Take Newsweek’s #MuslimRage debacle from last September. The magazine’s main article about protests over the controversial film Innocence of Muslims, featured a front page with angry men in traditional clothing, under the headline “MUSLIM RAGE.” Newsweek posted a link on their official twitter feed, encouraging their followers to voice their opinions under the hashtag #MuslimRage. And voice them they did:

BURN ALL WESTERN LITERATURE….onto a zip drive so I can listen to it while driving. #MuslimRage

— Qasim Rashid (@MuslimIQ) September 17, 2012

Lost your kid Jihad at the airport. Can’t yell for him. #MuslimRage

— Leila ليلى(@LSal92) September 17, 2012

Not knowing how many cheek kisses are due #muslimrage

— Abrar(@errnooo) September 17, 2012

On the surface, this shows how a carefully planned “social media strategy” can go wrong in an instant. More importantly, it shows that traditional media outlets no longer have as much control over the conversations around their coverage.

Social media and other online platforms give readers the ability to speak out and take part in setting the agenda. The age of user generated content has also ushered in a kind of crowdsourced fact-checking on a massive scale. If a story is being misreported, readers, listeners and viewers can and will let the authors know. Other examples include the huge social media backlash CNN faced over their article on hormonal female voters ahead of the US elections. On a lighter note, viewers lambasted NBC’s shambolic  Olympics coverage through hashtags like #NBCfail and #ShutUpMattLauer.

From the Magazine: Don’t feed the trolls
An anti-Muslim video demonstrated how the politics of fear dominate the online environment. It’s time we took action, argue Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman.

International in outlook, outspoken in comment, Index on Censorship‘s award-winning magazine is the only publication dedicated to free speech. The latest issue explores the impact the 2008 economic crisis has had on free expression. Subscribe.

Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of this development is the platform it has provided for people outside of the western world to speak back against the often simplistic and incorrect way in which their nations and cultures are reported on in international media.

For instance, some journalists are still likely to present African countries as one, exclusively impoverished and backward entity, which is constantly balancing on the brink of war. Alternatively, there is the increasingly popular, but almost equally tedious and one-dimensional “Africa rising” narrative.

In the past, people had few possibilities to respond to such coverage — if it even reached them.  But this has changed with the dawn of the internet. As foreign reporters parachuted in to cover the Kenyan elections in March, an easy go-to story following the crisis of the 2007-2008 vote was that of ethnic tensions and the potential for violence. However, this narrative was undermined the fact that most Kenyans went to the polls peacefully.  Foreign media promptly experienced the full wrath of a well-informed and snarky Kenyan social media population.

The below are only a few examples of the hashtag #PicturesForStuart, aimed at France 24 anchor Stuart Norval, who trailed their Kenya report with a tweet promising “dramatic pictures”:

Armed w/ MACHETE & spoons, Kenyan man destroys a plate of rice! Cc @stuartf24 #PicturesForStuart twitter.com/rimbui/status/…

— rimbui (@rimbui) March 4, 2013

Dramatic picture of clear streets in the Nairobi CBD on election day. flic.kr/p/dZuYK8 #PicturesForStuart #KenyaDecides – @stuartf24.

— ≡ (@wiselar) March 4, 2013

Then there was #SomeoneTellCNN, aimed at a particularly sensationalist CNN report titled “Armed as Kenyan vote nears”, featuring an unknown militia, seemingly consisting of a group of men rolling around in the grass with homemade weapons.  The piece was widely mocked.

This is what @cnni is calling an ‘Armed Kenyan’. Like reallyyyy??? #SomeoneTellCNN twitter.com/EricLatiff/sta…

— Eric Latiff (@EricLatiff) March 1, 2013

#SomeoneTellCNN that we had 2 presidential debates and countless peace rallies that they didn’t cover so they can take their crap elsewhere!

— tinakagia (@tinakaggia) March 1, 2013

There was also the more general #TweetLikeAForeignJournalist:

Kenyans go bananas awaiting election results, and dig in with Passion. Outcome fruitless. #TweetLikeAForeignJournalist twitter.com/MafiaCuckoo/st…

— Faiba Kartel (@MafiaCuckoo) March 5, 2013

#TweetLikeAForeignJournalist Fears as millions fall asleep before final results get released in Kenya. @stuartf24 #SomeOneTellCNN @nimacnn

— Wahura Kanyoro (@wahurakL) March 4, 2013

#TweetlikeAForeignJournalist International observers starry eyed at the goings on of the Kenyan election twitter.com/Frankiewgichur…

— Frankiewgichuru (@Frankiewgichuru) March 4, 2013

The hashtags trended worldwide. This was picked up by Al Jazeera and the Washington Post among others, and prompted CNN to release a statement defending their coverage. Kenyans had successfully turned the lazy journalism into the dominant story. As Africa is the fastest growing smartphone market in the world, over the coming years millions more will get the opportunity to challenge one-dimensional international reporting.

It’s important not to overstate the power of social media. Traditional media still commands the biggest platforms and audiences, and many sensationalist, ignorant or incorrect reports do remain unchallenged. Twitter in itself is not a solution, it is simply a tool. Used correctly, it provides a legitimate possibility for people to collectively raise their voice and be heard. It provides the platform for those on the ground, those in the know and everyone in between to help bring balance and nuance to big news stories. And that is certainly a positive development for freedom of expression.

