The World Information Access Project reports that 64 citizen around the world unaffiliated with major media companies have been arrested for their blogging activities. Average jail time is 15 months. Some bloggers were jailed for as little as a few hours, while others were jailed for as long as eight years.

According to the report, the Middle East and Asia are the two areas with the most arrests. Egypt arrested 14 bloggers since 2003, China arrested 12 bloggers, and Iran arrested eight bloggers.

Most of the bloggers arrested are young-ish, varying in age from 21 to 45.

WIA used Lexis Nexis and Google News to accumulate their research. They only recorded stories reported in online media, which means that countless other arrested bloggers are not included in their research. This invisible group is, perhaps, the one that matters most — untrackable but sitting behind bars somewhere for the crime of posting something online.

Check out the analysis and charts and graphs.

It’s 2008. We call this the digital era. Yet, in the United States we seem to lack political leaders with a vision for technology, much less an interest in the ways technology can make all levels of government services more efficient, effective, and accessible to regular voters.

Yes, indeed, the rumblings are starting to get a little louder – snuggled, as they currently are, within our niche community of tech-savvy politicos and politics-friendly techies. Is a technology transformation upon us?

For some, the transformation begins when elected officials use technology to listen. There’s a word – listening. In the middle of an election season that has seen a glut of staged conversations, online and offline. Andrew Feinberg rants about some of these so-called listening exercises today at Capitol Valley. There’s a difference between talker at voters and listening to them.

Talkers get headlines. Listeners get things done.

Like fixing potholes and handling case work, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. A year ago, IPDI published Constituent Relationship Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics, which looks how political campaigns and elected office can use online and offline feedback loops to run case management and constituent communications. Many elected officials and political candidates already use database platforms to help this process.

The next step? Government institutions that employ tech-enabled feedback loops to deliver better goods and services.

In their Politico column, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry write about some of the ways in which foreign citizens and governments are using technology to listen and act, including e-petitions in the United Kingdom and the government of New Zealand’s wiki for a new Policing Act. As Rasiej and Sifry put it, you can use the Internet to file your taxes, but you can’t use it to make suggestions on how your tax dollars ought to be spent:

Imagine then, that the next time you file your taxes online, your government asks for your feedback on how those tax dollars are being spent. Or it takes your suggestions on how to make a law more understandable. Or it helps you find groups near you that are doing things that benefit your community. It may sound mundane, but today in America, it would be the equivalent of a revolution. How much longer do we have to wait to bridge yet another digital divide?

What about tech policy?

At the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Robert D. Atkinson writes,

we need a debate in America that focuses on the most important issues like to get fast broadband networks to all Americans; how to use IT to transform our health care system, transportation system, education system, and government; and how to encourage all organizations to become digital, thereby driving productivity and income growth and a better quality of life.

Atkinson thinks that better private-public partnerships can help create an environment of “digital transformation.”

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller blogs about the successful efforts of blogger and member of the California Democratic Party platform committee, Dante Atkins, to get Net Neutrality in the party platform:

California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet. California Democrats strongly agree with recent rulings by the Federal Election Commission that political communications, including blogging, which take place independent of a political party, committee or candidate, receive a media exemption from campaign finance regulations. California Democrats further reaffirm their support of the right to free speech as expressed in the First Amendment, including the right to critique any elected official or comment on any and all public policy, whether during war or peace, without fear of reprisal.

 Perhaps it is time that we — voters that we are — begin to expect more from our elected officials and encourage digital leadership on our blogs as well as in our voting booths.

Two of the latest attempts to block dissenting political dialogue and multimedia:

China

The AP reports that China blocked access to YouTube this weekend, after videos began appearing late Saturday night about Tibet protests in Lhasa and around the world.

Iran

NewScientistTech reports that the Iranian government began blocking four sites of political insiders and conservatives critical of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the two weeks leading up to Parliamentary elections on Friday.

Next Thursday (February 7^th) IPDI and GW’s Graduate School of Political Management are hosting a postmortem Super Tuesday discussion that will look at

• How has this primary session challenged and confirmed the expectations of pollsters, political analysts, and the media?
• How has technology shaped the way the primaries will unfold?
• Did Super Tuesday change the political game?

