This recently posted video of Israeli soldiers dancing to the beat of Ke$ha’s “tick tock” in the middle of their patrol in the West Bank is a great example of the clash of context. The video went viral extremely fast, as many Israelis re-posted and proudly emailed the link, naively thinking that “the world will finally see that our soldiers are humans who also like to have a little fun”. They could not have imagined just how offended people across the world would be from watching the video. Slogans like “It’s easy to laugh at the occupation when you’re the oppressor” were posted in response, causing lots of frustration and confusion all around.

Intentions were good, but were lost in translation.

Ethan Zuckerman has been writing about xenophilia and culture bridging for a while. He points at people’s tendency towards homophily (’birds of a feather flock together’) and sees this as a fundamental challenge, since with the web, we’re more able than ever to find people that are like us. He stresses the importance for us to seek out and understand people different from us, especially as cultures clash on global web services become more common. Ethan defines xenophilia as people in the world who are genuinely fascinated by the breadth, complexity and difference of the world; “third culture kids”, people who were raised in one country, but are “from” another. Bridge bloggers are xenophiles who have the capacity to connect both sides of a story, because they themselves are associated with both sides.

In his recent blog post, Ethan looks at data released by peace.facebook.com, boasting how many daily connections are made between pairs of battling entities. According to the site, 15,747 connections between Israelis and Palestinians have been made over the last 24 hours on Facebook. I find this piece of data incredibly hard to believe (especially since the number doesn’t seem to change over the course of the week). Even if a reciprocal relationship equals 2 connections, I can’t imagine such a high number of connections forming on a daily basis. That said, 20% of Israeli population is Arab, many with roots and family in Gaza or the West Bank. This fact could certainly explain the data.

Their notion of “connections” makes me wonder if they account for Facebook fan pages. Successful fan pages tend to be politically charged, and polarize the users according to their political agenda rather than bring those with different views together. However, if Facebook’s data is counting Israeli Arabs as Israelis (as they should!), I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d accounted for multiple connections forming via these fan pages.

I am extremely doubtful that much bridging happens through direct Facebook “friending”, nor that it is represented by direct Facebook “friendships” between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. So where does it happen if at all?

In order to answer this question, we must discuss the notion of a “safe space”, which I consider crucial for bridging to happen. A safe space makes us feel comfortable, almost at home. Its an environment where we are supported and validated; a place where we are willing to lower our defenses.

I am a huge fan of Global Voices, but wouldn’t consider it as a safe space for Israelis. The majority of readership on the Middle East section tilts heavily towards Arab articles, comments and opinions. One might say that is totally fair since it is representative of actual world distribution of population. But the outcome is an imbalanced environment, which for an Israeli, feels unsafe; a place where they won’t be supported, nor will they be identified with. Why hang out where everyone’s picking on you when you can easily go play with fun friends elsewhere? For the most part,like the Guardian or Al-Jazeera, Global Voices is not perceived as a safe space.

However I believe that Facebook creates new opportunities for safe spaces to form, especially as they are based on people’s familiarity with each other.

Facebook received massive adoption in Israel, easily taking over any other Social network or service. Israel is a tiny place, and people are inherently social – making Facebook a perfect place to interact with the “hevre” (Hebrew for ‘gang’ – also the name of one of the earliest Social Networks that saw light in Israel). Facebook is a place where my friends from Israel feel extremely comfortable. Even when someone lands on my profile page, there are always other friends a mere click away, in the periphery. One is never alone, in any given context.

The Flotilla incident triggered something I hadn’t seen before. Friends from different contexts don’t tend to communicate with each other, even when reacting to the same post. The flotilla events changed this.

When dealing with such a complex topic that has no clear “right” or “wrong”, I witnessed multiple “cross boundary” conversations happening on my own Facebook page, and also amongst my Israeli friends who are also living abroad. Our pages served as bridges, or safe havens, where contacts from “opposing sides” could have a conversation.

It would go something like this – (1) Facebook page owner posts link to article (2) Israeli friend/relative responds with a pro-Israeli message (3) European friend responds to that with a counter opinion (4) Another Israeli friend responds (5) another foreign friend supports #3 (6) profile owner mediates…

…you get the drift.

The interesting part here is that even if there are no direct links between those in Israel, and those with opposing perspectives wherever they were, a conversation could take place because of the personalized nature of Facebook. Because it felt safer to do it there, on a shared friend’s page. Much safer than on Global Voices, or other international news websites.

The more Facebook grows, the more I see these kinds of exchanges happening. In his post, Ethan claims that “we overestimate how many of our online contacts cross borders and underestimate how often these tools are used to reinforce local friendships”. While I agree, I’d add that we shouldn’t only look at direct cross-border connections, but rather try to understand and estimate the value that Facebook serves as a safe space for bridging to occur. I’m not sure how we quantify the amount of cultural bridging that is not represented by FB connections. We could only do this by analyzing public discussions happening on profile pages, between profiles who are not friends on Facebook.

