Session One: Rebecca MacKinnon

The inimitable Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices and free expression expert in her own right, opened the day with a talk not all that dissimilar from her recent TED talk. The premise of Rebecca’s talk–as well as her upcoming book–is the fight for a citizen-centric Internet, rather than one controlled by governments. She, like I, has particular focus on the role of companies (Rebecca is also a founding member of the Global Network Initiative), and today discussed the role Tunisians–whom she says have just hit the “reset” button–could play in introducing new and innovative regulation that is citizen-focused.

Session Two: Tweeting the Revolution(s)

The second panel featured Ahmed Al-Omran (@ahmed), Hisham Al Miraat (@__hisham), Manal Hassan (@manal), @RedRazan, and was moderated by Nasser Weddady (@weddady). I unfortunately was unable to connect to the Internet during the panel, but @nmoawad, @techsoc and others did a great job of live-tweeting in English.

The main premise agreed upon by all panelists was the role that Twitter was less an organizing tool, and more a tool to allow users to draw a bridge between journalists/mainstream media and the people/citizen journalists. One major point worth noting, and agreed upon by Manal and @redrazan, is in respect to objectivity: citizen journalists, they emphasized, need not be wholly objective. They’re involved, it’s only natural that their views and reports will have a slant.

I can’t emphasize this point enough: I often hear MSM mainstays claim that to be the problem with the blogosphere; on the contrary, I believe that no one is truly objective, and that I would rather see an admittedly subjective player reporting his/her surroundings than a Tom Friedman sputtering bullshit without knowledge of the country he’s in. Of course, there are wonderful mainstream journalists–I’m not a hater, so to speak–but citizen journalists provide a complementary view. Both MSM and citizen journalism are needed in the ecosphere.

Session Three: Moez Chakchouk, President of the Tunisian Internet Agency

“Even if we wanted to censor, we’d have to consider the court decisions – there was a court decision in an appeals court without any prior references. We need to change ATI, make it an IXP, and provide more transparency.” — Moez Chakchouk, President and CEO, ATI

Moez Chakchouk is the president of the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI). I recently interviewed him for a forthcoming piece, and his talk today was within the same framework: how to build up the ATI as an Internet Exchange Point (IXP) whilst ensuring that the ATI is neutral and free of censorship. He offered considerable detail on the goals and accomplishments of the ATI thus far (which I’ll spare you here, as it’s included in my upcoming piece – well, and because I couldn’t see the slides well enough from my position in the back row!)

Moez also, as Nasser Weddady put it, “[blew] a huge hole in tech companies’ claim that their equipment sale to repressive regimes [are] in good faith.” Tunisia long used SmartFilter (owned by McAfee/Intel) to censor the Internet and continues to do so (though at a very different level: see my post here). Slim Amamou (@slim404) commented afterward on the sale of surveillance and censorship equipment by American and European companies to foreign regimes, particularly Tunisia.

A little background: The ATI was long an enemy of Tunisians; charged with censorship and surveillance under Ben Ali, it was a feared agency, its practices referred to widely as “Ammar 404,” in honor of the 404 error users received when trying to access a blocked site. Post-revolution, the options were to shut down Ammar 404 and the ATI, or leave the ATI open as a semi-government agency, charged with being Tunisia’s IXP. Moez and others have faced several attempts to shut down the Internet, but continue their fight for an open and neutral Internet.

Session Four: Zeynep Tufekci on Networked Activism and Democratic Transitions

Zeynep, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and fellow at the Berkman Center, is presenting on the role of networked activism post-revolution.

“How did these regimes remain in power for decade after decade despite opposition?” Zeynep asks to start. She notes the struggles faced by long-term activists, as well as the perception that regimes cannot be brought down. “Once the floodgates open, as they did in Tunisia,” she says, “People realize they can bring a regime down. Revolutions can happen.”

Zeynep recognizes the years of preparation by both Egyptians and Tunisians, but explains that everyone here understands that and that, rather, she wants to bring experiences from other post-revolutionary states to Tunisia. She notes the utility of the new media ecology in expressing the unknown; like Sami Ben Gharbia has said, Tunisians were aware of corruption and human rights violations, but leaks and activism confirmed it.

“How does new media play a role in organizing a new society?” Zeynep asks. “More participation and more democracy are not identical, and new media can even increase polarization, create more conflict. Free speech doesn’t automatically translate into other values.”

