Environmental reporters under threat

A panel including investigative reporters from from China, Pakistan, Egypt and Haiti as well as free speech advocates from RSF and CPJ was devoted to the threats professional as well as citizen journalists encounter when writing about local environmental issues. Reporters without Borders just have a report out on this, “High-risk subjects: Deforrestation and Pollution”, which provides a good world-wide overview of the issue.

Writing about environmental issues often gets people into conflict with companies and local government, which are in many cases strongly intermingled. A Moroccan activist told me that he keeps his anonymity not out of fear of the government, but because companies would not employ him if they found out about his commitment to preserve the Mediterranean environment. This has been the fate of Egyptian Tamer Mabrouk, who was fired from his job and fined about 5.000 Euros for blogging about his employer’s illegal waste-dumping.

Liu Jianqiang, probably China’s most influential investigative journalist, told a similar story. His reports on environmental issues such as genetically manipulated seeds have attracted a lot of attention. Prime minister Wen Jiabao himself is said to have stopped work on the “Tiger Leaping Gorge” dam when Liu broke news that it lacked official approval. Yet he lost his job at the prestigious Southern Weekly over an unauthorised interview with the Washington Post – an excuse to get rid of a journalist who had angered influential companies and local government with his stories, Liu says.

While CPJ’s Frank Smyth told the harrowing story of Russian newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, who was nearly beaten to death for reporting critically on plans to build a commercial centre in a forrest area, RSF’s Jean-François Julliard warned that “economic pressure is a strong threat”. Newspapers are facing losses in ad sales if they write articles critical of major local companies, and journalists or bloggers are living in fear to lose their jobs.

Besides violence and economic pressure, legal procedures are another way to bar environmental reporters from doing their work. Smyth reported that Lucio Flavio Pinto, founder of the Brazilian magazine Jornal Pessoal, did not dare to attend the Global Media Forum. Pinto is currently facing more than 30 lawsuits brought against him by companies. He does not want to leave Brazil out of fear that courts could rule against him in one of these lawsuits in his absence.

To avoid these threats, Liu advised his colleagues to fact-check their reports with the utmost accuracy so as to not allow their opponents to legitimately challenge their work. Rina Saeed Khan, from Pakistan, “as a developing country journalist, you have to make as many international links as possible”, saying that international pressure was important to free persecuted journalists.

My German readers may also be interested in an article I wrote for Spreeblick about this issue, “Wer über Umweltschutz schreibt, lebt gefährlich”.

Listen to the session’s audio recording on SoundCloud.

Two projects on solutions to climate change

One panel, which discussed “covering climate protection and possible solutions”, showcased two interesting media projects with a positive outlook on climate change. One is run by journalists, one by activists. I’ll spare you the discussion on whether there is a difference between journalism and activism (and if yes, what is it?).

Global Ideas, produced by Deutsche Welle, is devoted to “showcasing people & projects from around the world taking action against climate change.” Their weekly six-minute videos feature entrepreneurs mostly in the energy sector (e.g. “Biomass briquettes in India”. All the content is available in five languages (English, German, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese). Their communication efforts on Twitter are not really successful yet, but they say they forward any request they get to the respective organization.

OurWorld 2.0, a UN University project based in Tokyo, “reports on and analyzes innovations in order to inspire people to learn” in four categories – climate, oil, food and biodiversity. It’s a webzine (about one profound article every two days) with occasional videos produced at quite a high quality. Their world-wide aim is visible in a map showing the location of the webzine’s subjects. OurWorld 2.0 is published in both English and Japanese.

Listen to the session’s audio recording on SoundCloud.

Ushahidi wins the Best of Blogs award

Crisis mapping tool Ushahidi was awarded the prize as “best weblog” at this year’s BOBs. I must say I don’t really understand why – their blog is very informative, but to me it seems as if the jury rather chose Ushahidi as a platform and organization. Nevertheless, it certainly is a very interesting project.

Erik Hersman said that while the technology behind Ushahidi wasn’t new, its use is. While “technology will always be only be ten percent of the solution”, these ten percent allowed them to “disrupt the status quo” in the aid sector, which he called the “huminatarian-industrial complex” during the press conference. Those of you following Ushahidi more closely might notice that Erik perceives the importance of these 10% vastly different from his colleague Ory Okolloh, who recently cautioned: “Don’t get too jazzed up! Ushahidi is only 10% of solution.”

Finally, some general words on the Global Media Forum

All in all, I really enjoyed Deutsche Welle’s conference. Not so much because of the panels – I only managed to see a few – but because of the great participants. The conference had an extremely multicultural atmosphere, aided by the attendance of Deutsche Welle’s international staff. I finally had the opportunity to meet Jillian C. York, who won the best English blog award for her project Talk Morocco, a blog featuring several well-known Moroccan bloggers’ articles in monthly single-topic “forums” (check out their latest edition on citizen media, including a highly critical article by my friend Mahdi).

But I was also disappointed about some things I heard. On the “dangers” panel, Jean-François Julliard did not caution to admit that in the field of environmental reporting in non-free countries, bloggers are more in advance than traditional journalists. But other panels, focusing on the role of journalists in times of climate change, were full of the ignorance of professionals, who kept up the image of journalists as reporters of nothing but the matter of fact, which prompted a Norwegian colleague to say that “this kind of objectivism has survived only in journalism”.

Alex Kirby, a veteran BBC environmental reporter, moderated the first session I attended, entitled “Who will fuel our future? A fundamental debate between rivalling energy sources.” In the beginning, Kirby said to the announcer: “You called me a gentleman twice, but I am a journalist and these two don’t go together.” Indeed, I twittered, a journalist should court nobody. Yet the session proved to be an advertising space for such controversial companies as the Desertec project, with almost no criticism.

In fact, Deutsche Telekom’s Ignacio Campino dared to propose that journalists team up with companies to “educate” the “customers” on the issue of sustainability. All this at a broadcaster’s conference. Do I even have to ask to which level journalism must have degenerated to make this shameful proposal possible?

All the sessions are up as audio recordings on SoundCloud.

The book begins with a section on Contexts, addressing not only the technology of network infrastructure, devices, and applications, but also the social, economic, and political environment in which digital activism occurs.

An analysis of Practices follows, not in the usual format of case study analysis, but by presenting different ways of thinking about these practices. The section begins with a chapter on pre-digital social movement theory, while a second chapter takes the digital perspective of web ecology. Both constructive and destructive activism practices are discussed.

The final section on Effects seeks to address the range of opinions on digital activism’s value. While optimists see the great potential for citizen empowerment, pessimists believe that the empowerment of forces of repression is equally likely. Skeptics view both askance and do not believe digital activism makes much difference at all. We leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.

My own contribution, entitled “The New Casualties: Prisons and Persecution”, deals with the downside of digital activism. It is based on research into the circumstances of bloggers’ arrests around the world. I have published the data I used for my chapter on this blog, so you can fact-check my claims.

I am looking forward to your reviews of the book and to any feedback to my own contribution. It’s only the second time that any of my writing is published in print (the first was an article for a local student’s magazine), and I am a bit anxious about it. But for now, the book as a whole has already received positive attention, among others from Esra’a Al Shafei, the founder of Mideast Youth who is probably the one who has brought me to digital activism, and Dan McQuillan:

I hope and expect that this book will inspire the next generation of activist researchers to test the boundaries of their knowledge in a digitally engaged practice that has fairness and justice as its ethical core.

Digital Activism Decoded is published under a Creative Commons license which allows everybody with no commercial interest to copy and disperse it, as long as the content stays unaltered. The book is available as a free download from the Meta Activism Project’s website. You can also preorder Digital Activism Decoded from Amazon (de | us), where the print version will go on sale on June 30, 2010.

At re:publica 10, I interviewed Nigerian researcher, writer and activist Sokari Ekine on mobile activism in Africa for my current employer, Spreeblick. Earlier that day, Sokari had participated in a panel on the same issue. She has also edited a book on mobile activism, SMS Uprising, which I reviewed on this blog.

Both her panel and this video interview, when we published it on Spreeblick some days ago, did not receive the attention they deserve. I think it’s a pity, because Sokari shares a very experienced, down-to-earth view of technology in activism that is different from the common hype.

I have asked Sokari some questions that paraphrase this hype – whether mobile phones can provide an idea for a better future for Africa, whether they can be used to combat illiteracy and poverty. I hope she didn’t mind, because she gave exactly the answer that I had hoped for.

Sokari likened mobile phones to a pen: They are but a tool, and they can be used for good as well as for bad¹. This view should be the most natural thing in the world, but apparently it is not. If I look for media reports on digital activism, I will rather find stories on new technologies than on successful projects (which include much more than just a technology put to an issue!).

It seems as if we have already accepted the supremacy of the gadget. Do I even need to mention the iPad? What wonders have we heard this piece of plastic and cables will achieve! Were we not told that it would safe journalism in one strike?

My issue with the iPad is not that its influence was massively exaggerated. What bothers me is that it seems as if we have accepted that gadgets are shaping our habits, yes, that technology is at the core of our societies, rather than common values².

Remember those newspaper editors, how they have bowed in front of the iPad. It is not the quality of their work or the role of journalism in society that they trust in to find a business model, but a mere piece of technology.

This bothers me: It seems to be a common belief that there is some kind of technological determinism, that our civilization will rise and fall with the development of gadgets. Then it is indeed reasonable to see Steve Jobs as a guru, because the products of his company are part of the law that our societies are following.

In this situation it is a big relief to hear an experienced voice, and Sokari is one of the most trustworthiest that I could think of, say that “no technology can provide a better future”, and that it is about us to use the tools that are e.g. mobile phones to shape our world.

¹ also see: Goldstein, Joshua; Rotich, Juliana: Digitally Networked Technology in Kenya’s 2007-2008 Post-Election Crisis. A shortened version of this essay is also included in SMS Uprising.
² my German-speaking readers may also be interested in a talk by Miriam Meckel at re:publica 10 on the same issue.

Evgeny Morozov, the man who coined the term “Twitter revolution” and, despite that, has often been called a “cyper-pessimist” was one of the first speakers of the event. And while I often find Evgeny’s argumentation to be too polemic, sometimes even Andrew Keen’esque in it’s pessimism, the man has some very valid points.

In the times of the GDR, the Stasi supported a huge network of “inofficial contributors” who were coerced – through threats or monetary rewards – into spying on their peers. Nowadays, this is no longer necessary, says Morozov. Authoritarian regimes can instead discover activists’ networks by looking them up on Facebook. In my eyes, the grandchild of the Stasi is China’s “50 cent party”: An enormous horde of people paid for spreading propaganda on the ‘Net.

There has been a change in the role of access to information. Publishing information has become so cheap that it is the new default, even in environments where this would previously have been a “no-go”. And the regimes react – not by suppressing information, but by discrediting the sender. What does this mean for the importance of freedom of information?

Daniel Schmitt of Wikileaks seems to base his work on the conviction that transparency leads to a better world. It’s some kind of a journalistic determinism. Global Voices’ David Sasaki questions the role of investigative reporting: “Is it really true that traditional journalism minimizes corruption?”

For Jeff Jarvis, that’s not even a question. “We now must defend the public,” he says, “because what is public is owned by the public, and that’s us.” And “if you cut down from the public, you steal from all of us. [...] If you don’t share your knowledge, you’re being anti-social.”

The evening before, Christian Heller fought privacy at taz’ MediaTuesday event. Data security, he says, can be used against us. It “doesn’t necessary protect the weak from the powerful”. David Sasaki says that more and more raw data is put out on the ‘Net and it’s up to us to put it in context. Christian Heller wants to free information from its context. He calls this a plea in support of postmodernism.

Sokari Ekine, who talked about mobile activism in Africa, in an interview that we did said that revolutions are made by people, not by technology. Sami ben Gharbia wonders why media attention often focuses more on the technological development than on the issue, taking much-hyped crisis mapping tool Ushahidi as an example.

Iranian women right activist Farnaz Seifi tells me in an interview that the Iranian people “don’t need any other help rather than [free access to information]“. Evgeny Morozov explains to netzpolitik.org that the power of information is a myth stemming from America’s efforts during the cold war. Americans, he says, still believe that the US won that conflict – because of Radio Free Europe.

But he’s united again with Seifi when it comes to Western donors supporting projects in foreign countries. Their money disengages genuine activists, he claims. “I personally do not agree with lots of the projects inside the country with foreign countries’ budget”, says Seifi. “This is our internal fight. We have to do it ourselves.”

Kyrgyzstan: Revolution, social media, activism through contemporary art

The event was attended by a small group from revolution-shaken Kyrgyzstan. Tolkun Umaraliev highlighted Central Asia-centered group blog NewEurasia and social media news site and blogging platform Kloop.kg has valuable sources during the coup d’état. Eventhough only 14% of the population have access to the Internet, Tolkun sees citizen journalism in an important position.

He also told the story of Timur Toktonaliev, a 16 years old blogger who is the youngest journalist ever accredited to the Kyrgyz parliament. Working after school, he reports from the ongoings at the parliament. Readers of his blog can also pose questions to their deputees, which Timur will then try to get answered in interviews with the politicians.

Nellya Dzhamanbaeva of ArtEast told me about how they use contemporary art to raise awareness for social issues. While censors – mostly older people – did not understand contemporary art, the young audience they aim at would get the message, she told me.

As for the current situation in Kyrgyzstan, both Tolkun and Nellya seemed unsure what to expect. Visibly shocked by the second bloody revolution within five years, Nellya told that she doesn’t see a coup d’état as the right way for the country. Tolkun, while praising interim president Rosa Otunbajewa as a “very intelligent person”, said he wasn’t sure what to expect for the future, as the promises of the new leadership could turn out to be populism again, as were those of the revolutionaries of 2005′s “tulip revolution”.

Citizen-proposed legislation in Thailand

Niw Wong spoke about her work at iLaw.or.th, a Thai website that aims to promote citizen-proposed legislation. Since 2007, Thailand’s constitutions requires only 10.000 signatures to bring citizen-proposed legislation into parliament (first introduced through the constitution of 1997, 50.000 signatures were required before). iLaw.or.th collects ideas by citizens and helps them in drafting valid proposals.

Citizen-proposed legislation is, in my eyes, a great concept. Yet no draft has made it into the parliament since the opportunity was introduced more than ten years ago. Niw points out the complex process required for supporting a proposal as a key problem, which includes providing an ID card at a local . A more simple process, probably similar to Germany’s ePetition system, could make it easier for people to support drafts, thus making citizen-proposed legislation an effective tool for participatory politics.

Preparing for violent elections in Uganda

Next year, Uganda, a country that has not seen a single peaceful change of government in 48 years, will have only the second multi-party elections in its history. Gerald Karuhanga of the Justice and Development Council fears that the country will experience the same post-election violence that in 2009 left thousands of Kenyans dead.

An initiative called “PRESERVE” aims to reduce and document violent events before, during and after the elections through regional workshops, information dissemination, debates, public dialogues and “research based advocacy”, mostly trying to reach out to youth leagues, but also police and women’s organisations.

As tools for information dissemination, Gerald named mostly broadcasting tools such as TV, radio and newspapers. Asked about the use of mobile phones, he presented two ways of using mobile phones for information dissemination, namely through sending out SMS and voice mails. The latter is especially interesting because through voice messages, the huge illiterate part of the population (32%) could possibly be reached as well.

Still I think that mobile phones could also be used as a back channel, i.e. for information gathering. E.g. Ushahidi was developed as a crisis mapping tool during Kenya’s after-election riots, and in Ghana activists have used mobile phones to monitor elections and document possible evidence of vote rigging, one of the stated goals of PRESERVE.

Hip hop spreads political messages in Africa

Parker Mah held an enlightening talk about political hip hop in Africa. “Hip hop is booming in Africa”, he said, asking “why hip hop and why Africa?”. I can only recommend you to check out his presentation on Prezi. The slides are mostly self-descriptive and contain most of the content of Parker’s talk, including some great examples of African conscious rap.

As a personal educated guess, I have made up my own answer to Parker’s question. In the West, for several hundred years we have been used to see political criticism presented in written form (i.e. newspapers). Africa, on the other hand, has a longstanding history of oral information dissemination (e.g. Mali’s griot tradition). So hip hop, in my eyes, can be seen as continuing this tradition.

Hungarian elections

Visiting Hungary on election day (April 11), I got a devastating image of a democracy where young people see no (liberal) politicians they can trust in as an antisemitic, antiziganic, neofascist party – Jobbik – gets nearly as much votes as the currently governing social democrats. My German readers may be interested in my article for Spreeblick where I describe my impressions.

The book consists of two parts, each comprising a series of essays by international authors. The first four chapters target the context of mobile activism. Christian Kreutz has contributed a great summary of future trends and software developments in African mobile activism.

Another essay by Ken Banks asks whether “social mobile” is “empowering the many or the few”. Ken is the founder of FrontlineSMS, “a free software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone or modem into a central communications hub”. As the second part, consisting of seven case studies, includes a chapter co-authored by Juliana Rotich, the book brings together developers of two applications that stand for the success of mobile activism in Africa, FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi.

I especially liked the essay by Rotich and Joshua Goldstein on “Digitally networked technology in Kenya’s 2007–08 post-election crisis”. It is a short version of a case study written for the Berkman Center’s Internet and Democracy Project. The chapter looks at three facets of social media in a conflict situation: “SMS campaigns to promote violence, blogs to challenge mainstream media narratives, and online campaigns to promote awareness of human rights violations.” Here’s a short excerpt dealing with the latter part:

Ushahidi is a mashup: a blending of two internet applications to relay information in a visually compelling way. The design teams combined Google maps, which allows users to zoom in and view satellite images of Kenya, with a tool for users, via mobile phone or internet browser, to report incidents of violence on the map, add photos, video and written content that document where and when violence occurs. [...]

The Ushahidi platform is revolutionary for human rights campaigns in the way that Wikipedia is revolutionary for encyclopaedias: they are tools that allow cooperation on a massive scale. Yochai Benkler describes this phenomenon as ‘commons-based peer production’, and argues that it has a central place in rethinking economic and social cooperation in a digital age.

The essay more than once refers to Benkler’s outstanding work, The Wealth of Networks. I am just now reading this book myself and I find it to be very useful to fully understand the whole magnitude of the social media revolution we are experiencing. As Rotich and Goldstein write, “Yochai Benkler provide[s] useful language to help us begin to understand the place of these tools in society.”

SMS Uprising combines theoretical groundwork and practical case studies useful to everyone interested in the use of mobile technology for activism and development. While some chapters are a bit longer than necessary, in combination the book provides a good overview of the issue.

SMS Uprising is published by Pambazuka Press. It is available on their website as a paperback plus PDF for £12.95 or the PDF alone for £9.95 as well as on Amazon.

The publisher encourages non-commercial redistribution of the work, so if for any reason you cannot afford to buy the book, drop me a mail at [myfirstname] [at] [thisdomain] and I’ll send you the PDF.

I think these posts came way too early. You shouldn’t write meta on the first day of the relief efforts. Plus, there is no surprise in the fact that yes, social media is great for fundraising. Don’t get me wrong: I am in full support of those people who are using Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the net to collect donations, though I share Felix Salmon’s concerns that “throwing money at the issue” might not be the best solution for Haiti.

What I am criticizing is the euphoria of certain cyber-utopians who are now praising social media. You wouldn’t praise the town square because you can go there and ask people for donations, would you? Twitter and Facebook are nothing different: Virtual places you visit to converse. It’s not by chance that one of the early forms of “social” media on the web was called “forum”, just like the places where Romans went in ancient times to converse.

Currently, the social web doesn’t change anything about fundraising. Money still flows from the same pockets to the same NGOs as before. That’s exactly what these organizations want. But there’s no reason to be all euphoric about this.

There are indeed things related to the social web’s role in humanitarian relief that ought to be written about, such as the CrisisCamps taking place in several cities of the US. What Ushahidi and the OpenStreetMap community are doing is simply amazing. From a social media point of view, we should not miss these efforts just because the Red Cross is doing what it has always done – fundraising.

You might also want to read this interview with Patrick Meier on Ushahidi’s response to the Haiti earth quake, and German readers may be interested in my articles about this issue for netzpolitik.org and gulli:news.

Simon Columbus: [...] So what is Ushahidi?

Patrick Meier: Ushahidi is a free and open source platform that allows organizations to crowdsource information and to visualize this information dynamically on a map.

Simon Columbus: That sounds really technical. Can you delve a little deeper into Ushahidi’s structure?

Patrick Meier: Sure thing. Ushahidi simply aggregates information, so users can text in information or tweet in or go directly on the Ushahidi website and enter in information that way. The easiest way to think of Ushahidi is as a clever website, which you can send information to using different communication technologies. Information on human rights abuses, for example, or human trafficking. This information can then be mapped geographically, such as riots in a particularly neighborhood of Tehran.

Simon Columbus: What is mapping such information good for? In the last years, you have worked hard to establish “crisis mapping” as an academic field, so it is more than just a nice overview, I guess?

Patrick Meier: Sometimes it’s easier to understand information when it is mapped. For example, take a spreadsheet with lots of numbers: It may be difficult to make sense of the spreadsheet, but one could take the numbers and graph them, which would reveal more about the information. The same is true with mapping. It is simply a way to visualize information in order to reveal more about said information, e.g., like patterns. And yes, crisis mapping as a field is not just about mapping. It’s about information collection, data visualization, geospatial analysis and decision-support for operational response.

You can read the full interview in English on netzpolitik.org.

Today, Global Voices Advocacy is launching a new website called Threatened Voices to help track suppression of free speech online. It features a world map and an interactive timeline that help visualize the story of threats and arrests against bloggers worldwide, and it is a central platform to gather information from the most dedicated organisations and activists [...].

Threatened Voices aims to crowd-source information on harassment and arrests of bloggers worldwide. I had the opportunity to talk to Sami today at a Google event on freedom of expression in Berlin and he told that people already started to submit reports, which is an amazing start for the project.

I have committed some hours myself to entering data from my research on blogger arrests for the DigiActive book. Unfortunately I never got around to do as much as I would have liked and it doesn’t look much like I will do it anytime soon.

But here’s the deal: I still have my list of arrested blogger that I compiled for the book research. As far as I am concerned, it is the most comprehensive list dealing with blogger arrests on the net – at least I did never see anything similar. And if I cannot enter all the data myself, I can at least share this list with you. Just download it below.

I would love if some of you would take up what I have compiled and work with it. Whether you choose to submit it to the Threatened Voices database or to play around with the data in another way is open to you. If you use it outside of Threatened Voices, crediting me and linking to this site would be nice. By the way I have proposed that Threatened Voices should get an API, so anything that is added to its database should be available for mashups in the future.

Just some quick introduction to the structure of my list: It consists of the names of 162 bloggers that had been in prison at any time before August 1, 2009. That’s the cut-off date I chose for my book research. Please note that some of these people actually might not have been put in jail for their blogging, but other reasons. This is often unclear. All arrests and releases are sourced, so you can easily do additional research and verify the data. The status – whether someone is currently in jail – dates from August 1, 2009, so it might have changed since then. The rest should be self-explanatory. If not, there are plenty of way to contact me.

Download the Excel sheet here

The protests erupted rather spontaneously after professors and students at the much smaller Academy of Fine Arts ended a press conference with the statement that from then on the auditorium was seized. Soon, students at the University of Vienna followed suit. Nicole Kernherr, who served as the protesters’ spokeswoman on the first eve, reports:

“We got news about something going on there via mobile phone through personal contacts. Those who are committed to such things know each other quite well here.”

But there were no groups involved in organizing the protest. In fact, the Austrian students’ council, which had been behind protest events in the past, still remains relatively silent about the coup. Instead, the protest is organized to be strictly non-hierarchical, Philipp Sonderegger writes:

“The protest is not organized hierarchically, but network-like flat, decentralized and with many nodes. Spokespeople are newly elected every day to prevent individuals from becoming to important. [...] The six members of the organizing team are elected newly every day as well. Allegedly, decisions are prepared in 44 working groups, but have to be rubber-stamped by the plenum to prevent informal structures from taking hold.”

This is also empowered by a live video stream set up to let people follow the plenum online.

Officials of the university have complained about not having a distinct person to address. They were countered by an invitation to speak in front of the plenum. This is just the way the protesters communicate themselves: To the masses. Early-on they have used twitter not only to mobilize, but also to organize and coordinate.

If there is a lack of, let’s say, rice at the canteen, it’s just twittered. Many of the tweets by Unibrennt or those tagged #unibrennt (German for “university is burning”) are similar requests. And the network proves its ability to allocate resources effectively.

But as Jana Herwig remarks in an article entitled “from flash mob to #unibrennt: collective organization in real-time“, the outside world has difficulties to deal with this protest culture.

Herwig makes the point that there is actually a misunderstanding at work of what is political. She picks up criticism that the protesters were just “partysans”, that they were in fact non-political and did not have serious interest in their cause. A criticism that was partly fueled by said live video stream, showing people partying after discussion were over.

Herwig counters that in fact, protesters could never be dead serious 24/7. Previous generations of protesters did party just as this one does – but they were living in different media circumstances. When media was limited – only a few could produce media, and even those still had limited space to broadcast it – protesters could present themselves in placative events, narrowing the image the public would get of them.

“But today, protest is turned inside-out: mobile phone photos, Twitter news, Facebook groups, mobile coverage and of course the live stream from the lecture hall – all this provides opportunities to monitor the squatters at every turn,”

Herwig writes.

And she defends the protesters against accusations of having no program. In fact, she embraces the program being created collectively now that the sit-in has begun:

“This protest is different because one has not come up with elaborate pamphlets, but the program, starting from first demands yet, is evolving.”

Herwig bases her argument on the primary point of discussion at the plenum on Friday noon:

“Basis for the discussion: What was started with the sit-in? How shall it proceed? What do we want to achieve?

Officials struggle to counter this movement, yet it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The first squatters at the academy of arts started their protest demanding “re-democratization instead of neoliberal politics of leadership”. Now the protest’s level of democratization is disarming the old leadership.

There is just no way to decapitate a network, writes Sonderegger. Only if informal structures should finally take hold, providing the authorities with a handle to take on the now-liquid, young movement, it could face rapid marginalization. Meanwhile, the protest has spread to other universities, e.g. in Graz and Turin.

The Bologna process and other neoliberal reforms of the education system are affecting schools and universities in all of the European Union. It will be interesting to see whether these protests can gain further ground in their aim to promote “education, not formation” and a re-democratization of Europe’s universities.