Tagged: USA RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 5:58 pm on May 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , USA,   

    Vote Report India Featured in BBC Story on the 2009 Indian Elections 

    Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!

    Vote Report India was recently featured on a BBC story on the 2009 Indian elections.

    India has taken to the polls. The online reaction this time is revealing how the nation is developing digitally as well as making political choices. Gaurav Mishra joins us to look at the future for India online and what the electronic reaction to these elections can show us.

    We talk about the challenges of running an online election monitoring campaign in India and how the 2009 Indian elections are like the 2004 US elections.

    Here is the podcast. My interview is from 5:45 to 10:45.

    Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. For more, see a brief description of the project, the story behind the project and reflections on how well the project has worked.

    Cross-posted at Vote Report India.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:36 pm on May 7, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 50 Cent Party, , , , , Iraq, K Street, Lobbyists, , , Spinternet, USA   

    America’s Answer to China’s 50 Cents Party: K Street Lobbyists 

    I was interviewed yesterday by ABC7 on the sidelines of the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit. I’m fascinated by how news reporters pick a one sentence sound byte from a long interview. At the same event, AFP chose to quote me on how open (Western) democracies are curtailing freedom on the internet, while ABC 7 chose to quote me on how China is using its 50 Cents Party to control the internet through astroturfing instead of censorship.

    My point was that US media’s obsession with internet censorship in China is misguided because of two reasons.

    First,censorship is only one of the tools used by China to control the internet. Often, propaganda, surveillance and old-fashioned intimidation are more useful in controlling the internet in totalitarian regimes.

    The use of the internet for propaganda, especially, threatens to convert our internet into spinternet. A case in point is China’s 50 Cent Party, which consists of 3,50,000 volunteers who are paid 50 cents for every comment they post supporting the Chinese Communist Party. Russia is, in fact, so successful in controlling the internet through propaganda that it doesn’t need to censor the internet. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have also started using blogs for propaganda.

    Even more importantly, while China is one of the most extreme cases of internet censorship, it is also one of the simplest cases. To many of us, even more disturbing is the trend of open democracies like USA, UK, Australia, South Korea, India and Brazil closing down the internet by instituting over-strong pornography and cyber-crime regulations that can be misinterpreted and misused. Specifically, in the context of propaganda, these cases are more complex than the relatively simple case of China or Iran.

    We know, for instance, that the Bush government used both mainstream media and the internet for domestic and foreign propaganda during the Iraq war. In another context, we also know that public relations agencies and lobbyists in the US regularly use the internet to spin misinformation and promote their self-serving agendas. Now, the same people are beginning to work closely with the State Department and the Department of Defense to use the internet for public diplomacy. With the boundaries between public/ private, defense/ diplomacy and domestic/ foreign becoming blurred, there are serious concerns about whether public diplomacy 2.0 is merely propaganda 2.0, meant to misinform and mystify both domestic and foreign audiences.

    In the US media narrative, K Street lobbyists in the US are a minor annoyance, while the 50 Cent Party in China is a threat to human rights. However, to an objective third party observer (like yours truly), the K Street lobbyists look like better paid avatars of 50 Cent Party members. Perhaps, US media’s inability to connect the two narratives isn’t very different from the self-censorship of China’s government controlled news agencies.

    My point is not that America is the same as China, Russia or Iran. America is a messy vibrant democracy where a million points of view compete with each other and K Street lobbyists co-exist with the Center for Media and Democracy. Also, the first amendment is, in many ways, a gold standard for freedom of expression and dissent is almost always is seen as a virtue rather than a crime.

    My point is that the bad practices we condemn in totalitarian regimes are not unique to these regimes. Censorship, astroturfing, and overt propaganda are as pervasive, and as pernicious, in open democracies as in totalitarian regimes.

    China, Russia and Iran do have a terrible track record on the abuse of human rights, including freedom of expression, and they do need to be taken to task by the international community. However, it’s even important that, as we condemn these “bad countries”, we continue to be wary of “bad practices” within our own glass houses.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 11:03 pm on May 6, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: AFP, , , , , , Human Rights, , , , , , , USA,   

    Is the Debate on Internet & Human Rights Nothing More Than American Propaganda Against China? 

    AFP quoted me on a story on the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit held at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale office on May 5 –

    Western countries have been striving to “close the Internet” in the names of causes such as fighting pornography or cyber crime, said Gaurav Mishra who blogs about happenings in India.

