And still, it’s Independence Day in India tomorrow. (Today is Pakistan’s Independence Day – reaching out to all those devastated by the Pakistan floods.). Our media is full of the obligatory ‘cliched’ thoughts on freedom – corruption, poor governance, terrorism, naxalism, separatism, communalism, overpopulation, poverty etc et etc – ably supported by commercialization of the weekend, with obese pages of Independence Day retail ads, deals and discounts – each one cashing in on the the ‘liberated consumer’. I’d like to share some interesting reads this Saturday, on the brink of our 64th year of Independence. What I like about this selection of articles is that they are talking about specific notions of freedom – migration and free speech – not very much new content, but nicely written thought and thematic pieces that force me to look outside my urban elitist wired window.

Migration and Freedom:

I began with the Outlook Independence Day issue – The Mobile Republic – which is devoted to the challenges  migrants face, and the  faultlines of migration in India. Underlying this issue is the theme of an unequal India, one that pretends to be inclusive, but the cracks are many. This map reveals how much migration there actually is – making sense of mobility – metadata:

Nandan Nilekani, in his column We, The Innumerable talks of the ‘dual track’ in our development (sometimes I feel we are quite schizophrenic as a country, esp. when I travel to rural areas), and the need for a sense of ‘personhood’:

Nevertheless, growth in India is still, visibly, ‘dual track’, with the rapid transformation of urban India and the income growth of the middle class contrasting sharply with the rural country, where growth still remains an attractive but uncertain promise, and people’s aspirations are often cheek to cheek with their frustrations. Here, among the dust of the village and the faded wheat fields, it is difficult to comprehend the momentum of the Indian city.

The risk of being left behind

In the period when India experienced slow, near-stagnant growth rates, one humorous remark was that in India ‘everything proceeds at the rate of the slowest member’. The challenge today may be the opposite: that India’s breathtaking growth, combined with high rates of inequality, will leave too many behind and make the problem of our ‘slowest members’—lagging sectors and regions—an especially urgent one. In fact, in our rapidly expanding economy, inclusive growth thus becomes an even larger priority—else inequity left unaddressed means that the people left behind find themselves falling further behind every year, as the differences become too significant to overcome.

Neelabh Mishra talks of the Pardesi’s Perils - in this case, its not about migrating abroad but from state to state within the country:

Land sharks, labour contractors, businesses that need labourers in large numbers, politicians—they all feed the middle-class anxiety such a situation creates to make the migrants even more vulnerable. For instance, in Jaipur and Ajmer, a perverse reduction is being deployed: all migrants are Bengali speakers, all Bengali speakers are in fact illegal Bangladeshi Muslims, all crime and terrorist activity is their work. Whipping up communal frenzy in this way makes it easy both to deliver up slum clusters as real estate to builders and constituencies to politicians of a certain hue. Similar processes—not confined to Jaipur or Ajmer, and which other political parties are certainly not above using—create volatile situations exploited to the hilt by the predators who create them.

There is also another kind of faultline, created when powerful migrants arrive to prey upon weaker locals. The tribals of Jharkhand have long resented the Diku, or the outsider, first British, then Bengali, and later Marwari or Bihari, who exploited them. The tribals of Dantewada and Bastar too have similar terms to express their resentment for migrant communities that have long exploited them. Reduced to a minority in their own land, Jharkhand tribals first sought a separate state; now they are entwined in the Maoist insurgency. In Dantewada, many tribals are fighting a near civil war against the State, again under Maoist leadership.

And there are many other articles on migrants and their stories of success and pain as they strive for different dimensions of freedom in the ‘new’.

Free Speech

On, to Livemint Lounge – an issue dedicated to Free Speech. Well done @priyaramani and team – some great articles there. From Sunil Khilnani’s ‘A case for offence’ (he’s the author of The Idea of India):

All beliefs command a certain political respect—they should be heard. But let’s be equally clear that not all beliefs are equal, nor should they all be shown equal respect in intellectual or moral terms. Some beliefs are correct, others are false; some are better, others are worse. To think that the belief that widows should be burned on their husband’s funeral pyres stands on a par with the belief that all young girls should be educated, is morally repulsive and intellectually stupid.

But how are we to find this out, how do we come to evaluations that lead us to reject some beliefs—even if they are embedded in religious world views—and to embrace others? Such matters are not to be found out by consulting holy books or scriptural authorities; nor by polling the offended sentiments of religious believers.

We like to think of ourselves as argumentative, as debaters welcoming of diverse views and energized by confrontation. In reality though, what passes for argument is melodrama: shouting past one another, whether in Parliament and state assemblies, in TV studios, or at a railway counters; or else a timid refusal to really engage at all, a cowardly deference to “sentiment”.

