And while you’re reading, what’s interesting is to note different takes on some of the night’s more notable moments. Key points? I’d include Jack Dorsey admitting that he didn’t know Twitter was blocked in China (and the discernible disappointment in the audience and pointed follow-up questions directed at Dorsey); the witty and often downright bawdy Ai Wei Wei cracking jokes about the power of Twitter in courting girls and how his eight hours a day using the platform made it a “true lover”; a heated back-and-forth on whether Chinese people were happy or actually oppressed, and discussion about a timeline for Chinese democracy, between Ai Wei Wei and a Chinese businesswoman in the audience; and Richard McManus talking about Google’s “brave move” in pulling out of China and refusing to self-censor, and the panel’s discussion of whether internet companies were responsible in acting to preserve people’s internet freedoms. (The answer to the last point was a decided yes — Ai Wei Wei said there’s no excuse for not acting out “for human values.”)

“Digital Activism in China: A Discussion Between Ai Wei Wei, Jack Dorsey and Richard McManus”

Check out ReadWriteWeb’s recap of the event — pretty straightforward. For a refresher on censorship in China, it’s helpful to check out Kaiser Kuo’s SXSW presentation on Google in China this week or his earlier interview with ReadWriteWeb.

Read on for more after the jump …

“Some Thoughts On Ai Wei Wei and Jack Dorsey from ReadWriteWeb’s Social Media Activism Panel”

Digital East Asia is a web site that aggregates and analyzes news about digital and social media in and about East Asia. This post focuses more on discussion between Dorsey and Ai Wei Wei on translating Twitter in Chinese (which one audience member later said was more about Chinese display and input than just translating text).

“Artist Ai Wei Wei Makes Rare U.S. Appearance to Talk About Digital Activism”

The Los Angeles Times’ arts blog devotes its post to Ai Wei Wei’s evolution from artist to activist, and reports on the confrontational Q&A moment between Ai Wei Wei and the Chinese businesswoman.

A number of write-ups of the event focused on Dorsey’s promise that Twitter in China was in the works:

“Twitter in China? In Due Time, Twitter Founder Promises” (PC World)

“Twitter Working on Chinese Translation” (Portfolio’s Tech Observer)

“Twitter Working on Chinese Registration Page” (Associated Press)

Hm — I wonder when Twitter began considering the creation of Twitter.cn? Ai Wei Wei was pretty insistent on getting an answer from Dorsey yesterday, and so was the audience. Keep an eye on @aiww for more (though you might want to send it through a translator, unless you can read Chinese!) and keep an eye on this blog for future commentary on this subject.

• Earlier this year, China announced a controversial order that all computers be equipped with an internet filter, dubbed Green Dam, by July 1st, 2009. Intended to restrict pornography, the software could also be used to restrict other things—prompting even greater outcry about censorship and monitoring. Leading up to the July 1st date, however, the mandatory installation of the software on all new computers was delayed to an undetermined date; and in August, China’s minister of information technology announced that Green Dam wouldn’t be required on personal- and business-use computers, but would be still be run on all public-use computers.

• China’s Golden Shield Project, also known as the Great Firewall of China, blocks websites and searches related to any suspicious terms—which means typing “democracy,” “Falun Gong” and “Tibet,” as well as “pornography,” in a browser turn up error messages.

• During the unrest after the Iranian presidential elections this summer, the Iranian government attempted to erect its own firewall, but was only able to temporily handicap internet access.

• Also during the post-election fallout, Twitter postponed a maintenance update—after being asked to by bloggers and officials from the U.S. State Department, among others—and kept the servers on so Iranians could continue to tweet about what was going on in the Green Revolution.

• There are also small signs that citizen-run, progressive movements are getting through to the right people. This fall, Australian non-profit GetUp! started a “Censordyne” campaign against the government’s internet filtering program, running full-age ads in newspaper “The Australia” declaring the thousands of people that had signed its petition, and broadcasting on TV and online a series of parody videos. In October, it was announced that there would be a public consultation on the issue before the government proceeds, and the prime minister will be addressing it in a web chat.

