Mediaboss Marketing

When Somalias new minister of information took office in March, he promised to review the countrys restrictive media law, raising hopes of fostering a better environment for journalists and free expression in the country.

Journalists queue for a security sweep outside the venue of the presidential vote at the airport in Somalia's capital Mogadishu February 8, 2017. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

Those hopes have largely been dashed. The amended law, approved by the cabinet on July 13, makes some reforms but does little to address the laws deep flaws. Somalias journalists a grueling and life-threatening profession here deserve better.

Being a journalist in Somalia is dangerous: at least two journalists were murdered in 2016. Authorities have used various tactics to restrict media coverage, including arbitrary arrests and forced closures of media outlets, threats, and occasionally, criminal charges. The Islamist armed group Al-Shabab also targets journalists for reporting deemed unfavorable. Not surprisingly, journalists often self-censor on key issues of public interest, including security and governance, to stay safe.

While amendments to the law have partially addressed some concerns raised by Somali media organizations including by reducing the heavy fines imposed on journalists for violating the laws restrictions, and no longer making a journalism degree a requirement to practice journalism the law still hands authorities a big stick to keep the media under control.

The law maintains vague and overbroad restrictions, including prohibiting propaganda against the dignity of a citizen, individuals or government institutions, and dissemination of false information. This leaves lots of room for interpretation by authorities in response, journalists unclear of where the lines are drawn are likely to self-censor even more.

International and regional legal standards place a high value upon uninhibited expression concerning public persons and state institutions, and discourage open-ended and ill-defined provisions that risk chilling the media. Similar articles persist in Somalias 1963 criminal code, also under review.

But journalists continue to be arrested, and on occasion charged, under such outdated provisions. Two weeks ago, the authorities in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland arrested a journalist, Ahmed Ali Kilwe, reportedly for criticizing the president; he has since been released without chrge.

The amended media law does not provide for parliamentary oversight of nominations for a new media regulatory body. It also maintains watered-down but still substantive requirements for entry into the journalism profession there should be none.

When the revised media law heads to parliament for review, key committees should direct that the law be sent back to the drawing board to ensure that the final version helps to promote, not stunt, the development of a free and vibrant media in Somalia.

Read the rest here:
Review of Somalia's Media Law Falls Short - Human Rights Watch

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

The acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, started a national conversation about race and racism that continues. Part of that conversation includes what we tell children about this. We explore that.

When George Zimmerman was acquitted for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager four years ago, it ignited a national conversation about race and justice. It also sharply divided people. Some viewed the photo of Martin - a young man in a hoodie - and saw a threat. Others - including President Obama - saw someone who could be their son.

For some families of color especially, the incident started a deeply personal conversation that stems from news reports of police-involved shootings of young black men, but also from being black in America.

A filmmaker explored reactions after that verdict in the short documentary "What We Told Our Sons," which is coming to Charlotte this week. The filmmaker, Dayvee Sutton, wanted to use everyday peoples stories to start a conversation about race and racism. Mike Collins talks with her and others about how we talk with kids about race, interactions with police, and what they see in the news.

Guests

Dayvee Sutton - Journalist and filmmaker, she made the short documentary "What We Told Our Sons: Families React to the Trayvon Martin Verdict" that will be screened in Charlotte this week.

Venetia St Vilus - Local parent, she appeared in the film.

Stanley St Vilus - Venetia's son, he also appears in the film (he was 9 years old). He's 13 years old now and goes to Piedmont Middle School.

Hank Harris - Chair & Professor, Department of Counseling at UNC Charlotte.

Event info:

Levine Museum will screen "What We Told Our Sons" and host a discussion with filmmaker Dayvee Sutton on Thursday, July 20, 6:30-9:00pm. Details.

What We Told Our Sons - trailer from Dream Network Media on Vimeo.

Follow this link:
Charlotte Talks: 'What We Told Our Sons' Talking To Kids About Race And Police-Involved Shootings - WFAE

Raoul Peck's recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro served as a timely reminder of the relevance of James Baldwin to contemporary American society, and this show-stopper of a performance makes art of the writer's eventful life. A novelist-essayist who offered uncompromisingly acute observations on race relations as well as the bitter political hypocrisy at the heart of Uncle Sam during the Civil Rights era, Baldwin expounded un-alternative facts that could be uncomfortable for black and white, and faced no end of challenges for his grandstand intelligence as well as the arch threat he posed, by dint of his homosexuality, to fellow activists narrow of mind.