The post Challenging mainstream narratives with social media appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Community radio broadcasting was effectively regulated in Brazil in 1998 through a bill that laid out criteria and rules. Stations are required to operate in low-powered frequency modulation (FM) up to 25W. The stations’ programming must also be open to all inhabitants in its coverage area, should not aim for a profit and have no connection to political parties or religious institutions.

Brazil currently has around 4,700 community radio stations, operating either with full or temporary authorisation from the federal government. Up to another 1,300 stations that are waiting for authorisation to begin broadcasting.

Experts and stations representatives say that community stations are still a great way to empower people through efficient communication within their communities, even in a time when social media and cyberspace seem to command the most attention.

“While commercial media speaks about a place, community media speaks from a place”, says Professor Adair Rocha from PUC-Rio and Uerj universities. Rocha has more than 30 years of experience working with community communication in Rio de Janeiro.

“It’s obvious that commercial media has greater power, with broader market relations that attract the population. But community media has another power, which is making each person to identify oneself with that particular thing he or she does, or communicates.”

In this context, the phenomenon of social media has strengthened community radios, giving them space to publish programming notes and attract new listeners, says José Luiz Sóter, executive coordinator at Abraço Nacional, which is Brazil’s Community Radio Broadcasting Association.

“Just as mobile phones replaced the use of transistor radios by fans at the football stadiums, most community radio stations have adopted the latest streaming technologies and entered the virtual world”, Sóter told Index on Censorship.

States from the South and Southeast regions, the richest in Brazil, have the highest concentration of community radio stations in the country, especially in the metropolitan areas.

The federal government has been criticised for not doing more to improve the legislation that regulates community radios, which is generally thought to be obsolete.

One of the radio stations’ main complaints is related to diversifying the sources of financing. The 1998 bill states that stations can only get advertising in the form of “cultural support”, stipulating it only comes from sponsors located inside its community – which is seen as something that limits the radios’ financial viability.

Associations like Abraço Nacional also demand more broadcasting power for stations and a streamlined authorisations process for new stations.

Brazil’s Ministry of Communications denies the existence of any obstacle in the authorisation process. In 2011, it created the National Plan of Grants for Community Radio Broadcasting, which publishes a list of expansion locations months ahead, allowing time for interested parties to collect required documentation and to prepare themselves to go on air.

“Many times, however, the entities that ask for the authorisation do not send us the complete documentation, which pushes back the schedule”, says the Ministry’s general coordinator for Community Radio Broadcasting, Samir Nobre.

Nobre says the government intends to make it possible for all municipalities in Brazil to have at least one community radio by the end of 2013. Around 2,000 of the 5,500 cities in the country still don’t have community radio stations.

Abraço Nacional recently issued a statement criticising the government for not completing a series of recommendations that it had committed to complete by November 2011. One of the demands was making communities radios eligible for the federal government’s advertising budget, which has not yet been done.

“The public power has done everything to make it difficult for community radios to survive”, says Abraço Nacional’s José Luiz Sóter.

The Ministry of Communications responded by saying that community radios are an “important form of communication” but claimed it has no power to modify the law in force.

The community radio movement has also been hijacked by many groups — political and religious — flouting the law to create broadcasting outlets . Radio stations that were supposed to have community-driven programming end up being vehicles for the interests of private groups.

The Ministry of Communications acknowledges the problem and says it is doing its best to improve control over authorised stations’ operations.

On the other hand, some community radio stations that violate the law’s technical restrictions or that simply start operating without authorisation are considered by the government to be “pirate radios”. Many of them end up being shut down and having their equipment impounded by the police.

Traditional media often portrays these “pirate stations” as a menacing problem that could interfere with the frequency used by flight controllers, allegedly threatening the safety of commercial flights. Some see this kind of attitude as a move by big media companies to stop community stations from operating.

The debate about pirate stations “is part of the dispute for audience, in which groups with greater economic power try to keep their hegemony”, says Professor Adair Rocha from PUC-Rio and Uerj.

“This image the media created of ‘radios that put planes down’ is certainly not truthful”.

The post Brazil’s community radio stations struggle to survive appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Twenty-seven years after the Chernobyl disaster a whole generation of Belarusians has grown with no memories of the incident of 26 April 1986, when a nuclear reactor exploded in north-east Ukraine, just on the border with Belarus. Settlements that had been abandoned after the disaster almost disappeared: some of them were razed to the ground, others were inhabited again. The Belarusian media usually remind us of Chernobyl and its aftermath once a year, on the anniversary of the explosion.

Activists participated in last year’s annual Chernobyl Way remembrance rally in Minsk. Photo: Alexander Mazurkevich/Demotix

There are almost no significant memorials of the Chernobyl disaster in Belarus; just a small church in Friendship of Nations Park in Minsk and tiny monuments in southern districts of the country that were affected by radiation. This is why it is quite difficult to communicate the feelings about that “invisible catastrophe” to people who don’t remember.

“The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is now perceived by people as some kind of shared heritage or even national achievement. Just as ‘We survived the war’ Belarusians think ‘We survived Chernobyl’, says Yahor Lebiadok, a deputy of a local council from Smaliavichy. “It feels like a part of a national message of pride: nothing or nobody can take us bare-handed, we can survive anything. So, Chernobyl nowadays is perceived as just a cliché of a threat.”

The authorities are quite good at using state media and propaganda to change the focus of public attention.