VOTE

Name: Remembering Omid Reza “Let the first blogger to die in prison be the last”

Nominated Category: Individual (Omid Reza, Iranian blogger)

URL: http://www.march18.org, http://www.globalvoices.org, http://www.committeetoprotectbloggers.org

Area: Advocacy, Action, Memorial

About:

On March 18, blogger Omid Reza Mir Sayafi died in prison after being sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He had been charged with insulting religious leaders and spreading propaganda about the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There were reports of Mir Sayafi who primarily wrote about Persian music and culture being depressed, of him taking sedative pills or receiving an overdose, of being described by his also-jailed doctor as not at all fit for confinement and the prison hospital failing to provide adequate care. People spoke of how use of torture was an open secret in Iranian prisons, and how someone accused of libelous blogging could be kept near more violent criminals.

Mir Sayafi’s death under mysterious circumstances and the whys and hows of a blogger being jailed in the first place prompted outcry by members of the international community, followed by action. The March 18 movement started in part as a memorial to Mir Sayafi (with March 18 denoted as a day of remembrance), and in part to ensure that “the first blogger to die in prison be the last” as more bloggers around the world become victims of more than just government censorship.

Founded by Hamid Tehrani and Mideast Youth, an interfaith youth network, the March 18 movement seeks to expand the world’s understanding of bloggers as de facto journalists, and extend the protections normally accorded to journalists to all those who share information and stories of repression and corruption online–sometimes at risk of violence or other harm.

March18.org asks supporters to join them by following the movement on Twitter, Facebook and the movement’s blog. The blog and Twitter feed post on movement-relevant issues and news: Recent posts include news about a freed female reformist blogger and information on how to help bloggers currently being persecuted in Vietnam.

The motivations of the March 18 movement and similar initiatives are not unlike those of “Reporter Without Borders” the long-established activist organization for journalists’ rights that has spoken out about continued persecution of bloggers in Iran. Mir Sayafi’s death, and the role bloggers and active Twitter users played in the civil unrest following Iran’s presidential elections this year, has drawn attention to the bloggers rights movement, represented by sites like Global Voices and the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

The Basics:

WHO: Omid Reza Mir Sayafi and people around the world trying to ensure that what happened to him doesn’t happen to other bloggers.

WHAT: Mir Sayafi was one of a number of bloggers that have been arrested in Iran; he was reportedly the first to die in prison. Movements and memorials have sprung up in his memory, and his story — and the greater story of persecuted bloggers in Iran, and the yet greater story of bloggers under oppressive regimes around the world — has also drawn attention to bloggers rights and safety campaigns worldwide.

WHERE: Worldwide.

HOW to get involved: Follow the March 18 blog, Twitter and Facebook feeds. Become a member on the web site. Check out Global Voices, Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect Bloggers for new.

WHAT other people are saying:

Global Voices

Revolutionary Flowerpot blog

Zoescope blog

Read Write Web

Huffington Post

• Comment on this entry and tell us what you think. Who else should we be highlighting in this category?
• Share these initial selections with your network, through Twitter, Facebook etc

Learn more about ThinkSocial Awards here.

Thanks for your support and participation.

VOTE

Name: Remembering Omid Reza “Let the first blogger to die in prison be the last”

Nominated Category: Individual (Omid Reza, Iranian blogger)

URL: http://www.march18.org, http://www.globalvoices.org, http://www.committeetoprotectbloggers.org

Area: Advocacy, Action, Memorial

About:

On March 18, blogger Omid Reza Mir Sayafi died in prison after being sentenced to two and a half years in prison. He had been charged with insulting religious leaders and spreading propaganda about the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There were reports of Mir Sayafi who primarily wrote about Persian music and culture being depressed, of him taking sedative pills or receiving an overdose, of being described by his also-jailed doctor as not at all fit for confinement and the prison hospital failing to provide adequate care. People spoke of how use of torture was an open secret in Iranian prisons, and how someone accused of libelous blogging could be kept near more violent criminals.

