Small%20States,%20Big%20Opportunities:%20Challenges%20and%20Problems%20for%20Greece%20in%20Cyberspace

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Small States, Big Opportunities Challenges and
Problems for Greece in Cyberspace OR The
Greek, The Bad and the Ugly QA on the Greek
Identity Shift, the Global Media and its
coverage of the Greek Riots

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  ?p????????a?
• se ??a ??e???p???µ??? ?e??ß????? ???at?t?te? ?a?
  ???pt???? ??a t?? ????da,
• Greek Politics Specialist Group, Political
  Studies Association,
• ???????? ?p????e?? ???te?????, ????a, 4 ?a? 5
  Feß???a???? 2009.
• Teµat??? e??t?ta ?? ??ad??t?? ?? ???a?e??
  ??µ?s?a? ??p??µat?a? ??
• ???te????? ????t????.
• Dr Athina Karatzogianni
• University of Hull, UK, athina.k_at_gmail.com

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Presentation Layout

• Introduction Larger Project
• Small States, Nation Branding and ICTs
• Cyberconflict Model
• The Greek Case
• Questions
• Sample Collection
• Local Event and Media Descriptions
• Reaction and National Politics
• Global Reflection and Analysis of Greek Riots
• Conclusion

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Larger Project Small States, Branding and ICTs

• The project explores
• the effect of Information Communication
  Technologies (ICTs) on state branding and global
  media framing in relation to small states and
  unrecognised entities in crisis, conflict and
  dependency.
• Explains
• Processes of evolution of statehood from
  imaginary to virtual to real
• Links these processes with the literature of
  small states and cyberconflict
• individual cases of secessionary, failed and
  small states in crisis
• idiosyncratic behaviour of small states in world
  system
• state branding
• media and framing, political economy of
  communications
• ICTs and war.
• Seeks
• To reveal how some frames offered by such
  entities are accepted by the established media,
  while others are only accepted by media
  sympathetic to the state, population or cause.
• To add to theory and evidence on how new
  technologies have enhanced small numbers, weaker
  contenders and marginalised societies and upset
  the balance of traditional political
  communication.
• To provide relevant recommendations for
  practitioners in the governmental,
  non-governmental and private sector by providing
  knowledge and skills and examining new policies
  exploiting ICTs.

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Small States Background

• Small states studies resurgence during the last
  decade, especially in policy sectors, not only in
  Europe, but across the globe. e.g. emergence of
  new states in Europe and E.U. enlargement
• subfield, followed the theoretical developments
  in International Relations
• Concern rose in 1960s and 1970s with
  decolonization, and questions of
  self-determination and dependence of small
  entities (Baker Fox 1959).
• realism/neo-realism in the 1950s-1970s (size and
  foreign policy, small states in organizations)
• neorealism vs. liberal institutionalism in the
  1980s (small states interdependence and
  development issues)
• and rationalism vs. social constructivism in the
  1990s (small states in integration,
  globalization, ethno-political conflict) (Nuemann
  and Gstol 2004).
• Research examined the effects of geographical
  proximity to areas of great power interest (Vital
  1967).
• size, as a determinant of foreign policy and the
  compensation mechanisms, such as initiating more
  joint actions and targeting multiactor fora were
  examined by East (1973).
• Towards the end of the seventies the small
  state as an analytical tool for understanding
  world politics was questioned (Baehr 1975).
• UntilKatzenstein (1985) argued that superior
  flexibility was exhibited by small states as
  compared with large ones with regard to their
  economic and industrial politics. The reaction to
  international liberalization of such states was
  theorised as domestic compensation and flexible
  responses (1985).
• In the 1990s framing and discursive politics,
  and the importance of self-perception.
• For instance Reiter (1994) suggested that small
  states draw lessons and are influenced more from
  past experiences than from outside threats in
  comparison to larger states.
• More recently, Ingebritsen (2002) focused on
  smaller states with social power to influence
  the system. In other literature also known as
  soft power.

