In Class Today

In class today, students will briefly present the sites they examined in detail for the OPJ in Kazakhstan assignment. Using the computer at the front of the room, show us the site you examined and tell us what you discovered. In particular, show us what about the site makes you think makes it more or less and example of online participatory journalism.

Question for class today

Throughout this course we have been trying to understand the internet as a socio-technical system–a system that is defined both by technologies and what they enable people to do, and by social relationships, conditions, and expectations of people.

In asking whether there is or could be online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan, we also need to consider socio-technical issues. Many have come up in our recent readings.

Today in class we will brainstorm ideas, drawing on and hopefully going beyond the readings. The question I want you to consider: What social or technical factors influence the opportunity for OPJ to work effectively in Kazakhstan?

Some ideas from class:

•  Personal motivation
• Fear of punishment
• Atmosphere of free speech
• Atmosphere in which people speak out
• Lack of unity–need for sense of social cohesion
• Trust
• Economics

Clarification on the Weblog Assignment for Today

I’ve noticed that some of the links people have been finding for the online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan assignment don’t have any relationship to Kazakhstan at all. To clarify, we are interested in discovering whether there is any evidence of OPJ in Kazakhstan; the rest of the world does not much matter for this assignment.

What you should look for is a site written from Kazakhstan (or perhaps about Kazakhstan) and profile that site, being sure to address how the site is or is not an example of OPJ in Kazakhstan.

Please ask me if this is unclear to you.

Required Reading for Friday 9 November

Please read the following interviews (conducted by Neweurasia.net contributor Leila Tanayeva) before class on Friday:

•  Adam Kesher (Eng), who publishes a Livejournal weblog and contributes to neweurasia.net
•  Yuri Mizinov (Eng), an editor from Zonakz.net. The interview is also available in Russian.
•  Journalist and blogger Kazis Toguzbayev (Eng).
•  Ilim Karypbekov (Rus), media lawyer and director of the Institute of Media Representative, on legal issues related to blogs in Kazakhstan.

Individual Weblog Assignment for 9 November

Your individual weblog assignment, due by 5 pm Friday 9 November, is to write a brief profile of one of the websites you identified as a possible example of online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan.

Your profile should look at a site we have not discussed in class, but rather one you found on your own.

Your profile should include basic information about the site as well as your analysis about whether the site is an example of participatory journalism, and why you say it is or is not. Be sure to link to the site you discuss in your entry.

Your entry should be about four paragraphs long. You may use the profile guidelines we used for our group profile assignment if you wish.

Internet Governance and OPJ in KZ

The term “Internet governance” refers to a broad range of decisions–by governments, the private sector, and civil society–that affect the character of the internet.

The assigned article, “Internet Governance in Kazakhstan,” (by Rachid Nougamanov) highlights some of the governance issues that might affect the opportunities that people have to carry out online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan. The article includes:

• Internet usage: Who has access to the internet? According to the article, internet penetration in Kazakhstan (i.e. how many people have access) is only about 4 percent of the population. Even of that 4 percent, most people access the internet only occasionally at home. The high cost of the internet in the country presents an economic barrier for much of the population (as does the high cost of computer equipment).
• Internet legislation: All websites in Kazakhstan are legally classified as mass media. This means that potentially the government could make the same requirements of individual web users that it makes of broadcast and published media. Generally it has not enforced such requirements. (And doing so seems like it would be extremely difficult.) However, the government has sometimes acted on requirements, for example, that sites bearing the .kz domain be physically stored on computers located in Kazakhstan. The government has also made reference to forthcoming internet legislation intended to regulate internet content more directly, but no such legislation has yet appeared. The article does discuss an announced policy for increased government control of a “single information space,” which could affect internet publishers and users.
• Criminal Prosecution: In some cases, people who have published information on the internet has been subject to prosecution under laws such as those prohibiting insults to the president, or for threatening the security of the country.
• Blocking and Filtering: Internet sites can be blocked (the network is set so that a particular site or page is unable to load or loads very slowly) or filtered (the network is set to block access to pages that contains particular terms). The article suggests incidents of blocking in Kazakhstan. According to the OpenNet Initiative, there are suspicions of filtering in Kazakhstan, though not so dramatically as in some other countries.

