Absurdity, Thy Name Is...

Must Pakistan - or perhaps one should say specifically its government, its political leaders, its judiciary, its military and its bureaucrats - continue to make an ass of itself? Must it circumvent any attempt to make the world forget that we can be the most absurd cretins in the world?

Graphic by Nick Bilton (Source: New York Times)

Barely had the memory of the Lahore High Court-imposed Facebook ban faded from the collective global 'News of the Weird' consciousness that we were struck with the Twitter ban, which the Ministry of Information Technology people told us was because of "blasphemous and inflammatory content" on the site.


(Update: I had almost finished writing this post when news came in that the Twitter ban had been lifted but am posting this in any case in the off-chance that someone within the corridors of policy-making might read and prevent a recurrence of such ineptitude.) 

According to this Express Tribune story:

"Pakistan’s government had asked Twitter to stop a discussion on Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), which was considered derogatory, [PTA Chairman Dr Mohammad] Yaseen said, adding that “Twitter refused our request.”"

Now, you would have to be totally unaware of what Twitter is and how it works to think the above statement makes any sense whatsoever. Imagine, if you will, the government asking a cell phone company to stop people SMS-ing each other anything derogatory about the Prophet. The only way it would be possible for the cell phone company to enforce such a 'request' would be to either read each and every single SMS from the billions that go out from within its network or to simply ban any SMSes that used the word 'Prophet' or 'Muhammad' or 'Mohammad' or 'Mohd' or any other possible variation (and there would still be ways to circumvent it), which would of course block all Islamic SMSes as well. Any cell phone company would obviously 'refuse' the government's request, simply because it would not be possible to implement.

Of course I am not even touching upon the concept of 'free speech' (and which particularly protects 'speech' that one disagrees with or finds offensive) which is integral to rational societies and which would be another reason for Twitter to refuse to censor something even if it could. But this is a concept which is obviously is too lofty an argument for the cretins in officialdom to understand.

In any case, I am more than sure that there is not a single person within the so-called 'Ministry of Information Technology' who is on Twitter or even has a passing knowledge of it.

In all likelihood, given the storm of outrage and mocking it has unleashed, the ban will not last very long. But let's look at what this ban has actually achieved:

1. It has given free global publicity to offensive material that most people - including us - were not even aware of. 

2. It has shown that those in Pakistan who are supposed to manage information technology actually have no clue what they are in charge of. They are obviously also clueless about the ease with which such bans can be circumvented (it took us and others a total of five minutes to get around it.)

3. It has made Pakistan a target of mocking all around the world yet again as a country that cannot be rational, trust its citizens or tolerate any opinions that don't fit in with its own. 

4. It has made an issue out of a non-issue (most people were unaware of the material as pointed out above) and in that given oxygen to precisely those obscurantist elements who use these things to fan the flames of bigotry and intolerance, both within Pakistan and abroad. Note that there had been NO protests before the Ministry of Information Technology drew attention to this 'issue' but that with its ineptitude it has ensured that it is now on the radar for all rent-a-crowd mullahs and will embolden those racists who enjoy provoking all Muslims. 

5. It has shown that any flimsy excuse can be used to censor opinions, particularly political opinions, that the government of the day is uncomfortable with. Because at the end of the day, it's not alleged blasphemers and pornographers who suffer from Pakistani bans, but common people expressing their personal views, on Twitter, Facebook or on blogs, outside the more easily controlled corporate media.

Let me draw another analogy for our esteemed policy makers. If, on the street, someone were to go around particularly eavesdropping on conversations among random groups of people to check if anyone were using foul language so that he could berate them, or more closely, telling everyone to shut up because he had heard some people using foul language, we would consider such a person a lunatic. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the people at the Ministry of Information Technology have proved themselves to be, overzealous lunatics. It's about time bureaucrats realize that we cannot police the entire world and, more importantly, that there is no need to.

Yes, Television Was Sometimes Awful But Was Social Media Any Better?

Almost two years ago, I wrote this piece and this piece about reporting on the Air Blue aircraft crash in Islamabad. The tragic crash of Bhoja Air flight from Karachi to Islamabad yesterday and its attendant coverage has compelled me to sit at my keyboard yet again. But whereas my initial disgust with some of the reporting on television was the initial motivation for writing a few words, the subsequent speculation and shoot-everything-in-sight diatribes on social media deserve an equal evaluation.

