The Settlement has its origins in a class action copyright infringement suit brought by the American Authors Guild and the American Publishers Association (APA) against Google in 2005. A class action, it should be noted, concerns not just the parties of the case but an entire class of plaintiffs — in this case: all authors and publishers of the millions of books digitized by Google. As the copyright owners alleged, by digitizing the entire book collections of some of the largest university libraries in the world, and making ‘snippets’ of digitized text available through the Google search engine, Google infringed the copyrights of millions of authors and thousands of publishers. According to Google however all this amounted to fair use.

Surprising settlement caused storm of criticism

In the course of 2008 and 2009 parties came to an agreement, the so-called Google Books Settlement (‘GBS’) . To the surprise of many, the settlement far exceeded the scope of the court case, and permitted Google not only to digitize books and display ‘snippets’, but also to commercialize millions of out-of-print works, by selling downloads, e-books and institutional subscriptions. Thus from the Google Books class action case arose what can be easily called the largest book licensing deal in the world, binding not only Google and its direct adversaries (the authors and publishers represented by the Guild and the APA), but innumerable foreign authors and publishers as well.

A real Google book! (photo: Ruben Vermeersch. CC: by-nc-nd)

Not surprisingly, the GBS caused a storm of criticism, first and foremost by foreign publishers who complained that they had been left out of the deal and that their copyrights were severely comprised. At the Frankfurt Book Fair of 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly warned against the consequences of the Settlement for European publishers. Over four hundred official objections were eventually submitted to Judge Chin of the New York District Court, who was called to approve the settlement. Apart from the foreign right holders’ protestations, the concerns expressed in the objections reflected a variety of other interests and fears. According to many, including Microsoft, Amazon and even the American Department of Justice, the GBS would result in a Google monopoly on the online sale of digitized out-of-print books. Scientific authors protested that the GBS would allow Google to commercialize scientific works that many authors preferred to make available for free under open-content licenses. Some objectors also pointed to the privacy risks of a company like Google controlling online access to the world’s literature.

Future scenarios for Google Books

On the other hand, the GBS did receive public support from the universities that had entered into library digitization agreements with Google, such as Stanford and Michigan, and from information specialists and scientists who were excited by the prospect that the world’s literature would soon become available online. Some authors and author’s rights societies also supported the Settlement, for it included a promise by Google to pay substantial royalties to the authors of digitized books.

In the end, more than a year after conducting a public hearing, the District Court decided against the Settlement. Quoting many of the concerns expressed by the objectors, the Court determined that the Settlement is not ‘fair, reasonable and adequate’, as American law requires, and refused to approve the GBS in its present form.

Does the decision mark the end of Google Books, the largest book digitization project ever undertaken — often described as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of our time? Several future scenarios are possible.

One option is appeal. Google and its counterparts might take a second chance at getting the GBS approved, by appealing the judgment. However, decisions like these are rarely overturned, particularly if they are as well-reasoned as Judge Chin’s decision seems to be.

Another possibility is that Google and the right holders abandon the settlement altogether and resume the court case from which the GBS sprang. Ironically, this would pit Google once again against its former foes that became its best friends in the course of the Settlement: the Authors Guild and the APA. Who might eventually prevail in this suit is a matter of speculation. But even if Google would succeed in having its ‘fair use’ defense accepted by the court, this would never allow Google to make its digital books collection available online, except by way of ‘snippet view’.

A more likely scenario would be revision of the Settlement. A main concern for many objectors to the GBS was its ‘opt-out’ rule. Authors and right holders of out-of-print works who had not expressly opted out of the Settlement would be bound by it. As a consequence large numbers of unknown right holders, such as the heirs of long-dead authors of out-of-print works, would be automatically bound by the GBS, giving Google a monopoly in the market for digitized ‘orphan works’. By amending the Settlement into an opt-in agreement, the risks of a Google monopoly might be greatly reduced, while permitting foreign authors and publishers to become involved in, or withdraw from, the agreement.

For Google, however, the prospect of an opt-in agreement is not very attractive. Seeking express permission from millions of hard-to-find right holders will inevitably entail extraordinary transactions costs. Alternatively, Google would have to make large parts of its book database unavailable to the general public.

A fourth scenario would be legislative intervention. According to legal commentators, what was essentially wrong with the GBS is that it provided for a legal solution of the orphan works issue — the problem of dealing with myriads of unknown right holders in an efficient manner — to the benefit of only a single party: Google. Instead, this problem should be solved by way of legislation, allowing other mass digitization projects — whether by Google’s competitors or by non-profit institutions — to be realized on equal terms.

European and Nordic proposals for solving copyright dilemma

If the Google Books saga has taught us anything, it is that the law of copyright in many countries needs to be adapted in order to permit mass digitization of the world’s cultural heritage without denying authors and right holders fair remuneration. In the European Union, where digitization projects such as Europeana have struggled with copyright problems from their inception, the need for a legislative solution of the orphan works problem is now generally recognized. On May 24, 2011 the European Commission published a Proposal for a Directive (pdf) of the European Parliament and the Council ‘on certain permitted uses of orphan works’. The proposed directive would oblige the Member States of the European Union to allow cultural heritage institutions and public broadcasters to mass-digitize and make available online any ‘orphaned’ books, journals, newspapers, films and television programs in their libraries and archives. The proposal will undoubtedly lead to extensive discussions within the European Parliament and the Council, and is not expected to be adopted anytime soon.

In the mean time, cultural heritage institutions are placing their hopes on yet another solution to the orphan works problem: the extended collective license (ECL). An ECL is basically an agreement between a collective rights management society that represents large numbers of right holders on the one hand and an institutional copyright user (such as a broadcaster or a library) on the other. What makes an ECL different from ordinary collective licenses, is that it is extended by force of law to authors or right holders that are not represented by the collecting society. In this way, an ECL automatically allows the use of ‘orphan works’.

To scan or not to scan? (Photo: spyer. CC: by-nc-sa)

Readers of Vox Publica will be proud to learn that the ECL (in Norwegian: avtalelisens) is a Nordic legal invention that has been applied in Scandinavian countries for years to collective licensing of broadcast music and educational photocopying. In recent times ECLs have also facilitated various mass digitization enterprises in the Nordic countries, including the Bokhylla project that makes Norwegian literature available to the public in digital form. The Nordic solution to the copyright problems of mass digitization is attracting increasing interest from scholars and policy makers around the world. In the Netherlands, a recent study (pdf) by the Institute for Information Law advises the Dutch Government to follow the Nordic example. And even in the United States, where the failure of the Google Books Settlement has inspired a search for legislative alternatives (pdf), the Nordic model is becoming something of a hit.

Perhaps, like the Vikings of yesteryear, Nordic copyright law will one day set foot on American soil.

About this article

This article summarizes and updates a presentation held by the author at the symposium ‘The Google Books Revolution’ that was organized by the Institutt for informasjons- og medievitenskap (Department of Information Science and Media Studies) of the University of Bergen on March 21, 2011.

Even in the midst of tumultuous events it is not too early to start thinking about what comes after, and in particular how international policy-makers should best respond to and intervene in the coming Arab order.

The current signs are less than encouraging, in two ways. First, there is a tendency for political and media attention to focus on where the most dramatic action is, but then to move on quickly when it is over – the very time when sustained engagement (as now in Tunisia) is most needed. It is not enough to cheer for the revolution while it is happening. The aftermath, the transition process from authoritarianism to democracy, is the crucial moment; and this is when a country needs most help. This is also the time when people power alone cannot guarantee a change in the right direction, and when bad management in a critical period can backfire.

Second, the epic events in the Arab world reveal a potentially dangerous tension. Across the region, people seem to be craving freedom and democracy at a time when the west has lost interest in promoting these values. The east is looking west (at least in terms of its aspirations), but the west is looking away. Will the twain find a meeting-point in their objectives in the difficult period to come?

