USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding Weekly News Roundup, February 7 - 13, 2013 Media and Journalism South Sudan to Test Drive UN Media Safety Plan (Voice of America, 2/13/13) Nigeria Polio Killings: Arrests of 3 Radio Journalists for Allegedly Inciting Murders of Vaccine Workers (AP, 2/12/13) Israeli Says Syrian Media Misreported Exile's Views (New York Times, 2/9/13) Pakistan's Media Police (New York Times, 2/8/13) China and Japan's Media in War of Words Over Radar Issue (BBC, 2/7/13) Internet and Social Media In Vietnam, Draconian Decree Would Clamp Down on Blogs, Online Speech (PBS, 2/11/13) Egypt Court Bans YouTube Over Innocence of Muslims Trailer (Guardian, 2/10/13) E-Mails of Reporters in Myanmar Are Hacked (New York Times, 2/10/13) Software that Tracks People on Social Media Created by Defence Firm (Guardian, 2/10/13) Can Social Media Disarm Syria's Chemical Arsenal? (Daily Beast, 2/8/13) Twitter Devolutions (Foreign Policy, 2/7/13) Iranian 'Presidential Candidate' Makes Social Media Splash (RFE/RL, 2/7/13) A Gorgeous Video Describes the Iranian Internet in Three Minutes (Slate, 2/7/13) What's New from PeaceMedia "To Be Determined: Myrlie Evers-Williams" - TEDxBend **Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.** Media and Journalism South Sudan to Test Drive UN Media Safety Plan Journalists and U.N. officials on Wednesday hailed South Sudan's decision to be a pilot country for a United Nations initiative aimed at creating a free and safe environment for media workers. The U.N. plan outlines a series of activities to be put in place including helping the government to develop laws that safeguard journalists; developing safety training courses for journalists; establishing real-time emergency response mechanisms; and strengthening the safety of journalists in conflict zones, among others. See the full article (Voice of America, Mugume Davis Rwakaringi, 2/13/13) [Return to top] Nigeria Polio Killings: Arrests of 3 Radio Journalists for Allegedly Inciting Murders of Vaccine Workers Police in northern Nigeria arrested and charged two radio journalists and a local cleric alleged to have sparked the killings of at least nine women gunned down while trying to administer polio vaccines. Police claimed their on-air comments about a vaccination campaign in the area inflamed the region and caused the attacks. See the full article (AP, Salisu Rabiu, 2/12/13) [Return to top] Israeli Says Syrian Media Misreported Exile's Views A public relations controversy erupted Saturday after a leading Israeli newspaper published comments from a brief interview with the leader of Syria's main exile opposition group. The news media outlets of the Syrian government, and its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, reported that the opposition leader had declared that Israel had "nothing to fear" from a rebel-led Syrian government. See the full article (New York Times, Anne Barnard and Isabel Kershner, 2/9/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article [Return to top] Pakistan's Media Police Maria Khan, the host of a Pakistani television talk show, raided a massage parlor in a private residence in Lahore last week and accused the women working there of being prostitutes. But the recent show is more alarming in its similarity to a raid conducted by radicalized seminary students on a massage parlor in Islamabad almost six years ago. The parallels between the two incidents demonstrate how extremist ideologies have entered the Pakistani mainstream - and can even be counted on to get high ratings on local television. See the full article (New York Times, Huma Yusuf, 2/8/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article [Return to top] China and Japan's Media in War of Words Over Radar Issue The war of words between media outlets and experts in Beijing and Tokyo is hotting up after a Chinese frigate reportedly put a radar lock on a Japanese navy ship. The incident, which happened near disputed East China Sea islands last month, sparked angry responses in both capitals with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe calling it a "dangerous act" and China asking Tokyo to stop "illegal" activities. Newspapers and experts in both countries followed suit. See the full article (BBC, 2/7/13) [Return to top]   Internet and Social Media In Vietnam, Draconian Decree Would Clamp Down on Blogs, Online Speech "Reactionary group leader sentenced to life in jail" ran the headlines in Vietnam's government-linked press earlier this week. Such coverage sheds light on how the media works in the one-party state where online writing has filled a void. In state-run mainstream media, topics such as power struggles within the ruling Communist Party and relations with China are often taboo, and challenges to