Social media in government: 9 February to 15 February 2015

Twitter released its biannual transparency report Monday. Quick stats:

• the number of requests for user information in the second half of 2014 went up 40%
• Twitter received 2,871 requests for 7,144 user accounts
• Twitter cooperated with 52% of requests
• more than half of government requests came from the United States
• the biggest increases in requests came from Russia and Turkey
• Twitter did not cooperate with Russia and Turkey on any of their requests.

Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Bitly, Dropbox, and Yahoo! have joined forces with ThreatExchange, a social network for cybersecurity experts to share information. ThreatExchange was developed from an internal Facebook network designed for “cataloguing threats in real time.” The page for the network notes, “[t]he beauty of working together on security. When one company gets stronger, so do the rest of us.”

Tuesday was Safer Internet Day (#SaferInternetDay #SID2015). Campaigns focused on how to improve the Internet for children and adults.

The United Nations Population Fund ran a social media campaign this Valentine’s Day (14 February) to encourage users to say #Idont to child brides.

Europe and US tech companies continue to debate the extent to which individuals have “the right to be forgotten.” The Google Advisory Council published a report that stated the following with regard to the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) decision that Europeans have the right to ask Google to remove links about them from search, “The Ruling is not precise about which versions of search a delisting must be applied to. Google has chosen to implement these removals from all its European-directed search services, citing the CJEU’s authority across Europe as its guidance. The Council understands that it is a general practice that users in Europe, when typing in www.google.com to their browser, are automatically redirected to a local version of Google’s search engine. Google has told us that over 95% of all queries originating in Europe are on local versions of the search engine. Given this background, we believe that delistings applied to the European versions of search will, as a general rule, protect the rights of the data subject adequately in the current state of affairs and technology." Meanwhile, Andrus Ansip, the EU vice president in charge of the digital single market, stated at the Google-sponsored Startup Europe Summit in Berlin that he felt the ECJ ruling should apply globally.  Neither opinion is binding - yet.

In the UK, a Parliamentary report looking into rising hate speech online and off suggested banning offenders from social networks with an "internet asbos." The report suggested, “There is an allowance in the law for banning or blocking individuals from certain aspects of internet communication in relation to sexual offences. Informal feedback we have received from policy experts indicates that this is a potential area of exploration for prosecutors in relation to hate crime...if it can be proven in a detailed way that someone has made a considered and determined view to exploit various online networks to harm and perpetrate hate crimes against others then the accepted principles, rules and restrictions that are relevant to sex offences must surely apply.” In the UK, Jews are eight times as likely and Muslims are three times as likely to be victims of religious hatred as Christians.

The British-based NGO Faith Matters fired a Rabbi representative for Tweets last Monday. The NGO, dedicated to reducing interfaith tensions, fired Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet for controversial Tweets about Palestinians. “A few tweets made by Rabbi Schochet have taken very strong positions which have led to difficulties for us." Difficulties allegedly include threats from some funders to withdraw financing for the NGO following the Rabbi's social media statements.

The French government issued a decree that requires Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down websites within 24 hours of receiving a government order. While government leaders claim this decree will help tackle terrorism, civil liberty groups argue the decree is too broad and threatens freedom of speech online.

Tuesday the volunteer Azov battalion, loyal to the Ukrainian government in Kiev, announced via Facebook that it had captured villages northeast of Mariupol.This puts the rebels closer to the Russian border.

Despite actively disdaining Twitter, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the account @RT-Erdogan to send his first signed Tweet encouraging Turks to stop smoking. “Get a grip of yourself against this poison,” Erdogan wrote, using the hashtag #SigarayaTeslimOlma (Don’t give in to cigarettes). The Twitter account, formerly run by Erdogan supporters, will now be run by Erdogan's official staff. The Turkish President will sign any Tweets that he sends out personally. 

On Wednesday, the 20-year-old Turkish student Ozgecan Aslan was raped and her body burnt by a bus driver. Her name has become a hashtag rallying Turks online and offline to protest the alleged increase in violence against women in the country.

A Turkish journalist kidnapped over a year ago by ISIS and released after 40 days of intense negotiations has just published a book about his hostage experience. The journalist, subject of a social media campaign run under the hashtag #FreeBünyaminAygün, feels that governments need to do more to protect journalists taken hostage.

Following up on the release of Australian Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste (subject of another social media campaign), his Egyptian and Canadian colleagues have also been released by the Egyptian government. The journalists were held for allegedly having published content that was "damaging to national security."

The Nigerian Governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, asked youth Saturday to use social media to engage the government in positive work. The Governor's speech was featured at the inauguration of a 1.7 km road at Umeh in Isoko South Local Government Area of Delta State. The road was initiated following a Facebook post by a local citizen pointing out the poor state of roads in the area.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has restored social media as well as Internet and mobile connectivity throughout the country following public unrest after actions by President Joseph Kabila to extend his tenure in office. Citizens had been using text and social media services to organise protests against Kabila. The government claimed turning off the Internet and mobile was necessary for the security of the country, given that protests last month led to 45 deaths and over 1000 injuries.

Namibia's ICT Ministry is poised to finish the the Electronic Communication and Cybercrime Bill. The Bill aims to protect Namibians from defamatory content posted on social media. If the bill becomes law, Namibians will be able to request the removal of defamatory images and information from social networks.

