Tag Archives: Russia
What Would Dostoevsky Tweet?
The man with the giant spot on his head was always on the television. As a child I watched Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, or Tom Brokaw talk about him in hopeful though cautious tones. President Ronald Reagan often appeared in the pictures shaking hands with that man called Gorbachev. There was no public Internet in those days; a face was a face and a book was a book and we played Oregon Trail on green-screened IBM machines. The world in which glasnost and perestroika brought the end of the Soviet Union was quite different than the world in which Vladimir Putin has become president of Russia once again.
The Russian people are different, too. The long suffering tragic figures of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy novels are being replaced by young, networked people full of hope. They’ve been empowered by technology in a way those who invented the Internet never could have imagined. While Russia’s traditional media has become less free since the promising days of Boris Yeltsin, the Russian Internet, or RuNet, has remained fairly free from government interference, according to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s paper Exploring Russian Cyberspace: Digitally-Mediated Collective Action and the Networked Public Sphere. The research shows that social media have created a vibrant space for discussion about political and social issues even as print and broadcast media are prevented from reporting the truth. On the other hand, recent cyber-attacks and arrests of bloggers have obstructed online activity and debate.
“What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate in Mikael Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita. One can imagine certain Russian politicians employing a giant cat and a short man with a bowler hat and a fang sticking from his mouth to run around polling stations, stuffing ballot boxes and causing electoral mayhem. Indeed, electoral mayhem seems to have taken place. Twitter and other social media have been flooded with accusations of fraud, and videos have appeared online showing ballot stuffing, people getting paid to vote, and “carousel voting,” in which groups of people vote at several different polling stations using the same ballot.
Social media is making it much more difficult for dictators across the globe to hide the truth from the people. RuNet has become a watchdog over state and corporate interests. The Berkman paper highlights the Gazprom tower, the Khimki forest campaign, and the anti-Seliger protests as examples of online collective action. However, social media is a tool used by a limited segment of the population. According to the Open Society Foundations’ report Mapping Digital Media: Russia, the total monthly number of unique Internet users in Russia in November 2010 was 46.5 million, a mere 40 percent of the population aged 18+, and most Internet users reside in the larger cities.
Still, the impact that social media has had on Russia as a whole is undeniable. The country saw unprecedented protests against Putin both before and after the elections, protests that were largely organized through online media. No doubt issue campaigns will continue to be organized in the country, though it remains to be seen if President Putin will allow such freedom on RuNet to continue.
For more information on digital media in Russia, please see our list of resources here.
CIMA Weekly Digital Roundup
Highlights from the world of digital media. Sign up here for the full version of CIMA’s weekly Digital Media Mash Up.
Around the World
This Spring Breeze Did Not Arise in the West
So here I am, an Arab journalist in Silicon Valley, where four out of every four people I meet believe Facebook invented the Arab Spring. Three more weeks here and I may start to hallucinate that Mark Zuckerberg was a Cairo-slums native named Hassouna El-Fatatri, who rotted in a Mubarak prison for advocating personal privacy rights. (IPS, 12/23)
EGYPT: Egyptian Veteran Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah Released
Egyptian veteran blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah has finally been released pending investigation from the Cairo Criminal Court yesterday after being detained for 56 days. (Global Voices Advocacy, 12/27)
EGYPT: Eyewitness Accounts of Raid on Civil Society Group in Cairo Posted on Twitter
As my colleagues David D. Kirkpatrick and J. David Goodman report, “Egyptian security forces stormed the offices of 17 nonprofit groups around the country on Thursday, including at least three democracy-promotion groups financed by the United States, as part of what Egypt’s military-led government has said is an investigation into ‘foreign hands’ in the recent outbreak of protests.” (New York Times, 12/29)
RUSSIA: Social Network In-Between Security Services and Free Market
As social networks in Russia like Vkontakte play an ever increasing role in communication between post-election protesters, so too grows the interest of the security services to limit them. This conflict leads to a hard choice: whether Vkontakte should respond to security service requests, or allow its users uncontrolled protest activity. (Global Voices, 12/28)
UNITED STATES: SOPA Is the End of Us, Say Bloggers
The conservative and liberal blogospheres are unifying behind opposition to Congress’s Stop Online Piracy Act, with right-leaning bloggers arguing their very existence could be wiped out if the anti-piracy bill passes. (Politico, 12/28)
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Issues for the New Year
TWITTER: A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court
How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost? (New York Times, 12/25)
AFRICA: 12 predictions for Africa Tech Scene in 2012
It has been a banner year for the Africa technology scene as the world begins to turn to the continent – the Economist Africa rising cover story article was for many, a big validation in the future opportunities as well as challenges for Africa. The best follow up post worth reading is by Professor Juma of the Harvard Kennedy School in the UK Guardian blog, both recognize the importance of the technology scene in supporting Africa’s prosperity. (Afrinnovator, 12/28)
Will 2012 Be the Year of Hypermedia?
