Circuit: International Relations and Information Technology

Rausim! Social media and political protest in Papua New Guinea

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Sarah Logan

Papua New Guinea’s recent political upheavals follow an upsurge in the use of mobile phones, the internet and social media since the country’s telecommunications sector was deregulated in 2007. Mobile networks have expanded exponentially over the past five years to now cover some 75% of the country’s population. Phone ownership has increased apace, and some estimates suggest that over 30% of the population now has a mobile phone, dwarfing the number of fixed line connections. Internet penetration is still relatively low, at approximately two per cent of the population, but increasing numbers of Papua New Guineans are accessing the internet via mobile phones following the introduction last year of a mobile broadband service. Papua New Guineans are also using social media in ever increasing numbers. There are over 80,000 facebook members in PNG, mostly under 40, and this figure has doubled over the past year. Statistics on twitter users are less readily available, but the #PNG and #OccupyWaigani hashtags are active and regularly break news far faster than any other source in PNG.

The past two months have seen increased internet access put to good use, as bloggers and civil society activists have taken to the net to discuss recent events which are dire even by the Machiavellian standards of PNG politics, and to protest these events both on and offline. Events are constantly unfolding, but a standoff between the executive and the judiciary, general elections due later this year and the government’s ongoing attempts to postpone them, means politics looks set to continue in this contentious vein for the foreseeable future.

The internet and social media have two potentially important roles in this political maelstrom. The first is a part to play in facilitating political protest, and the second is an impact on the very practice of politics in PNG, particularly in terms of the role of civil society.

On the former, commentators have noted the role of social media in facilitating the organisation of events such as the large protest held over Easter in the capital, Port Moresby. Political protests in PNG often centre around concerns regarding mining and other land use. These protests are organised around local tribal identities, a key feature of PNG political life. In contrast, the protest held over Easter was arguably a rare example of a comparatively ‘pure’ civil society movement. This civil society identity has characterised recent protests and the social media associated with them. It has also been evident in earlier protests, following trends linking online and offline political activity. For example, large scale marches in 2010 against changes to anticorruption laws which were also organised via a combination of social media and traditional activism, similar to a largely online protest last year which culminated in the withdrawal of controversial amendments to environmental legislation.

However, the role of social media in protest action in PNG should not be overestimated. Its impact is limited by several caveats. The first of these is the limited numbers of social media users in PNG. Although the rate of increase is striking, overall user numbers are minimal – only about two per cent of the population. The Easter weekend protest was important in that it linked online activity with significant offline organisation activity in the planning phase: the organisation was not restricted to the online sphere but included significant offline coordination between traditional and non-traditional civil society actors. For example, PNG Social Networking Partners is an online/offline hybrid organisation, and joined with various unions and traditional civil society groups like unions, student representative associations and anticorruption groups in actual physical meetings prior to the event.

Given the limited numbers of actual internet users in PNG and the apparently significant role of offline coordination, it is perhaps useful to focus on the impact of mobile phone based interactions rather than social media in understanding and predicting protest action. The number of mobile connections far outstrips the number of internet users, and even further dwarfs the number of mobile broadband connections. Basic phone connections arguably facilitate certain types of protest. For example, during Kenya’s 2007 post-election violence mobile phones fuelled protests via simple text messages delivered along rival tribal groupings, amplified via interaction with radio broadcasts. Radio has long been an important source of news in PNG, and some reports suggest that most cell phone owners in Port Moresby use their phones capability as an FM receiver to listen to up to 15 local FM radio stations. In any case, it is instructive to consider the organisational capacity of various technologies for protests which are not well planned and peaceful—as recent protests have been—but are instead chaotic, fluid and largely opportunistic. For example, anti-Asian riots in PNG in 2009 were ‘non-tribal’, but were definitely not oriented towards civil society.

Secondly, despite the temptation to make comparisons, the explosive impact of social media in protest movements in Egypt and Tunisia was due to political circumstances not evident in PNG. Scholars argue that repressive, authoritarian regimes with effective state security services induced a collective action problem in Arab states which social media helped to overcome by allowing individuals to establish an important collective protest identity. This identity reassured individuals of both their likely personal safety and of the potential success of the protest in ways not possible without the ‘many to many’ communication facilitated by social media. There is very little history of repressive government action against protests in PNG: the collective action problem in PNG is fundamentally different. As Effrey Dademo, program manager at key activist portal ACTNOW! noted in a recent interview, the problem in PNG is rather one of political apathy and fragmented political identity. Social media is therefore unlikely to provide a stimulus for unprecedented, fluid, protests in PNG in the same way it did in Egypt and Tunisia.

Although in the short term the impact of social media and associated ICT on political protest is at best uncertain, the technology is arguably already having an impact on political practice more generally, and thereby on the PNG-specific collective action problem identified by Ms Dademo. The advent of mobile phones means PNG now arguably has a national communication network for the very first time, outstripping the relatively limited reach of PNG’s relatively free press and TV broadcasters and overtaking its ineffective and expensive fixed line network. Political blogs and facebook itself also expand the media landscape considerably. This adds an important element of new possibilities of political communication to the already evident economic benefits of the introduction of new technology.

Such technology also potentially affects important aspects of political participation in PNG. Reports suggest it has already had an impact on gender relations, and some studies of the impact of telecoms on gender participation elsewhere suggest both mobile phones and internet access increase the rate of participation by women in political activity. They can also facilitate new types of political engagement by those outside PNG – for example, 30% of ACTNOW!’s members are from the diaspora. The particular characteristics of the PNG cohort should be taken into account (although little research exists), but it is instructive to note the involvement of the Syrian diaspora in ongoing unrest there, and of the Indian diaspora in recent anticorruption protests in Delhi. Various studies show that diasporas can use their superior internet access and often educated/elite status to channel funds and lobby governments for particular political outcomes.