Mir Sayafi s death under mysterious circumstances and the whys and hows of a blogger being jailed in the first place prompted outcry by members of the international community, followed by action. The March 18 movement started in part as a memorial to Mir Sayafi (with March 18 denoted as a day of remembrance), and in part to ensure that “the first blogger to die in prison be the last” as more bloggers around the world become victims of more than just government censorship.

Founded by Hamid Tehrani and Mideast Youth, an interfaith youth network, the March 18 movement seeks to expand the world’s understanding of bloggers as de facto journalists, and extend the protections normally accorded to journalists to all those who share information and stories of repression and corruption online–sometimes at risk of violence or other harm.

March18.org asks supporters to join them by following the movement on Twitter, Facebook and the movement’s blog. The blog and Twitter feed post on movement-relevant issues and news: Recent posts include news about a freed female reformist blogger and information on how to help bloggers currently being persecuted in Vietnam.

The motivations of the March 18 movement and similar initiatives are not unlike those of “Reporter Without Borders” the long-established activist organization for journalists’ rights that has spoken out about continued persecution of bloggers in Iran. Mir Sayafi s death, and the role bloggers and active Twitter users played in the civil unrest following Iran’s presidential elections this year, has drawn attention to the bloggers rights movement, represented by sites like Global Voices and the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

The Basics:

WHO: Omid Reza Mir Sayafi and people around the world trying to ensure that what happened to him doesn’t happen to other bloggers.

WHAT: Mir Sayafi was one of a number of bloggers that have been arrested in Iran; he was reportedly the first to die in prison. Movements and memorials have sprung up in his memory, and his story — and the greater story of persecuted bloggers in Iran, and the yet greater story of bloggers under oppressive regimes around the world — has also drawn attention to bloggers’ rights and safety campaigns worldwide.

WHERE: Worldwide.

HOW to get involved: Follow the March 18 blog, Twitter and Facebook feeds. Become a member on the web site. Check out Global Voices, Reporters Without Borders and Committee to Protect Bloggers for new.

WHAT other people are saying:

Global Voices

Revolutionary Flowerpot blog

Zoescope blog

Read Write Web

Huffington Post

• Comment on this entry and tell us what you think. Who else should we be highlighting in this category?
• Share these initial selections with your network, through Twitter, Facebook etc

Learn more about ThinkSocial Awards here.

Thanks for your support and participation.

This dynamic and illuminating TED talk given by Clay Shirky’s  at the State Department last month underscored three important breakthroughs of social media. First, that it is a significant revolution nestled amongst the printing press and television. Second, that social media is a “site for coordination” where all mediums are aggregated in one space for dialogue and response. And third, that former audience members/consumers now have the ability to simultaneously be producers of content.

He illustrates one of the more profound examples of media transcending the traditional space and galvanizing a larger community by recalling the 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China this year. China’s traditional media outlets were unable to keep up with the speed at which information was being disseminated to the world and eventually started cracking down on the sources. On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen, the government suspended service of Twitter (Facebook had already been shutdown). Shirky points out that China, so well-oiled for censoring the internet, had now been stymied because media was no longer functioning in the traditional structure as it had before.

Yet, his story elucidated a more troubling matter. Although China was thwarted by its own citizens, who had bypassed usual media posts, leaders were still able to recognize sources of social media anarchy (eg. Twitter, Facebook) and just shut them down.

Michael Anti, a former NYT employee, recently stated that “Twitter is a new thing in China. The censors need time to figure out what it is. So enjoy the last days of twittering before the fate of YouTube descends on it one day.” He goes on to point out that Chinese tweets have “three times the volume of an English tweet, thanks to the high information intensity of the Chinese language.”

Most recently, communal violence between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese, that left 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured, further illustrated China’s suppression of expression. Urumqui Communist Party Secretary Li Zhi told the official Zinhua news agency that they “cut internet connections in some areas of Urumqi in order to quench the riot quickly and prevent violence from spreading to other places.” Simultaneously, they invited foreign reporters for controlled tours of the area, taking the cunning and sophisticated approach to managing reported media.