If you start with free speech, Zeynep notes, it’s only the first step – there are complications and expression is not a magic wand. She takes us through the post-revolutionary processes in the French Revolution, as well as in Iran and Eastern Europe, noting that in all cases, transition was not straightforward and often took years, or even decades. “Sometimes you have to keep going back, back, back. Revolutions are not moments.”

“The biggest danger facing us is a failure of imagination,” she concluded.

This question has been posed to me constantly over the past two days from journalists doing their best to understand the relationship between online and offline forms of protest.  I feel their pain – after the mainstream media went gaga over Iran’s 2009 protests, journalists must be considerably wary when tackling this subject: Go one way, and you risk overstating the influence, go the other and you’re dismissed as assuming individuals in the Arab world incapable of leveraging social media tools for organizing.

In thinking on this, I was inspired by these words, from “technosociologist” Zeynep Tufekci, in reference to Tunisia:

To say that social-media was a key part of the revolution does not necessarily mean that people used GPS-enabled phones to coordinate demonstrations; that is simplistic and misses the point in which social media shapes the environment in general. What it means is that the people acted in a world where they had more means of expressing themselves to each other and the world, being more assured that their plight would not be buried by the deep pit of censorship, and a little more confidence that their extended families, their neighbors, their fellow citizens were similarly fed up, as poignantly expressed by the slogan taken up by the protestors: “Yezzi Fock! Enough!”

Tufekci has repeatedly (and very thoughtfully) asked why journalists and bloggers insist on differentiating so strongly between “online” and “offline” and I think she has an extremely valid point: Though Egypt and Tunisia have considerably lower Internet penetration rates than the United States, young Egyptians and Tunisians use the Internet in pretty much the same way as young Americans, albeit perhaps more politicized at times.  And so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that, when organizing a massive protest, they might turn to Facebook to get folks to sign up.

Now, does any of this warrant Western reporters calling this a “Facebook” (or, insert your favorite social media site here) revolution?  I’d like to state a fervent “no.”  To do so is to take credit from the very brave individuals who’ve spent the past few days in the streets of Cairo and Suez, the individuals who’ve been shot at, some killed.  To do so is to ignore the brutality, the tear gas, and the killings.

So, how are protestors in Egypt using social media?

I’d like to delve a bit into what I’ve seen on these various networks over the past, say 48 hours.  Note that all of the following are merely examples, not the be-all end-all of what’s happening online in Egypt.  And I fully expect my Egyptian friends to jump in with corrections, additions, and anything else they might like to add.

Let’s start with the extremely popular (423,000 members) “We are all Khaled Said” Page on Facebook, started last summer after the murder of young Khaled Said at the hands of policemen in Alexandria.  Said’s murder resulted in a spate of loud, active blogging and tweeting, much of which was covered by Global Voices.

That solidarity page has morphed into what is perhaps one of the most central locations for information on the current protests in Egypt.  Over the past 48 hours, many of the group’s thousands of members have posted photos, videos, and various other updates to the page.

Some of the links serve no organizational purpose and are intended simply to be shared broadly; others offer actual assistance: Take, for example, an update this afternoon, posted by a young woman whose profile says she’s based in Cairo, sharing the download link to the circumvention tool Hotspot Shield.  An angry post from about 12 hours ago from the group’s admin ruminates on how the people of Suez were cut off from mobile networks when they needed them most.  A Google Doc posted yesterday asks members of the Page to submit their email addresses in case Facebook is censored or the group is taken down (note: this very same group was taken down a month ago by Facebook because its admin was using a pseudonym, a TOS violation.)

There are also events posted around Facebook.  This one, for example, calls for solidarity between Muslims and Christians on Friday, asking them to unite in protest.  A Google Doc (which I’ve been told is better not shared here) started prior to the January 25 protests, lays out a statement of purpose, explains meeting places, and offers practical advice: Egyptian flags only, no political emblems, no violence, don’t disrupt traffic, bring plenty of water, don’t bring your national ID card, etc.

Beyond Egypt, Beyond Right Now

To suggest that this type of organizing is limited to right now would be to ignore the existing use of digital tools in the region for social and political organizing.  To be honest, so much of the rhetoric around the use of social media in Egypt and Tunisia makes me want to scream — folks act like these American tools just dropped from the sky like humanitarian food rations, set to save the people from their (American-supported, natch) dictators.

As Sami Ben Gharbia so eloquently noted on Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan program last week, these networks have existed for a long time.  Are they enhanced by social media?  Of course, and I’m sure Sami would agree. But when did we go from referring to social media as a tool to calling it the catalyst of a revolution?

