The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 41 to 46.
India Bans Mass SMS to Counter Panic
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public
<b>Last year social networking was credited with helping to organize revolutions across the Middle East and with getting normally apathetic middle-class Indians onto the streets to protest corruption.</b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Shreya Shah was <a class="external-link" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/17/indian-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-panic/">published</a> in the Wall Street Journal on August 17, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">But in recent days, India has seen a darker side of social networking, as doctored videos of Muslims being attacked and text messages warning of retaliation by Muslims went viral in the wake of <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443570904577546271721787692.html?KEYWORDS=assam+riots">riots in the northeastern state of Assam</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages have caused panic among thousands of Indians and spurred attacks and clashes in two cities. In an attempt to calm the situation, India banned the ability to send mass text messages on Friday afternoon, the home ministry press office confirmed. The ban will stay in effect for two weeks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In remarks to Parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “The unity and integrity of our country is being threatened by certain elements.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The riots in Assam saw clashes between Bodo tribals and Muslim immigrants, beginning in late July, which led to dozens of deaths and displaced tens of thousands of people. On Friday, Abdul Khaleque, press secretary to the chief minister of Assam, told India Real Time that the death toll had risen to 78 as sporadic clashes continued. Of the 400,000 people that had fled their homes, approximately 115,000 had returned home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As India has struggled this month to bring calm to Assam, flare-ups started taking place in the western city of Pune, while in Bangalore, thousands of northeastern workers began <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/08/16/bangalore-urges-northeastern-workers-to-remain/">fleeing the city</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mobile phone messages saying that northeasterners had been killed in Bangalore have been circulating since Sunday, said Dilip Kanti, a 24-year-old law student from Mizoram who has lived in the city in the southern state of Karnataka for six years.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The messages warned that we should leave the city before the day of Eid,” he added. Monday, Aug. 20, is an official holiday for Eid, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Karnataka state government and the police have said that this is a hoax message and that they are investigating the source of these messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages appear to be intended to panic northeasterners, send large numbers of them back to their home state, and foster fear of Muslims. Those developments could set the stage for sectarian riots, always a concern in a country that has seen such clashes break out frequently.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The home minister has said an inquiry is underway. But so far officials have not shared information about the source of these messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Presently, Indian companies that send mass text messages need to register to do so. But there’s no bar on individual users sending mass messages. A<a href="http://www.cnngo.com/mumbai/life/travel-e-ticketing-agencies-exempted-new-sms-caps-953755"> limit of 100 messages</a>per user per day was imposed last year in an attempt to reduce spam and later increased to 200, but this was <a href="http://www.medianama.com/2012/07/223-implications-of-delhi-high-courts-removal-of-the-200-sms-per-day-limit-in-india/">overturned by the courts</a> in July.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Text messages are the “most potent weapon of rumor,” said <a href="http://www.jsgp.edu.in/JSGPFaculty/ShivVisvanathan.aspx">Shiv Visvanathan</a>, a professor at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy in Haryana. “They can multiply a few thousand times in a minute.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has been aware of the danger of high-tech rumor-mongering. When the verdict on the contested religious site of the <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/tag/babri-masjid-verdict">Babri Masjid</a> in Uttar Pradesh state was due in 2010, the Indian government temporarily banned the ability to send mass text messages.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But this time, with a new home minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, who has only been in the job for a little more than two weeks, India was slower to act. It wasn’t till Friday afternoon – after the messages had been circulating for nearly a week – that India banned mass text messaging.