I&D Blog

The blogosphere has been erupting with frustration over actions taken by volunteers at an Obama rally in Detroit on Monday. The Associated Press reported that two Muslim women were denied seats directly behind Presidential candidate Barack Obama and in front of TV cameras because of their headscarves. Politico.com revealed that Hebba Aref and Shimaa Abdelfadeel were told by volunteers that “women wearing hijabs, the traditional Muslim head scarves, couldn’t sit behind the podium” due to “a sensitive political climate.” Internet rumors have greatly contributed to this “sensitive political climate” by claiming that Obama is a Muslim (rumors which his campaign has attempted to stamp out through the online initiative “Fight the Smears”).

So far, nearly 8,000 blogs across the US, and abroad, have commented on the Obama campaign’s “discriminatory” and surprising behavior. Some have been supportive, commenting that Obama is “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t.” While other bloggers like Gardens of Sand were more critical, calling Obama “Just as prejudiced as the next guy.” The incident has created a PR nightmare for the Obama campaign, not only making his supporters question his rally cry for “change we can believe in,” but more importantly, it has given his opponents ammo with which to continue censuring him. Conservative bloggers have labeled the incident as “Obama profiling” and “political hypocrisy.” For his part, Obama recently personally apologized to the two women.

Yes, that was an “uh-oh” thing to do. Yet, can we honestly say it was completely unexpected? With all the attacks Obama has received regarding his affiliation to Islam and Muslims in an Islamophobic, post-9/11 world – everything from his middle name, Hussein, to his “tribal” Kenyan Muslim heritage has been under scrutiny – is the “overreaction” of his campaign volunteers really that surprising?

After all, American electoral politics is about more than a candidate’s message, it’s about his image. We have known this since the first televised presidential debates between JFK and Nixon took place in 1960. However, campaigning has “progressed” since then, emphasizing not only candidates’ looks, but the demographic landscape with which they are photographed – a landscape which bloggers have been highly influential in shaping. And as November 2008 draws closer, the candidates – taking a cue from cyberspace critics – continue to be more cautious about including American Muslims in that landscape, a reaction which the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) implored all presidential campaigns to refrain from.

Of the incident, blogger Ebony Mom Politics notes:
“This is the sad political reality of 2008. All things Muslims are viewed with fear. Ever since 9/11 all Muslims have been under a microscope. The crime these women committed was wearing their traditional headgear… A few weeks ago we saw Dunkin Donuts pull a Rachel Ray ad because some conservative bloggers said the scarf she was wearing looked like the garb of radical Muslims. Is this right? No, we are nation of immigrants, but sadly in this season the unspoken sign is no Muslims allowed.”

Sine May 2nd, South Korea has seen nearly daily protests against its new president, Lee Myung-bak, over his decision to resume imports of U.S. beef, which were suspended in 2003 after an outbreak of mad cow disease. In the history of South Korean collective action, these protests show the merger of Korea’s penchant for both the Internet and street demonstrations. Some media have dubbed this protest movement as “Web 2.0 protest,” which build off of the themes we identified in our case study on the impact of the citizen journalism site OhmyNews during the 2002 Presidential election.

Yesterday, the International Herald Tribune discussed in detail the role of the Internet on these demonstrations. When South Korea’s President Lee signed a deal in April with the U.S. to lift a ban on American imported beef, it quickly became a hot topic on the Internet among young people and lead to widespread fears of mad cow disease. In just one week, about 1.3 million students signed a petition on an Internet forum calling for the President’s impeachment. On May 2, thousands of teenagers who had networked in cyberspace and coordinated via mobile phone poured into central Seoul chanting “No to mad cow!,” igniting South Korea’s biggest anti-government protest in two decades.

After examining the increasing number of global political protests that have started in cyberspace (e.g. boycott against Carrefour in China and “A Million Voices against FARC” in Columbia), I found some interesting similarities in the process of Web protests that lead to street demonstrations.

• Online discussion forums and personal blogs are the ideal seedbed for Web protests. Internet users, especially young users, often respond quickly to current events or government policy and begin virtual petitions with alluring slogans, such as “No more FARC” and “Completely Boycott Carrefour”, on online forums or their personal blogs. These virtual petitions and slogans are quickly circulated in hundreds and thousands of online forums and blogs. After cyber protests go viral, often simultaneously stirring up people’s anger or nationalistic sentiments, it is time to stop talking online and take to the street. Cyber activists post plans and schedules about upcoming street protests on online discussion forums, and circulate such information immediately in cyberspace. For example, one media outlet has reported that many South Korean demonstrators rely on internet forums to get information on rallying points, weather forecasts and riot police presence.