Zimbabwe's Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Professor Jonathan Moyo is now on social media (Twitter @ProfJNMoyo and Facebook.) The irony of his is social media presence has been questioned given Zimbabwe's reputation for controlling the national media both online and offline. Just this same week, Professor Moyo banned journalists from sharing photos of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe tripping on the stairs at Harare International Airport after addressing party supporters who had gathered to welcome him from the African Union Summit in Ethiopia where he assumed chairmanship of the continental body. Despite the ban, photos of the fall were leaked to social media. Moyo complained, “If you go to that sacred temple in Cambodia and you take pictures of yourself nude and so forth like some French people were doing a few weeks ago, the police come, they will delete. That is an appropriate reaction, if they don’t delete they  [the journalists] deserve to be fired,” said Moyo.

The Zambian President Edgar Lungu has asked Zambians at home and abroad to be kinder to the country on social media. The statement supposedly came as a result of Zambians in the diaspora criticising the country's Draft Constitution on social media. “Some Zambians have not read the Draft Constitution but they want it like yesterday. The roadmap is definitely there but I cannot speak on the issue because I am a President,” President Lungu stated as a part of his request.

In South Africa, the State of the Nation speech (#SONA2015) was the subject of several social media conversations before, during, and after the actual event. One satirical personality asked South Africans to #CommitYourSelfie to social networks prior the speech and ask President Jacob Zuma's Government to #PayBackTheMoney (allegedly $23 million) it squandered on "upgrading" a home for Zuma. During SONA itself, members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party disrupted the speech several times before being forced out by security. Several videos of the disruptions made it to YouTube and South African social media is still buzzing about the various national scandals.

The United Arab Emirates continues to prepare for the upcoming International Government Communication Forum (#IGCF15.) The Forum will host a social media corner and social media awards for the best Tweets and Instagram photos posted per session. This past week the OECD as well as representatives of the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Culture, Youth, and Community Development; the Federal Demographic Structure Council; and the Emirates Identity Authority, praised the communicative efforts of the UAE, highlighting, among other things, its outreach to citizens via social media.

In India's capital, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) is celebrating a local election upset both in the halls of government and in social media. The opposing BJP party started the election season by taunting the AAP's chief ministerial candidate Arvind Kejriwal online for his large iconic muffler using the hashtag #Mufflerman. The AAP social media team took up the popular hashtag and turned it to Kejriwal's advantage, using the social media nickname to praise their leader's work. "Kejriwal emerged as the most influential of Delhi’s chief ministerial candidate on Twitter. In January, Kejriwal had 1.04 million mentions of his Twitter handle, far ahead of the 560,000 mentions for the BJP’s Kiran Bedi and 56,000 for the Congress’ Ajay Makan."

Vietnamese tech companies, including home-grown social networks like the now defunct Haivl.com, are finding that new national regulations could hinder or even shut down a erstwhile booming start-up scene.  The Ministry of Information and Communications shut down Haivl.com after the network featured content that the Ministry decided was "offensive to a historical figure" (Ho Chi Minh.)

In the Philippines, #ProjectAgos will host another social media workshop based on the success of its social media crisis management response during Hurricane Ruby.

The Thai Government aimed to use the hashtag #DinnerOnly to encourage Thai teens to abstain from sex this past Valentine's Day. The scheme backfired as Thai social media poked fun at the Government for its failed campaign. 

Australia celebrated Safer Internet Day with the introduction of legislation to centralise the protection of children online under the new office of the Children's e-Safety Commissioner.

While Kiwis in New Zealand celebrated #WaitangiDay online and offline, the Minister in charge of New Zealand's spies met his colleagues from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia in London (the Five Eyes). The ministers published a joint statement that claimed they plan to work together to address terrorists' use of social media to radicalise jihadists.

American President Barrack Obama attended a California summit where he signed an executive order that aims to help the private and public sector work together to address cyber threats, including the use of social media to recruit terrorists.  Obama said, "So much of our computer networks and critical infrastructure are in the private sector, which means government cannot do this alone.  But the fact is that the private sector can’t do it alone either, because it's government that often has the latest information on new threats."

In the beginning of the week, a man shot and killed three Muslim students in North Carolina, allegedly over a parking space. The man claimed via his social networks to be an atheist. The tragic deaths initiated the social media hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter (recalling the campaign #BlackLivesMatter at the end of 2014.)

President Barrack Obama also released a humorous campaign to promote healthcare.gov/ and the final sign-up date (15 February) to 18 to 34 year-olds via the top site reaching this demographic in the USA, Buzzfeed. The campaign has been widely shared (with positive and negative comments) via social media.

The USA's National Security Agency also tried to be funny during Valentine's Day be releasing a few, slightly jarring Tweets including "Every move they make, every step they take. We’ll be watching our foreign adversaries. #HappyValentinesDay from the #NSA #vday2015," and "Roses are red, violets are blue, #NSA loves privacy rights and you. Learn more from NSA's #CLPO Director http://bit.ly/1CgYRGH  #vday2015."

Venezuelans honoured protestors from the #SOSVenezuela movement one year ago using the hashtag #YoSalgoPor (I go out for...) with the reason that they choose to protest the current Venezuelan administration. 

The Internet "Hacktivist" group Anonymous continues to target ISIS, this time via social media. The group posted a list of top ISIS social media accounts to the site Pastebin, promising to take down the accounts. “We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you,” Anonymous explained in a YouTube video released last weekend. “From now on, no safe place for you online…you will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure.”

For more in-depth research this week, you can look at Kantar's China Social Media Impact Report. The report includes data from 13,341 online user surveys in China, as well as face-to-face interviews and text-mining of Weibo and WeChat posts.

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.