The Amateur
Computerist
March 2014 Netizen Journalism in the Era of the Netizen Volume 23 No. 2
Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1
On the 15
th
Anniversary of Print Edition of Netizens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Page 4
Korea and the Era of the Netizen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 8
Netizen Journalism, Libya and the UN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 18
UN and Houla Massacre: The Information Battlefield.. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 21
‘New News’ Challenges False Narratives of Reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 28
Ever Evolving Netizen – News – Net Symbiosis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 32
UN, China and Journalism in the Era of the Netizen . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 36
Challenging False Narratives Basis for Netizen Press. . . . . . . . . . . . Page 48
Netizens and Communication A New Paradigm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 51
Anti-cnn Forum Challenges Media Distortions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 63
Introduction
The Amateur Computerist first began as a newsletter in 1988, over
25 years ago. In considering what would be an appropriate focus for an
issue to celebrate that event, the question arose as to how to understand
the phenomenon of netizen journalism, a phenomenon that has been the
focus of several recent issues of the Amateur Computerist. By looking
back at these issues, would it be possible to begin to develop a concep-
tual framework for the phenomenon of netizen journalism? The articles
which have been collected in this issue of the Amateur Computerist
represent that effort.
While the development of what we call “netizen journalism” has
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/
Page 1
been a focus of work of the Amateur Computerist for several years, there
are various other names used to describe similar phenomenon by others
in the scholarly or journalist communities. For example, “citizen
journalism,” “social media” and “fifth estate” are terms used to describe
some aspect of what is encompassed in the concept of “netizen journal-
ism.” All of these other terms however narrow the perspective of what
they are describing so that they are only referring to much narrower
phenomena than the phenomenon encompassed by the concept of
netizen journalism.
The mere use of these other terms, however, is an important sign
that many scholars and journalists are coming to recognize that there is
a significant phenomenon represented by the empowerment of citizens
and journalists alike because of the Internet. What is needed to describe
this broader phenomenon, however, is a concept that is inclusive of all
the aspects of the phenomenon, rather than a term that limits itself to a
narrow focus.
Essentially, the phenomenon is one in which “a new kind of public
space” has emerged encouraging collaboration and participation of those
inhabiting the space.
Recognizing the empowering potential of the Net, people online are
exploring what it makes possible. Doing research in 1993 into this
phenomenon, Michael Hauben recognized that something new was
developing, something not expected.
He writes, “In conducting research…online to determine people’s
uses of the global computer communications network, I became aware
that there was a new social institution, an electronic commons
developing….
Others online shared this excitement. I discovered from those who
wrote me that the people I was writing about were citizens of the Net or
Netizens.”
The work is documented in the book Netizens: On the History and
Impact of Usenet and the Internet. It recognized the advance made
possible by the Internet and the emergence of the Netizen.
What is this advance?
The book Netizens is not only about what is wrong with the old
politics or media, but more importantly, the implications for the
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emergence of new developments, of a new politics, of a new form of
citizenship, and of a new form of media, which Michael called the “poor
man’s version of the mass media.”
Michael focused on what was new or emerging and recognized the
promise for the future by what was at the time only in an early stage of
development, “…as people continue to connect…the collective
population will contribute back to the human community this new form
of news.”
Netizen journalism is often a cooperative reporting of the news. In
that context there may be different means of determining the accurate
narrative of a news event. These may include discussion forums which
examine the details of a news event, reports of different aspects of the
event, analyses by a variety of netizens on diverse web sites or blogs,
etc.
Since at the essence of the netizen phenomena is the recognition of
the importance of accurate communication, netizens journalism also
focuses on the importance of communication and on the need for a
channel of communication different from the channel of distortion and
misrepresentation representing those seeking to strengthen their power.
One objective of netizen journalism is to act as a watchdog over the
abuse of power. Toward this objective it is often necessary to critique
inaccurate news reports. It is even more important to determine what is
an accurate narrative of a news event. The process of determining an
accurate narrative may include:
1) Investigation to seek out and clarify the facts of the news story
2) Research toward determining an understanding of the broader
context of the news story
3) An analysis to determine which are the significant aspects of the
news story
4) Looking at the implications of the analysis. This can include
asking the question who benefits and what is behind what is happening.
As an article which appears in this issue recognizes, while it is
important to oppose distortion and misrepresentation of the news, it is
equally important to open lines of communication with the different
parties to a conflict, despite the difficulty.
The articles in this issue represent a response to the question, “What
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will be the new global media in the Era of the Netizen?” A new more
cooperative and broadly participatory media is becoming possible. This
new form of journalism represents a symbiosis in the relationship of the
News, the Netizens (who may be journalists or others online) and the
Net. It will be important to recognize the nature and importance of this
symbiosis in order to nourish its development.
We welcome discussion and comment.
[Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared as the Introduction
to the Amateur Computerist Vol 21, no 2, Spring 2012.*]
On the 15
th
Anniversary of the Print
Edition of Netizens
On May 1, 1997, the book Netizens: On the History and Impact of
Usenet and the Internet was published in a print edition. May Day, May
1, 2012, marked the 15
th
anniversary of that occasion.
In 2007, on the 10
th
anniversary of the print edition, an article in the
online magazine Telepolis (
www.heise.de/tp) noted that an anniversary
“offers an occasion to consider the potential of the Net that was
identified in Netizens and to assess what has developed with regard to
this potential today.”
The article reviewed some of the background of Netizens: “During
the course of his pioneering research in the early 1990s, Michael Hauben
discovered a surprising phenomenon. He recognized that there was a
new social consciousness developing among those in the online
community. At the time, the Internet had recently emerged as a new
communications infrastructure. More and more people were gaining
access. The experience of being online and of having access to the
participatory interactive online environment was proving to be a
significance experience.”
The article continued, “People were eager to explore the nature and
Page 4
power of these new communication capabilities. To be online led to a
feeling of empowerment. The idea began to impress itself on some in the
online community that here was the potential for a new meaning for the
concept of citizen. Could the Internet make it possible for the citizen to
be able to act in a way not hitherto possible? Could the Net really make
it possible for citizens to become active participants in the process of
determining what happened in their society?”
The result of this process was that “a new identify was in the
process of being generated. This was a social identity as a citizen of the
Net, as a netizen.”
To celebrate the 15
th
anniversary of the publication of the print
edition of Netizens the Amateur Computerist gathered a number of
articles written or presented as talks by Michael Hauben. That
collection
1
brought together both new work Michael did after the
publication of Netizens along with work done earlier which was not
included in the book. Also included in that collection were some of
Michael’s articles that were published in Netizens.
The collection of articles and speeches particularly concentrated the
ability Michael had to reflect on the importance of a current develop-
ment through the perspective of a commentary on an earlier develop-
ment. He was thus able to grasp the long range broader implications of
the contemporaneous development of the Internet.
In his article “The Expanding Commonwealth of Learning: Printing
and the Net,”
2
Michael writes, “Understanding how the printing press
unleashed a communications revolution provides a basis to assess if the
establishment of worldwide computer communication networking is the
next communication revolution.”
The articles in the collection considered how the Net is expanding
the ability of the common people with access to the Net to communicate
with each other to offer to the world their thoughts, ideas and questions,
in short, for the common people to contribute to the intellectual and
creative commonwealth still coming into existence in a way never
before possible.
And it is this broadening of intellectual and collaborative coopera-
tion that similarly makes possible and desired more democratic political
structures and institutions.
Page 5
For Michael, the key to this ferment is the Netizen, those who
contribute to the ever expanding public set of resources. This is the
unique advance. “Making a contribution is an integral part of Netizen
behavior,” writes Michael.
He sees the Net as a “new kind of public space,” a space that makes
“collaboration and cooperation possible.” This new public commons, as
Michael characterizes the public space made available via the Net, is one
where “people are encouraged to share their views, thoughts and
questions with others.” It is a “many to many” process where netizens
can broadcast to others around the world and get responses back. This
participation Michael recognized is an empowering experience.
Personal computer pioneer Lee Felsenstein realized that “the
development of the commons to the exclusion of the big media
representations makes this a grassroots medium or a new enlarged public
commons.” Michael concurs with this characterization of the commons
created by the Net.
Similarly the ability of netizens to contribute to and create their own
news is a means to create an alternative to the commercial business
oriented media. This makes possible a means to effectively challenge the
outdated forms and processes that have come to dominate in the
commercial media environment.
The Net is “the poor man’s version of the mass media” writes
Michael. With the Net, the monopoly of the elites over the media was
broken. One important example of the potential of the Net, Michael ex-
plains, is that the Net bestows, “the power of the reporter on the
netizen.”
Netizens now have the ability to not only critique the misrepresenta-
tions and limitations of the commercial media, but also to create a more
broad ranging and accurate media.
Similarly in his article “Participatory Democracy: From the 1960s
and SDS into the Future On-line,”
3
Michael shows how an early goal of
SDS, the 1960s group Students for a Democratic Society, was to create
“a medium to make it possible for a community of active citizens to
discuss and debate the issues affecting their lives.” This new communi-
cation infrastructure would be one that would make it possible for
people to have a means to participate in the discussion and determination
Page 6
of the political decisions of their society. Michael pointed out that the
Internet provided what SDS saw as necessary but lacked, in Al Haber’s
words, “an institutionalized communication system that would give
perspective to our immediate actions.”
The aim of the Spring 2012 Amateur Computerist collection of
articles was to stimulate thought and discussion over the potential of the
Net and Netizen, but more profoundly, over how to recognize, as
Michael did, the important prototypes that are developing and emerging.
The aim continues to be to nourish those that will help to bring about the
changes which will bring more power to the grassroots of society in the
new global commons.
Notes
1. “In Honor of Michael Hauben and the Emergence of the Netizens,” Volume 21 No.
2, Spring 2012
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-2.pdf
2. http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/feature.pdf
3. http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netdemocracy-60s.txt
* http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-2.pdf
Page 7
[Editor’s Note: In celebration of the 15
th
Anniversary of the print edition
of Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,
Ronda Hauben made the following presentation at the Hope Institute in
Seoul, South Korea on Aug 10, 2012.]
Korea and the Era of the Netizen
by Ronda Hauben
Part I – Introduction
Fifteen years ago, on May 1, 1997, the print edition of the book
Netizens was published in English. Later that year, in October, a
Japanese translation of the book was published. Netizens was the first
book to recognize that along with the development of the Internet, a new
form of citizenship had emerged. This is a form of citizenship that has
developed based on the broader forms of political participation made
possible by the Net.
The book Netizens documents the emergence of this new political
identity. It also explores the potential for how netizens will change the
social structures and institutions of society.
An article in the Reader’s Opinion section of the Times of India
newspaper referred to a paper about South Korean netizens written in
2006. Quoting that paper, the Times of India article said, “Not only is the
Internet a laboratory for democracy, but the scale of participation and
contribution is unprecedented. Online discussion makes it possible for
netizens to become active individuals and group actors in social and
political affairs. The Internet makes it possible for netizens to speak out
independently of institutions or officials.”
The writer in the Times of India article pointed to the growing
number of netizens in China and India and the large proportion of the
population in South Korea who are connected to the Internet.
“Will it evolve into a 5
th
estate?” the article asks, contrasting
netizens’ discussion online with the power of the 4
th
estate, which is the
mainstream media.
“Will social and political discussion in social media grow into
Page 8
deliberation?” asks Vinay Kamat, the author of this article, “Will
opinions expressed be merely ‘rabble rousing’ or will they be ‘reflec-
tive’ instead of ‘impulsive’?”
Both South Korea and China are places where the role of netizens
is important in building more democratic structures for society. South
Korea appears to be more advanced in grassroots efforts to create
examples of netizen forms for a more participatory decision making
process. But China is also a place where there are significant develop-
ments because of the Internet and netizens.
Part II – About Netizens
First, some background.
In 1992-1993, Michael Hauben, then a college student who had
gotten access to the Net, wondered what the impact of the Net would be.
He decided to do his research using the Net itself. He sent out
several sets of questions and received many responses. Studying the
responses, he realized something new was developing, something not
expected. What was developing was a sense among many of the people
who wrote him that the Internet was making a difference in their lives
and that the communication it made possible with others around the
world was important.
Michael discovered that there were users online who not only cared
for how the Internet could help them with their purposes, but who
wanted the Internet to continue to spread and to thrive so that more and
more people around the world would have access to it.
He had seen the word ‘net.citizen’ referred to online. Thinking
about the social concern he had found among those who wrote him, and
about the non-geographical character of a net based form of citizenship,
he contracted ‘net.citizen’ into the word ‘netizen.’ Netizen has come to
reflect the online social identity he discovered doing his research.
Here is an excerpt from one of the questions he posted on line
during this period in the early 1990s when the Internet was just
spreading and becoming more widely available:
Looking for Exciting Uses of the Net
…I would like to know about people’s uses of the
network(s) that have been especially interesting, valuable
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and/or exciting. I want to hear about people’s delights and also
disappointments.
Gathering all the replies he had received, he wrote a paper describ-
ing his research. The paper was titled, “The Net and Netizens: The
Impact the Net has on People’s Lives.” This research was done in 1992-
1993. At that time, the Internet was spreading to countries and networks
around the world.
He posted his paper on July 6, 1993 on several of the discussion
forums known as Usenet and on several Internet mailing lists. It was
posted in four parts under the title “Common Sense: The Net and
Netizens: the Impact the Net is having on people’s lives.” People around
the world found his article and helped to spread it to others. The term
netizen quickly spread, not only in the online world, but soon it was
appearing in newspapers and other publications offline.
This paper initiated the conscious awareness of netizenship as a new
form of citizenship.
The concept and consciousness of oneself as a netizen has continued
to spread around the world.
In a talk he gave in Japan in 1995, Michael explained that there
were two uses of the word netizen that had developed:
Netizens are not just anyone who comes online. Netizens
are especially not people who come online for individual gain
or profit. They are not people who come to the Net thinking it
is a service. Rather they 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 resource. Netizens
are people who decide to devote time and effort into making
the Net, this new part of our world, a better place.
