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REVOLUTION: SHARE! The Role of Social Media in Pro-Democratic Movements Author Moran Barkai Edited by Wilfried Rütten Photographs by Lucas Daniëls Design cover by Deletec Lay out and print by printing office Grafico First edition: 2012 Published under a Non-Commercial Creative Commons License ISBN: 978-90-819305-0-5

ABOUT EJC – MISSION STATEMENT The European Journalism Centre is team of professionals dedicated to running a European training and media development centre. Our goal is to enable journalists, students and citizens to better participate in media landscapes around Europe and its neighbourhood. To this end, we are in close contact with all actors in the communication ecosystem: journalists, public and governmental institutions, the business sector, academia, NGOs and other civil society organisations. Our various activities may be seen as interconnected platforms each combining seminars, conferences and workshops with web projects, newsletters, research and networking platforms. Fostering the future of pluralistic media is the common denominator of all of our work.

Acknowledgements This book would have never come to life were it not for the involvement of the European Journalism Centre (EJC) in the European Neighbourhood Journalism Network (ENJN). Therefore, my first thanks go to the EJC team who made all this possible, beginning with Biba Klomp, who managed the project masterfully from its very inception, and breathed intelligence and enthusiasm into it. Secondly, I want to thank Diana Lungu, who joined in later, bringing with her, her light and energy. I am grateful to Eric Karstens and Sueli Brodin who shared their wise advice with me and never tired at the face of my interminable questions. I’m also indebted to Lisa Bushart, Hanna McLean, Remko Nijsten, Ivan Picart, and Lucas Daniëls who covered the ENJN conference, and whose work made mine possible. I would like to give particular thanks to Remko who bore without flinching the weight of all my requests, and Hanna who hunted down my mistakes, some blatant, some hidden. Special kudos also go to Richard Tynen and David Quinn from the Thomson Foundation, for running the overall project, and for being our guys “on location”. I owe sincere thanks to Bianca Lemmens and Wilfried Rütten, who showed their belief in me, first by welcoming me to the EJC, and later by entrusting me with this wonderful project. I hope I’ve earned your trust. I am also grateful to the professors of Media Culture at the University of Maastricht, in particular Renée van de Vall, who tried to beat some sense into me. Certain excerpts of this book are taken from papers written under her supervision. Also thanks to Ron, my partner in life, for walking down this road by my side, and for making it so much more joyful and thrilling. And finally, my sincere appreciation to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW), which extended essential financial support for this book. Without it, this book might have never have come into existence. Moran Barkai

Preface The European Neighbourhood Journalism Network (ENJN), supported by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) framework of the European UnionI, was a four-year project dedicated to media development among the European Union’s neighbouring partner countries. Created by the European Journalism Centre, together with its partners, the network united journalists and editors from the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, Eastern Europe and the southern Caucasus countries. These groups of media professionals, from various backgrounds and diverse nationalities and cultures, visited the ENP participant countries, shared experience and analysed different approaches to the problems, shared or unique, that they faced in their line of work. To mark the end of the project, the European Journalism Centre and BBJ, who participated in its implementation, alongside the Thomson Foundation and the International Federation of Journalists, organised the closing ENJN Conference – “Media Futures – Policy, Politics, and Power”II. The conference, which took place in Brussels on October 10 and 11, 2011, addressed issues such as media policy, democratic legitimacy and press freedom. It also focused largely on the recent Arab Uprisings and the implication of social media in the contestation movements that took place in the EU’s eastern European partner States. This conference, its proceedings, and interviews with its participants and speakers, are the basis of this study, often appearing as edited transcripts.

Content Acknowledgements Preface Content Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11 Democracy - at Home and Away ............................................................................ 13 The Conspicuous Surprise...................................................................................... 14 Technologies of Freedom........................................................................................ 16 Our Objective .......................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 1. .................................................................................................................... 23 Sowing the Democratic Seed ................................................................................. 23 The Politicising Media ............................................................................................. 25 The Digital Divide .................................................................................................... 28 Wael Ghonim or the Plummer and the Housewife? ................................................ 29 The Ideology Locker ............................................................................................... 31 Social Media Are Corporations Too ........................................................................ 33 Chapter 2. .................................................................................................................... 35 Mobilising the Troops .............................................................................................. 35 Digitally Mediated Insurgency ................................................................................ 36 Trending the Way Out.............................................................................................. 40 The Demography of Social Media .......................................................................... 44 Blows and Counterblows ........................................................................................ 46 Watch Thy Enemy ................................................................................................... 49 Flying Under the Radar ........................................................................................... 52 The Honourable Intention Paradigm ....................................................................... 53 Chapter 3. .................................................................................................................... 55 Mediating the Struggle............................................................................................ 55 Ideals and Ideologies ............................................................................................. 56 Negotiating Compromise ........................................................................................ 57 The Unholy Alliance ................................................................................................ 58 Blogs of Dissent and Hope ..................................................................................... 62

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Photographs by Lucas Daniëls ................................................................................. 64 Citizen journalists .................................................................................................... 84 Remediation and Media Synergy............................................................................ 88 The Revolutionary Cathode..................................................................................... 91 The Hidden Divide .................................................................................................. 93 Smoke Screen Formations ...................................................................................... 95 Hush, tag! ............................................................................................................... 97 Activist Harassment is the Continuation of Censorship by Other Means ............. 103 The Attention Seekers ........................................................................................... 104 Chapter 4. .................................................................................................................. 109 The International Appeal ....................................................................................... 109 We Are the World .................................................................................................. 110 I’ll Send an SOS to the World ................................................................................ 112 Politics Through and the Real Diplomacy ............................................................. 114 Tidying up Your Backyard ..................................................................................... 117 The Double-Edged Endorsement of Online Activism ........................................... 119 On Fickleness ....................................................................................................... 121 Conclusion. ............................................................................................................... 123 The Future of Social Media as a Democratic Tool ................................................ 123 A Final, Cautious, Optimistic Note ........................................................................ 129 Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 131

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Introduction “Revolutionary movements have always used the best communication tools available to them. All over Africa, the use of underground newspapers brought down the anti-colonial uprisings. In South Africa, the Apartheid regime was brought to its knees not by using media, but by putting the inhabitants of the townships on buses and bringing them into towns, where they would say: “Our lives aren’t good enough.” In the Middle East it was the tape recorder and now it’s DVDs. Wherever they are, people will use any kind of opportunity to communicate their hopes and aspirations, their dissatisfaction with life. It is a natural state of human beings, and they will continue to use whatever is available to them.” (Picard, R., 2011, ENJN Conference). “The fundamental issue is freedom of expression. [...] The principals of freedom of expression are technology neutral. They are equally valid, irrespective of the channel of communication in use. What matters is the content that is transmitted via these channels. [...] The main objective is to ensure that the public is well informed, so that it can participate fully in democratic processes. Such a journalism, that provides such information, I call democratically relevant journalism. This, of course, does not need to be journalism in the traditional sense. It can apply to a blogger, it can apply to tweeting, it can apply to anything. We must ensure the existence of such a democratically relevant journalism, and for that I would suggest that we concentrate on guaranteeing freedom of expression. We do not need to reinvent our shared values and our fundamental human rights as new technologies of communication appear all the time.” (Nikoltchev, I., 2011, ENJN Conference).

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Democracy - at Home and Away When Europe rose bruised and battered from the Second World War, it had at least one determination - to banish from its future the horrors of its past. A work-in-progress since the 1950s, the European Union was intended to dissolve any dispute in the common political and social entity through dialogue and cooperation. But as the Union grew and consolidated, its distance and separateness from its surroundings became more pronounced. It is, in part, in order to overcome this gap that the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was devised and subsequently put into action. Reaching out to Europe’s 17 neighbouring countries – ten in the south (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Syria, and Tunisia) and seven in the east (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia) - the partnership provides a frame of close collaboration and privileged relations. The ENP addresses different issues, such as economic reform, anti-terrorism measures, and visa regulations. An important place is also given to “the rule of law, good governance, the respect for human rights, including minority rights”III. These latter topics make the two regions concerned highly interesting when it comes to social media and its impact on democratic movements, particularly in light of the wave of revolts in North Africa and the Middle East, as well as the political upheavals of 2012, contesting in Russia Putin’s long reign. Among all of the EU’s ENP partners, only Israel was considered ‘free’ by Freedom House in 2011, although its standing might be somewhat mitigated if its status as an occupying nation was to be taken into account. Out of the other MENA countries, only Morocco and Lebanon are considered ‘partly free’ and the seven remaining countries are defined as ‘not free’IV. The eastern partners don’t fare betterV. Out of the seven, Armenia, Moldova, and Ukraine are deemed ‘partly free’, while Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, and Russia are ‘not free’1. These findings are consistent with the World Bank’s assessments - the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), which are reassessed and published annuallyVI. Aggregating data from sources such as think-tanks, survey institutes, and NGOs, the World Bank measures six dimensions of governance, among them ‘Voice and Accountability’, defined as, “perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media” (World Bank, n.d.).

1) According to Freedom House, “A Free Country is one where there is broad scope for open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. Partly Free countries are characterized by some restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, often in a context of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic strife, or civil war. A Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.” (Freedom House, n.d., 2011).

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The WGI calculates for each country its percentile rank among all other countries, ranging from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest). For the year 2010, in the ‘Voice and Accountability’ category, Israel is the only country to pass the 50-point bar, with its percentile ranking standing at 67. Moldova and Ukraine come after, ranking at 47 and 44, respectively, followed by Georgia, at 42 and Lebanon at 35. Morocco is ranked at 28, while both Armenia and Jordan come in at 26. The ranking of the remaining countries ranges from 20 (Russia) to 7 (Belarus). The Palestinian Authority is not estimated in this indicator. When comparing the evolution of these countries’ rankings since 1996, it appears that Armenia, Georgia, and Ukraine are the only ones to have improved. Moldova stagnated, while all the other ENP partners retrograded. The sharpest drops were recorded for Tunisia (23 points) and Russia (19 points). All in all, the data provided by both organisations reflect the existence of problems surrounding issues such as democracy, freedom of speech, and political freedom in practically all of Europe’s ENP partners, even if the gravity and the magnitude of these problems may differ from one country to the other. The ENP came into the world in 2004VII, and has been implemented continuously ever since. And yet, notwithstanding the grim political and social circumstances of its partners and its close knowledge of the problems plaguing their societies, the EU never expected the events that were to rattle and shake its closest geographical allies at the end of 2010 and throughout the course of 2011.

The Conspicuous Surprise The uprisings erupted in Sidi Bouzid in December 2010, in the aftermath of Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation. They spread like wildfire along the Mediterranean southern coast, extending east, all the way to Israel and Syria, Jordan, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, and south - putting an end to Saleh’s 22 year stretch as Yemen’s President. They brought down the existing political systems in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, and forced other regimes into change – either through an escalation of repression, as in Syria, or by promises of reform, as in Jordan and Morocco. The EU was slow in realising the political and social extent of the events, but then again, so was the rest of the international community, failing to interpret their meaning for the region and for the entire world. This failure may be explained, in part, by the belief in the ‘Arab Exception’, which is the notion that the peoples of the region are impermeable to political and social change. It is also possible that the West’s reaction stemmed from its own democratic crisis. The established democracies are suffering from citizen disaffection, dwindling numbers of voters, and youth indifference. With the Western media, 14

academia, and political class decrying an erosion of values and the general commercialisation of society, it was difficult to comprehend how a group of leaderless youths in a small Maghreb town rose to challenge the existing political order, risking life and limb to transform the face of the region. It is therefore only after the fall of Ben Ali and the rapid crumbling of Mubarak’s reign that the so-called Arab Spring caught everyone’s attention. It gave rise not only to bewilderment at the sudden, unexpected democratic activism and to fear at the prospect of rising oil prices, but also to hope. In a world that’s been dominated since 2008 by an economic crisis and the moral depression that soon ensued, the images of passionate, pro-democratic, and mostly peaceful protesters, produced a glimmer of hope for a better future, or at least of the possibility of its existence. There was a long period of confused muttering before the American and European political class began to cheer along. When they finally did join the crowds in praising the Arab revolutions, they stuck to the narrative already promoted by mainstream media, celebrating the role played by the new whiz kid in the democratic block - social media. This perspective was consistent with the stand adopted years before by these same actors: “Since the year 2007, the American State Department, very much like Western mainstream media, focused exclusively on the importance of Internet freedom and the role of social media in facilitating these revolutions [...] In June 2009, activists [in Iran] took to the streets following a controversial election there. Many appeared to have used social media to foment their uprising, and in Washington, among academics and journalists around the American State Department, the excitement was palpable. The journalist, Andrew Sullivan, for instance, labelled Twitter as a critical tool for organising the resistance in Iran. He even threw in a kind of electronic agitprop, “The revolution will be twittered”. (Harkin, J., 2011a, ENJN Conference). Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, made a declaration following the same vein in January 2010, vowing to promote Internet freedom as part of the Administration’s foreign policy (Foreign Policy, 2010). She announced that the United States has vouched for “diplomatic, economic, and technological resources to advance these freedoms”(ibid), thereby helping democratic movements to overcome restrictions to Internet use. Clinton’s announcement and the flurry of similar statements made by politicians and pundits alike concerning the Internet’s liberating properties were backed by academic work that, although more subdued in its Utopian proclamations, arrived to similar conclusions (Christensen, 2011). 15

Technologies of Freedom The inclination to view the latest communication technology as inherently democratic is not new. Echoing previous declarations about the democratising powers of the printing press and the telegraph, the dominating tendency, nowadays, is to regard the Internet and social media as a tool that could enable the creation of a freer, more democratic society. Theories surrounding social media’s liberating potential outline certain characteristics that hold great promise for democratic processes. As this assertion is quickly adopted by commentators of all sorts and broadly distributed by the media, it also finds its way to the political arena. Hilary Clinton was not the only one to make Internet freedom a foundation of foreign policy. In January of 2011 Swedish Minister for International Development, Gunilla Carlsson, pledged to support social media in the effort to promote democracy, making it an essential element in the definition of Sweden’s international aid (Christensen, 2011, p. 234). Carlsson announced that her government had earmarked 15 million Euros for this purpose, even though critics say not enough evidence backs the assumption that such action will support Sweden’s foreign-aid goals of promoting freedom and the universal respect of human rights. “In short, the liberation technology view is one in which there is a causal relation posited among specific forms of technology, the expansion of rights, and other forms of economic and social development. From a critical standpoint, the liberation technology argument leans heavily upon techno-deterministic (and some would say techno-utopian) lines of reasoning”. (Christensen, p. 237). The idea of communication technologies as a tool of liberation is also embraced by academics. In their article “The Role of Digital Media”, Howard and Hussain assert that: “Digital media became the tool that allowed social movements to reach onceunachievable goals”. (Howard & Hussain, 2011, p. 36). The two authors make the claim that social media proved to be the sine qua non of the Arab insurrections. Admittedly, it would be foolish to discard the role played by social media. Nevertheless, it is probably too early to be making such sweeping remarks about the primacy of their contribution. Declarations such as theirs seem rather too broad, bypassing the questions they themselves raise in turn. Were social media the secret ingredient that lacked, up until now, in the Arab World for an insurrection to take place? Did they become such a powerful tool since they were already widely used by the so16

cial and demographic group that is often central in contesting the powers that be, i.e. the educated youth? Or, could it be, perhaps that the arrival of social media added the magical communication ingredients to an already explosive social and political mix? Furthermore, little is said about the response of the standing regime. Does it merely sit back and watch, waiting for the storm to pass, or does it seek to also extend its domination to the Internet realm? Undoubtedly, a sweeping revolutionary wave such as North Africa and the Middle East have witnessed, would have seemed impossible a few years ago. But political struggles for civil rights and democratic change have taken place before the appearance of social media, and some of them have even been successful. In fact, a revolution did bring down the Shah’s regime in Iran in 1979, banking on the exasperation most Iranians were feeling towards his brutal reign. The leaders of that revolution had no access to social media as we know it, but they did have other means of communication – namely cassettes (Sreberni-Mohammadi & Mohammadi, 1994) - which seemed to have worked just as well for them. In the former Eastern Bloc in Europe, it was the printing press and fax machines that served as the backbone of the underground Samizdat (Gebert, 2011, ENJN Conference). This is not to say that social media’s contribution is negligible. As social media become ubiquitous, accessible to most, and the primary means for instant communication, it is only natural that all social and political players would adopt them. In fact, social media have become a digitalised extension of life, and as such, they were bound to touch upon the political. And that they did, bringing social and political conflict online, as the Anonymous hacker group and its cyber attacks against national administrations and corporations exemplifies. Still, the more traditional battlefields have not disappeared. The images sneaked out of the Syrian town Homs attest to that, as do the videos of the 2011 post election demonstrations in Moscow, rife as they are with offline protest and anger. When it comes down to it, a revolution is pretty much what it has always been – a mass of people in the streets, risking it all as they defy the ruling power. It appears, therefore, that political struggles simultaneously occupy two distinct spaces where they evolve and play out - the off- and the on-line spaces. While the occurrences in each space follow their own rationale and evolve according to their particular properties, they are also influenced by one another and feed, in synergy, the development process of the struggle in its entirety. Given this interdependence, it might be more useful to view social media in political conflicts as an added dimension. In this way, they, like other communication technologies, do not replace previous modes of contestation, but rather, add on to them, like an extra layer or a new extension in the power struggle. And although a victory in this dimension can influence the course of events, it cannot, on its own, determine the outcome of the confrontation.

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Additionally, the interaction between technology and society is always a highly complex one, making it impossible to determine its consequences with certainty and accuracy. In Blogistan, Sreberny and Khiabany warn against overestimating the contribution of technology (Internet, in their case) to social and political change, while disregarding the local specific background in which it operates. “Communication technologies by themselves cannot solve political, social, cultural, and economic discrepancies within societies, nor can they be regarded as the engines of history. They do not teach literacy, are not education in themselves and cannot resolve the lack of clean water or electricity, or food. Technologies are developed in historical societies and as such carry all the marks of their historical moment in their shapes, design, functions and the very fact that they are sold in the marketplace as commodities.” (Sreberny & Khiabany, 2010, p. 7). Every culture, every society, have their customs, their history, and their practices that shape the way social media is used, how it affects individuals, how it interacts with other media, and the consequences that arise thereof. These cannot be generalised and taken outside of their context. And yet this is precisely what happened in Iran, when the Green protest movement took to the streets, following the disputed elections of June 2009. The uprising was crowned as Twitter’s finest hour and the excitement over the media-enabled revolution soared. This same reaction was later repeated when the Western world finally turned its gaze towards the events unfolding in the Maghreb and the Middle East. This time, Twitter was not the only star – Facebook joined its rank as the liberating hero. In both cases, Twitter and Facebook were regarded as external forces amplifying, in an identical manner, processes of internal conflict that occurred in several countries, that apart from a shared Muslim identity, differed in their economic models, social problems, religious currents, and political regimes. The diversity of literacy levels or Internet penetration among countries were not considered, even though such elements are essential in determining the influence of ICT technologies. More importantly, certain societal characteristics, political forces, and cultural practices that come into play with technology may not only limit its positive effects, but can even reverse them. As Ronfeldt and Varda very aptly remark: “The printing press was a key technology enabling the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the end of Feudalism, the rise of modern science and capitalism, and the colonial expansion of the European empires to the New World and Asia.

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Yet the printing press, and later technologies, like the telephone and radio, did not prevent new and ever worse forms of autocracy from arising. Early on, these technologies contributed to the demise of the old monarchies and the broadening of popular participation in politics. But later, these same technologies were turned into tools of propaganda, surveillance and subjugation that enabled dictators to seize power and develop totalitarian regimes”. (Ronfeldt & Varda, 2008, p. 30). It is the complex interaction between technology and society, and the capacity of regimes to manipulate it according to their needs that prompted Internet sceptics like writer and academic Evgeny Morozov (2011) to see Internet and social media as a double-edged sword at best and as a repressive instrument at worst. Rulers have as much access to technologies as their dissidents, if not more. It is hard to imagine they would give up their technological edge. Rather, they would apply these same technologies, as ferociously as the activists would, if not more, to retain their power. “This leads to a kind of cat and mouse game, between the hacktivists on the one hand, and the regime on the other. This is a fun game, which also stimulates technological innovation, but it’s not obvious that the right side is going to win.” (Harkin, 2011a). Social media, as all technologies, are a tool in the hand of society. But as Clay Shirky remarked, the usefulness of a tool is judged by how well it performs the tasks to which it is destined: “There is no such thing as a generically good tool; there are only tools good for particular jobs. [...] A good social tool is like a good woodworking tool – it must be designed to fit the job being done, and it must help people do something they actually want to do.” (Shirky, 2008, p. 265). But the usefulness of a tool is also measured by how well it is adapted to the user and his needs, and to what an extent it allows for users’ constraints and possibilities in employing it. Understanding these complex interplays improves the capacity and quality of the tool. Understanding how social media interact with society, what are the limitations of their use, and its complex consequences are essential if they are to contribute to political processes. As Morozov insists, this is all the more important if they are to play a part in pro-democratic effort in non-democratic countries, where the price of a failed insurrection is often paid in blood. 19

Our Objective In both the regions participating in the ENP project, the sheer number and diversity of countries to have seen protests, with varying degrees of mobilisation, violence, and success, will no doubt prove to be an invaluable source for future research. This study aims to explore the different ways social media are involved in the struggle for democracy and their implications. A number of observers analysed these various contributions - Howard and Hussain (2011), Simon Cottle in his valuable research notes (2011a), and Dean Freelon, on his blog (2011). Cottle is one of the rare researchers who do not oppose social media’s democratic potential to their pitfalls and shortcomings, but rather sees them as different parts of the whole, creating a complex system of interactions, with consequences that are at times stark, and at other times elusive. I tend to adopt his approach, insisting that any contribution of social media to prodemocratic struggles is accompanied by limits and counter effects that diminish these same contributions or even reverse them. This is not to say that the contribution is nil or negative, but merely that the effect of social media on the democratic scene is in constant evolution and mutation, each transformation reacting and building on previous ones and on new input in technology and user ingenuity, be it democratic in nature or authoritarian. Cottle (ibid), as well as Howard and Hussain, identify a number of aspects to social media’s contribution to political struggles. This book is dedicated to four of them, discussing each aspect in a separate chapter. The chapters address in broad terms the democratic potential of social media in specific domains, how it is manifested in political and social movements among the EU’s ENP partners and how it can also be limited and even reversed by other political and social factors or by social media’s structural properties. The first chapter, entitled Sowing the Democratic Seed, focuses on social media as a platform for political debate, a ‘public sphere’ of sorts, striving to open up the political sphere to others beyond the usual power holders in authoritarian regimes. The capacity of social media to allow individuals to communicate their views and opinions both to restricted and to mass distributed networks endows citizens with the ability to propose alternative narratives and frames to the existing state propaganda, thus challenging the existing order. This is perhaps the most basic level of political contestation, and it is apparent under all regimes. Remarkable examples existed in Tunisia and Egypt prior to the uprisings, but also in Russia and Belarus, to name but a few. Nevertheless, the digital divide, particularly stark in developing countries, puts the threshold of political participation through social media high. Additionally, social media tend to concentrate like-minded people in formal networks, threatening to transform the possibility of an alternative public sphere to a mere illusion. 20

The second chapter, entitled Mobilising the Troops, examines social media’s contribution to organised anti-governmental activity. Beyond the realm of debate and the exchange of opinions, social media contribute to the coordination of collective dissent. Social media are situated at the crux of the political evolution, where the mounting anger and frustration erupt in an attempt of change. But, while they facilitate the logistics of the uprising, they also contain the threat of ‘slacktivism’, an easy way to vent political steam without real political engagement. Moreover, social media’s inherent resources that make it such a remarkable tool for mobilisation also simplify surveillance and the promotion of non-democratic ideas. Chapter three, entitled Mediating the Struggle, discusses the contribution of social media to the media landscape and more specifically - to journalism. The challenge they pose to the Fourth Estate is by and large a result of the latter’s growing incapacity to fulfil its role and its inability to fully play a democratising role in authoritarian regimes. Social media allow citizens to fill the gap left by legacy media’s inefficiency and challenge the narratives elaborated by the powers that be, pushing for greater transparency and accountability of state apparatus. But social media do not only serve to challenge the existing alliance between media and state authority, particularly powerful in non-democratic regimes. In certain constellations, social and other media come to interact, creating a powerful synergy that can effectively crush the state’s hitherto control of the communication field. However, the question remains whether social media play a leading role in this respect or whether other media, such as mobile phones or cable networks, actually lead this trend. In the case of the Arab uprisings, for example, Al Jazeera played a prominent role, which may in hindsight overshadow the one performed by social media. Additionally, experience has shown that authorities will always strive to maintain their hold on the national narrative and undermine any proposed alternative. In the case of autocratic rulers, this includes aggressive censorship and relentless propaganda that can subvert any attempt made by their opponents. Chapter four examines how social media are used to appeal for support from the international community, comprised of international institutions, foreign civil societies, and Diasporas. The transnational aspect of social media makes this move a natural one for groups seeking assistance in overthrowing a regime deemed unjust. Given that these groups cannot have their voices heard at home, assistance from abroad is essential, and social media can be important in securing help for their cause. Moreover, social and mainstream media are the major actors of the globalisation of ideas and values. Subsequently, the grievances of one people can be easily understood by others, or even shared by them, reinforcing the processes of identification and the willingness to play an active part in changing the regime, even from afar. And yet, recent events have shown that even social media cannot really challenge realpolitik, at least not at this stage of their development. Images of repression, horrific as they may be, have swayed 21

the international community only when the interests of all the powers involved were aligned with those of the opposition. In other cases, the world has continued to look on with no real capacity, or will, to interfere. Finally, while the Western democracies like to proclaim their attachment to ideas such as human liberties, freedom and democracy, and link them somehow to new technologies, their own record on this front is mitigated, leaving much to be desired. Practically all have implemented policies limiting Internet access for certain groups or censoring specific publications, at times going as far as targeting particular individuals (Howard, P. N., Agarwal, S. D., and Hussain M. M, 2011). This, in turn, undercuts their calls to a more open and free Internet and plays into the hands of repressive regimes, which use this as a validation of their policies in their own propaganda campaign.