The truth is, we’re not very good at tolerating views that question, mock or subvert our accepted beliefs—especially if we happen to be able to describe these as our religious beliefs. This collective chippiness—which makes us boastful and seeking the approval of others, but unwilling to take their criticism or questioning—is not a conducive psychological precondition in favour of free speech.

Salil Tripathi’s essay – We are not Free – on how our laws are restricting our freedom:

And today, those laws restrict Indian freedoms. Argumentative Indians? Maybe—so long as the argument is about cricket, or cinema, or perhaps mangoes. As the injunction says in an Irani restaurant in Mumbai, discussion about religion and politics is out of bounds. But you can talk about cutting chai and bun muska, while the owner’s father’s portrait looks over you, deciding what you can speak and think.

Technology and Freedom

I’ve yet to see much written about the intersection of technology and freedom. The articles made me reflect upon the special blend of relationship between technology & migrants, and technology & free speech. Both are complex issues – with many dichotomies. On the one hand, access to mobile phones and computers is known to empower the disadvantaged and the poor – however access issues and cost create a digital divide.  In research studies we have conducted among migrant workers and technology, we’ve found that the cell phone is often the new calling card and gives migrants a sense of ‘personhood’ (to steal Mr. Nilekani’s term). It’s also a device that brings the city (work, play, relationships, entertainment, services) to them – equal opportunities??? – that’s perhaps pushing it too far. But ironically, the same cell phone and the internet can become divisive tools – when used to arouse feelings of hatred and to mobilize crowds to violate their fundamental rights as human beings and citizens of India, as the vile MNS does in Bombay.

Then there is the whole issue around free speech and censorship. These two polarizations seem to continually blend into each other, amplifying one another, feeding the divisions. Sometimes I feel, the more we change, the more we remain the same .. or even go a few steps back. Doesn’t really make sense, but it would seem that the more we (people) speak and voice our views enabled by technology, (through mainstream media and social media eg. twitter, facebook, sms, BBM, blogs, flickr, youtube etc.), the more the government feels the need to impose on our freedoms and invade our right to privacy, by censoring us and taking away access. First, Blackberry, next Google, Skype?  One may argue that  there is justification with all the terror attacks and threats. Still, these bans only  feed back into us shouting even louder, more viciously and manipulatively and sometimes unreasonably.

None of this is freedom for anyone really.

And it’s not just the government that we incite and who incites us – caste groups, fanatical religious groups, political parties, big corporations and interest lobbies who often hide behind the face of the government, and even just ordinary people like you and me who have different views from ours and feel they have the right to say just about anything to anybody.

So we shout. They try to stifle our voice. We use our social networks and communities to amplify and spread our voice, and our opinions. We shout louder and more viciously for our freedoms, and find ways of attacking back and circumventing bans. One such case was when the Government tried to ban blogs – prompted by some misguided sense of nationalism -inept censorship at its best!  And a few times I’ve been on the other side where I’ve been forced to close or delete comments, invoking my own powers of censorship over my blog.

Sanjukta Sharma writes so aptly, in her introduction to the free speech series:

We celebrate the old and new kinds of free speech in this special issue. It’s a freedom, the lack of which we remember every other day. Our right to freedom of expression in the Constitution has “reasonable restrictions”—the “reasonable” often bordering on the bizarre. Hurt sentiments over calling Billu a barber; outrage over the biography of a national hero; violent attacks on those who commemorate the spirit of a certain fun-loving St Valentine with sweet nothings and oblong-shaped balloons—something irks somebody all the time. If you laugh at Indianness, you are booed. If you have a mind, you are stupid and deserve to be called names.

The free speech issue, not surprisingly, became less about freedom and more about censorship and restriction—in art, movies, erotica and the public sphere.

The question then is, who is really free in all this? Is it possible that the louder we all shout, we stop listening to each other? And when we stop listening, we cannot understand or empathize with the underlying issues and signals beyond all the noise – real issues faced by those who censor and are being censored.

And when we stop listening, we live with fear. Look at the mess the USA is in today – fear seems to have been one of the key operating themes driving many of their decisions in the last decade.

If fear frames our next decade, we will never really be free.

This is a post that’s long overdue, since the time the film was released! I was spurred to write it this morning, as I’m quite excited to be on a panel discussion at the screening of Tactical Tech’s film called 10 Tactics – Turning Information into Action.

