Information Policy

Australia Invites Public Comment on National Broadband Network Project

The Australian government today called for public comment on how its planned national broadband network (NGN) should operate, including issues of access, ownership and control of the network Dow Jones reports. Submissions are due by 30 July. The Labour government in April scrapped a tender process to build the network and instead plans to back the A$43-billion (US$34 billion) high-speed fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network itself, with some investments from the private sector, as the global financial crisis dashed hopes of a single company completing the project. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said it is important that, in laying the ground work for the single biggest national-building infrastructure in Australia's history, the government gets legislation governing the proposed national broadband network company right.

The government is planning to form a new company for the NGN roll out and operate the new company on a wholesale-only, open-access basis with oversight by competition watchdog the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission. It is asking for comment on how to achieve its goals, including how to set price and non-price terms for services, which services to offer, the nature of any private-sector ownership restrictions, arrangements for the government to ultimately sell its stake, and the role the ACCC should play in regulating the network. Telstra, SingTel's Australian unit Optus, and Canada's Axia NetMedia have indicated they are interested in participating in the NGN project, potentially by selling existing assets into the network in exchange for equity in the new company to be formed for undertaking the project.

https://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/36138?7649

Online Activism Isn’t Dead

by Leslie Harris

The social and political impact of the Internet is growing at a rapid pace. After all of the successes credited to President Obama’s social media campaign network in last fall’s election, we still find ourselves at the earliest stages of development of the social layer of the Net. Still, some are quick to dismiss the activist power of the Internet and still are not convinced that this medium will continue to change the way the world organizes around issues.

Take a piece in today’s Washington Post by Monica Hesse, which commented on the “trendiness” of online activism and discounted these “click to join” groups as nothing more than numbers on a Facebook page. This completely misses the impact that social networks have had on increasing the awareness of many issues and building communities around these issues. As we gear up for our nation’s 233rd birthday, we are reminded of how colonists planted seeds of activism and organized against oppressors from abroad. Instead of Facebook fan pages, they had militiamen; instead of asking others to click a link, they asked them to help gather supplies; instead of Twitter feeds, they used horses to get messages across. From top to bottom, they created organization that allowed supporters to thrive in any role or level they chose. The mother who allowed soldiers to sleep in her cabin, was as vital to their success as the soldiers themselves. It didn’t matter what a supporter of the revolution was doing, their support alone was enough.

Today there are groups on Facebook aimed at gathering supporters for just about any cause. Just like any other advocacy effort, supporters join for a variety of different reasons. That’s where the Hesse piece really misses the mark. The assumption is made that to participate in any activism online, one must be willing to fight hard and organize physical results to be “worthy” of being a supporter. This claim ignores the power of community building and the very essence of grassroots advocacy. My support of a specific issue is not measured by how much I donate or how many rallies I attend. To discount followers of causes on social networks engaging in conduct that is a “trendy and easy virtue” ignores the impact that supporters have on social networks at every level of involvement. The person simply receiving message updates on the issue is just as vital to the success of the cause as the top-level organizer who sends tasks and ideas to the group’s followers.

It’s especially disheartening to read about Anders Colding-Jorgensen and his little social experiment of creating a fictional Facebook cause and group just to “prove” how little the followers of a social media group matter. The time spent on rounding up supporters for a fake issue could have been better spent organizing supporters for a real global issue.

While not all social media activist campaigns are built with the same number of leaders and organizers, every level of involvement in these mediums is important. These networks are valuable at even the base level of getting information to hundreds of thousands of new supporters, regardless of how involved those supporters might ultimately be.

Rather than simply dismiss the power of social network organizing, we should focus on developing its use further as we have only begun to explore the possibilities of organizing masses online around global issues. If several thousand people can use a Facebook group to save an outdoor movie festival in Washington and one man can organize millions to take to the streets in Columbia against the FARC then there’s no telling what the future holds for social networking.

http://blog.cdt.org/2009/07/02/online-activism-isnt-dead/

Political Participation Through Social Media

While many traditional newspaper publishing companies are loosing their clients to the internet, social websites such as Facebook or MySpace are capturing new members every second. It appears that such websites are becoming the most effective means of distributing private or public information.

Indeed, citizens can express their political opinions by being supporters of different political parties or presidents on Facebook pages. As for instance, the pages of the French president Nicolas Sarkozy have 95 724 members. His pages provide access to all relevant news from the government. Members can read about the laws and re-forms that the government intends to implement, speeches that have been delivered on different occasions or official visits made by the president. By leaving positive or negative comments, people can create pressure on the decision makers to revisit certain legislation proposals or they can influence political views of other readers.