“It is not in their interest to put this focus on the issue of Chernobyl, because in this case they would have had to change their policy. If the government admits the problem of the Chernobyl aftermaths still exists, they would have put additional efforts into solving it, and spend additional funds,” says Piotr Kuzniatsou, a blogger and a human rights activist.“This means state media are allowed to mention Chernobyl only once a year, and are silent about the issues of radiation pollution and the affected areas,” Nastassia Zianko, a Belarusian journalist, admits. “Chernobyl media coverage is rarely investigative and deep — usually it is just reportage from the area, local villages or small towns. But the issue as a whole is very complicated; to do a good story one has to spend months researching and looking for information.”

As a result public opinion sees the topic of Chernobyl as less and less important; current social and economic issues push it into the media background. To avoid spending money on the elimination of outcomes of the disaster and rehabilitation of affected areas, the authorities try to persuade the Belarusians not to think of Chernobyl as something dangerous.

This strategy seems to work — despite cases when practical interests of particular people are at stake. For instance, inhabitants of several areas whose status had been changed from “polluted” to “clean” were unhappy to lose state benefits they received as compensation for living in districts affected by radiation.

“Chernobyl-affected regions have cheap labour forces, so it is profitable to run enterprises there. For instance, Belarusian agriculture inherited Soviet ‘extensive approach’; it means increasing production by mere expansion of cultivation areas instead of increasing the quality, breeding new varieties of products or crops or adopting new technologies. So, nowadays previously abandoned fields in polluted areas are being cultivated, and agricultural products from affected districts are being distributed around the country,” Piotr Kuzniatsou says.

Research done by Yury Bandazheuski, PhD, in Homiel Medical University proved that radionuclides affect organs of the human body when they penetrate an organism with polluted food. They cause so-called “inner radioactive irradiation”, which is more harmful than background exposure, but this is not included into estimates of influence of radiation on people.

Every year Belarusian sanitary and health services register the facts of radioactive pollution of food people bring from their farms to markets or in mushrooms they pick in forests. There is a question why such a vivid threat Chernobyl still poses to the country and its population doesn’t make it into a burning topic for Belarusians.

Time makes people forget, Natallia Alifirovich, a psychologist, says: “Psychological mechanisms of suppression and denial are quite powerful. Suppression means memories of an unpleasant event are placed in parts of the brain where they are inaccessible for a mind; denial helps people believe an unpleasant event won’t happen for the second time.”

But the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011 showed catastrophes happen again and again — despite any level of safety.

Another important reason for the authorities not to talk about Chernobyl is their plans to build a nuclear power station in Belarus.

Civil society groups remain alarmed by the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the prospects of building a nuclear power plant in Belarus. The issue is addressed by ecological and humanitarian NGOs, but due to the political situation they lack effective mechanisms of raising it to the level of decision-making.

“People who live in polluted areas know radiation is dangerous, but in practice they don’t do much to protect themselves. There is no special policy on health care for people who live in the polluted areas. Although some activities aimed at decreasing the impact of the catastrophe have been carried out, the state refuses to admit the real extent of the problem and finance recovery and rehabilitation from the Chernobyl aftermaths,” Andrei Yahorau says.

As the authorities push for building of a new nuclear plant in Belarus, they should be responsible for informing people about nuclear safety and behaviour in case of an emergency situation. But the government of Belarus can actually build the station without telling people about safety, Yahorau admits.

“This is exactly what is happening right now. The nuclear plant is being built near Astravets, close to the Lithuanian border; the local population has no information about the real threats a new plant can contain. The state propaganda machine works to convey a message that the plant is absolutely safe, that new technologies are used while building it, and that nothing can go wrong,” the expert says.

According to Yahor Lebiadok, the topic of Chernobyl in Belarus has always been political, as “both the authorities and the opposition have used it in their own interests”: “It is quite difficult for people who are not experts to actually differentiate between a real threat and mere politicking.”

In the case of nuclear power, access to information can become a question of life and death – or at least a question of personal safety and health.

Aliaksandr Zianchuk is a Belarusian journalist

The post Chernobyl disaster is invisible to many Belarusians appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Justine Roberts, co-founder and CEO of Mumsnet

When asked about Mumsnet’s mission statement I invariably respond, without missing a beat, that Mumsnet exists “to make parents’ lives easier”.

This is both true and necessarily broad; some parents’ lives are eased by practical advice about ways to wean a baby, while others find solace in vigorous debate about welfare policy or jokes about pelvic floors. But since the site’s inception over 13 years ago, I’ve strongly believed that the “mission” is most likely to be achieved if users are able to express themselves as freely as possible.

This commitment to free speech has produced some fascinating outcomes; to a large extent the site has been and continues to be shaped by its users, and re-tooled by them to serve purposes that were certainly not what I envisaged when I conceived a website to tap into other parents’ wisdom on anything from childbirth to sleep to mother-in-laws.

Most obviously, Mumsnet is a noisy mass of user-generated comment (UGC). Our forums receive around 35,000 posts every day, and our Bloggers Network comprises around 3000 bloggers writing about the issues of the day. New visitors to Mumsnet’s forums frequently express surprise at sheer scale of the place, as well as a certain relief at the unusual latitude afforded to posters.

The posting guidelines are as hands-off as possible, aiming to keep intervention to the minimum required to facilitate constructive conversation. The talkboard is post-moderated (our users often refer to it as ‘self-moderated’), meaning that mods only intervene if a post is reported. In other words, the community decides what behaviours it will tolerate.

Unlike some UGC behemoths, though, we do not believe that a total absence of rules necessarily produces an optimum level of freedom for all posters. Over the years multiple groups have collected on Mumsnet, often made up of those who find themselves marginalised and condescended to in “real life”; our incredibly busy and informative Special Needs forum is one example.

