new social media filtering maps from the opennet initiative

The summer of 2009 was a hectic one for online social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a bevy of other sites fell under the censors’ axe in China and Iran as political events — namely the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Iranian presidential election — shook both countries.

If you’ve been having a hard time keeping track of whether Twitter is accessible in Tehran or if Fallujah is blocked Facebook, you’re not alone. Luckily, I just completed a project for the OpenNet Initiative to help you out.

Based on testing conducted in 2008-2009, ONI has compiled data on the most frequently blocked social media sites around the world. We are proud to present five new social media filtering maps that serve as easy visual guides to the countries where Facebook, Flickr, Orkut, Twitter and YouTube are blocked.

Visit them now, and lay your social media filtering questions to rest.

giorgos cheliotis: mapping the global commons

Liveblogging Giorgos Cheliotis’s presentation on Mapping the Global Commons: A Quantitative Perspective on Free Cultural Practice at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.
Cheliotis is interested in measuring the use of the Creative Commons content pool. How much content exists? How free/open is it? How fast is it changing? How much of it is being remixed and fed back into the pool?

You can try to count everything individually, or you can use estimates, community-specific data, external reports and local knowledge. There’s an inverse relationship between the scale and the accuracy/richness of your data.

The CC Monitor project tracks the global development of Creative Commons (CC) licensing. It is still being developed, but the project has been tracking the use of CC licenses for over three years. It does not include unported licenses, often used by those in countries that do not have country-specific licenses.

According to the project’s World section, North America and Europe use CC licenses more than most regions in the world, with a few notable exceptions: Brazil, which has a sizable CC movement, and some parts of Asia.

Cheliotis is interested in the spread of CC licensing — who is using it and why, and how is it moving from person to person or organization to organization?

The CC Monitor project assigns a “freedom score” to each country based on the most frequently used type of CC license. CC licenses give users of licensed content different permissions. Some works can be used with no restrictions, while the use of others is constrained to non-commercial purposes or in cases where the resulting work is also CC-licensed.

CC Monitor assigns points to each license on a scale of 1 to 6, 6 being the most free (most permissive), then assigns an overall score based on these points. The global freedom score is 3.2. Some other scores:

One way that Cheliotis tracks content reuse is through CCMixter, which allows people to create remixes, samples and mashups of CC-licensed content. Cheliotis’ analysis of this content has shown that with a few small exceptions, all of the content on CCMixter is interconnected. The maximum number of remixes he’s found so far is 6, but the number of works per generation of reuse drops quickly — most remixes draw on original content, rather than a pre-existing remix. He also found a significant number of peer-to-peer relationships: “I remix content from you, you remix from me.”

It’s not yet possible to break down content by type (music, video, text, photography), nor is Cheliotis’ project currently tracking content that’s in the public domain (as opposed to strictly CC-licensed). These are both areas into which he would like to expand in the future.

Ben Wikler: Changing the World of Changing the World

Liveblogging Ben Wikler’s presentation on Changing the World of Changing the World: Pushing the Models of Online Organizing at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.

Ben Wikler of Avaaz.org is at the Berkman Center today to talk about new models of online organizing.

Wikler begins by explaining net-centered vs. broadcast-centered online activism. The Internet is a little bit like the Brazilian butterfly flapping its wings, causing a thunderstorm in Belgium — except we are all butterflies, and it can be hard to tell how we can act together to (for example) bring rain to the hypothetically drought-stricken Belgium.

Netcentric Activism
One method is the “Grass Mud Horse” — a grassroots protest against Internet censorship in China. Aggregated actions of individual citizens can be channeled for strategic purposes, but’s a bit like a shotgun blast vs. a laser beam. It can be hard to focus on your target or to deliver a clear message.

Broadcast-Centered Online Activism
Avaaz.org sends specific, targeted e-mails to different groups of activists. The key to making this work is to incorporate dialogue: there’s generally a broad consensus on the need for solutions to problems like climate change, human rights abuses and political crises (even in the Israel/Palestine conflict, “most people support a two-state solution,” Wikler says). Avaaz works to “give global public opinion teeth” by building a community. They then track the numerical and qualitative responses to their campaigns throughout this community, allowing them to modify their message as necessary.

If the Internet is a series of tubes, global civil society is a series of tubs, says Wikler — each issue or campaign (Burma, climate change, Zimbabwe) has its own group of interested people. The Internet allows us to connect these tubs to tubes, channeling the water to the biggest fires.