Andy Carvin became synonymous with a new form of media curation in 2011, retweeting first-hand accounts of the revolutions in Egypt and its surrounding countries to his tens of thousands of followers. A small group of media visionaries is now working to ensure that the next Andy Carvin won’t be restricted to 140 characters. (GigaOM, 12/28)
How Online Audio Tools Can Help Journalists
First blogs, then Flickr, then YouTube, then Facebook, then Twitter, then Tumblr… If you were told there’s one more thing that you have to be using to survive in journalism, you’d be forgiven for lashing out. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do. (Poynter, 12/29)
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Digital Philosophy
Infinite Stupidity
A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we’ve seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What’s happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we’re being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We’re being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers. (Edge, 12/15)
Does the Journal Really Matter Anymore?
Following on my previous post, another thought that springs from personal experience and its convergence with someone’s research. If you look at my Google Scholar profile, you will note that in 2011 my citation counts exploded (by social science standards, mind you – in the qualitative social sciences an article with 50 citations or more is pretty huge). Now, part of this is probably a product of my academic maturation – a number of articles now getting attention have been around for 3-4 years, which is about how long it takes for things to work their way into the literature. However, I’ve also seen a surge in a few older pieces that had previously plateaued in terms of citations. This can’t be attributed to a new surge in interest in a particular topic, as these articles cross a range of development issues. However, they all seem to be surging since I got on Twitter and joined the blogosphere. (12/27)
Of Surrogate Futures and Scattered Temporalities
There can be no refuting Michael Edwards’ claim that the world we live in is not only thick with problems, but that the problems that we are collectively trying to address are ‘thick…complex, politicized and unpredictable…complicated and contested’. It is also difficult to disagree with the fact that the solutions we work with, are often too thin, fetishising enumeration of impact more than actual systemic change in areas of intervention. This is what he calls the ‘magic bullet’ approach to accounting for the work we do in a language and framework shaped by neo-liberal and corporate productivity in the age of late-capitalism. (Center for Internet and Society, 12/29)
On Nostalgia
Just last week I was discussing the terrifically interesting work of Michael Sacasas who pens The Frailest Thing, a poetic blog about technology and culture. [see: "Information Revolutions & Cultural / Economic Tradeoffs"] I highly recommend you follow his blog even if you struggle to keep up with his brilliance, as I often do. He posted another great essay today entitled, “Nostalgia: The Third Wave,” in which he discusses the work of the late social critic Christopher Lasch and his work on memory and nostalgia. Go read the entire thing since I cannot possible do it justice here. Anyway, I posted a short comment over there that I thought I would just republish here in case others are interested. I find the issue of nostalgia to be quite interesting. (Technology Liberation Front, 12/29)
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Research
Twitter Beats Facebook (And Everyone Else) As The Most Popular Social Network Of 2011
Twitter received more media coverage than any other social network in 2011, earning around half of all press reportage, beating Facebook into second place, says a new study. (MediaBistro, 12/27)
Broadcasting Board of Governors Fiscal Year 2011 Performance and Accountability Report
Arab Social Media Report
