that today anyone can tell human rights stories. And as Hamad's video shows, if the stories are told with enough brio and skill, the public will pay attention, and the government may be more likely to respond. . . . YouTube goes where the mainstream media can't or won't go. It's visceral. It's story first, message second. And it gives advocates instant access to an audience in a way that press releases and op-eds never can.

Here's the YouTube video about Adel Hamad: