UNESCO questions the still one-way street of ICTs

The need for local content

The lack of local content is evident across all media and information channels. One needs to spend just a few minutes in front of a television or computer screen to notice the overwhelming presence of content coming from content providers in the developed countries, reflecting language, values and lifestyles which are often vastly different from those of the community “consuming” the content.

Content does not flow of its own accord; it needs owners or originators with the motivation to create, adapt or exchange it. Obviously, the agencies that ‘push’ global or non-local content are more powerful and resourceful than those disseminating local content. With a few exceptions (e.g. the telephone, community radio, or indigenous knowledge systems), most formal content and communication ‘channels’ in developing countries help to push ‘external’ content into local communities. Counter efforts to distribute local content (such as African film, Asian research publications, ‘southern voices’ in the media, or the e-trading of traditional crafts) to global networks face an uphill struggle.

While the importance of local content has often been raised in many international meetings and by numerous donors and cooperation agencies, concrete initiatives and expertise in this area are scarce. Many, if not most, content initiatives using ICTs tend to ‘push’ external content towards local communities. In other words, they mainly provide ‘access’ to other people’s knowledge. With a few exceptions, new technologies are not used to strengthen the ‘push’ of local content from local people. Generally, the balance between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ – or supply and demand – is heavily weighted towards non-local rather than local content.

It is important to note here that, while everyone is impressed by the potential that the new ICTs offer for sharing and exchanging local content, in many cases the ‘new’ technologies are still tape recorders, radio, television, newspapers, or telephones. ICTs and the Internet are still a small percentage of the ‘toolkit’ used to create and communicate local content.

July 3, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The Armenian parliament has failed to pass a bill that would have placed severe restrictions on foreign broadcast media, particularly RFE/RL.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/7/BB6F8DCC-A266-43BA-86D9-4DB560DBBD0A.html

Parliament Debates. International Community Chastises. Citizens Galvanize.

A group of activists organized primarily through the efforts of Sksela, Transparency International, together with the cooperation and participation of many NGOs and media outlets (after we sent out mass emails stressing to each that such a dangerous step regarding restricted media specifically required their attention and action), gathered at Freedom Square and marched to the gates of Parliament on Baghramyan Avenue, with covered mouths symblizing the silencing of free and diverse media, and bearing a 10 meter long poster which proclaimed "Nrank kvyarkelen azadutyan dem" ("They voted against Freedom"), in bold letters and then listed the names of the 100+ members of Parliament who voted for the bill on Friday.

The second reading of the bill was scheduled for this afternoon.

Photos Onnik Krikorian's and mine.

Armenian Parliament Debating Foreign-Media Bill (RFE/RL)YEREVAN, July 2, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Armenia's parliament is debating the second and final reading of a bill that would restrict foreign-broadcast media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported.

Several hundred press-freedom advocates, meanwhile, have gathered outside parliament to demonstrate against the law. The bill, which passed its first reading on June 29, would block foreign broadcasters' access to public frequencies and heavily tax the domestic retransmission of foreign-made programs. (more)

Football fuss

So much for hoping that "the beautiful game" could unite the world...and/or proof that Franklin Foer's thesis in "How Soccer Explains the World" is accurate. In that the game reflects politics and globalization in a microcosm.

Armenian-Azerbaijani Soccer Matches Canceled

BAKU/YEREVAN, June 26, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has ruled that the qualifying matches between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the Euro 2008 soccer championship will not take place.

Europe's soccer governing body said in a June 23 statement that it had decided to cancel the two matches "as no suitable compromise can be found." As a result, both teams will receive zero points.

The two matches were to be played in September. But the soccer associations from both countries couldn't agree on where.

Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have been sour since the early 1990s when they fought a war over the predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia did not object to the matches taking place in Armenia and Azerbaijan. But Azerbaijan wanted the games held on neutral territory. Baku said it would be difficult to guarantee the safety of the Armenian players on Azerbaijani territory.

(full article)

To be sure, OSCE is not the only one criticizing.

OSCE Criticizes Planned Armenian Media Restrictions June 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A top media freedom advocate has criticized proposed amendments to Armenia's legal code that would
severely restrict foreign broadcast media.

