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internetmedia

Page history last edited by PBworks 18 years, 11 months ago

Internet and media - interlocal collaboration project

 

Connected without connection: beyond the cliches of technology breakthrough and networking

 

there have been much talks about technology breakthrough in the internet world that people are liberated from national border and existing social structure. J.P. Barlow made his Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace back in 1996, while more recently Joichi Ito described the network effect of blog as emergent democracy. On the other hand, Clay Shirky shows that weblog shares the same Power Law with the reality: the predictable imbalance of 20% holding 80% of the world’s wealth (internet traffic).

 

in the media frontier, Dan Gilmor introduced the idea of Grassroots media that every individual can be a "media". However, will the aggregation of individual constitute to a "grassroots" identity? Or it is an extension of Man like "Neo" in the film Matrix and revolution of the "real-life" becomes the ultimate extension of human via virtuality? Worse still, even individual liberation seems not that easy, Neo's liberation becomes a myth that drives individual labour force to contribute to the desire machine of the existing social-political system. In the end, it is difficult to distingush whether Neo is connecting to the bio-energy battery system of Matrix while dreaming his own liberation or he is really free to travel in and out of the machine.

 

McLuhan has reminded us since the appearance of television era that the extension of man has an amputation effect: television as an extension of man's eyes has taken away his ability in seeing with his own eyes. How about internet - as an extension of people's connection / relation?

 

It seems that the internet has allowed us to network more easily with each other. However, network has freed from its value and become a pure form, people are connected, but without connection.

 

Let's take look into an example here: Has anyone hear anything about Pambazuk News? It is an english website about Africa social and political justice issue. It exists in the Internet world like a dust in the wind. Even though we are connected through search engine, we won't search for it, because we have no connection or we made no connection.

 

On the other hand, there are many connections between us and Africa: all these images of starving and dying kids, women in despair made by developmental NGOs; or the wild-life in Africa that some of us would dream of travelling there made by national geography and travel agences. But such connections would never lead us to Pambazuk News. The Korean website Base21 is another dust in the wind.

 

Global empire vs localized movement

 

in recent year, there has been much discussion about globalization esp. after the end of communist regime in USSR and eastern europe. Global capital flow and division of labour has resulted in a new governmental paradigm in global institution such as world bank, imf and wto (in polit-econ) and united nation and global NGOs conventions e.g. on human rights and environment (legal-ethical), NATO & U.S (military act). antonio negri called such regime as "empire".

 

however, in the past few decades, despite the fact that there are more and more local NGO and people's organizations, social movement become confined to the existing political boundaries. when we trace back to our contemporary history, back in the sixties, we have the cultural revolution in China, 1968 revolution in France, anti-Vietnamese War in U.S, the prague spring in eastern europe; the political sentiment were inter-connected. people were inspired by political events in other parts of the world (even though their imagination maybe wrong). Now, a suspected case of avian flu of a German cat is drawing us more attention than weeks of demonstration /a potential revolution in France.

 

what happens to our international movement?

 

in an evaluation meeting of anti-WTO protest in December last year, a korean participant Li Dae Oup asked why there were no platform for international coordination? there is a coordinating body called Hong Kong people's alliance, but there is no coordination and communication for protest strategies among organizations. The question is very critical because Hong Kong has been a very internationalized with many multi-national corporations, big NGOs, international and regional NGOs registered in the city. We are so used to show our solidarity to international movement, but there is no international solidarity movement in Hong Kong. For example, the mobilization was much greater in Taiwan in the recent anti-iraqi war than in HK; and the recent political repression in the Philippines did not stir up any discussion in our society even though the number of filippino is huge.

 

the situation has to do with the cold war politics in our region. hong kong has been a strategic place for international (U.S and european) funding in its NGO movement. Much of the fundings are related to mainland China, and the task of NGOs is to submit regular reports (in english) on human rights, labour conditions, etc. to funding agencies. while the city in itself is a non-place in their agenda. so we can see there are many regional organizations existed in hong kong for more than 20 years survived without ordinary people knowing their existence. there is no organization connecting inter-locals and international-local movement.

 

our movement becomes more and more self-centered. the interest of chinese peasant becomes conflicting with the korean peasant, eventhough both are victims. local labours are resentful towards illegal, imported or overseas cheap labour as they understand their jobs being taken away. people are disconnected and there is very limited effort in the movement sectors to articulate the situation in a wider context. we also don't have literary writing or other cultural production for people to develop emotional tie, sympathy and appreciation with each others.

 

we actually know a lot about other countries through developmental agencies (such as oxfam) and cultural industries. africa is a place for starving kids and animal, we either give donation to save those kids or travel there to experience the wildlife; we know where are the best cafe in taipei city and where are the best SPA in thai; Macau is a place for gambling and prostitution; through dae chang g'm we learn korean history and culture. everything that we know about each others are related to cultural industry. the knowledge is indeed distorting, however, it generates desire for us to know more and learn more.

 

again in last december's anti wto mobilization, so many hk people came out spontaneously was because of a mixed feeling of sympathy with the peasant against the wto and u.s.a, appreciation and understanding of the korean way of expression (korean culture) and a distrust for mainstream media and hk government. such sentiment are not generated by the anti-wto social movement sector, but more by the cultural industry. ironically, the anti-wto mobilization has transformed into a supporting-korean demonstration on the 18. and such sentiment cannot sustain and transform into substantial local movement resource. we can say that there is a tendency of people to people alliance emerging, however, such solidarity is not organized.

