The Amateur

Computerist

Spring 2009 Netizens and New Forms of Journalism Volume 17 No. 1

Homo Neticus not Homo

Economicus

The occasion for this issue is a panel that was

part of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Associa-

tion of Internet Researchers which took place in

Copenhagen, Denmark from October 15 to 18, 2008.

This issue of the Amateur Computerist documents the

presentations made at that panel, “The Internet,

Netizens, and Journalism: Do Netizens Make Possible

New Forms of Journalism?”

Besides contributions from each of the panelists,

the issue includes reports about the panel in an online

newspaper and a blog. Also we include an interview

of Ronda Hauben by Guenter Hack, the editor of

Radio Austria International website site for technical

computer users, about the publication of the book

Netizens. Ronda also was honored to be one of those

nominated for the Ada Lovelace award for women in

technology. The nomination article is included as

well.

Along with the presentations on netizen journal-

ism in China and South Korea made as part of the

panel, was Ulla Rannikko’s presentation on citizen

journalism, and Anders Ekeland’s presentation on

participatory technical design. In his presentation,

Table of Contents

Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Internet, Netizens, and Journalism. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Candlelight 2008. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

China: Netizen Impact.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 7

Citizen Journalism Organizational Context. . . . . Page 11

Democratizing Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 15

Report on IR9.0 Netizen Session. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 21

Report from Copenhagen IR9.0. . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 23

One Decade of the Net Citizen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 26

Honoring Ronda Hauben. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 31

Ekeland introduced the concept of homo neticus as

the alternative to the more traditional economic

concept of homo economicus. While homo

economicus is traditionally the paradigm of the

egoistic, short sighted economic individual, homo

neticus presents the world with the active, innovative,

collaborative alternative of the netizen

[The following Abstract describes the panel that was

presented at the 9th Annual Conference of the Associ-

ation of Internet Researchers. The titles of the four

papers and the biographies of the four presenters

follow the Abstract.]

The Internet, Netizens,

and Journalism: Do Netizens

Make Possible New Forms

of Journalism?

Abstract

In his pioneering research about the impact of the

Internet, Michael Hauben recognized that the partici-

patory nature of the Net made possible a new form of

citizenship, a non geographic form. He called the

people who were developing this new form of citizen-

ship, netizens.

What would be the impact of this new phenome-

non? Hauben investigated several areas where the

impact of this phenomenon was particularly striking.

One of these areas was journalism. What impact

would this new form of non geographic citizenship,

would netizens have on the news media? Would

netizens make possible a new form of journalism?

The Net “gives the power of the reporter to the

Netizen” Hauben wrote.

Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Page 1

The papers in this panel explored what the nature

of this power is. One paper considered the long

desired goal of the press to act as a watchdog to

challenge the abuse of power. Are netizens making

such a press possible? Another paper looked at events

in China where netizen online activity has led to

changes in media practice and government policy.

The paper explored whether the Internet and netizens

are helping to expose social and political problems in

China and helping to clarify what is needed for their

solution.

Another paper looked at the participatory nature

of the Internet through the perspective of the South

Korean OhmyNews International (this is the English

edition of the Korean OhmyNews) and Indymedia in

Finland. The paper addressed, by examining citizen

reporters’ practices, the possibilities and constraints

of participation online. While the participatory nature

of the Net makes possible these experiments in the

field of journalism, it also facilitates other forms of

interactive exploration. A paper in our panel explored

how interactive participation impacts economic

development, especially in the field of innovative

design.

The panel discussed internet related develop-

ments in four countries. The panel focused on how the

concept and role of netizens and the Internet are

contributing to a different more participatory model

of democracy. It raised the question of how this

crosses national boundaries and geographic limita-

tions.

Titles and Brief Biographies

1. Netizen Journalism as Watchdog Journalism (Ronda Hauben)

Ronda Hauben, is co-author of Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society, Los

Alamitos, CA, 1997. She is a researcher and writer. Currently

she is a featured writer for OhmyNews International and is a

correspondent covering the U.N.

2. China: Netizen impact on Government Policy and Media

Practice (Jay Hauben)

Jay Hauben is an internet historian and editor of the Amateur

Computerist. His published writings include biographies and

historical articles especially about the Internet and communica-

tions technology. He has worked for the last 14 years in the

Libraries of Columbia University.

3. The Relation Between Citizen Journalism and Its Organiza-

tional Context: The Cases of Indymedia in Finland and

OhmyNews International

(Ulla Rannikko)

Ulla Rannikko is a PhD candidate in Media and Communications

at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her

research interests include alternative media, journalism, social

aspects of the Internet and media activism.

4. Democratizing Innovation through the Internet? (Anders

Ekeland)

Anders Ekeland, Economist from University of Oslo, also

studied Computer Science, History and Czech Language. As the

head of the department for innovation indicators and statistics at

The Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and

Education (NIFU STTEP), Ekeland has done research on

innovation in various fields, especially ICT related. His research

includes evaluation of Norwegian Broadband policy, use of

Internet in political parties and issues related to semantic Web.

Notes:

1. See for example, Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben,

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,

IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997 and online:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook

2. Michael Hauben, “The Effect of the Net on the Professional

News Media,” in Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet, and online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x13

[This is a slightly edited version of a talk given in

Copenhagen on Oct 17, 2008 at the 9

annual confer-

ence of the Association of Internet Researchers (The

tag for the conference is IR9)]

Candlelight 2008 and the

Anniversary of

‘The Net and Netizens’

by Ronda Hauben

This year, 2008 is the 15

anniversary of the

publication of “The Net and Netizens” by Michael

Hauben on the Internet in the summer of 1993.

Michael posted this paper in four parts because it was

fairly long. It was based on research he had done

about the Internet by asking people questions about

how they were using the Net in that period of the

early 1990s. Also at the time there was some use of

the term net.citizen on the net. Michael contracted the

term net.citizen into the term netizen. Based on the

responses and his analysis of them, Michael wrote a

paper defining what he called the netizen.

Page 2

His paper was spread around the Net by the

Usenet software network and by people forwarding it

to each other via e-mail. People embraced the concept

of netizen to describe the social and political phenom-

enon that Michael had identified in his paper. To be

a netizen is not a passive identity. Rather a netizen is

an active participant in the affairs of the Net and

ultimately of the world.

Often when people online were acting in a

manner socially empowered by the Net, they would

call themselves netizens.

Identifying as a netizen has

become an identity some people have embraced. They

consider themselves to be netizens.

In a recent book,

netizen is described as a

political concept. The impression is given that the

concept showed up on the net more or less spontane-

ously. That is not accurate. Before Michael’s work,

the word netizen was rarely, if ever used. After his

paper “The Net and Netizens” circulated widely, the

use of the concept netizen became increasingly

common. It was a whole process of research, of

summarizing the research and analyzing it, and then

putting the research back online and people embrac-

ing it. This was the process by which the foundation

for the concept of a netizen identity was first estab-

lished on the Internet in the early and mid 1990s.

The early 1990s was also a time when the privat-

ization of the Internet was being actively promoted by

commercial interests and U.S. government officials.

Spreading the consciousness of oneself as a netizen

became part of the fight defending the public essence

of the Net from the attack by commercial interests.

The result was that an understanding of the origin and

development of the concept of netizens has in various

ways been suppressed by those forces who wanted to

promote the commercial domination of the Internet.

In “The Net and Netizens,” Michael wrote that

the Net represents a significant new development.

“We are seeing a revitalization of society,” he ex-

plained. “The frameworks are being redesigned from

the bottom up. A new, more democratic world is

becoming possible.” This new world had a number of

characteristics that he outlined. He described a situa-

tion where “the old model of distribution of informa-

tion from the central Network Broadcasting Company

is being questioned and challenged. The top-down

model of information being distributed by a few for

mass consumption is no longer the only news.”

Michael explained how “people now have the

ability to broadcast their observations or questions

around the world and have other people respond.”

The computer networks, he wrote, “form a new

grassroots connection that allows excluded sections of

society to have a voice. This new medium is unprece-

dented. Previous grassroots media have existed for

much smaller groups of people….”

The Net, Michael argued, was providing netizens

with the ability to create the content and to set the

agenda for what is to be discussed. Thus netizens had

the power to not only determine the content for

discussion forums but also to design the forms that

online discussions take.

Michael wrote elsewhere that in its simplest form

this characterizes democracy, making ‘The Net and

Netizens’ a significant model for a democratic soci-

ety. It is not elections that is the essence of democ-

racy, where certain candidates are put forward once

every 4 or 5 years so you can vote for them. But

democracy is where you can be active participating

and where what you say has some effect on what

happens. The netizen is a participant in this continu-

ous exercise of democracy. That is what I understand

to be more appropriately considered a model of

democracy.

Another one of the earliest pieces Michael wrote

was looking at an article James Mill, who was the

father of John Stuart Mill, wrote in 1825 about

Freedom of the Press. Mill wrote that government

officials are going to be corrupt. They can not help it

because they are put in a situation where they have

power. Therefore a means is needed to monitor the

actions of those with power. Mill argued that society

needs a press that is a watchdog. The Net, Michael

wrote, makes such a watchdog possible now.

Remember that “The Net and Netizens” was first

posted online in 1993. The conceptual understanding

it proposed when the article was posted was some-

thing new. The question to be raised is how much of

this is possible to fulfill? How accurate was what

Michael understood of the potential of the Net and of

the netizen to make a more democratic world possi-

ble?

I want to come back to our current times. What is

happening now?

I have found that it is very important to follow

South Korea if one is interested in the development of

the netizen.

In 2003 I read an article in the Financial Times

that said that the new South Korean President had

been elected by netizens.

Page 3

What happened was that in 2002, netizens in

South Korea made it possible to elect as the president

someone from outside of the mainstream political

establishment. Roh Moo-hyun was elected for a five

year term as the President of South Korea.

In 2004 the National Assembly tried to impeach

him and netizens again took up the fight this time

against the impeachment. One of the means of fight-

ing for democracy in South Korea are candlelight

demonstrations. An activist in South Korea told us

that they had taken inspiration from the candlelight

demonstrations in Leipzig, Germany that helped to

reunite Germany.

In 2008, there were over 100 days of candlelight

demonstrations in South Korea, which started on May

On May 2, 2008 I was in Seoul. I left on May 3.

(I had been in South Korea for 9 days). On May 2, a

new set of candlelight demonstrations began.

I did not go to the demonstration on May 2. But

I do have a sense what was happening at the time

from talking to people I know while in South Korea

in April and early May. It was obvious that something

was going to happen, just not when. And so I was not

surprised. But I think what did happen is very impor-

tant and if you look at this poster what you see is

Candlelight Girl and her army.

The first candlelight demonstration on May 2 was

called by middle school girls and high school students

using their cell phones and a fan website on the

Internet to announce that there was going to be a

candlelight demonstration.

The demonstration was part of an effort to

impeach the new president of South Korea, Lee

Myung-bak who had won the election in December

2007. (Internet posts about the election by netizens

had been the object of censorship by the South Ko-

rean government from June - December 2007.) In

April 2008, Lee Myung-bak, came to the U.S. and

signed an agreement with George Bush to give the

beef lobby in the U.S. Congress what they wanted.

The agreement ended the former restrictions on the

export of U.S. beef to South Korea. It eliminated the

regulations that existed to provide precautions with

regard to the danger of mad cow disease or other

worries about unhealthy beef. Virtually all the restric-

tions were to be removed.

There were articles and a TV investigation

program about this development in the news in Korea.

Middle school and high school students who were

already upset about the quality of the school lunches

they get, felt this was only going to add to their

problem of poor quality food in school. Also there

was already an impeachment petition being circulated

online as the new president and the program he was

promoting led many in South Korea to fear that he

would be taking South Korea backwards to its auto-

cratic past. The candlelight demonstrations were a

sign that many in South Korea saw the actions of the

new president as a difficult problem for their country.

The Role of OhmyNews

In August 2008, Oh Yeon-ho who is the CEO and

the founder of OhmyNews gave a talk in the U.S.

about the candlelight 2008 demonstrations.

OhmyNews is mainly an online newspaper that has

committed itself to be a 21

century newspaper.

The Korean edition of OhmyNews combines

articles submitted by its regular staff with those

submitted by people from around the world, from the

Korean-speaking population and then decides which

will be put on its front pages. The Korean edition has

a substantial regular staff, as opposed to the smaller

English edition which is mainly based on contribu-

tions of articles by non-staff voluntary journalists

from around the world. The Korean edition of

OhmyNews is a major newspaper in South Korea.

There has been a very proud tradition of protest

and sacrifice in South Korea. In 1987 the South

Korean people got rid of the military dictatorship.

And it has been a hard fight since then. But it’s only

in the last 10 years that people have felt that they’ve

had some minimal level of democracy. In his talk, Oh

Yeon-ho explained that people had committed them-

selves to using the internet to try to guarantee and

spread that democracy.

OhmyNews played an important role in the 2008

Page 4

candlelight demonstrations. It started OhmyTV.

Because of OhmyTV I was able to watch the

candlelight demonstrations in my kitchen in the

Bronx in New York City. I don’t speak Korean but I

could have a good idea of what was happening. I

could chat using the Internet to talk to a former editor

of OhmyNews who is in London. She and I would

write back and forth to each other about what was

happening in the demonstrations. OhmyNews had 24

hour coverage at times and they provided not only

coverage on OhmyTV of the demonstrations, but also

articles and photos on their web pages about the

demonstrations. Also they had articles in English on

the English edition of OhmyNews about the demon-

strations. I found the coverage helpful and inspiring.

Though netizen is not a Korean word, it has been

adopted in Korea. People use the word netizen to

describe when they are active defending democracy

using the Internet. Netizens in South Korea took on to

broadcast whatever was going on. They would use

text messages sent via their cell phones or their

laptops. They would discuss what was happening

online.