Miklos Haraszti, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe's media freedom representative, called on Armenian
lawmakers not to adopt the amendments, saying they
were incompatible with OSCE commitments to media freedoms.

Under the draft amendments, Armenian broadcasters
would have to pay a sharply increased fee for each aired program made by a
foreign media organization.

The legislation would also ban Armenian Public
Television and Radio (HHHR) from retransmitting programs of foreign
broadcasters.

RFE/RL's Armenian Service primarily relies on HHHR's
radio frequencies to air its daily news programs across Armenia.

Haraszti said that as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
is currently the only foreign media outlet using the HHHR frequency, the
adoption of the amendments "would amount to a ban on their programs in
Armenia."

Armenia: Government Moves Against Foreign Broadcast Media June 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Armenia's National Assembly is due today to debate government draft amendments that could end Armenian-language broadcasts of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Among the amendments is a proposal to ban, or put a heavy fine on, retransmission of foreign-broadcast programs.

The two draft amendments sent to the parliament late on June 26 were swiftly condemned by local media rights groups and top opposition leaders.

(more) http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/06/e668c742-c73d-4df6-ba43-f6b26db6ac9c.html

La Fête de la Musique en Arménie!

Held around the world in 130 countries and 400 cities, and this year for the first time in Yerevan, the Fête de la Musique is my new favorite obsession! Concerts held all over the streets, in the open air. As the French have told me "it is the night when no one can tell you to be quiet!" Perfect weather, music resonating off old buildings, diverse bands and musicians playing just meters away from one another...a mass celebration of music all over the world, on the longest days of the year- the summer solstice.

In Yerevan, the philharmonic orchestra played a free concert, children's singing groups performed by Komitas' statue, but later in the evening it was lovely Abovian street whose scene was not to be missed. Reggae-band Reincarnation brought smiles to everyone crowded around Square One, The Beautified Project and of course Bambir brought their unstopable energy out to Charles Aznavour square...and the Fête ended with a finale of a remarkable new jazz band The Zoo playing at the French Terrace (how apropos), under cafe umbrellas while the warm summer rain started to drizzle in, with the smell of wine and strawberry hookah floating in the air...

http://www.21juin2007.net/
http://fetedelamusique.culture.fr/index_flash.php

Yes. Thank you. Finally.

Kindergarten through 4th-graders at Mid-Prairie Elementary School in Kalona, Iowa (Iowa!) will have the chance to learn Arabic after receiving a federal three-year grant for a language program (full article).

Cary and his classmates are in one of the classes of kindergarten through fifth-grade students who have started to receive lessons in the language this past month. While studies show the benefits of learning a second language at a young age, why Arabic?

Because of the Middle East, increasingly important in world affairs and where Arabic predominantly is spoken, said Susie Swartzendruber, Kalona Elementary's Arabic program coordinator.

“I just feel like this is our way to help our students start looking at that part of the world in a different way,” Swartzendruber said. “I think this is a great way to build understanding.”

art imitates life

Two nights ago I finished watching a documentary called Gaza Strip, which was recommended to me by a friend. The doc was filmed during the second intifada in 2001, and the camera mostly follows children in east Gaza, where many were wounded and killed by Israeli soldiers- making the devastation of the conflict all the more difficult to swallow. The film particularly follows one 13 year old, Mohammed Hajezi, and his friends, who are a part of "a new generation of Palestian boys who risk their lives hurling stones over barbed wire fences at Israeli tanks, in symblic gesture of resistance to the occupation."

Upon turning off the DVD player and flipping back to tv mode- which is permanently set to CNN- imagine my suprise to see images of the very same streets in Gaza with headlines about the anarchy resulting in a dissolved Palestinian unity government. It hurts me to think that perhaps some of the bemasked faces I was seeing on the live-feed, today, in 2007, could be the very same young teenage boys I had just watched immortalized in Longley's film 6 years ago, now grown into men with unresolved frustrations ceaslessly fueled by the realities of the life they dealt with in childhood. When will children be able to live as children...