• Social networking sites, Instant Messenger (IM), and Short Message Service (SMS) are tools to recruit more demonstrators among peer groups and help organize group actions and coordinate each protester in street demonstrations. For example, in the boycott against Carrefour in China, protestors, especially college students, sent short messages via mobile phone and IM to their friends asking them to participate in the boycott and distribute information about local protests. Besides, the use of IM, SMS, and social networking sites can allow for more efficiently organization of large street protests (often divided into small group actions) and also allow protestors to avoid government crackdowns. (See more cases about how social networking tools and SMS are used to organize protests)

• Camera phones, webcast, and networked citizen journalists extend the influence of street demonstrations to larger audiences, often tapping into large transnational networks. With camera phones, digital camcorders, and wireless Internet technology, demonstrators can instantly shoot and upload photos and videos to Internet sites during the demonstration. In South Korea’s protest, dozens of sites, like OhmyNews a popular participatory media web site, have been offering live broadcasts of demonstrations using videos or photos collected from volunteers with some even hiring commentators to liven up the action. The videos, photos, and stories from citizen journalists not only provide independent and (arguably) trustworthy information about protests that may encourage more citizens to participate, but also can serve to protect protesters from crackdowns by the authorities. In South Korea’s protest, a blogger suggests, “Take pictures and videos whenever police use violence or arrest people. Send the footage to OhmyNews by dialing 5055.”

Despite the positive side of young people’s passion on the Internet, we still should be cautious about irrationalism in cyberspace that may threaten online democracy (as I mentioned in my last post). Yesterday, South Korean President Lee warned that “the spread of false and incorrect information through the Internet and spam email is threatening the people’s rational thinking and mutual trust.” One political scientist in South Korea said that “In the online discussions on beef, you are welcome only if you voice a certain opinion, and you’re attacked if you represent an opposing view.” Regarding Chinese boycott against Carrefour, some media said that the young protesters are very irrational, “since there’s no proof that the French company has been part of the anti-China conspiracy”.

Lee Raine of the Pew Internet & American Life Project shared with us the results of a fascinating poll on the Internet and the 2008 Presidential election that he and Aaron Smith just completed. According to the Pew report:

In total, 46% of all adults are using the internet, email, or phone text messaging for political purposes in this election. That is the percentage of those who are doing at least one of the three major activities we probed—getting news and information about the campaign, using email to discuss campaign-related matters, or using phone texting for the same purpose.

I’m especially glad that this poll asked questions about mobilization and creation of online political content instead of just use of the Internet to read campaign news. According to the report:

Online activism using social media has also grown substantially since the first time we probed this issue during the 2006 midterm elections. Among the findings in our survey:

–11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else’s commentary about the race.
–5% have posted their own original commentary or analysis.
–6% have gone online to donate money to a candidate or campaign.
–Young voters are helping to define the online political debate; 12% of online 18-29 year olds have posted their own political commentary or writing to an online newsgroup, website or blog.

The survey also tracks the use of new tools like social networking, video-sharing sites and text messaging for political purposes. As we’ve seen around the world, social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are increasingly being used to mobilize networks around causes. The poll found that 66% of Internet users under 30 have a social networking site profile, and that nearly half of them use that platform to get or share information about the candidates or campaigns.

Not surprisingly, 35% of respondents (nearly triple the amount in 2004) have watched campaign videos on sites like YouTube, no doubt including the will.i.am Obama video that went viral earlier this year, which we’ve discussed at Berkman on a couple of occasions. Ethan Zuckerman has a great post about online campaign videos, particularly less polished, user-generated videos. To me, these videos stand out as some of the best examples to date of semiotic democracy, or how individuals take cultural and political images from mass media, mash them up, and create their own culture and political meaning out of them. This phenomenon may be the most interesting but least talked about aspects of the narrative surrounding the Internet and this year’s campaign, and is emblematic of politics in the Web 2.0 era.

