Blogging, online video, and rapid-fire text messaging are new media technologies that have become widely used and adapted in the last few years. Savvy users have applied these technologies in unexpected ways to achieve political goals. Governments are struggling to respond, some with repression, some with reforms.

Patrick Butler is vice president for programs at the International Center for Journalists, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that "promotes quality journalism worldwide in the belief that independent, vigorous media are crucial in improving the human condition," according to its mission statement.

The videos are grainy and blurred, but clear enough to horrify.

In one, a police officer repeatedly hits a suspect on the face as the man raises his hands in defense and then falls to the floor. In another, a woman in custody hangs upside down, her feet and hands tied to a rod as she cries and screams. In a third, police round up protesters on the street, beating them with sticks as they herd the men into a wagon.

The videos of police brutality in Egypt were never shown on any television station broadcasting from that country. Instead, they were posted by blogger Wael Abbas on his hugely popular MisrDigital Web site [http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com/].

The videos had impact, even in a country like Egypt, where the only ones punished for abuses exposed by courageous journalism are often the journalists themselves. Because of postings of the cell-phone videos by Abbas and other bloggers, two police officers were sentenced to three years in jail in November 2007 for torturing a Cairo minivan driver. Other officers await trial in other abuse cases.

Digital Reporting

Online video Blogging for Freedom Award-winning journalist and blogger Wael Abbas of Egypt appeared on Al-Jazeera in September 2007, interviewed by host Riz Khan. Used With Permission

Across the globe, journalists and non-journalists are using digital media tools like the Internet, short-message service (SMS) messaging, and small cell-phone video cameras to gather and disseminate information in ways that were impossible just a decade ago. The technology — ubiquitous even in poor countries — not only enables a freer flow of information, but it also encourages citizens who previously felt powerless to take a role in bringing about changes in their societies.

In many cases, like that of Abbas, the freer flow of information enabled by new technology is nudging governments to take action they otherwise might not have. While arrests of abusive police officers are a step in the right direction for Egypt, it remains to be seen whether Abbas and other bloggers can have a broader impact in pushing the Mubarak government to adopt more democratic practices. Like other countries that have seen citizen journalists boldly using new technology to reveal wrongdoing or organize protests, Egypt has cracked down, arresting journalists and bloggers who have disseminated information deemed to insult Islam or the government.

In the most recent case, the two officers were sentenced to jail over videos that showed them sodomizing the minivan driver with a pole after they arrested him for intervening in an argument between his cousin and police. Other officers recorded the abuse with their cell phones, intending to show the video to the man's friends as a form of further humiliation.

Abbas and other bloggers obtained the video and posted it along with many others, showing a systemic pattern of ugly abuse. The Egyptian Organization of Human Rights records about 400 cases of torture by police each year, about 20 percent of them prosecuted, according to the Washington Post.

Abbas has paid a price for bringing to greater attention videos showing police abuse, voter fraud, corruption, and harassment of women on the streets. He lost his job as a journalist and has been arrested and threatened, but he continues to blog in hopes that he can bring change to his country.

My organization, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), recently named Abbas one of the winners of our 2007 Knight International Journalism Award. He is the first blogger ever to receive it — but almost certainly not the last. The other winner, May Thingyan Hein, is an investigative reporter in Burma, another country where new media have played a crucial role in fomenting citizen activism and where it's still uncertain whether that activism will have a long-term impact.

In Burma, technology was instrumental in spreading the word about the August-September 2007 protests against the military regime, protests that captivated the world. Inside Burma, cell phones were used to pass information about where demonstrators would gather and how to avoid arrest. Outside Burma, photos and videos of the monk-led protests and the government's violent response, taken mostly with cell phones, were posted on the Internet, raising awareness that put political pressure on Burma's governing military regime. Such information could only come from "citizen journalists," as the Burmese government barred almost all outside journalists from entering the country.

