Friday, November 21, 2008

Russia fights financial crisis... with censure


If you live in America or in Europe and are used to watching television every day, you probably think that nobody in the world now knows for sure how to deal with the current economic crisis. But you would think differently if you lived in Russia.

First of all if you watch television or read mainstream newspapers in Russia, you must know that the economic crisis has affected all countries in the world except for one (guess which one) "because its officials have taken all necessary actions to prevent it".

And second, Russian officials took measures to make sure people believed that.

According to an article on the web page of Russian newspaper "Kommersant" the Russian "General Prosecutor's Office joined the fight against the financial crisis. It issued an instruction for its attorneys in different regions of the country 'to prevent the information attacks on banks'". Inspection of different media outlets started yesterday in different regions of Russia. The attorneys are examining media reports for signs of "fomentation of financial crisis" and "destabilization of the situation in the region".

Web site URA.ru became the first target for the officials after writing about banks. During an interrogation its editor was asked how the web site got its information about banks.

The General Prosecutor Office's spokesman explained that they "don't censor", but just "verify the accuracy of information".

The newspaper mentions that the first person who spoke about "information attacks" that can "destabilize the social situation" was Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Equal opportunities online

I was currently reading about PEN (Public Electronic System) Project in Santa Monica, CA. It was in 1989. Santa Monica was known for its politically active citizens. The citizens donated to create this system and to built public terminals where various people could access PEN. And their efforts had its fruits. The system was actively used by homeless citizens. They created their own group that could promote their interests in the community. 

As a result of this the group was given a building in the center of the city where they could clean and story their things, learn and look for a job.

Thanks to this system these homeless people were treated equally.

It reminded me on what we were currently discussing in Paul Levinson's class at Fordham. We were talking about what Sarah Pailin said about bloggers. That they were "kids in their pajamas"... Professor Levinson thought it was a remarkable thing to say: Because on the internet no matter who you are, no matter how you are dressed or if you are homeless or not. Everybody is treated equally, everybody has an opportunity to express himself.

Isn't it a big deal for a human society? Isn't it promissing?

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Blogging clearance

I was going to post information about another conference about communication today. But then I realized that my blog was getting to boring and incoherent... And now I'm going to clear this up.

I'm still very uncertain about what I want this blog to be. Even now, at the moment when I'm writing this post, I doubt whether this post fits here well or not... I'd like to remove this ambiguity that makes me feel uncomfortable with almost every post I make here.

I started this blog with an intention to gather the information that might be useful for my academic work and to practice my English vocabulary getting myself ready for my future studies.

But after a while I found it much more interesting to write here down my own thoughts and observations, which, though not very often, appear in my head.

So, I created a separate blog to rework all the material I find on the internet. Pretty regularly I post there summaries of all interesting articles about communications and media. In the sidebar "baskets" I also bring together the concepts, organizations, books, journals, persons, and web pages I am interested in.

So be it.

This blog will be my personal diary of opinions about different events pertaining to my field of study in the world and in Russia.
And the blog "Everything useful" will serve as my public notebook of articles, links, organizations, and conferences dedicated to communications and media.

And by the way, here I also have one more blog about the impressions I have of studying in America))

Thursday, August 7, 2008

International Association for Development of the Information Society

Here is one more conference to be added to my calender.

The International Association for Development of the Information Society organizes a conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age and on WWW/Internet on October 13th-15th 2008 in Freibug, Germany at Albert-Ludwigs-Universitaet.

There is a list of all conferences organized by the Association on its web page. Besides, it has a digital library of all IADIS press publications, including conference proceeding and the IADIS Journal publications by 11723 authors with all materials avaliable online in PDF format.

I'll be happy if you find those links somehow useful.
I presonally don't know how to cope with all the information pertaining to my field of interest that I find online every day...

Monday, July 28, 2008

An enjoyable web page

I can't keep myself from posting a link to one commercial web site. Couldn't literally pull myself out of it.

It's a very well done page of a marketing company that delivers digital media consulting to businesses and organizations. The page shows all the fascinating abilities of modern internet technology for entertaining presentation of information and advertisement on the web. Their sophisticated use of videos is especially impressing. But only if you have a good internet connection and don't have to restart your browser every 5 minutes...

TPRC annual conference on communications, information, and Internet policy and its online resources

I guess one of the best ways not only to study the history of any academic discipline but also to follow its current tendencies and development is to monitor the conferences. At least it seems true for communications. And at least for somebody who is still out of the real academic life, like me.

