In the first part of this blog we looked at some of the challenges and barriers facing people with disabilities when it comes to the Internet and other new media. In this final part we turn to possible strategies for making the virtual world fully accessible to all.

Some advances are being made in making new media accessible, though it is largely being done by universities, non-profit organizations and hobbyists rather than the media industry. Mobile ASL (American Sign Language), for instance, is a project at the University of Washington to allow sign language conversations over cell phones. Because North American wireless networks still have a fairly limited bandwidth, special compression techniques are required to be able to carry the real time video needed for sign language. Because the hands and face communicate most of the meaning in ASL, the project lets cameras prioritize the recording of those areas to make the most efficient use of the bandwidth available.

Similarly, the American Federation for the Blind has begun the Cell Phone Accessibility Project  to make it easier for people with vision impairments to use cell phones. In the United States cell phone manufacturers are already required to make them accessible under section 255 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996; the Cell Phone Accessibility Project aims to survey which models of cell phone are not accessible and push for changes to their design. Special software, such as Talks and Mobilespeak, has also been developed to allow visually impaired people to send and receive text messages, but these are currently limited to only a few carrier networks. Unfortunately, this removes the privacy of text messages, which are a major part of their appeal, especially to teens; a few companies have begun to market products such as Samsung’s Touch Messenger phone that allow texting and other cell phone functions using Braille. These products are not yet widely available, however.

The Web Accessibility Initiative  is a project aimed at providing access to the Web to people with disabilities. It provides both Web page developers and designers of browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer with information on what issues people with disabilities face while online and techniques for making sites more accessible, such as their Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites They’re also at the forefront of ensuring that new aspects of the Web, such as Web 2.0 and mobile phone browsers, are accessible from the start. Primarily, though, they’re best known for developing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which aim to provide an international standard for bringing full accessibility to the Web. One Web site that has made particular efforts to be accessible is BBC News, which has created a special site called Accessible Newsreader that can be navigated with a single click and reads news stories through a computer-generated voice. 
 
Vischeck lets you test how an image or Web site would look to people with different forms of colour blindness. This way programmers and Web page designers can test to see if people with colour blindness will miss any important information. Not only that, but Vischeck includes a utility for “Daltonizing” images, altering them so that people with colour blindness will more fully perceive the contrast between colours.

When it comes to making video games accessible, there are three different approaches. The first is to adapt existing games, such as the modified version of Doom III titled Doom 3C. In this case all of the sounds in the game, such as dialogue with other characters, approaching footsteps and monster noises, have been captioned as they would be in a film or TV show. As well, Reid Kimball, the developer, added a “radar” function that shows players the direction sounds are coming from, allowing them to be used as game cues as they would be by hearing players. (More detailed information is available at the Accessibility Games Web site.)A more recent example is Eelke Folmer’s Blind Hero which will convert the video instructions in Guitar Hero and similar games to a buzzing signal in the different figures of a glove controller.

The second approach is to create games specifically to be played by people with different disabilities. For instance, there is a small market of audio games created for people with visual impairments; these roughly 300 games cover the gamut from adventure to action and even a driving game. These games rely heavily on distinctive sounds to communicate what’s going on, and use stereo speakers or headphones to help you situate things in the game, such as letting you line up a target before shooting. The Audio Games Web site features an archive of downloadable games such as Sonic Invaders, Pacman Talks and both Star Trek and Star Wars games.

For people with a physical disability, the control schemes of video games – which often involve using one or more joysticks, buttons, or a mouse and keyboard – present an insurmountable barrier to play. One Switch Games creates games that are designed to be played with limited motion. Like audio games they tend towards the retro, mimicking simple games such as Space Invaders and Frogger, but they have the production values of modern games. (The Accessible Newsreader site listed above includes links to a number of such games.) One Switch Games and similar organizations also develop alternate controllers for popular game systems such as the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, but in general game manufacturers are not friendly towards such efforts; Mark Felling, an engineer who founded Broadened Horizons to make new technology more accessible, has said that he has received no help from Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo in his efforts to create accessible controllers.

