PublicWorldOpinion.org just released its report on international public opinion, internet censorship, and media freedom.

They polled 18,122 people in 20 nations: China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Britain, Egypt, France, Iran, Jordan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, and the Palestinian Territories.

Some of the findings:

• 81% of people surveyed around the world say the media freedom is important.
• Around 51% of those surveyed worldwide prefer media freedom without government control – even if government controlled will prevent the media from publishing politically destabilizing information. This includes, interestingly enough, 96% of those surveyed in Peru.
• 71% of those polled in China say that “people should have the right to read whatever is on the Internet. Only about 21% agree with the government’s limitation on access to information online.
• 63% percent of those surveyed in Jordan and 44% of those surveyed in Iran do not endorse full access to the Internet.

Is mobile culture making human beings a whole lot worse or a whole lot better? It depends upon who you talk to: western psychologists or user anthropologists in the developing world.

ZOMG Noes!

According to an article called “Homo Mobilis” in the April 10^th edition of The Economist, linguists and psychologists at schools like American University and MIT think that Western youth culture is on a slippery slope, and that our mobile phones are pushing us overboard.

Why? Well, when people text each other we use short hand, and we don’t always follow grammatical rules, making mobile language as varied and variable as Middle English poetry. If language is the primary vehicle for thought, the argument goes, then what does mobile shorthand say for the way people think and reason?

The article quotes MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, who believes that gadget culture is changing us:

In the distant, landline-dominated past, she says, people thought: “I have a feeling so I want to make a call.” Young people today, including Ms Turkle’s teenage daughter, seem to be thinking instead: “I want to have a feeling, so I need to make a call.” What she means is that there is something inorganic, derivative and inauthentic about a lot of mobile communication. As a species, Ms Turkle thinks, we run the risk of letting the permanent wireless social clouds that surround us steal part of our nature.

The context here is obviously somewhat negative. We’re not evolving toward something greater. Rather, we’re becoming somewhat worse than our parents and grandparents. The medium is simply too just-in-time.

SMS FTW

But what does this say about the very positive role that mobile technology has played in the developing world?

In yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine, author Sara Corbett wonders “Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?” Corbett paints a strikingly different picture of the ways in which mobile culture is helping families across much of the world.

Corbett looks at mobile banking (Wizzit in South Afria and GCash in Philippines), farming cooperatives in Nepal aided by local sales agents who check market prices on their mobile phones (a project of International Development Enterprises), and phone ladies in Bangladesh, who function as mobile phone operators for their villages and change a small commission so that fellow villages can make and receive calls (a project of Grameen Phone LTD).

The same features that make mobile culture so threatening to scholars in the United States make it so valuable in the rest of the world. Corbett writes,

A “just in time” moment afforded by a cellphone looks a lot different to a mother in Uganda who needs to carry a child with malaria three hours to visit the nearest doctor but who would like to know first whether that doctor is even in town. It looks different, too, to the rural Ugandan doctor who, faced with an emergency, is able to request information via text message from a hospital in Kampala.

Neways

So give a mobile phone to a 17 year-old American girl, and she’ll devolve into a prehistoric being who can’t communicate properly or engage in healthy relationships. But give the same mobile phone to a 17 year-old girl in Bangladesh, and she’ll become an innovative entrepreneur?

Something doesn’t quite connect.

With the greatest respect for my colleagues at American universities (and for whistle-blowers in general), whose knowledge I greatly value and whose expertise in their chosen fields of discipline well exceeds my own, I think perhaps the time has come to stop viewing gadgetry, mobile culture, and the media consumption patterns of young people through a frame of fear, within the context that just because my kids do something differently, then it must be wrong. Let’s watch and see what happens. I think we might all be pleasantly surprised by how innovative mobile culture can be.

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.

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.

During the last couple of elections, there was a big push towards e-voting. I think that is the right way to go in the long run, but we are definitely late to the e-voting party. Besides late adoption, another issue is the general lack of trust we have for e-voting systems, though to be fair, they have brought this upon themselves.

While we try to get an e-voting system in place, Estonia is leaving us behind. According to this article the ruling Reform Party in Estonia is planning an amendment to allow people to vote via mobile phone, m-voting. They hope to have a viable system in place for the 2009 local elections, which is no doubt ambitious.

Hopefully e-voting will become the de facto method here soon, but even when it does, we still might be playing catch-up to other nations when it comes to voting technology.

The junta regime in Burma is facing massive protests again, this time led by the country’s monks. Unlike the last major protests, people around the world are paying attention this time. The Burmese government tries to be secretive and control communications, but with the spread of blogs and other new media, it is proving too difficult.