The societal and political transformations sweeping the Arab region have empowered large segments of the region’s population. Many stereotypes have been shattered, with Arab youth, “netizens” and women becoming the main drivers for regional change. Arab women in particular have become more engaged in political and civic actions, playing a critical leading role in the rapid and historic changes that have swept the region. Meanwhile, the debate about the role of social media in these transformations has reached policy making circles at the regional and global levels. (Dubai School of Government, December 2011)
It’s a Social World: Social Networking Leads as Top Online Activity Globally, Accounting for 1 in Every 5 Online Minutes
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the report It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed. The report analyzes the current state of social networking activity around the globe, providing key insights into how social networking has influenced the digital landscape and implications for marketers operating in this social world. (comScore, 12/21)
CHINA: Presentation on Mapping Chinese Censorship
I recently presented my work on censorship mapping to my colleagues at the OII, including a couple of maps with early analysis of DNS manipulation in Chinese cities. The analysis is very preliminary, and there are a huge number of caveats even for the early results, but here’s the presentation. (Pseudonymity, 12/29)
The New Landscape for Civics and Politics (Especially in Mobile)
SLIDESHOW: Voting Information Technology Summit-GeekNetNYC (Pew Internet, 12/1)
Culturnomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-Scale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space
News is increasingly being produced and consumed online, supplanting print and broadcast to represent nearly half of the news monitored across the world today by Western intelligence agencies. Recent literature has suggested that computational analysis of large text archives can yield novel insights to the functioning of society, including predicting future economic events. Applying tone and geographic analysis to a 30–year worldwide news archive, global news tone is found to have forecasted the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, including the removal of Egyptian President Mubarak, predicted the stability of Saudi Arabia (at least through May 2011), estimated Osama Bin Laden’s likely hiding place as a 200–kilometer radius in Northern Pakistan that includes Abbotabad, and offered a new look at the world’s cultural affiliations. Along the way, common assertions about the news, such as “news is becoming more negative” and “American news portrays a U.S.–centric view of the world” are found to have merit. (First Monday, 9/5)
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Global Censorship Update
View Global Censorship Update – December 2011 in a larger map
CIMA Weekly Digital Roundup
Highlights from the world of digital media. Sign up here for the full version of CIMA’s weekly Digital Media Mash Up.
China Cracks Down on Social Media Use
China has been in the news for its refocused efforts at censoring its citizens. Last week, Chinese authorities shut down 200 microblogs, claiming they contained porn or vulgar content. This week began with the arrest of a pair of citizens who were accused of spreading rumors online. This came as a top Chinese government official urged authorities to be more forceful in the way they manage the Web and the city of Beijing government said that users have three months to register with their real names or face legal consequences.
It’s working. The Financial Times reported that heavy users of Sina Weibo felt that the microblogs had become less vibrant because of new controls over the site. Perhaps the state will pick up the slack, however. Government-related microblogs increased threefold over 2011.
Other China-related digital news:
China Protest in Guangdong’s Wukan ‘Vanishes from Web’
China Needs Common Ground Online
Chinese Cyber-Attacks ‘Pinned to Users’
INFOGRAPHIC: How Big is China’s Social Media and Digital Market?