A report about the demonstrations by France24

was particularly helpful. The reporter recognized

what was happening. France24 presented a netizen

with his laptop. Even when the police were using

water cannons attacking the demonstrators you could

often see someone with plastic over his laptop trying

to film what was going on. People took their cameras,

their cell phones and their laptops however they

could, they would broadcast on the Internet what was

happening. They would get broadcasts back from

other people at other areas of the demonstrations.

Along with the OhmyTV broadcasts, there were many

other sources of broadcasts, as for example via the

Korean online video portal Afreeca or via Youtube.

People who weren’t at the demonstration would

discuss what they saw and interact with the demon-

strators via their computers or cell phones. As one

person explained to me, netizens would go with their

laptops to the demonstration. They could be at the

demonstration and online at the same time. So online

and offline reality came together in a lot of ways for

a number of people during these demonstrations.

I was told that the demonstrations were different

from the prior tradition of demonstrations. In South

Korea, there is a tradition of militant demonstrations

in the struggle for democracy. The demonstrations in

2008, however, were festivals. There were people of

all ages, men, women, and children at the demonstra-

tions. People would bring their instruments. For

example, in one situation, in the middle of the police

attacking demonstrators, some people began to play

their accordions. At other times, there would be

singing, there would be dancing. There was debating.

There was something called a free speech stage that

developed. People would line up for a chance to

speak. Others would listen and react to the speakers.

And the demonstrators became the press, so they were

no longer dependent on how their demonstrations

were reported in the traditional media.

These were an important set of activities. But in

order to understand what happened it is crucial to

recognize that South Korea is advanced in terms of

the Internet.

South Korea is among the most advanced nations

in having the highest number of people connected

with broadband access. So it’s my sense that what

happens in South Korea represents a glimpse into the

future in terms of what’s possible when a large

number of people in a country have access to high

speed broadband connectivity.

If the Internet can spread and spread widely and

if there’s inexpensive wireless available, that is very

helpful because if people have the internet and can

write, film and carry on discussions about what is

happening in the world, this can function as a watch-

dog over what is happening. At times during the

candlelight demonstrations, the widespread media

coverage proved to be a protection for people from

the arbitrary actions of the police.

One such example is demonstrated by events that

took place in Seoul on June 10 and 11. A very big

demonstration was planned for June 10 to celebrate

the victory over the military government in South

Korea in June 1987. Some estimate as many as

600,000 to 700,00 people were expected and actually

participated in the demonstration in Seoul. What the

government did to prepare for the demonstration was

to try to blockade the president’s house, which is

called the Blue House, to keep the demonstrators

from marching to the Blue House. The police put up

barriers. They put out a number of shipping contain-

ers and filled them with sand which was reported to

have weighed 40 tons each. The police put grease on

the barriers so people would not be able to climb over

them.

The netizens named this structure “Myung-bak’s

castle.” They even made a wikipedia entry for

Page 5

“Myung-bak’s castle” as a landmark of Seoul.

They decorated this new landmark of Seoul.

Below is a photo of what happened later, after the

June 10 demonstration, from 12 midnight on June 11

until 5:30 am. On one side of the barrier is the crowd

of people discussing what should they do about the

barriers.

On the other side of the shipping containers, there are

buses filled with police and police outside the buses

guarding the President’s house.

The photo shows how people had brought blocks

of Styrofoam to be able to go over the police barri-

cade. But there was a 5-1/2 hour debate over what to

do at the site of the demonstration with people lining

up on both sides of the debate. Through the discussion

people decided not to go over the barricade for a

number of reasons. People felt it was too dangerous to

go over it. Instead several people with their banners

went up on the barricade.

The people who went up on the barrier did so to

show that they could have gone over it if they wanted

to but that they had decided not to.

The last photo presents the contrast between

WHAT IS SUPPOSED to be democracy, which is the

side of the barricade protecting the President from

communicating with the people.

And WHAT IS democracy, which is the people

communicating with each other to determine what

action is in the interest of the people on the other side

of the blockade. People online wrote about how

important this all was to them, to see that there could

be a discussion especially where people had real

differences. This was significant in two ways:

First, the discussion made it possible to decide

how to resolve the differences to come to a decision

among all of them.

Second, they cooperatively determined how to

construct a structure that would enable them to carry

out their decision. They took the kind of plastic,

cooperative process possible online and utilized it to

construct an offline structure and action.

The discussion and decisions carried out on June

11 were by a combination of people acting as netizens

and as citizens. What they did, I want to propose,

represents an important achievement and serves as a

fitting celebration of the 15

anniversary of the

publication online of “The Net and Netizens.”

Notes:

1. I say ‘socially’ because the concept of netizen refers to having

a concern for the well being of others, not only for one’s own

concerns and interests.

2. Information Please: Culture and Politics in the Age of Digital

Machines, Mark Poster, Durham, NC, 2006, page 78.

Page 6

3. For example, we had difficulty getting the book Netizens

published and distributed widely.

4. “The Net and Netizens” is the first chapter of the book

“Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet.” There is an online version of the book at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

China: Netizen Impact

on Government Policy

and Media Practice

by Jay Hauben

In this talk, I present two examples where the

activity of netizens has had an impact on Chinese

society. I hope to illustrate that active participation by

a critical mass of net users in online discussions can

influence national public opinion, activate the main-

stream media, check actions of the authorities and set

some of the political agenda of China. I submit this as

evidence that netizens are beginning to exercise some

political power and contributing to developing Chi-

nese society in the direction of greater citizen partici-

pation.

I. Introduction

Internet adoption in China is still rapidly increas-

ing. It was reported in July 2008 that there were more

than 253 million online users in China,

forty three

million more than a year earlier. Over 100 million of

current users read online forums. A still smaller set of

net users, less than 60 million are active contributors

to forum and chat room discussions. It is among these

users that I would locate net users who are “netizens”.

Netizen as a concept of scholarly interest was

first analyzed in the research of Michael Hauben at

Columbia University starting in 1992. Hauben had

participated in the 1980s on local hobbyist run bulle-

tin board systems (BBS) and in global Usenet

newsgroups. He wrote about “a new social institution,

an electronic commons developing.”

He undertook

research to explore how and why these communica-

tions forums served as an electronic commons. He

posted questions on newsgroups, mailing lists and

portals and found a very high level “of mutual respect

and sharing of research and ideas fostering a sense of

community and participation.”

Hauben found there

were people online who actively use and take up to

defend public communication, who oppose censorship

and disruptive online behavior. Hauben recognized

this as a form of network citizenship. He contracted

“net.citizen” into “netizen” to express the new online

non-geographically based social identity and net

citizenship he attributed to these people.

The self-identity and practice of netizenship

spread around the world. Especially in analyzing the

net in China, it is necessary to distinguish between all

net users (wang min) and those users who participate

constructively concerning social and political issues

in forums and chat rooms.

This second category

comes online for public rather than simply for per-

sonal and entertainment purposes. They act as citizens

of the net (wang luo gong min) and are the netizens of

this talk. The distinction must be emphasized because

the Chinese characters for network people wang min

are very often translated into English as “netizens.” In

the examples I will now read, I strictly adopt the

second usage. Netizens are net citizens, not all net

users.

http://www.cnnic.com.cn/html/Dir/2008/07/31/5247.htm

“Preface: What is a netizen” in Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Michael Hauben and Ronda

Hauben, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA,

1997, p. ix. Also, an earlier version is online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.xpr

Ibid.

Forum software hosted on internet accessible servers allows

for sequential and threaded online text discussions which can

be monitored and moderated. Similarly hosted chat room

software allows for simultaneous multiple participant real time

text conversations. In China, most forums allow alias

registration and are often archived. Chat room sessions are

ephemeral and are not easily monitored.

My usage is similar to that of Haiqing Yu who writes, “I use

‘netizen’ in a narrow sense to mean ‘Net plus citizen.’ or

‘citizen on the net.’ Netizens are those who use the Internet as

a venue for exercising citizenship through rational public

debates on social and political issues of common concern.”

(Haiqing Yu, “From Active Audience to Media Citizenship:

The Case of Post-Mao China,” Social Semiotics, 16 (2), June

2006.

http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/10350330600664888

(access restricted))

I add, however, that netizens are not only ‘citizens on the net’

but also ‘citizens of the net’ signifying those who actively

contribute to the development and defense of the net as a

global communications platform.

Page 7

II. Examples

My first example is the case of The Death of Sun

Zhigang

(2003)

To help control migration of rural people to the

cities, the Chinese government had in place for more

than 20 years, “Measures for Internment and Deporta-

tion of Urban Vagrants.”

On March 17, 2003, a

college graduate from the city of Wuhan working

away from home in the city of Guangzhou was

stopped for an identity check. He was detained under

these measures because he did not have the temporary

residence card he was asked to show. In the police

station he contacted two friends who came quickly to

vouch for him and his employed status. The police

would not release him. Three days later his friends

tried to contact him and were notified that he died

from a heart attack. After learning of Mr. Sun’s death,

his relatives and friends contacted the local police for

an explanation but received no definite answer as to

what happened.

With financial help from Mr. Sun’s former

classmates, his family was able to have an autopsy

performed which indicated that Mr. Sun was brutally

beaten before his death. One of the classmates who

was studying media in Beijing posted an appeal for

help concerning Mr. Sun’s death on a cyber forum for

discussion among media professionals from all over

China. A journalist working for the South Metropoli-

tan Daily took the post as a lead and decided to

initiate interviews of the family and authorities

involved.

About one month after the death, a detailed

report about it appeared in the South Metropolitan

Daily with the headline, “University graduate de-

tained and cruelly beaten to death for not showing

temporary residence card.”

On the same day, the

journalist also made the report available online on the

Southern Net news site.

Following the reports, the news was picked up by

editors of other online news portals. The net was

quickly flooded with anger at the death and appeals

for justice. Major national forums

featured extensive

discussions of the detention system, the death of Mr.

Sun and its implications. Other netizens commented

about the obvious injustice and denial of his constitu-

tional rights. Portal sites made the case a Hot Topic

where links to related stories were gathered. Chinese

language forums outside of China were also used for

discussions and analysis of the case.

A memorial page was launched by a software

engineer. It eventually received over 200,000 visits,

many visitors leaving comments, messages of sadness

and some money donations to the family. Some

comments gave examples of other cases of police

brutality. Others went further, demanding an end to

the official policy that treated migrants as lower class

citizens.

The intense online reaction influenced further

reporting first by big non-governmental media and

then by the mainstream national media, feeding more

online ferment. A special committee was formed by

the Guangzhou government to investigate Sun’s

death. The subsequent blunt denial by the police of

responsibility enraged many netizens. Their reaction

was critical comments now focusing on the weakness

of the investigation procedures.

Contributions of articles, responses, comments

and calls for action appeared online from activists,

lawyers, and academics all of whom had no other

option where to publish their critical analysis. Online

news articles typically received tens of thousands of

responses. Live chat discussions formulated demands

for a thorough investigation, punishment for those

involved, change or abolition of vagrancy measures,

and an immediate end to deportations. The combina-

tion of online outrage and mainstream media cover-

There are approximately 34 million Chinese speaking people

living outside of mainland China, many take a keen interest in

social and political issues in China. Those online often

participate in forums, chat rooms and blogs hosted on servers

in China and outside. In the examples that follow it is likely

netizens outside of China have participated.

This case is well covered in the scholarly literature. See for

example, Ibid, Tai, pp. 259-268 and other references in the

following notes.

Ibid, p. 260.

Shaoguag Wang,”Changing Models of China’s Policy

Agenda Setting,” Modern China, 2008, 34 p. 79.

http://mcx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/1/56 (access

restricted)

http://news.sina.com.cn/s/2003-04-25/09501015845.shtml.

See also, Haiqing Yu, “From Active Audience to Media

Citizenship: The Case of Post-Mao China”, Social Semiotics,

16 (2), June 2006.

http://news.21cn.com/social/shixiang/2003-04-25/1021755.html

Like Strong Nation Forum (qiangguo luntan), Development

Forum (fazhan luntan) and China Youth Forum (zhongqing

luntan)

Page 8

age made the case a topic of household conversation

everywhere in China. People’s Daily began to publish

selected netizen comments in its online news site.

Pressure from online communities, social groups and

the central government gave the local officials no

choice but to initiate a more serious investigation. The

investigators acknowledged that netizen pressure

added to their determination, resulting in thirteen

arrests reported. An open trial from June 5 to 9 ended

with 12 convictions of guards at the detention center

and some of the detainees. There was one death

sentence. Twenty-three governmental officials and

police officers were disciplined for their roles in the

death and lack of action after it.

Even after the arrest, online petitions were

circulated and online protest letters were addressed to

the National People’s Congress calling for abolition

of the current custody and repatriation system. Such

letters virtually never appear in Chinese off line

media. On May 15, a netizen posted an article, “On

the Violation of ‘Legislation Law’ by the Holding

System: The Case of Sun Zhigang” on a site main-

tained by the government which was followed by an

online examination of the existing anti-vagrancy laws.

On June 18, after over 20 years of enforcement, the

State Council decide to abolished the 1982 Measures

under which Mr. Sun had been detained. New mea-

sures were initiated which did not allow for detention

but required a system of help for homeless people be

available on a voluntary basis.

The collaboration of netizen and traditional

media set the news agenda and helped public opinion

to form so that the death of Sun Zhigang, an ordinary

person, was given extensive national coverage. This

led to the relatively quick end of a long standing

oppressive and discriminatory law. One scholar

described this as “one of the first cases of popular

opinion overriding and resetting official agendas and

the first demonstration of the sociopolitical power of

Chinese netizenship.”