In Burma, too, the government cracked down, simply shutting down the Internet as an attempt to conceal the embarrassing photos and videos that raced around the globe seconds after they were e-mailed to expatriate Burmese Web sites. Police on the streets confiscated cameras and cell phones. Such actions are possible in the short term for a country as tightly controlled and isolated as Burma, but whether the Burmese government can maintain the information shutdown over the long haul is another question. Technology used today by Burmese citizens did not exist during the last bloody crackdown against protesters in 1988, when more than 3,000 people died, largely out of view of the outside world.

Censorship in Cyberspace

In other countries like China and Iran — larger and more engaged with the outside world — regimes are having a more difficult time controlling how information is shared through new technology. In 2006 in China, Li Datong, editor of a supplement to the massive China Youth Daily, e-mailed to key people a memo blasting the paper's new policy of docking the pay of reporters who wrote anything that displeased Communist Party officials. Within minutes, the memo was posted on Web sites all over the country. Censors quickly ordered Web sites to remove the memo, but they couldn't move fast enough to stanch the spread of the story. Though Li himself was fired, the government had to rescind the policy of docking reporters' pay.

China is second only to the United States in the number of Internet users, and China's leaders are fighting a losing battle as they try to control what kind of information is accessible to Chinese people on the Web. China is the world's leading jailer of people for posting information deemed unacceptable on the Web, with 50 cyber-dissidents in prison, of at least 64 worldwide, according to Reporters Without Borders.

"More and more governments have realized that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it," the organization said in its Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007. "The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media."

Like China, Iran is unable to fully control Web content, and Farsi is now among the top 10 languages for bloggers, with 70,000 to 100,000 active Iranian bloggers — many of them writing political pieces that mainstream Iranian media would never consider. Iranian bloggers change their Web addresses frequently and use "proxy sites" to get around government restrictions.

Blogs, podcasts, text messages, and video uploads are pushing the limits of free expression and causing real change in Iran, China, Burma, and Egypt, but so far none of these regimes has toppled as a result. They have in other countries.

Mobile Democracy

The most famous example is the Philippines, where text messaging helped muster citizens for mass protests that led to the 2001 downfall of then-President Joseph Estrada. He had narrowly escaped impeachment by the Senate, despite evidence that he controlled bank accounts containing $71 million worth of ill-gotten gains. Estrada thought he had survived until hundreds of thousands of people gathered to protest the Senate vote, spurred by text messages that said "Go 2 EDSA" (Avenue), "Wear black to mourn the death of democracy," and "Expect there to be rumbles." When the Supreme Court resolved that "the people have spoken," Estrada finally agreed to step down.

Lebanon provides a similar, more recent example. There, 1 million citizens answered the text-message summons on their cell phones in 2005, gathering to demand that Syria end its military occupation of the country. As in the Philippines, citizens were immediately successful, with 14,000 Syrian troops leaving the country after a 29-year occupation. But the long-term success of citizen power remains uncertain; Syria continues to exert control over Lebanon through assassinations and bombings, and the country remains fragile.

Other examples of "mobile democracy" abound. Women in Kuwait used text messaging to organize rallies successfully demanding the right to vote and run for elections. Tech-savvy young South Koreans urged 800,000 people to vote in a last-minute SMS campaign, putting their candidate Roh Moo Hyun over the top by the thinnest of margins. Chinese have used SMS to mobilize labor strikes and anti-Japanese rallies.

All of these examples show the power of new technology in bringing people out into the streets in countries where they previously felt impotent. While the Internet has been an important mobilizing tool in the United States, cell phones and text messaging are much more important in developing countries where few people have access to the Web, but many more have mobile phones.

The United States is actually behind much of the world, even the developing world, in this regard. In Botswana recently, I told students that I was interested in talking to telecommunications companies about the possibility of delivering news stories via cell phones. One student pulled out his phone and asked, "Do you mean like this?" Top headlines from a local daily newspaper were scrolling across the phone's screen, a service that had long been available in his country. Africans with cell phones in remote areas that don't have access to printed newspapers are actually getting news from those newspapers on their cell phones.

Caveats and Concerns

So if cell phones are being used all over the developing world to deliver news to people who might not otherwise get it and to bring together people who now feel empowered to take action and bring about change in their countries — what's the down side?