Thus, last week my continuous internet searching brought a solid fruit. A blog about law, technology, and society (medisonian.net) brought me to a home page of Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (an annual conference on communications, information, and Internet policy) and its wonderful archives with programs for the last 13 conferences (beginning with the 1994) and free PDF format papers for the last 5 (from 2002) (can be found on the archive-search page).

The nearest, 36th research conference is taking place on the 26th through 28th September 2008 at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia and has the following themes announced:
  1. Network Competition, Policy and Management
  2. Next Generation and all-IP Networks: Policy, Regulatory, Architectural and Societal Issues
  3. Spectrum Management and Wireless Futures: Anywhere, Anytime Communications and its Implications
  4. Societal Issues: Universality and Affordable Access; ICTs for Development and Growth
  5. The Transformation and Future of Media in an Age of User- and Community-Produced Creativity
  6. The Transformation and Future of Intellectual Property and Digital Rights
  7. Privacy, Security, Identity and Trust
  8. Internet Governance and Institutional Strategies for Information Policy
Who knows, maybe I'll be able to use the Student Paper Contest opportunity next year when I'm going to have a full time student status... I'd be so happy to try to write something that meets its standarts, let alone to attend the conference to see what this kind of conferences looks like in an American reality...

Meanwhile, I'm thankful to the organizers of the conference for the opportunity to explore its informative web page and study its plentiful content, and have a subject to write about on my blog today and an event to add to the calender I put at the bottom of this blog page :)

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Insists Internet Is a Mass Media

It seems like Internet has really grown in influence in the Russian political life. It can be seen from the exsessive attention it gets from the Russian authorities lately.

Right after the blogger who had been critisizing the Russian militia was determined guilty of “inciting hatred and enmity” but was sentenced only to a suspended prison, the Minister of Internal Affairs, a soviet KGB successor, came out with an legislative initiative to qualify Intenet as a mass media, subject to the mass media law.

As the Russian national newspaper "Kommersant" reports, Nurgaliev had called all Russian security agencies "to be more insistent in their work with deputies pertaining to the question of legislative recognition of Internet as a mass information media with all legislative consequences for all holders of subversive sites".

Today's Russian media low has already proved its effectiveness for allowing the authorities to close quickly and quitely any media outlet accused in the "extremist activity". During eight years of Putin Presidency almost every independent traditional media outlet was put under the governmental controll - financially or administratively- or closed.


The message evoked neither a wide public response nor an adequate reaction of the small in number in Russia but highly appricieted in the Westrn countries Russian opposition. No surprize. A while ago there were some other initiatives of Russian officials pertaining to the Internet. Among them a mandatory registration off all Internet users, and an obligation for all Internet providers to block any web
site found guilty in destribution of extremist materials at first prosecutor's call. And as the Russian history shows and everybody in Russia has well learnt, a resistance to a lesser evil often results in an evil much greater.

Monday, July 7, 2008

A lawsuit against a nonconformist blogger is likely to bury another chance for Russia's communication improvement

Internet communication could be an excelent solution of russian everlasting great communication problem.

Russia is the country with the most extended territory in the world with one of the worst developed road and post infrastructure. Its information system is highly centralized; the main mean of nationwide political communication - television - is broadcasted from Russia's capital Moscow and controlled in its finances and contents by the government. Imoprtant national newpapers, though more free that TV, are also produced exclusively in Moscow and can never be delivered to all remote corners of the country in an acceptable time.

The Internet seemed to open new opportunities for the country. Good or bad, but telephone wires reach every small Russian town. Internet delivery business is still out of the government controll and is one of the most competitive spheres of economy. Information and opinions that are easily watched by the government in traditional media seemed to find its refuge in "ru-net" - Russian Internet.

But a lawsuit against an average blogger from an average Russian city Syktyvkar (1500 km away from Moscow) showed that things are not going to be that easy. There, where the central power looses its ability for total control, local authorities are ready to help.

Savva Teryentyev, a young livejournal.com user [info]terentyev was sentenced to one year of suspended prison for making a harsh comment on a post of another user about russian militia and its lawlessness. The court found him guilty of “inciting hatred and enmity”.

No doubt it was just a touchstone of a ruling clique who in the person of Russia's ex-president and todays prime minister Vladimir Putin had already long been talking about necessity for Internet environment to be controled in order to prevent the dessemination of extremism.

