The Amateur

Computerist

Summer 2021 Toward a Second Netizen Book (Part 4a) Volume 34 No. 4a

Table of Contents

Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Interview with Ronda and Jay Hauben. . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Netizen Pressure for a New Journalism. . . . . . . . . Page 8

Netizens and the Republic of Tahrir Square . . . . Page 19

Netizens in Media War at the United Nations . . . Page 21

Significance of the Net and the Netizens . . . . . . . Page 37

Forward

This issue of the Amateur Computerist, Vol. 34

No. 4a, is the fourth issue in a series, each containing

chapters that are the basis for a second netizen book.

The chapters in this issue provide analysis and exam-

ples of an emerging new journalism. Michael Hauben

wrote that the net “brings the power of the reporter to

the Netizen.”

The first article is an interview that asks the

question, what is new about this emerging journalism.

It offers several examples of characteristics that

distinguish netizen journalism from other journalism

forms. The second article, “Netizen Reporting and

Media Criticism Pressure for a New Journalism”

argues that netizen activity in China has served as a

pressure for a reexamination and recasting of journalist

practice. The next article, “Netizens in Egypt and the

Republic of Tahrir Square” describes how bloggers

reported on the 2011 protests and discussed them

online. Their journalism became a significant part of

the protest activities.

The article, “The Role of Netizen Journalism in

the Media War at the United Nations” shows that

journalists with a social purpose and with blogs and

other online forms, can on occasion influence even the

UN. The article documents there are netizens who are

dedicated to doing the research and analysis to deter-

mine the interests and actions that are too often hidden

from public view 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.

The last article, ties this new journalism with the

emergence of new developments, of a new politics, of

a new form of citizenship, and of what Michael Hauben

called the “poor man’s version of the mass media.” It

cites the work of Mark Poster, who wonders if the role

of citizen is being replaced with the role of netizen as

globalization drives society to new forms of democracy.

[Editor’s Note: In September 2007, Ronda and Jay

Hauben were in Germany for a conference celebrating

German-Chinese networking collaboration. On the side-

line to that conference, journalist and journalism

professor Gabriele Hooffacker interviewed them on

September 23, 2007. Dr Hooffacker published the

interview in a book with the German title Wem gehört

das Internet? (Verlag Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker,

Munchen, 2008). The following is the original English

interview, edited by the Haubens in December 2007.]

Interview with Ronda

and Jay Hauben

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Would you say that

netizen journalism is the same as grassroots journalism?

Ronda Hauben: They are not quite the same. Netizen

journalism includes grassroots journalism, but the

significance I understand is that a netizen has a social

perspective and does something from that perspective.

Some of the origin of the term netizen was when

Michael Hauben, then a college student, did some

research in 1992-1993. He sent out a number of ques-

tions on Usenet which was at the time and still is an

online forum for discussion. Usenet was very active in

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

Page 1

the early 90s. He also sent his questions out on Internet

mailing lists.

In the responses to his questions people said that

they were interested in the Internet for the different

things they were trying to do but they also wanted to

figure out how to spread the Internet, to help it to grow

and thrive and to help everybody have access. What

Michael found was that there was a social purpose that

people explained to him. People had developed this

social sense from the fact that they could participate

online and find some very interesting valuable possi-

bilities online. Many of the people that responded to

his questions shared with him that they wanted to

contribute to the Internet so that it would grow and

thrive.

In my opinion this set of characteristics is broad-

er than grassroots journalism. Grassroots journalism I

would interpret as people from the grassroots having

the ability to post. But where there is also a social

desire and purpose, that is what I would define as

netizen journalism.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: You also said political

participation?

Ronda Hauben: Yes a political and a social purpose.

By social I mean that people support something

happening for other people, that the net be shared and

be available to a broader set of people. This includes a

political focus as well.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I just remember one of

my first keynote speeches. I had to speak about em-

powering the information poor in 1994. It was a

meeting of pedagogic teachers and I told them that

they should try to make it possible for many people of

all classes to have access to the Internet. That I think is

some of the sense of being a netizen.

Ronda Hauben: That is being a netizen.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m afraid many people

think participation only means economical and not

political and that especially people in Eastern Europe

mainly wanted to take part economically.

Ronda Hauben: In the U.S. for example, there has

been a lot of pressure supported by the U.S. govern-

ment for seeing the Internet as a way to enrich your-

self. But that is not what grew up with the Internet

community. The pressure for the Internet to be for

economic purposes was in opposition to the netizen

developments in the U.S.

Jay Hauben: At one point it became clear that there

was beginning to be the Internet for economic pur-

poses in contradiction to the original Internet. That is

when Ronda and Michael received a lot of help toward

having appear a print edition of their book, Netizens*.

People said, we must defend the Internet from this new

pressure, which is coming as an economic pressure.

That was a great impetus and support for publishing the

book.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: We just talked about the

Chinese bloggers and you told me that they call them-

selves netizens.

Ronda Hauben: I asked a Chinese blogger, Zola

Zhou, who I had written to if he thought of himself as

a netizen. He said yes he did. Also, I have seen articles

about the Internet in China that actually say that the

netizens are a small set of the Chinese online population

but are those who have political purpose and activities.

That is in line with research that Michael originally did

in the 1990s with regard to the Internet and which

helped his coming to understand that such people online

around the world were netizens.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: You told me that there is

a great blogger community without censorship and also

political?

Ronda Hauben: No, there is censorship in China. But

there is a big blogger community and something that I

found in one of the articles that I read I thought was

very hopeful. It quoted a Chinese Internet user who said

that focusing too closely on Internet censorship over-

looks the expanded freedoms of expression made

possible in China by the Internet. I thought that seemed

correct. All I ever hear from the U.S. press is that in

China the Internet is censored. Such framing of the

Internet in China leads away from trying to look and

understand what is happening in China with the Inter-

net. It turns out that there is something very significant

developing and that has already developed, which

involves a lot of people who are being very active

trying to discuss the problems of China and trying to

see if they can be part of helping to solve those prob-

lems. That is the opposite of the sense you get from the

news media that talks about censorship all the time.

Jay Hauben: The chairwoman of the Internet Society

of China (ISC) Madame Hu Qiheng spoke to me about

this. She said that there are some very high Chinese

government officials who have blogs and they invite

anybody and everybody to comment. They answer as

many comments as they can and they are learning the

importance of blogging. She feels that they will be

supportive to the changes that are needed to make the

Internet even more extensive and more well spread in

China. She was optimistic that at least some in the

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Chinese government were seeing the importance of the

blogging activity and were learning how to be sup-

portive of it in some way. She wanted that to be known

to the world.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m not sure whether I

understand. Do they hope if the people blog they will

learn to use the Internet?

Jay Hauben: No, she said the government officials

themselves had their own blogs and receive from the

population criticisms and complaints and other things

and they try to answer some. Those officials who have

entered into this back and forth exchange she feels will

learn from it and be supportive in the expanding

support for blogging in China.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: There are some examples

that netizens can sometimes get control over the

government. Could you give us one example?

Ronda Hauben: A question that I have is whether

netizens can have some impact on what government

does. Traditionally people like James Mill, writing in

England in the 1800s argued that if a people do not

have some oversight over government then govern-

ment can only be corrupt. That is why a society needs

processes and ways that people can discuss what

government is doing and watch government. I like to

use the word ‘watch dogging’ government. A piece of

my research is to see if there are ways that by having

the Internet and the ability to participate in the discus-

sion of issues netizens can have an impact on what

government is doing. I have found situations where

there is an impact on government.

One example I give is a blog that is called ‘China

Matters.’ Also there have been articles in ‘OhmyNews

International,’ which is the newspaper for which I

write. It is the English edition of the Korean Ohmy-

News, an online newspaper started in 2000.

The blog China Matters was able to post some

original documents from a case involving ‘The Six-

Party Talks Concerning the Korean Peninsula.’ The six

parties are North Korea, South Korea, the U.S., Russia,

China and Japan. There was a breakthrough in the six-

party talks in September of 2005 leading to a signed

agreement toward denuclearizing the Korean penin-

sula.

Immediately after the breakthrough, the U.S.

Treasury Department announced that it was freezing

the assets of a bank called Banco Delta Asia in Macau,

China. Macau is a former Portuguese colony now a

part of China as a special administrative region. Banks

in Macau are under the Chinese banking authority and

supervision. The U.S. government was determining

what would happen with this bank in China. The Banco

Delta China had accounts containing $25 million of

North Korean funds. In response to the U.S. causing

these funds to be frozen, North Korea left the six-party

talks saying it would have nothing to do with the talks

until this matter got resolved.

In late January and the beginning of February

2007 there were negotiations between a U.S. govern-

ment official and a North Korean official in Berlin. An

agreement was reached that there would be an activity

to work out the Banco Delta Asia problem so that the

negotiations could resume in the six party talks.

But often with negotiations with the U.S. when-

ever there is an effort to try to straighten something out,

the implementation is not done in a way that is appro-

priate. In this case what was offered was that North

Korea could send someone to Macau to get the funds

but it could not use the international banking system to

transfer the funds which is the normal procedure.

U.S. Treasury Department officials went to China

for negotiations allegedly to end the financial problems

the U.S. had caused for North Korea. Officials from the

different countries were waiting to have this settled so

the negotiations could go on. Instead the U.S. Treasury

Department officials failed to allow the international

banking system to be used to be able to get the funds

back to North Korea.

On the China Matters blog, the blogger posted the

response of the Banco Delta Asia bank owner to these

activities. If you read the owner’s response you would

realize that the bank owner was never given any proof

of any illegal activity that had gone on with regard to

the funds in his bank, so there was no justification

presented for having frozen the funds of his bank. The

U.S. Treasury Department under the U.S. Patriot Act

was able to be the accuser and then the judge and jury,

to make the judgement and then have banks around the

world go along.

Jay Hauben: By posting these documents on his blog,

the China Matters blogger made it possible for journal-

ists to write about this aspect of the case. In one of his

blog posts he also put links to the U.S. government

hearing documents that helped to expose the rationale

and the intention of the Treasury Department.

Ronda Hauben: Based on what I had learned from

these blogs and then subsequent research that I had

been able to do using the Internet to verify what the

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blogger said, I wrote articles that appeared on Ohmy-

News International. I was subsequently contacted by

somebody from the Korean section of the Voice of

America, the official U.S. State Department world-

wide broadcasting service. She asked me about the

articles I had written. Essentially the Voice of America

reporter said that if this situation went on and the funds

were not returned, the Voice of America was going to

ask questions of the people I had identified who had

come up with this policy. It would ask them to explain

what they had done and to respond to the issues raised

by my articles.

Just at this time, however, a means was found to

get the funds back to North Korea via the international

banking system. All the other prior times, this had

failed.

It was very interesting that this was all happening

at the same time. It provides an example of how a

netizen media of blogs and online newspapers can take

up issues like this one, get under the surface to the

actual story and even have an influence on government

activity.

The China Matters blog is very interesting

because it says that there is U.S. policy about China

being made without the knowledge of the American

people. Therefore the American people do not under-

stand what is going on or what the issues are. They are

not given a chance to discuss and consider the policy.

Somehow these issues have to be opened up, they have

to be

made public so that there will be a good policy

with regard to what happens between the U.S. and

China.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: So the way was from the

netizens and the bloggers directly to the government

and not via mainstream media?

Ronda Hauben: In this situation there was one

mainstream press that was different from all the rest.

It was the McClatchy newspapers. McClatchy actually

had an article about the China Matters blog. It was

helpful for people to know about the blog. Here was

collaboration between the blogger and the mainstream

media but it was not that the rest of the mainstream

media picked up any of that or discussed it. Most of

the English speaking mainstream media just said that

North Korea is being very difficult and that it should

be allowing the six-party talks to go on instead of

making this trouble. McClatchy articles and my

articles on OhmyNews tried to understand why North

Korea was insisting that this money be returned using

the international banking system. In this situation there

was no need to influence what the rest of the main-

stream media said or did. Voice of America Korea and

the U.S. State Department responded to my articles in

OhmyNews directly.

Jay Hauben: In a presentation at a recent symposium,

Ronda spoke of a situation in China of child abduction

and labor abuse with little response by the local govern-

ment. The situation had been casually covered by local

media but was not solved. Only later when the story

appeared prominently in online discussion sites did it

spread. Then it was discussed by a large cross-section

of the population. Finally the government started to act.

In this case, the government had not been influenced by

coverage by the local mainstream media but was pushed

by the coverage of the netizen media.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Ronda, you are a featured

writer for OhmyNews. I do not know whether there is

a German edition?

Ronda Hauben: No, there is none at this point.

OhmyNews has a Korean, a Japanese and an English

language international edition. There are German

writers who write in English for OhmyNews Inter-

national. There is however a German online magazine

which I am honored to write for in English, Telepolis,

which I would call an example of netizen journalism.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Why do you think that

OhmyNews is a good thing?

Ronda Hauben: The Korean edition of OhmyNews

pioneered a concept which is very interesting. The

founder of OhmyNews , Mr. Oh Yeon-Ho, had worked

for an alternative monthly magazine, Mal, for almost 10

years. He saw that the mainstream media which is

basically conservative would cover a story and it would

be treated as news. On the other hand, he had uncovered

for Mal a very important story about a cover-up of a

massacre during the Korean War. His story, however,

got very little coverage in the mainstream media and his

coverage had no effect. About three years later, an

American reporter covered the same story and got a

Pulitzer Prize. Then the Korean mainstream media

picked up the story and gave substantial coverage to it.

Mr. Oh realized that it was not the importance of

an issue that determined if it would be news, it was

rather the importance given to the news organization

that determined that. He decided that Korea needed to

have a newspaper that could really challenge the

conservative dominance of the news. So he set out with

a small amount of money and a very small staff to try to

Page 4

influence how the press frames stories, how it deter-

mines what should be the stories that get covered. He

also decided to welcome people to write as citizen

reporters, to support the kinds of stories that were not

being told in the other newspapers. He ended up

welcoming in and opening up the newspaper so that a

broader set of the Korean population could contribute

articles to it and could help set what issues were

covered.

One example is the story of a soldier who had

been drafted into the South Korean army. He devel-

oped stomach cancer. The medical doctors for the

army misdiagnosed his illness as ulcers and hid the

evidence that it could be cancer. He did not find out

until the cancer was too far advanced for successful

treatment. He died shortly after his term in the army

was over. People who knew the soldier wrote the story

and contributed it to OhmyNews. The OhmyNews

staff reporters wrote follow up articles. There were a

number of articles, which led to really looking into

what the situation was.

Jay Hauben: There were 28 articles in 10 days. The

government first said that the incident was not signifi-

cant and that it happened all the time. But as more and

more articles were written and more and more people

were commenting and more and more people were

writing letters and more and more people were blam-

ing the government, the government changed its tune

and acknowledged that there was something seriously

wrong here. The government eventually said it would

put 10 billion won over a 5 year period to have a better

medical system in the armed services. That was the

result of this 10 days of constant articles. Everybody

knew someone in the army that might get sick and they

did not want that to happen. Every mother was upset.

It was a major national phenomenon from these 28

stories in 10 days.

Ronda Hauben: That is the kind of thing that

OhmyNews has done in the Korean edition. The

English language edition does not have regular staff

reporters the way the Korean edition does so is weaker

in what it can do.

A lot of the analysis of OhmyNews in the

journalism literature is only looking at the fact Ohmy-

News uses people as reporters who are not part of a

regular staff. This literature does not look at the whole

context of what ‘OhmyNews’ has attempted and de-

veloped.

But even the practice of the English edition is

worth looking at. There, the Banco Delta – North

Korean story was covered in a number of articles. The

OhmyNews staff welcomed these articles. Not only did

it welcome articles on this topic with no similar cover-

age elsewhere, there was on the staff an editor who used

his experience and knowledge of North Korea to help

the journalists with their articles. He was a very good

person to have as an editor in the English language

edition, to be helpful toward covering that important

aspect of the Korean story. Unfortunately he is not an

editor any longer as they had to cut back on their

editors.

Journalism articles written about OhmyNews

rarely describe this aspect of OhmyNews, that reporters

need a supportive editorial staff that is knowledgeable

about the issues and willing to be really helpful to the

people doing the reporting so that they are not just off

on their own but they can have a discussion and a

communication with the people who work with the

paper itself.

Jay Hauben: As a minor footnote, Ronda has some

evidence that the U.S. embassy in South Korea reads

OhmyNews. She heard this from the U.S. ambassador

to South Korea and read it in a U.S. State Department

press release.

Ronda Hauben: The press release referred to one of

my articles and something that somebody else had

written.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: So netizen journalism is

something political?

Jay Hauben: From our point of view, yes.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m asking this because

some German publishers/newspapers have another kind

of amateur journalism in mind. They think that journal-

ists are too expensive because they must be paid wages.

So they tell their readers to send them photos, videos

and texts and say that they will publish them. The

journalist union is not happy about this.

Ronda Hauben: The dean of the Columbia University

School of Journalism in New York City wrote an article

in The New Yorker magazine where he complained

about what he called ‘citizen journalism’ and referred

to OhmyNews. He wrote that it was “journalism with-

out journalists.” When you carefully read his article,

what it came down to, was that the business form of

journalism – which is basically corporate-dominated in

the U.S. and which aims to make a lot of money – has

very little regard for the nature and quality of the

coverage that the newspapers are allowed to do. He was

Page 5

basically defending the business form of journalism in

the name of defending the journalists. He was not

defending the journalists because he was not critiquing

in any way what the journalists who work for these big

corporations must do to keep their jobs and the crisis

situation that journalism is in in the U.S. because of it.

What was interesting is that he knew about

OhmyNews and he is the dean of the Columbia

Journalism School and yet he presented nothing about

the important stories that OhmyNews has covered.

Instead he referred to one particular day and he listed

three stories covered by three different journalists on

this day and said this was just like the kind of journal-

ism you would have in a church publication or in a

club newsletter. It showed no effort on his part to

understand or seriously consider what OhmyNews has

made possible.

I critiqued what he did in an article in Ohmy-

News International. I also sent an email message to

him asking if he had seen a prior article I had done in

response to what a professor of the journalism school

had posted on ‘The Public Eye’ at CBSNews.com. My

prior article answered the same argument the dean was

now making. The ‘Public Eye’ even gave a link to

what I had written in OhmyNews.

The dean of the Columbia Journalism School

answered my email acknowledging that he had seen

my answer and still he made the same argument that

had been made prior rather than answering my critique

of the argument.

One of the things I pointed out in my critique

was that OhmyNews had helped make it possible for

the people of South Korea in 2002 to elect a candidate

to the presidency from outside of mainstream political

community. The dean mentioned nothing about that

when he trivialized what OhmyNews has done and

what the developments are. He presented none of the

actual situations and had instead a trivial discussion

about the issues. Yet he was allowed to publish his

article in The New Yorker. OhmyNews sent my re-

sponse to his article to The New Yorker. The magazine

would not publish it. It was interesting that this is

being promoted as the evaluation and the understand-

ing of netizen journalism. It is totally inaccurate.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: I’m afraid that some

professional journalism teachers in Germany think in

narrow-minded categories and only see the profes-

sional standard of journalism and their own journalists

but do not realize what the aim of journalism is any-

more – the political participation and the control of the

government.

