RConversation

We are Global Voices. Five Years On.

The following post appeared first on Global Voices. Please consider supporting the project by clicking here.

Rising Voices Director David Sasaki has written a lovely retrospective for Global Voices' fifth birthday. Five years ago this month, David traveled across the United States from California to Harvard for a day-long workshop on global blogging. The workshop - little more than a structured brainstorming session - was called "Global Voices Online." The website you are reading today started out as a blog that Ethan Zuckerman and I set up to organize that workshop. Our aim, put very simply, was to discuss how "to use blogging and blog tools to help people in different countries hold more meaningful and direct conversations with each other." The day's discussion was part of a larger Internet and Society conference put on by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The Open Society Institute generously granted us some funds to fly in bloggers from various parts of the world. We publicized the event on the web, and many others - like David - just showed up. Thank goodness.

Here is an article I wrote soon after the meeting. Here is Ethan's "day after" blog post. We did not emerge with a concrete plan for world domination - or even for a coherent project. Participants agreed to set up a wiki to share information, an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for further on-line meetings, and an aggregator of blogs by conference participants and others like them who we began to call "bridge bloggers." We weren't sure where we would go from there.

One thing, however, was clear: a critical mass of bloggers with similar values was emerging around the globe. It seemed like a good idea to "connect the dots" (as Jeff Ooi put it) amongst these people and create a platform for this emergent community. In the weeks following the conference, a number of participants used a wiki to articulate this community's shared values. The Global Voices Manifesto was the result. It's worth reproducing in full here because everything Global Voices does today continues to be driven by these fundamental values:

We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak — and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.

To that end, we seek to enable everyone who wants to speak to have the means to speak — and everyone who wants to hear that speech, the means to listen to it.

Thanks to new tools, speech need no longer be controlled by those who own the means of publishing and distribution, or by governments that would restrict thought and communication.

Now, anyone can wield the power of the press. Everyone can tell their stories to the world. We seek to build bridges across the gulfs that divide people, so as to understand each other more fully. We seek to work together more effectively, and act more powerfully.

We believe in the power of direct connection. The bond between individuals from different worlds is personal, political and powerful. We believe conversation across boundaries is essential to a future that is free, fair, prosperous and sustainable - for all citizens of this planet.

While we continue to work and speak as individuals, we also seek to identify and promote our shared interests and goals. We pledge to respect, assist, teach, learn from, and listen to one other.

We are Global Voices.

We now have an amazing multinational team who act as stewards for various parts of Global Voices. But the soul of GV are the hundreds of volunteers who take time out from their jobs, studies, and and family obligations to help build a more open and participatory global public discourse.

(Members of the Global Voices community at the 2006 Summit in Delhi, India. Photo by Jace.")

The detailed story of how Global Voices evolved and how its various branches operate - including Rising Voices, Global Voices Advocacy, and Global Voices Lingua - can be found in many places, including this website's About section and FAQ. News stories about the project are here. Since 2004 we've had physical gatherings in London (2005), Delhi2006), and Budapest (2008). We are looking forward to another gathering in 2010 (location and date to be announced soon).

In 2006 Ethan and I wrote an article for the Nieman Reports magazine in which we sought to explain the relationship between Global Voices and journalism. David has another excellent post about why outreach, advocacy and translation are necessary to help people overcome the obstacles to speaking, being heard, and listening to others.

Many people around the world are frustrated that the global English-language mainstream media ignores their country much of the time, or only covers the bad things about their country, or tends to stereotype them. They see GV as a valuable platform through which to get their stories and viewpoints amplified to a broader global audience. Others are frustrated that their own domestic news media fail to report on much of the world, do it badly, or do it in a slanted manner that supports their government's worldview, and thus believe that by translating GV content into their local language they can improve their community's understanding of the world. Others focus on helping communities who are not yet taking advantage of new technologies to get their story out. Others have joined in common cause against censorship and repression of those who are merely exercising their universal right to free expression according to Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The GV community has not let itself get bogged down in endless debates about whether bloggers are or aren't journalists, or what the Internet means for the news business. Nor does GV get tangled up in arguments about whether the Internet is or is not going to be a force for global democratization. As a community we're more interested in rolling up our sleeves and getting to work addressing a more tangeable problem: filling a few of the gaping holes in the global public discourse, and doing what we can about the huge imbalances, inequities, and injustices in global media. However you define this work, we believe that what we're doing has value and makes a difference.