Another event in 2003 was the BMW Incident

(2003)

On Oct 16, 2003, two farmers, Liu Zhongxia and

her husband, rode their tractor loaded with onions

through a narrow street in Harbin, capital city of

Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. The tractor

accidentally scrapped the rearview mirror of a car

parked on the side of the street. The car was a BMW

owned by Su Xiuwen’s businessman husband. Ms. Su

caused a commotion haranguing the two farmers

because of the damage to her husband’s expensive

car. Then she got back into the car and drove it into

the crowd which had gathered because of the commo-

tion. Ms. Liu was killed and 12 bystanders were

injured.

Ms. Su was tried in a Harbin court on Dec. 20.

None of the bystanders testified. They had each

received money from Ms. Su’s husband. After two

hours, the court ruled Ms. Su had not been properly

handling her car. The death of Ms. Liu was judged

accidental. Ms. Su was given a two year sentence

which was suspended. There was brief local media

coverage of the trial and it seemed it would pass as a

fatal traffic accident, one of many every day in every

country.

But two days after the trial, a post about the case

appeared on the Strong Nation Forum, “Attention:

The BMW killed a farmer.” The person posting made

three main points: 1) Ms. Su was related to a high

ranking official. 2) Ms. Su had killed Ms. Liu deliber-

ately. 3) The trial did not follow legal procedures. The

post unleashed a wide spread questioning and discus-

sion of the case throughout Chinese language cyber-

space. Soon there were over 70,000 comments and

opinions relating to the case on one portal alone.

Many netizens saw in the incident a posing of the

questions of rich versus poor in China, and justice

versus corruption.

Within two weeks the BMW incident became the

online hottest topic in the China. Journalists from out

side the province who followed the online commotion

went to Harbin to investigate and report for their

newspapers. After January 8, China’s mainstream

national media began intensive coverage. After all

this attention, local authorities and legal organs began

a reinvestigation.

The online uproar over the case put it on the

national news agenda and offered an alternative

framing to that of the court and the local media.

Almost half of the early posts looked for “behind the

scenes” reasons for Ms. Su’s light sentence. Less than

ten percent accepted the court’s decision. Other

netizens sought to understand the underlying causes.

Some suggested remedies like greater government

accountability to public opinion.

Haiqing Yu, “Talking, Linking, Clicking: The Politics of

AIDS and SARS in Urban China,” positions: east asia

cultures critique, 15 (1) Spring 2007:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/positions/v015/15/lyu.html

(access restricted)

Page 9

There was a growing call for the authorities to

open a new investigation and hold a new trial. When

it was reported in the press that province officials

promised “a satisfactory solution to the ‘BMW case’

will be offered to the public,” a post on the Strong

Nation Forum titled “Why should we trust you?”

precipitated a cynical thread casting doubt on the

credibility of the officials.

More and more the

question raised was what kind of China do we want?

A netizen with the alias stellyshi commented that

history shows that “…justice originates with the truth.

But now in the world, or in China, the truth means

nothing. In modern China, with power and money,

you can say anything as you like. Even you can kill

one person as you want. So, what is this? Is this fare

(sic)? Is this so-called socialist country? I don’t think

so. Never!!!…”

The hundreds of thousands of online posts took

many forms including analysis, argumentation,

poems, novels, dramas, letters, animations, and jokes.

Most posts were sympathetic to Ms. Liu and hostile to

Ms. Su. For many netizens, Ms. Su and Ms. Liu, the

BMW and the onion cart became symbols of the

growing gap and the character differences between

the rich and the poor in China. While much coverage

in the mainstream media called for government

transparency and social improvement, a major direc-

tion taken in netizen posts was to raise the question of

the direction in which China should be going. The

mainstream media called for step-by-step social

improvement, the online discussion raised deeper

systemic questions.

The off line media and the government in re-

sponse to the massive netizen activity took more

action then they would have. A new investigation was

promised and a retrial of Ms. Su. But by mid January

the government forbad the mainstream media from

any further coverage. It also required the deletion of

some and finally all old posts and any new netizen

contributions on the major forums and portals. At the

new trial there was no greater penalty for Ms. Su and

the monitoring and deleting of BMW related posts

caused online attention to shift to other incidents and

issues including net censorship.

In this incident all the netizen activity did not

lead to a different legal outcome. But it was another

example that ferment around a not very uncommon

event can lead to examination of contradictions buried

in society. It is arguable that this netizen uprising had

an effect on Chinese society regardless of the legal

outcome or the deletion of hundreds of thousands of

netizen comments. And in September 2004, the

Fourth Session of the Sixteenth CCP Central Commit-

tee rejected the long standing policy orientation

“efficiency first” which had been criticized by some

netizens who in the course of their uprisings traced

the specific problem to this systemic root.

Discussion

Every year since 2003, there has been dozens of

such national netizen uprisings and commotions

around social and political issues, sometimes expos-

ing fraud or corruption or questioning government

actions or explanations, sometimes discussing foreign

events like disruption of the Olympic touch relay.

They have become a normal aspect of Chinese soci-

ety.

The Chinese government has signaled its support

for active posting on forums.

Government officials

at all levels are encouraged to take part in forums or

on blogs. Government related news sites tolerate very

active and often highly critical forum discussions.

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jaibao both said

publicly that netizen activity at the time of SARS was

helpful. Summaries of each day’s hottest netizen

activity are made for the State Council. The dominant

Christina Yuqiong Zhuo and Patricia Moy, “Frame Building

and Frame Setting: The Interplay Between Online Public

Opinion and Media Coverage,” paper presented at the annual

meeting of the International Communication Association,

Dresden, June 16, 2006:

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p91118_index.html

Comment #11 at:

http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/redirect.php?tid=39672&goto=lastpost&highlight=

Ibid, Shaoguang Wang, note 9, p. 80

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has

been officially promoted for the last 15 or 20 years as one of

the most important driving forces of China’s economic

development. The government and party publicly support the

spread of the Internet and its use by people within China. The

result is the rapid spread of the Internet and its active use,

averaging for net users in China almost three hours per day. A

foreign journalist working in Beijing commented that users in

China “are usually too busy enjoying the Internet they have to

lament the Internet they do not have.” (Quoted in OhmyNews

International,

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?me

nu=c10400&no=381087&rel_no=1). But also, enthusiastic

netizens have found ways to minimize the effect of the

censorship. And many of them are using it with the purpose of

rational public debates on social and political issues.

Page 10

stress of censorship reported by media outside of

China misses this level of support and the rapidly

expanding new use for social and political discussion

and debate.

Often ahead of the mainstream media, netizen up

risings set the news agenda. Local events are given by

netizen activity national or international attention. In

alliance with more independent journalists and

editors, online issues can spread to the main stream

national media and to the whole Chinese people.

Netizen critical framing of issues differs from govern-

ment and mainstream media framing. When popular

opinion is formed about these issues it often follows

the netizen rather than the government or media

framing. The fight around censorship is creative and

spirited. A possible result is that the percent of net

users who view forums is increasing.

Some journalists come online for their leads and

to find contacts to interview. Some are emboldened

by netizen exposures and numbers to dig deeper and

take on more controversial topics. The result is the

media environment in China is livelier than in societ-

ies with less netizen activity even if those societies

have less media supervision and guidance.

Setting the agenda, framing issues and arousing

public opinion are all aspects of political power in

modern society. That the netizens in China are able

occasionally to play these roles suggests a political

dynamism in Chinese society that is often denied by

critics of China. Netizen activity in China is relatively

recent. It has many obstacles including a trend toward

nationalism and a contest over supervision and

control. But it is fertile soil for scholarly attention.

My intention with my examples was to attract such

attention. One precaution is the need for collabora-

tions that include Chinese speaking colleagues. I look

forward to the results.

Thank you.

[The following is a script of the presentation made by

Ulla Rannikko at the Netizens panel at IR9.0.

Rannikko is a PhD candidate at the London School of

Economics and Political Science. The slides which

accompanied her presentation can be seen at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/netizen_panel_2008/URannikko.ppt]

The Relation Between Citizen

Journalism and Its Organiza-

tional Context: The Cases of

Indymedia in Finland and

OhmyNews International

by Ulla Rannikko

[email protected]

Slide 1

I am going to talk about how participatory media

organizations, more specifically Indymedia in Finland

and OhmyNews International, act as social resources

for citizen journalists. My paper draws on face-to-face

interviews that I have conducted with citizen reporters

and people facilitating these two websites for my

ongoing doctoral research on citizen journalism. I will

call these two organizations by their abbreviations,

hence Indymedia in Finland is VAI and OhmyNews

International is OMNI.

Slide 2

As a general background for my paper, I want to

note a few developments in media in recent years that

seem to relate to citizen journalism.

It has been argued that democratic journalism is

in crisis and that people are not always getting the

kind of information from the media they need as

citizens. The mainstream media have been criticized

for being misleading and profit oriented. At the same

time, media are struggling to maintain their profit

margins. Media are also trying to adjust to the

so-called digital revolution, part of which is that

media content and original sources of information are

increasingly available online and often for free, and

the ordinary people are becoming involved in creating

media content. There has been a rise in media activ-

ism, the idea being that it is our democratic right to

express ourselves in the media, or as Hackett and

Carroll (2006) have noted, that media activism is

about democratization of the media, not through the

media.

But what is citizen journalism, which for some

appears to offer at least a partial solution to what the

mainstream media are perceived to be doing wrong?

Citizen journalism tends to be understood to include

blogs, user-created content in the mainstream media

and various participatory media. Not all citizen

journalism is online, as, for example, newspapers

Page 11

publish people’s photos in print format.

Slide 3

I will use as a starting point here a definition by

Bowman and Willis (2003). Their definition of

participatory journalism, their preferred term for

citizen journalism is:

“The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing

an active role in the process of collecting, reporting,

analyzing and disseminating news and information.

The intent of this participation is to provide independ-

ent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant

information that a democracy requires.” (Ibid, 9)

I am not going to discuss in this presentation

what this information that a democracy needs might

be or how citizenship should be understood; instead,

what is relevant here is the long list of adjectives that

Bowman and Willis (2003) use to describe the type of

information that citizen journalism should offer.

It seems to me that they have a great many

expectations of citizen journalism. I wonder how

often journalism in general succeeds in offering

“independent” – one could ask independent of what –

“reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant informa-

tion,” yet citizen journalism is expected to be able to

do that. Interestingly, in discussions about citizen

journalism, particularly in the mainstream media, it

has been criticized for failing to meet these expecta-

tions. Instead, some have claimed that citizen journal-

ism equates to poor quality and lack of accountability.

Now we have an idea of what citizen journalism

is expected to provide, but what have media commen-

tators said about how it is supposed to work? I am

going to show you two quotes; the first is by Dan

Gillmor (2006), who is one of the foremost advocates

of citizen journalism. The second is by Andrew Keen

(2007), who is not a proponent of the phenomenon.

Slide 4

“When people can express themselves, they will.

When they can do so with powerful yet inexpensive

tools, they take to the new-media realm quickly.

When they can reach a potentially global audience,

they literally can change the world” (Gillmor, 2006,

p. xv).

“The simple ownership of a computer and an

Internet connection doesn’t transform one into a

serious journalist any more than having access to a

kitchen makes one into a serious cook” (Keen, 2007,

47).

Gillmor (2006, xv) suggests that if people are

given the tools, in turn they “can change the world,”

whereas Keen (2007, 47) argues that not just anyone

with a PC and Internet access can be a proper journal-

ist. But are either of them right?

Slide 5

Gillmor (2006) is right to draw attention to the

tools that citizen journalists need to be able to partici-

pate in citizen journalism online. But I argue that the

tools only create the basic conditions, as citizen

journalists must be motivated, and they need skills

such as writing skills and language skills. Some

citizen journalists may need support, as not everyone

can be expected to be competent in journalistic

writing and, for example, in taking pictures. This is

where participatory media organizations play a role,

as ideally they can act as social resources for citizen

journalists.

Social resources refer to structures, in this case at

the mesolevel of organizations, that, I quote, ‘allow

people opportunities to form alliances, create joint

accomplishments, and collectively defend their inter-

ests’, as argued by Warschauer (2003, 160), who has

written about social inclusion and the digital divide.

My question then is how do participatory media

organizations act as social resources for citizen

journalists? Before I discuss OMNI and VAI, it is

worth briefly looking at what people involved in

citizen journalism see as desired skills and quality in

citizen journalism.

Slide 6

“...citizen journalism should aim at the same

quality as ‘real’ journalism ...?the skills required are

the normal good writing skills, critical analytical

skills and so forth ... ?the ‘critical citizen journalism’

part comes from having a slightly different point of

view from that of the mainstream media” (Laakso,

2006, VAI).

“A citizen journalist needs to be able to use solid

and consistent grammar, write in their own voice, and

use various resources effectively to gather as much

information as they can about their story” (Hahn,

2007, OMNI).

“...they [citizen journalists] do need to know how

to express themselves. Or they need an editor who can

help them” (George, 2007, OMNI).

The first quote is by a globalization-critical

Page 12

movement activist (Laakso, 2006) and a reporter from

VAI, and the second quote is by a citizen reporter

(Hahn, 2007) for OMNI. As the first two statements

indicate, it seems that citizen journalism should not be

that different from journalism in general, except that

writing from a certain perspective is seen as desirable.

Unsurprisingly, good writing skills are seen as a

requirement for citizen reporters. In the third quote, a

former OMNI assistant editor (George, 2007) draws

attention to the role of editors in helping citizen

reporters.

I will move now to discuss VAI and OMNI.

Slide 7

VAI was active in Finland for three years at the

beginning of this decade. OMNI is an English lan-

guage edition of South Korean OhmyNews and the

website was launched in 2004. Both VAI and OMNI

aim to empower people to become citizen journalists.

