dr moscow this is artsy here you have lines a passenger plane goes down in russia's western siberia killing thirty one the frantic rescue operation pulling a dozen survivors out of the wreckage. a group of nations backing a regime change in syria are believed to be have now putting the rebels on the payroll and that would ultimately fly in the face of the un backed peace initiative . party fever permeates russia's opposition movements as the government prepares to loosen up registration for new and not so new political factions. now people of

ellen as guests of a cross talk discuss how far internet revolutionaries can actually go in changing the political landscape crosstalk. filmmakers. and. directors costco's real life in prison on charges of. low. income. to. follow in welcoming rostock i'm peter lavelle is collectivism we place an evening destroying meaningful social activism

from the arab spring to the coney two thousand and twelve fiasco the power in reach of social networking such as facebook you tube and twitter is undeniable but are these media themselves becoming the message and can clicking and sharing change the world. can. still live. cross talk quick to visit i'm joined by alex halliday in new york he is president of the association of internet researchers also in new york we have john perry barlow he is co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation and a fellow at harvard law school's perp and center for internet and society and in stockholm we got to get a lot of ink he is a media firas internet critic and author of networks without a cause all right gentlemen this is crossfire that means you can jump in anytime you want to learn if i can go to you first in stockholm came clicking and sharing changed the world. well in itself it's might not be very

meaningful but from a perspective of social movements it's really interesting what comes after the residue how it brings people together what we call you know organized networks they are going to replace let's say the old forms of political parties and trade unions and these are you know dense forms of organize ation that i have fully supported by networked technologies they're somewhat smaller units than what we see now you know what we see now is television spectacle you know for instance. kony two thousand and twelve so i'm more interested in what comes after ok after if i'm going to alex i mean i think that's one of the things everyone else is asking too because you know what is the sustainability because you can get all excited about kony two thousand and twelve and you can click and you

can share and then i'm absolved i did my bit you know and you can brag about it if you want and you can share and show how it's important to you and then you just go on to your daily business i mean it's about sustainability isn't it. well it may be i mean you can say that you go about your daily business but the fact is that those who have done this have changed change their attention in some way right there now attending to something that they wouldn't have been otherwise and some people are suggesting that they would be doing something rather than watching this but i suspect they would be watching something else they would be watching you know reality television instead so there is this level of awareness that sustains some of the core members of a social movement and i think that's important and i might take a slight. some slight difference with thought that the the outcome of the residue of these interactions is important i think that the actual interactions are the outcome that is that politics happens through discourse and so that if we have

a new way of discussing things online that that can be the residue itself and that's very interesting what do you think about that john because it's like the media is the message we go back to the very beginning of television. well first of all i don't think of the internet generally speaking as a medium it's more like an environment and i think that matters ok because part of what's going on here is people who are otherwise isolated in opinion and are fearful of that opinion being divulged in their context are suddenly made aware of the fact that many other people share that opinion they have a place that they can gather and find out that they're not alone that makes a huge difference now if they're also sharing it with a whole bunch of armchair revolutionaries and i've been one in some of these cases but it's an interesting case where the armchair revolutionaries can actually make a difference in the sense that ok john just you know i would be contrary you know is what is the difference ok just to be contrarian what is the difference

a difference but the difference is that the aware of what's going on on the ground in a pretty granular way makes it possible to deliver the people to the people on the ground tools that make it easier for them to convict the revolution that they're engaged in but also i mean i think the i want to say something about the coming two thousand and twelve i don't want to talk a lot about it go ahead which i passed on that i passed on to my followers with a certain amount of skepticism i mean it's the greatest piece of propaganda film making since triumph of the will there's no question. and i've been to i've been uganda i've been to northern uganda i know a lot about what has been going on there. and what's going on in the central african republic and that part of the congo and i think even though i had i knew that this was a. this was a very shallow set of insights into it it created this storm of discussion where i

