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Blogging responsibly for Good Governance: does the market work?
By Kaufmann | May 2, 2008
Last couple of blog entries where on blogging and good governance, the first focused on IFIs, the second on countries and governments, providing recent illustrations from Africa.
In fact the Christian Science Monitor (CSM) recently had an interesting article which called blogging the ‘Africans’ newest form of dissent’. Like in my previous blog entry, this article also referred to the role played by blogging during the vote count in Zimbabwe. Further, it contains a full story about blogging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Yet towards the end of the CSM article, caution is thrown to the wind: ‘Africa expert Leonard Vincent, with the Paris-based journalism watchdog group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), says that while expanding freedom of speech in Africa is important, some opposition and rebel blogs are taking it too far. “You have the personal bloggers and the political bloggers: Political parties publish whatever they want – full of libel, defamation, violence, sometimes very graphic images,” Mr. Vincent says. “I have the feeling that the ones who are blogging in an individual way are more conscious of their responsibility and are more likely to be measured and moderate in the publication than those who use the Internet and their Web sites as war tools or propaganda tools.” ‘ …..
As hinted previously, my view (and shared by a good friend), is that when it comes to helping the cause of better governance, on balance blogging is doing much more good than harm. This is particularly so when the press is censored by the State or self-censors itself for other reasons. And nowadays censorship and restraints are more commonplace than commonly acknowledged. In many places a truly free press is still elusive (and in some places the steps taken have gone backwards). This is a challenge we want to be particularly mindful now, of as we approach World Press Freedom Day (tomorrow, Saturday May 3rd).
Of course, at times blogging can be abused, as for instance when political extremists or security police may invade web sites or nefariously engage in fake blogging. But experience suggests that in general these are being countered by the balanced bloggers. And responsible blog editors and administrators do not tolerate ’hate speech’ in their blogs.
At the end of the day, aren’t we all ‘economists’, driven by incentives?: those blogs that manage to do it responsibly and get it right will attract so many readers, while others will merely feed a limited and biased clientele? After all, it is a market, and overall it works — doesn’t it?
Topics: Aid Effectiveness, Corruption, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights | |