Social media and government: 7 to 14 December 2014

Mexican social media was abuzz after 18-year-old Agustin Flores allowed himself to be set on fire in protest against political corruption in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

President Obama of the USA told ESPN radio last week that social media "Polarizes Society." Around the same time, Twitter suspended the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed's Twitter account. Saeed planned the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Just before the account was suspended, Saeed called for Pakistanis to help Kashmiris get "freedom" from India.

In New York, Facebook has attempted to retroactively block search warrants that allowed authorities access to more than 300 Facebook profiles. The warrants investigated the profiles of individuals that lied about disabilities to receive financial support from the government. Photographic evidence found in Facebook profiles showed the individuals participating in water sports and martial arts despite claiming debilitating disabilities.

In an event entitled “Clicks, Tweets and Likes: Canadian Democratic Citizenship in a Digital Age,” Canadian researchers released the results of an ongoing survey looking at the impact of social media and politics in Canada. There is apparently little impact. Sixty percent of Canadians have a Facebook profile and 18 percent have a Twitter account, yet only 15 percent share political content on Facebook and only 5 percent on Twitter. A researcher stated, “We’re finding Canadians don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook or Twitter interacting with politicians, or even with each other. One of the big things they do is go to government websites to get information. People are more interested in e-government than e-politics, more interested in services and less interested in being politically engaged.”

Channel 4 News in the UK successfully uncovered the Indian marketing executive based in Bangalore running Shami Witness, one of the top pro-ISIS Twitter accounts. Shami Witness has since shut down his twitter account and the man allegedly behind the account has been arrested.

In Hungary, another protest against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was organised via social media and staged on the streets of Budapest this past Thursday. Called "Our Nation, Our Money," this protest demonstrated against the eviction of the National Gallery and National Széchenyi Library from the Buda Palace to make room for the Prime Minister's office.

The International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda withdrew charges against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for the 2008 post-election violence.  The ICC Prosecutor said social media harassment of protected witnesses and the Kenyan government's refusal to share information hampered her investigation.

The Turkish government's ruling party is allegedly spreading rumours in social and traditional pro-government media that the two Turkish authors Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak are part of a pro-West international literature lobby that aims to attack Turkey's government. Pamuk is a Nobel Prize winner and Shafak referred to the massacre of Armenians in one of her novels.

Erlan Karin, the director of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the president of Kazakhstan (KazISS) told journalists Tuesday that blocking websites is a reasonable and effective approach to ensuring information security. His statement arose after an ISIS video showcasing Kazakh children circulated on local social media.

Amidst criticism from activists, Facebook's founder Zuckerberg invited Chinese internet regulator Lu Wei to Facebook’s California headquarters and praised the Chinese President Xi's book “The Governance of China.”

Taiwan's Premier Mao Chi-kuo, elected last week, expressly noted that his government will pay more attention to opinions expressed in Taiwan's social media as a means of "standing in the people's shoes."

In India, Uber, the social app used to find a ride home, is in trouble in Indian social media and with the Indian government. After a 27-year-old woman was allegedly raped by her Uber driver in New Delhi, the Indian government banned Uber and all web booking transportation services that had not received regulatory approval from transit authorities. Uber has ignored the ban and continues to operate in India.

Meanwhile, the Indian government this past week cautioned bureaucrats to refrain from sharing confidential material via social media due to concerns that social networks that are not owned or operated in India might have access to sensitive state information.

In the Philippines, Senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV called on citizens and government to use social media to help each other in times of disaster. The typhoon Ruby provided perfect opportunity, and indeed the nation's Ruby Response Cluster, via the Twitter (@rubyresponse) and Facebook accounts (Ruby Response Cluster), among others, used social media to collect and exchange up-to-date information for disaster respondents and victims. There was also a bit of social media banter after a photo of the helmet-less 2016 Presidential hopeful Manuel Roxas II falling off a motorcycle in a muddy, post-Ruby road was circulated.

The Abbott Government in Australia is trying to use social media as a part of a campaign to drum up support for a bill allowing universities to set their own tuition rates. The campaign website and additional outreach are funded by tax payers, which has resulted in a lot of backlash against the campaign itself. 

For more, follow @Linda_Margaret on Twitter.

Social media in government: 30 November to 6 December 2014

In general news, Facebook blogged in “Making connections to Facebook more secure” that the social network is now directly available to Tor users. This "provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud."