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But by Wednesday, students and workers from the northeast who were living in Bangalore, where these messages circulated, were rushing to the train station to head home. On Thursday alone, two special trains were scheduled to take 6,000 people back to Guwahati, the capital of Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of them had already experienced personal run-ins with Muslims upset about the riots in Assam. A 21-year-old student from the state of Nagaland, who didn’t want his name used, said that he is “sick of receiving these messages with rumors.” Apart from the messages, he said that he had been threatened twice in Bangalore by Muslims in the last five days but did not want to return to Nagaland and miss classes. His mother, on the other hand, is fearful for his safety and is forcing him to come back. His roommates have already left. “I will stay till Ramadan and if the situation doesn’t get better I will have no option but to leave,” he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The messages have gained potency from the fact that there have been some attacks on northeasterners in parts of India; these attacks too seem to have been intentionally instigated online.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Videos were doctored to show Muslims being tortured purportedly by ethnic Assamese, Pune police inspector Prasad Hasabnis told India Real Time.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“These incited the youth,” he added.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Four students from the northeastern state of Manipur were <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article3765708.ece">attacked in Pune</a> by young Muslim men in three separate incidents in the last week as a result, he said. In <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443537404577583143397317210.html">Mumbai</a>, meanwhile, two people were killed and 65 injured after a protest over the suffering of Muslims in Assam turned violent.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A group called the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena (Bhagat Singh’s Revolution Army) has been spreading some of the rumors, said Laurence Liang, a researcher with the Alternate Law Forum, a Bangalore-based human rights group that also advocates free speech.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mr. Liang said the group put up a post on Facebook that remained up until Wednesday. It said that a fatwa has been issued by the Muslims against people from the northeast and provided telephone numbers that didn’t work, he added. The Alternate Law Forum complained about the post to Facebook and it has since been taken down, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says Mr. Liang. A few people use it to “rip up a frenzy of emotion by spreading rumors,” he says. He added that it didn’t help that “people in the United States and the United Kingdom, sitting in the safety of their homes, reply provocatively on social media, unaware of the consequences they unleash.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, some people are trying to use Twitter and Facebook to counter the rumors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">American Enterprise Institute resident fellow <a href="http://twitter.com/dhume01">Sadanand Dhume</a> tweeted on Friday that a video purporting to show violence in Assam was actually footage from Indonesia.</p>
<p>“I lived in Indonesia so recognized the policeman’s uniform, batik sarong & writing on baseball cap. Must be many more fake videos out there,” he said. (Mr. Dhume is an opinion columnist for The Wall Street Journal in India.)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And in a message on Facebook, Walter Fernandes, head of the North-Eastern Social Research Centre, said northeastern and Muslim associations were meeting in Bangalore to figure out how to quell the rumors, and that people shouldn’t give in to panic. Muslim leaders have promised to speak about the situation and the need to protect people from the northeast in their sermons, Mr. Fernandes wrote.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government last year attempted to censor social networking site like Facebook, arguing inflammatory content on the site could lead to violence in India. Facebook, Google and several other Internet firms are presently <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277263704300998.html">on trial in India</a> for failing to remove offensive material from their sites in response to complaints. This month’s developments could help the government make a stronger case for censoring these sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But Pranesh Prakash, of the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society, says that greater regulation will not solve the problem. What he says is needed are proactive statements by the government and rigorous fact-checking by the media, especially regional news channels.</p>
<p>The only way of “countering rumors is by fact,” he said.</p>
<p><i>– Preetika Rana contributed to this post.</i></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/blogs-wsj-com-aug-17-2012-shreya-shah-india-bans-mass-sms-to-counter-public</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-08-27T07:29:59ZNews ItemNortheast exodus: Is there a mechanism to pre-screen social media content?
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-merinews-com-wahid-bukhari-august-23-2012-northeast-exodus
<b>The government has passed the blame buck on social media and blocked hundreds of websites, which it claims, hosted hate speech and inflammatory content, enough to incite violence. But is it feasible to pre-screen objectionable or provocative content, and reject it before posting so that there is no chance of such rumours?