(Hypernetwork ‘95 Beppu Bay Conference)
This usage of netizens is the usage being referred to in this talk as
well.
“The Net and Netizens” was but one of a number of articles Michael
wrote about the research he was doing about the Net.
During this period in collaboration with Michael, research and
writing was done. Different articles were often based on what was
learned from people online and which were subsequently posted online.
Page 10
In January 1994 we collected our papers into an online book we
titled Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net, or in its shortened
title “The Netizens Netbook.”
In 1997 a second version of the book was published in a print
edition titled Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the
Internet in English in May, and then in a Japanese edition in October.
Among the responses Michael had received to his work was one
from a professor in Japan, Shumpei Kumon. The professor wrote: “I am
a social scientist in Japan writing on the information revolution and
information oriented civilization. Since I came across the term ‘netizen’
about a year ago, I have been fascinated with this idea.”
Professor Kumon wrote, “It seems that the age of not only the
technological understanding but, also political-socio-revolution is
coming, comparable to the citizen’s revolution in the past. I would very
much like to do a book on that theme.”
When Professor Kumon’s book on netizens was published in
Japanese, its title in English was The Age of Netizens. The book begins
with a chapter by Michael on the birth of the netizen.
In the 1992-1994 period, a significant critique of the professional
news media was developing among netizens. In the chapter of the
Netizens book, “The Effect of the Net on the Professional News Media,”
there are a number of observations made by people online who recog-
nize that this new media makes possible the participation of a broader
set of people in reporting the news and that the range of news is also
considerably expanded.
Part III – Some Examples of New Forms of Netizens
Reporting the News
In order to consider in more concrete terms the new form of
citizenship and the new form of media that the Internet makes possible,
this talk will describe some examples drawn mainly from South Korea
(though there are other examples from China, and other countries that
it would be valuable to discuss during the question period if we have
time.)
Page 11
A. South Korea and the Netizens Movement
My first experience with netizens in South Korea was in 2003 when
I saw an article in the Financial Times that the new president of South
Korea at the time, Roh Moo-hyun, had been elected by the Netizens.
This was, as you can imagine a very striking news article for me to
find, not previously knowing anything about the struggles of the netizens
in South Korea. But subsequently I learned that the Netizens book was
known by several in the academic community. For example, Professor
Han Sang-jin of Seoul National University (SNU) told me he used the
book in a class at SNU. Professor Kang Myung-koo also of SNU learned
of the book from the Japanese edition and it had an influence on his
thinking, and Professor Yun Yeon-min of Hanyang University learned
of the book from its online edition, and it inspired him to write his early
book about South Korean networking titled “A Theory of Electronic
Space: A Sociological Exploration of Computer Networks” (Seoul:
Jeonyewon).
When during a trip to Seoul in 2005, I asked a number of different
people that I met if they are netizens. They all responded “yes” or “I
hope so.”
There have been a number of important netizen developments in
Korea. These include:
1) Helping to build what became large candlelight demonstrations
against the agreement governing the relations between the U.S.
government and South Korea. This agreement is known as the Status of
Forces Agreement (SOFA for short) in Nov., 2002.
2) Helping to build the campaign for the presidency of South Korea for
a political outsider Roh Moo-hyun in Nov.-Dec. 2002.
3) Helping to create a climate favorable to the development of online
publications.
In 2002 the Sisa Journal, a Korean weekly, named ‘Netizens’ as the
person of the year. This represented a rare recognition at the time of a
new and significant phenomenon that is represented by the emergence
and development of the netizen.
A subsequent example demonstrating how netizens have been able
to have an impact on science policy is the case involving the stem cell
scientist Hwang woo-suk in South Korea. Hwang had been considered
Page 12
a top Korean scientist and his scientific achievements were celebrated
by the Korean government. Netizens in South Korea were able to
demonstrate that Hwang had doctored photographs of his research to
present fraudulent results.
Lee Myung-bak won the South Korean presidency in 2007. In April
2008, he went to the U.S. and agreed to a beef agreement ending the
former restrictions on the import of U.S. beef into South Korea.
Starting on May 2 there were 106 days of candlelight demonstra-
tions in South Korea protesting the administration of Lee Myung-bak
and calling for his impeachment. (I was in South Korea when the first
candlelight demonstration occurred on May 2 but wasn’t able to go to
it.)
One of the most remarkable events of the 2008 Candlelight
demonstrations occurred on June 10-11. A big demonstration was
planned for June 10 to celebrate the victory over the military govern-
ment in South Korea in June 1987 that led to direct popular election of
the ROK president.
To try to keep the demonstrators from marching on the Blue House,
the presidential residence, the Lee Myung-bak administration set up
shipping containers as barriers and filled them with sand. Then they
were covered with grease so that people would not be able to climb over
them.
Netizens named these structures the Lee Myung-bak castle. They
made a Wikipedia entry for it as a landmark of Seoul. They decorated
this new landmark of Seoul with graffiti.
On the other side of the shipping containers there were buses filled
with police inside and outside the buses, guarding the president’s house.
Blocks of styrofoam were used at the demonstration to build a
structure to be able to go over the police barricade.
There was a 5-1/2 hour discussion with people supporting the
different positions in the debate. Through the discussion people decided
not to go over the barricade for a number of reasons. Many 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 it did so to show that they could have
gone over it if they wanted to, but that it had been decided not to.
Page 13
The situation presented 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 on the other side of the
barricade. People online wrote how important this all was to them, to see
that there could be a discussion where people who had real differences
came to a decision taking those differences into account.
This was significant in two ways. First they figured out how to
resolve their differences to come to a decision. Second they coopera-
tively determined how to construct a structure that would enable them
to carry out their decision. They took what they could do online and they
did it offline.
The discussion and decisions carried out on June 11 were by a
combination of people acting as netizens and as citizens. What they did
represents an important achievement.
There is one other netizen development to mention in this talk.
This is the situation that happened with respect to the South Korean
war ship Cheonan in 2010. The ship broke in two and sank on March 26,
2010. At the time, it had been involved in naval exercises with the U.S.
military in an area of the West Sea/Yellow Sea between North Korea
and China. This is a situation that soon became the subject of much
discussion among netizens.
Initially the South Korean government and the U.S. government
said there was no indication that North Korea was involved. Then at a
press conference held on May 20, 2010 in Seoul, the South Korean
government claimed that a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine
had exploded in the water near the Cheonan, causing a pressure wave
that was responsible for the sinking. Many criticisms were raised about
this scenario.
First, there is no direct evidence of any North Korean submarine in
the vicinity of the Cheonan. Nor is there any evidence that any torpedo
was actually fired causing the pressure wave phenomenon. Hence there
was no actual evidence that could be presented in court of law to support
the South Korean government’s claims.
In fact, if this claim of a pressure wave phenomenon were true even
those involved in the investigation would have to acknowledge that this
Page 14
would be the first time such an action was used in actual fighting.
What is of interest, however, is how netizens responded to this
situation.
What is unusual and something especially interesting is that
netizens who live in different countries and speak different languages
took up to critique the claims of the South Korean government about the
cause of the sinking of the Cheonan. It appears, also, that such netizen
activity had an important effect on the international community. And it
appears to have acted as a catalyst affecting the actions of the UN
Security Council in its treatment of the Cheonan dispute.
Such activity is the basis for a new form of news.
There were substantial analyses by NGO’s like Spark, PSPD,
Peaceboat and others posted online in English as well as Korean. These
were distributed widely online.
There were also discussions and critiques at American, Japanese
and Chinese websites which were seen when searching online during the
period that the Security Council was discussing the Cheonan incident.
One example of such a critique was by an American blogger, Scott
Creighton, who uses the pen name Willy Loman. He wrote a post titled,
“The Sinking of the Cheonan: We are being lied to.”
In a post he titled “A Perfect Match?,” he showed that there was a
discrepancy between the diagram displayed at the press conference held
by the South Korean government and the torpedo part that the South
Korean government claimed it had found near where the ship sank.
The South Korean government claimed that the diagram was from
a North Korean catalogue offering this as proof that the torpedo part was
of North Korean origin.
On his blog, Loman showed how the diagram was of a torpedo
different from the part of the torpedo the South Korean government had
put on display. The diagram was of the PT97W torpedo, while the part
of the torpedo on display was of the CHT-02D torpedo.
Much discussion followed this post on Loman’s blog, both from
Americans and also from Koreans. At first the South Korean govern-
ment denied these claims. But three weeks later in response to a question
from a journalist, the government acknowledged that Loman was right.
In a post titled “Thanks to Valuable Input” Loman wrote: “Over
Page 15
100,000 viewers read the article and it was republished on dozens of
sites all across the world (and even translated). A South Korean MSM
outlet even posted our diagram depicting glaring discrepancies between
the evidence and the drawing of the CHT-02D torpedo…. But what we
had, was literally thousands of people across the world committed to the
truth….” It was signed Willy Loman.
Such online discussion and posts appeared to have acted as a
catalyst to encourage the UNSC to act in a neutral way toward the two
Koreas, with the Security Council giving time to hear from both sides of
the dispute and encouraging the two Koreas to settle the dispute
peacefully. A Presidential statement issued by the Council on July 9,
2010 took a balanced view, stating the different views of both sides, but
without assigning blame to anyone.
Part IV – Implications
Describing the ability of citizens to discuss issues online on the
Chinese Internet, an Australian researcher, Haiqing Yu, a researcher at
the University of Melbourne, realized that there was an important
phenomenon developing among some of the people online in China who
identified as netizens. They were exploring how the Internet could help
them to contribute to their society.
She explains in her book From Active Audience to Media Citizen-
ship that there is a new manifestation of what it means to be a citizen
and to express one’s citizenship developing on the Internet, that it is a
more mobile and flexible manifestation than previously. (p. 307)
She maintains that the virtual space of the net has become a public
forum that makes it possible for ordinary people to take part in the
traditional media’s agenda setting and government decision making and
law-making functions. Haiqing Yu writes, “Citizenship is not an abstract
concept discussed in ivory towers among elite intellectuals. It is a
mediated social reality where ordinary people can act as citizens of a
nation when they use the Net to talk, discuss, petition and protest.”
In a similar observation, Michael Hauben noted that, “The collec-
tive body of people assisted by Net software, has grown larger than any
individual newspaper.”
The implication from these two different observations is that a new
Page 16
form of global media and a new form of global citizenship or
netizenship are developing. As Hauben recognized, instead of the
traditional news reporting which is actually the news of a certain set of
elite economic and political interests, there is the ability developing
among netizens to have real debate on issues on the Net. This new media
includes the participation of a broader set of people who hold a wider
more all encompassing set of diverse perspectives.
Actually the ability to have this broader set of perspectives that the
Net makes possible is helping to create a new media and a new role for
the citizen. These are gradually supplanting the traditional forms of
journalism and of citizenship.
Part V – Conclusion
There is an analysis of the netizen by media historian Mark Poster
in his book Information Please. The book considers the effect of
globalization on the citizen and argues that with globalization the citizen
loses the power to be able to have any influence on government officials.
The concept of the netizen, however, intrigues Poster, as he sees in this
concept the potential to forge a new identity that is capable of opposing
and challenging the harmful effects of globalization.
Poster explains, “This new phenomena will likely change the
relation of forces around the globe. In such an eventuality, the figure of
the netizen might serve as the critical concept in the politics of globaliza-
tion.”
In support of Poster’s argument but beyond it our time can best be
described as the Era of the Netizen. The ability of the netizen to focus
on communication and participation to affect the institutions of the
society, is a critical characteristic of this new Era.
In his article comparing the impact of the Net on our society, with
the impact of the printing press to bring revolutionary changes to the
society after it was introduced, Michael wrote, “The Net has opened a
channel for talking to the whole world to an even wider set of people
than did printed books.”
In conclusion, considering the examples of the response of netizens
to the problems raised by the investigation of the Cheonan incident, the
importance of the collaborative response of netizens supporting each
Page 17
other from diverse countries and cultures is but a prelude to the potential
of netizens around the world in different countries to work together
across national borders to solve the problems of our times.
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following note introduced a collection
of articles about the 2011 war in Libya. The articles were offered as
examples of netizen journalism.]
Netizen Journalism, Libya and the UN
*
There is a Special Issue (vol 21 no 1) of the Amateur Computerist
on Netizen Journalism and the story of the resistance to the NATO
aggression against Libya available at the ACN website. The url is:
That issue is a collection of articles documenting what happened in
Libya in 2011. It presents a critique of the inaccurate reports that were
used to justify the NATO war against Libya.
The focus in the collection is on the role played by the UN in
making possible the aggression against Libya. The actions taken by the
Security Council and other United Nations bodies like the Human Rights
Council were contrary to the obligations of the UN charter and other
principles of international law. The articles document the process by
which the UN became an accomplice in a NATO war against a
sovereign nation that is a member of the United Nations.
These articles serve to argue that starting in February 2011 there
was a media blitz supporting the NATO actions, largely based on
unverifiable claims by the opposition against the government of Libya.
The story that emerged is based on broadly circulated falsifications of
what was happening on the ground. The media blitz was accompanied
by a rush at the UN Security Council to authorize force against the
Libyan government, military, infrastructure and civilians under Article
7 of the UN Charter. The resulting Security Council resolution gave
NATO and special forces the pretext to support an armed insurrection
Page 18
inside Libya. This armed insurrection was supported by a military
campaign of bombing and other aggressive acts on the part of the U.S.,
France, the U.K. and several other NATO nations. The harm to civilians
and civilian infrastructure was ignored by those supporting the NATO
aggression.
There were however a number of journalists, websites and inde-
pendent news sources which provided an alternative account and
critiqued the false narrative being presented to justify the NATO war.
Such a form of journalism, contributed to online by many netizens, has
been described as “netizen journalism.”
1
Netizen journalism takes as its
mission to independently investigate situations, seek out the accurate
story, and challenge the fact that much of the mainstream western media
is but a media presenting the dominant viewpoint of those in power.
Whereas the western mainstream media most often acts to reinforce this
power, netizen journalism takes as its mission to challenge the abuse of
power.