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State, Branding, Conflict and ICTs

• Scholarship for state branding very recent and
  embryonic,
• focusing on tourism, attracting foreign
  investment and more rarely public diplomacy or
  the knowledge economy and culture (Anholt, 2002
  Papadopoulos and Heslop, 2002 Kotler and
  Gertner, 2002 Jaffe and Nebenzhal, 2001 Van Ham
  2001 Ryan 2002 Tzanelli 2006, 2007).
• Failed states and crisis states as empirical
  categories are examined by few scholars, such as
  Rice and Stewart (2008) and by institutes or
  centres, such as the Fund for Peace Research or
  the Crisis States Research Centre at the London
  School of Economics.
• Generally researched without focusing on the
  media side of the equasion.
• theorisation of the state in relation to
  globalization has been the object of research by
  significant contemporary theorists, commenting on
  
• the multi-variant tensions deriving from
  dependence and diffusion of the Western model of
  government (Badie, 2000)
• questioning the unproblematic and inevitable
  moral authority of the state (Rosenau, 2003)
• arguing that minorities are sites for the
  displacement of anxieties of many states
  (Appadurai, 2006)
• looking at the suppression of the nation-state
  and the inter-state system, whereby the
  nation-state is transformed into a larger
  structure of a transnational capitalist state
  (Robinson 2005)
• theorising hegemonic decline (Friedman and
  Chase-Dunne 2005).
• Equally, the effect of media on conflict, and
  ICTs on coverage has seen an explosion of the
  literature (Wolfsfeld, 1997 Taylor, 1998
  Robinson 2002 Rosenau and Singh, 2002 Rosenau
  and Johnson 2002 Schechter, 2003 Berenger 2004
  Philo and Berry, 2004 Seib, 2005 McNair 2006
  Karatzogianni 2006, 2008 Tremayne, 2007 Gow
  2007 Hoskins and OLoughlin 2008).

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Small States and ICTs SIDs case

• how small states can achieve critical mass and
  speak with one voice through ICTs
• For example, at a Workshop on ICT strategies for
  Islands and Small States (SIDs) in Malta in 1999,
  
• ICTs will allow them to pool their diplomatic
  efforts, through electronic networking
• This will facilitate their communications with
  each other and their home capitals, allowing a
  faster response to key issues, affecting their
  trade and economic security, under discussion
  with the WTO in order to improve their
  competitiveness, SIDs need information and ICT to
  find niche markets (Briguglio).
• Griego argued that ICTs can connect small states,
  small units and small islands into a substantial
  political and market force for affordable
  E-commerce technical development
• recommended that development agencies need to set
  up interactive sites which allow them to obtain
  feedback from locals regarding the projects
  developed.
• In the small islands context, as it is difficult
  to define indigenous skills, the diaspora is very
  important and can be virtually present too
  (Baldacchino).
• strategic information it is vital that small
  states gain competitive advantage by opening up
  markets through ICTs which were previously
  unthinkable (Sammut).
• The workshop identified the problems of top-level
  management and their mistrust of IT, because of
  their fear of losing power through the sharing of
  information.
• According to Kirkman (2002) SIDs are generally
  better off than the rest of the developing world
  in terms of some elements of their Networked
  Readiness such as ICT buildout and diffusion
• however, SIDS continue to lag in
  telecommunications liberalization. There is
  growing evidence that SIDS are pooling resources
  to take a regional approach in areas such as
  telecommunications regulation, natural resource
  management, maritime surveillance, and distance
  learning.

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Cyberconflict Model
1. Environment of Cyberconflict (CC) The
Reversal argument a. Ethnoreligious
cyberconflicts represent loyalties of
hierarchical apparatuses while b. Sociopolitical
cyberconflicts are empowering network forms of
organisation c. Actors in ethnoreligious CC need
to operate in a more network fashion, if they are
fighting network forms of terrorism or resistance
d. Actors in sociopolitical CC need to operate
in a more organised fashion and more conscious of
the rest of their hosting network, if they are to
engage with the present global political system

• 2. Sociopolitical Cyberconflicts impact of ICTs
  on
• Mobilising structures (network style of movements
  using the internet, participation, recruitment,
  tactics, goals)
• Framing Processes (issues, strategy, identity,
  the effect of the internet on these processes)
• Political opportunity structure (the internet as
  a component of this structure)
• Hacktivism

