Antony Loewenstein

My following article is published in this week’s Time Out Sydney magazine:

In the years after September 11, 2001, I was constantly frustrated by the failure of the Western media to examine the real reasons behind the attacks. It was as if only a Western journalist’s filter was allowed to see the post 9/11 world. From the hills of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq, I constantly waited to read indigenous voices from these conflict zones. They rarely came.

The internet has revolutionised the ways in which the world communicates, does business and dissents. In Western societies, such advances are irreversible but what about the rest of the planet? In 2007 I visited Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to examine how the net was challenging authoritarian regimes, the role of Western multinationals such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the assistance of web filtering and how misinformed we are in the West towards states considered “enemies” or “allies”.

I spoke to writers, journalists, politicians, dissidents and citizens to gauge attitudes towards social and political issues in their countries and what they really thought about taboo subjects. Blogs, websites and online forums prove that state-run media are usually little more than propaganda-producing outlets. In many places, therefore, online media is the only space to find quality and reliable information.

Across the world, young generations are challenging tired state media by writing online about politics, sex, drugs, relationships, religion, popular culture and Brad Pitt. From female Egyptian activists opposed to female circumcision to outspoken, pro-Western women in Cuba, people are being empowered by new technology to create spaces away from the prying eyes of meddling authorities.

My book, The Blogging Revolution, is more conversation than definitive statement. As Western media struggles to adapt to a web future – ironically enough, sales of print media are rising in many non-Western states – it is vital to examine the shifting relationship between reader and writer and journalist and consumer.

In the non-Western world, however, as I extensively examine in the book, expectations towards transparency and democracy are different and necessarily so. Blogs are one way to gain insights into these worlds, away from our current obsession with “terrorism.”

The following review of The Blogging Revolution is published by the Committee to Protect Bloggers:

I told Antony Loewenstein well over a month ago that I would review his book, “The Blogging Revolution.” I’ve put it off not because the book’s no good but because I simply hate reviewing books. It takes forever and, if you’re a freelancer, pays crap. I’ve found various ways of getting around it before, primarily by rambling on without end, as with this review of “Muslims in Spain” on my personal blog.

This time, however, I’m going to try an ongoing review. That is, I am going to expand the review as I go through the book. Each time I write, I will be registering my impressions. Some of those impressions will be qualified, even contradicted, by further reading. Others will not. Not ideal, perhaps, though in keeping with the spirit of blogging, I think. Hopefully, the discussion in the comments will also be extended due to the form. Plus, both Antony as the writer and you as readers will actually get a review out of the deal.

A couple of introductory comments. As far as I know it is the first book on the topic of repression of bloggers. That alone would make it an important book. It’s also got a very cool cover. Antony I met long before he even had the idea for this book and was interested to watch the idea, and then the reality, develop. To know more about Antony, who is an Australian writer and journalist, check out his blog, Antony Loewenstein.

I have to confess straight out to a certain trepidation about the book. Antony’s first is the controversial “My Israel Question,” which I think could be described as a book by a Jewish anti-Zionist. The gravity that things like this book can sometimes produce however, attracts, in addition to critical thinkers, those with a rather problematic relationship to Jews. I’m talking less about anti-Semites than about disengenous anti-Israelis whose racism is couched in an objection to racism, much as some European politicians condone intolerance out of a worshipful relationship to tolerance.

I’m telling you this not to slap Antony upside the head, but so that you can tack your own sails against the direction of my wind if you feel it necessary.

OK, back to the book in question. To write it Antony researched a great deal. He was a blogger to begin with so already had a relationship with the technology, the communication strategy and some of the players. To write it, he visited Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China. This is also, chapterwise, how he organized the book.

Introduction.

The thing that irritates me about the introduction, something which I have already seen in everything from blog posts to radio reports on the “progressive” side of the spectrum, is this notion that repression of bloggers in countries like Cuba has the following qualities.

• The United States (gasp!) is responsible for it
• It’s not so bad as The Man would have us believe
• The people in repressive countries are not bad

That the U.S. has an effect on the world is beyond question, but one thing I never see is an expose on how the vast power of the country is responsible for, say, South African music, or love. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the U.S. is responsible for everything, then it’s responsible for everything. And that includes French cinema and dim sum.

To the second and third points, I’m sure there are some people who believe that because Iran’s governing cadre is mostly creepy tyrants, for example, so are its people. But I don’t think there are many. It does make sense to ask the question, however, how much do the people in a given country believe in the philosophy of information their governments express? I think it’s vital to any exploration of repression.

Now, one of the main focii in the introduction is on the role of Western (really, American) companies in providing both the technology of repression as well as the strategy for it. From Google to Microsoft, Cisco to Smart Computing to Facebook, American Internet and social media companies have enthusiastically and repeatedly effected the repression of citizens in other countries and their own. What pisses me off about this even more than normal is that the ideal of America, the ideal whose practice made these innovative companies possible, has been whored off so enthusiastically by these companies NOT to make a fortune, but to make a little bit more money to add to the already-existing fortunes. For the life of me I have never understood this. Wouldn’t the PR benefit of acting decently more than make up for the loss of possible future customers in places like China.

Antony is right to point out that this is an integral element in the repression of bloggers and other practioners of social media. I look forward to more coverage of this as the book goes on. (With Tom Lantos having died, I doubt seriously there is another American politician with the moral uprightness and love of conflict who will hold these companies to task.)

My following interview by Hamid Tehrani for Global Voices was published today:

Antony Loewenstein, a Sydney-based freelance journalist and blogger, has recently published his new book: The Blogging Revolution. This book talks about the impact of blogging on six countries: Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba.

