Internet & Democracy Blog

In a rare case of Internet filtering in Russia, the popular history Web site Hronos.info has been blocked for publishing Hitler’s Mein Kampf. According to the site’s founder, Vyacheslav Rumyantsev, the site was shut done last week by the site’s ISP, Agava, after a warning from St. Petersburg’s local Ministry of Interior ‘K’ squad, which enforces violations of Russian laws on the Internet.

Similar to what the OpenNet Initiative has seen in a number of other countries, the site was blocked because it violated Russian laws on anti-extremism (Article 280 of the Criminal Code).

In Russia, it appears that ISPs are responsible for violations of the law by their users. The Moscow Times describes how it’s done:

A spokesman for St. Petersburg police, Vyacheslav Stepchenko, said Friday that the site was closed down after the police sent a letter to provider Agava. He said that the law calls for the distributor of information to be warned first, and a criminal case will be opened only if the warning is ignored.

The law applies to the provider, not to the author of a web site, he said. “According to Russian law, responsibility for distribution lies with the owner of the resource, the owner of the hosting.”

The police department sends about 20 warning letters every month, he said.

Two mirror sites are up, with Mein Kampf removed.

Over the weekend, Russian censors also cut part of a South Park episode to edit out a clip that makes fun of Prime Minister Putin. The section that was cut is available at the New Yorks Times Arts Beat Blog. It’s not clear who did the actual cutting. Last year, prosecutors also warned Russian cable channel 2×2, which airs South Park in Russia, that an episode of the show (Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics) could be seen as promoting hatred between religions. A Moscow court later canceled that warning.

UPDATE: The Moscow Times later reported that the Web site’s creator actually thinks that his site was shut down because of criticism of St. Petersburg mayor and Putin loyalist Valentina Matviyenko, and may have had nothing to do with Mein Kamph. The Moscow Times writes:

Rumyantsev said Tuesday that he suspected that the real reason for the closure last week was an article critical of Matviyenko that was posted on the site’s magazine section on June 15, four days before the police warning.

“It was a very quick reaction,” he said. “‘Mein Kamp’ was on the site for two years, and no one lifted a finger.”

By Karina Alexanyan

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Russian bloggers gave more attention to Obama’s trip to Moscow than Russian TV, but not much more. According to “Yandex blogs”, Obama’s visit to Moscow was not among the day’s top 3 blog topics, which instead include Google’s new operating system, juvenile justice in Russia and a subway machinist who fell off the train.

Obama’s visit appears at #11 in the “additional topics” column, which also contains references to the G8 summit in Italy, a Beer and Kvas festival, Newsweek’s list of top 10 books in the world, and the visit by Patriarch Cyril to the Ukraine.

A search among the posts of the top four bloggers in Russia found virtually no mention of Obama’s visit, although Live Journal blogger “drugoi”, whose photoblog is the most popular on RuNet, has a brief post on the superiority of White House press photography over that of the Kremlin.

A quick review of Russian blog posts that do mention Obama’s visit, about 550 posts over the last few days, finds a wide variety.

Many mention the visit in passing, as part of list of other relevant news events of the week (Michael Jackson’s funeral, the subway death, etc).

There is also a fair amount of political analysis, with varying degrees of detail, summarizing the key topics of discussion and main agreements. These contain opinions that range from a quite positive outlook on Russian/American relations, (similar to this news clip from Channel 1) to a less optimistic take on the productivity of the visit. Below is a snippet of loose translations:

– the real reason for Obama’s visit was to discuss Iran and the danger of the increasing accessibility of nuclear technology…

– The first visit of Obama to Moscow showed who is who in contemporary Russian-American relations. There is no rivalry between the Kremlin and the White house. Moscow is today a junior partner to Washington – albeit not a very reliable one. However, this doesn’t change the essence of the relationship. Its enough to review the main points of yesterdays meeting…

– I feel like Obama’s visit to Moscow is falling apart before my eyes…Even a month ago insiders circles there was much more optimism about the political results of this visit. Today – there isn’t. The focus on arms control and nonproliferation as the main reason doesn’t justify the trip. There is and should be forward movement on this, but too many big issues have been neglected…. (Ex, the fact that Hillary Clinton wasn’t there, the inadequacy of Obama’s visit with the opposition, etc.)