• 4. Media Components
• a. Analysing discourses (representations of the
  world, constructions of social identities and
  social relations)
• b. Control of information, level of censorship,
  alternative sources
• c. Wolsfeld Political contest model among
  antagonists the ability to initiate and control
  events, dominate political discourse, mobilise
  supporters
• d. Media effects on policy (strategic, tactical,
  representational)

• 3. Ethnoreligious Cyberconflicts
• Ethnic/religious affiliation, chauvinism,
  national identity
• Discourses of inclusion and exclusion
• Information warfare, the use of the internet as a
  weapon (hacking), propaganda and mobilisational
  resource
• Conflict resolution, which depends on the legal
  and organisational framework, the number of
  parties and issues, the distribution of power,
  and the content of values and beliefs

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Introducing present Greek case

• Global media coverage dec 08-jan 09
• Nation branding
• Imaginary identity for internal and external
  consumption
• Combine small states research and cyberconflict
  concepts
• Create a map of the real, virtual, imaginary
  identity transformed by ICTs
• Law and Order Frame vs. Justice and Defiance
• New generation energy harnessed -explain social
  movements edge of chaos
• Cyberconflict - online diaspora and online
  activists, the Sociopolitical/Economic against
  the ethoreligious/cultural, party politics and
  banckrupt ideology of the nation-state

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Sample Dec7-Jan 28

• Majority texts chosen (60) are first reaction
  reports to the riots - editorials and subsequent
  analysis of events also included
• Sample captured one single search for articles
  for greek riots on Google and it is drawn
  mostly only from the top 50 hits. problems with
  Googles (crypto)hierarchy of results is
  recognised
• Mainstream Media Al Jazeera, AFP, Associated
  Press, BBC, China Daily, Deutsche Welle,Die
  Welt,Euronews, Financial Times, France 24, Globe
  and Mail, Huffington Post, Le Monde Diplomatique,
  MSNBC, New York Times, News 24, Novinite
  (Sofia),Reuters, Spiegel, Sunday Times,The Boston
  Globe,The Economist, The Guardian, The
  Independent, The Telegraph The Nation, Wall
  Street Journal, USA Today
• Various non-mainstream media, and online media
  anarchistnews.org, bnp.org.uk, chabad.org,
  christian science monitor, freedemocracy
  wordpress, globalreach.com, internationalistbooks,
  indymedia.org, hellenic news of america,
  libcom.org,occupiedlondon.org, unite.gnn.tv

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Central Themes

• Law and Order Frame vs Injustice and Defiance
• Worst riots in decades
• Government reaction
• The families-dynastic political system
• Corruption
• The Lost 700 euro Generation (unemployment)
• Tradition of protest
• Make up of protesters (students, anarchists,
  middle class,unions etc)
• Financial position of Greece in the world system
  -perscriptive
• Various alternative explanations and conspiracy
  theories

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Local Event- Initial Description

• What happened? Who is blamed? Where did it
  happen? Government reaction, political parties,
  popular reaction etc. Who are the rioters? Who
  is quoted and interviewed?
• Sunday Times Grigoropoulos was hardly an ideal
  martyr for a movement suspected of being heavily
  influenced by a hard-left party known as Syriza.
  His mother runs a jewellery shop opposite Prada
  in the Bond Street of Athens and his father is a
  bank manager. He apparently belonged to a
  cluster of Athenian youths from the well to-do
  families who enjoy goading police on a Saturday
  night in the troubled district of Exarchia.
• Nearly all media outlets used the phrase worst
  riots in decades, or in Greeces recent history
  or since 1974
• Majority mention our tradition of protesting, how
  dear and sacrosant it is held since ancient
  times or a tradition on violence e.g. Reuters
  Greece has a tradition of violence at student
  rallies and fire bomb attacks by anarchist groups
  