I will leave this with a final thought cribbed from Ethan Zuckerman, who wrote last week: “Tunisians took to the streets due to decades of frustration, not in reaction to a WikiLeaks cable, a denial-of-service attack, or a Facebook update.”

Egyptians are not out in the streets because of Facebook, nor Twitter.  They are not angry because an American diplomat who spent a few years in their country revealed something that a nation of Egyptians already knew.  Egyptians are angry, and rightfully so, at a dictatorship that has been around for longer than I’ve been alive, a dictatorship that has been supported by the United States for almost as many years (see Alaa Abd El Fattah’s thoughts on that here).  And if their will is to bring that dictator down, then so be it.

It’s a valid question–that is, if we lived in a vacuum where all media were viewed equally and all peoples and countries viewed along the same plane.  But we don’t and they’re not.  The Arab world is viewed with suspicion and distrust by most Americans, including diplomats sent to work in the region (as we’ve seen from WikiLeaks cables), and its dictators long supported–whether quietly or outright–out of fear of Islamist uprising.  Democracy in the Middle East is paid lip service, but never truly supported.

In a sense, then–and putting aside the fact that their reporting of events on the ground in Tunisia has been truly excellent–Al Jazeera can be seen as taking care of their own, in the same way the US media does.  Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged that on the Charlie Rose Show last fall, in the midst of praise for the channel:

“I watch Al Jazeera every day…because it’s news.  I’m not interested in what Lindsay Lohan is doing…I’m interested in news…they’re still reporting news.  Do they have a slant?  Yeah, I think I’m round enough where I can realize what the slant is, but as I said, I’m not interested in the rehabilitation of Lindsay Lohan.”

Ginsberg on the other hand, who is no slouch when it comes to Arab media (he speaks the language fluently and is president of the–pretty cool–Layalina Productions), writes:

Americans should not underestimate the role that the ever popular Arab news channel Al Jazeera plays in challenging the Arab world’s status quo, using events in Tunisia to fuel its favorite political pastime of disgorging its anti-authoritarian editorial bias across all of its media platforms — much to the anger and hostility of most Arab rulers, particularly those Al Jazeera views as too pro-western (Al Jazeera gives quite a pass to the despotic Syrian regime as well as to its Qatari benefactors).

Key phrase: “Anti-authoritarian editorial bias.”  In another universe, or a country far far away, one might call that a “pro-democracy editorial bias,” or in other words, something possessed by every single mainstream American channel.  To put it bluntly, can you imagine MSNBC or CNN (the two “reasonable” and “mainstream” US news stations) ever taking a non-democratic stance?  No, you probably can’t.  On the other hand, why isn’t Ginsberg criticizing his own country’s Fox News, which surely throws gasoline on the fire of right-wing (American and otherwise) politics on a daily basis?  And have any major US stations ever reported fairly on the Middle East?  Do they criticize Hosni Mubarak or Ben Ali?  Or, for that matter, Israel?  The answer is an emphatic “no.”

It’s also worth noting here that Ginsberg is stretching the facts when he claims that Al Jazeera gives Syria a pass: Syrian opposition leaders are regularly hosted, with at least one individual, Habib Issa, arrested after appearing on the channel.  More recently, tensions between Al Jazeera and Syria grew after the station gave an appearance to Mohammed Riyadh Shaqafi, of Syria’s banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Ginsberg also notes that “Al Jazeera’s editorial and opinion commentators are having a field day mesmerizing how a similar spectacle could unfold across other Arab states.”  While I can’t help but note the truth in this, it’s not without good reason: Following the Tunisian uprising, no fewer than six youth self-immolated in countries across the Maghreb, from Mauritania to Egypt.  Social media–which may not have overthrown the Tunisian regime, but which certainly assisted the media’s coverage, perhaps more than ever before–is abuzz with talk of who’s next.  The “Arab street” is indeed talking about change, but should Al Jazeera really get the credit for that?  It’s not as if anti-authoritarianism is something that emerged in the past month.

Despite Ginsberg’s pedigree, it should be noted that he’s also a major AIPAC player, something most reasonable people would see as a conflict of interest to democratic ideals in the Arab world.  After all, staunch Israel supporters have little interest in disrupting the status quo, particularly in neighboring (and friendly) Egypt and Jordan.

All things considered, it would be irresponsible not to consider Ginsberg’s closing argument:

Let’s hope that Al Jazeera’s penchant for regional anarchy is tempered by cooler heads within Arab democratic dissident ranks who have far more to lose than audience share if they prematurely swallow Al Jazeera’s bait.

