Access and citizen power

Anyone who posts anything on the Internet should be aware that he or she is releasing it to the whole world—or at least the “wired” world. Which is why when I heard that mothers of young Filipinas who were engaging in cyber-sex over the Internet justified their daughters’ activities by saying that “at least our daughters are not touched,” I was appalled and amused. Sure, the clients couldn’t put their hands on their daughters’ nubile bodies, but were they aware that their daughters’ faces and identities could be accessed by anyone with a computer or similar device, and that their “naughty” activities would be recorded for all eternity? (Or at least for as long as the Internet is in existence.)

Like with most anything in this world, the Internet has both an upside and a downside. Cyber-sex and all other forms of nefarious activities flourishing on the web (along with the death of privacy) may be a downside. But an upside is that persons who previously, because of their humble circumstances, were voiceless and faceless could, through accessing the Internet, gain a worldwide audience.

I recently attended a round-table discussion on “IT, Gender and Citizenship” where the results of a project involving urban poor community leaders were shared. Under the project, the leaders, many of them women, underwent training on writing news and features, and afterwards were fielded to “report” on events in their neighborhoods or on the views of their neighbors. Their stories were uploaded on an e-magazine titled “Boses ng Komunidad (Voices of the Community)” contained in the website of Likhaan, an NGO engaged in both service provision and advocacy on reproductive health issues.

The project was meant to explore the potential of information and communication technology “as a tool for popular advocacy and people’s participation.” More specifically, it was meant to bring the voices, views and experiences of urban poor women to the attention of legislators (in view of the ongoing debates on the RH bill) and to the public at large.

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The results were 21 published stories (out of about 40 that were submitted) that were, as an analysis puts it: “Grounded in the local and the intimate… (where) the poor are depicted not as victims but as agents of social change.”

The results, as far as impact is concerned, were rather disappointing. “…[M]ainstream media had not picked up any of the activists’ articles; anti-RH legislators continued to ignore the voices of the poor represented by these articles; national-level discussions continued to be dominated by tropes of morality, sexuality, the dangers of contraception, abortion and large populations. In this case, the attempt to bridge the local and the intimate to the institutional and national, through the use of ICT and the Internet, seems to have failed.”

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But not if you ask the women and youth who took part in the project.

Almost all of them said they appreciated the skills training they received, the familiarity they gained on the use of computers and of the Internet, and the training they received on citizen journalism.

To be sure, they had complaints, mainly because of “lack of access” to neighborhood Internet cafés (where most wrote and transmitted their stories) which were dark, cramped and dominated by youthful gamesters who tended to be boisterous and rowdy. They also worried whether their relatives or neighbors could read their stories, since not everyone had access to a computer. But they all agreed that the reporting project empowered them as citizens and as individuals, that the power of the media had imbued them with confidence to talk to their neighbors and report on goings-on in the community.

And as said earlier, they had also gained a worldwide audience. “From now on, anyone anywhere in the world who happens to open the Likhaan website can read your stories and perhaps relate it to his or her own life,” I told them. One of the participants in the round-table discussion pointed out that access to IT is not an unqualified good, and that the value of access depends to a large extent on the uses to which access is put in service of. Is it to be used mainly for game-playing or social networking? Or  should it be developed further by users to gain knowledge and information, for initiating change?

Who knows, such grassroots efforts could yet gain ground and result in popular upheavals similar to that of The Arab Spring. At the very least, they could result in a more enlightened, more aware and more empowered citizenry, beginning with the community activists.

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“We are all passengers and crew of the ship called Pilipinas,” said former President Fidel V. Ramos, in his keynote at the book launching of Ciel Habito’s “No Free Lunch: Economics in Bite-size Pieces.” Showing off a T-shirt that proclaimed “I’m Retired, Leave Me Alone,” FVR proved that he was far from tired and reclusive, declaring that “everyone in this ship should plug a hole where he sees one, or carry an oar to move the ship along.”

The launch also served as a mini-review of Habito’s public and private engagements, with speakers dating from his days as an economics professor at UP Los Baños and Ateneo; his term as Neda director general (serving six years under the Ramos administration); and his present engagements as a board director, educator and civil society leader.

Not only did Habito “learn what will be said of me in my eulogy,” he joked, but the audience also marveled at the breadth of Habito’s contributions to the country, in all the fields of endeavor he finds himself in, including that of being a most accessible columnist writing on economics (among other things) in this paper.

Congratulations Ciel!