The Yes Men

“The Yes Men” (2003): Really interesting production. It shows that when activism joins originality and sense of humor, this combination of factors entails efficient actions to aware citizens about controversial current affairs or policies. It was very inspiring for me to realize that most part of the times it´s not due to economical/organizational limitations that we can´t develop an activism initiative..but due to imagination limitations. Why don´t you check it out by yourselves: http://theyesmen.org/ ?

AFRICA IS A COUNTRY

Africa is a country (http://africasacountry.com/) is a collaborative blog which aim is to provide a critical approach to representations of Africa in the Western media by using humorous materials to engage people. A different initiative to combine both amusement and social activism started by the journalist and professor Sean Jacobs. Together with professor Jacobs, other seven conspirators, coming from the field of media academy and communication advocacy, work to continue successfully holding this project. The goal of this online platform is to use humour as a potential tool to promote deeper reflections about what kind of values and images are being transmitted by occidental media when talking about Africa. So, we are in front of an ambitious and original way of fighting for a more democratic society, in which several professionals with really interesting backgrounds are involved. 

Africaisacountry´s offered materials are structured around the homepage of this portal; what easier focuses the Internet user attention. Most of the times, the nature of this contents is an hybrid between audiovisual material – pictures and videos – and descriptive writings in English. Information provided by this texts is conceived as an interactive text in which refereed documentation is available for users just by clicking on the links. Different post are organized in categories such as music, television or art; however, we can also find uncategorized materials, as it is the case for varied news. At this point, I´d like to highlight that the pretension of this kind of news is bringing to the public sphere those informations without a concrete commercial interest for global media conglomerates. Those constantly forgotten informations in Eastern newspapers, televisions and radios because of they seem not to take part in what is established as                  “ occidental public affairs”. 

Finally, it is also interesting their effort to cover subjects from different areas of interest. Both stereotypes and simplifications can be present – as they try to show- in music groups, TV series or news discourses. For instance, on this occasion they have dedicated some space on the blog to criticize the South African music group Die Antwood because they consider that: “in videos they use clothes, gold teeth, spliffs and gangsta gesticulations to convey pretty superficial stereotypes about blackness that already over saturate global popular culture” ( Lily Saint, Guest Blogger). The possibility of freely writing a comment about this and the rest of the published entries is given to anyone surfing the net.

What is the "Third Cinema" project?

According to the manifesto Towards a Third Cinema, written in the late 1960s by Argentine filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino:

“Third Cinema rejects the view of cinema as a vehicle for personal expression, seeing the director instead as part of a collective; it appeals to the masses by presenting the truth and inspiring aggressive activity”

Third Cinema is a relative new and original idea based on the conception of cinema as aesthetically and politically revolutionary practice, for facilitating social and political change. We can categorize it as a militant cinema which aim is to enable expression for dissident voices. Following with this idea we have initiate ourselves on the reflection about the subaltern, a concept to explore cultural dimensions of power and subjugation. “Can the subaltern speak?” The subaltern often is destined to keep a marginalize position in society. This means that they seem not to appear in mass media, or, if they do, they are usually represented under the wrong values – for instance, as promoters of violent situations-, what negatively influences their image in social imagination. So, the aim of Third Cinema is to use technology to give a voice to those marginalized groups who don´t have it.

This Third Cinema is different from Second and First cinema in many features. There is a constant process of experimentation in the way of producing this films, they can be recognized just for their technical appearance. Cinema is not conceived as spectacle – as it is the case for First Cinema-, and the action is not structured around the hero; main characters in this kind of cinema are inspired by those anonymous groups suffering from poverty and social prejudice. However, Second Cinema is experimental and potentially revolutionary, what makes it closer to Third Cinema, the main difference between them is that Second Cinema doesn´t take the same kind of risk about film making-process and argument.

First, Second and Third Cinema do not correspond to geographical areas – there is Third Cinema in the first world and First Cinema in the third world -. And Third Cinema is not simply opposite to the others two Cinemas, but it bets for a collaboration among these different methods for making films. There is a characteristic group of audience for each one, and, paradoxically, First Cinema seems to be the most democratic between them in the sense that while Third Cinema is demanded by an intellectual elite, First Cinema is popular around the world without regarding gender or social status.

According with M. Wayne, four key markers of Third Cinema are: historicity – changes and conflicts that constitute history-, politicization – raising awareness among the oppressed and the exploited-, critical commitment – to political and cultural change-, cultural specificity – Third Cinema´s “ intimacy and familiarity with culture...as a site of political struggle”-.

· In conclusion...

This new film- making method based on revolutionaries audiovisual techniques and non lineal scripts, aims to be critical with the current society by telling stories about marginalized social groups. These kind of films are not stared by famous and successful actors because audience must be focus on the critical approach that the story contains. I consider Third Cinema as an original way to join social activism and art.  

