On air: "The internet only talks about change, it doesn't actually achieve it"
| 14:04 UK time, Monday, 20 September 2010
It's a big, bold statement, but it's one that will be at the forefront of the minds of the bloggers and internet activists gathering in Budapest next week for a big .
On Monday World Have Your Say will be coming to you live from Budapest where we will be gathering together some of those activists to ask whether all the blogs, tweets, mobile-phone videos and discussion boards that promote dissent and democracy have ever achieved it.
There are many examples in the last couple of years where the use of internet-based media has been trumpeted as being behind a revolution. In Iran, the YouTube video of the death of in post-election violence streamed around the world causing outrage and condemnation of the regime. But did it change anything? A year later, the country is still controlled by Mahmood Ahmadinejad and . Speech is still not free and the new face of repression, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, is still languishing in jail.
In Burma managed to evade Burma's censors to post information about the true extent of the damage caused by 2008's Cyclone Nargis. Sure, they got the information out, but it still took three weeks and the intervention of the UN Secretary General to get the country's leaders to accept the scale of the devastation and .
China, Cuba and some former Soviet Union countries all have vibrant pro-democracy blogging communities. But last time I looked there was still rampant repression of dissent and no credible move towards democracy there.
It's something that respected and widely-read tech writer has thought and written a lot about. In an edition of last December he wrote:
While new media can make the lives of many traditional activists much easier (and safer), we simply do not know if the never-ending supply of funny videos of cats on YouTube would make Iranians or Chinese youngsters any more involved in politics (but it might be safer to assume that it wouldn't).
Evgeny will be joining us for Monday's show. So will Merve Alici from the , a Turkish pro-democracy group.
Merve has marched along with thousands of others in Turkey trying to get the and other internet restrictions lifted. But despite the fact that the ban still exists, he is much more upbeat about the power of the internet to change politics.
We'll also have guests from Iran, Vietnam and hopefully China. A few other bloggers I have invited have said it's just not safe for them to appear on an international radio and online discussion show.
There are plenty of groups that exist to try to promote internet freedom. is one such group which promotes a 'global proxy cloud' to help people cut off behind restrictive firewalls get onto the internet through using other peoples' computers in countries which have free access. Kim from Access Now will be part of Monday's programme.
But is it enough just to give people access to information?
Do you think that all the blogs, website and forums about achieving democracy, or even just political change have worked? Or does it still take a lot more than just talk to bring about real change?
