Whitman
Romanticism was much about beautifying nature which can be seen in Walt Whitman’s work but he was also very influenced by Scientific Realism. Walt Whitman kept writing and re-writing his masterpiece, titled Song of Myself, throughout his life. Whitman sees himself as a Seer, he was religious and equalized all living things (even the mundane was important). With a provocative rebellious attitude (for those times) he stretched concepts on what was considered poetry and inspired many. 

Whitman is too religious for my liking. He also maintains a slightly condescending tone and at sections he “hammers in his points” through excessive use of catalogs which I feel dumbifies his readers. He also doesn’t like taking sides but prefers always listing dichotomies to stay in the “grey zone”. I don’t like the overall tone in the poem where he acts as the wise man teaching “his children” a lesson of life. Some of the quotes I like:

“I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven”

“The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them”

“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.” 

Rimbaud
The Symbolists worked with stretching reality into mental creations. Creating an ordered chaos to find beauty in evil. They take every sense into the extreme, making it very personal and close. Rimbaud was a very young poet who wrote all his work before he turned 20. He lived a very extreme life with plenty of drugs, sin, homosexuality and alcohol to reach the unknown. “The poet makes himself into a visionary by long derangement of all the senses”. In his poetry titled “A season in hell” he has a dyptic part between the sections named Delirium I and Delirium II. In the first delirium he mocks his own relationship through the voice of his lover where he compares himself to a devil. The second part is also a confession but this time mocking himself as a poet. The text utilizes a lot of parody, he is innocent but guilty. Rimbaud also stretches the imagination, how can Hell have seasons?

This poetry is more my style because it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Utilizing a lot of black humor and seeing beauty even in evil which I like. Rimbaud also makes use of many strong contrasts next to each other like when he lists church latin, eroticism, grandmother novels and fairy tales after each other. Mixing and merging objects and ideas by creating beautiful poetry. I really like some of the small images he manages to create with just a few words e.g. “the slumber of virginity” and “I had been damned by the rainbow”. Not much more than this is needed. To me good poetry should take a while to understand fully which symbolism poetry definitely does. 

“Beneath the bush a wolf will howl
Spitting bright feathers
From his feast of fowl:
Like him, I also devour”

“I began it as an investigation. I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”

“For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable.”

 Edit: Several different versions are used by people reading this poem. Makes us see how drastically a text can change meaning depending on the form of it. Different translations means only that translators saw the meaning of the text very differently which is then multiplied with us reading their different translations deriving even more separate meanings from the words.

[pic: CC-BY-NC-ND, Thorsten Becker]

Social Media as a Force for Change 

You’d be forgiven for thinking that social networks like Twitter and Facebook are the sole domain of inane chatter, people ‘friending’ those they haven’t seen in ten years, and teenagers orchestrating their highly complex social lives from the comfort of their sectional sofas; but in recent years these networks have taken on new roles – as tools of social and political change. During the Arab Spring of 2011, and the unrest that followed across the globe, websites such as Twitter and Facebook were instrumental in the co-ordination of protestors and rebels. To such an extent, in fact, that during the overthrow of the Egyptian government, the internet was actually switched off. The implementation of this block serves as proof of the power of the web; giving the oppressed the ability to reach out to others across the globe, whether as a call to arms or a cry for help. But when both the instigation of an attack, or word of oppression, can be delivered in less than 140 characters – is social media a gift or a curse for international relations? Does it bring us all together, serve to incite more animosity, or have no real purpose at all? 

A new way to source information 

In the past, international relations have relied upon various centralised media institutions, including newspapers and television. The only way that international stories could ‘break’ is via these traditional news sources, so there would sometimes be a delay in the delivery of breaking news stories, or information censored or removed. The internet has changed all this, and more specifically, social media has changed all this. International relations are now as simple as checking a news feed or searching for a hashtag. News spreads in a much more organic way thanks to the web, and as such it’s not uncommon for traditional news outlets to be somewhat ‘late to the party’. When you can discover exactly what’s happening in a particular country with a simple social media search, why bother waiting for a news website to draft a story about it? The realtime nature of social media has meant that international stories are heard more quickly and by more people who then have the chance to act – and that can only be a good thing for all of us. 

The rise of ‘slacktivism’ 

One of the reasons that social media is so great is that it gives everyone a voice; however, for many people, voicing their concerns is where the story ends. From an awareness point of view, it’s great, because more and more people will learn of the plight of those in other countries, but it doesn’t necessarily achieve anything in terms of action. For this reason, the term ‘slacktivism’ has been coined. In essence it refers to those who speak up on international issues via networks like Facebook and Twitter, but fail to take any action – be that donating money, attending protests, or any other form of activism. This highlights one of the key issues with international relations via social networks: awareness is increased (along with indignation), but in real terms, a tangible difference being made is often absent. 

