Harping on about not being on Facebook, it has been said, is the modern-day equivalent of boasting about not having a television. And of course, there is plenty to criticize Facebook for: its dubious privacy practices, the censorship of walled gardens, and the potential threat to the open web.

But sometimes criticism of Facebook -- and criticism of social media and digital technologies in general -- falls into a familiar groove: one that has a tendency to ignore much of the empirical research on the subject, an over-reliance on whimsical anecdotal evidence, and often a projection of the author’s own foibles and predilections.

The latest article in this vein is a cover story in "The Atlantic" by Stephen Marche titled, "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?"

Marche contends that "we have never been more detached from one another, or lonelier."

"We are living in an isolation that would have been unimaginable to our ancestors, and yet we have never been more accessible," he writes. "We were promised a global village; instead we inhabit the drab cul-de-sacs and endless freeways of a vast suburb of information."

In America there is not just rising isolation, but rising loneliness. It is not just about being alone, but about being lonely. "We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy," Marche argues. According to the author, that is partly due to a decrease in "confidants" -- defined as quality social connections.

As other commentators have pointed out, Marche is right about the rising isolation -- that has been well documented. However, the problem is where Facebook fits into all of this. Much of the research and expert opinion the author draws on in fact leads us to the conclusion that Facebook does not make us lonely. As Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, argues in a blog post, research does show that we are indeed more isolated than before (in terms of strong ties) but that Internet users are doing better at bucking that trend than non-Internet users. As Tufekci points out, this isolation could be due to “suburbanization, long commutes, long work hours, decline of community and civic institutions.” But of course an article titled "Do Long Commutes Make Us Lonely?" just wouldn’t hit the mark.

So Facebook might compound existing loneliness, it might draw the lonely onto its pages, but it doesn't make us lonely. Marche's piece is a great read and he raises plenty of interesting points, but he tends to universalize his own experiences, as we humans tend to do:


Fair enough, but if we are going to universalize our own experiences of Facebook, let me do the same.

In the last year, two momentous things have happened in my life. My son was born and my father was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In this melange of inordinately wonderful and desperately sad times, Facebook (or more accurately, my friends on Facebook) has been a wonderful companion.

In critiques of Facebook, such as Zadie Smith's in "The New York Review Of Books" last year, there is a constant refrain: that of the superficiality of the "like." Marche calls it "the lazy click of a like." "Likes" are seen as remarkably unprofound throwaway actions, at the expense of more sophisticated and complex things we do offline, like calling someone or writing a letter, say. (Wrapped up in this is the idea that our Facebook selves are subpar approximations of our real selves.) One of the experts quoted in "The Atlantic" piece says that Internet communication allows only "ersatz intimacy." Another expert says "composed communication" is more satisfying than "one-click communication":


I'll remember that, as "that's what we all want to hear." Far from being empty vessels, however, "likes" -- just like smiles -- are packed full of meaning and multilayered with context. Online interaction works at myriad levels and not everyone in the conversation is operating at the same level.

My son Tommy was born more than eight months ago. A large part of those first few weeks was about documenting his first forays into the world. The photos began in the delivery room: Tommy, bleating for the first time, angry at his ignoble entrance into the world; Tommy, screaming now, his skin chilled by the scale; then, swaddled like Mother Teresa, quiet for the first time in his life after the poking and prodding was over.

A couple of hours later, the first photo, snapped on my iPhone, was on Facebook. Within minutes, there were comments from friends and family welcoming Tommy and congratulating us all. Those congratulatory comments and "likes" were not meaningless to me. For me, the immediacy of communication, the desire to share with us in that moment right there and then, meant as much as a handwritten card or a onesie popped in the mail (those were lovely too). All the “likes” and congratulations were different. Some were from people I hadn't seen in 20 years; others from friends I would have a drink with the next day.

As the days went on, more photos were e-mailed and uploaded onto Facebook: Tommy spread-eagle next to an attentive Tigger; his first bath with a plastic duck; the unfathomable cuteness of dressing little people in oversized clothes. It was an affirmation that the best thing the digital revolution has brought is the ability to share information instantaneously across great distances: My parents, thousands of miles away, could share bath time in real time.