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Digital Media in the Middle East
The Role Of New Media And Communication Technologies In Arab Transitions – Analysis
The pace of events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in early 2011 led analysts to identify Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as an important catalyst of the Arab spring. Looking at the role of these tools in processes of political change, we distinguish two phases: firstly, their role in bringing down old regimes, and secondly, their significance in consolidating transitions to democracy once the revolutionary dust has settled. Whilst it is clear that ICTs made an essential contribution to the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali, experiences from other parts of the world show that their role in sustaining the democratic transition process in the longer run is less certain. (Eurasia Review, 12/10)
How the Arab Spring Moved Citizen Journalists to Use Maps, HTML5 Instead of Text
Covering countries in political turmoil has opened the door to innovation: activists and citizen journalists are using maps, HTML5 and video to report the events of the Arab Spring instead of relying only on text. (Mashable, 12/13)
SYRIA: Syria’s Information Revolution Brings News Out of the Dark
Fadi Aho describes his childhood in northeast Syria in the 1980s as “living in a fortress within a fortress.” In Qamishle, near the borders of Turkey and Iraq, he was separated not only by the 650 kilometers between him and the political and cultural capital Damascus, but also by the tightly controlled police state, which he said had prevented him from knowing much about either home or abroad. “There was no real source of news,” he recalls. “No one talked about anything or knew anything.” (The Daily Star, 12/15)
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Digital Africa
AFRICA: Mobile Technology in Africa: A Comparative View between Kenya and South Africa
A recent GSMA report stated that Africa is currently the second biggest market for mobile in the world. This means that there is huge innovation potential in terms of mobile technology application development, as well as creating solutions (think access to information, ability to transfer money, creating jobs) for the more than 649 million handset owners on the continent. (MIH Media Lab, 12/12)
LIBERIA: AFP Features Ushahidi Liberia
VIDEO: Agence France-Presse visited Ushahidi Liberia’s office during the recent presidential elections to learn how the electoral process, and conflict across the country, was being mapped by partner organizations on the ground. (Ushahidi, 12/12)
SOMALIA: Somalia’s Insurgents Embrace Twitter as a Weapon
Somalia’s powerful Islamist insurgents, the Shabab, best known for chopping off hands and starving their own people, just opened a Twitter account, and in the past week they have been writing up a storm, bragging about recent attacks and taunting their enemies. (New York Times, 12/14)
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Digital Eurasia
ARMENIA: More Online Diplomacy
Following the recent Question & Answer session on Twitter with the UK’s new Ambassador to Azerbaijan, his outgoing counterpart in neighboring Armenia, Charles Lonsdale, is due to answer questions on Facebook on Friday 16th December. (Global Voices, 12/14)
KYRGYZSTAN: Crowdsourcing Tapped in Initiative to Add Kyrgyz to Google Translate
Kyrgyz speakers recruited on Facebook and other social networking sites have submitted nearly 30,000 pairs of texts in Kyrgyz and English in an effort aimed at getting Google to add Kyrgyz to the list of languages available on its automatic translation site. (Net Prophet, 12/14)
RUSSIA: After Mass Protests In Russia, Is The Kremlin Using Facebook To Ease The Pressure?
After posting a message on Facebook ordering officials to look into reports of possible violations at polling stations during the December 4 vote, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s page has been overwhelmed by negative comments. (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 12/12)
UZBEKISTAN: An Uzbek PM on Facebook; A Funny Fantasy or for Real?
Have you gotten a “Friend Request” from O’zbekiston Respublikasi Bosh vaziri, Prime Minister of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev on Facebook yet? His personal page has 1,818 Friends, explains him to be a 100% Conservative believer in Islam, interested in Women and Married, inspired by various Westerners politicians and so on. There are even some professional photos, both uploaded and tagged, on his profile. But is this all real? (NewEurasia, 12/7)
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Research
SERBIA: Mapping Digital Media: Serbia
The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs. (Open Society Foundations, December 2011)
Towards a Cyber Security Strategy for Global Civil Society?
