Amnesty International Australia

Facebook, Twitter and blogs. They’re hallmarks of the social media revolution that has gripped millions of people across the globe from all walks of life.

Indonesia, with 34 million Facebook users, is the second largest user of the service after the US. And significantly, you’ll also find millions of Facebook fans in countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Vietnam and China, according to Facebook tracking website socialbakers.com.

This is noteworthy because they are all countries that violate the human rights of activists who exercise their right to free speech.

Equally noteworthy in these and other countries with poor human rights records is their response to the rise of social media.

From the 2009 uprising in Iran, to the revolution in Tunisia and international coverage of Wikileaks, it has been near impossible to miss the connection between social media and political movements. And critically, advocates are using social media like Twitter to reach a global audience with increasing speed and effectiveness.

"It has been near impossible to miss the connection between social media and political movements."

For example, millions followed the ousting of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in real-time through Twitter, using hashtags such as #sidibouzid and #tunisia (hashtags group thematically-linked content together on the service).One person who followed the events closely on Twitter was Professor Sarah Joseph from Monash University, a director at the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

As events unfolded, Professor Joseph saw tweets from Tunisians complaining about poor mainstream media coverage. "People were saying, ‘CNN, BBC where are you?’ People were reaching out to the world trying to get help," she said. International media did ultimately follow the storybut they were weeks behind Twitter.

Iran’s 2009 uprising was another landmark Twitter event.The US State Department made an unprecedented request to Twitter that it delay a planned network upgrade to keep the service running during planned protests against the presidential election. Twitter complied, and Time magazine subsequently suggested the event signalled an era ofsocial media-fuelled revolutions.

But nearly two years on, a revolution in Iran has still failed to materialise. And Professor Joseph cautions against believing social media and Western knowledge of unfolding events alone will fuel revolutions. "Tunisia was achieved all by themselves," Professor Joseph said.

Carmela Baranowska, a lecturer in media at the Australian Catholic University, said social media was quickly alerting people to the plight of people in prison. But she warned that social media can still offer a disconnected experience when we simply read about human rights abuses. "You still need to have eyewitness testimonies on the ground," she said.

This perspective is echoed by Evgeny Morozov’s book TheNet Delusion in which he writes social media could actually serve to counter the revolution Westerners idealise.

Double-edged sword

"We forget about the dark side, governments harvesting information," Professor Joseph said. "If these platforms are used to organise dissent, the government could use them tofind people. It’s a double-edged sword."

"Advocates are using social media like Twitter to reach a global audience with increasing speed and effectiveness."

And that is what activists the world over are discovering asthey sign up to Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Governments and repressive regimes are ignoring the subtle differences between professional journalists in mainstream media and so-called citizen journalists or bloggers - they are all seen as forms of media that must be controlled.

"Governments try to silence the messenger because they do not want the message heard," Human Rights Watch noted in its 2010 report.

Examples of human rights abuses against activists using social media as a tool of communication continue to climb.

In Vietnam at least 20 activists and bloggers were arrested or jailed in late 2010 for alleged threats to national security, according to Public Broadcasting Service site Media Shift. And since September 2009, at least seven trials were heldfor 17 dissidents, Amnesty International reported in October last year. In most cases the activists were denied legal services and fronted sham trials.

The communist state’s intent to stamp out dissent among media, bloggers and banned political groups includes the arrest in 2010 of prominent Vietnamese blogger and journalist Nguyen Hoang Hai, known as Dieu Cay, who was released last year only to remain under investigation for "spreading propaganda against the state," Amnesty International reported.

Vietnam has also officially blocked public access to Facebook through its internet service providers, but that hasn’t stopped some 1.8 million people from side-stepping the online roadblocks.

"Governments try to silence the messenger because they do not want the message heard."

Human Rights Watch, 2010 report

Satirical Twitter message

In China, social media users are also attracting attention. Chinese online activist Cheng Jianping was sentenced in November to a year in a labour camp for re-tweeting a satirical Twitter message suggesting the Japanese Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo should be attacked. Chinese police acted without legal oversight, exercising their power to apply ‘re-education through labour’ without trial.

Meanwhile, Facebook is attracting attention in Egypt amid widespread crackdowns on dissent in the media. Facebook user Ahmed Hassan Bassyouni appeared before a military court in November 2010 charged with revealing military secrets. He received a six-month prison sentence for allegedly publishing publicly available information about military recruitment on a dedicated Facebook page.

Also in the Middle East, former Kuwait newspaper editor, lawyer and blogger Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qader al-Jasemin November 2010 was sentenced to a year in a Kuwait Central Prison for defaming Prime Minister Shaikh Nasseral-Mohammad al-Sabah on his blog. Amnesty International maintains he is a prisoner of conscience jailed for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

In Azerbaijan, it is a similar story. In December 2010 two ‘donkey bloggers’ were released 18 months into a two-year prison sentence on charges of hooliganism.

Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizada’s crime was to organise and film a satirical video critical of the government and post it to YouTube. The video, featuring a blogger in a donkey suit giving a mock press conference, criticised the government for wasting government funds on importing two donkeys at a cost of $41,000 and claimed that donkeys have a better chance of success at life than people in Azerbaijan.

"Oppressive regimes will also find it tougher to control millions of voices attracted to social media platforms."

Examples like these are only set to increase, but equally, oppressive regimes will also find it tougher to control millions of voices attracted to social media platforms.

Katerina Morjanoff, co-author of The Relationship Age and director of business development at X|Media|Lab, said regardless of what social media platforms dominate inthe future, people of all cultures intrinsically want to make a difference in the world. "Engagement is the currency of the relationship age, engagement is more valuable than money," Morjanoff said. "So if we change peoples lives, that is what we leave behind," she said.

Mark Jones is a business and technology journalist who hosts 'The Scoop' podcast for the Financial Review.

This article was originally published in our free quarterly magazine, Human Rights Defender.