Though I think “penchant for regional anarchy” is a wee bit of a stretch (okay, an enormous stretch), but Ginsberg is not wrong to wish for “cooler heads” over the next few months, given the real risk in such protests (ask Tunisians if they really thought this would be the time it worked).  Nevertheless, take or leave Al Jazeera, it won’t be what gets Jordanians, Egyptians, or Libyans out in the street, the conditions of their countries–and the degree to which their regimes have become despotic–will be.

Like Alaa Abd El Fattah, I think it’s too soon to tell what the true impact of social media was on the events of the past few weeks. I also think it’s a bit irresponsible of Western analysts to start pontificating on the relevance of social media to the Tunisian uprising without talking to Tunisians (there are notable exceptions; Ethan Zuckerman’s piece for Foreign Policy is spot on, Matthew Ingram does a nice job of opening the debate here, and Evgeny Morozov’s analysis–which starts with this great piece–is ongoing).

But for each thoughtful, skeptical piece, there is yet another claiming the unknowable. In this piece, for example, Elizabeth Dickinson of Foreign Policy writes:

Of course, Tunisians didn’t need anyone to tell them [about the excesses of the first family]. But the details noted in the cables — for example, the fact that the first lady may have made massive profits off a private school — stirred things up.

By all Tunisian accounts, WikiLeaks had little–if anything–to do with the protests; rather, the protests were spurred by unemployment and economic woes.  Furthermore, Tunisians have been documenting abuses by the Ben Ali regime and the first family for years, as Zuckerman notes.  In fact,  Dickinson seems to realize this herself, and yet for some reason still attempts to argue that WikiLeaks was a catalyst in the unrest.

Andrew Sullivan, who praised Dickinson’s piece, seems to have decided for himself that social media was used as a tool for organizing:

The core test is whether Twitter and online activism helped organize protests. It appears they did, even through government censorship. Wikileaks also clearly helped. So did al Jazeera, for those who see it entirely as an Islamist front.

I’m not sure by what means such an idea appeared to Sullivan, but I haven’t heard it said yet–not once–by a Tunisian.  Until I do, I’ll remain skeptical (though Sullivan’s praise of Al Jazeera is welcome).

Now, I’m not about to discount social media’s relationship to the Tunisian uprising.  For one, it most certainly played a huge role in getting videos, photos, and news out to the world–and not just to a public audience, but to news organizations as well.  Al Jazeera–which had some of the best coverage of Tunisia over the past few weeks–relied heavily on sources gleaned from social networks for much of its print work, as did other organizations.  Tunisian blogs and news sources–such as Nawaat and SBZ News–filled in the gaps left by the mainstream media’s shoddy reporting of the events. And speaking from personal experience, I was able to connect a lot of Tunisians–some of whom I’ve never met in real life–with journalists because of our connections on Facebook and Twitter.

But to call this a “Twitter revolution” or even a “WikiLeaks revolution” demonstrates that we haven’t learned anything from past experiences in Moldova and Iran.  Evgeny Morozov’s question–”Would this revolution have happened if there were no Facebook and Twitter?”–says it all.  And in this case, yes, I–like most Tunisians to whom I’ve posed this question–believe that this would have happened without the Internet.

The real question, then, is would the rest of us have heard about it without the Internet?  Would the State Department have gotten involved early on (remember, their first public comment was in respect to Tunisian Net freedom)?  Would Al Jazeera–without offices on the ground–have been able to report on the unfolding story as they did?  Most importantly, would any of that have mattered?

Social media may have had some tangential effect on organization within Tunisia; I think it’s too soon to say.  No doubt, SMS and e-mail (not to be mistaken with social media) helped Tunisians keep in touch during, before, and after protests, but no one’s hyping those–e-mails and texts simply aren’t as fascinating to the public as tweets.  In fact, assuming SMS and e-mail did play a role in organizing (and again, I don’t doubt they did — Tunisian’s Internet penetration rate may be only 33%, but its mobile penetration rate is closer to 85%), then we ought to be asking what it is about social media that is unappealing for organization?  Could it be the sheer publicness of it, the inherent risks of posting one’s location for the world to see?  Given the mass phishing of Facebook accounts, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Facebook were seen as risky (Gmail accounts were also hacked, however, which undoubtedly led some to view digital communications in general as risky).

I am incredibly thrilled for and proud of my Tunisian friends.  This is an incredible victory and one unlikely to fade from popular memory anytime soon.  And I am glad that Tunisians were able to utilize social media to bring attention to their plight.  But I will not dishonor the memory of Mohamed Bouazizi–or the 65 others that died on the streets for their cause–by dubbing this anything but a human revolution.