think now an awful lot more people are aware of what's going on there you know it's not just you know i mean what do you think about i mean i mean and thing is that there's been an enormous amount of a discussion and criticism of that documentary but how much should people know learn more about a third if i can go to you because maybe because of the the way it worked on facebook and other places people realized oh it was a scam but nobody really knows why it was a scam you know what i mean. it wasn't precisely the. near future you know a lot of different people will be able to claim. it was their country buescher and does that to the arrest of coney you know there are now five thousand troops from the african union there are the obama advisers there's the ugandan army there's the colony twenty twelve campaign itself there is there's a lot. me ask you

a question it's kind of important you don't you so you still think this documentary has not been discredited in the in the in a broader scheme of things we will be discredited i mean being media critics but in the larger scheme of things it hasn't been discredited well maybe developments and a campaign but we need to separate that from the situation on the ground and there's also a lot of other things happening in northern uganda and across the border you know and things have been happening there over the last ten years so yes also in this is certainly all the like was out there a lot will happen ok john go ahead jump in. suddenly a lot of people are becoming aware of what's happened to the seven eight and we used to be here oh i mean he was a hero of mine i met with him back in the mid ninety's i thought he was the answer to the future and he's turned into the usual problem and having there be

a large amount of public opinion that feels that way is going to have an effect on american policy with regard to uganda and i think that's helpful. what do you think about ok alex if i can go to you i mean i would go back to this estate ability i would because again i'd like to stress the point all of us look at it very carefully and look we have our own criticism but in the in the popular imagination the i mean it was one hundred million clicks i mean and people still do you think people still believe that this kind of fight fairytale documentary that was made and it will have an impact on this not at all sure but i mean there were always tells the story out of here so it's a question of how to start let's go ahead alex first yeah alex first yeah john's absolutely right it wasn't a fairy tale it was a story and we always tell stories that's what we do in the media and that's true of social media as well as kind of the traditional mainstream media i mean i know i went into a classroom two nights ago to talk to undergraduates and and most of the people in the room had never heard of the l.

or a connie before the video and i know that that's kind of scary but with one hundred million people viewing it i suspect it's a large proportion of that hundred million and so again it's a small slice of attention but they're attending to it and most of them had not only had heard of it but also heard of the controversy over the over the video and so i think that more discussion is a good thing ok john do you think we'll see the repeat have invisible children because you think the next group of people who try to do something like this would be a lot more careful. well you know i think that was actually such a triumph for me in propaganda that not just anybody is capable of doing such a thing and also i think we're you know that was one of the last great gasps of broadcast media on the net. i think increasingly you will see things that are that are much more granular in the way that they operate and are trying to build movements that have substance around issues that are. easier to

relate to i mean the fact is that in this particular instance the bad guy in question is in a place where it's really very very difficult to ferret him out and he's also not as dangerous as he used to be but the problem remains i mean there have been more people killed in the eastern congo in the last decade in world war one and you know we're not paying very much attention to that fact ok so we will you could say the same thing about the palestinians ok i mean you know you don't have a film like that that goes viral you know you don't know you don't agree with the go ahead no no no i think it's good for the israeli palestinian conflict that it's somehow. not so centrally covered i mean the palestinians would love to have a film the invisible palestinian wouldn't. i don't know if if it would really benefit. i really doubt because. this is

a really complex situation and well no different than you can do no different than you can well really oh i think you get it all right i think i think it's very different. strategies. hang on alex go ahead jump in. he yeah even zuckerman makes the argument that we really should be paying i was trying to dampen should be paying attention to syria and so if you get if you do syria maybe that's what i mean this is this ends up being up there will be a lot of people who suggest that attention should be diverted to something else the truth is that invisible invisible children despite the sort of problems with the presentation it is certainly a piece of propaganda has captured a large portion of the attention and there will be people who say that our attention i would argue that our attention should be in the united states more directly approaching questions of what i was going on in afghanistan so there will