In Mexico, the anti-government hashtag #YaMeCanse has been replaced with #YaMeCanse2 after #YaMeCanse mysteriously disappeared on Twitter. Users blame “peñabots,” fake Twitter and Facebook accounts that aim to "confront criticism" against the very unpopular Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and his government.

The USA democracy watchdog organisation Freedom House published its 5th annual Freedom on the Net report. The report looks into internet freedom in 65 countries between May 2013 and May 2014. Overall, 41 countries created legislation to limit freedom of speech online in some way, 38 countries arrested individuals for online communication (the Middle East and North Africa were highlighted as particularly punitive), and it looks like government is making it increasingly difficult to be an independent news site.

In the USA, a New York grand jury decided not to indict the police officer who killed Eric Garner, a 43-year-old black man and father of six in New York City who was doing nothing wrong and was unarmed at the time of his death by strangulation. This kicked off a number of online (and offline) protests under the hashtags #CrimingWhileWhite and #AliveWhileBlack. Meanwhile, the hashtag #HandsUpWalkout remains strong, continuing to spike offline demonstrations in remembrance of the police shooting of an unarmed black youth in Ferguson, Missouri.

The US government has also cautioned soldiers to be careful on social media as ISIS may be tracking US military via their social media accounts. 

Canadians are attacking a #Bill10 Amendment in the province of Alberta. The Amendment makes it possible for schools to avoid allowing students to set up gay-straight alliance on campus. Online protesters, including a Canadian sports star, have criticised the government for promoting discrimination through the amendment.

In the UK, Quilliam, a counter-extremism think tank, issued a white paper called The Role of Prevent in Countering Online Extremism. The white paper calls for the UK Government to develop positive long-term measures to counter extremism, including outreach via social media.

The UK Crown Office issued social media prosecution guidelines this past week. Social media prosecution in the UK may be permissible when social media posts:

• "specifically target an individual or group and are considered to be hate crime, domestic abuse, or stalking
• constitute credible threats of violence to the person,damage to property or to incite public disorder
• may amount to a breach of a court order or contravene legislation making it a criminal offence to release or publish information relating to proceedings
• do not fall into the above categories but are nonetheless considered to be grossly offensive, indecent or obscene or involve the communication of false information about an individual or group which results in adverse consequences."

In Ukraine, the creation of a new Ministry of Information Policy has caused widespread ridicule on social media. From fake Twitter accounts to trending Tweets renaming the Ministry the "Ministry of Truth", the online backlash has caused Yuriy Stets, the new Ministry's leader and the former head of the Information Security Department of the National Guard of Ukraine, to try to explain the idea behind the Ministry in a Facebook post.

The Kenyan government announced plans to introduce policies to monitor social media abuse by Kenyans. Controversial and sometimes violent content has made it onto social networks following, for example, a recent Mandera Bus Attack.

South Africa remembered the death of leader Nelson Mandela December 5th. Online, the hashtag #RememberMandela allowed users to share memories and images of Mandela's life and legacy.

Turkish columnist Ali Tezel (@tezelali) revealed in a Tweet Monday that he was fired by his paper Habertürk due to personal Tweets criticising the Turkish government's reaction to a mining accident in Soma in which 301 people were killed.

In Egypt, the court dropped all criminal charges against former President Hosni Mubarack, spurring protests. During the Arab Spring, an uprising arguably organised largely via social media, many of those involved called for the immediate dismissal and jailing of the corrupt leader. His release is seen another step backwards, calling into question the effectiveness of the uprising.

Indian Minister for Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad reported to the Indian Lok Sabha that fake or duplicate social media accounts are on the rise in India. "In most of the cases, such fake/duplicate accounts were successfully disabled in association with social networking sites having offices in India," Prasad reported.

A study of Chinese social media attacking the Chinese government for its environmental policies (or lack thereof) found that much of the online conversation was hijacked by corporate or government accounts. “Citizens acting online made some real changes to how the government handled the air pollution problem, but government and corporations used the same online tools to advance their own agendas,” a lead researcher noted. The same researcher observed, "The most influential users in the debate were almost entirely composed of government sources, companies or famous individuals."

The Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) announced it will monitor social media for seditious remarks as a part of plans to empower the Sedition Act of 1948 and counter online extremism.

Social media in the Philippines is abuzz with jokes following the ill-conceived public service video "Gaga Girl, Bobo Boy" aimed to educate Philippine youth about teen pregnancy. This is not the first government viral video to achieve unintentional popularity.

