This is the original version of the speech I held today the 3^rd of November at AsiaBlogFest 2012 in Siem Reap, Cambodia. You can read more about the event at http://2012.blogfest.asia

As a member of the board of the Spider ICT4D center in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the co-sponsors of the Asia blogfest2012, I’m honoured to be here. But more than that – I’m happy to be here among fellow writers, bloggers and social media activists.

More than 30 years ago, in 1981, when I was even younger than what I’m today, I went for the first time to Central America to learn, write and report. 1981, that was many years before Internet, it was even before the fax and before the mobile phone. Yes I know it’s hard to imagine, but that was the reality not so long ago.

Even if the years have passed my driving forces remains the same – the curiosity to learn more about different things, to spread knowledge and help shaping the world.

I believe that exactly that is the same passion that drives many of you, young, and maybe not so young, bloggers and social media activists, in Asia. you want to change the world – with the help of a click!

Some would say blogging and social media is trivial. And it’s true, there are a lot of blogging about trivialities.  But the same could be said about traditional media as well, am I right?

Social media makes the world more unpredictable. Social media means that authorities, companies and other have lesser posibility to control their messages and how their brands are presented. Of course, this makes them worried.

It is also changing the media landscape. When the international magazine Newsweek did its story with the now famous cover on Muslim rage, if went viral in hours but it a different form. The content was changed. The Muslim rage turned into a collaborative joke about the western perception of Muslim’s as well as about the angry Muslims themselves. It was a great moment for social media – and for fun!

When thinking about social media, one of the world’s most prominent artists and activists of our times comes to my mind: The Chinese artist and activist Ai Wei-wei. For Ai Wei-Wei social media and especially twitter is a way of reaching out, but also of being in contact. In a recent interview Ai Wei-Wei said:

”Twitter is my city, my favourite city. I can talk to anybody I want to. And anybody who wants to talk to me will get my response. They know me better than their relatives or my relatives. There’s so much imagination there; a lot of times it’s just like poetry. You just read one sentence, and you sense this kind of breeze or a kind of look. It’s amazing.”

Ai Wei-Wei most likely understood it better than most of us, the fact that today there is an ongoing race between those who want to use Internet to promote and support freedom of expression, freedom of thinking, and those who wants to impose and increase the control over the citizens.

Late yesterday, I read an article about Kremlins new surveiliance plan that will – at least that is what the regime hopes – will block all unwanted content from the media, with the pretext of protecting children from pheadophiliacs.  And what’s even more scaring, it will even be possible to follow what each and everyone writes and who tries to go to which web sites. The message is clear: No more pussy riots in the kingdom of Putin.

Still I’m an optimist. I believe that who work for increased freedom will win, even if they have to challenge the communist leadership of China and the British Prime minister David Cameron, the EU and the United States. The reason is simple: people who want freedom are more creative and more fun-loving than those who want to control us.

So, who do have the power over Internet? and can power be translated into empowering those who are today often without a voice? It depends very much on you, in fact. What you do, and how dedicated you are.

I’ve already mentioned one thing, the fight for freedom and against control. Now, I would like to give you my view on a number of important trends that I believe are effecting all of us already and that will effect us even more in the future.

The first relates to the traditional media.

The traditional media are having more and more problems in finding its role, with old business models going defunct. I still do have a printed paper arriving to my doorstep every morning, but then I belong to an older generation. In a few years time there will hardly be any newspapers printed on paper and distributed the traditional way.

One imminent problem, however, is that as traditional media is loosing out it will have less resources for investigative journalism. Today, major investigative reporting is also often done by strong civil society organisations such as Human Rights Watch. At the same time as companies, agencies and governments are employing more and more public relation consultants and spin doctors. This means less room and less resources for critical reporting.

This is indeed worrying, especially as threats against journalist and those reporting are on the increase. As everywhere, the well know reporters from international media gets the attention, but those that have to pay the highest price, often their own life, are local journalists and writers.  According to Reporters without borders, this year only so far 50 journalists have been killed, one of them here in Cambodia.

So what can journalist, social activists and bloggers do to fight back against violence and censorship? One solution is crowd sourcing – and crowd funding. When collaborating small actors and individuals can build something never before imagined. Wikipedia is of course the prime examples of this, but there are many more examples. One excellent example is the Sithi human rights web site in Cambodia. It is comprehensible, easy to use and credible. And with crowd funding, citizens can jointly finance projects and investigations they believe are important.

Here, civil society will also have to change, it has to be more open, more collaborative and recognize the importance of independent writers and bloggers.

