Yet more on drone journalism

BBC journalist Stuart Hughes has a useful round up of the interest in drone journalism which includes links to recent newsgathering deployments of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to cover protests in Poland and Russia:

"Dramatic aerial footage of recent demonstrations in Warsaw shot using a small Polish-made drone gave a tantalizing glimpse of how they could be used as newsgathering tools.

Photographers covering election demos in Moscow also deployed a UAV - prompting some onlookers to suspect they had spotted a UFO over the Russian capital. 

The resulting images were widely used by international news organizations - including the BBC."

Full piece available on the BBC's College of Journalism website.

My previous snippets on this can be found here (on the demonstrations in Poland) and here (on a drone journalism lab in the United States).

Ghosts of Afghanistan: An interview with foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele

At the back end of last month, I spoke to foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele about Afghanistan for the War Studies podcast. I've embedded it below in case you missed it.

Steele's new book, Ghosts of Afghanistan, compares the experiences of Russian (1979-89) and US/NATO (2001-) forces in Afghanistan.

He argues that President Obama can learn from how Mikhail Gorbachev began withdrawing Russian troops in 1988.

In Steele's estimation, Obama should be pursuing a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and other parties with more vigour.

Russian blogger arrested after post-election protests

Russian blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny has been arrested after participating in post-election protests in Moscow against the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. 

He was sentenced to 15 days in jail. 

The BBC has a good profile of Navalny which explains how his Livejournal blog gained traction for exposing corruption:

"The popularity of his blog allowed him to start mobilising internet users to take an active part in his anti-corruption campaigns by means of what he called his "unstoppable mass complaints machine". 

"The "machine" worked by getting internet users to send hundreds of online complaints to investigative and oversight bodies demanding that they look into the case that Mr Navalny was pursuing at the time. 

In March this year, the Russian business daily Kommersant was forced to retract an article which attempted to discredit Navalny's exposure of large scale fraud at Transneft, the state-owned pipeline company in 2010.

Russian bloggers complained earlier this week that Livejournal was down for several consecutive days around the day of the election, alleging that a cyberattack had been designed to stop them discussing Sunday's vote. 

The head of Livejournal, Ilya Dronov, believed the perpetrators had "a mountain of money" in order to sustain the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.  

Armed With Smartphones, Russians Expose Political Abuses

From the New York Times...

"Violations of Russia’s elections rules have typically gone unnoticed, but now Russians armed with smartphones and digital cameras are posting videos of the abuses online." 

The article also notes that Russian bloggers are influencing Google's search results (though just how often is "occasionally"?):

"A slogan adopted by bloggers describing United Russia as “the party of swindlers and thieves” has become such a prominent Internet meme that it occasionally appears as a top hit when Googling the party’s name."

Russian bloggers acting as a 'Fifth Estate'

Kommersant, the Russian business daily, was forced to retract an article which criticised an anti-corruption blogger, Aleksey Navalnyy, earlier this month.

The article had attempted to discredit Navalnyy's investigation into fraud at the state-owned pipeline company, Transneft last November.

Bloggers pointed out a number of inaccuracies in the Kommersant piece which forced senior management to issue an apology.

BBC Monitoring Stephen Ennis has the full story. He concludes...

"The incident...illustrates the shifts of power and influence on the media scene in Russia. First, it shows the authority commanded by Navalnyy and the fact that he cannot be attacked with impunity. 

Second, it demonstrates the ability of the online community to police the activities of major players in the mainstream media. None of Kommersant's rivals on the newsstands touched the story. It was left to bloggers to hold the paper to account. 

For media commentator Andrey Miroshnichenko, the episode was an illustration of how the online community can act as what he calls a "viral editor".

Cyberwar, blogging and Russo-Georgia War 2008

I've put a post of links on the Frontline Club blog about the conflict between the Russians and the Georgians.

It's hardly the most important news at the present time, given the number of casualties being incurred in the region of South Ossetia, but the Georgians have been setting up Google blogs in an attempt to ward off Russian cyber assaults. More details here.