We are grateful that a range of organizations have deemed our work to be worthy of their financial support. We have developed relationships with news organizations who follow our work and seek us out because - however you define what we do - our community is a valuable source of global information and fresh perspectives. This is why Reuters provided critical core support in our first three years, and why a many news organizations continue to work with our editors and to contact our volunteers for interviews. While we can't say we've completely transformed global media, we do believe that we've brought global media attention to a range of stories that might otherwise not have been reported, and provided fresh perspectives on numerous other major international news stories. That in itself has made the entire enterprise worthwhile.

What's even more exciting is the way in which Global Voices has impacted the lives of our editors, volunteers, and broader community members. We have become a hub through which an amazing group of talented, articulate, and caring people can find fulfillment, global recognition, and community support. Click here to read about how Rising Voices has brought more diverse voices into national and global conversations, and what that has meant for the individuals and communities involved. To get a sense of how amazing our volunteers are, read and listen to some of the blogger profiles posted here.

GV has also had an impact on various blogging communities around the world with whom we have no formal relationship - other than linking to and translating some of their blog posts from time to time. Just one example: Ethan recently described an eye-opening conversation with a young Kyrgyz blogger, Bektour Iskender about the impact some of our work has had in Central Asia.

What might result from a slightly more democratic, open, and participatory global media environment is not clear. At the 2004 meeting, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan expressed the hope that the spread of online citizen media would make societies more democratic and war more difficult for governments to justify. "Hoder," as he's known on the Internet, has been imprisoned by Ahmedinejad's regime for over a year now, and it's not clear whether expanded contacts between Iranians and Westerners would be a deciding factor in a U.S. decision about whether or not to attack Iran. Writers like Evgeny Morozov argue that contrary to early optimism about the Internet as a democratizing force, dictatorships are figuring out how to use the Internet to solidify their power and suppress dissent - and that the Internet in many countries is dominated by manipulated spin, disinformation and hate. Others like Clay Shirky and Patrick Meier argue that there is still reason for optimism. Still others point out that most of the world's people have more pressing problems - like physical survival - and all of the above including Global Voices' work is irrelevant to them anyway.

Five years ago Ory Okolloh - who went on to found the wildly successful citizen reporting platform Ushahidi - made some comments that are worth revisiting in the context of those debates. Here's how I reported her words at the time:

Kenyan blogger Ory Okolloh doesn't expect Africa to be transformed by blogging any time soon. Bridging the digital divide is perhaps the least of Africa's many problems. Nonetheless, she thinks blogging is important – if not transformative – for the small number of Africans who do blog. "For young people, we have not been heard, we don't have a space in Africa within politics or in other arenas to express ourselves," Okolloh says. "I think it could provide a forum for young people to create their own space. I don't think it will change politics per se or determine an election but I think it can breed community in ways that have not been able to take place before."

Online citizen media is breeding new forms of community at the local, national, and global level. GV has become a loose connective tissue between Ory's Kenyan blogging community and other bloggers around the world who share similar values.

While Global Voices seeks to influence the stories reported by traditional news media - most of which serve specific nations or regions - we are also building a platform for global discourse, and a community of global citizens around that discourse. We use the Internet not to escape from our humanity, but to assert it. We believe individual choices and actions make a difference. Whether the Internet will ultimately empower more than it enslaves depends on whether we take responsibility for our future and act. Building a multi-cultural, multi-lingual community focused on specific projects underpinned by a core set of humanistic values is just one small effort in that direction.

U.S. and China on Internet freedom vs. security

Last week I attended a quiet event in San Francisco called the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum, organized by Microsoft. This is the forum's third year - last year they met in Shanghai and the year before in Redmond. Attendees included executives from major U.S. and Chinese Internet companies, a few academics, and government officials from both countries - the highest ranking being Cai MIngzhao, Deputy Director of the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department, and Robert Hormats, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs. The event was an opportunity for key players from industry and government - from the country which invented the Internet and the country with the world's largest number of Internet users - to hold frank conversations in a relatively informal setting without the pressure of government or business negotiations. For a good part of the time, however, I felt like I was in the middle of a more sophisticated and nuanced version of this video mashup on YouTube:

For readers who don't follow all the twists and turns of Chinese Internet policy and/or understand Chinese, a bit of background. (For people who do, skip down below the jump.) Earlier this year, the Chinese government issued an edict requiring that all computers sold in China after July 1st had to come pre-installed with censorware called Green Dam-Youth Escort. While the ostensible purpose of this software was child-protection, it also censored political content and subjected users to external monitoring. (The government later backed down on this edict as a result of industry backlash.) Soon after the government edict became public a BBC journalist asked Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman why the government was requiring Green Dam censor-ware on all of China's computers:

Qin Gang's response: 

"do you have any children? If you have any children or you are expecting some, you can understand the concern of the parents over the harmful Internet content. The Internet in China is open and the Chinese Government endeavors to promote sound development of the Internet. However, the Government also regulates the Internet according to law so as to safeguard the interests of the public and prevent the spread of harmful content."