Another important trend is open data, something that is cherished by donors, governments and agencies. The idea is that collected data  should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish. So no more copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

“Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. …That tension will not go away.” The iconic phrase is attributed to Stewart Brand who, in the late 1960s, founded the Whole Earth Catalogue and argued that technology could be liberating rather than oppressing (I’m quoting this from the No. 1 place for free and collaborative knowledge: Wikipedia).

Today, it looks like Stewart Brand has finally made his way into the development cooperation sector. Traditionally, donors, consultants and NGO’s have kept their documents, studies and formulas for how to solve the world’s problems for themselves, jealously guarding their business secrets. Now they have been convinced – or maybe coerced – into sharing.

As in Communication for Development (C4D) some years ago, the World Bank is now trying to set the agenda. But, can you really trust the Bank, or is this just another attempt at whitewashing?

When listening to the Bank’s representative talking about the achievements, about a month ago at other event, one could almost believe that the participatory budgeting was something invented in Washington, when in fact NGO’s and local authorities in cities such as Porto Alegre in Brazil have done this for many years.

And, I do not need to tell those of you who are from Cambodia how the World Bank has contributed to everything but openness in the land sector…

Still, Open Data could really become an important tool, both for social media activist and for the civil society. In more and more countries, pressure is compelling the government to open up, or using open sources to create something new and important. An excellent example of this is the Cambodian site Open Development Cambodia. Otherwise, Africa is the prime inspiration for open data and citizen empowerment.

Open data is important, but data need to be interpreted, made into personalized stories that could capture the interest of citizens. Otherwise we risk being swamped with date. This is where the blogger comes in.

Open data is also closely linked to the fight against corruption. Once citizens get to know how much money that has been transferred to a certain authority, they will also demand that the money is made accountable for. In Uganda, in Africa, I heard about a simple but effective example. In rural schools, one big problem is that teachers often doesn’t show up even as the get paid to be in school. With a simple anonymous text-message that doesn’t cost anything, kids and their parents can notify the authorities if the teacher doesn’t come, or if other irregularities happens. The result: more teachers at school during school hours!

The decline of the traditional mainstream media also coincided with another trend: a change of perspective, from the western centrist, to a more global one where more voices are being heard and listened to. One of the partners of this event is Global Voices on-line. Thanks to them, I’m able to read about what’s happening on Chinese microbloggers sites. There is, at least according to media sources about 300 million Chinese persons blogging on the twitter like site Weibo. 300 million! That is more than the whole population of Western Europe! Imagine, what a force they could become!

Bloggers, journalists and social media activist most often belong to an educated middle class. One huge challenge is reaching out to the poor and already marginalised people with limited access to ICT tools (apart from simple phones). Here, technology must adapt, information must be translated into local languages and, most importantly: people must be empowered so that they understand that they really have the right to demand open and fair processes. Otherwise, blogging, crowdsouricing and Open Data risks remaining an elite project with little impact.

As traditional media is fighting for survival, going on-line, I believe that the line between bloggers and “real media” will be even more blurred, hopefully, for the benefit of the readers. The well known NY times journalist Nicholas Krystof is a good example of this. More than anything else, I would call him a blogger, based at one of the most powerful old-school media, in the way he uses the times, and all his other channels in engaging the readers. Hopefully, there will be more mainstream media journalist follow his example.

Just before I left for Cambodia, a major news story hit the Swedish public. No, it was not the hurricane Sandy, nor did it have to do with the crisis in the European union. It was the situation for the garment workers in Cambodia.

H&M is one of the leading retail brands for low-price fashion in Europe and the family that controls the company has made billions upon billions of dollars, selling cheap fashion stuff to people with not so much money, mostly youngsters, of course.

Now, this Swedish company has a code of conduct, a CSR policy and many other good-looking documents. Still, the workers in Cambodia can hardly survive on the salary they are being paid and the Swedish company has no plans to support the right for so called living wages, something the competitor Zara is already advocating.

So, the story was good, and it had a great impact. But it would have been even better if it had been developed in cooperation with Cambodian social media activists and bloggers. Then it could have continued more detailed interviews, more films from inside the factory, more storytelling.

So, what would I like you to do? Well, simply, join forces. With NGOs, with traditional media – and of course, among yourself. Collaborate even more. Trace all those black Lexus in PP. Which governmental official do they belong to, which donor have paid for them with money that should have been used in education, health and other things that taxpayers in the west expect them to?

I’m sure Swedish or US mainstream media would be happy to collaborate with you, once they know more about you. And I’m sure, in the end the donors will also be happy even if you will make the life complicated for them in the short run.

May the Internet be with you!

David Isaksson, Communication consultant and writer, board member of Spider Center www.spidercenter.org