be this question of where attention should be that the truth is that invisible children managed to do this when they have a media piece that drew attention to a particular problem and i think that that is a model that people will try to to emulate jon you want to say something before we go to the break go ahead but the other thing is that their excuse me there are a lot of people on the planet who are online now a lot and that's a great many people that can have their attention focused on any number of different things it's not ok i'm looking at the central african republic which means i can't think about syria there are plenty of people thinking about syria. and you know for that matter i would i would be surprised to hear gentlemen i'm going to jump in here to go to a short break and after that she'll break we'll continue our discussion on like is the state party.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. if. it is to get the maximum political impact costs before the source material is one hopes if journalism honest we've. just seen we want to present. something up if say. the litmus

tests. just simply. insists. just say. it's. came. into. the menu for us talk a little about the amount you were talking about new social media and activism. taking. ok john i'd like to go back to you let me be this i'm always the cynic on my own program here

this is all about marketing it's about selling stuff it's selling bracelets and it's making yourself feel good about yourself that you made a contribution to something and you where if it's white or pink or blue and you wear it on your wrist and it shows that you're a real activist ok but some people call that slacktivism as well. you know the problem is that it's both. people need to feel some sense of engagement i actually think that it matters if you wear something like that on your wrist it matters if you have it in addition to wear you know on your wrist you're writing letters you're trying to become informed you're actually taking an interest in the overall pov political dynamic all those things can count if all you're doing is pointing about it from afar. but i wouldn't say that it makes a big difference but i do believe that one of the things that came out of that film was the realization for many people that if they really think about marketing in

a dynamic way for political causes that they may have they can start to present a lot of stuff that i think would be very helpful for people to see i mean for example if you take the israeli palestinian situation there is a huge and generally unseen mass of both moderate israelis and moderate palestinians very good that would love to be able to have the opportunity to come together in a film could do that but do you think about that that's a very interesting point go ahead. yeah i see ignore the manifestations of of sudden waves and these waves you could say you know are produced by the media from activist side but also from the mainstream press television and so on but the fact is there's been. a crunch we've had arab spring we've had numerous scandals around leaks

and most recently we've had a large. movement called occupy wall street we don't know how that that movement is going to manifest itself now in in the spring and you know so these are turbulent times so we don't even know what the next you know over the next weeks or months. is really going to happen so what you see is a growing awareness of these of these techniques how to bring in people how to model and this is my biggest problem with all this again trying to be skeptical alex you know just because you click on a page on facebook thing you like something i still don't see the results the outcome ok because john pointed out you have to do a lot more things for that outcome again the slacktivism thing you know you're

that's pretty superficial in a nanosecond. but i'll go back to something john said at the outset which is so there's a serious i mean if there is named on newman who suggests that there's a spiral of silence right those who won't speak up don't speak up in part because they don't know that others share their opinion and and i think a lot of what we see in the arab spring and elsewhere is people being aware that they are not alone in sharing this opinion so that one clip that that i agree and i'll leaving aside some of the criticism of the commodification of attention i'll note that marketers who have suggested that a vote is you know like is worth over one hundred dollars in terms of their ability to shape attention but even leaving aside that commodification knowing that your fellow citizen or someone else across the world is aware and shares your opinion on something provides the seed bed right there provides the environment in which people feel like they can act safely and have the support the site even if it's

a silent support of a large group of people behind them and i think that's ok alex i'm going to push you on this one where it didn't work so i'm really just not going to put you on the spot where is it worked when is it worked well so i you know that's me because i thought yeah i'm going to duck that spot. john you want to react to that you know just kind of you know we're going to mean i'd reason why we're doing this program because i think it's fascinating what's going on right now ok john you want to well i mean i don't mind your be skeptical i think there's plenty of reason to be but but i must say that in addition to creating a coalescing awareness that they were not alone i mean i've talked to a lot of people and met with a lot of people who've been involved in the various presidents. and the internet both twitter and facebook were extremely important in letting people know in real time where there were movements of police or army units what was going on where

they could get out of the way or get into the way and that's made a huge difference i mean you've got this command and control system that is completely horizontal and instantaneous and it's hugely pages to the people who are using it in the other tends not to ok so curtly it's logistics versus awareness is that the difference we're at right now because i think john's got a really good point well i come back to my emphasis on new forms of organization because we know from the studies that we've done in the ninety's and later on that when you look at these so-called virtual communities there's about one percent you know who's really active if you look at colony twenty twelve and then think of one percent that really becomes involved that's a huge amount of people and we know you know that for instance in the netherlands.