Each of these areas highlights a governance mechanism that could potentially affect opportunities for online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan. Although the ways we use the internet may sometimes make is seem like an unregulated arena, the potential for government intervention can have a real affect on how people actually use the internet.

The article concludes by pointing out some of the principles in the Declaration of the World Summit on the Information Society:

1. The technical architecture of the internet should not allow for censorship of news or editorial opinion, nor should “self-regulation” be used to regulate content;
2. The system should respect Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (i.e. Press Freedom);
3. “Ethics” should not be used to promote censorship;
4. There must be a separation recognized between legitimate and illegitimate communication online.

Online Participatory Journalism in Kazakhstan, part two

Today in class, we will discuss the sites students looked at for the assignment we began on Wednesday.

After that, we will continue the process of looking for signs of participatory journalism in Kazakhstan. The second part of the project will be to use the tools we have available (search engines, blogroll links, existing networks and knowledge) to come up with a list of potential examples of online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan. These may include weblogs, forums, listservs, standard websites, and so on.

Your assignment: Each student should come up with a list of potential sites to investigate (at least five) and post a link to that site by class time on Monday.

Required Reading: For next week (due for class Monday 5 November), read “Internet Governance in Kazakhstan,” pages 119 to 131 in the OSCE report, Governing the Internet. Note the link is to the entire document, but you only have to read one chapter.

Online Participatory Journalism in Kazakhstan

Participatory journalism, and particularly how participatory journalism is practiced online, has been one of our key interests in the course so far. You will remember the definition offered in the We Media report:

• “Participatory journalism: The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.” (We Media, pg. 9)

The We Media report is concerned with looking at how New Information Technologies can be used to promote participatory journalism online. In other words, its authors argue that NITs are making it possible for the audience to take an active role in the process of creating news rather than simply receiving news produced by professional news organizations. They further argue that the new media ecosystem enabled by NITs is changing the nature of journalism and democratizing the process of creating news.

We Media looks at how a number of different online technologies (discussion groups, user-generated content, weblogs, collaborative publishing, RSS syndication, and so on) help users provide commentary, filter and sort news, check facts, engage in grassroots reporting, and other news oriented tasks.

There are many examples throughout the report showing this process in action at various websites. However, the sites in the report are mostly based in the United States and are exclusively in English. This makes sense for the report, which is concerned with presenting a recent phenomenon in the context of the practice of journalism in the U.S.

The problem for us, though, is that this presentation is too limited. It doesn’t tell us about the potential for online participatory journalism outside of the U.S. And particularly, it tells us nothing about online participatory journalism in this region.

We have looked a bit at online participatory journalism in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, primarily by exploring the neweurasia.net websites. However, this tells us only about the neweurasia (English language) sites, and not much about how people are using NITs here. For one thing, this is just one set of sites, and although there are a number of people writing for the neweurasia sites from this region, others are located far away. For another thing, Kazakhstan’s dominant languages are Russian and Kazakh, and sites in English cannot fully represent the experiences of people here.

Our task now is to discover whether there is something we might call online participatory journalism being practiced in Kazakhstan, and to try to develop an initial profile of that practice. We will begin this process by working in groups and creating profiles of a few weblogs. (Each group will examine one weblog. Post your profile as a comment on this entry by 1 pm Friday, 2 Nov. and be prepared to present it in class that day.)

1. ru.kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, neweurasia’s Russian-language weblog on Kazakhstan
2. kz.kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, neweurasia’s Kazakh-language weblog on Kazakhstan
3. adam-kesher.livejournal.com, Adam Kesher’s Russian-language Livejournal site
4. Askar Shushekov’s Media Support Center site (rus)

Provide the following information about the site you are profiling:

1. Site name and URL
2. Language(s) used on the site
3. Who authors the site? Is it a group weblog? Individual weblog? Are full names available? First names? Pseudonyms?
4. Where is/are the author(s) located?
5. How long has the site been active? How active is the site? (How many entries per week, on average?)
6. Does the site allow users to comment? If so, are there many comments? Or few comments?
7. Does the site provide an RSS feed?
8. What community does this site connect with? Look at links in entries, at the blogroll, and at the comments section: What are the sources of information the site uses? What sites does the author consider important?
9. Overall content: What kind of topics are addressed at the site? Are they personal? News oriented?
10. Impressions: Is the site engaging in participatory journalism in the sense described in the We Media report? What qualities does it have (or lack) that make you see the site as an example of online participatory journalism?
11. What else of interest do you observe about the site?