Clearly, China has shown a deft and swift way of dealing with new media control. They are concurrently controlling and propagating messages over these social media channels. It’s easy to get lost in the swell and excitement that surrounds technological breakthroughs and demonstrations of democracy in Iran, the US and elsewhere in the world, and focus on where it’s working. But, policy makers and business leaders need to also recognize that their needs to be the creation of alternatives in places like China, North Korea and Cuba. Just because elements of social media and the internet are a lawless frontier, doesn’t mean that it will not be wrangled and contained.

Kelley Currie from the Wall Street Journal says “policy makers in free societies need to recognize China’s simultaneous efforts to control and exploit new information technologies as a serious threat to freedom and human rights.” She suggests starting the process with Chinese-language media such as Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and the BBC and says that it will also require “investing in new initiatives that challenge China’s control of online space and discourse by both increasing Chinese citizen’s access to the uncensored Web and expanding the number and presence of alternative Chinese vernacular voices.”

Likewise, this spirit of defiance is captured when Shirky concludes his speech with a call to arms by asking, “How can we make best use of this media? Even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it.” Although his question is directed towards traditional media space, we can just as easily aim it at the ever-expanding, growing force that is social media. How do we investigate, challenge and expand the sphere in areas where it is being stifled, silenced and manipulated? And can we transcend national laws and supersede powerful regimes with social media innovation?

Craig Newmark

CRAIG NEWMARK
Founder of Craigslist

Twitter: http://twitter.com/craignewmark

Craig Alexander Newmark was born December 6, 1952, in Morristown, New Jersey. He is an Internet entrepreneur best known as the founder and an active customer service rep of the San Francisco based group of community websites known as craigslist.

TS: What do you think the public interest of social media is?

Craig Newmark: From one perspective it’s a way for people to just socialize with their friends; from perhaps a bigger perspective social media is being used by people to connect – to promote causes and efforts which are bigger than themselves. For example, I’m using social media, specifically, right now, Facebook, Twitter and my own blog to promote support for returning war veterans. I did a little bit of that ten minutes ago.

TS: What do you think the responsibilities of Craigslist are as regards that public interest?

CN: At Craigslist we figure that we will do well as a company by doing good for people. We’re both a business and a community service, and that works for us. More and more people are seeing that they can participate in making the world better just by getting involved through social media. We saw that on November 4th and we’re now seeing it in other ways.

TS: Do you think governments have a particular responsibility to consider that shift?

CN: Yes. For example, I’ve been working a lot with the Federal Web Managers’ Council in trying to help hem to use social media because they want to do their jobs better. That’s mostly in serving the public directly, but also in areas including public diplomacy.

TS: Do you think people expect their governments and their leaders now to be web savvy?

CN: Yes, I think there’s a large expectation among a lot of people.

TS: What do you look at in terms of social media and get excited about?

CN: I don’t really look at any one technology and get excited. It’s more when I look at everything going on and see increasing numbers of people getting involved and how social media can change the way organizations and societies work. Social media allows the workers in any organization, private or government, to work together to make things better. And that’s a real movement. It’s just starting now, but I think it will change a lot of organizations as it’s already changing our way of governance.

TS: And what do you think the greatest threats are to that? Where could it go wrong?

CN: I do see some problems with the people in some governments trying to disrupt or censor social media or prevent people using it. I think that’s really the only thing I’ve observed that might cause a problem.

TS: On the other side of the coin who do you think the real leaders are in pushing forward the public interest of social media?

CN: Well, the biggest contribution is made by the Obama administration. They have an Office of Social Innovation, the Office of New Media, the Office of Science and Technology, the Office of Citizen Participation. This is real and it’s also new. Then there are people in different clusters doing good work. The Sunlight Foundation, Techpresident, a lot of people who are making things happen.

