Deutsche Welle, 23 February 2012
With
foreign media barred from the country, the Syrian uprising provides the best
example of how the concept of what was formerly called broadcasting has changed
and of the transformative power of personal videos.
In his 1971
spoken word classic "The Revolution will not be televised," US
singer/songwriter Gil Scott-Heron presciently captured the struggle of
African-Americans to find their place in a white majority society.
He weaved
his critique around the mass medium which manifested America's dominant culture:
television. For Scott-Heron, by constantly broadcasting and thus reaffirming
life from the perspective of the white majority and neglecting the very
different reality experienced by African-Americans, television, was a key part
of what was wrong in the US.
New concept
Thirty
years later there is probably no better real life proof of how much the nature
of what used to be called television - i.e. a one-sided sender-recipient system
- has changed than the Syrian revolution.
To be sure,
the official Syrian media remains under state control and spouts the
government's line. But scratch just below the surface and you'll notice that
the Syrian revolution is indeed being televised - albeit in a very different
way than many would have imagined just a few years ago.
With
practically all international journalists being banned by the Assad regime from
Syria, the way the world has learned what it knows so far from the events stem
mostly from reports provided by Syrians still inside the country.
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| Protests continue in Syria
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Of all the
accounts coming out of Syria, video footage due to its immediacy has arguably
played the lead role in highlighting the atrocities carried out by the regime
and alerting a hesitant global public to the Syrian struggle.
On Youtube
alone users can find some 100,000 videos related to the events in Syria. On
more specific sites like the Syrian Revolution page on Facebook, an information
hub on the conflict with nearly 400,000 supporters, there are dozens of videos
from Syria and numerous links to other portals, almost all of them providing
video content.
Live videos
for everyone
Måns Adler
is one of the people who made this possible. The 30-year-old Swede is the
founder of Bambuser, a start-up that enables users to broadcast live videos
from their mobile phones to the Internet. The company which Adler launched in
2007 now boasts over one million active users who stream videos in real-time
from their mobile phones to sites like Facebook, Twitter or the Bambuser
homepage.
Since the
violence escalated in Syria in recent months, Bambuser has noticed a massive
uptick in the number of videos streamed via the site. Currently there are more
than 1,000 Syria-related videos posted daily on Bambuser, estimates Adler.
What's more, video footage provided by Bambuser is also used by major news
outlets like the Associated Press, Press, Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera reaching
a global audience in the millions.
Democratize
technology
When Adler
founded Bambuser five years ago, he never imagined that it would become a major
tool for young Arabs in their struggle against their oppressors. Instead it was
mainly seen as a nifty way for people to communicate directly with others.
Still, the seed of how the platform could be used was already sown back then.
"It
was a mission to democratize the technology of live broadcasting," says
Adler.
He explains
that when he conceptualized his plans for Bambuser during his university
studies, one of the three possible scenarios he sketched out for its usage
involved an Iraqi man named Mohamed who used the service to broadcast live
footage of innocent civilians being shot by soldiers during the Iraq war.
"So
there was that sort of scenario within the idea already from the
beginning."
By enabling
the average mobile phone user to stream videos live across the Internet
free-of-charge, Adler and others tore down a major technical barrier that
allowed autocratic regimes to monopolize and control the dissemination of video
content.
Fight for
human rights via video
However,
the groundwork for the widespread use of videos to document human rights abuses
was laid 20 years ago in New York when singer Peter Gabriel among others
founded Witness, a non-profit dedicated to capturing human rights violations
via video.
Chris
Michael, Witness' video advocacy training manager, says the drastic change in
video usage over the past 20 years can't be overemphasized. In its early days
when so called handycams were just appearing on the consumer market, Witness -
due to steep camera prices and the difficulty of transferring footage - was
focused mainly on providing equipment and teaching people how to use it.
Fast
forward 20 years and many of us not only carry some sort of video camera in our
pocket everyday, but services like Bambuser make it easy for everyone to
broadcast and share that content in real-time.
So instead
of providing equipment and basic training, Witness today explains how to keep
video material fresh and relevant for potential use in court and gives
practical advice about how to avoid retribution for documenting human rights.
"We
are making people aware of the security risks if someone's worst enemy were to
see that footage," says Chris Michael.
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Image of security forces deployment
by Syrian opposition
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"We
are also building new tools that help blur faces in real time through a new
application called the Obscuracam which really is an innovative tool to not
only blur faces and make sure that we can protect identities in real time, but
also look at ways that we can encrypt content."
In
addition, Witness shares a curated list of Syrian videos with its more than
325,000 followers via Twitter.
Genie is
out of the bottle
Confronted
with dozens of videos documenting government brutalities going viral, the Assad
regime finds it almost impossible to stop their citizens' coverage.
Måns Adler
believes that the regime is trying to lower the Internet capacity in Syria in
order to make it difficult for the opposition to use it, but he says autocrats
have learned that they can never fully put the genie back in bottle again.
"When
we were blocked in Egypt last year I think the countries learned a hard lesson
whereas they understand that if they block specific Western companies there
will be massive pressure from the international community on them."
Chris
Michael of Witness notes that as the violence picked up dramatically in Syria
over the past weeks, so did the amount of personal accounts of the events.
As one of
the best examples of the power of a personal account Michael tells the story of
a video showing a nine-year-old boy who is lying on a table in the middle of
room with a bandage over his heart. Crying can be heard in the background and
you can hear a man speaking and crying into the camera. The man relates what
happened to his child and then suddenly pulls off the bandage and you can see a
bullet hole straight through his heart. Then he makes a direct plea for the
Russian government to stop the bloodshed in Syria.
"It's
an unprecedented experience with regard to human rights work in video,"
says Michael.
"And the Syrians are leading the charge."
Author: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge
" ... Now I give you something that few think about: What do you think the Internet is all about, historically? Citizens of all the countries on Earth can talk to one another without electronic borders. The young people of those nations can all see each other, talk to each other, and express opinions. No matter what the country does to suppress it, they're doing it anyway. They are putting together a network of consciousness, of oneness, a multicultural consciousness. It's here to stay. It's part of the new energy. The young people know it and are leading the way.... "
" ... I gave you a prophecy more than 10 years ago. I told you there would come a day when everyone could talk to everyone and, therefore, there could be no conspiracy. For conspiracy depends on separation and secrecy - something hiding in the dark that only a few know about. Seen the news lately? What is happening? Could it be that there is a new paradigm happening that seems to go against history?... " Read More …. "The End of History"- Nov 20, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll)
"The New Paradigm of Reality" Part I/II – Feb 12, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" (without a manager hierarchy) managed Businesses, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)