The screening is at the Conference Room of National College, Bandra today and is being hosted by Point of View.  I’m often asked what Info-Activism is, and this film is a must-see for all those who are curious about, interested in and work in the area. I’m also often asked whether I’m a rights activist or a digital activist – and I say no, I’m an ethnographer and researcher who is sometimes an accidental information activist. I’d also broaden the scope of the relevance of these 10 Tactics to those who are working in the social media area, and to those in the corporate world, who’s focus of work is in developing products, services and strategies in a world where customers, users, consumers are already exchanging information, having conversations, and learning often much faster than organizations are. Or simply, it’s for those who care and already use these tools – how can you get more involved in making a difference?

From the 10 Tactics website:

What is 10 Tactics?

10 tactics provides original and artful ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause. It includes a 50-minute film documenting inspiring info-activism stories from around the world and a set of cards; with tools tips and advice, for you to work through as you plan your own info-activism

The film features 35 info-activism stories told from the point of view of advocates in 24 different countries including Lebanon, India, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, South Africa and the UK.

The film is shared at the website as 10 Tactics, along with Tactics cards that cover a case study, a video story, suggestions and tips, and a featured tool. The 10 Tactics are:

1. Mobilizing people
2. Witness and record
3. Visualize your message
4. Amplify personal stories
5. Just add humour
6. Manage your contacts
7. How to use complex data
8. Use collective intelligence
9. Let people ask the questions
10. Investigate and expose

(I’m featured in Tactic 8 – Use Collective Intelligence – here’s the gist of what I said – “We have communities that we have developed over time in several spaces on the web – on blogs, Facebook, Twitter. What these tools allow you to do is network with all of your online communities, to operate as hubs of connected people. So when something happens and you need to respond, it’s about the spontaneous mobilisation of a community that already exists online, through the multiple nodes and hubs that you have created as you leave your footprints on the web.”

Tactic 8 – Use collective intelligence from Tactical Technology Collective on Vimeo.)

The project came about at the Info-Activism camp held in February 2009, which I was very privileged to have attended.

We’ve also used collective intelligence and swarming way back in 2004 when the Tsunamis had devastated parts of Asia and then again in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina – each of these on a different scale, and using other technologies like blogs and wikis and Skype.

If you’re interested in this area, make sure you view the whole film, all 10 tactics! And there are screenings all over the world, so do go for them, and participate in the discussions.

Last week, I attended the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi.

The discussion was really interesting, and I do hope it is the start of many such events. It was a great opportunity to share and learn around projects, processes and outcomes! I got to know more about many really interesting projects and the people associated with them – Edwin from Open Space who was the facilitator, Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute that runs EmpoweringIndia, Muthatha Ramanathan, the JaagoRe guys from Janaagraha, Ravi Rangan of Comat, Siddharth Sharma of Intellecap, Nitai Mehta of Praja, Gokul of Mapunity, Gautam John of Pratham books, Meera from the Bangalore-based Citizen Matters, Sanjay Jain of Google, Gaurav Mishra of Vote Report India, a bunch of folks from CIS – Pranesh, Anja, Kiran, and many more!  The Tactical Technology Collective folks were there too, and Allan and David distributed some of their guides and toolkits which were a real hit in terms of content and production values!

Zainab has a really detailed report on the roundtable, the picture above is from her post. The discussion was also live-tweeted under the #cisia tag!

A few things that struck me when reflecting upon the event:

• that there is a need to combine efforts and share resources across the various projects, for instance, back-end integration with the government
• that there’s need to engage audiences in the projects by different ways of dissemination
• that ‘data’ needs to be presented and disseminated in ways that are relevant to people’s lives and in line with their own usage patterns, habits and behaviour
• and that there are opportunities within this diverse groups to help and collaborate.

On one of the breaks, Gautam John, who I enjoyed meeting F2F after following his tweets for a while, introduced me to Sachin Malhan and his team who are working on a really interesting set of projects under the umbrella, Inclusive Planet. I was quite impressed with what they’re trying to do – creating innovative crowd-sourced online services for the differently-abled with the vision of leveraging these services to building a community on the web. The common theme across their projects is ‘access’. Check out Readable, their beta platform that enables the blind to share and access books and materials relevant to their study or leisure in formats totally accessible to them.

Peter and I were also invited to be on a Panel Discussion hosted by  CIS, on Social Media and Mobilisation. It was a good conversation, although not always easy when the audience is so diverse – we had open source geeks nd technologists, online & offline activists, ngo’s, marketers, social media users & newbies. Zainab has a nice synopsis at her blog.

Thanks Sunil, Nishant and Zainab of the Centre of Internet and Society for inviting me to these events, and to Zainab for being such a great host!

The verdict is out. An article at Business Standard (link shared with me by @aparnaray who writes Newsmericks and who encouraged me to blog my thoughts) called Impassive Indians reveals findings from a study conducted by IMRB International on the impact of the political campaigns on youth in India. What’s evident from this study is that the messaging of the online campaigns from political parties did not reach nor resonate with voters.