Among the key differences between them is that VAI

as part of international Indymedia network is associ-

ated with the alter-globalization movement and its

content tends to reflect this, whereas OMNI offers a

broader range of content from news articles and

analysis to film reviews and commentary.

VAI was a volunteer organization, whereas

OMNI is owned by a company. In VAI, people were

not paid for their stories, whereas OMNI pays a small

sum to its reporters.

Language is another difference because many

Indymedia collectives, such as VAI, tend to operate in

a local language, whereas OMNI operates in English.

Indymedia websites are usually city, region or, such

as VAI, country based, whereas OMNI is aimed at a

global audience and has contributors from around the

world.

I will discuss next how VAI and OMNI operate

and the kind of support they provide for their citizen

reporters.

Slide 8

VAI and OMNI demonstrate different approaches

to offering online space for people’s contributions.

VAI by and large followed principles of open publish-

ing, which means that the editorial decisions are made

transparent to the users and potentially anyone can

become involved in making those decisions, as well

as in contributing content. Also, the filtering and

modifying of stories is kept to a minimum. In reality,

VAI, unlike some other Indymedia websites, did not

edit stories, although the website was moderated and,

for example, racist and sexist articles and comments

were removed. If the moderators considered some-

thing to be very poorly written, they could return the

article to the writer to be tidied up.

Although some Indymedia collectives train

reporters, VAI, as a very small collective, did not

provide training. OMNI has a code of ethics and style

guidelines for reporters available on their website,

whereas VAI only posted very basic editorial princi-

ples on the website. Stories that are published on the

OMNI main website go through an editing process,

although they also have a Talk Back forum on their

website, which is a non-edited space for people’s

stories. In OMNI, editors can ask reporters to rewrite

a story. Based on the interviews, it seems that for

OMNI reporters, getting facts right is very important

and they appreciate that editors do fact-checking.

OMNI editors offer advice for citizen journalists

mainly through e-mail and online instant messaging,

but sometimes also through voice services available

online, such as Skype. Some reporters are invited to

a yearly Citizen Reporters’ Forum in Seoul. There

they get to meet OMNI staff and other reporters. The

forum builds a community feel among OMNI.

80% of OMNI contributors are non-native Eng-

lish speakers (Thacker, 2007). For editors, this means

that correcting articles for spelling, grammar and

punctuation is a central part of their work. For report-

ers not confident about their English language skills

at the level required for writing a journalistic piece,

help is available. For VAI, operating in Finnish was

likely to encourage participation among Finns.

Obviously, having the website in Finnish made it

incomprehensible for the vast majority of the world’s

population and for other Indymedia readers and

collectives. For OMNI, operating in English means

that the website is incomprehensible for the majority

of the world’s population. Estimates of first or second

language users of English vary between eight and

eighteen per cent of people (Graddol, 2006, 62).

Slide 9

“You have to learn the art of diplomacy through

text because it’s very easy for people to misinterpret

what you’re saying, especially as often they’re not

native speakers either, so it’s a double whammy”

(Thacker, 2007).

“You know, he always answers me as soon as I

write to him ...it’s always better to talk to that person

Page 13

but it’s... you know, when you’re doing it in that kind

of format online, um, that’s the closest it comes to

really being able to interact on a personal level”

(Jacquot, 2006).

These two quotes, the first by the senior editor

(Thacker, 2007) of OMNI and the second by a citizen

reporter (Jacquot, 2006) for OMNI, refer to communi-

cation between editors and citizen reporters. As the

senior editor notes, it is challenging to communicate

in writing, especially as many of the citizen journal-

ists are not native English speakers. In the second

quote, a citizen reporter points out that speaking in

person with editors would be preferable. It is worth

noting that although VAI was a local operation, the

collective operated by and large using mailing lists.

Some interviewees identified that this caused prob-

lems because the organization was seen to be too

loose.

Slide 10

The cases of OMNI and VAI indicate that lan-

guage is still a dividing factor on the Internet. When

citizen journalism platforms choose a language, it

means that while they open up access for some, they

close it for others. Computed-mediated communica-

tion between editors and citizen reporters across

cultures – this also came up in interviews with OMNI

editors – has challenges, especially if it’s not in the

people’s native language. Interestingly, if a website

operates locally, it does not automatically mean that

people meet in person, as the case of VAI shows. On

the whole, reporters for OMNI appreciate input from

editors and clear written guidelines seem to help.

These two cases indicate that the level of support

available to citizen reporters can vary dramatically

between citizen journalism platforms and it may not

be enough just to provide a space for citizen journal-

ism.

Slide 11

Appropriate support may encourage more people

to become involved in citizen journalism, not just

those who are confident about their skills. It seems

reasonable to argue that the decisions that are made at

the level of an organization, whether they concern the

language of the content and communication, the

editing process, or the training of citizen reporters, in

turn not only affect who contributes to these websites

and how, but also shape the readership, as certainly is

the case with regard to the language.

There are many challenges in responsible citizen

journalism. For example: How to make sure that help

is available for those who need it. How to find volun-

teer or business models that allow the creation of

support structures. How can participatory media

organizations balance the power and responsibility

that come with the territory when they offer a space

for people’s contributions?

References:

Bowman, S. & Willis, C. (2003) ‘We media: how audiences are

shaping the future of news and information’, Report by The

Media Center at the American Press Institute. Available:

http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php (accessed 4 Mar

2008).

George, C. (2007) Interview with the author, London, UK, 17

December 2007. [Ms. George is a former assistant editor of

OhmyNews International].

Gillmor, D. (2006) We the media: grassroots journalism by the

people, for the people, Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

Graddol, D. (2006) English next: why global English may mean

the end of ‘English as a foreign language’, British Council.

Available:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf

(accessed 30 Jul 2008).

Hackett, R. A. & Carroll, W. K. (2006) Remaking media: the

struggle to democratize public communication, New York, NY:

Routledge.

Hahn, J. (2007) Interview with the author, New Jersey, U.S.A.,

9 August 2007. [Mr Hahn is a citizen journalist of OhmyNews

International].

Jacquot, J. (2006) Interview with the author, San Francisco,

U.S.A., 17 Nov 2006. [Mr Jacquot is a citizen journalist of

OhmyNews International].

Keen, A. (2007) The cult of the amateur: how today’s internet is

killing our culture, New York: Doubleday.

Laakso, T. (2006) Interview with the author, Helsinki, Finland,

24 August 2006. [Mr Laakso, one of the core group of activists

who launched the VAI website, was also a reporter on the VAI

website].

Thacker, T. (2007) Interview with the author, Seoul, South

Korea, 3 July 2007. [Mr Thacker is a senior editor of OhmyNews

International].

Warschauer, M. (2003) Technology and social inclusion:

rethinking the digital divide, Cambridge: MA: MIT Press.

Page 14

[The following resume for the Amateur Computerist

is based on the presentation Anders Ekeland gave in

Copenhagen, at IR9.0. Some topics have been ex-

tended by the author, some relating directly to pic-

tures in the presentation have been dropped or re-

duced. Ekeland was at the time a Senior Researcher at

the Norwegian Institute for Studies in Innovation,

Research and Education. The resume was written

specially for this issue. The original slides can be seen

at:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/netizen_panel_2008/AEkeland.ppt]

Democratizing Innovation

Through the Internet

by Anders Ekeland

After having read some of the literature on

“user-driven innovation” I felt that it is was necessary

to outline some alternative theoretical perspectives

before going into a more systematic empirical study

of how the Internet facilitates user-driven innovation.

In my opinion the mainstream economic theory that

is used as the theoretical framework to discuss the

phenomenon of user-driven innovation is build on a

set of atomistic, egoistic and static principles that

makes mainstream economic theory ill suited to grasp

this highly social and dynamic phenomenon.

Mainstream economic theory with its egoistic

“homo economicus”

as its ideal of human rationality

is in contest with precisely the cooperative, collabora-

tive – “altruistic” – aspects of the Internet. User-

driven innovation is also very interesting for those of

us who are interested in forms of society where profit

maximization and competition are not the main

drivers for social and technological change. Conse-

quently in this presentation the actual use of the

Internet for the purpose of “user-driven innovation”

will be more anecdotal, based on data and description

in the literature and my own experiences. My own

experiences are connected primarily to my interest in

emission free vehicles, which includes human pow-

ered vehicles, but is broader since it includes all

non-fossil vehicles.

The starting point is Eric von Hippel’s recent

book Democratizing Innovation (2005).

This book is

the last in a series of books and articles by the same

author related to the “sources of innovation,” which

was also the title of von Hippel’s ‘breakthrough’ book

Sources of Innovation (1988). Here von Hippel

described and discussed the role of users in the

making of innovations. Von Hippel (1988, p. 4)

showed that users of a variety of products were either

the source of innovation or an important source. User

in this context is both firms and persons. As von

Hippel in Democratizing (p. 19) points out, the word

‘consumer’ gives an association of passive consump-

tion. This is of course generally correct, but under-

states that some of us – many of us – in some spheres

of life have a much more active attitude to the prod-

ucts we use. We sometimes modify them to make

them better suited to our needs.

The conventional wisdom, that it is the manufac-

turer that finds out what we need and then designs and

produces it – completely overlooks the social interac-

tion that takes place even in a capitalist market

economy. As a facilitator, the Internet should be well

suited as a vehicle for democratizing innovation.

Anecdotal evidence shows that the Internet creates

better user-producer links, that it makes possible a

creation of a wider and more customized variety of

goods. Von Hippel points to several studies where the

intra-user and user-producer exchange of ideas could

only have been mediated through a medium with such

low cost and rich information potential as the Internet.

A recent report written by a group of students at

the Technical University of Norway (NTNU)

“User-driven Innovation: When the user makes the

difference” also includes several cases where the

Internet have been instrumental for innovation. For

some product categories like extreme outdoor equip-

ment, the users are not only “lead users,” i.e. ad-

vanced users giving early and insightful information

to the manufacturers R&D department what problems

to address – they are practically the developers,

making modifications and/or extensions to the prod-

uct that the manufacturer then puts into production.

These developments - based on “virtual” commu-

nities of interest – are interesting from various theo-

retical and policy points of view. One important

aspect is the question of alienation, i.e. the phenome-

non that the profit motive “perverts” the relationship

between the producer and the user of goods and

services. Under capitalism many in our role both as

consumers and producers (workers) often get the

feeling that we get/make an inferior product, less

adapted to our real needs (“preferences”) just because

the producer was constrained by short term profit

maximization. The producer has to save, has to

introduce “fashion” and product differentiation

Page 15

characteristics that do not contribute to satisfy our

“real” needs. As consumers we often have no other

practical option than to buy this “lousy” product -

gruntingly buy it.

For an economist like Karl Marx a major aspect

of how markets worked was clearly the tension

between the “private,” atomistic labor that had to be

socially accepted as “socially necessary labor”

through the market. What Marx and later Marxists

like Ernest Mandel clearly saw as a rather wasteful

process - a view also confirmed by the little there is of

empirical research of this topic. Von Hippel puts it

this way, “It is striking that most new products

developed and introduced to the market by manufac-

turers are commercial failures.” The “success rates”

are typically found to be between 20-30 % (2005, p.

108).

So this is a topic related, but different from the

issue of the Internet as a vehicle for democratization

of the more strictly political sphere of society, i.e. the

large literature on the possible role of the Internet for

broadening and deepening political democracy,

including how political parties and political move-

ments use the Internet. Parties and movements influ-

ence the material artefacts around us- including the

infrastructure (roads, trains, city- (non) planning) and

environmental standards, but seldom individual

products. That is where user-driven innovation comes

in.

The economic literature on user-driven

innovation

The literature on “user-driven” innovation is very

strongly influenced by main-stream, neo-classical,

static equilibrium, theory. The use of “economic

theory” in the singular is a problem in itself. It ex-

cludes the heterodox schools of thought in economics,

like evolutionary (Schumpeterian), post-Keynesian,

Marxian and feminist economics, just to mention

some of them. Mainstream, that is neo-classical

economic theory, builds on a set of unrealistic, static

first principles, among them a very narrow, “egoistic”

view of the fundamental motivational structure of

humans, the so-called homo economicus.

This theory has great difficulty in handling the

“altruistic” nature of interactive activities in general.

Such activities are an important part of Internet use.

The open source movement and community being the

most well-know and analyzed example but far from

the only one.

My core message is that it is necessary to use

other theoretical models/traditions in order to under-

stand such activities in general, and in order to pro-

mote such activities, among them also user-driven

innovation. There are various ways to actively use the

Internet to shape society for example by journalism or

user-driven innovation to the betterment for all of us.

It is the essence of being a Netizen

User-driven innovation – an old story

In Democratizing Innovation, von Hippel gives

several examples of how user-driven innovation has

been a topic of interest for several economists:

[Adam] Smith pointed out the importance of “the

invention of a great number of machines which

facilitate and abridge labor, and enable one man

to do the work of many.” He also noted that “a

great part of the machines made use of in those

manufactures in which labor is most subdivided,

were originally the invention of common work-

men, who, being each of them employed in some

very simple operation, naturally turned their

thoughts towards finding out easier and readier

methods of performing it.(2005, p.21)

And from the post WWII era:

Rosenberg (1976) studied the history of the US

machine tool industry and found that important

and basic machine types like lathes and milling

machines were first developed and built by user

firms having a strong need for them. Textile

manufacturing firms, gun manufacturers and

sewing machine manufacturers were important

early user-developers of machine tools. (2005, p.

