New Media: Ushering in a New Era of Protest? Or Just Another Tool to Mobilize?

International Institute Journal University of Michigan Vol. 1, No. 2 Spring 2012 JOURNAL New Media: Ushering in a New Era of Protest? Or Just Another Tool to Mobilize? Inside: New Media and the Middle East: Thinking Allowed by Annabelle Sreberny The Politics of Energy and What it Means for the Climate by Brian Min Translating Human Rights Testimonies by Christi A. Merrill Burmese Change: Opportunities for Myanmar? by Dominic Nardi Health through Accompaniment in Rural Liberia by Colin Yee II JOURNAL Spring 2012 University of Michigan Contents New Media and the Middle East: Thinking Allowed 2 by Annabelle Sreberny The Politics of Energy and What It Means for the Climate 6 by Brian Min © NASA Translating Human Rights Testimonies 10 by Christi A. Merrill Photo by Subedi2022 Burmese Change: Opportunities for Myanmar? 13 by Dominic Nardi Health Through Accompaniment in Rural Liberia 16 by Colin Yee On the Cover: Ken Kollman, Publisher Top: Apple iPhone 4 screen with news applications including CNN, ABC News, Washington Post, BBC News, Director of the International Institute and USA TODAY. Susanne Kocsis, Editor Middle: New York, NY, USA – October 11, 2011: Protestors broadcast updates over the internet via social Assistant Director of the Center for International media from their camp in Zuccotti Park, also called Liberty Park, as part of the Occupy Wall Street campaign & Comparative Studies (CICS) to protest corporate influence on democracy, and issues related to the global financial crisis. Updates via social Kirstin Olmstead, Circulations and Online Manager media and live streaming from the Park ensured a large active campaign of protest and connected NYC with Marketing and Communications Specialist for the protests in Seattle and elsewhere. International Institute Bottom: Athens, Greece – May 9, 2010: People wearing white masks are protesting outside the Parliament Susan Cybulski, Page Designer building against unpopular EU-IMF austerity deal. II JOURNAL Spring 2012 University of Michigan 1 Welcome to the Spring 2012 issue of the II Journal! he II Journal is pleased to present a few of the highlights of another dynamic year at the International Institute. Apropos of a political year, politics are at the core of each article in this issue. From the political uprisings witnessed across the globe this year, advanced in part by new media, to the political choices made in the everyday work of energy distribution or literary production, Tto new political players and structures appearing in former dictatorships, politics inform these essays in obvious and subtle ways. In Fall of 2011 the it Means for the Climate, Brian Min (CICS This year the International Institute International Security and Development University of Michigan hosted a day-long Fellow) explores the role governments play Wallenberg Committee symposium on New in supplying electricity, and how the type of awarded Aung San Media/Social Change government (democratic/ non-democratic) Suu Kyi the 21st Raoul to examine the impact determines which sector of society (citizens/ Wallenberg Medal of “new media” (social, network, digital) industry) gets priority in the delivery of in absentia for her human rights work on international news, political movements, electrical power. Soaring energy needs in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Dominic and on traditional news media. In our lead worldwide have serious consequences Nardi (a political science graduate student) article, New Media and the Middle East: for the climate, and the challenges of delivered the Wallenberg medal to her in Thinking Allowed, Annabelle Sreberny meeting increasing demand and addressing December. The next article describes his visit (Centre for Media and Film Studies, environmental concerns often present with the human rights activist in Burma. London) analyzes the role of new media conflicts for policymakers around the globe, He discusses the political transformations in contemporary political mobilizations and new questions for political scientists. taking place in the country, and Daw across the globe. She discusses the role Suu’s transformation from resistance of Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, mobile leader to politician. He addresses the phones, email, and the 24-hour news cycle The literary process challenges of rebuilding after 50 years of in the socio-political unrest unfolding across (from writing to military dictatorship destroyed the public the Middle East and Western countries translating to editing institutions there. Democracy hangs in the alike. She examines the intersection of to publishing to balance as the country struggles with a new social networks with traditional forms reading), especially shortage of professionals who understand of news