Ronda Hauben: What I see is that netizen journalism

is getting back to the roots of why you need journalism

and journalists.

In the U.S. there is a first amendment because

there was an understanding, when it was formulated,

that you have to oversee government and that there has

to be discussion and articles and a press that looks at

what government is doing and that discusses it and that

that discussion is necessary among the population. Now

the Internet is making this possible. But the corporate-

dominated, profit-dominated form of journalism in the

U.S. will not allow that to happen even on the Internet.

Netizen journalism fortunately makes it possible.

What is of interest to me is that the Columbia

Journalism School claims that it supports ethics in

journalism. Yet here is a challenge, a challenge to treat

this seriously and to learn about it, to support it, to

encourage it and to help it to spread it. Instead, its dean

does the opposite.

Jay Hauben: Let me add two points. One is that

OhmyNews and Telepolis pay their contributors. So this

is not free journalism. This is a respect for journalistic

effort.

The second point is one Ronda is raising in her

current research. Not only is this new journalism getting

back to the roots and the purpose of journalism but also

it is doing something new and different. Is there some-

thing more than just being the real journalist taking over

because mainstream journalism is failing? There is an

intuition that the Internet is making possible a new

journalism. Perhaps the Chinese are speaking to that

when they ask, “Are we not being citizens and is it not

journalism when we communicate with each other

about the news as we see it and our understandings as

we have them?”

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: Do you think that netizen

journalism will affect the mainstream journalism or that

the mainstream journalism will learn from it?

Ronda Hauben: It turned out to be very surprising to

me that the reporter from Voice of America Korea asked

me some very serious and interesting questions. I would

have expected maybe a left-wing journalist would ask

these questions but not a mainstream or State Depart-

ment journalist.

Why was the Voice of America reporter asking me

these questions? Perhaps some people at the State

Department realized there was serious discussion going

Page 6

on online reflected by my articles but not on Voice of

America or in the mainstream media. And if there is

discussion among people about what is going on, then

that leads to the mainstream media having to learn

something or become irrelevant.

Maybe that is already happening because even

BBC is exploring ways of opening up its discussions

and processes. Maybe netizen journalism has already

had some impact and there is change happening even

though we do not see it yet.

Jay Hauben: Maybe also the distinction between

mainstream and other media is changing.

At least in South Korea, OhmyNews is already a

mainstream media. Three years after it was created,

OhmyNews was reported to be one of the most impor-

tant media in the whole society, judged to be among

the top six most influential media in South Korea.

It is not so clear that what we call the great media

or the mainstream media is left alone to have that title.

The position might be changing. The founder of

OhmyNews, Mr. Oh Yeon-Ho says he would like

OhmyNews to be setting the news agenda for the

Korean society. It is his objective that OhmyNews be

the main, mainstream media or at least he says 50

percent of what happens in the mainstream media

should be from the progressive point of view. There

should not be only the conservative mainstream media

but there should be a progressive mainstream media as

well and then those two together – that is what would

serve the society.

Ronda Hauben: Let me add that in South Korea

other online progressive publications have developed

and online conservative publications have developed.

The media situation is much more vibrant now than it

had been, I think this is as a result of what Mr. Oh

Yeon-Ho has achieved.

Dr. Gabriele Hooffacker: When you look into the

future and imagine what journalism and netizen

journalism will be like in 10 years? What are your

expectations? What do you hope and what do you

think?

Ronda Hauben: It is an interesting challenge that is

being put to us. There is a lot of support from govern-

ments and others toward making big money off of the

Internet. But meanwhile for example, the U.S. society

is in deep trouble because of the ability of government

to do things without listening to the people or consid-

ering what the people’s desires are. In my opinion

netizen journalism holds out the hope and the promise

that there can be a means for the citizens and the

netizens to have more of a way of having what is done

by government be something that is a benefit to the

society instead of harmful. The form this will take is not

clear. But one of the things that Michael wrote in 1992-

1993 was that the net bestows the power of the reporter

on the netizens. He saw that that was already happening

then. And we see Telepolis which last year celebrated

its 10

anniversary and which unfortunately we did not

get to talk about now but which has pioneered a form of

online and netizen journalism that really is substantial

and which has achieved some very important things.

There is OhmyNews in South Korea and there are the

Chinese bloggers and people posting to the forums.

Even in the U.S. some important news forums and

blogs have developed.

Jay Hauben: There are also the people’s journalists in

Nepal who took up to tell the story to the world about

the struggle against the king’s dictatorial powers.

Ronda Hauben: They were able to do that because of

OhmyNews International.

I just looked at those few countries for a con-

ference presentation I gave in Potsdam. I did not look at

all the other places where things are developing. It turns

out that online there is a very vibrant environment.

Something is developing and that is a great challenge to

people interested in this, to look at it seriously and try

to see, firstly what is developing and secondly, is there

a way to give it support and to figure out if there is way

of beginning to have some conferences for people to get

together and have serious papers about what is happen-

ing and some serious discussion toward the question,

can we give each other help for example, to start

something like ‘OhmyNews’ or ‘Telepolis’ in America

or similar things elsewhere. I feel that something will

turn up. It is exciting that so much is in fact going on.

Note

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

Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Wiley – IEEE Computer

Society Press, Los Alamitos, 1997, ISBN: 978-0-8186-7706-9. en

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[Editor’s Note: The following paper was prepared for

the International Summit on Reconstruction of

Journalism conference held at the United Nations New

York Headquarters on May 1-3, 2014.]

Netizen Reporting and Media

Criticism Pressure for a New

Journalism

The South China Tiger,

Anti-CNN and the

Wenchuan Earthquake

by Jay Hauben

I can say free media works the same way

as less-free media. So what’s most impor-

tant? The people I’d say — … . If people

dare to doubt, dare to think own (sic) their

own, do not take whatever comes to them,

then we’ll have a clear mind, not easily be

fooled. kylin

I. – General Background: Media in Crisis

The dominant media in China and in the U.S. are

targets of a common serious criticism. Scholars point

out that the narratives that they contain are not the

news but rather the picture painted under the influence

of the governments and leading establishments in the

respective countries (e.g., Bennett, Lawrence, &

Livingston, 2007; Li, 2003). The Chinese media, at

least until recently, has been described as a party or

propaganda press taking as its purpose to portray and

explain the viewpoints of the leadership and party of

China and to praise socialist development and cast a

negative light on western capitalism. In the U.S., the

closeness and reliance of the mainstream political

media like the NY Times and the Washington Post on

government-provided information and influence and

corporate ownership results in a portrayal of the world

in such a way as to support and give credence to the

establishment’s framing of events and realities. It is

not just at the U.S. mainstream political media but also

at the other major international media like CNN, BBC

and Deutsche Welle that this criticism is aimed.

Similar to the Chinese media, a purpose of the U.S.

and major international media has been to show the

superiority of market capitalism and freedom over

socialism and communism.

The critics ask, whose media are these? They

point out these media fail in any obligation to oversee

or supervise their respective governments. The U.S.

media is in crisis. The level of public confidence sug-

gests a growing rejection especially after its coverage

giving credence to the false story that there were

weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, justifying an

invasion and occupation. The established media in

China is also in crisis. Its traditional state and party

support purpose cannot compete with the liveliness and

breadth of Internet discussion and online investigative

journalism.

In this paper I will argue that netizen activity in

China has served as a pressure for a reexamination and

recasting of journalist practice. Netizens in China have

taken many small events and made them into national

discussions and calls for social or political change. One

study is the case of the South China Tiger. It will show

how the official announcement in 2007 of the sighting

of a rare tiger was turned into an exposure of journalis-

tic weakness and official misconduct. Another case

study is of the anti-cnn website. It will show the netizen

exposure of serious malpractice of the international

media reporting on the March 2008 Lhasa violence.

That exposure by netizens cast serious doubt about the

positive expectation some in China had for the interna-

tional media. Having the concrete evidence of the

malfeasance of international media strengthened the

anti-cnn netizens to create an online forum where media

events were analyzed from many angles in an interna-

tional participatory process that lasted for at least one

year. The study of netizen criticism of Chinese media

coverage of the May 2008 Wenchuan (Sichuan) Earth-

quake will document failures of prominent Chinese

journalists and argue the value and impact of the media

watchdog function netizens in China are increasingly

playing. Journalism, at least in China, has begun to

engage and benefit from this broadening of citizen

participation in its domain.

II. – People in China as Media Critics

At least as far back as the work of Paul Lazarsfeld

and others in the 1940s, there have been empirical

studies and theoretical analyses suggesting that media

audiences are not passive receptacles for media mes-

sages. More recently, Haiqing Yu (2009, p. 9) wrote,

“Empirical research in active audience studies has

demonstrated that people are not … easily fooled and

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manipulated by media producers.” China is a good

example. “Like media audiences everywhere, Chinese

readers, listeners, and viewers are active interpreters of

content, not passive dupes. Over time, they have

learned to discern overtones, subtexts, and what is not

said along with what is.” (Polumbaum, 2001, p. 270)

Active audience theory argues that people learn

to be active decoders of official messages. Many

Chinese people have been and are critical readers of

the state and party media. As an illustration, the story

is told that when in January 1976, Zhou Enlai, a leader

respected by many Chinese people at the time died,

central leadership seeking to delay the announcement

of that news reported that Zhou’s condition was critical

but still his doctors held out hope for his recovery.

Most ordinary people interpreted these reports to mean

Premier Zhou was dead (Naduvath, 2009, p. 116).

Also, mass media and communications in China “have

never operated as the well-oiled totalitarian machine

envisioned by cold warriors.”(Polumbaum, 2001, p.

270) Artists, intellectuals, scholars, and dissidents have

always more or less provided a broader spectrum than

the dominant hegemonic culture sought by the party

and state.

But many people in China have had the expecta-

tion that the mainstream international media would be

more credible. The emergence of the Internet and the

netizens however has made it possible for ordinary

people to share their suspicions about Chinese official

media publically and to turn their critical media sense

onto the faults of the international media like BBC,

CNN, Deutsche Welle, Reuters, etc. The Internet is

making possible a concrete exposure by netizens of the

character and faults of both the main Chinese media

and the previously respected international media.

III. – Who are the Netizens?

Internet adoption in China rapidly expanded

since 1995. Such expansion continues but at a slower

pace. It was reported in January 2014 by the China

Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) that

there are more than 618 million Internet users in

China. In comparison, the U.S. was reported to have

260 million users. Approximately 80% or over 500

million Chinese net users access the Internet on mobile

devices. Many users in China participate in online

forums, some of whom also contribute to the over 280

million Chinese language microblogs, known as

Weibo. CNNIC reports that a smaller set of net users

are active contributors to forum and chat room discus-

sions. Among the users who actively contribute online,

I would locate net users who are “netizens,” who prac-

tice some form of netizenship, that is, they defend the

Internet and contribute actively to it to affect social and

political change.

Netizen as a concept of scholarly interest was first

analyzed in the research of Michael Hauben at Colum-

bia University starting in 1992. Hauben had participated

in the mid and late 1980s on local hobbyist run bulletin

board systems (BBSs) and in global Usenet news-

groups. He writes that he became aware of “a new

social institution, an electronic commons developing.”

(Hauben & Hauben, 1997, p. ix) He undertook research

to explore how and why these communications forums

served as an electronic commons. He posted questions

on newsgroups, mailing lists and portals and found a

very high level “of mutual respect and sharing of

research and ideas fostering a sense of community and

participation.” Hauben found social and political issues

being discussed with seriousness in this online com-

munity which the conventional media and his school

courses rarely if ever covered or covered only from a

narrow angle.

Hauben documented in the book, Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet (Hauben

& Hauben, 1997) which he co-authored with Ronda

Hauben that he found in this community of net users

many for whom their self-identity was generated by

their online participation. Hauben found that there were

people online who actively use and take up to defend

public communication. They oppose censorship and

disruptive online behavior. He recognized this ident-

ification and behavior as a form of network citizenship.

He contracted “net.citizen,” the name on forums in the

1990s for such people, into “netizen” to express the new

online non-geographically based social identity and net

citizenship he attributed to these people.

As the Internet spread in the mid and late 1990s

around the world so did the online self-identity and

practice of netizenship. Two uses of the word netizen

emerged. Especially in analyzing the net in China, it is

necessary to distinguish among all net users (wang min

meaning network people in Chinese) and those users

who participate constructively concerning social and

political issues in forums and chat rooms or on their

blogs and microblogs.

This second category is the user

who comes online for public rather than simply for

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personal and entertainment purposes. They act as cit-

izens of the net “wang luo gong min meaning ‘network

citizens’ in Chinese” and are the netizens of this

article. The distinction must be emphasized because

the Chinese characters for network person wang min

are very often translated into English as “netizen.”

I strictly adopt the second usage. Not all net users

are netizens. My usage is similar to that of Haiqing Yu

who writes, “I use ‘netizen’ in a narrow sense to mean

‘Net plus citizen’ or ‘citizen on the net.’ Netizens are

those who use the Internet as a venue for exercising

citizenship through rational public debates on social

and political issues of common concern.” (Yu, 2004,

p. 304)

I add, however, that netizens are not only ‘citi-

zens on the net’ but also ‘citizens of the net’ signifying

those who actively contribute to the development and

defense of the net as a global communications plat-

form (Hauben & Hauben, 1997, pp. ix-x).

In the examples and discussion to follow, it is

important to recognize that the Internet is basically

global. Geographic and political boundaries on the net

are weaker than in the physical world. There are ap-

proximately 34 million Chinese speaking people living

outside of mainland China including in Taiwan, Hong

Kong, and Singapore. There are perhaps at anyone

time 380,000 Chinese students studying aboard.

For

example, in 2014 there are approximately 235,000 stu-

dents from China studying temporarily in the U.S.

Many Chinese speaking people outside of China take

a keen interest in social and political issues in China.

Those online often participate in forums, chat rooms

and blogs hosted on servers in China and outside.

Chinese speaking netizens outside China gain from the

richness and vibrancy of the mainland netizen com-

munity and add viewpoints, media clips and infor-

mation which further enrich the information envi-

ronment and discussions in which netizens in China

participate. Efforts at what the government and party

of China call supervision and netizens call censorship

have only a limited effect, in part because of the bord-

erless essence of the Internet. In the examples that

follow it is often likely but difficult to tell whether

netizens from outside China have participated.

Information and communication technology

(ICT), for at least the last 20 or 25 years, has been

officially promoted as one of the most important

driving forces of China’s economic development. The

Chinese government and party actively support the

spread of the Internet and its active use by people

within China. Tai Zixue (2006) reports, “The Chinese

government has displayed an unusual level of enthu-

siasm in embracing the Internet since the mid-1990s …

by investing heavily in the infrastructure and in promot-

ing Internet use among its government agencies,

businesses, and citizens.” Another scholar commented,

“In China, if the government does not push, hardly

anything grows so quickly.” (Guo, 2006) When report-

ing about the Internet by media outside of China, the

predominant stress of censorship in China misses this

level of support and adoption. The long-standing

governance philosophy and practice of “benevolent”

supervision and guidance in all aspects of Chinese

society are still prevalent and results in the censorship

emphasized by that media.

But official emphasis on

“reform and opening” especially an economic market

oriented development is changing the nature of such

supervision and guidance. The result is the rapid spread

of the Internet and its active use (averaging for net users

in China in 2014 almost three hours per day) supported

by the highest government and party officials. Broad-

band and mobile access was already available to about

40% of the population by the beginning of 2014.

Although still disproportionately in the urban areas and

with a little over 50% of the people of China without

Internet access, the level, speed of adoption and the

active participation by net users is significant. A foreign

journalist working in Beijing commented that users in

China “are usually too busy enjoying the Internet they

have to lament the Internet they do not have.” And, as

the examples which follow show, many of them are

using it as netizen journalists with the purpose of social

and political improvement.

IV. – Case Studies

China became a particular media focus during the

dramatic events leading up to and surrounding the 2008

Summer Olympics in Beijing. This paper however will

start with an example from 2007 when netizens uncov-

ered fraud and with the eventual help of the mainstream

media achieved official recognition of the fraud and

punishment of the perpetrators and covers up.

South China Tiger (2007)

Although there have been occasional reports in

China that signs of the South China tiger have been

seen or roars heard, the species has been thought to be

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extinct in the wild. There had been no confirmed sight-

ing since 1986. However on Oct. 12, 2007 in a press

conference, the Forestry Department of Shaanxi

Province in northwest China announced a verified

sighting. A South China tiger, the Department spokes-

person claimed, was photographed by a farmer with

optical and digital cameras on Oct. 3. One photo was

released. The spokesperson also said that experts had

confirmed that the 40 digital and 31 film photographs

were authentic. The announcement was carried in local

and a few national media. On Oct 13, China Central

Television, CCTV, the predominant state television

broadcaster in China briefly reported about the official

announcement in its Joint News Broadcast: “Recently,

the rare wild South China has been found in Shaanxi

after going out of sight for more than twenty years. A

peasant in Ankong town, Ping county took a clear

photograph of a wild South China tiger near a cliff.

Experts have determined the photograph to be authen-

tic.” (EastSouthWestNorth, 2007)

But already in the afternoon of Oct 12, the one

released digital photo had been posted along with the

news release on a forum frequented by photographers

and users of the Photoshop software application. Six

hours later, a forum member raised suspicion that the

photograph seemed to have been composed using

Photoshop. The photo was reposted on other forums

discussing photo presentation technologies. Soon a

wave of doubt spread with online contributors citing

irregular effects of illumination and focus, unreal fur

color, lack of three dimensional effect, etc. Some

netizens speculated that the digital photo may have

been taken from a cardboard enlargement placed in the

bushes to be photographed. The next day a self-de-

scribed Photoshop expert argued that based on the size

of the leaves in the released photo, if authentic, the

actual size of the tiger would be near that of a rat.

Comments were reposted and other online com-

munities became involved in the dispute. Various hy-

potheses were proposed but there was near unanimous

conviction, despite the official announcement of au-

thenticity and the reports in the press accepting the

accuracy of the official announcement, the photo was

faked. National and international media picked up and

welcomed the story of the sighting but also began to

include mention of netizen skepticism. Experts an-

swered some of the posts agreeing or disagreeing about

the authenticity of the photos. The farmer reasserted

that he had risked his life to photograph the tiger and

that is photos were genuine. Shaanxi Province officials

defended the announcement. Well-known wildlife pho-

tographers joined the online debate.