A number of independent journalists and journalists working for
alternative media like TeleSUR covered the struggle in Libya against the
NATO aggression and the damage inflicted on the civilian infrastructure
and the civilian population. The Amateur Computerist issue vol 21 no 1
includes not only articles documenting what happened in Libya but also
contains references to some of the many independent news reports and
analyses that explore the long term goal of the NATO war and the
injustice done by that mainstream media which used unverified reports
by opposition sources to spread a phony rationale for the invasion of a
sovereign nation.
A list of journalists who provided this alternative coverage would
include, among others, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Thierry Meyssan,
Lizzy Phalen, and Franklin Lamb.
Some of the websites that have been part of this broader collabora-
tive effort to understand what happened in Libya and to present it to the
world include:
Center for Research on Globalization
Voltaire Network
Page 19
Global Civilians for Peace in Libya
Libya360
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mathaba. Independent News Agency
Investig.Action
TeleSUR
http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/media/telesur.video.web/telesur-web/#!en
Concerned Africans
April Media
American Everyman
In his article in the issue, “From Munich to Tripoli,” Yoichi
Shimatsu refers to the resistance offered by the fighters of the Spanish
Civil War and the work to spread the story of their resistance by the
writers and commentators who conveyed this story to the world. In the
issue of the Amateur Computerist tribute was paid to both the resistance
offered by those in Libya who fought against the foreign intervention
and to the journalists, websites, and other forms of netizen journalism
around the world that have helped to spread the story of the resistance
to the NATO war against Libya and to the destruction of Libya that it
wrought.
Note
1. See for example, Ronda Hauben, “The Need for Netizen Journalism and the Ever
Evolving Netizen – News – Net – Symbiosis”
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/05/01/need_for_netizen_journalism/
Page 20
* This article appears on the netizen blog at:
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2012/02/16/netizen-journalism-libya-and-the-un/
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared on the
netizenblog on June 12, 2012 at:
UN and Houla Massacre:
The Information Battlefield
by Ronda Hauben
At a press conference held on June 4, 2012 marking the beginning
of China’s presidency of the UN Security Council for the month of June,
Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, observed that there are
different versions of the facts of the Houla Massacre. “Now we have
different stories from different angles,” he noted. “Now we have the
story from the Syrian government, and from the opposition parties, and
from different sources.”
Since the Security Council had “a team…on the ground,” he said,
“We want to see first-hand information from our own people.” He hoped
this would make it possible to put the different pieces of information
together and to come “to our own conclusion with our own judgment.”
1
The expectation was that Joint UN-Arab League Envoy, Kofi
Annan, would be able to provide further information from the UNSMIS
Observer mission when he came to speak with the Security Council on
June 7. It was anticipated that Annan’s presentation would help to
clarify the facts of the massacre.
2
On June 7, 2012, however, instead of providing new information
from such an investigation, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and
several of the other speakers at the informal General Assembly (GA)
meeting put the responsibility for the Houla Massacre on the Assad
government. This was also the dominant response of the nations that
Page 21
spoke at the informal GA meeting even though there had not yet been
any adequate investigation into facts of the situation.
3
Also, there were
claims of a new massacre.
Some of the member nations that spoke at the informal GA meeting,
however, objected to coming to such a conclusion, especially, in the
absence of an adequate investigation.
In his comments referring to the massacres in Houla and on the
outskirts of Hama, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin,
said, “Clearly these are the most serious crimes that require a reliable
detailed investigation.”
Other nations including Venezuela, India, Cuba and Nicaragua
expressed similar views. The Venezuelan Representative told the
informal GA meeting, “We suspect the fact that these criminal acts
happen to coincide with these debates at the UN. We have to wonder
who does this benefit at this time?” He urged that, “an independent and
transparent investigation into these massacres must take place and we
must find convincing clarity.”
India’s Ambassador to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri, noted that the
attacks against civilians and security forces in Syria “have intensified
over the last few weeks and have taken a significant toll.” Also he drew
attention to the sharp increase in the number of terrorist attacks in
different parts of the country.” He “condemned all violence, irrespective
of who the perpetrators are,” and called for the “cessation of all outside
support for armed groups and serious action against the terrorist groups
in Syria.” And he asked that the crimes, “including the recent incident
in El Houleh, are fully investigated and their perpetrators brought to
justice.”
After comparing what has happened in Syria with what had
happened in Libya, the Nicaraguan Representative called for “an
exhaustive investigation of these crimes and to bring the guilty to
justice.”
The Cuban Ambassador noted that the “information is fragmented,
imprecise and the object of frequent manipulation.” He denounced what
he saw as the “complicity of the major broadcast media which are used
to confusing reality and not accepting the responsibility for their acts.”
During his comments, which were twice cut off by the UN video
Page 22
transmission system, Bashir Ja’afari, the Syrian Ambassador, asked how
the Secretary General of the League of Arab States could render a
judgment about who is responsible for the Houla massacre when such
a judgment contradicts the report of the United Nations observers on the
ground, and investigations of that atrocious massacre have not yet been
completed. The massacre, he emphasized, had been condemned by the
Syrian government.
Ambassador Ja’afari announced that, “Syria is ready to receive a
commission of inquiry of states known for their independence and for
their respect for the UN charter and for their refusal to interfere in Syrian
internal affairs.”
Later in the afternoon, after the Security Council’s informal briefing
with Kofi Annan, there was a media stakeout at the Security Council.
One journalist asked Ban Ki moon, “Mr. Secretary General, what steps
have you taken to comply with the request of the Security Council on
27
th
of May through the press statement to investigate fully, independ-
ently and transparently the killing in El Houleh?” The UN Secretary
General did not answer the question.
4
It is notable that as Ambassador Li Baodong had recognized during
his press conference on June 4, several different narratives have been
used to describe the Houla massacre. These offer different explanations
of the circumstances under which it happened and therefore what the
implications are for the future of the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan.
Those nations encouraging an investigation into the details of the
Houla massacre want to determine the lessons from it toward solving the
crisis in Syria. Those who were quick to jump to conclusions based on
superficial information are helping to fan the flames of the conflict.
What were these major competing narratives?
Western and Arab Media Narrative
The narrative that was being spread by much of the mainstream
western and Arab satellite media was a narrative that blamed the Assad
government for the Houla massacre. At first that media claimed that the
people killed, including the women and children, had been killed by
shelling from Syrian troops attacking the town.
In examining the videos and photos put online or provided by the
Page 23
opposition making these claims, however, it became evident that many
of the victims, particularly the women and children, had been killed at
close range by bullets and knives and not by the shelling of heavy
weapons by the Syrian military.
It soon became obvious that only 20 of the 108 who were killed may
have been killed in combat fighting over the checkpoint and that the
circumstances of these deaths were not yet determined.
The opposition to the Syrian government and the western and Arab
media supporting the opposition, like BBC and Aljazeera, etc. had to
quickly change their narrative. They invented a new force allegedly used
by the Syrian government, the ‘shabbiya,’ which they claimed is a pro
government militia.
5
The shabbiya allegedly came into the homes of
people and killed them at close range.
Russian News Team Narrative
A Russian news team interviewed people after the massacre. The
explanation compiled from these interviews represents a very different
narrative.
Their account noted that Houla is an administrative area, made up
of three villages. It is not the name of a town. Some of this area had been
under control of armed insurgents for a number of weeks. The Syrian
army maintained certain checkpoints. This account explains that on the
evening of May 24, the Free Syrian Army launched an operation to take
control of the checkpoints, bringing 600-800 armed insurgents from
different areas.
At the same time that there was the fight over the checkpoints,
several armed insurgents went into certain homes and massacred the
members of several families. Among the families targeted was a family
related to a recently elected People’s Assembly representative. This
family and another family that were killed were said to be families that
supported the Syrian government. “Other victims included the family of
two journalists for Top News and New Orient Express, press agencies
associated with Voltaire Network,” reported the news and analysis site
Voltairenet.
6
Page 24
Template for Media Warfare
At a press conference held in Damascus shortly after the Houla
massacre by Joint UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, a question was
asked which provides an important context to keep in mind when trying
to determine what happened in Houla.
The journalist asked: “I am a Russian living in Syria and reporting
for various Russian online sites. What is happening in Syria reminds me
of what happened in Yugoslavia that led to its division. We have sources
that tell us that the Pentagon is preparing for war. If that happens, what
do we do? What do Syrians do and what does the Government do?”
7
Annan’s response was that he had no information of the Pentagon
“preparing for war.” Nor did he have any indication that what was
happening in Syria would be a repeat of “what happened in Yugoslavia.”
Despite the fact that Annan dismissed the journalist’s question, the
question provides an important perspective toward understanding what
is happening in Syria.
Looking back at the form of media warfare used to prepare public
opinion for the NATO aggression against the former Yugoslavia, a
template emerges that reflects a pattern in these events.
In this media warfare, the mainstream western media was used to
spread stories about the alleged “responsibility for” massacres in order
to demonize certain forces. This demonization served to justify the
NATO bombing of their country. Hence the Russian journalist’s
question to Kofi Annan raised an important and serious concern.
In his book Liar’s Poker, which analyzes the role of the media in
the Yugoslav war, Michel Collon writes “Information is already a
battlefield, which is part of war.” He writes that in 1991 the Slovenian
government created a “media center which unleashed a flood of
disinformation to international correspondents.”
8
This disinformation
created a false narrative about what was happening and about who was
responsible for the violent acts that killed many innocent people. The
false narrative was then used to provide the justification for foreign
intervention on one side of the conflict.
Also Collon documents the use of U.S. public relations agencies to
help mold public opinion in favor of the Croatian and Muslim national-
ists and as media warfare against the Serbs. In a striking way, Collon
Page 25
shows how “a massacre happens unexpectedly each time certain
Western powers plan to escalate measures against the Serbs.”
9
He
proposes what could be considered as the template used to create the
climate of western public opinion justifying the escalation of the attack
on Yugoslavia.
Here are the components of the template he presents:
10
Step 1: Preparation of a more or less hidden agenda
Step 2: Images that shock Public Opinion
Step 3: Groundless and Wild Media Accusations Without Investigation
Step 4: Western Objectives are Achieved
Step 5: Corrections to Erroneous News Reporting: Too Late and No
Impact
Collon argues that shocking events were “staged” for the interna-
tional media so as to make possible a planned escalation of the attack on
Serbia. The Houla massacre bears a striking resemblance to the incidents
that Collon refers to in the 1990s that set a basis for the escalation of the
aggression against the Serbian government.
Was the rush to judgment after the Houla massacre both at the UN,
and in the mainstream western and Arab media but another example of
support and encouragement for armed aggression against a sovereign
nation, as in the Yugoslavian situation? Was it but a signal to the armed
insurgents willing to carry out horrific deeds to achieve their goal of
foreign intervention, that they should go ahead with their cruel agenda?
These are questions that need to be asked as they may help to explain the
underlying motivation for one of the narratives.
The failure of mainstream western and Arab satellite media and of
a number of nations at the UN to acknowledge that there were different
views of the underlying cause and implementation of the Houla
massacre impeded the urgency with which the needed investigation and
analysis had to be organized.
11
Such an investigation was critical to
identify the actual problems and to understand what was needed to solve
them.
It is important to acknowledge that there are two major narratives
about the events of the Houla massacre. Such an acknowledgment
recognizes, as Ambassador Li Baodong did, the need for evidence to
determine what is an accurate narrative of the Houla Massacre. There
Page 26
are a number of blogs and news sites on the Internet where netizens
contribute articles and comments that are helpful toward analyzing what
is happening in Syria and at the UN and whether the actions at the UN
are helpful or harmful for resolving the crisis in a way that is in line with
the principles of the UN charter. There are examples of a substantial new
netizen journalism developing on the Internet which is taking up the
needed work to investigate the facts of the Syrian conflict so as to
understand what is needed to contribute to a peaceful resolution.
12
Notes
1. Video of Press Conference marking the beginning of the Chinese presidency of the
Security Council for the month of June 2012:
http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/security-council/watch/li-baodong-china-presid
ent-of-the-security-council-on-the-programme-of-work-for-the-month-of-june-2012-
press-conference/1672822951001
2. The press statement issued by the UN Security Council on May 27, 2012 called for
the Secretary General and UNSMIS “to continue to investigate these attacks and report
the findings to the Security Council.”
3. See for example the summary by Moon of Alabama,
http://www.moonofalabama
.org/2012/06/the-syria-discussion-at-the-un-general-assembly.html
4. “Joint press encounter with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Kofi A. Annan,
Joint UN-Arab League Special Envoy on Syria and Nabil El-Araby, Secretary General
of the League of Arab States.”
5. See for example the account by AP: “The assault came nearly a week after 108
people, many of them women and children, were killed in the area. Activists said
government forces first shelled the area on Friday, then pro-regime fighters known as
shabiha stormed the villages. The Syrian government denied its troops were behind the
killings and blamed ‘armed terrorists’.”
http://calgary.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120531/UN-chief-warns-syria-ho
ula-120531/20120531/?hub=CalgaryHome
6. See for example: Thierry Meyssan, “The Houla Affair Highlights Western
Intelligence Gap in Syria,”
http://www.voltairenet.org/The-Houla-affair-highlights
See also: Wassim Raad, “The Set Up Massacre and the American Fingerprint”
http://www.voltairenet.org/The-set-up-massacre-and-the
In German see for example Mathias Broeckers, “Der Hula-Hoax”
http://www.broeckers.com/2012/06/05/der-hula-hoax/ and Rainer Hermann, “Again
massacre in Syria,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 7, 2012.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-aberma
ls-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html
(An English translation FAZ is available at Moon of Alabama blog:
Page 27
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/06/prime-german-paper-syrian-rebels-commit
ted-houla-massacre.html)
7. Transcript of JSE Press Conference in Damascus, May 29, 2012, p. 4. For video see:
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unsmis/
8. Michel Collon, Liar’s Poker, International Action Center, New York, 2002 p. 45.
(This is an English translation of the book which was originally published in French.)