The video juxtaposes Qin's statement with President Obama's remarks about the Internet at his town hall event in Shanghai: 

"Think about -- when I think about my daughters, Malia and Sasha -- one is 11, one is 8 -- from their room, they can get on the Internet and they can travel to Shanghai.  They can go anyplace in the world and they can learn about anything they want to learn about.  And that's just an enormous power that they have.  And that helps, I think, promote the kind of understanding that we talked about."

Back to the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum. Much of the day-and-a-half long forum was under the Chatham House Rule, which means that participants can report on what was said but can't attribute anything directly. There were, however, several on-the-record keynote speeches. Cai and Hormats echoed the Qin-Obama riff. Here is how Xinhua News Agency reported Cai's speech:

An important part of network security was to ensure the security of online information, said Cai Mingzhao, former deputy director of China's State Council Information Office and an adviser to the Internet Society of China [note: they omitted his Communist Party post], which co-hosted the one-and-a-half-day forum with Microsoft Corporation.

Pornography, fraud, spam, online attacks and computer viruses were serious threats to information security and were impairing the public's confidence in the Internet, he said in a keynote speech on Thursday.

"Under such circumstances, it is not enough to emphasize the free flow of information alone. Information security should be put in a prominent position," Cai told an audience of more than 100 government officials, business leaders, academics and other representatives from both countries.

"If network information security is not guaranteed, the information flow will become irregular. If illegal and harmful information are allowed to flow rampantly without checks, it will do great harm to the real society," he said.

Cai said the first priority of ensuring online security should be protecting adolescents, as teenagers had become the largest online group and whose growth was increasingly influenced by the Internet.

Each country has its own unique circumstances, differing from each other in Internet penetration, economic and social development, cultural traditions and laws, Cai said, adding that ensuring online security should fully respect the cultural diversity and concerns of all countries.

"Therefore, Internet security around the world is unable to be measured by a unified standard. It is impossible to regulate security with a single law or manage it in a single pattern," Cai said.

What Xinhua did not report is that Cai called for the U.S. and China to move beyond differences and instead work together on four issues of common concern: Child protection, online intellectual property protection, spam, and cyber-security. He called on the two sides to create specific bilateral workstreams focused on these issues. 

Hormats, on the other hand, spoke of common ground but also made it clear that the differences are meaningful. While Chinese media covered Cai's remarks, they did not mention any elements of Hormats' talk that differed from Cai's views. No U.S. media appear to have reported on the forum at all - at least not on news outlets available to the public domain. The State Department has not released a transcripts of his remarks either. I took notes and made a recording of his on-the-record speech in which Hormats emphasized that Internet freedom is important to the  U.S. government. Here is an extended excerpt of the portion of the speech devoted to free expression (with relevant links added):

...The Internet offers us an unparalleled opportunity to acquire knowledge if we allow ourselves unrestricted access to it. As president Obama noted in his townhall meeting, freely flowing information allows people to think for themselves and to generate new ideas. It also encourages a great deal of creativity. this is true not only politically but also economically. The internet has produced entire new industries and revolutionized distribution of design and development of both goods and services. Unrestricted access to information is vital to the types of innovation that spark economic growth.

...It is the users and developers of online content who make our connections to the world wide web so valuable. Secretary Clinton has made improved access to information a significant part of her policy focus. She stated in a recent speech: "President Obama and i are committed to defending freedom of expression on the new terrain of the 21st century." Within the State Department our newly revitalized Global Internet Freedom Taskforce is ready to play a leading role in this critical effort. The task force, a policy coordinating body within the state department, co-chaired by myself and the State Department's Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero, works to advance free expression and access to information on the Internet. The State Department monitors and reports on threats to Internet freedom around the world. It pursues the free flow of information and freedom of expression on the Internet in our bilateral relationship and through multilateral organizations as well. 

The right to freedom of expression and the importance of the free flow of information over the Internet were confirmed by all participating governments at both phases of the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 and then again in 2005, including the Tunis Commitment, and continue to form the foundation of U.S. government efforts on Internet freedom throughout the world. 