Finally, the Australian parliament introduced a bill this past week to create a Children's E-Safety Commissioner office.  The Commissioner would work with Australians and social networks to take down posts that constitute cyberbullying. Under the bill social networks could be fined up to 17 000 Australian dollars a day for not taking down identified content. 

For more, follow @Linda_Margaret on Twitter.

Social media in government: 22 to 30 November

Happy Thanksgiving for those of us from the USA. My holiday celebration means this column is a day late.

Starting with Canada: peaceful protests on the 22nd of November denounced government budget cuts in light of increased defence spending in Montreal. Demilitarize McGill, a group dedicated to highlighting and protesting federal government-funded research into drones, data mining and social media analysis at McGill university, participated in the protests and posted about the event on social media.

Canada also finished up Bullying Awareness Week the 22nd. The week is meant to raise awareness about the potential emotional and physical pain associated with all types of bullying, including cyberbullying. Canadian advocates from groups like Stop Hating Online,  #Cyberlove and Fearlessly Girl praised how social networks provide powerful tools for youth in the fight against bullying.

In the USA, Thanksgiving is followed by #BlackFriday, a day of sales and shopping that is almost as celebrated as Thanksgiving day itself. This year, #WalmartStrikers took to the streets and to social media to demand better wages and more full-time work. Walmart earns about 16 billion US dollars in annual profits and is the USA's largest employer of 1.4 million workers. The store pays poverty wages and uses part-time work schedules to avoid offering benefits to employees.

The USA National Security Agency Civil Liberties and Privacy Director Rebecca Richards held a tumblr chat with concerned netizens early last week. Users could question the Director about NSA policies via the IC on the Record tumblr blog or on Twitter via @icontherecord.

A controversial case involving social media, free speech, and threatening language hit the USA Supreme Court this past week. Anthony Elonis posted threatening messages about killing his wife and images in which he pretended to kill a female co-worker to Facebook and will argue that his social media posts were therapy rather than threats, protected under the Constitution as free speech, and that they should not be held against him by the USA's Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In Jamaica, Environment Minister Robert Pickersgill is in hot water with Jamaicans online after the Minister's comments that most Jamaicans know nothing about Twitter. The Minister claimed that government criticism on social media came from an "articulate minority" and did not necessarily represent the opinions of "ordinary" Jamaicans.  Jamaican netizens disagree.

The UK parliament targeted social networks this past week. The parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) published its inquiry into the May 2013 murder of a British soldier on a London street by two British Muslims. The inquiry suggests that social networking companies have a duty to not only monitor discussions between members of their online communities but also to inform governments of any suspicious communications. The parliament's science and technology committee published a separate report stating that social media terms and conditions are too complex for users. At the same time, Theresa May MP (Member of Parliament) outlined plans for a new law that will compel firms to hand over digital information that will help identify who was using a particular computer or mobile device at a given time.  

For more light reading, The Guardian hosted social media week for government, encouraging local government leaders to write about their use of social media. 

Uganda held the country's first social media summit the 26th of November. Catch up on #SMUg14 here.

The United Arab Emirates hosted a media Forum the same day. Habib Al Mulla, lawyer and writer, spoke at the Forum on UAE laws that impact social media, "One is spreading misleading information deliberately. The second is spreading rumours that threaten national security. The latest concerns posting pictures or information and pictures of a person's private life. This will draw a fine and jail term."

The UAE Governance and Innovation Programme at the Mohammad Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG) in cooperation with Dubai Press Club presented the survey "2014 UAE social media outlook: increasing connectivity between government and citizen."  The survey noted that most citizens do not feel comfortable sharing private information with the government via social media. However, most survey participants did agree that more social media interaction with the government could benefit the design and delivery of public services.

Russia's Ekho Moskvy, one of the last independent radio stations still permitted to, on occasion, criticise the Russian government, is drafting new social media guidelines after an "insensitive Tweet" by one of its journalists. The questionable Tweet suggested that the drowning of the son of the Kremlin's chief of staff might be a sign of justice given the drowning victim had earlier killed a pensioner in a hit-and-run car accident. 

A new Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in India must be elected by the 23rd of December, and the political campaigns are heating up on social media. A former Bharatiya Janata Party idealogue filed a petition challenging the current Indian Government's use of social media to disseminate information to the public on the grounds that social network companies may misuse the information. The Indian Congress is criticising the Government's changes in policy post-elections using the hashtag #UTurn Sarkar. 