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Chapter 1. Sowing the Democratic Seed The Internet, the brainchild of scientists working for the American Defense Department, fed and bred by additions and contributions made by a handful of European scientists, started trickling down into public consciousness in the early 1990s. Before anyone had time to pause and notice, the trickle became a torrent that swept high and wide (Flew, 2008, pp. 5-7). The Internet’s arrival was accompanied by the development of software and hardware, new services, and growing interconnections between IT, telecommunications, and media industries. With all these elements in place, most individuals had the capacity to digitally mass-distribute content within their reach. And due to the relatively affordable price of the technologies and hardware involved – many individuals did (Schäfer, 2009, p. 150). Thus, the posting of comments, pictures, videos, and links available to all has become custom currency – a phenomenon unheard-off and unimaginable before, at least not in this magnitude (Manovich, 2008, p. 25-26). Social media, if anything, reinforced this trend. These characteristics of affordability and the capacity to mass-communicate on an individual level appeared to endow the technology with unforeseen democratic potential, enabling citizens to publish and share information, organise activities and protests, and dispute the conventional narrative handed down by state authorities and legacy media. “The scholar, Adel Iskandar, has said, “Government media and alternative media have different agendas”. Government media and alternative media alike pose an inherent problem for advocates of objectivity. Because you’ve got on the one hand the state narrative, which is what it is, and on the other hand you have this alternative narrative, which has to push back, a kind of counternarrative [to that of the state]. And so, really, citizen content, to me, adds a new dimension, with a broader range or perspectives, to get a better grasp of what is happening.Take, for instance, what happened in Egypt [the Maspero protests, which led to the killing of 25 Copt protesters by the military on October 9, 2011]. Watching Twitter and following the people that I know, and comparing that to the mainstream media, I saw two very different narratives. On the one hand I saw Egyptian state media and the American media claiming this was a sectarian conflict. And then I saw on Twitter people claiming that it was the military instigating, encouraging, and inciting riot. This is a prime example of why social media and citizen content is so necessary, not in replacing media, but in providing an alternative.” (York, J., 2011, ENJN Conference). 23

This alternative frame of reality provided by social media is an essential part of its democratic potential. As Lynch correctly remarks, the telling of events is never neutral: “Events do not speak for themselves. For them to have political meaning, they need to be interpreted, placed into a particular context and imbued with significance.” (Lynch, 2011). The standing regime and other power-holders will always strive to discredit those that challenge their legitimacy, by framing the events in a light that favours them. To gain popular support, anti-governmental activists need to counter this by offering their own frame, which will present their cause and even give a more personal, “likable” image of them. This is particularly important for protesters and dissidents, who tend to be demonised in the public eye, often portrayed as extremists and a threat to the public peace (Aday et al., 1010). The media, which are themselves affiliated to the centres of power, are naturally inclined to support their outlook and disseminate it widely, generally without questioning its validity. This stance is also at the basis of the media’s tendency to disregard the views expressed by social, political, and ethnic minorities (Terry Flew, 2008, pp. 164-165; Gorman & McLean, pp. 179-181; Kumar, 2006, p. 49). Today’s social media appear to challenge this nexus of power, by providing each individual with the capacity to confront the dominant narrative through the formulation and publication of her own analysis of political and social developments, thereby democratising the framing process. Moreover, by their very nature, social media allow users to go beyond the mere posting of opinion, towards a mass debate in the electronic public space, which for many commentators, is a rejuvenated version of Habermas’ public sphere. Mediating between the State and society, the idea of a truly public sphere provides the citizen with data and analysis necessary for him to forge an informed opinion concerning the state of affairs. It is also a space where all citizens can engage in discussion on matters pertaining to the general interest, free of coercion of discrimination. Thus, information, analysis, and reason play a primordial role in the very existence of the public sphere (Habermas 2007, p. 103). Media was essential for the public sphere: “[t]he press remained an institution of the public itself, effective in the manner of a mediator and intensifier of public discussion, no longer a mere organ for the spreading of news but not yet the medium of a consumer culture.” (Habermas, 2001, p. 105).

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Habermas believed that media’s role as a public service was short-lived. Once newspapers were transformed into consumer goods, private interests and privileges took over the public sphere, effectively disintegrating its foundations. Information became biased and the egalitarian nature of the public sphere evaporated. In that sense, new media technologies seemed to provide society with an answer to the democratic crisis. For the price of a PC and an Internet connection, citizens can engage with one another, raise issues of concern, and inform each other and the rest of cyber space, effectively bypassing legacy media. Indeed, the ICT revolution enabled many citizens, for the first time, to publish their opinion with little cost, irrespective of race, sex or religion.

The Politicising Media “The Arab Spring had many causes. One of these sources was social media and its power to put a human face on political oppression”. (Howard et al., 2011, p. 2) Howard and Hussain view the primary engagement through social media as the first, necessary step that lays the foundation for future collective action. It is, in effect, a preparation phase, involving: “Activists using digital media in creative ways to find each other, build solidarity around shared grievances, and identify collective political goals”. (Howard & Hussain, p. 42). When the uprisings erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, the West was clearly caught by surprise. Yet it seems that in these countries, activists have been preparing the ground for an uprising already for a long while, using social media quite naturally as one of the many tools available to them. “How is it that the Internet came to be of such help for the Tunisian revolution? It is the result of a decade old work of politicising the Internet. In Tunisia, it started already in 1997 or 1998. [For instance,] in 2005, we gathered 40 to 50 activists and we launched a campaign “Ben Ali, enough is enough!” (‘Ben Ali, yezzi fock’ in Tunisian dialect), at the occasion of the world summit on information and society, that took place in Tunis.

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At that time, it was the first network to gather Tunisian activists online. I think they were aware of the potential of social media as they were theorising that social media and the Internet would create the next revolution that would come to Tunisia. [...] The work behind the scenes of the Arab bloggers’ meeting in Beirut in 2008 and 2009 allowed activists, who knew each other first through the Internet, to meet face to face later, in trainings, where they taught each other, sharing strategies, tools and tactics.” (Ben Gharbia, 2011, ENJN Conference). It is not entirely surprising that the political protest took to the Net or to social media in particular. Social media have become ubiquitous, encompassing almost all aspects of modern life and to such an extent that social media can no longer be considered as a mere pastime. What happens offline will ultimately find its way to the online sphere and to social media, where individual expression takes primacy. In this way, a constant flow of ideas and movements between the off- and the on-line dimensions is created, one that is naturally used for actions requiring mass interaction. The Egyptian April 6 movement or the Kefaya (Enough) campaign, that began following the 2005 presidential elections (and which served as blue print for the Tunisian ‘yezzi fock’ campaign) also belonged to this preparation phase. In effect, they represented an attempt to re-appropriate the media field and to use an electronic space to raise public issues, when other public spaces were hard to access. They would prove essential, later, when conditions would be ripe for the next revolutionary phase to take hold in Egypt. Shirky also believes in the importance of social media networks in preparing political change (2010). He refutes the idea of social media as instrumental to bringing about revolutionary action, but sees it as a necessary phase for the development of an environment that can be receptive of democratic ideas. Such an environment has to be literate and densely connected, so as to allow for a profusion of political debates. The building of such societal foundations is long, but essential, for democratic processes. “The more promising way to think about social media is as long-term tools that can strengthen civil society and the public sphere. In contrast to the instrumental view of Internet freedom, this can be called the “environmental” view. According to this conception, positive changes in the life of a country, including pro-democratic regime change, follow, rather than precede, the development of a strong public sphere.” (Shirky, 2010, p. 32).

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Russian blogs and social media also carried out such preparation work in the past decade. One of the country’s most important opposition leaders, Alexey Navalny, started his political activity precisely in this way – by creating a blog (RosPil, or The Plunder of Russia), dedicated to the investigation and mass publication of state corruption and wrongdoings of all kinds2. He soon became a highly trusted and respected critic of the Russian government, a position that naturally made him a key figure in the protests that took place in the aftermath of the contested December 2011 elections (Leroyer, 2011). Martina Litvinovich, another important opposition blogger in Russia, also uses social media extensively, attempting to propose an alternative narrative and to change the country’s political and social priorities. But the appeal to citizens’ public consciousness is not only done through blogging. Posting pictures and videos by otherwise unengaged individuals could also prove valuable. For example, Alexey Dymovsky, a Russian police officer, used YouTube to expose the problem of corruption in the force (Machleder & Asmolov, 2011, p. 7). In a similar vein, opposition bloggers in Tunisia worked for years to expose governmental corruption. One of their most famed actions was the broadcasting of videos portraying the presidential plane flying frequently to shopping destinations, at times where no presidential meetings were scheduled, allegedly for the convenience of the Tunisian First Lady. Apart from raising awareness and proposing an alternative framing of the political reality, the pre-uprising Internet activity is also considered valuable due to the role it plays in diminishing the fear factor that paralyses attempts at pro-democratic action under repressive regimes. “According to my experience in Egypt, a lot of what has happened in the country was a re-imagination of the field of possibilities. What brought people out in the streets has been the overcoming of a psychological fear barrier. In the past decades, Egyptians had every reason to revolt. The legitimacy of the Mubarak regime was dissolving, step by step, [while] the last remaining social contract of subsidies and an economic baseline of financial stability has been ebbing away. People were just left with economic repression, security repression, and corruption. But they were held in place by the thought that the costs of revolting were too high, and that the prospects of success were simply unimaginable. It didn’t seem like it could ever really happen. The Egyptians had to get past this psychological point and say, you know what, that can actually happen, we can beat the police off the streets. And this is what we saw on January 25, and to a much greater extent on January 28. 2) Navalny is the one to have coined the nickname ‘Party of Swindlers and Thieves’ for the governmental party United Russia, which has since become widespread in the country.

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Is social media responsible for that? No, not least because it was shut off for most of January 28. As a matter of fact, all internal communications were largely shut off that day. Still, the contacts made prior to that between certain activists and certain groups online helped produce this re-imagination and provoke this re-conceptualisation of what could be achieved.” (Shenker, 2011a, ENJN Conference). It is not only a question of overcoming a fear, it is also a matter or opening up the field of possibilities to a new eventuality that was deemed up until then as remote or unlikely. Either way, it is something that is done communally, touching several members of a community simultaneously. Shirky prefers to speak of a moment of shared awareness, a term he borrows from the military. Not only do all the members understand a certain situation, they also know that they share this understanding with their comrades. Social media is essential to this, accelerating the propagation of the message, making it at once more clear and precise (2011, pp. 35-36).

The Digital Divide One societal problem that may seriously constrain social media’s democratising potential is the digital divide. As van Dijk explains (2005), inequality and social injustice affect how online resources are accessed, and therefore also the capacity of members of society to use them for political ends. Those who suffer from limited access to offline resources would also find it difficult to acquire and use online resources, which in turn would limit their participation in an increasingly digitalised and networked society. The result would be a reinforced exclusion of these individuals and an even greater inequality in the distribution of resources. The digital divide runs, accordingly, along the fault lines of the social divide, namely gender, class, ethnic origin, education level, and geographic distribution. It is also a divide that touches mostly, on the macro level, the developing countries, leaving the Western world, still today, well ahead. Thus, in this sense, Internet, and by extension social media, can only be considered a democratising tool for a certain segment in society. Philip Howard, quoted in Patrick Meier (2011), doesn’t view this as a fundamental problem in democratising processes, since a change doesn’t require an equal degree of participations from all citizens in a society. Ultimately,

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“It does not matter that the number of bloggers, twitterers, or Internet users may seem small, because in a networked social moment only a few ‘brokers’ need to be using these tools to keep everyone up to date. These are the communication tools for the wealthy, urban, educated elites whose loyalties or defection will make or break authoritarian rule. Indeed, it is probably more useful to evaluate applications such as Twitter through the communities they support, rather than through tool features. […] Social movement scholars write that elite defection usually marks the end of an authoritarian regime.” (Howard, 2010). Without a doubt, a pro-democratic movement fighting to overthrow a repressive regime does not need to mobilise all citizens in front of their screens. As a matter of fact, an absolute concentration of protest activity in cyber-space would put an end to any hope of change. Nevertheless, the fact that certain members of society are socially prohibited from using a tool that is deemed democratising clearly undermines its effectiveness and validity. If the original premise contends that social media is democratic as it gives an equal voice to all, including the voiceless and disenfranchised, the digital divide puts it under a heavy strain. At the very least, it points to the possibility that the Internet, or social media, like all media, end up facilitating the political participation of those who are already in the advantage while excluding whole segments of society. In Azerbaijan, for instance, only 30% of Internet users are female. Any political action carried through the Internet would only serve to further exacerbate women’s exclusion of public life.

Wael Ghonim or the Plummer and the Housewife? If the digital divide inhibits social media from becoming truly inclusive, depriving many of the capacity to participate in and influence the political debate, the strong entertainment propensity of the media signifies that also for those who have the means to be politically engaged, it is difficult to find open venues for such action. Social media are often rigged towards consumerism and distraction, relegating politics to the background. As Hindman shows in The Myth of Digital Democracy, only a small fraction of Internet use is dedicated to politics. As a result, it is extremely difficult for those who express themselves on the Internet to get their voices heard. Or in his words: “[...] putting up a political Web site is usually equivalent to hosting a talk show on public access television at 3:30 in the morning.” (Hindman, 2009, p. 57).

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Hindman’s research reveals a rather sobering picture of Internet use: “Overall, about 10.5 percent of Web traffic goes to adult or pornographic Web sites. A slightly smaller portion (9.6 percent) goes to Webmail services such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, 7.2 percent of traffic goes to search engines, while only 2.9 percent of Web traffic goes to news and media sites.” (Ibid, p. 60). In “Political Power of Social Media” (2010), Clay Shirky dismisses this problem. Online distraction cannot really be considered a new threat to political debate, on or offline, since entertainment, of any kind, has always been part of any media: “Far more people in the 1500s were reading erotic novels then Martin Luther’s “Ninety-Five Theses”, and far more people before the American Revolution were reading Poor Richard’s Almanack than the work of the Committees of Correspondence.” (Shirky, 2010, p. 32). Ethan Zuckerman addresses this same issue with the Cute Cat Theory of Digital Activism. In short, “Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers. Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats” (2008a). Zuckerman explains that modern Internet may indeed be developed, used, and commercialised primarily for the sharing of cute cat photos and videos of scantily-clad ladies and their gentlemen suitors, but ultimately, if Internet is good enough for these activities, it will also be good enough for democratic action. Dissidents will find ways to adopt and adapt these tools to their goals, taking the fight to another dimension – the online dimension. Governments who would then try to block the Internet in order to counter cyber-activism will end up enraging also those who were not, up to that point, politically engaged, simply because they can no longer access their favourite ‘LOL-cat’ website.

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The Ideology Locker Consumer-oriented social media offers many distractions that may in fact take most people’s minds off of a more political use of the Net. Still, this does not mean that politically oriented engagement through social media is null. But just how productive is it, looking at it through the prism of the public sphere? One answer to this question points to a structural limitation of social media for political debates - the so-called echo-chamber. Habermas alluded to it when he discussed Internet’s weakness as a public-sphere agent: “The Internet has certainly reactivated the grassroots of an egalitarian public of writers and readers [... But] the rise of millions of fragmented chat rooms across the world tend[s] instead to lead to the fragmentation of large but politically focused mass audiences into a huge number of isolated issue publics. (Habermas, 2006, p. 423, quoted in Neuman, Bimber & Hindman, 2010). Cass Sunstein (2001) was one of the first to address the issue of electronic political discussion platforms becoming echo-chambers, as people holding certain political views will increasingly gravitate towards Internet sources that reflect ideas identical to their own, while shunning those that challenge their beliefs. More than anything, this promotes the creation of what Sunstein calls the “Daily Me”. Thus, instead of encouraging an exchange of ideas, online political discussion may actually lead to a polarisation of opinion. Taking the Tea-Party as an example, Dana Radcliff (2011) reaches the same conclusion. Social media cements like-minded individuals in online organisations that can easily grow, mobilising adherents and funds relatively quickly and acquiring a powerful influence over politicians, beyond election periods. While this may seem a positive development at the onset, it can quickly turn into a political straightjacket. Members can follow every act and gesture of their elected leaders, holding them accountable for any move that challenges their political line, chaining, in this manner, the politician to their own, group-restricted agenda. This is precisely what has happened with the Tea-Party and the congressmen and women associated with the movement, making any concession or compromise a near impossibility. A similar phenomenon is also taking over the Likud party in Israel, the current coalition leader of the right majority. Israeli daily Haaretz described a take-over of the party by an extreme-right fringe, aided in great part by new media and digital networks, including social media (2011a). According to the newspaper, the activists use blogs and chainemails to enforce their agenda upon the politicians, mainly the protection of the colonial project in the Occupied Territories. This is often done at the expense of other issues, which tend to be bypassed, as the activists manage to hijack government and parlia31

ment meetings, through Knesset members, who are vulnerable to their pressure. The echo-chamber phenomenon is rendered even worse by the fact that it is not merely a question of choice. Unbeknownst to them, users of Internet and social media are increasingly relegated to such echo-chambers by their service providers. For commercial purposes (a better advertisement targeting of the consumer), Internet technologies tailor research results according to what algorithms judge to be your earlier preferences. Since 2009, Google is customising search results for every user, providing not the most pertinent results, but those the user will be the most likely to click on. This personalisation creates separate electronic universes, which feed the users only what they are familiar and comfortable with, leaving their beliefs intact and the political debate barren (Pariser, 2011). “Algorithms have the tendency to [...] work like funnels that progressively narrow our view on reality, constantly offering us what we already know, like and desire. In this way, existing stereotypes and prejudices are being reinforced and amplified. If I once “like” the Facebook page “Islam is dangerous”, I will receive ever more information with a similar political orientation and attitude.” (Meckel, 2011). Meckel points to another interesting problem arising from the personalisation of searches on the Internet. The very process, by which this personalisation is made, is based on choices made in the past. In such a way, the search algorithms base every future search on what has already occurred, cementing it electronically and making change unlikely, or at least much more difficult to access (ibid). This is hardly encouraging when addressing issues such as political evolution and democratic processes, which are based on change and development. It is also important to bear in mind that discussions on Facebook do not necessarily follow patterns that bode well for democratisation, and these echo chambers can ultimately transform a simple opinion into a subversive act. Haaretz reported that a group called Israel Arzenu (“Israel our country”) in December 2011 posted on its Facebook page a picture of a dead man, presumably Palestinian, killed in an Israeli air attack. The graphic picture got over a thousand ‘likes’ and hundreds of comments, most of which were favourable (Haaretz, 2011b). Many comments had an inflamed, nationalistic tone and those that expressed doubt at the usefulness of such an act were vehemently silenced and their writers requested to leave the electronic space. The picture, posted on December 7, 2011, has since then been blocked, possibly by Facebook. The question also arises whether a social media that aggregates a user’s family and friends is the right platform to encourage the expression of ideas and opinions, which might not be considered as ‘right’. It is possible that the peer pressure exerted by these various circles of contacts, ranging from the very close to the very loose, might dis32

courage users from conducting a free, open and un-coerced discussion. Experience shows that the heated tone of some debates can lead, in time, to censorship or selfcensorship. Some users can then decide to discuss political matters in more precisely defined circles that exclude other users for fear of retribution, thus exacerbating the echo-chamber effect and drying up the exchange of ideas.

Social Media Are Corporations Too Finally, when considering the structural limits of social media as liberating technologies, it is important to keep in mind that social media are products, their owners are corporations and their users clients3. These distinctions are not merely a linguistic squabble – they define the very essence of social media’s characteristics, uses, and limitations. Corporations that develop social media have corporate concerns. Their primary aim is to have a profitable product that sells. To ensure this, they devise business plans and terms of use, which constrict the media within certain limits. The users can seldom transgress these limits since the owning company has almost complete control of the product, and any alteration to the rules of the game requires a long negotiation (or advanced hacking skills). “A lot of us think of social media as the public sphere online, the place where we gather, our new town square, but in reality, it’s not public. Social media are the product of Western technology, American technology mostly, for better or worse, which means that they come with their own set of rules. It also means that they are privately owned, making them not a public sphere, but a quasipublic sphere. These characteristics make them vulnerable to censorship and propaganda. One example from Tunisia: a couple of years ago, Nawaat, a blog collective founded by Sami Ben Gharbia, filmed young children sniffing glue, later posting this film on YouTube. But YouTube took it down, claiming it was inappropriate content, since it showed children using drugs. Similarly, earlier this year, there were a number of videos from Syria, showing violent content, showing dead bodies, and showing horrible, horrible things. YouTube took those down as well. Ultimately, YouTube has shifted its position, I give them credit for that, but what they’ve said is: OK, we’re going to make a different rule. Rather than saying ‘you can’t show violent content’, or ‘you can’t show children using drugs’, they 3) Alternatively, one can say that social media are free because they are not products. It is the user of the medium who is the product and the data he submits about himself a very valuable good that corporations are willing to pay great amounts of money to access (Andrejevic, 2002).

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are now saying that you can actually show this for documentary or educational purposes. That makes it a call they have to make. Often, it requires the person who uploaded the video to make the appeal, which remains problematic. Still, that is one platform that has basically adapted to these new uses of social tools. Facebook, on the other hand, has not adapted. Facebook seems reluctant to appear as a revolutionary or an activist platform, continuing to take down content on a regular basis. One example is a recent page, discussing the possibility of a third intifada in Palestine (at that point not even calling for one). As a result, this page was taken down.” (York, 2011). Indeed, Facebook insists that users sign-in to the social medium with their real name. Those who sign in with a pseudonym may find that their account has been shut down. The problem is that by forcing members living under repressive regimes to use their true identity when using Facebook forces them to choose between peaceful self-censorship and between very risky free speech. This is an aspect of social media that’s often neglected by commentators, leading certain stakeholders to recommend Facebook or Twitter as candidates for the Nobel Prize ever since the protests of the Iranian Green movement erupted in June 2009 (Pfeifle, 2009). The Arab uprisings renewed the trend in 2011. As the Net gains importance in all aspects of life, it becomes an essential space of interaction for corporate and financial organisations that vie to invest in and capitalise on its use. These actors are likely to influence the Net’s use in ways that are not necessarily conductive to democratic change, by excluding certain groups or rejecting members that do not convey the right message or image, according to commercial criterion. “Social Media is Corporate: so far, the interests of Google etc. have generally coincided with an open Internet, but not always and not necessarily forever (remember the withdrawal of corporate services to WikiLeaks in the US?) But without those companies you won’t have those platforms”. (Beckett, 2011a). States are highly aware of this weakness and do not shy away from exploiting it. Many governments pressure Internet corporations into censoring content or users who are not to their liking, thus washing their hands from exercising censorship measures themselves and saving the costs of searching for the culprits and shutting them down. This had been the basis of the relationship between Google and China ever since the company set up shop in the country, and has remained an issue, until the company finally decided to pull out, exasperated by the regime’s demands. 34

Chapter 2. Mobilising the Troops Pro-democratic action goes beyond debating. Social media nowadays also play an essential role in mobilisation – getting the activists to dedicate their time and energy to the service of the cause. Social media is, on the face of it, ideal for coordinating mobilisation and action, permitting instant, mass distribution of information at a very low cost. Messages are exchanged on Twitter, concerning the last protest and the directives for the following action. Points of friction and escape routes are marked on Google Maps, and then shared on Facebook. Testimonies are gathered on YouTube. Network ICTs, including social media, are no longer a mere debate tool. Some commentators see them as an extension of the movement, the place where the battle is raging. It is a democratisation of the media, through the media (Lievrouw, p. 159). Moreover, the rapidity and the ease of engagement through Internet and social media, as an integral part of daily life and even leisure, makes political action less foreboding and time consuming. At times, a click is all that is required to make one’s opinion heard. What is more, the networked character of social media amplifies that click and infuses it with power, by spreading the reality of that single action to a host of connected members. And indeed, the Internet in general and social media in particular are increasingly used by associations, social movements, and activists in their struggles to attain their goals. As a matter of fact, it is hard to imagine any political action today that’s wholly conducted outside the online realm. Finally, social media offer the possibility of political participation to those who would normally shy away from such action, either because they fear retribution or because they feel that the normative debate does not accommodate their views. This is particularly true for minorities and women. In Egypt, for instance, where public space is not always open to female voices, blogs and social media serve as a platform from which they can express their views and even initiate action. In March 2008, Esraa Abdel Fattah started a Facebook page, calling Egyptians to participate in a strike as a show of sympathy for the textile workers of Mahalla, who were planning to go on strike themselves on the 6th of April. Two weeks after the group’s formation, Fattah’s Facebook page had around 70,000 members, an astonishing figure, considering that less than 800,000 Egyptians had Facebook accounts at the time (Faris, 2008). The action led to the creation of the 6th of April movement, headed by Fattah and Ahmed Maher, which played a central part in the strikes that broke that day in Egypt. Cairo was almost completely shut down, as businesses, schools, and shops preferred to keep out of trouble and the local elections that took place in the city two days later saw an unprecedented low in voter numbers. Fattah was subsequently arrested and jailed for 35

two weeks. At the time of her release, she renounced pursuing any political action. Still, in his article, Faris remarks how deeply Fattah and her movement affected the Egyptian collective memory. Interestingly, his article was written in 2008. Little did Faris know that in 2011, this same movement would hold such a prominent place in the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak. Considering the prevailing gender discrimination in Egypt, it is almost unimaginable for a woman to create such a social movement merely with off-line tools. In this chapter, we will review social media’s contribution to political mobilisation, building on the previous work made to politicise society and develop a critical stance towards the regime, and moving in the direction of a more concrete revolutionary action. We will also address factors undermining the mobilisation potential. Paradoxically, such factors stem from the very ease that characterises social media politics, putting online engagement at risk of becoming a quick and shallow involvement that replaces a deep and demanding commitment for the democratic change. Additionally, when organising street action, social media again favour those classes or segments of the population that are already close to the centres of powers, making the powerless ever more dependent on external forces. Finally, pro-democratic elements are not the only ones to add social media to their arsenal. Other movements that challenge the regimes, be they Islamist or Fascist, can also benefit from social media’s potential to win over society with regards to their cause. The state authorities themselves are not blind to social media’s advantages and do not hesitate to provide a counterstrike to their challengers. They also take advantage of the media’s openness to follow the actions of their dissidents and crush them at the most opportune moment.

