The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia last week beget further democracy uprisings in Egypt and Yemen this week, as well as protests in Jordan and Mauritania.  If the protesters are finally successful in Egypt and President Hosni Mubarak is forced out, this eruption of game-changing scenarios inspired by deep conflicts between the people and their leaders, and enabled by the velocity and spread of social media, poses a whole new set of communication and policy challenges for the United States.

For most Americans these developments are news items that we watch until we tire of the images on the screen and turn the channel or click onto another website or decide to check our email or post a change to our Facebook status.  I doubt many of us could locate Tunisia on a world map.  I know most of my students can’t.  But beneath that surface of relatively uninformed curiosity about the unfolding rebellion lies a deeper empty well of cultural ignorance.  Put simply, most of us couldn’t say why, or how, the words “Pharaoh” and “tyrant” used to describe Mubarak are such powerful narrative IEDs dropped into an already turbulent environment.

Here’s a brief version of the backstory, which you can read more about in a new book, Master Narratives of Islamist Extremism, to be released next week.  (Full disclosure: I am one of the authors.)  The Pharaoh, a tyrant believed by many Muslims to be Ramses II, rejected the Word of God despite being repeatedly being shown signs through Moses who was acting as God’s agent, was drowned in the sea with his army while pursuing the Israelites.  Just before death, the Pharaoh accepted the God of Moses but it was too late.  God did not save him.  Instead, God promised to preserve the tyrant’s body for all time, so all could see what fate awaited those who reject God’s signs.  The body of Ramses II is, in fact, remarkably well preserved and on display in Cairo today.

That is where the Old Testament/Qur’anic story ends, but it is not the end of the story.  Master narratives derive their enduring cultural power over time and across geographies.  So it was that the story of the Pharaoh was used to discredit Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and to cast him as a tyrant.  As we recount it in the book:

On October 6, 1981, President Anwar Sadat was reviewing a military parade commemorating Egypt’s ‘victorious’ campaign in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.  While television cameras captured the event, four men emerged from a truck and approached the viewing stand. When Lieutenant Khalid al-Islambouli, the leader of the assassination plot finished firing his weapon at Sadat, he cried out: “I have killed the Pharaoh!” Sadat was shot thirty-seven times. Thereafter, videotapes of the bloody televised spectacle fetched huge prices on the black market and it remains readily accessible online today.

Similar tyrant/Pharaoh accounts and images exist on the Internet and are distributed in pamphlet form for other perceived tyrants, including Ariel Sharon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.  In each case, the master narrative is appropriated as a sign of history repeating itself and used to influence perceptions of the targeted leader/ruler.  It doesn’t matter that there may be no direct correlation between the Pharaoh, who was not an elected official, and today’s leaders.  Nor does it matter that thus far no Moses has appeared before the cameras to claim he or she is acting as God’s agent.  What does matter is that once a leader is branded a “tyrant” and called “the Pharaoh,” the details of the old story matters less than the idea that an injustice of historic proportions exists and must be remedied by true believers.

For those of you who may be thinking, “but this democracy uprising has nothing to do with radical Islam or even with religion in general,” that fact doesn’t make the interplay of a powerful set of rhetorical figures well known within and across cultures any less viable.  If anything, it only broadens the appeal.  For it is not just Muslims who are in the streets of Cairo or Tunis, but a diverse array of Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who all know the old story of the tyrant known as “the Pharaoh” who dared to challenge the God of Moses.

In the case of Egyptian dictator Mubarak the comparison is made more relevant by his refusal to yield to the will of his people.  And it is underscored by his friendship with U.S. leaders and our continuing support of his regime.  Regardless of religion, the overt support of the U.S. is often associated with the use of our military and economic power to influence events and protect our interests in the region.  The irony, of course, is that while we officially endorse democracy everywhere in the world, this democratic uprising places our official position in conflict with the support of a major ally in the region.  Do we side with the people who are organizing for democracy, or with a stubborn dictator well past his sell-by date who has been tarnished with the tyrant label?

As Reuters reporter Amr Abdallah Dalsh on the scene in Cairo put it yesterday:

The Administration is caught in a bind, but it’s more strategic than just moral: Supporting tyrants loathed by their own people but willing to do Washington’s bidding in international matters is a decades-old U.S. tradition in the Middle East, as well as in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The problem with Mubarak is not simply that his methods are at odds with professed U.S. values; it’s that his brittle autocracy appears to have entered a period of terminal decline, with the U.S. potentially on the wrong side of history.

Being “on the wrong side of history” is a narrative we can little afford.  Yet no matter what we may or may not do in response to this and other popular uprisings, the perceived lack of U. S. support for the protesters and continuing support for Mubarak does evoke another historical parallel.  Aladdin Elaasar is the author of The Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future of Egypt in the Obama Age, and in a op-ed piece published today, he writes ominously of Egypt’s uncertain future:

It is possible to find parallels in Egypt to pre-revolutionary Iran. Given the social ills engendered by extended unemployment, especially among the qualified young; aggravated social polarization in which ill-gained wealth, insolently displayed, stood out against the growing misery of the rural and urban population; and generalized corruption spreading right up to the highest levels of society and state. Indeed, many U.S. analysts acknowledge Egypt’s instability. “It will rock the world,” wrote Michele Dunne, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace scholar. “Octogenarian Mubarak, will leave office, either by his own decision or that of providence.” Instability in Egypt may become an international security concern. There is no clear chain of command or civil society base to facilitate the transfer of power to the next president.

Does the reference to “providence” call up the association of divine will bringing an end to the rule of a tyrant? Perhaps.  But dictators rarely die peacefully in their sleep.

The irony of the U.S. response is not lost on the rest of the world.  As Richard Grenell, Spokesperson for the United Nations, put it in an article earlier today:

[Vice President] Biden’s support for Mubarak in the face of his falling regime sends a powerful and unfortunate message to the Arab world that their freedoms are negotiable. While American interests in the Middle East must obviously be protected, America’s credibility to support democracy for everyone everywhere is crucial. WikiLeaks have already shown American ambassadors and foreign service officers criticizing governments privately but publicly saying very little. How can VP Biden ever talk about the importance of fighting for freedom and democracy again if he chooses to support a corrupt dictatorship at the very time its being so strongly challenged from within? The vice president’s absolute show of support for Mubarak is unfortunately being heard throughout the Arab world. The people of Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Cuba and North Korea are listening. It’s too bad that Vice President Biden can’t find a way to support everyday Egyptians’ pleadings for more freedoms.

Finally, with the master narrative in the backstory and the label of tyrant firmly in the foreground of published reports used to describe Mubarak, there can be no doubt about the message of the looters who broke into the Egyptian Museum last night and “destroyed” two Pharaonic mummies.

Democracy has proven to be a many-splintered thing in the Middle East and elsewhere, whether it arrives with an invasion that forces a regime change or by the will of angry mobs who threaten to topple a dictator. Regardless of method, the U.S. should pay greater attention to the language used to define the conflict and what the meaning of terms such as “Crusader,” “tyrant,” and “Pharaoh” conjure up for populations who are schooled to respect their histories.  The use of the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter, is not the reason the people have taken to the streets.  These devices are only distributors—and effective ones—of messages that are deeply rooted in culture and time.  What moves people to action is not the technology of rebellion, but the narrative that shapes it and the words used to define it.  Master narratives are powerful because they provide answers to essential questions of identity as well as what it takes to live a just and meaningful life.  As such, they serve as calls to action.  Because, to paraphrase the philosopher Alistair MacIntyre, in order to answer the question “what am I to do?” requires first being able to explain what narratives we are part of.

The Pharaoh is a master narrative throughout the region and most of the world.  We would do well to remember that when we begin formulating what our next move will be.

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Since November of 2006, the State Department has taken its public diplomacy efforts into the online arena of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian discussion boards. Heading this effort is the Digital Outreach Team (DOT). According to DOT member Muath Alsufy, the initiative began after the realization that “there was a lot of misinformation about the US, mainly foreign policies, and there was a void… no source on these forums and blogs that would identify this misinformation and somehow correct it.” Thus, the DOT’s mission to correct these misperceptions was born. Research and analysis for this post, however, suggests that DOT efforts could actually be producing negative results.

At the outset, the DOT’s efforts were met with mixed opinions. A 2007 New York Times story cited a number of positive reflections by analysts, including that “they had been surprised by the positive response, with people seemingly eager to engage [on the forums].” It also said that the DOT’s work “helps to counter one source of radicalization — the sense that Washington is too arrogant to listen to the grievances of ordinary Arabs.”

In a previous post on this blog, Steve Corman defended the DOT against David Axe of Danger Room labeling the State surfers as “trolls.” Matt Armstrong, however, gave “no applause” to the team for misunderstanding both the audience and the nature of online discourse, criticizing the fundamental approach.

That criticism may be valid. Recent research produced by Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Jason Reifler of Georgia State casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of efforts to correct political misperceptions based on either false or unsubstantiated beliefs. Their study involved subjects reading mock news articles that included misleading claims and also corrections, a format very similar to the way forum users read information.

Contrary to what we might assume, “results indicate[d] that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group.” In fact, they found “several instances of a ‘backfire effect’ in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.” While the experiment does not exactly mimic the environment and conditions in which the DOT tries to correct misinformation, it does call into question the premise on which it is based.

Having now reached its fourth birthday, researchers are taking a closer look at the effectiveness of the DOT program. Two recent examples are of particular interest. Lina Khatib of Stanford University is currently leading a project asking whether or not the DOT is a “useful complement to more traditional forms of public diplomacy.” While Khatib and her team have not yet published any findings, her presentation at Georgetown University in March painted a less than rosy picture. Some of the problems are predictable, such as forum users accusing DOT staffers of being traitors or conspirators.

In addition to that, Khatib reportedly two more interesting challenges. First, teams of forum users have organized to oppose DOT members’ posting activities, composing about half of the negative feedback on their posts. Second, Khatib argues that “in many instances the logic and rationale of the responses backfires as they address conspiracy theories with either ridicule or belittling the critics,” therefore undercutting the outreach effort.  Lastly, Khatib describes the lack of consistency between posted statements and policy realities as a major undermining factor.

The second example is found in a recent report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Released on October 19^th, it states that over their nine-week observation period of the DOT in action on Palestinian forums, the “State Department’s efforts to influence the online discussions were largely ineffective.” FDD suggests that while this may be the case because of the team’s relatively small staff, the most limiting factor, in their opinion, is that the DOT identifies themselves as State Department employees. “To be effective, the outreach team must not advertise its presence.”

While this call for the DOT to “go dark” is at odds with principles of public diplomacy, it reflects one of the biggest challenges that the DOT faces: credibility. Even on general interest forums, such as Aljazeera Talk, DOT posters face consistent insults and accusations. In addition to that, threads started by the DOT appear to act as magnets for insults and accusations against the United States and its policies.