He says:

I chose the six countries in the book because they are routinely referred to in the West as “enemies” or “allies” of Washington and we were rarely gaining true insights into life for average citizens, away from stories about “terrorism”. I wanted to talk to bloggers, writers, dissidents, politicians and citizens and hear their stories, removed from “official” perspectives.

Antony attended the Global Voices Summit 2008 in Budapest as a panelist. You can find several references to Global Voices in his book.

I interviewed him about the book:

Q: Before starting your trip to Iran, you wrote that you were skeptical that the internet on its own can bring real revolutionary change to this country. What do you mean by revolutionary change? And what do you think now?

The concept of revolution is a fluid term. I met few people in my travels that wanted great shifts in their country. My book profiles a number of dissidents and bloggers across the globe who are striving for political, social and moral change – including Saudi Arabia’s most famous blogger, Fouad Al-Farhan, recently released from prison for challenging his nation’s nepotistic rule – but they recognize that only a tiny minority of citizens would join them in massive upheavals.

The internet cannot on its own bring large change, but it can facilitate and empower people to find their voice and campaign openly. No technology has existed before the web to do this. I don’t idealise the internet, nor believe Western-style democracy is the goal of people in the countries I visited. Foreign meddling is largely resented, though opening up the lines of communication with Westerners is welcomed.

In Iran, after nearly thirty years of revolution, most young people I met were exhausted; what they don’t want is to be bombed by the US or Israel.

Q: You quoted an Iranian journalist who worked with international news agencies, and said that foreign media in Iran are only interested in nuclear issues and Al–Qaida. Don’t you think it is the same in other countries? After all, Iranians are more interested in the US elections than the American health care system. How do you see the role of blogs in covering the less “hot” issues in Iran?

Western media is currently in a massive crisis of confidence. Resources are declining, fewer journalists are being employed and localism is being celebrated. It’s therefore not surprising, though regrettable, that so many stories in our press about a place such as Iran is obsessed with Ahmadinejad, terrorism, Iraq or human rights. These are all vitally important issues, but they don’t define the place.

My book reveals a side of Iran that is rarely seen in our terrorism-obsessed media.

Living in Sydney, Australia, I see daily the obsession with the US election, as if we all have real influence over Barack Obama or John McCain’s campaigns.

Blogs in so-called repressive regimes cover issues that time-constrained and narrow Western journalists usually do not. For this reason alone, they should be discussed and promoted.

Q: Are there any real commonalities between the Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian and Saudi Arabian blogospheres, or any radical differences?

The Iranian and Egyptian blogospheres are large and growing, and influencing the political process. The regimes, recognizing this, are increasingly imprisoning bloggers and activists to try and silence them. International solidarity, from other bloggers and certain governments, is making the job of repressive regimes more difficult. Imprisoned bloggers won’t be forgotten.

I was impressed with the depth and diversity of the voices in both Egypt and Iran, something I feature extensively in the book, from the left to the right, women, activists and Islamists. Frankly, this scene is far more engaged than in many Western nations.

In Saudi Arabia, the blogosphere is less developed though still remains active. Censorship of “pornographic” sites is limited, though the regime is starting to fear the power of activists. Reading female bloggers – as a gender they’re actively marginalized in society – is refreshing if we want to understand this previously “silenced” group.

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced writing this book and doing your research?

Gaining full access to some of the countries was challenging. Investigating the role of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other Western multinational firms and their collusion in web censorship in a state such as China. Protecting my sources was equally important. I took precautions before I contacted bloggers in most countries and when I arrived there.

A key aim of the book was to move away from the traditional role of Western journalist as a filter of quality. In every featured country, my perspective is unavoidable, of course, but I was determined to redefine my position in relation to the people I was interviewing. Their voices were far more important than mine.

Q: What do you think about the role of Global Voices in helping people learn about unheard voices? Any ideas for how to make Global Voices more efficient?

The strength of Global Voices is its ability to educate readers across the world about different countries and cultures, often issues and perspectives ignored by the myopic Western media. Language remains a key problem, however. More effort should be placed into finding connections between the West and the rest because the internet is currently a space where these two worlds rarely interact.

My following article is published today by the Melbourne Age:

During the bruising Democratic Party tussle with Hillary Clinton in April, a citizen journalist recorded Obama saying that he understood why working-class voters in decrepit industrial towns were “bitter” and clung to “guns or religion”.

Despite being a paid-up Obama supporter, writer Mayhill Fowler worked for the Huffington Post’s Off The Bus program – around 1,800 unpaid researchers, interviewers and reporters follow the intricacies of the campaign and publish it online – and believed it was her duty to reveal the event.

It was a defining media moment, made even more significant because most of the mainstream press explaining Obama’s comments conveniently airbrushed Fowler’s work. A “real” journalist hadn’t recorded the comment and therefore could be ignored.

It was the kind of exclusionary attitude all-too-common in Western media offices. Editors tell themselves that only “professionals” should be allowed to contribute published or broadcast information to the daily news cycle. Thankfully, this broken narrative is disappearing before our eyes. Alternative models are appearing by necessity.

Participatory media could easily be adopted in Australia. What about leading media outlets utilising trusted and vetted citizens in marginal seats and giving them resources to write and investigate issues relevant to their communities? From corrupt councillors to government inaction, politicians will find it hard to ignore questions from voters in their own electorate.

Journalism skills are hardly rocket science and can be acquired with experience and a little training. These so-called amateurs could blog, maintain wikis, write articles and develop contacts that would exceed any professional reporter who simply can’t devote the time to one area.