How much influence did the social and political awareness campaigns have on young urban voters?  Not much, says a recent IMRB International survey. Carried out between May 1 and May 5, it sought to gauge the impact of the recent social and political campaigns on individuals aged 18 to 29 in socio-economic categories A and B from four metros — Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata.

Low recall
The revelations are startling. Only 18 per cent respondents could spontaneously recall the Jaago Re campaign and 6 per cent recalled Lead India. The celebrity-ridden Kuchh Nahin Ho Sakta (Nothing can happen) campaign, which starred leading Bollywood actors like Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra, had a low recall of just two per cent.

and a more culture-specific analysis on ‘consumption’ of advertising:

More than the social awareness campaigns, it was the advertisement campaigns launched by political parties like the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party which had better recall amongst the youth, according to the survey. While 67 per cent recalled the Congress campaign, 53 per cent recognised BJP’s campaign. More respondents remember Congress and BJP advertisements on traditional media (98 per cent for Congress and 94 per cent for BJP) than on other forms like hoardings, direct mailers, radio and the Internet. The message for media planners of the political parties is clear.

Few were aware that political parties have a web presence and fewer visited these sites, the survey reported. Only about a third of the respondents knew that the Congress and BJP have their own websites. About a tenth and fourth visited the Congress and BJP websites, respectively. Worse, only about one per cent visited websites dedicated to political heavyweights like Lal Krishna Advani, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.

Clearly, political parties, despite having made augmented efforts this time to reach young voters through the Internet, did not generate much response. “Personally, I would see them (websites) as campaigns built to promote a party or an individual to power. There was no call to action,” Potharaju says.

Joshi, however, attributes it to the way Indians take to information, “As a culture, we don’t have the tendency to look for information through the written word. Ours is a culture that follows the oral tradition. We want the moti baat (the essence), which is why TV ads draw much better response than websites.” However, if (Barack) Obama would have been quoted as saying that he liked Advani’s blog, everyone in our cities would have read Advani’s blog, Joshi quips.

Reiteration that political campaigns online were ineffective for the most part, as they did not have the right messaging, idiom and call-to-action. Some, like the BJP’s campaign, were were visible, even in-your-face, but they failed to resonate with voters. This indicates problems with both, their tactics & message, as many in the Indian blogosphere and Twitterville have expressed.

Rahul Jauhari, in his well-written post Zero for Advani 2.0 analyzes this:

Coming to the point, the BJP was all over the web this time.
Zillions of banners across the www.
The new web savvy face of the party.
A clear attempt to connect with the youth of the country.

It didn’t work.

There are plenty of post mortems floating around by now.
I have 3 cents to add to the same.

1. Just because you are present on a younger forum doesn’t mean you will be seen as young. I mean I just can’t see respected Shri Advaniji as the face of new India. Sorry.
2. You don’t barge into social media and expect to be welcomed. You need to make yourself part of someone’s social world first. And then ask for favors.
3. Before you put the bucks behind the message, put some thought behind the message itself.

I guess you can’t just do an Obama and expect a landslide victory when you don’t have a credible, powerful clarion call as Obama had in the first place.

I also believe you don’t advertise on Social Networking sites.
Social Networking sites are like people’s homes.
Nobody wants an ad in his/her private space.

Mahesh Murthy of Pinstorm adds his perspective on why the BJP campaign was neither relevant, nor persuasive (classic measures of evaluating campaigns that we tend to forget about in thie Social Media world):

An online group is a platform to gather people, but that is not enough. People have to be commandeered on the platform to do something concrete to generate value, says Mahesh Murthy, founder of Pinstorm, a digital advertising firm. “The Indian political party online groups seem to have gathered people but are not directing them to action except in stray cases such as Meera Sanyal in South Mumbai. I would largely discount the BJP and Congress online groups for now as mostly valueless.”

Whether or not a campaign fulfilled the objectives it set out to accomplish is a measure of its efficacy, says Mr. Murthy. This can be measured with metrics such as engagement (amount of time and depth of user’s involvement in the message), brand impact (visibility of the message to target user), clicks, sign-ups, ‘viralness’ (how much users spread the message) and persuasion scores (measuring how persuasive the message is), he adds.

“In the specific case, say, of the BJP’s campaign, it seems to have several objectives,” says Mr. Murthy. He outlines three of those — to negate the impact on youth of Narendra Modi and project L.K. Advani as the sole BJP leader; to project the 81-year-old Mr. Advani as a relevant leader to an audience of urban 18 to 35-year-olds; and to project the BJP as the ideological choice at the polls.

