RConversation

Happy Blog Day!

Through my work on Global Voices, every day I discover new blogs. Through those blogs I get to know fascinating new people around the world, and hopefully come to understand - at least a little bit - about what it's like to be them. 

Here are 5 of the dozen or so new blogs I have newly discovered this week:

Be sure to visit the Hurricane Katrina aftermath blog created by Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network. He's doing some fabulous work as usual.

I was pleased to see that despite the Vietnamese government's attitude towards online speech, my friends at VietnamNet have their Vietnamese blog-hosting service up and running. A lot of the blogs listed there so far still seem a bit tentative and experimental, but a few bloggers are emerging. One of them is the blog of Jones Lee, documenting mainly his social life and technology purchases. But look at the pictures and his accounts of his life - I'm willing to bet they don't have much to do with anything that might come to mind when most people think of Vietnam.

While I was skyping with Taiwanese blogger Ching Chiao, who will be on my Chinese blog conference panel, Ching pointed me to some new Taiwanese blogs I hadn't known about. They included Jedi's Weblog in English and Chinese. His most recent English post recounts his recent presentation in Korea, describing how Taiwan's remix culture is influencing Taiwan's blogging culture and how Creative Commons Taiwan is working to keep lawyers from stifling online creativity. He also links to his slides. Jedi's latest Chinese-language post on his much more active Chinese blog complains about the Taipei city government.

In Japanese we have 2 very unusual subjects. Thanks to Nevin Thompson's latest post on Global Voices, I discovered Nina - a young Japanese woman chronicling her Swahili studies in Tanzania. I also was amazed to discover, yes, a food blog from Samawah, Iraq, written in 2004 by a member of Japan's Self-Defence Forces (i.e., Japan's military which hasn't called itself a military since WWII) -  sent to Iraq for non-combat peace-keeping support work. Even if you don't read Japanese, the photos give an interesting peek at the lives and activities of the Japanese troops in Iraq, and their day-to-day interactions with Iraqi people - especially meals eaten together.

Many thanks to Nir Ofir for conceiving and organizing Blog Day 2005. Based on what's coming out of Blogpulse, the BlogDay 2005 Technorati search and BlogDay2005 Technorati tag, it has definitely been a success!

Iranian Blogosphere: Happy 4th B-day!!

Four years ago today, the first Farsi blog appeared. Today, with the help of Hossein Derakhshan (aka "Hoder") and others, there are believed to be 75,000 Farsi blogs in Iran. Today on Global Voices, Iranian blogger Farid Pouya marks the occasion with a post about Iran's "blogistory".

There are of course a number of Iranians blogging in English, whose blogs you can find over at the Global Voices bridge blog index page for Iran. They include "Mr. Behi," who I interviewed for Global Voices not long ago.  He is one of the many progressive young Iranians blogging in English, who want the outside world to know that many young Iranians are not particularly fond of their current leaders or the way their country is being run, and wish they could engage more directly with the Western world while maintaining their identity as Iranians at the same time.

As my colleagues note in their Report on Internet Filtering in Iran, the Iranian government censors and blocks a lot of blogs. Farid also notes that blogging can be dangerous if you're too critical of the government . Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad is now serving a 2-year prison sentence (you can sign a petition for his release here.) Blogger Omid Sheikhan is facing trial in October.

Farsi blogs do span the gamut of religious and political views.  Farid points out that there are even Hezbollah blogs, like this one.  And as I reported last year, Hossein received a death threat from an extremist blog called "Islamic Army."

False claims of Chinese censorship?

My friend Kaiser Kuo, former Tang Dynasty rockstar and currently Red Herring's correspondent in Beijing, has just written an article: China Net Star Cries Censorship. The story describes the rise and likely fall of China's recent blogging sensation Sister Hibiscus (sometimes also known as "Sister Lotus" in the western media though her Chinese nom-de-blog "Furong Jiejie" actually translates to "hibiscus," not "lotus"). Now the important thing to understand about Sister H., who is plain and not very talented, is that her stardom was basically the result of bloggers and chatroom denizens making fun of her - a situation which in her egotism and lack of sophistication she herself failed to understand.  The plot only thickens from there.

Like most people who follow such things (including many snickering bloggers around the world) I had been under the impression - thanks to this Reuters article widely reprinted, re-posted, and broadcast in video and audo versions around the world - that the Chinese authorities had cracked down on her, and that her blog host bokee.com had complied with their request to, er, de-emphasize her on their site. While Reuters quoted Sister Hibiscus herself as claiming to have been cracked-down upon, Kaiser could find no further evidence that this was the case. The people at Bokee.com strongly denied having been asked by the authorities to stop featuring her blog on their front page, and pointed out that Sister Hibiscus' blog remains one of the most well-trafficked in the Bokee blog constellation.  But the "in thing" had moved on (to "Super Girls", a phenom I'll discuss in a later post). 

