User:Isha9/sandbox

Article Evaluation - Deliberation Day

I decided to look at the Wikipedia page for Deliberation Day, and found that while it has some useful information (in explaining what exactly it is), there are only a few sentences of information as the entirety of the article. There wasn't anything specific that distracted me or went off-topic; I just found that it was simply not enough information/unsubstantial. While the page itself is pretty unbiased, one of the references comes from an online magazine about failure, I guess implying the failure of Deliberation Day, making it a biased/un-neutral source with information that may or may not be reliable. The article is a part of two WikiProjects (one on Politics and the other on the US) and is considered a stub.

2-3 Articles to potentially tackle for UGBA 39E

• Barbara Simons
  • The entry on Barbara Simons is very short to begin with, so I can add to essentially ever section provided. I would probably plan to focus on improving the section about voting technology, as it highlights Simon's achievements in addition to staying on theme with the class' focus on Civic Technology.
• Y Combinator
  • The article virtually has no introduction, so I would want to add a proper introduction. In addition to this, I could probably add to the section about controversies and the section about media coverage. There is already some information in the history section, but I could probably add more section there (in addition to media coverage) especially as more information is found and reported on as the company grows.

Internet in Myanmar: What I Can Contribute

While the article does have many components and is not much of a stub, it does have a lot of outdated information; the top of the Wikipedia page literally states that the article needed updates even in 2013. I can definitely update the article on internet access with current (or at least more relatively new) information. I also want to add more information in regard to the internet in Myanmar during these times of conflict with the Rohingya crisis. (especially with all of the turmoil within the country recently).

Potential sources:

• http://www.lirneasia.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/GSMA_Myanmar_Gender_Web_Singles.pdf
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23471144.pdf?refreqid=search%3Aaa4e70d4ca1e802d28473506ea3eec1f
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41148433.pdf?refreqid=search%3Aaa4e70d4ca1e802d28473506ea3eec1f
• http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.7249/mr1382osd.10.pdf?refreqid=search%3A5f1ca364b7c142c679c127c6c72ddb24
• http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2050157917689950

Drafting my Article Assignment - Ideas

Since I am improving on an already existing article (even though it needs to be updated with information from the last few years), here is what I feel is missing from the article, as per the assignment instructions.

• The article at the top states that since December 2013, edits were needed and wanted. This means that a bulk of the article is very outdated (despite already being very long and developed).
• The lead section of the article, briefly goes over something from 2015, but for the most part the article focuses on instances even before then. Even with the mention of 2015, the article ignores even more current, up-to-date news in regard to the growing use of internet use in Myanmar in 2016, 2017, or even now in 2018.
• There is some mention of internet cafes from around 2011, but again, there needs to be more up-to-date information regarding the internet in the country, especially as the social media platforms used internationally have grown so much with new features (ex. Facebook, Instagram, etc.)
• The article does mention the cost of internet use in rural areas and internet penetration in 2017, but most of the article is not this current.
• Even though it might not be the most connected to the topic of “internet in Myanmar,” the article does not go over events such as the Rohingya crisis, which does affect internet access in the sense that the government tries to restrict access to information about how the government is making the Rohingya Muslims suffer (and maybe even expanding more on Aung San Suu Kyi, contrasting her Nobel Peace Prize with the truth about what he did to contribute to the crisis while also attempting to cover things up. I feel like this issue is so big ad has brought Myanmar in such a hot spot, thus having to affect internet use in some way or another (if the government wants to control people’s access to knowledge about the government’s actions online). I still have to do more research connecting the refugee crisis with the influence of internet.
• This is especially interesting in contrast with the idea that the country is becoming more democratic with internet use.
• In the “recent reforms” section, the article goes in-depth about issues in 2012, exemplifying the need for new information.
• The “laws” section can also be updated with something more recent in 2013, and the history section can probably include more about the use of internet and political prisoners (which might have been affected from something such as the Rohingya refugee crisis).