9. Ibid., p. 28
10. Ibid., p. 26.
11. The Human Rights Council passed a resolution calling for an investigation into the
Houla massacre. Several sources, however, document that the Human Rights Council
only considers information supplied by activists in support of the armed opposition. See
for example “UN Commissions report on Houla? But they only talk to Syrian
opposition – by phone,” May 31, 2012 “Anti-war campaigner Marinella Corregia
worries the HR commissioner talks only to its sources: the opposition.”
http://www.rt.com/news/houla-massacre-un-syria-635/
12. A few of the English language web sites providing news and analysis of the Syrian
conflict toward a directed peaceful resolution include:
Moon of Alabama:
http://www.moonofalabama.org/
Centre for Research on Globalization: http://www.globalresearch.ca/
VoltaireNet: http://www.voltairenet.org/en
Syria News: http://www.syrianews.cc/
Syria360: http://syria360.wordpress.com/
The 4
th
Media: http://www.4thmedia.org/
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared on the
netizenblog on Nov 21, 2007 at:
h t t p : // bl o gs . t a z . d e / n e t i z e n b l o g / 2 0 0 7 / 1 1 / 2 1 / n e w - ne w s -
challenges-false-narratives-of-reality/]
‘New News’ Challenges
False Narratives of Reality
by Ronda Hauben (Nov. 21, 2007)
A 2007 article written for the online news journal Telepolis took up
the issue of the false reality the U.S. press presented to the public with
regard to Iran’s nuclear program. The article is titled, “Injecting a
Page 28
Synthetic Reality? Framing the narrative on Iran’s Use of nuclear
energy.” The url is: http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/26/26630/1.html
The false framing of reality by the neoconservatives in the U.S. is
a significant tactic they use to accomplish their political objectives.
Unless there is a press to adequately challenge their activities, the public
is left under the cloud of deception. A press that presents an accurate
presentation of reality is critical for the public. This is why it is
important that there be a ‘New News’ to counter the false narratives
presented as the news by those with hidden agendas. The public will
have a more effective means to oppose these hidden agendas if they are
understood. See for example, Robert Parry’s article “Why We Write,”
a t C o n s o r t i u m N e w s , T h e u r l i s :
A forum on “The Changing Media Landscape”* was held on Nov.
13, 2007, at the Columbia Journalism School (CJS) exploring the new
media. Such a program presents an opportunity to look at the changing
media landscape and particularly at what the state of journalism is and
what the new means of expression made possible by the Internet and
netizens can contribute to journalism. Instead of this being the focus of
the evening’s events, however, it was an issue introduced into their
presentations by the few speakers who had a concern with these issues.
This meant that the state of journalism and how it is developing was
peripheral to the evening’s events rather than at the heart. However,
since challenging the false presentation of reality in the press is a critical
issue, it was good to see that it was even peripherally explored.
A brief review of the Columbia Journalism Program focused on the
ways the panel treated this issue so crucial to the crux of journalism, so
necessary for a journalism which can challenge the powerful and play
a watchdog role over our political systems. The presentation and later
the responses to questions offered by Hossein ‘Hoder’ Derakhshan, an
Iranian-born blogger, and journalist who was then living in Great
Britain, provided an important example of what is the importance of
challenging false notions of reality and what this means with regard to
journalism.
Hossein, who introduced blogging to Iran, has suffered from being
censored in various ways for his posts. Despite this, he had taken on to
Page 29
challenge the attack in the mainstream English language press against
Iran, defining this attack as a form of censorship. In a response to one of
the questions about censorship, he explained how the Western press has
heaped hostility on Iran. He gave the example of how a prominent U.S.
newspaper attacked the nationalization of Iranian oil in the 1950s calling
the prime minister of Iran at the time, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, a
“dictator” and threatening that Iran’s desire to nationalize its oil was
playing with fire. Hossein explained how some U.S. newspapers were
publishing similar articles 50 years later, focusing on Iran’s nuclear
“ambitions.” Hossein pointed to the political use of the term “ambitions”
to frame the Iran nuclear issue, rather than the media offering an
accurate depiction of Iran’s nuclear activity. “Since when has ‘ambition’
entered politics,” he asked. He noted that with India, and other countries
which already have nuclear weapons, the term “ambition” is not used
with regard to them. There is no evidence that Iran is producing nuclear
weapons, and none is provided. Instead the issue is framed as one of
“ambition.” In defining censorship, Hossein explained that for him
censorship has to do with the distortion of reality. On his web site he had
written that to “censor is controlling the reality by constructing various
versions of it.”
Hossein referred to corporate censorship as a serious problem. The
issue of press censorship should not be restricted to the consideration of
government censorship, he explained.
A related presentation at the forum was that by Andrew Lih. He was
at the time living in China and working on a book about Wikipedia. One
of the problems he raised is how journalism is funded. A nonprofit
model like Wikipedia is a model to help those who are concerned about
the strings that are attached to a journalistic effort. Andrew also pointed
out, however, that Wikinews hasn’t succeeded even though it is
functioning on a nonprofit model.
During the question section of the forum, Josh Cohen of Google
News was asked about Google News removing publications from being
included in the publications it indexes. Josh said this was not his area of
knowledge but gave some general criteria, none of which applied to the
publication the question was raised about. Another panel member
mentioned that Google News does not make public its criteria for
Page 30
including or removing sites from its News and that it would be helpful
if it did.
As part of his concluding comments, Hossein referred to the stated
purpose of journalism as helping people hold the powerful accountable.
While the forum helped to raise some important issues, it would
have been more helpful if it had found a way to put the focus on these
issues. Much of the other discussion was related to issues like using
video for websites. These may be considered aspects of new media.
More significant, however, are the difficulties of journalists and
journalism that are encountered when one attempts to challenge
practices like the media dissemination of the false notion of Iraq’s
‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD). The false narrative of WMD
provided the pretext for the U.S. invasion and then occupation of Iraq.
It is important that a focus of good journalism be on challenging such
misrepresentations in the press, especially when the media is fomenting
hostility toward Iran in the name of questioning Iran’s “ambitions.”
Hossein is to be commended for proposing that these misrepresentations
in the press are actually a form of censorship.
*The Program at CJS was: “The Changing Media Landscape, 2007”
COLUMBIA JOURNALISM DIALOGUES
Tuesday, Nov. 13 / Columbia Journalism School / 6:30-9 p.m.
SPEAKERS at the program included:
Josh Cohen, business product manager, Google News
Hossein ‘Hoder’ Derakhshan, an Iranian-born blogger, journalist, and Internet activist
Jonathan Dube, director of digital programming, CBC
Andrew Lih, author of a new book on Wikipedia and expert on Chinese media
Mindy McAdams, new media education pioneer and professor at University of Florida
Michael Rogers, resident futurist of The New York Times
MODERATOR: Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Students, Columbia Journalism
School & WNBC-TV tech reporter
Producer: Citizen journalism platform GroundReport.com
Location:
Page 31
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared on the
netizenblog on May 1, 2011 at:
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/05/01/need_for_netizen_journali
sm/]
The Need for Netizen
Journalism and the Ever Evolving
Netizen – News – Net Symbiosis
by Ronda Hauben
The international situation always raises important questions for
discussion and analysis. In a complex world, how can one have a means
to understand what is happening? While the mainstream media often
project one view of the world, online discussion and analysis have begun
to play an ever more important role in offering alternative viewpoints
and analysis.
Around the world there has been a recognition that the mainstream
western media can play a harmful role for those trying to develop an
accurate understanding of the events of our times. The example of the
U.S. media promoting the U.S. government misrepresentation that Iraq
had weapons of mass destruction led to a number of critiques of how
such a falsification could occur. The question was raised as to what is
the means to prevent similar occurrences in the future. One such answer
was to recognize that a serious problem with much of the mainstream
U.S. media is that it presents only the dominant viewpoint of those in
power, and in so doing helps to empower that viewpoint even more.
1
The situation in 2011 with the U.S., France, and the U.K. providing
NATO military action against Libya again raised the question of the role
played by the western mainstream media in reporting the actions of their
governments.
As in the Iraq situation where the mainstream news media focused
on the reports and views of the Iraqi exile opposition community,
similarly in the Libyan situation, much of the mainstream western
Page 32
English language media, along with Al-Jazeera, were reporting
overwhelmingly the Libyan defector and opposition reports and views.
The question raised in that situation was whether there was any other
means to get a broader perspective of the situation in the Middle East?
The problem of relying on the narrow perspective of much of the
mainstream western English language media has been recognized in the
past. Is there a means to solve this problem?
Exploring a similar problem, Michael Hauben, in his article, “The
Effect of the Net on the Professional News Media: The Usenet News
Collective/Man-Computer News Symbiosis”
2
considered what the effect
of both the netizen and the Internet would be on the future of the news
and the news media. He recognized that a new form of news was in its
infancy
Writing in the mid 1990s when he was doing his pioneering
research on the social impact of the Internet and the netizens, a dominant
form of this new news was online discussion. At the time the largest
online discussion forum was Usenet. Hauben recognized that a new form
of news was evolving into a new paradigm which would include both the
contributions of netizens and the capabilities of the Internet. Describing
the frustration of many netizens with the traditional media that they had
to rely on before the Internet, Hauben wrote, “Today, similarly, the need
for a broader and more cooperative gathering and reporting of the News
has helped create the new online media that is gradually supplementing
traditional forms of journalism.”
What Hauben realized is that a symbiosis was developing between
the News, netizens and the Internet. Symbiosis is a term describing an
interdependent relationship between different species. For example, the
relationship between the insect Blastophaga grossorun and the fig tree
is described in an important paper by one of the pioneers of networking
J. C. R. Licklider as a relationship in which each is dependent on the
other for survival. Licklider writes:
3
“The fig tree is pollinated only by the insect Blastophaga grossorun.
The larva of the insect lives in the ovary of the fig tree, and there it gets
its food. The tree and the insect are thus heavily interdependent: the tree
cannot reproduce without the insect; the insect cannot eat without the
tree; together, they constitute not only a viable but a productive and
Page 33
thriving partnership. This cooperative ‘living together in intimate
association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms’ is called
symbiosis.”
Hauben realized that the news was evolving into a similar interde-
pendent partnership which had become substantial. He wrote, “the
collective body of people assisted by (Usenet) software, has grown
larger than any individual newspaper….”
There are many examples that have developed of netizens making
their contributions to the News and the Net.
One important example of this new media was the anti-cnn web site
created in China in 2008. There is an article “Netizens Defy Western
Media Fictions of China”
4
which documents how the website was
created in response to western media distortions of the Tibet demonstra-
tions and riots and how the website critiqued these distortions.
In 2010 netizens in South Korea and in various online sites around
the world took on to challenge the inaccuracies and serious problems in
the South Korean government investigation into the sinking of the
Cheonan.
The article “Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan Controversy”
5
documents some of the many online contributions made to demonstrate
the inaccuracy of the South Korean government’s conclusions.
The article “UN Security Council March 17 Meeting to Authorize
Bombing of Libya all Smoke and Mirrors”
6
includes some of the online
critique by netizens of the UN security council characterization of the
conflict in Libya as that of peaceful demonstrators needing foreign
military intervention for protection.
These are but a few references to the new form of news media that
is evolving which is one of analysis and critique, especially of the
inaccuracies portrayed by mainstream western media.
Similarly, given the claims of the U.S., French and U.K. govern-
ments that it was necessary to bomb Libya in order to protect civilians,
a number of web sites have taken up the obligation to offer analysis and
perspective challenging such government views and the mainstream
media promoting them. In the U.S. even some prominent alternative
media like Democracy Now that had challenged the U.S. government’s
false claims as the pretext for the invasion of Iraq, relied on the defector
Page 34
analysis of the situation in Libya. Despite the critique of how much of
the mainstream U.S. media had failed in the period leading up to the
U.S. invasion of Iraq, similar superficial news reports were again a norm
in the UN attack on Libya. With much of the mainstream U.S. news
media presenting only the viewpoint of the dominant political interests
in the U.S., there was a dire need for a netizen–news–net collaboration
producing a more in depth coverage and critical analysis. Web sites like
Global Research,
7
Counterpunch,
8
Mathaba,
9
and Voltairenet
10
are just
a few of those which offered a broader critique of the U.S. and NATO
military attacks on Libya.
The significance of this new form of news is that there are many
netizens who are dedicated to doing the research and analysis needed to
determine the interests and actions that are too often hidden from public
view. By revealing the actual forces at work, netizens are making it
possible to have a more accurate grasp of whose interests are being
served and what is at stake in the events that make up the news.
Notes
1. W. Lance Bennett, Steven Livingston, Regina G. Lawrence, When the Press Fails,
Chicago, 2008.
2. Michael Hauben, “The Effect of the Net on the Professional News Media: The
Usenet News Collective – The Man-Computer News Symbiosis, in Michael Hauben
and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,
Los Alamitos, 1997.
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x13
3. J. C. R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis” http://memex.org/licklider.pdf
4. Ronda Hauben,”Netizens Defy Western Media Fictions of China” OhmyNews
International, September 5, 2008.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=382523&rel_no=1
5. Ronda Hauben,”Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan Tragedy: Online media
challenge claims that North Korea is responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan,”
OhmyNews International, June 4, 2010.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=386108&rel_no=1
6. Ronda Hauben, “UN Security Council March17 Meeting to Authorize Bombing of
Libya all Smoke and Mirrors”, taz.de,
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/03/30/un_march_17_meeting_res1973/
7. http://www.globalresearch.ca/
8. http://www.voltairenet.org/en
9. http://www.mathaba.net/
Page 35
10. http://www.counterpunch.org
[Editor’s Note: The following is an updated and edited excerpt from a
talk given in Beijing in July 2012 at the April Salon.*]
The United Nations, China and
Journalism in the Era of the Netizen
by Ronda Hauben
Introduction
The year, 2012 was the 15
th
anniversary of the publication of the
English and the Japanese print editions of the book Netizens: On the
History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.
To mark that occasion I wanted to try to understand the significance
of this anniversary with respect to ongoing development of the Internet
and the Netizen. Visiting China that year was an impetus to review my
previous visits to China and the interesting events I was able to take part
in related to netizens during these visits.