Since my father was diagnosed, we have endeavored to spend much time together as a family. Friends and relatives have descended onto my parents' home and there have been plenty of family occasions packed into a small amount of time.

I have shared many photos of these family moments on Facebook: dinners out, my father holding his grandson, relatives visiting from across the ocean. Some of my friends know about my father's illness; others don't. For those not in the know, they just see standard family photos. But for those who know about my father's condition, they understand the poignancy of these particular moments. They understand that these are some of the last times we will spend together as a complete family.

Thus, their "likes" are not throwaway sentiments at all but rather -- for me -- touching recognitions of meaningful moments in my life. They are the equivalent of smiles, a comforting touch on the arm, a glass raised -- and their various meanings depend entirely on their owners/authors. Some are reminders of tearful talks with certain friends -- yes, real friends and real face-to-face talks! -- about my father's rather sudden decline. Some are from supportive colleagues who might not normally "like" such a thing but are offering a brief but appreciative moment of support from afar. And those "likes" are diplomatic -- the likers would not mention my father's health on the photo, as they knew that perhaps not everyone knew. They are not substitutes for longer, more in-depth conversations or more expansive sentiments but are complementary. Because of their contexts, they are laden with meaning. Facebook did not make me feel lonely; quite the opposite, in fact.

Many critiques of social media or the Internet suffer from digital dualism, the idea that the online and offline worlds are completely distinct and not entwined. (More on that here by Nathan Jurgenson.)

The supposed superficiality of the digital world is always juxtaposed next to a pristine, well-ordered "real world," where we never act as approximations of our true selves, nor are our meanings or sentiments ever truncated or dumbed down. Anyone who has ever made polite small talk in the supermarket with someone they don't like very much, or anyone who has stood through the dreariest of business lunches, can attest that the “real world” just doesn’t work like that. Just like in social media, our emotions on display are not necessarily our true emotions. And thank God for that!

One of Marche's most interesting arguments is that Facebook can make us feel worse about our own lives as we see a constant stream of other people's happiness. That may well be true, but is that so different from the “real world”? We are constantly bombarded with implicit critiques of our worth or our social standing. Our real-world interactions -- friends boasting of fabulous new properties they have bought, or tales of infants of comparable age accomplishing Herculean tasks while my son lies contentedly on his back shouting at a flying monkey -- can have the same effect. Every time I park next to a fancy sports car I am reminded of my worth.

Tufekci has a theory, which she calls "cyberasociality" -- "the inability or unwillingness of some people to relate to others via social media as they do when physically present." Tufekci thinks that might be why articles such as "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" are so popular. Perhaps the "cyberasocials" are over-represented in the debate:


Of course, all this debate is healthy. But whenever I read articles such as Marche’s, I can't help feeling there is a rather benign and intellectual attempt to monopolize meaning and to establish rules about what constitutes true and worthy sentiment.

Zadie Smith did the same when she rather sniffily dismissed online memorials to dead teenagers, with their poor grammar, kisses, and LOLs. There might, after all, be as much meaning embedded in a LOL or a smiley than there is in a handwritten letter of condolence. But Smith seemed to be saying: My communication good, yours bad.

In "The Atlantic," Marche asks: "Is Facebook part of the separating or part of the congregating; is it a huddling-together for warmth or a shuffling-away in pain?" For me, it’s the huddling-together for warmth and, in both wonderful and hard times, it's about finding joy and solace in something as simple as a "like."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's interview show airs on Kremlin-controlled RT on April 17 and the television station has promised that the first guest will be so controversial it will lead to calls to shut it down.

RT is heavily promoting the show with a dedicated page and slickly produced promos juxtaposing images from the Occupy movement with the Arab Spring.

"For 500 days now, I've been detained without charge," Assange says, "but that hasn't stopped us. Today we are on a quest for revolutionary ideas that can change the world tomorrow."
  

 
But who will the guests be?
 
Assange has said the show, which will be broadcast in English, Arabic, and Spanish, will give a voice to those "who normally simply would not be given a voice on TV at all."
 
"What is fair to say is that the majority of what they have said to me they could not say on a mainstream TV network," he added.
 