During a 2008 NBC Nightly News story on the DOT, Marc Lynch commented that he thought it was “worthwhile, as long as you don’t have too high expectations.” While not appearing overly optimistic, Lynch seems to affirm that there is some intrinsic value to the program despite its limitations. During the same segment, NBC correspondent Mara Schiavocampo further downplays the mixed expectations for success, suggesting that “when you’re fighting the war of ideas, showing up is half the battle.”  Seconds later Brent Blaschke, Director of the DOT, affirms that statement saying, “We can’t guarantee that by going online and engaging we’re gonna change—influence anybody, but I can guarantee you if we’re not there we won’t influence a single soul.”

This leads to a fundamental question that seems to be missing from the discussion: What if the DOT’s online efforts are actually harming the image of the United States by creating even more unfavorable discourse? As already noted, forum users with opposing viewpoints are making a concerted effort to post “counter-arguments” to any DOT posts. These replies often include personal insults and attacks, tempting the DOT poster (acting as a representative of the US) to respond in kind. In one example a DOT member repeatedly told forum user that he should think twice and form better arguments before hitting the “reply” button.

More significant than exchanging personal insults, however, is creating the appearance of a win for the anti-American posters. While it is impossible to judge how these online exchanges affect readers’ opinions, it seems difficult to believe that American posters are more skilled at navigating the narrative terrain than the opposing side. And success requires a dialogue. It appears that in many cases, the challenges of users against the United States go unanswered. Though this is likely because of the DOT’s small size vis-à-vis the entire Arabic forum and blogosphere, it gives the impression of acquiescence.

One clear example of failure to respond can be found here on al-Saha, a general Arabic-language discussion site. A DOT staffer started a thread about the United States’ true intentions in Afghanistan and includes a video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Negative comments appear within minutes, including a personal attack against Secretary Clinton and her ability to control “a country like Afghanistan and Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban.” More significantly, the last comment declares  that “America’s goal in Afghanistan is to kill Muslim civilians and the establishment of a true Islamic state.” No response to this or any other comments on the thread was made.

Missing a rebuttal on one thread is likely of small significance. But if this style of posting without follow-up is a trend, it could become hugely detrimental to the DOT’s mission. Through my examination of the communication patterns of the DOT on a few Arabic-language sites, I found mostly discouraging evidence. This is based partly on threads like the one mentioned above. Even in threads where DOT staff responded, however, their voice was outnumbered by many more negative responses from forum users. The fact that those negative responses often included personal attacks and sensational photos of civilian casualties makes the hill that the DOT must climb even steeper.

Unfortunately, I cannot currently draw any hard, overall conclusions as to whether or not the DOT is succeeding in its mission. Such a definitive statement would require sophisticated research and tracking of the posts, comments, and dialogues generated by the DOT and other forum users. Perhaps Lina Khatib and her team have such a study forthcoming.

Regardless, it seems clear that the assumption that “any action is good action” must not be made. Given the real chance that, despite good intentions, DOT operations could actually be doing more harm than good, a serious and thorough review of their strategies, tactics, and results is needed.

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I just ran across this interesting release from Gallup.  It cross-analyzes data from Gallup’s Communications Index “which measures the extent to which respondents are connected via electronic communications” and approval of U.S. leadership. The results are not too encouraging.  Basically, the more wired the respondents are, the less inclined they are to approve of U.S. leadership and vice versa.

Gallup reckons that the “vice versa” (i.e. approve) results are skewed by sub-Saharan Africa, where communications infrastructure is underdeveloped.  Once that data is removed, the approve levels don’t significantly differ with increasing levels of wiredness.

That bad news is that the disapprove relationships still holds even with the least wired group taken out of the sample.  Gallup is careful to say that this doesn’t necessarily show a causal link between communications access and disapproval of U.S. leadership.

True, this might be a spurious correlation, like the well-known correlation between ice cream sales and swimming pool drownings. On the other hand, it might not.  Given the equally well-known pattern of plummeting U.S. approval ratings over the last decade or so, I think it’s pretty reasonable to rule this out.  Additionally

Gallup also compared other factors, such as income, education, and age, to American approval ratings, but the relationship was not as clear as with communications.

So they at least checked demographic factors that could explain the results. The simplest explanation, then,  is that the better informed people are and the more connected they are to social networks, the less they like what they see in the U.S.

One caveat is that the release isn’t completely clear about whether “U.S. Leadership” means our leaders per se or a collective attribute of the country.  Wording in the release suggests it’s the former, and if so the fact that the data were collected in 2008 may be a reflection of disdain for the former administration.

In that case it’s possible that the same mechanisms underlying the relationships in this Gallup study could work to our advantage with Barack Obama.   He is popular with international audiences and is widely preceived to be off to a good start in communicating with the world. Gallup, please repeat this analysis in six months or so.

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By Pauline Hope Cheong

Two related white papers have generated fresh buzz about Internet radicalization in recent weeks.  These papers are in substantial disagreement about the basic issue of how much of a force the Internet is in causing radicalization.  This is a sign that the process is not yet well-enough understood, and that we need a broader view of the effects of new media on radicalization.

One report, Countering Internet Radicalization in Southeast Asia, is a joint effort of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Australian Strategic Policy Institute (RSIS-ASPI).  The other, Countering Online Radicalization, is published by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR).

