Old and New Media: Converging During the Pakistan Emergency (March 2007-February 2008)

8. Pakistani vs. Western new media use

In this paper, we have seen how new media platforms and digital technologies have been harnessed by citizen journalists and democracy advocates for hyperlocal reporting and community organizing. We have also seen how mainstream media outlets increasingly serve as distribution channels for citizen journalism, initially generated and circulated via blogs, YouTube, or SMS text messages. Within certain communities, then, the adoption of new media platforms in Pakistan resembles their use in developed democracies such as the United States.

There are, however, differences between Pakistani and western approaches to new media. In the developed world, new media platforms gained popularity as many-to-many communications tools that reoriented the public as media producers and participants in a conversation rather than passive consumers within the one-to-many broadcast model.

In Pakistan, however, access to information--rather than the desire to participate--has driven the adoption of new media platforms. When old media distribution channels were compromised, new media was harnessed to fill in the gaps and maintain a flow of news and information. As such, new media in Pakistan has helped old media survive. The result is a media amalgamation in which information is pushed to the public, promiscuously distributed across broadcast media, new media platforms, and various digital technologies to prevent being disrupted or corrupted by the authorities. Thanks to amateurs and activists, students and concerned civilians, a nugget of information can leap from local televised news broadcasts to YouTube to SMS text message to FM radio broadcasts to blog posts to international news reports--whatever it takes to go public.

It would be a mistake to conclude this paper with the impression that digital technologies and new media platforms are the exclusive preserve of educated and privileged activists and citizen journalists, used solely for information dissemination and community organizing. Indeed, some of the best uses of new media and digital technologies address highly localized issues and are emergent, ad hoc, and culturally specific. For example, the residents of Karachi occasionally create an ad hoc, networked public sphere using FM radio broadcasts, cellphones, and landline connections not only to negotiate urban violence, as they did during the Emergency, but also to navigate flash floods during the monsoon, negotiate bad traffic owing to construction, and monitor protest rallies through the city.

This shows how people empowered by creativity and a commitment to aiding their community can use old and new media technologies to make a difference, even on an ad hoc basis. The sheer pervasiveness of new media platforms and digital technologies in Pakistan is leading to a situation whereby not only the digital divide, but also the participation gap, is being narrowed in ways that are unpredictable and unfamiliar, yet highly sustainable because locally relevant. An increasing awareness of such emergent uses of new media and digital technologies in the developing world might prompt the design and deployment of tools tailored to Third World realities, thereby facilitating participation, networking, and ad hoc community organizing in unprecedented ways.