Taking into account the history of a consecutive authoritarian destruction of freedom of speech in russian tradional media and the indifference of general public to the question of information freedom, the test promisses to be successful. And that means that just another try to establish a common free communication field in Russia is going to fail.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Never out ot the coverage

Here is an idea I found interesting and worth writing about while reading a post about communication in a blog of one guy who seems to be so cool that I'm afraid has no need in bloggers like me to be cited by :-).

The idea was that the new means of communication like cell phones with abilities to send and receive text messages, voice mails, emails, and notifications about missed calls instantly during 24 hours a day make it really difficult to hide from people you don't want to communicate with at the moment. You just can't say you weren't aware they were trying to contact you. Any serious delay to answer or call back may cause a justified discontent of the "caller".

I myself recently "enjoyed" this gift of technology with my mother who always suspects me in reluctance to "find time for your only mother", and who during one weekend was trying to connect me by cell phone, sms and email.

It seems to me this feature of new technologies is changing our communication environment and habits dramatically. It changes our expectations for other people's avaliability, and requires more sophisticated communication strategies than just not to pick up the phone. It learns us to solve problems in a real time mode since any try to delay it by just ignoring any person's inquiries make chances for a good problem settlement worse...


Friday, June 20, 2008

Salutary fragmentation power of the new media?

The idea that the evolving media technologies do not help consolidating people, that it's quite the contrary, they devide people who used to be close, is not new but still striking for me. I'm still fascinated with the opportunities for self-education and communication the Internet with its searching mashines, social networks, blogs gives to me and, to be honest, can't regard it critically.

A few months ago in one blog I read an opinion that computers have destroid a family custom to watch TV in the evening - the main activity that could daily bring all members of a family together before and gave them a common content to discuss. Now everyone has its own computer and even if sitting in one room with others can enjoy one's own content independently.

Today I read a more ambitious statement about a danger of separation power of new media in an article by Sean Gonsalves about media biases:
  • With the Internet and the ability of news consumers to pick and choose what news they want to engage, I wonder how America will ever have a meaningful conversation about any national issue when we're all living in our own individual media bubbles, clinging to news that affirms our individual world view while rejecting any information that doesn't fit neatly into our political philosophy as worthlessly "biased."
I personally feel that power of separation especially strong when I take metro to go to work every day and use a noise reducting headphones to listen to music or radio podcasts on my PDA. To be honest, I never regret being in my individual media bubble. I enjoy the ability to modify at least partly the environment I can't avoid, to soothe my negative attitude to that routine, and to manage my information supply anytime I want. However I never miss my station and am pretty attentive to what's going around me. So does good few of people going to their work in the same car.

The number of different popular internet servises is really impressive. And I think that in reality this diversity provide consumers a choice they are confused by. In a blog Regular Geek I found a list of the most popular social media services.

Social networks:
Social media:
Other related sites:
As Marshal McLuhan warned in his book "Understanding Media" (or better to say, as I understood what he had been trying to say when I was reading the book in a Russian translation), thanks to the new media the world is tending to be tighter, is going to "implode", loose its specialisation, is going back to a village, tribal community where information is delivered so fast that it's impossible to fence yourself from it. Who knows maybe that fragmentation will make this process less painful for us. And instead of indiscriminate total fusion we'll get a social regrouping on a new basis.

Monday, June 16, 2008

The book I can get

If only all the books I wanted to read were availiable online...

... I would get blind very soon.

To be serious, for somebody who lives far away from the communications academic world (like in Russia) to get an up-to-date book in communications is a big problem. There are almost no books written in Russian about this field of study; only few are translated into Russian, still most of them are old; and it's almost impossible to get a modern book in a foreign language here.

So while I'm still in Russia I'm very happy when I can find an interesting book availiable online.
This time I have a double luck because the book I found is free (thanks to an Open Books Project).

We The Media Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People
by Dan Gillmor


I'm still only about to read it...
But a comprehensive review for this book is availiable on the blog The Machine Is.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

An old media usage research by Center for Media Design of Ball State University

Old news might sometimes be useful.
Today I came across an article that reported on a study which I found interesting.

It would be the best message to open my blog if not the fact that the study was conducted in 2005.
Anyway I found it useful to post (though I have to make up my mind that my first post is not ideal) since

1. I'm sure the main conсlusion of that study is still up-to-date.

2. Now I know that there is a Center for Media Design of Ball State University who's making that kind of researches and I can follow their work here: http://www.bsu.edu/cmd/