The third approach is to make games that are as accessible as possible while still appealing to mainstream audiences. There are few examples of games like this so far, but groups such as the Game Accessibility Project provide resources for developers that can help them make each game as accessible as possible to the widest number of people. For instance, captioning is a relatively easy way to make games accessible to people with hearing disabilities, and the option to slow the speed of a game can make it much more accessible to people with physical disabilities. A game studio that has taken up this challenge is Fire Hose Games which created the game AudiOdyssey to be played by sighted and vision-impaired gamers. (This slideshow sets out founder Eitan Glinert’s philosophy towards accessibility in games and his experiences developing AudiOdyssey.) AbleGamers is an example of a site that provides support for gamers with disabilities, with news about accessible gaming and reviews of commercial games based on their accessibility to people with different disabilities.
 
A wider world

It’s important to keep pushing for accessibility in all parts of our society, new media included. Not only do people with disabilities deserve to have access to these experiences, there are a number of ways in which new technologies can improve their lives. For instance the Jitterbug, a cell phone marketed at seniors, can be tremendously useful for people with physical disabilities because of its oversized buttons, large text and option for voice commands. As well, recent research has shown that video games – particularly casual, puzzle-based games such as Tetris – can help children with ADD and ADHD deal with their condition. CapAbility Games, a project at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is developing computer games designed to teach people who have suffered brain injuries and have a physical disability ways to increase their independence, such as a virtual world that simulates grocery shopping while in a wheelchair. 

With their ability to simulate reality, games can help us make our world more accessible in another way, too: Handigo, a game designed by Handicap International and Ubisoft, shows players what it is like to have different kinds of disabilities; two mini-games show what it is like to navigate the world with impaired vision or in a wheelchair. While these games are somewhat simple, they may just be the beginning of a new era in accessibility awareness. This video, which gives a sense of what it’s like to be schizophrenic, is a bold step in using the simulation tools of new media to further the full integration of persons with disabilities into society. Imagine how much easier it would be for people with disabilities if their teachers, employers, peers and families had some experience of what it’s like to have limited vision or hearing, to have mobility limitations, to be dyslexic or even autistic? Full accessibility is a challenge for us all, and perhaps in time games can be a help and not a hindrance in that challenge.

Note: This is the first part of a two-part blog. The second part can be read here.

It’s ironic that as computers and other communications technology have become more accessible to the general public over the last thirty years, they have actually become less accessible to a segment of the population, one to whom access is everything: people with disabilities. More ironic still is that the history of communications technology is intimately tied to the drive to integrate people with disabilities more fully into society. From Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone as a result of his research into hearing loss, to Vinton Cerf, who was hard of hearing and developed the TCP/IP protocol that underlies the Internet to help him communicate better with other engineers, addressing disability has been essential to the development of communications technology. Today, though, many new media and communications technology are produced with little or no thought to accessibility.

No audio: cell phones and media players

Let’s begin with that staple of teenage communication, the cell phone. While landlines have long had accessibility tools for people with hearing impairments, such as the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf or TDD (TTY in Canada), many cell phones are not compatible with these devices. (Voice Over Internet Protocol services have a similar problem.) At the same time, text messages – which are actually a more popular use for cell phones than voice calls among teens  – can neither be sent nor read by people with impaired vision. Those who have any degree of motion-related disability in their hands, from arthritis to cerebral palsy, will find texting or even dialling the tiny buttons found on most cell phones impossible.

MP3 problems such as the iPod raise similar concerns. While it’s obviously not possible to adapt them to the fully deaf, many hearing-impaired people have better hearing in some registers than others. Most MP3 players, though, can only adjust the volume and not bass, treble or even balance between speakers, excluding many potential users with partial hearing. For those with impaired vision, meanwhile, these devices can be nearly impossible to use, with menus of small, non-adjustable text to navigate, most often using buttons that are nearly indistinguishable by touch. The iPod, with its scroll wheel, is particularly inaccessible when it comes to those with motion-related disabilities in their hands.

The virtual staircase: personal computers and the Internet

For many people with disabilities personal computers and the Internet have been a boon, as we’ll see below, offering opportunities to work and socialize in a context where ability is almost irrelevant. As the old command-line operating systems have given way to the graphical user interface of the Macintosh and Windows, and the text-based world of Usenet and BBSes have evolved into the graphics-based World Wide Web, for people with vision impairments and some motion-related disabilities they have actually become less accessible: a recent study of 1,000 Web sites found that 81% failed to reach a minimum standard of accessibility under the guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Content Accessibility program. None of the sites surveyed reached the highest level of accessibility, and only eight reached the second-highest.

