Robert Sharp

Evenin’ all. I wanted to make a quick point about certain global news stories, and the relative amount of news coverage given to each.

Its fashionable, yet incredibly easy to complain that the Michael Jackson death has crowded out news of other more pressing matters. Shawn Micallef sounded an early word of warning about this attitude:

There is no need to compare MJ & Iran - completely dif, just intersect on same medium, not a social/moral lesson to be learned.

Then (again via Twitter, though the link is now lost in the maelstrom) I came across this MJ/Election mash-up, and it occurred to me that coverage (be it on Twitter, blogs or the international MSM) is not a zero-sum game, and that coverage of one piece of news could promote awareness of another.

If you consider Jackson’s output, there are actually loads of other songs that could fit a revolutionary template. Songs like “Heal The World” and “You Are Not Alone” seemed (to me) quite sanctimonious and irritating when they were released. But with the passing of Michael Jackson, the self-congratulatory element to those tracks seems to dissipate. They’re now ripe for the picking as a backing track to some feel-good montages of the peaceful demonstrations in Tehran. “Earth Song”, “Black or White” and (going back a little bit further) “Man in the Mirror” also carry that We-Are-The-World vibe… as does, of course, “We Are The World”! They could all fill the role of unofficial theme-tune to a non-violent protest movement.

Too cheesy? Not one bit of it: The “Yes We Can” generation of political campaigners are unafraid of such accusations. Meanwhile, tracks like “Beat It” could accompany comedic images of Ahmedinejad and Khameni and Keyboard Cat.

I meant to post this last week, so I feel sure I am behind the curve on this one. Yet a quick search through YouTube doesn’t yield further examples. Let us know your favourites, either in the comments, or via the tips form, and maybe we’ll do a round-up or something.

+posted at Liberal Conspiracy. Comment there.

By flickr user fhashemi, reproduced under a creative commons licence.

Its frustrating to maintain a blog, yet fail to comment on some of the most potent stories of the moment.  Nothing doing here on the expenses row or the election of a new speaker.

Worse still, nothing on the ongoing protests and violence, following the recent disputed elections in Iran.  That’s not to say I’m not engaged with what is happening.  I’ve been following the pleas for help via the #iranelection tag on Twitter, and looking various photostreams on Flickr.

During the street protests that followed the Mumbai attacks, I said that social media has come of age.  But now, looking at the Iranian events, I worry about that.  First, we have seen that the network is still vulnerable to interference from governments.  And second, raising awareness of an event is not the same as establishing consensus, much less ensuring there is a critical mass of people for effective action.

I discussed this briefly in a post about the Burmese Monks protest (the short-lived “Saffron Revolution”) in September 2007.  Despite the use of the Internet as a co-ordination tool, it seems that critical mass - or, to be more precise, the right kind of critical mass - is still an elusive Pot of Gold.

Protesters assist a riot policeman in distress in Tehran

Its been a bit quiet on the blog this week.  That’s because I’ve been at the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression in Oslo.  I’ve been using Twitter to log noteworthy nuggets from the seminars and speeches, and may add some more substantial thoughts later.

In the meantime, here’s a compelling cartoon from the artist Magnus Bard.  It features in the International Cartoon Exhibition, currently on show until 26th July at the Oscarsborg fortress in Oslo fjord.

I didn’t know that Salman Rushdie and Aung San Suu Kyi shared a birthday:

On this day, my birthday and yours, I always remember your long ordeal and silently applaud your endurance. This year, silence is impossible. It is not any action of yours, but your house arrest, which symbolizes the suppression of Burmese democracy, that is criminal. It is your trial, not your struggle, that is unjust. On this day, on every day, I am with you.

Rushdie’s message launches the Sixty-Four Words for Aung San Suu Kyi project. Citizens of the world are invited to leave a 64 word message for Aung San, in honour of her 64th birthday on 19th June. Alternatively, you can leave a 64 character twitter instead, using the hashtag #assk64.

http://64forsuu.com/

The project is led by the Burma Campaign UK and was created in only six days, which is a remarkable feat. In addition to Salman Rushdie, the site carries messages from Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and George Clooney. Why not add your message, and then let others know that you’ve done so?

Photographed at a press conference in her home, September 1996, after a government crackdown on her party. By flickr user taptaptap

I was at the House of Lords on Monday, listening to peers debate the Coroners & Justice Bill.  As previously mentioned, this Bill offers the chance to repeal the laws of criminal defamation and seditious libel.

I have summarized this aspect of the debate over at the Index on Censorship Free Speech blog - another outlet for my furious typing…

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The atmosphere in Westminster is oppressive. Hop up the steps from the tube and the cries from the Tamils on Parliament Square bite your ears. I’ve seen plenty of protests on that piece of green over the past few years, but this one crackles like a storm-cloud ready to discharge a bolt of lightning.

The wind seems angry too, sweeping through Victoria Tower Gardens, pulling the hats off tourists and messing up their grey comb-overs. The pigtails on school children billow in syncronicity with the union flag above the tower.

Meanwhile, the press and the suits hurry in and out of the building. They ignore the angry mob and the red flags across the street, and yet they are under attack. They shrug off the violent wind, yet there is a storm brewing inside.

A man of about thirty moves slowly through the crowd. He has a grubby brown jacket and a bad back, both of which accounts for the angry expression on his face. He is hungry and slightly dazed from some painkillers, which accounts for the punch-drunk gait. The protesters, the tourists, the wind, don’t help his mood. Seeds, pollen from the trees, waft down and interfere with his eyes.