Digitally Mediated Insurgency In their analysis of the Arab springs, Howard and Hussain see the second phase, or aspect, of social media activism as the ignition moment, when the media are instrumental in transforming the built-up political anger online into an insurgency. It is the tipping point, so to speak, that takes society from political debate to revolutionary activity. This phase is closely followed by what Howard and Hussain identify as social media’s third contribution to pro-democratic movements – the mobilised street protests. In Tunisia, the ignition moment can very easily be identified as the self-immolation act of Mohamed Bouazizi, the young street vendor, and the protests following his act. But Bouazizi’s act served as an ignition point not only for the uprising in Tunisia, but also for the waves of revolution that washed over the whole region. It is probably for this reason that the event carries so much symbolism for so many peoples all over the world. 36

In Egypt, Bouazizi’s desperate act joined with other societal elements to bring the streets to a boiling point. Among them, the We Are all Khaled Said campaign holds a particular status. It may have started six months before the Egyptian uprising, but it was also particularly important in escalating the conflict in the country and taking it to the next level. The campaign came into being through a We Are all Khaled Said Facebook page, created by Wael Ghonim (who would later become one of the leading figures of the Egyptian revolution), following the death of the young man in the hands of the police, in June 2010. Said, a 28 year old man, was dragged out of a cyber-cafe by a couple of policemen and beaten to death, after posting on the Net pictures showing law enforcers engaged in dubious practices. The police claimed he died choking on the drugs he tried to ingest when he saw the police coming, but the bruises on his body and the witnesses who saw his arrest told a different story. The family of the young man published photos of his bruised body, which soon became viral. The Facebook page dedicated to his death quickly gained followers and became the strongest platform of dissent in Egypt and a major symbol of the anti-torture movement in the country. Building on the groundwork that the anti-torture campaign had already accomplished, it won astonishing popularity. “They [the web activists] pressured mainstream media in Egypt, both newspapers and television, to address the topic of torture in Egypt. Without that, without building that campaign for a decade against torture in Egypt, the ‘We are all Khaled Said’ page could not have galvanised and gathered all that support within the Internet sphere.” (Ben Gharbia, 2011) When tensions in the country began to rise in January, this symbol became the rallying cry of the anti-Mubarak contestation, representing the political and social practices the protesters were trying to bring down. The fall of the Tunisian regime acted as an additional accelerator, pushing the Egyptian street towards the ignition phase. Beyond the ignition of political consciousness, social media is also instrumental in mobilising street protests. At this stage, social media assist in transmitting messages about upcoming actions, mobilising protesters, and coordinating meetings. It also continues to educate society on the protesters’ demands and grievances. As the demonstrations gain momentum, so grows their media coverage and their visibility. The activists can take advantage of this sudden surge of interest to increase the exposure of their ideas. The first platform available to them at that point is social media. And this exposure can be highly profitable for them. As it turns out, peaks in online political conversations in both Tunisia and Egypt preceded street protests (Howard et al., p. 23). As Howard and 37

his colleagues point out, it is not possible, at this point, to clearly establish a relation of cause and effect between the increase in online activity and the success of the mobilisation. Nonetheless, it is apparent that social media is involved in the societal and political tempest. The use of social media to organise street action was not a prerogative of the Arab uprisings. The phenomenon is a global one, established also, for instance, in Belarus. “Young people [in Belarus, who] are under no delusion as to their country’s attitude to free expression or freedom of association, have found inspiring and creative ways to protest, ignoring the risks. Throughout the summer, people have gathered in cities all over the country to take part in non-violent, silent antigovernment protests. Two groups played a key role: ‘Movement of the future’ (200,000 members), and ‘Revolution through social networks’ [both based on social media networks]. On Wednesdays, groups of men and women gathered in a designated place and simply clapped or set on their phone alarms.” (Butselaar, 2011, ENJN Conference). Social media’s role in mobilising protesters can be more complex than it appears at first glance. By the sheer virtue of social media’s networked function, a post concerning an individual’s intention to participate in a demonstration, is simultaneously an open call for others to join and a symbol of solidarity for those who have already expressed a similar intention (Beckett, C., 2011b). Furthermore, this mobilisation, of time and resources, does not have to be translated necessarily into mass street demonstrations. Action organised and carried online can be valuable in and of itself. Josh Machleder and Gregory Asmolov have broadly studied crowdsourcing platforms in Russia that originated in opposition blogs and social networks, and which have had palpable effects in the country (Machleder and Asmolov, 2011). “In the State, there are certain actors, such as government, parliament, police, and so forth, that have many different functions. There are certain services they need to provide the citizens with, whether it’s security, welfare, or law enforcement. But in reality, as we see in Russia, these institutions are not necessarily transparent, nor are they fully accountable, incapable at times of answering the needs of the people. The mainstream media, the so-called Forth Estate, have many outlets - television, radio, newspapers, or online media. In general, the role of media is to increase transparency, to investigate and to hold the government accountable. But the problem in Russia is that some of the media, especially television, exer38

cise self-censorship and are subject to government control. And then there are online media - bloggers and social media, networks, and websites. William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute calls these the ‘Fifth Estate’, linking it ideally to the ‘Fourth Estate’. In effect, this means that social media do what legacy media fail to do, i.e. holding the State accountable and increasing transparency in the state system. At times, social media can also fulfil some governance roles, making use of their inherent lack of hierarchy and organised structure – an aspect that allows them to remain relatively uncontrolled. Transparency, for instance, is increased through crowdsourcing platforms and blogs that cover issues ignored by traditional media, especially in regions where traditional media cannot operate. Blogs and social media also attempt, through their coverage, to increase the pressure exercised on government, forcing it, in certain cases, to react. Similarly, the Fifth Estate can also play a role in making the State accountable for its actions or lack thereof. But when achieving transparency or accountability is not enough, Internet allows users to take destiny into their own hands and to do what the State or mainstream media failed to do. One such example is the ‘Help Map’ crowdsourcing platform, created in the summer of 2010, during the wildfires crisis that saw the deaths of about 60 people and the destruction of many villages. The Russian government had a problem in providing an appropriate response while traditional media, particularly television, insisted the situation was under control. Bloggers, on the other hand, presented a very different picture. They increased transparency by describing the real scale of the disaster on their blogs. Beyond that, they also enabled collective citizen action by creating a crowdsourcing platform called ‘Help-map’. The platform collected reports from different citizens on the events on the ground and displayed them on the map according to different categories of information.This pressured journalists of mainstream media to follow-up on events, thus also increasing accountability. But in Russia, this was not enough. Therefore, the major role of the platform was not only mapping the events, but also creating a system to coordinate the assistance online, filling in this manner the gap left by state institutions.” (Asmolov, 2011, ENJN Conference). Although the crowdsourcing efforts described here by Asmolov don’t answer the traditional definition of pro-democratic mobilisation, they represent, nonetheless, an effort of civil society to re-appropriate the social and political arenas, holding the regime accountable and pushing for appropriate government practices. 39

Trending the Way Out “Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools.” (Gladwell, 2010). “When weak ties become some kind of ideology of their own, through this idea that movements can self organise through weak electronic ties, they become useless, and potentially disastrous.” (Harkin,2011a). In view of all that’s been said about social media’s capacity to act as both a catalyst and an accelerator to pro-democratic processes, one might think that human societies as a whole are simply one social media step away from open, liberal, and just democracies. Yet, the United Arab Emirates, the Middle Eastern champion when it comes to the percentage of its citizens registered as Facebook usersVIII, has known little, if any, protests in recent times. Yemen, on the other hand, with only 9.7% on its inhabitants on the Internet and 1.3% on Facebook, successfully ousted its long-standing dictator. If anything, the discrepancy in Internet and Facebook use among the countries involved in the Arab uprisings begs the question of their usefulness in political movements. Another people to miss the insurrection train were the Palestinians. With all their hardearned experience in protest, militant and underground activism, they stayed at the sidelines. And it is not for lack of motive. Struggling for decades to shake off the Israeli occupation, Palestinian civil society, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, also faces what many see as corrupt and repressive administrations. The apparent passivity cannot be ascribed to lack of social media, with 53% of the West Bank population on the Internet and 27% on FacebookIX. As a matter of fact, new media, and social media among them, are widely used by Palestinians to contest both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority (Najjar, 2007). Living conditions in the Occupied Territories made communication particularly difficult for Palestinians, whether it is with their acquaintances in their vicinity or abroad. The problem has been made particularly acute after Israel imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip, enforced in full since 2007, making contact with those inhabiting the enclave particularly difficult. Thus, the use of Internet is less of a luxury and more of a necessity for most Palestinians, providing them with a more stable means of communication, but also allowing them to broadcast their opposition to the occupation, and at times, to the Palestinian Authority. Internet is also essential in maintaining ties with the Palestinian Diaspora, who plays a major role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Najjar, p. 197). 40

Subsequently, social media in the Palestinian Territories are in a kind of perpetual preparation phase, to use Howard and Hussain’s term, providing a Palestinian narrative to the propaganda war with Israel. Every once in a while, social media may even go through ignition phases of sorts, but to this day, every ignition phase has died down, returning the media back to an eternal build-up for a mobilisation that never really matures, at least not since the advent of social media. There may be several explanations to the incapacity of social media to play a mobilising role in the case of the Palestinian opposition movements. Some of them point to the particularities of the Israeli-Palestinian context. Others put the blame specifically on social media. “[Social media] distract Palestinians themselves from building a stronger movement at home. If you look at the distinction between the Palestinian revolution in the 1970s and the Palestinian movement now, well, which one was stronger? What I see now is an incredibly weak movement, which almost becomes a kind of echo-chamber. Wearing a badge for Palestine in the West is very different from offering any real practical support which might help the Palestinian people, and I think in contemporary time, the real danger of us all migrating to these electronic echo chambers is that we might hinder, rather than support that movement in the long term.” (Harkin, 2011a). Later, in an interview, Harkin explained more in detail the reasons he feels cause social media to hinder rather than aid political and social movements: “Media is an important pillar for any political transition. But if we want to think more generally on what we need in place to ensure a transition to a proper democracy with very strong roots, then the real danger is that we work with very shallow tools with social media, because social media is something that you can do from your room, with no true involvement. It can, on occasion, take the place of real political engagement; it can become a kind of ‘slacktivism’. I think there’s a real danger that we ‘fetishise’ these current movements in North Africa and the Middle East and imagine them wholly led by social media. And if we go down that road, we might well find that democracy turns out to be a flash in the pan. I mean, political scientists for years have talked about the kind of institutions you need in place [for a democracy] and there are all sorts of arguments as to which ones. But social media is not enough. Freedom of the press, for instance, is hugely important.

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Social media fills a gap when people aren’t allowed to say what they think; it fills a gap when mainstream media is not doing what it should. On its own, I don’t think it can achieve very much. If social media are used less as a tool, in other words flaring people up to go on the streets, but more as a dopamine, as a way of letting people express themselves, almost as a kind of a cathartic political release, there’s a real danger that they will become a kind of self-reinforcing loop, in which people who already agree with one another talk to other people who already think the same thing. I’m not quite sure what a movement around social media would do. What I do know is that there’s a lot of easy talk around empowerment, and really, it’s not terribly empowering to spend all of your time typing things into the Internet. It’s much more empowering to go out into the streets, or perhaps down to the mosque and try to convince someone of your perspective. And when we talk of ethnic minorities, they really need to take their arguments outside.” (Harkin, 2011b, ENJN conference). Konstanty Gebert joins Harkin on this point, insisting that social media can turn out to be counter-productive, if other means of resistance are neglected: “Social media do not build institutions the way that Samizdat [the dissident print apparatus in the former USSR] did. What social media do is create a moment of emotional catharsis, which tends to replace the long-term need for building institutions. Lenin, who knew a thing or two about overthrowing regimes, once said that newspapers are a powerful collective organiser. Which is exactly what newspapers did. In Poland, under the martial law, all the structures of the underground were based on structures of underground newspaper distribution, which were built on trust, verified trust. This is one thing that social media cannot produce. That is extremely important, when we come up to elections, where there would be groups that are built on trust [and which are] truly able to organise. We might then realise just how feeble are the kind of social bonds that social media produce in reality.” (Gebert, 2011a, ENJN conference).

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In an interview with the author, Gebert also alluded to the Belarusian experience of social media activism: “Belarus is a case in point. In Belarus they have a very developed system of communication through social media, yet they are unable to produce a systematic, structured movement that will oppose the regime, and they do not have underground print media, although next door, in Poland, they have an entire country, full of people who know how to get it done. And if it remains at this level, Lukashenka can sleep safely. So ultimately, sitting at your keyboard and happily clicking away is an autistic activity. It may give you catharsis, it may be fun, it may be informative, but it does not make you a part of a movement. And when you feel that way, that because you clicked on something, you become part of a movement, you got it wrong. It is like cybersex. People say it’s great. Possibly. But it kind of misses the point.” (Gebert, 2011b). The criticism raised by Gebert and Harkin echoes one of the most heated debates surrounding social media, comparing present day digital weak ties created by the media to the strong ties characteristic of resistance movements active offline. Weak ties are the bonds created on social networks among members who are merely acquainted, or perhaps do not know each other at all, loosely connected by the exchange of messages, pictures and the like. Through blogs, forums, and social media, they form networks, and networks of networks, an immense interconnection of contacts and information that is almost infinite. This “bridging capital”, as Shirky dubs it, allows for an effortless and rapid spread of data and ideas, making the world simultaneously smaller and bigger. Smaller – because the distance among the members of the networks diminishes, and bigger – because the networks can become ever so large and reach even the remotest spot on the planet (Faris, 2008). Gladwell, one of the biggest objectors to the reliance on ‘weak ties’ in political movements, insists that the important component that drives people to act together at the risk of their lives for the promotion of a common cause is the ties they share, strong ties that bind them together (2010). These ties are family ties, friendships, or the extraordinary bonds that can be formed between political prisoners who share a prison cell and similar experiences of torture. Weak ties, the ones that are created off-hand among members of social media that are barely related to one another, if at all, cannot stand the pressures that are exerted when fighting for freedom in an authoritarian State. These ties, according to Gladwell, are only effective when the members of the network are not asked much. 43

This criticism views ‘social media activism’ as an ‘easy’, clickable participation that only brings a self-centred sense of fulfilment and an illusion of engagement. Aday and his co-authors cite the example of a Facebook page – Save the Children of Africa – uniting 1.3 million members, who raised, collectively, only 6,000 dollars. Similarly, the Egyptian May 4th protest, supposed to be the follow up for the April 6th strike, failed to live up to expectations. Facebook made it possible for millions to join the movement, which they did. But easy come, easy go – the cheaply acquired sympathy did not translate to commitment, and only a handful of protesters arrived to the demonstration (Aday et al., 2010, p. 29). Social media provide, therefore, a convenient outlet to political frustration, so effortless in fact that paradoxically, it hallows out the meaningfulness of political engagement. But this ‘leisurely act of dissidence’ is hardly the privilege of the masses. A large segment of the populations among the ENP partner countries can’t even have access to this simple act of political expression. How does this limited accessibility influence mobilisation through social media? In other words, what is the effect of the social divide in the context of collective action?

The Demography of Social Media “[Under the communist regime,] literally hundreds of thousands of people in Poland, living under martial law, started producing underground media because they would otherwise have nothing to read. Those same people [the dissidents in Belarus] are happy clicking-off at their keyboards but only 18% of Belarusians have access to the Internet. The remaining 82% are already out of the game. And of those 18%, most are satisfied enough to insult President Lukashenka in comments on Facebook that they would not go out and organise. A friend of mine with whom I worked in the underground in the 80s, and who, as opposed to me, is a huge fan of social media, returned from Tunisia recently, where she tried to interest people in producing printed media as a way of furthering democratic discussion, and for the first time she admitted to me, “you know what, you might have a point. Everybody there is on Facebook, so there’s nobody left to print a leaflet that will explain to the guy on the donkey what the whole story is about.”” (Gebert, 2011a).

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The Iranian Green Revolution of 2009, the first revolution to win the pet name of the “Twitter Revolution”, took place with less than 100 Iranians as active ‘tweeters’. Apart from the fact that this raises serious doubts about the relevance of the nickname, it also begs the question of how democratic a movement channelled by a medium reserved for the elite truly is. Even with a higher percentage of networked activists, compared to the one displayed by Iran at the time of the revolution, the digital divide hampers democratic movements centred on social media networks from reaching out to all of society’s strata. This problem is particularly acute in countries with repressive regimes, where the digital threshold is relatively high and where, coincidently, pro-democratic movements are most needed. “Social media may be the preserve, in Egypt at least, of educated, urbanised, and in some cases, English speaking and westernised elites, but it still brings a whole new range of voices to the table. People can take to Twitter; they can take to Facebook, and other platforms of social media, thereby challenging the inaccurate [state] narratives. The problem is that [social media] can also reinforce misleading narratives. One of the things we are seeing at the moment is a focus on Egypt’s revolution being the product of a certain subset of youth activists. This takes out of the equation other elements, like the trade union movements; working class organisations; other social forces, like the Bedouins in Egypt; or certain groups like the Coptic Christian or the Nubians in the south, people who aren’t so readily identified with social media.” (Shenker, 2011a). The MENA region has seen an impressive spike in Internet penetration. Still, only 20 million out of its total of 80 million citizens have Internet in Egypt. The situation is slightly better in Tunisia, with 33% of its inhabitants enjoying the technology. A quarter of the Egyptian Internet users have a Facebook account, while in Tunisia Facebook members account for more than two thirds of all Internet users. In Libya, less that 0.3% of the inhabitants have Internet, and only 14% of those are on Facebook. The Syrian Internet users make up 6.2% of the country’s total population, and in Yemen the percentage of those connected to the Internet drops further to 3.2%, with only 13% of those going on FacebookX. These numbers don’t bode well for a social-media facilitated rebellion. As Howard remarks, not all citizens need to be Internet users for it to enable an uprising (2010). After all, the French revolution was the initiative of the aristocracy, the populace was only too happy to follow their guiding hand. Sitting well with this logic are the numbers advanced by Castells (2011), who remarked that although Internet use is relatively low in Egypt, 45

for the inhabitants of Cairo and Alexandria, between the ages of 16 and 40, Internet penetration levels rise to 65%, and it is specifically this segment of the population that was at the forefront of the uprising. This is true, but not conclusive as to the democratic character of the uprising, since it was restricted only to a small segment of the population. This is particularly remarkable in Yemen or Syria, where Internet is the privilege of a very small minority4. Finally, if we go back to the French example from the past - the revolution did succeed, but democracy did not prevail.

Blows and Counterblows “The less a government is transparent, accountable, and relevant, the more powerful the network society is. The bigger the degree of separation between the traditional political system and the network-based one, the more probable their confrontation.” (Asmolov, 2011). “Internet is one of the most visible and important transformations [in Russia]. In 1999, less than 10% of its citizens were online and skulking behind grey boxes of work, hardly perceived as much of a threat to the regime. After Putin’s clamp down on television independence, power rivals, and NGOs, the Internet was left pretty much untouched. Russia, unlike China, did not want to invest in a great firewall of censorship. However, Russia’s online population has boomed, from 10% to 50% this year. The Russian blogosphere has exploded. Russia’s own Internet giants have also emerged; building up global ranking brands such Yandax and mail.ru. So if the Internet was a truly transformative technology, distinct from the printing press, radio and television, how is it that Russian authoritarianism is entrenched, and now displays markedly autocratic tendencies? I want to argue that the Internet is not a transformative technology. Its impact had been lessened in Russia and will continue to be lessened in Russia for the coming years by two over arching political forces. Firstly, the online coercion model in Russia is mostly one of co-option, not confrontation, working with the grain of Russian society. The Kremlin had accepted and worked with the Internet to achieve its goals, not against it. The Kremlin de-

4) The Economist came up with an interactive chart called The Shoe-Thrower’s Index, supposed to allow the readers to determine which will be the next centre of unrest in the MENA region, according to variables such as the dictator’s number of years in power, corruption rankings, and last but not least, the number of Internet users (http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/03/arab_unrest_0)

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ploys the Internet co-option in the following manner: Kremlin e-activists, known as the web-brigada and paid to post pro-government comments, are at the first line. Then you have Kremlin e-training centres that issue tools for the webbrigada and pay them. The Kremlin also increasingly uses YouTube. Take for instance Medvedev’s blog. The Kremlin uses social media as a promotional tool as well, exemplified by sad Putin’s Army adverts online that encourage young ladies to join and support the once and future President. Crucially, the Kremlin is operating its co-option through the Skolkovo Project, which it calls a high technologic growth spot, offering cheap loans, grants, and access to government funds for Russia’s young entrepreneurs, taking them into the system, instead of pushing them away. Also, the Kremlin is pushing for more e-government and a greater online presence, thus opening up more contracts and more involvement for anyone working on the Internet in Russia, allowing them to profit from collaboration with the State, instead of opposing it. Additionally, for the Kremlin, the Internet is not only about communications, it’s also a data revolution that helps government planning and helps the monitoring of dissent. Thus, the wealth of new online information about Russia’s citizens makes efforts like monitoring them a lot easier. The government has also spent good money in contracts abroad, purchasing foreign products, which all enable deeper surveillance of Russian society. Coincidently, many of these products come from the EU. And then there are the methods of online confrontation that the Russian government has. There’s a widespread use of distributed denial of service attacks [DDoS] on foreign and opposition websites. There’s a variable geometry of repression within Russia. You have certain provinces that are more repressive than others, and you also have provinces that have taken to detaining bloggers. Beyond Russia, the Kremlin has launched an e-foreign policy of sorts, seeking to challenge global Internet norms, in partnership with China. An example of this was the recent proposal made by those pioneers of Internet authoritarianism, Russia, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, at the United Nations, to establish a new online code of conduct, establishing these issues as the sovereign rights of states. So all in all, we see a Russian government that’s working with the Internet and that’s working with foreign partners, not against them. It’s a relatively subtle and sophisticated policy. As for the second broadly political and economic trend that’s stopping the Internet from becoming a transformative force in Russia - I will argue that despite the illusion of a vast array of different voices, Russia’s online world is actually 47

developing a corporate oligarchy, resembling how its television or radio markets work, which also makes it easier for authorities to manipulate. Russia has a strongly indigenous Net culture and its sites have regional dominance. The key corporations that control the Russian Internet like Yandax, Vkontakte or mail.ru, are effective online hegemonies. If you want to search, if you want to use social media or if you want to email, there are dominant websites. You also have key oligarchs behind these platforms. This means that there may be a cacophony of voices, but there are only a few bosses, there are only a few people you have to call, and there are only a few companies claiming tax returns that the Russian government can pressure. Add to this the corporate desire for users to remain visible online, ‘liking’ the advertising that obviously helps the Russian secret service to monitor its citizens. To sum up, the system is not as decentralised as it may look.” (Judah, 2011, ENJN conference). Social media may be perceived as the peoples’ weapon of choice, but unfortunately, repressive regimes do not sit idly by, watching passively as they are turned against them. In The Net Delusion, Evgeny Morozov extensively discusses the many non-democratic backlashes inherent to social media. The unsuspecting, freedom-fighting user of YouTube may end up paying a very high price by taking the struggle to the digital dimension. There is a tendency to regard authoritarian regimes as backward or unsophisticated. The West tends to fall in this trap, taking for granted its technological and social superiority (Morozov, 2011). But, regardless of ideology and culture, survival is a powerful instinct for the ruthless ruler too. It is therefore naive to expect the regime not to fight back. When it comes to dissidents using social media to organise, coordinate, and garner support, the State may take advantage of the media for surveillance purposes. The exact same properties that make social media such an important tool for protesters and opposition leaders also excel in facilitating repression, providing state security forces with all the information necessary to identify those they consider to be a threat, their future plans, and where they can be most easily intercepted.

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Watch Thy Enemy “Belarus’ President, Alexander Lukashenko, has been in power since 1994. Every election he has presided over has been deemed unfair by the OSCE. The December 2010 presidential elections have again been disputed by the OSCE, the US, the EU, and the Belarusian people. In the post election crackdown, the police violently dispersed thousands of people who were protesting vote fraud. Seven of the nine presidential candidates were arrested, including one who was dragged from his hospital bed by the KGB. Two candidates, including one we worked closely with, are still languishing in jail. Lukashenko’s model of dictatorship has made this central European country of ten million people economically dependent on Russia. He has subordinated public institutions, while the country’s opposition is fragmented and finds it is almost impossible to operate openly. Belarusians get their news from state controlled television channels and the traditional media. The position of independent newspapers is extremely fragile. For this reason, even prior to the mass uptake of social media, international experts promoted the Internet as the vehicle most likely to drive democratic change in Belarus. Unfortunately, despite an old school Soviet reliance on rhetoric and military parades, Belarus’ leaders are well versed in the modern tools of repression. In 2006, an attempted revolution failed when the authorities simply cut off mobile communications and people who participated in the protest following the 2010 elections were tracked down and convicted, thanks to telecommunications data. In a July 2011 speech, ironically celebrating Independence Day, Lukashenko described information intervention as the main danger to Belarus. According to him, external enemies deploy weapons of mass information to manipulate public opinion. But Lukashenko hasn’t just woken up to the threat that the Internet and social media play. He deploys web filters, similar to those used in China, routinely blocks critical websites, and ensures opposition websites suffer under crippling denial of service attacks. In the lead up to last year’s election, with the traditional media under his control, the regime pursued an offense against new media, or what the regime called: Anarchy on the Internet. Comprehensive new laws and regulations guaranteed the government extensive control over Internet access and online content, including the compulsory registration of all websites, requiring all legal sites using a ‘.by’ domain to move to Belarusian hosting; requiring Internet service providers to register and provide technical details about online information resources, networks, and systems; forcing Internet providers to store data on individuals 49

using Internet for a full year, and hand that information over to law enforcement agencies; establishing individual responsibility for any information posted on the Belarusian Internet and forcing Internet cafe users to show a passport or other identification; not to mention introducing bans on spreading illegal information. Freedom House have documented the way Belarus blocked access to international SMTPs and HTTP ports, to prevent users from securely posting content on social media sites such as Facebook, or sending secure messages through Gmail. In addition to outsourcing intermediary censorship to corporations, the Belarusian security state discovered a long time ago, and to its great delight, that the customisation inherent to Web 2.0 offers a range of options for comprehensive online surveillance. One of the chapters in Morozov’s books is titled “Why the KGB wants you to join Facebook”, and in it he highlights the case of a Belarusian activist, whose real life activities, including travel and organisational connections, were easily gleamed by the KGB from his online presence. One day in June 2011, a total of 450 protesters were arrested and brutally shoved into trucks, which then became huge holding cells. Amateur activists, as usual, are fairly easy prey. The KGB obtained information about those behind the protests by forcing information out of contacts. They detained a website’s administrator and forced him to give up a list of passwords. One activist, who was interviewed earlier this year, was detained and released only after disclosing his passwords to social media websites. The police removed his postings that spoke out against Lukoshenko’s policies. [In early October 2011], a new law passed in the Belarusian house of representatives that specifically bans demonstrations organised through the Internet or social networks. The law places flash mobs at the same legal status as pickets, which are almost impossible to organise in Belarus.” (Butselaar, 2011). The regime does not need to exert itself to unearth the dissident threat, since social media are inherently designed for augmented visibility. All a state security service has to do is to plug in and check the latest developments on Facebook. Even when opposition members are smart enough to avoid these pitfalls, it is still difficult enough for them to distinguish between genuine dissidents and the planted ones, putting them in constant danger of being lured into the lions’ den. “Tunisia [before the 2010 revolution] was implementing a very sophisticated censorship machine. The regime carried distributed server attacks, hacking blogs and websites that were publishing political content. The State created an 50

atmosphere of fear, making Internet users refrain from publishing critical voices and arresting digital activists. This started in 2001, with the arrest of Zouhair Yahyaoui, followed by that of other activists and bloggers, which raised to 29 the number of people in Tunisia arrested because of their online activity. And in the middle, to control the flow of information between the Diaspora and the Tunisian inhabitants, Tunisia also implemented what we call ‘deep packet inspection’ or ‘deep packet intrusion’. It also implemented email and Facebook phishing, which is a technique allowing the government to crack into the accounts of activists using Facebook or Gmail and to follow their computer activity.” (Ben Gharbia , 2011). While Tunisia’s approach was to heavily restrict Internet use, limiting the number of accessible sites, Egypt, prior to Mubarak’s demise, preferred to leave the Internet relatively open, opting for a crackdown not of the technology, but of its users, facilitated by the technology. The arrest, imprisonment, torture, and sexual intimidation of the exposed dissidents was common practice. In extreme cases, such as that of Khaled Said, the harassment led to death. Syria, ever the faithful adapter of repressive measures, has been blocking Facebook and Twitter periodically since 2007, but when pressure rose in the country in the beginning of 2011, the regime allowed access to the media again, officially as a gesture of good will. Most likely, the gesture camouflaged a will of security forces to use social media to better monitor protester activity and plans. The State also set up a number of honey-trap websites to attract opposition activists, monitor them and eventually strike them (Filiu). In the CIS countries (Commonwealth of Independent States, a regional organisation formed by former Soviet republics), Russia is the leader and template-provider of opening the Internet to state surveillance and passing on personal content to FSB (Federal Security Service, the KGB’s successor) inspection. Its ultimate weapon is the Law on System for Operational Investigation Activity devised for the Internet, or in short, SORM II. The legal measure allows the FSB to monitor users’ Internet activity. Accordingly, ISPs are required to submit all information pertaining to Internet traffic and to install software that allows the Russian security service to follow in real-time all online activity of its users, including emails and browsing activity. Apart from the users’ general information, such as name and address, the Internet providers are also obliged to give away their email addresses, all passwords and user identifications. During his second mandate as president, Putin extended the authority to monitor all Internet activity also to other security services, such as the Kremlin’s, the Border Guards, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Presidential Security ServiceXI.