From romance to reality

What happened in Tunisia and Egypt, and may yet happen in the rest of the Maghreb and elsewhere in the Arab world, is the collapse of an order that had long had lost its legitimacy. The Tunisian experience is exemplary, in that the trigger for the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali seems to have been a radical awakening of the population so powerful as to convince the president and his coterie that it was all over and that fighting back was useless.

The abstract and romantic part of the process is that many Tunisians’ dream of change and freedom to speak is being fulfilled – and that others in the Arab world are inspired to follow suit. But this phase, in Tunisia and elsewhere, is not the end of the story, but only the beginning. The hard reality of negotiating and creating a new order must follow, to fill the vacuum of power and build the institutions that can ensure better governance. This involves huge challenges and requires substantial support from outside.

The starting-point, in most of the Arab states, is that political society has been suppressed for decades and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Even civil society, political parties and the non-governmental sector (where they exist) are compromised by having had to adapt to the realities of an authoritarian regime; they need help to move quickly towards a healthy pluralist environment.

The problems of transition are thus multiple. There are issues of transitional justice: what to do with the old regime and reform the security sector, how to promote reconciliation and allow society to move on. There are questions of fair democratic competition: after so many years when real politics have been semi-comatose the most effective operators are often Islamist parties, which in addition benefit from association with and protection from the mosque.

But addressing all these matters should be made easier by the fact that the impulse of the Arab revolts are for freedom, justice and accountable government. These values echo those espoused by Europe and the United States, and represent enough of a shared foundation for the western powers to be seen as supportive of the process.

The US and western Europe have significant experience in managing transitions; in the case of the Marshall plan after the second world war, it bound them together. The European Union on its own account has also led various transitions: in Spain and Portugal’s move from authoritarian rule, in the enlargement process that transformed east-central Europe. And the EU’s neighbourhood policy (ENP) is intended precisely to apply the lessons gained from enlargement to help reform the countries just beyond the union’s boundaries.

European security, in Javier Solana’s dictum, was best promoted were Europe surrounded by a “ring of well-governed states”. In practice, the ensuing approach developed bilateral “action plans” in collaboration with the regimes themselves. These plans will now need to be renegotiated with the Arab world’s ambitious agents of change that are now or will soon be in government.

The transition handicap

But precedents can mislead as well as guide. The post-1989 transition in Europe and the early signals of a similar process in the Arab world seem are likely to be different at the outset in three main ways. They can be characterised in terms of visions, competition, and timing.

Visions
Both sides of the European transitions at the end of the cold war had the objective that the post-Soviet states (as with Iberia and Greece a generation earlier) should move towards becoming liberal democracies, and ultimately members of the European Union bound by its institutional-legal framework and principles. Such consensus in or regarding the Arab world cannot be guaranteed, despite the consonance of values referred to above. The transition is also likely to feature a competition between visions, each presenting a direction and model to fill the vacuum created by regime collapse.

Some influential political currents are already calling for western-style democracies and governance. But there is also support for Islamists of various kinds; and remnants of the ancien regime will learn new tricks and use the new system to attempt a comeback (the examples of Ukraine and Lebanon show how this can be done). After so many years of semi-comatose political existence, it is only natural that at a certain point the awakening will be disoriented and look in different directions. What is needed is a mechanism to manage the diversity.

Competition
There will also be international and regional competition for influence in the Arab world during the transition. In the case of the enlargement of the European Union to the south and east, the European commission was alone in planning and implementing the required reforms; again, the Arab world’s inheritance means that no single legitimate authority is likely to be available.

Instead, there will be competition. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Iran will probably step in to support different brands of Islam; there are already signs of that in Tunisia and Egypt. Al-Jazeera is attempting to take credit for the first Cathodic revolution; Syria claims the various risings to be in line with its own anti-American and anti-Israeli stance; Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei seeks to interpret the events as an Islamic revolution.

So the west will not have things its own way, and must focus soon on how best to support the transition. It is not true that a stance of non-interference and of leaving everything to homegrown reform is the best way to ensure a good outcome; on the contrary, this needs to be argued for, worked for, and paid for.

Timing
In one sense, the long-awaited Arab democratic revolution comes into being at an unfortunate time. The dominant mood in both Europe and the United States has been shifting towards more “realism” in foreign policy, effectively a willingness to engage and make deals with unpalatable regimes for the sake of stability and self-interest.

The corollary is a move away from a positive projection of democratic values, reflected in decreased emphasis on and funding of active democratisation projects. The reluctance to put these at the centre of foreign-policy objectives reflects the bitter legacy of the George W Bush administration’s “freedom agenda”. But it is not clear that a more distant and “realist” policy will serve the Arab peoples any better.

The new partners

Tunisia and Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, Morocco and Libya are in transition – albeit at different stages, in different ways, and with (in all likelihood) different outcomes. The western perceptions of what is happening needs to change to take account of the movement on the ground. This is easier said than done: ideas and policies that have evolved slowly are hard to change, even when shown to be wrong or bypassed by history.

When events are moving so rapidly, last week’s questions can very soon look ancient. In the week after the Egyptian revolt erupted, much attention focused on the opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei (is he a strong leader, will he have the backing of the army, can he unify the opposition?). The questions were outdated before they were asked. If real change is to happen, there will be democratically elected politicians, not strong leaders; they will probably be elected by a small margin, not the classic 97.6% of the past. They will be criticised and contested; consensus and enforced national unity are depassé.

The Arab political awakening means that old words should acquire new values: political crises, some instability, paralysis, bickering mediocre and opportunistic politicians, are all part of the new good. Division is a sign of strength not weakness, for it means the system can absorb the various political currents. There will be fewer reliable allies, who can be tarnished – and become election losers – precisely for supporting a bad policy.

In the end, change in the Arab world means that western policy-makers have to change too. The west has preferred to work with dictators. When their Arab allies no longer fit that description, a new phase of history with all its challenges and opportunities will begin.

***

About this article – Creative Commons license

This article was originally published by Nadim Shehadi, and openDemocracy.net under a Creative Commons licence. It is republished here in accordance with the license.

So, wearing a black headscarf and a loose, long-sleeved red tunic over jeans, I waded through the crowd and started taking notes: on the men throwing rose petals, on the men shouting that they would die for the chief justice, on the men sacrificing a goat.

And then, almost predictably, someone grabbed my buttocks. I spun around and shouted, but then it happened again, and again, until finally I caught one offender’s hand and punched him in the face. The men kept grabbing. I kept punching. At a certain point — maybe because I was creating a scene — I was invited into the chief justice’s vehicle.

At the time, in June 2007, I saw this as just one of the realities of covering the news in Pakistan. I didn’t complain to my bosses. To do so would only make me seem weak. Instead, I made a joke out of it and turned the experience into a positive one: See, being a woman helped me gain access to the chief justice.

Reporter Kim Barker reporting in Afghanistan. (Kuni Takahashi)

And really, I was lucky. A few gropes, a misplaced hand, an unwanted advance — those are easily dismissed. I knew other female correspondents who weren’t so lucky, those who were molested in their hotel rooms, or partly stripped by mobs. But I can’t ever remember sitting down with my female peers and talking about what had happened, except to make dark jokes, because such stories would make us seem different from the male correspondents, more vulnerable. I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me at home the next time something major happened.

I was hardly alone in keeping quiet. The Committee to Protect Journalists may be able to say that 44 journalists from around the world were killed last year because of their work, but the group doesn’t keep data on sexual assault and rape. Most journalists just don’t report it.

The CBS correspondent Lara Logan has broken that code of silence. She has covered some of the most dangerous stories in the world, and done a lot of brave things in her career. But her decision to go public earlier this week with her attack by a mob in Tahrir Square in Cairo was by far the bravest. Hospitalized for days, she is still recuperating from the attack, described by CBS as a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.

Several commentators have suggested that Ms. Logan was somehow at fault: because she’s pretty; because she decided to go into the crowd; because she’s a war junkie. This wasn’t her fault. It was the mob’s fault. This attack also had nothing to do with Islam. Sexual violence has always been a tool of war. Female reporters sometimes are just convenient.

