I’m a bit late in getting to it, but Foreign Policy blogger (and former TOL hand) Evgeny Morozov had a very interesting post over at Net Effect a couple weeks back entitled “What if the Trafigura case happened in Turkmenistan?” Morozov asked just that regarding the Guardian’s Twitter-abetted triumph over a certifiably evil oil company that secured an injunction against the newspaper reporting on the firm’s internal analysis of a 2006 pollution disaster - and against reporting on the injunction itself. (As The New York Times pithily put it, “the Guardian was forbidden to report that it had been gagged.”)
Prompted by a Guardian article that broadly hinted at what was afoot, the Twitterati took over, creating an online onslaught that prompted the firm, Trafigura, to relent and release the internal report. All well and good. But Morozov notes that the case points up what digital activism can’t do as well as what it can do - or, more to the point, where it can do:
“… broadly speaking, for networks of activists to exert influence on power structures, those structures have to be responsible, transparent, and fluid. The reason why the anti-Trafigura campaign succeeded is that the U.K. already enjoys a rather healthy democracy, whatever its minor shortcomings are. A similar campaign in Belarus or Uzbekistan would almost surely fail, because state newspapers have nothing to lose (they are subsidized by the government), the private sector doesn’t exist, and bureaucrats do not really care about their reputations or the reputations of the structures that they represent.
“Just look at the failure to mobilize civil society in Azerbaijan over the case of two activist bloggers who are now facing jail sentences. No matter how many Twitter users stand up for their cause, I doubt any digital activism campaigns could sway the Azeri authorities.”
I don’t think Morozov is trying to pour cold water on digital activism in Azerbaijan, Britain or anywhere else. But, as he often does in his blog, he casts a welcome critical eye on the sometimes overheated claims being made for social tools as political tools. In repressive regimes, as he points out, the hard slogging still has to be done on the ground, not just in the ether.
Today and in the future – what is the role of civil society organizations in the public space? Global issues and new tools for civic engagement are influencing CEE societies as well as the rest of the world. The Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe wants to explore the changing map of civil society - beyond formal institutions, concepts and agendas developed in the first years of democratization.
The Civil Society Forum takes place 17 and 18 September in Bratislava. Take part in discussions and share your thoughts directly with participants and speakers through the online livestreaming!
“No dictators have been toppled via Second Life” reminds us Evgeny Morozov of the OSI’s Information program. Second Life is one of the social media platforms used in the recent phenomenon of networked protest. Networked protest can be traced back to the French riots of 2005 and blog posts urging people to “burn the cops,” as well as the Hungarian riots in 2006, which relied on blogs to enlist supporters and disseminate an audio recording of the prime minister admitting government corruption. The Hungarian protesters even came up with something they called Interactive Riot Walkthrough to offer “virtual tours” of Budapest as it burned. Greek riots this January left a memorial space in Second Life (you probably need to download the free software to visit it) to commemorate the death of the 15 year old Alexandris Grigoropoulos taken down by a police bullet.
The reverberations of the Greek anti-establishment riots which followed the murder circulated wildly through the social media. Twitter, Facebook and Youtube helped organise solidarity protests in Istanbul, Madrid, Copenhagen, Sofia and so on. The buzztag on Twitter in January was “griots” or Greek riots.
The near-colour revolution in Moldova in April followed the example. The Moldovan Twittertag was #pman. Type #pman in Twitter and you will get a series of liberal anti-communist comments in Romanian. Two months earlier you would have seen calls for a peaceful flashmob gathering with candles in Chisinau’s main square - Piata Marii Adunari Nationale - what pman stands for. Today’s search on this tag yields references to a similar tag for Iran: Enqelab sq. Not surpisingly, radio Free Europe called the Moldovan uprisings a “Twitter revolution.”
Looking back to the most recent colour revolution in Europe: the Ukrainian Oragne revolution, the technological progress is obvious. A Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society study recalls that “By September 2004, Pora [the opposition’s youth movement] had created a series of stable political networks throughout the country, including 150 mobile groups responsible for spreading information and coordinating election monitoring, with 72 regional centers and over 30,000 registered participants. Mobile phones played an important role for this mobile fleet of activists. Pora’s post–election report states, ‘a system of immediate dissemination of information by SMS was put in place and proved to be important.” It took less organisation and time for this spring’s networked protests to happen.
Morozov, however, warns against cyber-optimism in an essay on democracy and the internet. In fact the brutally falsified election results and foreign money flowing to the democratic opposition played a large part in Ukraine. Moldova, on the other hand, is still in a political impasse. Morozov also warns that authoritarian regimes can be equally as effective in using the social media for propaganda, oftentimes very subtly. The internet does not necessarily mean democracy. Access to it does not automatically lead to political awareness and activism. Morozov’s essay has quite a sobering-up effect.
Who said it is impossible to gain popularity via new media in country with low level of online media development? Especially in Caucasus... One guy from Mingrelia, western Georgia have been caught by traffic police and as always recorded by cameras and showed on TV, that everybody laughed at him. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yfeNu7986E]
Then his video appeared in YouTube and have got 11.150 viewers in a country with near-to-zero new media development! That's incredible.
So next step was taking him to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Br2ElRBI8g&feature=related">very popular show</a>. Last step - he has got contract with country-wide TV channel! Perfect work Koxora!