It’s unlikely these posters would feel as safe as they do on Mumsnet if we didn’t respond to their expressed desire for a relatively safe online space. Put simply, Mumsnetters are free to swear, but not to express disablist sentiments. Our few rules can roughly be distilled down to “no personal attacks and no hate speech”.

Over the years we have frequently found ourselves having to bat away attacks on our users’ freedom of expression from those keen to use England’s outdated defamation laws to suppress criticism; this has come worryingly close to home at times, threatening the existence of the website itself in the early days, and Mumsnet has been an active supporter of the Libel Reform Campaign for some years.

We also believe strongly that anonymous online posting offers enormous benefits, particularly to vulnerable people, and we try to make this point as loudly as we can whenever confronted by politicians who believe that anonymity is of use only to trolls.

The post ‘Giving women a voice may be our most significant achievement’ appeared first on Index on Censorship.

With more than four billion people yet to come online around the world, basic connectivity is an obvious and necessary prerequisite for digital access. But handing out one laptop per child and selling low-cost smartphones does not solve the quality problem, and can in fact worsen it.

Repressive governments and opportunistic companies sometimes exploit their citizens’ and customers’ ignorance and apathy towards personal privacy and data protection in the name of national security and financial gain. Countries like Iran and China’s biggest web companies are obvious offenders, but western democracies and Silicon Valley startups are far from perfect.

Doling out laptops and ethernet cables without also spreading the internet’s core values of freedom and openness can inadvertently harm newly connected users and the wider web.

NGOs with good intentions sometimes make this mistake. More troubling are companies with financial incentives to lay cables and sell hardware in new markets. Africa is one of the least connected territories, making it, from a corporate perspective, a digital desert ripe for cybercolonialism. Despite being framed as aid, a $20 billion pledge from China to Africa last year was primarily about business. Chinese companies with troubling track records on digital rights and freedoms are also competing to lend their security and surveillance expertise to African governments, a serious cause for concern on the quality side of access.

Frank La Rue, the UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, has described internet access as a right and acknowledged both the quantity and quality components inherent and critical to the enjoyment of this right. Other digital thought leaders, like Google’s chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf, has described the internet as an enabler of human rights but not a right in and of itself. Both perspectives hold weight, but we must not forget that the internet can also be used as a disabler of human rights.

Rather than a panacea, the internet can be poison when used to monitor, suppress and prosecute online speech and offline action.

Cyberutopians who think smartphones will set us free have been proven wrong time and time again. On the flip side, this does not mean that cyberdystopians who fear governments will exploit our dependence on technology and digital communications to neutralise dissent are necessarily correct. Increasing the quantity of internet connections without minding the quality of those connections forged can potentially bring greater harm than good for digital access, but such harm is not inevitable. Companies and NGOs working to spread access should ensure that the benefits they bring outweigh potential dangers they create or expose and should ensure that quantity is balanced by quality at the corporate and government levels. Only when this balance is achieved can global digital access truly be advanced.

The post Quality overlooked in rush to spread digital access appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was adopted in 2006, and has now been signed by 82 countries. The convention amongst the document’s 50 articles, there is one that specifically guarantees disabled persons the right to freedom of expression:

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that persons with disabilities can exercise the right to freedom of expression and opinion, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas on an equal basis with others and through all forms of communication of their choice, as defined in article 2 of the present Convention, including by:

a) Providing information intended for the general public to persons with disabilities in accessible formats and technologies appropriate to different kinds of disabilities in a timely manner and without additional cost;

b) Accepting and facilitating the use of sign languages, Braille, augmentative and alternative communication, and all other accessible means, modes and formats of communication of their choice by persons with disabilities in official interactions;

c) Urging private entities that provide services to the general public, including through the Internet, to provide information and services in accessible and usable formats for persons with disabilities;

d) Encouraging the mass media, including providers of information through the Internet, to make their services accessible to persons with disabilities;

e) Recognizing and promoting the use of sign languages.

The United Kingdom is one of the countries that has ratified the convention, and statistics on media literacy for disabled persons in the UK shows just how important it is to increase access to information across different channels. According to the UK regulator Ofcom, 64 per cent of disabled persons use television as a source of news, and are more likely than their able-bodied counterparts to rely on one source for news.

According to Jo Roach, who has worked with people with learning disabilities for over 30 years, freedom of expression hinges on having equipment and support workers who can “understand the person’s needs”. Roach says that the support worker is key to learning how to use things like the internet.

“If support workers aren’t well-informed, you aren’t well-informed,” says Roach.

This is particularly important when thinking of ever-advancing mobile phone access and capabilities: while internet usage for disabled persons currently sits at 62 per cent, mobile phone access is 82 per cent. Most disabled people under 65 use mobile phones for calls and text messages. With smartphone penetration on the rise in the UK, there are possibilities for increasing accessibility for disabled persons — but this relies entirely on access to not only the equipment, but tailored training on how to use it.

Smartphones open up the doors to apps catering to disabled persons, and this is already being explored. For example, the voice-operated “Georgie” app, which helps blind users find buses or navigate. The UK’s Department for Work and Pensions recently announced a plan to train 200 people to use the application. Apple’s iPhone has been celebrated for the usability of its “assistive” features, and this also increases options for developers of apps.

But there is still a long way to go: the head of London-based accessibility consultancy Hassell Inclusion, Jonathan Hassell, told the Guardian that a narrow definition of accessibility could also be a barrier:

“In audience terms, the needs of the small audience of totally blind people are being catered for well, whereas the needs of the much larger audience of people with more moderate vision difficulties, probably because of ageing, seems to be being ignored.”