In the coming weeks, I fear that the conclusions drawn from Ms. Logan’s experience will be less reactionary but somehow darker, that there will be suggestions that female correspondents should not be sent into dangerous situations. It’s possible that bosses will make unconscious decisions to send men instead, just in case. Sure, men can be victims, too — on Wednesday a mob beat up a male ABC reporter in Bahrain, and a few male journalists have told of being sodomized by captors — but the publicity around Ms. Logan’s attack could make editors think, “Why take the risk?” That would be the wrong lesson. Women can cover the fighting just as well as men, depending on their courage.

More important, they also do a pretty good job of covering what it’s like to live in a war, not just die in one. Without female correspondents in war zones, the experiences of women there may be only a rumor.

Look at the articles about women who set themselves on fire in Afghanistan to protest their arranged marriages, or about girls being maimed by fundamentalists, about child marriage in India, about rape in Congo and Haiti. Female journalists often tell those stories in the most compelling ways, because abused women are sometimes more comfortable talking to them. And those stories are at least as important as accounts of battles.

There is an added benefit. Ms. Logan is a minor celebrity, one of the highest-profile women to acknowledge being sexually assaulted. Although she has reported from the front lines, the lesson she is now giving young women is probably her most profound: It’s not your fault. And there’s no shame in telling it like it is.

Creative Commons license
This article was first published by ProPublica on Feb. 19, 2011. It was co-published in the New York Times. Republished here according to the Creative Commons license by-nc-nd. See ProPublica for details on republishing terms.

The current tax exemption amounts to about NOK 1.5 billion of the NOK 1.8 billion comprising total Norwegian press subsidies. Today, the tax exemption is reserved for newspapers’ print editions, and newspaper companies are fighting desperately to retain this privilege. At the same time, they want to bring this economic advantage over to their electronic initiatives.

In a time where digital distribution is becoming increasingly important, it will be difficult for the Media Support Committee to argue that the largest support component should be reserved for printed newspapers. This can be compared to financially supporting composers under the condition that they release their music on vinyl records!

A possible solution could be to introduce a platform-neutral reduced VAT. The Media Businesses’ Association recently agreed on a compromise proposal in which a reduced VAT on “culture” will be an important part of the future media support. This compromise is expensive. According to the proposal, print newspapers will keep their tax exemption, while online newspapers, magazines and the specialist press will get a reduced VAT, rather than today’s full VAT.

Introducing a reduced VAT for the press will also create problems of delimitation. Deciding who qualifies for tax exemption can be difficult enough under the current regime, but it may present a far more urgent problem in a digital world where the distribution of journalism, music, telephony and sheer entertainment increasingly converges. It is therefore important to comply with the intended aim of the VAT, namely to raise money to the Treasury. Subsidies should be provided through other, more targeted arrangements.

According to the Media Support Committee’s mandate, media support is primarily aimed at maintaining a diversity of media and culture to ensure broad public access to news and high quality debate. Existing subsidies are largely a product of political horse trading and historical coincidences. The importance of the tax exemption has grown over time and has resulted in an extremely distorted distribution of total subsidies towards the major newspapers. This is hardly intentional. Had the press been subsidized in the form of jobs, the Media Support Committee would have some 2,000 journalists to spread among the country’s newsrooms. The current norm of distribution corresponds to a situation in which 540 such journalists would have been designated to the two largest newspapers, VG and Aftenposten, both located in Oslo. From a quality perspective, supporting large editorial environments is important, but such an extreme subsidising of the largest media companies in the country is hardly a cost-effective way to create media diversity.

An interesting alternative suggestion comes from Sven Egil Omdal of Stavanger Aftenblad. Omdal suggests supporting journalistic work directly through, for example, geographically dispersed work grants channeled to talented individuals. Journalists are important producers of knowledge and economic research supports the claim that the free market fails to produce enough knowledge on its own.

Selective and direct support of the type Omdal proposes would be more accurate than the VAT exemption, but extensive direct support also has its drawbacks. Evaluating a large number of project applications requires a large administrative apparatus and may easily end up as an arena vulnerable to lobbying. Indirect support through the taxation system is cheaper, more robust and provides greater predictability for the industry as it is not allocated over the state budget from one year to the next.

One suggestion that has been promoted in the American debate on press subsidies is tax deduction for editorial positions[1]. This form of support finds its parallel in the Norwegian “Skattefunn” scheme, where companies receive tax credits for investments in R&D — another form of knowledge production[2]. As major newsrooms carry greater labor costs than smaller newsrooms, such an arrangement would also benefit the major companies, however this support would not be tied to circulation and would not be linked to the VAT rate. This provides more freedom both in terms of overall support and in terms of distribution. The Norwegian R&D tax credit scheme, for example, applies different tax rates for large and small businesses, and places a limit on the total tax credit to prevent large companies such as Statoil and Telenor from capturing more or less the whole pie.

Today’s tax exemption implies that the five largest newspapers in Norway obtain 40 percent of total press subsidies. The Media Support Committee will need to provide a very good justification should this situation continue.

Footnotes
1. See e.g. “The Death and Life of American Journalism” by Robert McChesney and John Nichols.
2. The Dutch R&D tax credit scheme, WBSO, may represent an even better model for indirect media support than the Norwegian Skattefunn-scheme as it is based on researchers’ wages. The tax benefit consists of a reduction in wage tax and social security contributions paid for employees carrying out R&D. In 2010 the R&D deduction is 50% of the first € 220,000 in R&D wage costs and 18% for the remaining R&D wage costs. Start-up companies receive as much as 64% of the first € 220,000.

Arguing that homosexuality is a disease which can be treated, Kavaf continued with criticizing the political standing of some feminist NGOs in Turkey. She stated that violence against women is sometimes so exaggerated by certain NGOs that they perceive it as a form of psychological violence when a husband asks her wife for food. Finally, Kavaf expressed her irritation by some soap operas which have explicit kissing scenes.

These shocking comments magnetized several reactions from LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) organizations, human rights organizations, artists, and many other intellectuals. One organization recently filed a criminal complaint against the minister. I argue that one of the most powerful responses was given to the minister during the demonstrations of Women’s Day in the cities of Ankara and Istanbul.

March 8 celebrations in Ankara. The banner says: - In the 100th anniversary of Women's Day, we are getting stronger, changing with struggle. (photo: Eda Acara).

This year on the 8th of March, when Women’s Day was celebrated all over Turkey, a group of people attracted my attention as I was watching some videos captured during the celebrations. The group belonged to the Women’s Platform which unites different women’s initiatives and organizations. Instead of screaming out cliché slogans with fixed tone of voice, they use some sort of a humorous but politically critical way of protesting. For instance, a group of women within this platform sing one of the famous songs from the 1970s named “I born free, I live free” (hür doğdum, hür yaşarım) while jumping on the streets to the lyrics. So, there was this girl who covered herself with her rainbow flag, while singing loudly, arm in arm with a veiled woman:

Why does this liar world keep limiting me? Who the hell are you interfering with my life? I was born free, I live free, it is none of your business, I am not slave to you. My mistake, my life, it is none of their business, go do your own business, don’t interfere with my life.

Another scene that captured my attention was when a second group of people were all sitting on the street with their little hand-made drums (empty cans probably filled with lentil, rice, small stones) and whistles. One of them was standing and shouting “Make noise against heterosexism, make noise against fascism, make noise against capitalism.” Suddenly, everybody was shouting, whistling, playing those drums, right before they slowly stood up and shouted “Another world is possible”. It is quite fascinating to see the unity and solidarity of that group of women with diverse backgrounds.

Throughout this short essay, I will try to introduce the dynamics of the mainstream women’s movement in Turkey and argue that this women’s platform might be an indicator of a new epoch for this movement.

The Turkish Modernization Process: Making the Public Sphere Available for Women

First of all, I will give a brief summary of the Turkish Modernization process as many of the reforms concerning women were introduced during that period of time.