Peter Dworkin, commenting on David Pogue’s blog on the New York Times Web site, noted that computer programming was once a viable career for blind people; now “the whole concept of a graphical user interface (GUI) using a mouse to make gestures and icons to represent files presents an untenable solution for the blind by its very nature.” Similarly, for many people with motion impairments using a keyboard to type commands, though sometimes laborious, was easier than making the very specific movements necessary to control a mouse.

Screen reading software does exist for people with vision impairments, but it has many limitations. To begin with, in most programs and Web pages information is organized visually, so that a sighted person can tell immediately what is important and what is not; a screen reader has no way of doing so and must read every piece of text from the top of the screen to the bottom. As well, graphics are read simply as “graphic” unless programmers and designers have taken the time to add descriptive tags, and buttons are similarly often just labelled “button.”

Although the Web presents fewer barriers for people with hearing impairments, some do exist. The most significant is the general lack of captioning on online games and especially video; neither Hulu nor Netflix have standards for captioning or require content to be captioned (this is especially galling in cases like Hulu, where the same content would be captioned if viewed on TV.) However, this may be changing: YouTube, the Internet's top video site, began captioning its videos in November of this year, using speech-to-text technology to automatically generate the subtitles.

Left on the sidelines: video games

Video games have become one of the most popular forms of recreation for both kids and adults, but they remain largely inaccessible to people with disabilities. The word video may suggest that it’s unlikely that visually impaired people will be able to play them, but this isn’t necessarily the case: Brice Mellen, a teenager who was blind from birth, became widely known for his skills in fighting games such as Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur. Mellen relied heavily on audio cues to understand what was going on in the game, but not all games feature such cues, and few games are designed with any thought to how a person with a visual impairment might experience it.

For people with hearing impairments, the situation is reversed: many games use audio to communicate key information – dialogue with game characters, hints of what is going on nearby, or even instructions on how to complete game tasks. Unlike movies or television, not many games include closed captioning – Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997) and Half-Life 2 (2004) are two of the very few examples.

Even a sensory disability that may have less of an impact in daily life, such as colour blindness, can significantly affect how someone experiences a video game. Colour is often very important in distinguishing things such as which side a character is on, whether a door can be opened or not, or even whether or not a particular item will cause instant death.

One reason that little attention has been paid to making video games accessible may be that they are perceived as being entertainment of little value. Recent research, however – most notably the Digital Youth Research Project – has shown that playing video games is an important part of kids’ lives, providing a common topic of conversation. Children and teens with disabilities, if unable to play video games, are left out of this part of youth culture. Moreover, people with disabilities report a variety of positive effects of playing video games such as stress relief, improved concentration and hand-eye co-ordination, learning of important skills and a sense of achievement. Some experts, such as psychiatrist Dr. Carl Arinoldo, suggest that video games may have greater positive effects for people with disabilities who suffer from depression because “with some forms of depression, a person may be very focused on something that clearly amounts to a misperception of reality. So the chance to distance themselves from the perceived negative situation and relax may allow them to think more clearly and consider the situation later in a more realistic manner.” It’s certainly clear that people with disabilities are keen to play those games that are accessible: a recent study shows that one in five players of “casual” games (games which require less time commitment, are generally played online, and usually are free or can be played for a nominal cost) has a disability of some sort. (For comparison, eighteen per cent of the population of the U.S., and 14% of Canadians, have a disability according to census data.)

In our next blog we'll turn to solutions and look at some of the things that are being done to help people with disabilities use and access new media.

The history of the Internet -- and the history of technology in general -- could be described as one big demonstration of the doctrine of unintended consequences: a system designed to help researchers collaborate, and developed to protect military communications in the event of a nuclear war, wound up being used primarily for shopping, socializing and entertainment. The same is true of many of the products and services on the Internet as well. In its early years it was mostly seen as a one-to-many broadcast medium, like TV or radio, but over time it's the more interactive elements that have proven to be most popular, with users producing at least as much online content as professionals.

One such development that may be in its infancy is the relationship between news  gathering and the Internet. So far that relationship has been a largely one-sided one: professional news organizations gather their news the old-fashioned way and then post it to the Internet, where it attracts readers and advertising dollars. Increasingly, though, the Internet is also being used to gather news.  One online service being used for both roles is one that's frequently dismissed as the most trivial, Twitter.