This system permits people to identify with different political believes. There are however a few drawbacks. Some individuals do not want to join these groups on principle of discretion as their membership is visible to all. Some people think that joining a specific political group could lead to a conflict at their workplace or community.

If we take the example of Barak Obama, who built his political campaign on the Internet by using means such as Facebook and YouTube, we can see how the new technology can directly change voters participation and election turnouts. Through internet, Obama established connection with otherwise inaccessible groups and become the most popular president in the world.

On his Facebook pages, we can find videos of his speeches, his agenda, projects he is planning to organize and various newspaper articles about his presidency. Moreover, his pages include some personal photos. This particularity made Barack Obama known as the “human” or “family” president.

The power of social networking is even greater in France where people are known for their political activity. There are thousands of groups and blogs discussing, opposing or supporting the French laws. We take an example of one group against the Law “DARCOS” created and named after the minister of education in December 2008. The group has already 21 664 members with a total of 541 comments. Law Darcos plans to re-form the French high school diploma (Baccalaureate). Prepared in four years at present, the Minister plans to reduce this time to one year. The Facebook group represent the discontent students and the many political slaps that France has suffered this year.

The Internet opened a new wave of political participation reaching more people than ever before. Youngsters use groups on social networking websites to read and comment on certain laws but also to organize public gatherings and protests. This social networking trend may lead to a greater political transparency and public inclusion. As a result, one may wonder if Facebook and blogs are good ways to etablish sustainable relationship between the government and citizens. That is a question that only time can answer.

http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?p=545

Mobile Phones as a Tool for Civil Resistance - Case Studies from Serbia and Belarus

Author: Fabien Miard

The recent so-called “Twitter Revolutions” in Moldova and Iran have created a renewed interest in the role of new communication technologies in civil resistance and social protest activities. It is a new example in a growing list of events where such technologies played an important role in facilitating protests. Twitter and other microblogging platforms represent a new phenomenon because they easily work across different types of communication technologies such as instant messaging, blogging, and text messaging. This convergence also draws attention to the wide-spread use of mobile phones in civil resistance, a factor often overlooked by Internet enthusiasts. This R@D product summarizes some key insights from interviews with civil activists in both Serbia and Belarus that were part of a master thesis project on mobile phone usage in protest movements, and it links them to insights gained from the recent “Twitter Revolutions”. Although the cases of Serbia and Belarus might initially seem similar because of their geographic proximity, struggles with dictatorial leaders, and historical Communist dominance, mobile phone use by activists in these countries is markedly different. Mobile phones were a critical tactical tool in bringing down Milosevic in 2000. However, only 8 years later, mobiles are less useful to anti-Lukashenka Belarusian activists in the present day because of the state’s increasingly effective surveillance of mobile communication. http://www.digiactive.org/wp-content/uploads/research3_miard.pdf

WordPress blocked in Guatemala

Guatemala's ongoing political crisis, which began with the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg and has been fueled largely by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs, reached a new level over the weekend when several ISPs began blocking access to WordPress.com.

Reports of the blocking first reached Twitter on June 26, when user @demuxer noted that some Internet users in Guatemala were unable to access WordPress and wondered if Chapintocables, a political blog created after Rosenberg's death, was somehow involved: http://opennet.net/blog/2009/06/wordpress-blocked-guatemala

The Iranian Election on Twitter: The First Eighteen Days

The political events that transpired during and after the 2009 Iranian election garnered global attention, particularly due to the purported importance of Twitter. As a platform-independent service for communication, Twitter has become a preferred vehicle to broadcast unfolding events in Iran both within the country and to an international audience. The use of Twitter to communicate about these events is a striking instance of the memetic spread of behaviors and ideas online. Our report serves as an initial assessment of the Twitter web ecology -- that is, users interacting with their technological environment -- to sketch out the broad anatomy of discourse on Twitter by providing a novel perspective with quantitative data. Our servers continue to collect data, and we plan to publish a follow-up report that comprehensively explores the structure of the events from additional perspectives and depths.

Key Findings

* From 7 June 2009 until the time of publication (26 June 2009), we have recorded 2,024,166 tweets about the election in Iran.

* Approximately 480,000 users have contributed to this conversation alone.

* 59.3% of users tweet just once, and these users contribute 14.1% of the total number.

