MixedRealities :: Changing the world with social media and virtual worlds

{ 2009 06 24 }

Changing the world with social media and virtual worlds

The Generalife in Al-Andalus, Second Life

Yay! The first meeting of the MixedRealities group in Second Life (and on Facebook) went just great: about 20 avatars showed up and we had an in-depth discussion about how social media deal with the events in Iran.

As a journalist, I learned from this event that one can either look around for news and information, or one can just ask people to participate in an event – in other words, I got some very interesting insights and information from the participants.

Before we even started, Doubledown Tandino gave me a link to his post about social media and Iran. Remember Raph Koster talking about his little brother who took down part of the media infrastructure of the Iranian authortities? One of the stories provided by Doubledown is what Josh Koster himself tells about what happened.

Those last few days I was wondering whether there was really nothing going on in Second Life regarding Iran. How could a place with so many non-profits be so silent about those events? Could it be because of the very difficult relations between Iran and the West, making public opinion give up on the Iranian issues?

One of the participants told me the “Support Iran” group IS active in-world (meaning in Second Life) organizing a vigil on Wednesday June 24 at 12.20 pm SLT/PST in Al-Andalus Generalife in Second Life, saying “We Are All Iranians”. Another participant gave me a protest placard against the death of Neda Agha Soltan, a protester who was deadly wounded.

We watched a video featuring Clay Shirky, who underlined the importance of simple tools such as mobile phones and twitter in order to organize social change. One of the participants remarked that Iran has access to mobile phones and the internet, this is not self-evident for all countries. The protesters in Burma for instance don’t have that access and are less heard or not at all.

This is not to say that access to the internet solves the problems for the protesters. Not only can the authorities limit access, they can also use the internet to gather in-depth information about citizens and they can alter communications, as this article of The Wall Street Journal says.

While there were no supporters of the Iranian authorities at our meeting (at least I heard no one defending the authorities), there are English language media giving the perspective of the regime (or parts of the regime) on what happens: more and more it seems the Iranian authorities blame the West and Israel for the rebellion.

Some participants said they would like to support the protesters but don’t know how to help. Solidarity can easily be misguided, BoingBoing ran a story about the issue.

For instance, there was the call for people on Twitter to “relocate” their tweets to Iran, in order to confuse the authorities. However, it sure did confuse foreign journalists, who had a hard time finding out who was actually reporting from Iran and who was not.

One can support the protesters, but does that mean one should support the “other candidate” (Mir Hossein Musavi)? Furthermore, direct support by people in the West can be used by the regime to claim that is all a conspiracy by the West.

There was a feeling at our meeting that what we can do is helping people to get information out. In the end it are the protesters who face the guns. More information and education is also needed about the Iranian political system – many people feel lost in the complexities of the situation.

There are issues however beyond those complexities. A participant said: “Any protester killed should be remembered … not only in Iran, but everywhere .. so it might be good to organise a bigger exhibition reminding everyone about where people have fought for their freedom… ”

Thinking about responses to those issues is something, so we experienced, which can be done rather easily in Second Life (and I guess in some other virtual environments). Twitter is great to broadcast quickly and to coordinate, but it is not that good for discussion.

Immersive environments can help to make minds meet. There are some interesting precedents for the use of Second Life for social protest: Burma, Earth Week and IBM were mentioned for instance.

The fact hat Africa and India are raising their Second Life profile makes this environment into an even more valuable platform for dialogue. For protest and social movement exhibitions, one participant recommended Better World Island.

Yet another participant recommended the Rings Discussion group in Second Life, which charter says: “Explore the potential of SL to take humanity to a future of cooperation instead of competition. Positive about solutions and acting for change using creativity.”

This discussion group allows for the organization of events in a short time.

Even though these and other venues were mentioned, participants also said that we need more dynamic content from all over the web in Second Life, and what happens in Second Life should be more readily available in other media.

Some however have doubts whether mainstream media will listen at all. Maybe Second Life is a good place for debate and the exchanging of ideas, but less for the organization of (large scale) social action.

Maybe Second Life can be used best for actual information, giving people things to think about as well as pointing them to the right places.

The 6th birthday exhibitions give a unique opportunity to see some social movements and initiatives in action in Second Life. Participants also mentioned the Four Bridges, a region devoted to the advancement of human rights and of grassroots nonprofits in Second Life: Amnesty International, Imagine Network, ICEA, BORDC, Peace Train,Live Music

In order for governments and mainstream media to take notice of the possibilities of Second Life, rampant accessability is needed. Participants told the group that the US State Department does use Second Life and also consulting on health care policies used Second Life (I don’t have information or confirmation on that as yet).

It seems Metaplace is doing better as far as accessibility is concerned. It is as yet a young platform, but now already social organizations are using it to organize meetings. Second Life will not be the only virtual environment where people gather in order to change society for the better – or, eventually, for the worse.

Do you have more information or comments on these issues? Please react!

Roland Legrand

Prokofy

I'm all for fighting for freedom in Iran. I held a meeting and discussion on Iran, too, to debate whether it was a Twitter Revolution and to discuss what was effective to do. BTW, my event was griefed and prim bombed by the, er, educational group Woodbury University which proves that barbarians are inside the gates, not at them.

I blogged and tweeted too - others did.

The notion that the West and Israel are responsible for everything is something you find coming from most Europeans and many lefty Americans on Twitter, not just the Iranian authorities -- in that sense, some of the lefties dropped this silly mantra for once when they saw a genuine people's struggle against an oppressive Islamic regime -- something they don't do every day of the week, let me tell you.

In that regard, holding anything at Al Andalus, which is devoted to establishing a caliphate, is not anything "progressive" or "libera". To be supporting this group that wants to put a caliphate in place to rule over us is an absurd abandoning of Western liberal values that is unnecessary to "understand Islam" or be tolerant of other cultures.

Here is why so many non-profits are silent about Iran: they don't work on Iran. At all. Ever. They may have played catch up in the last few weeks, but most don't. It is not a progressive and politically correct thing to do to challenge an oppressive Islamic regime. It is especially not politically correct to challenge a regime that blasts Israel and the U.S. all the time -- which is what these groups themselves do.

I don't understand what you feel "Mainstream Media," evil creature that it is surely dominated by Zionists and America. It has had saturation full-title effective and accurate coverage of Iran all over, despite the crazy #CNNfail meme that you can't get people to reason about because they need it to help them feel better about themselves using new media to follow an issue they had absolutely no use for as politically incorrect last year.

There is nothing in the way to organizing anything you wish in SL. It's more effective in some ways than MP in terms of making representations of things. But...tools and new shiny things don't make people better. If they didn't organize around Iran and the problem of theocratic Islamic states in real life, it's hard to expect that new media will transform them. Yet, if using new media and virtual worlds converts even just one or ten or 100 people from their usual memes and cliches about these problems, it's all to the good.

It seems to me from your story, however, that we're supposed to come away with the same old tired explanation as everything being the fault of the West again.

roland legrand

No, not at all. I think the sentiment was more that it is very difficult to do something here in the West apart from helping information get out and seeking information about what happens in Iran. I mentioned the Iranian pro government news source because I think people should know how the regime reacts on this: by blaming the West. That does not mean I agree with that.

MixedRealities

Changing the world with social media and virtual worlds

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