In 2005 when I first came to Beijing, it was because Beijing was the
host of the International Congress on the History of Science. At the
conference I presented a paper on “The International and Scientific
Origins of the Internet and the Emergence of the Netizens.” At the time
there was a lot of new construction going on in Beijing and the city
appeared to be new and developing. It appeared to be an appropriate
place to present a talk on the importance of Internet development. With
the continuing development of the Internet the phenomenon of the
netizens was becoming more important to understand.
My second trip to Beijing was in April 2008 when I was invited to
give a talk at the Internet Society of China. In my talk I asked the
question “Is this is a new Age, the Age of the Netizen?” Also during this
trip I was invited to give a talk on “the Global Media and the Role of
Netizens In Determining the News.” This talk was for a journalism class
at Tsinghua University. On the day the talk was scheduled, there was a
Page 36
meeting between students at Tsinghua University and several journalists
from the International Federation of Journalists. The students at
Tsinghua University were angry about the Western media coverage of
China. They told the journalists their complaints. The journalists seemed
surprised and found it difficult to respond. In the process I met students
who were part of the anti-cnn web site that was created to challenge the
falsifications about China that were then appearing in the Western press.
One of the reasons for my next trip, in September 2009 was to
participate in a Netizens’ Day event sponsored by the Internet Society
of China. This Netizens Festival Day was observed on September 14,
2009.
For this Netizens’ Day event, a stage was set up in front of the
CCTV Tower. I was invited to present background on the development
of the Netizen. I gave a short introduction about the discovery of the
emergence of the Netizens. This was presented in English with a
Chinese translation and the event is archived in videos on websites in
China.
I described how in 1992-1993, Michael Hauben who was then a
Columbia University student, sent out a set of questions across the
networks asking users about their experiences online. He was surprised
to find that not only were many of those who responded to his questions
interested in what the Net made possible for them, but also they were
interested in spreading the Net and in exploring how it could make a
better world possible. Based on his research Michael wrote his article
“The Net and Netizens.”
The netizen, Michael recognized, was the emergence of a new form
of citizen. This was a citizen who was using the power made possible by
the Net for a public purpose, and who was not limited by geographical
boundaries. The Net for Michael was a new social institution and the
discovery of the emergence of the netizen was the special contribution
that he made to the field of network study.
The 2009 Netizens’ Day event held in China was the first official
recognition of the netizen anywhere in the world. It was a celebration to
honor the fact that the phenomenon of the netizen continues to develop
and spread and to be recognized as a new and important achievement of
our times. It is fitting that in China with its many millions of netizens
Page 37
pioneering the use of the Internet there is a day to celebrate netizens.
When I returned to New York in 2009 after my visit to China, I
went to an event at the Chinese Mission to the UN. On the way into the
Mission, there was a rack with magazines about China. A magazine in
the rack caught my attention. It was the July 5, 2009 edition of the
magazine NewsChina. The title of the issue was “The Netizens’
Republic of China.”
The magazine was filled with articles documenting the impact of the
Net and netizens on what is happening in China. It presented several
examples of netizens speaking out in discussions in online discussion
groups and forums. In an article titled “Netizens, the New Watchdogs,”
the writer, Yu Xiaodong wrote, “It is the newly emerging Internet
media, in particular, citizen journalism that has filled the need to kindle
political discussion in China leading many to conclude that Internet
media has become the mainstream itself rather than a peripheral form of
communication.”
Based on these experiences I wrote an article with the title “China
in the Era of the Netizen.” In the article I explained my sense that
something significant is happening in China. Beijing, I wrote, was being
developed as a world class city with the benefit of contributions made
possible by the Internet and by netizens. “So perhaps a special character-
istic of Beijing has to do with the emergence of the Netizen.” The
NewsChina issue of the magazine helped to clarify that there were those
in China who also recognized that netizens were crucial actors in the
development of China.
I have had subsequent visits to China, in which I have been
encouraged to give talks about netizens and about the development and
spread of the Internet and its potential impact on China.
What seems significant about these experiences is that there is
interest and support for netizen development in China that I have not
found elsewhere in the world.
This introduction brings me to the subject of the talk I want to give
today. This talk is about a problem with the mainstream western media
and how the Internet and netizens are creating a needed alternative to
solve this problem.
Page 38
Part I The UN and General Mood’s Missing Report on
Conflicting Accounts of the Houla Massacre
The Houla massacre occurred in Syria on May 25, 2012. This was
but a few days before Kofi Annan, who was at the time the joint Arab
League-UN envoy, was scheduled to visit Syria.
Immediately after the massacre, there was a media campaign in
much of the Western media to blame the Syrian government for the
deaths. There were 108 deaths reported which included men, women and
children. A short time after the massacre, an alternative account was
made available by a Russian online media group, Anna News.
1
The day
following the massacre, a news team for this online site visited the area
where the massacre had occurred. Their report appeared on a number of
alternative news sites soon after the massacre.
The reports from the Anna News team, and other netizen news
reports, challenged the mainstream Western media claims that the Syrian
government was responsible for the killings.
Similarly, the Syrian government conducted a preliminary investi-
gation. They provided witnesses that the massacre was carried out by
armed insurgents and criminal elements.
The armed opposition’s account of events demonizes the Syrian
government and campaigns for foreign intervention. The mainstream
Western media accounts of the massacre (and some Arab satellite tv
channels) mainly present what they claim is happening from this point
of view of the armed opposition in Syria. But there have been a number
of instances when the accounts from the armed opposition have been
shown to be false.
Differing from the reports in the mainstream Western media is
information presented by the Syrian government. Also there is the
information in the alternative media that I refer to as netizen journalism.
Netizen journalism exposes distortions and misrepresentations in the
news coverage and does the investigation required to present an accurate
narrative. For example, in the aftermath of the Houla massacre, a
number of articles documenting the role of the armed insurgents in
carrying out the Houla massacre appeared on alternative media sites.
Similarly there were articles comparing what had happened in Houla
Page 39
with media campaigns advocating foreign intervention in the Yugosla-
vian conflict in the 1990s. Also there were articles considering what the
motive was behind the massacre and the clues this provided toward
determining who was responsible.
I want to propose that this form of alternative media is setting up a
communication channel different from that of the mainstream Western
media.
What has been interesting has been to consider not only the two
different channels that these different forms of news represent, but also
to look at how different actors at the UN relate to these different
communication channels.
In April 2012, the UN Security Council authorized a mission of 300
unarmed military observers to monitor what was happening in Syria and
to try to encourage a cease fire between the conflicting parties. This
mission was called the UN Supervisory Mission in Syria (UNSMIS).
When the Houla massacre first occurred, UNSMIS observers went to
investigate the massacre. The initial response of UNSMIS was that there
were presented to them two views of what had occurred and who was
responsible. UNSMIS said it was not yet possible to make a determina-
tion which was accurate and which was a falsification without further
investigation.
The UN Security Council issued a press statement after the Houla
massacre requesting that UNSMIS do such an investigation.
2
In June,
Major General Robert Mood, the commander of UNSMIS told journal-
ists that a report had been prepared and submitted to UN headquarters.
In the article “General Mood: ‘Two Versions’ of the Houla
Massacre,” John Rosenthal writes, “At the June 15 press conference
General Mood went on to say that the mission had assembled a report
about the massacre, including the details of witness interviews and that
this report had been submitted to UN headquarters in New York. This
raises an obvious question,” writes Rosenthal, “Why has this report not
been rendered public?”
3
Rosenthal did a service pointing to General
Mood’s June 15 press conference in Damascus. The press conference is
online only in a video format. I have transcribed the part of the press
conference where General Mood talks about the report on the Houla
massacre that he says was given to UN headquarters.
4
Page 40
Describing the investigation by UNSMIS into the Houla massacre
and the report UNSMIS submitted to UN headquarters, General Mood
tells journalists:
The statement we issued after el Houla is still valid. Which
means we have been there with an investigating team. We have
interviews, interviewed locals with one story, and we have
interviewed locals that has another story.
The circumstances leading up to el Houla and the detailed
circumstances, the facts related to the incident itself, still
remains unclear to us.
We have put this together, the facts that we (can) could
establish by what we saw on the ground. We have put together
the statements, the witness interviews and we have sent that as
a report to UN headquarters, New York.
And then the assessment on what is the way forward. Will
there be a different investigation? [This] is a matter for
headquarters in this context. But if we are asked, obviously we
are on the ground, and could help facilitate that.
According to General Mood’s statement during this press confer-
ence, UNSMIS provided UN headquarters with a report on the Houla
massacre. This report included the facts on the ground that UNSMIS
was able to establish, and also witness statements and interviews from
“locals with one story” and from “locals that have another story.” This
report, according to General Mood, was not able to establish “the
circumstances leading up to el Houla, and the detailed circumstances,
the facts related to the incident itself,” as these still remained unclear to
UNSMIS.
But General Mood explained that if there was to be “a different
investigation,” UNSMIS was “on the ground and could facilitate that.”
UN Security Council members have said that the Security Council
did not receive the report nor does it appear that there was general
knowledge at the Security Council that this report presented two
conflicting accounts of what happened and that UNSMIS, which was on
the ground in Syria at the time, was able to help conduct a more
expansive investigation to determine who was responsible for the
massacre.
Page 41
The question is raised as to why the UN Secretariat did not make the
UNSMIS report available to the Security Council? Why didn’t the UN
pursue the course of a further investigation into the circumstances
leading up to the Houla massacre and the facts related to the incident
itself by taking up the offer that General Mood made to facilitate such
an investigation?
When journalists asked the Secretary-General’s spokesperson what
happened to Mood’s report and why it wasn’t given to the Security
Council, the spokesman told the press the report had been given to
various members of the UN Secretariat. But as several people at the UN
and online have asked, “Why not to the Security Council?”
One of the original purposes for the UNSMIS mission, according to
Kofi Annan, was “to see what is going on” so as to be able to “change
the dynamics.
”5
In April 2012, outlining the need for UNSMIS, Annan said, “We
continue to be hampered by the lack of verified information in assessing
the situation. We need eyes and ears on the ground. This will provide the
incontrovertible basis the international community needs to act in an
effective and unified manner, increasing the momentum for a cessation
of violence to be implemented by all sides.” This “eyes and ears on the
ground” function was to be filled by UNSMIS. UNSMIS was deployed
to Syria and was on the ground at the time of the Houla Massacre and
was able to do an investigation.
Yet when UNSMIS submitted a report to UN headquarters
documenting its investigation, it was withheld from the Security
Council. Though Ban Ki-Moon’s spokesperson acknowledged that the
report was received, the report was not given to the Security Council. It
was not made available to the media and the public. Thus it could not be
part of the eyes and ears on the ground that Annan said was needed. One
can only wonder about the fact that shortly after this report was received
by the Secretariat, General Mood left UNSMIS, and not long after that,
UNSMIS was ended. The UNSMIS report on Houla did not blame the
Syrian government for the massacre, but instead presented two conflict-
ing views of the massacre and offered to facilitate a further investiga-
tion.
At least some Security Council members indicated that they wanted
Page 42
the kind of information General Mood explained was in his report. For
example, on June 4, at a press conference to mark the beginning of the
Chinese Presidency of the Security Council for the month of June 2012,
China’s Ambassador Li Baodong, referring to the Houla massacre, said:
6
“Now we have different stories from different angles. Now we have the
story from the Syrian government, and from the opposition parties, and
from different sources. Since the Security Council has a team…on the
ground,” he said referring to UNSMIS, “We want to see first-hand
information from our own people.” He hoped this would make it
possible to put the different pieces of information together and to “come
to our own conclusion with our own judgment.”
The acknowledgment by China’s UN Ambassador that there were
different views of what had happened in the Houla massacre and that
there was a need to get accurate information from an on the ground
investigation was an important step for a member of the Security
Council to make. This challenged mainstream media claims that their
account was the only account of what was happening in Syria. The
UNSMIS report was the kind of additional information the Chinese
Ambassador indicated he was seeking.
The fact remains, however, that the report from UNSMIS that
General Mood presented to Ban Ki-Moon’s UN headquarters was
withheld from the Security Council, the press and the public. Instead of
the UNSMIS report, and any in-depth independent investigation
conducted by the UN, which General Mood said UNSMIS could
facilitate, something different happened. On August 3, the UN General
Assembly passed a resolution condemning the government of Syria for
the violence in Syria. In his speech in support of the resolution, Abdallah
Y Al-Mouallini, the Ambassador representing Saudi Arabia at the UN,
blamed the Syrian government for the Houla massacre.
Similarly, in August, the Geneva based UN Human Rights Council
issued a report blaming the Syrian government for the violence in Syria.
The Human Rights Council made no effort to reconcile the conflicting
facts or interviews submitted by UNSMIS to the UN, nor any effort to
take up the offer made by General Mood that UNSMIS would provide
on the ground assistance to do the needed investigation. The report of
the Human Rights Council inaccurately claimed that
7
: “The lack of
Page 43
access significantly hampered the commissions ability to fulfill its
mandate. Its access to Government officials and to members of the
armed and security forces was negligible. Importantly, victims and
witnesses inside the country could not be interviewed in person.”
Such a statement by the Human Rights Council misrepresented the
fact that indeed the UN had had observers on the ground in Syria, and
that those observers not only gave a report to the UN, but also said that
they could facilitate a more thorough investigation if the UN desired to
do so. Hence the claims of the Human Rights Council that the UN was
unable to conduct an investigation “inside the country” are contrary to
General Mood’s statement to the press.
Then in August the Security Council, without being able to review
the UNSMIS report or to consider the need for the additional investiga-
tion that General Mood said was possible in order to determine who was
responsible for the Houla massacre, allowed the mandate authorizing
UNSMIS to expire. Though there was an effort by some nations on the
Council to introduce a resolution to extend UNSMIS, others on the
Council refused to do so unless Syria was penalized, even though the
issue of who was responsible for the violence against civilians, as had
happened at Houla, had not been determined by the Security Council nor
by any other UN body through an UNSMIS facilitated and impartial
investigation.
