Thoughts About a Hypothetical Social Network for Activists I

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:57 Written by Mehmet Ali ANIL Tuesday, 01 June 2010 12:33

Freedom for Gaza Movement Flotilla and the Social Networks

When I heard about the attacks towards Free Gaza Flotilla, I looked up in the Internet about how the social networks responded. With many activist networks that are interconnected in a dense way, Twitter and Facebook come first in place. I looked up Twitter first, the social network that served as one of the information source about Iranian elections and violence that took right after, expecting that its structure is the most suitable for a protest to propogate within. I found out that many of those who protested or sent out news used the #flotilla tag in Twitter, which means that that tweet is about #flotilla, with many other tweets. Expecting the #flotilla topic to rise in rank, many people were tweeting about the incident. Depending upon the number of tweets in unit time, it was sure that #flotilla was the topic that was the most tweeted about. But the website, though it must've been an automatic process didn't put it into the trending topics, causing many twitter users to suspect censorship. This action, if it is taken on purpose, has limited the number of links that each tweet could make with others, thus limited the propogation of information, and supressed a probable exponantial boom in awareness in user numbers. The number of links, which is tweets in Twitter, inbetween each user within social web, is the key parameter that controls whether a news about an incident exceed the critical rate of spread. Links matter a lot. 

Thinking about the possibility that Twitter could've been at least undergoing a data mining procedure about the tweets that is shared within its network, and supressing those which could've been disturbing to the wider audience. That could've been the case, since the flotilla topics are associated to the Palestanian conflict, and since most of the world is both politically and spatially distant to most of what is going on there, and even most of the time clueless about what is happening, It might be an adventageous policy for Twitter to supress "extremes" from those who are "fed up" about Middle East crises and want to see Lakers trending instead.

Properties of Social Networks

So with the assumption that such censorship was in action, I thought about where actually these social webs fit in a set of all probable structures. Most social networks show some features that we take for granted. For example, in most of those networks, we know about the person that we are connected with, we know who she is, we have a tendency to confirm that the person exists in real life, the social link inbetween is generally persistent, and we are exposed to a huge amount of social data via a page that is always up to date. Chatroulette might be the example that is out of this generalization, though it has a very different emphasis. Another property of most of the social networks that it is a service. A service that though its clients are mobile, its servers are immobile. It is not a social network, but the Torrent network might be a very good example not working in this fashion, and is a good example about my upcoming claim.

If they differ, these networks differ in topology. For example Facebook is one of those networks that nodes are very common, and a single link is very rare (which is actually a user with only one friend). So everybody knows about every single action taken by others.  A groupware in contrast, has a graph, that is hierarchized in a way. Every employee has one way links to her inferior, whereas distinct workgroups are clearly defined, with roundabout links inbetween, in order to facilitate focusing. The first introduces endless opportunities and self organization, the other sustains easy control and is very energy efficient.

Though many of these properties that I cited are generally taken as very natural, due to our circumstances, but the area that I will ve trying to implement social networking to, requires to abandon these presuppositions. 

Thoughts About a Hypothetical Social Network for Activists.

I think that the current social networking scheme is unable to provide the needs of activism. What made me think about that is not only the recent observations I made in Twitter, but set of rules, or in other words a systematized culture which is called the Security Culture^1,2 , that has rules for those that are targeted by government, for example activists.

In short, the Security Culture has this social links of don't ask, don't tell, in order to prevent infiltration. It reminds activists that when an information is shared, an action is bragged about or any nonanonymity would result in weakness of the whole structure. It depends on the fact that when a fellow is investigated, she cannot tell what she doesn't know about you or the protest. In contrast of many social links that we encounter in Facebook, for example, this network calls for different needs, and they differ a lot in essence. 

A Social Network on the Internet that activist groups are going to use will indeed introduce some very exotic properties.  I will be writing a set of articles, from time to time depending on the Security Culture requisites, I will try to build a hypothetical network, in other words brainstorm about how a suitable system can be obtained for activist groups, that would help them only and only in their cause, how problems might arise and how could one get over them.

In my opinion there seems to be a gap in the social networks that is in use today. This approach, seems to alter the way that we consider information, how it is shared, its back-traceability, how social hubs are formed and such. Since, first of all, and probably for the first time, we will require a social web to show as small information as possible from our neighbors, and the ability to recruit fast and anonymously.

It is a fun challenge to consider. 

Will be continued.

Freedom Flotilla, an aid convoy, attacked by Israeli Armed Forces

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:57 Written by Mehmet Ali Anıl Monday, 31 May 2010 10:02

Though I avoid writing my personal feelings in my blog posts, for this one, this had to start a bit more personal.

Today, though I claim myself a non-nationlist and a non-believer, I got up enraged. I am sorry to put it this personal, but I thought it over lot of times and couldn't manage to put it  another way. It is very disturbing to get up early in the morning hearing about a convoy garrying aid attacked by military forces, killing civilians. To be honest, even writing a blog entry about it feels unnatural, but this I take as a necessity of being a humanist. If I have audience, let them hear these, though I must state that I am not a dependable source of information right now.

Despite of the fact that there are many little details about the incident, and I know that these details are either ingored or exaggerated depending on the source. Talking about those is the work of the people whom try to obtain an objective stance when such incident is investigated. All those I see when I open up a webpage about the attacks, is a brief explanation of what happened, and fine assurance of legitimacy for both sides, which is familiar, and expected from global news agencies. Those things are the things that will be consulted when this intervention is investigated afterwards.

So stripped out from the details, though many readers are probably have thirst for those details, I am sorry for those but can google it anyway: This night, the free Gaza movement ships a.k.a. "Freedom Flotilla" that headed towards military blockaded Gaza, loaded with aid, was intervened by Israeli Armed Forces, with 600 to 800 civilians on board. Facing resistance, İsraeli Forces responded with fire, killing 10 to 16 civilians as a result.

That's as simple and as real as it gets. 

So, this is the situation, though many will first mention that it took place in international waters, or that civilians wounded two Israeli soldiers, that the soldiers fired as soon as they landed on deck, that Israel had warned beforehand, or that wounded civilians were handcuffed. 

The point for today is that civilians died there while carrying humanitarian aid for people of Gaza. And that such action is taken towards a semi-international humanitarian organization has several clear consequences. First of all, though response towards such actions peak right after the incident and settle down pretty rapidly with the need for so called neutral commentary, the feelings of Turkish citizens towards Israeli Government which was under a veil of professionalism and "legimitate war" on "terror", has now shown its other side, triggering both religious and nationalist feelings and the need for revenge, which are deep rooted within the society already, but was targeted on other directions.

Israel and Turkey, being both military states (or warfare state, which is also in use, not being a welfare state) which both engineered strong ties between its military and people, which both have to induce nationalism and religion to its people in order not to lose its integrity, since they both have and still perform illegimite actions towards their residents and neighbors, are one of the few nations that such a conflict, when backed with emotions arose from the tendencies stated, would lead to severe consequences. When Turkey made a invasion to Northern Iraq, I saw how people watch death counts, silently found satisfacton from the ratio of casualties, in a hidden need of revenge. I don't think It was any different in Israel when it invaded Gaza Strip.

So, from now on, it doesn't seem to be the ones that want freedom in Gaza that have very bad personal feelings towards Israel as a state, but a majority of the residents of Turkey. Concerning their social structures, Israel and Turkey seem to be the worst choice, when it a major conflict comes to be the issue. This incident will motivate people to bring their fragile tendencies, like national or religous beliefs, out here, though probably in Israel it will only induce a chain of cool beurocratic movements. 

Right now, the Consulate General in Istanbul and Embassy in Ankara of Israel is subject to big demonstrations. There is a rally in Taksim square right now, and many are expecting a very bold international response, though it seems unlikely.

Concerning the closure of DTP, the only Kurdish nationalist socialist party in Turkey

Last Updated on Saturday, 17 July 2010 14:58 Written by Mehmet Ali ANIL Friday, 11 December 2009 22:35

This is directly copied from my journal in dA , I would be glad to take your ideas about the event from the comment section below: 

(I came into a conclusion that banishment of a major political party in Turkey would be an issue worth spreading word of, and would be a good reason to update an fossilized journal.) 

DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi, en : Democratic Society Party) is closed and its 35 party members are banned from politics for five years, with the final decision of the Constitutional Court. DTP, is dominantly Kurdish, and is the representative of Kurdish community and their will in the Turkish parliament. The party is found to be affiliated with PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, en: Kurdistan Workers Party), which is a guerrilla organization on Turkish-Iraqian border.

Sadly, the ongoing trend towards dialogue has came to a halt by this decision. DTP was one of the few success stories of Kurdish criticism to be implemented into a so-found-legal Turkish parliamentary system, incrementally getting attention and becoming a political force, getting the focal point from armed solutions, to itself; and was just becoming to be the one in the position of concern when Kurdish issues are to be addressed. Gathering more votes than former Kurdish parties from South Eastern region, people in the region had seen the glimpse of well settled and strong representation in the parliament.

By the time of its electoral success till its closure, DTP was a major figure of criticism in media and politics. Ultra-nationalist parties secured their state of both denial and annihilation of DTP authority, whereas elitist-leftist parties succeeded to be in favor of closure, because of its main source of trust while conserving the so-called secular state is the Turkish Army, which is fighting with PKK guerrillas indefinitely (yeah, very leftist indeed)

In short, today the Constitutional Court has undertaken revocation of a couple of million votes of Kurdish people. Many would call it to be an inevitable consequence of the attitude the party had towards PKK, whose blindfoldedness towards not-taken chances would be the reasons for prolonged and deepened indifference, othering and more armed conflicts.