More information about Third Cinema :

http://thirdcinema.blueskylimit.com/thirdcinema.html

When Murdoch found the Indian Dream

Traditionally, the two channels for news information more popular in India were BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and CNN (Cable News Network). However, nowadays the world of news is becoming more and more complicated in this country because of the proliferation of sources that are changing the global news-scape. At the same time that journalism is going through a critical period in most of the occidental democracies, in places like India it is possible to find another situation: mass media, specially if we focus on television, are a growing market. In fact, looking at this market form a global context, we could say that it is equipped with a huge pluralism, for instance, it has over eighteen official languages and seventy-round-the-clock news channels, what means this is the world´s most linguistically diverse media landscape. And future for TV industry in India is promising, in a country where more than 60% of the population live in the countryside, we could conclude that a huge market is still waiting to be connected. In fact, while TV penetration in urban spheres is around 64%, when talking about rural areas this data changes to 19%. So far, number of TV households is 113 million, and broadcasters revenue comes from advertising in 73% and from subscription in 27%.

Satellite Television Asia Region (STAR) is an Asian TV service owned by Rupert Murdoch´s News Corporation. According to the STAR website, their service has more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries and it is watched by approximately 120 million viewers every day. One of India´s most popular Hindi general entertainment channels is STAR plus ( http://www.startv.com.tr/), it was one of the five original STAR TV channels when it launched in 1991, and was dedicated to English language entertainment (which then became STAR World). Murdoch was responsible for introducing the first music television channel in India (Channel V), reality TV series (Lakme Fashion Show) and the adaptation of an international game show ( Who Wants to be a Millionaire?). In order to launch this last mentioned programme he used one of the most popular Bollywood´s film stars to actuate as a presenter, what made it a very successful format among the Indian audience.

So, the question is, are we attending to a Bollywoodization of the news media in India? One important data to take into account is that entertainment and the media sector in this country is projected to be worth twenty nine billion dollars by 2012. In addition, news-entertainment synergies between Hollywood and Bollywood have been institutionalized during the last years. And, the conclusion of this kind of market strategies is that they bet for the three “C” of Indian infotainment: Crime – presentation of the country as a dangerous place-, Cricket – Murdoch´s sport channel-, and Cinema -Bollywood-.

Finally, television can be also contemplated as a new source to democratize the country; for example, in this huge offer of channels we can find some of them, as it is the case for NDTV ( http://www.ndtv.com/), where the quality of contents really cares. So, it is also possible to create a TV for development, apart from that businessmen blinded by millions of revenues.

· In conclusion...

Privatization of Hindi TV has entailed the proliferation of new channels broadcasting different kind of contents. On the one hand, this fact could represent the Indian TV-market aperture to media convergence and desregularization; but, on the other hand, this increasing offer of contents brings to the citizens more information about current affairs, what, at the same time, contributes to democratize the public sphere. Of course, Mr. Murdoch and its News Corporation presence in the Hindi market plays an important role in the Foxilization of news in this country, or, what it´s the same, the rise of infotainment. But, as I have explained before, freedom of expression is being also used for developing serious discourses based on accuracy and pluralism (e.g. NDTV).

Internet Governance Forum: "is there really any power there"?

 Before going more in-depth within the definition, and aims and this entity I would like to start this point by quoting Hintz and Milan´s research, At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy: "Policy fora such us the IGF are believed to have little actual impact and there is deep distrust in their outcomes and in the usefulness of engaging with them. Civil society participation is not expected to lead substantial change. As one of the respondents put it "it is a puppet theatre, internet governance is being decided somewhere else (Microsoft, Cisco, IP international regulation...)" (Interviewee 3 2007)" (1. Hintz, A.,& Milan, S.(2009), "At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy". International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5: 1&2, pp. 23-38)

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is the most prominent outcome of WISIS, it is defined as a new forum for a multi-stakeholder dialogue on the Internet policy. Its mandate has been to "discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet" (IGF 2006). It is also important to highlight that this institution does not have a decision-making role and cannot negotiate binding agreements but it can set policy agendas. The first meeting of the IGF took place in Athens (Greece) in 2006, and it allowed open debate, advanced WISIS practices and moved closer to "full participation". One innovation has been the establishment of "Dynamic Coalitions" in which members of all stakeholder groups discuss specific Internet policy sub-themes - such as spam, privacy, freedom of expression, linguistic diversity- and try to find common positions. Finally, the IGF Secretariat's activities are funded through extra-budgetary contributions paid into a multi-donor Trust Fund administered by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). All contributions are administered and accounted for in accordance with the United Nations Financial Regulations and Rules and other applicable directives, procedures and practices. The project expenditure is contained in the biennial Financial Report and audited Financial Statements of the United Nations.