While this is a slow process, it will surely improve in the coming years.

The post Freedom of expression and disabilities appeared first on Index on Censorship.

The reason for that is a traditional perception of media in post-Soviet society: everything said in an “official” paper or on TV is considered to be trustworthy.

“Belarus has a post-Soviet society that is characterised by non-critical attitude towards everything,” says Ales Antsipenka, a Belarusian philosopher and a media expert. “A bearer of ideological dogmas is required to be loyal to the authorities and totally take for granted messages mainstream ‘official’ media deliver, transmitting only one point of view — that of the regime.”

The “vertical model of communication” remains very strong in Belarusian society, where “top-down” information flows from the authorities to the population. In this model, the authorities that stay on top of the “information pyramid” and broadcast ideas that are supposed to be accepted as universal truth.

“This model is sustained through budget subsidies to state media, through ideological choice of people who manage those media outlets, through censorship and creation of ideological filters between sources of information and audience. On the other hand, there are independent media that are allowed to practise a critical attitude to reality”, Antsipenka says.

Increasing media literacy for Belarusians would help to improve the situation. The basis for media literacy should be a possibility to question, to analyse news reports in media, and to differentiate between propaganda, censorship and manipulation technologies. In this case, the media audience should become a competent member of the media process. But the Belarusian state does not want this to happen.

“The authorities of the country, on the contrary, rely on decreasing of cultural and educational levels, and a low level of media literacy is one of the main conditions of ideological and propaganda work among population,” say Ales Antsipenka.

The question is whether Belarusian media themselves are interested in their audience being able to differentiate a quality journalistic product from a poor one. According to Aliaksandr Klaskouski, a well-known Belarusian journalist and media expert, it is the media that aim to bring quality reporting to the public that are most interested in better media literacy of the audience.

“It is more useful for tabloids or ‘barricade media’ to have an indiscriminate reader. That is why, unfortunately, not many media outlets in Belarus are really interested in increase of the media literacy level of the audience,” Klaskouski admits.

“But propaganda media outlets, both state and oppositional, should be left aside when we speak of journalism and mass media,” Eduard Melnikau, a professor of European Humanities University, argues. “Otherwise, every ‘real’ media outlet should be interested in its audience having a good level of media literacy, because an educated reader can increase the effectiveness of media themselves as they become partners and co-authors.”

This can only be achieved if the society understands how valuable quality journalism is. But this, in turn, is impossible without changing of the system of values — a process that can take years.

“It is quite easy to change public opinion; it does not take too long. But changing the system of values in society is a much more complicated and long process. If we speak of a quality journalism, it is a product that is needed by people whose set of values changed from old Soviet to a new, European ones,” says Ales Antsipenka.

At the same time, professor Melnikau is sure it is impossible just to wait for the rest of the society to change their values system.

“Media literacy is needed today, and it is needed to everybody, from politicians to street cleaners, because media is the instrument of pushing the society towards humanitarian values; without these values no developments of economy, science, culture are possible,” argues Eduard Melnikau.

But it is clear the Belarusian state is not interested in media literacy of its citizens, and the society itself does not value quality journalism. So, the question is who should take the responsibility for media education of the audience? The obvious answer is media outlets themselves. But nowadays many of them are quite marginalised or operate in semi-clandestine conditions, and rarely work effectively with their audiences. Non-governmental organisations often fail to work with the society as well, as many of them concentrate on holding on to their structures and actual “survival” in difficult authoritarian conditions.

Journalistic organisations  such as the Belarusian Association of Journalists should be working in the field of media literacy. But the question is whether they will be allowed to access schoolchildren and students, who should become the main target audience for such programmes. The state holds the line of defence and substitute classes in media literacy with lessons in “political information”.

Yanina Melnikava is the editor of Mediakritika.by website from Belarus, dedicated to media analysis

The post Belarus: Media literacy vs propaganda appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Forced evictions of India’s marginalised Dalit community in Delhi have been carried out by the country’s government

All over the world today, both in developing and developed states, liberal democracies and less free societies, there are groups who struggle to gain full access to freedom of expression for a wide range of reasons including poverty, discrimination and cultural pressures. While attention is often, rightly, focused on the damaging impact discrimination or poverty can have on people’s lives, the impact such problems have on free expression is less rarely addressed.

We are not talking about the classic examples of challenges to freedom of expression where repressive regimes attempt to block, limit and inhibit across a population as a whole. Rather we are looking at cases where in both more and less free societies particular groups face greater barriers to free expression than the wider population. Such groups can often be denied an equal voice, and active and meaningful participation in political processes and wider society. Poverty, discrimination, legal barriers, cultural restrictions, religious customs and other barriers can directly or indirectly block the voices of the already marginalised. How much do these barriers and lack of access to freedom of expression matter? A lot – as the examples below tell us.

Why is access to freedom of expression important? Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It also underpins most other rights and allows them to flourish. The right to speak your mind freely on important issues in society, access information and hold the powers that be to account, plays a vital role in the healthy development process of any society.

The lack of access to freedom of expression is a problem that particularly affects the already marginalised – that is, minorities facing discrimination both in developed and developing countries, from LGBT people in African countries, to disabled people in Western Europe. While the scale of their struggles varies greatly, the principle is the same: within the context of their society, these groups face greater barriers to freedom of expression than the majority. If they are unable to communicate their ideas, views, worries and needs effectively, means they are often excluded from meaningful participation in society, and from the opportunity to better their own circumstances. In other words, discrimination is one of the core elements of unequal access to freedom of expression.

