The Economist: Blogging, Global Voices Online & Armenia

Via Unzipped, The Economist has an article on blogging as a tool to circumvent censorship in countries where governments often control the media. As Global Voices Online and Armenia are mentioned in the piece I think my posts on how blogs impacted the situation were noticed.

It’s also testimony to the work Global Voices Online, for whom I’m Caucasus Regional Editor, is doing. Congratulations all round although as Real Armenia notes, The Economist’s mention of Armenia is not particularly accurate.

It was the same story in Armenia in March, where the president, Robert Kocharian, ended his term in office with a media blackout that, supposedly, extended to blogs (self-published websites which typically contain the author’s personal observations and opinions). Like all other outlets, the authorities said, blogs could publish government news only. The result was a soaring number of blogs hosted on servers outside Armenia—all sharply critical of the authorities.

[…]

International human-rights organisations have taken up their cause. But the best and quickest way of defending those in prison may be with the help of other internet activists. Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian digital activist who now lives in exile in the Netherlands, says that this beats traditional human-rights outfits when it comes to informing the world about the arrest of fellow bloggers. He co-ordinates the campaigning efforts of Global Voices Online, a web-based outfit that began as a collator of offbeat blog content and has now branched out into lobbying for free speech.

Such issues were expected to be in sharp focus at Global Voices’ annual summit in Budapest this week, where hundreds of bloggers, academics, do-gooders and journalists from places like China, Belarus, Venezuela and Kenya were due to swap tips on how to outwit officialdom. The aim, says Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard academic who cofounded Global Voices, is to build networks of trust and co-operation between people who would not instinctively look to the other side of the world for solutions to their problems.

That is a worthy if ambitious goal. Doubtless, authoritarian governments are in close touch too, sharing the best ways of dealing with the pestilential gadflies and troublemakers of the internet. But they will not be posting their conclusions online, for all to see. Which way works better? History will decide.