Since the establishment of the Republic in 1923, Turkey has gone through a process of westernization, secularization and nationalization; i.e., the components of what is often defined as the modernization project (Saktanber, 2002, p.20). Women were regarded as an important part of this whole process. As a part of the ‘secularization’ process, women were aimed to be freed from the constraints of religion and turned into citizens of the young republic. The Swiss Civil Code was adopted in 1926 and women’s suffrage was introduced in 1934 which can both be regarded as the major reforms (see additional sources under References below).

Adoption of The Swiss Civil Code guaranteed all Turkey’s citizens equal rights before the law, regardless of their language, religion, race and gender. The most important aspect was the ‘secularization’ of the legal system. In terms of women’s rights, the law guaranteed:

• Equality between men and women within family
• ‘Official’ state marriage as the only ‘legal’ marriage (religious marriage is not legally recognized in Turkey)
• Abolishment of polygamy
• Equality between men and women regarding the issues of divorce, marriage, inheritance and witnessing in trials

The civil code was revised and approved in 2001 and came into effect on January 1, 2002 (see further information.)

The rights that were given to women, however, have not contributed to a total freedom of women from traditional constraints. The young republic was initially an authoritarian and centralized regime which implicitly constrained the organization of any sort of civil society. Claiming that women had been provided full equal status with men and herewith did not need any specific organization, the government shut down the Turkish Women’s Union in 1935 (described in an article by Şirin Tekeli on Turkey’s Women’s Movement). It is possible to say that women were tried to be integrated into the public sphere where the boundaries were rigidly defined by the state. Accordingly, women were expected to appreciate the citizenship rights that were offered to them.

State-designated Image of the ‘Modern’ Woman in Turkey

The paradoxical operation of the modernization process in relation to the status of women can further be evaluated according to the state-designated image of women. The socio-political structure of the Ottoman Empire was very traditional and religion was an important part of the organization of everyday life. In this sense, talking about women’s citizenship rights and offering them access to the public sphere under the ‘modernization project’ was sensitive topics to be discussed during the early years of the republic. In other words, as Ayşe Saktanber describes in her book “Living Islam: Women, Religion and the Politicization of Culture in Turkey”, the politicians of the young republic had to negotiate the status of the ‘modern’ woman with a traditionally conservative society.

March 8 demonstration in Istanbul (photo: engin(art))

Secularism was the key motto and positioning of women within this motto was obviously a challenge. Here, the notion of ‘nationalism’ played a balancing role between modern and traditional. While Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Turkish Republic and the commander of the Independence War, was proposing the reforms concerning women, he emphasized the heroic role played by women during the Independence War, underlying the fact that women share a significant part in the independence of the country and deserve equal rights with men (Parla, 2001, pp.71-75).

This image of the nationalist/patriotic woman was not traditional and backward-looking in terms of appearance and she would not stay at home but participate in the public sphere and serve the modernization of the nation. But at the same time she would be careful about her honour and chastity. In other words, the patriotic modern citizen identity limited the experience and the expression of a distinctive female sexuality, Parla explains. This can be seen as another type of boundaries set in front of women. It sounds like a precondition which offers women to enjoy the public domain but never forget the values and norms attached to her sexuality.

According to a report published by European Stability Initiative in 2007, Turkey has its first “woman revolution” during this modernization process because of the reforms mentioned above.

The report states that currently Turkey is going through its “second women’s revolution” since 2001 with the constitutional changes within the Civil and Penal Code. In order to understand this ‘second revolution’, we have to take a brief look at the development of the feminist movement in Turkey.

Organized feminism boosted after military coup

Undoubtedly, the voices of the 1968 generation were heard in Turkey as well and different groups of people were mobilizing parallel to the world wide identity movements in the 1970s. It was the Progressive Women’s Organization which was effective in vocalizing primarily the conditions of the working-class women in Turkey, according to Tekeli.

The organization and other new feminist initatives were sharply silenced when the military regime came into power on September 12, 1980. Around 650,000 people were detained, 230,000 people trialed, 50 executed, and 14,000 stripped of their Turkish citizenship. All political parties, unions and foundations were closed.

After the coup, the feminist movement gained a new perspective and acceleration. Nilufer Timisi and Meltem Gevrek, who were both part of that movement, define the main features of the 1980s as “Gaining strength” and “Consciousness Raising” in their article. The consciousness raising groups centered around neighborhoods constituted the very basics of an organized movement. Gevrek and Timisi talk about how women began to meet weekly at each other’s houses, and simply shared their daily experiences. The act of questioning the wider system took its root from questioning these local experiences. Finding commonalities between each other’s stories helped those groups of women accumulate the necessary knowledge and triggered their desire to see the wider picture.

This formation, however, was not unitary as it primarily followed the Kemalist tradition and turned the Muslim and veiled woman into the Other, seeing them as “backward” and “non-modern”, as Hilal Ozcetin argues in one of her works. The polarization between the secular and the religious left many women outside of the movement. However, the mainstream feminist movement managed to press the State to change the sexist patterns of the 1926 Civil Code which gave husbands the privileged position as the head of the household, and favored the man concerning property ownership during marriage and divorce (Tekeli, 2006, p.195).

Women’s legal rights improve, but discrimination persists

Lots of campaigns have been launched and The Civil Code was reformed during 2001. Accordingly, any sexual assault towards women is now taken into consideration under the code ‘Felonies against Individuals’ instead of ‘Felonies against Public Decency and Family Order’ as it was before. Besides, equal property ownership rights concerning divorce and marriage are legally ensured by the reforms. Yet, the latest governmental statistics shows that there is still a long way to go for women before they achieve equal status to men in Turkey.

In February 2010, the Prime Ministry Directorate General on the Status of Women (KSGM) published the most recent statistics on the labour and political participation of women in Turkey (pdf, in Turkish).

March 8 demonstration in Istanbul (photo: engin(art))

According to the report, the labour force participation of women has been decreasing during the last decade. In 1990, 34,1 percent of the total labour force was occupied by women, however, this number decreased to 26,9 percent during 2002, and to 24,5 percent in 2008. This number is very low as 43 per cent of the university students are female. Women’s political participation is relatively low in the country as there are only 50 women deputies in the Turkish Parliament which consists of 550 seats. KSGM’s report also comprises numbers about the physical violence against women. It is stated that 38 per cent of urban and 43 per cent of rural women are subjected to physical violence in Turkey.

Uniting the Diversity

The official statistics regarding women’s status in Turkey is quite superficial and overlook the diversity among women. This diversity has been kept obscure even within the feminist movement for a long time. Its agenda was so much occupied by the dominance of patriarchy that it did not pay enough consideration to the merging of patriarchy with the notions of nationalism, religion, and heterosexism.

What is new about this newly emerging feminist movement that we have seen on the streets of Ankara and Istanbul is the fact that they are able to unite different groups of women by erasing the ideological differences among them. In this sense, for me, they form the most subversive fist against patriarchy. This new group of people are able to see all the facets of patriarchy which constraints the lives of a Kurdish woman, secular woman, veiled woman and lesbian woman despite the differences in terms of the degree of that oppression. That does not mean that the differences among women are intended to be neglected, but a common ground is found to act as a whole. I am sure that those women’s initiatives, which form the bigger platform, do have a separate and autonomous agenda that they follow for their own struggle. They are, however, able to create one ‘multivocal’ body of action during mass demonstrations, like they did on the 8th of March.