According to "The New York Times's" Lede blog, guests will include "politicians, revolutionaries, intellectuals, artists, and visionaries" and the first guest was "particularly controversial and, according to Julian in the wake of the interview, highly charismatic."

In an interview with RT a day before the premiere, Assange said that he will be called out for being a traitor for interviewing radicals:

 
Taking Assange at his word, it's possible that guests would include the likes of Kremlin critic and blogger Aleksei Navalny. And he might well tap the pool of dissidents throughout the world happy to share their plights.
 
But given RT's reliance on guests who tend to be critical of "Western imperialism" and Assange's past focus on the United States, a big-name first guest would perhaps more likely to be someone like Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, or Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who all hold strident anti-Western opinions. (Unless, of course, someone like Khodorkovsky or Navalny decided to publicly recant and confess the error of their ways.)  
 
Someone like Noam Chomsky or Slavoj Zizek might be a safe bet -- although that would hardly shake the establishment to its core. Or he could go tabloidy with, say, an exclusive tell-all with former Russian spy Anna Chapman.
 
If the interviewee really was so controversial that there would be calls for the station to be shut down, that could mean a senior Taliban or Al-Qaeda official or a terrorist wanted by the United States. But then again, all this talk of secret guest lists might just all be bluster.
 
Another possibility might be Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Assange might draw certain parallels between the rape charges against Kahn -- subsequently dropped -- with his own situation, in which he faces rape allegations in Sweden.

The real scoop, however, would be Joseph Kony, the Uganda guerrilla leader at large and the target of a phenomenally successful U.S. viral campaign. Now that really would be something.
 
Let us know who you think it might be in the comments.

If you want a good example of the power of citizen journalism, then look no further than the Deir Press Network (DPN).

Started one year ago in the eastern Syrian town of Deir el-Zour, DPN was the brainchild of a doctor and his cousin who lived in the United Kingdom. In a fascinating interview in "Guernica" magazine, the two founders, Kareem and Ahmed (not their real names), discuss how they smuggled out footage and fought off cyberattacks from the pro-regime Syrian Electronic Army:



WATCH: A DPN video purporting to show regime forces dumping the bodies of opposition fighters:


Braving roadblock after roadblock, the smugglers were wary about carrying smartphones, as they would prompt more scrupulous searches. But just as important as getting through roadblocks was the question of their branding:



None of the videos can be verified and it is hard for news organizations without a presence on the ground to check that the scenes of dead bodies, for example, are what they purport to be.

DPN doesn't have any pretenses to be an independent, nonpartisan news organization. They are a group of activists allied with the opposition dedicated to recording atrocities by the regime. To that end, their videos have spread on social networks and are making it onto the major TV networks -- they have undoubtedly driven much of the international policy discussion on Syria.

Often filmed behind fences or twitching curtains, it's clear what huge personal risks were taken in gathering the footage. As Ahmed says, "The problem was that when the army entered towns like Dier el-Zour, filming any citizens getting killed was very dangerous, and yet DPN was carrying all of these videos. "

"Carrying a camera was a death sentence."

WATCH: A DPN video showing security forces in Deir el-Zour:

When I first heard about Azerbaijan's "donkey bloggers," I couldn't help think of an opposition politician I had met on a reporting trip in the town of Lankoran, close to the border with Iran. The head of the local Musavat Party, Yadigar Sadigov, a genial and intellectual man, seemed to be the personification of the marginalized opposition in the former Soviet Union. His office was small, dark, with a few academic tomes, and posters curling up on the wall. He seemed resigned to the fate of being in a state of perpetual and nominal opposition. You didn't get the impression that this was an organization that was going to take down the Aliyev regime.

The donkey bloggers, on the other hand, were young, web-savvy, and English-speaking. The poster boys of Internet activism, Adnan Hajizada and Emin Milli were jailed for 2 1/2 years for making a video mocking the government, which involved a man dressed up as a donkey. They were representative of a new generation, unburdened by the fractious politics of the traditional opposition or of the constrictive paradigms of Soviet-era dissidents. What tied their generation together were not political parties or ideology but rather social networks and the Internet.