Challenging channels of authority 

For many years, and in many countries, there has been a hierarchy of information in place which allowed those in power to control the flow of information. Social media practically abolishes this hierarchy. If a protest begins in any major city across the world, news of it will hit social networks in seconds, meaning that the country’s authorities have no power to stem this flow. And because social media is a global medium, the news can be picked up rapidly by those in other countries who can then begin to report on the incident. For this reason alone, social media is a tool of incredible power. Far beyond a being a platform to arrange a meetup with friends, social networks have become a tool of revolution. 

So is social media a gift or a curse? The answer is a subjective one. If the freedom of information enabling help (or at least awareness) coming from other countries, then it’s most certainly a gift. But if it’s used only for talk and not action, it can become a victim of itself. With responsible action taken based on social media sources, networks like Facebook and Twitter can emerge as something far more than the sum of their parts. 

[pic: CC-BY, Arenamontanus]

Transparency – Net Politics (the pirate party movement),Integrity, Copyright
Social Media – Integration,Technology,Web 2.0
Cultural Patterns – Design,PR,Marketing

My primary intentions when starting to blog was to evolve my written communication skills. Blogging also helps me by forcing more thoughts on a certain subject and thereby enhancing my thoughts and ideas around a certain area. Writing down thoughts also helps me in a pedagogical way to devour the information contained within the text and internalize it for later on. Blogging builds my digital portfolio and creates a good SEO result for my name (making my views easy to find when googling me). 

I write the blog for my own personal development which is why it’s not as reliant on recurring visitors as other blogs might be. Most of the hits on my blog come through search engines (a few from when I share content over Facebook and Twitter). 

Some key metrics achieved over my two years of blogging:
Total unique visitors: 15.334
Unique countries: 153
Top countries: USA (34.1%), Swe (10.7%), UK (8.9%)

Some crazy numbers that I had no intention of reaching when I started my blogging! I currently reach 200-250 unique visitors each week which I still have a hard time grasping. The visitors are reached by high quality content and utilizing some of my SEO knowledge to attract readers. Despite high number of visitors I don’t create posts to attract readers, I write about what I find interesting and want to develop my thoughts on.
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My top 5 posts over the past two years

Gain 500 Followers on Twitter Instantly,Quantity or Quality? – A critical post about how easy it is to gather “empty followers” on social media that don’t mean much. 

A Letter About Why I Want to Study Abroad - Posted the letter I wrote when applying for exchange studies in Mexico. Many students in similar situations looking for inspiration on what to write or if they really should do an exchange in a foreign country.

Sierra Tequila Label Brand Through a Semiotic Perspective - An analysis of a brand I did for a visual communication course I took. Gives an insight to Sierra Tequila’s brand through applying a certain method.

The Power of Mind Control - An area that has tantalized people for a long time. An area I find very relevant to try and grasp for anyone studying behavior science and particularly Public Relations. 

MTV and Their Brand Image - An analysis for a brand management course that delves deep into some underlying factors of the MTV brand 

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If you appreciate my posts you can follow my RSS feed, send me a tweet on @collentine, share a post with your friends, support my blog costs through Flattr or contact me through e-mail: josef [at]] collentine.com

The rapid development of social media have changed our communication patterns and made information more accessible. With more access to information, people are able to get more educated opinions even though the majority of knowledge originates from a limited amount of sources. It is not until recently we have started to see more studies about how gatekeeping play an important role in social media. This study will examine how Mashable plays a part in the dissemination of knowledge about Chinese social media.

Some argue social media in China are merely copycats. Most “social media” experts in the western world look exclusively at Facebook and Twitter when looking for new social media practices. China is a “copycat” worth copying back from. Many social networks in China have the same platform but make small and important differences upon it. The western world would benefit by studying the knowledge of Chinese social media in order to understand and improve their own.

Through theories on media logic, social media and gatekeeping the thesis discusses implications of what is communicated about Chinese social media in the western world. Through also bringing up what is not conveyed this thesis will explain how knowledge about Chinese social media is of importance to the western world.

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To be continued…

Thesis will be handed in tomorrow. Parts of it will be posted here in future blog posts while waiting for feedback and creation of final version.

[pic: CC-BY, 85mm.ch]

The document can be reached here.

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This document was compiled from the German pirate party Wiki page. It has been translated through Google Translate and I take no responsibility for accuracy of translations or that this is the current stances of Piratenpartei. Might have missed some newer versions of programs as well if they were not on the Wiki. Tried finding other stances towards education change in other countries wiki’s but didn’t find much. Sweden has a few specific for education and Catalunya has a few both not very detailed. See this compilation as inspirational samples to form your own ideas

There has been a recent hashtag, #ShameOnReuters, criticizing the impartiality of Reuters reporting in Yemen. This critique concerned ‘Mohamed Sudam’ who has been a ‘stringer’ (non-staff correspondent) for Reuters for a few years. During this time he also worked for the Yemen government as interpreter and secretary of state. This facts were known by Reuters but a decision had been taken to allow him to keep working as a neutral reporter for them. 