Active since the late 1990s, The Negro Problem is a provocative name, for the Baldwin Negro was a problem on many levels. In any case Stew is a front man with a waspish playfulness that livelys up the Spiegel tent at the popular cross-arts summer festival that is Underbelly. He resists categorisation as much as Baldwin does trivialisation. From the git-go he leads his troops Marty Beller(drums), Art Terry (keys), Dana Lyn(violin), Heidi Rodewald (bass) as Dick Gregory might marshal a sparkly Weimar Republic cabaret. Los Angeles-born and Europe-embedded Stew's asides suit that of a Tony-winning author (for Passing Strange in 2008), but the pleasing arrangements of long-time musical collaborator Rodewald have the kind of taut precision sometimes with basslines stripped to a few chords, sometimes stretched to more expansive harmony that makes for listenable music amid theatrical story-in-song. Time and again echoes of John Cale and The Velvet Underground ring out, perhaps with an itchy scratchy catchy rock'n'roll animalism skewing smartly to Elmore James' territory.

Tales of Baldwin's literary assassination of his former benefactor Richard Wright, the Kan-Jay or Ye-Z of the 1950s whose hook-up of the young pretender was met with an almighty putdown, are gripping because they highlight an era when ideas moving forward mattered more than careers pushing upward. As do the revelations that our hero became a hate figure because of a lifestyle choice not seen as wholesome, uniting both the Black Panthers and Black Nationalists in censure of his less than 'manly' ways. Moving seamlessly into biography-cum-travelogue mode Stew also regales us with snapshot chronicles of Baldwin's sojourns in Istanbul and France.

Sharp as the focus is on Baldwin, it is a song about Trayvon Martin that is arguably the moment that captures so much of the writer's anguish over the state of America, and, more to the point, underlines how the tragic death of a black teenager in 2012 at the hands of a 'brown man with a very German name', George Zimmerman, still resonates with the chilling divides in society that were prevalent in Baldwin's time. If Black Lives Matters hails Martin and many others then Baldwin remains one of the ultimate black lives that still matter precisely because he saw, just as Sly did, the reality of 'everyday people', the ordinary among the extraordinary, the bare fact that there were black Harlemites too busy scrappling for the rentman's apple to know who Charlie Parker was. They had to be rather than bop. Stew & The Negro Problem bring us James Baldwin as a present day flame of truth rather than a nostalgic fire last time.

Kevin Le Gendre Photo by Jen Pearce

View original post here:
Notes Of A Native Song: Stew & The Negro Problem Probe James Baldwin's Legacy At Southbank's Underbelly Fest - Jazzwise magazine

To complicate matters, the 19th Party Congress where top leadership positions are determined is just months away. The government puts an increased emphasis on stability in the run up to the event, which happens every five years, often leading to a tightening of internet controls.

WhatsApp, which had generally avoided major disruptions in China despite the full block of Facebook and Instagram, appears to have become a victim of those circumstances.

The blocks against WhatsApp originated with the government, according to a person familiar with the situation who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the disruption. Security experts also verified that the partial disruption in WhatsApp started with Chinas internet filters.

According to the analysis that we ran today on WhatsApps infrastructure, it seems that the Great Firewall is imposing censorship that selectively targets WhatsApp functionalities, said Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Symbolic Software, a cryptography research start-up.

The actions by the Chinese government are another setback for Facebook in a country that has been difficult for the worlds largest social network to crack. Its flagship site was blocked in 2009 after ethnic unrest in western China; Instagram followed in 2014 during protests that fall in Hong Kong.

Beginning in late 2014, Facebook began an aggressive campaign to woo the Chinese government and get its main social network back into the country. As part of the courtship, Facebooks founder, Mark Zuckerberg, showed off his language chops at a conference and later dined with President Xi Jinping during a state visit to the United States.

But Facebooks efforts have slowed over the past year, and it has little to show for itself. Instead of getting a new product into China, the internet giant now faces the reality that its last app standing is under threat of being pushed outside the walls of Chinese censorship.

A spokeswoman for WhatsApp declined to comment.

Since taking power almost five years ago, Mr. Xi has presided over a consistent and deepening suppression of internet freedom. He has been vocal in calling for China to establish sovereignty online, and has set up a new internet regulator to consolidate controls over the web.

The scale of the recent actions shows the increasing muscle of the Chinese government, which has strengthened this year.

In recent months, a number of virtual private networks, tools that allow users in China to access the broader internet around the world, were removed from app stores or shut down. Chinas telecom regulator said it would ban unauthorized VPNs starting in February 2018.

The new cybersecurity rules, broad and vague, have left Western companies uncertain of how they will be applied and what impact they could have on a difficult operating environment. The government has put strong emphasis on the law, which could serve as a watershed for how the internet is managed and foreign companies are policed.

This month, Apple opened its first data center in China. The company said the move was made to comply with the law that calls for companies to store their data in China.

The disruption of encrypted messaging programs like WhatsApp and censorship circumvention tools like VPNs shows a desire to take almost total control over how the internet is used.

WhatsApp is hugely popular around much of the globe, but the platform is not widely used in China, where local messaging app WeChat dominates. Even so, WhatsApp provides encrypted messaging, making it a useful tool for many Chinese to communicate or do business outside the country or in Hong Kong.