He adds that the campaign has done really well on the first two but failed in the third objective. “The campaign merely projects a leader and doesn’t tackle the issues the audience cares about — from Babri to Ram Sene and more.” In advertising terms the campaign has established high reach and frequency levels and is very visible online – but it probably has done very little in the persuasion scores,” he says, adding that it had succeeded in neutralising Modi’s appeal among a section of the public and projected just one leader of the BJP.

Merely transposing years and years of traditional advertising experience onto the web does not work. Like Rahul, I was absolutely appalled to have Advani’s smiling face cluttering up my blog was a huge no-no.  Shubham at Strat.In says Political parties should continue online campaigns, and makes suggestions for the road ahead for political parties considering online political campaigns:

Why did the campaign fail? I believe that although the campaigns were successful in catching people’s attention once, but they did not convey any message to the public. If we look at the advertisement which was displayed  almost through the campaigns by BJP and Congress we see their leaders covering the screen with their political campaign statement covering the rest. What was missing was the issues they wanted people to read and discuss. People on the net are not looking for just advertisements but they want more. They already know about both the political parties but they need more information for reasons to vote for them, and this information was not passed on to them. The campaign medium was correct but the strategy was wrong.

The Road Ahead: Since the elections are now over I don’t see any advertisements from any political parties. Their online activity has also slowed down considerably. Political parties need to maintain their online campaigns (in a subdued form) for the next 5 years. Interaction of leaders through online medium, informing citizens about issues (like black money, reservations, government projects & policies), getting citizens feedback through online polls and comments, forming an active online support group, and many more activites are possible. In the next elections online campaign just might become more important. Political parties should not let the spending they have done on their online campaigns go waste, they have already built a brand and now they need to maintain it and increase the interaction.

When the common man will feel empowered by a political party, when he will feel a political party is listening to him through the net then they will definitely support them.

So, did they work – perhaps not. Can they work – absolutely.

The interest of some political parties in building online campaigns is a great sign. This too is a good sign with the Friends of the BJP asking openly at their blog what should we do, right after the defeat of the BJP/NDA.  My suggestion to them would be focus on meaningful outreach where you bring in more into the fold, rather than holding conversations with the committed! Talk with, rather than talk to people in their own spaces.

Overall, I do believe that political parties and their social media ‘experts’ need to have a much better understanding of the conversational and social nature of the medium (it’s not called Social Media for nothing!!).  While there are issues with the messaging, there are also issues with the tactics of the campaigns. Using classical push-advertising, one-t0-many tactics on the web will not work. Conversations matter, as value flows in webs. There are new emergent ways to assessing social media campaigns that include both quantitative and qualitative measures of engagement, participation, influence, stickiness, imagination and energy.

Last thought – does anyone know how effective the mobile phone and SMS campaigns have been?

Sampad Swain points to this Election Page from Google which is an interesting mashup on the Lok Sabha 2009 Elections, in partnership with a bunch of organizations and groups like the Association For Democratic Reforms, HT Media, Indicus Analytics, Janaagraha Centre For Citizenship and Democracy (the Jaago Re folks), Liberty Institute, PRS Legislative Research

From Sampad’s post: “Some of the things you will find in the site are:

• Latest election news
• MP profiles
• Constituency statistics
• Candidate quotes
• Polling booth locations and more, all personalized to your location

Just specify your city or town, and get election information relevant to you. One of the interesting stats the site gives is the development work in each constituency from the last election.”

For more information on the Indian Elections, check out Global Voices Online’s ongoing feature – Indian Elections 2009.

Am not really impressed by all the hype around political parties like the BJP using social media to their advantage – perhaps I am biased against them, but I was aghast to see BJP ads being served at my blog, and had to block them. I was asked by a well-known blogger and social media analyst who’s views I really respect (and who will remain unnamed), to get involved in projects around digitizing the Elections. But I found myself really hassled by the fact that I could not retain my own objectivity. Here’s most of my response [by email]:

While I acknowledge some parties are busy putting up online campaigns etc – I do feel a lot of it is like spam and under the garb of development, pushing forward the Hindutva agenda.  I find myself unable to keep my own objectivity through all of this, and although I appreciate your analysis here, and a lot is based on actual fact, I still sensed a lot of BJP propoganda in there to be honest (am perhaps very biased myself).

This goes against my own personal political beliefs (I am very very anti-communalism), and I fully acknowledge that this inability to dissociate my own emotions and beliefs is my own failing.  What I’m trying to say perhaps not so clearly is that my fear with such a thing is around objectivity really.    If this sort of effort is going to help one political party (the ‘wrong’ one for me in this case, as they are the ones that seem more active online than the Independents or the Congress) I would hate that.  No amount of IT / Social Media /Techno smarts can take away my belief that its all to push ahead a Hindutva agenda.