These dual jobs had not been known by the public until the recent event where Mohamed Sudam had been kidnapped by the opposition to the government. When the public found out they didn’t take the perceived bias in a Reuters reporter good and started tweeting about this under the #ShameOnReuters hashtag. As late as Thursday afternoon Reuters was still defending ‘Mohamed Sudam’ before the #ShameOnReuters forced them to rethink. On Thursday evening the following statement was released by Reuters:

Statement from Reuters regarding Mohamed Sudam: Sudam’s work as a Reuters stringer over the course of many years has been fair and accurate. When he became a translator for the president, he disclosed his role to Reuters. On reviewing the matter, however, we believe it’s not appropriate to use a stringer who is also working for the government. He is no longer reporting for us from Yemen.

I believe that if Mohamed Sudam’s double jobs had not been criticized in Twitter he would still have worked for Reuters reporting in Yemen today. This leads us to ask if social media will be the watchdogs for impartiality of traditional media in the future?

I was able to ask this to Eric Auchard, editorial innovation director for Reuters, during one of his lectures on Thursday. He responded with it definitely being a good idea and also said that it was “always good to look at weaknesses”. He also mentioned a blog, Regret the Error, dedicated to finding “media corrections, retractions, apologies, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the press”

[pic: CC-BY, Shaun D Metcalfe]

“Even if there’s only one person, that learns one more thing than yesterday, my work is worth it” -@Dima_Khatib

On October 26th I took part of a conference called  Net4Change that discussed how the Internet helps to create democratic change. I wrote some more about who organizes the conference earlier. I was participating in the conference remotely, taking part of a live-stream via Internet and following the #net4change tag on Twitter. Here are some of the notes me and others took from two of the talks. I will post more notes from Maryam Al-Khawaja and the end-discussion in another blog post on Friday.

Salma Said - Egypt: Popular uprising or Internet revolution?
Twitter: @salmasaid 

‘I am a thug. Come arrest me!’ pic: CC-BY-NC-SA, Nora Shalaby

Salma Said kept a very engaging speech displaying a lot of passion in her participation of the revolution. One critique against the net4change conference and media in general was for only focusing on a certain type of activist for interviews, articles and conferences like this.

Slim Amamou - Tunisia: Hacktivists, Anonymous and their role in the revolution
Twitter: @slim404

I found this text through Lola Voronina who is the International Coordinator for Pirate Party of Russia. 

The concept of the Moscow Convention for the Copyright

The need to reform the copyright law

The need to reform the copyright law, under national and international levels is the conclusion, to which the professionals (lawyers, artists, economists and representatives of the content industry) come worldwide. Established in the industrial age, the system of author rights was fully consistent with the way of functioning of the industry in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century but it is no longer corresponding to the digital age. The principles of the protection of authors’ rights that are set out in the main international agreements – the Berne and Geneva Conventions and WIPO Copyright Treaty, – may not be fully realized in an environment where the methods of production, distribution, access and use of the culture have changed under the influence of digital technology and the Internet.

In the last few years it’s appeared to be a number of fundamental new ways of communication and collaboration. The basis for economic development is the speed the creation and sharing of works, as well as ease of their revision. Often the product is no longer even and complete, but represents a complex of individual results of intellectual activity, which can constantly change. Basically the whole Internet society has become authors. Anyone who was actively using the network, was creating the protected works, often without knowing it. This led to the fact that on the one hand, the amount of available information became enormous – for one day people create more protectable works, than in all of the XIX century. On the other hand, the commercial value of most of the results of intellectual activity is very low and often non-existent. So the value of the potential actions in protecting them are many times bigger than their value. Usually the authors of such works and do not mean that their creations will be protected, but not making efforts to make the public aware of it or allow to use their works for free.

Besides that, the Internet has aggravated the problem of so-called “orphan” works, the search for authors and copyright-holders of which is impossible or requires a lot of effort, so many of these works fall out of the public turnover.

To tighten security is the way to a dead end

The conclusions that seem to be logical – the tightening of the protection requirements and increasing of the control over the content distribution  – do not stand a technical audit and do not meet the capabilities of the control services, as well as they contrary to the way of life of the digital age people. Copyright law definitely needs be changed, and not by bringing the new restrictions, but by a new understanding of it’s principles.

The basic principles of the reform

The basis of a new international convention on copyright should form a realistic and realizable principles, corresponding to the interests of society, protecting the creator law in using the works, and the public’s right of access the culture. Only by following these requirements, the copyright will be respected, and will give the new opportunities for the creativity and social development.