We also work closely with individual companies and industry groups to foster improved access to information. one example is the Global Network Initiative, a group of leading private sector companies, NGO's, academicians and investors, that seeks to advance both freedom of expression and privacy in information and communication technologies. A number of the authors and leading advocates of the GNI are represented here today, and i commend them for their vision and their initiative. As president obama noted in his town hall meeting in Shanghai, we believe that certain core principles enshrined in our founding documents are universal rights also present in international documents like the universal declaration of human rights and we speak out for these principles around the world

We believe that commerce should be open and the information should generally be freely accessible. we recognize that potential downsides and risks may come with new technology, such as threats to children and online ability of terrorists to use the internet to organize. we look forward to working with China and the private sector both here and abroad to mitigate these risks while maximizing the free flow of information. 

Hormats commended China for embracing the Internet and the global telecommunications revolution. He spoke at some length about the importance of the Internet in economic growth and recovery around the world. He also expressed concern about barriers erected by Chinese regulators against U.S. companies entering or fairly competing in the Chinese market. Later in the speech he also emphasized the importance of child protection, cyber security, and protecting intellectual property. If a full transcript of the speech becomes available later I will link to it here. (Update 12/19: An overview post about the forum by Microsoft VP Pamela Passman can be found here, and the transcript of a speech by Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie is here.)

In a closed door session devoted to Internet governance later that morning (which, according to the Chatham House Rule I can report on in general as long as I don't quote or attribute anybody directly), another Chinese official and another U.S. official outlined their governments' positions, with corporate and academic participants also contributing. 

The Chinese side emphasized that if Americans better understood the challenges faced by the Chinese government in maintaining social order, and if they realized that Chinese citizens hold high expectations toward their government in that regard, Americans would be more sympathetic to the Chinese government's policy choices and actions. Social problems tend to be amplified online and if people are allowed to do whatever they want on the Chinese Internet that would disrupt social stability, which they pointed out is in nobody's interest, and - given the Chinese Internet's size - isn't conducive to shared global goals of child protection, cyber-security and intellectual property protection anyway. They appealed to the Americans to focus more on commonalities and not try to impose their values on everybody else. 

The U.S. side focused more specifically on the future of global Internet governance, emphasizing three overarching goals: interconnectivity, free flow of information, and preserving the Internet's "dynamism." The best way of preserving that dynamism is to "leave it alone" as much as possible, and specifically not to put Internet governance in the hands of an "intergovernmental institution." The U.S. government supports a multistakeholder approach with a leading role for ICANN accompanied by a renewed mandate for the Internet Governance Forum. Putting Internet governance in the hands of inter-government bodies such as the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union is not desirable because such institutions can't keep up with the pace of technological change.  Restrictions on the free flow of information should be a "rare exception" in very narrowly defined cases of child pornography, human trafficking, and terrorism. Errors of under-reaction and over-reaction can only be achieved through continuous dialogue between public and private sectors. 

Asked to make some brief comments, I suggested that we combine components of both Chinese and U.S. suggestions made that day. Why not set up U.S.-China "work streams" to drill down on problem-solving in specific areas Mr. Cai suggested like cyber-security, child protection, and intellectual property. But as both Hormats and other U.S. officials pointed out, the Internet is what it is today not just thanks to the efforts of governments and big Internet companies, but because of the actions and choices of small entrepreneurs and individual Internet users of all kinds. Therefore it only makes sense that such work streams should be truly multi-stakeholder in nature, including members of civil society, representatives of user groups, consumer groups, open source programming groups, and other stakeholders - because after all, no solutions to any of the problems discussed are going to succeed without broad-based support and buy-in from netizens around the globe. Models for multi-stakeholder problem-solving are still in their infancy and have much room for improvement (as neither members of civil society nor the Chinese government hesitate to point out). So why not experiment with using bilateral meetings as an opportunity to improve on the multi-stakeholder model - in a more narrow situation involving only two cultures, instead of hundreds? A number of American heads nodded. I did not detect a positive reaction to this idea from the Chinese side. They did tell me that they wished my criticism of their censorship would be better balanced by an explanation of all the reasons why they need to do what they do. A corporate person asked me what might be done to help bridge misunderstandings between the two countries. I suggested that more direct dialogue between citizens of both countries - and more platforms to facilitate such interaction - would be helpful. 