Essentially, the article already has a pretty good article outline/skeleton, but desperately needs to get updated with current information from these last few years. Since the article has a lot of random spots in which it needs improvement, here is a rough draft of a paragraph (or an intro paragraph followed by a lot more information on the Rohingya crisis) for 'History,' one of the many sections that needs change: (+ more sections that need help!)

DRAFT OF ARTICLE ASSIGNMENT

An example of a Telenor Myanmar SIM card

Lead (add into the existing paragraph)

While the internet situation in Myanmar has constantly been evolving since its introduction in 2010 and reduction of censorship in 2011, laws such as the 2013 Telecommunications Law continue to restrict citizens from total freedom online. Despite restrictions, internet penetration continues to grow across the country.

Service Providers, Internet cafes

Add to the end: For more information, go to the full article on Internet Service Providers of Myanmar.

Example usages of WiMax

Mobile Phone Usage (add this as a subsection underneath 'Access and Usage')

With the growth of internet use in Myanmar and opening of telecommunications, the price of SIM cards is decreasing, going from "~245,000 kyats (reported as US$250) in 2013 to ~1,542 kyats (reported as US$1.50) in 2014." Even though costs still are high for Myanmar, ranking 148th out of 188 of countries on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index that have 66.9% of the country making less than 2,622 kyats per day ($2.00 USD), Mobile Media & Communication found that "Myanmar people are willing to pay for mobiles, with over 18.1 million active SIM cards."

Union of Burma Boy Scouts motto using Zawgyi font

Font Conflicts (add this as a subsection underneath 'Access and Usage')

Amid the growth of internet access across the country, ACM Computers & Society found that the Burmese-text font, Zawgyi, "may impede the digital potential of the country." Zawgyi, considered the most widely-used font throughout Myanmar, is not Unicode, meaning that it does not use "an intelligent rendering engine to make sure each script element has one and only one code point." This can stop websites with Zawgyi from being accessible from other countries or people using Unicode.

ACM Computers & Society also claimed that Zawgyi has difficulty typing certain ethnic languages of Myanmar, meaning that "Myanmar’s ethnic languages cannot be represented or co-exist with Burmese languages when the non-Unicode Zawgyi font is used."

While Unicode began to spread through Myanmar with initiatives such as including both Zawgyi and Unicode on Android versions 4.4 and newer, Lorian Leong of Mobile Media & Communication found that the lack of Unicode "influences users’ access and dependency on others to help install such services, and creates constraints and limitations to content."

Blogging

Add to the end: For more information, go to the full article on Blogging in Myanmar.

Social Media

According to the Development Institute of the Russian Federation, Myanmar "still [has] social media penetration levels below 10%." Despite this, internet and social media usage is still rising and influential, with Facebook usage among a variety of people in Myanmar, including farmers. While social media usage spreads, people using platforms such as Facebook use it for controversially both good and bad reasons.

According to Reuters, "U.N. human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said [...] that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there." The plausible genocide with the Rohingya Muslims was found to be affected by Facebook, as Reuters found that it was "used to convey public messages but we know that the ultra-nationalist Buddhists have their own Facebooks and are really inciting a lot of violence and a lot of hatred against the Rohingya or other ethnic minorities."

With the growth of social media and its capability to spread both news and opinionated information, some information managers in Myanmar are learning about the potential of social media through a workshop run by UNESCO, Myanmar Information Management Unit, and the ICT4Peace Foundation in which they discuss big data and trends. According to UNESCO, the workshop "gave participants a chance to learn about social media and data trends, the platforms available, their characteristics, and how to effectively leverage these for crisis information management" in addition to advising the managers about the use of social media in issues such as hate speech or election violence.

Censorship

As Myanmar gradually expands its technologies and the internet access/penetration across the country, it still deals with problems regarding censorship, with Freedom House in its 2017 Myanmar country profile stating that "conditions for the media in Myanmar have improved significantly since the country began its ongoing transition from military dictatorship toward electoral democracy. However, the government maintains tight control over the media sector through the use of harsh defamation and other laws." Throughout this last century after internet penetration began Myanmar, the country has been noticed for its actions regarding censorship, some of which are listed below:

• Listed as not free for both net freedom and press freedom according to Freedom House in 2017.