• Protests were described as riots interchangeably,
  students as gangs of youth, as anarchists,
  anarchists as students, ordinary citizens, all
  depending on the discursive mood of the
  journalist/citizen journalist
• Main quotes in the majority of the mainstream
  media in the first instance were officials
  Prokopis Pavlopoulos the Interior Minister, and
  PM Kostas Karmanlis, after that secretary of
  information, president of trade association,
  police, majors office.
• Very few mentions of statements of opposition
  parties, no interviews of the opposition parties
  (incredibly 2/50 quote papandreou statement), no
  interviews from rioters, very few from students
  and very few from ordinary people
• Almost an exception New York Times (10 December
  2008) sources Livadas general secretariat of
  Greeces Secretariat of Information, 17-year old
  hairdressing student, protester (because of
  economy), researcher (economy and police
  brutality), law school student, international
  relations student. Other example Al Jazeera
• Law and Order Frame
• Euronews quotes Pavlopoulos Protests must and
  should take place. Citizens have every right to
  defend their ideas and principles but not by
  destroying other peoples property
• The Nation quotes Karamanlis "We must all have
  a united stand against illegal actions, to
  clearly condemn violence, looting and vandalism,"
  he said, and appealed to unions to cancel a
  protest rally during a 24-hour strike scheduled
  for Wednesday.
• Injustice and Defiance
• Deutsche Welle Amnesty International called for
  an investigation into the shooting death of
  Grigoropoulos and criticized "unlawful and
  disproportionate" police violence.

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Reaction National Politics Family Politics,
Corruption, and Unequal distribution

• Associated Press Before the riots began, the
  Greek government was already facing public
  discontent over the state of the economy, poor
  job prospects for students and a series of
  financial scandalsAn opinion poll published on
  Wednesday showed that 68 of Greeks disapproved
  of the government's handling of the crisis.
• Spiegel Many normal Greeks share the same views
  as the Black Bloc anarchists They consider the
  country's elite to be corrupt and incompetent.
  Their experiences with its scandals, cronyism and
  corruption are too deeply seated. And it is in
  their unanimous rejection of the elite that both
  business people and the Black Bloc anarchists
  have found common ground..
• Financial Times Greek politics can be
  correspondingly raw with family dynasties often
  treating both party and state as personal
  patrimony. Two aspects of this culture vested
  interests that shade into corruption, and a
  robust tradition of public protest keep
  colliding in ever more combustible ways, as the
  buildings ablaze in downtown Athens well attest.
• Le Monde Diplomatique The big families - the
  Caramanlis, Mitsotakis, Papandreou - that have
  followed one another in power for decades, have,
  along with their loyalists, profited from a
  system of which the scraps and crumbs have
  nourished a large part of the population. The
  social crisis explains, without justifying, the
  violence of the last few days. Mr. Caramanlis's
  government may restore peace. It is too weak to
  attack the roots of the disorder.
• The Economist The feel-good factor allowed the
  conservatives to ignore the pressing case for
  social reform, particularly in education, health
  and policing. But as the global slowdown takes
  effect, young Greeks see their parents struggling
  to pay the bills. If they cannot afford to study
  abroad, they get lousy tuition at a Greek
  university and, unless their family can pull
  strings, few chances of a good job. The
  unemployment rate for young graduates is 21,
  compared with 8 for the population as a whole.

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National Politics Lost generation and make up of
protesters

• Telegraph The death of Alexis Grigoropoulos is a
  justifiable cause for public outrage. But it has
  become a bandwagon for a much broader coalition
  of anti-government interests student anarchists,
  whose raison detre is to challenge authority
  the socialist opposition Pasok and the trade
  unions, who want to unseat the ruling New
  Democracy party and members of the middle class
  incensed by low wages, a high cost of living,
  rising unemployment and official corruption
• The Guardian For many these are a lost
  generation, raised in an education system that is
  undeniably shambolic and hit by whopping levels
  of unemployment (70 per cent among the 18-25s) in
  a country where joblessness this month jumped to
  7.4 per cent. If they can find work remuneration
  rarely rises above 700 euro (this is, after all,
  the self-styled euro700 generation), never mind
  the number of qualifications it took to get the
  job. Often polyglot PhD holders will be serving
  tourists at tables in resortsstarted selling
  them on stones - at three stones a euro - to
  other protesters whose parents may live in
  Hollywood-style opulenceWhat is certain is that
  Karamanlis's handling of the disturbances will go
  down as a case study of what not to do in a
  crisis.
• Wall Street Journal Some 25 of Greeks 15 to 24
  years of age are unemployed, meaning the benefits
  of the country's economic expansion haven't been
  equally distributed, said Claude Giorno, an
  economist at the Organization for Economic
  Cooperation and Development Alexander Kitroeff,
  associate professor in history at Haverford
  College, said the length of protests among
  high-school and college students is particularly
  striking because it is an age group that hasn't
  been politically active since the early 1980s.
• Al jazeera interviews Psaropoulos, Athens News
  The political reason is that some parties on the
  left are keen on making political capital out of
  any kind of mobilisation of this kind.We are
  talking about university students and even
  younger ages. A lot of kids of high school age
  have been turning up and taking part and that is
  very much a organised thing, it is not a
  spontaneous outpouring. But the social cause is
  more spontaneous, we saw enormous riots involving
  high school and university students during an
  attempt by the conservatives at reform two years
  ago in 2006. And that's where that age group
  acquired a renewed sense of its own power.

