“MEDIA-TERRANEAN ACTIVISM: WHICH STRATEGIES CAN WE ADOPT TO GET INDEPENDENT INFORMATION AFTER THE REVOLUTIONS?”

Moderator: Pamela Cioni, responsible of communication COSPE

Guests:

Esraa Abdelfattah (EG): She played a leading role in the mass protests of Tahrir Square during the 2011 Revolution. In 2008, she co-founded the “April 6 General Strike Egypt” Facebook group promoting a day of civil disobedience for workers. Nominated for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, she is currently a consultant at the Egyptian Democratic Academy, and a columnist at El-Youm7 newspaper.

Nathalie Galesne (FRA): Founder of Babelmed.net, an independent magazine on Mediterranean issues, putting together a multicultural network of journalists from the whole Mediterranean, reporting about contemporary cultural productions, breaking mental barriers and fighting prejudices.

The objective of this dialogue is to understand how to enhance the value of the independent media and of the civil society after 2011, networking the present and active experiences in Mediterranean countries: how to build a Mediterranean Citizenship from a media’s point of view.

The first point concerns the independence of the traditional media: to really have free and independent medias, it is necessary to have a legislative framework which ensures this independence. Esraa Abdel Fattah speaks of Egypt like a country that is still in transition. There is a new constitution with excellent articles, but these articles are not law due to the absence of a parliament. In Esraa’s opinion, a “Media Commission” should be established. It should be free and independent from the government or private interests, and it should only be composed of media workers. The steps to reach the independence of traditional media in Egypt should thus be: the affirmation in the community of the new constitution and its articles, the adoption of framework laws which refer to these articles, the creation of an independent Media Commission and the economic independence which ensures the freedom of media operators. Without this framework, journalists shall always face censorship. This currently represents a big challenge for the media in Egypt. The dialogue moves toward talking about the theme of Citizens’ Journalism: journalism, activism or both?. According to Esraa, it is necessary to fully decentralise the information, to give voice from the “inside” of the countries and not to leave the information solely in the hands of governments and/or of foreign correspondents. Therefore, welcome to the citizens’ journalism. Nathalie Galèsne, on the other hand, involves writers and intellectuals instead of political activists in the network of correspondents of her portal “Babelmed”, because “where there is not freedom of expression and association, the cultural voice manages to go deeper and escape from the control system. More than the voice of the declared activists”. Speaking about citizens’ journalism, she claims that in the conflict areas or in the countries under a dictatorship, the voices from the bottom-up are necessary, but journalism is a profession. It is a question of know-how, of resources and tools, of the possibility of making surveys. Relying only on a militant form of journalism is sometimes risky and might turn against the same information. Citizens’ Journalism is very important where freedom of press does not exist, but we cannot entrust the information only to this type of activism. This type of information must inform and influence the mainstream media.  “Can social media be alternative to mainstream media?” To answer to this question, Esraa underlines the importance of social media in Egypt, where they have existed since 2004. Social media have covered news and facts of which was not discussed elsewhere. They made known unknown things to the general public. They were a way to make population aware. For example, they were the first to show the abuses committed by police forces. The other important role of social media was their power of mobilisation, the capacity to involve people in real events, from the first strikes to the first big manifestations. Moreover, social media have stimulated the exchange of experiences between Mediterranean countries. After the Revolutions of 2011, also governments and institutions entered on facebook. They had to take into account the good and the bad of using social networks (to open up a dialogue and to control too), where the satire is the most used language to do counter information, especially in Egypt. On the other hand, Nathalie reminds that there are important, innovative, successful and avant-garde projects that meet the needs of both the civil society and journalism (for example through computer graphics and video-journalism tools) and we have to support and to disseminate this type of projects. The “political” communication, according to Nathalie, although it facilitates sharing and people mobilisation, it cannot replace “classic” journalism. Indeed, the contamination between social media and mainstream media is possible, and the mainstream media can no longer ignore what is going on in the networks. They often take their news from there. They are different tools, but the relation and the connection between these two types of media is fundamental, even if the targets are very different. In these countries there are also community media, which represent an answer to the impossibility to access traditional media. However, there are not laws recognising these community medias, i.e. communication media managed by local groups. We are not talking only about web radio and web television, but about the possibility to access to radio waves and television frequencies by associations, private and/or communitarian subjects as well. “For this reason, we welcome a transnational networks”, said Nathalie “this is a way to build a Mediterranean identity”. In respect of the concept of Mediterranean Citizenship, the speakers define it “a utopia, of which, however, we have a need for”. Nathalie tells about the creation of a common charter on rights of movement and the access to health, work and information, especially for the South of Mediterranean which is deprived of it. The watchwords are “connection, complexity and utopia”. According to Esraa, to reach the Mediterranean Citizenship we need to learn a common language. Eventually, according to Esraa and Nathalie we have to clarify some conditions: “why do we need a Mediterranean Citizenship? What needs is it answering?”. We need a regional platform to stay close and to exchange experiences between us. We have to find a way to meet us, not only virtually. We have to stay up-todate and understand how we can support each other, how to practice our solidarity. We see it in the revolutions: to exchange experiences is important. We need to find how to do it: through a union or an association? Or something new? How we want to reach this Mediterranean Citizenship and what’s the plan? The key words identified during the dialogue are: networks, proximity, common objective, contamination and meeting.