Both articles acknowledge the role of the Internet in ideological warfare resulting in violence. Here are excerpts from both reports that illustrate what they have in common  (italics, mine):

Recent examples from Europe, including the cases of Younis Tsouli (a.k.a. ‘irhabi007’) and Ifran Rafa, show that the internet can be the main way some individuals become radicalised without external contact. Both men spent hundreds of hours downloading videos, posting email messages and chatting on web forums. As a result of those activities, and without any prior involvement with extremist groups, both Tsouli and Rafa concluded that they wanted to participate in a terrorist attack. They were joined by others online to create a ‘virtual’ terrorist cell… (RSIS-ASPI)

Labelled ‘Britain’s youngest terrorist’ by the press, Munshi collected instructions for making napalm, high explosives and suicide vests, and was a member of a British group of ‘online jihadists’ who regularly shared extremist videos and spent hours discussing their plans to travel to Pakistan and die as ‘martyrs’. Much of Munshi’s extremist activism took place online, but his radicalisation had been initiated in the ‘real world’. Through a common friend, Munshi had met Aabid Khan at Dewsbury central mosque. Khan had attended a terrorist training camp in Pakistan and served as a recruiter for the Islamist militant movement ….As with Khan, whose real world contacts informed his online activities, Munshi’s radicalisation too was a combination of face-to-face interaction and virtual consolidation. (ICSR)

So both papers highlight the personal actions of young European Muslims in radicalization.

On the other hand they disagree about how much of a role the Net plays in this process. In the RSIS-ASPI report, the Internet is conceived to be a culpable force and cyberspace is the central context of radicalization.  For them, “auto-radicalization” poses a significant threat:

The internet has contributed to radicalization, will probably grow in regional significance, and might become the dominant factor in radicalization in the region.

But the ICSR report sees online activities as a less malignant complement to face-to-face encounters in extremist activism.  It concludes that the Internet is not and will not be the principal driver of hate crimes and terrorist attacks:

[S]elf radicalization and self-recruitment via the Internet with little or no relation to the outside world rarely happens, and there is no reason to suppose that this situation will change in the future.

Disagreement in the two reports reflects uncertainty about the role of the Internet.  It is envisaged as the main culprit in one approach, and as an accomplice in another.  The difference is important, because which view we accept has real implications for policy.

Clearly it is still difficult to pinpoint exactly when radicalization occurs and  what sources contribute the most to the conversion process.   The link between  personal uptake of online propaganda and violent action is tough to establish because we still have too narrow a view of how any why technology supports radicalization.

Broadening our view of technology and its effects could improve our ability to draw the link.   For example, here are three aspects of techno-radicalization not addressed in the current reports that seem crucial to understanding the process:

• Speed and intensity of radical messages and messaging.  Both papers mention the capabilities of the internet for anonymity and asynchronous communication, but they downplay the diffusion of online messages over time and and the importance of “viral” messaging systems.  Both reports cite political communication research on the “echo chamber” effect of the internet, which speeds amplification of messages.  But other concepts exist that deal with other aspects of message intensification.  For example, research on hyperpersonal communication online that stresses that computer-mediated communication speeds up development of social intimacy between users.  Any evaluation of the Internet’s impact as a radicalization tool needs to consider the various ways mediated communication intensifies communication relationships.  We must also keep in mind that online radicalization is usually backed up by face-to-face encounters.
• The evolving communication ecology.  Both reports focus on the Internet and offer policy recommendations involving the government, Internet service providers, and Internet users to varying degrees.  But they are silent on recommendations regarding the related aspects of the mediated and interpersonal communication landscape.   This is important because our conception of what constitutes “the Internet” is continuously evolving as various smaller media applications like Twitter are connected to the web via multiple mobile devices. Radicalization can also be catalyzed via the creative appropriation of online materials from older media, and vice versa. For example, the conversion of religious podcasts to cassettes or compact discs by Internet users for dissemination to their social networks adds new scope to religious webs of faith and the appraisal of online radicalization.
• Incidental communication, virtual worlds, and identity.  Both reports focus primarily on the recent proliferation of extremist websites and their migration to popular social networking media like YouTube and Facebook. Yet the attention placed on internet users’ direct consumption of messages–downloads, page views and messaging, etc.–overlooks extremists’ growing use of virtual worlds like Second Life, where communication can be more incidental.  Though some dismiss this threat, recent research on online religion shows how virtual worlds can support religious collaboration and the growth of religious identity and community.  This flags another potentially important aspect of online radicalization.

In short, disagreement about the role of the Internet in radicalization is a sign that we don’t yet have a complete understanding of everything that it entails.  A good response is to broaden our view of how technology affects communication, what counts as “the Internet,” and how it can grow identities that sympathize with extremist ideologies.

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The Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) Summit took place last week in New York City.  The event was announced during a press conference on November 24 by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman and Jared Cohen of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff.

During the conference, Glassman described the summit this way:

a conference is being held in New York City at the Columbia University Law School that will bring together 17 organizations around the world that currently have an online presence similar to the Million Voices Against the FARC Movement, but usually at a much lower level – 17 of these organizations, bringing them together with private sector partners, including Facebook, Google, MTV, AT&T, Howcast, Access 360 Media – and I may be forgetting some, and Jared will remind me. Columbia University is also – the Columbia University Law School is also a partner. And the idea is put all these people together, share best practices, produce a manual that will be accessible online and in print to any group that wants to build a youth empowerment organization to push back against violence and oppression around the world.

The summit took place, the participants conferred, they partied at the MTV studios, and produced the manual as promised.

The conference accomplished the goals laid out by Glassman.  It provided direct contact between a number of strikingly disparate people and groups (with respect to geography, culture, and targets of resistance) that almost certainly would never have met under any other circumstances.  It is also a signature example of Glassman’s vision for public diplomacy, involving ideals, cultural exchange, and new technology, leading to movements of diversion from dangerous ideologies.

But since this was a “2.0″ event, we should also evaluate it from a buzz and viral marketing point of view.  Judging by the extent of the pre-summit publicity, I have to assume this was an informal goal of the event too.  On this score it was not so successful.  Attendance at the actual conference was limited to a few hundred people (mainly, I am told, because of fire code limitations at the scheduled venues).  So the organizers actively encouraged participation by people not attending the summit.