As in other developing countries, internet use also has the potential to effect change in governance issues via increased transparency – this is particularly important in PNG, which ranks as one of the most corrupt nations on earth. PNG blogs regularly post and curate information related to corruption and government transparency, and in 2010 the country experienced its first instance of attempted internet censorship based on leaked findings into a corruption enquiry at the finance department.

This issue relates to the role of the internet in influencing political institutions and political practice. Some studies argue that internet and mobile phone use can promote or at the very least transform civil society and both online and offline political participation. Still others suggest that internet use in particular can lead to greater political polarisation and extremism rather than enhance the hallmarks of civil society. Indeed, it may simply lead to disengagement: a recent study in Tanzania found that internet users had more negative perceptions of the fairness of elections, and that more critical internet users were less likely to vote.

Ultimately, like any sort of political participation, the relationship between technology and politics is influenced by cultural and historical features. Very little current academic work on this issue focuses on states exhibiting similar political and cultural features to PNG: weak political institutions and deeply rooted alternative forms of political organisation. Indeed, there is an almost complete absence of relevant work on PNG itself. The coming weeks will likely provide further evidence for or against the role of social media and other ICTs in political protest, while a longer time frame (and the right research questions) will allow us to understand the impact of this technology on politics in PNG more generally.

In 2010 I presented a paper on the impact of internet access on fragile states at the Oxford Internet Institute, using PNG as a case study. The paper is very much a draft, and is now out of date, but is here should anyone be interested.

Posted in Censorship, Fragile States, ICT4Dev, Papua New Guinea | 1 Comment

Repost: Twitter and Corporate Politics

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Sarah Logan

This is a repost of a piece I wrote for the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, published initially here. It is a bit more journalistic than Circuit’s usual style, but may be of interest. Next month, we’ll bring you a piece on social media in Papua New Guinea – fascinating, and so important given recent political scandals in that country and the general election later this year.

Twitter’s recently announced censorship policy essentially allows governments with a ‘valid and applicable legal order’ to ask Twitter to remove certain tweets because they violate local laws. Doing so would mean that while those tweets were still visible by users outside that country, users within it could not see them, thus defusing any domestic impact. Managing social media is an ongoing concern for many states, and Twitterphobes like China and Russia were quick to follow Thailand’s initial rush to endorse the policy publically. Thailand’s support for the policy comes as no surprise: it is part of an increasing crackdown on freedom of expression online by Thai authorities, an approach shared by states from India to Russia and South Africa.

However, despite almost instant outrage greeting the policy, the issue is not necessarily straightforward. Aside from debates about the political impact of social media raging in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Twitter issue is interesting because it reveals the complex ways corporate social media entities can massage both domestic and international politics in the pursuit of commercial gain. Sometimes this process is overt. Facebook, for example, recently announced that it is putting together what it has described as a team of diplomats to progress its interests with governments around the world. Google has done this since 2006 – describing it as essentially a ‘foreign service’.

Sometimes the relationship between social media and state interests is less clear cut. Notably, for example, Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin have invested in Twitter and Facebook, and a key Saudi prince recently purchased a stake in Twitter. Indeed, this latter event has sparked conspiracy theories in Iran, with representatives suggesting—apparently without irony—that the new Twitter policy it is part of a Saudi move to crack down on free speech.

So where does this leave the new policy? Key commentators have argued that the policy may not be all bad, and Twitter has responded to accusations of participating in censorship in several ways. First, it has promised it will publish a list of all tweets which have been removed. Second, it has argued that users can change their settings so that they will be counted as a ‘global’ Twitter user and therefore not counted in state driven crackdowns. Third, blocked tweets which show up globally will be marked as such, with the name of the blocking country attached. The company suggests that such an approach will produce a ‘Streisand effect’, named after Barbara Streisand’s attempts to stop paparazzi photographing her house, ultimately leading to even higher prices for such photos and thus even more paparazzi attention. Twitter argues that their policy will likewise mean that blocked tweets noted as such will automatically draw attention to the fact of censorship circumventing its effect.

Others have pointed to the problematic mix of commercial imperatives and political affects, arguing that the policy is part of Twitter’s efforts to move into China. Others suggest that the move is instead part of Twitter’s plans for Europe, where strong hate speech laws make it judicious for the company to allow some government control. Still others have argued that the policy does nothing to protect those Twitter users who do not, for example, tweet in a world language, or whose cause, unlike the Arab Spring, is not of geopolitical significance to the wider world. The Streisand effect, they argue, only works when the world already cares who Streisand is.

Ultimately, the mix is muddy. If we allow that social media companies can influence politics, particularly contested politics, it means that an essentially commercial entity is unavoidably political. Mixing commerce and politics is not new. But mixing commerce, politics and social media is.

Posted in Censorship, South-East Asia | Leave a comment

Book Review: Access Contested: Security, Identity and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Sarah Logan

We have one copy of this excellent book to give away – just scroll down and leave a comment to enter the draw!

Last week Thailand became the first country in the world to endorse Twitter’s new censorship policy. Despite the fact that this policy may not be as draconian as it first appears, the Thai government’s speed in applauding it is telling. It speaks to both the government’s appreciation of the political power of the internet and its understanding of the fact that it cannot control the relationship between its citizens and the internet alone but needs the assistance of social media giants like Twitter. Access Contested: Security, Identity and Resistance in Cyberspace, the third edited volume published by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), deals precisely with this issue of ‘co-constituted’ control of the political impact of the internet. ONI’s brief is to ‘investigate, expose and analyse Internet filtering and surveillance practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion’, and the first two volumes in the series, Access Denied and Access Controlled, analyse government filtering and censorship practices the world over.

