Thursday, November 10, 2005
Blogs and text messages spread call to violence
Blogs and text messages spread call to violence -- International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune has an article on how the unrest in France was "coordinated" through the use of cell phones, text messaging and, yes, blogging. This was indeed a smart mob using digital communications networks to spread information about the movements of the police and encourage people to participate in the actions. Young people have been arrested for participating in the unrest and some have even been arrested for blogging:
The International Herald Tribune has an article on how the unrest in France was "coordinated" through the use of cell phones, text messaging and, yes, blogging. This was indeed a smart mob using digital communications networks to spread information about the movements of the police and encourage people to participate in the actions. Young people have been arrested for participating in the unrest and some have even been arrested for blogging:
Police officials are saying that youths have coordinated local arson attacks using mobile phone messages, and have arrested three people for comments on the online diaries known as blogs that are hosted by Skyblog. The site belongs to the nationwide radio station Skyrock, which has four million listeners daily and claims the largest audience of any radio station among 13-to-24-year-olds.Skyblog is a blogging service run by a popular radio station which is targeting a generation that uses IM and texting to communicate. These free blogs were used a means of communication by the rioters and could also be used as a means of reaching them as a market and influencing their opinions. According to Pierre Belanger, the head of Skyrock:
The Skyblog site says that it hosts more than three million blogs, with new ones coming online at a pace of 20,000 a day, and is possibly the most popular meeting point for French youths on the Internet.
Those prosecuted for inciting violence in their postings this week included a 14-year-old from Aix-en-Provence who called on rioters to attack police stations, according to Justice Minister Pascal Clément.
Blog entries of those arrested also included ones calling on youths in the Paris region to rise up at once in a coordinated attack. "Unite, Ile-de-France, and burn the cops," one of the postings said, according to Agence France-Presse. "Go to the nearest police station and burn it."
Another message called on youths in housing projects to start arson attacks between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Friday.
Under French law, such calls to violence can result in sentences of one to seven years in prison.
Judicial officials said the three youths arrested did not know one another, but had all used Skyblog to send out their message.
Speaking during a press conference on Monday, the director general of the police, Michel Gaudin, condemned some blog entries as "real calls to violence."
Through blog entries, he added, the police have been able to watch development of a competition between housing projects to produce the most violence and damage.
Following the arrests, a spokesman for Skyrock issued a statement that the station would block any blog content deemed too inflammatory. "Whatever you do, I do not want you to use my name," the spokesman added. "You can imagine from what is happening in the suburbs that if someone finds out that we deleted their blog, it could mean a bullet in the head."
Censorship of Skyblog became severe enough by Tuesday afternoon to become a major topic of conversation on the most popular blogs. Postings on a memorial blog that features photos of the youths whose deaths inspired the unrest, bouna93.skyblog.com, emphasized the need for polite postings.
"We are targeting the first generation to have grown up after the Internet and mobile phone revolutions," Belanger said. "Eighty percent of our listeners have access to Internet and 90 percent own a cellular phone." Rather than traditional-style radio broadcasting, he said, he wanted a conversation with French youth over Internet and SMS messages.Some officials are also using web sites and blogging to explain their recent actions and the unrest has spread into cyberspace in the form of hacking in support of the rioters:
Official Web sites have also been hit by hacking and Google "bombing." For a time over the weekend the French version of Google returned the home page for the French president's political party when users typed in a search for Paris and the words "riot" or "suburb" in French.It is unclear who isresponsiblefor the online actions, but we have an interesting attempt to create some cyber disturbances in support of the real disturbances, fire and violence in the streets.
The Web site, www.u-m-p.org, features a banner advertisement of Sarkozy, whose hard-line policing tactics are blamed by many in the suburbs as alienating the youth there.
Another Web site taken over by hackers was the municipal Web site of Clichy-sous-Bois, the commune in which the unrest began. An article declaring the town mayor had resigned was posted on the Web site and sent out to all who had signed up for the municipal e-mail newsletter.
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A good observation. Networking technology can be used by all sorts of people, good and bad. Smart mobs can bring people together for all sorts of purposes. We hope it will be used for progressive goals but, mostly it will bring people together for social purposes of all sorts.
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