We started this point by giving a critical approach towards the IGF as an institution that enables the empowerment of civil society in policy making issues and provides egalitarian debates hold by multistakeholders coming from different fields of society. In this sense, the research published by Hintz and Milan reflects on the fact that there is a lack of engagement and participation in policy advocacy manifested by what they agree to call "grassroots tech groups" (GTG), groups providing alternative communication infrastructure to civil society activists and citizens on a voluntary basis through collective organising principles, with the aim of counteracting commercial as well as state pressures on information content, media access and the privacy of media users. Grassroots tech groups usually offer web-based services such as website hosting, e-mail and mailing list services, chats and other tools such as anonymous re-mailers and instant messaging; or provide platforms for self-production of information. (5. Ídem) So, what it´s kind of contradictory is that although the Free and Open- Source Software (FOSS), which includes systems such as Linux and office software suites, was one of the interesting (and ambiguous) outcomes of the WISIS process, according to the conclusions of the already quoted research, grassroots tech groups trust more in achieving change through practical and technological development than through advocacy. Furthermore, when asked, these groups point to a variety of reasons why they do not participate in policy processes such us WISIS and IGF, in this sense, I would like to quote the following lines:

" The immediate answer of most interviewees (GTG) to the question on whether they would get involved in policy-making processes if invited to is a strong "no". Most suspect that that civil society participation is just "decorative" (Interviewee 3 2007), that the actual decisions are taken elsewhere, that is by corporate and government actors, and that "the invitation would be just for the record, so the institution or the body would gain political and cultural capital" (Interviewee 4 2007). Participation, in that sense, would "legitimize the decisions taken by other agents ( corporations, governments, lobbies, etc.)" (Interviewee 3 2007). Therefore, "we want to maintain a certain distance from this institutional and falsely "democratic" internet [regulation]" (Interviewee 7 2007)" (2. Ídem)

Global Internet Governance: dream or reality?

After the celebration of the UN World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS (Geneva 2003, Tunis 2005), promoted by the ITU, and the verification of its main outcome, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the global society´s sight is focused on the possibility of generating an Internet regulation capable to cross borders from one nation to other. Put it another way, as far as the Internet is a global phenomena it should be legislated from a global institution in which the decision-making processes could enable the participation of governments, private sector and civil society. However, this theorization in the field of Internet governance seems to be easier "said than done", the fact is that one year ago we attended to the, at least partially successful attempt to shut down the Internet in Egypt carried out by the national Government of Mubarak when trying to stop the social revolution taking place on the country. So, although the aim of the global population is to establish common policies to regulate the Internet on a frame of freedom of expression and self-responsibility, the reality is that still today the ones counting on true power to control the cyberspace are, on the one hand, the national governments, and, on the other, the huge Internet conglomerates.

WSIS: An attempt to democratize the Internet governance landscape.

The preparatory process toward the 2003 WSIS stated in 1998, when UN´s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) proposed it within the UN system in order to challenge to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In December 2001 the General Assembly formally authorized the summit, to be held in December 2003 (Phase 1) and November 2005 (Phase II). Actually, this was the first time that a two-part nature summit took place within the UN and it achieved an important change in the summit form in the sense that the forum´s resources could be used for a longer time and there are more chances for encouraging fruitful implementation processes. Formally speaking, the preparatory meetings for the summit taking place in 2001 (that consisted on both preparatory committee meetings -prepcoms- and regional meetings) served to gather input from around the world and to prepare the documents that would be adopted in 2003. In fact, the summit itself is a ceremony of ratification in which heads of state make speeches and ratify the collective documents that would be adopted after the event. At this point it is interesting to highlight that WISIS formalized the role of civil society to an unprecedented level by creating an official "civil society bureau" that held formal meetings with the bureaus for governments and the private sector. Later on, five years after the summit there is a conference to assess the progress made toward implementing the summit plans.

As we have mentioned before, one of the main WSIS´s aims was to create a new global Internet governance regime in which the powerful ICANN could acquire a less monopolistic role to play. Created in 1998 as a private, U.S.- based corporation under the sole political authority of the United States, ICANN constitutes a nascent global governance regime for the Internet. This institution is unpopular because of its perceived violation of sovereignty through its control of the Internet´s globally-shared core resources. China, South Africa, Brazil, and most Arab States, in an alliance with the ITU, successfully initiated a process to review and possibly change the ICANN regime. This way, between the three classes of outcomes that the summit produced, significant policy action, significant policy inaction and a large set of ambiguous outcomes, taking part in the first class we find both the Internet Governance Forum, that is discussed in greater detail below, and the Digital solidarity fund, which consists on a mechanism to address issues commonly known as the "digital divide" by transferring wealth from the rich countries to the poor ones. These two effective policy-initiatives are the best proofs to conclude that the UN´s summits can make a difference in the sense that they present an opportunity structure that, when combined with advocacy and well -fitting policy proposals, can lead to a real change. (1. Klein H. (2004). Understanding WISIS: An Institutional Analysis of the UN World Summit on the Information Society. Volume 1, Number 3-4)