Avaaz is intentionally multi-issue. Wikler’s found that the same people who care about what’s happening in Zimbabwe are likely to care about what’s happening in Sri Lanka. Avaaz looks for ways to channel these common interests into actionable items that can be acted on quickly by members of the larger Avaaz community.

What is Avaaz?
Lightning rod: Avaaz’s method allows the channeling of “amorphous public concern” into targeted action.

Battery: Avaaz allows you to build a movement and then tap it for future issues — people concerned about the political crackdown in Burma are more likely to care about the cyclone that came later. Avaaz stores this communal energy, making it easy to build support for campaigns without starting from scratch.

SWAT team: Avaaz operates in a very targeted way. Some of Avaaz’s partners can’t be political for fear of putting their in-country staff at risk, but Avaaz has the freedom to criticize.

Stem cell: multiple communities can build off of Avaaz.

Burma campaigns
During the fall 2007 crackdown in Burma, 850,000 people got involved through Avaaz. Avaaz presented a petition to the UN Security Council, but that was just the beginning. Its European members contacted the European Parliament; its members in Singapore asked the foreign minister to be more harsh on the junta; other groups acted in other targeted ways. Avaaz was able to work with established groups to get guidance about what would be effect, then to bring in a huge number of concerned people from around the globe who wanted to help but didn’t know how.

When the cyclone hit Burma the following spring, Avaaz was able to partner with in-country monks who were part of the relief efforts.

Challenges
Because everything is mediated through the staff, there’s a limit on the number of campaigns Avaaz can run. They also have trouble tapping existing expertise. There has to be a way to open things up so Avaaz members can point Avaaz to local crises while also maintaining some sort of filter to make sure that campaigns retain a high level of quality and are relevant to members.

Wikler is afraid that opening up a dialogue may inundate Avaaz members with too many e-mails, drowning out important issues and overwhelming those who only have a small amount of time to donate to any particular cause.

Avaaz has started small but high-volume local groups to try to manage some of this, starting a small campaign and then expanding it to other members after it is established.

Another idea is to run public trainings, teaching people how to do online activism, then let them submit campaign ideas, which will then be rated by other members before being acted on by Avaaz as an organization.

Wikler believes that online activism is still in its infancy — he says there’s a global gap in the models that currently exist. He closes by saying we’re all in one big tub and asks if we have any ideas for new models of online activism.

Questions
Q: Has anyone ever attempted to use Avaaz’s tools for a purpose the organizational staff disagreed with?
A: People wanted to boycott the Olympics because of Chinese censorship, but Avaaz felt this would backfire within China. Wikler spoke with activists in Hong Kong, who said China would respond by tightening control even further.

Q from Jonathan Zittrain: How is Avaaz governed? Are governance issues a distraction? Does Avaaz aspire to become more organically governed (like, say, Wikipedia)?
A: Avaaz is a small group of people in a huge room of noisy people. Unlike a government, it’s completely voluntary. Instead of speaking on behalf of all 3.5 million members, Avaaz only speaks on behalf of those who participate in any particular campaign. It’s a “horizontal culture” — the executive director only greenlights campaigns that already have support from a random sample of members, and Avaaz is 80 percent funded by its members. Avaaz wants to avoid being directed by either the whims of the staff or the whims of a small group of members.

Q from Jonathan Zittrain: Might be interesting to use multiple approaches to issues, letting people choose multiple ways to be involved in multiple campaigns. Either that or giving people multiple ways to participate in choosing campaigns, so you can see what appeals to people with various amounts of free time.
A: Avaaz does some of this. They responded to the economic crisis with a long poll open to all members that generated options for action and let members vote these up or down. This resulted in a package of action items, some of which Avaaz staff wouldn’t have thought of, that people could pick and choose from.

Q: How do you define action? Just writing letters to politicians and sending money? What about collecting best practices that can be adapted for individual causes? We give away our power when we say that petitioning politicians is the best we can do.
A: What happens on the Internet often stays on the Internet, and using online activity to unleash offline activity is something Avaaz is working hard on. Many of the issues on which Avaaz works can’t be affected by individual actions that don’t involve government — such as carbon emissions. Avaaz is about helping people to find ways to take action together when they know that taking action alone isn’t enough — looking for the domino effect.

Q: When will Avaaz have achieved its goal? What metrics are being used to show the community the progress that has been made?
A: Avaaz exists in moments and particular campaigns. It doesn’t have a manifesto — its brand is “deployed” on behalf of the people who are taking action. In a world this complex, there aren’t any good yardsticks to measure success. The ultimate metric is communicating with your members to let them know how things turned out.