Further, nearly one in ten text message users regularly send or receive text messages about the campaign or politics. Like social networking, video sharing and other new tools, I expect that text messaging will increasingly be used in politics as those tools become more ubiquitous and as younger users mature into voting age. The poll argues that these younger voters are giving Democrats the edge over Republicans online. According to the report:

Young voters in our survey tend to gravitate toward the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign at greater rates than their elders, and their comfort engaging with the political world online is clearly in evidence in our survey. Online Democrats outpace Republicans in their consumption of online video (51% vs. 42%). Furthermore, Democrats are significantly ahead among social networking site profile creators: 36% of online Democrats have such profiles, compared with 21% of Republicans and 28% of independents.

Finally, I was a bit surprised (although I guess I shouldn’t be) that 60% of Internet users believe that “The internet is full of misinformation and propaganda that too many voters believe is accurate.” The majority must have read Cass Sunstein. However, 28% still say that the Internet allows them to be more personally connected to candidates and almost a quarter (22%) say they would not be as involved in the campaign if not for the Internet. It was also surprising that only 6% of Americans have contributed online, since online fundraising seems to be a much larger part of the news story in this campaign.

Check out the full survey report. We will wait anxiously for results of the next round of surveys from the Internet and American Life Project, and hope they can dig more deeply into questions about the Internet’s role in offline political mobilization.

The Zimbabwean blogosphere has been responding to national crisis for over a year now. Hyper-inflation, food shortages, and the anti-democratic tactics of the Mugabe administration have been closely tracked on the net by a small group of native Zimbabweans inside the country, expatriates outside of its borders, and foreign embassy representatives living in the capital, Harare. In recent weeks, however, it appears that their activity has kicked into high gear, as bloggers attempt to make sense of the chaos around them.

News sources from around the world have been reporting the escalation of political violence since the announcement of a June 27th run-off election between incumbent President Robert Mugabe of the Zanu-PF and his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Much of the Zimbabwean blogosphere has indeed verified that the country has turned into a near militarized police state.

Pro-democracy advocates in Zimbabwe have made use of blogs and other online platforms in a variety of ways. Zokwanele is a democratic civic action movement whose blog has served as newspaper, organizer, and advocate. The blog reports stories and displays images of government-sponsored torture, posts the press statements of Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC officials, and monitors what internal human rights groups are saying about these events. In addition, Zokwanele and other blogs have set up action alerts and encouraged readers to contact United Nations and Embassy officials about the violence. Some blogs simply post stories about Zimbabwe’s political turmoil from various news sources across Africa and around the world. One site, which organizes NGO workers and other online activists, has even kept a photo index of post-election violence across the country. Indeed, Zimbabwean bloggers have become a key source of information and commentary on the situation there, according to Global Voices.

Many would argue that the online community in Zimbabwe is probably too small and too disconnected from the majority of the populace to have much of an impact on daily outcomes in the country. Only 8.4 percent of Zimbabweans have access to the internet, so one assumes that reports and appeals from bloggers are likely only reaching a small number of citizens. However, as Kenyan blogger Daudi Were who blogs at mentalacrobatics has observed in his country, radio reaches nearly 90% of the population and blogs serve as a major source of information for radio journalists in Kenya. Blogs are thus reaching nearly the entire country once their stories get picked up by radio. If Zimbabwe’s media ecosystem is anything like Kenya’s, bloggers may have a much larger voice than you might expect. Of course, blogs also serve as a window into Zimbabwe’s mayhem for an international community that has grown dangerously complacent.

There is already a growing narrative about the impact of the Internet on the 2008 Presidential election. For example, Wired argues that Sen. Barack Obama owes his recent Democratic nomination victory to the Internet. Noam Cohen picked up on this theme in the New York Times, writing that the themes of Obama’s campaign–“openness, transparency, and participation”–were “merged perfectly” with the Internet. Further, Cohen described Mr. Obama as the first real “wiki-candidate,” whose supporters generated video clips, created posters, built enthusiasm for the campaign, and even gently mocked him online. Most of the narrative in the press revolves around the Obama campaign, but it’s necessary to also highlight the use of the Internet by others, particularly the Ron Paul campaign, which used Facebook as their primary online organizing tool–as we discussed last month at the Institute of Politics. And it will be interesting to see how John McCain harnesses the Internet (or not). For one, he’s reached out actively to political bloggers, while Obama has not.

These anecdotes raise the question of the Internet’s impact not just on political campaigns, but also on deliberative democracy. Antje Gimmler notes that the Internet strengthens deliberative democracy in two ways. First, the Internet provides unrestricted and equal access to information. Second, it facilitates opportunities for interaction and participation. In terms of increased access to information, a recent Pew study found that nearly a quarter of Americans (24%) regularly learn about the presidential campaign from the Internet, almost double the number from a comparable point in the 2004 campaign (13%). However, the Pew study also found a growing generation gap regarding campaign news, with those under age 30 more likely to gather their campaign related news from the Internet than older Americans.