So while I still feel its a great idea, I cannot somehow bring myself to be a part of this .

There are some great initiatives by civil society to get more people to the voting booths by providing them with information and know-how.  Here’s a list of Civil Society efforts, compiled at the Digital Election Wiki, around bringing about change by voting.

Civil Society: Voter Registration

• Jaago Re (Marketing Campaign by Tata Tea)
• Bangalore Voter ID
• Vote India

Civil Society: Transparency

• Association for Democratic Reform
• Public Interest Foundation
• No Criminals
• Smart Vote (Bangalore)
• Mumbai Votes
• Future CM (AP)
• Conversations on Elections through Gtalk/Jabber Chat – elections@askme.im

Civil Society: Ideation/ Collective Action

• My Idea (Marketing Campaign by Idea Cellular)
• Manifesto: Wisdom of Crowds
• Change India
• India Banao
• Praja

If you do too, don’t hesitate to click the button below, this December.

A whole lot of questions are being asked about whether the Twitter #mumbai feed was citizen journalism or not. Many ‘sides’ are emerging in this debate. I found this post (thru’ a tweet by @MaryHodder) which asks How Should Journalists Use Twitter? I’m not so sure it’s the right question to be asking … here’s what I said in a comment there:

“I was one of those Tweeting the terror attacks from my apartment in Mumbai, which was about 8 kms away from the centre of the attacks. When I began tweeting about what I was seeing on tv (yes) and re-tweeting accounts others were talking of from the ground, I don’t think there was any conscious intention for the twitter stream to become a source of citizen journalism. We were sharing our confusion, our shock, our sadness, our rage. We also then began sharing useful information around injured lists and what was required by hospitals as they emerged. Some twitterers in Mumbai were on the ground sending updates from hospitals and from the centre of the attacks.

That tools like twitter, blogs, flickr enabled this spontaneous outpouring of emotion, information, rumours, panic, confusion, anger is quite amazing to me. The twitter #mumbai stream reflected all these nuances as we experienced them. If this isn’t a form of reporting, tell me why. I do believe it brought a real (face to the) horror to the terror attacks to the world, where people could empathize with what was going on. India is not alone in its fight against terrorism. Just yesterday, I wrote in a commentary at CNN:

“The “we” I speak of is not an organization but a loosely joined community. We are bonded, and I truly believe that in the face of utter horror, wherever it might occur, we have a strong pillar in this emotional connection we feel as equal human beings and not in our narrow identities prescribed by nationality or religion or race or gender. This is an evolving revolution sparked by how people are using social tools on the Web.”

That’s the revolution really – the discourse must shift from an argument about one vs the other into a discourse around how social tools are allowing people to channel their emotions and harness them to mobilize into action. It’s not a war nor an either-or between MSM and citizen reporting. We saw a symbiotic relationship between the two during this disaster. Each helped the other. MSM acknowledges it – look at the number of stories being done on how Twitter worked (or didn’t). Likewise with bloggers and tweeters, who leant on mainstream media as their source of information in many instances.”

The full piece I wrote for CNN is here - How social media shared pain and rage in Mumbai

Update:

See Neha’s roundup of posts in criticism of TV reporting during the crisis at Global Voices Online – don’t miss the comments there.

And Stuart’s call for counter-intuitive thinking.

Tactical Tech and Aspiration are organizing a week-long event in Bangalore, India in February 2009 – The Info-Activism Camp. Deadline for applications has been extended to Nov 8th.

The Info Activism camp (http://www.informationactivism.org), to be held in Bangalore, India from February 19th to 25th, helps advocates to make the best use of information, communication and digital technologies to achieve their objectives. The first-ever international camp on Info-Activism will feature 120 participants, picked through a competitive selection process, and who will not only learn but also share skills and techniques to aid in the process of advocacy. Workshops, group discussions, interactive sessions and live demos, which to a large extent will evolve from participants’ proposals, are all part of the one-week programme.
If you want to learn more about the camp, please write to infoactivism@tacticaltech.org

The organizers were involved in the AsiaSource camps – I can guarantee you lotsa fun and learning! Here’s a pic from Asia Source 2 as a sampling:

Beth Kanter is helping spread the word, and forwarded this email to me – it’s a competition for participatory learning.   They’ve opened up the competition to international applicants, including India.  If there are any bloggers and networkers in India (and other countries mentioned) who reach the nonprofits and educators who are using social media and doing participatory learning, do apply and spread the word!

 2008 DIGITAL MEDIA AND LEARNING COMPETITION 2008
$2 Million Competition
Focus: Participatory Learning

Participatory learning is defined broadly: using new digital media for sharing ideas or planning, designing, implementing, or just discussing ideas and goals together.