Participation opportunities included watching  live feeds of the events provided by Howcast and using discussion threads on their web site.  One estimate–which must have been part of a press release given its appearance in multiple sources– said “millions of viewers” were expected to visit Howcast for the event.

I can find little evidence of participation at anywhere near this rate.  Howcast hasn’t released any numbers on the event, but the Alexa traffic history report for their site shows only a small blip-up in page views on December 3rd, going back to pre-summit levels on December 4 (I have been holding this post for several days waiting for the December 5 data to come in, but Alexa seems stuck; I will post an update when data becomes available the data has now become available and is posted in the update below).

Oddly, there were no videos available of the presentations immediately after they occurred, and this probably contributed to low viewership.  I wanted to watch a few of the presentations but had work responsibilities at the time, so I could not tune in live.  The Howcast site is promising availability of videos next week, but long delays like this kill any buzz that might have been generated by the event.

There is also little evidence that people participated in asynchronous discussions on the Howcast site.  When I checked over the weekend, 14 discussion threads were available.  They averaged only 35 views and two replies per thread.  So remote participants did not join the dialog either. So remote participants did not make much use of the asynchronous discussion forums (see update below).

I looked at blog buzz resulting from the event, using a Google blog search on the phrase “Alliance of Youth Movements.”  I found 93 matching entries and classified these as announcements of the summit or its events, coverage of what actually went on there, or other (mostly sidebar links to “recent posts”). Granted it could take more time for Google’s crawlers to find all the relevant posts, but it searches the most buzz-worthy blogs frequently, so this is probably a representative set.

Half of the items were dated December 2 or earlier, automatically putting them into the announcements category.  But even after the conference started few posts could be categoried as coverage.  As a result, the blogs overwhelmingly talked about the occurrence of the event rather than what went on there (see pie chart).

Of the coverage posts, there were two themes apparent.  One was about an Egyptian activist who challenged the sincerity of the United States, citing a say-do gap between the ideals of the summit and our support of the Mubarak regime.  The other theme was a tangent about the Obama campaign’s shortage of smart phones.  This story popped up during the summit and is the only thing from it that appears to have gotten any traction in the MSM.

Confirming the blog pattern, a Twitter search turned up only about 35 tweets about the AYM summit.  This small new media footprint is not too surprising.  Given the limited number of attendees, few of the people who would be inclined to blog or tweet about it were there.  The use of a live-only feed made time shifting of the event impossible for the rest of us.

The AYM summit was a conceptual win and it also appears to have been a very valuable event for promoting relationships.  Some of those who attended described it as a remarkable event and spoke highly of the contact it afforded.  But this means that its impact will be long term, and will probably manifest itself only in the social networks of a few hundred participants.  The summit is unlikely to set off a meta-movement because it did not generate buzz.  As with all things “2.0,” buzz is everything.

UPDATE  2:00 pm MST

I got a note from Tessa Barrera at Howcast who corrected me on the statement that “remote participants did not join the dialog either.”  She pointed out that there was live chat during the events and many people were participating via those.  My bad.  I have edited the post to say people did not make much use of the asynchronous discussion forums.

Tessa said the summit was an amazing success from the point of view of the participants, something I tried to emphasize in my post.  She also relayed some further information on this point:

What may not have been translated on the screen were the personal connections and the inspiring stories that each of the delegates had.  I personally have never been so inspired to see two Sri Lankans from rival factions sitting together over lunch, an Iraqi man chatting with a man from Colombia about how he can better galvanize his online presence to help his cause or even members of the press corps reduced to tears at the stories of people’s own stories.  The participants were so moved by the summit that they are planning a global march on January 17th against violent extremism.  Marches have already gotten support in Mumbai, London, Sri Lanka, Baghdad, Beirut and New York.

This is great to hear, and I hope the planned march is a big success.

To be clear, the point of my post was not to call the summit a failure, and I don’t think I did that.  It was merely to point out that it did not generate much social media buzz, which seemed to be one of its implicit goals.  I stand by that analysis until I see numbers to convince me otherwise.

UPDATE December 12

I promised an update when the additional Alexa traffic data was available, so here it is.  Alexa doesn’t break out subdomains, so this data is for all of howcast.com.  They express the traffic numbers as a percent of all the page views they log, but unfortunately they don’t provide that number (that I can find) so I can’t convert these percentages back into raw numbers.

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This is the fourth part of a five part series on about the one-year anniversary of the State Department’s Dipnote blog. In Part 1 we focused on reviewing DipNote management and processes. In Part 2 we looked at what the State Department bloggers were writing about. In Part 3 we conducted an in-depth content analysis of reader comments on the blog.  In this post I look at the larger context of Web 2.0 effort being pursued by the State Department, of which Dipnote is a part.

In analyzing Dipnote comments in Part 3, we found that the “Responses to Others’ Comments” category was the second largest—an interesting finding revealing the extent and centrality of social interaction between readers. However, there was much less direct interaction between the bloggers and commenters. New forms of social media, many of which the State Department has begun to embrace, offer unique tools for more direct interaction with their audiences for public affairs and public diplomacy efforts.

Last week I had the chance to interview State Department spokesman and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack.  He has been a driving force behind many of the department’s new media efforts. During the interview, McCorcack mentioned that when he took over in 2005 much of the work of the Public Affairs office was centered on the daily press briefings. However, he saw an opportunity to embrace media efforts to disseminate content:

I thought it was a great opportunity to provide people the raw information, the transcripts, the videos, the photos, etc. that we produce. We produce a tremendous amount of content here at the State Department every single day that people are interested in. So, given where the Internet was headed, the various new applications and technologies that were out there, there was a great opportunity to allow people to access this information firsthand.