– I especially liked it when the emperor of the global empire explained…to the ex-emperor of the non global empire that ‘the time of empire and imperial politics has passed.’ That American’s are a people without complexes – that’s for sure. I wonder, what was Putin thinking at that moment? Something like: and when are you going to free your colonies?

Other posts are mainly humorous or tongue in cheek:

“During Obama’s visit to Moscow, not one fly was harmed…” (A reference to Obama killing a fly during a recent CNBC interview)

– Another wrote, “It’s a funny thing, as I hear about Obama’s visit to Moscow, I catch myself wanting to get a ticket or a pass to his show…”

– Finally, Russian blogger Merenzon suggests that the phonetic spelling of Medvedev’s name “(dih-MEE’-tree med-VYEH’-dyev),” which appeared in a AP article about Obama’s visit, be printed up on T-shirts.

Not a bad idea, given that most US commentators still get tripped up over Medve…dev…ev’s name.

During recent turmoil in Xinjiang, China again revealed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ability to stonewall Internet access regionally, and block sites such as Twitter nationally. However, with the growth of domestic copy-cat micro-blogging services such as Fanfou, TaoTao, Jiwai, Komoo, Zuosa, and Digu, China’s government may be losing their cat and mouse game with connected denizens. Broad proliferation of comparable micro-blogging services are making central control harder to manage. For example, despite recent turmoil in Western China, according to the Berkman Center’s Herdict Project, all of the above sites are still accessible except for Fanfou.com which recently went down for “server maintenance.” Although Fanfou was supposed to come back online on June 6, it is still suspiciously inaccessible. Protracted unavailability of Fanfou points to possible CCP involvement to stifle destabilizing conversation. However, most other domestic micro-blogging services –even Jiwai.de, Komoo.cn, Digu.com and Zuosa.com which bear striking resemblance to Twitter– are still accessible in China. Perhaps user bases differ, and the CCP has shrewdly allowed for this less-threatening Internet persistence. More likely, however, is the fact that a plurality of diversely-hosted, yet similar, services is becoming tougher to patrol.

Another emerging form of domestic communication is Tencent’s Instant Messaging (IM) on QQ.com. No site in China enables greater horizontal web communication than QQ.com, now the 9th largest web property in the world. Founded by Pony Ma in 1998, Tencent –a Chinese-listed company earning $1.2 billion annually in revenue, 88 percent via the sale of “virtual goods” rather than online advertising– has over 570 million registered users of its IM service. In January Tencent launched an English version of the IM platform at IMQQ.com, and a 3G version that offers QQ chat, real-time news, and search engine accessible over mobile phone.

Many users in Western China, and across rural China, do not have email accounts. And many rural Chinese view and understand the Internet as Tencent, the platform on which they’ve grown up. In fact, as of March 2009 China had as many active Tencent QQ users as it officially had people online. Despite focus on access to Google and Twitter –observations of Tweet trends, and Google search engine query data patterns– undoubtedly most relevant in China is continued access to those domestic services of communication most widely used by Chinese citizens.

As advised last week by a Chinese colleague –“mail me at my university account. The government might shut down Google, but they never mess with my college email”– the CCP is selectively choosing what to patrol, because it can’t do it all. While the Western media predominately pay attention to the CCP denying access to Western sites and services, domestic entrepreneurship and a swelling offering of overlapping tools of communication are mitigating the effectiveness of the Internet muzzle. In line with Ethan Zuckerman’s Cute Cate Theory, Web 2.0 may have been created to share photos of adorable creatures, but new platforms for user-generated content are empowering digital activism in profound ways. For the CCP, perhaps it’s the “cute cat,” that is now out of the bag.