Application Deadline: October 15, 2008

Full information at: http://www.dmlcompetition.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/dmlComp

The second HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition is now open!

Awards will be made in two categories:

Innovation in Participatory Learning Awards support large-scale digital learning projects
$30,000-$250,000

This year we are piloting international eligibility for our Innovation Award and will be accepting submissions from primary applicants in Canada, People’s Republic of China, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands,Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States; collaborators can be from anywhere in the world.

Young Innovator Awards are targeted at U.S. applicants aged 18-25 year olds
$5,000-$30,000

(You can find out about last year’s winners at hub.dmlcompetition.net/)

Full information at: www.dmlcompetition.net

Volunteers on the world wide web are getting ready to help as Hurricane Gustav gathers fury heading towards the Northern Gulf Coast. I was alerted to this through tweets by Andy Carvin, (@acarvin) who’s coordinating these efforts:

* Gustav Information Center is up

* Follow live updates on Gustav at Twitter – search for #gustav

* IRC channel – #interdictor to coordinate volunteer efforts

* There’s also a mobile information centre. Click here to access on any mobile phone including the iPhone.

They’re also planning to build off our KatrinaHelp wiki which makes a lot of sense, as it has a good structure and some useful resources (which may need updating).  UPDATE: Gustav Wiki is up

Follow @markmayhew and @gustavreporter for live updates from New Orleans, as it is in the process of getting evacuated.

There’s also a growing Wikipedia entry on Hurricane Gustav.

Hurricane Gustav is still being described as a Category 4 storm, but meteorologists are forecasting that the storm will gain strength as it passes over Cuba and may emerge in the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 5 hurricane. USA Today

See the full Hurricane Advisory here.

I’ve seen no such effort around the recent floods in India on the other hand, where many have died and many more homeless, but it’s very difficult to do when there is almost no connectivity in the regions affected. Here are a couple of useful blogs I found:

Bihar Flood Relief

Bihar Flood operation relief 

I was on the first Phweet call!  Voice call over Twitter and with many folks at one time. Conversation contained within a URL. Really worth staying up late to actually experience it. It was fantastic – 7 of us from 3 different continents all chatting as if we were in the same room.  A PhweetParty!

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions … Phweet will help!

• Have you ever wished you could just Talk to your Twitter friend?
• Have you ever wanted to spontaneously set up a Conference Call with your Twitter friends?
• Have you ever felt irritated that you have to turn on a separate client to accept a Call?

Check out the Phweet blog for more details.

“A Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. Let your friends know you are talking. Invite them to join in. No numbers, no new profiles. Simple, just start Phweet talking!”

I really do like the philosophy embodied in the PhweetVision:

Our vision is to create a more open telephony and communications environment where the users take control and are not dictated to by numbers, directory services, or tariff barriers, while retaining increased control over their privacy and presence information.

This is revolutionary really.  Today Twitter .. tomorrow all social networks? Congratulations Stuart (my partner at Mosoci) and David!

I’m tweeting reactions from India as reported on English TV news channels around Benazir Bhutto’s brazen assassination. Follow the updates here, if you’re interested. Updates so far:

- Musharraf says political parties should be united against terrorists. Feeling here … how convenient blaming terrorists. 7 minutes ago
- Musharraf on TV now: This is the work of terrorist we have been fighting so long. Will not rest till we punish the guilty. Appeals for peac 9 minutes ago
- “PPP likely to boycott elections” – Matiullah Jan, Reuters reporter live from Islamabad. 13 minutes ago from web
- Bush .. We urge them to honour Benazir’s memory by contributing to the peace process === meaning …. elections must go on in Pakistan?? 14 minutes ago from web
- George Bush speaking now 16 minutes ago from web
- Not much been spoken of in Indian media about Islam or extremists – all fingers seem to point to Military rule in Pak. 18 minutes ago from web
- NDTV 24/7: No official reaction still from Washington. Much talk of US-reflection of Indians being upset at US for supporting Musharraf. 20 minutes ago from web
- She says: this military will not allow any democratic govt. [on NDTV 24/7]. Says we are all in danger. Need a national govt minus military 42 minutes ago from web
- Asma Jehangir, Human Rights Comm Pak,distraught. Reiterates what Nawaz Sharif said- Govt & Military responsible. Not religious extremists 44 minutes ago from web
- Lots of talk on English TV channels in India on America’s reaction to Benazir’s death. Upset about America having supported Mushar so long about 1 hour ago from web
- Nawaz Sharif tells PPP supporters : I will be fighting your war now. Source: CNN-IBN about 1 hour ago from web
- on NDTV: Bhutto’s husband says to a TV channel: its the work of the government. Violence breaking out now. Shops & petrol pumps closed about 1 hour ago from web
- senior diplomats here say america will go for stability first and then democracy. short term – greater dependence on musharraf about 1 hour ago from web
- @robpatrob: Extremists supported by the Army. On Indian TV: couldn’t have happened without Army & ISI’s involvement. Hope no 1914! about 1 hour ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: quite a shame for america’s alleged control over pakistan. now open allegations against musharraf as responsib on indian tv. about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: its not my perception. she was stronger than any man in many ways. she transcended gender issues typical to this region. about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: no official comments out yet here apart from shock. fear about pakistan really spinning out of control now. fear for stability about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- @robpatrob: she was one of the leading pol parties fighting for democracy. and had committed herself to it. we feel the loss as much about 2 hours ago from web in reply to robpatrob
- benazir bhutto has been assassinated in pakistan about 3 hours ago from im