broadcasting, and old forms of in an international public management. political activism with its emphasis on context, is full of political repercussions. meeting spaces such as squares or parks In Translating Human Rights Testimonies, (Tahrir, Benghazi, Zuccotti, St. Paul), and the Christi Merrill (CICS Human Rights Fellow) Closing out the combinations of media tools and political discusses the ideological implications issue is a narrative actions used to topple authoritarian regimes of translating literary texts, particularly by another student, (Libya, Egypt), or respond to the global in translations of works describing Colin Yee, who financial crisis (London, New York, Athens). discrimination into the language of the traveled to Liberia colonizer. She explores the consequences of with the help of categorizing a work as fiction, non-fiction, an International Institute Individual While revolutions are autobiography, or even literary, and how Fellowship to complete an internship with by definition political, such delineations can alter the reader’s the NGO Tiyatien Health. Health services politics also play a perception of events described in the text. in Liberia are being overwhelmed by an central role in more How are terms such as “truth” or “universal influx of refugees from political turmoil in mundane activities— truth” defined in works of literature, neighboring Ivory Coast. The internship such as the provision especially human rights literature? included conducting research on a and consumption of electricity around the community health worker program, which globe. In The Politics of Energy and What serves as a model for paid health workers. 2 II JOURNAL Spring 2012 University of Michigan New Media and the Middle East: Thinking Allowed by Annabelle Sreberny The joke goes that Mubarak dies and meets Nasser and Sadat in the afterlife. They ask him “were you poisoned or shot?” since that is how each of them perished. Mubarak shrugs and answers “Facebook!” An Egyptian family did recently name their newborn daughter Facebook. here is no doubt that 2011 was a hour transnational news environment and Democracy Deficit? world-historical year. The insurrec- world-encircling Internet? Evidently, not all of the Arab World is tionary wave that started in Tunis in involved, yet. The monarchies of Saudi Suddenly it seemed, as if no one had December 2010 and is still unfolding Arabia and the UAE are trying to regroup. been looking, there was the “Arab Tacross the Maghreb and Middle East has One oil-rich society, Bahrain, is in turmoil Spring”—which seems to be an Al Jazeera raised important questions about the role and its regime has behaved brutally, nominalization—a wave of socio-political of new media technologies and platforms supported when necessary by Saudi tanks; unrest that moved across the region. And in contemporary political mobilizations. so too is the poorest country in the region, for all the money, the regional specialists, There has quite possibly never been Yemen. And in the rest of the region, the research, no one saw this coming! such a dramatic set of political changes the non-Arab countries are dealing with The first approach to events by experts in contiguous nations ever before. If their home-grown dissent (the camps on and media alike was open-mouthed the revolutions of 1848 in Europe were Israeli streets; the ongoing tensions in Iran; astonishment. supposed to be inspired by each other, how while Turkey parlays a new regional role as much more might that be the case in a 24- ‘honest broker’ in some of these issues). II JOURNAL Spring 2012 University of Michigan 3 If oil and Islam were too limited foci for roles in the recent insurrections to topple Citizen journalists as self-appointed adequate regional analysis, the other autocratic regimes from Tunis to Cairo and contemporary historians are photographing lurking third term was “authoritarianism”or beyond. New media cannot be considered and filming events and uploading them the “Middle Eastern democracy deficit.” the epiphenomena of political movements to You-Tube for an interested globalised This was always understood as internal but are rather significant tools of political audience to find; and indeed, much of lacks and deficiencies and rarely to do mobilization. This is not to repeat the this content has been picked up and re- with Western arm-trades, political support fatuous claim that Tunisia was a “Twitter broadcast by “old” media. Whatever the for conservative regimes to protect oil revolution,” as had been claimed for the intentions of their corporate developers, supplies, or skewed notions of what counts Green Movement in Iran after the June social media in many countries are being as development. Suddenly, the region has 2009 election, nor to argue that such tools used to provide

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