This third volume delves into the arguably far more complicated question of how governments control access to the internet without or as well as engaging in wholesale censorship and filtering, and focuses exclusively on Asia. For example, the excellent chapter on internet access in Malaysia examines the failure of three government attempts to assert control over the relatively unfettered Malaysian internet. Legal scholar Vee Vian Thienh gives a sophisticated account of the Malaysian government’s reasons for backing down on this issue when it usually has few qualms about interfering with civil liberties. The chapter outlines the government’s attempts to implement top-down regulation via legislation and mediated regulation via controls on ISPs. It outlines the role of blogs in Malaysian political discourse, norms of self-regulation in the Malaysian blogosphere, and the state’s recent attempts at more subtle, ‘nonlinear’, third generation controls such as the implementation of state-generated ‘counternarratives’ and an increase in more covert denial of service measures regarding non-government bloggers. Similarly detailed chapters on internet control in Thailand and the Philippines aim at a deep understanding of the interplay between government, commercial operators, and citizens. An excellent and timely chapter on Burma outlines the history of internet control and the role of the Burmese hacker community in both pro and anti-government activity.

In focusing on Asia the book highlights a region of explosive internet growth which has so far mostly avoided the sort of scholarly and political attention lavished on the relationship between the internet and politics in the Middle East. The book does, of course, pay serious attention to internet access and controls in China – a topic covered in detail by numerous other scholars and commentators. However, the China chapter doesn’t simply rehash the same old important but tired arguments about internet access in China inducing political change (or not). Instead, the China chapter, by acclaimed internet scholar Martin Mueller, delves into China’s role in global internet governance and it’s uneasy relationship with the international institutions of that governance. This issue grows ever more pertinent as both Russia and China continue to argue for alternative forms of governance. A chapter on corporate social responsibility and internet filtering in Asia, written by Rebecca McKinnon, a key scholar on Chinese internet practices, also focuses largely but not exclusively on China. It examines the issue from the perspective of limits on and incentives for companies to comply with state practices in China, India and Korea. In doing so it adds insight into the complexity and sometimes chaos of state attempts to regulate the internet in the face of its commercial benefits, especially in China.

The book’s definition of ‘Asia’ is broad, and slightly scattered. Only five of the 10 main chapters focus on country case studies, including China, and two of those are on Malaysia. Indonesia, with the world’s third-largest number of Facebook users, is notably absent. The other five main chapters focus on thematic issues, like the aforementioned corporate accountability, discussions of new, ‘fourth phase’ cyberspace controls and analyses of different online filtering tools, although these chapters do use Asia-focused examples and data to enhance their arguments. Importantly, and countering the arguably limited geographic detail of the main chapters, the book includes extensive country profiles of internet filtering and censorship practices in a range of countries, drawing on ONI’s extensive research and fieldwork. These detailed profiles range in focus from Bangladesh to India, Pakistan, Indonesia and South Korea. They include a history of internet access in each country, a list of important regulations with some political context given, and the results of ONI’s unique testing regime, which aims to test the reality rather than the rhetoric of internet filtering in each country. These case studies do nothing to refine the book’s scattered definition of Asia but do much to provide useful, detailed information on states which so often fall under the public and scholarly radar on these issues or fall victim to hyperbole. Detailed case studies like these are a boon to scholars of politics as much as they are to scholars of communication.

The book, or others which seek to build on it, might also benefit from a more sharply tailored regional focus on for example, South-East Asia. Regional initiatives like the proposed ASEAN blogging community are interesting regardless of their actual impact because they indicate the attention leaders and their publics pay to this issue. Indonesia’s championing of this issue suggests regional posturing around ‘data styles’, meaning attitudes to online discourse as indicators of approaches to real-world political debate. In addition, attention to intra-regional politics played out online, as in Thai and Cambodian commentary on the Preah Vihear temple dispute may be of interest regarding the role of the internet, inflammatory or otherwise, in long-standing regional disputes, especially if the issue involve domestic politics arguably intensified by online interaction, as in the Thai case.

In all, though, this book is an invaluable resource for scholars of the region and scholars of political communication in any field. It features writing by some of the top scholars on internet governance and politics, from leading institutions such as Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. The data-heavy analysis is rich in an understanding of the importance history and broader media ecology play in understanding the impact of the internet on politics in this region and more generally. We have one copy of the book to give away – just leave a comment below before Friday 10 February to go into the draw!

Posted in Censorship, Internet Governance, Social Media, South-East Asia | 17 Comments

Singapore online: speaking up and acting out?

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Sarah Logan

This post is co-authored with Natasha Cowan of Flinders University

Organised via Facebook, the recent Occupy Singapore protest failed to attract any actual protestors, leaving foreign journalists disconsolate in their search for evidence of Singapore’s newly thriving political sphere. More interesting though is that the protest was organised at all given Singapore’s history of repressive politics. It says much about the impact of recent political reforms, particularly as they relate to online politicking and offline action in a highly controlled media environment with an almost 100% internet penetration rate.

The May 2011 general elections were the most competitive to date, demonstrating practical effect of electoral rules relaxed in 2009 to allow significant and meaningful participation by opposition parties for the first time. In addition, political discourse flourished online as the government lifted restrictions on political advertising and the use of video, multimedia and social media in political discussion and advertising. Whereas previously discussion was dominated by anonymous message boards, the 2011 elections saw a massive increase in the number of blogs, and facebook dominated the opposition’s media campaigning. Political participation also flourished offline, with footage of opposition rallies being streamed live and legally for the first time. The elections saw the first major electoral gains for opposition parties since independence, and some academics suggest the impact of online political discourse on actual electoral change is increasingly important.

