China´s censorship

The republic of China has a variety of laws concerning Internet censorship. The censorship does not apply to Hong Kong or Macau though since are special entities recognized by the international treaty with independent judicial power. The laws of free flow restriction do not all apply to them as well. 

This effort the government has made to delete online opinion follows series of large anti-corruption protesta, ethnic riots and views agains pollution which were organized or made public through the internet. The size of the internet police is thought to be around 50.000. Critical comments appearing on blogs or other websited are often erased within minutes.

This Internet free flow repression is more advanced in China than in any other country in the world. Authorities do not only block websites. They also monitor what individuals access on the Internet. The country has the largest number of cyber dissidents in the world. Most of them are guilty for opposing the government, signing online petitions, having opinion on the end of corruption etc.

 One example of such is Liu Shaokun, a teacher that was sentenced for „inciting a disturbance. He took photos of collapsed schools and posted online in 2008.

Another example from 2008 is Huang Qu, who was arrested for illegally possessing state secrets. He apparently dared to speak with foreign press about the horror of the lost children in the collapsed schools. Well, he did also post information on his website about it, but still I think imprisonment isn´t what he deserved.

At least 18.000 websites are blocked from within the mainland of China. Out of the top 100 global websites used in everyday life for most people, twelve of them are blocked in the country. In 2009, Facebook and Twitter were blocked, it is presumed because of containing things like political commentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaKjubZBFoY

Hanna

Predicting politics

One of the many things I love about the Internet is that you can find whatever you want on there. At the end of every year I tend to check if predictions various people made about the past year ended up being true. On Youtube for instance you can find a lot of television shows and videos including such predictions.

A good example is the political television show "the Devil´s Advocate" from Colorado:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVVHt29EI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrLsTY1BHVM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHIf-L7ch5c&feature=related

It might be fun at the end of 2011 to see if these predictions came true :)


Hanna

The Mosh Pit

I think this clip from Michael Moore's Awful Truth says it all.
I think it says a lot about the internet, the media, politicians, elections, popularity and more. He puts question marks on what is going on, but also leaves a big question mark on himself. He is a great example of a force that people should not take as the holy truth, but makes you rethink things that you maybe took as truth before. He is what we have been talking about before about how media and internet effects politics. It both has a good influence on the information flow and a bad one.
Here Moore puts these 2000 presidential candidates under his big sarcastic question mark!

I chose this clip out of his other stuff when I was thinking about the US presidential elections, refering to my first post. How people can easily twist other peoples actions to make them look different to what they are. I am refering to how one candidate starts talking about Rage Against the Machine as an evil force and how Alan Keyes owes policemen and parents an apology. And also the whole mosh pit thing is just hilarious!

At the end of the day, watching and reading about the endless debates in politics, how a country should be run, what needs to be done, what not, debating, fighting and rambling on, it is great to be able to watch shows like these that put it all into these sarcastic contrasts! Or that is at least my opinion =)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qwDBgNMD7c

Lilja

Internet Scandals Live Forever

For politicians the Internet is not always a good thing. Whatever ends up on the Internet, doesn´t go way that easily if ever. Like in the case of the republican congressman Christopher Lee had to resign because of an Internet scandal.

Last february pictures he sent on an Internet site to a woman, of himself bare-chested along with flirtatious messages were revealed. Ofcourse he was married and the messages were not to his wife.

Icelandic politicians are not excluded from Internet mistakes. In 2008 a congressman named Bjarni Harðarson had to resign after accidentally sending an email to the media which was suppose to go his assistant. 

Just to take another example (and there were a lot to choose from) our readers might remember  the Taiwanese politician Chu Mei-feng who became famous in 2001 when a sex video of her circulated on the internet. It might not be to much suprise but ofcourse the man she was with was married. Chu decided to take advantage of the publicity she gained and released an autobiography the next year.


Hanna

Internet Security: Is the Government Powerless?

A news report sumarizing fears governments have concerning the internet and the information flow.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ZJc-VtxUQ

Lilja

Wikileaks and Iceland

As the internet grows and the information flow seems to be exploding, it is hard to rely on what information is true and which is false.  It is also clear that many governments fear this information flow and most don’t know how to handle it while others seem to accept that they can’t.
The biggest event in matters concerning the internet and politics is, of course, Wikileaks. An Icelandic politician, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, has been involved in this matter,  as she worked with WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. She has now been dealing with the United States government concerning her twitter page.  This is a good example of different governments deal with issues in different ways.