    The story was also reproduced in The Age, Brisbane Times, France 24, The Sydney Morning Herald, and CNN Money, amongst others.

    Taken out of context, my comment might sound strange, or even outrageous, so it’s important that I put it in context.

    The popular narrative about human rights and the internet is that there are two types of countries: open democracies like USA which have a free and open internet and closed totalitarian regimes like China which have a closed, censored internet. However, as the internet is “essentially free and borderless”, the hope is that, over time, it will make these closed societies more open, more like Western democracies.

    This narrative is flawed at two levels.

    First, the internet isn’t inherently free or borderless. It has already become evident that governments have both the will and the means to force the internet to conform to the rules and regulations within their national boundaries. It has also become evident that the internet itself, like any other technology, is neutral and value-agnostic. So, it can be used for free expression and activism, but it can also be used for propaganda and suveillance. China, Russia and Iran, amongst other repressive regimes, are using a combination of censorship, astrofurfing and old school intimidation to control the internet, in one form or another.

    Second, the internet in the open (Western) democracies isn’t really open anymore. Open democracies like USA, UK, Australia, South Korea, India and Brazil are closing down the internet in many ways by instituting over-strong pornography and cyber-crime regulations that censor content at ISP level, limit anonymity by linking internet access to real world identity, and force internet companies to share user data. Most of these regulations are supposed to protect internet users, but in the hands of extremist or paranoid elements in these open democracies, they can be easily misinterpreted and misused.

    So, my fear is that both open democracies and closed totalitarian regimes are moving towards each other and will meet in an unhappy middle that is very different from the free and open internet we know today.

    The discussion around internet and human rights needs to move beyond its US-centric China-Russia-Iran fixation to include “open” democracies like USA, UK, Australia, South Korea, India and Brazil. Unless the focus of this discussion changes from “bad countries” to “bad practices”, there’s a risk that it will be seen as nothing more than US propaganda against unfriendly countries.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:41 pm on December 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , Tweetminister, , twitter Congress, Twitter Parliament, , USA   

    Twitter and Politics: Check Out UK’s Tweetminister and USA’s Tweet Congress 

    While I was putting together my social media predictions for India for 2009, it was clear to me that social media will play an important role in the 2009 Indian general elections —

    Specifically, we will see Twitter and other mobile based applications like SMSGupShupand MyToday playing an important role in the 2009 general elections, both in the campaigning and in the coverage of the elections.

    Today, I came across two examples of what is possible at the intersection of Twitter and politics: Tweeminister in the UK and Tweet Congress in the USA (via Mashable). Both websites aim to connect constituents with politicians by tracking the politicians who are active on Twitter and encouraging others to join Twitter.

    Twitter Politics TweetMinister UK

    Twitter Politics Tweet Congress UK

    Given that some Indian politicians are already beginning to experiment with social media (BJP’s V K Malhotra, for instance, has a Twitter account @VKMalhotra), I don’t see why we can’t have Twitter Parliament for India. Thoughts?

    Update: TechPresident speculates that Twitter may become the preferred outpost for political outsiders –

    And if the Internet is big enough to be co-opted for mainstream use, where do the insurgents go? They go to Twitter, which (at least for now) is still an outpost that favors the scrappy, authentic outsiders — kind of like the early Internet. Relative longshot candidates are using Twitter to fundraise. It’s also the ultimate cut-the-BS medium — it’s low-cost enough that principals can plausibly maintain their own accounts, and instantaneous and conversational enough that you can really tell when they actually are.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:31 am on October 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , Secure Computing, Sophos, , Trend Micro, USA   

    Why is Spam So High in Russia? 

    Spam in BRIC Countries

    Over the last week, reposts of a rather misleading Trend Micro press release on on spam in BRIC countries1 kept showing up in my Google Alert feed for “BRIC + Internet”. The press release and most of the news articles quoting it verbatim focus on the high incidence of spam in BRIC countries. However, even some cursory math showed me that the incidence of spam in BRIC countries is not unusual: BRIC countries account for 28.5% of the world’s internet users and 27.1% of the world’s spam (according to Trend Micro). In fact, two other reports from Sophos2 and Secure Computing3 peg the contribution of BRIC countries to worldwide spam at 19.7% and 18.5% respectively.

