Later today, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will outline the next phase of the Obama administration's so-called Internet freedom agenda. So far, that agenda has been about demanding other countries keep Internet access open. But when that fails, the Broadcasting Broad of Governors, which oversees the government-owned media organizations that send pro-American messages to foreign audiences, has begun using social media to go around online restrictions in repressive countries.
Perhaps the most important? Facebook. When possible, said the board's new media chief, government news organizations like the Voice of America or Radio Free Asia use social media platforms that the publics they seek to reach already use.
Facebook is blowing up in Indonesia, said Rebecca McMenamin, the new media director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, so the Voice of America set up a Facebook page for its Indonesian service that's now got 278,000 Likes and counting. In Iran, Radio Farda, the Persian-language branch of Radio Free Liberty/Free Europe, has been uploading photos and videos of the past few days' protests in Iran and sharing them on Facebook and Twitter, said Golnaz Esfandiari, who edits the service's Persian Letters blog.
McMenamin and Esfandiari spoke at a panel on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning examining U.S. public diplomacy in an era of new and online media. It's apropos: there's currently a debate in Congress about whether the U.S. should actively provide circumvention tools to keep the Internet free worldwide.
To some degree, the Broadcasting Board of Governors' new social media efforts already wade in the circumvention pool. They don't provide proxies to online dissidents. But in a closed country like Uzbekistan, RFE/RL launched mobile sites in November that earn 20,000 users a month, McMenamin said. The website of Voice of America's Russian service crowdsourced a map for user information to circulate about the December election in Belarus. The Mandarin service is in league with "a network of bloggers" in China to get pro-American content "inside the firewall," McMenamin said.
In the spring, the Voice of America will go further, partnering with a company called Citizen Global, which a BBG official at the hearing called a "sort of an iMovie in the could." Users of VOA's Citizen Global page will upload text, videos and photos to the site documenting whatever's on their mind, curated by VOA and then pushing the service's reporters to "take the greatest hits" of what's uploaded and build out stories around them. Walter Isaacson, the former CNN president turned BBG chairman, called efforts like Citizen Global "the future of BBG broadcasting... and we'll do it ways that will break any firewalls and protect anonymity."
Anonymity is obviously a major concern for online activists, something that rubs up against Facebook's use policies. "Facebook has a rule that you're not supposed to be anonymous," said Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN reporter and New America Fellow, meaning that when Facebook finds anonymous dissident accounts, "there have been some real problems with acvitists having their accounts go dark." The lesson for the BBG, she said, is that it's "risky to be overdependent on one platform."
The Internet Freedom Agenda has taken hits for being too passive, especially after Egypt shut down the Internet in an ultimately futile attempt to stop a revolution. Clinton may well address that in a speech this afternoon. But the Broadcasting Board of Governors' move into social media offers an early glimpse into active U.S. attempts to get around online censorship.
Photo: Flickr/AlJazeeraEnglish
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