The efforts were inspired by his trip to Silicon Valley in 2006, during which he was impressed by the “creative, goal-oriented spirit” of the Internet industry.  McCormack decided to build the technical aptitude of his department to help foster a more creative approach to their online efforts.

This was the genesis of Dipnote and the other Web 2.0 efforts of the department today.  Results can be seen in web site usage statistics.  According to McCormack, in 2005 the State Department website received about nine million hits per month. Currently, they receive around eighteen million hits per month.

In further efforts to increase direct interaction with the public, McCormack recently initiated Briefing 2.0. Inspired by the CNN Youtube debates during the presidential primaries, he saw another opportunity to directly engage the public. While originally the briefing was to be combined with the daily press briefings, he decided that the goals of Briefing 2.0 were distinct, and would benefit from a separate event.  The first briefing took place last month, and questions have just been answered in the second round.

In May of this year, the State Department created a Facebook page.  It is fairly straightforward. The group page contains links to the State Department Flickr site, a discussion board, and links to recent blog posts. It has 853 “fans.”  The discussion board is not very active.  It currently contains five topics.  The most active of these is the opening post, inviting users to say what they would like to see on the page.  That thread has 15 replies, many noting Facebook pages at existing embassies (see below).  In contrast to Dipnote, all but one reply has a rejoinder from a State Department employee.  As the page continues to grow and develop a larger fan base, it should be able to direct more traffic to Dipnote and other public affairs efforts.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the line between public affairs and public diplomacy becomes more and more fuzzy. For example, on Dipnote (presumably a public affairs outlet) many of the commenters are from foreign countries. Facebook also has domestic and international potential.  It is offered in 38 languages, indicating an international user-base. While the content of the State Department Facebook page may be targeted to domestic audiences, it has potential as a global medium for public diplomacy goals as well.

I was surprised to find Facebook pages for individual embassies, often in native languages. As it turns out, so was McCormack.  He didn’t learn of the embassy pages until he considered setting up a page for the Mother Ship and started doing research.  Facebook pages exist for U.S. Embassies in Egypt, Japan, Lebanon, Montenegro and Uraguay.

I took a look at one of these, the U.S. Embassy in Uruguay. It has 483 “fans”, many of whom appear to be Uruguayan citizens. Their “Wall” contains almost 50 comments (in Spanish of course) regarding U.S. politics and questions about the daily operations of the Embassy. We salute this effort to follow pragmatic complexity principles: By allowing users to dictate the theme of the group, this embassy is deemphasizing control of the message, and promoting a more complex communication structure.

The structure of the State Department certainly plays a role in the immersion of these somewhat disconnected Facebook efforts. While he has no direct control over the use of Facebook by the embassies,  McCormack emphasized their importance:

I think it’s going to be, going forward, very important for the embassies to develop these kind of engagements with their publics. It’s important for their efforts to ensure we don’t have a 20th century state department in a 21st century world.

In contrast to its Facebook efforts, the State Department’s use of Twitter leaves quite a bit to be desired. The Twitter website explains its goals succinctly:

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

But to date, the State Department has used its Twitter account only as a means to disseminate new Dipnote posts, something that is already accomplished through its RSS feed. To truly engage in public diplomacy and public affairs, they should embrace the Twitter mission statement by keeping us informed about what they are doing. Is the Secretary of State currently in talks with a foreign leader? Are ambassadors in Sudan in talks over the tragedy in Darfur? Dipnote usually discusses these events in-depth.  But the strength of Twitter is its speed and conciseness.  McCormack agrees with this—and thinks that as more State Department employees incorporate Twitter into their personal daily routine, the Department’s Twitter efforts will benefit as a result.

While the efforts of Public Affairs efforts are by definition targeted at a domestic audience, State Department content is now consumed globally. The Bureau of Information Programs and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, produce content for the global audience. Going forward, these efforts can be combined to take further advantage of the worldwide interconnectivity provided by new technologies.

In the upcoming final part of this series, we draw implications from our one-year anniversary review of Dipnote and other new media efforts by the State Department, and offer recommendations for improving these efforts in the future.

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In two recent briefings, one for the MSM and one for bloggers, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman spoke approvingly of an incident that took place in Colombia earlier this year.  It involved Facebook and a march against Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), a Bolivarian revolutionary guerrilla organization.  FARC is classified as a terrorist group by the government of Colombia, the United States, and the European Union because of the large number of kidnappings the group has committed over more than a decade.

In early January of this year, a 33 year old Colombian engineer named Oscar Morales expressed his indignation (and that of many other Colombians) against the FARC by launching a Facebook group called Un Millón de Voces Contra las FARC (UMVCF, “One Million Voices Against the FARC”).  It contained the declaration

Firmly and unanimously we want to express to the whole world that the FARC does not represent any of us, nor our interests, nor our people. We also want to express that we strongly condemn all their terrorist actions that, for more than 40 years, have been producing death and pain, while stopping the progress of the country we want for our families and children. For the previously listed reasons we want the whole world to know: We DON’T want more kidnappings. We DON’T want more death. We DON’T want more terrorism. We DON’T want more FARC.

The Facebook group, and its companion web site colombiasoyyo.org (I am Colombia), underwent exponential growth.  Within four days the group had 20,000 members, and by late January it swelled to almost one-quarter million members.