The events of the Arab Spring have demonstrated the tremendous power of digital technologies in helping citizens mobilize, chiefly by organizing and documenting the crimes of their states. A fascinating new paper in the "Journal of Communication," written by Katy E. Pearce from the University of Washington and Sarah Kendzior from Washington University in St. Louis, argues that in the case of Azerbaijan the opposite is true, in that "greater documentation and publicizing of suppressed dissent can derail political protest." In short, diffusion of digital material doesn't always have democratic consequences.

The key finding of the paper is that in the years surrounding the imprisonment of the donkey bloggers "the government has successfully dissuaded frequent Internet users from supporting protest and average Internet users from using social media for political purposes." While many politically engaged Azerbaijanis still held a strong affinity for the donkey bloggers' cause, their support for activism during this period waned.

The authors argue that the Azerbaijani government's response is a case of networked authoritarianism, "a form of Internet control common in former Soviet states where manipulation over digitally mediated social networks is used more than outright censorship."

'Screw With Us And You'll Wind Up In Jail'

The paper studied social media and online activism from January 2009 to August 2011 and also public-opinion data from 2009 to 2010. In that period, the authors found that "between the two years, frequent Internet users became significantly less supportive of protests against the government, indicating that the government's campaign against online activism was successful."

For some Azerbaijanis, the Internet has become a way of bypassing state media, with its sanitized and sycophantic coverage of the Aliyev regime. In 2010, about one-third of all Azerbaijanis had access to the Internet, the majority of them urban, wealthier, and better educated.

From the arrest of the donkey bloggers in 2009 to their release in 2010, the case was a cause celebre among young Azerbaijani activists -- and indeed for human rights activists abroad. In other contexts such cases have managed to unite and galvanize opposition, but in this case the opposite seemed to be true.

The government managed to create a compelling counternarrative -- a narrative they knew young, well-educated, ambitious, politically engaged Azerbaijanis would listen to: screw with us and you'll wind up in jail. Donkey blogger Emin Milli is quoted in the paper as saying: "This is the way they function. They punish some people and let everyone else watch. To say, 'This is what can happen to you.'" They seek to effect cognitive change and "exploit the preexisting political culture of the population, which we argue is characterized by cynicism, apathy, and an aversion to risk." The authorities could only do all this by keeping the Internet open.

What is most revealing about the survey data is that between 2009 and 2010, overall there wasn't much change in attitudes to protest. But when narrowing the focus to "Azerbaijan's small group of daily Internet users," a different story emerged:


So while increased Internet use and more people joining Facebook might mean a greater number of people find out about the "donkey bloggers," there is a flip side: more and more Azerbaijanis, who might be open to challenging the regime, will be aware of the government's ruthless response.

In addition the government, increasingly wary after the role social media played in the Arab Spring, targeted high-profile social-media activists. State media went into overdrive to warn of the dangers of social networking: psychological damage, ruined families, criminality, etc. That campaign has not been successful as, for example, the number of Facebook users is continuing to grow in Azerbaijan. More people on Facebook, however, doesn't necessarily mean more political people on Facebook. "Although their negative opinion of the government may not have changed, they are now less likely to make their discontent known," Pearce and Kendzior write.

As the authors point out, countries in the former Soviet Union are often neglected in analyses of the Internet. "These countries have a unique approach to Internet regulation that represents a 'middle path' between open access and censorship."

Internet control often works at the layers of infrastructure and code, for example with filtering systems. What's interesting in Azerbaijan is how the government is operating at the level of ideas. The authorities exploit "problems of cynicism, insecurity, and trust particular to post-Soviet political culture." In a self-censoring and fearful society, instead of simply trying to filter or legislate out dissent, the authorities instead tried to compete by offering a counternarrative.

The study is a good reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to Internet activism and that "scholars should consider the political cultures of authoritarian systems before assuming the Internet offers an effective means to contest them."

WikiLeaks is back in the news with the release of millions of e-mails from Stratfor, a global security firm.

The latest trawl -- 167 of more than 5.5 million corporate e-mails -- was obtained after the hacktivist collective Anonymous hacked into Stratfor servers in December 2011.
 