In some cases these online discussions helped to generate political action in the real world. For example, opposition parties used the web to mobilize enough volunteers to place some at nearly every polling station – a huge departure from previous elections, when most polling stations were manned only by government members. In addition, a scandal regarding a government candidate’s comments on facebook was exposed by internet users, and resulted in a complaint being lodged with the Singaporean police. Political rallies were streamed online for the first time, and footage and live blogs from the rallies provided a focal point for political discussion.

However, despite relaxing the rules governing online communication the government made it much harder to organise public protests, reimposing earlier limitations on public protests and the use of Speakers Corner which had been lifted in 2008. These built on the 2009 Public Order Act, which required anyone wanting to promote a political cause to register with the authorities. The Act also allows the government to force individuals or groups suspected of organizing a protest to leave a location for up to 24 hours.

This seemingly counterintuitive link between online freedom and offline repression is arguably a useful example of networked authoritarianism – with the government managing the information sphere carefully to allow the release of political pressure whilst still maintaining control. Indeed, surveys of the relationship between online freedom of speech and freedom of association show the latter is the more important predictor of democratisation, implying freedom of speech – particularly in the online sphere, is not necessarily a democratising move.

However, Singapore’s online political discourse has always been a paradox: despite a much higher level of internet penetration than neighbouring Malaysia, its rate of political discourse has been much lower. Both countries have not hesitated to engage in censorship of online political debate – despite important differences like Singapore’s licensing regime, in practice their approaches have been essentially similar. Their different offline media ecologies provide a clue as to the reasons for this disparity. For example, scholars note that Malaysia’s number one alternative site, Harakah Daily, is run by the country’s largest opposition party, the Islamic Party (PAS). Singapore has no contentious website remotely as successful as Harakah Daily because it does not have an opposition party like PAS – well organised, well funded and strongly ideological. The impact of restrictions on traditional press are also important here. Some of the most significant political websites in Malaysia, including Aliran and Harakah, did not start from scratch, but are online versions of pre-existing newspapers and magazines repressed by the government. Harakah Daily started as a fortnightly tabloid and moved online when the government stepped in and revised its licence. Similarly, Aliran grew out of a monthly magazine. In contrast, other than one or two small and infrequent opposition newsletters, Singapore had virtually no independent political periodicals before the internet was introduced.

The onset of significant online political discourse in Singapore also raises an important point about the echo chamber effect of the internet in an environment of offline repression. Sunstein’s influential analysis of the effect of the online discourse’s tendency to deepen political rifts and polarise identities suggests that online political discourse in Singapore would reinforce divisions between government and opposition. In a multi-ethnic state like Singapore, such political fragmentation could be reinforced by fragmentation along language and ethnic lines. Indeed, academics note a profusion of Chinese language blogs in response to the 2011 elections, but there is little analysis of their place in the Singaporean political blogosphere overall. In addition, the echo chamber effect may be multiplied by the existence of offline censorship. Recent examples in China, for example, suggest the intensification of online rumours regarding the death of Jiang Zemin in the absence of reports in the official press. In Singapore, bloggers have complained about the mainstream press’s failure to take up political scandals, and the internet provided a conduit for scandal during the recent elections, but there is little analysis of the role of online fora and intensification of rumour in their role as alternative news sources.

The link between China and Singapore is an important one in this context. Commentators argue that Singapore’s model was the initial model for its own approach to online censorship: marrying the need for allowing the internet as an agent of economic development, and managing its implications for political order via a combination of overt and covert censorship, manipulation, and regulated spaces for political discourse. Given this link to China’s sophisticated ‘networked authoritarianism’ it is interesting to speculate the extent to which recent reforms of online political expression in Singapore represent real political change or another manifestation of this networked approached to regime information control—albeit in concert with real political reforms.

The failure of previously effective laws to enforce ‘intermediary liability’ in the recent elections is a useful indicator in this debate. Such liability is plays an important role in managing a populations’ internet use beyond black and white censorship. For example, the popular Online Citizen (TOC) website was gazetted in January this year under the Political Donations law. Ordinarily, this would have acted to stifle political debate, as gazetting a website in this manner defines it as a politically active body and requires it to take full responsibility for all content and actions inspired by content. This is an onerous responsibility in the Singapore, and in the past has led to such websites backing down in the face of government pressure. In the recent case though, TOC agreed to registration as a politically active body, complied, and continued on with its online activities.

Apparent panic in government ranks about the influence of new media following the election results aside, there are numerous options open to government in what is still essentially an authoritarian-style state. Understanding recent events as a balance between sophisticated control and actual political change is intriguing. Presidential elections in August of this year did nothing to clarify this issue; the next general election, due by 2016, may do just that.

Posted in Censorship, Social Media, South-East Asia | 2 Comments

Digital Diasporas: Politics by Proxy

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Sarah Logan

The State department’s diaspora 2.0 initiative, part of the recently initiated International Diaspora Engagement Alliance Initiative (IdEA), links the political and economic power of so-called digital diasporas to US foreign policy goals – the first time a major power has harnessed this concept so overtly. Recent events have brought the political part of this role sharply into focus: digital diasporas have been important actors in recent events in Egypt, Libya and Syria as well as in recent anticorruption protests in India. The digital component of these diasporas facilitates and intensifies the focus of their often already significant influence. But it’s not always easy to classify digital diasporas in terms of this influence, which can be benign or otherwise.