A transsexual woman in the March 8 celebrations in Istanbul. The banner says: - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite, Transsexual Women are walking in the path opened by the resisting TEKEL Workers. (Tekel is a former state enterprise in the tobacco and alcoholic beverage sector that closed down their factory and left many workers unemployed). (photo: engin(art))

It is possible to trace their unitary understanding in their slogans. They shouted “Smash sexual, national, class-based exploitation” and “The world would shake if women were free”. Undoubtedly, there are organizations who do not want to integrate a veiled woman into them. Some women’s organizations never let the lesbians talk, arguing that the homosexuals’ turn has not come yet. Hence, what I have written about this platform might sound a little bit utopian as many people prefer to look at this new emerging group as ‘dreamers’. For me, they are the forerunner of a new epoch. “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing” says Arundhati Roy describing the new social movements that unite many different groups against the destructive forces of globalization. Concerning the new feminist movement in Turkey, I would like to believe that another world is possible also.

References and further reading

Bildirici, F.(07.03.2010). Escinsellik Hastalık, Tedavil Edilmeli, Retrieved 08.03.2010, from http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/pazar/14031207.asp?gid=59

European Stability Initiative (2007). İkinci Kadın Devrimi: Feminizm, Islam ve Turkiye Demokrasisinin Olgunlasmasi.Retrieved 09.03.2010, from http://www.esiweb.org/pdf/esi_document_id_91.pdf

KSGM (2010). The Status of Women in Turkey. Retrieved 03.03.2010, from http://www.ksgm.gov.tr/Pdf/tr_de_kadinin_durumu_subat_2010.pdf

Nilüfer, T., & Meltem, G. (2002). 1980′ler Türkiyesi’nde Feminist Hareket: Ankara Cevresi In B. Aksu & G. Asena (Eds.), 90’larda Türkiye’de Feminizm. Istanbul: Iletisim.

Ozcetin, H. (2009). ‘Breaking the Silence’: The Religious Muslim Women’s Movement in Turkey. Journal of International Women’s Studies 11(1), 106-119.

Parla, A. (2001). The ‘Honor’ of the State: Virginity Examinations in Turkey. Feminist Studies 27(1), 65-89.

Saktanber, A. (2002). Living Islam: Women, Religion and the Politicization of Culture in Turkey. London: I.B.Tauris.

Tekeli, Şirin (2006). The Turkish Women’s Movement: A Brief History of Success. In Quaderns de la Mediterrània, n. 7, 2006. 193-197.

Several authors have analyzed Turkey’s modernization process. Here is a selection for further reading:

Abadan-Unat, N. (1978). The Modernization of Turkish Women Middle East Journal, 32(3), 291-306 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/4325769)

Ahmad, F. (1993). The making of modern Turkey: London : Routledge.

White, J. B. (2003). State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman NWSA Journal, 15(3), 145-159.(http://www.jstor.org/stable/4317014)

A whole catalogue of interesting facts and opinions about government data — that’s what I’m taking away from the seminar (of course, as I helped organise it this is a completely subjective and biased view!).

Open data as a topic is unusual in that it brings together people with very different roles and backgrounds, from computer scientists via public sector specialists to journalists, business entrepreneurs and innovative civil servants. The presentations and debates at the seminar always zoomed in on the same questions, but from different angles: Why should more government data be made public? What obstacles are in the way and how can they be passed? What can we do with the data?

These are my notes from the seminar presentations, supplemented with slides from speakers. See also other reports and remarks (in Norwegian): Bente Kalsnes’ post on Origobloggen has sparked a lively debate, and a blog comment from Anders Waage Nilsen summarizes the day very efficiently.

Denmark: Demand-driven approach

Cathrine Lippert from Denmark’s National IT and Telecom Agency reported on the agency’s initiatives to improve access to government data. They include a project competition for innovative services (winners to be announced at a conference on February 4), an innovation programme directed towards the private sector, and a data source catalogue on the social platform digitaliser.dk. Planned is also an open data desk which can provide assistance, define guidelines and highlight good practices.

Download presentation (pdf).

The agency tries to advance its agenda by appealing to and bringing together interested groups in both the private and public sector. Lippert said the agency believes it can accomplish more by this demand-driven approach mobilising the grassroots. A top-down approach is hard, as open data does not have the same political weight as currently in Britain and the US.

Britain: Data and innovative journalism at The Guardian

The British newspaper is at the vanguard of using data in journalism. Simon Rogers, editor of the Datablog, explained how The Guardian works toward the “mutualisation of data”. Data is shared with users by publishing the data material behind stories on the Google Document platform – simple and user-friendly. A Flickr group has been set up to collect users’ own visualizations of data.

Increasingly, the role of journalists will be to guide the public through the vast forest of data; to be curators of information, Rogers said.

The Guardian’s “crowdsourcing” of researching the files of parliament members’ expenses is already famous. More than 23.000 users took part in reviewing the files. The editors learned from the experiment that when you ask users for help, you need to define manageable tasks and you should give the users something back for their efforts. When a new batch of data was released, the editors gave more specific tasks and the job was done in one and a half days.

Last week, The Guardian launched its own gateway to public data portals. In the future, they also want to give people visualization tools, Rogers explained.

Hidden data and how to find them

Web developer Harald Groven at the Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education focused his presentation on how vast amounts of highly interesting public sector data are kept under lock and key. In the analogue era publishing medium or low level aggregates of data was practically impossible – there wasn’t enough paper. This is no longer relevant, but the same practices remain, Groven said. Legal constraints are part of the reason why Statistics Norway and other institutions do not release more fine-grained data.

A Norwegian government data portal should concentrate on making available anonymized low level aggregated statistics, data sources that are largely unknown today, Groven recommended. He illustrated the proposition with examples from his own work developing services aimed at giving young people a better basis for making decisions about what to study. A type of data needed for one of the services, salary levels in different occupations, was difficult to get access to at a sufficiently detailed level.

A news journalist’s perspective: TV 2

Journalists often experience that public sector agencies want to control the presentation of data, Gaute Tjemsland of Norwegian TV 2′s news website said in his presentation. When TV 2 wanted the data from national school tests, the ministry responded by sending pdf documents, before finally caving in and releasing the spreadsheets that they had had all along. The reason was explicitly that they didn’t want the media to produce school rankings – i.e. present the data in their own way.

For journalists, the ideal situation is to get structured data, as detailed as possible, and as fast as possible, Tjemsland commented. He had encountered three main obstacles. Public sector agencies want to retain control over information; they are afraid of losing revenue; or in many cases they are not aware that their data can be valuable to others. The last obstacle is probably the most important, Tjemsland said.

The TV 2 editor proposed benchmarking the openness of government institutions. By defining variables to measure transparency, more pressure can be applied to have government data released. The media need to do their part by demanding information and should take a leading role in the debate about open data.

The need for a data.gov.no

In my own presentation, I emphasized four main findings from the project at the Infomedia department — based on a survey among state agencies, an evaluation of state agency websites and interviews with civil servants at the local and regional level.

We found that there is a scarcity of information about what data sources that actually exist. Very few agencies provide substantial information about their own datasets. Second, a central datastore, a data.gov, doesn’t exist; therefore we created a simple “store” of our own using a Google spreadsheet. With the help of a small community around 130 data sources have been registered there so far. Third, our survey and interviews convinced us of the great potential that exists in making more data available. Among other results, six out of ten agencies said they plan to make more data available during the next year. Finally, I highlighted how knowledge of open data issues vary widely across sectors and agencies. This probably reflects the low profile that the topic still has politically and in the public sphere.

In our project report we make ten proposals for making more data available in Norway. In the presentation I emphasized four of them: Create datastores at the state, regional and local levels; define principles and guidelines; give special attention to privacy issues; and define and fund pilot projects to kick-start the process.

The public sector collects and generates vast amounts of data. In recent years the interest in re-using public, non-personal data has been increasing among citizens, groups and companies outside the public sector. The media, civil society groups, businesses and private citizens can use public data as “raw material” to create new services, new insight and economic value. Efficient re-use of public data requires that public sector agencies inform about their data sources and make data available in relevant formats.