Cyberspace is at a watershed moment. Technological transformations have brought about an architectonic change in the communications ecosystem. Cyber crime has exploded to the point of becoming more than a nuisance, but a national security concern. There is a seriously escalating arms race in cyberspace as governments scale up capabilities in their armed forces to fight and win wars in this domain. Telecommunication companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and other private sector actors now actively police the internet. Pressures to regulate the global network of information and communications have never been greater. (Global Information Society Watch, December 2011)
mHealth: New Horizons for Health through Mobile Technologies
Based on the findings of the second global survey on eHealth, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched this report on the state of mobile technology usage in the field of health. It was written with support from the mHealth Alliance, the United Nations Foundation, and the Vodafone Foundation. The survey enquired about national trends in the adoption of mHealth in 14 specific areas ranging from the use of mobile technologies for health call centres and treatment compliance to mobile telemedicine and community mobilisation for health promotion. Member States were also asked to assess the most significant barriers to mHealth adoption for their country situation, as well as the practice of evaluating existing programmes. (Communication Initiative Network, 12/15)
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Global Censorship Update
View Global Censorship Update – December 2011 in a larger map
CIMA Weekly Digital Roundup
Highlights from the world of digital media. Sign up here for CIMA’s weekly Digital Media Mash Up.
Open Society Foundations’ Mapping Digital Media Project
A free press and access to information are inherent traits of democratic societies. As technological changes have had a tremendous impact on the way citizens consume news and information, traditional media outlets have been forced to rethink the way they gather and present news.
Digital technology presents an opportunity for a golden age for information, but with it comes risks. The democratic values of media pluralism, transparency and accountability, editorial independence, and freedom of expression and information can be threatened by a lack of understanding about new technologies. Policymakers across the globe often struggle to grasp new technological concepts, which can lead them to draft laws that run contrary to the values of freedom of information and expression.
The Open Society Foundations’ Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering up to 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs. The project aims to build bridges between researchers and policymakers, activists, academics and standard-setters across the world. It also builds policy capacity in countries where this is less developed, encouraging stakeholders to participate and influence change. At the same time, this research creates a knowledge base, laying foundations for advocacy work, building capacity and enhancing debate.
Currently, reports are available for Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Mexico, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Others will be released as they are completed.
In addition to the country reports, the Open Society Media Program has commissioned research papers on a range of topics related to digital media. These papers are published as the MDM Reference Series.
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Russian Court Fines Election Monitor $1,000
A Moscow court on Friday ruled that the country’s sole independent election watchdog had broken Russian law by publishing citizens’ complaints of campaign abuses during the run-up to parliamentary elections this weekend. Friday’s court ruling related to Golos’s “Map of Violations,” which has attracted more than 4,500 reports alleging illegal campaign tactics, including stories of employers threatening workers with pay cuts and local officials ordering business leaders to pressure subordinates. (New York Times, 12/3)
Critical Websites Hacked, Down on Election Day
Popular Russian media websites, the major LiveJournal social network and the website of the country’s biggest independent election watchdog, were inaccessible in hacking attacks for several hours on Sunday in what their employees said was an attempt to jam information on parliamentary elections. (Ria Novosti, 12/4)
Massive DDOS Attack on Independent Media during Russian Duma Election
I’m just waking up to discover that, coinciding with today’s Russian Duma elections, there has been a series of major DDOS attacks that have at times brought down a number of leading independent media outlets, the LiveJournal blogging platform, and the online ‘map of [election] violations’ by election watchdog group Golos. (Internet and Democracy Blog, 12/4)
The Internet’s Watching
Past Sunday’s Duma Elections Were the First Russian Elections to Come Under So Much Scrutiny in RuNet, Social Networks and the Russian Blogosphere. (Ria Novosti, 12/5)
Journalists and Bloggers Arrested during Moscow Demonstration
Reporters Without Borders condemns yesterday’s arrests of reporters, photographers and bloggers while covering a street protest in Moscow against the results of the previous day’s parliamentary elections and the irregularities that accompanied the polling. (Reporters Without Borders, 12/6)
A Blogger Could Start Russia’s Arab Spring