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Global Reflection Analysis Globalization of
protests and Greeces position in the world system

• Sunday Times My 12-year-old daughter has been
  getting text messages inviting her to join the
  demonstration said Constantine Michalos,
  president of the Greek chamber of commerce.
• Wall Street Journal Thousands of students were
  joined by striking workers in a fifth day of
  protests in Greece, an uprising that mirrors
  growing discontent among youths in many European
  countries over outdated education systems, lack
  of jobs and a general apprehension about the
  future.
• Novinite (Sofia) According to the Greece Antenna
  TV, the Greek anarchists have been joined by
  like-minded people from all over Europe who have
  recently arrived to Greece in order to take part
  in the protests.
• Reuters Protests have swept more than 10 cities
  across the European Union member state of 11
  million people, including the tourist islands of
  Crete and Corfu
• Al Jazeera (posts on their site) Global
  conversations from people from Greece, mexico,
  Venezuala, Indonesia, the US, Canada,
  Netherlands)
• Le Monde Diplomatique the last three days
  testify to the disequilibria of a society that
  over several years only went from being part of
  the Balkans to part of Europe.
• Financial Times It must root out the corruption
  that places it 57th (out of 180 countries) and
  23rd in the EU in Transparency Internationals
  2008 corruption perceptions index. As Athens
  burned, Greeces parliament was investigating an
  illegal land-swap between a Mount Athos monastery
  and the state, from which ministers may have
  profited mightily. With bad governance, disparate
  causes for disgruntlement coagulate into
  rebellion. Good governance in Greece would
  recognise that reform is something you do all the
  time, unless you want to see the country
  overtaken by its Balkan neighbours, Romania and
  Bulgaria

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Global Reflection Analysis Greece as
foretaste/trigger for next phase in the financial
crisis

• Wall Street Journal Thousands of students were
  joined by striking workers in a fifth day of
  protests in Greece, an uprising that mirrors
  growing discontent among youths in many European
  countries over outdated education systems, lack
  of jobs and a general apprehension about the
  future.
• Associated Press Authorities say the incidents
  have been isolated so far, but acknowledge
  concern that the Greek riots could be a trigger
  for antiglobalization groups and others outraged
  by economic turmoil and a lack of job
  opportunities.
• Sunday Times Some see a foretaste of the next
  phase of the global financial crisis, sensing in
  the tear gas and chants a warning to European
  leaders of what may unfold elsewhere if they do
  not take into account the frustrations of their
  people.
• The Independent Bringing together youths in
  their early twenties struggling to survive amid
  mass youth unemployment and schoolchildren
  swotting for highly competitive university exams
  that may not ultimately help them in a
  treacherous jobs market, the events of the past
  week could be called the first credit-crunch
  riots. There have been smaller-scale sympathy
  attacks from Moscow to Copenhagen, and economists
  say countries with similarly high youth
  unemployment problems such as Spain and Italy
  should prepare for unrest.