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Azerbaijan tried to copy the Russian SORM II model, but its attempt failed and it has to content itself with monitoring ISPs and Internet cafés. Belarus has had more success with the SORM II adaptation, and uses it widely in monitoring Internet activity in the country. Considering that its Internet policy is even more restrictive than Russia’s, it probably even made extensions to the Russian archetype. Moldova has also been considering its own home-version of the system, which will allow it to go down the same road of conducting tight surveillance of ICTsXII. The Ukrainian legislation also allows for the surveillance and monitoring of Internet on a large scale, supposedly aimed to unmask illegal transmission of “state secrets”, even though it is not exactly clear what these secrets could entailXIII. In addition to setting up specific surveillance measures, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova have also created special security service units dedicated to curb cyber-criminality, a broad term that usefully covers all kinds of interests. Ultimately, although filtering and surveillance is not as harsh as it is in the MENA region, the CIS states often resort to surveillance of users and intimidation, leading to arrests and self-censorshipXIV.

Flying Under the Radar In authoritarian states, where the stakes of political action can be extremely high, the potential and pitfalls inherent to the use of social media in protest activity grow exponentially, compared to such activity in democracies. Egyptian activists, students, and union members were highly aware of this, as they were of the surveillance measures enforced by the security apparatus in their country, making them wary of digital communication in general and social media in particular. Interviewed by Brisson and Lee, some of them indicated their preference for the ‘old fashioned’ cell-based organisation, which included the distribution of a great amount of printed and hand written material. This does not mean that online activity was irrelevant, but simply that it was derived, to a large extent, from offline ground work: “... the amount of knowledge transfer that occurs in cafes, on street corners, and from roadside newspaper vendors is immense. It is this primary layer of offline interaction that provides much of the fodder for connections happening online.” (Brisson & Lee, n.d.) Technology assisted by facilitating and accelerating events, but it was not indispensible for the uprisings. The forces of change in the Egyptian society and in all other societies, which chose the path of insurrection, were strong enough without social media, and are likely to have erupted, regardless of the technology available. 52

In the case of mobilisation, for instance, Levinson and Coker of the Wall Street Journal, who recounted the planning of the protests on the 25th of January 2011, revealed that while Facebook was widely used to set up most of the protests, the organisers also resorted to distributing flyers in the days preceding the protests in one of the poorer areas of Cairo, where Internet penetration is low. According to them, it is this face-to-face distribution of information about the uprising that proved decisive. They carefully planned this specific gathering, assuming police would be monitoring the preparations of all other protester groups by following the exchange on social media and subsequently intercepting them. Ultimately, they were proven right. Of all the groups of protesters organised before the 25th, it was this particular one, organised offline, that made it through police forces and roadblocks all the way to Tahrir Square, which it occupied till the wee hours of the night. All other demonstrators, mobilised through social media, were stopped in their tracks, as predicted by the organisers. A similar conclusion is made by Emad Mekay of Inter Press Service, who highlights the primacy of the Friday noon prayers in coordinating mobilisation and collective action. They played a central part not because they provided some spiritual awakening, but merely because they were the most broad and readily available means to assemble participants, without requiring additional investment of time or costs and with a reduced risk of interception (Mekay, 2011). Similarly, in Syria, more than a year after the protests first erupted, Friday continues to be a particularly explosive day in the country, with processions of dissidents forming up once the prayers are done. The Tunisian blog Nawaat, which was an active opposition voice for many years, also warns against making wide sweeping assumptions about the contribution of Facebook and Twitter to the revolution. Quantifying the feeds and posts on both social media and analysing their content, the blog states that nothing shows that their contribution was greater than that of the Friday prayer gatherings, family reunions or mobile phone chain-communications, all of which were more difficult to monitor than Facebook activity (2011).

The Honourable Intention Paradigm Aside from security forces and the intrepid freedom fighter, other political forces might also wish to tap in to the social media potential, without this having a particularly democratic effect. Not all opposition to autocratic regime embodies aspirations for democracy. For instance, some of the strongest opponents of Medvedev and Putin in Russia are partisans of the extreme right, known for their xenophobic opinions and acts, including assault and murder of homosexuals and ethnic minorities. A case in which a crowd53

sourcing map was used by a nationalistic Russian group to track ethnic minorities is brought up by Machleder and Asmolov, who point out that the map in question was used to encourage attacks against foreign communities (p. 18). On an international scale, perhaps the most flagrant example is the use of Internet and social media by Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants. “In the modern era, the truism that ‘information is power’ is very clearly understood by the media and governments; it is also understood by terrorists, their audiences, and their adversaries”. (Martin, 2003, p. 280). Terrorists, like other minority groups, would normally find it difficult to get the media to listen to their story. Social media afford them, like they do for other marginal ideologies, the capacity to broadcast their message at minimal costs and with maximal effect. As a matter of fact, media are an all-important ingredient in terrorism, which can only gain power as it gains notoriety. A terrorist act with no media coverage is like a wink in the dark. Al Qaeda understood this perfectly, often posting messages and videos on the Internet. Some of them are merely typical propaganda messages, while others include filmed executions of hostages. The emergence of al Qaeda in forums, websites, and blogs, catering not only to its hard-boiled followers but functioning also as means of recruitment, makes it difficult to promote a moderate Islamic ideology and tends to radicalise the debate in the Muslim world (Conway, 2007, p. 247). If social media allow dissidents living under repressive regimes to bond with their supporters in the West and learn the secrets of the trade from supporters spread all over the world, it can certainly serve terrorist groups in a similar way. Conway remarks that websites of Islamist extremists are no longer only in Arabic, Urdu and Indonesian, but increasingly also in English, French, German, and Dutch (p. 250). There is another, slightly more optimistic interpretation of the Islamist incursion into social media. Marc Lynch studied the activity of blogging members of the Muslim Brothers, recognising in their posts an evolution towards a more open and moderate reading of Islam (Lynch, 2009b). According to him, the blogs were supposed to be a proselytising tool directed towards the Egyptian society, but lead instead to a certain liberalisation of those online, or at least the formation of a “growing intellectual and political force within the movement that could, over time, help tip it in a reformist direction” (ibid). But Lynch is also forced to admit that for the time being, these developments have also led to a growing schism between the minority of young, urban, online community of members, and the great majority of Muslim brothers, who, on the contrary, push for a more extreme agenda.

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Chapter 3. Mediating the Struggle “The less professional and efficient traditional or professional media is, the more non professional media becomes active and aggressive, in a good way. It’s very simple. If there’s demand for news, but we, as professional journalists, are not providing it, then someone will appear on Facebook and other social networks to give an account and post pictures of what he has seen.” (Strokan, 2011, ENJN Conference.) In the age of the “all-media”, a struggle can only take place once it has entered the media realm. But media are not neutral. They are brimming with interests and torn by conflicting forces, such as the democratic ideal of the Fourth Estate, commercial claims of corporate owners, and political tampering by opposing parties. In non-democratic regimes, the strongest force manoeuvring the media are the communication needs of the authorities, which view them mostly as their own, private PR agencies. The capacity, then, for a pro-democratic movement to use media platforms to expose its demands and motivations are practically nil. Social media seem to be a blessing for pro-democratic movements, as they redefine the rules of the game. The possibility to express and mass-communicate ideas ceases to be the government’s prerogative and is given to citizens of all political inclinations. For the first time, they are capable of challenging the imposed narrative and proposing their own framing. Authoritarian rulers have grasped long ago the danger of abandoning social media in the hands of their opponents and have adopted various means to tackle the problem, means that can be separated into two groups – censorship and propaganda. The first response is meant to silence the opposition on the Net, as it does on other media, while the second one uses the digital platform as a new branch of the regime’s PR system. And so, the Internet, and more specifically social media, become the new battle ground of the political struggle, as a Netwar between the regime and its supporters on the one hand, and the opposition groups on the other, rages in full. The cultural diversity and the political specificities of each country define the contours of this Netwar. The more liberal Lebanon provides greater opportunities for cyber-dissidents than Syria, intent on stifling any sign of resistance at its very inception. The blogosphere of technologically savvy Russia is more confrontational than the subdued Armenian Facebook citizenry, which makes up less than 10% of its total population. A victory in the social media front will undoubtedly signal its democratic potential, but when all vectors are taken together, it is impossible, at least at this stage, to determine whom social media will favour. 55

This chapter will address the aptitude of social media to democratise the media landscape in repressive regimes. It will start by discussing the handicaps of legacy media, the so-called Fourth Estate, that hinder its democratic role in society, and the response provided by the Internet and social media in the form of blogs and citizen journalism. It will then put their contribution into perspective, by analysing their interaction with other media forms and by exploring the inherent weaknesses that limit their ability to play a strong, credible media part. Finally, it will examine regime response and how it counteracts both, on- and offline oppositional elements using social media platforms.

Ideals and Ideologies “Any talk about social media at the nexus between activism and reporting has to begin with an assessment of what’s wrong with the conventional, mainstream media model, and what holes have been left gaping by traditional forms of journalism.” (Shenker, 2011a) The ménage-à-trois, made up by journalism, the ruling class, and the public was seldom easy or straightforward. As a rule, throughout history, journalists were met with suspicion, both from their audience and from policy makers. The former regarded journalists as dubious characters, engaging in a questionable trade, either busy with sensationalism or conniving with the State to keep the masses at bay. The latter had an inherent dislike for the institutionalised whistle-blower and tried with all its might, from the onset, to muzzle it. Journalism, on the other hand, had a good number of noble aspirations, all of them already formulated with the emergence of “New Media” in the late 19th century. It positioned itself as the Fourth Estate – a (unofficial) national institution of a kind, independent from government intervention and therefore credible and objective in its approach of the political scene. The subsequent establishment of journalism as the state’s watchdog and protector of the people was only a stone’s throw away (Conboy, 2004, pp. 109-127). The growing journalistic independence and the widening readership led to the newspapers’ reaching real public influence, as can be seen already with the fall of the British government during the Crimean War - a direct result of The Times treatment of the British debacle, the shortcomings of the command, and the horrendous hardships suffered by the injured soldiers (Gorman & McLean, 2003, p. 15). Some editors and newspaper owners, such as W. T. Stead, the Pall Mall Gazette editor in the 1880s, had social and political aspirations that continue to shape journalism to this day. They saw the political education of the electorate as their mission and strove to shape journalism as the guide of an educated and democratic society (Conboy, p. 168). 56

And yet, these social and political pretences were continuously confronted with economic and political imperatives that, just like journalism’s high ideals, cling tenaciously to its practice. Conboy, quite accurately, describes the development of journalism up to this day, not as a constant, coherent ethical, and professional progress, but rather as a series of negotiations and compromises made in order to achieve its role in the public sphere while at the same time ensuring its commercial viability (p. 199). Most people and commentators would probably conclude that ultimately, it is the commercial viability that came out with the upper hand. Some even say that both are long dead and buried.

Negotiating Compromise The main handicap of journalism is intimately linked to its distribution through mass media. Mass production required great funds, which had to be got through advertisement, an imperative that forced newspapers and then broadcast news programs to refrain from printing or transmitting content deemed too controversial for the advertisers to endorse (Gorman & McLean, p. 71). In parallel, the need to appeal to a large popular audience continuously eroded newspapers’, and later broadcast news programs’ role of “hard news” delivery, and in exchange promoted the tabloidisation and entertainment mode, considered easier for the readers to digest and therefore deemed more ‘sellable’ (Conboy, pp. 181-186; Gorman & McLean, p. 162). The constant consolidation of media in an everreduced number of hands exacerbated this trend and accelerated the transformation of journalism into a mere commodity, following the laws of the economic market5. In the sharp Flat Earth News, Nick Davies (2008) analyses in detail the havoc wreaked in the newsroom by economic restrictions and downsizing imperatives. The image he paints is a gloomy, hopeless one of a profession at the end of the line. The new financial organisation of news corporations, which imposes on journalists a factory-paced production of articles, inhibits them from doing their jobs. Instead of unearthing news, researching and analysing events of national importance or of human interest, they are often forced into ‘Churnalism’, a sad rehashing of press releases and PR statements taken at face value, and seldom checked or challenged. The result, again, is that of a profession that is not only incapable of living up to its ideals, but one which is in danger of betraying the very foundations of its existence. 5) Interestingly enough, media consumerism and commercialism is not always all that bad. Granted, the ‘entertainment as news’ and the tabloidisation of the media that go hand in hand with it have been detrimental to political discourse and democratic participation in the Western world (Sennett, 1992). The abandonment of expensive investigative journalism in favour of cheap and profitable sensationalism hardly bodes well for civic engagement. Still, this can also globalise pro-democratic ideals and values (Cottle, 2011a; Levitt & Dubner, 2009). Western mass media do not only recount Kim Kardashian’s latest visit to Aspen and other adulating reports of extravagant consumerism, they also adhere to certain societal norms, which include civil rights and liberties, broadcasted by cable television, increasingly pervasive throughout the world. Tools of new media, social media among them, are strengthening this trend, by “pluralising interaction and discourse” (Cottle, 2011a, p. 651).

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Journalism’s limitations in delivering its ideological and ethical promises are also, in part, a result of national interference. This is certainly clear in undemocratic regimes, where the press can be fashioned as another propaganda institution or continuously censored. As in the case of economic imperatives dictating content, the distortion of news coverage can be either forced on the press by exterior elements, such as the American Defense Department, influencing news coverage by embedding journalists inside military units, thereby controlling their point of view, but also by the media adopting nationalistic postures and gratifying populist trends while disregarding their role in providing in-depth coverage and analysis (Gorman & McLean, pp. 179-181). Another critique of journalism is that while it claims to represent the population at large, in fact it mirrors the reality and values of the ruling elites. Ethnic minorities, the working poor and the underclass, and to some extent women and homosexuals, remain voiceless and therefore further excluded from the public debate. Thus, not only does the press not carry out its function, it actually betrays it (Terry Flew, 2008, pp. 164-165). Thus, the basis of the struggle opposing journalistic ideals and political and economical imperatives have been laid in the early days of mass-media, more than a century ago, and to this day remain unresolved. One might even say that the contradictory forces have grown stronger over the past twenty years, strengthening and generalising the public’s discontent with the press. This in turn led to a shrinking readership, resulting in staff reduction and budget cuts, which only further undermine the capacity of journalists to truly fulfil their mission.

The Unholy Alliance “Media and authorities are uneasy bed fellows, particularly in transition societies”. (Strokan, 2011) The problems plaguing journalism from infancy tend to undermine its capacity to play a relevant role in the public sphere – i.e. informing an inclusive, critical debate. And although they are global in nature, affecting all countries in the world, they are compounded in non-democratic states by regime pressure and intimidations, which end up transforming the media into one more state apparatus. In the case of Europe’s ENP partners, the latest Press Freedom Index of Reporters Sans Frontières for 2011-2012 reflects a situation that can be described as mediocre at best. Most of them occupy the lower echelons of the listing and a handful is concentrated at the very bottomXV. Moldova and Armenia are the exception to this, positioned at 53 and 77 respectively. They are followed by Israel (Israeli Territory) at 92 and Lebanon at 93. Georgia is situated at 105 and Ukraine at 116. Algeria comes at 122, Jordan at 128, 58

Tunisia at 134, and Morocco at 138. Russia is seated at the 142nd position, with Libya at 155. The last ones to appear on the list are Azerbaijan, ranked 162, Egypt, ranked 166, Belarus, ranked 168 and at the very last – Syria at 176 (the complete listing includes 179 countries). The Palestinian Authority appears as “Israel – Extra Territorial”, at 133. “Russia is experiencing some problems, which are common for transition societies. While the number of media outlets in the world is growing dramatically and media is becoming more and more diverse, and while social media emerge as independent players, there’s a continuing proliferation in the ways to control the media. There’s a popular belief that the major threat to media freedom comes from rigged government control, intimidation and harassment of journalists, and even their murder. This is partly true, since authoritarian systems and other societies in transition have powerful apparatuses, which use these means to crack down on media. Still, there are also smarter techniques to control the media. They are the less known, but we see them when we work in our newsrooms, when we talk to our editors. And these techniques are becoming more and more prominent. I started my career as a journalist nearly 30 years ago, in pre-perestroika times. At that time, the government kept the media under strict control. Every day, our editors-in-chief were summoned to the Kremlin, where they were instructed what to write about, what news to transmit. [...] Nowadays, media control and other threats to media freedom are self-censorship and corruption. There’s no need for the Kremlin to make any calls, you simply impose the principle of selfcensorship. A colleague once told me this joke: There are two types of journalists - those who write and those who dictate. All you need to do is place the journalists who dictate as chief editors. They know the rules of the game, the dos and the don’ts, and they tell reporters, observers, and sub-editors where the red lines are. The Russian media’s self-censorship implies a certain interpretation of reality: - Top leadership is divine. You may never touch it. You may criticise local authorities, municipal authorities - we have plenty of that - but not Putin or Medvedev, that is not allowed. - Russia’s course of development is the best course and it has no alternative. - The foreign plot narrative - if Russia has problems, these are not of domestic but of foreign origin, mainly European or American. The second challenge to media freedom in Russia is corruption, which has multiple facets. Most cynically, it involves bribing journalists. Companies have big budgets 59

for advertising. They employ PR agencies that contact journalists and say, listen, we need a positive story about this company, and a negative story about its competitors. They offer the journalist an envelope of money and he writes the stories. There are journalists in Russia who sit for weeks and weeks without writing anything. They only start writing when a PR agency passes an order. These practices are not restricted to business reporting. They also concern political reporting and news reporting. Let me give you an example. During the run-up to the Ukrainian presidential elections in 2004, the Russian media engaged in a tremendous smear campaign against the candidacy of Victor Yushchenko, labelling him a fascist. It looked like news, appearing on major TV channels, but it was a prepaid campaign. Anchormen and women were getting money for this. Another way to control the media is to create alternative structures. For example, in the case of a journalists’ union, critical of the government, an alternative confederation of journalists will be created, loyal to the government and critical of the first union. From the outside, it would look as if there is a struggle going on within the journalistic community, and few people would know that spin-doctors stand behind this. [...] It would not be fair to say that we don’t have media freedom, or that we have no critical coverage of the government. The print media provides a very critical, in-depth analysis of the Russian managed democracy. But nobody cares about it and the regime doesn’t try to crack down on print media. They understood that they need to control broadcast and digital media through the mechanisms I’ve mentioned before, making sure they obey an indirect code of conduct. I will give you an example. You’ve heard perhaps about the long controversy concerning who would run for the [2012] Russian presidency - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev. This question remained an enigma until Medvedev approached the United Russia ruling party a little while ago, announcing he would not be running and proposing Vladimir Putin as candidate for the party. As you can imagine, this was number one news. I switched on the Russian television and tried to find at least one political talk show discussing this development, but all I could see were culinary lessons and programmes on health - nothing of relevance. The only political talk show that was really hot, on the second channel of Russian television, was discussing the events of 1993 - Yeltsin shelling the Russian parliament. That was really hot stuff, but that was not related to today’s news, but to news dating back 18 years ago. Thus, the compounded effect of self-censorship and corruption in the media leads to a distorted reality, which has a very remote relevance for the day to day reality in Russia.” (Strokan, 2011). 60

Regime takeover of media is not only a threat to national reporting. It can be equally harmful and misleading when reporting international news. Examples of this are also rife in Western democracies. Since 9/11, the West is increasingly wary of the Arab World and the Muslim countries, and quick to endorse any government that appears friendly, whatever its other faults may be. Mubarak’s regime for instance, won the U.S.’ approval not only by its repression of Islamic forces at home, but also by maintaining correct relations with Israel. His treatment of his own countrymen, however, was widely ignored. Western media tended to reproduce this outlook of foreign relations, ultimately adopting the narrative of the Egyptian government, largely ignoring the reality on the ground. “Prior to the Egyptian revolution, which began in January, I have been based in Egypt for nearly three years. I saw with my own eyes just how skewed a lot of the mainstream media narratives were when it came to covering the country, and that was partly the result of Mubarak’s strategic alliance with Western governments and partly because of inherent flaws in the corporate mechanics of mainstream international media. The result was that international consumers of news, be they newspaper readers or television viewers, were left with a distinctly inaccurate picture of what was happening in the country, and that, in turn, helped promulgate the endlessly repeated mantra that the political upheaval came out of nowhere and was completely unexpected, which always run hollow for those on the ground. I’m talking about these tales of Egypt being an economic success story under Mubarak, 7% GDP growth rates, and this wonderful liberalising government. All the while, 9 out of 10 people in the country got poorer in real terms, the number of people living in absolute poverty doubled, the number of children who were malnourished rose. And yet, these kinds of figures were never discussed in the media. Nor were some of the key drivers of political change, like the trade unions’ movement or working class activism in factories, in textile miles, in work places around the country. Rather than seeing a division between a social movement on the ground and the regime, the international media was keener to concentrate on sectarian tensions or on the division between religious thought and secular elite. So, subtly Mubarak’s prism was being repackaged and reinforced through the international media, which had fairly toxic consequences.” (Shenker, 2011a). The authors of the Arab Human Development Report (2004) warn against the tendency of Arab rulers to take institutions, which appear pro-democratic at first glance, and transform them into instruments of their own regime. This tendency includes national media:

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“There are some media outlets that are little more than mouthpieces for government propaganda, promoting freedom of speech only if it does not turn into political activity. Such captive outlets fail to stimulate intelligent and objective debate, enhance knowledge acquisition, and advance human development among the public at large.” (Arab Human Development Report, 2004). The Middle East is hardly the sole area on the globe to suffer from restrictive and repressive media policies. Still, their scope and prevalence make it the region with the least media freedom, a reality that is strongly felt by its inhabitants (ibid).