    If you compare the three sets of data, three trends emerge strongly –

    - USA still remains (one of) the largest contributors of worldwide spam, which is understandable given its high internet user base.
    - China’s contribution to worldwide spam is disproportionately low, perhaps because of its strict censorship regime.
    - Russia’s contribution to worldwide spam is disproportionately high, so much so that Russia is being called the “spam superpower of the world”4 5.

    The question to ask, however, is: why is spam so high in Russia?

    It seems that there aren’t any easy answers to that question. Russia is also prominent for other types of Internet criminality, such as malware and exploits, partly due to the notorious Russian Business Network4 and it seems that spam is part of a larger internet related malaise in Russia. Also, the high spam figures partly reflect the number of compromised botnet PCs in Russia that have been hijacked as relays, and do not simply reflect the amount of spam that actually originates in the country4 5. Still, almost 85% of all e-mails in Russia are spam and almost 80% of all spam in Russia is in the Russian language6. What’s more, these percentages are likely to become even higher in the near future, given the state of affairs in Russia.

    The next question to ask, then, is: what does this level of spam mean for the Russian social web?

    References

    - 1 India is the number one spamming nation in Asia, says Trend Micro, October 8, 2008.

    - 2 New spam-related webpage found almost every three seconds, Sophos reports, April 14, 2008.

    - 3 Secure Computing Internet Threat Report, Q2 2008

    - 4 Russia becomes spam superpower, John E Dunn, Techworld, February 12, 2008.

    - 5 Russia emerges as spam superpower, as Asia and Europe overtake North America, Sophos reports, February 11, 2008.

    - 6 Spam evolution: January-June 2008, by Darya Gudkova, Kaspersky Lab, September 24, 2008.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 3:11 pm on June 24, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Patricia Martin, Rengen, , , , , , , , USA   

    Everyone is a Creators Now! Really? 

    Quick Summary: Read my analysis on the real nature of engagement with social media amongst US Internet users.

    – X – X – X –

    In a recent post, I had used the Forrester Research Social Technographics Profile Tool to compare the social technographics profiles for USA/ Europe with Japan/ Metro China.

    Now, I have come across new data from eMarketer on the US internet users’ social media usage that doesn’t quite fit in with the Forrester Research data.

    As per Forrester Research data —

    - 19% of US internet users are Creators, who publish blogs, maintain websites, or upload self-created photos, podcasts or videos on social sites.

    - 25% of US internet users are Critics, who post ratings and reviews of products and services on user review sites, comment on someone else’s blogs or contribute to online forums or wikis.

    - 12% of US internet users are Collectors, who create metadata that’s shared with the entire community, by aggregating RSS feeds in a feed reader, by saving or tagging URLs on a social bookmarking service, or by voting for websites on a social voting site.

    - 25% of US internet users are Joiners, who visit and maintain profiles on social networking sites.

    - 48% of US internet users are Spectators, who read blogs, online forums and customer ratings/ reviews, listen to podcasts and watch peer-generated video.

    - 44% of US internet users are Inactives, who do not participate at all in social media activities.

    Forrester Research Social Technographics USA

    However, according to a 2007 Deloitte & Touche study of US internet users (reported by eMarketer) –

    - 46% maintain and share photographs, 34% create personal content, 22% maintain a personal website, and 18% maintain a blog (Creators).

    - 28% participate in discussion board or forums (Critics).

    - 51% read personal content created by others, 38% read message boards, 36% watch video streaming sites, and 36% read blogs (Spectators).

    - 37% socialize (presumably Joiners).

    eMarketer Online Activity of US Internet Users

    According to other reports on online behavior of US Internet users by eMarketer –

    - Almost 43% of US internet users are User Generated Content Creators. However, eMarketer’s definition of UGC Creators includes users who create and share video/ audio/ photo/ personal blogs/ personal websites (Creators), online bulletin board postings/ customer reviews (Critics) and personal profiles in social networks or virtual worlds (Joiners).

    eMarketer US User Generated Content Creators 2007-2012

    - 52% of US Internet users create their own entertainment and 32% even consider themselves to be a broadcaster of their own media

    eMarketer US Internet Users Attitude Towards Digital Entertainment 2007

    - More than 54% of US internet users read blogs (Spectators).

    eMarketer US Blog Readers 2007-2012

    So, while all three reports agree that about 50% of all US Internet users are Spectators, and about 25% are Critics, there is significant disagreement on Joiners and Creators.