Photo: Daily Dish

The LA Times and other media outlets are reporting that a resilient group of Iranians has defied the government by publicly protesting the nearly month old election results. The opposition chose today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of student-led protests against the closing of reformists newspapers by conservatives during the Khatami presidency. Andrew Sullivan and others are back to relying on Twitter for updates. According to the LA Times, over a thousand protesters turned out in Tehran, and they have been met with violence by the Basij and regular security forces. In an attempt to thwart protest organizers, the government has cut off cell phone access for the last few days, although they apparently released 2,000 who had been arrested after earlier protests. On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad called the election, the “freest ever,” which alone was probably enough to push the opposition back into the streets.

Photo credit: Telegraph/EPA

While US media outlets have led daily news coverage with President Obama’s visit to Russia, including several days of special reports by the NewsHour and front page, above the fold articles in the New York Times, Russian media, and especially Russian TV, have almost completely ignored Obama’s visit. For example, Obama’s speech to the graduating class at the New Economic School was not covered at all on Russian TV, while President (oops, Prime Minister) Putin’s motorcycle antics received roughly the same amount of airtime as the US President’s visit.

Photo: REUTERS/РИА-Новости, Алексей Дружинин

This is not completely surprising, since the Kremlin has long viewed national TV outlets as critical to its efforts to influence public opinion, in particular about Putin, while ignoring thorny topics like the war in Chechnya. The high point of the independence of the Russian media may have been the critical coverage of the first Chechen war, which many argue forced President Yeltsin to end the war in order to have a chance to win re-election against a resurgent Communist Party. Putin quickly moved to reverse privatization of national media outlets after entering the national political stage in 1999, though, starting with Boris Berezovskii’s ORT and then Vladimir Gusinskii’s NTV. The state used charges of tax evasion to force both oligarchs into exile and placed their television stations under state control.

Today, all Russian television stations are under direct control of the Kremlin or state-controlled enterprises, such as Gazprom. Television is the only mass media that has nationwide reach and is an important tool used to maintain the popularity of the administration. In a paper in the British Journal of Political Science, Steven White, Sarah Oates and Ian McAllister also showed that the 1999 parliamentary elections, and the 2000 presidential election in which Putin became president, were won in large part through the partisan use of state television. This helps explain why the Kremlin has taken control over national television stations through direct and indirect means. This control includes, according to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, weekly meetings between Kremlin officials and television producers from major networks where pro-government talking points are distributed, expected news topics discussed and approaches to news stories suggested. One can guess how that meeting went this week.

While one could argue that coverage of Obama’s visit could have benefited the Kremlin, by showing them as an equal player with the US, others argue that it was more important for Russia to maintain the illusion that the US is a threat. As Mark Ournov told the Telegraph, “Anti-Americanism is the basis of a system that has been created to justify a return to authoritarianism.”

China’s efforts to limit access to information about ethnic violence in the country, which has resulted in over 150 deaths, shows that the Internet is more difficult than traditional media to control, but not impossible. The OpenNet Initiative reports that China has completely shut off access to the Internet in Xinjiang province and blocked access to Twitter throughout the country. The New York Times also reports that links about the riots have been deleted from Fanfou, the Chinese version of Twitter, as well as popular forums such as Mop and Tianya. The Times also argues that, similar to SMS during post election violence in Kenya last year, the Internet may have helped mobilize rioters:

Internet social platforms and chat programs appeared to have unified Uighurs in anger over the way Chinese officials had handled the earlier brawl, which took place in late June thousands of miles away…photographs that appeared online after the battle showed people standing around a pile of corpses, leading many Uighurs to believe that the government was playing down the number of dead Uighurs. One Uighur student said the photographs began showing up on many Web sites about one week ago. Government censors repeatedly tried to delete them, but to no avail, he said.

‘Uighurs posted it again and again in order to let more people know the truth, because how painful is it that the government does bald-faced injustice to Uighur people?’ said the student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the government.

A call for protests spread on Web sites and QQ, the most popular instant-messaging program in China, despite government efforts to block online discussion of the feud.