TS: Do you see Craigslist as kind of a pioneer in the social media field?

CN: We perhaps got tens of millions of people in the habit of working together online. And we try to contribute to the right atmosphere which is something.

Co-Founder of Flickr

CATERINA FAKE
Cofounder, Flickr

Twitter: http://twitter.com/caterina

Caterina Fake is the cofounder of Flickr, the popular photo-sharing site that helped transform the web into the participatory environment it is today. Flickr launched in early 2004, but she has been involved in web development since 1994, working as an art director at Salon.com and greatly involved in the development of online communities, social networks and personal publishing.

TS: How do you think social media has changed over the last year?

Caterina Fake: Familiarity with social media is the thing that is constantly changing as the technology changes. People always tend to be the same. So 18th century church groups, and church groups online are the same. Dating back in the day, and dating online are the same. What changes is not people or how they respond to each other but the technology. I think the thing that has changed most in the past 5 years is this ubiquity of social networking, social media, people contributing content, this effervescence of the architecture of participation. The saturation point was reached at some point in the past year.

TS: What do you think the public interest of social media is?

CF: Well Flickr for example, gives people all over the world the ability to upload photographs, or trigger things from the ground. Protests that are going on in Chile are suddenly visible to any interested party in any part of the world. It’s a liberating and freeing phenomenon.

TS: Do you think Flickr has any kind of responsibility to journalism? Do you think it has any kind of role to play in the future of journalism?

CF: We have these debates all the time. I had an extensive argument with someone from the New York Times recently who said that I was personally responsible for all of his photographic staff losing their jobs. I actually don’t think that’s true. The responsibilities of journalism are significantly greater than those of bloggers, because they have editorial standards which they live up to. With bloggers it’s all very wild and messy. And unconfirmed. Things can spread through the blogosphere like wildfire. There’s a curatorial part of what newspapers do – they actually select the news that is worthwhile and confirmed.

TS: Do you think governments have any particular responsibility to use social media or to address the issues that it is bringing up?

CF: If you want to be where the people are and they’re on social media – you go to where they are. There’s no reason to avoid participating in or using the platforms that are already existing out there for communication.

TS: What do you think the greatest threats are to the way people use social media in terms of public interest?

CF: As you would think I am a techno-utopian. I love the internet, I love all of the possibilities for online community and connecting people. But I do think when you go online a certain amount of communication gets lost. I’ve been studying this recently. People can de-personalize, de-humanize and lose a lot of the subtle meanings of things. The facial expressions, the blush response. You can type an email in your most sarcastic voice or your most gentle and kindly voice and it will essentially come across completely the same.

So social media serves only a small part of the full spectrum of human interaction and should not be relied upon exclusively. It’s very important for people to organize online, to meet each other online, to connect with each other online, to share information with each other online, but ultimately people need to see other people, they need to interact directly with other people. One of the big problems of social media is that there are people who rely upon it too heavily

TS: So you think the future of social media, especially in the public interest, is to organize and stimulate real-world interactions rather than replace them?

CF: Exactly. The danger lies in never leaving the online world. You see what I would call sociopathic behavior happening online the most repugnant things imaginable are said in anonymous blog comments and posts. That could only happen online when there are absolutely no repercussions for these actions.

TS: Would you censor that, if you could?

CF: I don’t think that’s censorship, actually. Because those people are not identifying themselves as themselves. If you are yourself online and you stand by everything you say, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t say it. But you shouldn’t be able to hide behind some mask and say amazingly offensive things. Korea is one of the most advanced countries in the world using social networking. In order to join a social network there you now have to submit your social security number. Anonymity breeds hostility and sociopathy and it’s very dangerous.

TS: So do you think that the way the Obama campaign used social media to get people out into the real world to do real things is a model for the future, or can be built on?

CF: Yes, exactly. That to me is the way social media can work in the public interest. It’s an incredible opportunity for organizing, for broadcasts, for collaboration. But there is the danger it will become circumscribed by the media itself that power for good needs to move out into the world.