The new face of the Russian opposition is a young whistle-blowing, shareholder activist, muckraking blogger by the name of Alexei Navalny. At 2:15 p.m. on Monday, he called his huge internet following to a 7 p.m. demonstration at the Chistye Prudy park to protest “the rotten total fabrication of Moscow election results.” He wondered why some Moscow districts reported 20 percent while identical districts next door reported 70 percent votes for United Russia. (Forbes, 12/6)
Social Media Makes Anti-Putin Protests “Snowball”
Artyom Kolpakov used to shrug when he came across occasional appeals on social media sites to protest against Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his government. “I didn’t see the point really,” he said. But something changed when, clicking through amateur videos and online testimonies documenting cases of ballot-stuffing and repeat voting, he saw others shared his outrage at Putin’s party’s victory in Sunday’s parliamentary election. (Reuters, 12/7)
The Internet, the Ballot Box and the Russian Presidency
VIDEO: In Moscow today, protesters took to the streets for a second day of demonstrations over Russian elections on Sunday that were marred by widespread reports of fraud and attempts to suppress election monitoring — the climax of a conflict over political power in that country that has been playing out on the Internet for months. (Tech President, 12/7)
Due West: Russia’s Internet Generation Finally Finds Itself
“You know what I did on election day? I started checking where my friends were via Foursquare”. Noticing the slightly bemused look of an Internet illiterate, Anton Nosik, Russia’s number one Internet guru explained it to me: “It is an application which allows you to see in real time where people you follow on Twitter were. And you know what I saw? Page after page of “I am at a polling station number so and so” tweets. Most of them are thirtysomethings and the majority were voting for the first time.” (Ria Novosti, 12/7)
Russian Social Network: FSB Asked It To Block Kremlin Protesters
A Russian social-networking website part-owned by London-listed Mail.Ru Group said Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, has asked it to block the online activities of political protest groups during a tense period following parliamentary elections. (Wall Street Journal, 12/8)
Russians Fight Twitter and Facebook Battles over Putin Election
Protests against president’s party escalate across social media with flood of automated counterattacks and alleged hacking. (The Guardian, 12/9)
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CENTRAL ASIA: Censorship and Control of the Internet and Other New Media
Briefing paper by International Partnership for Human Rights, the Netherlands Helsinki Committee, Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights and the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan. (November 2011)
ENGLAND: Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder
A study of the causes of the English riots. (The Guardian, 12/7)
IRAQ: Audience Analysis The Role of Journalism and Social Media in the Consumption of News in Iraq
Newly released IREX audience research shows that while Iraqis continue to rely on television as their primary source for news and information, social media and mobile devices play an important role in the consumption and distribution of news and information in Iraq. (IREX, December 2011)
LATVIA: Mapping Digital Media: Latvia
The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project examines how these changes affect the core democratic service that any media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs. (Open Society Foundations, December 2011)
MIDDLE EAST NORTH AFRICA: Media As Key Witnesses and Political Pawns: Upheaval in the Arab World
A year after the start of democratic uprisings in the Arab world, Reporters Without Borders takes stock of censorship and violations of free speech during the “Arab Spring.” (Reporters Without Borders, November 2011)
RUSSIA: Russian Digital Dualism: Changing Society, Manipulative State
The article studies the effect of the Internet on Russian society in the 2000s, as well as the complex relations between the Internet, groups of digital activists and the manipulative state. The Internet creates new spaces for politicians and proto-politicians to practice digital activism, develop relationships of trust and new identities. At the same time, it becomes an object for increasing neo-Nazi and Islamist mobilization, and subject to greater control by a government worried by the inability to dominate this sphere. (Russia/NIS Center, December 2011)
UNITED STATES: Exploring the Digital Nation
Report by the Economics and Statistics Administration, the National Telecoms and Information Administration, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. (November 2011)
VENEZUELA: Law on Social Responsibility of Radio, Television and Electronic Media
ARTICLE 19 analysed the Law on Social Responsibilities on Radio, Television and Electronic Media of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for its compliance with international standards on freedom of expression. The Law, published on 22 December 2010 is an amendment to the 2004 Law on Social Responsibility on Radio and Television. While proponents had applauded the 2004 Law as modernising the country’s communication structure, critics had seen it as a naked attempt to gain control over private broadcast media. (Article 19, November 2011)
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Global Censorship Update
View Global Censorship Update – December 2011 in a larger map
