Session 8.2: Isaac Mao on the earthquake
“How Will The Social Brain Evolve in China?
Isaac starts off with some background, his alternate angle to studying the Chinese internet over the past 4-5 years that might help explain his presentation. Look at this conference, there is good turnout. However, what we cannot see is how the people here are connected. The invisible things: how well-connected the people are to each other.
Looking at the Chinese internet, we cannot see how things develop. Many Chinese internet users are switching their online habits from readers to reader-writers. All of the cases in the past year, from SexyPhotoGate to the torch relay to Sharon Stone, illustrate big changes on the Chinese internet. These are problems moving beyond the box that are becoming more and more complex.
So, how will the Social Brain evolve in China?
At this point Isaac puts a map up on the overhead, an outline of China with flame graphics scattered all across the map, suggesting fires have broken out all across CHina. He will share this on Slideshare.
Taking teacher “Runner Fan” Meizhong, who was criticized widely online and off- for having run out from his class at the instant the earthquake struck. Then there’s “Jumper Guo” the former soldier who criticized Runner Fan on his blog, and then was invited by Phoenix TV to “PK” (battle). In this PK, Runner Fan showed up and explained his side, stuck to his points that he is whohe is, a human being with his own faults. “Jumper Guo” jumped up (earning himself the nickname) and stormed out of the TV studio at that point (and got a lot of flack for that).
Isaac shows the video, link here.
Following the exchange on the tv show, which has been WIDELY discussed online, and people had a chance to consider Fan’s side, combined with Jumper Guo’s response, opinions began to change. Isaac says: if you take the time to consider the story, you’ll see that it’s not all crazed e-nationalists out to kill people, but that there is balanced discussion. This kind of discussion is happening everywhere on the internet today. If you could remove some of the noises in those discussions, you would see a lot of things going on in this country that just a few years ago, you would not have been able to. Instead of people being ruined, or displays of nationalism, you can see people’s views and opinions being revealed.’ In contrast, officials tried to downplay the incident of the ‘Tiger Zhou’ and his South China Tiger photographs. But in reality (online), people are working together, putting their heads together, to think about problems, thinking online, and coming to conclusions.
Propaganda departments in China can effectively control traditional media, but they cannot control the emerging/evolving social media in which the user is the creator. Isaac emphasises that this happens in particular where bloggers use their realID, which comes with credibility. He also mentions the WIDESPREAD trend for Chinese journalists opening up their own blogs, collecting information from their Twitter friends, their Facebook friends, and this becomes a social fabric. This kind of fabric cannot be controlled.
Ten years ago, we would only be able to get earthquake information from CCTV/Xinhua/foreign media etc. Yet in this earthquake, for the first five minutes after the Sichuan earthquake, the story was on Twitter. “Beijing is shaking. Shanghai is shaking.” From this you can see how this is different from the traditional media space.
What we’re seeing now is the image of Amateur Journalism shaking hands with Professional Journalism. Amateur Journalism is people using their mobile phones, their Twitter, their SMS messages, and sharing that information with mainstream media.
Following the earthquake, Isaac mentions 1kg.org, which received information through these amateur journalism channels, and responded by sending what was needed: food, tents, trauma counsellors.
The most important thing in China is: how can we help people, facing the Great Firewall, achieve free space?
What is Evolving Social Brain?
-worries about cybernationalists/”fenqing”
-society evolving in a way beyond that which the government either likes or dislikes
-beyond ways that individuals like or dislike
-the changes are complex, but we’ll see the formula one day.
The ‘Social Brain’ will be the key in the future of this country. Society is changing. It’s a macro phenomenon, so nobody can control it. You can only participate in it.
Isaac at this point brings up Minesweep the PC game, using an image of the game on Large setting to illustrate the growing complexity of the Chinese internet, pointing out that there are now more than 210 million internet users in China.
isaac.mao@gmail.com
[You have to check out Isaac's SlideShare]
Questions:
Is this too much technological determinism?
Isaac: I didn’t say that technology can save the world. It can however create more intelligence. The best way is to help more people collaborate in a flat way, and define their positions in society, create more than just noise. It’s the future of human beings, but we cannot tell that this is determined already.
Q: What you’re describing is the emergence of a public space, which is determined by technology. Reality is, though, that authoritiescan invade this space. So is this really a free space, free markets, or can authorities control it?
Isaac: I agree that the government always has the strong power and always wants to control. A good balance, however would be from the people. If they are not legitimate, tehy will try and go beyond what it’s in their rights. Ian Young is a good model, but we are not following that in China. There are always rules in society, and that can be considered as governance, but people can always work around those.
Q: DO you foresee an end to censorship in China as we know it in China?
Roland: I don’t foreseee an end. This goes back to Deborah Fallows’ research, where there are not so good things happening on the internet. An earthquake happens, and and people tell jokes to gain the limelight. Or others say they predicted it and the government allowed those 70,000 people to die. People in some sense shouldn’t be allowed to say that.
Isaac: I think the government should have some control over the internet, over those malicious content, for our children. Hong Kong is free on the access part, but not on the free thinking part.
In China there are two parts to censorship: Censorship 2.0: people who were educated under censorship and censor themselves, and business who comply with ‘hidden rules’. Even if the GFW were removed, people would retain that thinking. That’s one. People can break censorship, and make it completely useless. At present, there are 5% of internet users who know who to use tools like Tor and get information through their friends. The internet is connected for them, and they can get what they want.
So even if the government puts more money into research into how to censor the internet, they cannot effect it.
Q1: What are some of the important pieces/components of the system that is shaping the future? In terms of internet research, what role is the internet playing shaping that future?
Isaac: one of the experiments [Isaac brings up memedia.cn, Strawberry + grassroots media, collaboration work online media, so nobody needs to do everything on one particular week. Groups continuously contributing from week to week, and at the end of the week, MeMedia journal comes out. It may not be the Truth, but it is what’s happening on the Chinese blogsphere. We need to create new models, new ways of communicating and thinking.
Q: We see a lot of changes that allow individual usersto control and creat information. What does that mean for the role of the journalist (in newsmaking)?
Roland: the biggest change that I would like to see is require journalists be bloggers too. You see situations, the most insightful stuff, say a major natural disaster somewhere. The journalist goes, wirtes his article. Order comes down, can’t be printed. So he puts it on his blog. Then he follows it up. Adds in his notes. “I have all this stuff, here it is.”
That defeats censorship on two levels: from above, and self-censorship. Items he kept out of the original report out of habit, now go on the blog and stay there.
Isaac: I’m not a journalist, but journalists should be trained to use new technologies: blogs, microblogs, things that can help them collect mroe information. New technologies can help improve that part. It’s a handshake.