ration over the national defense authorization act for the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter you can find me at christine for sound. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so bleak you think you understand it and then something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything is ok you don't i'm sorry markham is a big picture. of . the same issues. could you take should free the closed door charge of free. range amongst the free. three

stooges free. download free blog to live video for your media project a free media don carty dot com. you can start. the season to. follow in welcome across the uk i'm peter lavelle is collectivism a place in eating 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. the same can't be the same. across the

cooked of islam i'm joined by alex halladay 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 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 cross-eyed and you can jump in anytime want gird if i can go to you first in stockholm can clicking and sharing change the world. well in itself it 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 the old forms of political parties and trade unions and these are you know dense forms of organize ation that are 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 if for instance at. coney 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'm absolved i did my best 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 cheap 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 are

fearful of that opinion being divulged in their context are suddenly made aware of the fact that many other people share that opinion 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 who is what is the difference ok just to be contrarian what is the difference the difference but 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 but 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 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 of i mean i mean the thing is is that there's been an enormous amount of discussion in criticism about documentary but how much should people know to learn more about of current if i can go to you because maybe because of 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 is. a future you know

a lot of different people will be able to claim. it was their contribution that let 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. twenty twelve campaign itself there is there's a lot. of question it's kind of important you don't so you still think this documentary has not been discredited in the in the in a broader scheme of things and we may be discredited i mean being media critics but in the larger scheme of things it hasn't been discredited well maybe jimmy deliverance and the campaigning 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

and things have been happening there over the last ten years so yes also in you know this is actually i'll you know it was out there a lot will happen ok john go ahead jump in. so suddenly a lot of people are becoming aware of what's happened to the seven eight 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. alex what do you think about ok alex if i can go to you i mean i go back to this is saying ability i would because again i'd like to stress the point where all of us look at it very carefully and look we have our own criticism put it in the in the popular imagination and i mean it was one hundred million clicks i mean do 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 i mean there were always tells it or not i mean you know it's a question of how this let's go ahead alex first there 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 a connie before the video and i know that's 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 have not only had heard of it also have 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 could be

a lot more careful. well you know i think that was actually such a triumph i mean propaganda 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 there 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 as me 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 i know you don't agree 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 not so centrally covered i mean the palestinians would love to have a film the invisible palestinian which. 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 sure you get it all right i think i think it's very different. today so when he thanked them and hang on alex go ahead jump in. yeah even zuckerman makes the argument that we really shouldn't be paid by mr

anything special be paying attention to syria and so if you have to do syria maybe that's a bit but i mean this is this ends up being 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 to 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 bent 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 but the other thing is that there excuse me there are 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 if regionalism going to jump in here to go to a short break and after that show break we'll continue our discussion on like some state party. if. for us. i asked.

if. i.

can. think of. the menu for us talk a little about the amount you were talking about new social media and activism. katie. ok john i'd like to go back to you i mean 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 being engaged in it i actually think that it matters if you wear something like that on your wrist it matters if you have it in addition to where you know on your wrist you're writing letters you're trying to become informed you're actually taking an interest in the overall policy 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 with 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 do you think about that part that's a very interesting point go ahead. yeah i see it more as manifestations of of certain way 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 credit crunch we've had arab spring we've had numerous scandals around weekly leaks and most 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 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 saying 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 produced a patient in a nanosecond. but i'll go back to something john said at the outset which is so there's a theorist a media theorist 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 click that i agree and. leaving aside some of the criticism of the commodification attention i'll note that marketers who have suggested that a vote is you know a like is worth over one hundred dollars in terms of their ability to shape my time should but even leaving aside that come out of education knowing that your fellow citizen or someone else across the world is aware and shares your opinion on something provides the seed that 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 mean i want you to understand where i said works i would just call it a pleasure just on your resume worked when he said works so well so i think you know i think he was a good guy so yeah i'm going to duck that spot ok. john you want to react to that you know just trying to do it well i mean i the 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 i don't mind your being skeptical i think there's plenty of reason to be but but i must say that in addition to creating that 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 cage's to the people who are using it in the sense not to ok so currently you can 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 second nature ok but i mean alex that we have these all these millions of young people young people involved in this levi 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 going to laura either i mean that's. great i agree i mean you know and a member of the five point is a lot of these young people went ninety nine point nine percent of these young people have never been to uganda alex keep going. yeah and so i think 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 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 the only thing that makes a difference in politics and so you know we we make move 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 change 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 what 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 and then a fundamental part of the revolutionary movement ever. i kind of lost my train of thought without we're going to go where do we go next ok because i mean because you

know with this going 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 the 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 film even though i'm very dismissive of it it is a amazing phenomenon. well but what we see here is democratize asian all of the knowledge you know how to utilize these tools and it's called the twenty twelve shows 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 very very knowledgeable you know that's valuable knowledge yeah and told you worry tears very don't you worry your skin i can really do a lot of money and that's ok and i think 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 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 where you are i mean agreeing i just i'm not sure the. threats exactly are i am agreeing

but isn't that the current situation. right now we have that. is we would be have some ability ok i want to go to john and give him the last time we really are 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 two thousand and twelve video is that they gauged in a kind of emotional pornography and it was unbelievably effective i mean there are strings that you can fold there 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 meant to work so people get better and better at doing these things and frankly in the service of the causes i

care about and i hope they do gentlemen fascinating discussion thank you very much many thanks my guess city of new york and in stockholm and thanks to our viewers for watching us here to see you next time and remember rostock you. can say. something to the. wealthy british style.

markets why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars report on our key you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. download the official on t.n.t. cation on the phone called touch from the choose ops to. munch on chief life on the go. video on demand all keys money fuel costs and says features now in the palm of your. question.

come. from. more news today violence is once again flared up the film these are the images. from the streets of kenya that. shine corporations are today.