Twitter, as most people likely know by now, is what's known as a "microblogging" service: users post short (140 characters or less) messages called "tweets" which are delivered instantly to anyone who subscribes to, or "follows," their feed. For many critics that character limit exemplifies the pointlessness of Twitter, and it's true that many tweets are trivial, while many more serve as promotional materials, providing links to blog posts or photos. It's also true that, for all its Web 2.0 credentials, Twitter is closer to the broadcast model than many other Internet services, with ten per cent of Twitterers accounting for ninety per cent of tweets. As a result, many have dismissed Twitter as a tool for narcissists or celebrity-stalkers.

The one feature those critics miss -- the thing that has made Twitter so important in both making and gathering the news -- is that it is searchable. Though you only get a feed of messages from people whom you follow, you can also search every public tweet for key words or phrases. To make this easier, tweets on a particular topic are often prefixed with what's called a "hashtag," a word prefixed with the number sign as a sort of label (so a message about Twitter itself would bear the hashtag "#Twitter"). Finally, the Twitter home page shows a constantly updated list of the most discussed phrases, words or hashtags. Because Twitter is updated in real time, it can be used to gather eyewitness accounts, opinions and even photos more quickly than any news outlet could manage.

The use of Twitter for newsgathering first became widely known during the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, when the general chaos of the situation, as well as the limited ability of Western media outlets to cover the attacks first-hand, made it the most reliable source of information about what was going on. Twitter then went on to beat The New York Times on its own turf when a user tweeting from his iPhone broke the story of US Airways flight 1549's crash landing in the Hudson River.

Where Twitter has really come into its own, though, is the protests following the Iranian election. What makes Twitter so important in this situation is the unusual combination of a literate, educated, Internet-connected urban population and a regime that is willing and able to censor its media. Even before the election Iranians turned to the Internet for opportunities to speak out without censorship (Iran has the third-largest number of bloggers of any nation). But the disputed results of the vote, and the rallies that followed, have caused a flood of tweets. Because tweets can be read from a variety of platforms -- the Web site itself, applications that provide a direct Twitter feed, and even cell phones -- it's particularly resistant to censorship, making it an ideal tool for organizing and disseminating information when other media are blocked or state-controlled. As of this writing, "#iranianelection" is the number one topic on Twitter, with more than a thousand tweets being posted every ten minutes.

Watching the feed of all tweets with the #iranianelection tag is an interesting, nearly addictive experience. There's definitely a sense that this is a watershed moment, not only in the history of Iran but in the history of journalism; as one poster put it, "There's a revolution going down. I'll never be able to take the news seriously again, not after seeing what Twitter can do."

It's unclear, though, how much of what's on Twitter is actually news, particularly now that the story has become so widely known. Unlike during the Mumbai attacks, when most of the tweets were coming from the event itself, at this point Iranian Twitterers are probably a minority compared to people from North America and Europe. Many of those are commenting on the events rather than participating, or are piggybacking on the topic to push their own political ideas ("This is what happens when the people are disarmed") or conspiracy theories ("If Israel is ever going to attack and destroy the nuclear facilities, wouldn't now be the premier time due to #iranelection?"). The sheer number of tweets has also left some readers feeling overwhelmed; as one put it, "The tweets in #iranelection are so voluminous, how can you read each one in order to decide which you can trust, which you can't?"

Indeed, credibility is a major issue when using Twitter as a news source: as well as random pranksters (one tried to highjack the discussion to spread a rumour that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had died), there is a suggestion that the Iranian government has begun to use Twitter to spread disinformation instead: one repeated tweet is "DO NOT RT [re-tweet] anything U read from 'NEW' tweeters, gvmt spreading misinfo." Beyond that possibility is the issue that there is virtually no way to confirm anything reported by Twitter: the message "RT Army moving into Tehran against protesters!" appeared dozens if not hundreds of times, often prefaced by the word "confirmed," but there was no way of knowing if it is true. Some users claiming to be Iranian have posted photos, but in this age of Photoshop they add little credibility. To make matters even more confusing, reported efforts by the Iranian government to block access to Twitter have led to calls for all Twitterers to change their time zone settings to Tehran in a sort of "I am Spartacus" manoeuvre, meaning that it's now harder than ever to know where someone is actually posting from.

In this one event, Twitter has shown its strengths, weaknesses and potential as a tool for journalism. Despite the concerns, it's almost certain that the Twitter feed will be a major source of information for almost any event of importance in the future. But at the same time it cannot be taken with any more confidence than an overheard conversation. Perhaps in the future news providers will designate "Twitter reporters" whose job it is to monitor trending topics, search the feed for the information that is most probably relevant and reliable, and co-ordinate with their offline colleagues to confirm what's being reported. In the meantime it falls to news consumers to develop new critical thinking tools for sifting out the truth.