Q: It seems like you’re focusing on short-time action that can make a difference on a specific issue, rather than long-term sustained action.
A: In some senses that’s true. Each individual development (a march, a petition) is somewhat disconnected, but over time the number of people involved in a campaign (supporting democracy in Zimbabwe, for example) grows and can be remobilized — it’s like a snowball.

Q: What percentage of Avaaz’s actions is based on global public opinion, and what percentage is focused on other things? It’s easy to get “petition overload.”
A: Maybe half and half, or closer to 40 percent opinion. Avaaz does a lot of funding public opinion polls, advertising campaigns, support for Internet access — moving more towards these types of things: “activity beyond the outcry.” But more people are willing to sign a petition than to donate, at a ratio of 100:1.

Q: How did you pick your languages?
A: Political activism in multiple languages involves more than just translation — you have to shift your content into the political idioms of those languages. Avaaz is working on a Farsi language site right now. They have to figure out how to expand without becoming a translation organization.

Q: How often do members reject an idea from Avaaz?
A: Can’t think of a time when something’s gotten strong support in a test but not in the general membership. Around 30-50 percent of tested campaigns don’t pass the threshold, though. The rate has improved over time, as staff become more familiar with the work and with the members.

Question from Wikler
What’s the most convenient way for you tell Avaaz about an issue you want them to work on? Contact Ben [at] avaaz.org.

WordPress blocked in Guatemala

WordPress blocked. Guatemala follows China’s example

Crossposted on the OpenNet Initiative blog

Guatemala’s ongoing political crisis, which began with the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg and has been fueled largely by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs, reached a new level over the weekend when several ISPs began blocking access to WordPress.com.

Reports of the blocking first reached Twitter on June 26, when user @demuxer noted that some Internet users in Guatemala were unable to access WordPress and wondered if Chapintocables, a political blog created after Rosenberg’s death, was somehow involved:


Some users in Guatemala can’t access wordpress, is it @chapinocables’ fault? #insolitogt #escandalogt

The news spread through Twitter and Facebook, with many Guatemalans encouraging their fellow Internet users to report the blocking on Herdict, which tracks reports of inaccessible sites worldwide. Reports from Guatemala saw a spike over the weekend, with WordPress.com reported inaccessible nearly 30 times.

The block was initially attributed to technical errors, but as WordPress continues to be inaccessible, opinions are changing. Eduardo Arcos of Alt1040 writes [ES]:

Supuestamente se atribuyen problemas técnicos, pero el sentido común dice que se trata de un intento por parte del gobierno guatemalteco de reducir el acceso a información independiente, libre y crítica sobre la crisis política que se vive en el país y la relación con el caso del Twitter de Jeanfer.

[The block has been] allegedly attributed to technical problems, but common sense says that this is an attempt by the Guatemalan government to reduce access to independent information that is free and critical about the political crisis experienced in the country and the respect for Jeanfer of Twitter. [the man who was arrested for criticizing the government on Twitter].

David Alayón of Bitacoras concurs [ES]:

Desde hace unos días, los usuario de WordPress.com residentes en Guatemala no tienen acceso a este servicio. Se ha descartado la posibilidad de ser un error relacionado con los proveedores de Internet y se baraja el hecho de que el propio gobierno lo haya bloqueado.

For several days, the WordPress.com users in Guatemala have had no access to the service. The possibility of this being an error related to Internet service providers has been ruled out, and [opinion] has shifted to the idea that the government has blocked it.

Today Chapintocables reported [ES] that three ISPs, Turbonet, Telgua and Tigo, are currently blocking access to WordPress.com:

Actualmente, TurboNet, Telgua, y Tigo son los que tienen restringido el acceso a nuestros blogs, los invitamos gentilmente a que levanten este bloqueo, porque ESTAMOS EN GUATEMALA, NO EN CHINA.

Currently, TurboNet, Telgua and Tico have restricted access to our blogs, we gently invite them to the lift the block, because WE ARE IN GUATEMALA, NOT IN CHINA.

According to Twitter reports, WordPress.com is still accessible through ISP Cybernet de Guatemala S.A.

UPDATE: Renata Avila just posted an update on the situation on Global Voices Advocacy.

Beth Kolko: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments

Liveblogging Beth Kolko’s presentation on Form, Function and Fiction: ICTs and their uses in resource constrained environments at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos and general stupidity.