The demand arose online for more expert analysis

of all the photos and an independent investigation of the

farmer’s claim. The motive of the Forestry Department

was questioned. Why did it not take more time to verify

the photos? Was it hoping for increased tourism or new

money for a wild life preserve? The online discussion

questioned even more the motives of the authorities

than that of the farmer who also received reward money

for the photos. One netizen posted on the Tianya Forum

under the name First Impression 1. The post was a

response to the CCTV broadcast welcoming the sight-

ing and declaring it authentic. The netizen used Photo-

shop to make an animation of two photos that appeared

online to show they had “identical facial features,

outlines, stripes and height.” He or she wrote, “At first

sight, this photograph could not be more fake. The

lighting, the expressions, the color, the environment …

how can this pass through the examination by experts

on the South China wild tiger as well as photography

experts? Did they make the examination with eyes

shut?” (EastSouthWestNorth, 2007). On Fu Jianfeng’s

blog, (http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4776545401000

bob.html, Oct. 20, 2007), it was reported that the

Shaanxi “Animal Protection Bureau director Wang

Wanyun … told the media: ‘I am willing to guarantee

the authenticity of this photograph with my head.’” The

blogger also reported that a Chinese Academy of

Science plant researcher, Fu Dezhi posted on the

Yuanmu Shanchuan Forum that the leaves in the photos

were either oak or hazelnut which are about 3 cm in

size. In all photos one of the leaves is covering the

tiger’s forehead so the tiger in the photo must be part of

a cropped photograph about 8 inches square. Fu

Jiangfeng ended his blog writing “… people don’t need

their heads, they don’t need to swear, they only need to

know the truth.”

On Nov 15, a netizen posted that he had found the

original picture that was used to fake the South China

tiger sighting. He had discovered a lunar new years

calendar for 2001 which had all the features of the

photos being debated. The Shaanxi authorities re-

sponded that they would continue the investigation.

Eight months later, they tried to end the paper tiger

saga, as it was called on the net, by announcing the

photos were fake. The farmer was arrested on charges

of fraud and 13 provincial officials were dismissed or

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disciplined for their role in the episode. But, netizen

comments which followed mostly complained about

official sluggishness.

Despite the efforts of the “pro-tiger” officials and

the experts they found to defend the authenticity of the

sighting, many netizens had kept up the exposure of

fraud. As in the Hwang Woo-suk case in South Korea

where netizens challenged the officially supported

stem cell scientist, Chinese netizens were willing to

challenge the photos as fake even when the provincial

authorities and the mainstream media initially backed

their authenticity. In the end the search for the truth

prevailed.

Netizen attention to detail in photographs was

repeated when media reports appeared especially in

North America and Europe about the violence in Tibet

in March 2008.

Anti-cnn (2008)

On March 14, 2008, Tibetan demonstrators in

Lhasa the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in

China turned violent. A Canadian tourist and the few

foreign journalists who witnessed the situation put on-

line photos, videos and descriptions documenting the

deadly violence of the rioters against citizens and pro-

perty (Al Jezeera, 2008; cali2882, 2008; Kadfly,

2008). That was even before the official Chinese

media started to report it. The mainstream media in

China framed the story as violence against Han and

Muslim Chinese fomented by the Tibetan government

in exile. Much of the mainstream international media

like BBC, VOA, and CNN framed the violence as the

result of discriminatory Chinese rule and Chinese

police brutality. (For an exception see Jill Drew, “Eye-

witnesses Recount Terrifying Day in Tibet,” Washing-

ton Post Foreign Service, Thursday, March 27, 2008,

online at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn

/content/article/2008/03/26 /AR2008032603275.html.)

Wide anger was expressed by many Chinese

aboard when they discovered that some of the media in

the U.S., Germany, and the U.K., were using photos

and videos from clashes between police and pro-

Tibetan independence protestors in Nepal and India to

support that media’s claim of violence by Chinese

police. A digital slide show appeared online (dionysos-

615, 2008) containing an annotated presentation of 11

photos from CNN, Der Spiegel, the Washington Post,

N24 German TV, BBC, Fox News, Bild, etc. The

photos were mislabeled and in other ways inappropriate

for the articles with which they appeared. The photos

included screen shots from German TV stations that

consistently labels Nepalese police as Chinese. A BBC

photo showed an ambulance using it to illustrate a

“heavy military presence.” A photo used by CNN to

show Chinese military violence was carefully cropped

to hide rioters throwing rocks at a Chinese military

vehicle. The slide show ended with a slide which read,

“These western media should be shamed for the report-

ing they’ve made purposely and whoever in the world,

intending to slander Chinese people to promote territo-

rial integrity of China will be doomed to failure.” The

slide show spread widely in cyberspace in and outside

China.

Within a few days of the appearance of the

inaccurate and misleading reporting, Rau Jin a recent

university graduate launched the anti-cnn website

(http://www.anti-cnn.com). He explained that after

netizen anger and discussion he wanted to “speak out

our thoughts and let the westerners learn about the

truth.”

The top page of anti-cnn featured articles,

videos and photos documenting some of the alleged

distortions in the coverage of the Tibet events. The

website also had forum sections first in Chinese then

also in English. The organizers set as the goal of anti-

cnn to overcome media bias in the West by fostering

communication between Chinese netizens and netizens

outside of China so that the people of the world and of

China could have accurate knowledge about each other.

They wrote on their website, “We are not against the

western media, but against the lies and fabricated

stories in the media.” anti-cnn was chosen as the site

name, one of the organizers said, “because CNN is the

media superpower. It can do great damage so it must be

watched and challenged when it is wrong.”

But the site

was not limited to countering errors in the reporting of

CNN. It invited submissions that documented bias or

countered misrepresentations of China in the global

media.

Rau received hundreds of offers of help finding

examples of media distortions. He gathered a team of

40 volunteers to monitor the submissions for fact-

ualness and to limit emotional threads. Posts that were

name calling or attacks on individuals or groups were to

be deleted. Emotional posts were not to be allowed

follow-up comments. Forum discussions were started

on “Western Media Bias,” “The Facts of Tibet” and

“Modern China.” In the first five days the site attracted

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200,000 visits many from outside of China. Over time

serious threads contained debates between Han Chi-

nese and both Westerners and Tibetan and Uyghur

Chinese trying to show each other who they were and

where they differ or where they agree.

On anti-cnn, in answer to the exposure of the

Western media practice, many visitors from outside

China posted their criticism of Chinese government

media censorship. In their responses to such criticism,

some Chinese acknowledged such censorship but

argued it was easy to circumnavigate, that all societies

have their systems of bias or censorship and that net-

izens everywhere must dare to think for themselves

and get information from many sources. One netizen

with the alias kylin wrote:

I can say free media works the same way

as less-free media. So what’s most impor-

tant? The people I’d say— … . If people

dare to doubt, dare to think own (sic) their

own, do not take whatever comes to them,

then we’ll have a clear mind, not easily be

fooled. I can say, if such people exist, then

should be Chinese … the least likely to be

brainwashed, when have suffered from all

those incidents, cultural revolution, plus a

whole long history with all kinds of tricks.

Some analysis of anti-cnn in the Western media

criticized it as a form of nationalism (e.g., Kuhn, 2008)

or of being somehow connected with the Chinese

government. The Chinese government and anti-cnn

organizers deny any connection with each other and no

verifiable evidence of such a connection has been

produced. There are often expressions of nationalist

emotions in Chinese cyberspace, for example calls for

boycotting Japanese and French products. After the

riot in Lhasa, the Chinese government and media

blamed the Dalai Lama and “splitists.” There was an

upsurge of nationalist defense of China including on

anti-cnn. The moderators on anti-cnn and netizens in

general however are opponents of nationalism arguing

that it is a form of emotionalism and needs to be

countered by rational discourse and the presentation of

facts and an airing of all opinions. The moderators

often answered Chinese nationalists with admonitions

to “calm down and present facts.” While nationalist

sentiment and love of country and anger appeared

often on the anti-cnn forums, the opportunity for a

dialogue across national and ethnic barriers is an

expression of the internationalism characteristic of

netizens.

Chinese citizens in general know that the main-

stream Chinese media have a long history as a con-

trolled and propaganda press. Since the 1990s, there has

been a commercialization of that media and more

openness but still much of the national media has strong

remnants from its past. On the other hand the main-

stream international media had been widely assumed in

China as a more reliable source of information about

some events such as SARS and for alternative view-

points. The widespread distribution by netizens like Rau

Jin of exposure of distortions and bias in major exam-

ples of the international mainstream media called into

question for many Chinese people their positive expec-

tation about that media. It also attracted the attention of

others who questioned whether the so called Western

mainstream media is any less a propaganda or political

media than the Chinese mainstream media. After

western media framing of the war in the country of

Georgia in August 2008 as the fault of Russia, a Rus-

sian netizen started a thread on anti-cnn suggesting a

Russian-Chinese alliance. He wrote:

Russian problems with the Western media

are identical to Chinese problems … . What

[do] we need to do so that their publications

about countries like China and Russia will

be written in a fair tone rather than being

politically motivated? I would be most

happy to hear your opinion on these matters.

Over its first year, the anti-cnn website had be-

come a significant news portal. After a year, there was

a debate to determine its future. Some of the founders

left. The site continued with separate forum sections in

Chinese and English but became less focused than it

was before on exposing media bias. As a continuation

of anti-cnn, the April Media Group was founded by Rau

Jin. April Media sponsored Chinese and English lan-

guage websites both known as M4. The two sites

carried news reports and comments not usually found

elsewhere in Chinese media and exposures of the

ongoing media fabrications, for example about alleged

crimes of the government of Syria.

Wenchuan Earthquake (2008)

On May 12, 2008 at 14:28 in the afternoon local

time a massive earthquake struck in south-central

China. The epicenter of the earthquake was in rural

Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province and measured 8.0

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on the Richter Scale. The world outside of the quake

zone began to learn of the earthquake one minute later,

at 14:29, when a post on the “Tianya Mixed Talk”

forum read, “Very Urgent!!!! Where has a massive

earthquake occurred???” By 14:30 a video was posted

on YouKu and by 14:35 a headline on the Baidu

bulletin board reported, “Earthquake happens in

Sichuan region.” From then on posts escalated. Tianya

is the most popular forum website and had at the time

on average over 200,000 simultaneous visitors. Like-

wise YouKu, the most popular video website at the

time, and Baidu, the most popular search engine, had

tens of thousands of users online when the Wenchuan

disaster first hit. Professional news reports began to

appear at 14:46 with a dispatch by the official online

site Xinhuanet (Nip, 2009, p. 98).

Online communication was interrupted in the

epicenter. But some witnesses and survivors were able

to send out messages using mobile phones which the

recipients put online. Also, survivors who were able to

walk or drive out of the disaster area brought with then

photographs and videos they took using their phones or

cameras. These began to appear online and were

picked up by off line media and by CCTV. With roads

destroyed and all landline telephone service down to

and in the hardest hit villages, material posted by

netizens gave the mainstream media some of the

stories and all of the graphics for its reports.

Great concern was felt and voiced throughout

China and the rest of the world for the victims of the

earthquake. There was a hunger for news. Netizens

started a discussion thread on “Tianya Mixed-Talk” for

contributions of casualty information and estimates. As

the thread was updated it was visited almost one

million times in the first nine hours after the quake

first hit.

Netizens provided information from the disaster

zone, expressed their sympathy and emotions, started

to organize grassroots relief efforts, organized missing

person lists and in many ways contributed online in the

relief and rescue effort. Some netizens also raised

serious questions. A netizen posted on the Tianya

Mixed Talk forum a few hours after the quake “Some

questions and reflections about this quake.” He ques-

tioned why there was no early warning of the coming

of such a major quake. Netizens searched for and

found evidence that there were early warnings which

the Seismology Bureau ignored. A netizen on Tianya

left one remark, “Before May 12, some strange nature

phenomena predicting earthquakes appeared in earth-

quake zone and some local persons worried about earth-

quakes coming, but local officials and forecast agencies

declared that the rumor of earthquake was baseless and

people need not worry.”(Xu, 2008) Mainstream journal-

ists joined in the pursuit of this story questioning some

of the relevant officials. Netizens also called attention

to the number of schools which collapsed and ques-

tioned whether the problem was systemic.

The earthquake was the main news event for

many days. Government officials allowed journalists

unprecedented access to the disaster zone. The Internet

and the off-line media were watched intently for news

and understanding of the disaster and the unfolding

rescue effort. Criticism began to appear online of the

behavior and reporting of some of the professional

journalists, especially those seeming to be insensitive to

the victims and survivors. One well known anchor

person from the Phoenix TV station in Hong Kong,

Chen Luyu, appeared at a destroyed village with heavy

makeup, wearing designer sunglasses and carrying a

parasol. One netizen commented:

Phoenix Chen Luyu, you dressed like that

kind of a show at the ruins … . I put many

viewers to see your ugly performance … the

majority of the audience spurned your be-

havior, you are a very individual phenom-

enon, 99% of people really want to help the

suffering compatriots, not to see a show.

(Reese & Jai, 2009, p. 227; Tianya, 2008)

Many other netizens showed similar disdain

toward Chen Luyu and other reporters who seemed

frivolous or insensitive. Reese and Dai (2009, p. 227)

reported that “[t]he same anger emerged online toward

journalists when they forced busy rescuers and seri-

ously injured or dying victims to be interviewed, when

they took up seats in rescue helicopters, when they

presented the tragedy of the earthquake with bloody and

graphic pictures and descriptions, or when they shot

flash photos of victims faces without regard for the

trauma the bright lights would inflict on those who had

spent so much time trapped under the ruins in dark-

ness.”

Netizen criticism was also aimed at CCTV’s

coverage of the disaster and rescue effort. The awk-

wardness and insensitivity of some of its coverage was

not only blamed on the reporters but also on the media

organization itself. A well read blogger and former

CCTV reporter, Shi Feike, suggested that CCTV’s con-

Page 14

trol over its reporters and infrequent live coverage of

major disasters like the earthquake accounted for the

failures of some of its earthquake rescue reporting

(Shi, 2008).

During the time of the earthquake and rescue

efforts, activities of the netizens became part of the

news covered by the mainstream media. But also,

netizen criticism of some well-known journalists and

of, for example, CCTV was widely circulated online.

As a result, respect for the netizens throughout China

was enhanced. One observer commented, “I am deeply

touched by the patriotism and humanism shown in the

activities of our netizens.” Another wrote, “This

catastrophic disaster aroused the civil conscience and

responsibility of Chinese, and showed the power of

Chinese netizens.”

V. – Discussion

The Three Cases

Professional or mainstream journalists in the

three cases above required the collaboration of

netizens and ordinary citizens for their coverage. It

was difficult for the former to get to rural Wenchuan

after the earthquake or to have the expertise and

critical attitude of the online photographer community.

Only after netizens around the world exposed the

media fabrications about the Lhasa riots was the

mainstream media in China able to report about them

by reporting about the anti-cnn website. But the

mainstream media have more access to economic and

official resources and TV and newspapers are still

popular in China. Media scholars looking at China see

an emerging netizen-journalist collaboration. But

besides collaboration, netizens are playing the role of

media critics.

The special significance of anti-cnn was that

netizens took up the important task of media watch-

dog, but especially a watchdog over the most powerful

media like CNN and BBC. Some scholars are calling

such media practice the “Fifth Estate” because the

watchdog is over the media itself. In an article, “The

Computer as a Democratizer,” Michael Hauben argued

for the crucial role in a society of a watchdog press

(Hauben & Hauben, 1997, pp. 315-320). In every so-

ciety, major sectors of the media echo and support the

current holders of power either internally or in the

world. Now, with the netizens, there is an emerging

media and journalism which tries to serve society by

watching and criticizing the abuses of those with

power and the media which serves them. Anti-cnn

provided for the whole world an alternative to the

media which was distorting the truth about the Lhasa

riot. The net users who launched anti-cnn took for

themselves a public and international mission, using the

net to watch critically the main international media.

They took up to address journalism via exposures and

discussion and debate. In the process they expanded the

practice of journalism.

Similarly, at the time of the Wenchuan earth-

quake, netizens created a space for the public to ex-

amine and discuss journalistic operation not only at the

individual level, but also at the organizational level

(Reese & Jai, 2009, p. 228). Holding professional

journalists to their own high standards was a service to

the profession. Discussing the practice of CCTV, the

predominant state television broadcaster in China,

added to netizen supervision of the official media and

encouraged public scrutiny and criticism of even the

official media.

Context

In 2003 in China, there were numerous large scale

netizen commotions and almost 58,000 officially

acknowledged off line social and political ‘mass inci-

dents.’ In September 2004, the Fourth Session of the

Sixteenth Chinese Communist Party Central Committee

responded. The long standing policy orientation ‘Effi-

ciency First’ was withdrawn. It had been criticized by

netizens who in the course of their uprisings traced the

specific problem to this systemic root. Netizens argued

that ‘efficiency first’ meant putting business success

before the welfare of the great majority of the people.

The Central Committee replaced ‘Efficiency First’ with

the policy orientation ‘Harmonious Society’. This con-

ceptual framework seemed to be aimed at moving the

focus in China away from only economic efficiency and

toward a societal balance. One practice advised for the

implementation of the harmonious society was to foster

“interest expression” ( Li Yi Biao Da) by accommodat-

ing more ordinary citizens’ voices in the public sphere

(Lei, 2012, p. 135).

Some of the party and state support for netizen

activity stems from this policy decision to encourage

interest expression. So also does the increasing incorp-

oration of reporting about netizen activity and netizen

concerns in the mainstream media and parallel reporting

by netizens and professional journalists of events which

arouse netizen concern. The dominant stress of censor-

Page 15

ship reported by media outside of China hides this

level of support and the rapidly expanding new use for

social and political reporting, discussion and debate in

China.

Every year since 2003, there has been dozens of

national netizen uprisings and commotions around

social and political issues, sometimes exposing fraud

or corruption or questioning government actions or

explanations, sometimes discussing foreign events like

disruption of the Olympic touch relay, sometimes

exposing failures of the press or of star journalists.

They have become a normal aspect of Chinese society.

Netizen Effect on Journalism in China

Often ahead of the mainstream media, netizen

uprisings set the news agenda. Local events are given

by netizen activity national or international attention.

In alliance with more independent journalists and

editors, online issues can spread to the main stream

national media and to the whole Chinese people.

Netizen critical framing of issues often differs from

government and mainstream media framing. When

popular opinion is formed about these issues it often

follows the netizen rather than the government or

mainstream media framing. Also, the fight around

censorship is creative and spirited not only by netizens.

When journalists have stories rejected they sometimes

put the stories online, often in their own blogs or

microblogs (called J-Blogs). More and more the stories

get out despite the imposed restrictions. Even though

there is still a significant level of official media super-

vision and control, a growing body of critical reporting

is occurring often encouraged by or encouraging

netizen excitement.

Some journalists come online for their leads and

to find contacts to interview. Some are emboldened by

netizen exposures and numbers to dig deeper and take

on more controversial topics. The result is the media

environment in China is livelier than in societies with

less netizen activity even if those societies have less

media supervision and guidance.