Questions for discussion

• Do you think that Twitter will be an important tool for journalists in the future? Why or why not?
• What might be some ways that you could verify information you learned on Twitter?
• Twitter is unusual among social-networking programs because it is more popular with adults than with teens. Why do you think this is? Do you think it is likely to change? Why or why not?
  

The last year has been an unusually busy one for watchers of gender representation in the news media, with not one but two high-profile women involved in the U.S. presidential race. The way in which these two politicians were covered provides a view of how gender in politics is portrayed in the media, and how this can help to explain just how unusual those two women are.

Let's begin with a composite of media portrayals of the typical politician. Whether a portrayal is positive or negative, some characteristics occur in nearly all such portrayals: politicians are driven, confident, well-organized, committed to their cause (or else corrupt and beholden to special interests -- but in that case still determined to achieve their purpose), and above all willing and able to achieve their goals through conflict. When these characteristics are embodied in a positive portrayal, the result is a character like The West Wing's President Bartlett: loyal to his principles, tough, clever and ruthless enough to get things done.

Now let's turn to a composite of the female characters found in media, particularly the media most consumed by young girls. How many female characters on Nickelodeon or Family Channel have two or more of these characteristics? If a character has any of the traits on that list, can they show them openly, or must they (like Hannah Montana) hide them from their peers? Are they the characters whom the viewer is meant to hate, like the inappropriately-confident Sharpay of High School Musical? In order to find sympathetic characters with any of these traits you need to go to animation, and even then to shows for the very young (Dora the Explorer) or for adults (The Simpsons).

The problem is not only with the portrayal of women but also that of politics. Stereotyping politics as an essentially masculine endeavour creates an "echo chamber" that more-or-less guarantees that it will be practiced in a stereotypically masculine way. The U.S. Founding Fathers saw politics ideally as a part-time profession, so that one would both serve the public and be a part of it, but today politics is seen as a commitment that makes it nearly impossible to have a family life. Despite the aspects of democracy that make consensus-building necessary for success -- whether it's our multi-party Parliament or the U.S. government's checks and balances -- the narrative of politics is almost always one of conflict and conquest. In short, the media's picture of politics is no more accurate than its portrayal of girls and women.

The treatment of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the recent U.S. presidential election is instructive. While each certainly received some legitimate criticism, many of the attacks on them had to do with gender: that they were insufficiently feminine as women, overly feminine as politicians, or both at once. Hillary Clinton received criticism for being too "cold" and "staged" -- long analyses were written of her forced-sounding laugh, for instance -- while at the same time having her candidacy trivialized by discussions of her wardrobe and fashion sense. Sarah Palin, meanwhile, was mocked for her past as a beauty pageant contestant (a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch suggested her contribution to the Republican campaign consisted of "fancy pageant walking") and simultaneously attacked for her perceived shortcomings as a mother (her daughter's unwed pregnancy, for instance.) Female politicians, in short, face a two-edged sword in the media, portrayed either as too feminine or not feminine enough.

There may be hope, however. As rough a ride as they received, Palin and particularly Clinton have made strides in forcing the media to take female politicians seriously, if in no other way simply by being serious candidates. In the less politicized role of Secretary of State, Clinton may -- like House majority leader Nancy Pelosi -- provide a model of a female politician whose two identities contain no apparent contradiction. Meanwhile, the media picture of politics itself may be changing, not due to a female politician but a male one: with his preference for consensus over conflict, his "team of rivals" leadership style, his emotional openness (as evidenced by his first, more personal memoir) and his active involvement in his family, Barack Obama may redefine our idea of just what a politician is.

Questions for classroom discussion

The activity below is taken from the MNet resource The Girl in the Mirror. Click here to view the entire lesson. An interactive version of this activity is also available here.

Portrait of a politician

Based on a class discussion of the nature of politics and political action, ask students who would be able to succeed at politics as you have defined it. What characteristics would s/he have? What strengths or qualities would s/he need to succeed? Write the heading “Portrait of a politician” over the third column on the board and list the students’ suggestions below it.  (Likely suggestions: a successful politician must be confident, forceful, willing to fight for what s/he believes in, good at tactics and strategy, persuasive, charismatic, well-organized, ruthless, a leader, inspiring, committed.)

