Azerbaijan, Citizen Journalism, Social Media and the Government
Since January, I have been helping the World Affairs Council of Dallas Fort Worth incorporate social media into their marketing efforts. The WAC is a terrific organization with wonderful people. They host endless delegations from around the world and have a truly remarkable speaker series.
Last week, the WAC hosted a delegation from Azerbaijan and invited me to present on citizen journalism, social media and government.
The delegation was from an organization called IREX which is funded by the U.S. Department of State. Their mission is to improve the quality of education, strengthen independent media, and foster a pluralistic civil society.
One of the primary tasks of IREX is to set up Internet centers across Azerbaijan and convince the population to begin using the Internet to express themselves more fully. While both Facebook and Russian social network Odnoklassniki are popular, I was told that Azerbaijanis primary use these sites for fun only. There are virtually no controversial, or contrarian points of view posted.
Although Azerbaijan is a member of the United Nations and is an ally of the United States, the government is not particularly fond of the spread of these Internet cafes. While not shutting them down, they have not gone out of their way to help them either. The foreign press has been banned from the country and when I asked about opposition media, I was told this did exist but these news organizations were only a “puppet-show”.
I showed numerous examples of citizen journalism from those aggregated on large sites such as CNN’s iReport, AllVoices and OhMyNews, down to individual Tweets from Iran and real time pictures from the Haiti earthquake.
We talked about the need for governments to become more enlightened by listening to the groundswell and engaging its constituents authentically without cynicism to further its agenda. Examples of those doing it right were the United States, the United Kingdom and even Hong Kong. At the other end of the spectrum, the perfect example of the cynical approach is the Twitter account of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Three weeks after calling Twitter a “tool of terror”, he has a Twitter presence. Far form engaging personally and transparently, Mr. Chavez has hired over 200 people to manage his account.
Reaction to my presentation was positive even though expected reactions to main points were muted as I was presenting through an interpreter. Unfortunately, there is considerable truth to the idea of “lost in translation”.
We had a lively question and answer question session, but there was one question that completely caught me off guard, “so, what should we do, can you help us?”
The presentation was fine and served its purpose, but what these people really want is help. They believe passionately in their cause, freedom of expression, an open society and access to information but they need help. While they are receiving funds from the U.S. Department of State, they are a very small group that is not infrequently intimidated by their own government.
While the Internet promises to break down barriers and force governments to be more accountable, this is not actually occurring. Despite the high volume of pictures and video uploaded and disseminated worldwide following last year’s election in Iran, the government now has publically published many of these and is asking its citizens to identify troublemakers. Additionally, by applying the first rule of a strategic approach to social media, governments are monitoring and listening to online conversations. As evidence, you only need to look at Google’s decision to pull out of China in part because of state sponsored hacking of dissident email accounts.
Herein lies the problem. In order to achieve their goals, IREX needs to mobilize the masses. However, once engaged on the social web for reasons other than purely social, it will only take one knock on the door at 2a.m., to convince all but the most ardent to log-off for good. The Azerbaijanis have a long road ahead as do many other developing countries.
The opportunity to present to and spend time with these people was a truly life changing experience. The additional opportunity to help even in a small way will not be missed.
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