Practice varies strongly between Norwegian public sector agencies in different subject areas and across administrative levels (state/regional/local), this fact finding project from August to December 2009 has revealed. Some agencies offer detailed information about their data sources and have made data available for download. However, a major part of the agencies assessed offer insufficient or no information about data sources on the homepage of their websites. Here a fundamental requirement for the re-use of data is missing. The impression of varying interest and unused potential is amplified by the results of a survey among state agencies:

• Two thirds of respondents say their agency possesses data with potential for re-use that is not utilized today.
• The survey on the other hand suggests that the subject of open data is on the agenda in many agencies; more than six out of ten say they plan to make more data available for re-use during the coming year.

The survey shows that increased costs and the concern that external groups will misunderstand the data and misinform the public are cited as the two greatest obstacles against more data being made available. In addition, interviews with public sector agency employees suggest that the topic of making data available is new to some agencies.

A comparison with initiatives and debates about open public data in a selection of other countries (Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, USA) show that the attention the topic receives is greatest when it is placed on the agenda at the highest political level. The report recommends a number of concrete measures that it is assumed would quickly increase the selection of data sets made available for re-use. A website that collects public data sources, inspired by the US government’s data.gov, would be an obviously efficient initiative, especially when accompanied by a set of clear principles and rules and an “instruction manual” that describes how to make data available in a secure and user-friendly way. The report also points out the need for a parallel, ongoing debate about criteria for the constructive re-use of data. The media should, in cooperation with the public, play a leading role by producing examples of best practices in re-using open data.

Later, in November 2009 when election fraud had shocked me, like many others, I came across the article “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East” written by Ellen Lust. Lust in this article tries to draw a picture of the relation between authoritarian elections and democratization processes in the Middle East. She claims that “Elections in authoritarian regimes [of the Middle East] not only fail to push the transition process forward, but tend to strengthen the incumbent regime” (Lust, 2009, p. 131). She argues that in authoritarian regimes elections are the mechanisms to create competition for access to the limited state resources. By this, she claims that the authoritarian elections reduce demands for change, and create a “Competitive Clientelism”.

From the protests in Iran June 2009 (photo: Hamed Saber, CC license: by)

Lust uses this concept to describe a mechanism where the voters will reduce their demands to interests which fit in the state’s limited resources. In other words, she considers that voters would support the parties or groups which can cooperate with the regime to deliver goods to them. Further, she argues that authoritarian elections only during economic or political crisis can lead to demands for change.

This, in my point of view, contradicts with Lust’s description of voters in “Competitive Clientelism”. How could voters in authoritarian elections demand change (which would lead to democratization) if they will only act based on their limited interests? Is it the political crisis that creates a condition for demanding change? Or does democratization from below create a political crisis, which in the next step might produce the conditions for growing demands for democracy on the surface?

Although I find “Competitive Clientelism” very useful in helping to understand the Iranian presidential election of 2009, I felt the need for some further discussion on the way voters and authoritarian electoral “games” were described by Lust. I use the concept of game in authoritarian elections to indicate that on the one hand these elections seem to be simulation of selections, and on the other hand these kinds of elections are more complicated than simple selections.

As Lust also gave attention to, some voters in authoritarian regimes would not accept the rules of the game and would refuse to vote. But some of the others who participate in authoritarian elections would, in my point of view, learn the rules of the authoritarian electoral games.

In this article, I will consider whether knowledge about the game and participation in the game (in combination with many other factors) would create a demand for change from below. This gives meaning to why authoritarian elections only in a period of economic or political crisis can lead to a demand for democratization. Here, I will use the Islamic Republic of Iran as an example to indicate firstly the way voters as political actors learn about their positions in the authoritarian electoral games. By this, I mean that voters would find a power (even if it is limited) in the game. Secondly, I am interested in indicating that the election system would create a Self for voters which contradicts with the principles of authoritarian regimes (by the concept of Self I mean that the experience of voting creates an individual understanding of being able to choose one’s own representative). In other words the practice of voting creates an individual experience that might be the basis of demanding democracy. This I have called in this article democratization from below.

When elections in political crises do not lead to change

Not all authoritarian elections in periods of political crisis lead to demand for change. Since 1979 a new system of theocracy with some democratic features has prevailed in Iran. On the one hand legislative and democratic institutions such as the parliament have been established, and on the other hand Velyat-e Faqih, the leader of the Revolution, subordinate the people’s will by his ultimate rights (Eshkevari, Tapper, & Mir-Hosseini, 2006).

Between 1979 and 1989 there were continuous fights among Islamist groups and non-Islamist parties in Iran. While the Iranian people fought in battles with Iraq (in the 1981-89 war), radical Islamists established their power in the country by terror and imprisoning of political oppositions. During ’79 to ’89 many authoritarian elections were held, where people were supposed to choose selected candidates as president and parliament members. During these 10 years of internal and external political instability, none of the authoritarian elections led to a demand for change.

There should be many reasons for that. Voters might not have seen the election system as authoritarian. Or maybe elections were not understood as a correct way to change power, since the elections were not used by Islamists to stabilize their power. This also means that voters could not see their power in the election system.

Learning how to play the game!

In 1997 when the first post-revolution generation was ready to step onto the political stage by taking part in elections, there had already been some demonstrations at universities against the government. Youth, who were unhappy with the individual restrictions the government had placed on them, supported Mohammad Khatami in the election of 1997. Khatami supported peaceful relationships with Western countries, democracy, individual and civil freedom. “Iran for all Iranians” was one of his most known slogans in the election of ’97. On June 12th 1997, 79 percent of eligible voters participated in the election and by almost 70 percent of the votes cast Khatami was elected as the new president of Iran. The new generation of Iran was not the only attribute of the election. The Islamist groups that had been excluded from the powerful institutions of Iran had to mobilize people to reach the institutions. In other words, the Islamist opposition groups had to use the election system to gain power.

I believe it is crucial to ask what mobilized people. What were the voters’ interests? Can I claim that the speeches on democracy, individual and civil freedom mobilized voters? If yes, then I would argue that there already existed a huge demand for change and democratization from below in the society. In other words, the excluded Islamist groups and voters used each others interests to reach their own interests. This is what I want to call learning how to play the game. After twenty years of authoritarian elections, voters not only know the rules of the game, but also know more about the fights among Islamists. Since voters can see the oppositions’ need for their support, they recognize their power in the election system. Voters see themselves more as insiders, rather than outsiders in the authoritarian electoral games.

What moves in parallel with learning about the game is the experience of choosing one’s own representatives. Voters not only assume that they have some power in the game, but also they believe they are able to choose their representatives. We should also keep in mind that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the result of a revolution, where there was a belief that people should choose their government. The discourse of “nation’s will” was always powerful in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The experience of choosing own representatives

President Ahmadinejad’s national and international aggressive policies mobilized youth, women and middle class people to vote against him in 2009. The opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi accused Ahmadinejad of making the Iranian people poor by his international policies. Ahmadinejad in return accused them of being corrupt.

Mousavi represented a coalition of different Islamist opposition groups with more reformist feature. Karroubi is known as reformist cleric.

After a few debates among the presidential candidates, it became clear that Ahmadinejad was supported by a generation of Islamists that believed that the Islamic Republic of Iran has chosen a wrong path. They wanted a new start based on their own understanding of the Islamic revolution’s goals. The opposition candidates argued that Ahmadinejad’s international policies are against the interests of lower-class families, and national policies are against the will of youth, women and middle class families.

This video documents in part the election campaign and mass protests:

A detailed discussion on corruption and internal fights among Islamists never were held openly in Iran before the presidential election of 2009. Firstly, this showed a huge political crisis among Islamists in the structure of power. Secondly, it revealed that both the government and the opposition groups needed to mobilize the support of the people to gain power. The video footage taken some days before the election showed that Mousavi had mobilized many people across the country. One of his best known slogans was “every Iranian is one campaign, every campaign is one leader”. While remaining silent could be an option for people, they chose to come to the streets and express their thoughts in rallies. This, among other things, indicates that people believed that they could have impact on the situation and might gain acceptance for their demands.