Access to free expression is also vital both to support the development process and as a development goal in its own right. The connection was perhaps most famously put forward by Amartya Sen in his widely cited book — Development as Freedom — where he argued that expansion of freedom is both the primary end and the principal means of development

It is striking to note the way in which cultural and religious customs are sometimes used to clamp down on various minorities’ rights to expression and assembly in many countries around the world. Human Rights Watch’s latest world report states that “traditional values are often deployed as an excuse to undermine human rights.” One example of this is the caste system still in place in countries including India, Nepal and Pakistan. This is culturally-based discrimination on a major, systematic scale. A significant proportion of the Dalits, (lower-caste people, or “untouchables”) are barred from participation in public life and have a limited say in policies that directly affect them. In May 2008, the Dalit community in the Nesda village in the state of Gujarat attempted to stage a protest after being excluded from the government’s development funds allocation, by refusing to fulfil their historic “caste duty” of disposing of dead animals. The dominant caste in the region promptly blocked the protest through a ‘social boycott’, forbidding any social or economic interaction between Dalits and non-Dalits. This is only one example of Dalit’s being barred from having a say in development matters directly relating to them. When they attempted to stage a peaceful protest, they were only further marginalised, and their weak economic, social and political position further cemented. It’s a vicious cycle.

Another major area where discrimination has a knock-on effect on freedom of expression, is with regards to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people across the globe. They are discriminated against for traditional, especially religious, reasons, with countries like Malaysia and Jamaica claiming that homosexuality is simply “not in our culture” when clamping down on LGBT civil rights. The right to express one’s sexuality is an aspect of the right to freedom of expression both in itself (as an expression of identity) but also because in countries where LGBT rights are not respected, the cultural expression of such rights is often also a political act. Cultural events organised by the LGBT community, such as pride parades, find themselves banned from exercising their right to freedom of assembly and expression, which happened last October in Serbia and Moldova. LGBT-themed art is also often times censored. One example reported by Index took place in Uganda, where a play about a gay man was banned, and its British producer, David Cecil, jailed and later deported. Countries also adopt laws that ban or circumscribe the discussion of homosexualty. In Russia, the Duma recently voted in favor of a draft law to ban “homosexual propaganda”. The amendment, passed by an overwhelming majority, prohibits the “propaganda of homosexuality” (in a practical sense, the discussion of homosexually) to protect children. The bill would in effect seriously curtail the right to freedom of expression of LGBT people.

Full access to freedom of expression is difficult to achieve in the absence of universal education and literacy. Around the world, illiteracy and inadequate (or non-existent) education hits the poorest hardest – both because education is often private, and because in poor countries where it is provided by the state, the standard of education can be low. Women and girls in the developing world are the groups most affected by illiteracy. There are a number of factors contributing to this, including higher levels of poverty among women, with culture and tradition also playing a significant part. There are still a number of societies around the world where it simply is not accepted that girls should receive education at all, and certainly not higher education. While the gender gap in education has been decreasing over time, in 2009, there were still around 35 million girls out of primary education, compared to 31 million boys. Lack of education is still the single biggest contributing factor to high and persistent levels of illiteracy — making it the most basic barrier to freedom of expression. It stops people from effectively participating in society, as it hinders them from being able to read, write and share written information, and thus fully engage with a range of issues or debates. Women make up the majority (64 per cent) of the nearly 800 million illiterate people in the world today. UNHCHR resolution 2003/42 identified this as a contributing factor to constraints on women’s rights to freedom of expression.

As well as the impact of poverty, discrimination and religious and cultural factors, governments and local authorities often put in place more formal mechanisms which result in significant restrictions on access to freedom of expression for minority groups. This can come in the form of restrictions on minority languages, such as Kurdish in Turkey, or barriers to political participation, such as the Bosnian constitutional ban on Jews and Roma running for high office.

Refugees are one of the hardest hit groups of people in terms of facing significant and basic restrictions on freedom of expression. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the political rights of refugees stated that they, “…like other aliens, are entitled to the same freedom of expression, association and assembly as citizens.” However, a 2005 report investigating the state of Italian immigration detention centres showed that those detained in Italy were given few opportunities for communication with the outside world. Similarly, allegations of arbitrary deprivation of liberty in Greek detention centres are to be examined by independent experts selected by the UN Human Rights Council later this year. These are only a few examples of fundamental barriers on refugees’ access to fully express themselves. This, of course, cannot be separated from the wider discrimination as outlined above. Refugees constitute a group which often face prejudice and racism. Research from Cardiff University has for instance shown that they do not have the platform to counter the overwhelmingly negative way in which they are portrayed in the UK media. Refugees have universal rights like all other people around the world — states must recognise this and must act to tackle discrimination in all forms.

The barriers to free expression discussed here show why exercising our right to free expression is not as simple as living in a democratic society that broadly respects rights. Barriers that block or inhibit access to freedom of expression exist all over the world, in various forms and to varying degrees. Through being denied a voice, these groups are being denied a fundamental right, are facing barriers to their active participation in society, and, in many cases, are facing additional limits on their ability and opportunity to play a part in improving their own lives. Tackling the barriers from poverty to discrimination to laws that limit access to freedom of expression is vital.