authoritarian rule are dismissed with old-school Soviet slurs. See the full article (PBS, Simon Roughneen, 2/11/13) Click to read about USIP's upcoming event "Media as Global Diplomat: Media That Moves Millions" on February 28 at 8:30am. [Return to top] | [Return to section] Egypt Court Bans YouTube Over Innocence of Muslims Trailer YouTube has been temporarily banned in Egypt for carrrying an anti-Islamic documentary that triggered deadly riots across north Africa and the Middle East in September. In what human rights activists have called a backwards step for internet freedom, Judge Hassouna Tawfiq ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website for 30 days after the trailer for Innocence of Muslims sparked outrage. See the full article (Guardian, Patrick Kingsley, 2/10/13) [Return to top] | [Return to section] E-Mails of Reporters in Myanmar Are Hacked Several journalists who cover Myanmar said Sunday that they had received warnings from Google that their e-mail accounts might have been hacked by "state-sponsored attackers." The warnings began appearing last week, said the journalists, who included employees of Eleven Media, one Myanmar's leading news organizations; Bertil Lintner, a Thailand-based author and expert on Myanmar's ethnic groups; and a Burmese correspondent for The Associated Press. See the full article (New York Times, Thomas Fuller, 2/10/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article [Return to top] | [Return to section] Software that Tracks People on Social Media Created by Defence Firm The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns. The sophisticated technology demonstrates how the same social networks that helped propel the Arab Spring revolutions can be transformed into a "Google for spies" and tapped as a means of monitoring and control. See the full article (Guardian, Ryan Gallagher, 2/10/13) [Return to top] | [Return to section] Can Social Media Disarm Syria's Chemical Arsenal? If you are a Syrian military officer in charge of some nasty chemical weapons, you've probably been friended or Skyped by the U.S. government. The message is simple: think twice before using or selling that mustard gas you are guarding. When a bombing knocked out top Assad officials, Western intelligence agencies scrambled to find those left holding the deadly stash. Their tools: Facebook, Skype, Twitter, and more. See the full article (Daily Beast, Eli Lake, 2/8/13) [Return to top] | [Return to section] Twitter Devolutions Tahrir Square launched a thousand dissertations on how social media drove the frenetic mobilization of the Arab Spring. But the celebratory narrative about social media needs to be tempered by the reality of the struggles that have befallen most of these countries in transition. Whether or not Twitter made the Arab revolutions, is it now helping to kill them? See the full article (Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch, 2/7/13) *Foreign Policy sign-up may be required to view the full article [Return to top] | [Return to section] Iranian 'Presidential Candidate' Makes Social Media Splash Iran has been prominent recently on the popular Reddit social newssite thanks to the fact that self-styled presidential candidate Hooshang Amirahmadi made himself available to the site's users on February 7 under the subject line "I am running for President of Iran. My name is Dr. Hooshang Amirahmadi, ask me anything!" Among other things, Amirahmadi also boldly claimed that he would abolish censorship in Iran were he to be elected president. See the full article (RFE/RL, Coilin O'Connor, 2/7/13) [Return to top] | [Return to section] A Gorgeous Video Describes the Iranian Internet in Three Minutes What role Twitter really played in the 2009 protests in Iran is debatable. But in the years since, the Internet there has become only more controlled, using a complicated system of censorship and surveillance. Maral Pourkazemi hopes that by illustrating this information artistically, the true internet can become more accessible. See the full article (Slate, Charles Pulliam-Moore, 2/7/13) [Return to top] | [Return to section]   What's New from PeaceMedia "To Be Determined: Myrlie Evers-Williams" - TEDxBend Myrlie Evers-Williams, a Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Alcorn State University, is an African-American civil rights leader who for decades has broken barriers of racial and gender inequality in the workplace, in government and in society. Her legacy evokes leadership in activism, journalism, politics and public service. See the full video [Return to top] Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup. Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend

USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding Weekly News Roundup, February 7 - 13, 2013 Table of Contents South Americans Face Upheaval in Deadly Water Battles (Bloomberg, 2/13/13) Obama Issues Cybersecurity Order as Congress Revives Cispa (BBC, 2/13/13) Nearly 450 British Military Drones Lost in Iraq and Afghanistan (Guardian, 2/12/13) Cyber-Gang Warfare (Foreign Policy, 2/11/13) U.S. Drone Use Could Set Dangerous Example for Rogue Powers (Los Angeles Times, 2/7/13) Can Google Maps Make Africa Safer? (Global Post, 2/7/13) Could Climate Change Be Al-Qaida's Best Friend in Africa? (Slate, 2/7/13) **Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup, which includes a special section on Internet and social media.** South Americans Face Upheaval in Deadly Water Battles In South America, governments promote economic growth by allotting water to industry at the expense of local residents, who depend on the resource for sustenance. In Peru's Cajamarca Region, the conflict has turned deadly as residents fight for control of the water they say they need to survive. See the full article (Bloomberg, Michael Smith, 2/13/13) [Return to top] Obama Issues Cybersecurity Order as Congress Revives Cispa US officials have been ordered to draw up procedures to reduce the country's exposure to cybersecurity threats. President Obama warned that the country's enemies were "seeking the ability to sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our air traffic control systems". The US president's executive order instructs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist) to work with the relevant government agencies and industry bodies to draw up standards and practices to combat cyber threats. See the full article (BBC, 2/13/13) [Return to top] Nearly 450 British Military Drones Lost in Iraq and Afghanistan Almost 450 drones operated by the British military have crashed, broken down or been lost in action during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last five years, figures reveal. The Ministry of Defence has disclosed for the first time the five Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems used in the conflicts and the number that have perished due to pilot error, technical faults or the undesirability of retrieving them from hostile areas. See the full article (Guardian, Nick Hopkins, 2/12/13) [Return to top] Cyber-Gang Warfare State-sponsored militias are coming to a server near you. Although seldom discussed, state use of cyber-militias has become a significant dynamic in international relations. As the cyber revolution has matured, cyber-militias have become the key to the most lucrative piratical strategy in history. Whether current-day militias could carry out such attacks is questionable, but with the rapid proliferation of cyber-weapons, they will likely have such a capability in the near future. See the full article (Foreign Policy, Richard B. Andres, 2/11/13) *Foreign Policy sign-up may be required to view the full article [Return to top] U.S. Drone Use Could Set Dangerous Example for Rogue Powers Imagine if North Korea or Iran or Venezuela deployed thousands of unmanned surveillance aircraft in search of earthbound enemies, a swarm of robotic hunters armed with lethal weaponry and their governments' go-ahead to exterminate targets. It's a frightening scenario but far from an unimaginable one, given that dozens of nations now build, program and deploy their own drones. See the full article (Los Angeles Times, Carol J. Williams, 2/7/13) [Return to top] Can Google Maps Make Africa Safer? Armed with laptops and smartphones, more than a hundred young Nigerians fanned out across Nigeria's capital last week, helping to Google map their oft-forgotten, mostly avoided West African city. Oludotun Babayemi, director of MapUp for Google Abuja, said that over time, mappers could help security forces respond to sectarian violence and food crises by uploading data they gather from relatives or friends in the countryside. See the full article (Global Post, Heather Murdock, 2/7/13) [Return to top] Could Climate Change Be Al-Qaida's Best Friend in Africa? French troops are currently planning a swift exit from Mali, but the local government's battle with Islamist insurgents rages on. Meanwhile, the international community continues to ask itself what went wrong in a country once seen as a model for the region. But some climate analysts say they saw the civil war brewing-and, more importantly, that climate change could be an increasingly prominent factor in crises in the region. See the full article (Slate, Abraham Riesman, 2/7/13) Click to read "Natural Disasters as Threats to Peace," a USIP Special Report by Frederick S. Tipson. [Return to top] Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup, which includes a special section on Internet and social media. Did we miss anything?     Share this: | Forward this to a Friend