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Manuel Maqueda of Periodismo Ciudadano tracks development in the citizen journalism space from around the world on his wonderful Spanish language blog. He has just posted an interview with me, which we recorded during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco –

We talked about Vote Report India and how platforms like Ushahidi are useful to make meaning from citizen reporting in a crisis situation.

We also talked about the important role of curators and connectors to make sense of the stream of citizen reporting during a crisis situation. When people ask me how to make sense of a fast emerging crisis situation, I tell them that the first thing they need to ask is: who should I follow?

Sometimes, it’s easy to find bloggers who understand local dynamics and have strong connections to the outside world. These bloggers can then curate mainstream and citizen media reports related to the crisis, and add cultural and other context, to help outsiders make sense of the situation. During the Mumbai terrorist attack, Dina and I, amongst others, played that role.  Read More

I’m speaking tomorrow on a panel at Georgetown University on social media implications for the defense community. Here is a summary of what I’ll be talking about.

The defense community needs to understand the social media phenomenon in order to do five things well: listen, understand, engage, defend, and collaborate.

The interesting thing to note is that the diplomatic community also needs to understand social media for the same reasons, and there is great value in the two communities working together in their use of social media tools.

The other thing to note is that I’m only discussing the public part of the social web. I don’t research, and have no expertise in, traditional cyber security concerns like critical infrastructure security, viral warfare, or the surveillance of private email or phone conversations.

My research is focused on how business and civil society organizations use social media, and the pointers here are rooted in that understanding.  Read More

The absence of reliable and unbiased information about the Israel-Gaza conflict is eerily reminiscent of the information vacuum during the Russia-Georgia Ossetia war (Wikipedia/ Global Voices).

There are many parallels between the two conflicts.

There’s a war between a more powerful country (Russia and Israel) and its weaker neighbor (Georgia and Palestine). The weaker country not only suffers a military defeat, but its communications infrastructure is also hacked (Noah Shachtman and Travis Wentworth). The stronger country denies access to international journalists. That, combined with the absence of a vibrant media ecosystem in the attacked country (Georgia and Palestine), leads to an information vacuum. The bias of the American media towards one of the involved countries (Georgia and Israel) further adds to the confusion.

Due to limited access and the absence of prior reputations, citizen journalists in the attacked countries cannot make their voices heard. And, finally, whatever citizen reporting does come out of the conflict zone can be best characterized as citizen propaganda, designed to add further fuel to the blame game. Ethan Zuckerman points out in the comments that the citizen propaganda in these conflicts even extends to citizen participation in coordinated cyber attacks against websites in the enemy country (Noah Shachtman and Evgeny Morozov).  Read More

David Sasaki compares our collective enthusiasm for the power of social media to bring about positive social change to Alexander Graham Bell’s hope that the telephone will lead to world peace –

We have many reasons to be hopeful…

However, in the case of the recent conflicts in Georgia and Palestine, we have also seen how citizen media can be used by both sides of a conflict as propaganda tools to win international support rather than engage in meaningful dialogue.

Whether we are talking about the birth of the telephone at the start of the 20th century or today’s ever-expanding Twittersphere, it’s not the technology that matters, it is what you do with it.

Communications technologies that make the world more interconnected have the potential to help us connect to each other as humans, increase understanding and empathy between individuals and institutions, and enable collaboration instead of conflict.

However, technology is only an instrument, and its promise for positive social change will only be realized if we choose to use it to that end. The good news is that many of us are using technology to do good. The bad news is that the same technology can also be used as a weapon of war or anarchy — as the Greece riots, Israel-Gaza, Russia-Georgia, and “the war on terror” have shown us.  Read More

On December 27 2008, Israel launched a series of air strikes, known as Operation Cast Lead, against targets in the Gaza Strip, killing more than 400 Palestinians and injuring more than 2200 over the week (Wikipedia/ NowPublic/ Mahalo/ Global Voices/CrisisWire).

The Israel-friendly Help Us Win blog (Facebook/ Twitter) says that “the war is not only on the ground – but also in the international media” and encourages Israel’s supporters to “tell Israel’s side of the story” and “ensure that the international coverage of the Campaign Against Hamas is balanced”.

In fact, the Israel propaganda machinery is in full flow to ensure that everyone gets to hear Israel’s side of the story. The Israel Defense Force has a blog and a YouTube channel, the Israel consulate in New York held a press conference on Twitter and summarized the discussion on their Israel Politik blog, and the Likud prime ministerial candidate Benjamin Netanyahu is active on both Twitter and YouTube.

CNN quotes Israel consul of media and public affairs Davi Saragna on the Twitter press conference –  Read More