Networked journalism both engages a wider slice of society and ensures that more segments of the debate, from conservative to the progressive end, won’t feel so unrepresented in the media.

The future of robust journalism is still being written but it certainly won’t emerge from ignoring the wishes of the masses. Off The Bus co-founder Jay Rosen defines citizen journalism thus: “When the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another.”

The current debate in the West over the dwindling resources of the mainstream media remains mired in tired paradigms. Both print and online can survive, but the relationship between the professionals and their readers has to change. Print circulation is falling across the Western world and is unlikely to shift soon. Journalists have never been so mistrusted. Media owners, with notable exceptions, are not investing in investigative work.

The only answer is to connect interested parties from a diverse cross-selection and allow them access to the tools of the media elite. I agree with American media commentator Jeff Jarvis who tells newspapers: “Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.” In other words, know your strengths and don’t waste valuable resources sending journalists on stories that can be adequately covered by a few reporters. Readers will always be instinctively drawn to the best coverage (not sloppily re-written wire copy.)

Of course, these discussions are largely irrelevant in the non-Western world, the vast majority of the planet. Newspapers and television stations in authoritarian regimes are usually little more than propaganda-producing outlets (though interestingly in many of these states circulation figures are rising.) The internet is often the only source of alternative and reliable information.

During the research for my new book, I spent time in Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China to discuss with writers, dissidents, online gurus, citizens, bloggers and politicians the ways in which the net is challenging repressive regimes and forcing uncomfortable issues into public consciousness.

Torture, multi-party elections, an unfiltered internet, gender relations and female circumcision are just a small taste of what courageous bloggers and activists are discussing online. Even with the censorship of many websites, through the assistance of Western multinationals such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, dissent is growing in many of these nations. But are we listening to their voices?

We are only given a tiny glimpse of these worlds in the West. I remember speaking to many middle-class Chinese twenty-somethings who resented the ways in which Western journalists stereotyped their nationalism as dangerous and foreign. As many angry bloggers told me, is it really any different to Americans celebrating and defending their government in times of crisis?

The Beijing Games proved that an anti-China narrative was alive and well in the foreign pages of our media. If reporters thought of reading Chinese bloggers writing during the event, they would have found a multitude of opinions about human rights, Tibet, the Dalai Lama and Taiwan. I waited optimistically for the publishing of these blogger’s perspectives, but it seemed that only a Western journalist’s filter was allowed to judge proceedings.

The West and the rest may seem eons apart in terms of interests and desires, but everybody craves trustworthy news and views. It’s time to engage communities to find ways in which they can contribute making sense of a rapidly shrinking globe.

Antony Loewenstein is the author of The Blogging Revolution, published by Melbourne University Press.

Sunday Night Safran is a great weekly show on ABC youth radio Triple J.

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about The Blogging Revolution, the role of Western multinationals in repressive regimes and how the American relationship to the internet should be viewed in the non-Western world.

The Fourth Estate is a great weekly radio program on one of Sydney’s finest independent radio stations, 2ser.

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, host Daz Chandler and I talked about the role of Western multinationals in authoritarian regimes, the seeming lack of understanding of online privacy in the West and the issues in The Blogging Revolution.

My latest column for New Matilda is about the ways in which the web can challenge dictatorships around the globe and the complicity of Western firms in assisting repression:

With the Beijing Olympics now a distant memory — and commentators wondering whether the event will herald greater openness in the Communist nation — local internet users are already reporting increased online censorship. As lawyer and legal blogger Liu Xiaoyuan recounted last week:

“Yesterday, I was interviewed by some foreign media; they wanted me to talk about issues of press freedom and freedom of speech during the Olympics. During the Olympics, authorities stopped blocking foreign media websites, and we were free to browse them, this is definitely a big step forward. But, controls on internet speech are tighter than they were before, and many things cannot be talked about; even posts like this one will be deleted. What I didn’t expect is that now that the Olympics are over, internet speech still hasn’t [been] let go.”

There has also been extensive online chatter about China’s medal haul in Beijing and the inevitable comparison with the US, including a pithy challenge to America’s obesity culture. Despite China now having the world’s largest online community — 250 million and growing at around six million new users per month — the Communist Party has started to recognise the potential health dangers of new technology (and not just the increased weight of users): late last week a leading Chinese legislator announced that about four million Chinese youngsters were addicted to the internet, attracted by “unhealthy” online games.

Meanwhile, the recent war between Georgia and Russia — in many ways a proxy battle between the Russia and the West — proved the effectiveness of bloggers in deconstructing the realities behind the headlines. Russian bloggers regularly use LiveJournal, a social networking blogging tool, and during the conflict we were treated to a relatively unfiltered perspective, radically different to the pro-Kremlin line in the Russian state media.

All sides issued exaggerated propaganda, but some Russians, despite the vast majority of the country supporting President Dimitri Medvedev’s offensive, were more considered. Journalist Michael Idov wrote, “Russia is a society of conspiracy theorists. In fact, the notion that politics is mere theatre and policy is determined via backroom collusion is so central to the Russian worldview that ‘theorist’ is perhaps too weak a word. Russia is a society of conspiracy axiomists.” Georgian bloggers were desperate to be heard, too.

In Turkey, over 450 websites recently joined in solidarity to protest the state’s increasing censorship of mainstream sites, such as YouTube (again available after being temporarily banned for allegedly insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish state).

A public prosecution’s office in Egypt announced in late August () that a blogger held in Cairo’s Tora prison for a month should be released immediately. Police accused the blogger, 21-year-old mass communications student Mohamed Refaat Bayyoumy, of being a member of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, and charged him with possession of literature promoting the organisation. In a separate case, a blogger imprisoned for four years for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed and President Hosni Mubarak is facing increased harassment.