i was at the meeting last week and. we could clearly see that there was a core of people there coming together who didn't know each other who were indeed young they were really young and that's also known the demographics of this video and there is a new generation. and they are using these tools like you know are second nature ok but i mean i want to we have these all these millions of young people young people involved in this they buy a bracelet right i mean again it goes back to this kind of commodification because it's hard for me to believe that a lot of teenagers understood the nuances of uganda. right but no he didn't understand the nuances of you see i'm going to war you better i mean that's. going to and i agree i mean you know. i mean there's something based a lot of these young people

a mom what ninety nine point nine percent of these young people have never been to uganda alex keep going. yeah and so i you know even that step that awareness is important and again you know it's i think it's unfair to say that simply because they are becoming involved in a small way that doesn't count and so i think that the pejorative so activism is unfair and i think that again that one percent of one hundred million is an important one percent it's something that people are aware about and are willing to take action on beyond that so yes we can dismiss the ninety nine percent is what posers you know if we want to kind of take that position but only thing that makes a difference in politics and so you know we we make we make movements out of a large group of people making a change and a small group of people leading them and that's not that's not changed with the internet so i think it's a little unfair to kind of to say that your activism doesn't count because it's too small do you think john and look you know i i was on the barricades in paris in

one nine hundred sixty eight and i can tell you for a fact that there were an awful lot of people throwing rocks out there who were trying to impress their girlfriends i mean posers i've been a fundamental part of every revolutionary movement ever. kind of law and i try to follow about when you go where do we go next ok because i mean because you know with this go to two thousand and twelve we probably won't see a repeat of it because we're going to be much more nuanced ok and you think you could be i mean if we look at what's going on with the austerity in europe i mean something closer to home that people in europe could understand in america we have the occupy wall street and we have the election coming up and we see something new here i mean because i think this this film even though i'm very dismissive of it it is a amazing phenomenon. well what we see is. not criticized. all of the knowledge you know how to utilize these tools and

if connie twenty twelve show something you know we could narrow it down to you know a campaign that's been very very carefully orchestrated designed and branded but you know it worked because they understood how. you tube works together with these real time tools of twitter and facebook and this awareness of how to create these snowball facts you know well that i can tell you that's very very knowledgeable you know that's valuable knowledge yes current knowledge you worry dear sir you don't you worry years then i can really do a lot of money if that's ok i mean yes i worry about is that ok i think giving attention to the children of uganda is an honorable thing even though it was done badly ok but not they're not people are not always so honorable we could use the

same kind of technique for some very negative things also and i'm thinking of like the right wing in the united states the right wing in europe we can have this happen as well where you have fascism with a smile ok and i worry about that kind of thing too alex are you agreeing or disagreeing with me or you're going to let me go to know already or i mean agreeing i just i'm not sure the. exactly i am agreeing but isn't that the current situation. right now we have that ready i said i was really would be have some ability ok i want to go to john and give him the last word earlier from the below from below to do that yet john i'm going to give you the last word here in the program go right ahead what this is all about is attention and. one thing to be said and didn't do you can have various moral postures on this but one thing to be said for the county team twenty twelve video is that they gauge in a kind of emotional pornography that was unbelievably effective i mean there are heartstrings

that you can call their kodak moments that you can get that will get people's attention riveted on an emotional plane and they did that and i have mixed feelings about it but i know that for a lot of people it takes that emotional engagement to work so people will get better and better at doing these things and frankly in the service of the causes i care about i hope they do gentlemen fascinating discussion thank you very much many thanks my guest city in new york and in stockholm and thanks to our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember rostock. that's. taking six.