Research on digital diasporas and their role in political activity in source countries stretches back to the early days of the Internet. Some authors focus on the role of diasporas in facilitating good governance in source countries and in post-conflict situations, while others point out its role in potentially prolonging conflict by facilitating the transaction of funds and propaganda and engaging international actors. Longstanding online diaspora communities such as the Kurds and Tamils are good examples of both sides of this coin: engaging the broader international community in governance and human rights issues which might otherwise be overlooked, and also potentially intensifying conflict by prolonging it and providing harbour for unregulated, anonymised discussion. Richard Eriksen’s typology of digital diasporas usefully characterises these various political activities by online diaspora based on their different goals and their relationship to various nation-states.

However, not all politically active digital diasporas are traditional activist diasporas in the sense of these examples. A key example here is hazara.net, a website focusing on the Hazara diaspora which appears to be aimed at political activity in a Western English speaking context – specifically, asylum seeker receiving states. The Hazara are an ethnic group historically targeted by the Taliban, although with significant populations in Iran and Pakistan. They form a large and relatively recent diaspora in the West sourced largely from refugee communities.

Hazara.net acts as an English-language clearing house for information about Hazara persecution. That is, it doesn’t engage in what some scholars refer to as ‘rooting’ mechanisms of maintaining culture or ‘routing’ mechanisms of maintaining contact with source countries. Nor does Hazara.net focus only calling for international intervention in either Afghanistan or Pakistan on behalf of the Hazara. Instead, it acts as a source of curated information which arguably serves two purposes: to support claims for asylum by Hazara in the West, and to publicise asylum policies – such as deportation of failed asylum seekers,which affect the Hazara community. It publishes exclusively in English, despite the fact that most Hazaras speak Hazaraji or Dari/Persian as their primary language, and several of the articles come from non-English sources.

In this, the sites appear to serve a particular function: access to curated, English language examples of Hazara persecution. The audience here is arguably Western refugee determination agencies. Claims for asylum are presumably more effective if information regarding the details of persecution can be supported by sources other than the applicant, particularly when the claim regards the information-poor environment of Afghanistan/Pakistan. In providing these examples, the digital diaspora engages in a type of activism which is different to the other types of online political activism in that it doesn’t seek to engender domestic political change from outside. Instead, it bases the activism on a distinctly transnational community as an agent (the Hazara diaspora) and another distinctly transnational community as an audience (Western countries of asylum).

Hazara.net is perhaps conceptually similar to the Global Huaren movement – an online movement of multi generational ethnic Chinese diasporas formed in response to anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia after the economic shocks of 1997 and focusing on disseminating evidence of anti-Chinese sentiment in various diaspora locations. Here, the global identity of ethnic Chinese approaches another global/transnational identity: the various and varied home countries of members of the Chinese diaspora, ranging from Malaysia to the United States.

The concept of bridge bloggers may also be relevant in classifying this type of activism. Bridge bloggers are those who ‘reach across gaps of language, culture and nationality to enable interpersonal communication’. Bridge blogs/twitter feeds are distinguished from the vast majority of their brethren because they are designed for an international audience. By providing (usually translated) information online in English, they allow Westerners to access information—sometimes real-time feeds of reactions to political events—from non-Western states. In this analysis, Hazara.net is not necessarily about ‘interpersonal communication’ but rather ‘bridge blogging’ as a form of activism.

The concept of politically active digital diasporas feeds into ongoing debates in International Relations concerning the impact of globalisation and its cousin, transnationalism on the nature of the sovereign state. Hazara.net is particularly relevant to these debates because, as above, unlike many examples of so called digital diaspora’ activism’ – Kurds, Tamils, Eritreans and Somalis – it engages in a sort of ‘multi-source’ and ‘multidirectional’ activism aimed at any country which receives Hazara asylum seekers. In this, rather than transgressing the boundaries of the state, and thus fundamentally changing its nature, as many scholars of globalisation and transnationalism argue, it arguably co-constitutes those boundaries as it targets but simultaneously relies upon them.

Posted in Diasporas, Fragile States | 2 Comments

Street politics and social media: BBM and the London contagion effect

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Sarah Logan

Recent waves of unrest in the developed world have had commentators wondering nervously if social media might facilitate the spread of unrest in Athens or Paris or now, New York, just as it did in Tunisia, Egypt and London.

This generalisation is likely unfounded, at least in terms of social media’s impact. There are obviously important differences in the solution social media poses to the collective action problem in autocracies and democracies. And apart from extremely important differences in the political context and political goals of each protest, there are differences in the cascade effect facilitated by various forms of social media, meaning ‘social media’ should not be used as a coverall term in this context. For example, the explosive spread of violence in London took security forces by surprise, but this speed has so far not been emulated by protests elsewhere in the West which, like the current Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests, have taken weeks to build. This is arguably not only because of potential differences in political contexts and goals, but also because of the technology involved – the OWS movement uses a combination of Facebook, Twitter and traditional media whereas the London rioters mostly used BBM. All social media networks socialise ‘latent networks’ of media users, but they don’t all socialise them in the same way, and this potentially influences protests’ spread and onset. So nervous commentators should analyse not only (and most importantly) the dynamics of political context but also fine-grain differences in the features of various social media networks before making sweeping generalisations across protest movements.

Blackberry is a useful demonstration case, given the key role BBM and its associated demographic played in the riots earlier this year. Blackberry has experienced strong growth in the UK and emerging markets over recent years, with many analysts putting this down to BBM’s popularity among youth demographics – for example, almost 37% of UK 16 – 24 year olds own a Blackberry. Market research suggests Blackberry is particularly dominant in Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Venezuela, with growth driven by the youth market. India, Indonesia and of course Saudi Arabia have attempted to restrict Blackberry’s market access because of security concerns.