Setting the agenda, framing issues, arousing pub-

lic opinion and supervising the media are all aspects of

political power in modern society. That the netizens in

China are able to play these roles, often with the help

of more mainstream journalists and editors suggests a

political dynamism in Chinese society that is denied by

critics of China. Netizens in China are developing into

a force contributing to motion of Chinese society in the

direction of greater citizen participation. Those journal-

ists who ally with the netizens are helping a new

journalism to emerge, a netizen journalism in China but

also globally.

Appendix: Two Case Studies

Case 1: The Death of Sun Zhigang

(2003)

To help control migration of rural people to the cities, the

Chinese government had in place for more than 20 years, “Mea-

sures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants.”

On March 17, 2003, a college graduate from the city of

Wuhan working away from home in the city of Guangzhou was

stopped for an identity check. He was detained under these meas-

ures because he did not have the temporary residence card he was

asked to show. In the police station he contacted two friends who

came quickly to vouch for him and his employed status. The police

would not release him. Three days later his friends tried to contact

him and were notified that he died from a heart attack. After

learning of Mr. Sun’s death, his relatives and friends contacted the

local police for an explanation but received no definite answer as

to what happened.

With financial help from Mr. Sun’s former classmates, his

family was able to have an autopsy performed which indicated that

Mr. Sun was brutally beaten before his death. One of the class-

mates who was studying media in Beijing posted an appeal for help

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

media professionals from all over China. A journalist working for

the South Metropolitan Daily took the post as a lead and decided

to initiate interviews of the family and authorities involved.

About

one month after the death, a detailed report about it appeared in the

South Metropolitan Daily with the headline, “University graduate

detained and cruelly beaten to death for not showing temporary

residence card.”

On the same day, the journalist also made the

report available online on the Southern Net news site.

Following the reports, the news was picked up by editors of

other online news portals. The net was quickly flooded with anger

at the death and appeals for justice. Major national forums

fea-

tured extensive discussions of the detention system, the death of

Mr. Sun and its implications. Other netizens commented about the

obvious injustice and denial of his constitutional rights. Portal sites

made the case a Hot Topic where links to related stories were

gathered. Chinese language forums outside of China were also used

for discussions and analysis of the case.

A memorial page was launched by a software engineer. It

eventually received over 200,000 visits, many visitors leaving

comments, messages of sadness and some money donations to the

family. Some comments gave examples of other cases of police

brutality. Others went further, demanding an end to the official

policy that treated migrants as lower class citizens.

The intense online reaction influenced further reporting first

by big non-governmental media and then by the mainstream

national media, feeding more online ferment. A special committee

was formed by the Guangzhou government to investigate Sun’s

death. The subsequent blunt denial by the police of responsibility

enraged many netizens. Their reaction was critical comments now

focusing on the weakness of the investigation procedures.

Page 16

Contributions of articles, responses, comments and calls for

action appeared online from activists, lawyers and academics, all

of whom had no other option of where to publish their critical

analysis. Online news articles typically received tens of thousands

of responses. Live chat discussions formulated demands for a

thorough investigation, punishment for those involved, change or

abolition of vagrancy measures, and an immediate end to deporta-

tions. The combination of online outrage and mainstream media

coverage made the case a topic of household conversation

everywhere in China. People’s Daily began to publish selected

netizen comments in its online news site. Pressure from online

communities, social groups and the central government gave the

local officials no choice but to initiate a more serious invest-

igation. The investigators acknowledged that netizen pressure

added to their determination, resulting in thirteen arrests reported.

An open trial from June 5 to 9 ended with 12 convictions of

guards at the detention center and some of the detainees. There

was one death sentence. Twenty-three governmental officials and

police officers were disciplined for their roles in the death and

lack of action after it.

Even after the arrest, online petitions were circulated and

online protest letters were addressed to the National People’s

Congress calling for abolition of the current custody and repatri-

ation system. Such letters virtually never appear in Chinese off

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

Violation of ‘Legislation Law’ by the Holding System: The Case

of Sun Zhigang” on a site maintained by the government which

was followed by an online examination of the existing anti-

vagrancy laws. On June 18, after over 20 years of enforcement,

the State Council decide to abolished the 1982 Measures under

which Mr. Sun had been detained. New measures were initiated

which did not allow for detention but required a system of help for

homeless people be available on a voluntary basis.

The collaboration of netizen and traditional media set the

news agenda and helped public opinion to form so that the death

of Sun Zhigang, an ordinary person, was given extensive national

coverage. This led to the relatively quick end of a long standing

oppressive and discriminatory law. One scholar described this as

“one of the first cases of popular opinion overriding and resetting

official agendas and the first demonstration of the sociopolitical

power of Chinese netizenship.”

Case 2: BMW Incident (2003)

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

husband, rode their tractor loaded with onions through a narrow

street in Harbin, capital city of Heilongjiang Province in Northeast

China. The tractor accidentally scrapped the rearview mirror of a

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

by Su Xiuwen’s businessman husband. Ms. Su caused a commo-

tion haranguing the two farmers because of the damage to her hus-

band’s expensive car. Then she got back into the car and drove it

into the crowd which had gathered because of the commotion. Ms.

Liu was killed and 12 bystanders were injured.

Ms. Su was tried in a Harbin court on Dec. 20. None of the

bystanders testified. They had each received money from Ms. Su’s

husband. After two hours, the court ruled Ms. Su had not been

properly handling her car. The death of Ms. Liu was judged acci-

dental. Ms. Su was given a two year sentence which was sus-

pended. There was brief local media coverage of the trial and it

seemed it would pass as a fatal traffic accident, one of many every

day in every country.

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

on the Strong Nation Forum, “Attention: The BMW killed a farm-

er.” The person posting made three main points: 1. Ms. Su was

related to a high ranking official. 2. Ms. Su had killed Ms. Liu

deliberately. 3. The trial did not follow legal procedures. The post

unleashed a wide spread questioning and discussion of the case

throughout Chinese language cyberspace. Soon there were over

70,000 comments and opinions relating to the case on one portal

alone. Many netizens saw in the incident a posing of the questions

of rich versus poor in China, and justice versus corruption.

Within two weeks the BMW incident became the online

hottest topic in the China. Journalists from outside the province

who followed the online commotion went to Harbin to investigate

and report for their newspapers. After January 8, China’s main-

stream national media began intensive coverage. After all this

attention, local authorities and legal organs began a reinvestigation.

The online uproar over the case put it on the national news

agenda and offered an alternative framing to that of the court and

the local media. Almost half of the early posts looked for “behind

the scenes” reasons for Ms. Su’s light sentence. Less than ten per-

cent accepted the court’s decision. Other netizens sought to under-

stand the underlying causes. Some suggested remedies like greater

government accountability to public opinion.

There was a growing call for the authorities to open a new

investigation and hold a new trial. When it was reported in the

press that province officials promised “a satisfactory solution to the

‘BMW case’ will be offered to the public,” a post on the Strong

Nation Forum titled “Why should we trust you?” precipitated a

cynical thread casting doubt on the credibility of the officials.

More and more the question raised was what kind of China do we

want? A netizen with the alias stellyshi commented that history

shows that “… justice originates with the truth. But now in the

world, or in China, the truth means nothing. In modern China, with

power and money, you can say anything as you like. Even you can

kill one person as you want. So, what is this? Is this fare (sic)? Is

this so-called socialist country? I don’t think so. Never!!! … .”

The hundreds of thousands of online posts took many forms

including analysis, argumentation, poems, novels, dramas, letters,

animations, and jokes. Most posts were sympathetic to Ms. Liu and

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

BMW and the onion cart became symbols of the growing gap and

the character differences between the rich and the poor in China.

While much coverage in the mainstream media called for govern-

ment transparency and social improvement, a major direction taken

in netizen posts was to raise the question of the direction in which

China should be going. The mainstream media called for step-by-

step social improvement, the online discussion raised deeper

systemic questions.

The off-line media and the government in response to the

massive netizen activity took more action then they would have

otherwise. A new investigation was promised and a retrial of Ms.

Su. But by mid January the government forbad the mainstream

media from any further coverage. It also required the deletion of

some and finally all old posts and any new netizen contributions on

the major forums and portals. At the new trial there was no greater

penalty for Ms. Su and the monitoring and deleting of BMW re-

lated posts caused online attention to shift to other incidents and

Page 17

issues including net censorship.

In this incident all the netizen activity did not lead to a

different legal outcome. But it was another example that ferment

around a not very uncommon event can lead to examination of

contradictions buried in society. It is arguable that this netizen

uprising had an effect on Chinese society regardless of the legal

outcome or the deletion of hundreds of thousands of netizen

comments. And in September 2004, the Fourth Session of the Six-

teenth CCP Central Committee rejected the long standing policy

orientation “efficiency first” which had been criticized by some

netizens who in the course of their uprisings traced the specific

problem to this systemic root.

Notes

1. “Preface: What is a netizen,” an earlier version is online at:

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

2. Forum software hosted on Internet accessible servers allows for

sequential and threaded online text discussions which can be

monitored and moderated. Similarly hosted chat room software

allows for simultaneous multiple participant real time text

conversations. In China, most forums allow alias registration and

are often archived. Chat room sessions are ephemeral and are not

easily monitored.

3. Chinese students are studying in some 103 countries and most

densely populated in schools in the United States, Britain,

Australia, Canada, Germany, France and Japan.

4. For a discussion of Internet control in China, see Kluver 2006.

5. Quoted in China Daily, April 2, 2008,

https://www.chinadaily

.com.cn/china/2008-04/02/content_6587120_2.htm

6. Interview with anti-cnn webmaster Qi Hanting, April 19, 2008,

translated from Chinese. See Hauben, 2008.

7. Machine translated from posts in Chinese at Tianya (2008) chat

forum about the performance of Chen.

8. Chinese original cached at Baidu Content is no longer avail-

able.

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

example, Ibid., Tai (2006), pp. 259-268 and other references in the

following notes.

10. Ibid., p. 260.

11. Shaoguag Wang, “Changing Models of China’s Policy

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

12. “A university graduate was taken into custody without a

temporary residence permit and was beaten to death,” in Southern

Metropolis Daily, April 4, 2003, online at: http://news.sina.com

.cn/s/2003-04-25/09501015845.shtml (In Chinese). See also,

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

Case of Post-Mao China,” Social Semiotics, 16 (2), June 2006, pp.

303-326.

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

ml (No longer available.)

14. Like Strong Nation Forum (qiangguo luntan), Development

Forum (fazhan luntan) and China Youth Forum (zhongqing

luntan)

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

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

critique, 15 (1) Spring 2007,

https://www.researchgate.net/public

ation/265748880_Talking_linking_clicking_The_politics_of

_AIDS_and_SARS_in_urban_China

16. Christina Yuqiong Zhuo and Patricia Moy, “Frame Building

and Frame Setting: The Interplay Between Online Public Opinion

and Media Coverage,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the

International Communication Association, Dresden, June 16, 2006.

17. Comment #11 at: http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/redirect.php?tid

=39672&goto=lastpost&highlight=n (No longer available.)

18. Ibid., Shaoguang Wang, note 11, p. 80.

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[Editor’s Note: The following article documents how

some of the unifying foundation was set for the broad

nonviolent demonstrations of the people of Egypt

which took place January 25 to February 11, 2011.]

Netizens in Egypt and the

Republic of Tahrir Square*

by Ronda Hauben

On Wednesday February 8, 2011 the Egyptian

Ambassador to the United Nations, Maged A.

Abdelaziz, spoke to journalists at a stakeout outside

the Security Council.

There had been an ongoing set

of questions to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his

spokesman and to the Security Council President by

journalists covering the United Nations in an effort to

understand what role the UN is able to play in the

struggle going on in Egypt. In response to a question

about the ongoing assault at the time on journalists by

police in Egypt, the Ambassador said that someone

from the foreigner side was instigating the uprising.

This refrain accusing outsiders of instigating the

Egyptian uprising had also been expressed by Egyptian

government officials a few days earlier. What is signif-

icant about this claim is that it denies the internal

process by which the Egyptian people had organized

themselves over a multi year series of struggles. These

struggles included labor struggles, anti-repression dem-

onstrations and online discussions to help to determine

a set of political and economic demands uniting the

different sectors of Egyptian society.

The claim of outside instigators ignores the role

played by active online discussion and other forms of

communication by a diversity of political actors, of

citizens empowered by their access to the Internet, who

had been striving for a more just and dynamic Egypt.

In the early 1990s, a university student in New

York, Michael Hauben, took up to do research to

explore the political power of the developing networks.

Through his research he discovered that a new form of

citizenship was being born online.

In response to a set of questions Hauben sent out

to people with Net access in the early 1990s, he re-

ceived descriptions of how people were exploring how

to use the Net to solve the many social and political

problems of our times. He called these users who were

active citizens exploring how the Net could help to

make a better world netizens (Net + Citizen = Netizen).

For Hauben, not all users were netizens. Instead he

reserved the use of this term to describe those users who

empowered by the Net, were exploring how to contrib-

ute to a better world.

Many of the characteristics that Hauben dis-

covered among netizens in the early 1990s are also the

characteristics of netizens who have been part of the

struggle to change Egypt.

Describing some of how the process of mobil-

ization developed, Charles Hirschkind, in his article,

“From the Blogosphere to the Street: The Role of Social

Media in the Egyptian Uprising” writes, “The seeds of

this spectacular mobilization had been sown from

across the political spectrum.”

Hirschkind describes

how a political alliance grew up between the secular

leftist organizations and groups with Islamic ties

(particularly the Muslim Brotherhood), working to-

gether to defend victims of state torture.

Another example of an organization working

across the political spectrum in Egypt was the Kifaya

movement, a coalition of those with diverse political

leanings united in their demand that Egyptian President

Mubarak step down and that his son Gamal not succeed

Page 19

him.

With the emergence of this movement in 2004-

2005, bloggers became a significant part of the protest

activities, reporting on the protests and discussing

them online. One blogger, Wael Abbas is mentioned

for distributing a video clip of a man being physically

abused by the police in Cairo. This video and other

forms of online reporting helped to build a movement

in Egypt against police abuse.

Another contribution to the protests was from the

many labor struggles in previous years. Strikes helped

to spread the sense of the importance of struggle in

Egypt. Bloggers, Facebook groups, and others online

took part in the discussion of grievances and in spread-

ing the information about mobilizations.

April 6, 2008 was an important example of the

power of the alliance of online netizens and workers

working together to challenge the abusive practices of

the Mubarak government.

Hirschkind describes how online discussion and

communication helped to transform diverse political

ideas into a common set of political objectives. “They

have pioneered,” he writes, “forms of political critique

and interaction that can mediate and encompass the

heterogeneity of religious and social commitments that

constitute Egypt’s contemporary political terrain.”

It was this evolving communication among

Egyptian netizens, not foreign instigation, that helped

to provide the platform for a movement which was

able to embrace a broad spectrum of Egyptian citizens.

Describing the movement that developed, Nubar

Hovsepian, in his article, “The Arab Pro-Democracy

Movement: Struggles to Redefine Citizenship” writes:

Organizationally it is more like a network

than our outmoded top down structures . …

This is a revolution in the making sparked

by youth who are determined to alter the

dominant paradigm of politics and power

that precludes the central idea which under-

grids democracy citizenship under a social

contract.

Hovsepian argues that a new relationship be-

tween the Egyptian government and the citizens is at

the heart of the movement:

Simply put, Arab youth are leading a pro-

found revolt whose central objective is the

transformation of former ‘subjects’ into

‘citizens’ with agency and voice to make

demands of their rulers. The rulers are ex-

pected to be servants of their citizens –

nothing less is acceptable.

Mohammed Bamyeh in his article, “The Egyptian

Revolution: First Impressions from the Field”

de-

scribes the 18 days of the Egyptian uprising as the dawn

of a new civic order. He points to many of the grass-

roots forms that developed during the days of the

uprising, one of which was a mass “civic character as a

conscious ethical contrast to the state’s barbarism.” He

describes the transformation of people’s sense of

themselves and of their capability as an integral part of

the process of the movement:

Like in the Tunisian Revolution, in Egypt

the rebellion erupted as a sort of a collective

world earthquake – where the central de-

mands were very basic, and clustered

around the respect for the citizen, dignity,

and the natural right to participate in the

making of the system that ruled over the

person.

This goal, Bamyeh explains, was expressed as well by

even,

Muslim Brotherhood participants (who)

chanted at some point with everyone else

for a ‘civic’ (madaniyya) state – explicitly

distinguished from two other possible alter-

natives: religious (diniyya) or military

(askariyya) state.

Describing the significance of these develop-

ments, Hovsepian regards the Egyptian events as the

Arab equivalent of the French Revolution. In a paper I

presented in Paris at Sorbonne III in summer 2010,

titled “Watchdogging to Challenge the Abuse of Power:

Netizenship in the 21

Century,” I proposed that the

important achievement of the French Revolution was

the conceptual transformation of the former subjects

into the citizens to be regarded as the sovereign of the

State.

“It was the citizens who were to possess the

power of the nation … . It is among the citizens that the

discussion and decisions to determine the progress of

the nation belongs.” This goal or vision has been

considered only as an ideal for over 200 years, as

citizens have lacked the capability to exert their super-

vision over the government or corporate officials who

have grabbed the power of the state.

The Egyptian revolution had its groundwork set

by the Egyptian netizens and it is this foundation that

provides a strength to meet the many trials to be faced

in the days and years after 2011.

Page 20

Hence it is not foreign instigators who are

responsible for seeding the soil of the mighty move-

ment that removed Mubarak from power. Instead it

was a resurgence of the ideals and demands of citizens

which fueled the French Revolution, but which are

now strengthened by the actions and deeds of the

netizens.

Notes

1. Stakeout at Security Council, Maged A. Abdelaziz to the press

on February 8, 2011. https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/ass

et/U110/U110208g/

2. Michael Hauben, “The Net and the Netizens, in On the History

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

Press,

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

3. Charles Hirschkind, “From the Blogosphere to the Street: The

Role of Social Media in the Egyptian Uprising,” Jadaliyya,

February 9, 2011.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/599

/from-the-blogosphere-to-the-street_the-role-of-social-media-in-

the-egyptian-uprising

4. Nubar Hovsepian, “The Arab Pro-Democracy Movement:

Struggles to Redefine Citizenship,” Jadaliyya, February 9, 2011.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/588/the-arab-pro-

democracy-movement_struggles-toredefine-citizenship

5. Mohammed Bamyeh, “The Egyptian Revolution: First Impres-

sions from the Field [Updated],” Jadaliyya, February 11, 2011.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/561/the-egyptian-

revolution_first-impressions-from-thefieldupdated

6. Ronda Hauben, “Watchdogging to Challenge the Abuse of

Power: Netizenship in the 21

Century,” Paper presented on July

13, 2010 at Sorbonne III, Paris, France

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

/Paris-7-13-10.doc

*This article was first published on April 16, 2011 on the netizen-

blog online at:

https://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/03/16/net

izens_egypt_tahrir_square/

Editor’s Note: The following paper was prepared for the

annual meeting of the Chinese Community of Political

Science and International Studies (CCPSIS) which was

held in Beijing on July 14-15, 2012.]