Speakers include Mike Allen (Politico), Ana Marie Cox (Time.com), Charles Ellison (BlackPolicy.org and IPDI), Frank Greer (GMMB), Mark McKinnon (Public Strategies and President of Maverick Media) and Maya Rockeymoore (Global Policy Solutions). Ron Faucheux, a faculty member at the Graduate School of Political Management, will moderate the discussion.

Details:

Thursday, February 7, 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

The Jack Morton Auditorium, located on the first floor of GW’s Media and Public Affairs Building, 805 21^st Street, NW (Corner of 21^st and H Streets), Washington, DC 20052

RSVP is required. RSVP to ipdi@ipdi.org. More details here.

Speaking of events, check out the lineup at our annual Politics Online Conference. Tickets are filling up extraordinarily fast, and we’re one month out. Register soon!

Last week at Steven Clift’s eGov discussion, someone asked, “after the 2008 election, will the new White House have a blog?”

Most everyone said yes.

I sat silently thinking, “Well, no. Not a real blog. Not a blog in the sense that people post things without first obtaining dozens of final approvals. Not a blog with comments (hey, that wouldn’t be too terribly different from ours). Not a blog with interesting, substantial posts.”

No, I thought. There will not be a blog. Not in 2009 and not for some time after. That’s just the way the presidency works.

I obviously skew toward the cynical, which leaves plenty of room for pleasant surprises.

It hasn’t been a secret that over the course of the past few days, administration staffers have posted trip notes about President Bush’s trip to the Middle East.

It’s not a blog exactly – a point that others have most likely pointed out – but it is a start. It certainly looks well produced. Cynical me found the journal-style posts Dana Perino, Bill McGurn and others very interesting, akin to reading about someone’s travel adventures. Sure, they appeared to be sprinkled here and there with talking points, but at this point, the intrigue factor is hitting me higher than the cynical factor.

Is this a frank discussion about the Bush administration’s foreign policy? No. And frankly, I don’t think it is intended to be just that, even though I think just that would be an incredible exercise. I look forward to the day when online voters and an administration can dialogue about policy – online or offline. Particularly online.

Is it a very interesting look at what it’s like to travel with the President in the Middle East? Definitely. A geek like me was hooked at “We ate dinner [on the flight] while watching the New Hampshire primary returns come in.”

So what is this good for? On one level, putting some nice faces and good stories on the administration can’t hurt. Gee, I thought while reading through the notes, policy differences aside, what a fun group of people to travel with.

One another level, let’s hope this is another step in the ladder of an administration – any administration – using the Internet to reach out to voters and chronicle the politics of, well, politics.

Another step is Ask the White House.

Higher up on the ladder?

Both of these tools, while interesting, give the administration another chance to speak. In the future, however, perhaps we will start to see tools that encourage another part of conversation: active listening.

Last week, I moaned about why I thought the CNN/YouTube Republican Presidential Debate was a little bit off. I wanted to see more substance and less circus.

This week, I invited a group of new and traditional media practitioners and analysts over to IPDI for lunch and conversation. We wanted to begin a conversation about what future technology-powered debates should look like.

You can read our memo at: http://www.ipdi.org/uploadedfiles/Future%20tech%20debates.pdf

Not a free for all

Part of our conversation centered on the role that gatekeepers play in the debate process. Most of the room coalesced around the idea that holding free-for-all style voting online to set the debate agenda and determine which questions will be asked. The room felt that some kind of gatekeeper or mediator was needed to add order and structure to the debate and keep the process fair. In other words, we thought that some control was good. We tried to think of recommendations that balanced the need for order and some control with our desire to make the debate agenda-setting process more transparent and interactive.

New model wanted

At the same time, we couldn’t ignore the fact that the great American presidential debate model is beginning to feel a little outdated, an aging device from a broadcast era. We felt that in order to engage the viewers and voters of the future, the debate model itself most adapt to changing expectations and media consumption habits.