22)

Users as the sources of innovation

As mentioned in the introduction, the starting

point is von Hippel’s recent book Democratizing

Innovation (2005). Von Hippel’s first major opus,

published in 1988, Sources of Innovation is also

downloadable with permission from Oxford Univer-

sity Press. In Sources of Innovation, von Hippel

described and discussed the role of users in the

making of innovations (1988, p. 4). He showed that

the users in domains like ‘Scientific instruments’ and

Page 16

‘Industrial gas using’ were either the source of inno-

vation or an important source. The users had often

made important modifications that were many years

ahead of commercial production. This is of course not

surprising, since it is the users who have an intimate

knowledge of their own needs, the problems with the

equipment, etc. So they can propose to the producer

improvements that will not only benefit themselves,

but also other users.

The role of users in innovation is an important

fact. By contrast, an important way of legitimizing the

very high income differentials for entrepreneurs

versus users that still exists is to present the entrepre-

neur as a kind of genius who actually invented the

process. What case studies show is that, the picture is

much more nuanced to say the least.

Bill Gates is one of the richest men on earth, but

neither he nor Microsoft is very impressive when it

comes to innovation or satisfying users’ real needs.

Most of us can point out clear defects with Windows.

Also the business strategy of Microsoft has always

been to price the product as high as possible by

creating artificial market segmentation (for example,

Home, Academic, Pro, Business Premium versions of

the same operating system) that has no economic

rationale. This market segmentation just creates

problems and makes users waste a lot of time on

products where very short term profit maximisation

clearly dictated how the product was developed.

VISTA is a good example - an operating system that

had few new real features, but quite a few new prob-

lems. That is of course why you have a “downgrade

to XP” option. This business strategy has stimulated

in opposition to it the open source movement - which

is a very systematic effort at collective,

well-organized user-driven innovation. The point

about Microsoft is not that it is particularly bad, but

that the logic of capitalist competition very often

makes a firm choose a business strategy like that of

Microsoft.

Apple has clearly been more adjusted to

user needs, but even it has to try to “lock-in” the

customers to its equipment, its software. Much more

could be said about this, but let me get back to

user-driven innovation using the bicycle as an exam-

ple.

The bike as an example of user-driven

innovation

The bike not only has a past. In an era of climate

change, it certainly has a future. Most of us have

become so used to the ‘diamond’ frame (DF) bicycle

that we can hardly think of anything else. But the DF

bike is not optimal aerodynamically or ergonomically.

Air resistance is the major problem for biking since

rolling friction can be made very small. Having a

more horizontal body position would reduce air

resistance. From the early days of biking there were

various “recumbent” designs with or without “fair-

ing.” A French inventor, George Mochet constructed

and a French cyclist, Francis Fauret in 1933 rode

these “horizontal” bikes to world records. The pro-

ducers of ordinary bikes intervened and the recum-

bent bike was prohibited by defining the competition

bike with certain standards. The recumbent bike

almost died out, but with oil price “shocks” in the

seventies and eighties, more interest in environmental

issues, the recumbent bike had a renaissance.

It is

obvious that both the sales of recumbent bikes and

their development were stimulated by the spread of

the Internet. To empirically quantify the importance

of the Internet is a difficult and demanding task. But

the reason why the recumbent has not become the

ordinary bike is that it has certain disadvantages

sitting low and uphill, manoeuverability in heavy city

traffic.

One solution would be to make a hybrid bike,

combining the advantages of the diamond frame,

so-called convertible recumbents. The pictures

illustrate this idea.

The convertible is built of stan-

dard, but in some cases modified bicycle parts.

Real life and homo economicus

User-driven innovation points to other types of

motives for innovative activities that are beyond the

Page 17

“egoistic,” “egoistic profit/utility maximizing behav

ior, points towards a truly democratic, ecological,

interactive way of organizing the production of goods

and services. It is necessary to underscore that these

motives or incentives, as most economists call them,

are not irrational in any sense. They are not contrary

to long run sustainable growth and its real and final

goal, more welfare creation. On the contrary, it is only

in a myopic profit maximizing perspective that these

“altruistic” types of behavior can be considered

irrational or sub-optimal. Ordinary economic models

(market cross) cannot even be called myopic, since

actually they do not have any time dimension, they

are static.

I think that for modeling human behavior, a

model of what is rational is needed. Indeed most of us

have such a model internalized, since we are more

satisfied with some parts of actions than others, we

are more satisfied with the macro-social result of

some types of behavior than others. The point is that

a concept of rationality that has a real time perspec-

tive includes that obvious fact that life is a continuous

learning process because we do not have global

perfect information.

One obvious aspect of this learning process is

that some products and firms are failures. If there was

anything close to perfect information, no product

would be a failure, no firms would go bust. Some of

the firms that go bust clearly do so because they

misjudge the real needs of the customers. But often

the anarchistic nature of capitalist competition and

profit maximization means that there is too much

productive capacity created as everybody tries to be

first to market - to create a (quasi-) monopoly, i.e. get

the largest possible market share.

Von Hippel writes:

It is striking that most new products developed

and introduced to the market by manufacturers

are commercial failures. Mansfield and Wagner

(1975) found the overall probability of success

for new industrial products to be only 27 percent.

Elrod and Kelman (1987) found an overall

probability of success of 26 percent for consumer

products. Balachandra and Friar (1997), Poolton

and Barclay (1998), and Redmond (1995) found

similarly high failure rates in new products

commercialized.

Although there clearly is some recycling of

knowledge from failed projects to successful

ones, much of the investment in product develop-

ment is highly specific. This high failure rate

therefore represents a huge inefficiency in the

conversion of R&D investment to useful output,

and a corresponding reduction in social wel-

fare.(2005, p. 108)

It is quite clear that increasing the rate of success-

ful products would result in increased welfare produc-

tion. This is not taking into consideration successful

products that we buy, but actually would have liked to

be quite different – like Microsoft windows!

Microsoft is a commercial success, but not a welfare

success.

The great surprise…sharing information!

The obvious answer to the failure of firms and

products would be to have mechanisms of informa-

tion sharing, a dialog on how to best develop the

product so that it would satisfy real needs. Von

Hippel writes:

The empirical finding that users often freely

reveal their innovations has been a major surprise

to innovation researchers. On the face of it, if a

user-innovator’s proprietary information has

value to others, one would think that the user

would strive to prevent free diffusion rather than

help others to free ride on what it has been devel-

oped at private cost. Nonetheless, it is now very

clear that individual users and user firms-and

sometimes manufacturers – often freely reveal

detailed information about their innovations.

The practices visible in “open source” software

development were important in bringing this

Page 18

phenomenon to general awareness. In these

projects it was clear policy that project contribu-

tors would routinely and systematically freely

reveal code they had developed at private ex-

pense. (2005, p. 9, my emphasis)

An alternative approach – theories of

alienation

In my opinion the reason why this “sharing of

information” comes as a surprise to innovation

researchers is because the dominant paradigm in

economics is utterly static and atomistic. The reason

why economics uses the specific type of mathematical

model it uses is because only under such extreme,

non-scientific conditions can a set of pro-market,

neo-liberal “results” be proven mathematically.

Mainstream theory is a clear example of the SCOTh

(Social Construction Of Theory). The founding

fathers did not want the theory to be that abstract, but

every trace of real life had to bee weeded out in order

to prove these “results.”

I will here briefly outline an alternative approach,

just to show that the question of what kind of theory

one approaches the user-driven innovation phenome-

non with matters. I will use the concept of alienation.

Alienation has a long history. Originally ii was a

religious concept, the tragic fate of man on earth,

alienated from the “real” heavenly existence. Accord-

ing to Ernest remolded (1970), it was a theme in

classical Greek/Roman philosophy. In modern times

Hegel “secularized” the concept, relating it to “alien-

ated labor” (needs outstrip what labor can produce

since it produces new needs) – and as “Entäusserung”

– “externalization.” Marx remolded the Hegelian

concept of alienation and pointed to new forms of

alienation, alienation from the state as a hostile

institution, loneliness as alienation created by a

competitive “winner takes all” society and alienation

of humans from the means of production, means of

creativity – a historically new phenomenon (Mandel,

The causes of Alienation). From this perspective

being creative (innovating) together is overcoming

alienation – becoming more human – getting back to

the community way of doing things that are “in our

genes” - and not as a theoretical surprise.

A surprise…for mainstream economics.

One example on how hard mainstream econom-

ics struggles to incorporate the “altruistic” (I would

say rational) nature of Internet-aided, user-driven

innovation, can be seen in an article from Research

Policy 2003 with the title, “How communities support

innovative activities: an exploration of assistance and

sharing among end-users” (Nikolaus Franke and

Sonali Shah). The case studies in this article are taken

from diverse sports communities: sailplanes, canoe-

ing, boardercross (snowboard competition), and

handicapped cycling – but of course there are many

more. The origin of such online communities is the

“newsgroups” on the Internet, which in the early

years were mainly related to ICT, programming,

programming languages, etc. Over the years (mid

eighties to late nineties) newsgroups expanded expo-

nentially both in quantity and scope. For those of us

that have struggled with programming problems and

bug-full software, the newsgroups were just fantastic.

In minutes you could have the solution, or a good hint

that saved you days of desperate debugging. The

mutual benefit in such groups is evident so that even

the most experienced programmers read and re-

sponded to the newsgroup posts. Once upon-a-time

anyone online could get freely given advice. No

human is all knowing. We are not experts in all

domains. In some we are experts (responders), in

others we are novices that ask for help. With the

development of HTML, browsers, FAQ-pages,

knowledge banks the newsgroups are no longer the

only source of freely available help.

But our innovation researchers Nikolaus Franke

and Sonali Shah seem to be unfamiliar with the ideas

behind the creation of the Internet. Because to them

The hydrofoil kayak. (If you were thinking of developing one, you

will find the state of the art on the Internet – and possibilities for

sharing of ideas, drawings, etc.

Page 19

“... the existence of generalized exchange is some-

what of a puzzle, because any member of the ex-

change system can free-ride since there is no guaran-

tee of reciprocity” (p. 173). Not only is that the case

but the traditional “egoistic” explanations of

“free-revealing” and assistance like:

! Induce further improvements from others

(which one then can egoistically benefit from)

! Setting my “egoistic” standard - benefitting

me more than the others

! Reputation effects

! Low rivalry/competition context

… do not stand up to critical scrutiny of these suc-

cessful communities, even when we are talking about

products with a clear commercial potential. Franke

and Shah find that a cause that is “overlooked” in the

traditional theoretical framework is “the fun and

enjoyment that arise through engagement in the task

and in the community. From this perspective, the

individual does not view the participation and contri-

bution as a cost that has to be compensated. Rather

these activities are enjoyable in and of themselves.”

(p. 173) This is not surprising from an alienation point

of view. Modern life, where most products around us

are too often “one size fits all” due to the extreme

attention to short term profit maximisation leaves

little room in our lives for our own creativity. We feel

“big business” as an external, foreign and hostile

force. By participating in communities of innovation

we increase welfare by better products – and we

overcome our alienation by shaping the material

artefacts around us – and by working together, instead

of the “bellum osmium contra omens” which is not

only the ideal of mainstream economics, but also the

ethos of our times. The authors further state that …

“competition decreases the flow of information… a

ski manufacturer is likely to be better off monitoring

a community of ski fanatics … than a group of World

Cup racers” … (p. 175) – so competition is not

always the driving force for innovation/progress.

Quite the contrary. What is even more “surprising” is

that … “the communities do not appear to operate like

traditional reciprocal exchange markets” (p. 171).

Time does not allow me to discuss how they really

work, but overcoming the alienation of and between

user and producer is certainly a key issue. To develop

the critique of main-stream economics is also impor-

tant as a first step.

Further research

I have not touched upon how Internet-based

user-driven innovation could be supported – by a

fraction of the cost of the current “bail-out packages”

– yet another example of how resources are systemati-

cally wasted under capitalism. There are also more

collective innovations to make - for example stan-

dardization of mobile phone chargers, lap-top charg-

ers – where the logic of capitalist competition result

in a lot of wasted resources, a lot of wasted time and

a lot of frustration for the users. There is a range of

topics connected to users as “Watch-dogs” for prod-

uct quality, safety and sustainability – that would be

an important role – even in a society where the logic

of profit maximization would not dominate - because

technology is always socially constructed and a male,

white, high education world view might be too

dominating. There is still a lot to do when it comes to

empirical research on the specific role of the Internet

– what does the medium, the Net mean – a method-

ological difficult question since we do not have any

ex ante bench-mark. But maybe is that not needed,

one could create one today – and then try to see if

support of Internet based user-driven innovation made

any difference. I am quite convinced it would.

Anyhow – my main point here was that from

alienation – theory perspective user-driven innovation

generally is not a theoretical problem, on the contrary

– concrete examples show the possibility, the direc-

tion to take in order to find a way to make a more

human, less competitive society, with more welfare,

more equality and fewer lousy products. In short, a

society where the active and innovative collaborative

Netizen – homo neticus – and not the egoistic,

short-sighted homo economicus is the theoretical and

practical role model of the social sciences.

Notes:

1. Homo economicus, or Economic human, is the concept in

some economic theories of humans as rational and broadly

self-interested actors who have the ability to make judgments

towards their subjectively defined ends. See for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

2. This book is freely downloadable at:

http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm under a ‘Creative

Commons License’ and is “Dedicated to all who are building the

information commons.”

3. For those who think that Microsoft is a monopoly as opposed

to “perfect” or “free” competition, see my paper “The Text-book

Myth of the Monopoly case” presented at Association of

Heterodox Economics conference, 2006.

Page 20

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#History

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recumbent_bicycle#Disadvantages

6. See also:

http://revver.com/video/439960/switchbike-wwwfreshcreationnl/

7. See Wiebe Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward

a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Inside Technology Series)

(Hardcover), where the SCOT (Social Construction Of Technol-

ogy) approach is outlined and illustrated by case studies.