The post Why is access to freedom of expression important? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Forced evictions of India’s marginalised Dalit community in Delhi have been carried out by the country’s government

All over the world today, both in developing and developed states, liberal democracies and less free societies, there are groups who struggle to gain full access to freedom of expression for a wide range of reasons including poverty, discrimination and cultural pressures. While attention is often, rightly, focused on the damaging impact discrimination or poverty can have on people’s lives, the impact such problems have on free expression is rarely addressed.

We are not talking about obvious examples of challenges to freedom of expression where repressive regimes attempt to block, limit and inhibit across a population as a whole. Rather we are looking at cases where in both more and less free societies particular groups face greater barriers to free expression than the wider population. Such groups can often be denied an equal voice, and active and meaningful participation in political processes and wider society. Poverty, discrimination, legal barriers, cultural restrictions, religious customs and other barriers can directly or indirectly block the voices of the already marginalised. 

Why is access to freedom of expression important? Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. It also underpins most other rights and allows them to flourish. The right to speak your mind freely on important issues in society, access information and hold the powers that be to account, plays a vital role in the healthy development process of any society.

The lack of access to freedom of expression is a problem that particularly affects the already marginalised — that is, minorities facing discrimination both in developed and developing countries, from LGBT people in African countries, to disabled people in Western Europe. While the scale of their struggles varies greatly, the principle is the same: within the context of their society, these groups face greater barriers to freedom of expression than the majority. If they are unable to communicate their ideas, views, worries and needs effectively, means they are often excluded from meaningful participation in society, and from the opportunity to better their own circumstances. In other words, discrimination is one of the core elements of unequal access to freedom of expression.

Access to free expression is also vital as a development goal in its own right. The connection was perhaps most famously put forward by Amartya Sen in his widely cited book — Development as Freedom — where he argued that expansion of freedom is both the primary end and the principal means of development.

It is striking to note the way in which cultural and religious customs are sometimes used to clamp down on various minorities’ rights to expression and assembly in many countries around the world. Human Rights Watch’s latest world report states that “traditional values are often deployed as an excuse to undermine human rights.” One example of this is the caste system still in place in countries including India, Nepal and Pakistan. This is culturally-based discrimination on a major, systematic scale. A significant proportion of Dalits, (lower-caste people, or “untouchables”) are barred from participation in public life and have a limited say in policies that directly affect them. In May 2008, the Dalit community in the Nesda village in the state of Gujarat attempted to stage a protest after being excluded from the government’s development funds allocation, by refusing to fulfil their historic “caste duty” of disposing of dead animals. The dominant caste in the region promptly blocked the protest through a “social boycott”, forbidding any social or economic interaction between Dalits and non-Dalits. This is only one example of Dalit’s being barred from having a say in development matters directly relating to them. When they attempted to stage a peaceful protest, they were only further marginalised, and their weak economic, social and political position further cemented. It’s a vicious cycle.

Another major area where discrimination has a knock-on effect on freedom of expression, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people’s rights across the globe. They are discriminated against for traditional, especially religious, reasons, with countries like Malaysia and Jamaica claiming that homosexuality is simply “not in our culture” when clamping down on LGBT civil rights. The right to express one’s sexuality is an aspect of the right to freedom of expression both in itself (as an expression of identity) but also because in countries where LGBT rights are not respected, the cultural expression of such rights is often also a political act. Cultural events organised by the LGBT community, such as Pride parades, find themselves banned from exercising their right to freedom of assembly and expression, which happened last October in Serbia and Moldova. LGBT-themed art is also often times censored. One example reported by Index took place in Uganda, where a play about a gay man was banned, and its British producer, David Cecil, jailed and later deported. Countries also adopt laws that ban or circumscribe the discussion of homosexualty. In Russia, the Duma recently voted in favor of a draft law to ban “homosexual propaganda”. The amendment, passed by an overwhelming majority, prohibits the “propaganda of homosexuality” (in a practical sense, the discussion of homosexually) to protect children. The bill would in effect seriously curtail the right to freedom of expression of LGBT people.

Full access to freedom of expression is difficult to achieve in the absence of universal education and literacy. Around the world, illiteracy and inadequate (or non-existent) education hits the poorest hardest — both because education is often private, and because in poor countries where it is provided by the state, the standard of education can be low. Women and girls in the developing world are the groups most affected by illiteracy. There are a number of factors contributing to this, including higher levels of poverty among women, with culture and tradition also playing a significant part. There are still a number of societies around the world where it simply is not accepted that girls should receive education at all, and certainly not higher education. While the gender gap in education has been decreasing over time, in 2009, there were still around 35 million girls out of primary education, compared to 31 million boys. Lack of education is still the single biggest contributing factor to high and persistent levels of illiteracy — making it the most basic barrier to freedom of expression. It stops people from effectively participating in society, as it hinders them from being able to read, write and share written information, and thus fully engage with a range of issues or debates. Women make up the majority (64 per cent) of the nearly 800 million illiterate people in the world today. UNHCHR resolution 2003/42 identified this as a contributing factor to constraints on women’s rights to freedom of expression.

As well as the impact of poverty, discrimination and religious and cultural factors, governments and local authorities often put in place more formal mechanisms which result in significant restrictions on access to freedom of expression for minority groups. This can come in the form of restrictions on minority languages, such as Kurdish in Turkey, or barriers to political participation, such as the Bosnian constitutional ban on Jews and Roma running for high office.