United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malaysia's largest political party, hosted its International Forum 2014 titled Hyperconnectivity and the Social Media: Empowering Citizens to Build or Divide a Nation. Umno president and Malay Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak said that the biggest challenges for his party included the rise of social media, generation Y and support of the Chinese community after the 12th General Election. Malay Prime Minister Najib has a following of more than 2.2 million on Twitter. 

In Australia, the Immigration Minister is under fire for spending almost $120,000 on monitoring the media, including social media, for mentions of specific names and topics. His is not the first office to be criticised for this offence; however, he is notable given his overall lack of media engagement despite his office's obvious interest in what is being said in the media. 

Finally, December 5th marks the one-year anniversary of Nelson Mandela's death. South Africa plans to distinguish the occasion online and offline. Follow the hashtag #RememberMandela to participate.

For more, follow @Linda_Margaret on Twitter.

Social media and government this week - 15 to 21 November

Summary

The theme for Europe this week is privacy. Italy hopes to better mediate data-sharing. Romania's President is the most popular politician on Facebook. The UK has warned police officers to keep mum. 
Across the pond, a Canadian public service announcement is generating amused buzz while the Government is worried about online ISIS recruitment. In the USA, several social media events occurred while a few studies looked at social media use and the police, social media use and banks, and social media use and counter-terrorism.  
Chinese teachers are warned about their social media content, and a Philippine Minister used Twitter to set the record straight while others in his country explored social media use in disasters. Indians are campaigning against rape while authorities in Jammu and Kashmir order a social media gag order. 
Egyptians are sad about a young girl's suicide, a Nigerian Governor credits social media in his success, Uganda issues social media guidelines to its public servants, and Jordan's Queen calls on Muslims to change the social media narrative of Islam. 

Finally, don't forget to check out a suggested tool used to detect spyware.

Europe 

Italy, currently holding the European Union's rotating presidency, has proposed an EU-wide data protection board to mediate disagreements between Member States over data-sharing. The current EU approach to data disagreements and privacy is the purely advisory board, the Article 29 Working Party. At the same time, the Austrian Max Schrems in Max Schrems Vs. Facebook is taking aim at the Safe Harbour agreement between the EU and the USA. Schrems says Safe Harbour offers no protection - would an EU privacy authority offer more?

 In other European news, Klaus Iohannis, the recently elected 5th President of Romania, has also become the most popular European politician on Facebook.

In the UK, police officers have been asked to avoid their uniforms and keep quiet on social media when it comes to work. Authorities fear terrorists might be targeting British police and using their online profiles to help plan an attack.

North America 

In Canada, a Tory ad attempting to discourage citizens from smoking pot through scary music and questionable claims has been roundly mocked in social media and given over 2500 "thumbs down" on YouTube (with only about 100 "thumbs up").  At least some of the credit goes to Reddit users where a long thread drew a lot of online attention to the video.

In more serious Canadian news, the government has noted that there have been a few cases of ISIS recruiting North American women as wives via social media. The government has ordered a study looking at: "why and how women are recruited; the proportion of women in terrorist groups and support networks; women’s motives for joining; the radicalization process for women; and the security challenges posed by the recruitment of women."

Finally, in Dartmouth on Canada's East Coast, emergency officials and volunteers took part in a disaster-management test Wednesday in which they were trained in using social media to better manage real world crises.

Canadians take experiment by storm, US assisting! http://t.co/8iDdByfD2X @katekaminska1 @TabTalks @pcdawe @DRDC_RDDC pic.twitter.com/sqcIJJ52o5
— FieldInnovationTeam (@FITreadytogo) November 19, 2014

In the United States, a study noted that American law enforcement agencies use social media for several purposes: for crime investigations, crime anticipations, and, less frequently, to engage with or inform the public of emergencies, disasters, or crimes. Most law enforcement agencies in the study claimed that they expect their social media use to go up in the future.

Meanwhile the Counter Extremism Project (not all that popular on Twitter) uses the hashtag #CEPDigitalDisruption to flag terrorist Twitter accounts for Twitter to take down. Not that this does much good. Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush and now head of the Counter Extremism Project, noted "It'll take Twitter 10 to 12 days to actually shut [the terrorist accounts] down. And it takes these [terrorist] guys, you know, as long as it takes to take a home pregnancy test before they reopen another account and they're up."

ATTN @Twitter: @greenbird70_72 says @BarackObama is the next westerner to be beheaded. #CEPDigitalDisruption pic.twitter.com/mVB4nuryA0
— CEP (@FightExtremism) November 17, 2014

Another US study focusing on banks noted that online users are not all that influenced by social media when it comes to their increasing (and already pretty significant) distrust of banks. Instead users rely more on their personal experiences with banks - although Millennials and Gen X'ers are paying more attention than Baby Boomers to what is said about banks on social media.