And as he approaches Millbank, a tall man in a light grey suit emerges from one of the offices, and turns back towards the Palace. Around his neck hangs a security pass, one with the green and white stripes, the most sought-after there is. He walks with his head bowed, looking at his feet, and doesn’t see the man in the brown jacket lumbering towards him. And the man in the brown jacket has no inclination to move. Only when they are in each other’s personal space, does the man with the green striped security pass feel the presence of the other. He twitches only slightly but is visibly startled. It is as if he is expects to be mugged on the street.

He, the politician, regains his stride and heads towards The Commons. I, the man in the brown jacket, haul myself into the coffee shop on the corner, the better to take refuge from the storm.

The English PEN evening plenary was a fanastic way to round up the Convention on Modern Liberty.  For me, it was the writer and blogger Cory Doctorow’s contribution that really caught the imagination. With his laptop on his knee, he seemed to be pulling snippets and sound-bites from all corners of Teh Intertubes:

Later, the panel were asked what piece of art had inspired them to think about freedoms and liberty:

So here’s what’s really inspired me about our capacity as a society, to enforce (or rather, claim) the rights that are our due - not that the state gives us, but belong to us from the beginning: Its the rise of internet culture, and the rise, for all the bad and all the good, its the rise of a system in which we are all part of a single dialogue, in which we can make any kind of art, and in which any person can communicate with any other person, without any third party intervening, has given rise to a global dialogue that, I think, beggars the imagination of even the most optimistic philosophers of a generation ago. 

And I mean that literally - you read the science fiction of the 1960s and the closest they come is they think maybe we would have a really good video on demand service with some video-phone on the side.  No-one predicted just how, just, the fantastic Cambrian explosion of genres, of forms, of ideas, and of participation from every corner of the globe, that the Internet has enabled.  And that’s for me, why keeping the network free is the first step to keeping us all free.

Its better in video! Billy Bragg, Feargal Sharkey, Paul Gilroy, Henry Porter and English PEN’s President Lisa Appignanesi also answer:
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Gaurav Mishra supplies a useful model of social media (via Global Voices Advocacy).   His “4Cs” are

• Content
• Community
• Collaboration
• Collective Action

… each stage being progressively harder to achieve than the last.  He suggests measuring any given ’social media’ campaign against this framework.

I am reminded of an event run by the think tank Demos a few months ago, How To Make News And Influence People, chaired by Charlie Leadbeater.  I had refrained from writing up my thoughts until now, because I had hoped a podcast of the event would emerge.  No such luck.

The discussion centred almost entirely around using the web and other technologies for PR purposes.  We saw a fascinating presentation on how the photographs of James Nachtwey, winner of the 2007 TED Prize, were used to promote awareness of a new and extreme form of Tuberculosis, and the campaign to eradicate it at XDRTB.org.  My question (which I had vainly hoped, and hoped in vain, would be on a podcast) drew the distinction between raising awareness amongst the generally sympathetic public (is there anyone against TB?) and establishing a consensus on a political issue, where there wasn’t one before (gay marriage, and the legalisation of marijuana are two issues that spring to mind).  The multi-platform techniques described in the event seemed to be perfect for the former, but did not (to use Mishra’s analysis) harness a significant colelctive intelligence.

What was also noteworthy about the XDRTB campaign in particular, and about advocacy campaigns in general, is how they still rely on the mainstream media for traction.  Immigration Minister Phil Woolas gave into the demands of the ghurka campaign when it received significant celebrity-focussed media coverage.  My work at PEN has a large element of this too, where we arrange for our more famous members to speak out in favour of our campaign.  This has always been the way of traditional PR campaigns (c.f The Onion classic Rare Disease Nabs Big-Time Celebrity Spokesman).  This is entirely different from the highly connected campaigns such as #amazonfail and this week’s #fixreplies Twitter clusterfuck.  The celebrity-free, crowd-driven campaigns still seem to focus mainly on issues with a strong online or technological focus.

Activists marked the 12th anniversary of the house arrest of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by protests outside Chinese embassies worldwide, this one in London. Photo by lewishamdreamer

As any news report worthy of the name will have told you this morning, the Burmese military junta have imprisoned the democracy campaigner and PEN Honorary Member Aung San Suu Kyi. The reason given in an apparent breach of her house arrest conditions, after an American man swam a lake and visited her.  As a correspondent at the Burma Campaign UK HQ just put it to me in an e-mail:

It seems Burma is the only country in the world where you can be sent to jail for someone breaking into your house.

Aung San Suu Kyi was nearing the end of her ‘term’ of house arrest.

The Burma Campaign have a handy form that allows you to quickly lobby the UN Secretary General, asking him to send an envoy.

The lives of those with distinguished World War II military careers still pepper the obituary pages, but not with the frequency that they once did.  I enjoyed this passage from his obituary by Roy Roebuck:

He first arrived at the Commons with his newly awarded Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon inexpertly self-sewn on to his uniform. A Conservative MP, who was a squadron leader in the RAF police, approached. “You are improperly dressed,” he told Millington.

“If you are talking to me as an RAF officer,” Millington replied, “take your hand out of your pocket and address a senior officer as ‘Sir’. If you are addressing me as a fellow MP, mind your own business and bugger off.” He did.

Millington famously won a by-election in the true-blue Tory seat of Chelmsford, standing for the short-lived Common Wealth Party.  Its objectives were “common ownership, democracy, and morality in politics.”  Perhaps it should re-form in time for the Euro elections next month?

(cross-posted at Liberal Conspiracy)