To conclude, Obama argues that we suffer from an “empathy deficit”, as quoted from a speech to college students:

“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room. As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.”

Placing yourself in someone else’s shoes is much easier when the store attendant is your close friend. Facebook as a platform has the potential to host these conversations; be the store. Safe space.

But we the users, have to make the conversations happen.

Even with the staggering numbers that we have seen over the past year (the newspaper industry shed an estimated 15,970 jobs in 2008, and 8,484 through April of this year), it is important to remember that the future of quality journalism does not depend on the future of newspapers. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, whenever, however and wherever they want. This change is here to stay. The discussion needs to move from “How do we save newspapers?” to “How do we strengthen journalism — regardless of which platform it is delivered on…”

We must not act as if we are still operating in the old content economy, as opposed to the new link economy. The survival of the industry cannot be found by “protecting” content behind walled gardens. The future is a linked economy – it is search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation supported investigative funds.

Arianna firmly believes in a hybrid future:

where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism). The emphasis should not be on subsidizing what exists now, but on how to rededicate ourselves to the highest calling of journalists — which is to ferret out the truth, wherever it leads. Even if it means losing our all-access-pass to the halls of power.

Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists who, like Pontius Pilat, wash their hands of finding the truth and instead are obsessed with a false view of “balance” and the misguided notion that every story has two sides. And that the truth can be found somewhere in the middle. But not every story has two sides and the truth is often found lurking in the shadows.

[tags] huffington, news, senate,arianna[/tags]

The soldiers’ testimonies described cold-blooded murder of Gaza civilians and unreasonable commands passed during the operation. This lead to a promise by the military to form an investigation which was recently concluded, resulting in no file charges against any of the soldiers as their descriptions were based on hearsay. Their names have not been released in order to protect their identity, and the military investigative police did not publish any more information about the case.

Zamir’s efforts haven’t sat well with a certain patriotic constituency within Israeli society. The IDF is seen as a sacred national institution that is beyond reproach. I’m sure Zamir didn’t expect to be lionized for his efforts, he probably didn’t expect to be vilified either. Not only have Israelis accused him of smearing the IDF, they’ve accused him of aiding and abetting the nation’s enemies who are only waiting to pounce upon such stories to justify their hatred of Israel. The IDF itself initiated this campaign by revealing that Zamir had been imprisoned briefly in the 1990s when he refused to guard a settler group holding a provocative religious ceremony at Joseph’s Tomb. They attempted to shoot the messenger. (link)

While doing research for my Global Voices Online post, I scoured through Israblog, Tapuz and other Hebrew portals, trying to find posts from soldier first-hand witnesses who wrote about their experiences in Gaza. To my dismay, I could not find any. It is such a taboo topic; an Israeli must not help those haters validate their claims against our country. We were all soldiers. We all realize that these situations are not black and white. And even if these stories are somewhat true on a micro level, it is certainly not an IDF-wide phenomenon. But when they are taken out of context and amplified to the masses, it is easy to forget the source, while letting our emotions play out. Especially when messages are rapidly amplified through Twitter, the effects can be devastating ( a.k.a. what we saw last week re: #amazonFail)

Ever more often, we are witnessing the implications of living in a society with fast-paced, worldwide media coverage that can easily spin stories out from their original context. This is precisely how a closed door session between school colleagues turns into a worldwide news sensation against the reputation of one of the most powerful armies in the world. We must remember that the truth usually lies somewhere in-between, and make an effort to fact-check before letting our emotions passionately take over our logic.

Here’s a link to my GVO article:

[tags]Israel,global voices oline,testimonials,context,idf,soldiers,war,palestine,gaza[/tags]

Alfred Sirleaf is the managing editor of The Daily Talk, a white plywood shed trumpeting the latest headlines along Tubman Boulevard, one of Monrovia main thoroughfares. “Those who don’t have opportunity to buy newspaper, go on the Internet, who can’t afford to buy generator to buy TV,” he said, describing just about everyone in this battered city, “I do all the dirty work for them, and I just give them exactly what they want.”

Alfred’s solution to dispersing information to the people around him is simple yet highly effective. He also seems to have made a business model out of this board, charging for advertisement space on the bottom. Alfred wants to make sure every Liberian can keep up with the news and play a part in the country’s young democratic government, but in a way that wholly depends on what type of information he displays.