Refugees are among the hardest hit people in terms of facing significant and basic restrictions on freedom of expression. A report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on the political rights of refugees stated that they, “…like other aliens, are entitled to the same freedom of expression, association and assembly as citizens.” However, a 2005 report investigating the state of Italian immigration detention centres showed that those detained in Italy were given few opportunities for communication with the outside world. Similarly, allegations of arbitrary deprivation of liberty in Greek detention centres are to be examined by independent experts selected by the UN Human Rights Council later this year. These are only a few examples of fundamental barriers on refugees’ access to fully express themselves. This, of course, cannot be separated from the wider discrimination as outlined above. Refugees constitute a group which often face prejudice and racism. Research from Cardiff University has for instance shown that they do not have the platform to counter the overwhelmingly negative way in which they are portrayed in the UK media. Refugees have universal rights like all other people around the world — states must recognise this and must act to tackle discrimination in all forms.

The barriers to free expression discussed here show why exercising our right to free expression is not as simple as living in a democratic society that broadly respects rights. Barriers that block or inhibit access to freedom of expression exist all over the world, in various forms and to varying degrees. Through being denied a voice, these groups are being denied a fundamental right, are facing barriers to their active participation in society, and, in many cases, are facing additional limits on their ability and opportunity to play a part in improving their own lives. Tackling the barriers from poverty to discrimination to laws that limit access to freedom of expression is vital.

The post Why is access to freedom of expression important? appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Brazil’s indigenous population have gone online to campaign against social injustice in their community – Alberto Cesar Araujo/Demotix

Despite their poor economic and living conditions, Brazil’s indigenous peoples are increasingly using the internet to make their struggle for rights known to the world.

Historically, native Brazilians have been deprived of proper citizenship, first by slavery and the loss of their homeland in the 16^th century and, after that, by prejudice, impoverishment, the loss of cultural traces and the disappearance of entire populations. But, the emergence of the internet has allowed Brazilian Indians access to a new era of free speech and civil activity.

One example of their fight to be heard is the campaign against the Draft Constitutional Amendment #215, currently being debated in the Chamber of Deputies. If the amendment passes, it would remove the Federal Government’s power to delimit indigenous lands and pass it to Congress.

Indigenous leaders fear this would strengthen landowners’ powers, who already have a strong lobbying position in Congress and would likely do their best to inhibit the creation of new reservations.

An online petition against the amendment has gathered more than 27,000 signatures.

Their cause also attracted huge support through social media late last year. Facebook users showed support to the Guarani and Kaiowá peoples by adding “Guarani-Kaiowá” to their profile name. The 45,000-strong group perpetually struggle to protect their ancestral province from land-grabbing farmers in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

In January 2013, however, Facebook ordered the additional names be removed, reminding users that they were forbidden from adopting fake names on their accounts.

Access to justice

Considered to be one of the main platforms for indigenous discussion, the Índios Online website is maintained by indian peoples from the states of Alagoas, Bahia, Roraima and Pernambuco.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Thydewá, an organisation protecting the rights of indigenous peoples, Índios Online allows “offline” Native Brazilians from all over the country to voice their needs and interact with other users.

According to the president of Thydewá, Sebastián Gerlic, those who feel their interests have been threatened by the website often approach the Justice system to censor its content — particularly regarding videos produced and uploaded by the indians.

Ingigenous Brazilian Potyra Tê Tupinambá ended up in court for her film documenting land reposession in an indigenous reservation in the northeastern state of Bahia. The ongoing lawsuit was taken out by a land owner interviewed on camera. It was a testimony, according to Gerlic, given spontaneously and with no animosity.

“The farmer accused Potyra of transmitting his image on the internet without his permission, and now he looks for reparation,” says the president of Thydewá, who took reponsibility for the director’s legal defence.

The internet was also a strong ally in the indigenous peoples’ struggle against the looting of the natural resources on their reservations. In mid-2011, the Ashaninka people used a solar-powered computer to denounce the invasion of their land by Peruvian woodcutters. This information was passed to authorities in federal capital Brasília, who sent a task force formed by the Federal Police and the Brazilian Army to arrest the invaders.

The Ashaninkas also addressed chief justice of the Supreme Court Joaquim Barbosa in an online petition, urging the Supreme Court to address the problem of tree cutting in their native territory. They demanded financial reparation for the lumbering activities that could reach 15,000,000 BRL (around 30,000,000 USD). 

Limited access

Indians usually access the internet through centres maintained by Funai, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation or in LAN (local area network) houses, schools or in private homes. Funai does not have any digital inclusion programme specifically for the indigenous peoples – this responsibility goes to the Ministry of Culture. Through its programme called “Points of Culture”, the Ministry invested more than 1,300,000 BRL (about £447,000) on installing internet connections inside the Indian communities.

Despite public investments, online access has grown far less in indigenous communities than in poorer urban areas. According to a survey led by Rio de Janeiro State’s Secretary of Culture, in partnership with NGO Observatório das Favelas (“Slum Observatory”), 9 out of 10 people living in low-income areas in Rio have internet access.

Brazil has a population of 896,917 indigenous people divided in 230 different ethnic groups, according to the last Brazilian Census from 2010. This represents around 0.47 per cent of the country’s population.

Amongst this populus, access to employment is a problem. According to the last Census, 83 per cent of adult Brazilian indians earn no more than minimum wage (678 BRL a month, about £233) and 52.9 per cent of them don’t have any income at all.

According to the Indigenous Missionary Counsel, an organisation aiding native Brazilian peoples, at least 200 indians have been killed in Brazil in the last decade, mainly because of land disputes.

The post Brazilian indians go online to demand their rights are protected appeared first on Index on Censorship.