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi

History

Once the leadership power of the country transferred to the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Aung San Suu Kyi in 2016, the speed of the internet stayed generally stagnant with slight improvements in regard to more phone shops and WiFi in bigger cities, but the freedom of internet use slowed down. A few years prior, in 2013, the Telecommunications Law included legislation that was seen as restrictive to free speech, as seen through the incarceration of 38 people charged with violating the Telecommunications Law through online defamation since the NLD came to power. Ever since its enactment in 2013, people have stated that the law is being used to silence anyone that speaks badly of the government, making freedom of speech on the internet difficult. According to Freedom House, the tense environment with the Rohingya refugee crisis starting in 2015 in the Rakhine state has thus created more concern for the future of freedom of speech online. Allegedly, once Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD came into power in 2016, 17 journalists were incarcerated under the Telecommunications Law. Despite restrictions, the number of Internet users in Myanmar continues to grow, albeit having a low bandwidth and slow connections. According to World Bank, "mobile and internet penetration has increased significantly from less than 20% and 10% in 2014, to 60% and 25% respectively" as of October 2017.

Laws

Revise last small paragraph of this section that is on the existing article to be this:

"These laws are still in place, authorities had promised to adopt a media law that will put an end to censorship back in 2012 in addition to revising or repealing the Electronic Act and emergency rule.^[22] In January 2013, the new media law was not in place and there was some concern that the country could backslide and return to the repressive tendencies of the past,^[28] which ended up happening later on in the year with the 2013 Telecommunications Law, which has been considered a breach of freedom of speech online." ***(those citations excluding the last one represent the citations that were already there from the existing information)***

Add: While the government of Myanmar amended the 2013 law slightly in August 2017, including an amendment that "permits judges to release people on bail, allows only those directly affected, or with permission from those directly affected, by the offense to press charges, and reduces the maximum prison sentence to two years” for crimes under article 66 of the law, the government did not change anything about article 66(d), which is considered a "highly controversial clause that restricts freedom of speech."

UGBA 39E Assignment - Respond to your peer review

After looking at Inaara's peer review of my article contributions so far, I decided to make some changes in my article. She suggested that since I talked about how the internet slowed down after the government transferred power in 2016, internet access slowed down. After doing further research, I realized that I was not completely sure of how factually correct my statement was, and that it has more to do with the use of internet versus the spread or access, as the internet was slow and still is slow (no real change after the government changed); the bigger issue I think just has to do with freedom of speech and people's ability to use the internet for all of the purposes that they desire without attack or criticism. Due to this realization, I made some changes to my article (as seen above). Additionally, I am doing some research on the rate at which internet users are growing in this leapfrog democracy (as per Inaara's suggestion), but I think I may end up moving that last sentence in which I cited World Bank to the section of the article dedicated to 'Internet Penetration." In addition to this, I will probably add more information about the Telecommunications Law in the section dedicated to "Laws."

Also, in general, I plan on fixing my citations, as a lot of my citations came from the same sources and I failed to use "re-use" source when adding citations.

After looking at Alyssa's suggestions on the talk page for the actual article, I agree with what she has to say. I think that I will end up moving the whole "History" section to right after the lead to give readers more context. In addition to this, I think I will try elaborating/finding more information on bloggers for the "History" section.

^ After more thought, I realized that the History section actually is a subsection underneath "Censorship"/it relays the history OF censorship, so I decided to just move "History" to the top of the entire "Censorship" section.

**Alyssa left her advice on the talk page for the actual article in which I replied. Here is the link: Talk:Internet in Myanmar#Peer Review

**Inaara left her advice on my sandbox's talk page in which I replied as well. Here is the link: User talk:Isha9/sandbox#Inaara's Peer Edits