The Design for Digital Inclusion group at the University of Washington, which Kolko heads, works on a variety of topics, including tech in Central Asia, the Global Impact Study, the impact of public access to ICTs, technologies for youth with autism, games for development, and more.

Kolko focuses on three main questions: what ICTs are adopted in diverse communities and why? What do people in these communities do with these ICTs? How can we design better technologies for these users?

We assume that ICTs have universal meanings across cultural contexts, but the functions of these technologies vary widely from culture to culture. We need to pay attention to this diversity because designing with it in mind makes systems stronger, less brittle.

Kolko approaches design from both the engineering and humanities perspectives: both form and function. The goal is to blur the boundaries between these two categories until they eventually collapse.

People tend to “get sleepy” when people talk about technology and development, but the findings from the ICT4D field are relevant to a number of communities. Geography is not the primary determiner of resource constraints — the technology developed in, say, Central Asia can be useful in Yakima Valley (in Washington state).

Resource constraints include not just money but also time, cultural capital, screen size, bandwidth.

Kolko’s work in Central Asia has both quantitative and qualitative components, including annual surveys, interviews and usability tests. The survey doesn’t focus on tech use (though it does have a tech use model) — Kolko’s interested in issues of trust, social networks and social institutions as well as technology.

[[Side note: Kolko apologizes for not having a LOLcat photo in her presentation.]]

Internet is weather-dependent: in some places, when it rains, the Internet goes down because rainclouds block satellite access. This intermittent connectivity happens in Central Asia and Cambodia, but also in the rural United States.

Patterns of Internet use (both frequency and duration of access) vary widely across cultures. In Central Asia, most users are online for an hour at a time. There are different pricing structures for chat and actual Internet use (accessing Web pages, etc.).

Mobile phones are particularly key in resource-constrained environments. Mobile phones weren’t created to transfer money, but they’re being used for banking. This, along with general mobile Internet access, brings up questions of mobile phone security. (Moral: if you have an iPhone, use a password.)

Why don’t people use the Internet? It’s too expensive, too hard to access, or too confusing. Also: many Central Asians think it’s “for young people” (though the definition of who’s young depends on who’s answering the question).

Kolko has conducted some design ethnography work focused on the exchange of goods and information via social network in Central Asia. Controlling for demographics, people who use their conventional social networks (face-to-face communication) more are more likely to use technology. These people are also more likely to have higher levels of trust in their friends and family.

Of Central Asian Internet users, more people use the Internet for research for school or job training than for any other purpose. The least common use is for online auctions.

Most Central Asians use their mobile phones several times a day (though only 2% of mobile phones are connected to the Internet). People use their phones not because landlines are particularly expensive or hard to get, but because they want to be able to be reached no matter where they are.

Mobiles aren’t always great: people are already using them for 419-type scams. But their role has been noticeable in the political sphere: after the 2008 revolution in Kyrgyzstan, phones were used to report rioting and looting, both to warn people to stay home and to rally friends and family to help protect businesses. In Kenya, SMS was used to spread rumors and incite violence.

Part of Kolko’s research focuses on games for development. Games are cheaper and, often, easier to use than the Internet. For many Central Asian kids, games provide an first introduction to ICT. This initial training in ICT may give these kids a leg up in terms of later educational and career opportunities.

All of the examples above help provide a better understanding of how ICTs are used in resource-constrained environments. But how to build better ICTs for these regions? You need to focus on design ethnography. For example, looking at how people use mobile phones, how they use their social networks, and the “pain points” of their everyday lives.

Researchers interviewed Central Asians in their homes and had them draw diagrams of their own social networks. Their research lead them to two projects: the Mobile Social Software (MoSoSo) directory addresses the lack of published information directories, working through SMS instead of Internet to list and rate businesses. The Starbus focuses on providing more information about public transportation, using GPS and traffic algorithms to track the location and estimated arrival time of a bus, then send this information via SMS to users who request it.

Interestingly, the initial Starbus design was as low-power as possible to maximize the battery life. They tested the system in Seattle and it worked, but when they brought it to Bishkek they realized that the cell phone towers there required the GPS to have more power. They had to rewire the whole thing — “a classic design approach that failed miserably.”

In order to design the best and most appropriate ICTs, you need to drill deeply to truly define what an “Internet user” is in a particular environment — you can’t assume all Internet users access or use the Internet in the same way.