I was born 14 years later, too late to understand the intricacies of the time.  I showed up too late for the revolution.  By 1969, those who might have changed the world had all been assassinated or disappeared, and the tone had changed.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like were it not for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the disappearing of Mehdi Ben Barka, the murder of Che Guevara, the shooting of Bobby Kennedy.  I wonder if there would have been real revolution.

The most tangible of effects comes from the work of Martin Luther King. Jr, who today we honor.  My words are not enough to do his justice, but today, I will honor him.

“A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.”

King spoke for non-violence, but was also cognizant of the result of oppression.  It is not just to look at acts of violence committed by the oppressed and equate them with those committed by the oppressor.  To do so is to ignore circumstance.  A genuine commitment to non-violent protest is principled, organized, committed.  True calls for non-violence call first on the oppressor.  King recognized the crimes of Black Americans, but he called them “derivative crimes,” crimes born of the greater crime of white society.

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

Like Pastor Martin Niemöller, King called out not only the perpetrators, but also the passive, those who stood by and watched as Black Americans were discriminated against, segregated in public life, lynched and hanged.  Those who never spoke out.  Now, just like then, there are barriers to speaking out against injustice, but barriers to living a fulfilling life with silence and passivity on one’s conscience should be much higher.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Words of wisdom, and something we all struggle with.  I am not a religious woman, and “love thy enemy” makes little sense to me, but loving my fellow human beings, and standing on the side of those who show me love resonates deeply. But forget love for a moment…Hate is something I struggle with, we all struggle with.  When we witness great injustice, it’s so easy to hate the oppressor, to fall into hate’s hands.  What I’m learning is that little productivity comes from hate; that those who are the strongest, those who are the most successful, focus their energies elsewhere.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

*”assassinated” has always sounded too sanitary for me.

Applebaum’s piece is problematic for a number of reasons aside from the obvious (which is to say that, while shooting protesters and clamping down on free speech are fundamentally wrong, the elections themselves are still contested).  From the opening paragraph, in which she invokes the all-too-common cliché of non-headscarf wearing Muslims “[not looking] out of place in New York or Paris” to her claims of Morocco entering a new era of democracy, Applebaum demonstrates her total ignorance of the Maghreb and the Arab world on the whole.

Take this sentence, for example:

“…unlike most of its Arab neighbors, the country has over the last decade undergone a slow but profound transformation from traditional monarchy to constitutional monarchy, acquiring along the way real political parties, a relatively free press, new political leaders—the mayor of Marrakesh is a 33-year-old woman—and a set of family laws that strives to be compatible both with sharia and international conventions on human rights.”

Anyone with an iota of knowledge on Moroccan politics can see the flaws in this paragraph; from the recent elections, in which the newly created Modernity and Authenticity Party, or P.A.M. (dubbed the “King’s Party”), closely linked to the royal palace, managed to sweep 22,158 seats to the three journalists arrested and fined for insulting the tyrannical leader of Libya, it doesn’t take a genius to see that Morocco is not a prime example of democracy, nor a model for Iranian reform.

In fact, Morocco’s own human rights record is deeply flawed.  Despite substantial changes from the “Years of Lead,” Morocco continues to oppress Saharawi citizens (be their true nationality Moroccan or Saharawi, it should be relatively undisputed that they are not treated well by the state), suppress Amazigh activists by outlawing their language in schools and requiring their children be given Arab names even abroad, and persecute converts to other religions.  Furthermore, Morocco almost certainly harbors CIA rendition sites, as has been testified by former Guantanamo inmates, and almost always turns the other cheek to Israeli and United States imperialism.

Applebaum also brazenly suggests that perhaps, had the Iranian revolution not occurred, perhaps Iran could have followed a similar path to Morocco, saying, “One thinks wistfully of the shah of Iran and of what might have been.”  It’s as if she forgets, or is completely unaware, of the human rights violations and general atmosphere of oppression under Pahlavi.

Lastly, Applebaum’s assertion that “the Arab world lacks the political will to change” reeks of Obamania.  Doubtless there are a number of Arab countries in which rigged elections, oppression of citizenry, and lack of freedoms are rampant, but the meme that democracy and capitalism are the only way (not to mention the United States’ hypocritical views toward democratic elections in the Middle East) is getting old.  Change, if it is to happen, needs to come from within, and will not occur thanks to Western journalists, nor Twitter users changingtheir icons green, nor United States imperialism.