If history is any guide, the Chinese will likely ease their online restrictions when the riots end, but the cat and mouse game will continue. As Michael Wines argues:

Chinese experts clearly have studied the so-called color revolutions — in Georgia and Ukraine, and last month’s protests in Iran — for the ways that the Internet and mobile communication devices helped protesters organize and reach the outside world, and for ways that governments sought to counter them…As the Internet and other media raise new challenges to China’s version of the truth, China is finding new ways not just to suppress bad news at the source, but also to spin whatever unflattering tidbits escape its control.

In regards to the resources at China’s disposal, Jonathan Zittrain may have said it best, “Given that it’s a game of cat and mouse they could bring to bear a lot of cats if they had to.”

President Obama has landed in Russia for his first visit to the country as President–let’s hope it doesn’t end like the last one as US Senator, when he was detained with Senator Lieberman at a regional airport after a nuclear missile inspection. That was later called a ‘misunderstanding’ by the Russians; apparently, there are a lot of them according to responses on the New York Times Russian language blog, where Russians were asked to explain what Americans do not understand about Russia. Money quote:

Well, Americans will never be able to understand us, because you are stuck in the cocoon of your mass media, which always depicts Russians as the enemies of America.

Also according to the Times, Russian TV outlets, whose content is heavily influenced by the Kremlin, have backed off criticism of the US during the summit, partly by keeping anti-US agitators like Mikhail Leontyev off the airwaves. Still, according to Levada Center polling data, only 36 percent of Russians view the United States positively, while 50 percent view it negatively, a reversal from opinion of the US in the 1990s after the break up of the Soviet Union.

While this meeting is largely about restarting nuclear disarmament talks, it is clearly also meant to move forward Hillary Clinton’s initially bumbled ‘reset’ of the US- Russian relationship, which many argue is at its worst since the Cold War thanks to lingering tensions over last summer’s conflict between Russia and Georgia. Although Obama has been generally quiet about democracy and human rights issues in Russia, he does plan to meet with human rights and civil society representatives during his trip, as well as opposition politician and former chess champion Gary Kasparov. Obama also granted an interview to the often Kremlin-critical Novaya Gazeta, which has had four of its journalists assassinated in roughly as many years, including Anna Politovskaya. While most of the questions posed by Novaya Gazeta dealt mostly with the economic crisis and whether the US was to blame (a common claim by Putin), here is part of what President Obama said about whether the ‘reset’ in US-Russian relations would also include issues of human rights and freedom, in particular resolving the Politovskaya murder:

I also think that Americans and Russians share an interest in strengthening the rule of law, democracy and human rights. To quote my inaugural speech: ‘To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.’ Later, speaking in Cairo, I said: ‘I have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights.’ These ideas are shared by your President and your people. I agree with President Medvedev when he says that ‘some freedom is better than no freedom.’ I therefore see no reason why the ‘reset’ in relations cannot include the common desire to strengthen democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Yesterday, on Sunday July 5, Mexico hosted its mid-term elections, bringing change to its lower house of Congress, six governor and hundreds of mayoral offices. The reform agenda of President Felipe Calderon will depend on his ability to secure a majority in the 500-member Lower House, or Chamber of Deputies, or “Deputatos.” Calderon’s party, the National Action Party (PAN) competes with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the old garde in Mexican politics until Vicente Fox upset the trend nine years ago. Though Calderon’s PAN hold more Senate and Deputy seats, they lack a majority, as the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) occupies highly coveted seats.

Sunday’s elections are pivotal in the ability to provide majority. While no Senate seats are up for grabs, should PRI or PAN secure sufficient seats in the lower Chamber of Deputies –350 of whom are elected, 150 appointed– the President’s ability to push reformist policies will alter. With the onset of Swine Flu, the disengagement of tourists, rising unemployment, and destabilizing macroeconomic climate, the mid-term election offers potential for facilitated policy change, not to mention a tacit referendum on Calderon half way through his six-year term.