Here are our recommendations:

1. Balance the role of the debate mediator, whether that mediator is a broadcast media company, political party, or technology company, in setting the debate agenda and selecting questions with a representative sample of the American public. This can occur in many ways. For example, one possibility is developing a focus group comprised of partisan and centrist members of the American public to help select questions and engage in providing commentary and follow-up question during the debate – online and on television.
2. Make the traditional post-debate coverage more interactive. Instead of following up with the candidates and pundits, incorporate questions, comments, and push back from the audience. Ask the candidate’s follow-up questions from an online forum or offline focus group. Incorporate comments from live bloggers or people texting into the debate.
3. Publish the debate mediator’s criteria for selecting questions and setting the debate on the Internet and allow moderated feedback from the public.
4. Use the Internet to generate substantial discussions about policy before, during, and after the debate.
   1. Before – Consider allowing each candidate’s campaign to use a portion of your website to post policy position papers or other forms of online media, and make these positions and opinions easily accessible, searchable, and comparable by the public.
   2. During – Consider incorporating different channels of live communication and publishing into your webcast or broadcast. This might include, for example, publishing an online “fact checking squad” that researches statements the candidate’s make and publishes the results online in real time. Allow campaign staffers to post evidence that supports their candidates’ statements in real time. Another idea might be to publish ongoing comments from a panel of issues experts.
   3. After – Incorporate the comments of live bloggers and online audience members into post debate commentary and interviews with the candidates. Ask on- and offline focus group members to discuss what they felt were key moments from the debate.
5. Create and post community guidelines on all debate discussion fora to generate a spirit of respect and quickly remove abusive or spam posts.
6. Use technology that is ubiquitous and uncomplicated, so that even those who are familiar with wikis or posting video will feel comfortable participating.
7. Establish anti-sabotage measures on all online fora and voting mechanisms to prevent people from gaming the system.
8. Use split screens on television broadcast so that users without high speed internet access can follow the dialogue and participate in the discussion by as many ways as possible – text message, email, phone calls, instant message etc.
9. If you want to generate substance-driven user-generated content, such as web videos, questions, or commentary, then make your “ask” specific and policy-focused. For example, ask people to contribute questions that address a specific policy issue or set of policy issues.

Epilogue

We post these recommendations as a strawman. We certainly don’t have all the answers, and we hope that further reflection and discussion will enhance the dialogue and perhaps lead us to a more nuanced understanding of how technology should and will shape the future of presidential debates in the future.

Please add to the discussion. Email your ideas to ipdi@ipdi.org.

Will the academic study of the Internet ever set standards for the practices of political operatives, campaigns and politicians, or will it forever be trying to play catch up to the constantly changing technology?

This was one of the most interesting questions that I received after presenting my undergraduate thesis yesterday afternoon. My initial thought is that for the foreseeable future scholarship of the Internet would not be able to catch up to constantly changing technology. If anything, the constant push towards advancement and the presence of hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent on acquiring Internet companies is allowing technology to increase its metaphorical lead over academics. I come to this conclusion after reading two dozen scholarly books and articles about politics and the Internet, only a few of which had any salience towards current practice. The lack of conclusions that can be turned into actual practice is not because of bad research (in all but a few cases), but rather because the technology discussed is outdated, even though all of the studies have been conducted in the last 8 years.

My thesis- a literature review of the study of the Internet’s effect on political communications and democracy- identified six main areas or questions that scholars have been considering when approaching the topic of online politics:

1. How does the Internet Age of political communications fit into the history of media and politics? What forces drove the Internet Age to come about?
2. How has the Internet changed the process through which politicians, professional political communicators, campaigns and organizations operate? What may the future hold?
3. What is a blog? What effects do blogs have on political discourse? What societal and political norms do they advance? What is the personal, social and political influence of blogs?
4. What are the implications on democratic societies of Internet-users who can choose what news content they consume?
5. What is the relationship between Internet use and individual-level production of social capital as it relates to politics? Are there generational differences
6. What are the consequences of the growing digital divide on democratic societies as the Internet continues to gain prominence and utilities?

Admittedly, these categories are from perfect. In my opinion this is driven by an overall lack of homogeneity in the study of the Internet. In my research I found that very few scholars are trying to refine or challenge other scholars already published studies. Instead, most scholars are tackling a new aspect of the Internet and trying to put their mark on an emerging field. In the very simplest terms, this makes synthesizing the research more difficult for my thesis; however, it brings up the major question I ask at the end of my thesis: What questions do academics need to focus on in the future of the study of politics in the Internet sphere? And how do they need to approach their studies differently?

Here are some of my initial thoughts:

1. Has the Internet’s significance in political actions changed over time?
2. Do social networking activities have an effect on political campaign? Can politicians target likely voters with the personal information provided by users on their social networking webpages?
3. What are the driving factors in political activities online? Political needs or technology improvements?
4. What are the implications of online micro-donations in political campaigns?