Despite the mobilization of the opposition, Ahmadinejad was announced as president for four more years. The post election protest which is today called “the green movement” started from the day Ahmadinejad was announced as elected president. The first slogan of the protest was “Where is my vote?” which people shouted in the streets. Only a few days after the protest started, demonstrations changed the focus from election fraud to Vali-e Faqih Khamenei. Such chants can be heard in this video:

If authoritarian elections were only a system of Competitive Clientelism, then any political crisis in authoritarian regimes would only lead to another authoritarian election system. By this I mean that the lack of democratization from below would probably not change an authoritarian election system to democracy in any political crisis.

Here I have argued that the paradoxical nature of the authoritarian election creates a Self that grows against authoritarian ideology. This is not the political or economic crisis creating a condition for demands for change, but the demands for change that exists at the grassroots level. The demand for change can only lead to democratization, when the voters know how to use their limited power in electoral games. These voters who have started to believe in their power and formulate independent demands (independent from the authoritarian regime) know about the oppositions’ needs of support and mobilization.

In this article I have focused on a type of relationship between voters and an authoritarian election system that can lead to democratization. However, I believe that international and global forces should also be taken into consideration when we talk about the relation between authoritarian elections and democratization. How can we talk about an authoritarian regime, or any other regime, excluded from the rest of the world? Even if a regime tries hard to isolate the nation from the world, there will always be some international relations that have impact on authoritarian regimes and also the way authoritarian elections are perceived among the voters.

The text on the poster says: 'Our demand: Referendum again' (photo: Hamed Saber, CC license: by)

Literature:

Lust, E. (2009). Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East. Journal of Democracy, Volume 20, Number 3, July 2009, pp. 122-135.

Eshkevari, H. Y., Tapper, R., & Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2006). Islam and democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the quest for reform. London: I.B. Tauris.

By June of 2009 the nation’s Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, had overseen the launch of data.gov with the goal of increasing public access to machine readable datasets produced by the federal government.  Other government sites such as usaspending.gov and recovery.gov have since been launched to provide even more focused data on how the U.S. spends its taxpayers’ dollars.

A promise of increased participation

The promise of data.gov and of many of these other civic data collections is in allowing citizens to participate in the scrutiny of their government and of society at large, opening vast stores of data for examination by anyone with the interest and patience to do so. Open source civic data analysis, if you will.

The array of data available on data.gov is still sparse in some areas but has steadily grown to include things ranging from residential energy consumption, to patent applications, to national water quality data among others.

And the data transparency movement isn’t just federal anymore: State and local municipalities such as California and New York City are following suit with pledges to make more civic data available.

The benefits of the open data movement are also starting to be recognized throughout Europe. The U.K. has called on Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, to lead a similar government data transparency effort there, which should soon result in a data.gov analogue. And indications of movements are beginning to stir in Germany (link in German).

Beyond Data Scraping

In the U.S. various government data resources have been available in some form or another online for years now. Programmers could scrape these online data sources by writing custom parsers to scan webpages and create their own databases. And many journalist-programmers working in today’s modern newsrooms still do. But it’s messy, it doesn’t scale or extend well, it’s brittle, and ultimately the data that results may not interoperate well with other data.

Having government buy-in to the publication of organized and structured data lowers the barriers substantially for developers and others to get involved with analyzing that data. It also means that structured formats, such as those that conform to semantic Web standards can interoperate more easily and be utilized to build ever more complex applications on top of the data.

Data.gov ≠ Insight.gov

So now that the U.S. government is publishing all kinds of data online, society will be better, right? Well – maybe. Let’s not forget that data has a long way to go before it becomes the information and knowledge that can ultimately impact back on policy.

Some non-governmental organizations are pushing data to become information by incentivizing contests with big prizes. For instance, the Apps for America 2 contest, coordinated by Sunlight Labs, awarded a total of $25,000 to the top application submissions which made data.gov data more transparent and accessible for citizens.

These efforts at coordinating developers and stimulating application development around government data are vital, no doubt. The applications which result typically involve polished interfaces and visuals which make it much easier for people to search, browse, and mashup the data.

Take for example the Apps for America 2 winner, DataMasher, which lets users create national heat maps by crossing two datasets (either adding, subtracting, dividing, or multiplying values). These operations, however, can’t show correlation, and at best they can only show outliers. As one anonymous commenter put it:

I don’t get it. It shows violent crime times poverty. So these are either poor, or violent, or both? I don’t think multiplying the two factors is very enlightening.

What we end up with is that many of the possible combinations of datasets lead to downright pointless maps which add little if any information to a discourse about those datasets.

Data.gov and indeed many of the applications built around it somehow fall short of the mark in terms of helping people share and build on the insights of others – to produce information. It’s not simply that we need interfaces to data, we also need ways to collaboratively make sense of that data.

The Minnesota Employment Explorer was an early foray into helping people collaboratively make sense of government data. It not only visualizes employment information but also allows people to ask questions and build on the insights of others looking at the visuals in order to make sense of the data. In the long run it’s these kinds of sensemaking tools that will really unlock to potential of the datasets published by the government.

What’s Next?

With a long tradition of making sense of the complex, there’s a unique opportunity for the institution of journalism to play a leadership role here. Journalists can leverage their experience and expertise with storytelling to provide structured and comprehensive explorations of datasets as well as context for the interpretation of data via these applications. Moreover, journalists can focus the efforts and attention of interested citizens to channel the sensemaking process.

I’ll suggest four explicit ways forward here:

(1) that data-based applications be built with an understanding of trying to promote information and insight rather than simply be database widgets,
(2) that journalists should be leaders (but still collaborators with the public) in this sensemaking enterprise,
(3) that these applications incorporate the ability to aggregate insights around whatever visual interface is being presented, and
(4) that data.gov or other governmental data portals should collect and show trackback links to all applications pulling from its various datasets.

And finally, after we all figure out how to make sense of all this great new data, lies the question of whether government is even “listening” to these applications.  Is the federal government prepared to accept or adopt the insight of its constituents’ data analysis into policy?

Daniel C. Hallin is Professor and Chair at the Department of Communication at the University of California San Diego. Hallin has over the last 25 years conducted extensive research on war and the media. In his major contribution to the field, The “Uncensored War”, he addresses the issue of the media’s role in the formation of public opinion of the war, the journalistic reporting of the war, as well as the question of the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome”. This is a term that according to Hallin was created by proponents of a more aggressive foreign policy to refer to the reluctance of Americans, after Vietnam, to consent to the exercise of military power abroad — the concern being that intervention in foreign conflicts could lead to “another Vietnam.”

Hallin has also studied the media coverage of the Gulf War. His most recent contribution to the field of war and media studies, the article “The Media and War”, reflected critically on the state of the media and war research field.

This interview took place at the University of California San Diego in late November 2007. Although Hallin’s research focus over the past 10 years has not been on war and the media, but rather on comparative media studies, this interview offered an opportunity for an afterthought from a media scholar highly knowledgeable about media coverage of war and its effects on public opinion.

Helle Sjøvaag (HS): Much of the research on the media-military relationship in times of war has focused on military control of the media. As you yourself have emphasised in your book The “Uncensored War” — The Media and Vietnam, journalists experienced an unprecedented amount of freedom during the Vietnam War — a level of freedom that we have perhaps not seen since. Consequently, research on US media coverage of the wars since the 1980s onwards has focused much attention on military restrictions on journalists reporting war. However, in comparing the media-military relationship during the Gulf War in 1991 with the Iraq War, scholars seem to suggest the military is loosening its tight control of the media. Do you see a trend toward a more peaceful coexistence between the media and the military, or do you think there’s still a lot of conflict there?