Stereotypes in media products  

Ask students if they know what the word stereotype means. With the class’s participation, explain that it means an idea of what a person is like based on what group s/he belongs to, rather than his/her individual qualities. To make sure students get the idea, ask if they know of any stereotyped ideas adults have of young people.

Ask students where stereotypes come from, and make sure that in the following discussion the media are listed as a source. Ask students what media products girls and young women consume. The list will likely include the following:
 
• Disney products
• Family Channel, Nickelodeon and other tween-oriented shows
• Tween and teen movies
• Teen magazines
• “Grown-up” TV (make sure to get details on different kinds of shows – sitcoms, dramas, reality, etc)
• Music (again, get details – what genres, sources)

Divide the class into five groups (or more if the class suggested other media products you think are worth considering). Have each group consider one of the media products and develop a list of what stereotypes of girls and women that medium or media product communicates. (Provide the group doing teen magazines with the examples you brought to class.) Make sure students understand that they are not listing which qualities they believe girls and women possess, but which qualities these media products suggest they do.

Once the groups have made their lists, write the heading “Female stereotype” on the fourth quarter of the board and collect the groups’ findings under it. Ask students: how many stereotyped qualities came from more than one source? Do some sources give substantially different pictures of what girls and women are like, or do the different media generally agree?

Comparing stereotypes

Have the class look over column three (“Portrait of a politician”) and column four (“Female stereotype”). Are there any qualities or characteristics that are found in both columns? (Probably not.) Are there any qualities or characteristics found in one column that are the opposite of those found in the other? (Examples: ruthless/caring; well-organized/ditzy; willing to fight/wants to please.)

Based on this comparison, ask the class: if you believed in the picture of girls we get from the media, would you think girls would make good politicians? Ask the girls: if you believed in this stereotype, would you think you might make a good politician? Would you think you could get involved in political action?

One of the most noted aspects of the Internet is its anonymity: by and large, people online will treat you as whoever you say you are. In the West, this is often used for mischief or identity play, but in other parts of the world anonymity can have a much more significant and liberating effect.

Perhaps the area most affected in this way is the Middle East. Although this region has been slow to build a digital infrastructure -- the Arabic version of Wikipedia has only 65,000 articles, fewer than the Slovenian version -- people in the Middle East still find ways to get online.

This is particularly true for young people, who, like their peers in the rest of the world, outpace their elders in matters digital. For instance, Iran, where more than half of the population is under 25, has the third-largest number of bloggers in the world (after the United States and China). Under the shadow of a repressive regime, despite the government's attempts to ban high-speed Internet access, blogs and other forms of online communication have become an important source of dissent. This issue is explored in a striking animated film created by students at the Vancouver Film School:

In Egypt, which has a similar proportion of young people, the flashpoint has been Facebook: not because it lets people socialize, but because it helps them organize. In the spring of last year a protest arose against rising food prices. The focus of the protest was a Facebook page that at its peak had 75,000 members. The government cracked down on the protests, arresting one of its organizers, Israa Abdel Fateh, and contemplated banning Facebook (a "Free Israa" group quickly appeared, which gained tens of thousands of members). Of course, many Egyptians use Facebook for socializing as well. For citizens in these countries, for whom both physical travel abroad and access to foreign media is often restricted, the borderless nature of the Internet is its most appealing feature. As Cairo medical student Ahmad Belal told the New York Times, “For Egyptians, the visa procedures for any country are very difficult. You need a visa to visit any country in the world. Facebook and Wikipedia connect us to the outside.”

The Middle Eastern group with the most circumscribed existence, of course, is women. For many, the Internet has opened up an entire world they would not otherwise have access to. Young Bedouin women in Israel, for instance, manage (despite not being connected to an electrical grid) to use Instant Messaging (IM) to socialize with each other and to talk to boys, something that would be entirely forbidden otherwise. The Bedouin are an extremely isolated group -- separated from the mainstream of Israeli society by religion, separated from other Arab Israelis by customs and geography -- and the isolation of their women is even greater. As in many insular communities, reputation is everything; so for women -- particularly young women -- the anonymity offered by the Internet allows them a freedom they would not know otherwise. As Adnan Gharabiya, a Bedouin who studied this phenomenon as part of his thesis, puts it, “In Bedouin society there is rather strict separation of the sexes, and a chat room is the only place where they can talk with members of the opposite sex. It is especially significant for the girls, because their social circle is even smaller, and their freedom of movement is limited. Not all of them can leave their parents’ community. Unlike the boys, girls are not allowed to go to town after classes, or to visit friends. In this respect, technology is very important.” It also serves as a source of information that would otherwise be unobtainable: “Among the family, it is not common to discuss all subjects, primarily when the children are adolescents. In a chat room, you can discuss everything, if you find someone who is receptive.”