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Wahid Bukhari was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.merinews.com/article/northeast-exodus-is-there-a-mechanism-to-pre-screen-social-media-content/15874014.shtml">published in merinews</a> on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government took the action after Home Minister RK Singh alleged that the exodus of northeastern people from southern states such as Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune was a result of the panic and rumours created because of the content uploaded on these websites, many according to him were created by elements across the border in Pakistan. Though many suspected that Mr Singh's claim was an excuse to save the government from its inefficiency in controlling the riots, and the exodus of the northeastern people who were seen boarding the trains to their home states with their belongings amid fears of reprisal attacks.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Was the action meant to pass on the inefficiency buck or not - the government has, at least, managed to shift the focus of the media from exodus to the debate - as to whether social networking sites or websites promoting hatred should be blocked or not - given the democratic rights of every citizen to freedom of speech and expression.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Around a hundred more websites have been reported promoting hate speech and <a href="http://www.merinews.com/topics/business/Google">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.merinews.com/topics/business/facebook">Facebook</a> and other social networking sites like <a href="http://www.merinews.com/topics/business/Twitter">Twitter</a> have been asked to remove such content as soon as possible but in this whole debate one question remains unanswered: How does removing a post from Twitter or Facebook make a difference, several hours after it was published? One might argue even an hour is enough for an inflammatory picture or comment to incite violence or hatred. As a consequence, one might demand that a comment is screened before it is posted on a website, otherwise it doesn't serve any purpose.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Whether pre-screening is technically possible, Pranesh Prakash maintains: "Given the amount of content uploaded on the larger social networks, pre-screening content is just not possible, while removal upon complaint is. They don't have editors like newspapers do; importantly, they shouldn't."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Perhaps, a mid way is to intervene prior to registration on social media websites. All those who register should be made aware of the content that's not permissible, and make them aware of relevant laws and repercussions of breaking them if their complicity is proved. Similarly, these sites can be asked by the Indian government to continuously remind registered users as well as general public, through mass media advertizing, about what kind of content is not permissible. The government, from its side, can strengthen cyber laws to empower sites such as Facebook and Twitter to curb posting of provocative content due to presence of these stringent laws.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Terming the government action unfortunate, Mr Prakash who is a programme manager with the Bangalore-based research and advocacy group, The Centre for Internet and Society believes that government botched up at so many levels. “I don't think the government should be going after Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. It should be going to them, to work with them on removing content,” Mr Prakash suggests. "The larger social networks have dedicated complaints mechanisms, which the government could have asked them to run 24x7 for a few days, and to expedite that process, and both complained itself and asked the public to use the complaints process,” he adds.<br /> <br /> Though Pakistan has rubbished the claims that it has any role in fomenting trouble, but it has also asked the Indian government to provide it with evidence so that it could nab the accused. Whether or not there is any evidence is a secondary question, the primary blame will always rest with both the state and central governments who failed to stop the exodus of fear-stricken people from the northeast.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Experts like Mr Prakash are wondering why the government didn't pay back in the same coin by using the social media to dispel the rumours. “It is a pity that they notified a new policy to encourage governmental use of social media only today; they sorely needed it this last week,” Mr Prakash rues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has blocked content related to thirty Twitter accounts but another surprising thing is that only accounts using the web interface have been blocked, and such accounts can still be accessed on BlackBerrys or other smartphones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The only visible thing government did on ground when the exodus started taking place in Bangalore was the setting up of helplines but did they help in preventing the exodus - there are enough reasons to believe against it. "There were some complaints that the people attending some of these helplines could only speak in Kannada, and not the English or Hindi that people calling for help were expecting. Even such positive steps were executed badly." Mr Prakash informs.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-merinews-com-wahid-bukhari-august-23-2012-northeast-exodus'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-merinews-com-wahid-bukhari-august-23-2012-northeast-exodus</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaIT ActSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-04T04:06:46ZNews ItemIs the govt caught in the 'censorship' web?
