New media’s role in political protesting isn’t new, not by far. It’s not even new when it comes to inciting violence. You only have to look at the examples of the Philippines and Cronulla, right here in Australia.
In 2001 thousands of protesters were mobilised by text messages received on their phones to bring down the government of President Joseph Estrada. In 2005, a text message that was passed around incited racial violence on the beaches of Cronulla as Anglo-Australians moved to reclaim the beaches from Lebanese Australians.
Now Chinese bloggers are revealing their anger towards Tibet, where unrest has led to the deaths of seven Tibetan protestors. One Chinese blogger has been quoted as saying;
‘If you behave well, we’ll protect your culture and benefits…if you behave badly, we’ll still take care of your culture..by putting it in a museum.’
Using new media as a means for political agitation is something that interests me, because it is so well suited for it. Blogs are unedited and uncensored (unless they belong to Olympic athletes) and mobile phones can be used to create networks that bypass government control and any censorship that might come with that. But as new media becomes increasingly prevalent, will government agencies look to find ways to control what happens within the blogsphere and other supposedly private new media networks?
New Media Mogul has already thoroughly presented the case study of the IOC and blogging athletes at the Beijing Olympics, but there is news that the Indian government wants access to the email network of Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the popular Blackberry mobile emailing device. Apparently the encryption used by RIM is too strong for security agencies to hack into a user’s Blackberry email and the Indian government wants them to lower it because they are concerned that terrorist activity is taking place and they need to stop it.
The point is that the use of new media is ever increasing, and at a rapid rate too. So is this move by the Indian government just the beginning of a movement to try and control new media sites of dissemination like blogs, and mobile networks? It is difficult to discern what the ultimate possibilities of an increasingly unregulated media landscape will bring us, but certainly an opportunity for greater free speech is one of them. And while free speech may not always be positive, it is the sign of a healthy democracy.
The other point is that the sheer volume of information flowing on these networks is surely too much for any media regulator to cope with. This is an issue that New Media Mogul will continue to watch, and it will be interesting to see what develops in this area.
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