There is no co-ordinated worldwide campaign against web filtering and oppression but bloggers and activists in various countries are starting to realise the power of organising locally and globally.

The proliferation of blogs giving air to indigenous voices in countries deemed “enemies” or “allies” is a challenge to the Western-centric media attitudes we are familiar with. As I argue in my new book, it is essential to hear alternative voices from a place such as Iran, where the latest reports suggest that a US military strike is imminent. During my visit to Iran last year, there was constant fear of an aggressive move by Washington or Israel.

What most dissidents, bloggers and journalists couldn’t understand — and these were people who mostly opposed the regime — was how the political planners expected a bombing run to lessen the control of the state. If anything, it would only increase it. And as I argued on the Lowy Institute blog last week, the current Western posturing is actually more about protecting the Jewish state’s supremacy than worrying about Iran’s supposed nuclear capabilities.

While the challenges new media presents for old media may be a key issue in the Western media context, in the vast majority of other countries, the presence of a technology which can express ideas usually kept between friends and family is an inherently liberating force. Ultimately, in much of the non-Western world, the blogosphere is the only source of reliable information, as state run media is guaranteed to be shameless propaganda.

In surveying the activities of bloggers and online activists, however, it’s essential to note the largely silent influence of Western multinationals. The role of companies such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Adidas, Coke and McDonald’s, among many others, has been to complicity assist some of the worst authoritarian regimes on the planet, such as China’s. Internet firms, many of whom we rely on every day for our information needs, are actively involved in the restriction of freedom for others in non-democratic nations.

Days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, Canadian writer Naomi Klein argued that “Police State 2.0″ was being born:

“The games have been billed as China’s ‘coming out party’ to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organising society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it ‘authoritarian capitalism’, others ‘market Stalinism’ — personally I prefer ‘McCommunism’.”

It isn’t hard to imagine a dystopian future in which the skills learned by Western firms in a place like China may be transported back to our own societies, or simply used in other countries desperate to control the online flow of information.

I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Media Report today on The Blogging Revolution and the ways in which the internet is far more complex than simply being a supposedly democratising force:

Antony Funnell: What do Iran, Cuba and Egypt all have in common? Well, they all have governments which suppress dissent and they all have bloggers, people using the social power of the internet to communicate with their own and the outside world.

Now the popular Western perception of the blogger in a country with a repressive regime is of a person trying quietly to bring about change, using the power of modern technology to bring about a liberal, or at least democratic, transformation.

Well that’s one story. But as journalist and author Antony Loewenstein discovered, there are many more. His new book is called ‘The Blogging Revolution’ and it’s a collection of his experiences in six countries, the three I’ve just mentioned, as well as Saudi Arabia, Syria and China.

Now Lowenstein challenges us to take a more realistic and complex view of the power and value of blogging.

Antony Loewenstein: We perceive in the West mistakenly, that many Chinese people are craving some kind of open democratic system. Now there’s no doubt that many people in China want some kind of democracy and would like maybe greater freedom of speech. But the simple fact is that study after study after study proves, or suggests at least, that the majority of Chinese people are happy with their lives, are happy with the one-party state, they’re happy with the fact of their current direction in life. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues, and there are, and the web of course in China, one of the great things it’s done, is allowed people to actually articulate issues that were previously unheard of, such as, say, corruption. So for example in the last sort of few years, there have been thousands upon thousands of protests in small towns across China, about corruption.

Now this is not challenging the one-party state and the government itself, the regime in Beijing generally speaking tolerates that as we saw after the earthquake in Sichuan as well, where there were public protests against builders who allegedly were involved in building constructions that collapsed after the earthquake. So it’s a far more nuanced picture than much of our media allows, and I guess that’s even often frustrated me. Which led me to write the book, in a way, was how narrow these interpretations of so-called enemies or allies of the West are in so much of our media, and it’s far easier for Western journalists to go to country X and simply report everything through his or her filter. Now I’m a Western journalist too of course, but it was very important for me to actually allow these people in these countries to actually have a voice and be heard themselves, rather than always filtered through my own perceptions and biases.

Antony Funnell: Now you travelled to six countries for your book, and as you’ve said, you’ve found encouraging signs as well as the bad and the frustrating things about the way in which the internet is used, the way blogging occurs in those countries, or doesn’t occur in those countries. But it seems to me from reading the book that your experiences in Cuba were very different from your experiences elsewhere. Tell us about Cuba.

Antony Loewenstein: Cuba, of all the places I went to, Cuba’s internet is the least developed, and the reasons for that really are twofold: firstly the US embargo, which has been going on since the early ’60s is insanely criminal and if nothing else actually restricts much material and infrastructure to actually arrive in Cuba. The other reason of course is the fact that the Castro regime, (although now Raoul has allegedly taken over and Fidel’s kind of in the background just penning his diatribes every few days) they have a profound fear of dissent. And so I’m someone who very much defends some elements of what’s going on in Cuba, but the simple fact is that it is a one-party state, it doesn’t allow freedom of speech association or freedom of the press. And the internet of course is seen like in many other countries, as a threat to that. The internet does exist, and some people do blog, and generally speaking it’s a fairly privileged middle-class, who are able to access that.

Antony Funnell: There’s only a small percentage of population though that have internet access.