Two key features of BBM arguably influenced the particular pattern of the spread of violence in the UK this August: the network creation effect and the ‘spectacle’ effect. The network creation effect refers to the nature of the network which BBM facilitates: cheap, media driven, and grown in a particular way. So BBM allows users to send messages and attached media for free to other users of the service, its broadcast function sends such messages to all contacts simultaneously, and the group chat function allows users to interact in real time using such media. The group chat feature on BBM also allows group members to invite other members, meaning all members can become administrators and invite new members, a feature not easily available using other social media. Perhaps most importantly, BBM is private by definition because of its strong encryption, meaning that its broadcasting function is not ‘one to many’ in the same way Twitter is, for example. It is instead ‘one to many but not all’, meaning that there is at least some sort of group identity occurring or maintained within the broadcast.

This group identity, and the way BBM allows users to manipulate their place within the group leads to the second feature: the ‘spectacle’ effect, relying on the fact that BBM allows users to share video and audio easily and for free. Although data isn’t available, commentary suggests users engaging in sending video and photo messages as a way of recording their participation in events. This is what I mean by ‘spectacle’ – the flipside of citizen journalism, a self-recorded ‘spectacle’ placing the user at the centre of a media event.

The role of social media in mediating identity for the key UK Blackberry demographic as well as research on political demonstration more generally suggests that group identification behaviour is important in the context of ostensibly ‘risky’ behaviour like participating in public violence. If we assume that participating in the riots shows membership of a certain ‘group’ of people who generally view violence or antipolice action as positive, using BBM to easily send videos and pictures of an event which can easily show one’s own presence in an ‘in-group’ event is significant. In this way BBM arguably enables ‘social symbolism’. By social symbolism, scholars mean conspicuous symbols of group identification behaviour – so, the social value of either sharing information about upcoming or ongoing ‘events’ thereby implying one’s in-group status, and the value in uploading and sharing images of those events. Most social media networks allow this: BBM just makes it easier, faster and cheaper. BBM also allows users to measure the impact of this self-identification: users are alerted whenever a message of theirs is read. This arguably amplifies the feedback loop of in-group symbolizing. The privacy of BBM makes this in-group dynamic even stronger.

Considering the literature on the influence network factors have on the spread of behaviour may help to understand the way the riots moved from Tottenham to Manchester to Birmingham. Spreading arguably ‘risky’, or ‘complex’ behaviour like rioting through ‘weak ties’ like ‘friends of friends’ on BBM should be less effective than spreading that behaviour through comparatively strong ties. Scholars argue that spreading this sort of behaviour requires the subject to experience multiple exposures from a network member with credibility and legitimacy, and that these effects are not available via weak ties. However, others argue that to some extent all social media facilitates the transmutation of weak ties into strong ties, at least as far as the spread of behaviour goes. BBM possibly intensifies the process because of its key features, as described above: the intensified ingroup nature of the network structure, privacy and spectacle create a kind of in-group feedback loop and arguably facilitate the transmission of complex behaviour.

Posted in Social Media | Tagged More | Leave a comment

Indonesia: why Facebook?

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Sarah Logan

What drives Indonesia’s massive growth in social media use, especially Facebook? Indonesia has driven Facebook’s growth rates in the region and is one of Facebook’s top markets worldwide. This isn’t necessarily only a function of Indonesia’s size: Internet penetration as a whole remains relatively low and broadband speeds are still comparatively slow. Despite this, Indonesians have been amongst the fastest adopters of Facebook in the world, and the fastest in South East Asia. Whilst a small part of the overall Facebook growth story, Indonesia’s spectacular growth rate of 645% in 2008, beat India, Malaysia, China and Singapore, put the country at the very forefront of Facebook’s expansion into the region. The question is why. Some commentators suggest the rise of Facebook in Indonesia is due to its early introduction of more accessible mobile media platforms in a country where the fastest growing user base accesses the net by phone. However, most users in Indonesia still access the net from internet cafes – so this alone cannot explain such rapid growth.

Sociocultural factors emphasising network building could be an interesting factor. Indonesia has been at the forefront of social networking in South-East Asia since the mid-2000s. Some anthropologists argue Indonesian society exhibits cultural traits emphasising extensive network building and de-emphasising deep interpersonal relationships in small numbers. Facebook allows users to friend others they may only ‘know’ in the most abstract way, or even strangers, whereas Friendster restricted users to only friending people within four degrees of separation. Does this have anything to do with Facebook’s rise – at least over Friendster? Scholars suggest these network building practices are uniquely Indonesian – distinguished from other so-called collectivist societies by an emphasis on building networks with limited intimacy. Other cultures – such as South Korea’s – emphasise strong but less extensive networks. Indonesia also has the third highest number of Twitter users in the world, and Indonesians reportedly retweet more than they tweet. Does this say something about cultural proclivities for shallower but wider network building? Or is it just due to Indonesia’s Blackberry obsession? It is worth reiterating that it is probably not due to Indonesia’s size or comparative Internet access – indeed, despite Indonesia’s reputation as a social media hub and its increasingly vibrant startup culture, Google recently opened its first regional office in Malaysia, reportedly because of concerns about Indonesia’s digital infrastructure.

Interestingly, Facebook has yet to claim top spot in South Korea or Japan, where locally generated social networking sites dominate. Although Facebook is rising quickly in these markets, we can speculate that in these highly net-literate societies local cultural features influence user preferences for social networking sites. In Japan, for example, top locally generated sites allow users to anonymously interact with strangers online. Cyworld dominates in South Korea – it has a hometown advantage, having been introduced in 1999, before Facebook’s arrival in 2004. But some commentators suggest that South Korean’s preference for Cyworld is due to local aesthetic tastes and its privacy-heavy format, which prioritises the formation of closed groups, where Facebook favours a more open format.