The Role of Netizen

Journalism in the Media War

at the United Nations*

by Ronda Hauben

Preface

The history of journalism includes many different

forms of publication and many different methods of

organization of those publications. Journalism scholars

like Chris Atton and Tony Harcup of the U.K. point to

a wide continuum of how the news is produced and who

are the journalists who produce it. These scholars argue

that it is too narrow to restrict the definition and consid-

eration of journalism to commercially or government

produced media. Instead these scholars propose that the

many forms of alternative journalism should be consid-

ered as part of the spectrum of journalism and those

who produce for these publications are to be considered

in any study of journalists.

Traditionally alternative journalism provides for

a broader set of issues to be raised than is common in

commercially produced mainstream media. Often, too,

alternative publications allow for a broader set of

sources to be utilized. Such a media often reflects not

only a criticism of the limitations of the mainstream

commercial media, but also a demonstration that

another form and practice of journalism is viable.

With the creation and the spread of the Internet,

the emergence of a new form of citizenship, know as

netizenship, has developed. Also a critical and vibrant

form of online journalism has begun to develop. I call

this journalism, netizen journalism. A more detailed

exploration of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of

this paper as the paper is for a panel on questions

related to the United Nations. As such, the paper will

focus on the impact of netizen journalism on the United

Nations and on issues related to the United Nations. But

an awareness of the emerging phenomenon of netizen

journalism can help to provide a context for issues

investigated in this paper.

Page 21

Introduction

In this paper I take three conflicts which are or

have been on the agenda of the United Nations Secu-

rity Council. The paper will explore the role of netizen

journalism in relation to the efforts to resolve these

conflicts in a peaceful manner. The three examples the

paper will consider in relation to the UN are 1) the

Cheonan conflict in South Korea (2010), 2) the war

against Libya (2011), and 3) the crisis in Syria (2011-

2012).

I. Medvedev and the Challenge of Media

Manipulation to International Relations

In a recent speech, Dmitry Medvedev, Prime

Minister of the Russian Federation, spoke about what

he called “the new security dimensions” in interna-

tional relations.

“Today,” he said, “we are witness to

persistent attempts to make mass manipulation of

public opinion a tool in international relations.” He

offered as an example what he calls the media cam-

paign against Syria.

“Syria’s case is illustrative in this respect,”

Medvedev said. “A very active media campaign un-

folded with respect to Syria.” He explained, “What is

clear is that this media campaign had little to do with

ending the violence as rapidly as possible and facilitat-

ing the national dialogue that we all want to see there.”

He attributed this media campaign to the nature

of what is considered the politics of certain countries.

Describing this politics, he explained, “This sees a

country or group of countries instill their own aims and

objectives in the consciousness of others … with other

points of view rejected.”

What I propose is important about his talk for our

panel on “The UN is a Dilemma” is that Medvedev

argues that media manipulation by certain political

actors presents a serious problem for the field of

international relations. He argues that such a media

campaign against Syria interferes with the goal of

international relations “to concentrate on professional

and serious discussion rather than propaganda efforts,”

so as to be able to work out “a common approach to

settling this conflict.”

While he does not see journalism as able to help

solve this problem, I want to propose that there is the

development of an alternative form of journalism that

is taking on the problem. This is the journalism I call

netizen journalism. Netizen journalism seeks to chal-

lenge the misrepresentations and distortions of main-

stream western journalism that Medvedev presents as a

serious challenge to international relations. Netizen

journalism encourages not only the exposure of the

distortions in the mainstream media, but research and

writing to provide the background and information

needed to determine how to settle a conflict. By chal-

lenging the media campaign fomenting a conflict,

netizen journalism becomes a participant in the media

war at the UN.

II. The Cheonan Incident, the UN, and Netizen

Journalism

I first turn to the details of what happened with the

Cheonan conflict which was brought to the UN in 2010,

to examine how netizen journalism affected the media

war in that situation and helped to make a significant

contribution to the peaceful resolution of the conflict

that was embraced at the Security Council.

The Cheonan incident concerns a South Korean

naval ship which broke up and sank on March 26, 2010.

At the time it was involved in naval exercises with the

U.S. military in an area in the West Sea / Yellow Sea

between North Korea and China. This is a situation that

had been the subject of much discussion on the Internet.

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 on May

20, 2010, the South Korean government claimed that a

torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine exploded in

the water near the Cheonan, causing a pressure wave

that was responsible for the sinking. Many criticisms of

this scenario have been raised.

There was no direct evidence of any North Korean

submarine in the vicinity of the Cheonan. Nor was there

any evidence that a torpedo was actually fired causing

the pressure wave phenomenon. Hence the South

Korean government had no actual case that could be

presented in a court of law to support its claims.

In fact, if this claim of a pressure wave were true

even those involved in the investigation of the incident

acknowledge that “North Korea would be the first to

have succeeded at using this kind of a bubble jet

torpedo action in actual fighting.”

The dispute over the sinking of the Cheonan was

brought to the United Nations Security Council in June

2010 and a Presidential Statement was agreed to a

month later, in July.

Page 22

An account of some of what happened in the

Security Council during this process is described in an

article that has appeared in several different Spanish

language publications

The article describes the

experience of the Mexican Ambassador to the UN,

Claude Heller in his position as president of the

Security Council for the month of June 2010. (The

presidency rotates each month to a different Security

Council member.)

In a letter to the Security Council dated June 4,

2010 the Republic of Korea (ROK) more commonly

known as South Korea, asked the Council to take up

the Cheonan dispute. Park Im-kook, then the South

Korean Ambassador to the UN, requested that the

Security Council consider the matter of the Cheonan

and respond in an appropriate manner.

The letter

described an investigation into the sinking of the

Cheonan carried out by South Korean government and

military officials. The conclusion of the South Korean

investigation was to accuse North Korea of sinking the

South Korean ship.

Sin Son Ho was the UN Ambassador from the

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK),

which is more commonly known as North Korea. He

sent a letter dated June 8, 2010 to the Security Council,

which denied the allegation that his country was to

blame.

His letter urged the Security Council not to be

the victim of deceptive claims, as had happened with

Iraq in 2003. It asked the Security Council to support

his government’s call to be able to examine the evi-

dence and to be involved in a new and more independ-

ent investigation on the sinking of the Cheonan.

How would the Mexican Ambassador as Presi-

dent of the Security Council during the month of June

handle this dispute? This was a serious issue facing

Heller as he began his presidency in June 2010.

Heller adopted what he referred to as a “bal-

anced” approach to treat both governments on the

Korean peninsula in a fair and objective manner. He

held bilateral meetings with each member of the

Security Council which led to support for a process of

informal presentations by both of the Koreas to the

members of the Security Council.

What Heller called “interactive informal meet-

ings” were held on June 14 with the South Koreans

and the North Koreans in separate sessions attended by

the Security Council members, who had time to ask

questions and then to discuss the presentations.

At a media stakeout on June 14, after the day’s

presentations ended, Heller said that it was important to

have received the detailed presentation by South Korea

and also to know and learn the arguments of North

Korea. He commented that “it was very important that

North Korea approached the Security Council.” In

response to a question about his view on the issues

presented, he replied, “I am not a judge. I think we will

go on with the consultations to deal in a proper manner

on the issue.”

Heller also explained that, “the Security Council

issued a call to the parties to refrain from any act that

could escalate tensions in the region, and makes an

appeal to preserve peace and stability in the region.”

Though the North Korean Ambassador at the UN

rarely speaks to the media, the North Korean UN

delegation scheduled a press conference for the follow-

ing day, Tuesday, June 15. During the press conference,

the North Korean Ambassador presented North Korea’s

refutation of the allegations made by South Korea. Also

he explained North Korea’s request to be able to send

an investigation team to the site where the sinking of

the Cheonan occurred. South Korea had denied the

request. During its press conference, the North Korean

Ambassador noted that there was widespread condem-

nation of the investigation in South Korea and around

the world.

The press conference held on June 15 was a lively

event. Many of the journalists who attended were

impressed and requested that there be future press

conferences with the North Korean Ambassador.

During June, Heller held meetings with the UN

ambassadors from each of the two Koreas and then with

Security Council members about the Cheonan issue. On

the last day of his presidency, on June 30, he was asked

by a reporter what was happening about the Cheonan

dispute. He responded that the issue of contention was

over the evaluation of the South Korean government’s

investigation.

Heller described how he introduced what he refers

to as “an innovation” into the Security Council process.

As the month of June ended, the issue was not yet

resolved, but the “innovation” set a basis to build on the

progress that was achieved during the month of his

presidency.

The “innovation” Heller referred to, was a sum-

mary he made of the positions of each of the two

Koreas on the issue, taking care to present each objec-

tively. Heller explained that this summary was not an

official document, so it did not have to be approved by

Page 23

the other members of the Council. This summary

provided the basis for further negotiations. He believed

that it had a positive impact on the process of consider-

ation in the Council, making possible the agreement

that was later to be expressed in the Presidential

statement on the Cheonan that was issued by the

Security Council on July 9.

Heller’s goal, he explained, was to “at all times

be as objective as possible” so as to avoid increasing

the conflict on the Korean peninsula. Such a goal is the

Security Council’s obligation under the UN Charter.

In the July 19, 2010 Security Council’s Presiden-

tial Statement (PRST) on the Cheonan, what stands out

is that the statement follows the pattern of presenting

the views of each of the two Koreas and urging that the

dispute be settled in a peaceful manner.

In the PRST, the members of the Security Coun-

cil did not blame North Korea. Instead they refer to the

South Korean investigation and its conclusion, ex-

pressing their “deep concern” about the “findings” of

the investigation.

The PRST explains that “The Security Council

takes note of the responses from other relevant parties,

including the DPRK, which has stated that it had

nothing to do with the incident.”

With the exception of North Korea, it is not

indicated who “the other relevant parties” are. It does

suggest, however, that it is likely there are some

Security Council members, not just Russia and China,

who did not agree with the conclusions of the South

Korean investigation.

Analyzing the Presidential Statement, the Korean

newspaper Hankyoreh noted that the statement “allows

for a double interpretation and does not blame or place

consequences on North Korea.”

Such a possibility of

a “double interpretation” allows different interpret-

ations.

The Security Council action on the Cheonan took

place in a situation where there had been a wide

ranging international critique, especially in the online

media, about the problems of the South Korean inves-

tigation, and of the South Korean government’s failure

to make public any substantial documentation of its

investigation, along with its practice of harassing

critics of the South Korean government claims.

One such critique included a three part report by

the South Korean NGO People’s Solidarity for Partici-

patory Democracy (PSPD).

This report raised a

number of questions and problems with the South

Korean government’s case. The PSPD document was

posted widely on the Internet and also sent to the

President of the United Nations Security Council for

distribution to those Security Council members inter-

ested and to the South Korean Mission to the UN.

There were many blog comments about the

Cheonan issue in Korean.

There were also some

bloggers writing in English who became active in

critiquing the South Korean investigation and the role

of the U.S. in the conflict.

One such blogger, Scott Creighton who uses the

pen name Willy Loman, wrote a post titled “The

Sinking of the Cheonan: We are being lied to”

On his

blog “American Everyman,” he explained how there

was a discrepancy between the diagram displayed by

the South Korean government in a press conference it

held, and the part of the torpedo on display in the glass

case below the diagram.

He showed that the diagram did not match the part

of the torpedo on display. The South Korean govern-

ment had claimed that the diagram displayed above the

glass case was from a North Korean brochure offering

the torpedo identified as the CHT-02D.

There were many comments on his post, including

some from netizens in South Korea. Also the main-

stream conservative media in South Korea carried

accounts of his critique.

Three weeks later, at a news conference, a South

Korean government official acknowledged that the

diagram presented by the South Korean government

was not of the same torpedo as the part displayed in the

glass case. Instead the diagram was of the PT97W

torpedo, not the CHT-02D torpedo as claimed.

Describing the significance of having documented

one of the fallacies in the South Korean government’s

case, Creighton writes:

(I)n the end, thanks to valuable input from

dozens of concerned people all across the

world … . Over 100,000 viewers read that

article and it was republished on dozens of

sites all across the world (even translated).

A South Korean MSM outlet even posted

our diagram depicting the glaring discrep-

ancies between the evidence and the draw-

ing of the CHT-O2D torpedo, which a high-

ranking military official could only refute

by stating he had 40 years military expe-

rience and to his knowledge, I had none. But

what I had, what we had, was literally thou-

Page 24

sands of people all across the world, scien-

tists, military members, and just concerned

investigative bloggers who were committed

to the truth and who took the time to con-

tribute to what we were doing here.

‘Forty years military experience’ took a

beating from ‘we the people WorldWide’

and that is the way it is supposed to be.

This is just one of a number of serious questions

and challenges that were raised about the South

Korean government’s scenario of the sinking of the

Cheonan.

Other influential events which helped to chal-

lenge the South Korean government’s claims were a

press conference in Japan held on July 9 by two

academic scientists. The two scientists presented

results of experiments they did which challenged the

results of experiments the South Korean government

used to support its case.

These scientists also wrote to

the Security Council with their findings.

Also a significant challenge to the South Korean

government report was the finding of a Russian team

of four sent to South Korea to look at the data from the

investigation and to do an independent evaluation of it.

The Russian team did not accept the South Korean

government’s claim that a pressure wave from a

torpedo caused the Cheonan to sink.

Such efforts along with online posts and discus-

sions by many netizens provided a catalyst for the

actions of the UN Security Council concerning the

Cheonan incident.

The mainstream U.S. media for the most part,

chose to ignore the many critiques which have ap-

peared. These critiques of the South Korean govern-

ment’s investigation of the Cheonan sinking have

appeared mainly on the Internet, not only in Korean,

but also in English, in Japanese, and in other lan-

guages. They present a wide ranging challenge of the

veracity and integrity of the South Korean investiga-

tion and its conclusions.

An article in the Los Angeles Times on July 28

noted the fact, however, that the media in the U.S. had

ignored the critique of the South Korean government

investigation that is being discussed online and spread

around the world.

On August 31, an op-ed by Donald

Gregg, a former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea,

appeared in the New York Times, titled “Testing North

Korean Waters.” The article noted that “not everyone

agrees that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea.

Pyongyang has consistently denied responsibility, and

both China and Russia opposed a U.N. Security Council

resolution laying blame on North Korea.”

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. Such netizen activity had an

important effect on the international community. It also

appears to have acted as a catalyst affecting the actions

of the UN Security Council in its treatment of the

Cheonan dispute.

In his op-ed in the New York Times, Gregg argued

that, “The disputed interpretations of the sinking of the

Cheonan remain central to any effort to reverse course

and to get on track toward dealing effectively with

North Korea on critical issues such as the denucle-

arization of the Korean Peninsula.”

North Korea referred to the widespread interna-

tional sentiment in its June 8 letter to the Security

Council. The UN Ambassador from North Korea wrote:

It would be very useful to remind ourselves

of the ever-increasing international doubts

and criticisms, going beyond the internal

boundary of south Korea, over the ‘investi-

gation result’ from the very moment of its

release … .

The situation that the North Korean Ambassador

referred to is the result of actions on the part of South

Korean netizens and civil society who challenged the

process and results of the South Korean government’s

investigation. Also, there was support for the South

Korean netizens by bloggers, scientists and journalists

around the world, writing mainly online but in a multi-

tude of languages and from many perspectives. Several

of the non-governmental organizations and scientists in

South Korea sent the results of their investigations and

research to members of the Security Council to provide

them with the background and facts needed to make an

informed decision.

The result of such efforts is something that is

unusual in the process of recent Security Council

activity. The Security Council process in the Cheonan

issue provided for an impartial analysis of the problem

and an effort to hear from those with an interest in the

issue.

The effort in the Security Council was described

by the Mexican Ambassador, as upholding the prin-

ciples of impartiality and respectful treatment of all

members toward resolving a conflict between nations in

Page 25

a peaceful manner. It represents an important example

of the Security Council acting in conformity with its

obligations as set out in the UN charter. In the July 9

Presidential Statement, the Security Council urged that

the parties to the dispute over the sinking of the Cheo-

nan find a means to peacefully settle the dispute. The

statement says:

The Security Council calls for full adher-

ence to the Korean Armistice Agreement

and encourages the settlement of outstand-

ing issues on the Korean peninsula by

peaceful means to resume direct dialogue

and negotiation through appropriate chan-

nels as early as possible, with a view to

avoiding conflicts and averting escalation.

Ambassador Gregg is only one of many around

the world who have expressed their concern with the

course of action of the U.S. and South Korea as con-

trary to the direction of the UN Security Council

Presidential Statement. Gregg explained his fear that

the truth of the Cheonan sinking “may elude us, as it

did after the infamous Tonkin Bay incident of 1964,

that was used to drag us [the U.S.] into the abyss of the

Vietnam War.”

Despite this dilemma, the Security

Council action on the Cheonan dispute, if it is recog-

nized and supported, has set the basis instead for a

peaceful resolution of the conflict.

While the netizen

community in South Korea and internationally were

able to provide an effective challenge to the misrep-

resentations by the South Korean government on the

Cheonan incident, the struggle over the misrepresenta-

tions of the conflict in Libya was less successful.

III. False Claims that Led to the War Against

Libya

A short article at the Current Events Inquiry

website lists several provocative claims which helped

to provide a false pretext for the NATO bombing of

Libya.

Among them were reports by Al Jazeera and

the BBC that the Libyan government had carried out

air strikes against Benghazi and Tripoli on February

22, 2011. Russia Today reports that the Russian

military who had monitored the unrest in Libya from

the beginning, “says nothing of the sort was going on

on the ground.”

According to the report by the Russian military,

the attacks had never occurred.

Another such claim widely circulated by major

western media very early in the Libya conflict was that

the Libyan government “is massacring unarmed demon-

strators.” The NGO, the International Crisis Group

(ICG) in its June 6, 2011 report says that such claims

were inaccurate. The report explains that this version of

the events in Libya “would appear to ignore evidence

that the protest movement exhibited a violent aspect

from early on.” This includes evidence that early in the

protests, “demonstrations were infiltrated by violent

elements.”

Similarly the ICG report found no evidence for

claims that the Libyan government “engaged in any-

thing remotely warranting use of the term ‘genocide’.”

A similar criticism was made of the claim that “foreign

mercenaries” were employed by the Libyan govern-

ment. A report by Amnesty International which is de-

scribed in an article in The Independent newspaper in

the U.K. on June 24, 2011 says that, “The Amnesty

Report found no evidence for this.”

Netizen Journalism on the Conflict in Libya Pres-

ents a Different View

From the early days of the false media claims

targeting Libya for an outside intervention to remove its

government, a growing set of articles and comments

were written and published online exposing the lack of

evidence for these claims and demonstrating that they

were distortions with a political purpose. These articles

exposing the distortions were read and distributed by a

growing set of online reporters. These examples demon-

strate that a different form of journalism is emerging.