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-we-the-people-aug-26-2012-is-the-govt-caught-in-the-censorship-web
<b>NDTV aired a one-hour debate on censorship in "We the People" episode hosted by Barkha Dutt on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash participated in the discussions as a speaker.</b>
<p>Pranesh Prakash responded to Barkha Dutt's question on what does a government do in a time of social unrest:</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I think in a time of social unrest there is leeway provided in laws for the government to take action. The law existing and the law allowing for it is a very different matter from the government actually making use of it. There are as shown in the United Kingdom, much better ways of combating situations of riots. As we have seen in India for instance, there are people who provoke riots from podiums yet don't get arrested and as we have seen in the UK, there are people who take part in riots and have been punished a great deal."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Video</b></p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-0f0_yG2gVE" width="320"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">See the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/we-the-people/is-the-govt-caught-in-the-censorship-web/244248">full debate</a> on NDTV</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-we-the-people-aug-26-2012-is-the-govt-caught-in-the-censorship-web'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-ndtv-com-we-the-people-aug-26-2012-is-the-govt-caught-in-the-censorship-web</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceVideoCensorship2012-09-04T06:54:25ZNews ItemIndia Debates Misuse of Social Media
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media
<b>India has blocked more than 250 websites after provocative online content spread panic among people from the country's northeast, prompting some of them to flee Indian cities. The crackdown has sparked a debate about how the country will cope with misuse of social media. </b>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Anjana Pasricha's article was originally published by <a class="external-link" href="http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/08/22/2012082200496.html">Voice of America</a> on August 21, 2012 and re-posted in the <a class="external-link" href="http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/08/22/2012082200496.html">Chosunilbo</a> on September 4, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials say the websites that were blocked had posted edited images and videos of victims of earthquakes and claimed they were those of Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic strife in India's northeastern Assam state and Burma.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the images went viral, rumors began about reprisal attacks against Hindu migrants from the northeast working in other parts of India. Hate text messages warning of violence circulated widely. Worried about their safety, thousands of the migrants fled Indian cities last week to return to Assam.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Taken aback by the mass exodus, the government says the "unity and integrity of the country is at stake."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde says that "elements" had used social networking sites to whip up communal sentiments. Shinde says a number of the sites had been uploaded from Pakistan. Shinde adds that the government has gathered a lot of evidence through the investigation, whether from Facebook communication or text messaging.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials have also blamed social networking sites such as Twitter, Yahoo and Facebook for not screening objectionable content.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber specialists say the government needs to go beyond the blame game and learn how to manage misuse of social media on the massive scale witnessed last week. About 100 million people in India use the Internet, the third-largest number of net users in the world. About 700 million people have mobile phones.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to incite fear in a community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"India has to wake up to the need of putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation," Duggal noted. "Unfortunately, India does not even have a cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should such an emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has been involved in a dispute with web companies such as Google and Facebook for several months and has called for them to devise a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the web. India routinely asks these companies to remove what it calls "objectionable content," which has led to fears India may be diluting web freedom.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham heads the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, an advocacy group for net freedom. He says the government's recent crackdown on hundreds of websites is warranted, but says it needs to be more sophisticated and aggressive in handling threats and rumors emanating from the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating," Abraham explained. "The best way to deal with misinformation is to produce more accurate and more credible information. By just blocking access to fraudulent information, you do not fully undermine the power of rumors because by the time the government had decided to act the photographs and videos had already gone viral. And even though the websites are blocked these images will continue to circulate."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The exodus of northeast migrants from Indian cities has slowed in recent days as India has moved to block multimedia and bulk text messaging, and panic has subsided after repeated assurances of safety by the government.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-voanews-com-aug-21-2012-anjana-pasricha-india-debates-misuse-of-social-media</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-04T12:13:21ZNews ItemPolitical war on the web
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-kunal-majumder-tehelka-magazine-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-political-war-on-the-web
<b>Twitter is not only the ‘people’s voice’. It is also a forum for orchestrated propaganda.Kunal Majumder tracks the BJP-Congress online duel.</b>