Blogs of Dissent and Hope “[In Russia] Over 12 million bloggers maintain their own blogs. About a million of them are quite active. They provide a good public service, by whistle blowing at dubious practices, such as traffic priorities taken by numerous politicians, who basically drive in whatever way they want. [They report on] excesses of power made by the authorities and on over-spending by state finance corporations. Bloggers simply won’t leave these issues alone, and as a result, news media respond, obliging politicians to respond too.” (Levchenko, 2011, ENJN Conference). “Nawaat blog published the Tunileaks cables on the 28th of November 2010, only two weeks before the Tunisian revolution started. Those cables were addressing the corruption and the nepotism of the political establishment in Tunisia. I think that had a very important psychological effect, at least inside the political establishment in Tunisia. It also played a role in convincing the bourgeoisie, those living in the cities, in Tunis, to join the protest, [which is exactly what they did] on the 14th of January.” (Ben Gharbia, 2011). Blogs, born a decade before Facebook and Twitter, raised expectations similar to those associated with social media. Considered, for better or for worse, as the closest digital relative of journalists, bloggers’ democratic aspirations were not less pronounced. But while bloggers and journalists were not quite different, they were also not quite the same. As Rosenberg (2002) pointed out,

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“If the pros are criticized as being cautious, impersonal, corporate and herdlike, the bloggers are the opposite in, well, almost every respect: They’re reckless, confessional, funky -- and herdlike”. Jesse James Garrett, content editor and weblog editor for jig.net, is quoted by Allan as comparing blogs to the pirate radio stations of lore, “[...] personal platforms through which individuals broadcast their perspectives on current events, the media, our culture, and basically anything else that strikes their fancy.” (Allan, 2006, p. 46). The blogs’ big defining moment was 9/11, as both Allan (pp. 53-71) and Gillmor (pp. ix-x, pp. 18-22) explain. While the big networks were broadcasting loops of the horrendous footage, many readers, both in the U.S. and abroad, turned to the Web in search of personal accounts that might help them make sense of the colossal events. And with Internet access to the websites of networks such as CNN or MSNBC shut down due to the sudden surge in traffic, readers reached for blogs as if they were precious lifelines. As it appeared, when the macro narrative became incomprehensible, people sought meaning and solace in the multitude of micro stories that filled the Net. This was, in all probability, the first boom of amateur journalism, supplementing personal accounts with links to official reports and footage of the event posted by the public. But perhaps what made blogs such an important part of mediated exchange that day is precisely their capacity to provide true exchange, allocating an important space to comments from readers, thus enabling the public to weigh in on the debate (Allan, p. 68). In the years that followed, bloggers continued to build their existence as a counterpoint to traditional journalism, plagued by what they saw as corruption and obsessed with a misplaced sense of objectivity and aloofness that no longer served a professional ethic but merely reflected its detachment from society. The bloggers felt a certain shared ethos of their role in democracy – supplementing, correcting and commenting on the media (Hall, 2001, p. 135; Gillmor, p. 111). Indeed, blogs were perceived by their writers as a means to set the old, big media straight. There was a certain messianic undertone to it – the lone, idealistic blogger, behind his computer screen, taking on the monopoly of media conglomerates (Allan, p. 74). To a certain degree, there was some logic to this view, as Rosenberg reflects:

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“Pros get pay checks, and that gives them the chance to devote themselves full time to writing and editing -- but it also means that they have to write about things that can attract a big enough crowd to fund those checks. Amateur status can free a blogger to focus on material that fascinates the blogger and a few others, material that no media with any “mass” is going to touch”. (Rosenberg, 2002). Another aspect of the ethos uniting most bloggers is the strict adherence to the subjective tone. Originally, the subjective narrative was simply a result of the blog being a personal account of individuals’ interests. But nowadays, this is nurtured by political bloggers as a clear response to journalism’s ‘objective tone’, which they often criticise, considering the media’s claim to objectivity a mark of hypocrisy. Interestingly, notwithstanding the personal touch, or perhaps due to it, blogs tend to be perceived as more credible, compared to other media (Carlson, 2007). This rivalry with bloggers is seen by many journalists as a threat (Farmer, 2006), while others, such as Rosenberg and Jarvis (2008) see blogs as a tool that could contribute to journalism, expanding the media landscape and forcing mainstream media to reform, or else risk its very existence. “The rise of blogs does not equal the death of professional journalism. The media world is not a zero-sum game. Increasingly, in fact, the Internet is turning it into a symbiotic ecosystem – in which the different parts feed off one another and the whole thing grows.” (Rosenberg, 2002). In non-democratic countries, where media’s capacity to fulfil its role is even more limited, the first impulse of citizens with a political awareness is to step in and take up that role. But more than that, the blogger in this case does not only challenge the media, she also pokes at the regime’s hold on the country. “Bloggers understand their role as that of providing a direct link to what they call ‘the street’, conceived primarily as a space of state repression and political violence, but also as one of political action and popular resistance. They render visible and publicly speakable a political practice – the violent subjugation of the Egyptian people by its authoritarian regime – that other media outlets cannot easily disclose, due to censorship, practices of harassment, and arrest.” (Hirschkind, 2011).

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As Levchenko’s quote above indicates, this is precisely what is happening in Russia, where blogs are taken up massively by a population that sees them as a new entry point into the political debate. But this phenomenon is not equally reproduced in all countries. Like social media, the use of blogs is determined by factors such as societal differences, gaps in literacy levels, and Internet penetration. Thus, the use of blogs as a tool of dissent is not generalised. Egypt, for instance, counted only 160,000 blogs in 2008XVI, a blogosphere of minuscule proportions when compared to its Russian counterpart, which has as many as 12 million bloggers (Levchenko, 2011). This discrepancy remains big, even when the difference in population size is taken into account (82 million in Egypt, compared to 138 million in Russia). Lynch divides the involvement of political bloggers into three categories, mainly “activism, bridge-blogging, and public sphere engagement” (Lynch, 2007a). (Howard and Hussain’s categorisation of social-media enabled action, into preparation phase; mobilisation etc. not dissimilar). His analysis refers to Arab bloggers, but it can easily be applied worldwide. The first category of bloggers concerns those who not only discuss politics, but who are also engaged in dissident mobilisation. Their blogs are used to publicise their activity and provide leverage for their political messages. Lynch claims this is typical of Egyptian bloggers, who often stand at the forefront of the protest, unlike Jordanian bloggers, who have a tendency to remain at the sidelines. Egyptian bloggers, husband and wife Alaa Abd El Fattah and Manal Hussein, exemplify this perfectly. The couple originally dedicated their blog manalaa.net to social issues, but the April 6 movement, discussed earlier, pushed them towards a more political orientation. Abd El Fattah participated in the landmark demonstrations of 2005, and again in a protest that took place in 2006, the latter earning him 45 days of imprisonment. The couple’s political activity has always remained tightly linked to their blogging, which allowed them to win, already in 2005, the Special Reporter Without Borders Award in Deutsche Welle’s Best Blogs competition (Gundy, 2011). The couple left Egypt for South Africa, but when the anti-Mubarak demonstrations began in January 2011 they quickly returned to the country, taking a prominent part in the movement to overthrow the Egyptian ruler. Abd El Fattah remained mobilised after the military leadership took over and maintained his pro-democratic activity. This culminated with his participation at the Maspero protests, which were violently crushed by the army, leaving 27 of the demonstrators dead. Having pinned the responsibility of the massacre on the Egyptian military, he was arrested again on October 30, 2011, charged with “inciting violence against the army” (Shenker, 2011b). Abd El Fattah was finally released on December 25. Throughout this period, including his time in prison, the couple continued to publish information and personal impressions on their blog. Marina Litvinovich is another blogger to fit this profile. The Russian opposition militant 81

and civic rights activist uses her blog, abstract2001.livejournal.com, as an extension of her political struggle, which is Internet-based to a large extent. Through her blog, she raises controversial issues, discusses them and turns them into matters of public interest, both by massively publicising them and by pushing the media to step in, thereby creating “blog waves”, in effect massive networked campaigns. Her ultimate goal is to influence the government’s agenda, by creating a chain reaction of pressure, running from citizen to mainstream media to the regime. She often uses pictures, videos, or other official documents that confirm her story, giving her blog an added credibility (Machleder & Asmolov, p. 9). In this way, Litvinovich managed to expose several cases of police and state corruption, such as the case of Anna Shavenkova, the daughter of a high-ranking regional official who was responsible for a fatal car accident but managed initially to escape any judicial pursuits. Only following networked campaigns, such as those generated by Litvinovich, was she brought to trial (ibid, p. 7). The second category of bloggers that Lynch refers to is Zuckerman’s famous bridgebloggers6. These local bloggers, writing mostly in English, use their blogs to ‘translate’ to the rest of the world the local social and political context and provide the necessary background to understand a situation that can be too complex for foreign readers. In the words of Zuckerman, a bridgeblogger is: “[...] someone who acts as an interpreter between cultures, introducing people who look at the world in one way to another way of looking at the world.” (Zuckerman, 2008). The Iraqi blogger, Salam Pax, is one of the first, and perhaps most famous bridgebloggers, providing firsthand accounts of the American invasion of Iraq in 2002. The Global Voices project (glovalvoicesonline.org) is also a bridgeblogger of a kind, a community of bloggers, translators and editors, who curate, translate and provide perspectives to blogs from the entire globe. Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman created global Voices in 2004 specifically to bring to the English-speaking world voices it would otherwise not be open to. “The goal of Global Voices is to take a look at bloggers from all around the world, see what they were saying and present it back out to the world. Part of it is a sort of ‘translation’ of ideas, curating and explaining them in a cultural context. And so, typically, Global Voices authors either come from or live in the country they are covering. Originally, we focused on blogs, but since social media cropped up in the past few years, Global Voices also covers content from Twitter, Face6) As a matter of fact, Chinese blogger Xiao Qiang was the one to coin the term in 2004 (Zuckerman, 2008c).

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book, and YouTube. And so we are just looking at citizen generated content and trying to bring that back out into the world, to offer a complementary narrative to mainstream media.” (York, 2011). The third category of blogs concerns those that constitute an alternative public sphere and facilitate an informative discussion, mostly on domestic policy. Although they are oriented mainly towards a local audience, they are nonetheless often written in English, as is Baheyya - a political blog, written under a pseudonym, that provides sharp and knowledgeable commentary on Egyptian politics (baheyya.blogspot.com/) and which has been dubbed “the best source of political analysis on Egypt” (Lynch, ibid). But Baheyya not only provides valuable insight and interpretation of events in the country, it was also highly critical of Mubarak’s regime, prompting discussion on matters such as the rule of law, civil rights, and corruption, matters that the country’s legacy media preferred to sweep under the carpet. Like in the case of Litvinovich’s writings, it is a prominent and popular blog, oriented towards broadening the public sphere and capable of introducing to the national debate questions hitherto ignored. Forcing, in a way, the media’s hand to address topics they prefer to bury, can have powerful consequences. There are also blogs, which cannot be exclusively limited to one category or another. Nawaat, for instance, discussed above, probably belongs to all three categories at once. The blog was meant to provide a space for an engaging debate for the opposition forces in Tunisia, but it also served as an activism platform during the Tunisian uprising, and to a certain extent - to this day. In addition, the blog, written in French, also works in the capacity of a bridgeblog, providing broad insight to the events that are shaping the country. But then again, Sreberny and Khiabany also see a political role for blogs which might not be political to begin with, and which do not provide direct political insight. This is particularly true under repressive regimes, where any partisan message can be violently reprimanded. In this way, poetry blogs can contain, between the lines, political messages and exhortations that go well beyond the literary. A female blogger in a Muslim country, discussing questions of fashion, may also be questioning patriarchal values and the incursion of the public into the private domain (p. 59). In this way, even a blog dealing with miscellanea can, in effect, push the limits of public discourse. An additional blog category concerns those written by journalists, which usually enjoy the greatest visibility7. Journalists turn to this means of self-publication either to increase their notoriety or to address concerns that their editorial board prefers to leave aside, 7) These blogs are also often perceived as very credible – a paradox, since the reputation of journalists, which was already disputable to begin with, is increasingly eroded.

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either for lack of interest for political, financial, or ideological motivations. The subjective tone of the blog is another advantage, allowing the writer to engage with the reader in a direct, passionate tone, conveying a clearer message. Israeli +972 (972mag.com) is such a blog, managed, edited, and written by its bloggers, who, for the most part, are also affiliated with other mainstream media outlets, or have been so in the past. The outstanding feature of the blog is its militant, critical tone, leaning very much to the left, and its handling of topics which are often ignored by Israeli legacy media, such as corruption, or institutionalised human rights abuse. Through this, the blog acts as a “corrector” to the country’s news outlets that tend to overlook these issues, presenting society with a very skewed image of the local reality. Another interesting feature of +972 is the fact that its harsh critique of Israeli policy is written in English, making it a bridgeblog of sorts, albeit an internally censorious one. This is an outstanding feature, considering that Israelis of all political inclinations are generally highly averse to having their political dirty laundry washed in public.

Citizen journalists “Certainly, when we look at the practice of journalism, we see that it was constructed in a time when its relationship with the authorities was absolutely necessary because the means of communication were controlled by them. Today, there are so many ways to communicate in society, without broadcasting, without traditional print, but simply with social media. What we have is a means through which power can be held accountable, through which corruption and bad behaviour can be revealed. That’s not to say that the large methods of communication and the large media organisations aren’t useful, merely that they are not the only way. And that of course complicates the discussion about who’s a journalist and who’s not, because some of the functions of journalism can be performed by those who are not journalists. [...] People have always been a source of information in society. They would go to cafes and tell people what they saw. They would tell their friends and relatives what they saw. And when media would come to them, they would tell the media what they saw. And so, they’ve always been sources. But they become particularly powerful when the media themselves are constrained from telling their stories, while people are able to mass communicate through social media, the Internet, or text messaging and mobile phones. Then, they become very important”. (Picard, 2011). 84

The means of self-publication are not the bloggers’ prerogative and the wish to correct, enhance or provide an alternative to mainstream media is widespread, coming in all shapes and sizes. One of those is citizen journalism, also known as participatory journalism or amateur reporting. Citizen journalists are individuals with no journalistic background who cover events and provide reports either for mass media news outlets (such as CNN iReport) or to alternative platforms such as Wikinews or Indymedia. In the first instance, the objective is to supplement legacy media with witness accounts and personal perspectives, while the latter is a more politically engaged act, aiming to challenge the dominating mainstream account of reality, promoted by mass media and state administrations. The past few years saw the rise of a new type of citizen journalism – the posting of instantaneous reports and comments on social media, a development that made the participatory coverage even more individualised. As in the case of blogs, many commentators on the subject see 9/11 as the turning point, when citizen journalism ceased to be a niche activity, known only to a very restricted audience. Somehow, that day in the U.S. crystallised the need of an entire nation to take part in a communal contact, to convey one’s emotions and to collect as much information as possible, in order to even begin to grasp the magnitude and the significance of the occurring events. Since then, citizen journalism has become a booming business, attracting an evergrowing readership. But like blogs, the opinions regarding this trend vary widely. Can we really consider it a worthy and valuable contribution to the public debate? Dan Gillmor is perhaps one of the biggest proponents of citizen journalism, emphasizing the importance of citizen journalism in all its aspects: a source collaborating with the journalist, a media watchdog, or an amateur reporter (2004). The new power, accumulating in the hands of those who once constituted hitherto the passive audience, will enable communities and even nations to hold an improved discourse, and will allow individuals to become more fully engaged as customers, families, neighbours, and citizens (Gillmor, 2003). Furthermore, most media’s ownership structures and the socio-economic background of those working in media’s mass-distribution complexes often mean that voices outside the mainstream, expressing fringe ideas and representing invisible minorities, are often inaudible. Yet new journalism enables those who have been hitherto quiet to share their story and provide a fuller and therefore more accurate image of reality. In non-democratic regimes, where it is even harder for citizens to get media and media coverage to represent a more diverse image of reality and of their grievances, aspirations, and demands, citizen journalism is all the more important. If mainstream media do not try to redress wrongs, hold the government accountable, and appropriately inform 85

the public, a gap is formed, which the citizen might attempt to fill. Blogs are one way and citizen journalism is another. The rise of social media allowed citizen journalists to take advantage of the new digital broadcasting methods in their reporting endeavours. It also gave them the opportunity to exchange information in a more direct, immediate, and informal fashion, bypassing more established platforms of alternative journalism such as Indymedia. In a way, although citizen journalism on social media is still reliant on corporate outlets, such as Twitter or YouTube, it becomes a more individual, nuclear act, beyond the constraints of an organised movement. “There was a blast in the Moscow metro in the spring [of 2010]. My daughter was close to this place, so I was half mad. I switched on the TV and all I see is the same bullshit, culinary lessons and the like. Journalists were scared and editors were scared to report for five hours, and we, as an audience, we were deprived of the right to see what the hell was going on there. That was the problem. But on Facebook, there was some news. People were posting pictures there, and I, a media professional, I was taking news from non-professionals for half a day. Of course, the news was not filtered, but somebody had to fill this niche.” (Strokan, 2011). The terrorist attack on the Moscow subway, which took place in March 2010, was a case of emergency, in which citizens spontaneously took upon themselves the journalistic mission of keeping others informed. It was an ad-hoc response to a crisis situation. But some citizen journalists take this task as an ongoing mission to which they dedicate time, money, and energy. Ukrainian Serge Dibrov has a degree in plumbing, a company for pest management, and a risky night-time hobby – tracking, investigating, and reporting on the failures and misdeeds the country’s establishment is trying to cover up. In other words, he’s a typical amateur reporter, doing what Ukrainian media is incapable of doing. Dibrov specialises mainly in uncovering medical corruption and criminality cases, which he subsequently publishes on his website (dibrov-s.livejournal.com). His experience and perseverance enabled him to gain prominence, credibility and trust over time. This meant that he was able to diversify his sources and gain access to information others tried hard to cover. Basically, amateur or not, Dibrov was acting as a journalist, a position that made it possible for him to play an essential part in cases such as the pneumonia vaccine that was pulled off the market after he demonstrated that it had not been properly tested in the Ukraine, leading to complications among young patients (van der Kamp, 2011).

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Relying on citizens’ engagement and appealing to their civic duty, citizen journalism is not merely an exercise in media literacy and analytical thinking. It is, in and of itself, an act of resistance, a political gesture and a personal stance in contentious politics. It is therefore not only an attempt to reach other citizens and encourage them to take action, but also a deed of resistance. Hence resides its power, and this is what makes it even more compelling than an article in a journal. “It is the personal testimony provided by user-generated content that gives the emotional power to the storytelling – unlike much of the professionally shot material, which is one step removed from the events portrayed. It is an emotional power that has an impact on our audience and newsroom journalists alike.” (Eltringham, 2011). The more journalism is controlled by the State, the bigger the incentive of news consumers to rely on citizen journalists: “The example of Syria is a flagrant one, where journalists are not allowed to operate, unless they are government controlled journalists, and where foreign journalists are not allowed to go freely. They have to be accompanied by government journalists at all times, ultimately producing controlled journalism. Now, with Syria, citizens are playing an important role in filling the gaps, posting online news and YouTube videos. For us, as journalists, it is sometimes difficult to tell which is genuine and which is not. But still, that is essential, enabling us to try to understand what’s happening in Syria. Now, it is happening elsewhere in the Arab world, not only in Syria, where people see what mainstream media is missing and try to correct it. [...] We can consider Facebook users as competitors, but we can also view them as sources of information, providing us with tips that we can follow up on for our own stories. They also express opinions, which we might have ignored in the past. They were voiceless before and now they are expressing their opinion. Ultimately, they have the right to influence public opinion, and finally they have the chance to do so.” (Barhoum, 2011, ENJN Conference). Citizen journalism through social media, ‘correcting’ mainstream media and providing alternative points of view in the national coverage, begs the question of social media’s position in the general mediascape. How does it interact with other media forms and what does this interaction mean for journalism in the context of democratic processes? 87

Remediation and Media Synergy The participatory culture, brought about by Web 2.0 technologies that allow individuals to contribute their bit to the media culture, is taken as a break with the past. No longer is each medium – photography, radio, television, and cinema – a closed, independent entity. New media opened the door to an open, constant flow to and fro between diverse media that feed and alter one another. Or at least this was the assumption, which Bolter and Grusin challenged. In Remediation, (2000), the two academics demonstrate that new media, to which Internet is central, is following a media-old habit of borrowing, repackaging, enhancing, and adapting content from one medium to another. This ‘remediation’, literally the “representation of one medium in another” was already largely in practice well before the inception of the Internet. The cinema always borrowed from photography, inspiring and refashioning television, which ended up influencing the radio. Thus, Internet is joining an old media custom, and it does so to its own advantage. Social media do not replace journalism in the traditional way, nor do they pull the plug out on cinema and television. They merely joined the conversation. And this actually makes them stronger. Posts, viral videos, and other online media campaigns become truly ubiquitous and generally acknowledged once they have been picked up by other media, especially television. This is particularly relevant in societies in which Internet penetration is relatively low and which still rely heavily on radio and television as their main source of information. This means that the population of these societies can be divided between a minority that gets its information through the Web, and a majority that is dependent on television. This was true in Tunisia and Egypt before the uprisings, and it is also definitely true in Georgia, which has an Internet penetration rate of 28.3%XVII. Subsequently, the Internet alone cannot have a nation-wide reach. For that, it remains reliant on other media forms, primarily television. The same holds true for social media and its use in contention politics: “The Tunisian revolution created a new media ecosystem, in which, for the first time in history, user-generated content became so central and important. This media ecosystem was formed by three hubs: social media; online platforms, such as Global Voices, curating the user generated content; and Al Jazeera. Those three hubs acted in synergy, informing and educating Tunisians about the revolt, and ultimately, influencing also Egyptians, Yemenis, Libyans, Syrians, and so forth. Facebook was the first media hub during the protests, used to inform Tunisians, mobilise activists, and notify them about the coming protests, gatherings, and sit-ins. Facebook also centralised the support from international grassroots movements, mainly from Egypt and the Arab world. 88

Nonetheless, for international journalists, who don’t speak Arabic or French, Facebook is a hard platform to navigate, and a hard platform in which to identify the good and the right content. They would require the assistance of Tunisians, who understand the context and the Tunisian dialect, who can translate the video footage posted on Facebook, and then pass it on to mainstream media and human right advocates in the West. That, in essence, was the second hub - the curators who understood the context, translated the materiel and prepared it for the use of international journalists, mainly from Al Jazeera and France 24, who were following day by day the events in Tunisia (the rest of Western media began to cover the Tunisian revolution only two weeks after it began, following an attack on the Tunisian infrastructure). Facing a very sophisticated censorship machine, Tunisian activists were also keen to work with online curators. For them, it meant that by just sending an email [to the curators], they could get their content published across the Web. So people sent us the information they gathered by email. Sometimes we got the information out of Facebook and sent an email to posterous.com, for example. Posterous would then broadcast and cross-post the information on 20 different platforms. This helped, in a way, to circumvent the Internet censorship in Tunisia and reach a broader audience. The third hub of the new media ecosystem was Al Jazeera, putting the focus on the revolution in Tunisia. At the time, Al Jazeera didn’t have a correspondent in Tunisia. It didn’t have the kind of crew they sent to Egypt or Libya. That made the network completely reliant on user generated content. [And this is where we, in Global Voices, came in,] translating the information and passing it on to Al Jazeera, which then fact-checked the information provided by users on Facebook or through online curators, and rebroadcast it in Tunisia. In this way, we had what we call an information cascade, which had political implications, encouraging Tunisians to join the protest movement. Without the information cascade, we couldn’t have toppled the regime.” (Ben Gharbia, 2011). The remediation of personal accounts from the street to Al Jazeera did not always follow this scheme, though. It was at times more direct, a result of the network’s policy to foster links with bloggers and protesters even prior to the uprising. The ties enabled Al Jazeera to establish them as reliable sources and to use their content in its broadcasts. This entailed the meticulous, and at times tedious, task of verifying the veracity of these accounts, by analysing locations, slogans heard, and so forth. This work allowed the network to identify falsifications and errors when they occurred.

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This collaboration was particularly important in Egypt or Syria, where either Al Jazeera itself was targeted, or where no foreign journalists were allowed to work. In this way, having already established valuable contacts, the network had an edge over its competitors when reporting on the events. While Al Jazeera could access original video footage, pictures, and audio recording, other channels often had to choose between keeping their viewers in the dark, or rebroadcasting Al Jazeera’s material (Fisher, 2011). Hence, Al Jazeera’s rapidity in recognising citizen reports as a worthy contribution, to be encouraged and cultivated over time, set it apart from other media corporations, which find it difficult to come to terms with citizen journalists. This relationship, between Al Jazeera and the cyber-activists, was not only profitable for the network. It also proved invaluable for the Tunisian and Egyptian opposition forces, which were conferred through Al Jazeera’s treatment a legitimacy that no other national medium would accord them, at least not in the early days of the revolution8. Lynch is also convinced that the story of social media and television is not a story of a competition or of a rivalry, but rather one of synergy. This was the media reality in the Arab world for the past ten years, YouTube, Facebook, forums, and blogs working with Al Jazeera to transform the face of the local media environment and counter the dictators’ capacity to manipulate it according to their own personal needs and interests. This was first and foremost a layered, collective effort, which enabled the creation of a new framing narrative and its widespread distribution (Lynch, 2011). In the case of the Arab uprisings, this widespread distribution of the framing narrative was stronger than anything that could have been previously anticipated, transmitting the revolutionary ideas and values to societies throughout the world. The role played by Al Jazeera in Tunisia, and later in Egypt, made it all the more suspect in the eyes of Mubarak and his administration, which shut down its offices and targeted its journalists (or any journalist it suspected of working for the Qatari network). Egyptian security forces were going from one café to the other, asking the owners to shut down the transmission of the network’s broadcasts (Filiu). But either Al Jazeera, its employees, and the dissidents on the ground were not as susceptible to state intimidation as they used to be, or the repression was not harsh enough, because in Tunisia and Egypt, unlike Syria, the media synergy was not broken. Together, the pan-Arabic network and social media proved that the regimes and their repressive apparatus were, in fact, vulnerable and fallible, and all the rest was state propaganda. And so, they broke the spell “that had stopped millions of ordinary people from rising up and claiming their legitimate rights” (Miles, 2011). 8) Sadly, Al Jazeera, for internal political reasons, chose not to extend the same courtesy to the opposition movements in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

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But this cascade effect, as Ben Gharbia calls it, can only exist where there is at least a shard of media freedom, or a foreign media outlet immune to local political pressures. In Russia, corporate media started to cover the anti-governmental protests of December 2011 weeks after they started, and it did so reluctantly. Subsequently, the protesters were, for the most part, mobilised through the Internet and social media, or through word of mouth. As a result, the volume of the demonstrations never reached the impressive dimensions of the protests in Egypt, for instance, even if they remain unprecedented in contemporary Russian history.

