Development action with informed and engaged societies

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Iran's Twitter Revolution

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Affiliation

The Nation

Date
Summary

From the The Nation blog page, The Notion, author Ari Berman claims that information and communication technology (ICT) is creating access to the most recent news on the June 12 2009 Iranian opposition election protests, available through blogs, YouTube, and Twitter updates from Tehran.

Berman cites reporting done over Twitter by a university student in Tehran who goes by the moniker Tehran Bureau. The Iranian authorities reportedly shut his website down over the weekend, but he was able to send short posts around the world over Twitter. The twitter messaging network has included a list of Iranian bloggers twittering about the clashes between opposition protesters and government forces.

In the United States (US), as reported by Berman, bloggers at such websites as The Atlantic and the Huffington Post "surpassed most traditional news organisations by posting around the clock updates", relying on YouTube footage from inside Iran. Outside the US, news organisations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Britain's Channel 4 have done on-the-spot reporting, "often shooting on their cell phones" amidst the "outpouring of texts, tweets and video from Tehran."

Source

The Nation blog website on June 18 2009.