On March 21 I was happy to present neweurasia (together with Global Voices, see detailed post about the conference on GV) as an example of citizen media site on First Moscow International Conference on Blogs, Media and Citizen Journalism on March 21.

Session on Freedom of Speech in Russian Segment of the Internet

The conference was organized by the Centre for Internet Policy of Moscow State University for International Relations (MGIMO), Realno.info, a web site that was created in the summer of 2006 to bring together regional journalists, and a Club for Regional Journalists “Iz Pervyh Ust” (”First-Hand Reporting”). The idea for the conference came up when Rostislav Vylegzhagin, one of the organizers and editor for Realno.info, was writing his dissertation on new media, only to discover that there are no Russian-language sources on new media, despite much interest in it.

It was good to catch up on development of Russian citizen journalistm. Because if Russia is several years behind the West in development of new media, Central Asia is several years behind Russia. Central Asian Livejournal bloggers are in touch with Russian, hence, the initiatives by Russian bloggers are likely to influence Central Asia too (especially, Kazakhstan, with high Internet penetration and mostly Russian-speaking population). It is also useful to see how Russian government copes with the rise of blogosphere, which is numerous and outspoken.

Dmitry Peskov, Director of the Center for Internet Policy, said in his welcome speech that four or five years ago, when first bloggers appeared in Russia, the IT administrators at the universities used to block access to Livejournal. Now, however, there is a need to explain the positive side of the blogosphere. Most conference participants (about 60 journalists from the regions, several from Belarus and Ukraine, and the rest - students, journalists, bloggers from Moscow) had their own blogs. If Almaty conference in September 2006 was dominated by the debate about whether blogs compete with professional journalists, Russia moved on. It now discusses what the future of the citizen media would be, and how both bloggers and professional media can cooperate with each other to contribute to better reporting.

Irina Yasina, of the Club of Regional Journalists “Iz Pervyh Ust” (”First-Hand Reporting”) said that people who write blogs are concerned with what is going on around them. Russian civil society is scared to go and protest on the streets, and thinks it is dangerous to deal with people in uniform. It is not possible for them to remain quiet, though – thus, the protest is going on in blogs and civic media.

Several stories told by journalists on Freedom of Speech in the Russian Segment of Internet (presented by Mikhail Afanasiev, editor of the web site “Novy Fokus” (”New Focus”), Boris Surganov (Zyryane.ru), Dmitri Kolbasin, and Irina Khrunova, a lawyer from the human rights organisation “Agora”) were reminiscent of Kazakhstan experience with the Internet media. There is an important difference though: in Kazakhstan, all online sites are considered to be media outright, while in Russia the sites would be media only if registered (and it is a voluntary procedure), and Media Law applies to them. Insulting the honor and dignity of the officials is a popular article of the Criminal Code, too. Popular punishment measures include fines and closure of the website, basically stopping someone from publishing information online. Interesting case was with “Novy Fokus” site: the judge decided it was a “tool” for committing a crime and ordered “confiscation”.

Irina Serbina, an organiser of the conference, said that currently those online media that are not registered (Realno.info, for instance, presents itself as a site for communication, not spreading the information) fall into legal gap. Moreover, the legislation and officials, especially in the regions, cannot keep pace with development of new media: there is no legal document that regulates it. Clearly, there is no understanding of new media by the officials, coupled with fear of publications that might upset higher echelons of power, therefore, measures to control online activity, though non-consistent and often illegal. Lawyer Irina Khrunova, who specialises in online speech freedom, said that it is apparent that the state will soon try to close this gap and adopt a law on online media. She urged the journalists to come up with their own version of the document and advocate for it being adopted. Russian journalists have another means of defending their rights internationally - in European Court of Human Rights, something that Central Asians (except for Armenia and Azerbaijan) still do not have access to.

Session on the future of citizen media