Commenting on the Security Council action withdrawing UNSMIS
from Syria, Archbishop Mario Zenari, the Vatican Nuncio to Syria, said
that the withdrawal of UN forces from Syria was a “sad blow. Three or
four months ago, there was a good bit of hope for their mission, and now
their departure plunges us back into this reality….”
8
His disappointment is understandable. The Annan plan was based
on having eyes and ears on the ground as a way to discourage violence
against civilians. The failure of the UN to make the UNSMIS report on
Houla available to the Security Council and to the public, and to
recognize the need for a more extensive pursuit of the facts of what
happened in Houla, was a failure dooming the Annan mission in Syria.
Commenting on what she referred to as “fake” news reports about
what is happening in Syria, Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, a
Superior of the community at the monastery of St James the Mutilated
Page 44
in Qara, Syria, explained that the news reports were “forged with only
one side emphasized.”
9
In her comments to the Irish Times, she included
a criticism of UN reports that she said, were “one sided and not worthy
of that organization.” Though she didn’t specify any particular reports,
one would not be surprised if it were particularly the Human Rights
Council Report she had in mind.
In a paper titled, “The Role of Netizen Journalism in the Media War
at the United Nations” presented in July 2012, at the International
Relations and Political Science Conference in Beijing, I documented
more of the particularities of netizen journalism in the media war at the
UN over Syria.
10
There have been many articles and videos posted on a
number of web sites challenging the Western mainstream media version
of the events in Houla and providing facts that make a convincing case
that the massacre was carried out by armed insurgents and local
criminals.
With these articles acting as a catalyst, the mainstream German
newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung published two articles
documenting how the armed insurgency was responsible for the Houla
massacre. The titles of the articles translated into English were “Syrian
Rebels Committed Houla Massacre” and “On the Houla Massacre: The
Extermination.”
In my paper on “The Role of Netizen Journalism in the Media War
at the UN,” I also consider the netizen journalism coverage of two other
examples of conflicts that were under consideration by the Security
Council and consider the impact on the Security Council of the netizen
journalism on these issues.
II Conclusion
The problem raised by this preliminary presentation concerns the
importance of facilitating an accurate channel of communication about
the conflicts under consideration by the Security Council.
In the example of the Syrian conflict, the fact that General Mood’s
report on the Houla massacre could be withheld from the Security
Council, and UNSMIS ended by the UN Security Council without any
consideration of the issues raised by the report, represents a serious
dilemma. This indicates that there is a problem with the communication
Page 45
channels at the UN. There is a problem with the integrity of these
communication channels. This is an example of what happens when a
communication channel can be blocked.
In a press conference held in March of 2011 when China assumed
the month long rotating Security Council presidency, Ambassador Li
Baodong referred to the international media as the “16
th
member of the
Security Council.
”11
While Ambassador Li Baodong was then referring to the main-
stream media, it is important to recognize that there is a new form of
journalism emerging. This new form of journalism is being created by
netizens dedicated to doing the research and analysis to expose the
interests and actions that are too often hidden from view in the reporting
of the news. As a result of the failure at the UN to provide the Security
Council with the conflicting facts of the UNSMIS investigation and to
take up the UNSMIS offer to help carry out a more substantial investiga-
tion on the ground, an impartial investigation, the ability of the Security
Council, and ultimately the UN, to determine what is an accurate
narrative about the Houla massacre has been blocked.
This situation demonstrates in a graphic manner, the need for a
netizen journalism that can help to create a channel for communication
to provide a more accurate understanding of the conflicts the Security
Council is considering. Such a journalism can help to make more likely
the peaceful resolution of these conflicts.
Notes:
1. Early reports by Anna News about the Houla Massacre were on Syrianews.cc. Later
many alternative web sites carried Anna News reports. Following is one url for an early
report:
http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-what-really-happened-in-al-hula-homs/
2. Security Council Press Statement on Attacks in Syria, May 27, 2012. “Those
responsible for acts of violence must be held accountable. The members of the Security
Council requested the Secretary-General, with the involvement of UNSMIS [United
Nations Supervision Mission in Syria], to continue to investigate these attacks and
report the findings to the Security Council.”
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sc10658.doc.htm
3. John Rosenthal, “General Mood: Two Versions of the Houla Massacre.” The
Western media was quick to blame Assad. But does an unpublished UN report tell a
different story?, June 26, 2012. Rosenthal writes: “What is perhaps most remarkable
Page 46
about General Mood’s comments is that they have been almost universally ignored and
this despite the fact that the video of the press conference has been made publicly
available by UNSMIS on the mission’s own website.”
http://pjmedia.com/blog/general-mood-two-versions-of-the-houla-massacre/
4. June 15, 2012, General Mood Press Conference, Video part 2. The section where
General Mood describes the UNSMIS report on Houla starts at min: 3:10 and ends at
4:17.
5. See “Kofi Annan tells UN We Need Eyes and Ears on the Ground,” April 26, 2012.
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2012/04/26/kofi-annan-briefing/
6.Video of Li Baodong press conference marking the Chinese Presidency of Security
Council for the month of June 2012. June 4, 2012.
http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/2012/06/li-baodong-china-president-of-the
-security-council-on-the-programme-of-work-for-the-month-of-june-2012-press-con
ference.html
7. Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria. Human
Rights Council, August 15, 2012.
http://un-report.blogspot.com/2012/08/report-of-independent-international.html#more
8. Cindy Wooden and Sarah MacDonald, “Nuncio in Syria: People stunned worried for
the future,” The Tidings, 24 August 2012.
http://www.the-tidings.com/index.php/news/newsworld/2548-nuncio-in-syria-peopl
e-stunned-worried-for-the-future
9. Patsy McGarry, “Media Coverage of Syria violence partial and untrue, says nun,”
The Irish Times, Monday Aug 13, 2012,
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2012/0813/1224322099930.html
10. “The Role of Netizen Journalism in the Media War at the UN.”
Draft Paper:
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/beijing2012/r-china2012-paper.doc
Talk: http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/beijing2012/r-china2012-talk.doc
11. Press Conference: Li Baodong (China) President of the Security Council for the
month of March, 2 March 2011.
http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/webcast/2011/03/press-conference-li-baodong-chin
a-president-of-the-security-council-for-the-month-of-march.html
* The longer talk can be accessed at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/beijing2012/r-china2012-april-cafe.doc
Page 47
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared in the
Winter 2007 Amateur Computerist on page 1.*]
Challenging the False Narratives
as Basis for a Netizen Press
One particular vision of the role for the press is that it acts as a
watchdog over government. This is not a role that the press often
succeeds in fulfilling. Writing in the early 1990s, Michael Hauben
observed that the Net “gives the power of journalism or the reporter to
the individual.”
1
What is this power? Can the Net make it possible for
the press to be such a watchdog so that the problems of the society can
be brought to the surface and the means found to solve them?
There is an issue of the Amateur Computerist
(
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-1.pdf) which is a collection of
articles that explore the potential of the Internet to make possible a
journalism which will function as a watchdog. The articles first appeared
in the online newspaper OhmyNews International
(
http://english.ohmynews.com) and sometimes in the online magazine
Telepolis (http://www.heise.de/tp). They were an effort to explore what
the power of the reporter makes possible.
The articles cover events over a one year period of time. They were
selected so as to focus on what has happened with the North Korean
situation at the United Nations (U.N.) and in the regional efforts related
to the Six-Party Talks in Beijing. They were an effort to contribute to a
form of press coverage that would provide an accurate narrative of the
events that make up the news.
On October 9, 2006, the South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Ban Ki-moon, won the Security Council nomination to become the
eighth Secretary General of the United Nations. The General Assembly
voted in favor of the Security Council recommendation on October 19
to make Ban the next U.N. Secretary General.
This was a historic event for South Korea. This was an evolving
story. How would Ban fulfill the obligations of the UN charter as
Page 48
Secretary General? Could the problems of the Korean peninsula,
especially the struggle for Korean reunification make steps forward
during the period while Ban would be at the helm of the U.N.?
A few months earlier, claiming that it had to protect itself from the
hostile actions of the United States, North Korea had tested a nuclear
device. The very next day after the General Assembly vote in favor of
the Security Council’s recommendation of Ban to be the next Secretary
General, the Security Council began its work to pass Resolution 1718,
to impose sanctions on North Korea. The Security Council’s actions
against North Korea were reminiscent of its actions against Iraq just a
few years earlier.
Was there a story developing here? How would Ban do as Secretary
General? Would the problems of the Korean peninsula, especially the
tension over denuclearization and the struggle for Korean reunification
make steps toward resolution or would there be greater instability in the
region?
By fall of 2007, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution
supporting the reunification of Korea and the Joint Declaration North
and South Korea had issued at their October 2007 summit.
The articles in the Amateur Computerist issue present an account of
what happened in the period between these events. During this period,
much of the mainstream media in the U.S. supported the U.S. govern-
ment’s hostile treatment of North Korea, blaming North Korea for any
delays that developed in the Six-Party Talks. Such framing helped to
create a false narrative reminiscent of the fake claim that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The articles in the issue, instead
were an effort to accurately document the events as they unfolded.
During the period leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March
2003, much of the mainstream press in the U.S. wrote articles about
Iraq’s ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD) and how Iraq was a
threat to the international community. The investigative journalist and
author Robert Parry calls this activity the creation of a ‘false narrative.’
Parry explores the role of much of the mainstream media in helping the
U.S. government to establish a pretext for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
2
This raises a number of questions. When the U.S. President George
Bush described Iraq as part of an ‘axis of evil,’ he included Iran and
Page 49
North Korea in this same category. Would the Iraq scenario be repeated
with respect to North Korea and Iran? Is it possible for the Internet and
netizens press to provide a means to counter a ‘false narrative’ that the
U.S. government creates to support its hostile policy objectives?
In his article, “Why I write,” the writer George Orwell explains that
for every piece he writes, “…there is some lie that I want to expose,
some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to
get a hearing.”
3
Orwell is describing how he strives for truthfulness in
his work.
Does the Net give the power of the reporter to the netizens to
counter the fictitious accounts that often make up much of the news?
The Amateur Computerist issue was an effort to explore the nature of
this power and whether the Net and the netizen can present the needed
challenge to the false narratives presented by much of the mainstream
U.S.
Notes:
1. “The Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net Has on People’s Lives” in Netizens: On
the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/
2. Robert Parry, “Why We Write,”
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/111207.html
3. George Orwell, “Why I write,”
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
* http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/acn/ACn16-1.pdf
Page 50
[Editor’s Note: The following is a slightly edited version of a talk
presented on May 1, 2012 at a small celebration in honor of the 15
th
Anniversary of the publication of the print edition of the book Netizens]
Netizens and Communication
A New Paradigm
by Ronda Hauben
I – Looking Back
On May 1, 1997, the print edition of Netizens: On the History and
Impact of Usenet and the Internet was published in English. Later that
year, in October, a Japanese translation of the book was published. In
2012, we are celebrating the occasion of the 15
th
Anniversary of this
event.
In honor of this occasion I want to both look back and look forward
toward trying to assess the significance of the book and of Michael
Hauben’s discovery of the emergence of the netizen. I want to briefly
look at what has happened in the interim of these 15 years toward trying
to understand what new advance this development makes possible.
By the early 1990s, Michael recognized that the Internet was a
significant new development and that it would have an impact on our
world. He was curious about what that impact would be and what could
help it to have a beneficial impact.
The book was compiled from a series of articles written by Michael
and by me which were posted on the Net as they were written and which
sometimes led to substantial comments and discussion.
The most important article in the book was clearly Michael’s article,
“The Net and Netizens: the Impact the Net Has on People’s Lives.”
Michael opened the article with the prophetic words, which
appeared online first in 1993: “Welcome to the 21
st
Century. You are a
Netizen (a Net Citizen) and you exist as a citizen of the world thanks to
the global connectivity that the Net makes possible. You consider
everyone as your compatriot. You physically live in one country but you
are in contact with much of the world via the global computer network.
Page 51
Virtually, you live next door to every other single Netizen in the world.
Geographical separation is replaced by existence in the same virtual
space.” [Netizens, Chapter 1, p. 3]
Michael goes on to explain that what he is predicting is not yet the
reality. In fact many people around the world were just becoming
connected to the Internet during the period in which these words were
written and posted on various different networks that existed at the time.
But fifteen years after the publication of the print edition of
Netizens, this description is very much the reality for our time and for
many it is hard to remember or understand the world without the Net.
Similarly, in his articles that are collected in the Netizens book,
Michael looked at the pioneering vision that gave birth to the Internet.
He looked at the role of computer science in the building of the
ARPANET network, at the potential impact that the Net and netizens
would have on politics, on journalism, and on the revolution in ideas that
the Net and netizens would bring about, comparing this to the advance
brought about by the printing press. The last chapter of the book is an
article Michael wrote early on about the need for a watchdog function
over government in order to make democracy possible.
By the time the book was published in a print edition, it had been
freely available online for three years. This was a period when the U.S.
government was determined to change the nature of the Net from the
public and scientific infrastructure that had been built with public and
educational funds around the world to a commercially driven entity.
While there were people online at the time promoting the privatization
and commercialization of the Internet, the concept of netizen was
embraced by others, by many who supported the public and collabora-
tive nature of the Internet and who wanted this to grow and flourish.
The article “The Net and Netizens” grew out of a research project
that Michael had done for a class at Columbia University in Computer
Ethics. Michael was interested in the impact of the Net and so he
formulated several questions and sent them out online. This was a
pioneering project at the time and the results he received back helped to
establish the fact that the Net was having an important impact on a
number of people’s lives.
Michael put together the results of his research in the article “The
Page 52
Net and Netizens” and posted it online. This helped the concept of
netizen to spread and to be embraced around the world. The netizen, it
is important to clarify, was not intended to describe every net user.
Rather netizen was the word to describe those on the Net who took up
to support the public and collaborative nature of the Net and to help it
to grow and flourish. Netizens at the time often had the hope that their
efforts online would be helpful toward creating a better world.