It's no surprise that WikiLeaks is partnering with Anonymous. After companies, including Amazon and PayPal, withdrew their support for WikiLeaks after the release of U.S. State Department cables in December 2010, Anonymous launched distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) against PayPal and a Swiss bank. Anonymous activists have been strong supporters of the Free Bradley Manning campaign. Manning is the U.S. Army private who is alleged to have leaked the cables to WikiLeaks.
 
For Anonymous -- a loose and decentralized collection of activists sometimes united but often divided into various factions -- it makes sense to partner with WikiLeaks. One activist told Wired that:

 
While WikiLeaks has always maintained it doesn't hack, it has published information that has been obtained by hacking, such as the Climategate e-mails. But as Andy Greenberg points out at Forbes, "Since hitting the spotlight in 2010, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange has played down the group’s associations with hackers and focused more on its role as a media organization and a conduit for whistleblowers."

​​WikiLeaks has undoubtedly received much support because of its choice of targets (the U.S. government, for example), but its high-tech submission system has also been lauded as a model for future whistle-blowing. However, that submissions system -- which meant that whistleblowers could anonymously and securely leak information -- has been dormant since 2010. Potential users just get a site-under-maintenance message and a link to an Internet relay chat channel. If, say, you were a whistle-blowing bureaucrat in Country X visiting the WikiLeaks website, it isn't immediately apparent how you would leak information.
 
Not only is WikiLeaks facing financial challenges, but security challenges. In December 2011, the "FT" reported that while WikiLeaks had been hoping to "re-engineer from scratch" its submission system, it had to delay the release because of "the deteriorating state of internet security which directly impacts the ability of sources to communicate with journalists and human rights activists securely."

With its submissions system on ice, WikiLeaks will no doubt rely more on the likes of Anonymous for its leaks. While many Anonymous activists are relatively low-skilled and just foot soldiers in DDoS operations, there are certainly hackers capable of sophisticated exploits. That could potentially bring WikiLeaks plenty of swag and also mean the organization doesn't have to maintain a secure dropbox on its site. It could also bring them a few PR headaches. Greenberg writes that, "A public association with a hacker group like Anonymous may hurt WikiLeaks’ moral credibility just when the group needs it most."
 
Would people feel the same about WikiLeaks -- in a post-Murdoch hacking scandal world -- if it just relied on hacked information obtained by shadowy and unaccountable groups like Anonymous? Assange, a former hacker himself, is certainly not troubled by the ethics of relying on hacked information, but other supporters might be. There was much public outrage over the "News Of The World's" alleged reliance on hacking, private investigators, and paying for sources, but as Assange revealed in this interview, he had no moral qualms.
 
The partnership with Anonymous could also put WikiLeaks under more legal scrutiny. A functioning submissions system could have been a handy legal loophole for WikiLeaks: one of the original concepts of the organization was that their technology enabled their sources to remain anonymous, even to WikiLeaks. But as a Canadian hacker, Oxblood Ruffin, commented on Twitter: "There's no plausible deniability if there was a hand-off, no?" referring to the exchange of information between WikiLeaks and Anonymous.
 
The other question is one of verification and trust. Anonymous is known for and has its origins in pranking. An e-mail circulating earlier on various forums used by Anonymous claimed that the Stratfor CEO, George Friedman, had resigned. But in interviews to wire agencies on February 27, Stratfor said that the e-mail was a fake and that Friedman remained the company's CEO.
 
Stratfor has said in a company statement that some of the published e-mails "may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic." For WikiLeaks, the problem with working with Anonymous is that the decentralized structure means that technically anyone can do anything in Anonymous's name. There are plenty of serious hacktivist types who would identify as Anons; but there are also plenty of troublemakers and pranksters. For WikiLeaks -- keen to present itself as a serious media organization working in the public interest -- Anonymous might just be too lulzy to handle.
 
What is clear is that WikiLeaks is in desperate need of funding. Partnering with Anonymous on a release of pretty underwhelming information is a good way to get WikiLeaks back into the news cycle and raise funds.

Visit the WikiLeaks site and it's almost impossible to find out how you can leak information, but you can instantly see how to donate.