So anyway, Kaiser called the Reuters correspondent to see where he got his information. Apparently, the reporter had nothing more than Sister Hibiscus' claims, plus the quote from a Daily Telegraph article about her in which she told the Telegraph reporter  "They blocked me. The Propaganda Department told the television stations and big newspapers to stop covering me."  Usually, when somebody claims to have been cracked down upon, a responsible journalist will make the effort to get at least off-the-record confirmation from official Chinese contacts (even if indirectly via friends of Chinese officials or people who work in Chinese media organizations who tend to know about crackdowns) that such a crackdown has in fact occurred. When I worked as a journalist in China, I myself ran across situations in which artists and writers claimed to have been censored when the reality was they just weren't very talented - but were trying to salvage their careers by claiming political victimhood and getting buzz with Western journalists. The tactic works surprisingly often, I'm afraid. 

Apparently, no effort to confirm Sister H's claims was made by the Reuters journalist. Kaiser's efforts along those lines have turned up total blanks. It appears, indeed, that China's bloggers and chatroom denizens - as fickle as bloggers and chat-roomers anywhere -  have lost interest. Welcome to 15 mintes of fame. It ends. The cyber-herd moves on.  Sister Hibiscus appears to be trying to revive her edge by turning herself into a censorship victim, whether it's true or not. (That said, if anybody out there has evidence that authorities have indeed made deliberate efforts to diminish her fame, please hit the comments section and let everybody know.)

As Kaiser points out in his article, Western reporters can get away with this kind of sloppy reporting because there is so much real censorship happening every day in China. So reports of censorship are always believable - to foreigners as well as to many Chinese. This situation is reinforced by the fact that the Chinese government routinely lies and obfuscates about what it censors, why and how. So denials - even when true - are not believed. Similarly, companies involved with censorship and filtering are generally evasive and un-transparent about what they're up to and what the Chinese government has asked them to do. Bokee, like all Chinese blog-hosting companies, filters and censors the blogs they host. Users know this through their posting experiences, not because Bokee has been publicly upfront with them about what they're doing. So I wonder, when Sister H. cries censorship, and the Reuters article gets cut and pasted around the Chinese blogosphere and chatrooms, do Bokee's users believe their denials or not? 

It's an interesting question. I'd love to know what Chinese bloggers out there think.

International Blog Day 2005

David Sasaki at Global Voices reminds us that Blog Day 2005 is coming next week!

The idea came from Israeli blogger Nir Ofir, who happened to notice that the numbers for the 31st of August, "3108" (which is how they order dates pretty much everywhere except the U.S.) look kind of like the word "blog"...close enough, right? Anyway here's the plan to celebrate World Blog Day 2005:

In one long moment on August 31st, bloggers from all over the world will post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs, Preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude. On this day, blog surfers will find themselves leaping and discovering new, unknown Blogs, celebrating the discovery of new people and new bloggers.

It's a more international approach to the "Ten New Voices" challenge Halley Suitt issued back in March, and relates to the issue of link-diversity which the good sisters at BlogHer spent a lot of time talking about: the idea that too many bloggers link only to people like themselves. 

It's not just an issue of gender, race and socio-economic background: Too few bloggers link to blogs outside their own country. 

Please celebrate the power of blogs by showing you respect and care about the views of people whose life experiences you may find hard to relate to - because they're just so different.

... and if you aren't sure where to find new non-American blogs, just head on over to Global Voices Online and meet a whole world-full.  Or check out the BlogDay2005 Technorati tag, where you can meet bloggers from all over the world who say they're planning to take part.

Freedom of Speech News

(Cross posted from Global Voices)

According to Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), and Human Rights Watch, here are the latest developments on threats to Freedom of Speech over the past week:

Tunisia: Government bans new journalists' union from holding founding congress. RSF reports that the Tunisian government has decided to ban the Union of Tunisian Journalists (SJT) from holding a founding congress that had been planned for 7 September.

Libya: Web Writer's Arrest Stifles Debate. HRW reports Libya’s internal security force has detained al-Mansuri since last January in an apparent effort to silence a writer with critical views.   See also the RSF appeal here.