Describing this experience in a speech he gave in Japan and which
subsequently became the preface to the Netizens book, Michael
explained: “In conducting research five years ago online to determine
people’s uses of the global computer communications network, I became
aware that there was a new social institution, an electronic commons,
developing. It was exciting to explore this new social institution. Others
online shared this excitement. I discovered from those who wrote me
that the people I was writing about were citizens of the Net or Netizens.”
[Netizens, Preface, p. ix]
Michael’s work which is included in the book and the subsequent
work he did recognized the advance made possible by the Internet and
the emergence of the Netizen.
The book is not only about what is wrong with the old politics, or
media, but more importantly, the implications for the emergence of new
developments, of a new politics, of a new form of citizenship, and of
what Michael called the “poor man’s version of the mass media.” He
focused on what was new or emerging and recognized the promise for
the future represented by what was only at the time in an early stage of
development.
For example, Michael recognized that the collaborative contribu-
tions for a new media would far exceed what the old media had
achieved. “As people continue to connect to Usenet and other discussion
forums, the collective population will contribute back to the human
community this new form of news,” he wrote. [Netizens, Chapter 13, p.
233]
In order to consider the impact of Michael’s work and of the
publication of the book, both in its online form and in the print edition,
I want to look at some of the implications of what has been written since
about netizens.
Page 53
II – Mark Poster on the Implications of the Concept of
Netizen
One interesting example is in a book on the impact of the Internet
and globalization by Mark Poster, a media theorist. The book, Informa-
tion Please, was published in 2006. While Poster doesn’t make any
explicit reference to the book Netizens he finds the concept he has seen
used online to be an important one. He offers some theoretical discus-
sion on the use of the “netizen” concept.
Referring to the concept of citizen, Poster is interested in the
relationship of the citizen to government, and in the empowering of the
citizen to be able to affect the actions of his or her government. He
considers the “Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen” a
monument from the French Revolution of 1789. He explains that the
idea of the Rights of Man was one effort to empower people to deal with
governments. But this was not adequate and the concept of the rights of
the citizen, he proposes, was an important addition.
“Human rights and citizenship,” he writes, “are tied together and
reinforce each other in the battle against the ruling classes.” [Information
Please, p. 68] He proposes that “these rights are ensured by their
inscription in constitutions that found governments and they persist in
their association with those governments as the ground of political
authority.”[Ibid, p. 68]
But with the coming of what he calls the age of globalization, Poster
wonders if the concept ‘citizen’ can continue to signify democracy. He
wonders if the concept is up to the task.
“The conditions of globalization and networked media,” he writes,
present a new situation “in which the human is recast and along with it
the citizen.” [Ibid, p. 70] “The deepening of globalization processes
strips the citizen of power,” he writes. “As economic processes become
globalized, the nation-state loses its ability to protect its population. The
citizen thereby loses her ability to elect leaders who effectively pursue
her interests.” [Ibid, p. 71]
In this situation, “the figure of the citizen is placed in a defensive
position.” [Ibid] There is a need, however, to find instead of a defensive
position, an offensive one.
Page 54
Also he is interested in the media and its role in this new paradigm.
“We need to examine the role of the media in globalizing practices that
construct new subjects,” Poster writes. “We need especially to examine
those media that cross national boundaries and to inquire if they form or
may form the basis for a new set of political relations.” [Ibid, p. 77]
In this context, for the new media, “the important questions, rather
are these,” he proposes: “Can the new media promote the construction
of new political forms not tied to historical, territorial powers? What are
the characteristics of new media that promote new political relations and
new political subjects? How can these be furthered or enhanced by
political action?” [Ibid, p. 78]
“In contrast to the citizen of the nation,” he notices that the name
often given to the political subject constituted on the Net is “netizen.”
While Poster makes it seem that the consciousness among some online
of themselves as “netizens” just appeared online spontaneously, this is
not accurate.
Before Michael’s work, netizen as a concept was rarely if ever
referred to. The paper “The Net and Netizens” introduced and developed
the concept of “netizen.” This paper was widely circulated online.
Gradually the use of the concept of netizen became increasingly
common. Michael’s work was a process of doing research online,
summarizing the research, analyzing it and then putting the research
back online, and of people embracing it. This was the process by which
the foundation for the concept of “netizen” was established.
Considering this background, the observations that Poster makes of
how the concept of “netizen” is used online represents a recognition of
the significant role for the netizen in the future development of the body
politic. “The netizen,” Poster writes, “might be the formative figure in
a new kind of political relation, one that shares allegiance to the nation
with allegiance to the Net and to the planetary political spaces it
inaugurates.” [Ibid, p. 78]
This new phenomena, Poster concludes, “will likely change the
relation of forces around the globe. In such an eventuality, the figure of
the netizen might serve as a critical concept in the politics of democrati-
zation.” [Ibid, p. 83]
Page 55
III – The Era of the Netizen
While Poster characterizes our period as the age of globalization, I
want to offer a different view. I want to propose that we are in an era
demarcated by the creation of the Internet and the emergence of the
netizen. A more accurate characterization of this period is as the “Era of
the Netizen.”
The years since the publication of the book Netizens have been
marked by many interesting developments that have been made possible
by the growth and development of the Internet and the spread of netizens
around the world. I don’t have the time to go into these today but I will
refer to a few examples to give a flavor of the kind of developments I am
referring to.
An article by Vinay Kamat in the Reader’s Opinion section of the
Times of India referred to something I had written. Quoting my article,
the Times of India article said, “Not only is the Internet a laboratory for
democracy, but the scale of participation and contribution is unprece-
dented. Online discussion makes it possible for netizens to become
active individuals and group actors in social and public affairs. The
Internet makes it possible for netizens to speak out independently of
institutions or officials.” [See “We are looking at the 5
th
Estate,” by
Vinay Kamat, Reader’s Opinion, Times of India, December 16, 2011, p.
looking-at-the-fifth-estate/opinions/11133662.cms The quote is taken
from, “The Rise of Netizen Democracy: A Case Study of Netizens’
Impact on Democracy in South Korea” by Ronda Hauben. For the url
see: http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/korean-democracy.txt]
Kamat points to the growing number of netizens in China and India
and the large proportion of the population in South Korea who are
connected to the Internet. “Will it evolve into a fifth estate?” the article
asks, contrasting netizens’ discussion online with the power of the 4
th
estate, i.e. the mainstream media.
“Will social and political discussion in social media grow into
deliberation?” asks Kamat. “Will opinions expressed be merely ‘rabble
rousing’ or will they be ‘reflective’ instead of ‘impulsive’?”
One must recognize, the article explains, the new situation online
and the fact that it is important to understand the nature of this new
Page 56
media and not merely look at it through the lens of the old media. What
is the nature of this new media and how does it differ from the old? This
is an important area for further research and discussion.
IV – Looking for a Model
While I was in South Korea in 2008, a friend asked if there is a
model for democracy that could be helpful for South Korea – like in
some country perhaps in Scandinavia. Thinking about the question I
realized it was more complex than it seemed on the surface.
I realized that one cannot take a model from the period before the
Internet, from before the emergence of the netizen. It is instead
necessary that models for a more democratic society or nation in our
times be models that include netizen participation in the society. Both
South Korea and China are places where the role of netizens is important
in building more democratic structures for the society. South Korea
appears to be the most advanced in grassroots efforts to create examples
of netizen forms for a more participatory decision making process.
1
But
China is also a place where there are significant developments because
of the Internet and netizens.
2
In China there have been a large number of issues that netizens have
taken up online which have then had an impact on the mainstream media
and where the online discussion has helped to bring about a change in
government policy.
In looking for other models to learn from, however, I also realized
that there is another relevant area of development. This is the actual
process of building the Net, a prototype which is helpful to consider
when seeking to understand the nature and particularity of the evolving
new models for development and participation represented in the Era of
the Netizen.
V – Nerves of Government
In his article comparing the impact of the Net with the important
impact the printing press had on society, Michael wrote: “The Net has
opened a channel for talking to the whole world to an even wider set of
people than did printed books.” [Netizens, Chapter 16, p. 299]
Page 57
I want to focus a bit on the significance of this characteristic, on the
notion that the Net has opened a communication channel available to a
wide set of people.
In his study of the Net and netizens, Michael recognized that
something new was emerging. In trying to understand what impact the
Net was having and would have on society, he also kept in mind that the
technical processes of building the Net were important.
In order to have a conceptual framework to understand what these
technical processes are, I recommend the book by Karl Deutsch titled,
The Nerves of Government.
In the preface to his book, Deutsch writes: “This book suggests that
it might be preferable to look upon government somewhat less as a
problem of power and somewhat more as a problem of steering; and it
tries to show that steering is decisively a matter of communication.”
[Nerves of Government, p. xxvii]
I want to propose that to look at the question of government not as
a problem of power, or of democracy, but as one of steering, of
communication, is a fundamental paradigm shift.
What is the difference?
Power has to do with force, with the ability to exert force on
something so as to affect its direction and action. Democracy has to do
with the participation and effect of people on the decisions made for
society. Steering and communication, however, are related to the process
of the transmission of a signal through a channel. The communication
process is one related to whether a signal is transmitted in a manner that
distorts the signal or whether it is possible to transmit the signal
accurately. The communication process and the steering that it makes
possible through feedback mechanisms are an underlying framework to
consider in seeking to understand what Deutsch calls the “Nerves of
Government.”
According to Deutsch, a nation can be looked at as a self steering
communication system of a certain kind and the messages that are used
to steer it are transmitted by certain channels.
I want to propose that some of the important challenges of our times
relate to the need for exposure of the distortions of the information being
spread. For example, the misrepresentations by the mainstream media
Page 58
about what is happening in Libya and Syria.
3
The creation and dissemi-
nation of channels of communication that make possible “the essential
two way flow of information” are essential for the functioning of an
autonomous learning organization, which is the form Deutsch proposes
for a well functioning system.
To look at this phenomenon in a more practical way, I want to offer
some considerations raised in a speech given to honor a Philippine
librarian. The speech was given by Zosio Lee. Lee refers to the kind of
information that is transmitted as essential to the well being of a society.
In considering the impact of netizens and the form of information that
is being transmitted, Lee asks the question, “How do we detect if we are
being manipulated or deceived?” [“Truthfulness and the Information
Revolution” JPL 31 (2011), p. 105]
The importance of this question, he explains, is that, “We would not
have survived for so long if all the information we needed to make valid
judgments were all false or unreliable.” [Ibid] Also, he proposes that
“information has to be processed and discussed for it to acquire full
meaning and significance.” [Ibid, p. 106]
“When information is free, available and truthful, we are better able
to make appropriate judgments, including whether existing governments
fulfill their mandate to govern for the benefit of the people,” Lee writes.
[Ibid, p. 108]
In his article “The Computer as a Democratizer” Michael similarly
explores the need for accurate information about how government is
functioning. He writes,“Without information being available to them, the
people may elect candidates as bad as or worse than the incumbents.
Therefore there is a need to prevent government from censoring the
information available to people.” [Netizens, Chapter 18, p. 316]
Michael adds that, “The public needs accurate information as to
how their representatives are fulfilling their role. Once these representa-
tives have abused their power, the principles established by Paine and
Mill require that the public have the ability to replace the abusers.” [Ibid,
p. 317]
Channels of accurate communication are critical in order to share
the information needed to determine the nature of one’s government.
4
While in general I have focused on the implications of the concept
Page 59
of Netizen that have emerged in the decade and a half since the
publication of the print edition of the book, it is also important to realize
that not everyone is friendly to the concept of Netizen. An article in the
online newsfeed section of Time magazine proposed that the word
netizen should be banished from the media.
Katy Steinmetz, who does an online column for Time claimed, “The
word has been around for almost three decades (sic – it is less than 2
decades -ed), but the likes of the Los Angeles Times were using it as
recently as last month. Perhaps it’s time to give it a rest….”
In the same article, she proposed to banish “occupy” and “#[the
hashtag].” [See “POLL: What Words Should Be Banished in 2012?
NewsFeed Time.com,” Time magazine, January 11, 2012.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/11poll-what-word-should-be-banis
hed-in-2012/ ]
The following week she acknowledges that there is very little
sentiment to ban the word netizen.
5
VI – Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to point to an article in a blog at the Foreign
Policy Association website which has the title: “Institutions And New
World ‘Netizens’: Act 1”
The author, Oliver Barrett, reminds his readers of a quote from
Mohandas Gandhi: “First They Ignore You – Then They Ridicule You
– Then They Fight You – Then You Win.”
Barrett asks, “Will technology fundamentally change the relation-
ship between the nation state and citizens?” He asks if Net-connected
citizens are “a threat or opportunity for government?”
In response to this question, he writes, “But I am not convinced that
government officials, even in industrialized countries, are cognizant of
how technological innovations like social media have forever robbed
them of their positions as trusted sources of timely and legitimate
information…. I dare say that netizens have started to short-circuit the
politico-corporate communications wiring, raising the political and
social justice consciousness of the hyper-connected citizen in a way that
might not be in the interest of the governing classes.”
“How will governments respond to this situation?” he asks.
6
Page 60
“I look forward to witnessing how Act 2 of Revolution 2.0 will
unfold,” he concludes.
Barrett focuses on the opinions of those in government. Instead, I
propose that the important challenge is for netizens. Netizens need to
understand the conceptual nature of the information and communication
changes represented by the Era of the Netizen so they will be able to
successfully meet the new challenges these represent for our society.
7
Notes
1. In South Korea there are many interesting examples of new organizational forms or
events created by netizens. For example Nosamo combined the model of an online Fan
club and off line gathering of supporters who worked to get Roh Moo-hyun elected as
President in South Korea in 2002. Also, OhmyNews, an online newspaper, helped to
make the election of Roh Moo-hyun possible in 2002.
Science mailing lists and discussion networks contributed to by netizens helped
to expose the fraudulent scientific work of a leading South Korean scientist.