Antony Loewenstein: A few percent, indeed, and it’s basically one of the lowest figures. In fact it is the lowest figure in Latin America as a whole. So I think it’s a different mentality. In Egypt, for example, years ago, the Mubarak regime realised the internet was going to be great to build the economy of the country. It wasn’t seen initially as a threat to its rule, and Iran was the same. So they actually through massive government support, allow the internet to exist in even the poorest communities, as a way to try and build economic development. What of course they realised very soon, as we see in Iran and elsewhere around the world, is the fact that now there are dissidents and activists who are challenging a one-party state. Cuba I think has also realised that, and its policy was the opposite. They would cut off at the knees from the beginning. Inevitably of course, if a country wants to develop these days, it’s impossible to avoid the web itself, and that’s what’s happening in Cuba. There is a shift and the web is becoming more known. I mean I found it surreal to meet a number of students in Havana who were learning Information Technology and the internet, but actually weren’t allowed to access the internet, if that make sense. So therefore they could access the ‘intranet’ and you meet many people in Cuba who are allowed to access an ‘intranet’, which is really only a number of websites that were approved by the regime itself.

Antony Funnell: It’s not a real internet.

Antony Loewenstein: Indeed, it’s basically websites there which are approved by the authorities, and clearly they’re going to be very limited in nature. So I think it’s a different policy I suppose. I think also the perceived threat, and the real threat from the US in Cuba, gave justification of the regime to block any kind of outside influences, and the internet was one of those things. That is starting to change, and we might, might see a difference with a new President in the US towards the policies with Cuba. But I think what’s important to know is that most countries around the world, the internet initially was not seen as a threat, it was not seen as a threat. Now it’s regarded as that because you have countless numbers of bloggers and writers, even though they’re a minority, actually writing and dissenting and actually challenging one party rule.

Antony Funnell: Now you make the point, as you did earlier, that blogging and the internet is a great democratiser, and that’s a point that’s been made by many people before. But is that really valid in the sense that it seems even from your book, that most people you encountered who blogged, were middle-class; we’re not talking about a broad scope of society. In all of these countries it seems to be the middle-class who are undertaking this activity.

Antony Loewenstein: There’s an element of truth in that. As I talk about in my book, there’s no doubt that in many countries the people who have the greatest access to this technology, are people of course who have some kind of a greater income.

Antony Funnell: And literacy as well, I would say.

Antony Loewenstein: And literacy, undoubtedly so. But of course what you do see in many countries, and this includes China, for example. Now China has 1.3-billion people, and about 250-million of those are online now, which means that the majority are not. But what you do find is in the last few years, that many of the greatest increasing penetration of the web in China actually are in rural areas. People who are generally not literate enough to use the web granted, but not people who are necessarily in the cities. So there is a sense that for example, there’s many farming communities in China, which are using the web in terms of getting access to greater markets throughout their country. Now this sort of stuff is not known that much in the West, but it exists, and it’s not a tiny minority, it’s a growing number of people who are using the web for those purposes.

These people in China aren’t using it to challenge the government necessarily, but what they are doing is often to challenge corruption or challenge shoddy building, as we saw with the recent earthquake. So – and in Saudi Arabia again, there was a sense very much that the people, 20% of the population use the web, it’s the minority, true, but it’s growing, very, very quickly. And I think there’s also a belief with many activists in these countries (and this is what I talk about in my book too) to actually try and involve people who don’t have as easy access to the web, in other words a belief that Yes, we don’t want a situation where the web in itself is a supposed democratiser, but are we only actually hearing middle-class voices? Why aren’t we hearing voices for example of, as I talk about, sex workers in India, or people who actually are often disenfranchised within their own society. The web in itself gives them a voice, and I think many people in my book who I talk to, were aware of the fact that they don’t want to come across as being part of the elite, although in some ways they are, but it’s important for them to acknowledge the fact that Let’s get other people engaged who are less privileged than they are.

Antony Funnell: Sure, look I take on what you’re saying there, but I mean, given that we are talking predominantly about one section of society’s engaging in this internet activity, how good a gauge is it of the mood of a country?

Antony Loewenstein: I think it’s one good gauge. Is it the only gauge? No, it’s not. But I think there is a sense in every country that I went to, the internet in itself, not just the middle-class, actually has changed things. Now my point is not simply to say that the web by definition democratises, therefore makes the country more open, therefore makes it more Western-friendly; it’s far from the case at all, as you know, having read the book. And I think one of the key things in a country like Iran, say, is that many people I met, many of whom support Ahmadinejad I might add, and support the idea of Islamism and the idea of a kind of quite hardline religious state, their idea about what Iran should be is ,even the reformists, and I spent time with the former Vice President of the country, Mohammad Aliabadi, who is a reformist, and supposedly a liberal. When you hear him speak though, his views about Iran and the world are still very hardline. He believes in Islamism and he believes in shunning Israel, he believes very much in the idea of a religious state.

Now these people are part of the elite, that’s true, but what you find in Iran also as a good example, is that the majority of the population supposedly, according to many studies, away from the internet I might add, want an Islamic state. In other words, the idea that the web in itself and activists in Iran are moving towards some kind of greater liberal state is simply not borne out by the facts. So yes, you’re right to the extent to say that it’s one gauge, and it’s an important gauge, and also I think in countries like that, it’s very hard to gauge how people think. There’s not regular polling as we have in the West about certain issues and ideas, so the web is one way, only one way, to gauge how people actually view both their own countries and the world.

Antony Funnell: And look, just finally, it seems to me that one of the other things that you challenge is the idea that oppressive regimes are good at closing down this type of freedom of speech, if you like, on the web. We have a notion in the West I guess, that regimes in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Iran, that they must be very good because we know in the past they’ve been very good at putting down dissent. But that doesn’t seem to be the case with the internet, they don’t seem to be all that sophisticated in the approach they take to filtering, say.