To protect the protected

The state must protect the personal rights of the author (moral and nonproprietary), his proprietary rights of commercial use of his creations, the right of free distribution of works and also the cultural heritage that is in the public domain.

The protection of the creators rights has to distinguish the difference between two kinds of rights – proprietary (commercial disposal) and non-proprietary (personal or moral). Personal rights – in particular the right of name, must be protected independently throughout the duration of protection of copyright. Protection of the right of commercial use is provided to the author by the state as a benefit for a limited period of time. The way of protection should depend on the context of the publication and the way of its use. In particular, the use of the product for personal, nonprofit matters should not be a subject to state regulation or any restriction.

Registration of commercial exploitation of the works

Implementation of these principles is possible through a reference to historical legal experience, which some countries do have – for example a registration of works designed by the authors for the commercial turnover with the financial rewards to them. The use of the product for personal nonprofit use is impossible to control, because you can only monitor the information which is available. To obtain the material rewards the work should be registered. The registration shall be maintained under the control of the state, which thus learns what works should be protected. Perhaps the paid registration may be implemented, similar to any property registration. The implementing of the registration would solve the problem of “orphan” works, would limit the amount of state control, would make the authors make serious decisions regarding their rights, and will lead to the increase of the information in the public domain.

The freedom of using

The authors, who wish to establish the conditions for distribution of the works, can express their wishes in the form of a free public license. Free licenses for the works, do not imply any material reward for the author and do not require a formal registration, they are recognized and protected by the state. The works in relation to which the authors have not expressed their will in a free public license, or have not registered for commercial use will be deemed to have passed into the public domain.

The registration period

Registration of works to be undertaken for a certain period. This period may be 5 years, as proposed by a joint team of the Green Party and the European Free Alliance, or 14 years as offers the well-known expert on copyright Lawrence Lessig. A specific period of registration may be discussed at a new convention on copyright, but it should be fairly short and manageable. The registration itself may be renewed various times, if the author thinks that the commercial exploitation of the work is still relevant.

The deadline for protection

The registration can not be extended indefinitely and should be limited by the deadline for protection. That may be, for example, 20 years from the date of publication or even 50 years after his death (a period specified by the Berne Convention).

The duration of the deadline is the subject of future discussion of specific proposals of the new convention on copyright. However, it is absolutely clear that for the vast majority of the works of art and science embodied in most countries, the period of protection should be reduced – “70 years after his death” in reality means “life inprisonment” for such works.

The limit should depend on the format of the work – the same protection for films, scientific articles, computer programs and comments on blogs, is obviously irrational. In particular, this applies to the scientific texts, whose term of protection is advisible to limit to the bare minimum due to the rapidity of changes taking place in science. This will lead to a more rapid turnover and multiplication of scientific knowledge.

Support of the public domain

The state is obliged to care not only about the interests of authors, but also about the interests of the society, the state has to protect and support the public cultural heritage. According to the principles of a new convention on copyright, public domain sector will be increased by the works which protection period has expired, with works, non-registered for commercial use and for which the authors haven’t expressed their will in the form of free public licenses, as well as works created at the expences of the government.

The state should not allow the reverse transition of the works from the public domain, and should take care of the  public domain sector and provide the access to it in a digital form.

The transitional period 

After the adoption of the Convention the transitional period is required, it should last not more than the registration period. During this period the authors and their heirs  get the  opportunity to register their works for the commercial use, or to dispose them through the public distribution under a free license (if the protection period for the work has not yet exceeded the time limit for protection, approved by the Convention). Otherwise, these works go into the public domain.

“Soviet” warranty

Regardless of the prospects and timing of the Moscow Convention on copyright, as an act of good will and caring for the protection and enhancement of the world public cultural heritage, the Russian Federation may recognize that all the works created in the Soviet Union and which economic rights that are currently disposed to Russian Federation, federal services and municipal authorities, as well as other government agencies, or been disposed at the time of changing the form of government, should go into the public domain. In addition, in case that the protection period has expired the work can also be transfered into the public domain.

Association of Internet Publishers, Wikimedia Russia and the group of experts

There are many interesting people attending and it will all be broadcasted live for everyone not able to attend. There’s two parallel  broadcasts taking place and both of them can be found at Sida. 

Some of the talks on the program:

• Effective use of social networks to support social activism
• Watching the watchers – democratized real- time video broadcasting
  
• Revolutions from the couch
  
• Egypt: Popular uprising or Internet revolution?
  
• Syria: ICT and the revolution: A grassroots movement case
  
• Bahrain: Social media and the revolution
  
• Tunisia: Hacktivists, Anonymous and their role in the revolution