Informed societies

SEOUL – Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, impressive in her speeches overseas, isn’t the only one relishing the fresh air of freedom in Myanmar.

The Burmese press is also starting to enjoy whiffs of freedom. The situation is so new there is still a lot of skepticism that the change will last. After so much oppression and disappointment, hope can be scary.

“We are now a little bit open,” Nyein Nyein Naing, executive editor of the Yangon-based 7 Day New Journal, told about 300 participants in the East-West Center’s International Media Conference here last Friday night.

She recalled that the Myanmar media used to be required to submit “every word” of every news article to the government for clearance prior to publication. This time, she said she has defied publication prohibitions on several articles, and “nothing happened to me.”

Naing and two other Myanmar journalists told us that they have to worry about new problems. One is the rise of a so-called crony media, whose owners cozy up to the military cabal that still retains tremendous power. Another is a plan to set up a “press council” that journalists fear will replace government censors.

Myint Kyaw, editor of the Yangon Press International, said Facebook has also become popular in Myanmar – for both ordinary people AND the government, which is using the social networking site to monitor the people.

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Like any powerful tool, the Internet can be used for both good and evil, by citizens and governments alike.

It is so powerful that the US State Department is actively tapping social media for public diplomacy. Just check out “It’s me, Kristie” – the blog of Kristie Kenney, the former US ambassador to Manila who’s now assigned in Bangkok.

“Engagement is part of the spadework of diplomacy,” Victoria Esser told the participants here, mainly East-West alumni from 27 countries and 100 media organizations.

Esser is the deputy assistant secretary for digital strategy at the State Department. Her position was created only 10 months ago – an indication of the new thrust in America’s public diplomacy. Diplomats in over 300 US posts around the world are being encouraged to engage the public through digital media.

US Ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford, who was pulled out as violence escalated in Syria in October last year, is using the Internet from the US to continue reaching out to Syrians fighting the murderous regime of Bashar Assad.

Asked if digital engagement was just another way of disseminating US government propaganda, Esser said, “People can smell a phony a mile away.”

She also saw no contradiction between this effort at diplomatic transparency and Washington’s response to WikiLeaks. The two issues, she said, are “apples and oranges.”

“We believe some conversations still need to remain private,” Esser told us, adding that WikeLeaks “was a theft of classified documents.”

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Using the Internet to win hearts and minds is surely better than trying to censor it.

“This Internet is not broken. So why are many governments trying to fix it?” asked Jeff Jarvis, director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York. “Can governments really control the Net? I don’t think they can. But they will certainly try.”

Taj Meadows, Google’s manager of policy communication in the Asia-Pacific region, told us that Google has received millions of requests from most countries to block certain sites or data over copyright infringement, personal privacy, use of the Internet for crime and terrorism, and yes, to suppress political dissent. (For the requests of specific countries, check out google.com/transparencyreport.)

The blocking requests are made by individuals, companies, organizations and governments. Google dismayed its fans by caving in to pressure from China.

Even democratic South Korea blocks websites and content sympathetic to its enemy North Korea.

Efforts to clamp down on social media are likely to continue as its power to radically transform societies has been firmly established particularly in Egypt and the Arab Spring.

Authoritarian regimes are spooked. In China, social networking is hugely popular, even if social media companies, according to director Isaac Xianghui Mao of the Social Brain Foundation, are “living in fear that they can be shut down any time.”

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Last Friday, an official of the World Economic Forum announced to us the launch of a “Code of Conduct for Government Leaders.” The code calls on governments to “embrace the opportunity provided by the Internet and social media to establish a dialogue with their citizens.” The draft code was presented at our conference for discussion by the Global Agenda Council on Informed Societies, a group of prominent journalists, academics and media entrepreneurs.

The council is also drawing up a so-called Informed Societies Index to measure government leaders’ compliance with the code.

“Instead of trying to control what is essentially uncontrollable, governments should use the power of the Internet to create informed societies,” council chair Ying Chan said.

A press statement described the Global Agenda Council as “a group of experts from business, academia and civil society from Asia, Africa, North America, the Middle East and Latin America, whose goal is to raise awareness of how different elements of society can ensure that all citizens have access to reliable information to make informed decisions that can improve the state of the world.”

The Informed Societies Index will be based on four dimensions: transparency, media literacy, privacy and citizen empowerment.

China, Myanmar and Syria are sure to rank near the bottom of the index. Even the Philippines, however, will be found wanting.