Antony Loewenstein: Well it’s incredibly random, I mean to the point where there are thousands upon thousands of key words that often are blocked, in places like China and Iran. And of course one of the things that it’s also important to remember is that in countries like China, companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are actively involved in actually assisting the regime in censorship programs. So whereas in the West we view those companies as kind of these benevolent forces that help us find information, the fact is China has become like a laboratory for Western internet companies and security firms to improve and work on their security infrastructure so to speak, which can then be exported back to the West or other authoritarian states. So the filtering process in a place like China is sophisticated to the point where a lot of websites are blocked. People can always find a way around it, and I suppose one of the things that amazed me in the writing of the book was that regimes in some ways are fighting a battle they can never win. You can block websites, you can put people in jail, you can do all that kind of thing, as they are doing in every country I went to, but ultimately, as clichéd as it might sound, people’s freedom will actually speak out in the end, despite all the restrictions that may happen. And I think what’s happening increasingly is that many people in the West are realising that to support individuals in countries like this who have got something to say, who may well be, I might add, critical of the West, I mean many people in Saudi Arabia are hardline Islamists who are critical of the regime and critical of the US. And to me it seems a shame that many Western human rights organisations often feel uncomfortable I think, supporting Islamists, particularly in the post 9/11 world, because they’re seen as being critical of the West, and to me, if we believe in human rights, it should be human rights for all.

Antony Funnell: Well the book is called ‘The Blogging Revolution’ and the author is Antony Loewenstein. Antony, thank you very much for joining us on The Media Report.

Antony Loewenstein: Thanks so much for having me.

Antony Funnell: And Antony’s book is published by Melbourne University Press.

My following essay appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper:

The young online tribe is more interested in discussing sex, drugs and rock’n'roll than political revolution, writes Antony Loewenstein

Early last month, some Iranian members of parliament voted to debate a draft bill that aimed to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society” by adding to the list of offences punishable by execution crimes such as “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy”.

Nikahang, a Canadian-based Iranian online cartoonist and blogger, was defiant: “Only people who disturb people’s mental security could support such a thing.”

During a visit to the Islamic Republic in 2007 to research the blogging community, I found this attitude was common. With a population of 70million, most of them under 30, Iran is home to one of the Middle East’s largest online communities, which is thriving despite onerous censorship and risk of imprisonment.

The more than 100,000 active Iranian bloggers, writing mainly in Farsi, include hardline Islamists battling with reformists over religious dress, anti-Semitism, the war in Iraq and dating rituals.

The rise of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it seems, has only emboldened activists of all political persuasions.

I spent a day with the country’s former vice-president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a regular blogger. This chubby man, a frequent giggler, chastised me when I asked why it was impossible to criticise Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly, just as Westerners routinely slam elected politicians. “One of the misunderstandings is that you try and compare the institutions of countries, which are not similar to each other,” he instructed.

I quickly discovered that in a country such as Iran, the divide between conservative and moderate is far narrower than generally presumed. Iranian reformers are Islamists in less fundamentalist garb and most citizens appear to want an Islamic nation with a modern face.

Across the world, young generations are challenging tired state media by writing online about politics, sex, drugs, relationships, religion, popular culture and especially Angelina Jolie. From Egyptian activists opposed to female circumcision to outspoken, pro-Western women in Cuba, people are being empowered by new technology to create spaces away from the prying eyes of meddling authorities.

The rise of the online community means the relationship between the state and its people is shifting radically. Individuality is emerging in societies that routinely shun such behaviour and repressive regimes are not pleased.

A recent University of Washington report reveals that 64 people have been arrested for blogging since 2003. Iran, China and Egypt are the main offenders.

In the West, blogging has become an essential part of the media, with millions of internet users cataloguing their daily lives. The US-based Co-operative Congressional Election Study has found that although political blogging is popular, only a minority of web users regularly engage with political bloggers. The study’s report confirms that readers “tend to visit blogs that share their viewpoint”.

The need for alternative sources of information, voices not processed through a Western journalist’s filter, became pronounced after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC. I shared the frustration of many with the mainstream media’s lack of insight into nations deemed Western enemies or allies.

Blogs offered a window into mainly middle-class segments of societies rarely examined in the West. What does a Saudi Arabian male think about his country’s adherence to Wahhabism? How does the average China web user cope with multinational-assisted filtering? What is Cuba’s likely future after Fidel Castro?

These are just a few of the issues that blogs have helped to elucidate.

My on-the-ground investigation of the blogging revolution and its influence on the relationship between the West and the rest took me to Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China. In these countries I met writers, bloggers, dissidents, politicians and journalists.

The subjects we discussed included the role of companies such as Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft in helping repressive regimes censor the internet.

The results were surprising. As one blogger told me in Tehran: “Most of the people (I knoware) in favour of reform, not revolution, because people are too tired to experience another revolution.” I found the same message echoed throughout the countries I visited: the desire to experience incremental change without foreign involvement.

Vocal activism was the exception, not the norm. Take China. A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the vast majority of China’s web users — who number more than 250 million, the largest online community in the world — expressed support for Beijing managing or controlling the internet. A book editor in Shanghai explained to me that online filtering didn’t bother many Chinese, given that 99 per cent of blogs discussed food and daily life. He thought that most citizens questioned the sincerity of leaders who talked about “democracy with Chinese characteristics”. “Is China ready for free elections?” he asked sceptically.

Despite these realities, during the past decade there has been a steady increase in awareness about political rights, principally because of satellite television and the internet.