The Revolutionary Cathode The information cascade, or the triangular media synergy created by social media; Global Voices and other bridgeblogs; and by cable networks such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, was therefore important to the political upheaval in the MENA region. And yet, most discussions about the Arab uprisings give primacy to social media over television, or any other media for that matter. But is this interpretation justified? The case of Al Jazeera might contradict it. The Qatari network appeared in the Arab airwaves fifteen years ago. Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the man behind its creation, had the intention of creating a regional equivalent to CNN that will address matters that concern the Arab world through an Arab perspective. More specifically, in the internal MENA front, Al Jazeera aimed to become a powerful leader in politics and mores, whereas in the external front, it viewed itself as a diplomat of sorts, representing the Arab Nation and Muslim world. Qatar was the right launching pad for such an endeavour, since it had already one of the most liberal media policies in the area (Powers & Gilboa, 2007). Through this, the small country hoped to increase its political influence on the region, and perhaps even grow to become one of its leaders. By no means was the network shy in pursuing its goals. With ambition and daring hitherto unseen in the Arab world, the TV channel tackled subjects perceived as taboo both in the MENA region and the Western countries. It addressed topics such as sex, governmental corruption, and women’s rights. It enraged Arabs by interviewing Israeli officials, and infuriated the U.S. by giving airtime to Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda leaders. Unlike other Arab media that maintain intimate relationships with the powers that be, so close as to appear like an unofficial information ministry, Al Jazeera managed to unearth the sins of (almost) every Arab government, attracting the wrath of states such as Algeria, Egypt, or Jordan. Its talk shows, chief among them The Opposite Direction, notorious for the levels of vehemence and brutality of dispute between the opposite parties interviewed, brought to the region a new, almost revolutionary culture of political 91

discussion and debate. Not only did it put an end to Arab state control of media narrative, it also undermined the dominating ‘unitary Arab nationalist discourse’. It gave citizens the opportunity to call-in, raise concerns and voice opposition publicly, on air, in front of millions of other viewers. This was a coming-out moment for internal conflicts within the shared Arab identity - in total contradiction to the ideals of Pan-Arabism (Lynch, 2007b). This nationalist concept of consensus within the Arab nation hinted at the importance of fealty to the ruler, as long as this served to preserve the “Ummah”. Al Jazeera, discussing birth control methods and criticising state endorsement of police violence, weakened the official consensus favouring the Arab rulers and gave rise to a new, alternative shared Arab experience, made of grievances and aspirations that were kept hidden up to that moment. This is not to say that the network’s journalistic practices are always without blemish, or that its motives are always pure. Some of the criticism directed towards it is not without foundation, such as its tendency to highlight one kind of violence (for instance Mubarak’s crack down on protesters), while completely ignoring another (the torture and mass killings of civilians by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or by Saddam Hussein in Iraq)(Powers & Gilboa, p. 66). Still, Al Jazeera enjoys tremendous popularity in the MENA region, its credibility soaring in Middle-Eastern terms, ranking between 89 and 96 percent in the eyes of its viewers (ibid, p. 56). Another study, quoted by Saleh, confirms this trend (2007). While 100% of people surveyed in the study confessed to watching television, 62% of them named Al Jazeera as their leading source. Al Jazeera’s closest competitors, MBC2 and Al Arabiya, trailed behind with 44% of the respondents watching their broadcasts. In a region suffering of relatively high rates of illiteracy and extreme poverty, these figures hint at a greater political influence by Al Jazeera than by Facebook and Twitter combined. Even if not all households are wealthy enough to own a television set, they are ubiquitous enough in cafés, restaurants and other public places, transforming public debate and political dispute into an intrinsic of street life. Al Jazeera’s edge over social media with regards to the influence it has exercised over the Arab society is not only due to its popularity. It is also a consequence of its enduring presence in the regional media landscape. The network recently celebrated 15 years of devoted service, while Facebook opened up for mass registration in 2006, giving the TV station a ten-year lead in the transformation of minds and spirits. Al Jazeera’s aspirations to play a democratising role, whether a noble pursuit or a populist facade, were always brightly displayed by the medium. Since the MENA region lacked the institutions that normally promote the rule of law, human rights, freedom, and equality, the network proclaimed to take it upon itself to fulfil this mission (Powers & Gilboa, p. 65). The ‘Arab Spring’, Al Jazeera’s great ‘CNN Moment’, put these aspirations to the test, thereby obtaining mixed results. As mentioned earlier, the channel kept mum 92

about the repression of protests in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. But in the case of Tunisia and Egypt, the reporting of the events was quite partisan, leading to the question whether it was merely reporting on news or actually instigating them, espousing the political line of the protesters, thus practicing ‘campaigning journalism’ (Mir, 2011). Many analysts, quoted by Mir, clearly see the channel as an important player in the ousting of Mubarak, turning it into a force of change (p. 166). And in this, citizen journalism was highly valuable, supplying the network with an infinite amount of raw material that was shot and commented from the demonstrators’ point of view. Al Jazeera’s personnel strongly denies this, insisting the English channel of the network, at the very least, provided a balanced level of reporting. The Arabic channel, on the other hand, seemed to have indeed pushed actively to give a platform for the opposition. But is this truly a campaigning journalism, or a balancing of the Egyptian media environment at the time, one that was completely given to the Mubarak cause? Al Jazeera was not only the revolution’s unofficial broadcaster; it was also the opposition’s favourite source of information. Considering that it was one of the first Arabic TV channels to broadcast in a dissenting voice, this is hardly surprising, but in effect, what this created was a sort of insurgency network of sorts. The fact that Al Jazeera was transmitting directly at Tahrir Square, both filming the demonstrators and then broadcasting the images back to them, was a good symbol of the medium’s position in the conflict. As Filiu summarised the debate on social media and Al Jazeera’s role in the uprising, the Egyptian revolution was not tweeted, if anything, it was televised (p. 53). Finally, when weighing in the importance of social media in the Arab uprisings, it is essential to put it in perspective by discussing another medium – mobile phones. These also play an essential part in the remediation of political contention. Like television, mobile phones are more commonly used than the Internet. Additionally, unlike social media, which are by definition almost completely porous and open to hostile inspection, telephone communications cannot be as easily and massively watched and supervised. Brisson and Lee insist that on the basic level, it was primarily phones, via text messages and calls, and not social media, that allowed the militants to stay informed, coordinate, and communicate, among themselves and with the outside world. Still, even in the case of the ever-present mobile phone communication, the democratic role remained superficial. Any contact between the leaders of the Egyptian revolution and the masses was done with offline communication methods, since it was assumed that all electronic networks would be closely monitored (p. 12). The real added value of mobile phones, according to Brisson and Lee, was to allow demonstrators to document the events during the revolution, giving them a certain sense of empowerment, since they could, for the first time, produce their own media coverage, and therefore, in a way, their own political reality (p. 29). 93

The Hidden Divide Blogs and social media-enabled citizen journalism appear to be a part of the media ecosystem, existing in interaction with and through other media. But if we were to take these other means of communication out of the equation, such as television and radio, what then would be the reach of citizen contribution? Would it be quite as relevant? Would it reach the same level of visibility and eminence? Matthew Hindman, studying the reach of political blogs in the U.S., arrives to a rather pessimistic conclusion concerning the capacity of individuals to acquire a true position of influence in this ecosystem (2007). As a matter of fact, the capacity of most individuals to break the wall of anonymity through a political blog is negligible, contradicting the commonly accepted paradigm that blog writing equates to a participation in the political debate. In his book, The Myth of Digital Democracy, Hindman maintains that ultimately, blogs do not open up the political debate, making the public sphere more inclusive. Indeed, almost everyone can produce his political writings, but only a selected elite manages to be heard. It is no longer the production that defines exclusivity, but the filtering system of these blogs, that excludes those outside the social and political power circles. Social hierarchy is as pronounced on the Internet as it is offline, upheld by the economic dominance of the Web corporate behemoths and by the social advantages enjoyed by white, highly educated males. The Net, says Hindman, is a ‘Winner-takes-it-all’ arena, where the few in the top get exponentially more attention than all the scraps of interest taken together, extended to the multitude below. Hindman talks specifically of a ‘Googlearchy’, which is ruled by those most heavily linked. The number of links is the crucial factor determining a site’s importance. The less a number of links to a site, the more difficult would it be to find, making the dominance of the few a self-perpetuating phenomenon. “Though millions of Americans now maintain a blog, only a few dozen political bloggers get as many readers a s a typical college newspaper. Yet the problem is not just the small number of voices that matter; it is that those voices are quite unrepresentative of the broader electorate.” (P. 103). Without surprise, those enjoying all the attention online, are also those at the top of the social and political pyramid, constituted of highly educated white males, with a big representation of the business sector, while females and ethnic-minorities are reduced to a minuscule presence, smaller still than their offline position in society.

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The problem is not merely that blogs fail to represent the real social fabric of the State and give voice to the voiceless, it also lies in the yawning gap between the theoretical claims made about blogs’ democratising power and the reality of their effect on political and social representation. We are told that the citizen contributors that we read represent diversity, although they ensure the same division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. The result is that those who remain in the background are shrouded by an additional layer of obscurity, exacerbating the political inequality. “If we look at citizens’ voices in terms of the readership their postings receive, political expression online is orders of magnitude more unequal than the disparities we are used to in voting, volunteer work, and even political fund-raising.” (P. 17). Hindman discusses blogs in the U.S., but the problem is a global one, and while the elite in the country owes its existence to social divisions, in repressive regimes it also reproduces the political bias enforced by the ruling class. The same holds true for social media, where the number of contacts of a certain member of a network is often a reflection of that person’s position in society. Would the power circle of an authoritarian country be more connected than those belonging to the opposition? While this remains to be proven, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to assume that those holding prominent positions and decision makers are better networked than those who are out of the regime’s favours. As for citizen contributions to mainstream media, it remains to be seen just how diverse the sources feeding their coverage are and if they truly reflect the makeup of the societies in which they take place.

Smoke Screen Formations Another weakness confronting social media and blogs in their role of opposition media is their lack of accountability. Any person may start a blog or open a Facebook account, and whatever they wish to share is a matter of personal choice. At the simple, entertainment level, nothing else remains to be said – these are commercial products, available for free use, and the nature of their use is a matter of personal discretion. Yet when social media and blogs are taken to be a media tool in contentious politics, the user acquires a certain responsibility, to her readers and to other members of her network. Issues such as veracity, disclosure, and objectivity come into play. The writer also needs to keep in mind the implications that may arise from what can appear at first glance as inconsequential posts. 95

Veracity and precision are particularly important if citizen journalists and blogs are expected to provide information in cases where regime and state media misinform or cover up the truth. In these cases, they are expected to shed light on the events, enabling a debate and exchange of ideas – the prerequisites of any democratic process. But the inherent lack of accountability undermines this, and citizen contribution may thicken the smoke screen, instead of blowing it away. The difficulty of discerning the true from the false is crystallised by the story of Amina, the Syrian lesbian blogger, who wasn’t. Amina was supposedly the author of the “A Gay Girl in Damascus” blog, attracting increased interest and support in the West during the spring of 2011. In her blog, she described her experiences as a homosexual, a dissident, and the daughter of a pro-democracy activist in Syria. She was pretty, half American, and very politically correct, thus making her the perfect ‘bridgeblogger’. Except that Amina turned out to be Tom MacMaster, a married, middle-aged American studying in Edinburgh University, who claimed after his exposure that he wanted, through this fictional blog, to put a human face to matters he cared greatly about (Bennett, 2011). Unfortunately, MacMaster’s hoax ended up damaging the very cause he claimed to promote. Before his exposure, Amina became a very popular figure and other bloggers, Western media, and platforms such as Global Voices reviewed her blog. In Western eyes, she became the star of the Syrian insurrection. When MacMaster realised his heroine was attracting too much attention and that his fantasy was getting out of control, he had the unfortunate idea of escalating his fiction by having Amina ‘arrested’ by Syrian secret services. MacMaster claimed later he wanted, in this way, to whisk her out of public attention, hoping that the story would eventually die. That turned out to be a gross miscalculation and the effect Amina’s arrest had over the media and the blogosphere was the exact reverse of what he was aiming for. NGOs, media organisations, and personalities, among them Reporters Without Borders and US embassy officials, rose to the occasion, calling for her release (ibid). It is at this point that MacMaster was exposed and his elaborate fantasy came crashing down. But by then, the harm had been done. MacMaster had been feeding the West false information about the Syrian uprising for many months already. Worse, he discredited opposition activists and bloggers and wasted valuable time and resources in trying to get Amina out of Assad’s clutches, time and resources that could have better been spent coming to the aid of true activists who have been perishing by the dozens in the dictator’s dungeons. Beyond the hoax and the deception, Amina/MacMaster’s story reflects the vulnerability of journalists and readers alike to what Bennett calls the false “Authentic Voice” online.

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“By removing the physical body and collapsing the geographic, the Internet allows us to alter, switch, conceal and simulate our identities more easily and to a greater extent than we have done in the past”. (Bennett, p. 188). In that sense, social media and blogs do not solve any problems. Deception, whether government issued or generously contributed by supporters and opponents of the regime, only becomes more easily produced and distributed, while the truth remains hard to access.

Hush, tag! The ultimate weapon against citizen-produced content comes from the existing state communication arsenal – censorship and propaganda. While repressive regimes have an important advantage over their democratic counterparts in their capacity to enforce these measures and their tendency to do so, democracies do not shy away from using them either. Censorship can be accomplished by various means. Either through legal measures, which means the State needs to pass a number of laws prohibiting certain uses of Internet or social media. Additionally, it can appeal to the Internet service provider (ISP), or contact the developer of the social media platform – a measure rendered particularly easy under repressive regimes, where loyalty and political, financial or even family ties with the ruler is often rewarded by granting licenses and ownerships of media. It can also direct automated attacks that target certain websites or individuals, or even better – intimidate cyber-activists into silence. Finally, when everything else has failed, the censoring authorities can go as far as arresting the perpetrators, and in some cases, brutalise and even kill them. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a joint programme of the University of Toronto, the University of Harvard and the SecDev Group, crowns the MENA region as one of the most censored in the world. As the region’s countries invest increasingly in Internet penetration, so grows state intervention and efforts to control access and limit the nature of the use. For this, the governments do not hesitate to use laws, regulations, surveillance, and censorship technologies, in addition to arrest and physical abuse of dissidents (Noman, H., n.d., Middle East and North Africa report for ONI). As Noman points out, the censorship is not always apparent:

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“Though many governments acknowledge social filtering, most continue to disguise their political filtering practices by attempting to confuse users with different error messages. [...] Many ISPs block popular politically neutral online services such as online translation services and privacy tools fearing that they can be used to bypass the filtering regimes. The censors also block Web sites and services such as social networking Web sites and photo and video sharing Web sites because of the potential for content is considered objectionable.” (Ibid). According to ONI, the approach to Internet and social media is generally more liberal in the CIS region, although the improvement is neither uniform nor conclusive. Practically all countries in the region restrict Internet freedom in one way or another. Regimes often devise ways to target specifically bloggers, citizen journalists, and other social media dissidents, whom they perceive as a threat, precisely because they challenge the authorities’ control over media and weaken dominance of their narrative: “States, of course, will not take increased blog power lying down. Internet filtering is already common, though of dubious effectiveness, and a number of prominent bloggers have already struggled with their Web sites being blocked in their home country. As blogs gain political relevance, bloggers will attract the attention of the repressive state security services. Most bloggers already assume that state security monitors their blogs, and perhaps even actively infiltrates the blogosphere (either posing as bloggers or as commentators).” (Lynch, 2007a). But States don’t always need to go to such extremes. To begin with, they can simply request bloggers and citizen journalists (or social media users) to follow the same ethical guidelines and regulations enforced upon journalists, thus depriving them of any initial advantage they may have had in reporting events, unhindered by governmental restrictions. Thus, the Azerbaijani defamation legislation criminalises equally any criticism emanating from both bloggers and journalists, and the prosecution of bloggers is at least as common as that of journalistsXVIII. But because their activity is external to any regulated journalistic activity and union organisation, they are deprived of any basic protection extended to a professional media worker: “You have the issue of intermediary liability, whereby bloggers are not afforded the same protection as journalists and this is something that is very problematic, also in the West. In the UK, for instance, there was a court that issued a super injunction a few months ago to block discussion of an extra marital affair between 98

a football player and a certain someone. Twitter, an American company with a presence in the UK, was forced to hand over the private information of British Twitter users who had tweeted about this case. Obviously, they weren’t aware of the super injunction because it was secretive. [...] In Israel, there’s the anti boycott law. Bloggers are afraid now to speak out, both in Israel or the Occupied Territories, because they could be held liable for what they say. Journalists could also be held liable, but bloggers in particular have no protections”. (York, 2011). The Israeli police and internal security forces are increasingly sensitive to publications endorsing what they deem to be “hate speech” or incitement to violence, investigating and questioning bloggers, tweeters, and other volunteer contributors of content. While this is common practice in democracies, often as a means to curb and limit the bashing of ethnic and gender minorities, Israel often resorts to this when the State perceives the content is abusive to its ethnic majority. In January 2012, for instance, the blogger and activist, Yossi Gurevitch, was taken in for questioning over a post written in his blog. The investigation against Gurevitch was instigated by a complaint made by the right-wing organisation the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel five months earlier, accusing the blogger of inciting violence. The basis of the complaint is a post, published in July, in which Gurevitch pointed out: “[There are situations in which] violence is necessary and justified, such as the opposition to invasion or conquest. But it must be limited towards those who carry out military operations and who carry arms, whether or not they wear a uniform.” (Ravid, 2011). This scrutiny of citizen contribution does not always need to be followed by legal measures in order for it to subdue the ardour of opposition activists. The mere threat of raising police interest can create an atmosphere of uneasiness or fear that will naturally lead to self-censorship. But when this is not enough, the censorship arsenal contains a large array of means and methods. Denying access to blogs and other online media is commonly used with little inconvenience to the regime. The Internet source can be shut momentarily, at sensitive times, such as the closing of opposition blogs in Azerbaijan, prior to the 2008 parliamentary electionsXIX. Similarly, in Belarus, access to the websites of opposition parties and media was blocked during presidential elections, using second-generation ‘just-in-time’ filtering techniques, that include network disconnection and DDoS attacks. The state 99

agency Beltelecom, which controls the Belarusian Internet, is also adept at devising measures to subtly influence the use of the Net, for instance by slowing down considerably the access to certain IP addressesXX. Certain countries also block access indefinitely, as Morocco did, in the case of the blogging website LiveJournal (livejournal.com) or the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender) site kelma.org, presumably because it has a section dedicated to the MaghrebXXI. The champion of permanent blocking and filtering of websites in the MENA region is probably Syria, which filters foreign sites such as YouTube or Amazon.com, blogging sites (Arab or otherwise), sites it accuses of being pro-Israeli, sites having the word Israel in their URL and all Israeli domains. It also blocks sites of Lebanese newspapers and Lebanese groups opposed to Syria’s influence in the country. It filters websites of Syrian opposition parties and those of leading Arab newspapers. Finally, the regime also blocks anonymizer platforms, which allow Internet users to circumvent censorship and surveillance on the web, by protecting their identityXXII. Following the Syrian model, Belarus’ attitude towards Internet users and social media activists has gone from bad to worse. The country has announced in the beginning of 2012 it will further limit access to foreign websites. A similar ban has been put on opposition websites. Additionally, any company wishing to sell merchandise to its citizens will have to use a Belarusian server. These new measures would make it easier for Lukashenko to nationalise Internet services, paving the way for increased monitoring and controlling of Internet activity. Tunisia was also exceptionally efficient in filtering access to websites it deemed unsuitable, either to Tunisians or to the interests of the regime. The Internet control authority of the deposed regime was so pervasive and omnipresent it even got a nickname - ‘Ammar 404’ (‘Error 404’) - after the error message that would appear on blocked pages. The security service did as it pleased with Internet content, going as far as altering emails and replacing the original message with threats, spam, or even pornographic content, an act that could potentially ruin the reputation of the sender in a Muslim society. Asma Hedi Nairi, former coordinator for Amnesty International, interviewed by Vernon Silver, described the atmosphere of fear that prevailed among Internet users: “Ammar 404 would see everything. [It] was more dangerous than any policeman on the street. It was an information war.” (Silver, 2012). The tactic of the Tunisian regime was particularly insidious, since it replaced messages with spam. Thus, when an individual received spam on his email account, it was impossible for him to know whether this was an innocent, unwelcome ad, or a sign that ‘Big Brother’ was watching, distilling fear of a constant surveillance that led, once more, to self censorship. 100

Another way to silence bloggers and social media users from criticising the authorities is to submit them to DDoS attacks, in which a large number of computers are taken over remotely and are used to flood a website or a user page on a social media site. This coordinated flood can crush the website, which is usually not equipped to deal with such a spike in visitors’ volume. In this way, a blog or content posted on social media is not officially censored, yet nevertheless it becomes inaccessible. As Morozov points out, the amount of DDoS conducted is on the rise, and they target increasingly individual bloggers and other opposition members (p. 107-109). He recounts how Cyxymu, a popular Georgian blogger, found himself under such a DDoS attack on the first anniversary of the Russian-Georgian war, in August 2009. The DDoS was so intensive it damaged Facebook and Twitter, where Cyxymu had duplicate accounts. Apart from shutting down websites and networks for short or indefinite period of times, States are also known to deny complete access to the Internet, as Mubarak famously did on January 27, 2011, on the eve of the great demonstration that sealed his demise. But shutting down the Internet can yield unexpected results. Mubarak’s decision proved to be a strong incentive for those Egyptians who have not hitherto taken part in the protests to join the masses in Tahrir Square, thus confirming Zuckerman’s Cute Cat theory of Internet activism. Even if the Internet and social media were used primarily for entertainment purposes, they created unexpected paths to activism. Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian columnist who is based in New York and who returned to Egypt after the protests broke confirmed this analysis: “Mubarak was stupid enough to turn off the Internet. People who got bored from not having Facebook to go on, went to Tahrir Square.” (Eltahawy, 2011). Zuckerman also thinks events in Egypt vindicated his theory: “We saw [this] on Global Voices. We heard people say: “I was following the protests on Al-Jazeera, I was following them on Facebook, I was following them on Twitter, but then the bastard went and shut down all of that, so I had no choice, I had to go to Tahrir to see for myself what was going on”.” (Zuckerman, 2011). Ben Gharbia speaks of a similar experience in Tunisia. Ben Ali was very wary of online opposition, and did everything he could to silence it.

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“Tunisia blocked all video sharing websites, starting from 2007. They blocked YouTube, and Daily Motion. In April 2010, they blocked the rest of video sharing websites - Blip TV, Vimeo, Metacafe, etc. They blocked more than 200 blogs that criticised the government; they blocked dozens of Twitter accounts, hereby creating a major migration of users from blogs and video sharing websites to Facebook. But the question is: why didn’t Tunisia block Facebook during the revolution? The answer is that they tried to do that in 2008, they blocked Facebook for around 10 days, but the protest was so strong that Ben Ali was pushed to unblock the website.” (Ben Gharbia, 2011). Still, the fact that shutting down the Internet or social media can backfire does not mean that the measure cannot prove effective and that dictators are about to strike it out of their manual. Internet and social media corporations are sometimes willing to accommodate up to a certain measure the censoring wishes of autocratic regimes. Twitter announced in January 2011 it will enable country-specific censorship of posts on its website, meaning the content will no longer be displayed in the country where it is regarded as problematic, replaced by a grey box notifying readers the content has been censored. The post will be visible in other countries where it will remain accessible under normal terms. Google came up with a similar initiative for its Blogger platform, one week later, allowing blogs to be filtered by certain countries, while maintaining their visibility for the rest of the world. Both corporations point out that the new measures will allow for more transparency. In the case of Twitter, for instance, readers from all countries will know a post has been censored. Furthermore, the post will not be entirely deleted, merely made inaccessible in the country where it is contrary to regime public speech policy. Some commentators see this as a compromise, even a fair one, and a real attempt at transparency (Smalera, 2012). This is perhaps so, although one might argue that censoring a post that is critical of Lukashenko in Belarus, while allowing it to be read in Finland diminishes significantly its relevance. Furthermore, even if this is not quite the equivalent of arresting and torturing the dissident, it does seriously limit the capacity of social media platforms to act as a democratising tool. There are also other, more insidious ways of censoring online exchange that may seem innocent at first, but which are just as harmful to freedom of expression on the Net. Among them is the tendency to use pricing as a means of controlling Internet penetration. In Jordan and Lebanon, for instance, the price of Internet services is maintained at a relatively high level, making it difficult for the middle class to access it. Hampering with infrastructures is another way of reaching this goal. Israeli troops damaged Palestinian telecommunication networks to hamper contact among opposition members (el Goby, 2007). 102

Finally, the ownership of telecommunication infrastructures and services remains often in the hands of the States, which can in this way control and limit the number of ISPs, making the surveillance of its activity all the more easy. Syria also makes the ownership of hardware an issue of state security, requiring all those who wish to obtain a modem to make an official appeal for government approval. Additionally, owners of PCs must register with the military authority. Other countries also ensure censorship and surveillance through software, which is either imposed through the national ISPs or installed by default on all computers in cyber cafes (ibid).

Activist Harassment is the Continuation of Censorship by Other Means The harassment of bloggers and activists is the next step in the struggle over information domination. Once more, Tunisia proved to be a leader in the field, being the first country to arrest a blogger, in 2000, but it had many disciples in the region. Ghannam describes a handful of particularly outstanding cases of bloggers arrested in Syria, Egypt, and Bahrain, including 19-year-old Syrian, Tal al-Mallouhi, the youngest Internet dissident to serve a prison sentence for her activity. They are but a small sample of the hundreds of others who share a similar fate. “In Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Palestinian Territory, authorities have incarcerated bloggers and others who have expressed their opinions, communicated on Facebook, or written poetry in ways deemed offensive to government authorities.” (Ghannam, 2011). A number of Syrian cyber-activists escaped the country when the 2011 insurrection began, but not all were so lucky. Tal al-Mallouhi is perhaps the most famous blogger to be arrested, but hardly the only one. Other cyber-activists were imprisoned, tortured or killed. Hussein Ghrer and Razan Ghazzawi are perhaps among the most prominent among them. The regime change in Egypt did not alter significantly the treatment of cyber-dissidents. The military rule appears to be as averse to criticism as its predecessor, arresting those who publish criticism online. Alaa Abdel-Fattah was arrested by the military authorities, which accused Abdel-Fattah of inciting violence and use of military property. Fattah, a known blogger and leading activist, is also known for his vociferous opposition to the military rule. Blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad suffered a similar fate for criticising the interim 103

military regime in his country. Other users of social media were questioned under similar charges of suspicious online postings (York, 2012). These practices are not reserved to the MENA region alone. Azerbaijan arrested two activists who posted Facebook messages calling for a demonstration in the spirit of the ‘Arab Spring’. In February 2011, Bakhtiyar Hajiyev and Jabbar Savalan were taken in for custody on politically motivated charges, although Savalan was released before the end of the year (Krikorian, 2012).