However, on an attempt to reflect some of the critics made to WISIS and its pretended multistakeholder nature we can attach the idea that, although civil society (mainly represented by NGOs) was supposed to reach the same participatory level than private sector and governments, some details point out that while a large number of NGOs and other civil society actors get involved within the event and created effective mechanisms for lobbying and thematic exchange, they also had to face serious obstacles in accessing the summit stage and in participating meaningfully, particularly with regards to accreditation, funding and exclusion from negotiations. Furthermore, the requirements for receiving accreditation for the WSIS process were geared towards formal NGOs and failed to consider the structural background of those civil society actors that are organised as loose grassroots groups, non-hierarchical networks and temporary coalitions. In addition, several groups, such as Reporters Sans Frontiers and Tunisian Human rights groups, were not allowed to participate at all. Financially, effective participation in WSIS preparatory conferences involved covering flight tickets and two weeks of hotel accommodation, food and drinks in an expensive Swiss city -several times a year. Little funding was provided for civil society delegates by the WSIS organisers. Again, only larger NGOs, which could mobilise sufficient funds could cope with this restriction. Finally, and despite the initial promises by summit organisers, the new non-governmental stakeholders were reduced to the status of "observers" who were allowed to attend only "public" sessions and who were excluded from actual decision-making processes and spaces. Only the Working Group on the Internet Governance (WIGIG) came close to a true multi-stakeholder design. (2. Hintz, A.,& Milan, S.(2009), "At the margins of Internet governance: grassroots tech groups and communication policy". International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 5: 1&2, pp. 23-38 )

Challenges to "Mediated Participations"

With the entrance of new ICT in our daily activity, an important sector of scholars and intellectuals are tempted to think that the key issue for a more democratic society resides on the use of these technologies as a tool for engaging citizens in the decision-making processes. These people sustain that time and space limitations operating until this moment have been already overcome on the current society. Citizens don´t need to attend to the antique “agora” to discuss about certain social affairs and to develop a collaborative policy to regulate the society; nowadays, this kind of “meeting room” can be available from each one´s home, always taking on account the need of the connectivity to the Internet. Lately, I´ve been working about this new concept of “deliberative democracy”, and, after reading different essays describing the implications of the term I still remain confused about its real meaning. I think the reason why I can´t completely understand this concept it´s because it seems to be clear if we are focused on the abstract/theoretical sphere, but when we try to be concrete about its direct application...things start getting imprecise. In my view, apart from the obvious challenges for this new ITC working as a tool for engaging citizens, such as digital divide or lack of information systems´ skills, I think that nowadays this “participative democracy” is conceived more for excluding a huge part of the citizens than for encouraging them to actively participate in the policies making. So, on the following lines I´d like to pose some question about which I hope to discuss in group during the Mediated Participations course:

· Does “deliberative democracy” mean “e-participation”? And, if it was the case, is the concept “e-participation” reduced to “e-voting”?

· Is it possible to develop a constructive discussion through the cyberspace? Or, on the other hand, maybe the Internet just provides the perfect environment for self-expression and for caring about individual needs more than the collectives ones.

· Who would be responsible if the decisions agreed by using e-participation processes don´t work appropriately once they have been applied to the society? How could anybody answer if he/she had contributed to this decision-making from its home´s anonymity? How this processes could affect to the public sphere?

· Who is going to decide which part of the population has the right to participate on a concrete discussion? And, in addition, Who has the responsibility of establishing which topics can be discussed online during an e-participation session and which others remain only for being managed by the political elite?

· Why some sectors of society try to confuse citizens with the promise of self-government? This confusion takes place when “deliberative democracy” is pretended to be “direct democracy”.

Maybe most part of these questions could be easily answered by an expert on information systems and sociology, but, so far I remain skeptic about the power that new ICT really have to promote a significant change in the current political organization within democratic communities. I know that e-participation processes have been successfully developed in countries like Scotland and the United Kingdom but they have taken place always focusing on a restrictive environment, or, what it´s the same, good delimited groups of people sharing a common interest and knowledge about the discussion topic, with an equal voice and opportunity to express themselves, well provided of information and, of course, using friendly technologies for the participants. Finally, to be developed in the correct way, this kind of processes need to invest an important effort by both the stakeholders and the organization. So, my last question is: Are the politicians really willing to empower citizens by spending both money and energies even knowing that this fact represents the loose of their current hegemony? It doesn´t seem to be very likely for me...