Today, Mexico has roughly 27M people, or 25 percent of its population, online. Although looking at Internet data in  low-connectivity nations can be problematic –as many online in Mexico are “Panista,” meaning they support the Calderon’s PAN party– such data can still be illustrative if used to describe proper demographics.  Before Sunday’s elections, online trends point to pockets of support across demographics and regions. It can point to issues of regional importance. Relevant to Mexico’s youth demographic, Facebook’s Lexicon displays prevalence of terms on Facebook Wall posts. When comparing “PRI” with “PAN,” the margin of difference for Calderon’s PAN has increased since March 2009. In fact, Facebook Wall reference volume on PAN is triple PRI, and peaking around June 15. As yet, there is still no means of parsing Facebook Lexicon data by geography.

Facebook Lexicon PRI vs PAN Wall Posting Data

Regarding use of Google, 30-day moving averages of relative search data indicated that Calderon’s PAN was leading in regional online interest, with strongholds in states of Sonora, Jalisco, Distrito Federal (Mexico City), Nueva León, and Baja California.

Geographic Distibution of Relative Google Search on "PAN"

The 30-day domestic Mexican Internet search volume puts PAN at roughly 40 percent greater volume than PRI, however recent spikes in traffic and initial post-election results are putting PRI roughly ten points up on PAN. Internationally, the importance of the mid-term election as partial referendum is indicated by high volume on President Calderon. Outside Mexico, greatest interest in Calderon –as a proportion of domestic search– comes from Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Outside of Mexico, the issue remains important across much of Latin America, in Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and even Spain.

Global Geographic Overview of Google Search on "Calderon"

Initial post-election results show Calderon’s PAN trailing the PRI in new Lower House seats won. Diminished PAN influence in the Chamber of Deputies will hamper Calderon’s reform movement, and strike an initial blow to the Mexican economy, with lack of Congressional majority undercutting likelihood of decisive leadership. As of 9:40AM, stocks and the Mexican Peso had fallen by half of a percent against the Dollar. Initial results indicated that in Mexico online interest in party and candidate terms by connected voters did not translate into a reflection of ballots cast. But the Internet demonstrated that such electoral events matter not only in Mexico, but also indicated a leading interest in Mexican politics across Latin America and across much of the globe.

Not (or not only) through sharing information on censorship tactics. Instead, as a mapping of the .ir domain by the firm Lumeta found, “one router in the .ir domain that passes the most traffic is physically located in Russia. Iran is apparently outsourcing a significant portion of its routed infrastructure.” This implies that Russia could also cut off that information, through that ‘choke point,’ if it wanted. According to Information Week, Lumeta also found that only about 10% of US-based traffic into Iran is blocked.

Lumeta also has a map of the Internet in the Middle East.

Which you can compare to our map and study of the Arabic blogosphere.

Hat Tip: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH)

The summer months of 2009 have already played host to game-changing elections in the world’s largest Hindu and Shiite Muslim nations, India and Iran respectively. On July 8, Indonesia – the world’s fourth-largest by-population nation, the world’s largest Muslim country as well as largest Muslim democracy– will hold its presidential elections.

On July 8, Demokrat party incumbent Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will face off against the incumbent Vice President Jusuf Kalla, now the Golkar party presidential nominee, and against 2001-2004 Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, also daughter of Indonesia’s first President Sukarno. Megawati is the leader of the opposition party known as Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, or PDI-P. Her controversial career soldier running mate, Prabowo Subianto, is the son-in-law of Suharto and the well-heeled founder and former Presidential nominee of the Gerinda party.

30-day domestic relative data on most popular candidate terms

While the perennial elite continues to vie for Indonesia’s top office, political engagement is moving from the streets to the information superhighway. Despite religious differences, the most salient non-domestic interest in the Iranian elections came from Jakarta, where –according to Google Insights for Search– Indonesian (Bahasa) trailed only Persian as the language of choice for entering Google search queries on Iranian presidential candidates. Outside of Iran and its diaspora, Indonesian interest in Iranian politics underscores religious trans-national solidarity, and an increasingly politically active youth demographic.
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