UMVCF became the basis for an anti-FARC protest march on February 4th that was one of the biggest civil events in Colombian history.  On the day of the protest, February 4th, an estimated 4.8 million people turned out across Colombia.  Numerous other protests were held simultaneously in 44 other countries around the world.

Press accounts tend to credit the Facebook group itself with causing the march.  For example, the Christian Science Monitor’s story carried the headline “Facebook used to target Colombia’s FARC with global rally.”  Glassman also seems to regard Facebook as a primary cause of the marches.  In his press briefing, the Under Secretary said

I recently came back from Colombia, and in Colombia, a small group of young Colombians, without government assistance, used Facebook to build a movement that put 12 million people around the world into the streets on February 4th, including 1 million in Bogota alone, in demonstrations against the FARC, a violent extremist group that has terrorized that country for more than 40 years.

Accordingly, he is launching efforts to “speed the use of the same techniques — again employed by foreign citizens, not governments — to build movements against violence.”

While there can be no doubt that Facebook played an important role in the events, it is a mistake to assume that it was the root cause of the movement.  What most press accounts of the march leave out is that the UMVCF group formed in the wake of an event in late December of 2007 that sources in Colombia describe as being similar in impact to the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.  Here is the rest of the story.

In the third week of December 2007 the FARC announced plans to release three high-profile hostages to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was acting as an intermediary with the Colombian government.  They included Consuelo González, a former senator, and Clara Rojas, a campaign manager for former Colombian presidential candidate and FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt.  In 2006 it was learned that Rojas had given birth in captivity to a son named Emmanuel, and he was also to be released.

The hand-over was to take place on December 31st in an area of Colombia near the Venezuelan border.  Chávez and numerous international observers waited to receive the hostages.  But at the last minute, the FARC canceled the release, citing military operations and a lack of security in the neutral area.

An infuriated President Álvaro Uribe of Colombia flew to the area and gave a televised address to the Colombian people in which he accused the FARC of duplicity. Uribe revealed that his Attorney General’s office was investigating the case of a foster child in the care of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute who they believed to be Emmanuel.  Four days later the Attorney General announced that a first round of DNA tests showed a “very high probability” that the boy was Rojas’s son.

Ordinary Colombians were off work for the holidays, and watched the address and other televised developments by the millions.  It soon became apparent to everyone that the release was canceled not because of security concerns, but because  the FARC had promised to release a hostage they did not hold.  The result was that public sentiment turned overwhelmingly against the group.  It is notable that UMVCF was launched on the same day that the Attorney General announced the results of the DNA tests identifying Emmanuel.

While Facebook played an important role in the development of the protest march, it can be better described as a catalyst than a cause.  Public resentment was building against the FARC, especially over 2007.  “Emmanuel-gate,” as it came to be called — plus its fortuitous timing when Colombians were home to follow events in the media — pushed things to a tipping point.  It was in this environment that something as seemingly innocuous as an online group could lead to a protest involving millions.

Under Secretary Glassman and other commetators like Marc Lynch have correctly pointed out that Web 2.0 technologies may offer important asymmetries (in our favor, for a change) in the effort to resist terrorist groups.  But at the same time, the full story of the anti-FARC marches in Colombia shows the danger of technological determinism in these efforts.

Had the conditions not been exacrly right, UMVCF probably would have become one more drop in an ocean of online groups.  Likewise, merely giving Facebook (or other social networking technologies) to people in other terrorism hotspots will probably do little until the right social conditions develop for them to have an imact.  Facebook, by itself, is not enough to cause social movements that can defeat terrorism.

UPDATE 11/18

Here is a post by Matt about a conference the State Department is sponsoring to catalyze similar uses of Facebook.

UPDATE 11/25

I have it on good authority that Under Secretary Glassman does not think of Facebook as a primary cause of the Colombia protests.  I suppose this illustrates the hazards of divining someone’s beliefs from press statements.  In any case, I’m glad to hear this is the case.

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The headlines from WatchAmerica show worldwide optimism and support for President-Elect Obama.  Yet, despite this large and welcoming window of public diplomacy opportunity, there are still 10 weeks to go before President Obama is sworn in and can officially represent America.  In the meantime, we have a world waiting to see if we have, in fact, something newer and better to offer under a new administration while the old and roundly discredited administration still commands media attention and wields whatever is left of its power.

What can Obama do?  What should he do?  From a strategic communication perspective it would be a serious mistake to let this moment pass.  Here are three strategies derived from a 21st Century Model of Communication that allow him to capitalize on this unique opportunity as a public diplomat before he assumes the office of the Presidency:

1. Transfer his Internet success in the campaign to a strategic communication campaign to rebuild our image in the world:  Obama and his team constructed the most powerful political fundraising network in the history of US elections, and what that team learned about leveraging social networks, viral marketing, and the use of alternative news sources must be mined in a new effort to create and sustain the positive initial perceptions of the US via an Obama administration.
2. Create one or two major disruptions in “business as usual” via bold strategic communication moves that capitalize on existing hopes for the US Foreign Policy: Steve Corman has opined on this subject and called for a “game-changer” that significantly shifts attention away from perceptions of the US as arrogant to one of humility.  Obama is perfectly situated to do that now.
3. Move from “Yes We Can” to “Yes We Have”:  Launch a weekly press conference that updates us all on the fulfillment of campaign promises regarding the improvement of our image in the world and the steps he has taken to rebuild an effective diplomacy team.

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Today the Washington Post reports that AQ Web Forums were “abruptly” taken down.  Abruptly?  Well not if abruptly means suddenly, as in it just happened.  This story has been circulating in the blogs for months, and it’s more like there have been a few waves of take-downs.  It even blipped-up elsewhere in the MSM one month ago.