The Internet is also becoming an important platform for political participation through social networking and online video sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Pew reported in January that nearly 10 percent of people under age 30 say that they have signed up as a “friend” of one of the candidates on a site. In the hard-fought battle in cyberspace between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, more than 800,000 peoplehave registered on Obama’s social networking website, making him the most popular politician on Facebook. Perhaps most importantly, Obama’s support in the virtual world has led to action in the real world, with more than 30,000 events organized to support his candidacy.

However, Jame Surowiecki cautions that the collective wisdom of the crowd in cyberspace might not produce the best outcome for deliberative democracy. Deliberation is essentially a procedure of open interaction aimed at achieving rationally motivated consensus through rational, tolerant, and civil interaction or debates. Cass Sunstein and many others have found that deliberative interaction on the Internet is problematic. They argue that polarized and extreme positions often dominate the online discursive space. Participants, especially young Internet users, often cannot detach themselves from their preferences, which results in a discourse of exclusion and persuasion. In the end, the ability of the Internet to improve deliberative politics and the openness of decision-making processes remain open questions.

Hamid Tehrani, the Iran editor for Global Voices, has an interesting new article on the History News Network site about anti-Semitism in the Iranian blogosphere: “Iranian anti-Semitic Bloggers: From Mickey Mouse’s Plot to Gaddafi’s Jewishness.” Hamid reviewed some 30 anti-Semitic blogs, which he sees as a subset of Islamist bloggers, that can be further sub-divided between nationalists and Islamists. Hamid also believes that these blogs have a pretty small readership. Further, he finds they all blog anonymously, are pro-government and emerged after Ahmadinejad became President.

Hamid concludes:

Anti-Semitic blogs are a small part of the Iranian blogosphere and can be considered a sub-group of Islamist blogs. These blogs show that anti-Semitism is a dynamic movement in Iran, able to combine traditional/religious, national and Western elements.

The conspiracy theories these blogs peddle reflect the trademark rhetoric associated with Ahmadinejad: denial of the Holocaust, suspicions about 9/11, claims that inflation is a Jewish plot. All of these claims have a common element: the denial of facts.

All Iranian statesmen do not support Ahmadinejad’s attitude. Former President Khatami calls the Holocaust a reality. Many Iranian religious leaders, despite their strong anti-Israel rhetoric, seldom sound anti-Semitic.

In our own Iranian blogosphere research we did not specifically look for anti-Semitism, but we noted that some blocked blogs reviewed by the OpenNet Initiative that were outside of the Secular/Expatriate cluster (the most frequently blocked cluster), appeared to be blocked because of anti-Semitic remarks.

Safaricom—Kenya’s largest mobile phone network and East Africa’s most profitable firm—made an impressive debut on the stock market this week. Soaring nearly 50 percent on its first day, shares ended trading at 7 Kenyan shillings after reaching a high of 8 shillings. Analysts point to the importance of renewed “investor appetite” in the Kenyan economy after months of grueling post-election violence. But Safaricom’s successful debut brings to my attention the potential growth of digital connections across the African continent. Kenya is at the lead of the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, as use in Africa has increased at an average annual rate of 65 percent. Although only one-third of Kenyans own mobile devices, providers are beginning to target new customer bases, such as low-income citizens.

In many respects, the increase in use can be traced to local entrepreneurs, who have taken advantage of innovative mobile phone technology. Kenyans use mobile phones not only as a device for voice communication, but also for a multitude of daily tasks. For example, a free (and popular) Safaricom service entitled M Pesa allows users to transfer money electronically. This allows many Kenyans to transfer money to family members, especially those residing in rural provinces. Moreover, mobile telephony has found a place in the agriculture and fishing industries, as workers are able to find information on pricing and potential buyers using their mobile phones.

There is undoubtedly much room for growth in mobile technology industries in Africa. The market is far from saturated, but is certainly growing across the continent and in other parts of the developing world. The energy with which Kenyans rushed to buy stock in Safaricom suggests to me that East Africans are looking for a share of the industry’s future. Investor confidence only bolsters claims that digital communication has grabbed hold of Africa and will continue to play a part in its development.