While such a form of journalism may not yet appear to

present an adequate challenge to the gross misrepresen-

tations and inaccuracies spread by much of the main-

stream western and Arab satellite media about the

Libyan conflict, the nature of this newly developing

form of journalism is important to explore and to

understand.

This new journalism has at least two important

aspects. One is serious research into the background,

context and political significance of conflicts like that

in Libya or Syria. Another is the application of this

research to the writing of articles or to comments in

response to both mainstream and alternative media

articles.

As an example of this netizen journalism related

to the conflict in Libya, I want to refer to a small

collection of articles titled “Libya, the UN, and Netizen

Journalism.”

This collection contains articles focusing

on a critique of actions at the UN that provided the

Page 26

authority for the NATO war against Libya.

One article in that collection, “UN Security

Council March 17 Meeting to Authorize Bombing of

Libya All Smoke and Mirrors” is about the Security

Council meeting which passed Resolution 1973 by a

vote of 10 in favor and 5 abstentions. The article in-

cludes some sample comments from online discussions

about what was happening in Libya at the time. While

the UNSC members at the March 17 meeting speak

about their support for the resolution to “protect

Libyan civilians,” there was no acknowledgment that

the resolution instead would in effect support the

ongoing armed insurrection against the government of

Libya.

While Security Council delegates and the main-

stream media described what was happening in Libya

as “peaceful protestors” attacked by a “brutal govern-

ment,” online discussion of the situation during this

same period described the opposition in Libya as

engaged in an armed insurrection. The following sam-

ple from comments from a discussion of an article on

the British Guardian website in March 2011 provides

an example of netizens questioning and critiquing the

actions of the Security Council and asking why the UN

is protecting and supporting an armed insurgency:

“Armed civilians or uninformed fighters have no

place being supported or protected by our air power.

They carry a gun and get targeted that is their look out,

not our job to hit the other side.” James St. George, 22

March, 2011.

“The thing is the rebels are ‘civilians’ when ever

it suits us.” llundiel, 23 March, 2011.

“Of course once you start bombing, there will

clearly be plenty of collateral damage.

This then makes a complete mockery of the

stated purpose of the intervention, to save innocent

civilians.” contractor000, 23 March, 2011.

“Yes tanks are not planes! Or in the air flying.

The civilian protection has no place extending to

armed rebels, they are not civilians.” Cock-

fingersMcGee, 23 March, 2011.

“So we are supposed to accept this scenario that

the Military aggression against Libya is to do with

protecting the protesters, the revolution, innocent

civilians, the rebels etc. This sounds very reminiscent

of attacking Iraq because of WMD.” comunismlives,

22 March, 2011.

Similar discussions were going on at other web-

sites. Here, for example, are some comments from a

discussion at the Hidden Harmonies website.

“Resolution 1973 is also directed at rebel force,

but we are not bombing the rebels, but usurping the

resolution to provide air cover in aid of the rebels.

Prolonging Libya’s civil war only brings more harm to

the civilians, and facilitating division of Libya’s sover-

eignty, are contravening/violating the resolution.”

Charles Liu, March 22, 2011.

“We can argue technicalities, but everyone knows

the current U.S.-led bombings are toward weakening

Qadhafi and to bolster the rebel opposition. Obama and

the Coalition publicly say so.”

“Its like seeing a thief caught on video sneaking

around in a store and after seeing no one around,

pockets the candy. He also says he is stealing.”

“Now we are suppose to ‘prove’ it? That’s quite

retarded.” DeWang, March 22, 2011

“‘under threat of attack’ clause includes threat of

attack by the rebels, yet we are not bombing them for

their incursion outside Benghazi. This violates the

preamble’s stated limit of military authorization to not

divide Libya’s sovereignty. Not withstanding any sort

of red herring and semantics wiggling, the selective air

strike in aid of the rebels violates UN resolution 1973,

while 1970 gave no legitimacy to the armed rebellion in

Libya, which the legitimate government of Libya has

the sovereign right to sanction against.” Charles Liu,

March 22, 2011.

“I just don’t understand why the bombing is

taking place at all.”

“1) It is a civil war. Why should the west take

sides?”

“2) Wasn’t Gaddafi the U.S.’s pet since Bush II?

Why is the U.S. seeking to remove one of their pup-

pets? Is the U.S./west looking for another Iraq?”

“I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if this war was

instigated by Wall Street looking to make a killing on

oil and commodities.” colin, March 22, 2011.

“It’s a historical pattern of these UN Resolutions,

including way back when the Korean War started, that

‘all necessary force’ is the general catch phrase for

‘unrestrained warfare’ limited only by what weapons

are available.”

“Now, even the high cost of the cruise missiles, $1

million a pop, is not enough to deter the launching of

100s of these.”

“Well, I guess we are going to see the cost, sooner

Page 27

or later.” r v, March 23, 2011.

These two examples of selected comments from

online discussions at the time demonstrate that

netizens raised serious concerns and critiques of the

Security Council action passing UN Resolution 1973,

while the mainstream media mainly reported what

western governments were saying.

Similar questions and critiques were raised

throughout the conflict in articles by independent

journalists who were in Libya during much of the

period of the defense of Libya from the NATO bomb-

ing and the NATO support for the armed insurrection

in Libya. Such journalists included Mahdi Darius

Nazemroaya of Global Research, Thierry Meyssan,

from Voltairenet, Lizzy Phalen who reported for

various outlets including PressTV, and Franklin Lamb

whose articles were carried on various websites.

Also a group that called itself Concerned Afri-

cans published an open letter which they also submit-

ted to the UN Secretary General, the UN Security

Council and the UN General Assembly. The letter

which was signed by over 300 concerned Africans,

described what it called the contribution to “the

subversion of international law.” The letter maintained

that in passing UNSCR 1973, “the Security Council

used the still unresolved issue in international law of

‘the right to protect’ the so called R2P, to justify the

Chapter VII military intervention in Libya.”

Other

articles focused on the violations in Security Council

procedures represented by allowing Libyan officials

who had defected to appear at the Security Council

representing Libya.

Similarly, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, at

Columbia University who has studied the region and

its history, points to the “political and legal infrastruc-

ture for intervention in otherwise independent coun-

tries,” namely the Security Council and the Interna-

tional Criminal Court working ‘selectively,’ that has

been created by Western powers.

Among the many websites at the time publishing

articles critiquing the UN’s actions in Libya were The

Center for Research on Globalization, Voltaire Net-

work, Libya 360, Mathaba, April Media, and Ameri-

can Everyman.

During this period, several of the independent

journalists or the journalists writing articles chal-

lenging the Security Council actions providing for the

bombing of Libya appeared on satellite news programs

like that of RT News and PressTV. Also there were

interviews and videos posted online.

While these articles, discussions, critiques and

analyses did not succeed in stopping the NATO attack

on Libya, they created an example of more accurate

reporting and analysis about the attack on Libya. A few

months later when an Al Jazeera journalist explained

why he resigned from Al Jazeera, he pointed to the

pressure from Al Jazeera to misrepresent what was

happening in his reporting. He explained that the

support of Qatar for the militarization of the Libyan

conflict was a turning point in the distortion of the news

at his station.

Also as the following comment by a netizen

indicates, someone who supported the attack on Libya

and who has learned lessons from what happened, is

more likely to question the media claims about Syria:

(I)t is also important to me that I feel I was

deceived about the Libyan situation. Being

like Libya would itself be reason to oppose

intervention in Syria.

And others suggest that the experience of NATO’s

actions in Libya has been having an impact on what

some at the UN and some of the nations of the UN will

do with respect to Syria.

As one netizen wrote after hearing of the Houla

massacre:

What has changed in the last week follow-

ing the murder of more than 100 people in

Houla, including dozens of children, is that

a new urgency and disgust has been injected

into an escalating crisis that has brought the

country to the verge of civil war. The role of

the Syrian opposition should also be clearly

investigated as well. Rather than just blam-

ing Assad in a media witch-hunt. As many

of those killed were supposed to be people

who refused to collaborate with the opposi-

tion.

It is obvious that the Russians and Chinese

have learnt from Libya too. Where the

number of people killed by unbridled

NATO bombing has been carefully sup-

pressed, and the use of the UN to cover «

regime change », has only bought chaos in

its wake. So the oil there has changed hands,

but most of the north of Africa is now trans-

formed into a violent marasme. Both of

those major powers now know from experi-

ence that – NATO with UN agreement

Page 28

means the destruction of peace, the loss of

their assets in the region, and the continua-

tion of war into other areas (Iran, Yemen,

Pakistan, etc. or closer to their own spheres

of influence. China sea – the ‘Stans,’ the

southern (Muslim) aligned ex-Russian

states, etc. or into South America). They do

not see any end. So they must draw a line

somewhere.

Is the object of the west once again to

cause a major mid-eastern war? shaun 2

June 2012, 10:00 p.m.

IV. The Syrian Crisis and the UN: Critique of the

Reporting on Syria

Similar to the mainstream media war against

Libya, there is a set of false narratives in the main-

stream western and Arab satellite media related to

what has been happening in Syria. While such media

essentially frames its news about Syria to demonize

the Syrian government and its President Bashar Assad,

its news stories support the armed opposition, and its

journalists rely on opposition sources for the news that

is to be reported.

In this situation, netizen journalism presents a

critique of the mainstream media support for what is

an armed insurrection against Syria. The forms this

netizen journalism takes include articles, interviews,

commentary, historical background, analysis and

discussion. Critical articles about the mainstream

media reports and misrepresentations are also com-

mon.

The Houla Massacre

The original mainstream media account of what

has come to be known as the Houla massacre was that

an opposition demonstration was suppressed by Syrian

government shelling.

Criticism of this claim soon emerged pointing to

the fact that the majority of those murdered were killed

at close range, not by shelling. In response the main-

stream western media produced a new element, a so

called pro government militia that they claimed had

gone into the homes of those killed and carried out the

massacre. Why an alleged pro government militia, the

so called ‘Shabiha’ would go into the homes of pro

government supporters and massacre them, was not

explained.

When Alex Thomson, a British Channel 4 re-

porter, went to the village that the opposition in Houla

had said had produced the so called Shabiha accused of

the attack in Houla, he found no evidence of any such

militia. He writes, “Beyond a few languid soldiers and

the odd policeman no sign of militias. No trace of heavy

weapons. No tank tracks on the roads…. Well these

Alawites insist there are not, nor have ever been,

Shabiha in these villages.”

Neither do the mainstream

western media wonder why the Syrian government

would carry out a massacre of civilians at the very time

that the United Nations General Assembly and the

United Nations Security Council are planning to discuss

Syria.

In his book Liar’s Poker which analyzes the

disinformation used to justify the NATO bombing of

Serbia, the Belgian journalist Michel Collon observes

that “Information is already a battlefield which is part

of war.”

Seeking Facts About the Houla Massacre

Shortly after the news spread about the Houla

massacre, netizen media sites included articles which

revealed that the area where the massacre was carried

out was under the control of the Free Syrian Army, not

of the Syrian government. A Russian news team had

gained access to the site the day following the massacre

and did interviews to determine what had happened.

Their report was originally published in Russia but soon

was translated into English.

Their account noted that Houla is an admini-

strative 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. The

Russian journalists’ account explains that on the eve-

ning 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,” reports the news

Page 29

and analysis site Voltairenet.

Soon after the news of the massacre appeared,

there were articles challenging the claims that it was

the work of the Syrian government. In his article

“Death Squads Ravage Syrian Town – West Calls for

‘Action,’ Tony Cartalucci of the Land Destroyer

Report blog, writes “‘Cui Bono?’ To whose benefit

does it serve to massacre very publicly entire families

in close quarters and broadcast the images of their

handiwork worldwide?”

He argues that this is in no

way in the Syrian government’s interest.

In another article he points to a U.K. government

official blaming the deaths on “artillery fire” by the

government. Claiming to be responding to such

reports, several governments including the U.K.

government expelled Syrian diplomats. Even though

these claims were soon demonstrated to be false,

Carlucci points out that there was no retraction from

the U.K. government or reversal of the expulsion of

Syrian diplomats. Cartalucci writes:

U.K. Foreign Office Minister, Alistair

Burt, peddling what is now a confirmed

fabrication, told for days to the public as

the West maneuvered to leverage it against

the Syrian government. The UN has now

confirmed that artillery fired by govern-

ment troops were not responsible for the

massacre, and instead carried out by

unidentified militants. Despite this, the

U.K. has failed to retract earlier accusa-

tions and has instead expelled Syrian diplo-

mats in an increasingly dangerous, irratio-

nal, aggressive posture.

Others online recognized that a photo BBC

posted which was allegedly of the corpses from the

Houla Massacre, was actually a photo that had been

taken in 2003 of deaths in Iraq. Describing how the

misrepresentation was detected, Sy Walker explains on

his blog:

The information on which it’s based comes

from a pro-Syrian tweeter called Hey Joud,

whom I’ve found to be well informed and

savvy.

A friend of this tweeter discovered the

misrepresentation and tweeted about it:

“@BBCWorld propaganda: http://image

shack.us/photo/my-image … showing a pic

of bodies from Iraq claiming it’s the

?#HoulaMassacre? ?#Syria?

BBC changed the photo, Walker explains, adding:

This is not the first time I’ve reported on

image fakery with regard to Syria. The

western media’s sustained attack on that

beleaguered nation has now been underway

for more than a year. A comprehensive

account of all its deceptions and misreport-

ing over that period would fill many vol-

umes.

In a blog post titled “Houla Hoax,” Mathias

Broeckers also comments on the BBC presenting the

2003 Iraq photo as a photo of Houla. Broeckers

writes:

It is the forbidden geopolitical agenda, the

big Picture that isn’t talked about, as op-

posed to the horrors by which the wars are

legitimized.

Other online journalists comment on the bias of

the United Nations Human Rights Council and its

inability to do an objective investigation of the facts of

the Houla Massacre. Reporting about an interaction

between an anti-war activist from the “No War Net-

work,” Marinella Corregia, and Rupert Colville,

spokesman for the Human Rights Council, an article on

the Uprooted Palestinians blog is titled “UN report on

Houla massacre? But they only talk to Syrian opposi-

tion – by phone.” Colville explains to Corregia that the

Human Rights Council will do its investigation by

speaking with the local network of opposition members

they have contact with in Syria by phone, with opposi-

tion members they have met in Turkey and with opposi-

tion members they have met in Geneva.

Martin

Janssen, a Dutch Middle East expert and journalist who

reports from Damascus and whose articles appear

online is also concerned that there are other important

sources of information that have information about

what happened, but that the Human Relations Council

investigators will not speak with them because the

investigators are only interested in hearing from opposi-

tion sources.

Janssen said that he was in contact with a Catholic

organization in the area of Houla, a monastery in Qara

in the Homs-Hana region, and the two Russian journal-

ists, Marat Musin and Olga Kulygina, who were able to

visit Houla the day after the massacre, on May 25 with

a TV crew. Jenssen reported that Musin and Kulygina

tried to offer their findings to the UN Special Commis-

sion on Human Rights doing the investigation, but that

the Commission was not interested in hearing from

Page 30

them. Colville indicated that the sources the investiga-

tors had were adequate because all their other sources

had already informed them that the ‘shabibha’ were

responsible for the massacre. The Commission was not

interested in hearing from anyone with different views

or with information different from that given to them

by the opposition.

The online discussion in response to Janssen’s

article was a serious discussion critiquing the main-

stream media and putting forward the criteria of what

a media should do. The discussion is an important one

as it sets out both the failings of the current main-

stream media and the needed objectives for a more

competent media.

Netizen Journalism Coverage of Houla Massacre

Along with the account of what happened in the

al Houla region, were articles proposing a broader

perspective. This included historical background

describing where the U.S. and NATO utilized death

squads in prior conflicts. One article “Syria Under

Attack by Globalist Death Squads,” by Bramdon

Turbeville presents background on how certain U.S.

officials including Robert S. Ford, the former U.S.

Ambassador to Syria, and John Negroponte who was

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras in 1981-1985 and later

in Iraq, supported death squads first in Nicaragua

(known as the “Salvador Option”) and later in Iraq.

Turbeville’s article and articles by others like the

article titled, “The Salvadorian Option for Syria: US-

NATO Sponsored Death Squads Integrate ‘Opposition

Forces” by Michel Chossudovsky, put the death squads

functioning in Syria in this historical context.

Along with the articles I am describing that are

available in English, there are also a wide range of

similar articles online in French, German, and other

languages. There are also online discussions and

comments about the Syria conflict. A collection of

articles, “The Houla Massacre: The Disinformation

Campaign,” available at Global Research website, lists

a number of the articles published on the media war

over the Syrian conflict.

There are various forms of

online discussions. One such discussion on an online

forum was initiated with the post, “Houla Massacre,

Syria: What If?” The discussion considered whether

the Syrian government claims that it was not responsi-

ble for the massacre was or wasn’t a lie. Online

sources referred to in discussions like this could be

either mainstream media or alternative media sources.

Through discussion, referring to various articles and

details, netizens in this online forum concluded that

armed insurgents were to blame, not the Syrian govern-

ment.

The Media and Syrian Sovereignty

Since it is rare at the current time that the main-

stream western media deviates from a hostility toward

the Syrian government and a sympathy with the armed

insurgents, it seems significant that in Germany one of

the mainstream national newspapers, the Frankfurter

Allgmeine Zeitung has printed a significant story

documenting the role of the Free Syrian Army in the

Houla massacre. The journalist, Rainer Hermann,

speaks Arabic. He has been reporting from the Middle

East for over 22 years and he did his thesis on modern

Syrian social history. His article “Abermals Massaker

in Syrien” appeared in the Frankfurter Allgmeine

Zeitung on June 7.

His article had been welcomed by many netizens

and was reprinted at various online news sites. Several

online sites featured the article and offered an English

translation of it. The story collaborated the report of the

Russian journalists that the Free Syrian Army insur-

gents were behind the Houla massacre.

Similarly there was an anonymous criticism of

Rainer’s article on the Houla massacre from opposition

forces, and Rainer wrote a second article “The Extermi-

nation” responding to the criticism.

His article appears

to be in response to sources who are troubled over the

attacks and discrimination that the armed insurgents

have been introducing into the Syrian struggle, but it is

perhaps also an indication that netizen journalism is

having some effect in the current media war over Syria.

Similarly, there was a report by the British media

criticism site, Media Lens on the low key recognition

by a BBC journalist that it is not adequate to blame the

Houla massacre on Syria’s President Assad, as several

of the media was doing, without more knowledge of

what actually happened, and with an approach which

includes more shades of gray rather than just treating it

as a stark black or white issue.

Netizen Journalism and the UN

After the Houla massacre, the Syrian conflict,

some say, appeared to be at a turning point. Russia’s

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had an article arguing

that there are lessons that have been learnt from what

Page 31

happened with Libya and that the UN has to take into

account these lessons. In his op-ed, “Oh the Rights

Side of History,” Lavrov writes:

When deciding to support UN Security

Council Resolution 1970 and making no

objection to Resolution 1973 on Libya, we

believed that these decisions would help

limit the excessive use of force and pave

the way for a political settlement. Unfortu-

nately, the actions undertaken by NATO

countries under these resolutions led to

their grave violation and support for one of

the parties to the civil war, with the goal of

ousting the existing regime – damaging in

the process the authority of the Security

Council … .