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<p>Kunal Majumder's article was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne080912Political.asp">published</a> in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 36, Dated 08 Sept 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.</p>
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<p>New battlelines Digvijaya Singh (left) and Sushma Swaraj are active tweeples<br />Photos: Shailendra Pandey</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">ON 27 August, as the Congress and the BJP battled it out in Parliament and later through news conferences, the story on Twitter was a bit different. Congress supporters, who had been at the receiving end of the ‘Coalgate’ issue so far, finally started hitting back. Adopting a strategy they had so far been accusing right-wingers of, they launched into an all-out attack on anyone who supported the BJP. Every tweet was hashtagged with #RIPBJP. At the end of the day, #RIPBJP was trending, making it the most successful Congress campaign against the BJP — a first on Twitter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The social media battle against the BJP has just begun,” says a Congress supporter associated with the new project. “In the days to come, you will see our volunteers in a more combative mode.” However, he says it will not “replicate the negative campaign of the right-wing”.<br /><br />The Congress’ social media strategy is spearheaded by its tech-savvy General Secretary Digvijaya Singh. On Twitter for nearly nine months, Singh has been readying to take on the BJP on its own turf and influence the ‘voice of people’. Though serious doubt remains about how much of this voice is real and how much is a result of political propaganda.<br /><br />The push for the Congress to take the battle online comes from the recent ‘banning’ of Twitter handles of BJP sympathiser and senior journalist Kanchan Gupta. While the government insists that the handles were blocked due to security issues, Gupta claimed political martyrdom and launched a tirade against the Congress for imposing a second Emergency. Hashtags like #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks started trending, with BJP supporters turning their display pictures to black. "The fact remains none of the blockings were politically motivated,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with Centre for Internet and Society. Prakash instead points to the UPA’s earlier request to IT companies like Google and Facebook to pull down certain pages, which displayed morphed photos and cartoons of Congress “functionaries” as clear example of politically motivated intervention.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though no explanation was forthcoming from the government as to why specific handles were blocked temporarily through ISPs (Twitter has still not blocked them), the PMO issued a statement saying it has requested Twitter to take “appropriate action against six persons impersonating the PMO”. Certain handles like @PM0India (with a ‘zero’) were often accused of impersonating the actual @PMOIndia. But that’s another story.</p>
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#Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks started trending, <br />with various BJP supporters turning their display pictures to black
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<td style="text-align: justify; ">The day Gupta’s handle was ‘blocked’, former bureaucrat B Raman wrote a blog that gave an interesting insight into why the government might have targeted Gupta. Raman describes a meeting that took place in Ahmedabad in 2008 — just before the 2009 General Elections — attended by senior BJP leaders and sympathisers, including Gupta. Raman says the general feeling among BJP participants was that mainstream media was not giving enough opportunities to the BJP and other right-wing activists to air their views. Therefore, “it was suggested by some participants that the BJP could get over this handicap by making good use of the online media”. Raman goes on to point that supporters of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and other right-wingers have since then used online media superbly with help of IT-savvy Hindutva supporters.</td>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">What Raman wrote in his blog is confirmed by the BJP’s IT Cell Convener, Arvind Gupta. The BJP was not only the first political party in India to have a website in 1999, its social media network has been way ahead of any other political group in the country. From posting updates to engaging users, it has a well-oiled social media machinery in place. Arvind calls this the “listen, engage and inform” model. This includes Internet TV, YouTube and messenger chats. In fact, the next big thing on the party’s social media agenda is the interaction with Narendra Modi on Google+ Hangout.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Poli-Tweeting</b></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Poli-Faking</b></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">BUT IT is not political agenda that has left Digvijaya Singh singed. Speaking to TEHELKA, Singh points to abusive — and at times, factually incorrect — tweets posted by right-wing supporters. In many cases, the mere mention of anything against Modi or Baba Ramdev would have scores of right-wing supporters bombarding Twitter timelines with counter-criticism, and often, abuses. “Anything that incites hate is a problem,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Though what can be called ‘hate’ is a very subjective matter, Arvind Gupta feels social media reflects the mood of the young population. “People call themselves Internet Hindus. We, as a party, have nothing to do with this. People are so passionate about Modi that they take up his case (against anyone who posts anti-Modi tweets),” says Gupta. He also points towards a similar trend when it comes to people tweeting against Team Anna.