17 Feb 2012 | Americas, Mexico
Mexican politicians are using social networks in sleight of hand similar to the ones they used in elections before the age of technology, say critics. Instead of paying voters to show up for the vote, or stuffing boxes — known practices in previous mid-term or presidential elections — today’s savvy campaign managers are helping their candidates swell up their numbers of Twitter followers and Facebook “likes”.
“They are doing online what they used to do offline,” according to Maria Elena Meneses, a media expert and professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey who has studied elections and the Internet.
The campaign of ruling party presidential candidate Josefina Vasquez Mota drew much criticism after it allegedly used an internet bot to create a trending topic during recent elections to select the presidential candidate for the ruling Partido de Accion Nacional. News magazine Procesoreported that news sites that had measured the growth of the Vasquez Mota’s followers could determine how many of them were obtained through the bots.
Despite this criticism, Vasquez Mota seems to have one of the best online media teams. Her approach is similar to that used by US President Barak Obama in his 2008 presidential elections. The team’s use of various hashtags to trigger a trending topic, including the hashtag #HoyganaJosefina, which means “today Josefina wins”, helped expand her followers list by 31,000 in only a few hours in late January during her party’s internal election process (detractors say this is where the campaign used bots). The candidate’s Facebook page also has a lot of young followers.
Meneses says it is estimated that 15 million Internet users in Mexico are between the ages of 18 and 34. The young vote will be the more difficult to harness in the next presidential elections in July: 34 million new voters who turned 18 between 2006 and this year will be voting this presidential election.
But the presidential campaigns have a wooden Internet presence. Enrique Peña Nieto, the presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), whose party ruled Mexico for 70 years until 2000, uses YouTube, but, Meneses says, not in a way that would attract young voters. “They only tape their campaign presentations. There is no give and take with the audience, which is what young voters want,” she says.
Meneses says none of the three presidential candidates for the three major parties — the PAN, the PRI and the left of center Partido Revolucionario Democratico, (PRD) — are using social media effectively to reach and communicate with common citizens. “They could use those sites to respond to uncomfortable questions,” she insists.
17 Feb 2012 | Russia
Authorities in the Siberian city of Barnaul have refused to sanction a dolls’ protest rally, claiming toys are not equal to people and so cannot participate.
Rights activists had planned to place 100 Kinder surprise toys, 100 Lego figures, 20 soldiers, 15 soft toys and 10 toy cars on the snow in Barnaul’s central square with tiny placards to protest against corruption, violations of election law and article 31 of the constitution which guarantees the freedom of assembly.
Organisers from the local GOLOS election watchdog department and Voters’ League rights activists called the authorities’ refusal absurd.
The activists have pledged to hold the protest action on 18 February anyway, but instead of a rally they plan to make it a series of single pickets, which, according to Russian law, do not have to be sanctioned.
Similar toy protests were held in Barnaul in January without any authorities’ sanctions and became successful among the public and foreign media [photos available here]. Their purpose was simple: authorities refused to sanction a traditional rally against allegedly fraudulent elections, and activists came up with a creative idea of toys protesting instead. Toys held placards saying “United Russia is united against Russia”, “I’m for clean elections”, “Send bears (the symbol of the Putin-led United Russia party – Index) to the North”. Barnaul Prosecutor’s office considered the toy rally “a public event which requires authorities’ sanction”.
Meanwhile protest activists in Moscow are trying to get human protest actions sanctioned. They planned a follow up to this month’s rallies against unfair elections on 26 February in the celebation Russian traditional holiday — Pancake week — with a slogan “Farewell to political winter”. It implies the burning of the winter effigy which is most likely to feature Putin’s face. Organisers are receiving controversial statements from Moscow city administration. They are going to hold the action anyway; if no sanction is given, it will take the form of a flashmob.
After protesters see off the political winter, they plan to gather in Moscow’s Garden Ring Road and create an unbroken circle around the city centre holding hands. Protesters estimate this will require not less than 34,000 people. The purpose of the “Big White Circle”, as protesters call it, is to remind the authorities none of their demands were fulfilled.
The only people who do not have any problems organising rallies now are Putin’s supporters. Their rally is to be held on 23 February, and it is expected that Putin himself will attend. The last rally in his support was held the same day tens of thousands people protested against his run in presidential campaign, and was marked with scandalous reports of how people were threatened or paid for supporting him.
17 Feb 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Three Tunisian journalists have been arrested on charges of offending public morality following the publication of a nude photograph. The Attounissia newspaper printed a photograph of Real-Madrid footballer Sami Khedira covering the breasts of his otherwise naked girlfriend, model Lena Gercke. The photograph drew an angry response from the country’s public prosecutor, resulting in the arrest of the newspaper’s publisher Nasreddine Ben Said, Habib Guizani, its editor-in- chief, and its world editor Hedi Hidhri. The photo was a reprint of a 2012 cover of the German edition of GQ Magazine.
17 Feb 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Google has urged the Australian federal government to reject an interim independent report recommending the country’s internet be regulated in a similar manner to television, arguing it would be unclear how regulation online could be imposed without a filter. Its proposals, if successful, would usher in a “new independent regulator for content and communications” that is technology-neutral. Google said it was “struggling with the one-size-fits-all model” the proposals made in the report, which is related to part of Australia’s Convergence Review into determining if current media policy and regulation need amending.