China: Cyber-dissident Ma Yalian released on completing sentence.  According to RSF, "A total of 62 other cyber-dissidents are still currently imprisoned in China for circulating articles and information critical of the authorities on the Internet."

Maldives: Cyber-dissident Mohamed Zaki freed after two years in prison and 19 months under house arrest. According to RSF "Zaki, who helped run the e-mailed newsletter Sandhaanu, was freed on 18 August, two months after the release of another Sandhaanu staff member, Fathimath Nisreen."

Belarus: KGB censors satirical Internet cartoons RSF reports on "raids carried out on 16 August by the Belarusian secret police, the KGB, on three apartments in Minsk and the western city of Grodno allegedly belonging to young members of the Third Way opposition movement who create satirical, animated cartoons (in Flash format) for Internet distribution."

The World Reacts to Robertson

(Cross-posted from Global Voices)

In the global chatter about U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson's remarks calling for the assasination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (for which he later apologized), there is much reflection on religious extremism - and the extent to which it is tolerated in various countries.

Calvin Ng, a Malaysian Christian, condemns "Mad Mullah Robertson" but then concludes: "My challenge to Muslim bloggers to similarly speak out that their own Mad Mullahs are wrong still stands."

As Haitham blogged in this roundup post yesterday, a number of Middle Eastern bloggers have been commenting. A Kuwaiti Online is unimpressed by the U.S. government's mild reaction to Robertson.

Indian blogger Harini Calamur writes at Point of View: "When Osama asks for Bush and Blair’s head - he is a nasty terrorist. ...It would be interesting to see the Bush Administration bring charges of ‘encouraging terrorism’ on Robertson." (Via Sabbah's Blog.)

U.S. based Indian-born blogger Arnab digs up some of Robertson's past anti-Hindu rants, among other things.

Jewels in the Jungle, who blogs on Africa from Germany, has a long roundup and asks: "What about all of those new anti-terrorism laws Congress passed last year? Isn’t this kind of thing against the law in America?" Jewels also points to discussion of Robertson's ties to Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

The Devil's Excrement, who is no fan of Chavez, thinks the whole Robertson thing has been blown way out of proportion and didn't deserve the attention it got in the blogosphere. He thinks the Venezuelan government did the right thing by shrugging off Robertson's remarks as a loony rant.

What do you think? Do you think the Robertson story got way too much attention or does it have broader significance when it comes to how the U.S. is perceived around the world? Head over to Global Voices and let us know your thoughts.

What Jeff Said.

In his post Who wants to own content? Jeff Jarvis begins:

Distribution is not king.

Content is not king.

Conversation is the kingdom.

He continues:

… The value is no longer in owning content or distribution.

The value is in relationships. The value is in trust.

He concludes:

Yet once you think about it, this isn’t so new, really: Isn’t journalism supposed to be about building trust (so how did it become so untrusted?)? Aren’t brands supposed to be about communicating trust (so how did so many of them become so untrustworthy?)?

In the end, isn’t the only asset worth owning trust?

Content is not king.

Distribution is not king.

Trust is king in the kingdom of conversation.

Great post. Read the whole thing.

Just because it's a pretty graphic doesn't mean its good...

Lots of people seem to be pretty impressed by that Akamai global news-tracking site.

My colleague Ethan Zuckerman isn't impressed at all, and explains why in great detail. The reasons include:

...Akamai’s customerbase appears to be English-language media companies. Chinese, Korean and Arabic-speaking internet users might be downloading lots of news content, just not from the English-language sites Akamai is tracking. (For instance, OhMyNewsroughly 750,000 visitors a day, none of which Akamai sees…

He also points out that Akamai fails to provide us with a lot of the context that would actually make its data useful, like what percentage of total internet users in each continent are looking at the news, etc.

I assume Akamai is providing much more useful and complete data to its clients compared to what we can see on the public site. But I'm concerned about the conclusions some may draw from the data there.. that the world wants more news about Michael Jackson, currently the 4th-ranked story ???   

Please tell me it's not so...

How "Pure" do Chinese want their Internet?

The prolific Hong Kong-based blogger EastSouthWestNorth has posted the full English translation of an article titled Fourteen Departments United to ‘Purify’ the Internet, published last week in the Guangzhou-based weekly, Nanfang Weekend.  This article is significant for a number of reasons. First, it’s the most detailed account in the Chinese media so far (at least that I know of) describing how and why China’s system of internet control came to be the way it is today. Second, the article reflects that there’s a strong debate within China between academics, officials, internet entrepreneurs and internet users about the extent to which the Chinese internet ought to be controlled, and specifically just how much anonymity should be allowed.