[Image - TimesReporter: Moments before her death]

Pakistan blogworld reacts: Global Voices Online.

More blog reactions at TimesOnline.

Blog reactions aggregated here.

… according to Clyde Bentley, who’s guest-blogging at Mark Fraser’s MediaShift is .. Comments.

Here’s the quiz of the day for 21st Century Journalism 101: What makes news critics howl, able reporters swoon and strong editors weep? (Hint: The great unwashed and untutored of the blogosphere consider them pure manna.) If I could squeeze another cliche into that first paragraph, I would. As long as it helped generate the answer to the quiz:

“Comments.” …..

…. When we first introduced staff blogs to the traditional journalism world, it seemed a refreshing opportunity to give more of us a try at column writing. But when the IT people toggled the “allow comments” option, all hell broke loose. Many of us grew up in a business where the end of the story was the end of the story. Period. The inarticulate sniping of a few know-it-alls adds nothing to the day’s report. Besides, they were embarrassing. So if we couldn’t block comments altogether, we put up walls of rules to diminish them.

And this:

Bloggers feel no obligation to be 100% correct. But they have supreme confidence in the validity of their posts. If they are wrong, no big deal! There will be a dozen comments to either set the record straight or at least keep the pot boiling.

But journalists are steeped in a culture of insecurity. We send our stories through a gauntlet of copy editors. We fact-check the quotes. And we buffer every statement we can with “allegedly” and “according to…” Is it any wonder that we fear comments? Errors are sins. Comments point out errors and therefore damn us to media hell. In theory, we journalists thrive in the public sphere. In reality, we find it a very scary place.

Read the full article – Losing the Journalistic Security Blanket.

Much has been said about the difference between journalists and bloggers. Original stories versus recycling. Editorial safeguards versus free-flowing conversation. Sovereign versus distributed. Slow-on-their-feet versus nimbleness. Big media versus real voices. Fixed number of words versus write as much as you wish. Job versus passion. We write for a brand versus we are the brand. Good writing versus poor writing …… I had blogged my view on the distinction, in 2005:

Yet, there is a distinction in my mind – blog media is about rub points and conversations, it is about writing out loud and learning, it is about reporting in real voices in real time. Blog media can be individual or group perspectives, most tend to be independent voices, the only community that is formed is in the links, whereas MSM is about reporting on facts or interviews within the context of a newspaper or station or media empire.

So are bloggers the fifth brigade? How can we co-exist with journalists, feeding off each other, with trust and respect? Is there scope to collaborate and not compete? Bloggers, by the diverse places from where they come, can report many more things in real time than MSM reporters can hope to reach – again, the tsunamis blog and wiki experiences exemplified this – how can this value be embraced as a strength?

The either-or debate however has been flogged to death, and is the wrong way to approach this. Not all blogs tell the ‘truth’ – but do newspapers and television anymore in their corporate avatars? The rise of blogs is not necessarily the death of journalism as we knew it. Does this mean that journalists must write in ‘beta’? No – still they must understand how the very nature of journalism is morphing to adapt to what readers and viewers want – whether it’s in the delivery system (RSS) or nimbleness and speed in reporting, or the desire for more humanized reporting in real-voices. It’s not the bloggers or the YouTube generation that are changing the face of journalism, it’s the people who consume media and their needs that’s driving this change. They don’t wish to be told “this is the end of the story” anymore – they want to form their own conclusions. They don’t want to be told “this is the truth” – they’d rather discover it. As a result, the rules of free speech, integrity, authority, responsibility, trust and transparency are being re-written.

This is why this article resonates – comments make a simple difference – they are from readers, they lead to conversations, which in turn feed the reader, the commenter, the public and the blogger. To dismiss them as noise, or fear them would be self-defeating for both the journalist and the blogger.