The Los Angeles Times reported on June 5th that, “China has begun rolling back many of the media and Internet freedoms that were permitted in the immediate aftermath of last month’s earthquake.”

As opposed to the tight media control during the unrest in Tibet, the Chinese government seemed to adopt a new media strategy in the first three weeks of the devastating earthquake in Sichuan. The government released information in a timely manner, gave foreign and domestic journalists freedom to travel and report, and remained hands-off when there was online criticism of the government. The Korea Times and the Gizmodo stated that Sichuan’s earthquake allowed millions of Chinese netizens to enjoy almost complete freedom from censorship for the first time.

However, in the three weeks since the major earthquake in Sichuan province, public concern has begun to shift from the heroic efforts of rescue workers and the plight of trapped victims to issues of corruption, embezzlement, and shoddy school construction. In response to this pressure on political authority and social stability, China’s government has issued directives to online websites and Internet portals outlining forbidden topics related to Sichuan’s earthquake and urging news websites to “emphasize positive propaganda,” and tighten the control of online forums, including limiting discussions and deleting postings about sensitive topics concerning the Sichuan earthquake.

It was disappointing to see China reverting to its previous position on media control. In the current Chinese context, it is difficult to recognize how much freedom of online speech the government will allow. With the world’s largest Internet user base, the Chinese government hopes citizens’ online activities can promote its political reform efforts and anti-corruption work, but, on the other hand, it worries about the use of the Internet as a threat to its political authority and to social stability. It seems the Chinese government may allow people to exchange information about certain sensitive topics via the Internet within small groups, but tries to prevent large scale dissent on the Web. In the case of the Sichuan earthquake, the government began to tighten its control over online speech when issues of corruption and shoddy school construction became hot topics in Chinese cyberspace, since they had the potential to ignite mass protests. Rebecca MacKinnon stated that, “They [the Chinese government] increasingly recognize they can’t control everything, and pick and choose.” In fact, both the Chinese authorities and Chinese Internet users know the ‘rules’ of the game–China is changing and government control of the media/Internet may relax a bit from time to time, but each side knows where the ‘red line’ is.

At least one positive outcome from the earthquake is that the Chinese government began to directly respond to the outcry from netizens, who grilled local officials about whether it was substandard building codes or even extremely poor construction that led to the death of so many students. Under mounting online public scrutiny, government officials promise to investigate the cause of collapsed school buildings and bring those responsible to justice.

Although China still appears monolithic from the outside, and still keeps a watchful eye on the online activities of Chinese citizens, the Internet seems to be sowing the seeds of free speech in China. That may be the most important lesson in Sichuan’s earthquake.

It appears that an ‘Asian Tiger’ is continuing its policies of censorship and limiting freedom of expression in the blogosphere. Gopalan Nair, a Singaporean-American lawyer whose blog is Singapore Dissident, was arrested on May 31st after criticizing the Supreme Court’s handling of a defamation suit. Nair was held in custody until Wednesday June 4th, when he was released on 2,400 euros bail. Reporters Without Borders has condemned the arrest and subsequent jailing, stating:

We urge the authorities to drop charges against Gopalan Nair who has only exercised his right of freedom of expression. This charge is improper and will add to the intimidation of bloggers and Internet users who express themselves about Singapore’s political life.

This week’s events call into question Singapore’s commitment to a democratic system. The country maintains a highly competitive market economy and one of the most clean and transparent governments in Asia. But if Singapore’s People’s Action Party continues its suppression of dissent, the nation may also continue to be labeled a “hybrid” regime or “illiberal” democracy well into the future.

Yesterday Sherif Mansour argued in an LA Times Op-Ed that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is considering shutting down Facebook. Mansour writes that Facebook activists have been targeted for mobilizing 80,000 activists to protest food prices and because they helped organize a textile workers strike, as we have discussed here.

Even without a potential shut off, the government is applying pressure. According to Mansour:

…Facebook activists are being targeted by government-based media campaigns defaming the website and the youth activists who use it. The government also warns media not to talk about the phenomenon. I saw the heavy-handed efforts of the government while recording a TV show with Maher. During the taping, Egyptian police broke into the studio, threatened the station manager and forced the guest outside the room.

Mansour notes that so far nearly 20 Egyptian human rights have shown their support, lead by Ahmad Samih, but that that the international community has been less quick to take up the cause. Mansour concludes that, “It would be shameful for the international community not to stand up on their behalf against a government that seeks to deny them even that small space to express themselves.”