The Attention Seekers In the battle for information supremacy, the State will act to silence and discredit any opposition, while at the same actively promoting its own narrative, thus complementing censorship with propaganda. The main difference between the two is that propaganda is supposed to win hearts and minds. As such, it can hardly use methods, which are blatantly repressive, as censorship tends to do, making the targeted population suspicious rather than favourable towards the message. Propaganda can be aggressive - it cannot be violent. But it can also be much more pervasive, and at times more difficult to identify. Strokan’s account of Russia’s reliance on PR in its communication policy is a good example of propaganda’s multiple facets. It is perhaps its most common, ordinary incarnation. Other testimonials, like that of foreign correspondent James Rogers (2011), reflect just how pervasive the method is, as journalists are presented with stories that had previously been washed, scrubbed and ironed by PR agencies, making the task of untangling the truth from the neatly packaged propaganda a hard one to achieve. Currently, the whitewashing of state policy has become a flourishing industry. Russia is an expert in the field, but the West cannot pretend to hang the blame on Putin alone. He can hardly be credited with the invention of Spin Doctors. The problem has existed in one form or another since the invention of media, regardless of regime or political orientation, and is likely to persist. Nonetheless, it is currently taking on unprecedented proportions, and the weakening of the journalistic profession – a process that, coincidently or not, is evolving simultaneously – renders it all the more dangerous. Faced with such a well-oiled and powerful machine, individually disseminated messages on social media seem ill equipped to deal with it. But while hiring a PR agency at a great expense is an obligatory tactic in the communications war, simpler, more immediate methods are easily available that also use social media. They, too, profit from social media’s inherent advantages of immediacy and mass distribution capacity:

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“In Syria, people use Twitter minimally, because Syria does have low Internet penetration, heavy censorship, and heavy surveillance. But we have, nonetheless, seen people use tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, to show what’s going on there on the ground. At the same time, we’ve seen a propaganda narrative forming to counter that. One day in March, I was looking at the Syria hashtag on Twitter, trying to figure out what was going on that particular day, receiving contrasting narratives. And all of a sudden, the entire flow of tweets was flooded by images, just pictures of the landscape. Look at this beautiful Syrian food; look at this bottle of Arak. And I figured, these were automated feeds, pushing out other content in an attempt to block legitimate content about what was happening, either pro or anti regime, for the sole purpose of propaganda. And we have seen the same thing with the Syrian electronic army, which has been hacking sites, flooding Facebook pages with irrelevant content, always pro-regime.” (York , 2011). Incidents like the one discussed by York are frequently recorded. In December 2011, ‘unknown elements’ have taken over thousands of home computers in Russia to spread hundreds of thousands of messages expressing support for the government on Twitter. The messages were mostly published using hashtags that concerned the demonstrations following the contested elections in the country. Computer experts in Russia believed the messages – praising the regime – were generated by a botnet, a network of computers taken over by a remote agent, who uses them to massively distribute whichever message he wishes to (Haaretz, 2011c). In both the Syrian and the Russian cases, social media were swamped by an automated system. But many countries also hire human “armies” whose task is similar – flooding the Internet and social media with content favourable to the regime. Israel has recruited an “army of bloggers” tasked with such a mission, or as the Immigrant Absorption Ministry names it: representing the country in foreign, anti-Zionist blogs. The recruits – Israelis who fully master a second language – are asked to visit foreign websites and blogs that are deemed problematic in their treatment of Israel’s policy and to respond to the articles and the posts presented there. In their comments, they give Israel’s version of the event, ensuring, in this way, that the media field is not left solely in the hands of its critics. This is one more propaganda method in which Russia excels. In this case, it is the ‘webbrigade’ that takes on the digital fight, but unlike its Israeli counterpart, it does not focus its cyber information warfare on the international stage. It is first and foremost an important ingredient in national and internal confrontations. Putin’s supporters are particularly adept at using social media to spread their message. Nashi, the youth movement affiliated with President Putin, is involved in promoting his Internet campaign. A group of 105

Russian hackers, who intercepted and published emails exchanged between Nashi’s leaders, revealed in February 2012 that the organisation has been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a wide network of bloggers, journalists, and Internet trolls, for flooding the web with pro-Putin messages and denigrating his opponents. Up to 20,000 dollars are paid for expressing support for Putin in platforms that criticise him. Nashi members are also encouraged to ‘dislike’ videos of Putin’s opponents and to come up with new, original smear campaigns (Elder, 2012a). Navalni, one of the strongest figures of the opposition, is a favourite of Nashi’s attacks and the movement is constantly busy devising new videos and posts that vilify and discredit him. Referring to Nashi activists’ policy of commenting on Navalni’s blogs, as well as on the blogs of other opposition leaders such as Ilya Yashin, one of the emails intercepted states: “More than 1,200 comments were left. Twelve publications on social-political themes and in support of the prime minister [Putin at the time] were written, and reposted more than 200 times.” (Elder, 2012b). The emails also indicate that Nashi paid up to 250,000 dollars for Twitter posts and messages on other social networking sites that support Putin and Medvedev (ibid). The same emails exposed by the hackers reveal the importance, not only of the sums engaged, but of just how essential is the financial motivation of the commentators engaged in Nashi’s endeavour. In one correspondence, the commentator complains of not being paid, contrary to his expectations and states: “Kristina, I don’t understand at all what the hell happened with the money for LiveJournal this month. Why didn’t you tell me there would be no money? Kristina, don’t think just about my rudeness or complaints, but for me financial motivation was the most important thing” (ibid). The financial exchange points to the main problem behind the web-brigade and the political content they generate. They pretend to voice an opinion, representing the Russian population, or at least one of its segments, while in effect, they are a state apparatus in disguise. Moreover, by their sheer number they may lead to the assumption that they reflect the view held by a majority, or at least a significant amount of people, although in truth, this majority is artificial. Botnets are used to create similar effects, although they pose an added threat. The sheer number of messages they produce don’t only create a false shift in the public opinion; they can be so large as to crush the platform on which 106

they reproduce, effectively putting an end to any debate that may have been going on. The example of the Israeli army of bloggers, presented earlier, is slightly different. Their motivation is not financial – no money was promised or exchanged at any time between the State and the bloggers it recruited. In their message, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption appeals to the bloggers’ sense of patriotism, calling upon them to contribute to Israel’s defence, a formulation that resonates strongly in the Israeli culture, especially among new immigrants, which are the Ministry’s primary target audience. In addition to the group the ministry initiated, others are created in the country, which treat the posting of statuses on Facebook like a mission of national importance, statuses that defend Israel’s policies and attack its opposition, both at home and abroad. In the Israeli case, the posts advertised on social media and blogs cannot be blamed to represent an artificial political reality, spurred by ulterior motives. The authors of these messages represent a certain part of the Israeli society that is by no means negligible. Still, their purpose is not to create a dialogue, or to reach any ideal of the public sphere, promoting an informed debate. Rather, it is an organised attempt to push for the spread and acceptance of certain political ideas, in a manner that resembles more a propaganda campaign than a heated discussion on state policy (although, admittedly, the line dividing the two may be thin). Naveh (2007), who studied the manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the net, notes that the Internet and its diverse tools such as blogs, have taken propaganda out of its narrow meaning as a state apparatus, and transformed it into a tool that’s readily available for large publics: “[...] The appropriate use of the Web for purposes of international propaganda provides an additional dimension to international processes, adds new actors to the propaganda arena, and integrates them in a manner that was not possible in the actual-external environment.” (Naveh, p. 182). Neveh explores Israel’s propaganda structure in relation to its Palestinian counterpart, which was just as quick to rush to the new, digital battlefront. Both sides use Internet, blogs and social media as spaces where the conflict now takes place and evolves. This development, the rise of a Netwar, seems to strengthen the fear expressed by Sunstein, namely that instead of promoting a space for political debate, the Internet might lead to the creation of separate echo chambers. In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two echo chambers are particularly aggressive in their attitude towards one another, making the existence of a fruitful debate appear like a far-fetched eventuality.

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A softer, subtler way of promoting regime policy on the Net is to simply move there as well, and many have done so. As rulers started to grasp the political and social benefits attached to online presence, it became clear that this scene could not be left only to their opponents. If anything, they had to push back, aggressively, and make social media a new front in their communication battle. Gamal Mubarak, Hosni’s son and heir apparent, decided to register to Facebook after witnessing opposition parties using the media to promote their anti-governmental protests (Morozov, p. 134). Ghannam mentions that a similar step was taken by other Arab states, including Jordan, whose officials are now contributing content and information to Twitter and Facebook. More importantly, they use the media to engage with citizens, exchange ideas, and promote debate. Russia’s leading duo, Putin and Medvedev, has also gone down this road. The Kremlin even posted a police law on the Internet and allowed citizens to comment on it and give their recommendations, a “crowdsourcing” operation of a kind. Medvedev is often tweeting and video-blogging, and a social networking site was set up by the Kremlin to allow Russians to take part in the forging of its ideological basis (Allnutt, 2010). Azerbaijan and Moldova have joined the trend of late, as the authorities of the two countries have encouraged ministers and other high officials to keep websites and blogs, using them as means of communication with the younger generation, as well as conducting interviews and posting them on YouTube (Deibert & Rohozinski, 2010). It is unclear though, whether an online presence of a non-democratic regime can truly herald a change in its policy with regards to free expression and the like. As Morozov mentions, Gamal Mubarak participated in a couple of online discussions, and those quickly led to the spontaneous creation of about 50 Facebook groups, dedicated to the promotion of his election as the next president. Ultimately, when a regime is repressive, putting on a nice face on social media will not change the fundamental truth of its methods. Merely debating with citizens on Facebook is not a sign that the State cares about their concerns, it is a sign that a State wants to be seen debating with citizens. The actions that may or may not follow would certainly not be documented or posted on YouTube. Confusing PR with performance is undoubtedly the mistake a ruler would like its citizens to make, but hardly one that would benefit them. And yet, many analysts do mix the two. Ghannam, who praises these regime escapades on social media, is hardly the only one. But as Allnutt states, the regime’s new Internet participation is first and foremost a “smokescreen”, a “liberalisation without democratisation”, in which social media play an essential part.

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Chapter 4. The International Appeal “Social networks are useful in generating political pressure and they continue to play a key role in ensuring that governments are susceptible to international pressure. [...] Social media alone won’t make the difference. But Lukashenko’s hold on power is weakening. Belarus is in a financial crisis. To survive, Lukashenko’s government must secure a much needed bailout loan from the IMF or from Russia. And this is where social media is crucial. As well as playing an essential role in mobilising and organising, documenting protest actions means that the international community is much more aware of the political situation. With the new law banning mass demonstrations, the cycle of unrest will continue, but the world would be watching, as demonstrators will continue to post footage online. Social media will make it harder for Lukashenko to justify an IMF or a EU engagement. It places a spotlight on the regime’s behaviour. Which in turn, in many countries we’ve seen, does alter foreign policy”. (Butselaar, 2011). Social media’s inherent qualities, which endow cyber-dissidents with the capacity to form an alternative, relatively more open public sphere; mobilise an opposition; and gain a more equal footing in the communication war, cannot be confined within national borders. Most social media are international platforms, which means that their reach is global. For this reason, activists appeal to the international community, the Diaspora, and global institutions for assistance and acts of solidarity. Social media is particularly important at this stage, since under repressive regimes, mainstream media is unlikely to publicise the dissidents’ claims and demands. Additionally, due to the relatively low figures of Internet penetration in the MENA region and the CIS countries, social media as a lobbying tool could possibly be more effective abroad and in the Diaspora community than it is at home. The appeal to the international community, targeting civil society, foreign governments and international institutions, is meant to provide the movement with support, either moral, such as the vote of resolutions condemning the regime, or physical, by providing the dissidents with financial and material means. Similarly, the international community can express its support of the opposition by exercising pressure or even adopting punitive measures against the regime, such as enforcing an embargo or freezing the assets of the ruling class. In some cases, the support can go as far as setting up a foreign 109

military intervention. A particular emphasis in the international media war is given to the Diaspora, which enjoys a special position, retaining a certain influence on policy matters at home and better positioned to plea for action abroad. The Diaspora can also act as a cultural bridge - translating into the local idioms the political and social background of the uprising and raising public awareness to the movement’s goals and to the regime’s shortcomings. This ‘in-between’ national status, as well as its financial situation, which can often be better than that of the indigenous society at home, make it an important and powerful ally. And yet, is it truly possible to assert social media’s capacity to alter foreign policy and promote greater international interference in cases of human rights abuse or violent repression of democratic movements? Can social media transform the world’s stance towards a repressive regime? Can it force it into action? In this chapter, we will trace the contours of social media action oriented towards enlisting the international community. We will address social media’s particular contribution to the way conflicts are perceived in the international sphere and how it can be restricted by certain political or social contexts. Finally, we will discuss the limits of the media in altering foreign policy.

We Are the World The information and communication technologies have transformed the world into a smaller place, enabling individuals from all parts of the world to communicate with one another, abolishing barriers of space and time. People who have never previously met and who, in other times, would not even know of each other’s existence, can now build ties and lasting relationships. Abolishing geographic frontiers and contracting distances, even if only on digital media, means that the ‘other’ ceases to be a foreign entity of suspicious intent. This does not mean that people would stop dividing society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ along national lines, but to a certain extent, the level of mistrust can be dropped. Social media made the very humanity of the ‘others’, the foreigners, slightly more palpable. Apart from establishing between individuals new points of contacts where previously none, or very few, existed, social media can also alter the way a society, as a whole, constructs an image of other peoples. Legacy media, mainly television and the press, were the leading conduits in the introduction of other cultures. They did this mostly by addressing issues of international importance. At times they displayed colourful images of national celebration. Mostly they showed pictures of disasters and wars. And yet, even at those times of human dramas, traditional media’s handling of violent conflicts abroad could hardly diminish the emotional distance between the ‘us’, the viewers, and 110

between the ‘them’, the victims. Undoubtedly, images of horror could shock the viewers in the West, but this shock could be dealt with by a soothing rationale that this horror could not be reproduced at home. Social media challenged this rationale, by modifying the basis of the journalistic coverage and by giving precedence to personal accounts. This means that in the coverage of civic unrest abroad, professional media objectivity (or at least its pretence) has gone to hell, contextual background stories were diluted and lucid analysis relegated to the margins. They were replaced by individual testimonies and intimate descriptions, relayed in real-time to the world, rough, unedited and uncut. This transformation of the journalistic report led to a primacy of the sentimental and the empathy over concerns such as realpolitik and national interests. The hardships of Chinese factory workers cease to be an exercise in macroeconomics and are absorbed, to a certain degree at least, as the sufferings of fellow men. Market and media globalisation also means that motives of unrest are no longer exotic oddities. Western commercial media have disseminated Western ideas and values throughout the world, not uniformly perhaps, but further than ever before (Cottle, 2011a). Subsequently, motives of political discontent are easier to understand, resting on ideals and aspirations that are shared by many. This makes empathy and identification easier, even for individuals of distant countries or even warring nations. Market globalisation reinforced this trend and created an economic bond between distinct regions, which meant that a crisis in one part of the globe became a concern in all of its parts. Thus, when young protesters took to the streets of Tunis, Cairo, and Homs, shouting for dignity and for the end of state abuse, TV viewers in Ashdod, Israel, and Baku, Azerbaijan, could relate. Ultimately, through social media, even local insurgencies can resonate with a global voice (Cottle & Lester, 2011a). Moreover, many national decisions nowadays are taken at the international level, beyond the reach and the influence of most people. The UN and its agencies may promote certain foreign policies, the IMF and the World Bank can dictate economic measures and global conglomerations can fundamentally change markets or even governments according to their needs. All countries share this loss of national sovereignty, at least to some extent. Since these developments are transnational, they are also dealt with on a transnational level. This reinforcement of shared political, social or ideological crises means that certain actions are taken at an international level. Networked communication systems mean that protests staged in disparate parts of the world can be jointly coordinated and presented to the world.

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“And it is here too [through the flows and formations of worldwide media and communication networks] that they often discharge their affect and effects on supporters, wider publics and different decision makers; whether by redefining the terms of public discourse, bolstering solidarities and identities of opposition, mobilizing supporters of shifting cultural horizons as well as seeking to influence political elites and government policies.” (Cottle, S. & Lester, L., 2011b, p. 4). The influence of social media on international affairs, or at least its popular perception, goes beyond creating an intimate knowledge of the claims and aspirations of peoples from far away countries. They also allow for a larger and broader dissemination of information and ideas concerning these issues among a wider public, beyond the usual, rather restricted crowd that would stop to browse the foreign section of a newspaper. Thus, foreign policies can become a matter of popular, or populist, debate, trickling to a bigger audience.

I’ll Send an SOS to the World Understanding the need to escalate the conflict to the international scene, activists use social media in a way that builds on their qualities as global communication instruments and weakens the established political frame. One problematic aspect of the existing political frame is the often-conservative interpretation legacy media offer to contentious politics, mentioned in the previous chapter. As demonstrated by Bowers (2011), these have a tendency, to this day, of favouring existing institutions over non-institutional sources in their coverage, leading to a skewed coverage of events that privileges the standing order, whether democratic or not. The ideal of pluralism is not respected and the opposition continues to be underrepresented (pp. 126127). Prior to the uprising against Mubarak´s regime, this propensity was certainly a part of Western coverage of opposition movements in Egypt, often depicted as either hostile Islamists or a potential threat to inter-religion and inter-ethnic peace in the country. In line with this tradition, the violent repression of the Maspero protest by military forces and the deaths that ensued were widely portrayed, both in Egypt and abroad, as the result of rioting demonstrators, thereby adopting unquestionably the military ruler’s interpretation of events. This official and media-promoted version was later disputed by witness accounts that pointed rather to military brutality and excessive and unjustified use of force. The demonstrators’ choice in Egypt and Tunisia to conduct peaceful protests, and the use of social media to document this, counteract the mainstream media’s traditional aversion to popular uprisings. The regimes may have announced they were fighting 112

reckless, lawless individuals undermining state security and social peace, and the media may have taken up this version of events for its own, in some cases, but the pictures that circulated told another story, one of purposeful, non-violent rallies. The brutal reaction of the security services served only to further credit the narrative proposed by the opposition and to undermine the regime’s legitimacy. Political movements are aware of this power, and they use it to their advantage, maximising the dramatic effect produced by the imbalance between their (mostly) pacific mobilisation and the State’s violent response. Again, social media play an essential part in this dramatisation, spreading a large volume of images that give credence to their side. Certain tragic events then become symbols that are taken up by the revolutionaries as their standard. This was the case of Neda, shot to death in the 2009 protests in Iran. Images of her falling wounded to the ground circulated all over the world and resonated strongly. Similarly, images of Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire served to ignite the whole Tunisian nation, while the picture of Khaled Said’s body added an accelerant to the simmering Egyptian street. 13-year-old Hamza Ali Al Khateeb, who went missing in Syria in April 2011 became the tragic figure of the uprising in the country and all over the world, after his tortured and mutilated body was returned to his family a month later. These are not new phenomena. The killing of Hector Pieterson, a boy of Hamza´s age shot in the 1976 student Uprising in Soweto had a similar effect at the time, gripping a whole nation and echoing the shock throughout the globe. The difference is that in all of the recent cases recorded in the MENA region, pictures of the deceased were taken by family members, or passersby, and later uploaded on YouTube and other social media by activists. The shock they engendered undermined the state posture and its moral foundations (Cottle, 2011b). The staging of the demonstration as a dramatic space, pitching the ‘good’ against the ‘evil’, does not always have to be tragic to catch worldwide attention. The organisers of anti-governmental protests in a Siberian town, for instance, went in January 2012 for a media gimmick that won them international interest, while forcing the local authorities into a reaction that bordered on ridicule. The activists first filed a request to conduct a demonstration in Barnaul, similar to those organised that winter in Moscow, which the town’s administration repeatedly rejected. Finally, the organisers chose to set up a public display of dolls and small toys, such as Lego figurines and teddy bears, holding up miniaturised signs condemning the ruling duo, Medvedev and Putin (Elder, 2012c). Normally, a demonstration in a mid-sized provincial town would hardly prompt media interest on a global scale. But in this case, the activists used skilfully the authorities’ restrictive measures, turning them into a farce on social media and making Barnaul’s administrators the losers of that battle, at least in the media field. The fact that the police chose to take up measures against the ‘doll’ protest only made it easier to cast it in the role of the villain. 113

The appeal to the international community can have unexpected results. In the case of the Arab uprisings, it seems that the sympathy it enlisted was also linked to a great feeling of shared grievances, hopes and aspirations throughout the MENA region, and even across the globe. The rallying cry of the Tunisian youth, proclaiming their right to live in dignity echoed powerfully in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, virtually every country in the region experienced upheavals of sorts. The uprising set off by Bouazizi’s desperate act ignited Egypt and led to the demise of its 30-year ruler. It also put an end to the 34 year-old rule and life of Libya’s Gaddafi and forced Yemmen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh out of office. Israel was besieged by protests during most of the summer of 2011 and Jordan’s authorities hastened to announce reforms, thus pre-empting social unrest. Syria, in the meantime, has been going through one of the darkest chapters of its history, and the fate of Assad, or that of his countrymen, remains unclear in the spring of 2012. This social and political regional cataclysm echoed in other parts of the world too, with the creation of the Indignados movement in Spain, which manifested itself in other EU States as well and finally metamorphosed into the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S. It is probably too soon to provide a definite analysis of this trans-national evolution. Still, for some commentators, social media played a particularly important role in this regard, acting as a potent, political ‘infectious agent’ (Howard et al., 2011).

Politics Through and the Real Diplomacy Considering all that has been said above, can we conclude that social media meaningfully transform foreign policy? The very fact of the international intervention in Libya could make this case a good starting point to address this question. The appeal to the international community proved crucial, since without it, it is quite possible Qaddafi would have had the upper hand, or the country would have sank into a long and excruciating civil war. Still, can we say without a doubt that this appeal is the effect of social media? Would it not have succeeded without their use? It is difficult to make such an assertion, especially considering the country’s low Internet penetration. Thus, even if social media were used to gain international support, their employment remained rather marginal. At any rate, Libya remains an extraordinary case, the international intervention, there, being the exception to the rule. Syria’s opposition, on the other hand, hasn’t enjoyed such a privilege. While the outrage towards Assad’s brutal methods has been growing by the day in the course of 2012, the international community is still at a loss, at the time of writing this, as to finding a solution that would save civilians from the regime’s daily violent raves, which result in quotidian loss of life, sometimes counted by the hundreds. The West and the Arab League were willing to impose sanctions, but these hardly 114

seemed to hamper Assad’s determination to quench the rebellion by the blood of his citizens. Russia and China, for a number of reasons, refused to adopt a resolution that would truly put the regime at risk, ultimately leading the world to a stance of impotence, if not one of indifference. Clearly, the actions of the Libyan dictator and the subsequent UN 1973 resolution for the protection of the country’s civilians, raised hopes of a new world order, where the UN Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine would not remain but mere words on paper, but translate to a definite action in the protection of human lives. Unfortunately, the events in Syria underlined just how long and arduous the road to such a new world order is. It would be wrong, though, to hang the blame on Russia and China alone for failing to implement a more just and humane foreign policy. The two countries opposed international intervention in Syria because this would endanger their interests. The West has acted similarly in the past. Its support of the Tunisian and Egyptian governments pre-uprisings is but one example. Granted, Ben Ali and Mubarak did not resort to measures as drastic as those adopted by Assad, but some of their policies were sanguine, nonetheless. Even after the uprisings began, the mobilisation of global public opinion had mitigated results. The world turned its gaze on Tunisia well into the rebellion, when Ben Ali was close to the brink. Nawaat shows that the number of tweets concerning Tunisia worldwide remained relatively low, with most interest elicited in France, where a big Tunisian Diaspora resides, and the Middle East. As for the political class, its lack of enthusiasm was even more blatant. Three days before Ben Ali was deposed, French Foreign Miniter, Michèle Alliot-Marie still proposed, in a public announcement, to send ‘French expertise’ to help the Tunisian regime deal with the demonstrating ruffians. Only one day later, two days before Ben Ali was gone, did the French Prime Minister, François Fillon, Catherin Ashton, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs, and the American Administration express some sympathy to the Tunisian liberation cause (Nawaat, 2011). The same slow reaction was repeated in Egypt, where politicians were just as cautious in condemning Mubarak’s exactions against the protesters, and where international public opinion remained divided on the desirability of a regime change. Political interests and realpolitik are not the only elements to distract the international community from making a positive stance in favour of democratic movements. Economic and financial interests can be just as powerful. The U.S. and the EU have proclaimed the promotion of democracy throughout the world an essential part of their foreign policy. They have adopted scores of legislation and measures that go in the same vein. And yet, to this day, these two most powerful Western entities have failed to stop the sale of technology widely used by authoritarian regimes against their people:

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“For years, European and American companies have been quietly selling surveillance equipment and software to dictatorships across the Middle East and North Africa -- products that have allowed these regimes to maintain a stranglehold over free expression, smother the flames of political dissent, and target individuals for arrest, torture and execution.” (Chambers & King, 2012). As a matter of fact, most regimes in the MENA region, but also among the CIS countries, don’t have adequate know-how to develop these tools, and so they are obliged to buy them from external providers. Western democracies, such as the US, France and the UK are the biggest exporters. The arsenal they propose is vast and advanced, including Trojan systems, malware and spyware. These systems are sold regularly in surveillance trade shows that have been dubbed the ‘Wiretappers’ Ball’. Between the years 2006 and 2009, these shows have been attended by surveillance agencies from Algeria, Belarus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Moldova, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, Tunisia and Ukraine, i.e. - 12 out of the 17 ENPI partner countriesXXIII. While the EU and the US have been adopting in the past years measures that restrict the sale of dual use technologies to dictators, the implementation of these measures is not always successful. The corporations that develop these tools are well versed in the arts of going around restrictions, and often find ways to put their products in the wrong hands. “The EU needs to be very, very strict and stop the sale of information technology to authoritarian states such as Russia and China, where dual use can be used for surveillance and censorship of populations and take away their human rights. The news that Western companies sold surveillance and censor technology to Ben Ali’s former government in Tunisia for “testing” with a significant discount should not come to anyone as a surprise, but as a warning to policy makers that this needs to be investigated and it needs to be stamped out. We should not be surprised if the FSB is surveying dissidents with technology purchased in Germany, France or the UK. A few weeks ago, the European parliament passed a resolution banning the sale of dual use technology to countries that have authoritarian governments. Now this needs to be implemented and it needs an urgent follow-up in all of the EU-27 Member States. To do this, I think that the EU should establish a commission, which will have diplomats, business and civil service, to assess and find out what is the right balance, and get a conversation going, so that we don’t have different aspects of the European Union working at cross-purposes across 116

the world. Nor do I think that the EU should hold back from naming and shaming companies that have been selling such dual use technology to Russia, China and some other Arab states. We could even consider having a branding system, forced on their products, within the EU, which have green for clean human rights record, or red, for having a history suspicious dealings with dictators.” (Judah, 2011).