China’s leading video-sharing site, Tudou (which means couch potato), is reportedly bigger than YouTube, with more than one petabyte of daily data transfers. Tudou founder Gary Wang explains that officials phone in several times a week to demand the removal from the site of films they consider suspect. Wang is philosophical. Change is coming but it will take time. Political reform isn’t a priority for most citizens. Even though he spent years living in France and the US, Wang resents questions about “oppressive censorship” from Western reporters. “They seem to pity us,” he says.

Earlier this year, most Chinese bloggers reacted with outrage at what they perceived to be anti-Beijing coverage in the Western media of the pro-Tibet protests in Lhasa and the troubled Olympic torch relay. “For a long time now,” one of them wrote, “certain Western media, best represented by CNN and BBC, in the name of press freedom, have been unscrupulously slandering and defaming developing nations.”

I heard repeatedly during my visit to China, usually after a tirade against foreign journalists who rarely travel beyond Beijing, that satisfaction with the Communist Party regime is strong and growing. This doesn’t mean the Chinese endorse authoritarian methods. Rather, it means incremental change and battles against corruption are considered preferable to Western-style capitalism.

A separate global Pew Research Centre study conducted this year found 86 per cent of Chinese were happy with their country’s direction, double the 2002 figure. In comparison, only 23 per cent of Americans surveyed thought their nation was heading the right way.

Blogger Mica Yushu told me in Shanghai that most of her middle-class friends didn’t crave political change. “We use the internet mostly for entertainment, sharing information, earning money or other fun,” she said. The sight of darkened internet cafes across the country was something to behold, with thousands of users gaming, watching downloaded films and soft-core pornography, blogging and instant messaging. Politics seemed the furthest thing from these monitored minds.

China’s economic boom has mostly silenced the internal critics and agitators who do speak up pay a high price for challenging Beijing’s unelected clique.

Online culture is thriving in almost every country I visited. The exception is Cuba, although the elevation of Raul Castro to the presidency is slowly leading to economic and social perestroika, despite some politically tinged websites being blocked.

Most bloggers prefer to protest privately, anonymously or not at all. The fight against repression takes many forms, from drinking contraband vodka in Tehran to appropriating American hip-hop culture in Havana. The price of protesting in Egypt, one of the highest annual recipients of US aid, is likely to be imprisonment and torture.

Despite their relatively small numbers and the penalties they attract, dissenting bloggers are playing havoc with the established order. According to Human Rights Watch researcher Elijah Zarwan, “bloggers have succeeded in doing something that years of standing on the street corner and shouting ‘No to torture’ or ‘No to the interior ministry’ has never managed to accomplish”: putting these issues on the public agenda.

The small size of online communities in Syria and Saudi Arabia has not stopped bloggers from challenging authoritarian rule.

Neither country employs harsh online filtering, but users learn quickly there are lines that cannot be crossed.

Saudi Arabian actor Mohammad al-Qass explains that in a fundamentalist nation such as his, internal reform — for women’s rights and broader legal and social rights — needs space to develop. “Fifty years ago, Saudi Bedouins were riding around on camels. Now they’re using mobile phones and the best technology,” Qass says. “It will take time for society to catch up with this technology.”

Meanwhile, for the first time a more nuanced view of the West is being offered via the web, and it allows a woman in Damascus the freedom to admire Brad Pitt as well as pray five times a day at the local mosque. Cross-cultural pollination is occurring, no matter what the religiously pious may think about it.

The issue of online representation is central to this debate. I recently presented a paper in Budapest at the Harvard University and Google sponsored Global Voices Citizen Media Summit. While we heard countless tales of bloggers across the world using online tools to highlight police torture and corruption, many participants wondered about the voices we weren’t hearing online: such as those of minorities, the poor and Luddites uncomfortable with technology.

US writer Clay Shirky explains in his book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising Without Organisations that “communications tools (such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and blogging) don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring”. In other words, it’s only now becoming possible to come across online the words of indigenous communities in Bolivia, dispossessed voters in Kenya or sex workers in India.

Letting people speak and write for themselves without a Western lens is one of the triumphs of blogging. The culture of blogging is unlike that of any previous social movement. Disjointed and disorganised, its aims are deliberately vague. While many want the right to be critical in the media, others simply crave the ability to date and listen to subversive music. That in itself is revolutionary for much of the world.

The Blogging Revolution by Antony Loewenstein (Melbourne University Press) is published next week.

Loewenstein will appear at the Melbourne Writers Festival, as well as at next month’s Brisbane Writers Festival.

My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:

We ignore the diversity of China’s web community at our peril, writes Antony Loewenstein

Is the West afraid of Chinese patriotism? Some Chinese bloggers think it is but remain aware of the ways in which such sentiments could be misunderstood around the world. One wrote:

“…I love the country, and fervently so. But regardless of how passionately patriotic I am, my goal is to see China be able to continue its economic development, social stability, and continuous political reforms so as to keep up with the times…This is what worries me every time I see patriotism rising up again, wondering if it will completely ruin international relations. Will it ruin our economic growth?”

A recent survey indicates that many Asian citizens are sceptical of China’s growing economic and social power. The conductors of the survey wrote: “Clearly, China is recognised by its neighbours as the future leader of Asia, but its rise does not mean US influence is waning.”

Despite these fears, however, the news last week that President Hu Jintao communicated with some of China’s 230 million netizens was a unique example of what few other world leaders would ever do. Can you imagine a US President or Australian Prime Minister spending time online with voters? “Political liberalization” is starting to occur in China.

The regime is undoubtedly parading a schizophrenic face to the world, both talking about freedom during the Beijing Games but also increasingly tightening the censorship screws. And too much of Western criticism of China ignores the role of multinationals such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in the filtering process. Chinese-based firms are now working to assist these companies in managing unruly blog coverage or bad PR.