For some, the worry is that "mobile democracy" is only a few letters removed from "mob democracy." It's admirable that people in the Philippines were able to rouse huge crowds through new technology to bring down a corrupt president, but what's to stop people from using the same technology to bring down a democratically elected government enacting policies that are unpopular in the short run but good for a country in the long run?

The same technology can also be used for more nefarious purposes than democratic change. In East Timor, marauding thugs used text messaging to organize riots and evade peacekeeping troops. Al-Qaida is renowned for using the most up-to-date technology as it works to push the world back into the eighth century.

Other concerns center on the new media tools that have brought to light abuses such as those in Egypt and Burma. How can we judge the veracity of information conveyed by someone who recorded it on a cell phone and sent it, perhaps anonymously, to a blogger in the West? How can we be sure that images have not been digitally manipulated? Can we trust information that originates from people who are activists for their causes rather than trained and impartial journalists?

Much of the world has never subscribed to the U.S. journalistic ideal of "objective" journalism, in which the viewpoint of the reporter or media cannot be ascertained from the story. But as more and more information comes from sources that have a clear agenda, the concept of presenting full and balanced reporting further erodes.

London-based Burmese blogger Ko Htike said that he had about 10 contacts in Burma who sent him text, photos, and videos from Internet cafes. He trusted the veracity of the material they sent, but he also noted that the Burmese regime caught on to the trend, too, sending fake e-mails and text messages, spreading false information about military crackdowns.

Another site that publicized reports from Burmese citizen journalists was Mizzima News, run by exiles in New Delhi. Editor-in-chief Soe Myint received reports, images, and videos from more than 100 students, activists, and ordinary citizens, according to the Wall Street Journal. He said that he has spent years building a grassroots reporting system of reliable sources. "This is not the work of one day," he said. "We have been getting ready for this for the last nine years. People know our work and how to reach us."

Another danger of the trend is that citizens who are gathering information often put themselves at great risk to do so. In Burma, one of the first casualties of the unrest was a Japanese photographer who was recording the protests.

Professional journalists often receive training for working in dangerous situations (though not often enough) and can count on the support of an employer if they are injured, kidnapped, or arrested; citizen journalists do not receive training and get no support from a news organization. Do the media that carry their work — and actually solicit it with invitations on their

Web sites — bear responsibility when those people are killed, injured, or arrested? Does the public?

Building Credibility

In Egypt, ICFJ award winner Wael Abbas has faced numerous threats and a government "smear campaign" against him. Government officials have said he has a "criminal past," that he is a homosexual, and that he has converted to Christianity. "They were trying to discredit me and make me lose my audience," he said in an interview with ICFJ's International Journalists Network Web site [www.ijnet.org].

Abbas won the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award in part because of his commitment to basing his blog on solid, factual reporting, not strictly in unsupported opinion. By giving Egyptians a firsthand view of what's happening in his country using new technology, he believes he is making a difference in a way that neither journalists nor general citizens ever could before now.

"I focused on images and video footage so that no one can discredit my work," he said, adding that he also writes in colloquial Arabic to attract younger audiences who find traditional media's reporting in classical Arabic "boring."

Stephen Franklin of the Chicago Tribune is one of ICFJ's recent Knight International Journalism Fellows, working to train journalists in Egypt. He nominated Abbas for the award. Despite his "mainstream media" background, Franklin found he could make the most difference by working with Abbas and other bloggers, who had greater freedom and were in many ways having greater impact on their society than newspapers, radio, and television. Franklin created a guide for bloggers, "Ten Steps to Citizen Journalism Online," that includes such issues as content, marketing, and safety for bloggers. (It is available on the IJNet site www.ijnet.org.)

Abbas believes that he and other bloggers — as well as traditional journalists who have dared to report on similar kinds of issues — have helped convince Egyptians that they can be active participants in bringing about change in society.

"Whenever injustice happens they come forward and talk," he said, "unlike in the past when people were too afraid to speak up."

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.