Link:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/birgitta-jonsdottir/

Lilja

Internet and Politics in Russia

The internet has great effect on politics all around the world, including in Russia. New words and slogans have formed from the internet with the huge growth of bloggers and online journalists. The contexts such as “cyber-pessimists” and “cyber-optimism” are a good example. Some say that Russian politicians have joined the “cyber-optimist” side. Also according to Alexey Cahaev, leading ideologist of the ruling party “United Russia”, Internet Democracy is the next step of evolution of democratic institutions.

“Chadaev proposes electronic voting for the next Duma election in 2011, electronic evaluation of officials' performance, as well as battling the digital divide, the development of open software, VOIP services and de-monopolization of online products. None of the initiatives he proposes, however, provide for the creation of sustainable political institutions for citizens.”
“Russian officials were using online tools like Twitter to demonstrate they were close to the people on a personal level, while at the same time avoiding real political change. NGOs and journalists are harassed and threatened, but at least everyone can blog about it. Internet activism, Allnutt writes, is permitted by authoritarian regimes like Russia as long as it serves as a pressure valve for the opposition to let off steam.”

There are also plenty of sites which specialise in Russian anekdoti, Russian jokes, aswell as dirt on the rich and famous among many other things. President Vladimir Putin was quick to grasp the web´s potential and made a stylish campaign website for the March presidential election. During his spell as Prime Minister there was published government news on the government site. It was also on this site that Putin chose to unveik his first “quasi-manifesto, saying notably that great powers should not to be measured in numbers of tanks, but in their ability to create and use advanced technology.”
The second Chechen war, which was launched in 1999 and made Mr Putin's domestic reputation, has in fact been fought both with tanks and technology.


Links:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/11/30/russia-competing-models-of-internet-politics/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1198603.stm


Lilja

Obama and the Internet

Arianna Huffington, editor in chied of The Huffington Post once said: „Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president. Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not have been the nominee“.

In his campaign Obama organized his supporters using the Internet, in a way that in the past would have required many volunteers and paid organizers on the ground. The campaign tools have changed since a few years ago. Because of the Internet Obama was able to move thousands of people to organize.

Obama took advantage of sites like Youtube and used it for free advertising. Using such videos ment millions of dollars worth of free advertisement. Those videos posted in his campaign were also more effective than television ads because viewers either chose to watch them or they might recieve them from a friend instead of their television shows being interrupted during the ad.

Obama even created a webside to keep in touch and talk to the citizens. We´re going to end this blog on the words of Mr. Trippi, who ran Howard Dean´s 2004 campaign about Obama´s campaign : „Just like Kennedy brought in television presidency, I think we´re about to see the first wired, connected, networked presidency“.


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/


Hanna

Facebook and Twitter protests

In Tunisia there ruled a president by the name of Ben Ali. He ruled an authoritarian regime and in Tunisia there was an illiberal democracy. After many years of Ben Alis´ dictatorship people got fed up and all hell broke loose after a young man set himself on fire, protesting the situation in the country. Unemployment and corruption in the government were the main thing people got fed up with. People used the websites Facebook and Twitter to organize their protests against president Ben Ali and even though the protests weren´t being broadcast on television, footages of them could be seen on the internet. All though there were some internet restrictions in the country, people found a way to get the world to see and hear what was going on. In the end president Ben Ali fled the country with his family. The fight isn´t over for the pople of Tunisia yet for a better society but at least there´s one big obstacle out of the way.

Here´s a news clip from the protests in Tunisia. 

Protests in Tunisia

Ingibjörg  Ýr

Do all governments approve of the internet?

There are many ways that governments can censor information and by censoring the internet governments can influence the media. One may resume that governments try to censor some aspects of the endless flow of information that travels on the internet for different reasons and in different ways.

One form of government cencorship is media regulation and therefore the censorship is written into law. In the United States the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the independent federal body that is responsible for regulating information that is broadcasted for an example by radio, television and satellite. The things that the FCC censors is what wsa considered to be profane, obscene and indecent.