The article’s conclusion comes down in favor of control: “there is hope that every corner of the Chinese internet will be mopped up cleanly.” The implication is that this control is necessary so that citizens (and especially their children) can be protected from pornography and internet scams so rampant in Chinese cyberspace.

But as with many Chinese news stories, the conclusion is less interesting than the debate raging within the body of the article. And what the article reveals is that there is a lot of pushing back and forth amongst the various players when it comes to the future of Chinese cyberspace. Internet entrepreneurs like the CEO of Bokee.com Fang Xingdong come out against proposals that Chinese internet users must register their real idenities at all times. The internet portal sites conducted surveys showing that their customers (not surprisingly) favor online anonymity:

Sina.com and Sohu.com conducted large-scale Internet surveys.  As of the morning of July 31, Sina.com showed that about 70% out of about 6,200 respondents said that the 'real name' system had more ills than good.  At Sohu.com, the survey question was "How do you think the 'real name' system ought to be implements?" and about 15% out of the 1,500 respondents agreed with compulsory registration.

Some Chinese academics and policy makers want online anonymity to be abolished by law. But others are quoted as pointing out that people’s ability to complain and vent anonymously online is an important “safety valve” that actually helps prevent anti-government protests from forming offline, and helps the government identify trends in public sentiment – which are likely to be aired more honestly under the cover of anonymity.

Another very useful aspect of this article is that it tells the story of China’s internet control regime from the perspective of the Chinese officials in charge of making and implementing the policy. It shows how they view themselves as a force for good protecting innocent and underage people from the evil people who will take advantage of them. As ESWN points out in an earlier post in which he makes an argument in favor of censorship in China, many Chinese are sympathetic with this view, especially those with children who they hope to shield from pornography and internet scams.

If the Nanfang Weekend story represents a greater willingness by Chinese authorities to be more open about why and how they control the internet, that is a positive development. One of the features of China’s internet censorship system, as my colleagues who wrote the study on Internet filtering in China point out, is that China’s filtering is completely opaque – users generally have no idea what the rules are and in many cases what the consequences are, why you can’t access certain content, and who makes the decisions about what gets blocked and what doesn’t. It would be a great service to the Chinese public if the Chinese media can do more stories asking and attempting to answer those questions. It would be even better if the the Chinese media could do stories about the role played by all internet and tech companies – Chinese and foreign – in China’s system of internet censorship and control. Or if the media won't maybe the Chinese bloggers can try to do this. If this meta-discussion is allowed to happen online without getting censored itself, then Chinese internet users themselves can be the judge of whether or not they like what is happening, and vote with their wallets, clicks, and pageviews. After all, it’s their lives, their country, and their cyberspace, right?

Don’t be shy.. let me know what you think… 

Journalism education: why I still think j-school is useless...

…although I do love Jay Rosen…

Jay’s post last week on "Things I Used to Teach That I No Longer Believe" takes a look at how journalism education must change. Now, I confess, I myself did not go to journalism school. I learned on the job, as did most of the journalists I worked with as a foreign correspondent. I’ve also gotta say… when I was working as a bureau chief for CNN we always had interns at our Beijing and Tokyo bureaus. Often times the kids who hadn’t been to j-school ended up being a lot more useful as interns (and thus better candidates for paid jobs) than the j-school kids. The j-school kids tended to be more prima donna-ish, less street-smart, less likely to think outside the box, more concerned about their careers and resumes and less interested in doing a good job at critical but sometimes menial tasks we assigned them. There were of course exceptions, but that was my general observation. So I have always advised aspiring journalists to avoid going to j-school, especially if they have specialized knowledge or language skills.  I see even less reason for people to go to journalism school these days. Especially those who are already blogging. 

Jay believes journalism is no longer a “profession” but a “practice” in which both professionals and amateurs now participate. I agree. I also think this is all the more reason why journalism shouldn’t be taught as a separate degree – or at least the granting of degrees should no longer be the focus of journalism education. I would rather see education about the practice of journalism better integrated into basic high school English classes, and definitely into the required curriculum for all college students. In a world where all citizens can and increasingly do create media, we need to teach people the skills, social responsibilities, as well as legal and personal consequences of what they post online. I’ve always felt that our school system fails to educate the American public on how the news we consume gets made - and how to be an intelligent consumer of that news. These skills are all the more urgent now that practically anybody can become a news organization. If I was funding journalism education, I’d want my funds to be spent on widespread public education about journalism and media – not on the granting of largely useless degrees.