Articles

The Internet platform t0 – Public Netbase in Vienna and the magazine Mute in London both have an emphasis on critical media discourse and both came into being about twenty years ago. Both played a pioneering role in their respective contexts as regards the emergence of a diverse Net culture and the discourse accompanying it. Both have been exposed, in different ways, to the upheavals and turning points of the ensuing era. More than enough reason then to reflect on developments in the field and track parallels and divergences in various locations, as well as to look into future prospects. To which end, representatives from both platforms took part in the following roundtable. They remain active today in the World Information Institute, which grew out of Public Netbase, and in the online medium metamute.org.

The far right straw man is certainly not new to the European debate, writes Cas Mudde. But it has gained in importance as mainstream leaders increasingly adopt a soft eurosceptic rhetoric (rather than policies), with a view to thwarting the advance of hard eurosceptic parties, most notably of the far Right.

The main stakeholders currently involved in Roma social inclusion continue to struggle to define clear and distinct responsibilities, or simply avoid them. Ahead of this year’s European Roma Platform, Valeriu Nicolae calls for systemic change that addresses key issues of anti-Gypsyism and multi-stakeholder cooperation.

For both Russia and Ukraine, the conflict in eastern Ukraine marks the beginning of a painful process of emancipation from a pre-modern imagined community of eastern Slavs. A process, writes Mykola Riabchuk, from which modern civic national identities must emerge.

When it comes to influence-peddling abroad, there is a certain logic in the Kremlin seeking to influence both left and right, nationalists and separatists, traditionalists and post-modernists, writes Andrew Wilson. And aligning them to a realpolitik that serves regime prosperity and survival.

The devout cannot have it both ways, writes Ian McEwan. Free speech is hard, it’s noisy and bruising sometimes, but the only alternative when so many world-views must cohabit is intimidation, violence and bitter conflict between communities.

Virginia Woolf’s famous line – “on or about December 1910, human character changed” – haunts the present. For sometime during the 2000s, writes Paul Mason, a combination of technology, broken economic life-chances and increased personal freedom changed human character all over again.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s film Ida may have won this year’s Oscar for best foreign language film; however, it is far from universally well-received in Poland. While some fear it will resurrect anti-Polish stereotypes, others accuse it of anti-Semitism, writes Filip Mazurczak.

Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, French public opinion is firmly in favour of giving greater surveillance powers to the state. Measures focus on online radicalization, including outsourcing surveillance to service providers and fellow citizens, writes Alice Béja of Esprit.

The Snowden revelations revealed just how far some states had departed from the guarantees of privacy enshrined in the human and civil rights agreements of the post-war era. The European Union can play the central role in setting enforceable data protection standards internationally, however resisting the logic of surveillance also depends on pressure from society, writes Peter Schaar.

The UK government tried to rush through a “Snoopers’ Charter” after Paris and is playing the security card in the run-up to the May elections. Yet parochialism and complacency obstruct real progress in digital rights, writes Vicky Baker of Index on Censorship.

Despite public interest, Croatian politics is too fractious and self-centred to engage in serious debate about state surveillance, while data protection and digital rights are concepts yet to enter the mainstream, writes Miljenka Buljevic of Booksa.

In Germany there has been heavy public criticism of the NSA. Yet the German government has failed to investigate the affair and has been quick to demand greater surveillance powers after the Paris attacks, writes Daniel Leisegang of Blätter.

The Belgian government has held back from demanding greater surveillance powers after the terrorist attacks; how long liberal protections withstand rightwing pressure remains to be seen, writes Thomas Lemaigre of La Revue nouvelle.

Despite residual hostility to state surveillance, the Polish response to the NSA affair both at the political and public levels was strongly pro-American. Will campaigning be able to change mainstream indifference to privacy issues? Anna Wójcik of Res Publica Nowa reports.