Four USA-based social media events happened over the last week.

Qlik hosted a hackathon with the United Nations in Orlando, Florida.

Rise Up, a network activist forum hosted in Washington DC, successfully brought social media dissent into the Real World when Code Pink protestors disrupted a live interview between journalist Jorge Ramos and US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.  Ramos invited the protestors to explain their position onstage and Power responded.

The New York Social Technologies in Emergency Management (SoTechEM) project presented "Social Media Practices in Local Emergency Management: Results from Central New York.” 

Social media strategist for the city of Boston Lindsay Crudele, GovGirl Kristy Dalton, Social media strategist for the city of Las Vegas Jennifer Davies, and Derek Chan of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, co-hosted a webinar on what being a government social media manager involves.

Asia

In China, an article widely shared on social media stated "Dear teachers, because your profession demands something higher of you, and because of the solemnity and particularity of the university classroom, please do not speak this way about China!" The article warned teachers to lay off rhetoric that was overly critical of the State.

The Philippines Manpower Minister Muhammad Hanif Dhakiri, an avid Twitter user @hanifdhakiri, set the record straight after he was misquoted by an online news portal this week. Twitter followers of the minister blasted his account with criticism, and the Minister was quick to respond with an explanation.

Rappler, in partnership with the Australian Embassy in the Philippines and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) held an event this week to train local Philippine executives and disaster management personnel in the use of social media as a tool for disaster preparedness and response. The 2012 World Risk Report identified the Philippines, one of the world's most populous countries, as also one of the world's most disaster-prone.

@zakyuson shares how the #ProjectAgos tool works #agostest @MovePH #ZeroCasualty #commisaid pic.twitter.com/fqaHHGnxRQ
— Aaron Aspi (@aaron_aspi) November 17, 2014

One of the biggest trends on Twitter this week came out of India. The male Bollywood star, Farhan Akhtar, became UN Women's Goodwill Ambassador. Akhtar, @FarOutAkhtar on Twitter, launched the 2013 social initiative Men Against Rape and Discrimination (MARD) following the horrific gang rape of an Indian medical student on a bus that grabbed global headlines.

Well done #FarhanAkhtar! Totally deserved and a fabulous and intelligent decision by #UNWomen. What better than... http://t.co/3RxwQ1Hxnr
— Poonam Joshi (@PoonamJoshi_) November 14, 2014

The Jammu and Kashmir Police in Northern India issued a gag order demanding that employees refrain from criticising the government or the police on social media. In Maharashtra, the government plans to strengthen social media labs of the regional police to combat cybercrime, in particular social media posts that look to incite local violence between different social groups.

In Bengaluru, where there have been nine cases of sexual abuse against schoolchildren, over 200 students came together to issue a Children's Charter on how to avoid future sexual abuse. In addition to asking parents to behave better, the Charter asks that children be banned from using social media and mobiles.

The Indian state of Gujarat hired social media experts to boost the region's brand.

Africa

Egyptian social media is abuzz after twenty-something  Egyptian Zainab El Mahdy hung herself allegedly citing her depression over Egypt's resistance to change following the 2011 revolution.

Before suicide activist Zainab El Mahdy wrote: "There's no justice.. We're lying to ourselves just to live." #Egypt pic.twitter.com/qmfjQr2PuP
— Mina Fayek (@minafayek) November 13, 2014

At Nigeria's 2014 Ogun State Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Press Week, Osun State Governor Aregbesola claimed social media was key in his victory and noted that social media needed to be “[E]xplored and protected for the betterment of our electoral process and political life but it should also be constitutionally made part of our electoral process.”

The Uganda Directorate of Information and National Guidance developed a set of social media guidelines for public servants. Government workers are not to post personal opinions on official accounts and are to identify themselves when discussing any topic in an official capacity on social media. The guidelines will be reviewed at a national Social Media Summit next week. 

Queen Rania of Jordan implored participants at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit this week to express the voice of the moderate Arab in social media. "We must create a new narrative and broadcast it to the world. If we don’t decide what our identity is and what our legacy will be, the extremists will do it for us."

Tools

Finally, worried your phone has been bugged by the government (as opposed to the NSA just harvesting your data via court orders issued to Google and Facebook?) Get Detekt, Amnesty International's new tool. Detekt scans your device for signs of spyware. 

For more, follow @Linda_Margaret on Twitter.