now here in moscow this is our time for you headlines a plane crash in the russia's western siberia killed thirty one pool the aircraft went down just minutes following takeoff twelve have survived the accident possibly thanks to the attempted emergency landing technical failure or a buildup of ice on the french italian aircraft are among the main causes being investigated by. the international envoy to syria kofi annan has briefed the u.n. security council on the progress of his peace plan the friends of syria group the

reportedly decided to fund opposition fighters as criticized by russia for undermining u.n. peace efforts. and the much anticipated reform loosening up the registration for political parties in russia controversial response. leaders fear the legislation prompted by mass protests will result in too many factions bidding for power. to stay with us here and now it's time for crosstalk. filmmaker. and. the lead in. the director's cut it was a real life in prison on charges. oh . i can't

stand. to. follow him welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle is collectivism replace an eating destroying meaningful social activism from the arab spring to the pony 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. start. to cross-talk collectivism 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 berkman center for internet and society and in

stockholm we go to get a lot of ink he is a media theorist internet critic and author of networks without a cause all right gentlemen this is cross-eyed that means you can jump in anytime you want to gird if i go to you first in stockholm can clicking and sharing change the world. well in itself it's got 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 organized. heavily 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.

called the two thousand and twelve so i'm more interested in what comes after ok and if we're 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 have 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 now attending to something that they wouldn't have been otherwise 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 or 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 it'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 there 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 and 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 i mean why would you be contrarian what is what is the difference ok just to be contrarian what is the difference a difference that with the difference is that that being 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 conduct the revolution that they're engaged in also i mean i think i want to say something about the coming two thousand and twelve when we talk a lot about it which i passed on to 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 to uganda 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 about i mean chris what do you think of i mean i mean the thing is there's been an enormous amount of discussion in criticism of the documentary but how much people know to learn more about a third if i can go to you because maybe because of the the way it works on facebook and other places people realize oh it was a scam but nobody really knows why it was a scam you know what i mean. it wasn't precisely. in the future you know a lot of different people will be able to claim. it was their country buescher and that's that. coney and there are now five thousand troops

from the african union there are the obama advisers there's the ugandan army there's the coney twenty twelve campaign itself there is there's a lot ahead earning good i mean ask you a question it's kind of important you don't you so you still think this documentary has not been discredited in a broader scheme of things we need to discredit it i mean being media critics but in the larger scheme of things it hasn't been discredited well maybe jimmy deliverance and the campaign but we need to separate that from the situation on the ground and there's also a lot of things happening in northern uganda and across the border you know. things have been happening there over the last ten years so yes also in this is essentially all the information was out there

a lot will happen ok john go ahead jump in. certainly a lot of people are becoming aware of what's happened to the seven men who used to be hero 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. and i wonder 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 i cannot i just miss 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 do people still do you think people still believe that this kind of hype fairytale documentary that was made and it will have an impact on this not at all sure but i mean there were many could always tell a story not a hero it's a question you know we still let's go ahead alex first yeah alex first. 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 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 had 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 a repeat of invisible children because you think the next group of people who try to do something like this are going to a lot more careful. well you know i think that was actually such a triumph of mean of 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 and now. i think increasingly you you'll 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 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 died in world war one and you know we're not paying very much attention to that fact ok so really i mean 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 me go ahead and no no no i think it's good for the israeli

palestinian conflict that it's somehow not not so centrally coffer to me the palestinians would love to have a film the invisible palestinian would then. i don't know if if it would really benefit. i really doubt because. this is a really complex situation and will no different than you can do no different than you can well really oh i was sure you get it all right i think it's very different . from the city so i want to. hang on alex go ahead jump in. he yeah ethan zuckerman makes the argument that we really shouldn't be paid by destroying the definition be paying attention to syria and so if you yeah if you do syria maybe that's that but i mean this is this ends up being a 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 are going on in afghanistan so there will be this question of where attention should be back 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 john you want to say something before we go to the break go ahead the other thing is that there and she's the there are there are a lot of people on the planet who are online now a lot and that's a great many people they 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 if regionalism going to

jump in here to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on like this of state party. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture .

coming. to the limited. to. just speak of. my i am a. take a. look at. the menu for us talk a little about the magic we're talking about new social media and activism.

taking. ok john i'd like to go back to you want me to 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 we're writing a letter is you're trying to become informed you're actually taking an interest in the overall profit political dynamic all those things can count if all you're doing

is tweeting about it from afar and 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 how do you think about that that's a very interesting point go ahead. yeah i see it nora it's manifestations of of certain way and these waves you could say you know are produced by the media from the activist side but also from the mainstream press

television and so on but the fact is there's been. the credit crunch we've had the arab spring we've had numerous scandal surround we keep leaks and anonymous recently we've had a large. movement called occupy wall street we don't know how 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 and how to bring in people how to model 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 and again the slacktivism thing you know you're that's participation 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 the women 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 just people being aware that they are not alone in sharing this opinion so that one click that that i agree and i'll leaving aside some of the criticism of the commodification attention i'll note that marketers have have suggested that a vote is you know like is worth over one hundred dollars in terms of their ability to shape but i'm sure 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 it 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 going to put you in there somewhere is it worked when is it worked well so i thought you were asking me because i thought i saw you i ducked that spot ok. john you want to react to that i am just going to tell you a little i mean i do 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 think i don't mind you being 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 prize and. 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 side and it's not too ok so you can if 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 county 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 there were really young and that's also known as the demographics of this video and there is a new generation. and you know 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 play by 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 the end of the lord either i mean that's. and i agree i mean you know and i mean this point is you know a lot of these young people and what ninety nine point nine percent of these young people have never been to uganda alex keep going. yeah and so i do 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 slacktivism is unfair and i think that again that one percent of one hundred million is an important one percent and 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 posing makes a difference in politics and so you know we we make we made 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 change but 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 what do you think john and look you know i i was on the barricades in paris and i did sixty eight and i can tell you for a fact that there were an awful lot of people throwing rocks out there that were trying to impress their girlfriends i mean posers has been a fundamental part of every revolutionary movement ever. i kind of lost my train of thought we're going to 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 do you think it 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 that this film even though i'm very dismissive of it it

is a mazing phenomenon. well what we see here is did not criticize asian 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's i can tell you that's a very very knowledgeable you know that's valuable knowledge yeah don't you

worry dear sir you are here so then i think you can really they a lot of money and that's ok and i mean as i worry about is it 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 you know you're going to let me go to your i mean reading i just i'm not sure the. words exactly here i am agreeing but but isn't that the current situation. right now we have that and i did read this and i said i want to mislead you would be have some ability ok i want to go to john if you are in the last really from the below from below to do that 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 coney two thousand and twelve video is that they engaged in a kind of emotional pornography and it was unbelievably effective i mean there are heartstrings that you can pull 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 and gauge went 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 and i guess city of new york and in stockholm thanks to our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember cross talk. and. see. if you can.

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