In 2008 there were 106 days of candlelight demonstrations contributed to by
people online and off to protest the South Korean government’s adoption of a
weakened set of regulations about the import of poorly inspected U.S. beef into South
Korea. The debate on June 10-11 over the form the demonstration should take involved
both online and offline discussion and demonstrated the generative nature of serious
communication. See for example, Ronda Hauben, “On Grassroots Journalism and
Participatory Democracy.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/netizens_draft.pdf
2. Some examples include the anti-CNN web site that was set up to counter the
inaccurate press reports in the western media about the riot in Tibet, the murder case
of a Chinese waitress who killed a Communist Party official in self defense, the case
of the Chongqing Nail house and the online discussion about the issues involved. See
for example, Ronda Hauben, “China in the Era of the Netizen”
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/02/14/china_in_the_era_of_the_netizen/
3. See for example “Libya, the UN and Netizen Journalism,” The Amateur
Computerist, Vol 21, no 1, Winter 2012.
http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/Back_Issues/Back_Issues%5b2011-2015%5d/ACn21-1.pdf
Jay Hauben, “On the 15
th
Anniversary of Netizens: Netizens Expose Distortions and
Fabrications”
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/Book_Anniversary/presentation_2.doc
4. As Michael Hauben explains, “Thomas Paine, in The Rights of Man, describes a
fundamental principle of democracy. Paine writes, ‘that the right of altering the
government was a national right, and not a right of the government’.” (Netizens,
Chapter 18, p. 316)
5. Katy Steinmetz, “Wednesdays Words: Readers’ Choice for Banned Words of 2012
Page 61
and More,” Time Newsfeed, January 18, 2012.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/18/wednesday-words-readers-choice-for-banishe
d-word-of-2012-and-more/
6. “Will the officials that govern the modern nation state engage their respective
societies in meaningful ways, or will they continue to hide their heads in the sand?
From what I’ve learned from history and the very erudite Mohandas Gandhi – I think
I know the answer.” Oliver Barrett
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2012/01/12/institutions-and-new-world-netizens-act-1/
(4/25/2012)
7. See for example: Ronda Hauben, “The Internet Model of Socio-Economic
Development and the Emergence of the Netizen”
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/11/02/the_internet_model_of_socio-economic_
development_and_the_emergence_of_the_netizen/
Ronda Hauben, “In Cheonan Dispute UN Security Council Acts in Accord with UN
Charter”
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/09/05/in_cheonan_dispute_un_security_council
_discovers_un_charter/
Bibliography
Oliver Barrett, “Introduction to the New World ‘Netizens’ Act I,” Foreign Policy Blog,
April 25, 2012
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2012/01/12/institutions-and-new-world-netizens-act-1/
Karl Deutsch, Nerves of Government, The Free Press, New York, 1966.
Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet
and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 1997. Online edition:
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120
Ronda Hauben, “The Rise of Netizen Democracy in South Korea.”
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/korean-democracy.txt
Vinay Komat, “We’re Looking at the Fifth Estate,” Reader’s Opinion, Times of India,
December 16, 2011, p. 2
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/We-are-looking-at-the-fi
fth-estate/opinions/11133662.cms
Zosimo E. Lee, “Truthfulness and the Information Revolution,” Journal of Philippean
Librarianship (JPL 31): p. 101-109
http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/jpl/article/viewFile/2779/2597
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Mark Poster, Information Please, Duke University Press, Durham, 2006.
Katy Steinmetz, “POLL: What Word Should Be Banished in 2012?,” Time Newsfeed,
January 11, 2012,
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/11/poll-what-word-should-be-banished-in-2012/
Katy Steinmetz, “Wednesdays Words: Readers’ Choice for Banned Words of 2012 and
More,” Time Newsfeed, January 18, 2012.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/01/18/wednesday-words-readers-choice-for-banishe
d-word-of-2012-and-more/
[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article first appeared on the
netizenblog on May 10, 2008 at:
http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2008/05/10/netizens-create-anti-cnn-fo
rum-to-challenge-media-distortions-of-china/]
Netizens Create Anti-cnn
Forum to Challenge Media Distortions
of China
by Ronda Hauben
Who will win the contest to be the new global media, CNN or
netizen media like the anti-CNN online forum and web site? This is a
question that students in a 2008 global media literacy seminar at
Tsinghua University in Beijing were given to grapple with as their final
project.
The creation in 2008 of the anti-cnn online forum and web site by
netizens in China has been a significant development. The global media
literacy seminar at Tsinghua University was taught by Professor Li
Xiguang. Professor Li’s background is as a journalist, covering science
and technology, and as a journalism professor who is the author of
significant papers about the role of the Internet in the development of the
changing media environment in China. Professor Li had invited me to
speak to his students in the global media literacy seminar about the
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spread of netizens and the impact of the Internet on society for his April
16
th
class.
The context in which this invitation came is the research I have been
doing about the role of netizens in the development of a significant new
form of journalism, a form of journalism which expands the spectrum
of issues and problems from the more limited range common in the
traditional forms of media.
Shortly before my trip to China was to begin, however, something
quite unexpected occurred. When the western mainstream media,
including CNN to BBC, pictured the events that occurred in Lhasa,
Tibet, in April 2008, as a peaceful demonstration, Chinese netizens
immediately documented that their coverage was often inaccurate or
misleading.
Within a few days of the inaccurate reports, an online forum
appeared on the Internet called anti-cnn. (
forum included articles and videos documenting some of the many
distortions in the coverage of the Tibet events. The forum also had areas
in English and in Chinese for discussion and debate.
I had discovered the online forum while still in New York before
my trip to China and was intrigued by the fact that it not only provided
an important source of clarification about the misrepresentations in the
media, but also it made available a space for discussion in both English
and Chinese about the importance of identifying and countering the false
narrative that the mainstream western media had been creating of the
events in Tibet.
While the online forum was named anti-cnn it was not limited to
countering errors in reporting by CNN. Rather the founder had chosen
anti-cnn for the name as CNN has a global spread and the purpose of the
anti-cnn forum was to counter the misrepresentations of China and
events in China in the global media.
I was particularly excited to be going to China at a time when a
netizen media form had been created to critique the narratives being
circulated by mainstream western media organizations.
We arrived in Beijing early in the morning on April 16, 2008, the
day I was to give my talk to Professor Li’s seminar.
We had arrangements to see Professor Li’s assistant in order to get
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ready to go to the class for my talk. It was 3 p.m., a little while before I
was to get ready to go to the class, when Professor Li’s assistant called
up to our room and asked if she could come up. It was good to see her.
I was in the process of putting some finishing touches on my slides for
my talk.
She came into our room out of breath, explaining that she had tried
to send an e-mail, which I hadn’t seen. She said that several journalists
had come to debate with Tsinghua University students about the
frustrations netizens in China had with the reporting by several of the
western media organizations. She urged us to come immediately with
her to hear the debate.
I saved the version I had of my slides and we left to follow her
across the Tsinghua University campus to the meeting between the
students and the journalists.
The meeting was in a large room in the journalism building. Four
journalists from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) were
seated at a large table, along with Professor Li and a number of students.
Other students filled the rest of the room.
The conversation was being held in English and Chinese with
Professor Li doing translation from one language to the other depending
on the speaker.
There were perhaps as many as 80 people filling the room.
I later learned that the journalists were probably part of a nine
person delegation from the IFJ who had come to speak with the Chinese
government about working conditions for the 30,000 journalists who
were expected to come to Beijing to cover the Olympics.
While the purpose of the IFJ delegation appeared to be as advocates
for the journalists who were to be covering the Olympics, the situation
in the debate they were having with Tsinghua students was quite
different. At this meeting the students were presenting their frustrations
and complaints about the kind of erroneous reporting that had been
documented on the anti-cnn forum and asking for an explanation of how
such misrepresentations could have happened.
One of the students asked why the Western media did not report
about the victims who had died in the fires set by those who took part in
the riots. Another student asked why the western media reported that
Page 65
religious effigies had been burned but didn’t report about the people who
had died as a result of the fires and other violence in the riot. The student
wondered why journalists would give more weight to the destruction of
property rather than of human life.
Still another student asked how journalists could cover the story of
Tibet if they didn’t first take the time to learn the history of what had
happened in Tibet in the past.
“Does a free press mean the freedom of the journalist to present his
or her own personal views or does it mean the freedom for the public to
know the information,” asked one of the students.
Many students had hands up when there was the call for questions.
The head of the delegation, Aidan Patrick White, who was the
General Secretary of the IFJ, headquartered in Brussels, gave most of the
responses, though others in the delegation also answered some of the
questions raised by the students.
White explained that when he went into journalism he thought it
would be something connected with public service. He had since learned
that there is political pressure on journalists no matter what country they
are from.
The manager of the anti-cnn web site, Qi Hanting, was a Tsinghua
University student. He was at the meeting and his presentation to the
journalists was eagerly greeted by the students. He explained why the
students were upset with the distorted coverage anti-cnn had docu-
mented as prevalent in the reports of western media organizations.
Qi explained that there was a difference between a mistake in a
story and a distortion. He offered as an analogy the core of an atom and
the electrons surrounding it. The electrons can appear any place around
the atom, but if an electron goes too far away it can break away.
Though reporters might write about different aspects of a story, he
explained, their stories still can be accurate. But if the report is too far
from the reality, it could be explosive.
The journalists from the IFJ responded that they weren’t trying to
justify bad reporting. There wasn’t a conspiracy in the western media
against China. Qi proposed that there was a need to have reporters who
emphasize different aspects of a story in order to help there to be the
proper understanding of a story, but that was different from presenting
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a distorted or inaccurate presentation of the story as had happened with
a number of the reports of the Tibet riot in the western media.
With less than 100 days remaining until the opening ceremony of
the Beijing Olympics, the issues and questions presented by Qi and the
other Tsinghua University students to the IFJ journalists took on a
broader significance. How would the 30,000 journalists who were
expected to come to China to report on the Olympics, portray the story
of China?
China has recently gone through a significant transformation. One
indication of the changes are the many new buildings, the huge majestic
structures that fill the Beijing skyline. These new structures, along with
the people who live and work in them are a sign that Beijing has become
a world class city. Could the journalists who were to come to Beijing
that August recognize that there was an important story about what was
developing in China? Could they become a force to investigate this story
and present it, so that there would be an accurate portrayal in the media
for people around the world?
This question was being considered by netizens in China and
abroad.
Formerly, it may have seemed to netizens in China that the western
media could be a reliable source of information about events and
viewpoints that were not available in the Chinese media. After the Tibet
reporting, the view that the western media could be relied on to present
accurate news had been transformed in just a few short weeks in March
and April 2008.
Instead netizens working together online were telling the story, not
only of what they saw happening in Tibet, but even more importantly,
they were documenting the failure of the western media to be a reliable
source of information about China.
In place of the western media sprung up a netizen media, contrib-
uted to by some of the 570 million (2013) Internet users in China, and
some of the many overseas netizens. There are many online sites where
discussion among Chinese netizens takes place.
The story of these netizens in China and abroad is an important
story as they have demonstrated a resolve and did not surrender the
framing of the story of the Beijing Olympics to the distortions of a
Page 67
powerful western media. Through their own active participation and
collaboration, they provided an alternative narrative.
Qi explained that the anti-cnn forum and web site had a staff of over
40 volunteers. These netizens did the technical work, and the fact
checking of the posts and the responses to the posts.
If a submission to the web site was emotional, he explained, it
would appear, but the moderators would not allow any responses to it in
order to prevent the discussion from becoming too heated.
One post in the anti-cnn forum raised the question of whether it
would be possible to create an east west cultural exchange platform to
facilitate communication across the cultural differences between the
Chinese people and those from other cultures who will come to China
for the Olympics.
During an interview with him a few days after the debate with the
journalists from the IFJ, Qi expressed his view that it can be possible to
communicate despite the differences and to be able to find out where the
differences lay.
Every difference has two aspects, he explained, an emotional
component and a rational component.
Even if people can’t agree, they can communicate, he proposed. He
was hopeful that discussion would go in more communicative directions
rather than netizens in China just feeling that they wanted an apology
from western journalists who distort the news about China.
His hope was that the anti-cnn forum on the Internet would make it
possible to have comments on issues from a wide range of differing
perspectives, rather than such differences leading to polarization and
hostility.
His long term goal was that the forum become a site to support
many different points of view but also where deviations from the truth
would be critiqued.
Talking with Qi I found it important that he was seeking to open
lines of communication with western journalists despite the fact it
seemed so difficult to do so. He was actually proposing a conceptual
framework to make such a communication process possible.
Listening to his views made me remember a struggle netizens had
with the U.S. media in the early 1990s. There was a plan for the
Page 68
privatization of the U.S. section of the Internet which had been built
with public funds. The U.S. press was misrepresenting the struggle of
netizens who were challenging the illegitimate privatization process and
who were upset with the spate of commercial ads that had begun to flood
the Internet.
One reporter for the Wall Street Journal had written an article that
misunderstood what the struggle was about. Netizens contacted him and
asked if he would be willing to learn some of the history and background
of the struggle. He welcomed the input.
The next article he wrote was very different from the previous one.
It talked about how netizens were struggling over the “soul of the
Internet.” This was indeed a helpful description of the struggle and it
was good to see that this reporter had changed in his perspective.
1
It is not to dismiss the possibility of journalists who are part of the
western media who are interested in learning about what is happening
in China and in providing an accurate portrayal. It is a worthy effort to
seek out a means to make such communication possible.
The goal of the netizens who were contributing to the anti-cnn
forum and web site was a goal that is an important one for China and for
the many people around the world who wanted the 2008 Beijing
Olympics to contribute to friendship and further understanding among
the people of the world.
This is also a worthy goal for those of the western media and for
other netizens around the world who want to be part of the creation of
a 21
st
century media that spreads understanding rather than the political
propaganda of one’s own government. The Internet and netizens have
begun to create such a truly global media.
Note
1. Steve Stecklow, “Cyberspace Clash: Computer Users Battle High-Tech Marketers
Over Soul of Internet,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1993, p. 1.
An earlier version of this article appears in OhmyNews International “Netizens Defy
Western Media Fictions of China”
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=3825
Page 69
23&rel_no=1
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] Permission is given to reprint articles from
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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.
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