    The percentage of Joiners amongst US internet users varies dramatically from 25% as per Forrester to more than 35% as per Deloitte & Touche and eMarketer.

    The percentage of Creators amongst US internet users varies dramatically from less than 20% as per Forrester to more than 40% to 50% as per Deloitte & Touche and eMarketer.

    While the percentage of Spectators is perhaps the most important number from an advertising revenue perspective, the percentage of Joiners and Creators are undoubtedly the most important metrics to understand the creativity-driven, community-based power of social media.

    It is based on the claims that “all of us are creators now” and “all of us want to belong to communities” that commentators like Patricia Martin are predicting that “we are about to see a cultural movement that is similar in scope and scale to the Renaissance”.

    It’s a little sad, then, that we are still unable to get a fix on how many Internet users really are Creators and Joiners, even for a mature market like the US.

     

  • Gaurav Mishra 1:43 pm on June 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , Europe, , , , Japan, , , , , , Social Media Strategy, , , , , , , USA   

    The Social Web is Not Flat (Part I): Forrester Research Social Technographics Profiles 

    Quick Summary: I use data from Forrester Research to compare the social technographics profiles for USA/ Europe with Japan/ Metro China to kick off my series on how the social web is not flat.

    - X – X – X –

    Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff have played an important role in increasing our understanding of the social media space over the last year, both through their book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (website) and their Social Technographics Study.

    The Forrester Research Social Technographics Study classifies consumers into a ladder with six overlapping levels based on their of participation in social media. The six levels in the Social Technographics Ladder are –

    1. Creators, who publish blogs, maintain websites, or upload self-created photos, podcasts or videos on social sites (like Flickr or YouTube).

    2. Critics, who post ratings and reviews of products and services on user review sites (like Amazon), comment on someone else’s blogs or contribute to online forums or wikis (like Wikipedia).

    3. Collectors, who create metadata that’s shared with the entire community, by aggregating RSS feeds in a feed reader (like Bloglines), by saving or tagging URLs on a social bookmarking service (like del.cio.us), or by voting for websites on a social voting site (like Digg).

    4. Joiners, who visit and maintain profiles on social networking sites (like MySpace or Facebook).

    5. Spectators, who read blogs, online forums and customer ratings/ reviews, listen to podcasts and watch peer-generated video.

    6. Inactives, who do not participate at all in social media activities.

    Basically, Creators create the user generated content, Critics and Collectors help disseminate it and Spectators consume it. Joiners are a special species, specific to social networking sites, who play all the other four roles in that context.

    The core idea is that, instead of starting from a list of social media tools, companies should start with their target audience, and develop their social media strategy based on the social technographics profile of their audience.

    Now Forrester has made their finding available in a nifty free Social Technographics Profile Tool. The data is based on Forrester Research Technographics surveys conducted with more than 40,000 respondents in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific in Q1/ Q2 2007. It’s a useful tool that allows you to split the data by age, gender and geography, and I’m sure that I’ll return to it frequently over the next few months.

    In this post, however, I will focus on the geographical split and compare the social technographics profiles for USA/ Europe with Japan/ Metro China to kick off my series on how the social web is not flat.

    Forrester Research Social Technographics USA

    Forrester Research Social Technographics Europe

    Forrester Research Social Technographics Japan

    Forrester Research Social Technographics Metro China

    First, only one fourth of the consumers in Japan/ Metro China are Inactives, compared to more than half the consumers in USA/ Europe. If Forrester’s claim that about three-fourth of all consumers in Japan/ Metro China engage with social media in some form or the other is indeed true, then the social media opportunity in Asia Pacific is much bigger than I expected it to be.

    Second, and even more importantly, more than one third of the consumers in Metro China are Creators, compared to about one fifth of the consumers in Japan and USA and one tenth of the consumers in Europe. If you add to it the high percentage of Critics and Collectors in Metro China, it’s obvious that the social media scene in Metro China is much more vibrant than Japan or USA, and especially Europe.

    Third, even in the specific context of social networking sites, almost one third of the consumers in Metro China are Joiners, compared to almost one fourth in Japan and USA and one eighth in Europe, pointing to a huge potential for social networking sites in the Asia Pacific.