Daniel C. Hallin (DH): I think there is more peaceful coexistence. Up until the first Gulf War, the tendency was, at least in the US, for more restriction. After the first Gulf War I think that the military kind of rediscovered that the media is not necessarily damaging to their interests — that actually it can be in their interest to have media coverage. I remember going to a conference after the first Gulf War where all of the press officers — the head press officers for the different military services – were there. The press officer for the army was complaining that the marines had stolen all the glory because he could not get the army officers to allow the journalists to go out with the troops — but the marines would allow them and so the marines stole the glory. So, rediscovering the fact that when you allow the journalists along, most of the publicity you are going to get is favourable. And it could in fact be in your interests to have press coverage. Then with the Iraq War, the policy of embedding gave the journalists way more access than they had had in [the Gulf]. And now of course this has become an unpopular war and so there are tensions, but I do not actually think the tensions are terribly sharp right now. I do not think that there is a lot of hostility in the military. There are complaints that the coverage is too negative but it does not seem like particularly a lot of hostility and not a lot of conflict either.

HS: Military restrictions on journalists have usually inspired loud complaints from the press corps. How loudly are they complaining of restrictions in their coverage of the current war in Iraq?

DH: The journalists are not particularly complaining right now. The journalists complain a lot more in the US about the White House — and this is actually standard. This was true about Vietnam also — that it was not the military that imposed restrictions on the journalists when there were restrictions, it was the civilian leadership in the White House, and this has been true again this time — that the greatest restrictions come from them, not the military.

Photo taken by US Army Cpl. Graner in Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq Oct. 24, 2003. The detainee “Gus” is being pulled from his cell by soldier PFC England as a form of intimidation. (Caption source: salon.com. On copyright: Pictures taken by U.S. military personnel on duty are ineligible for copyright, unless the photographer successfully claims that the photographs were not taken as part of his or her official duties. The photographers of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse photos have not made this claim, and have in fact denied it under oath. (source: Wikimedia Commons).

HS: The Iraq War has been compared to the Vietnam War on more points than one. When looking at the coverage of the two wars, we might see a few similarities. One similarity is perhaps that the media coverage of the two wars has been characterised by what you might call “significant events”, such as the My Lai story and the coverage of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the Abu Ghraib story during the current Iraq War. How important do you think these “significant events” are in changing public opinion of war?

DH: I do not think that by themselves they are significant. If you look at the trend line in public opinion I think that you will see that in Iraq, just the same as Vietnam, there are not very many bends in the curves — not like suddenly there is an event and all of a sudden public support drops after that event. What it usually is is a gradual decline. The Tet Offensive did not produce any significant wrinkles in the trend lines in public opinion really. That is not to say it was not important, because there was a lot of very significant discussion and politics that was focused around it. And similarly with Abu Ghraib — I think obviously Abu Ghraib had an important role to play in the decline of support for the war but it did not really dramatically change public opinion by itself. I think the most important thing is just like Vietnam — it is time that matters, and the fact that the war continues on and the casualty rate continues on. It becomes more and more evident that it is not going to end soon, and that is what erodes public opinion more than any particular event.

HS: Is there a fatigue that sets into the public opinion?

DH: There is fatigue, yes, and a kind of growing realisation about the cost of the war, and the fact that it is not as simple as the leaders said. Things like Abu Ghraib, or My Lai — people have a way of explaining those things away. They say that “people got what they deserved”, or they do not really believe that it happened — a lot of people do not. But it becomes harder and harder to explain away — the fact that the war just drags on. That is harder to deny than some of these other things.

HS: One of the other comparisons we can make between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War concerns the growth in one particular medium. In particular, television established itself firmly as a political force during the Vietnam years. Do you see some parallels here to the role of the Internet in the coverage of the Iraq War and the war in Afghanistan?

Vietnam war: Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base (photo: SP5 Edgar Price Pictorial A.V. Plt. 69th Sig. Bn. (A) (photo: Wikimedia Commons/ The Vietnam Center and Archive.)

DH: Well yes. In a lot of ways I think that what happened with Iraq is the same as what happened with Vietnam. There are some differences. One of them has to do with digital media technology. I think that that is really important — that the pictures of Abu Ghraib were taken by soldiers with digital cameras. Without those pictures it never would have been a story. I think one of the ways in which it is harder for the military to control the circulation of images has to do with that digital technology and the fact that there are soldiers with cameras who are taking these pictures. So the most negative images of the American military are not created by journalists — they are created by soldiers, and then they are circulated in this way. So digital technology is important in that way — and not just the Internet, but also just the cameras themselves.

Another thing is that the media are more globalised now than they were, and this is related to the Internet. But you have these other providers of information — Al Jazeera is the most important, but you also have the websites that are maintained by the militant groups and so on, and they circulate images too. So the flow of images is less totally monopolised by the big Western news agencies than it once was. With Abu Ghraib I think there are two things that are really important. The story of how it became such a big story – it partly has to do with Seymour Hersh [the journalist who broke the story], it partly has to do with whoever leaked those pictures to the media, but it is also true that even when the pictures were first shown, it was not quite such a big story in the United States until President Bush was forced to comment on it. And the reason he was forced to comment on it is because the pictures were also circulating in the Arab world. There was a big reaction in Arab public opinion, and he felt it was necessary to comment on that. So that fact that there are these other flows of information besides the ones involving Western media — it is not purely national, it is a global flow of information. And Bush has to respond to that.

HS: You wrote an article in Political Communication in 1993 called “Agon and Ritual — The Gulf War as Popular Culture”, together with Todd Gitlin at Columbia University. The article characterises the story of the Gulf War as highly ritualistic story, framed rather romantically in a similar narrative frame as the Second World War. The article also discusses the long term effect of media coverage, and you concluded by suggesting that “next time around” it would be easier to mount support for going to war. Looking at the build-up to the Iraq War — do you think this was the case?

DH: I think that was probably true, but there was another factor – which was the aftermath of September 11th, that made it pretty easy for Bush to send American troops to war. So it is true that in the period after Vietnam it became for a period much more difficult for the President to commit troops to combat, because there was a lot of suspicion of getting involved in war. And I do think that the Gulf War reversed the so-called Vietnam Syndrome to some extent, but then on top of that you had September 11th, which really pushed that into the background. Now of course, things are different again.

HS: Would you say that the media’s build up to the Iraq War was less extensive as the build-up to the Gulf War?

DH: I guess it should be said that in both cases there was a lot of coverage, and there was significant opposition in both cases. But I certainly think that the experience of the Gulf War made it easier for people to imagine that you could have a short successful war, and that you were not necessarily going to just get into another Vietnam. I think that the fact that the Democrats held back from criticising the President — they were willing to vote to go along — I think that has to do with the Gulf War, and the fact that that was seen as a successful war, and they thought that that might be what was going to happen again. They did not want to be on the wrong side of a popular war.

HS: In the article “The Media and War”, that you wrote in the book International Media Research, you diagnosed the state of research on war and the media — pointing to some of the aspects where more research was needed, particularly calling for a greater integration of the field and broader questions such as social theory, historical background and so on. You also argued that there should be more research on war as culture. How do you think the field of war and media research has evolved in the last 10 years?

DH: Well, there is a lot more literature now. The argument that I made about the absence of research about war and culture — I think there is a lot of new work on war and culture, not all of which I have read. I see more and more references to that. I mean, we are in a time of war again where this is a really interesting subject so people are starting to work on it much more intensively. And we are back into a situation where — if you believe our leaders — we are going to be in perpetual war for a long time. So it seems very obvious that the culture — our culture — is in some way a culture of war. You have to understand war in order to understand our culture.

References:
Hallin, Daniel C. (1986) The “Uncensored War” – The Media and Vietnam, University of California Press, Berkeley California
Hallin, Daniel C. and Gitlin, Todd (1993) “Agon and Ritual – The Gulf War as Popular Culture”, Political Communication, Fall 1993
Hallin, Daniel C. (1997) “The Media and War”, in Corner, John; Schlesinger, Philip and Silverstone, Roger (eds.) International Media Research – A Critical Survey, Routledge, London, New York
Hallin, Daniel C. and Mancini, Paolo (2004) Comparing Media Systems – Three Models of Media and Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Helle Sjøvaag is a research fellow at the Department of Media Science and the Department of Information Science, The University of Bergen.