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Non-mainstream Media

• Conspiracy theory http//freedemocracy.wordpress.
  com/2008/12/09/riots-in-greece-the-undercover-news
  -culprit-islamic-netowrks-joining-anarchists/
  Quite a few Greek radical groups have adopted
  Arabic Noms de Guerre, promote illegal
  immigration of Muslims into Europe and call in
  for the destruction of Western civilazation. They
  are part of an almost global network that acts as
  a soft power element of the hard one as envisaged
  by Al Qaeda.
• Globalresearch.ca world socialist website Also
  playing a retrograde role in the struggles in
  Greece are anarchist elements, who hold workers
  responsible for the right-wing politics of PASOK,
  the KKE and the trade unions, serving to isolate
  the youth from the working class as a whole. The
  World Socialist Web Site and the European
  sections of the International Committee of the
  Fourth International, the Partie fur Soziale
  Gleichheit in Germany and the Socialist Equality
  Party in Great Britain, call for spreading the
  mass protests and struggles that have erupted in
  Greece throughout Europe .there is the so-called
  "leftist coalition," or SYRIZA, an amalgam of the
  most diverse radical groupingsincluding the
  Greens, pacifists, feminists, radical lefts and
  self-described socialists. The heterogeneous
  composition of the party is matched by its
  complete lack of programmatic clarity. In last
  years election campaign, the coalition stressed
  the issue of ecology as the lowest common
  denominator to hold itself together, following
  bitter internal disputes.
• http//bnp.org.uk/2008/12/greece-suffers-under-wav
  e-of-asylum-seeker-caused-violence/The Greek far
  left, who have in the past been closely allied to
  the far left in Britain, has now seized upon the
  initial asylum seeker unrest and started riots of
  their own, providing the controlled media with a
  perfect excuse to hide the cause of the violence
• Chabad.org (jewish) The rabbi said that the
  previous two hours had seen a drastic
  intensification in the protesters actions.Its
  gotten really crazy here, said Hendel. Thank God,
  the Jewish community is okay, he added. So far,
  the rioters have not been targeting people.
• Diaspora Hellenic News of AmericaI think, is the
  sense that public institutions have been so far
  corrupted that they may, and should, be attacked
  with impunity. This may eventually provoke a
  backlash but, so far, whatever apprehension or
  disgust the rioters have provoked is exceeded by
  disgust for those they are rioting against.

18
Various anarchist and radical left

• http//www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2009/01/17/fuck
  -greece-fight-here-greek-riot-info-events-in-the-u
  k/ fuck Greece, fight here
• http//libcom.org/news/occupation-news-editors-uni
  on-hq-athens-12012009
• http//libcom.org/news/short-presentation-recent-e
  vents-athens-through-eyes-some-proletarian-partici
  pants-tptg-co-
• http//unite.gnn.tv/blogs/24139/Breaking_news_from
  _Greek_Anarchist_movement
• http//athens.indymedia.org/?langen
• http//www.anarchistnews.org/

19
Greece in Motion - Creative and Positive
Exploits The Edge of Chaos Recommendations for
Policy

• Reverse current coverage by addressing Greeces
  image/media coverage on 3 levels
• The Real
• Family politics
• Equaling distribution beyond party politics
• Corruption
• Unemployment
• Social Reforms
• Chanelling the Energy of the Lost generation
• The Virtual
• Exploit ICTs to address every single element of
  negative coverage, exchange with the global media
  constantly
• Engage diaspora and online activists through
  providing for a in cyberspace for participation
  in e-government beyond official ineffective
  information portals. THEY ARE CITIZENS NOT
  CUSTOMERS
• Engage youth in e-participation projects in p2p
  collaborative fashion to create new enterprise
  and business opportunities
• The Imaginary
• Reconstruct the Greek imaginary through deep
  reform on all levels
• Reverse the image of Greeks as hard working
  creative non-violent hospitable and
  non-destructive, uncorrupt and forward-looking
• Restore hope and dignity to people that have
  given up on democracy, politics, representation,
  equal distribution, equality of opportunites,
  human dignity
• Embrace youth as the most valuable asset of a
  state (in raw biopolitical terms) and exploit
  their abilities through providing opportunities
  and rewards
• Respect of minorities and embrace cultural
  diversity as a dynamic factor for cultural
  exchange and progress.