Tidying up Your Backyard The difficulties of Western democracies in protecting basic human freedoms and brandishing the Internet as democracy’s standard also originates from their own uneasy attitude towards technology. Although their citizens enjoy a relatively high freedom of use, this freedom is not total, and it is under constant scrutiny and questioning from the authorities. Often citing reasons such as child pornography and the threat to intellectual property, democratic States adopt measures that restrict the use of Internet and social media. The reasons invoked are hard to dismiss. No one can make light of child abuse and the protection of intellectual property is anchored in law. Still, the broad, almost automatic reference to these two spectres begs the question whether they are not too easily employed, serving, as a matter of fact, to cover censoring practices which would be otherwise more difficult to explain. This is not a paranoid scenario. In their article, ‘When do States Disconnect Their Digital Networks?’ Howard, Agarwal and Hussain draw a startling picture of Internet censorship in the world (2011). According to their research, democracies do not hesitate to disconnect social networks used for collective political action. The main difference between democracies, emerging democracies and dictatorships is not so much in the frequency of the practice, as much as it is in the tactics adopted. “Surprisingly, we find that while authoritarian regimes practice controlling fullnetworks, , and nodes more than democracies, democracies are the most likely to target civil society actors by proxy by manipulating ISPs.” (Ibid, p. 224). Dictatorships tend to resort twice as often to the extreme measure of shutting down all access to the Internet, while democracies “are much more likely to engage in online content censorship than other tactics, although they also frequently target civil society members offline.” (Ibid, p. 225). 117

As the authors of the study remark, authoritarian regimes may attack individuals expressing criticism, but democracies are much better equipped, legally, to penalise users for online political activity that is deemed problematic (ibid, p. 226). One of the most publicised examples is the British prime minister’s proposal to restrict social media and to ban certain people from using them, following the August riots that shook England for four days in 2011. Cameron: “Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill [...] and when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality [...] I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers.” (Halliday, 2011). Cameron’s proposition has not yet been followed by any direct action, but the mere utterance of this idea was damaging for pro-democratic activists across the world, as autocratic rulers quickly applauded Britain’s head of State for his remarkable suggestion. Iran and China, for instance, were charmed by these developments (Somaiya, 2011). Another big censoring operation of global dimensions involves the U.S. and the European Union. Having failed to stop WikiLeaks from publishing documents they deemed damaging by legal means, the two entities pressured corporations to virtually drain the organisation of its financial means. This move was clearly aimed at pulling the plug out on the Internet whistle-blower and shutting down its operation. “The EU needs to realise that precedents for more Internet control are being set at home [...] The EU should heavily discourage Member States from making statements such as those that the British government made during the London riots, about controlling social media that indicated that the EU might be open to persuasion by Putin or China.” (Judah, 2011).

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The Double-Edged Endorsement of Online Activism The policy of Internet control and the intimidation of online activists in non-democratic countries prompted protest and condemnation in the democratic West, and led Hillary Clinton to declare Internet Freedom a matter of U.S. foreign policy, as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this attitude does not always bear the expected fruits. According to Morozov, the sudden interest in Internet regulation in repressive regimes led their rulers to pay even more attention to what goes on in the domestic Net, deducing logically, from Clinton’s position, that the media is a wormy can of dissidents that needs to be closely watched and tightly monitored. The American administration famously appealed to Twitter, asking the company to delay a programmed shut down of the service for maintenance purposes during the Iranian Green revolution, so as not to hamper the insurgency, which was supposedly reliant on the social medium. As Morozov indicates, the Iranian regime’s prompt response was to increase its clamp down on the Internet and on its suspected users. The endorsement of a particular activist by the West can also have disastrous consequences. For Lynch, encouragement of Internet and social media activism on the part of dissidents living in authoritarian states may have grave consequences, condemning them to harsh retaliation from security forces and government supporters. Therefore, promoting online activism, as long as the West is incapable of truly protecting those who practice it, is a highly irresponsible act, “the equivalent of painting a bull’s-eye” on the activists’ forehead (Lynch, M., 2009a). Lynch’s observations on the consequences of such a stand rose following the harassment and arrest by Egyptian security forces of Abd al-Monem Mahmoud, an active blogger for the Muslim Brotherhood, the most prominent opposition movement under Mubarak’s reign. As Lynch explains in his article, this surfeit of interest on behalf of the Egyptian authorities towards Mahmoud was partly the result of an article Lynch wrote about him, praising his political importance. An appeal to the international community can be regarded as problematic not only by the regime and its coalition, but also by other opposition movements, or within the group that makes the appeal. A great majority of Israelis, from almost all political parties, consider the mere expression of opposition to the country’s policies on an international forum an act similar to treason. In this, it is not unlike the situation in Iran today, where a strong internal opposition to the regime exists, but where external hostility to the regime and the internationally adopted sanctions tend rather to unite the nation and create a united, national front. In these cases, the use of social media as a global platform to condemn or criticise the existing political order can often lead to a backlash and raise against the media users the ire of their peers, going as far as verbal assaults and threats of death. 119

Equally disputable is the West’s insistence on providing technological solutions to problems of liberty. Clinton, in her famous speech of January 2010, vowed to promote the development and distribution of electronic systems that will allow dissidents to bypass censoring and surveillance measures used online by repressive regimes. Clinton’s promise did not remain an empty rhetorical exercise. As a matter of fact, the U.S. earmarked at least 45 million dollars in the years 2008-2010 for support of Internet freedom. But these large sums are too short by far to seriously put a dent in Internet censoring, which in a country like China, with 384 million users, would quickly soar to the hundreds of millions a year in bandwidth costs alone, if the U.S. decides to offer them an open Internet alternative to their national, censored one (Zuckerman, 2010). As Morozov explains extensively, the rush to produce technological answers to political problems is running in full steam. Unfortunately, the results are mitigated. Morozov brings up the infamous example of Haystack, an American company that got an export license to sell a system in Iran that will allow dissidents to get around state firewalls and hide politically oriented activity on the Net. The effort to get the system approved for export was arduous, accompanied by massive lobbying and media campaigns, which transformed the company and its founders into national champions of democracy. Haystack refused to put the system up for review in the U.S., claiming that publicising it would make it vulnerable once in Iran, as this would give the authorities an opportunity to get acquainted with it early on. Instead, the company asked a group of Iranian dissidents to act as its independent testers. Within a few hours of receiving the system, they concluded that the system was unsafe and would make it easier for the Iranian regime to actually track and identify its users (Morozov, pp. 207-208). Granted, Haystack is a rather extreme example of a failed promise delivered by dubious entrepreneurs. But is it enough to make broad assumptions about anti-censorship tools in general? Admittedly not, but there are other indications that engaging in this technological battle is not a productive endeavour. A report for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University reached some sobering conclusions about the capacity to provide technological fixes to the problem of censorship (Robert, Zuckerman, Faris, York, & Palfrey, 2011). The writers of the report, among them Internet enthusiasts such as Zuckerman, point out that their findings lead them to lose the faith they had in such measures: “Four years ago, we were reasonably sure that the developers of circumvention tools were winning the match against government censors. Not only is victory in that match less assured, now, the entire playing field has changed, and new technologies of control are far harder to defend against than national Internet filtering.

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While circumvention and anonymity tools are likely to continue to play an important role in digital activism in repressive online environments, investing disproportionate resources on technological solutions may be counter-productive. Increasing the performance and availability of circumvention tools may make it easier for a larger set of Internet users to access content that would otherwise be out of their reach, just as reducing the effective cost of using anonymity tools could make it safer for political dissidents to express themselves online and investments in more secure hosting solutions would reduce the vulnerability of independent media sites from malicious attacks. It is unclear though how advances in each of these ‘liberation technologies’ might contribute to freedom of expression online or political reform, particularly given that none of these changes would take place in a vacuum; to the extent that they succeed, all of these actions will shift the benefits and costs to repressive governments of implementing stricter Internet controls and investing in more sophisticated counter-measures. Defeating government Internet filters, even if feasible, may provide the catalyst for more draconian government restrictions. In such a context, it is impossible to predict whether these moves will ultimately increase or decrease online access to information and the ability of people to organize online.” The “Firewall” race, pitching repressive regimes and dissidents against each other, is a costly one, for all sides. Unfortunately, States are usually the ones who have the biggest financial leverage, compensating through investment for what they lack in appeal. This means that they can invest more in technological developments than those who wish to bring them down. But governments, too, are reluctant to spend money, if they can make someone else pay the bill. Most often, they tend to pass it on to the Internet companies, which must apply the censorship and surveillance tools, lest they lose their operating license. In this way, the regime can have these measures applied by the technological experts themselves, engaging in no cost on their side (Morozov, pp. 101-103).

On Fickleness In many cases, acts of political and social injustice are picked up by the media (social or not), which in turn broadcast the information widely. And yet, most of the time they are met with a general indifference. Corporate media is blamed for poor coverage of foreign conflicts, for the tabloidisation of news, and for its partisan stances. Still, with all its faults, it does occasionally report on tragedies from afar. Nevertheless, these stories seldom elicit a worldwide interest. For many analysts, social media can make the difference, transforming indifference into indignation and action. It is unclear for the moment 121

whether this is indeed true. But assuming it is, it remains a problematic claim, providing a somewhat dispiriting reflection on human empathy and engagement. What this means is that a televised coverage, or an in-depth article in the press is incapable of moving us into action. A YouTube video, on the other hand, or a Facebook status, can do just that. The question that arises then is: What are we reacting to? Are we touched by the tragedy we see in front of us, or are we affected by the technology? The theories and practices of social media are filled with terms such as ‘trending’ and ‘memes’, which are used to describe the continuous flow of changing vogues and fashions on the Net, and more specifically, on social media. These are the flavours of the day. Tomorrow, new ones will follow, pushing their predecessors to the desktop bin. Is it possible, then, that social media do not actually open us up to the suffering of others but merely allow us to adopt the latest trend in today’s politics? And what would be the trend tomorrow? After we have browsed to the next tragedy, would there be anyone to stay on the same page and keep a watchful eye on yesterday’s sad story, alerting us to the alarming developments? And what about the ones that never make it to the Net? What does that say about human empathy, if social media is needed for it to be exercised?

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Conclusion. The Future of Social Media as a Democratic Tool “Tomorrow’s media technologies will no doubt be still more breathtaking. Yet, at bottom, democracy simply cannot exist without input from its citizens - their participation. The character and forms of participation are evolving but can never be taken for granted. We cannot know what kinds of media-based civic cultures will develop in the future, but the struggle for democracy, for present and future generations, will remain inexorably political.” (Dahlgren, 2009, p. 202). “Internet and social media would not necessarily create democratically relevant journalism. The analysis, the investigative journalism, the intelligent comment, which allows people to make sense of the political and social environment, they are not very likely to appear, or at least not often, through social media or on the Internet in general. It could get there later, but it won’t appear without the incentives. [This democratic role needs to be nurtured over time.] You don’t just build it up and leave it there, for it to stand on its own. Freedom of expression does not stand. It can erode, as we have seen in the Eastern democracies. So every day we have to make the effort to keep it in place, put a little brick in the wall, every day.” (Nikoltchev, 2011). Considering all that has been said previously about social media’s multiple and contradictory effects on pro-democratic movements, what conclusions can we draw when we look at the events that took place at the EU’s southern and eastern borders? Which side has prevailed? Was it the technology-savvy dissident or the existing, conservative system, brandishing old values and holding fast to tradition? The Russian electoral season that started with the contested parliamentary elections in December 2011 and reached its climax with the re-election of Vladimir Putin as president was accompanied by a wave of protests against the country’s corrupt and biased voting process. The stars of the demonstrations were Alexei Navalny and Rustem Adagamov, the leading opposition bloggers in the country. Like Wael Ghonim in Egypt, those online pamphleteers came to represent the opposition parties in their country. This evolution, which gave online activists a front-line position in the contestation, led certain commentators to remark upon the transformative power of online presence effecting offline politics (de Carbonnel, 2011). The defiance of the regime online is no longer a mere appendix to a true resistance movement - it is the spearhead of the in123

surrection. This, at least, is the image widely projected by the political revolutions that swept over Europe’s ENP partners. But a year and a half after Tunisian youths sent the world reeling, an interim analysis of the actual situation in the MENA region and among Europe’s eastern neighbours, Russia chief among them, favours a more subdued interpretation of social media’s role in these passing events. Notwithstanding the massive work done by Putin’s critics on the Net, his party won the parliamentary elections, while he himself sailed smoothly to a third mandate at the head of his State. This contrast seems to validate Machleder and Asmolov’s assertion concerning the growing polarisation between the on- and offline communities (p. 6). Certainly, a closer look at the media coverage, proposed by national television on the one hand, and by bloggers on the other, confirms the existence of two Russias, one informed by the national television networks, and the other one getting its news coverage and analysis online. Whereas the former shied away initially from covering the anti-governmental demonstrations and broadcast soviet-style films praising Putin on all fronts, the latter was highly critical of the Putin-Medvedev duo and used the online platform to push back against the narrative promoted by television and the Kremlin (Stanley, 2012). “Russia’s social media users and TV audiences live in the same physical space but in two different information realities, and their responses to the very same event may be different as well.” (Machleder & Asmolov, p. 6). While the Russian blogosphere and social media platforms are brimming with contributions made by anti Putin and Medvedev activists, the two Russian politicians and the party they represent still enjoy a big support in their country, a support that has landed them a new, consecutive victory, 12 years after Putin first rose to power. A similar schism between the on- and offline populations can be seen in Egypt, one year after the overthrow of Mubarak. With the legislative elections giving the Islamist Brotherhood in Egypt an overwhelming majority and the Salafists the second place on the political podium, the country’s revolutionary youth seems to be increasingly setapart from the rest of society. During the months of the uprising, a majority of Egyptians have stood behind the protesters, fought by their side in the country’s city squares, and sent them messages of praise and comfort. Nevertheless, once the revolutionary page had been turned, a majority of citizens turned away from the liberal, westernised, democracy-seeking youths and gave its vote to the country’s traditional and conservative forces. The core values of Egypt’s society have remained the same, and although it has given its support to the insurrection, it could not identify with the spirit of liberalism that accompanied it (Roy, 2012). And so, a great divide is forming, between the urban 124

youth, that led the revolution and still cannot fully abandon the fight, and the rest of the population, largely rural, that chose to put its future in the hands of those representing more traditional values (Pommier, 2012). The rise of the Islamists has also marked the Tunisian and Moroccan elections, organised at the aftermath of the Arab uprisings. As in Egypt, the cyber community that led the contestation lost the political game to its Islamic parties, those same organisations that preferred, during the uprisings, to remain at the sidelines of the revolution, at least as an organised body. Undoubtedly, the situation in the MENA region and on the eastern borders of the EU is quickly evolving and we have yet to see the final outcome of the processes that have only began. Additionally, social media are still in their infancy. For them to become a true political weapon in contentious politics they need time to evolve. Similarly, their effect on political processes and pro-democratic movements cannot be gauged in such a restricted frame. And yet, notwithstanding all these reservations, the developments that took place in North Africa and Russia in the second half of 2011 and early 2012 seem to raise certain doubts about the sweeping optimistic reading of social media’s contribution to the downfall of repressive regimes. It appears that one of the major characteristics of social media powered movements, i.e. their horizontal, non-organised, and non-hierarchical structure, that allowed them to gain so much momentum and to appeal to such large segments of the population, are also their biggest weakness. In Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, the population, faced with the great void left after the disappearance of their decennial leaders, preferred to entrust its fate in the hands of the renowned, organised, experimented and well-implemented Islamic representatives. The bloggers who stood at the forefront of the revolution failed, or perhaps chose not to create an alternative organisation. They remained amorphous and thus, lost the legislative fight. Second, the digital divide clearly proved to be a problem, contradicting the assumptions made by Howards and Castells, detailed earlier. Both academics presumed that it is not necessary for the whole population to have access to the Net for a democratic movement to grow out of its midst. Perhaps they were right on this account, as the digital divide did not prevent the uprising. And yet, from the examples we have here, it may well seem that the divide inhibited the transformation of the social movement into a political entity with the capacity to influence the electoral process. Clearly, the digital divide, which stems from a socio-economic one, also contributes, in its way, to the creation of a cultural and political divide. In Russia and Egypt, and to a certain extent in Tunisia as well, the divide is only made more blatant by the recent elections, which drew a political map made of two distinct parts, with on the one side, the technology-savvy, connected, revolutionary youth, and on the other - the rest of society. Interestingly, a reversal of situations seems to occur. Contrary to academic discussion 125

of the problem, the digital divide does not favour those on the connected end. The elections in Egypt, Tunisia, and Russia have put victory in the camp of the “disconnected” who seem to have gained the political upper hand, while those who have access to the Internet and to social media find themselves relegated to the margins of society, at least in the political sense. Nonetheless, these two observations above concerning the failings of social mediated movements cannot, on their own, explain the big gap between the great popularity the revolutionary forces won and which transported them to victory over the regime, and between the overwhelming success of the Islamist, and even extreme-Islamist organisations in the post-uprising era. This raises the possibility of an additional structural weakness of social media in the organisation of anti-regime campaigns. The uprisings in the MENA region originated out of a popular frustration, without a political structure, with no leader or strictly formulated goal, aside from the universal aspirations to dignity, humanity and the end of corruption. These are movements that truly rose from the bottom up, fuelled by social rage. In this sense, they represent a genuinely new phenomenon - since the very beginning of the 20th century, no other movement has emerged in this way. It was probably the advent of the Internet that paved the road to this change, in which society as a whole, and not a political organisation, is initiating change (Badie, 2012). In effect, contemporary societies in North Africa and the Middle East had plenty of reasons to feel dissatisfied with their governments. Human rights abuse, unemployment, and corruption can only begin to describe the hardships felt by their populations. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Internet and social media could enable such a movement, uniting as they did disparate segments of society, separated by geographical, social, and cultural differences, who nonetheless share many grievances, both on a national and on a regional level. Thus, Internet and social media united different groups on the basis of the single goal they shared - the toppling of a system that was putting them down. Also in Israel, the mass protests of summer 2011 won substantial popular support that was not far from becoming a national consensus. Resting to a large extent on social media, where it also originated, the movement united a vast number of different socioeconomic groups, including students, young middle-class families, pensioners, new immigrants, Arab-Israelis, and many others. Their demands were fundamentally social, but varied in their focus. They called for a more protected, affordable housing market, cheaper education, greater social security, a revision of the taxation system, and more regulated market. The movement’s comprehensive programme attracted a crowd of followers never seen previously in the history of the country, following the pattern set in Tunisia, but mostly in Egypt. It raised the hope that Israel’s political system is about to change, that priorities will at last be redefined, and that human dignity will return to the country’s agenda. And yet, by fall, the movement was dead. 126

Interestingly enough, its premature death came about once the social process reached the political echelon. At that point, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pledged himself to the demonstrators’ cause and appointed a special committee tasked with studying ways to implement it. But the government, made up by an ultra-liberal coalition, had no such intentions and it managed deftly to bury the promises it made in a torrent of new, controversial legislation (Rinat, 2012). And yet, notwithstanding these mitigated results, the movement never re-emerged, even though Dafna Leef, the movement’s initiator, and a small number of militants tried vainly to breath a new life into it. And so, once more, a campaign that began on social media and garnered unparalleled support collapsed once it reached its realisation phase on the political level. In this constellation, it appears that social media work perfectly when it comes to bringing together disparate factions, who would otherwise not connect. The difficulty arises once the common goal is achieved. The cohesion factor is gone once the opposition breaks down into its most elementary parts. Alternatively, movements that addressed more specific issues that concern (at least in appearance) only certain, strictly defined groups in society, such as ethnic minorities or LBGT, never managed to transform social media into a communication tool that will bring them unprecedented visibility and promote their cause in a manner never achieved before. It seems, therefore, that social media can only play a meaningful role when they touch on matters of consensus, and those that appear to touch society at large. On the international front, social media did not fare better. The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East raised great hopes and expectations throughout the world. They may have stirred fears as well, but many empathised with the hopes and wishes expressed simply, and yet also passionately by those who fought some of the world’s most obscure regimes. Social media, along international networks such as Al Jazeera probably contributed to this, allowing the creation of points of contact and sympathy where previously there were none. Under such circumstances, it is much harder to remain impervious to the plights of others. Still, as Syria’s opposition can testify, this is not enough to seriously challenge realpolitik as the decisive factor in determining international policy. Since the wave of protest has reached Syria, the repression has continued relentlessly, in effect emptying all meaning of any attempt at a peaceful resolution. While Europe and Russia battled over definitions of peacekeeping missions, citizens were killed in the streets by the dozens. To at the time of writing this, more than 9,000 people lost their lives in this conflict (Hubbard, 2012). All know of this story, and the international media did not make light of them, nor did it attempt to hide them from the public eye. And yet, no cross-border movement of solidarity was created, demanding immediate, forceful action. And when finally a group of 300 UN observers were dispatched to the country, they appeared incapable of altering the reality on the ground as the killings continued, 127

seemingly without change (ibid). It isn’t lack of interest or ignorance that failed to bring immediate relief to Syria’s population, rather it is the policy of international relations, which requires unanimous decision before such a move can be made. It is also the fear of Russia and China of creating precedents for international intervention which might one day turn against them that made them stall a clear condemnation of Assad’s regime. At the face of such considerations, social media remain powerless, at least at the short run. To this day, social media failed to create consensus where it did not previously exist. This strongly hampers the capacity of social media to provide a solution to conflicts abroad or to even allow for measured support of dissidents. Does this mean that social media are powerless to bring about change? Was the hype surrounding them completely misplaced? Are all their communicative qualities merely the trappings of a consumer-oriented product? Not necessarily. Social media present a great potential, and this potential can be fulfilled, at least in part, if social media’s limitations are addressed and dealt with overtime. Those shortcomings that cannot be solved need to be taken into account and their effect entered into the overall appreciation of the tool and what it is hoped to achieve. The process of changing a repressive regime is a long and arduous one. The exact list of ingredients is still being debated and is not likely to be finalised in the near future. Ultimately, it is a process of trial and error, error for which the regime’s subjects are the first to pay. Therefore, any outside interference should be considered very carefully, running as it does the risk of backfiring in everyone’s face, particularly in that of the local opposition. Still, taken from the opposite direction, certain societal issues can indeed be dealt with, ones that would ultimately enable social media to play a greater part in pro-democratic processes. The social divide is one of the biggest problems hindering social media from playing a truly inclusive role. A movement cannot claim to represent a people if it is endorsed by means that are available to but a few. Beyond the basic, blatant contradiction between an exclusive system and pro-democratic pretensions, this paradox represents a concrete threat to the movement’s future. The consequence of an exclusive system is that only a fragment of society participates in drafting a programme or an agenda. The endorsement given by the population to the movement’s short or mid-term goals will ultimately mask the underlying rift in ideology and that in the long run, the movement and its support base may have contrasting interests. As we have seen in Russia and Egypt, this may or may not put an end to a repressive regime, but in any case, it leaves the movement at the edge of consensus and out of its goal’s reach. Moreover, the advent of social media makes the subject of media literacy all the more relevant in today’s societies. As we have previously seen, the participation potential of128

fered by this tool is immense and new, at least in scope. Never has mass communication been so close to individual use. This implies a greater responsibility on the user’s part, which in turn raises the need for greater knowledge - both of the promise held by social media and of the many dangers they encompass. Social media can promote the existence of echo chambers, they can be used to silence those who hold different opinions, they may replace a profound, meaningful engagement with a quick show of interest, easily expressed, easily gone. They also risk falling into a frenzied pursuit of the latest trending topic, avoiding a lasting commitment to the achievement of a goal that may require its supporters to take part in a continuous, arduous struggle. These dangers are not theoretical. In the context of pro-democratic movements they are very practical. Democratic processes require patience; they call for openness, inclusiveness, and intelligent debate. They need a long lasting dedication and the capacity to look beyond one’s own, restricted interests. They may be boring, they may be frustrating, as they can take as much as centuries until they fully mature. In this sense, social media will only be relevant if they can accompany these processes for as long as they last, without distractions or the mere quest of the hype. All these problems are known. To a certain extent, they can be solved, if media literacy is promoted.

A Final, Cautious, Optimistic Note In the spring of 2012, the Israeli government escalated its promotion of a military attack against Iran’s nuclear sites. The subject has dominated much of the Netanyahu’s visit to the U.S. in March of that year, and took a prominent place in both the American and the Israeli political agenda. A majority of Israelis are opposed to such a move (Heller, 2012), as well as the country’s defence establishment (Sherwood, 2012), but this has not deterred the country’s prime minister and his defence minister from tirelessly pushing for international support of this Israeli move. In the face of such a stark dissention between the country’s political class and the population, an Israeli couple started what seemed like a doomed, naive, Facebook gimmick. Michal Tamir and Ronny Edry posted on their page pictures showing them with their children, with captions declaring their love for the Iranians. In essence, those messages read, “Iranians, we love you”, and “We would never bomb you”. At first, the couple attracted hostility and antagonism from Israelis, who judged their actions naive at best. But a few days later, they started getting positive messages and support, with fellow countrymen and women joining their initiative and sending their messages of love (Saar, S. 2012). They then opened a new group on Facebook they named Love & PeaceXXIV and created the israelovesiran.com website.

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Soon, the Israeli initiative was met with a similar Iranian response which filled both Facebook page and website, replete with posters, videos, and pictures of the so-called archenemies proclaiming friendship and love. One of those messages, an unusually long one, read: “I send the Israeli people my warmest Iranian regards and I wish that someday we Iranians can befriend you without fear, that we can welcome you in our ancient Iran (Persia) and you can enjoy the hospitality, friendship and good will of the Iranian people. I wish that someday Iranians and Israelis can meet each other the way they meet the other nations and discuss whatever they like, whatever that there is in their hearts... To say the words: “I love you my dearest Israeli companions from the bottom of my heart.”” (Iran Loves Israel, n.d., 2012). The messages often contained promises of one side not to bomb the other, but ultimately, it is difficult to imagine how these promises could ever be kept, when the Israeli government finally decides to go on the warpath, or when the Iranian administration engages in hostile action. It is hard to imagine the power holders stooping to listen to a handful of voices rising from their peoples. Nevertheless, whatever will be the final outcome, the grassroots attempt at peace processing is an admirable one, and could hardly have taken place between two societies at war without social media, at a time when no other venue for dialogue exists. The vast majority of Israelis and Iranians know nothing of their supposed foe, a situation that feeds the atmosphere of mutual suspicion and projected hostility. Still, the Israel Loves Iran initiative, through social media, provided a unique opportunity to break through the wall of frenzied drum beats resonating in the political discourse. As such, it gave the citizens of both countries a glimpse at what relations between them could be, in effect deflating state propaganda and mainstream media posturing. At best, this could lead to a true boost of the peace camp in the Middle East. At worst, it would remain a valuable lesson in unmasking the pervading propaganda, its futility, and inherent misconceptions.

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