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many right-wing Twitter users are accused of posting sponsored tweets against specific people who they believe are anti-BJP. This accusation has not been proven so far, though many users claim to have tracked interaction between rightwing Twitter users on coordinated attacks on users with liberal or pro-Congress ideologies. “There is a belief — and let me tell you that it is wrong — that we hire people,” says Gupta. So can the high number of right-wing users be put down to an ideological stance alone? Gupta says it’s got to do with understanding politics better. “Our volunteers are generally more educated and understand the the Congress’ wrong policies. That category also forms a major part of the ecosystem in this new media,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Within minutes of talking to this correspondent, Gupta posts a new hashtag on Twitter — #MotaMaal — taking a cue from Sushma Swaraj’s accusation of corruption against the Congress in the coal scam. The next day, Twitter became all about #MotaMaal versus #RIPBJP. Handles like @BJP0fficials and @PMAdvani have been created to counter the right wing. Clearly, Congress supporters are hitting back even at the risk of adding to the cacophony of an already-chaotic medium.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Kunal Majumder is a Principal Correspondent with Tehelka</i>.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-kunal-majumder-tehelka-magazine-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-political-war-on-the-web'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-tehelka-com-kunal-majumder-tehelka-magazine-vol-9-issue-36-sep-8-2012-political-war-on-the-web</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-05T05:27:24ZNews ItemNeed a standard strategy to deal with Web issues: Chandrasekhar
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-surabhi-agarwal-sep-4-2012-need-a-strategy-to-deal-with-web-issues
<b>The government has been facing allegations of Internet censorship for over a year now.</b>
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<p>This article by Surabhi Agarwal was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2012/09/04231942/Need-a-standard-strategy-to-de.html">published</a> in LiveMint on September 4, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government said it needed to improve the way in which it dealt with issues such as Internet hate messages besides blog posts and SMSes that seek to create panic so that it’s not accused of trying to gag free speech.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We all have agreed that we need some combination of self-regulation and government interventions. But we need to do it in a proper way,” said department of telecom secretary R. Chandrasekhar, while addressing a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) conference on the issue of “legitimate restrictions on freedom of online speech".</p>
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<p>The Union government has been facing allegations of censorship after it sought to contain messages that led to communal violence and a panicexodus by people from the north-eastern states in some cities.</p>
<p>Last month, the government ordered the blocking of almost 310 web pages for content deemed to be attacking particular communities. According to a post by Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society, 33% of them were on Facebook, 28% on Google Inc.’s YouTube and around 10% on Twitter.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Defending the government move, Gulshan Rai, chief of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in), said it was the first time that the emergency provision of the Information Technology Act 2008 had been exercised. Even though the list was not drawn up by his agency, due scrutiny was carried out before issuing orders to block the sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This came after allegations that government may have also blocked bona fide posts as it sought to block content related to the North-East.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Twitter accounts of some journalists and other individuals associated with and sympathetic to right-wing causes were blocked, according to a list published earlier by The Economic Times.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"This is certainly not the last time we are seeing such a situation, so meaningful ways to respond to such complex situations will have to be devised," said Chandrasekhar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He added that there was also a need to collaborate better with all stakeholders to devise not just defensive strategies during a crisis but also ways to contain its impact using the social media.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ankhi Das, head of public policy at Facebook India, said that during the London riots of 2011, the UK government enlisted the support of social networking sites to dispel rumours.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Social media can also be allies of the government at times like this," she said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Raman Jit Singh Cheema, a senior policy analyst at Google India, cited a similar example of authorities in Japan using such methods to send out correct information following the tsunami that hit the country in 2011.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"We need to collaborate on a continuing basis, so that when you are faced with such a crisis, you are able to deal with it," said Chandrasekhar.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The government has been facing allegations of Internet censorship for over a year after minister for communication and information technology Kapil Sibal raised the issue of regulating social networking sites. They had allegedly not complied with the government’s demand that offensive content be removed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chandrasekhar said that processes should be clearer, more transparent and well-defined.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"These need to be brought out in the form of some kind of a standard operating procedure, so that they (stakeholders) are expected to know how to conduct themselves and how they can expect the government to deal if a contingency arises," he said.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-surabhi-agarwal-sep-4-2012-need-a-strategy-to-deal-with-web-issues'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-surabhi-agarwal-sep-4-2012-need-a-strategy-to-deal-with-web-issues</a>
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No publisherpraskrishnaSocial mediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionPublic AccountabilityInternet GovernanceCensorship2012-09-05T08:37:09ZNews Item