I’d like to start a conversation in the comment potion of this blog post on other questions that scholars should be asking.

Here is the entire Powerpoint I used during my presentation.

Thinking about blogging from the ’08 Olympics next year? Watch out – you could be putting yourself at risk. That’s what the Committee to Protect Journalists warns online and offline journalists as many media outlets and individual bloggers prepare for the summer games.

According to a report released by CPJ in August, nineteen domestic online writers are now imprisoned by the Chinese government. That report, Falling Short, largely looks at domestic accounts of press censorship – emphasis on the term “domestic.” In fact the Chinese government appears to have more of an interest in controlling domestic online and offline media than controlling messages in foreign press.

What’s startling about the report isn’t necessarily its depictions of censorship, jailings of journalists, or harassment from local political leaders (although they do provide a sharp contrast to what we tend to expect in our own country). Rather, what strikes one the most is the report’s list of suggestions for foreigners covering the Olympics, including recommendations of topics to avoid and a list of tips for detained writers.

The publication includes the following dialogue, taken from an English phrasebook for police. The handbook uses a scenario of a police officer trying to stop a reporter for covering the Falun Gong:

Chinese Police Officer: “Excuse me, sir. Stop, please. It’s beyond the limit of your coverage and illegal. As a foreign reporter in China you should obey China law and do nothing against your status.”

Foreign Reporter: “Oh, I see. May I go now?”

Chinese Police Officer: “No. Come with us.”

Foreign Reporter: “What for?”

Chinese Police Officer: “To clear up this matter.”

Reporters representing major media outlets are one thing. After all, they are often backed by large, prestigious corporations. What might happen if an individual online journalist replaces the reporter in the scenario?

To view CPJ’s list of tips and to read more about the media in China, visit http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2007/Falling_Short/China/.

There’s a creepy scene at the beginning of the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which Charlie and a strange man stand outside the gates of the chocolate factory. The man, referring to the factory, says “nobody ever goes in; nobody ever comes out.”

This is all well and good in factories. But what’s a government to do when information about the goings-on instead its borders appear to threaten state security? The same thing: shut down the gates.

That’s what the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) did in Burma a few weeks ago when the less than 1 percent of its citizens who do have Internet access used it to post camera phone pictures and blogs about protests in Rangoon. The power of citizen media, the stirring images it produced, and the growing support for the protestors within the global community, led the government to shut down the country’s two ISPs, Myanmar Posts and Telecom (MPT) and Bagan/Myanmar Teleport (BaganNet) sporadically, then completely, then sporadically between September 29 and October 16. The idea was to prevent citizen coverage of the protests from reaching outsiders and outside signs of support and solidarity from reaching its citizens.

Now, the OpenNet Initiative tells you how the government did it in its latest report, Pulling the Plug. Author Stephanie Wang writes,

Burma provides a rare example of a government also taking extreme measures to keep information from escaping its borders. In pulling the plug on the Internet Burma became only the second country to resort to such drastic action; in 2005 King Gyanendra of Nepal declared martial law and briefly shut down the Internet, along with international telephone lines and cellular communications networks.

Like any factory with a security threat, the government didn’t stop at shutting the gates. It also started identifying protestors using protest footage. Wang reports that security forces in Mandalay checked motorcycle registrations against footage of the protests, pinpointing and cracking down on protestors using the same medium as the citizen journalists.

The point of the crackdown might have been to prevent nothing from coming in and nothing from going out, but that doesn’t mean that something wasn’t circulating from within. Wang alludes to the incident as an illustration of the power of citizen journalism to share up a nation and a global community.

But there is something else, something just beneath the surface, something about a government watching and adopting the tactics of a dissident citizen force. If a government wants to keep up with techno-powered dissidents (even in a country with one of the smallest Internet populations in the world), it behooves the government to quickly, nimbly and quietly (or not so quietly) think and even act like a dissident.

There is a proposed law in Italy which would require “that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money” (emphasis not mine). Quote from this Italian blogger/comedian. The link to the boing boing article is here.

This is obviously a bad idea. New blogs pop up constantly and starting them requires little to no effort. This proposed law would change that, in Italy at least. Sharing your opinion, especially via the Internet should be simple and straight forward. It’s true that lots of ridiculous things are said on blogs, but making it difficult near impossible to create or maintain one is not a solution to that problem at all. It seems to me like a veiled attempt at censorship.