But there are so many advantages to providing “analog” news:

Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily. (link)

[tags]mobile, development, blogger, analog, africa,news[/tags]

The Times lets viewers decide how to consume the multitude of UGC comments. These are usually the ugly, linear tail that is added onto the back of news articles. Here, the list defaults to a curated pool of comments picked by the editor. Its super easy to get different views by clicking on the pull-down menu. The options are – Oldest first, Newest first, Reader’s recommendations, Editor’s selections and Replies. Throughout the threads of comments, the ones picked by the paper editors are highlited with a different background color.

Why am I so excited by this? Finally a substantial paper decides to do something with user generated comments. Although they do get spammy, I still believe in their potential to highlight aspects of the conversation which the article is tackling, or missing out on. I’ve been working on a variety of concepts for this, some more artsy and some an exploration of possible interfaces. Very early stage ideas, but enroute to something bigger. Defintely inspired by the Times!

Secondly, seeing the synchronized Mac ad on their homepage just made me smile. Probably the first time in a while where I watched the full advertisement not once, but twice. A fantastic use of both skyscraper and horizontal advertisement spaces, synchronizing the two by allowing the “PC” character to walk over from one to the other. That little thing made the whole ad. experience just fun enough to watch. In addition, audio was opt-in rather than opt-out.

Yasser Arafat led Fatah at a time when its subgroups were purposefully killing civilians as acts of resistance against the state of Israel. They highjacked planes, kidnapped and killed athletes at the olympics and detonated bombs in public locations. My definition of terrorism encompasses directed action against civilian population. I categorize some of Fatah’s operations in the 70’s as terrorism. Move the clock 35 years forward, and we have Yitzhak Rabin severely scrutinized for negotiating with this “terrorist” and signing the Oslo accords. The right wing tore him to shreds using catchy-aggressive slogans. I remember the pictures depicting blood dripping from Rabin wearing an Arafat-style “keffiya”. He was portrayed as a Jewish traitor and extremist right wing rabbis legitimized “Pulsa denura” ceremonies calling for Rabin’s death. It was not wholly surprising that once Rabin was considered persona non grata by his extreme right wing opponents, a fanatic assassin in that right wing camp would arise and murder him.

Calling Ayers a terrorist is problematic. Yes, he was a radical figure in his youth, but the weathermen group were a troupe of troublemakers, acting against US powers and authority. Their bombs were not placed with an intention to kill civilians, but to harm state-recognized icons. No, I do not support such actions, but I take issue with how US media frames the organization as “domestic terrorist”. Moreover, Obama was only eight-year-old when Ayers and the Weathermen were active. He collaborated with Ayers on a professional-political level, within a commission many years later. If this means his friends are terrorists why not call a spade a spade – Bill Clinton worked intensely with “terrorists”. He was one of the main negotiators between Rabin and Arafat. Arafat, who has a substantial history of terrorist activities.

McCain’s campaign deliberately uses the terrorist ‘tag’ to create fear and hatred towards Obama, taking this whole story out of context. In her speeches, Palin points to the Times who framed Obama’s friend as terrorists as a way to legitimize this point. The fact that it is a pivotal topic in the campaign’s arguments against Obama shows just how desperate they are. Its dirty politics, and I am glad to see that it is not working in McCain’s favor. Still, I am disgusted. I see the slippery slope I witnessed before Rabin’s assasination. I see the ease at which words such as “terrorist” will affect people’s emotions… especially those with relatives in Iraq. I am disgusted because most Americans have *NO* idea what living with “terror” is like, yet they use the word so easily. The majority have never experienced the smell of death after a bomb explodes in a public space. Most never felt the need to calculate their odds of survival every time when using public transport.
I do hope you Americans never have to live through that. Just please don’t use the word “terrorist” to seed baseless fear.

[tags]elections,US,Ayers,Obama,McCain,Palin,Rabin,assasination,Arafat [/tags]

Happy reading.

[tags]nytimes,gvo,global,voices,online,journalism,censorship[/tags]

I am a big sucker for the New York times audio+visual slideshows. The interactive environment that the NYTimes has built is a fantastic way to receive personal stories – stunning photos, solid narration and lots of links to videos and texts. I almost want to build something similar for GVO. With the joint forces of the 100+ Authors from around the world, the slideshow can concentrate on a different topic every time. Its creator will need to fetch a variety of CC flickr photos, and attach a short recording of the topic. There could be additional links to videos and other stories on the topic – A visual representation of a story for those readers who engage with the content better through images rather than text.

Below, a screenshot from the NYTimes Interactive slideshow about life in Gaza. Shortly narrated at first, then accompanied by four different perspectives on people who live in Gaza.

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Conclusion? I need many more hours in the day. On my list of to-do’s – find an effective, open source tool that would allow us to create these visual-audio slideshows for GVO. If that doesn’t exist… well… build it.

[tags]audio,news,global,voices,online,visual,slideshow,gvo[/tags]