Regardless of their accuracy, these musings may be relevant to IR theories of public diplomacy, given they suggest that digital diplomacy ought to be conducted with reference to local social networking preferences. They may also be relevant to scholars who debate the transnational impact of the Internet – implying that local cultural considerations influence Internet use.

More interestingly, Indonesia’s Facebook fascination may also have an impact on local politics, although this is understudied. Quite how – or whether – it interacts with the rules of political debate, political information sharing and calls to political action is as yet unknown. But surely the intense connectedness of a particular demographic – Indonesian Internet users are young, relatively educated, and proactively connected – must have some impact. What little research there is only raises more questions. If we admit the relativistic nature of Indonesian consumption of social media, it is not necessarily wise to transfer assumptions from other contexts.

For example, some scholars have found interesting links suggesting a high level of trust in internet-based news in some Sunni societies where state control of media is high. How does this work in a society such as Indonesia, where the press is now relatively free, after many years of suppression? Interestingly, some studies of Islamic radicalism in Indonesia have suggested that although the internet plays a strong role in reinforcing jihadi narratives, it is not enough to sway individual opinion—ie trust may exist, but is not enough to induce political action (although see recent events reported here).

Ultimately, and given the temptation to fetishise the impact of social media, are we assuming too much about the political impact of Indonesian values around connectedness and their expression in social media? As always, the simple fact of digital connection does not necessarily imply political action. Comments pointing readers to useful analyses of Indonesian’s media consumption habits, including the nature of Indonesian political debate online, are most welcome!

Posted in Social Media | Tagged Indonesia | 14 Comments

Russia’s Internet: censorship, copyright and cronies

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Sarah Logan

Just as in other BRICs, Internet use in Russia is increasing rapidly, averaging 30% growth per annum. The country is also experiencing a social media boom – according to some sources, it has the most socially engaged media population on the planet. However, the Russian government’s approach to Internet use by its population is complicated and apparently contradictory.

These contradictions revolve around the government’s approach to Internet regulation. On the one hand, censorship is increasing. The most recent Freedom House report suggests that Internet censorship and arrests of bloggers has increased. At least 25 cases of blogger harassment, including 11 arrests, were registered between January 2009 and May 2010, compared with seven in 2006–08, and incidents of content blockage – particularly on a regional level – have increased. Recent reports of attempts to enforce government control of Skype and Gmail confirm this trend. In addition, links between the Russian business/political nexus and control of Internet access appears strong, at least in some striking examples, leading to further questions about state censorship. For example, oligarch Alisher Usmanov, a key stakeholder in DST-Global, recently acquired a significant stake in Twitter. The company is also the largest corporate stakeholder in Facebook, purchased in 2008. Importantly, Usmanov’s business partner is Yuri Milner, the Kremlin’s new Internet copyright/ censorship czar (depending on whom you read).

In contrast, President Dimitry Medvedev’s recent comments at the G8 focus on Internet openness, of a sort. Following the e-G8 meeting with key Internet stakeholders and CEOs – the first of its sort – he advocated relaxed copyright laws and regulation, especially in contrast to proposals presented by other G8 members, particularly France. This may in part be a response to Russia’s notoriously lax standards of copyright enforcement: overall, copyright crime in Russia is significant, and enforcement is declining. Some argue that this decline results from pushback by Russia’s business community, with its links into internecine Russian politics. Indeed, the IIPA is increasingly concerned about legislative moves to further decrease culpability for digital copyright crime in Russia, and Russia’s failure to enforce copyright reportedly stands as a barrier to its entry into the WTO .

So Medvedev’s stance may be simply directed at domestic business concerns, particularly given upcoming elections – the issue was certainly prefigured domestically before the e-G8 meeting. Despite this, it is an oddly global platform from which to launch this message, particularly given the WTO angle. However, global business interest in Russian Internet companies is likely at an all-time high after the enormously successful recent Yandex float and given the prominence of local tech operators in the local market, which has avoided colonisation by outside operators relatively successfully.

Given this, Medvedev’s comments are more likely a signal to the global and domestic business communities regarding the government’s attitude to copyright enforcement and Internet investment risk, particularly given his recent comments on the role of innovation in resurrecting Russia’s shattered economy: the Internet sector is forecast to grow much faster than other, traditionally dominant, Russian sectors. In siding with Internet giants at the G8 he emphasises his government’s tech-cred; in focusing on copyright innovation he messages his domestic business constituency and also international investors interested in a copyright-lax safehaven, especially considering recent high-profile crackdowns in other OECD jurisdictions and the possibility of stronger international cooperation on enforcement.

What does this mean for International Relations? First, like the ongoing tension between the US and the EU on data privacy issues , it suggests that the Internet is subject to state power and interests played out on a global scale – ie not only in terms of domestic censorship, where this power is exercised inwards. As Drezner (2004) suggests, contra scholarship which links globalisation/the Internet to the decline of the state, the Internet offers another domain for the exercise of state power and interests rather than simply a symbol of its diminution. Putin’s recent call for greater ‘internationalisation’ of Internet regulation is relevant here.

Second, DST-Global’s position raises questions about investment in social media by corporations linked to states with strong censorship agendas. Especially given recent concern regarding Facebook’s privacy practices, what scrutiny should the company’s dealings with such corporations attract, given the potential impact on citizens? As a US company, how are Facebook’s state-linked investors consistent with US foreign policy which emphasises the Internet as a vehicle of democracy? Does it matter? It might not matter at all if Facebook/Twitter were not so dominant in social media. And given China’s reported recent interest in acquiring a stake in Facebook, as well as overtures from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, this issue may grow in importance, or at least in the potential for embarrassment.