Of course, the problem is that the Chinese citizens participating in such citizen dialogue may not necessarily be in lockstep with their government's positions... And oh yeah, you don't really need to build anything new or special because there are all kinds of great social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook out there... But wait they're blocked in China so Americans only wind up interacting with the most determined Chinese Internet users who are angry about censorship and figured out how to use circumvention tools....Which is why in another keynote speech at the forum, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argued that the best way for China to get its story out is to let its citizens communicate with the world through unblocked platforms...

...sigh....

China tightens Internet controls in the name of fighting porn, piracy, and cybercrime

As the year draws to a close, China's blocking of overseas websites - including Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites including this blog - is more extensive and technically more sophisticated than ever. Controls over domestic content have also been tightening. People who work for Chinese Internet companies continue to complain that they remain under heavy pressure to be more thorough about the way in which they police and censor blogging platforms, social networking sites, discussion forums, and any form of user-generated content. As feared, the censorship arms race, which began in the run-up to the anniversary of the June 4th crackdown, intensified after the Xinjiang riots, and ramped up further in the run-up to the October 1st 60th Anniversary of the People's Republic of China passed uneventfully.  

The past few weeks have seen four new moves which are not officially or overtly aimed at political content, but which have implications for the way in which the government controls all conveyors of all kinds of speech. First, late November saw the launch of a mobile porn crackdown. The draconian way in which this crackdown is being implemented, however, involves a great deal of collateral damage for non-pornographic content. For example, the crackdown has caused China Mobile and other wireless carriers to suspend all billing of all WAP and G+ mobile services, including those by legitimate companies in good standing who are not involved with porn. As this article in Chinese on DoNews points out, the mobile content market in China is growing fast and getting quite lucrative.

Second, Chinese the state-run media is going after the search engines again for - horror of horrors, turning up smutty results when users search for smutty information. In early December, China Central Television (CCTV) ran a report which accused Google, Baidu, and Sohu of irresponsibility. According to the research firm JLM Pacific Epoch: 

"The report said Google "persisted in its old ways" and "explored every avenue to avoid China's 'anti-low-brow' campaign" after previous reports on the subject by the state broadcaster but noted that Google's English version contains content far more obscene than its Chinese language site. None of the three parties has made any official response, the report said." 

I would not want to be running Google China these days. No fun.

Third, last week the government shut down more than 500 file-sharing websites as part of an anti-porn and anti-piracy crackdown, on the grounds that these websites don't have proper licenses. For a sampling of Chinese netizen reaction, see Global Voices Online and People's Daily Online.   ReadWriteWeb points out that given China's strict government controls on what movies can legally be shown, these sites are the only way for many Chinese to access a lot of content. Much political jockeying by the more established services is now underway, and Xinhua indicates that the largest file-sharing site, VeryCD is fighting for survival. 

Fourth, CNNIC, the organization which runs the .cn top-level domain has announced that it is no longer accepting domain name applications from individuals. The stated reason in news reports is to control abuse of the .cn domain name space by criminals. Under the new rules, if you want to buy any domain name ending in .cn you have to provide ID and proof of company or organizational registration. As the Internet Governance Project's Milton Mueller puts it, "China's government is using its control of domain names to impose more strict controls over the Internet." Chinese Internet users have an interesting take on this latest development. Some like William Long say that this is actually a good thing, because anybody who isn't in lockstep with the Chinese government is better off staying away from .cn to begin with. Since January he has been urging Chinese Internet users not to use .cn domains, even posting instructions for how to buy domains on GoDaddy, arguing that .cn domains are too risky because the government could take the domain away from you at any time on vague grounds that you are violating some Chinese law, regulation, or whatever. 

It's also worth noting that CNNIC is now applying to ICANN to run .中国 - and plans to apply for .网络 and .公司 whenever ICANN opens up the application process for generic top-level domains. As the Internet's domain name system becomes multilingual, will the Chinese language domain space be hospitable to anybody who is not in total synch with the PRC government? The answer is pretty clear by now: only if non-PRC entities can run Chinese-language top-level domains outside of China. Will ICANN ensure that this will indeed be possible? We don't know yet. ICANN is still formulating the application process for new generic top-level domains, which includes the details of a process by which governments can object to - and potentially block - applications.

Can authoritarianism survive the Internet?

I recently gave a talk to the annual luncheon of the World Press Freedom Committee in Washington, D.C. 

An edited transcript of the talk has been compiled by the WPFC and posted here. I recorded the speech on my iPod and below is a slidecast of the talk. Apologies for the less-than-ideal audio.

Can authoritarianism survive the Internet? Yes it can...

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