 

what if our movement is capable of generating people's desire in knowing and learning more about people's movement in other countries and transform such knowledge into local movement?

 

Post-colonialism and international news

 

in the academic circle, there are much discussion about Orientalism in knowledge production set off by Edward Said that theory and research agenda has been under Western framework, to the extent that the East has internalized such Western knowledge system.

 

the operation of international news has more prominent effects. As the mainstream international news sources are dominated by western oriented news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press, etc., people's world view are limited to internal news or the West, while ignorant to their neigbouring countries. And when these international news agencies report on the West's OTHERs, the news are totally decontextualized from the local concern and tainted with mainstream international politics.

 

here, I would like to share some experiences with you which lead me to the interlocals.net project.

 

last October, a reporter from Guardian wrote a witness report on a grassroots democratic struggle in a village called Taishi (near Hong Kong) which is at the southern part of China. the story depicted in detail how an activist was beaten to "lifeless" shape: neck twisted and eye out of socket. This exclusive story became internationalized over 24 hours (however the village level's democratic struggle had been there for many months). In two days, the activist showed up in another province suffered from some injuries. The story is outraging in a way that we failed to represent ourselves in the english speaking world and it is only through such english report that the rest of the world get to know about the Taishi incident. the western representation of China is all about China threat, internal repression, riot, environmental problem, which are partially true. the subject of the international news is nation state. we can't see people's real life, not to mention their concerns and social agenda. and people from different countries cannot make connection without such basic knowledge about each others.

 

an individual blog EastSouthWestNorth has been doing a great job to translate local news and bloggers opinion from Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong into english. the blog has become an alternative news source for western journalists from international news to learn more about "native Chinese" opinion. As an alternative news source, ESWN is rather successful, however, it is not so dialogical as the blogger is ambivalent in his political stand, even though his taste is pretty clear.

 

an enlightening experience happened in last May when there were anti-Japanese demonstration in Mainland China. The sentiment between two countries were mediated by nationalistic mainstream media. However, in the blogsphere, a blogger Andrea Leung, translated the discussion among Chinese blogger in his blog, and another Japanese blogger Joi Ito, upon reading the translated discussion, wrote a blog post explaining his position and called for more dialogues among people from two countries. Then I translated the article into Chinese and it was posted in several other mainland bloggers' blog for discussion. Eventhough it is in small scale and among a circle of bloggers, it is a border crossing reflective space for people who are involved in the process. Such kind of dialogue is impossible in the mainstream media.

 

inter-locals project

 

apart from individual initiatives from bloggers, there are some organized one, such as global voices online. at the beginning, the website mainly focused on china and asia issues, the items were rather informatives. and its information sources are different from the mainstream international news. however, after it had expanded itself to cover everything (written in english) from the blogsphere around the world and invited a large pool of volunteers who would summarize discussion in non-english speaking blogsphere, the website lost it value, as the items that they submitted are usually with very limited contextualization. its motto is: "the world is talking, are we listening?" indeed, the world has been talking, and we need to transform voices into information, communication and dialogue. rather than just a aggregation of voices.

 

in the social movement sector, we also have different sorts of information exchange news group. For example, asia-social-movements' egroup (it is introduced to me by dongwon). it is informative, however, it is run by a group of movement organizers, who have more or less a definition of what are movement concern and what are not. it becomes a message board for activists with rather limited discussion (echo chamber effect).

 

are we and can we define what are / should be movement concerns? why can't movement media become popular? this is not a hypocritical question. two year agos, when we began formulating the alternative internet media project, the differences lead us to split (a friendly understanding split) and we have two separated project: globalnetwork (statistic)and inmediahk (statistic).

 

i want to go back to the korean t.v drama dae chang g'm, it is one of the most popular drama in hk, and there are many meaningful discussion around it. some people started to read the regional history of korea-china-japan; some compared the attitude towards culture and histroy between korean and hk people; some compared dae chang g'm with a similar popular local t.v. drama and discussed about politics: liberal vs court conspiracy, etc. it is a conscious raising process for ordinary people who spend probably 1/6 of the time everyday in front of the t.v.

 

how about movies like "munich", "brokeback mountain" and "JSA"? and how about youth policy at school and in the society?

 

when we say we have to build up people to people's alliance, shouldn't we begin with what they concern about? what touch their heart? and inter-link with social transformation agenda. a genuine people's media cannot be an echo chamber of one's belief.

 

the mainstream media and cultural industry, including news, t.v., movies, etc. have become part of the conditions of people's existence, we can't ask people not to watch t.v. in fact, all these media have their power in capturing people's concern and desire while distorting them for the statue quo. for example the intrepretation of people's support for the anti-wto demonstrators are to rescue the mainstream news industries and government from their credibility crisis in their fabrication of a "Roit". are we going to leave this battlefield and go back to our echo chamber?

 

of course, i am not denying the neccessities of echo chamber media, it is powerful for the construction of a strong movement subjectivities. but i just don't think it would work out in a popular level, not to mention in a border crossing level, where a well defined movement subjectivity is impossible.

 

in designing the feature of interlocals website, i have taken into the account of the above concerns, stressing mediascape, dialogical border crossing open letters, translation and substantial content exchange networks among alternative media and bloggers.

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