* The top 10% of users in our study account for 65.5% of total tweets.

* 1 in 4 tweets about Iran is a retweet of another user’s content.

http://webecologyproject.org/WEP-twitterFINAL.pdf

Politics 2.0 - The Obama Campaign

Barack Obama’s electoral campaign represents a masterpiece in online-campaigning. The use of ICTs and the creation of an Obama-brand were the key features to mobilising the masses. Obama’s opponent, senator McCain, couldn’t motivate as many people to participate in his campaign.

Barack Obama was registered on more than a dozen different social media, the main ones (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter) included, and succeeded in forming an online community that strongly supported his goals. The online-headquarter was my.barackobama.com (MyBO) “[which] was at the heart of the campaign’s new media strategy. [… The] site allowed users to create events, exchange information, raise funds, and connect with voters in their area. MyBO was the digital home from which the campaign could mobilise its army of supporters.” [2] This portal helped creating a community with more than two million profiles. Of course, the easy-to-use website also attracted adversaries, which made community managers essential to evaluate and delete certain statements if necessary.

Citizens participate in Obama’s Campaign

The operators of MyBO established a strong sense of community as everyone with political interest could participate. In blogs, people could express themselves and report about their personal experiences during the campaign. Useful information, such as phone lists and guides for campaigning, were distributed via this internet-portal; even fund-raising-statistics of all members were included. However, the “real spirit of the community could be seen in the more than 200,000 offline events organized through MyBO.” [2]

The Obama campaign collected 13 million email addresses and sent one billion emails to mobilize its supporters. “The Obama team used email as an integral platform to engage supporters, bloggers, and online media. Often overlooked by traditional communications departments, email has one major advantage: speed.” [2] Putting email recipients into groups gave the campaign the opportunity to send individually designed messages to specific groups of people. An even faster way to communicate is SMS, which can be used to contact people without internet access, especially in rural areas.

Citizens make President independent

Obama’s blog was the centre where all news and information were displayed. “It was the hub that captured all activities in the Obamaverse and shared them with the world. The blog was the campaign’s repository, a place where stories, videos, news, and pictures were captured and pushed out to Obama’s many social network profiles.” [2] As people could participate, the campaign’s theme “Yes we can!” was emphasised. One of the Obama’s campaign stated goals was to involve people and to make them participate.

The fund-raising was well organised, and, instead of a few companies making large donations, many citizens donated small amounts of money. “3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once.” [4] Even though Harfoush states different sums, one thing is for sure: Obama’s success in fund raising is based on small donations by many people. As a result, Obama’s campaign was neither dependent on financially strong lobbies nor on his party. The campaign’s activities in the Web 2.0 made Obama become a one-man-party. “Without entirely realizing it, America elected its first Independent president.” [3]

The campaign was successful because it was both consistent and authentic in all the different media used. Despite the campaign’s uniform appearance, campaign managers created a specific concept for each online-platform. Citizens could participate in the campaign; feedback was wanted, appreciated and heard. In summary, many volunteers supported and influenced Obama’s campaign and consequently led to the historic election outcome.

Source:
http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?p=533

China's Censorship Blowback

By Rebecca MacKinnon

I'm not sure what the Chinese government is thinking, or whether certain parts of certain ministries and party apparatus have gotten completely out of control.

Until recently, it had seemed to me that the Chinese government was managing its censorship system with surprising success: censoring enough (combined with strategic arrests) to keep people from using the Internet to organize a successful nation-wide political opposition movement; but at the same time allowing enough space for online discourse and citizen-muckraking that people have felt freer and more empowered than ever before, which actually seemed to work in favor of the central government's legitimacy—despite being very bad news for corrupt local officials. But this month, something shifted. It's unclear whether the shift is long-lasting or just temporary madness until the PRC's 60th anniversary on October 1st.

Most of China's educated, largely apolitical, internet-connected urbanites have until now been generally willing to accept the political status quo—and with it a certain amount of censorship, thuggishness and injustice, political paranoia and occasional bizarreness—in exchange for overall social stability (compared to any other time in living Chinese memory), economic growth, plus an impressive increase in China's global power and status. But whoever is driving the latest Internet crackdown and the accompanying moralistic propaganda drive may have done substantial damage to the government's credibility.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090625_chinas_censorship_blowback/

Tyranny's new nightmare: Twitter

Tim Rutten: As new media spreads its Web worldwide, authoritarians like those in Iran will have a difficult time maintaining absolute control in the face of the technology's chaotic democracy.