[The following is an entry by Axel Bruns on his blog

http://snurb.info/node/881. In the entry Bruns

summarizes the Netizen panel at the IR9.0 conference

in Copenhagen.]

Report on Panel Session

held on Oct 17, 2008

by Axel Bruns from his blog

http://snurb.info/node/881

Netizens and Citizen Journalists

around the World

The post-lunch session here at AoIR 2008 begins

with a paper by Ronda Hauben. She notes that 2008

is the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of

Michael Hauben’s seminal article on the ‘Netizen’

concept – a concept emerging from Michael’s re-

search that spread rapidly and widely, and (especially

in Asia) still has a great deal of currency. The concept

had a great deal to do with the fight against commer-

cialization of the Net which was prominent then;

today, for the same reason the concept has been

suppressed to some extent by those interested in a

more commercial Internet.

The Netizen idea provides a bottom-up frame-

work; the top-down model of information is no longer

the only model for news, it suggests, and this can give

voice to a greater section of society. This ties into

older ideas of the press as a watchdog over govern-

ment, but (enabled by technology) positions everyday

Netizens rather than professional journalists as such

watchdogs. South Korea is an interesting example for

such trends: in 2002, Roh Moo-Hyun was elected

president largely because of Netizen activism, and in

2004, a drive to impeach him was defeated for similar

reasons.

This year (2008), there have been extensive

candlelight demonstrations in protest against the

government; the first of these were called by middle-

and high school girls, creating a “Candle Girl Army,”

and to some extent these were directed in the first

place against a new import deal for U.S. beef (some

of which did not meet U.S. food quality standards),

but they also tie into an underlying impeachment

drive against the current president. Much of this also

connects to the OhmyNews Pro-Am citizen journalism

phenomenon, of course – and some of these demon-

strations were Webcast live by a new sub-division,

OhmyTV.

The presence of self-declared Netizens in such

events is palpable – remarkably, there are people with

laptops (sometimes wrapped in plastic to protect them

against tear gas and water cannons) at the demonstra-

tions, doing live DIY Webcasting using the wireless

and mobile Internet connections which are ubiquitous

in South Korea. One particularly notable demonstra-

tion involved the presidential palace which had been

surrounded by a ring of sand-filled containers (de-

scribed ironically by demonstrators as Myungbak

Castle, with its own Wikipedia entry); there were

lengthy online and face-to-face discussions amongst

demonstrators about whether to scale these walls and

enter the protected zone, again showing the important

role of Netizens in these events.

Jay Hauben is next, and shifts our focus to the

role of Netizens in China. Internet adoption in the

country is growing rapidly, of course, with some 43

million more users coming online only this year.

Some 60 million users are active contributors to

forums and chat rooms, and it is amongst this group

that Netizens can be found and that, as Michael

Hauben wrote, a new electronic commons is forming.

In Chinese language, in fact, there is a distinction

between wang min (Net users) and wang luo gong

min (Networked citizens, or Netizens) - but this is

often lost in translation.

One case in which Netizens made their presence

felt was the 2003 death of Sun Zhigang, a student

who was falsely identified as an urban vagrant,

detained by police, and died in custody after what

turned out to be a brutal beating. This issue was raised

on an online forum for media professionals in China,

and taken up by journalists on the forum; a report was

finally published in the South Metropolitan Daily

newspaper and various online news portals, and

generated a great deal of online discussion and

protest. Various other online sites were created

(gathering news reports, reports about police brutality,

or creating online memorials to Sun), People’s Daily

Page 21

reported about the case and published selected

Netizen comments, and some three months after the

death 12 police were convicted for their actions in the

death; shortly later, the 20-year-old anti-vagrancy

measures were abolished, too.

Another incident occurred in the same year, when

a tractor accidentally scraped a businessman’s BMW,

and the wife of the businessman drove into a crowd of

locals in retaliation. The driver received only a

suspended sentence, however, as many witnesses had

been bribed by the businessman. This case, too, was

taken by Netizens, and generated some 320,000 posts

on one portal alone; there was substantial discussion

about the growing gap between rich and poor, the

corrupt judicial system, and related issues. It also

expanded to a broader discussion about the overall

direction of change in China.

However, while a new investigation was prom-

ised, discussion and coverage of the incident was

ultimately removed and forbidden by the government,

and a retrial did not lead to a different outcome. Here,

then, Netizen power did not have a direct positive

outcome; at the same time, however, there may be

underlying effects, and there is some indication that

there were broader, less immediate and longer-term

policy changes which may have been driven by this

and similar cases.

Ulla Rannikko is next, and takes us (in part) to

Finland. She begins by pointing out discussions of a

crisis of democratic journalism, and the related

criticism of the quality of the mainstream media.

Additionally, the media are struggling to maintain

their profit margins, and journalism is being

de-professionalized by the rise of alternative journal-

ism and media activism. Citizen journalism (which

may be online or offline) is seen to offer a partial

solution to such challenges.

Citizen journalism is described by Bowman &

Willis as ideally providing “independent, reliable,

accurate, wide-ranging, and relevant information” –

a tall order that it may never necessarily deliver on;

however, this shopping list of adjectives may not

provide the only definition of citizen journalism. Ulla

contrasts the views of Dan Gillmor and Andrew Keen

here, and extracts from this the realization that citizen

journalists need Internet access, appropriate tools,

motivation, skills, and support for their work – they

do not simply emerge fully formed.

What is required of citizen journalists, then? Ulla

draws on interviews with citizen journalists at a

Finnish Indymedia site and OhmyNews International:

they should aim, they say, at a quality similar to that

of conventional journalism, but provide different

points of view from the mainstream media; journalis-

tic skills are hardly different from those of ‘profes-

sional’ journalists, but they are put to somewhat

different uses.

The two sites orchestrate such work differently,

of course; citizen journalism in OhmyNews is clearly

editor-assisted, while Indymedia practices a form of

direct, unedited publishing which is moderated only

for severe infringements against a set of basic stan-

dards. Indymedia provides no training for citizen

journalists, and has only basic guidelines for partici-

pants, while there are a code of ethics and style

guidelines for OhmyNews contributors. Editors on the

latter site are there to help the citizen reporting

process along. Additionally, of course, the Finn-

ish-language nature of this specific Indymedia site

limits the availability of a large community of partici-

pants.

Overall, then, there is a need for appropriate

support and guidelines for citizen contributors; this

may increase quality and in turn also the appeal of

citizen journalism. The challenge is to develop a

responsible and sustainable form of citizen journal-

ism.

Finally, we move on to Anders Ekeland, who

focuses on user-led innovation in Denmark. He points

to the literature discussion the role of the Internet in

democratic and policy-making innovation, as well as

to literature on user-driven innovation which still

works with a number of relatively old-fashioned

concepts that have a hard time dealing with the

altruistic nature of many forms of online collaborative

efforts. So, there is a need also to look to other

theoretical traditions.

Adam Smith noted that many early machines

were the inventions of common workmen; this is a

clear case of what von Hippel called innovation by

lead users. In many cases discussed by von Hippel,

users are either the or at least a source of innovation

– the term ‘consumer’ certainly does not apply here.

The Internet is especially instrumental here in the

formation not only of information, but of innovation

communities.

There are many implications of this. To begin

with, if users are (co-) innovators, then the income

generated from such innovations should be more

widely shared; if user-led innovation leads to fewer

Page 22

commercial failures, then governments should support

such processes; if user participation is driven by

non-egotistical motives, then this points to the poten-

tial for a democratization of innovation.

Indeed, the prevalence of ‘free revealing’ of

innovation has been a major surprise for innovation

researchers (as it is usually seen as encouraging free

riding) – revealing perhaps more about the mind set

of the researchers and the limitations of existing

theory than about the user-innovators who engage in

such sharing. Open source has been instrumental in

bringing this phenomenon to wider attention.

Anders suggests that one way of overcoming this

theoretical impasse is to draw from philosophical

approaches which describe the phenomenon as a way

of overcoming alienation through the formation of

innovation communities. Market forces may be not as

important drivers here as non-market forces – and

indeed, strong competition reduces the likelihood of

collaboration and learning from one another. The

Netizen or homo neticus, rather than the egoistic,

short-sighted homo economicus, may provide a better

theoretical role model.

[The following is a report from the IR9.0 Conference

in Copenhagen in Oct 2008. The original appeared in

Danish on the citizen journalism website:

http://flix.dk. The URL for the original is:

http://www.flix.dk/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=5135.

The translation is by the author.]

Report from Copenhagen

IR9.0

By Erik Larsen

When young youth house activist in the spring of

2008 demonstrated for a new youth house

(ungdomshus) in Copenhagen they used cell phones

and the Internet so intelligently that you might label

it ‘a new cultural practice within cyberactivism’. That

was the conclusion reached by Christie Stauning

Andersen and Lotte Lund Larsen, two students who

followed the activists and their use of IT closely as

part of their studies in Design, Communication and

Media at the Danish IT University (ITU) in Copenha-

gen.

A report by Larsen and Andersen on the subject

was presented at the conference Internet Research 9.0

(its tag is IR9) titled ‘Rethinking Community Re-

thinking Space’. This was part of the 2008 annual

meeting of IT researchers from all over the globe,

organized by the Association of Internet Researches

(AoIR). The meeting took place over three days,

October 16-18, 2008, at the ITU in Copenhagen.

Andersen and Larsen kept close contact with and

interviewed young people from the ‘Ungdomshus’

(Youth House) movement* during and after the

massive demonstrations in the streets of Copenhagen

in Spring 2008. The two researchers thoroughly

analyzed the chain SMS messages, web sites and mail

correspondence related to Ungdomshus movement.

Their report reveals a surprisingly high level of

organization, creativity and discipline in the way the

young people had used the digital tools – or weapons

– during their struggle.

The report reveals sets of unwritten rules which

streamline and optimize the communication flow

between group members and between the activists

and the press/society at large. One such rule is that

you don’t change the text of a chain SMS message –

this would damage the cell phone distribution sys-

tem’s value as a reliable and cheap mass communica-

tion media. The researchers also revealed that people

in the network all knew the names and numbers of

certain key people who held the cheapest SMS

subscriptions. These were the first ‘nodes’ when a

chain SMS message was released and in turn insured

that messages were distributed to as many people as

possible. Chain SMS and the unwritten rules for good

cell phone traffic was one of the reasons why the

activists on multiple occasions were able to mobilize

significant crowds quickly and efficiently in any

given place or time.

The activists were also found to be extremely

smart Internet users. Flyers and invitations for dem-

onstrations and actions were distributed via the

MySpace social networking system. Campaign

material of different kinds were produced through a

collaborative effort based on a very simple yet highly

effective piece of collaboration software – the activ-

ists used one single Gmail account edited collabor-

atively by all group members who would share a

single username and password. Leaflets, flyers,

translations and much more was stored in the drafts

folder of the account and were produced, edited and

released by a group of people working together

independently of time and place.

Page 23

The activists finally got what they fought for – a

new ‘Ungdomshus’ – but to cyberactivists in other

parts of the world there are more abstract yet ulti-

mately important prizes at stake: The young democ-

racy in South Korea is hanging by a thread and in

China there is a growing pressure from the citizens

for greater influence and the right to criticize authori-

ties. In both countries IT is shaping the very identity

of activists and to a large extent defining their range

and choice of action, and in both countries cyber-

activists call themselves ‘netizens’ – a word coined

by the Internet pioneer and researcher Michael

Hauben in the late 80s (by fusing net and citizens).

IR9.0 had invited Michael Hauben’s parents,

Internet researchers Jay and Ronda Hauben based at

Columbia University in New York. With a keen

interest in cyberactivism the Haubens have followed

the development among netizens in South Korea and

China closely and have visited both countries several

times.

Ronda Hauben opened her presentation at IR9.0

with quotes from the 1997 book ‘Netizens: On the

history and impact of Usenet and the Internet’ which

she co-wrote with Michael Hauben. In the book

Michael Hauben reflects on his research into the

discussion and knowledge sharing culture which

flourished in the 80s on the Usenet:

“We are seeing a revitalization of society,” he ex-

plained. “The frameworks are being redesigned from

the bottom up. A new, more democratic world is

becoming possible.”

The vision of the Internet as a potential tool for

democratic renewal was nearly drowned out by the

dot.com craze around 2000 and the promising re-

search of Michael Hauben stopped prematurely when

he died in 2001 from the consequences of a traffic

accident. But the Netizen concept had a strong come-

back when South Korean Netizens with the citizen

reporting newspaper Ohmynews.com as the unifying

media platform became an important factor for the

choice of the reformist president Roh Moo-Hyun in

2002.

Using photo documentation, Ronda Hauben

showed how something resembling a culture revolu-

tion took place in South Korea in the spring of 2008.

The backdrop for the events: The country’s newly

elected president, the conservative Lee Myung-Bak,

had tightened his grip on the media of South Korea

and had step-by-step begun to dismantle the fragile

democracy which the South Korean population gained

after massive demonstration and fights culminating in

1987.

Lee Myung-Bak became particularly unpopular

when visiting George Bush in U.S.A. in April 2008 he

gave the green light for South Korean import of

American beef some of which was restricted by U.S.

regulation from being sold in the U.S. This caused an

uproar in parts of the population and became the

launch-pad for the so-called ‘Candle-Girl Army’ – an

army of schoolgirls who marched with lit candles

through the streets of Seoul, protesting against school

food which they feared might be infected with mad

cow disease.

On June 10, 2008, thousands went on the street

protesting against President Lee Myung-Bak. He

reacted by immediately blocking access to the Presi-

dential Palace (Blue House) in a baroque fashion. He

ordered 40 containers filled with sand and stacked

upon each other, welded together and tied to poles in

the ground to be placed between the Blue House and

the area of the demonstrations. Grease was poured

over the entire construction to prevent activists from

climbing over it.