Of course internet censorship is continuing and there are no signs that this will cease anytime soon. Police brutality is worsening, too. A recent conference in Hong Kong tried to place this phenomenon in context and featured countless speakers who wished the Western media wouldn’t portray the Chinese people as oppressed netizens looking for liberation. There is not one single narrative to describe the Chinese internet experience and although the country maintains the world’s most sophisticated web filtering system, many users are able to debate online far more freely than before the technology’s arrival. In other words, progress is in the eye of the beholder.

On the ground, however, many of China’s citizens are paying a high price for “social harmony.” Tibetans are struggling to cope with “re-education” classes and heightened repression. An ABC reporter was allowed a brief visit this week to witness the shortened torch relay through Lhasa but he was able to gauge little from the stage-managed events. Some journalists are finding a way into restricted lands, such as the Sydney Morning Herald’s Mary-Anne Toy:

“In a meadow of blue and white irises in the nomadic grasslands of Gansu, which along with much of the neighbouring province of Qinghai formed the Tibetan kingdom of Amdo before it became part of China, three young monks arrive for an assignation. They have secretly left the Labrang monastery in Xiahe, the biggest and most influential outside of Lhasa, to meet the Herald.

“’We will never regret what we have done, even if we die, because what we are doing is for the sake of the Tibetan people,’ says one, aged 30.

“They want the return of the Dalai Lama, the release of the 11th Panchen Lama (kidnapped by the Chinese in 1995) and for Tibet to be governed by Tibetans, he says.”

Beijing will be able to navigate its way through the August Games and claim the world vindicated its tough stance against any designated troublemakers. But after the fanfare dies down, China will have experienced a year of almost unparalleled negative press.

Where to from there?

How Google, Yahoo and Microsoft assist censorship of the internet in China.

My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China:

The suffering of earthquake victims should not mask the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling elite, writes Antony Loewenstein.

The ongoing humanitarian catastrophe after the Sichuan earthquake has revealed a side of China that is rarely glimpsed. After months of controversy over Beijing’s abuses in Tibet and elsewhere – and many Tibetan activists are lamenting the switch of focus – the global community almost seems relieved to be obsessed on something else (though this hasn’t stopped leading actress Zhang Ziyi chastising participants at the recent Cannes Film Festival for knowing little about the disaster.)

Israel has provided aid to victims. Jewish news agency JTA writes: “In a gesture of support, one of the world’s smallest countries is sending aid to the world’s most populous nation in the form of $1.5 million worth of equipment for earthquake relief.”

One American teacher living and working in Beijing wrote in the New York Times: “As tragic as the Sichuan earthquake has been, perhaps it can do some good by helping dispel a widespread myth: that the new generation of Chinese students are materialistic and selfish.” Daniel A. Bell hoped that, “events can dispel another false impression: that young Chinese are xenophobic nationalists who cheer for their country, good or bad.”

Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof expressed a similarly optimistic attitude, though perhaps naively believed that “grass-roots politics” was taking shape in the world’s most populous nation. Although parents who lost children in shoddily constructed schools are demanding action on “tofu” buildings – and bloggers are now harassing corrupt government officials – authoritarian rule is as entrenched as ever.

There is no doubt, however, that China’s rulers, at least briefly, allowed a freer society to be glimpsed and both local and foreign reporters were allowed relatively unfettered access to the disaster zone.

“In the face of such suffering”, writes China’s correspondent for Britain’s Channel 4, Lindsey Hilsum, “it would be heartless and probably over-optimistic to herald the Sichuan earthquake as the beginning of civil society and accountable government in China. And yet, this natural disaster may have done more than years of campaigning by human rights and democracy activists to force the Chinese government to start opening up.”

Realists, however – and my experience tells me that the Chinese Community Party is unlikely to relinquish its grip on power anytime soon – place the regime’s response to the quake in an historical context. Geremie Barme, professor of Chinese history at the Australian National University, says that, “People have responded generously to this vast human tragedy but many are also aware that the Party is zuo xiu, that is ‘putting on a show’ for mass consumption. There’s a tradition reaching back into dynastic times in which power-holders display their virtue through great shows of munificence through disaster relief.”

China’s global, economic power is never far from the surface and Western multinationals have every interest in joining the boom. Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Cisco were recently grilled in Congress over their role in China. Revelations about Cisco were particularly worrying, though unsurprising. Money talks the loudest language of all. Calls for US web companies to cease locating servers in repressive regimes is one, solid suggestion.

As the Olympics begin in just over three months, it remains unclear what restrictions journalists will face during the event. Censorship is rife, with a popular bridge-building website between China’s Muslim population and Han Chinese shut down in mid-May.

None of these issues stopped one of China’s most popular websites, Sina.com, launching an English language version last week. The country’s growth confounds thinkers and critics alike.

After the devastation of the earthquake is long forgotten, the rules of the Chinese game will remain set. Human rights have rarely been a determining factor in capitalist development and Beijing has no desire to change this equation. Mr X, a foreign media entrepreneur based in China, outlined the rules of this (profitable) game:

“Ultimately, to succeed in China, businesses must assume the goals of the Communist Party as their own. One of the first steps into the market for a major multinational is to hire a government-relations director who will interpret China’s policies and articulate the company’s fealty to those policies as its “commitment to China.”

“In fact, conflating the interests of the Chinese Communist Party with the interests of businesses operating in China is what makes China Inc. work. For the last 30 years, China has been building a social system that establishes an identity between business and broader political or social interests.”