During last 2 years former USSR countries faced so-called “BarCamp boom”. Starting from the very first Ukranian BlogCamp in autumn 2007 and until the most recent NevaCamp in St. Petersburg, we all appreciated brand new style of putting new media dreams into real life.
These two years were full of exciting events, people, projects and innovations, which changed us very much. I, personally, during the Kiev BlogCamp in 2007, made my first presentation on a large (relatively) audience, met some people who became my good friends very soon, decided to take part in the BarCamp Baltics 2008 and even developed some ingenious projects for their Innovation Incubator.
Then a first thought of hosting our Belarusian un-conference has appeared. Later it transformed into some small events in Belarus and a huge event at the end of year, as a gift to all Belarusian internet community - ByCamp 2008.
I was chatting the other day with Ihar Mahaniok, a former TOL blogger from Belarus who now works for Google in Zurich. Ihar was reminding me that it was already two years since the death of Uladzimir Katkouski, a pioneer of the Belarusian Internet and especially the blogosphere.
I met Uladizmir probably around four years ago, as TOL was starting to get involved in new media and had just received a grant to promote blogging in Belarus. Without many contacts in the area, I started to inquire about individuals that might help us with the project, and as luck would have it, I soon found that one of the best and most popular bloggers happened to live in Prague and work over at Radio Free Europe. We met and Uladzimir graciously agreed to get involved, even though we at TOL were mere beginners and he was already quite advanced in his knowledge and experiences. He recruited Ihar and helped us with the initial strategy, but we hadn’t moved very far when news came of a tragic accident in the center of Prague.
If I remember correctly, Uladzimir and his wife were simply walking along a street when a fire engine ran a red light, and then spun out of control in trying to avoid a collision with a tram, hitting the couple. Also if I am remembering correctly, it turned out that there wasn’t even a fire. So sad. I would strongly encourage everyone to check out Ihar’s post (in English), which gives an overview of Uladzimir’s contribution to the Belarusian online world.
Twitter is not just an incidental result of the crazy webmasters` experiment, nor the greatest invention in the art of wasting your time, but the system which appeared right in time, by the society demand. Twitter came into our lives to eliminate the inner contradictions inside the classic style of blogging. With the appearance of “Twitter model” of blogging, traditional blogging systems began to adopt microblogging on their sites in the purpose to survive in quickly changing world.
In the universities we are taught the science of the evolution of open systems. Let me remind you some stages which every system should pass during its lifecycle.
1. The system is born, early prototypes as well as early adopters (as users and creators) appear.
I am in Baku now for Bridge Camp or Körpü Kamp in Azerbiajani. It is a second Barcamp style event this year in Azerbaijan. Sitting in the chairs of the high-ranking GEF Hotel and listening on possible new media-NGO-media links, I feel pretty interested. Actually it is organized by Transitions Online Caucasus representatives, our activists and other people. I have seen a lot of people from our previous trainings and it is fun to see people coming to listen and speak on new media, and the end of the traditional one. Some people from Ganja asked me: Will i present something on new situation in Azerbaijani media?
Actually I will present old vs. new media, and sure, it is not yet the end of the one. It just should change as has been done by many. Now I see some websites from media that have pretty good design, open source based programming, comments, videos, voices in one place. That’s what I want. But still even these pages don’t t involve many journalists participating. People (even if they write comments for one of the biggest opposition newspaper) are still unanswered by editorial staff.
Hoping to change this year. Now listning to one of my first students - Rita Valiyeva on media and PR. Perfect knowledge of issues. She also serves as PR person for our Barcamps. Success - we have more people than planned.
Still a lot of jobs to do. I am always using this ugly web site to show what we need to change. Pop-up windows, no place to write comments, not even proper e-mail to the editor. But imagine - it is the most read newspaper and news website in Azerbaijan, according to various statistics. Imagine how much more they will get … if they will change.
Welcome to TOL’s New Media blog, the place to track events and developments in IT, social media and their intersection with politics, business and culture in the post-communist world. Join us here for a robust dialogue and a fresh take on cool sites, new apps, usage trends, gains and losses on the electronic-freedom front, and other media news.
We’re kicking off with a stellar lineup of contributors from around TOL’s coverage area:
Vojcech Sakłovic is a blogger, translator and online media expert who splits his time between Minsk and London (where he is studying for his MA in media). He is a Belarus contributor to Global Voices Online and does new-media training for journalists in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Yelena Jetpyspayeva is an Almaty-based journalist, consultant and BarCamp enthusiast/organizer. She serves as Russian-language managing editor for the TOL partner project Neweurasia.net, and her own blog, Me. About., covers new-media developments in Central Asia and beyond.
Emin Huseynzade is TOL’s Caucasus project manager. He holds master’s degrees from the Azerbaijan State Economic University and the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. Emin is a former producer for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and also contributes to TOL’s Steady State Caucasus blog.
Igor Kandyba is a Belarusian blogger, podcaster and Drupal developer from Belarus. He is fascinated with information design, the semantic Web, and using new media tools for social change.
We’ll be adding to the roster as time goes on, and we welcome new voices. If you’re interested in joining in, see the Blog for Us page for details.