Demonstrators spent hours discussing on a

speaker’s stage and on online flora the next move.

They agreed to climb on top of the bizarre road block,

but instead of climbing over and confronting the

police who were behind the barricade to attack with

unconventional weapons. They launched a battery of

online satire ridiculing the monstrous presidential

road-block device which was dubbed ‘Myung-Bak

Castle’ and laconically labeled ‘South Korea’s tourist

attraction number 0.’

For 100 days Seoul was the arena for a public

rebellion where tens of thousands went on the street

in peaceful demonstrations highlighted by subtly

orchestrated ‘happening’ attacks on police and

‘Myung-Bak Castle’ – with music, happenings and

street theater all being coordinated by netizens using

online fora: The battle was discussed and planned

step-by-step online before the IRL [In Real Life]

execution.

The happening-like events and demos were

followed by video activists and via cell phones and

sent by portable computers to the TV station

OhmyTV.com and online video stream distribution

servers. On these websites, all of South Korea could

follow the events in real-time.

Ronda Hauben concluded that the June demon-

stration/festivals won a clear victory for the demon-

Page 24

strators in terms of PR and moral. She underlined the

fact however that the situation in the country is still

tense and that Lee Myung-Bak has shown earlier that

he is willing to use brutal force against South Korean

citizens.

In Jay Hauben’s presentation on the same panel

focus was turned towards the growing Netizen move-

ment in China – a country where the distribution of

the Internet is growing explosively. It is estimated

that more than 253 million Chinese were online in

July of 2008 and more than 100 million of these are

reading online fora. It is from these online fora that

Jay Hauben has collected examples of the Chinese

netizens raising critique against the Chinese govern-

ment and authorities.

A student from the Wuhan province, Sun

Zhigang, died in 2003 while in police custody. He had

been detained for not being able to show ID papers.

One of his friends wrote to an online forum fre-

quented by Chinese media people and asked for

media support to investigate the matter fully.

The police claimed that Zhigang died from a

heart attack but this explanation didn’t fit with all the

signs of beating and violence which were obvious

from the coronary papers.

A journalist from the newspaper South Metropol-

itan Daily brought the case to the public both offline

and online. Before long, all the details of the case ran

like a fire through Chinese web fora and more people

came forward with examples of police brutality. The

citizen and netizen commotion resulted in 12 police-

men and detainees being arrested for lethal violence.

An online petition against the rules for police

detainment was gathered and sent to the National

People’s Congress. The central government removed

the detention law and issued a revised system that no

longer allowed for arrest or involuntary holding of

migrants or others without proper ID papers.

Jay Hauben mentioned another episode which

happened in Harbin, the capital of the Heilongjiang

province, in 2003. By accident a tractor made a

scratch in a BMW owned by businessmen. In a rage

over the incident the businessman’s wife drove the car

directly into a crowd of local peasants.

One was killed and 12 wounded but the court

case which followed the event ruled that it was an

accident and the driver of the BMW was released. It

was later revealed that the witnesses to the event had

been paid off by the businessman. Two days after the

court case a post popped up at the national web forum

Strong Nation Forum entitled “Attention: BMW Kills

Peasant.”

Within a short time 70,000 comments were

posted in response to the original post and the nation

wide online debate quickly turned towards general

issues such as the different treatment of the rich and

poor in China and corruption in the court system.

When the case finally was mentioned in the print

media, with an assurance from authorities that the

case would be reopened, one netizen reaction was

skepticism: “Why should we trust government offi-

cials?” the title of one post read.

The government eventually shut the case down

completely when it deleted more than 300,000 com-

ments on Chinese web fora. The reprise court case

reached the same conclusion as the first.

Jay Hauben argued that the Chinese Netizen

movement is a potentially important phenomenon in

the development of democracy in China.

The BMW case didn’t yield any actual result for

the offended Netizens but according to Jay Hauben

the underlying effect should not be underestimated.

He mentioned that the Chinese government has

admitted that the debate about SARS in web fora was

actually helpful for the country and that China has

begun to challenge government officials on all levels

to take active part in debates on the web.

From SMS chain messages and collaborative

Gmail accounts in Copenhagen, Netizen TV in Seoul

and system critical comments on Chinese web fora –

cyberactivism is here to stay. In Asia the Netizen

movement has become a key element in the fight for

direct democracy – which the Hauben’s have missed

in their home country U.S.A. since in 1964 when for

the first time they walked side by side in a demonstra-

tion against the Vietnam War. It was an era where

SMS chain messages, Gmail accounts and web fora

were activist tools beyond the wildest imagination.

Today’s means of protest may be digital but the

goal remains the same. “The critical students move-

ment in which we were active from the beginning of

the 60s viewed republicanism and representative

democracy as a derailment of direct democracy which

was envisioned by U.S.A.’s founding fathers,” says

Jay Hauben who believes that U.S.A. could learn

something from the South Korean Netizen methods

and involvement.

“Democracy in U.S.A. works to the extent that

people have succeeded in fighting and sometimes

even winning important battles against government

Page 25

policy at certain points, but the political system we

have now does not represent the people,” says Jay

Hauben. Hauben, who categorizes himself as a

participatory democratic, is baffled by the massive

Danish media coverage of the McCain and Obama

presidential campaigns, since it “doesn’t really make

any difference if one or the other wins,” he says.

*For background information about the ‘Ungdomshus’ conflict

in Copenhagen, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungdomshuset

[In response to questions from Radio Austria

International (ORF), Ronda Hauben reviews how she

and Michael Hauben came to write and get the book

Netizens: On the History of and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet published. Below are her answers to

questions sent to her via e-mail by Guenter Hack, an

editor at ORF. The occasion was the tenth anniversary

of the book.]

One Decade of the

Net Citizen

ORF: How did Michael and you get the idea for the

book Netizens?

Ronda Hauben: In 1992 Michael and I had just

gotten access to Usenet even though we had known

about it for a while. (Usenet is an online forum. See

Chapter 10 of Netizens.)

Michael began posting articles on Usenet that he

was writing as part of his research as an undergradu-

ate college student about the social impact and the

history of the Net.

Little was known among the Net community at

this time about the history of the Net, and there was

little research or writing about the social impact of the

Net. People who were online were excited by the

experience they were having online and eager to

understand it better.

Michael’s research, especially about the experi-

ence of users online was pioneering at the time. Some

of the earliest articles Michael posted were “The

Computer As Democratizer” and “The Social Forces

Behind the Development of Usenet.” His articles were

welcomed by people online.

After reading some of what Michael posted, a

Canadian netizen, Phil Fleisher, who was then in

Ottawa, wrote Michael suggesting that there was a

need for a book length collection of articles from

various perspectives describing the important new

advance represented by the participatory interactive

nature of the global Internet.

In a parallel development I had been reading 17th

and 18

Century British economic works which

provided me with a framework to appreciate the

importance of communication in the economic

development of society. Once I had gotten onto

Usenet, I began to think about how it might be possi-

ble to apply the scientific framework I had found in

the economic works of writers like Sir William Petty

and others to try to document the significance of what

I was finding as the practice and historical founda-

tions of the Internet. I remember I was thinking of

writing a “Political Anatomy of the Net” after reading

Petty’s “Political Anatomy of Ireland.”

One day I received a review copy in the mail of

a print edition of a book that had been online about

how to use the Net. Books about the Internet were just

beginning to appear.

Michael and I thought it would be a good idea to

take Phil’s proposal seriously. It was worth our

contributing the work we were doing to a print edition

of Netizens. Around this time we approached a few

publishers and inquired if they would be interested in

a book. We soon learned that being able to put out a

print edition of the book we were proposing would be

much harder than we had anticipated because publish-

ers were promoting the commercialization of the

Internet, while our book was a challenge and critique

of such a change in the nature of the Net.

By Fall of 1993, I gathered the articles Michael

and I had been writing and put them together as a

collection of articles to be put online. We titled the

netbook, as we called it, “Netizens and the Wonderful

World of the Net.” We set a date in January of 1994

to have a book reading in honor of the online publica-

tion of the book. We posted a notice online and in a

local newspaper about the event. At the time we lived

in Dearborn, Michigan. Michael was then at Colum-

bia University in New York City as an undergraduate

student but was home for intersession. We had our

book launch at Henry Ford Community College on

January 12, 1994. Several people came to our event.

Michael read from the first chapter of the book “The

Page 26

Net and the Netizen.” We had some discussion about

the impact of the Net that Michael had documented in

his online research. Then we went to a computer with

Internet access and showed people who had come that

the book was online and how they could use ftp to

copy the book by downloading it to their computers.

Three months later, on April 24, 1994, I visited

Michael at Columbia University. Students in the

student chapter of the Association for Computer

Machinery (ACM) sponsored a book reading for us.

Michael and I both made presentations. There

was a lively discussion about what should be the

future direction for the Net. Should the emphasis be

on multimedia or participatory interactive develop-

ment? Students welcomed the book. I remember

visiting Michael after that and meeting students who

would ask if we had yet been able to get a print

edition of the book published.

This was an example of the continuing encour-

agement we got to keep up the effort to get a print

edition published of the book.

This was the period when there were a variety of

people coming online who saw the Internet as a way

to make their million dollar fortunes. For example,

some lawyers, who came to be known online as the

Green Card lawyers, posted an ad on many Usenet

newsgroups advertising their services. They were

greeted with much anger among netizens online who

took up to fight them and their spam.

Our online book was welcomed by netizens.

Steve Samuel, who I think lived in Canada, proposed

that we make a print edition and that he and others

online could take it to their local bookstores and ask

them to sell it. A netizen from Ireland offered to make

a Latex version of the book once we had a final

manuscript. Ron Newman, a U.S. Internet pioneer,

supported our efforts and let people know about the

book. He also encouraged us to keep up the efforts to

find a publisher.

Cal Woods, from Dublin, offered to put the text

into html which he did one weekend. We then had a

text version and an html version online.

It took us three more years to be able to get a

print edition of the book published. Our book focused

on documenting the scientific, public and participa-

tory nature of the Internet. During this period, the

books being promoted by U.S. publishers were those

books which were either “how to” books or books

which encouraged the commercialization of the

Internet. (The Green card lawyers had been given a

book contract for $40,000 to publish a book on how

to make millions using the Internet.)

At one point a publisher wrote me with an offer

to publish the book. His copy editor proceeded to

change the text. She took out sections where we

challenged the commercialization of the Internet and

replaced them with language promoting Internet

commercialization. When we objected, the publisher

threatened that we would never get the book pub-

lished in a print edition. We said we wouldn’t agree

to the changes. This publisher ended his offer to

publish the book.

Michael didn’t let this bad experience sidetrack

our efforts. He posted the table of contents of the

book online on some mailing lists and Usenet. He

received an e-mail from the IEEE Computer Society

publisher saying that if we really did have a manu-

script they would be interested in publishing the book.

The copy-editing and publishing process took

more than a year. Among the other people who stand

out during this period helping us to get the book

published were Jan Lee and Deborah Scherrer, who

were active in the IEEE Computer Society at the time.

Jan Lee was then editor of the IEEE Annals of Com-

puting encouraging us to get the research we had done

into print. Debbie was especially helpful as the IEEE

Computer Society Ombusperson helping us work

through problems when they developed in the pub-

lishing process. The book was finally published in a

print edition in May 1997. We had a book party

welcoming the publication on Bastille Day July 14,

1997 at a book store near Columbia. Michael and I

both read sections from the book. Our publisher came

from California and so did some friends from Michi-

gan.

Several Japanese colleagues helped to have the

book translated into Japanese so that a Japanese

translation appeared in a print edition in October

1997.

ORF: Who is a Netizen to you?

Ronda Hauben: This is a question that makes me

smile. It is quite amazing to see how the evolution of

“netizens,” that Michael discovered in his initial

research into the impact of the Internet in 1992,

continues to develop.

One quite fascinating example of netizens are the

young scientists of the scientific community in South

Korea who unmasked the fraud in the research papers

Page 27

of one of the most famous Korean scientists Hwang

Woo-suk.

The South Korean government gave great honors

to Professor Hwang for his stem cell research. The

highly regarded U.S. scientific journal Science had

published Professor Hwang’s papers. And there was

a fan club both online and offline supporting Profes-

sor Hwang and relying on his false promises of

medical breakthroughs to offer remedies for their

handicaps or diseases.

Yet the young scientists who participated in

online forums such as BRIC (Biological Research

Information Center), DC Inside (A photography web

site) and Scieng (the site of the Association of Korean

Scientists and Engineers) succeeded in not only

challenging the powerful forces who supported

Hwang, but also in spreading an understanding online

of the evidence of the fraudulent nature of Hwang’s

work.

In an article I wrote for OhmyNews 12/29/2005,

I proposed that these young scientists were the South

Korean “Netizens of the Year”

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi

ew.asp?menu=c10400&no=266352&rel_no=1

Netizens in South Korea also made it possible for

a relatively unknown politician to win the presidency

of the country in 2002 based on the candidate’s stated

commitment to participatory government. Unfortu-

nately he did not live up to his promises.

I consider the work of Florian Roetzer and the

Telepolis community to be the activity of netizens. As

the editor and a journalist, Florian has created

Telepolis, which I consider to be a pioneering online

magazine created in 1996. Telepolis reports on news

events often not covered elsewhere. Even more

important, however, the online community who read

and contribute to Telepolis often have serious and

interesting discussions about the articles. Telepolis is

one example of an online publication that I would call

“netizen journalism.” This is a form of journalism

where those who are the staff of the publication and

its readers are active participants in the discussion of

the problems of our society.

