In my book The Blogging Revolution I examine the central role of the web in China. A new work, Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, expands the conversation: Since the mid-1990s, the Internet has revolutionized popular expression in China, enabling users to organize, protest, and influence public opinion in unprecedented ways. Despite…
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Palestinian freedom through Google?
The recent Fatah conference in Bethlehem was a sign that the US-backed Palestinian party was utterly removed from reality. But not to worry, why do Palestinians need a state when they have this? Ten years after Google Inc first rolled out its internet search engine, Palestine finally has its own Google domain, enabling the territories…
Inside the mind of a leftist IDF reservist
Israeli journalist and blogger Noam Sheizaf – whom I recently met in Tel Aviv – is currently on reserve duty in the West Bank. It’s an interesting role for somebody so utterly opposed to the occupation. In his latest post, he tries to explain his thinking. Welcome to the tortured mind of the progressive Israeli:…
Please tell me this isn’t the newspaper of the future
The Huffington Post really needs to find better stories to highlight. This Obama obsession is lame: Obama with Babies: See Who He’s Held Since Becoming President (PHOTOS)
Ahmadinejad the Jew
An intriguing new report by Global Voices writer Hamid Tehrani on the myriad ways in which anti-Jewish sentiment is alive and well in the Islamic Republic: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who, for many, is the living symbol of anti-Semitism, has recently become the target of an anti-Semitic attack. Mehdi Khazali, the son of…
Uprisings won’t be coming via the mobile
Twitter revolutions across the world? Bollocks, writes Foreign Policy’s Evgeny Morozov: You can’t fear what doesn’t exist — and Twitter barely exists, if it exists at all, in most authoritarian countries. Generally, either they have their own microblogging services or Internet access is too slow and expensive for Twitter to be broadly useful. Furthermore, anyone…
The need to challenge authority
Citizen journalism – the kind of non-corporate reporting I examine in The Blogging Revolution – is growing in scope: A global study conducted by the University of Queensland has found Australia is lagging other parts of the region and comparable Western countries in the pursuit of citizen journalism. “It’s a rather complacent society,” said Michael…
The politics of Gazan schooling
Palestinian writers and bloggers discuss school graduation in Gaza; attempting a sense of normality in a completely unreal environment. Nazek Abu Rahma and Hanadi Al Qawasmi write: These are some of the scenes of joy in Palestine for its outstanding students. Palestine is renowned for the high academic achievement of its students, compared with other…
An Islamic Republic that nobody recognises
In my book The Blogging Revolution I explained my time with Iran’s former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a popular blogger. He is currently on trial in Tehran as a supposed ring-leader of the post-election chaos. It is a sham, a show trial. His “confession” – “I say to all my friends and all friends…
Deleting the Hamas factor
Facebook is massively popular in Gaza, a way to connect with friends inside the Strip and the world. So this move will cause damage in the Arab world: The operators of the internet site Facebook have recently removed a webpage dedicated to fans of Hamas’ prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the London-based Al-Hayat reported…