The internet however is a bit of a challange when it comes to censorship. There are internet censorship laws all over the world and requests by states for search engines to limit information. In Chine filtering systems are in place to restrict access to what are considered to be offensive websites including anti-Chine websites, Western news sources and pornography. The government in Singapore decided to censor websites in 2007 that could threaten the sanctity of society. Google is regularly asked to remove websites by Western countries such as the UK, USA and Germany.

It is understandable for some websites to be deleted from the internet and it´s a known fact that all sorts of bad things are put online, some unexcusable offences are even among them. What is important however is that most likely all governments regulate, restrict and inhibit information and that some of it is even in the favour of the health and sanity of the society. But it´s a thin red line for the governments to travel on since it´s the right of the people to get information online, eventhough it´s not in favour of the government. 


Ingibjörg Ýr

The way to get closer to voters

The internet is a media that is interactive. Unlike watching television or listening to the radio, internet users can comment their opinions on news and politicians are even using Facebook to try to get people to become members of the party they´re representing. For an example, those who become „friend of the Conservatives“ in the United States on Facebook will reicieve regular updates and advice on getting involved.

Using social networking sites to drum up political supports is having a huge impact on politics in general, voters and the political environment as well. The internet provides a certain restraint on politicians since messages, videos and news travel fast and anyone who´s interested, or isn´t interested but clicks accidently on the wrong button, will now see straight away if a politician makes mistakes or does something to offend voters. On the other hand though politicians have a broader range of getting into peoples´ homes just by a single message on Facebook or a video on Youtube.

The big question it whether more activity online is actually getting more poeple interested in politics and are poeple getting the right message through. Using propaganda for certain interests groups makes it easy to manipulate what people think regarding high profiled issues. It´s known that videos are seomtimes being edited before they are put on the internet so people should be aware of who got the message online before taking sides and judging on the matter right away. 


Ingibjörg Ýr

Icelandic political parties online

Here you can find the Icelandic political parties online. They all have their agenda on the Internet where voters can also get in touch with the parties. Latest news from Alþingi are put online so the voters can keep up with the latest news, debates and opinions on important matters.

http://www.xd.is/

http://www.samfylkingin.is/

http://www.vg.is/

http://www.framsokn.is/

http://hreyfingin.is/

Ingibjörg Ýr

Mistakes live forever.......

The Internet provides one thing that isn´t talked about all that much, that messages and clips can be viewed over and over again, which perhaps isn´t a good thing when you have made a tiny mistake on-air. This can be awful for politicians since they have to present the perfect image for the voters. Here are some clips from famous politicians in the United States and I bet some of them wished that these clips could be deleted. :)

Oops I did it again.......

Ingibjörg Ýr

Voters influenced by the Internet, the new way to reach out and get votes

When Sen. Obama got elected president of the United States he tried a new approach using the Internet to get to voters. Young voters use the Internet much more now than they did not so long ago and the Internet provides a good way to get the message through to them. It is also interactive that means that the voter can ask questions and get answers, which was hard to do before this enormous use of the internet. Here´s a video that shows how Obama most likely won the elections against McCain by being on top of the media called the Internet and how he could affect the voters by using it during his campaign.

Obama vs. McCain

Ingibjörg Ýr

US presidential campaigns

Politicians in the United States, as well as in many other countries, use the media frequently and it is one of the most important factors in their campaigns. The president elections are always big, especially in the United States. One of George W. Bush´s strategy was to use fear. Here is an example of one of his advertisments where fear is the main factor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4t9O_yFsY

If we look at his ratings we can see that they shot up whenever there was a crisis:

http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm

 This though does not work every time. Hillary Clinton tried this in a campaign ad, and got very negative responses. You could say that the U.S. citizens picked up on the intention. Here is the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yr7odFUARg


Lilja

Intro

On this website we will blogging and posting about how the media can effect politics and how politicians use media in their campaigns and in some extreme cases, propaganda.

Following the news, there are endless stories about politics, and most events have something to do with politics even though it is not always shown.

We will be posting links to these examples as well as other things.

Enjoy =)


Lilja