Will at Jihadica reported on a wave of take downs on June 10th, then another on September 21st, then yet another on October 27.  CBS scooped WaPo on it a month ago, re-reporting a story in the Hindustan Times.  It said the spooks were blaming it on e-vigilantes Aaron Weisburd and Rusty Shakleford.  They deny it.  Marisa at Making Sense of Jihad is skeptical of the alleged gubmint explanation too.  To add further to the confusion, Will reports that some of the forum operators are blaming it on Shia groups who are supposedly retaliating for hacks of their sites.

Well, how intriguing!  Let me add my own $0.02 on this.  To start with, I have been told that the gubmint doesn’t want these sites taken down because they are useful source of intel.  This make sense, too, because if they did want the sites taken down they would have done it a long time ago and it would be child’s-play for them.  So unless something has suddenly changed that makes these sites useless for intel purposes, the gubmint is not a likely source of the take-downs.

Did the e-vigilantes do it?  They say they are not hackers, but who knows for sure.  They at least claim to be White Hats in the e-terrorism game, so its conceivable they were involved.  Or maybe the Shia groups did it.  Yet neither of these scenarios really makes sense because forums have remained off.

I have been able to find no account of the circumstances under which they went down.  But to the best of my knowledge, all the common attacks against web sites are “temporary” in the sense that once you discover them you can correct the security breach and get back up and running (unless you’re some kind of massive operation like Amazon.com and they have hosed your back-end processes).  On a small forum, even if someone scrambled the forum databases, you could reset and start with zero post history.

If all else fails, you can just move to a new IP address and start from scratch.  The Bad Guys do this all the time in response to take-downs by ISPs.  You can sign up with a new ISP that provides plug-and-play forum software and be running with an IP address within an hour, and have a registered domain name within several hours.

So while any number of parties could have taken down some forums, I’m really scratching my head trying to figure out why they have remained down.  One explanation  I haven’t seen anyone suggest so far is that the Bad Guys have themselves taken these forums down.  Perhaps they decided they were too good a source of intel for their enemies.  Or maybe they uncovered some kind of threatening operation and pulled the plug.

This is really the only explanation I can think of that fits with the facts mentioned above, and explains why the sites have gone down and stayed down. If you have an alternative theory, please post a comment.

UPDATE 10/20

Will at Jihadica, reports that two of the extremist sites are back up.  More are supposedly to follow shortly.  Still no explanation for why they did not come back up more quickly, so this still doesn’t make sense.

UPDATE 10/23

More coverage from The Guardian and Christian Science Monitor playing-up the Shia hackers angle.

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Writing today in Danger Room, David Axe called members of the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team (DOT) “trolls.”  Axe was responding to some statements by Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Jim Glassman’s in a bloggers’ roundtable earlier this week.  Glassman discussed a recent and unusual engagement with an Iranian official by the DOT, which Matt has already written about.

I was more than a little surprised to see this presented as news, since the DOT program has been in operation for over a year now.  It was created in the summer of 2007 as a result of Karen Hughes’s U.S. National Strategy for Public Diplomacy and Strategic Communication as a non-BBG media activity that could help counteract negative propaganda about the U.S.

According to a New York Times article about the program last year, the DOT consists of State Department employees who speak the requisite foreign languges.  It concentrates on “about a dozen” mainstream Muslim web sites.  Team members try to engage discussion about the U.S. and its policies, and “they always identify themselves as being from the State Department.”  I don’t know what actually happens, of course, because the team operates on sites in Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu.

Is it reasonable to label the DOT members as “trolls”?  Methinks not.  My personal experience with trolls is that they try to completely disrupt an online discussion group, to prevent it from carrying on as usual.  They mainly do this by being e-jerks, baiting people into emotional, off topic reactions and flaming.  Sometimes they hack boards to delete or change posts, or impersonate other members.  Above all, they do all they can to prevent anyone from finding out who they are or where they come from, so there is no chance of retaliation by aggrieved parties.

Indiana University Information Technology Services has (for reasons I can’t really fathom) a page about trolls. It says their communication falls into one of three categories:

• “an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge”
• “a deliberately offensive insult to the readers of a newsgroup or mailing list”
• “a broad request for trivial follow-up postings”

It goes on to say that “people post such messages to get attention, to disrupt discussion, and to make trouble.”

If the public facts about the DOT are accurate, none of the foregoing characteristics of trolls applies to them.

It would be one thing if the “troll” label had been applied by a clueless individual.  But Axe is from Wired, for crying out loud.  You would expect writers from that outlet to have a better command of the digital lexicon.

UPDATE — Sept. 22

As Patricia pointed out in a post today, a transcript of the exchange with the Iranians shows that the digital debater in question indeed identified as being a State Department employee, but did not say exactly who s/he was.  Javanfekr thought it might be the Secretary of State:

Javanfekr: 1. My identity is completely clear to you but your identity is not at all clear to me. You are aware that I am the President’s adviser in media affairs and in this blog I express my own personal views and the official positions as declared by the government and foreign ministry spokespersons and also by the president and the foreign minister.  2. Considering that you present US government positions and given that your identity remains a secret, let me from now on refer to you as her Excellency Madam Rice, the distinguished US secretary of State unless you identify your position/standing at the US Department of State to the readers of this blog.

Debater: Thank you for the promotion but I am not the Secretary of State. I am a member of the Digital Outreach Team which is an entity within the US Department of State. Our goal is to establish communications and have a candid conversation with the people of Iran and answer questions about US foreign policy. But I think it’s better instead of focusing on personalities and job titles to focus on issues.

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