This Guardian Unlimited piece details some of the blogging going on in Burma. A search on Facebook for “Burma monks” shows 40 groups wanting to support these protesters. Over on the BBC website, some news pieces are using video footage that has been sent to them from inside Burma. Some people inside Burma were saying the government has decreased internet bandwidth and cut phone lines to slow down and prevent communications with the outside world. A lot of the footage and reporting coming from Burma is done through networks of underground individuals who risk being arrested on the spot. They believe the story must be told, and the rest of the world is watching.

Images and blogging are here.

Minute-by-minute accounts here.

What do you do when suspect that the chairman of your Commission on Elections received bribes to support a bid from Chinese company to provide your country’s broadband network?

If belong to Filipino group TxtPower, then you post a catchy protest video on YouTube and produce a ring tone. And you produce them in record time – placing your message in the phones and the screens about as quickly as the news hits the media.

This week, President Gloria Arroyo announced that investigations into allegations of a bribery scandal involving Chinese company Zhong Xing Telecommunication Equipment Corp. (ZTE) and Benjamin Abalos, Chairman of the Commission on Elections in Philippines turned up nothing.

Arroyo had previously suspended a $330 million contract awarded from the government to ZTE to provide the country’s broadband network pending the outcome of these investigations.

TxTPower was more than a little skeptical of Arroyo’s decision, and posted the video ZTE Scandal on YouTube a few days ago.

They also launched a ringtone on the TxtPower website, which we were unable to access.

Alexander and Caveh, two of the creators of www.Straight2theCandidates.com visited IPDI Labs this week. They have developed a platform that allows many-to-one communications. It is sort of an inverse blog. We all know that a blog works by one person, or group, posting on it, then many people can read it. Their system allows many people to post questions, then other people can vote those questions up or down so that the most popular questions make it to the top of list. Whose list you might wonder? They originally developed it for communications with politicians, but it has many applications. A company, a famous actor, or a musician could all use this system to communicate with the masses. One nice feature is that anyone who voted on a question that gets answered automatically receives the answer.

In case that’s hard to follow, here’s an example:
Let’s say that Senator John Doe is using their platform. I want to ask John a question about his position on stem cell research. I go to his straight2who site and look over the questions that other people asked. If no one has asked my question, I submit a new question. But, if my question already exists, I vote for that question. If enough people vote for the question, it moves up the list. If the question makes it into the top 3 or so questions, John Doe will answer it. His answers will appear on the site as well as get emailed around to those people who voted on the question.

Alex and I had time for a little Q&A:
IPDI: How did you come up with this idea?
Alexander: As students we had another idea, but couldn’t receive a government grant. We wrote to and emailed the Chancellor, but because the Chancellor receives so much communication, all we received were automatic responses. She later started to talk directly to the citizens using videopodcasts on her website. One of the episodes was about announcing grants for innovative technologies. Sitting in front of the laptop Caveh wanted to jump into the monitor to tell her we are there, but there was no way to do that. And because we already knew that sending email resulted in automatic answers we just decided to set up the back channel to her. The result of hard time, working and sleeping in the office: a brand new way for everyone to communicate faster with politicians.

IPDI: How willing have politicians been to cooperate?
Alexander: The site has just started so it’s difficult to say at this point.

They did show us a few sites that have been setup for German politicians, and they informed us that the Chancellor answers the top three questions on her site every week. She usually responds within three or four days which is apparently unheard of in Germany. They said that it normally takes a few weeks to receive responses.

IPDI: If you could interview one candidate for the site, any candidate, who would it be and why?
Alexander: I have to stay neutral.
Laughter
IPDI: There is no one candidate that you really want?
Caveh: The candidate who is the best for the United States and the world.

IPDI: Technologically, what was the hardest obstacle to overcome?
Alexander: We used Ruby on Rails, but not everyone knew the language. Having everyone learn and understand Ruby on Rails was one of the most difficult parts.

IPDI: What new technology on the horizon are you excited about?
Alexander: The spread of video and video applications on the Internet. It started with plain text, then color text, then sound, and now video technology is getting popular. Many people said there wouldn’t be enough bandwidth, but its spreading quickly.

The site was nice to see in action. It has some other nice features such as the ability to make a video questions (CNN/YouTube anyone?) or to embed video that is hosted somewhere else. People are allowed to comment on the questions so that discussion can be person-to-person as well as person-to-politician. Of course they have a group on Facebook, and they said their software would integrate with the Facebook platform. I hope their platform gains popularity here as well so we can see easier interaction between politicians and the masses.