Twenty years ago, the world was transfixed by an image of courageous resistance -- a lone young man standing in the road before a column of Chinese army tanks moving into Tiananmen Square to crush the students and others who'd gone there to demonstrate for reform.

Since Saturday, the global community has been similarly gripped by the tragic photos and video of Neda Agha-Soltan, the 26-year-old Iranian woman shot to death on the streets of Tehran while on her way to one of the protests over that country's disputed presidential election.

The most famous of the photos of the Chinese hero was taken by Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener. Other memorable images of the standoff were shot by photo journalists who were in Beijing working for Newsweek, Reuters and the Magnum photo agency. In Iran, by contrast, we still don't know who took the stills, video and audio recordings of the dying young woman, who has become known to tens of millions simply as "Neda," because the images and sound were collected on the cellphones of her fellow demonstrators and surreptitiously transmitted over the Internet to the rest of the world.

In those differing attributions, we can begin to see the future of foreign news reporting.

Two things of immense consequence have occurred since the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square: For economic reasons, far fewer Western journalists are dispatched to cover international crises, like the June 12 Iranian election; at the same time, millions of people around the world -- and particularly in countries with large, well-educated young urban populations, like China and Iran -- have joined the new media revolution. The Internet, social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, and cellphones with the ability to text-message and to record and transmit images have become interwoven with their daily lives.

The Iranian resistance is the first popular movement to present itself to the world, in significant part, through new media. But while it's true that something new and unexpected is happening here, the process hasn't gone as either many traditional journalists or the Web's theoretical triumphalists ever foresaw.

As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government and its thuggish clerical allies have choked off more and more of the Western media's access to events, thousands of Iranians armed with cellphones and social network connections have taken the reporters' and photographers' place. However, instead of the emergence of full-blown "citizen journalists" -- the ideal of Internet enthusiasts -- you've seen thousands of ordinary Iranians on the scene feeding information and images to other media, both traditional and nontraditional, much in the manner of volunteer stringers.

Over the last week, a variety of Western bloggers and alternative media outlets -- notably Andrew Sullivan's blog and Al Gore's Current TV -- have sorted through and ordered the incredible volume of information. Traditional news organizations -- most notably CNN and the BBC -- have relied on lots of information from ordinary citizens and have been extremely transparent about how they've done so, sorting it out right in front of their viewers.

The hard work of verifying, analyzing and fleshing out the facts has been left to the journalists on the scene -- notably New York Times columnist Roger Cohen and this paper's Borzou Daragahi, whose profile of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times was a model of what only print journalism can provide.

This hybrid journalism -- developed without plan and under the most intense pressure imaginable -- is the best and most workable glimpse of the West's informational future we've yet seen.

Meanwhile, the mullahs and their buddies can throw out all the correspondents they want, but the facts keep flowing. This is bad news for authoritarian governments. In the future, they'll have to choose between underdevelopment -- denying their people social media, cellphones and the Internet -- and control. It's a little clearer now why the Chinese are demanding that all PCs and hand-helds sold in that country come with built-in censorship hardware. Lots of luck with that.

Tyranny's irreducible dilemma is that the Web is, in its chaotic essence, the product of an open society. You can't have its benefits without accepting the democratic baggage.

Somewhere, there's a mullah gnashing his teeth, just as his great-grandfather did in the 1920s after pointlessly denouncing Reza Shah's introduction of antiseptics as heretical corruption. Modernity's a bitch.

http://128.100.171.10/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2373&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

European Elections: 15% of Estonians voters have voted by Internet

Estonia was the only EU country to allow Internet voting for the European Parliament elections, last June 7. Over than 58 000 voters used e-voting, which is 15% of all the people who voted. The e-voting system has been in Estonia under development since 2002 with the final pilot held at the end of 2004. It has been several times presented at the World eDemocracy Forum. In 2005 the system was used for the first time for local government council elections. In 2007, for the first time in the world it was possible in Estonia to vote online also in parliamentary elections.

At that time, a total of 30,275 out of 940,000 registered voters used that opportunity and cast their ballots via the Internet.

Internet voting in Estonia is presented a supplement, not to replace the traditional methods of voting. The idea is to give voters the possibility to vote from the location of their choice (home or office), without the necessity of going to the polling station. Therefore remote voting is used.

http://www.edemocracy-forum.com/2009/06/european-elections-15-of-estonians-voters-have-voted-by-internet.html