Saudi Arabia -- sophisticated, developed and modernized, thanks to oil revenues -- may seem like the utter opposite to the Bedouin communities, but there too young people are using the Internet and other new media to break through traditional barriers. Saudi girls are at least as isolated as those among the Bedouin, although in Saudi Arabia a parallel economy of women-only malls, gyms and boutiques has arisen. For many Saudi girls even the freedom found by Bedouin women online in unimaginable: men may be permissible as Facebook friends, but chatting online is considered as forbidden as speaking face-to-face. Instead, the breakthrough technology here is the cell phone: a popular courting ritual is called "numbering," in which a group of men who spot a car they think has women in it try to drive to within Bluetooth range and transmit their phone numbers. According to the New York Times, many young Saudi men keep love poems loaded on their cell phones to be sent as text messages to any women they may see, a practice which neatly encapsulates the way the country combines the millennial and the medieval. As with the troubadours of the Middle Ages, though, these are flirtations and nothing more: beamed cell numbers and text messages rarely lead to voice conversations, and most marriages still come about by parental arrangement.

As noted above, in many Middle Eastern countries young people make up a plurality or majority of the population. While many of them are not interested in opposing their parents' values, nearly all have enthusiastically adopted new media technologies. Many writers have argued that these technologies promote openness and free expression by their very natures; as the wired generation takes its place in leading these countries, we may have a chance to see if these claims will be borne out.

Discussion questions

• The video "Iran: Nation of Bloggers" suggests that blogs are "the true voice of the new generation." According to the video, what makes blogs appealing to young people as a means of self-expression? Do you think bloggers will be able to have an effect on their society through blogging? Why or why not?
• The New York Times suggests that one reason the Egyptian government cracked down so hard on the Facebook protest was because it was unexpected, the government having little knowledge and experience with the online world. Do you think the "digital divide" between generations is likely to cause more conflict in Middle Eastern countries? Why or why not? If so, in what ways might this conflict play out?
• How is the Internet and other new media changing the experiences of young women in Middle Eastern countries? Do you think this will lead to significant changes in the lives of young women, or will the changes only be on the surface? Why or why not?

Links

• Global Voices is a site that excerpts and links to blogs from around the world. It's searchable by region or topic and is an invaluable guide to the effects of the Internet and other new media on the developing world.
• Digital Natives collects the experiences of young people online around the world. Their article "Unveiling the veil -- on the Web" looks at the some of the issues facing young Muslim women online.
  

• What features do you think a laptop should have to be usable in developing nations? Why?

• Which do you think is more important in a classroom computer, affordability or functionality (what it can do and how well)?

• How are computers used in your school? Do you think they will be used in similar ways in developing nations, or differently? Why? If they would be used differently, how do you think they would be used?
  
  
• Do you think that international developments should give money to support the One Laptop Project Per Child project? If so, why? If not, what do you think should be a higher priority?

• Why might some developing countries have decided the One Laptop Per Child project is not for them? Do you think their reasons are good ones?

• Is it a good thing for developing countries to be connected to the Internet? Why or why not?

• The more people complain, the more the CRTC is likely to act.
    
• With strong public pressure, the station will correct itself; otherwise it will face three options: loss of audience, loss of advertisers and sponsors, and potential loss of license.
   
• Avoid making your case into a "freedom of speech' or a "free press" case. Media agencies under public criticism often use the "free press" argument to defend their practices. They often try to depict your group as another special interest group trying to impose its views. This argument almost always works.
   
• Mobilize external support for your case. Turn to other professional and public interest groups to add legitimacy to your claims.
   
• Often the most biased programs are the open-line talk shows, in which the host allows callers to state their views. The conscientious host will try to cut off, or correct prejudicial callers immediately. Should she/he not, call the show's producer and the station manager immediately to protest. Avoid debating on the air. Chances are you will become defensive or irritated, which may present a negative impression of your case to the audience.
   
• If you are a group's representative invited to speak on a certain show, avoid those hosted by sensationalist personalities. These hosts often try to further distort the issue. Decline all invitations, and choose instead those stations with conscientious and professional hosts.