Bhoja Air crash (Photos via Dawn)

More on the latter later in the post, however. First, let's look at where television coverage went right and where wrong (contrary to the outrage being expressed on social media, all of it was not dire). Generally, most channels did NOT show bodies or limbs. I flipped through most of the major channels during the initial coverage, once reporters and cameramen had reached the site of the crash, and none of them were deliberately showing gore. I have heard that Samaa breached this agreed upon rule during its coverage (I did not personally see it) and, if so, viewers should definitely haul them up for it. Generally, however, good sense dictated the on-site footage, with some minor slip-ups that occurred because of the live nature of the coverage but which were corrected immediately.

Most channels did go over the top in the intrusive way they covered the grieving families and friends of those who had lost their lives in the crash, with one channel's reporter even shoving a mike in the face of a wailing relative and most running footage of distraught people in a loop. This kind of insensitive and senseless reportage (what exactly is a grieving relative going to say that will add to the sum of our knowledge?) needs to be checked and the privacy and dignity of those affected by a tragic event needs to be respected by the media. Ditto for the silly and offensive animations that we have objected to earlier as well that are based on pure speculation (one had a plane nose-diving while ARY even ran a clip from a Hollywood film!)  and only serve to mislead viewers and perhaps cause agony for those affected.

However, those on social media who were of the opinion that there should be absolutely no coverage of those affected and that no such intrusion occurs anywhere else in the world are living in some sort of make-believe world. I'm sorry but, to a certain extent, this is the nature of the medium that television is, it gravitates towards dramatic visuals and I have personally seen Western reporters be equally insensitive and intrusive as well as plenty of footage on Western channels that covers grieving relatives. Instead of talking about having channels shut down over their coverage (on what basis one is still not quite sure) or hauled up and fined, it would be far more productive to build consensus on where the ethical line actually is. A good point to start, as someone pointed out, is for channels and reporters to put themselves in the shoes of those grieving. If one of their own family members had suffered such a tragedy, would they want their and their family's grief to be broadcast in close-up and in a loop to the whole world? Would they want to be asked what they are feeling? Pressure should be built on channel heads and news editors to sit down together - as they did in the case of coverage of people killed - and work out a framework of guidelines on how grief is to be shown, also keeping in mind that overly dramatic scenes of grief are not healthy viewing particularly for children who sometimes can catch them inadvertently.

Where most channels really slipped up, however, in my opinion, was, as in the case of the Air Blue crash, in their knowledge of basic scientific principles and facts and in their propensity to conjecture for no worthwhile reason or on the basis of any real facts. Thus two channels, including Dunya, initially kept insisting that the plane was a Russian aircraft (ostensibly implying poor quality construction) even while others had already pointed that it was an American Boeing. One channel, Express, initially announced that a military helicopter had gone down with soldiers on board (before reversing their 'breaking news') and ARY ran a lengthy clip of a local on site who claimed that the crash was probably caused by aerial firing 'as he had always feared and filed a court petition about'. Other 'eye-witnesses' variously claimed the plane had split up in the air or had been struck by lightning or that its engine was on fire. In most cases, the problem with unsubstantiated stories finding their way on to television news has to do with the 'breaking news' disease, the desire to be the first with the 'news' as part of ratings wars. But news editors should also know by now that 'eye-witness' accounts in such cases are notoriously contradictory and should at least be moderated by an editorial narrative. Wild claims such as that of aerial firing by the conjecturing 'eye-witness' only add to viewers' confusion and really should not be part of the narrative in the first place. I suppose when anchors have seemingly never even heard the term 'cloudburst', they latch on to whatever is easiest for them to grasp, whether it is relevant or not.

Incidentally, as pointed out by a journalist who emailed us, every channel also got one fact completely wrong: that this was Bhoja Air's 'inaugural' flight from Karachi to Islamabad. He pointed out that a friend of his had flown Bhoja on the same route three days earlier. However this wrong bit of information was apparently traced to Bhoja Air's own website. I have no idea why Bhoja would claim this was an inaugural flight when it was not. One suggestion was that, perhaps this was the first afternoon flight on the route while the earlier flights were morning flights. Even in that case, the term 'inaugural' is a bit of an exaggeration.

Of course the default position of all channels is to try and find scapegoats. Everyone knew that the weather had suddenly taken a turn for the worst and freak acts of nature have in the past brought down planes in other places in the world - in fact, pilots who landed in Islamabad just a few minutes earlier confirmed that the weather had suddenly become very dangerous - yet most channels chose to attack the age of the aircraft, the skill of the pilot, the company's chequered history (it ceased operations in 2001 and only started up again a month and a half ago), Civil Aviation Authority's procedures and bizarrely even the government (in the case of Samaa). Geo's anchor, meanwhile, actually asked an astonished aviation expert if, 'had the pilot been more skilled, he could have brought the plane down low enough in the air for the passengers to jump out'. