Lebanese Papers
The larger significance of the Red and White Revolution is this: it is being read about and viewed by tens of millions of people throughout the world. This is the nature of revolution in a global media culture.
Glenn Reynolds famously wrote, "the revolution will be blogged." Well, this one is, and it is also broadcast, written about, talked about, and sung about on a global scale, and that makes all the difference. Claude Salhani, writing for UPI reports:
Washington, DC, Mar. 2 (UPI) -- Modern communications is breaking down the gates of censorship in the Middle East, helping spread democracy by denying governments the monopoly they once held on dissimulating information.He has lots of good stuff to say about blogs. Read the whole thing here.
Satellite television and the Internet have already defied censorship rules imposed by autocratic leaderships in the region. Authoritarian regimes are starting to find it impossible to sustain their restrictive ways in a rapidly changing world where taboos are being broken and fears abandoned.
Borders -- both physical and imaginary -- that for decades were kept hermetically sealed in efforts to control the flow of information are now being flung wide open as a result of governments being unable to control the airwaves and the word-wide Web. It's not for lack of effort on their part, but there is simply too much information to control, even in countries with totalitarian regimes.
Now, a growing trend - the proliferation of blogs -- is making it all that much harder for governments to police the free-flow of data.
It turns out that Claude, in addition to being UPI International Editor, is himself a blogger. Check him out here.
2 comments:
Eric Muller (isthatlegal.org) has pointed out that every picture of happy Lebanese protesters/democrats, etc., Glenn Reynolds has posted is of a young, pretty female. This is no exception. Is this selectivity (Reynolds' or photojournalists), or is there an unexplored gender aspect to this uprising?
Hi Jon,
Nice observation.
In my own defense I would point out that the first photo shows only one woman and several men. The second shows women reading newspapers, which illustrates the subject of my post. Still, I may well have unconsciously selected for pretty women.
Reynolds took pics from the BBC photoessay and yes he seems to have selected pretty women to feature [not that there's anything wrong with that]. There is also a bias on the part of photo-journalists. Editors like to see pictures of pretty women because that's what readers like. [Come to think of it if I want to attract readers msybr I should select for pretty women too.]
I don't know about the gender aspect. I believe Reynolds implied some point regarding that, showing a mixed joyous throng at Freedom square, and contrasted it with an all male group of Syrian protesters displaying guns.
Post a Comment