It is clear that after what had happened in

Libya it was impossible to go along with

the UN Security Council taking decisions

that would not be adequately explicit and

would allow those responsible for their

implementation to act at their own discre-

tion. Any mandate given on behalf of the

entire international community should be

as clear and precise as possible in order to

avoid ambiguity. It is therefore important

to understand what is really happening in

Syria and how to help that country to pass

though this painful stage of its history.

Along with such comments from diplomats,

netizens covered and discussed what the UN was doing

about the Syrian conflict. A summary by Moon of

Alabama of the General Assembly meeting discussing

the Houla Massacre described how the UN Secretary

General, the Secretary General of the League of Arab

States and other officials, along with many of the

representatives of the nations at the UN, blamed the

massacre on the Syrian government, even though there

were few facts available as to what had happened and

who was behind the events.

Though rarely mentioned

in the mainstream media, there were comments by the

ambassadors of several member states including the

Syrian Ambassador and the Ambassador of the Rus-

sian Federation, those of Venezuela, of Nicaragua, and

a few others calling for an investigation, into the

details of the massacre, before making any rush to

judgment.

Conclusion: Channels of Communication

for International Relations

In the Libyan and Syrian conflicts, the misrep-

resentations by the mainstream western media and Arab

satellite media have seemed difficult to counter effec-

tively. In the Cheonan situation, the misrepresentations

were effectively countered both internally and on an

international level. In his presentation to journalists at

the press conference marking the start of China’s

presidency of the UN Security Council in March 2011,

China’s Ambassador to the UN, Li Baodong, recog-

nized the impact of the international media on the work

of the Security Council. He went so far as to refer to the

international media as the “16

member of the Security

Council.”

The Cheonan conflict is one where the

international critique of the South Korean Cheonan

report was an encouragement to at least some members

of the Security Council, to act diplomatically to calm

the conflict. Similarly, the North Korean Ambassador

held a rare press conference and indicated that he found

encouragement in the international support for the

critique. Along with the many online articles by

netizens critiquing the role of the South Korean govern-

ment in the Cheonan conflict, progressive media in

South Korea covered the activities of those challenging

the Cheonan report and also reported on the Russian

investigation of the problem. There were also articles in

the Chinese media and the Russian media that critiqued

the South Korean efforts to blame the breakup of the

ship on North Korea.

The actions of the Security Council in the Libya

and the Syria conflicts show the serious nature of the

problem Medvedev referred to in his talk in March.

Looking at the problem it is important to analyze

the nature of the media manipulation and the means of

responding to such distorted information.

In his book The Nerves of Government Karl W.

Deutsch writes that:

Men have long and often concerned them-

selves with the power of governments,

much as some observers try to assess the

muscle power of a horse or an athlete. Oth-

ers have described the laws and institutions

of states, much as anatomists describe the

skeleton or organs of a body. This book

concerns itself less with the bones or mus-

cles of the body politic than with its nerves

– its channels of communication and deci-

sion.

Page 32

Deutsch goes on to explain that “it might be

profitable to look upon government somewhat less as

a problem of power and somewhat more as a problem

of steering and communication.” He maintains that, “It

is communication, that is, the ability to transmit

messages and to react to them, that makes organ-

izations … .” He proposes that this is true for the cells

in the human body as it is for the “organizations of

thinking human beings in social groups.”

The significance of this perspective is that

distorted messages are the basis for distorted social

organization. A social organization that can make an

accurate assessment of the conditions on the ground in

a conflict, is in a position to analyze what is needed for

a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

There are a number of scholarly articles studying

the impact of the Internet on media and on communi-

cation among netizens. Some of the more interesting

articles focus on the communication channels created,

and the nature of not only the transmission of informa-

tion, but also its reception.

Deutsch makes a distinction between power and

information. He writes that “Power, we might say,

produces changes, information triggers them in a

suitable receiver.”

It is not the amount of what is

transmitted that is necessarily significant, but rather

the nature of what it is, what the receiver is, and the

effect of the information on the receiver. Deutsch gives

the example of the relative weakness of the Nazi

quisling government in Norway at the end of WWII,

and the relative strength of the resistance because it

had better channels of communication.

Joseph S. Nye in an article, “The Future of

American Power,” argues that information is indeed

important in the battle for the U.S. to try to maintain its

power.

He writes that, “Conventional wisdom holds

that the state with the largest army prevails, but in the

information age, the state (or the nonstate actor) with

the best story may sometime win.”

He advises, “It is

time for a new narrative about the future of U.S.

power.”

But for him whether or not the story helps to

obtain the desired goal is important, not the truth or

accuracy of the narrative.

At a program at the Japan Society in New York

where Nye spoke about his book The Future of Power,

he was asked a question about his view of U.S. actions

in the NATO war against Libya. Nye responded that

what President Barack Obama had done with respect

to the NATO war against Libya was exactly right.

Obama had waited until he had the needed narrative to

justify the military action against Libya. It was impor-

tant, Nye explained, that the U.S. not be seen as once

again attacking a Muslim country as had happened with

Iraq. Instead the Arab League and the UN Security

Council resolutions provided a narrative “of a legiti-

mate enforcement of humanitarian responsibility to

protect civilians.” This provided Obama with the ability

to claim that the U.S. was taking “collective responsibil-

ity,” not that the U.S. was undertaking a military

intervention.

The problem with Nye’s argument is that he is

focusing on how the world perceives the action he is

taking, not on the actual nature of the action itself.

But what happened in Libya was a military action

to support an armed insurgency against the Libyan

government. The NATO bombing of Libya was not for

the protection of civilians, but for the protection of an

armed insurrection against the government and people

of Libya.

Similarly, when the UN Security Council passed

UN Resolution 1973, many of the Ambassadors who

spoke said the resolution was to protect peaceful

protesters in Libya. A few days later the Russian Federa-

tion’s President Vladimir Putin, who was then the

Prime Minister of Russia, said that the “protection of

civilians” was but a pretext by which to intervene in the

internal affairs of a sovereign nation.

Nye’s contention that a convincing narrative can

gain support for actions, fails to recognize the harm in

lives lost and the devastation wrought that results from

the use of “convincing narratives” to justify actions that

are contrary to the obligations of the UN Charter and

the pursuit of the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Also

such duplicity sullies the image of the United Nations

amongst peace loving people around the world.

I have briefly surveyed research in English about

Chinese netizens and have found important scholarship

developing in this field. Similarly, there is scholarship

in journalism which explores the relationship of alterna-

tive journalism and citizenship. I want to propose that

there is a need for research in the field of international

relations and communication which explores the new

forms of online media and discussion that are develop-

ing, often across geographic borders. Those who took

up the struggle against the misinformation in the

Cheonan case or against the media attacks on Libya and

Syria are pioneering this relatively new form of alterna-

tive journalism, netizen journalism. Speaking about the

Page 33

potential for such a journalism Michael Hauben, whose

pioneering research on the social impact of the Internet

recognized the emergence of the netizens, writes:

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.

Hauben recognized that a new form of news was

evolving which would include both the contributions

of netizens and the capabilities of the Internet. De-

scribing 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 report-

ing of the News has helped create the new online

media that is gradually supplementing traditional

forms of journalism.” What Hauben realized is there

was a symbiosis developing between the news,

netizens and the Internet. These were evolving into an

interdependent partnership which had become substan-

tial. 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 website created in China in 2008.

The

website was created in response to western media

distortions of the Tibet demonstrations and riots and

the website critiqued these distortions.

Netizens in South Korea and in various online

sites around the world took on to challenge the inaccu-

racies and serious problems in the South Korean

government investigation into the sinking of the Cheo-

nan. Their work had an effect at the UN. In 2011, there

was an online critique by netizens of the UN Security

Council misrepresentation of the armed insurgency in

Libya as peaceful demonstrators needing foreign

military intervention for protection. The UN can only

benefit from such input. It is still too soon to know

whether netizens will be able to have a significant

impact on the UN in its handling of the crisis in Syria,

but those defending Syrian sovereignty have received

support and encouragement from the increasing spread

of netizen journalism.

The significance of this new form of journalism

is that there are netizens who are dedicated to doing

the research and analysis 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. If such a journalism can

help to provide the UN with a more accurate under-

standing of the conflicts it is considering, it can help to

make more likely the peaceful resolution of these

conflicts.

Notes

1. “Conference Organized by the Russian Council for International

Affairs,” 23 March 2012, Moscow.

http://eng.news.krem lin.ru

/transcripts/3582

2. He refers to how Libya and Syria have been the victim of this

politics. “How are we to see the mantras repeated by particular

countries that consider themselves the main exporters of democracy

if, say in the Libyan and now the Syrian cases, countries whose

internal political lives are governed by completely different norms

are chosen as models to follow for democratic development?”

3. “Questions Linger 100 Days after the Cheonan Sinking,”

Hankyoreh, July 3 2010, online at:

http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/eng

lishedition/enational/428715.html

4. Ronda Hauben, In Cheonan Dispute UN Security Council Acts

in Accord with UN Charter, Sept. 5, 2010 http://blogs.taz.de

/netizenblog/2010/09/05/in_cheonan_dispute_un_security_counc

il_discovers_un_charter/

5. The article, “Heller mediacion de Mexico en conflict de

Peninsula de Corea” by Maurizio Guerrero, the UN Correspondent

for Notimex (the Mexican News Agency), was published in la

Economia on July 5, 2010. http://enlaeconomia.com/news

/2010/07/05/69561 (No longer available.)

6. Security Council, S/2010/281, “Letter dated 4 June 2010”,

https://undocs.org/S/2010/281

7. Security Council, S/2010/294, June 8, 2010 Letter, https://www

.voltairenet.org/article166269.html (scroll down and look on the

left).

8. Media Stakeout: Informal comments to the Media by the

President of the Security Council and the Permanent Representative

of Mexico, H.E. Mr. Claude Heller on the Cheonan incident (the

sinking of the ship from the Republic of Korea) and on Kyrgyzstan.

[Webcast: Archived Video – 5 minutes] http://webcast.un.org/ram

gen/ondemand/stakeout/2010/so10 0614pm3.rm (No longer avail-

able.)

9. Video of North Korean Ambassador Press Conference http://

webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/pressconference/2010

/pc100615am.rm (No longer available.)

10. UN Security Council, S/PRST/2010/13

https://www.security

councilreport.org/un-documents/document/NKorea-SPRST-2010-

13.php

11. Lee Jae-hoon, “UN Condemns Attack on the Cheonan: Pres-

idential Statement allows for a ‘double interpretation,’ and does not

blame or place consequences upon North Korea,” Hankyoreh, July

10, 2010.

www.hani.co.kr/arti/englishedition/enational/429768.html

Page 34

12. Ronda Hauben, “Netizens Question Cause of Cheonan

Tragedy,” OhmyNews International, June 8, 2010. Ronda

Hauben, “Questioning Cheonan Investigation Stirs Controversy,”

OhmyNews International, June 29, 2010.

13. PSPD Report Sent to Security Council, 1,

https://www.people

power21.org/Peace/584228 2, https://www.peoplepower21.org/En

glish/40150 3, https://www.peoplepower21.org/English/40157.

14. Yeran Kim, Irkwon Jeong, Hyoungkoo Khang and Bomi Kim,

“Blogging as ‘Recoding’: A Case Study of the Discursive War

Over the Sinking of the Cheonan,” Media International Australia,

November 2011, No. 141, pp. 98-106.

15.

https://shadowproof.com/2010/06/15/the-sinking-of-the-cheo

nan-we-are-being-lied-to/

16. From “PCC-772 Cheonan: South Korean Government Admits

the Deception (and then Lies about It),” June 30, 2010. (No longer

available.)

17. The press conference was held on July 9, 2010 at the Foreign

Correspondents’ Club of Japan. The program was titled “Lee and

Suh: Inconsistencies in the Cheonan Report.” (See https://arxiv

.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1006/1006.0680.pdf). See also, David

Cyranoski, “Controversy over South Korea’s Sunken Ship,”

Nature, July 8, 2010, online at:

http://www.nature.com/news/2010

/100708/full/news.2010.343.html?s=news_rss

18. The Russian team proposed a different theory for how the

Cheonan sank. They had observed that the ship’s propeller had

become entangled in a fishing net and subsequently that a possible

cause of the sinking could have been that the ship had hit the

antennae of a mine which then exploded. “Russian Navy Team’s

Analysis of the Cheonan Incident,” Posted on July 27, Hankyoreh,

modified on July 29.

http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition

/e_northkorea/432230.html The Russian Experts document is

titled “Data from the Russian Naval Expert Group’s Investigation

into the Cause of the South Korean Naval Vessel Cheonan’s

Sinking.” See also “Russia’s Cheonan Investigation Suspects that

Sinking Cheonan Ship was Caused by a Mine,” posted on July 27,

2010, Hankyoreh, modified on July 28, 2010.

http://www

.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_northkorea/432232.html

19. Barbara Demick and John M. Glionna, “Doubts Surface on

North Korean Role in Ship Sinking”, Los Angeles Times, July 23,

2010.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jul-23-la-

fg- korea-torpedo-20100724-story.html

20. Donald P. Gregg, “Testing North Korean Waters,” New York

Times, August 31, 2010.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opi

nion/01iht-edgregg.html

21. Records at the UN show that the practice of sending such

correspondence to the Security Council dates back to 1946. This

is the date when the symbol S/NC/ was introduced as the symbol

for “Communications received from private individuals and non-

governmental bodies relating to matters of which the Security

Council is seized.” The Security Council has the practice of peri-

odically publishing a list of the documents it receives, the name

and organization of the sender, and the date they are received. The

Provisional Rules of Procedure of the Security Council states that

the list is to be circulated to all representatives on the Security

Council. A copy of any communication on the list is to be given

to any nation on the Security Council that requests it.

There are over 450 such lists indicated in the UN records. As each

list can contain several or a large number of documents the

Security Council has received, the number of such documents is

likely to be in the thousands.

Under Rule 39 of the Council procedures, the Security Council

may invite any person it deems competent for the purpose to supply

it with information on a given subject. Thus the two procedures in

the Security Council’s provisional rules give it the basis to find

assistance on issues it is considering from others outside the

Council and to consider the contribution as part of its deliberation

22. Tae-ho Kwon,” South Korean Government Impeded Russian

Team’s Cheonan Investigation: Donald Gregg,” Hankyoreh, Sep-

tember 4, 2010.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/englishedition/enorth

korea/438299.html

23. See for example “PSPD’s Stance on the Presidential Statement

of the UNSC Regarding the Sinking of the ROK Naval Vessel

Cheonan,”

https://www.peoplepower21.org/English/40247

24. http://ceinquiry.us/2011-08-22-acceptable-distortion-lieswar-

libya (No longer available.)

25. “Russia Today, ‘Airstrikes in Libya did not take place’ –

Russian military,” March 1, 2011

http://www.rt.com/news/air

strikes-libya-russian-military/

26. “Libya, the UN, and Netizen Journalism,” The Amateur

Computerist, Winter 2012, vol. 21 No. 1

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

/acn/ACn21-1.pdf

27. Comments from discussion of article on “Comment Is Free” at

the Guardian (U.K.), http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree

/2011/mar/23/libya-ceasefire-consensus-russia-china-india

28. http://blog.hiddenharmonies.org/2011/03/libya-whats-going-on

/#comments

29. “An Open Letter to People’s of Africa and the World from

Concerned Africans.”

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf,

pp. 23-26.

30. “Abuse of UN Processes in Security Council Actions Against

Libya,”

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf, pp. 12-21.

31. See for example “What Does Gaddafi’s Fall Mean for Africa?”

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf, pp. 26-27.

32. See Introduction, “Netizen Journalism and the Story of the

Resistance to the NATO Aggression Against Libya,”

http://www

.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf, pp. 1-2.

33. See for example: Ali Hashem, Interview at the Real News,

https://therealnews.com/ahashempt10319

34. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012 /jun/02/syria-

intervention-observer

35. Alex Thompson’s blog, Sunday June 3, 2012. http://blogs

.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/search-houla-killers/1811

36. Michel Collon, Liar’s Poker, International Action Center, New

York, 2002, p. 45. (This is an English translation. The book is

originally published in French.)

37. Marat Musin, the Houla Massacre: Opposition Terrorists

“Killed Families Loyal to the Government,” Detailed Investigation,

Global Research, June 1, 2012, ANNA NEWS (Original Russian)

and syrianews.cc, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php ?context

=va&aid=31184. See for example: Thierry Meyssan, “The Houla

Affair Highlights Western Intelligence Gap in Syria,” http://www

.voltairenet.org/The-Houla-affair-highlights. Investigators from

Vesti24: Marat Musin, Olga Kulygina (Al-Houla, Syria)

38. May 26, 2012 “Death Squad’s Ravage Syrian Town – West

Calls for Action,” May 27, 2012. http://landdestroyer.blogspot

Page 35

.com/2012/05/death-squads-ravage-syrian-town-west.html

39. “West’s Houla Syria Narrative Crumbles Expels Syrian Dip-

lomats Anyway,” https://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/05

/wests-houla-syria-narrative-crumbles.html

40. “Houla Horror Truth Is Elusive Lies Are Easier to Spot,”

https://mediawerkgroepsyrie.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/fake-

bbc-pictures-about-houla-horror-truth-is-elusive-lies-are-easier-

to-spot/

41. Mathias Broeckers, “Der Hula-Hoax,” http://www.broeckers

.com/2012/06/05/der-hula-hoax/ (in German)

42. “UN Commissioner report on Houla? But they only talk to

Syrian opposition – by phone,”

http://www.rt.com/news/houla-

massacre-un-syria-635/

43. June 2, 2012, The Horrors of Houla (The blog is in Dutch De

verschrikkingen van Houla)

https://mediawerkgroepsyrie.word

press.com/2012/06/10/de-verschrikkingen-van-houla/

44. Bramdon Turbeville, “Syria under Attack by Globalist Death

Squads,” May 27, 2012, Syria360 blog, https://newsghana.com

.gh/syria-under-attack-by-globalist-death-squad-experts/. “The

Salvador Option for Syria”: U.S.-NATO Sponsored Death Squads

Integrate “Opposition Forces” – by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky –

2012-05-28,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context

=va&aid =31359

45. The collection of articles, “The Houla Massacre: The Dis-

information Campaign,” at Global Research, http://www.global

research.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31399

46. Forum with discussion, Houla Massacre, Syria: What If?

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=237195

47. “Abermals Massaker in Syrien” Frankfurter Allgmeine

Zeitung, June 7, 2012, partial English translation in “Prime

German Paper: Syrian Rebels Committed Houla Massacre,” Moon

of Alabama, 6-9-2012,

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/06

/prime-german-paper-syrian-rebels-committed-houla-

massacre.html

Another article appears on the National Review website, June 9,

2012 by John Rosenthal, http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

/302261/report-rebels-responsible-houla-massacre-john-rosenthal#

48. “New FAZ Piece On Houla Massacre: ‘The Extermination,’”

Moon of Alabama, June 15, 2012, http://wwwmoonofalabama

.org/2012/06/new-faz-piece-on-houla-massacre-the-extermin

ation.html

49. Lavrov, “On the Right Side of History,” https://www.voltaire

net.org/article174662.html

“When deciding to support UN Security Council Resolution 1970

and making no objection to Resolution 1973 on Libya, we

believed that these decisions would help limit the excessive use of

force and pave the way for a political settlement. Unfortunately,

the actions undertaken by NATO countries under these resolutions

led to their grave violation and support for one of the parties to the

civil war, with the goal of ousting the existing regime – damaging

in the process the authority of the Security Council … .