Third, the links between DST Global’s senior personnel and Russian politics highlight the role Internet CEOS play in international politics. And Medvedev recently included Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh in his ‘Golden 100′ list of reformers, a move seen by some as part of power plays between the President and Prime Minister, or at the very least, domestic politicking. In addition, the e-G8, Facebook and Google’s meetings with US and UN representatives, and Facebook’s ‘diplomatic corps’ point to Internet CEOs being increasingly relevant international actors in their own right. Unlike other CEOs, these actors have identities which arguably resonate with citizens/consumers in a particular way, and a potentially direct line of communication to them which they are not always reluctant to use. Neither NGOs nor IGOs, and with distinct national identities, their role is arguably increasingly important.

Posted in Censorship, Social Media | Tagged Censorship, Russia, Social Media | 1 Comment

Mexico’s Narcoblog: state failure and information flows

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Sarah Logan

As suggested by recent terrorism charges laid against two citizens warning others about violence in Veracruz via twitter, social media and the Internet are increasingly important as information sources for Mexicans frustrated by an official vacuum regarding the country’s ongoing drug war. Key amongst these information sources is anonymous clearinghouse El Blog del Narco, (narcoblog) (warning – graphic images), which publishes images and news items on the nation’s drug war. It claims to be a blank slate, free of journalistic overtones, existing only to equalise the flow of information on Mexico’s increasingly lethal and chaotic drug war. For narcoblog, this means publishing images, videos and text sent by anonymous citizens. These include images of grisly executions arguably sent by drug cartels as a warning. The anonymity of the posters makes this impossible to verify, but the accompanying text suggests it is the case.

The founders of the site claim that their aim is to make up for the shortfall of accurate information on this issue in Mexico. They claim the government has failed to manage the flow of information to its people and has a vested interest in promoting the drug war as won, therein hiding the truth of the matter: that the country is spiralling further into violent chaos. In the face of the declining standards of journalism in the country (due largely to the increasing deadliness of the profession) narcoblog now serves as the premier online portal for news about Mexico’s drug wars – it has about 3 million unique site visits per month. Although its impossible to tell how many of these are domestic news consumers, its likely that a considerable proportion are, given the site’s Spanish language content and local relevance.

This raises interesting questions in International Relations in terms of the literature on state capacity. Despite the now overwhelming amount of literature on the role of the Internet in political ‘revolution’ there is little work on its place in mapping state capacity or lack thereof, and the resultant multiplying effect it may have on state failure or state fragility. Recent Shirky v Morozov style debates regarding the merits of the Internet in effecting political change or political repression miss the role of the Internet in states which are neither wholly democratic nor wholly repressive – but it’s these states that arguably cause the most trouble for policymakers. Bimber (2003), for example, argues that the Internet opens up a ‘post-bureaucratic’ model of governance. In narcoblog, though, we are seeing the Internet used as a mode of ‘anti-governance’. So the site is not only an alternative channel of information which citizens can use to hold governments accountable. It also enables chaos and fear by broadcasting images of terror posted by the drug cartels—arguably furthering their aims in doing so. At the same time, it reflects a reality which the government refuses to acknowledge.

The literature on failed or fragile states cannot account for the role of the Internet in this sort of state breakdown. There are no commonly agreed features of fragile states which refer to changes in the nature of a state’s hold over communication and information flows. This means work on the role of the Internet in either exacerbating state failure in the sense of Mexicans using the Internet as an information feed which confirms their worst fears about government incapacity, or the drug cartels using it to inspire fear and maintain their position.

Interestingly, the failure in communication in this case regards communication about an existential threat – the drug war. We could draw a long bow and make comparisons to the criticism levelled at the Japanese government’s apparent failure to manage information effectively after the recent tsunami and any role the Internet may have played in informing or disinforming citizens disenchanted with official government flows. We are not talking here about state propaganda: we are talking about the Internet opening up alternative information flows—for good and/or bad—to a populace not being served by the state and what it means for ongoing citizen trust in that state. In the case of narcoblog, these alternative flows open up national space to the propaganda of the existential threat – the ‘enemy’. The impact this has on state capacity and state identity is unquestionable, but how to categorise it in IR? Any thoughts on state fragility and information flows and the role of information control and legitimacy and the Internet age?

Posted in Aside, Fragile States, IR Theory and the Internet | Tagged Fragile States, IR Theory, Mexico | 4 Comments

Welcome!

Posted on September 1, 2011 by admin

Welcome to Circuit! This blog provides commentary on the Internet and its impact on international politics and the academic discipline of International Relations. In mid-2010, Circuit editors Madeline Carr and Sarah Logan noted a gap in online content examining the impact of the Internet on international politics. It seemed that commentary was commercially oriented, infected with the zeal of either side of the cyber-utopian debate, or focused on cyber security to the exclusion of other issues. Nor was there space for serious discussion of the impact of the Internet on international politics in the context of International Relations. This blog aims to fill those gaps with concise, informed and wide-ranging coverage. It covers issues, raises questions and links academia with policy and politics.

We envisage Circuit to be a clearinghouse for ideas, opinion and discussion. Crises come and go and media and academic attention spikes, falls and shifts, but the Internet and international politics are inevitably intertwined now as never before. There is always something to say and analysis to be done. Circuit seeks to not only address the issues highlighted elsewhere and add to ongoing debate but to also foreshadow possibilities and highlight areas where further research might yield fruitful results.

Circuit will update regularly, and the twitter feed, @circt, is updated several times a week. The blog will feature guest posts, interviews and book reviews. We have curated a list of relevant academic centres, blogs, journals and NGOs on the ‘Links’ page. Please contact us at sarah.logan@anu.edu.au or via the comments if you have suggestions for additions to this list, would like to work with us or have questions or feedback.

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