There is a need for a journalism that is independ-

ent of the powers that be, of a journalism critical of

what those in power are doing. Journalism should be

able to expose the underlying but hidden motives and

interests behind the news. Too often journalists tell

the story those in power want to be told. The journal-

ists too often act as if they are the public relations

department for the powerful. Rarely do journalists tell

the news from the point of view of the powerless, of

those who are the victims of the abuse of power by

those in public office.

Telepolis publishes mainly in German. The url is

http://www.heise.de/tp

Journalists who write for Telepolis are encour-

aged to ask the questions and tell the news that no

other newspaper will support.

An important example is the set of articles by

Mathias Broechers published immediately after the

attacks on the World Trade Center in the U.S. on

September 11, 2001.

Three days later and continuing on a regular basis

for several months, Broechers wrote articles which

challenged the official U.S. government account of

how 9-11 had happened and who was responsible.

Broechers has said that only one or two other

newspapers were willing to publish one or two

articles challenging the official explanation of 9-11 at

the time, and no news media with the exception of

Telepolis was willing to publish the series of articles

he did.

The articles appearing in Telepolis raised serious

questions about the what was the role of the U.S.

government with regard to what had happened on

9-11.

Not only did Telepolis print a number of articles

challenging the official U.S. government explanation

of 9-11 and the lack of an investigation, but there was

a lively ongoing discussion and debate in the reader’s

forum section of Telepolis on the articles. Broechers

reports, also, that he received a number of e-mail

responses to his articles with leads and information

that were helpful for his ongoing series of articles.

A similar process has gone on with articles

appearing in Telepolis on other significant issues of

the times. For example, a series of articles appeared

in Telepolis challenging the U.S. government claim of

the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” as a

pretext for its invasion of Iraq. Articles on many

different events and problems, and on scientific and

technical developments are featured in Telepolis. The

Hungarian journalist John Horvath reports from

Hungary about the developments in Eastern Europe

for Telepolis. Other journalists write about events in

Palestine and other areas of Europe, Africa and the

Middle East. There has been a continuing series on

the domination of the U.S. government over the

management of the Internet’s infrastructure. In honor

Page 28

of the 10th anniversary of Telepolis, in March 2006,

a number of people wrote about their appreciation for

the work done by this pioneering online newspaper.

Some people now use the word netizen to refer to

anyone who is online. When Michael introduced and

used the word, however, he reserved the word to refer

to those who participate online not only for entertain-

ment or personal reasons but more importantly toward

contributing to a better world.

Actually Michael, describing netizens, wrote:

“Netizens ... are people who understand it takes effort

and action on each and everyone’s part to make the

Net a regenerative and vibrant community and re-

source. Netizens are people who decide to devote

time and effort into making the Net, this new part of

our world, a better place.” (Michael Hauben, “Pref-

ace,” Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet) The Telepolis readers and staff are

one example of netizens.

ORF: Has it been easier to be a Netizen in the more

homogeneously populated Internet then it is now?

Ronda Hauben: Before the commercialization of the

Internet, there was a very supportive netizen commu-

nity that welcomed contributions and shared their

work and responded actively to the work of others.

The U.S. government’s privatization and commercial-

ization activities, however, gave support to those

elements who abused the Net and the online commu-

nity.

There was a very diverse population of people

online before the Internet was privatized on May 1,

1995. The fact that commercial activity was not

allowed, however, made the Net a more welcoming

environment than later after the commercialization.

ORF: For the book, you did extensive research on the

history of the Internet. Do you see some of the origi-

nal spirit of the Internet’s masterminds like J. C. R.

Licklider still around today?

Ronda Hauben: Yes.

It is not that I see something akin to the original

vision by people like J. C. R. Licklider now in any

individual person who stands out.

Instead, the spirit has become more diffuse and

spread out. It has become the challenge for netizens to

carry on the vision and figure out how to implement

it in the day to day developments that occur online

and off.

For example, the area that I particularly follow is

the area of how the Internet can help to create a

publicly oriented newspaper or other news media here

in the U.S. and else where around the world.

OhmyNews in South Korea and Telepolis in

Germany are examples of netizens utilizing the

Internet to make such a news media possible. While

there isn’t such a news media in the U.S. yet, there are

lots of efforts by people to make something happen.

For example, there was a scandal exposed during

the George W. Bush administration that bloggers had

been active bringing to public attention. That scandal

involved U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and

the decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys, some of

whom were in the midst of politically hot criminal

investigations. (See especially TPM Muckraker

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/)

Similarly in the scandal involving Paul

Wolfowitz, the head of the world bank and the archi-

tect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there were anony-

mous comments put online by the staff at the world

bank that helped to document the frustration of people

who worked under him. The scandal involving him

was not only that he claimed to be requiring govern-

ments elsewhere to fight corruption while he used his

office to give large salaries to those who had a per-

sonal or political relationship to him, but also that he

geared the program of the World Bank toward the

Bush political agenda rather than toward a program

supporting economic development goals.

Similarly, in the situation with the mass killing at

Virginia Tech, there was at least one web site with

discussion about the problems in U.S. society that

lead to someone becoming so isolated and frustrated

so they can become a danger to themselves and

others. While much of the mainstream media used the

situation to discuss gun control, the online discussion

I found looked for an understanding of the social

problems in U.S. society that led to this tragedy.

While the mainstream U.S. media continues to

offer a very narrow set of news for people, netizens

are actively exploring how the Internet can help them

to bypass the mainstream U.S. media so that public

opinion and the public agenda become broadened to

represent the public interest, not the interest of the

powerful.

As Michael wrote in Netizens, the Net brings “the

power of the reporter to the netizen.”

He explained: “People now have the ability

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to broadcast their observations or questions

around the world and have other people respond.

The computer networks form a new grassroots

connection that allows the excluded sections of

society to have a voice. This new medium is

unprecedented. Previous grassroots media have

existed for much smaller-sized selections of

people. The model of the Net proves the old way

does not have to be the only way of networking.

The Net extends the idea of networking – of

making connections with strangers that prove to

be advantageous to one or both parties.”

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CompHum/spee

ch_acm.html

Michael was referring particularly to online

discussion groups.

The forms of discussion groups have expanded

now to include discussion on blogs, news articles and

other formats. But the achievement is the same.

The netizen has a power and is using it :-)

Licklider described the need for citizen involve-

ment in government decisions to help determine how

to support the continuing development of computer

technology. More significantly, Licklider proposes

that people will not be interested in government

processes until they have a means to participate in

those processes. He foresees how computer develop-

ments will provide such a means. He writes: “Com-

puter power to the people is essential to the realiza-

tion of a future in which most citizens are informed

about, and interested and involved in, the process of

government.”

This is a goal now particularly of those who are

trying to develop a new form of media, a media which

will provide for a more participatory and discursive

interaction between writers and readers.

Though this process is still young, it is develop-

ing and will develop more as the Internet spreads and

more people get access. Netizens are finding ways to

implement and spread the vision of a more democratic

society that the Net helps to make possible.

ORF: In February 2001, Google acquired Deja News’

archive of then 500 million Usenet messages, dating

back to 1995. I remember you opposing the deal and

questioning whether corporations could sell postings

like a commodity. What do you think of collaborative

websites a.k.a. web 2.0?

Ronda Hauben: I still feel that Google has an obliga-

tion to the online community with regard to what it

does with Usenet messages. After I wrote the article

in Telepolis about the problem with Google treating

Usenet postings as a commercial commodity, I was

invited to speak at Stanford and then at Google.

Afterward, I was told that someone from Google

would speak with me about what I saw as the prob-

lems, such as with Google making decisions about

what should happen with regard to Usenet

newsgroups and Usenet posts without having a

mechanism of input from users.

I made the effort to talk to the Google person I

was put in contact with. He asked me what I wanted

them to do. I said for a start not to claim that they

owned the copyright on Usenet posts. (Google put

their copyright notice on each post.) At the time the

person from Google ended the conversation with me.

Since then Google has made several changes with

regard to how they treat Usenet newsgroup posts.

Still, however, I don’t know of any mechanism that

exists for them to have substantial user input into their

decisions.

How Google treats Usenet newsgroups affects

Usenet, so it is important there be a mechanism for

input and discussion with users about this. In general

it is interesting that Google and some commercial

entities like Google seem to function without the

realization that they need to have solid means of

interaction and discussion with users with regard to

how their activities impact the user community.

So I was glad I tried to open up a process with

regard to this and that my article was printed in

Telepolis and I was invited to speak at Stanford and at

Google about the issues involved, but I was not happy

that this problem was not treated in a constructive

way by Google management.

You asked about web 2.0.

The term “web 2.0” seem to be used a lot and I’m

not sure exactly what it means.

In general it seems that this means the interactive

and participatory processes of collaborative network-

ing and multimedia.

This all was part of the early vision for the

Internet and its development, so to call this web 2.0

seems to be suggesting that this is a new development

or something particular to the web. It isn’t something

new, or particular to the web, so in that way the term

seems misleading.

Nevertheless it is good to have lots of people

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have access to the collaborative processes that the

Internet makes possible.

But it seems that perhaps what gets lost in the

web 2.0 formulation is that there is a social orienta-

tion intended as part of the early vision for the

Internet. The development of the net was projected as

the development of a public utility, and as an empow-

erment of the user for socially related purposes. I

don’t know if this is part of what is considered ‘web

2.0' or if ‘web 2.0' focuses mainly on the technology

and loses the social orientation of the vision guiding

the development and use of the technology. In any

case, the netizen is a concept that has maintained the

sense of a social orientation.

Also, an important part of the original vision for

the Net was that all who wanted access be able to

have access to the Internet at a low cost.

I do not know if this is part of what is considered

web 2.0. It is part of what Michael included when

developing the concept of the ‘netizen’. Many people

who wrote him in 1993 and 1994 wanted everyone to

have access to the Internet. The vision of widespread

accessibility of the Net was an important part of its

potential promise.

In the U.S. there seems little commitment on the

part of the government to the spread of broadband.

Recently (circa 2008) the U.S. ranking is given as

25th globally (at a household level) with respect to

the widespread availability of broadband access. See

for example:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0704/

ORF: There’s so much information in Netizens. It’s

a very dense and powerful text.

[The editors were happy to find online the following

tribute to Ronda Hauben one of the founding editors

of the Amateur Computerist.]

Ada Lovelace Day +1:

Honoring Ronda Hauben

posted by metaverse* (March 25, 2009)

Yesterday [March 24, 2009] was Ada Lovelace

Day, a day to honor women in technology**. When I

first heard about the event, I knew instantly who I

wanted to honor. Though we never met, this woman

helped inspire me to participate in the community that

is the Internet. I’d lost track of what she was doing

over the years, so I had to do some research, which of

course led to more research...so, I’m late.

So let me introduce you to an underappreciated

Internet visionary, one of the original Netizens:

Ronda Hauben. In her youth, Hauben worked in

Detroit at the world’s largest car factory, Ford Rouge.

As the story goes, Ford was sponsoring continuing

education classes in computer programming. Hauben

and others were outraged when the company canceled

the program in 1987. After an unsuccessful attempt to

revive the company-sponsored program, Hauben

launched The Amateur Computerist newsletter to

foster technology education among the workers. The

first issue (

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/acn1-1.pdf)

came out on February 11, 1988, the 51

anniversary

of the Flint Sit-Down Strike. It declared: “We want to

keep interest alive because computers are the future.

We want to disperse information to users about

computers. Since the computer is still in the early

stage of development, the ideas and experiences of

the users need to be shared and built on if this tech-

nology is to advance. To this end, this newsletter is

dedicated to all people interested in learning about

computers.”

Sometime later, Hauben found Usenet news-

groups, and figured out early that collaboration and

participation among users were the key to the future.

In September 1992, the alt.amateur-comp newsgroup

was founded to circulate the electronic version of the

newsletter, which was: “dedicated to support for

grassroots efforts and movements like the ‘computers

for the people movement’ that gave birth to the

personal computer in the 1970s and 1980s. Hard

efforts of many people over hundreds of years led to

the production of a working computer in the 1940s

and then a personal computer that people could afford

in the 1970s. This history has been serialized in

several issues of the newsletter.”

A year later, Hauben delivered a speech on the

history and promise of Usenet, which may have been

my first acquaintance with her work.

Among the early stories The Amateur

Computerist published included one of the first

histories of Usenet in its Fall 1992 Supplement, “The

Linux Movement” and the Free Software Foundation

in Spring 1994, and more than a few basic (and

BASIC) programs for its readers to try out, much like

Dr. Dobb’s Journal.

Page 31

In 1994, Ronda and her son Michael released

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet for free on the web.

(

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/) It was later

published by IEEE Computer Society Press. It offers

a terrific glimpse at the early history of the Internet,

and an important discussion of its promise that

remains largely relevant today; especially with the

increasing corporatization of the Net.

Today, Ronda is a citizen journalist living in New

York City. She is an award-winning United Nations

correspondent for OhMyNews International, and still

contributes articles on the democratic promise of the

Internet.

So go out and take a look at the complete Ama-

teur Computerist archives, and think about how you

can contribute to your online communities – including

this one (

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/). Comments

always appreciated.

Notes:

* Notes from the Metaverse is the mostly technology-related

weblog of Mike McCallister.

** Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw

attention to women excelling in technology. See:

http://findingada.com/

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben

(1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions. Articles

can be submitted via e-mail: [email protected]

A two issue surface mail subscription costs $10.00

(U.S.). Send e-mail to [email protected] for details.

Permission is given to reprint articles from this issue in

a non profit publication provided credit is given, with

name of author and source of article cited.

The opinions expressed in articles are those of their

authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

ELECTRONIC EDITION

ACN Webpage:

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

All issues of the Amateur Computerist are on-line and

available via e-mail. To obtain a free copy of any issue

or a free e-mail subscription, send a request to:

[email protected] or [email protected]

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on the World Wide Web:

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