Quiz Reminder

Remember that our quiz is coming up on Wednesday 17 October, and will be held in room 131 Valikhanov, rather than our regular lab.

The quiz will cover readings (including this weblog) and course discussions, lectures and activities.

Format will combine multiple choice, fill-in, and matching.

To review, look over the course weblog, especially the material tagged with the Concepts and Terms category, and look over the course readings, which you can find (again) following the link for Required Readings in the sidebar. Ask me if you have any questions.

On Monday in class there will be opportunity for review, which will continue for as much of the class period that you have questions.

‘Pedia vs. ‘Tannica, Head to Head and Toe to Toe

Before this term I hadn’t looked at the Encyclopedia Britannica website for some time, and when I did I was surprised to find how much the site seems to mimic some aspects of the Wikipedia site.

• Both sites feature a relatively sparse layout with seemingly little attention paid to graphic design;
• Both sites offer user interactivity on their opening pages: Wikipedia with its standard interactive tabs and discussion features; Britannica with links to blogs, forums, and other seemingly participatory features;
• Both sites prominently display links to new and featured information, news, and so on.

As I recall, in the past Britannica has not had so many apparently interactive features, and I wonder whether this design is in part an attempt to adopt some of the elements that have made Wikipedia popular. If so, I think the folks at ‘tannica are missing the point: it’s Wikipedia’s openness (in contrast to Britannica’s still-closed system) that makes it popular. Consider a few comparisons:

• Anyone with access to the internet and some relatively simple skills can become a contributor to Wikipedia; in contrast, Britannica is a closed system of experts. Even Britannica’s weblogs (almost by definition an open medium) are written by a select group of experts. (They do, however, seem to allow general readers to comment on the ‘blogs.)
• Wikipedia content is available for free, both to read and to republish; most Britannica content requires a paid subscription for full access, and none is available for free republication.

Depending upon your perspective, you might see either of these characteristics as a point in favor of either encyclopedia. In fact, discussions about whether Wikipedia is a reliable resource are focused on its “wide open” character as opposed to Britannica’s closed system of experts.

Most of us are accustomed to systems of expertise in which we rely on people in authority to provide reliable information. Think of how schools work, governments, hospitals, and so on. This is the model that Britannica relies on (check out their authors, board members, and so on.)

The expert model has to be closed, because it assumes that expertise is something rare and that potential experts must be evaluated and confirmed as experts prior to participating.

This is a model with proven success (though it isn’t always successful). And if we consider the Wikipedia model simply to be opening the floodgates, for example, to allow anyone to enter a hospital, a university, or another expert institution and to begin acting like an expert, then perhaps we should be skeptical.

But that isn’t exactly what Wikipedia does. Yes, anyone can sign up to contribute at Wikipedia, and the process tries not to constrain contributors much. But what this project relies on is a large community of users who, working online, not only write and edit entries, but they evaluate and discuss entries, they consider the strengths and weaknesses of material, and they have systems to control people who abuse their freedom on the site.

Some examples:

• At the front end of many articles (such as the open source article) are announcements about suggestions on how to improve the article.
• The discussion page of each article is used, well, to discuss changes, proposed changes, and other issues related to the article’s content.
• The history page provides a list of changes and a way to revert edited articles to a previous state.

These are just a few of the mechanisms that Wikipedia uses to allow members of the community to work to improve the site. But perhaps the most important element of the Wikipedia system is this: they rely on a community of users who focus on one major goal: to produce a reliable, authoritative online encyclopedia. In the end, Wikipedia can only work if the majority of people in the community work toward that goal in good faith.