Paul Triolo, the head of geo-technology at Eurasia Group, said that a possible next step would be for China to target other encrypted messaging apps like Signal, pointing out that such apps represent a small but growing and potentially important hole in the Great Firewall.

The ministries and support organizations that undergird the Great Firewall must constantly prove they can keep abreast of technological change, and encrypted messaging apps are just the latest in a long string of innovations that have drawn the attention of the technical wizards behind the Great Firewall, Mr. Triolo said.

The apparent crackdown is part of the jockeying among Chinese ministries ahead of this autumns congress to show that they are doing their job, according to a government tech policy adviser who declined to be named because of possible retribution over speaking to foreign news media. While there is a real push to make it harder to use VPNs, he said the new rules set to take effect next year are unlikely to be so extreme that they entirely prevent individuals from being able to use such tools.

Some in the Chinese government are worried that the excess censorship and controls are damaging the countrys ability to access crucial information, like scientific papers and other educational resources. As such, there have been calls for a more surgical way to block specific material, rather than a sledgehammer approach that takes out entire services.

In the case of WhatsApp, it is not clear whether the targeted censorship of videos and photos was intentional, or if it was just a prelude to a more complete block. Previous partial blocks have sometimes led to full bans, or they have eventually been removed by the government, and service restored.

Beijings track record with other American social networking services does not bode well for WhatsApp. Besides Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, Google and Gmail are all blocked in the country.

Its like when Gmail first got throttled, the blockage was very uneven, said Lokman Tsui, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

View post:
China Disrupts WhatsApp Service in Online Clampdown - New York Times

With an enterprise social collaboration platform, teamwork makes the dream work -- especially if the dream is smoother, more efficient workflows and better communication among employees.

Today's IT admins face the challenging task of managing the countless amount of mobile devices that connect to enterprise networks every day. Find out how to eliminate the most common mobile data security pain points and pitfalls in this complimentary best practices guide.

By submitting your personal information, you agree that TechTarget and its partners may contact you regarding relevant content, products and special offers.

You also agree that your personal information may be transferred and processed in the United States, and that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.

Organizations today have a number of different collaboration tools at their disposal, from document-sharing platforms to group chat apps. In this FAQ, get the answers to your burning social collaboration questions and decide whether this technology is useful for your business.

Social technology is already part of people's daily lives. Most of us reach for our smartphones before even rolling out of bed in the morning, checking Facebook and other social networking apps first thing. Social collaboration is a natural extension of that. We're already sharing our lives on social media; why not bring that instinct to the workplace?

When social collaboration is successful, it creates a collaborative environment among co-workers, through document sharing and instant messaging. Ultimately, enterprise social tools should change the way we work in a good way.

Some companies are reluctant to join the party, though, because of security concerns and resource constraints. Organizations hesitant to adopt social tools can try an enterprise file sync-and-share (EFSS) platform, such as Citrix ShareFile, that will still allow employees to share and collaborate on their work while keeping corporate data safe.

A social collaboration platform should create new lines of communication for employees.

Not if it's more than mere chitchat and meme sharing. The idea behind a social collaboration platform is to create new lines of communication for employees. When they don't have to leave their desks or pick up the phone to get in touch, they may be more likely to participate on a group project.

Dominic Namnath, CIO at Tri-Counties Regional Center, a nonprofit based in Santa Barbara, Calif., explained that the right social collaboration tool can lead to less meetings and faster decisions. "It opens the doors for people to collaborate in a way that's comfortable for them," he said.

And with EFSS platforms such as Box and DocuSign, Namnath said there is more widespread adoption of enterprise collaboration tools than ever before. Some collaboration tools may have less of a social component without, say, an instant messaging feature, but organizations without any such tool could use an EFSS platform to kick-start collaboration among employees.

Social collaboration sounds appealing, right? So, why isn't everyone in the workforce on board? If your users are reluctant to use the social collaboration tools your company offers, it's time to tweak some things. There are four epic fails to avoid:

It's important for everyone involved in the implementation process to keep an open mind. With multiple social collaboration vendors and products to choose from, it may take time to find the right fit for your business. It may also be tricky to force a certain platform on employees, especially if they manage to find an effective tool on their own and have already incorporated it into their workflows.

IT may want to take note from employees who have taken the DIY approach to enterprise social collaboration software. Involve those early adopters in the decision-making process and let their experience guide you; then, you'll know exactly what worked and didn't with their chosen platform.

Again, reaching out to employees at every level is key to finding out what users need to improve their workflows. Tap into that team spirit to make social collaboration tools work for you.

We ask IT pros: Do you use social collaboration tools?

How social collaboration improves workflows

Know the difference between social collaboration and social media

See the original post here:
How can an enterprise social collaboration platform benefit business? - TechTarget