It is clear that after what had happened in Libya it was impossible

to go along with the UN Security Council taking decisions that

would not be adequately explicit and would allow those respon-

sible for their implementation to act at their own discretion. Any

mandate given on behalf of the entire international community

should be as clear and precise as possible in order to avoid

ambiguity. It is therefore important to understand what is really

happening in Syria and how to help that country to pass though this

painful stage of its history.”

50. See for example the summary by Moon of Alabama, -

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/06/the-syria-discussion-at-

the-un-general-assembly.html See also “The UN and the Houla

Massacre: The Information battlefield”

http://blogs.taz.de/netizen

blog/2012/06/12/un-and-houla-massacre/

51. See “The UN and the Houla Massacre: The Information Battle-

field.”

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2012/06/12/un-and-houla-ma

ssacre/

52. Ronda Hauben, “International Media ‘the 16

Member of the

Security Council,’”

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/03/15/me

dia_and_security_council/

53. Karl Deutsch, Nerves of Government, The Free Press, New

York, 1966, p. xxvii.

54. Ibid., p.77.

55. Ibid., p. 146.

56. Ibid., p. 153.

57. Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2010 Vol. 89, Issue 6, pp. 2-12.

58. Ibid., p. 2.

59. Ibid., p.10.

60. Ronda Hauben, “On Libya, Soft Power, and the Protection of

Civilians as Pretext,” Global Time, April 18, 2011.

61. Ronda Hauben, UN Security Council March 17 Meeting to

Authorize Bombing of Libya all Smoke and Mirrors.

http://blogs

.taz.de/netizenblog/2011/03/30/un _march_17_meeting_res1973/

Pavel Felgenhauer, “Putin and Medvedev Lead Opposing Coali-

tions in the Russian Elite,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, March 26,

2011,

https://jamestown.org/program/putin-and-medvedev-lead-op

posing-coalitions-in-the-russian-elite/

62. Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los Alamitos, CA, IEEE

Computer Society Press, 1997, Chapter 13, p. 233. See also the

Preface, and Chapter 1.

63. See for example, Ronda Hauben, “Netizens Defy Western

Media Fictions of China,” http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn20-2

.pdf, pp. 7-9.

*This article appears in the Amateur Computerist Vol. 22 No. 2,

pp. 17-32.

Page 36

[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article

appeared in Rhetoric and Communications E-journal,

Issue 27, March 2017. That journal can be seen online

at: http://journal.rhetoric.bg/.]

Considerations on the

Significance of the Net

and the Netizens*

by Ronda Hauben

Topics: netizens, communication processes, communication

channels, citizen empowerment, models for democracy, nerves of

government, social impact

Abstract

The book Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet celebrates in 2017 the 20

anniversary of its

publication in English and Japanese editions in 1997. The book

documents how along with the development of the Internet came

the emergence of a new form of citizen – the netizen. In his

pioneering online research in the early 1990s Michael Hauben

gathered data and did analysis demonstrating that not only the

Internet but also the netizen would have an important impact on

society. This article explores Hauben’s research recognizing that

netizens are a new social force. The article also looks at other

contributions which help to provide a conceptual framework to

understand this new social force. Media theorist Mark Poster’s

work about netizens is discussed, as is Karl Deutsch’s theoretical

understanding of the role of communication in creating a new

model for good government. But it is the candlelight revolution by

citizens and netizens in 2016-2017 in South Korea which demon-

strates in practice the importance of the netizen forging a new

governance model for participatory democracy.

Key Words: netizens, communications, empower-

ment, impact, citizen, watchdog, democracy

Introduction

With the introduction of the Internet, the question

has been raised as to what its impact will be on society.

One significant result of the impact already is the

emergence of the netizen. Michael Hauben’s work in

the 1990s recognized the significant impact not only of

the development of the Internet but also of the role of

the netizen in forging new social and political forms

and processes.

While the role of netizens in working for social

change has been documented around the world, the

role of netizens in working for social and political

change has been an especially important aspect of

South Korean experience for nearly the past two

decades. Most recently, however, widespread political

and economic corruption at the highest levels of the

South Korean society has led citizens and netizens to

take part in peaceful but massive candlelight demon-

strations advocating the need for fundamental change in

the political and economic structures of South Korean

society. The question has been raised whether there are

models for such change. In such an environment there

is a need to consider the importance of the Internet and

of the Netizen in helping to forge the new forms for

grassroots participation in the governing structures of

society. At such a time it seems appropriate to consider

the conceptual framework for the role of the netizen in

contributing to a new governing model for society

These developments in South Korea come at a

time when the book Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet celebrates the 20

anniversary since its publication in 1997, making a

review of the significant contribution of the book

particularly relevant to the events of our time.

Looking Back

Twenty years ago in May 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 2017, we are celebrating the occasion of

the 20

Anniversary of these publications.

In honor of this occasion I want to both look back

and 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 begin to consider

what has happened in these 20 years toward trying to

understand the nature of this advance and the develop-

ments the advance makes possible.

By the early 1990s, Hauben 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 be a beneficial impact. He had raised a series of

questions about the online experience. He received

responses to these questions from a number of people.

Reading and analyzing the responses he explained:

There are people online who actively con-

tribute to the development of the Net. These

people understand the value of collective

work and the communal aspects of public

communications. These are the people who

Page 37

discuss and debate topics in a constructive

manner, who e-mail answers to people and

provide help to newcomers, who maintain

FAQ files and other public information

repositories, who maintain mailing lists,

and so on. These are the people who dis-

cuss the nature and role of this new com-

munications medium. These are the people

who as citizens of the Net I realized were

Netizens.

The book was compiled from a series of articles

written by Hauben and his co-author Ronda Hauben

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

Hauben’s article, “The Net and Netizens: The Impact

the Net Has on People’s Lives.” Hauben opened the

article with the prophetic words, which appeared

online first in 1993:

Welcome to the 21

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. Virtually,

you live next door to every other single

Netizen in the world. Geographical separa-

tion is replaced by existence in the same

virtual space.

Hauben goes on to explain that what he is pre-

dicting 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 now twenty 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, Hauben looked at the pioneering vision

that gave birth to the Internet. He looked at the role of

computer science in the building of the earlier network

called the ARPANET, at the potential impact that the

Net and Netizen would have on politics, on journalism,

and on the revolution in ideas that the Net and Netizen

would bring about, comparing this to the advance

brought about by the printing press. The last chapter of

the book is an article Hauben 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 funding 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, many of whom sup-

ported the public and collaborative nature of the

Internet and who wanted this aspect to grow and

flourish.

The article “The Net and Netizens” grew out of a

research project that Hauben had done for a class at

Columbia University in Computer Ethics. Hauben 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 got

back helped to establish the fact that already in 1993 the

Net was having a profound impact on the lives of a

number of people.

Hauben put together the results of his research in

the article “The 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 conceptualization of 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.

Hauben described this experience in a speech he

gave at a conference in Japan. Subsequently in 1997,

his description became the preface to the Netizens book,

Hauben explained:

In conducting research five years ago online

to determine people’s uses of the global

computer communications network, I be-

came aware that there was a new social

institution, an electronic commons, develop-

ing. It was exciting to explore this new

social institution. Others online shared this

excitement. I discovered from those who

Page 38

wrote me that the people I was writing

about were citizens of the Net or Netizens.

Hauben’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 Hauben called the “poor man’s version of the

mass media.” He focused on what was new or emerg-

ing and recognized the promise for the future repre-

sented by what was only at the time in an early stage of

development.

For example, Hauben recognized that the collab-

orative contributions for a new media would far exceed

what the old media had achieved. “As people continue

to connect to Usenet and other discussion forums,” he

wrote, “the collective population will contribute back

to the human community this new form of news.”

In order to consider the impact of Hauben’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.

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’s title is Informa-

tion Please. The book was published in 2006. While

Poster does not make any explicit reference to the

book Netizens he finds the concept of the netizen that

he has seen used online to be an important one. He

offers some theoretical discussion on the use of the

“netizen” concept.

Referring to the concept of citizen, Poster is

interested in the relationship of the citizen to gov-

ernment, and in the empowering of the citizen to be

able to affect the actions of one’s government. He

considers the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the

Citizen as 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 govern-

ments. But this was not adequate, though the concept

of the rights of the citizen, he recognizes, was an

important democratic milestone.

“Human rights and citizenship,” he writes, “are

tied together and reinforce each other in the battle

against the ruling classes.”

He proposes that “these

rights are ensured by their inscription in constitutions

that found governments and they persist in their associ-

ation with those governments as the ground of political

authority.”

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 register in which the

human is recast and along with it the citizen.”

“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.”

In this situation, “the figure of the citizen is placed

in a defensive position.”

To succeed in the struggle

against globalization he recognizes that there is a need

to find instead of a defensive position, an offensive one.

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 exam-

ine those media that cross national boundaries and to

inquire if they form or may form the basis for a new set

of political relations.”

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?”

“In contrast to the citizen of the nation,” Poster

notices, “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 spontane-

ously, this is not accurate.

Before Hauben’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

Page 39

increasingly common. Hauben’s work was a process of

doing research online, summarizing the research,

analyzing it while welcoming online comments at

various stages of the process 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 interactively 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.”

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.”

The Era of the Netizen

Poster characterizes the current times as the age

of globalization. I want to offer a different view, the

view that we are in an era demarcated by the creation

of the Internet and the emergence of the netizen.

Therefore, 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 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 the article “The Rise

of Netizen Democracy,” 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 public affairs. The Internet makes it

possible for netizens to speak out independently of

institutions or officials.”

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?” Kamat

asks, contrasting netizens’ discussion online with the

power of the 4th estate, i.e. the mainstream media.

“Will social and political discussion in social

media grow into deliberation?” asks Kamat. “Will opin-

ions expressed be merely ‘rabble rousing’ or will they

be ‘reflective’ instead of ‘impulsive’?”

One must recognize, Kamat explains, the new

situation online and the fact that it is important to

understand the nature of this new 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.

Looking for a Model

When visiting South Korea in 2008, I was asked

by a colleague if there is a model for democracy that

could be helpful for South Korea – a model imple-

mented 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 just take a model from

the period before the Internet, from before the emer-

gence 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

not only of citizens but also of netizens is important in

building more democratic structures for the society.

South Korea appears to be the most advanced in grass-

roots efforts to create examples of netizen forms for a

more participatory government decision making pro-

cess.

But China is also a place where there are signifi-

cant developments because of the Internet and

netizens.

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, how-

ever, 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

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evolving new models for development and participa-

tion represented in the Era of the Netizen.

In particular, I want to point to a paper by the

research scientist who many computer and networking

pioneers credit with providing the vision to inspire the

scientific work to create the Internet. This scientist is

JCR Licklider, an experimental psychologist who was

particularly interested in the processes of the brain and

in communication research.

In a paper Licklider wrote with another psycholo-

gist, Robert Taylor, in 1968 a vision was set out to

guide the development of the Internet. The title of the

paper was “The Computer as a Communication De-

vice.”

The paper proposed that essential to the

processes of communication is the creation and sharing

of models. That the human mind is adept at creating

models, but that the models created in a single mind

are not helpful in themselves. Instead it is critical that

models be shared and a process of cooperative model-

ing be developed in order to be able to create some-

thing that many people will respect.

Nerves of Government

In his article comparing the impact of the Net

with the important impact the printing press had on

society, Hauben wrote, “The Net has opened a channel

for talking to the whole world to an even wider set of

people than did printed books.”

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 order to have a conceptual framework to

understand the importance of this characteristic, I

recommend the book by Karl Deutsch titled, The

Nerves of Government. In the preface to this book,

Deutsch writes:

This book suggests that it might be prefera-

ble 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.

To look at the question of government not as a

problem of power, but as one of steering, of communi-

cation, I want to propose is a fundamental paradigm

shift.

What is the difference?

Political power has to do with the ability to exert

force on something so as to affect its direction and

action. 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 trans-

mitted via certain channels.

Some of the important challenges of our times

relate to the exposure of the distortions of the informa-

tion being spread. For example, the misrepresentations

by the mainstream media about what happened in Libya

in 2011 or what has been happening in Syria since

2011.

The creation and dissemination of channels of

communication that make possible “the essential two-

way flow of information” are essential for the function-

ing 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, a speech

given by Zosio Lee. Lee refers to the kind of informa-

tion 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 manip-

ulated or deceived?”

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.” Also, he proposes that “infor-

mation has to be processed and discussed for it to

acquire full meaning and significance.”

“When infor-

mation 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.

In his article “The Computer as a Democratizer,”

Hauben similarly explores the need for accurate infor-

Page 41

mation 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.”

Hauben adds that, “The public needs accurate

information as to how their representatives are fulfill-

ing their role. Once these representatives have abused

their power, the principles established by [Thomas

Paine] and [James] Mill require that the public have

the ability to replace the abusers.”

Channels of accurate communication are critical

in order to share the information needed to determine

the nature of one’s government.

Conclusion

The candlelight revolution is still in process in

South Korea. It is demonstrating in practice that we are

in a period when the old forms of government are

outmoded. The paper by Licklider and Taylor proposes

that the computer is a splendid facilitator for coopera-

tive modeling. It is such a process of cooperative

modeling that offers the potential for creating not only

new technical and institutional forms, but also new

political forms. Such new political forms are more

likely to provide for the democratic processes that are

needed for the 21

century. Hence it is the efforts of

citizens and netizens who are involved in collaborative

modeling to create the more participatory forms and

structures as is happening during the candlelight pro-

cesses being explored in South Korea that provide for

the development of a more equitable and democratic

society.

References/Citations

1. Hauben, M., R. Hauben, (1997), Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer

Society Press, p. 3. Also available online in an earlier draft

version,

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/. Retrieved on Jan. 18,

2017.

2. IBID., p. ix.

3. IBID., p. 233.

4. Poster, M., (2006). Information Please. Durham: Duke

University Press, p. 68.

5. IBID.

6. IBID., p. 70.

7. IBID., p. 71.

8. IBID.

9. IBID., p. 77.

10. IBID., p. 78.

11. IBID.

12. IBID., p. 83.

13. Kamat, V. (2011, December 16), “We are looking at the Fifth

Estate,” Reader’s Opinion, Times of India, p. 2.

http://timesof

india.indiatimes .com/edit-page/ampnbspWe-are-looking-at-the-

fifth-estate/articleshow/11133662.cms, Retrieved on Jan. 10, 2017.

The quote is taken from Hauben, R. “The Rise of Netizen Democ-

racy: A Case Study of Netizens’ Impact on Democracy in South

Korea,”

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/kore an-

democracy.txt, Retrieved on Jan. 10, 2017.

14. 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.

Science mailing lists and discussion networks contributed to by

netizens helped to expose the fraudulent scientific work of a

leading South Korean scientist. And 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, 2008 over

the form the demonstration should take involved both online and

off-line discussion and demonstrated the generative nature of

serious communication. See for example, Hauben, R. “On Grass-

roots Journalism and Participatory Democracy.”

http://www.col

umbia.edu/~rh120/other/netizens_draft.pdf, Retrieved on Jan. 10,

2017.

15. Some examples include the anti-cnn website 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, Hauben, R. (2010, February 14). “China

in the Era of the Netizen.”

https://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/02

/14/china_in_the_era_of_the_netizen/.

16. IBID., Netizens.

17. “The Computer as a Communication Device,” (1968, April)

Science and Technology. http://memex.org/licklider.pdf, pp. 21-41.

Retrieved Jan. 21, 2017.

18. The Licklider and Taylor paper also points out that the sharing

of models is essential to facilitate communication. If two people

have different models and do not find a way to share them, there

will be no communication between them.

19. IBID., Netizens, p. 299

20. Deutsch, K., (1966), Nerves of Government, New York, The

Free Press, p. xxvii.

21. See for example, Hauben, R., (2012, Winter), “Libya, the UN

and Netizen Journalism,” The Amateur Computerist, Vol. 21, No.

1. http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf, Retrieved Jan. 10,

2017 and Hauben, J., (2007), “On the 15

Anniversary of Netizens:

Netizens Expose Distortions and Fabrication.”

http://www.colum

bia.edu/~hauben/Book_Anniversary/presentation_2.doc.

22. Lee, Z. (2011), “Truthfulness and the Information Revolution,”

JPL 31, p. 105.

Page 42

23. IBID., p. 106.

24. IBID., p. 108.

25. IBID., Netizens, p. 316.

26. IBID., Netizens, p. 317.

27. M. 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)

28. Hauben, R., (2016, December 21), “Ban Ki-moon’s Idea of

Leadership or the Candlelight Model for More Democracy?,”

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2016/12/21/leadership-or-

candlelight-democracy/. Retrieved on Jan. 21, 2017.

Bibliography

Deutsch, K. (1966). Nerves of Government. New York: The Free

Press. New York.

Hauben, M. & Hauben, R. (1997). Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet. Los Alamitos: IEEE

Computer Society Press. Online edition:

http://www.col

umbia.edu/~rh120, Retrieved on Jan. 11, 2017.

Hauben, R. (2005). “The Rise of Netizen Democracy: A Case

Study of Netizens’ Impact on Democracy in South Korea.”

Unpublished paper. Retrieved from

http://www.columbia

.edu/~hauben/ronda2014/Rise_of_Netizen_Democracy

.pdf.

Komat, V. (2011, December 16, p. 2). Reader’s Opinion: “We’re

Looking at the Fifth Estate.” Times of India. Retrieved

from:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/ampn

bspWe-are-looking-at-the-fifth-estate/articleshow/111336

62.cms.

Lee, Z. E. (2011). “Truthfulness and the Information Revolution,”

Journal of Philippine Librarianship, 31. pp. 101-109.

http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/jpl/article/viewFile

/2779/2597. Retrieved on Jan. 11, 2017.

Licklider, JCR, & Taylor, R. “The Computer as a Communication

Device.” (1968, April). Science and Technology.

http://

memex.org/licklider.pdf. pp. 21-41. Retrieved Jan. 21,

2017.

Poster, M. (2006). Information Please. Durham: Duke University

Press.

* This article is a revised version of a presentation made on May

1, 2012 at a small celebration in honor of the 15

Anniversary of

the publication of the print edition of the book Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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