    I must point out here that the data has some limitations. The sample sizes for Japan and Metro China are limited, so that splits by age and gender are not possible, but they should be realistic at overall levels. Then, to compare Metro China to Europe isn’t really fair, as we are comparing a few cities to a continent. Finally, the six levels are overlapping and it will be interesting to look at the overlaps between the different levels in each geography to see, for instance, how many consumers in Metro China are either Creators or Critics or Collectors. Still, given China’s huge population, even Metro China must add up to a sizable segment.

    Finally, I wish that this data was also available for India, or at least Metro India. However, given the low penetration of internet, even in Metro India, I suspect that the Creators will be in low single digits, Critics/ Collectors in high single digits, and Joiners/ Spectators in low double digits. What do you think?

     

    • Anjali Ramachandran 2:26 pm on June 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hmmm. If we take Metro India, I suspect joiners and spectators will be highest of all. There are a lot of people who have Orkut/Facebook profiles in India, for example, especially among the younger, early adopter group. In non-metro India of course, inactives will be highest.

    • Moksh Juneja 3:20 pm on June 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      With the platforms you mentioned against each profile – where do you think linkedin users fall under – since they are connecting as well as building profiles. They are also part of critics who are giving their views, etc.

      Dont see it easy to stereotype people under categories.. because they could be a combinations of two or more elements

    • Gaurav Mishra 11:04 pm on June 3, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Anjali: I have tried to create the social technographics profile for India using various sources. DO have a look.

      @Moksh: The levels in the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder are overlapping, so the same person can be Creator, Critic, Collector, Joiner and Spectator at the same time.

  • Gaurav Mishra 2:33 am on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: Consulate, , , , Rant, , Travel, USA,   

    A Rare Seth Godin Rant 

    A few hours at the Indian consulate in New York induced a rare rant from Seth Godin –

    Many of the chairs are broken, leaving sharp steel platforms on which to crouch. And there aren’t enough chairs, broken or not. The signs are confusing, the two clerks are protected by a sheet of glass a full inch thick (which is twice the thickness of a typical bank’s) and the little machine that dispenses deli-style tickets is broken.

    When Seth Godin is in India, which he is presumably going to be, someone should take him to the US consulate to check if getting a US visa in India is a more pleasant experience than getting an Indian visa in the US. I have a suspicion that the visit will inspire another, even more spirited, rant from him. :-)

     

    • Kamla 2:40 am on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Interesting post about Seth’s reactions to the Indian Consulate in NYC. It is actually not all all that bad! I can see though why he might complain about the broken furniture etc.The consulate is in a nice, tony neighborhood of Manhattan and looks nice from the outside, but inside is a different story.

      Yes, he will be quite taken aback by the long, tedious procedure of getting a visa to the USA. Let me recount just a bit of what it takes to get that visa. You typically get up at some unearthly hour to make a trek to the Consulate, stand in a long, meandering line and then hope that you make it to the counter before lunch time…oh, don’t get me started on this. But, yes inside the consulate is clean with gleaming, shiny, cold, steel furniture :-)

      kamla

    • Gauravonomics 5:00 am on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      @Kamla: My own visit to the US consulate was made even more interesting by the fact that it involved an overnight bus journey from Bangalore to Chennai (I was a student at IIM-B then), prolonged fare negotiations with Chennai autorickshaw drivers and 40 degrees of humid heat. :-)

    • seth godin 5:18 pm on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      I have no doubt at all that the US consul is a disaster. The question is: is the US working hard to market the country as a tourist destination? If they are, then the visa process is just as bad a marketing effort for them as it is for India here.

      I certainly wasn’t trying to rant about the Indian consul in particular. It had great people and wasn’t horrible. I was instead trying to make a point that everybody markets.

    • Gauravonomics 5:28 pm on April 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      @Mr Godin: First, I cannot tell you how kicked I am that you commented on my blog! Your ideas never fail to make me think and I’m a huge huge huge fan. :-)

      Second, there was never any doubt in my mind about the intent of your post (governments are marketers etc.) and I meant ‘rant’ in the nicest way possible. :-)

    • Vi 9:00 am on May 1, 2007 Permalink | Reply

      Gah, I’m going to be there this week. And I’ve been there twice; I can vouch for its dismal conditions. It’s definitely nerve wracking!

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
esc
cancel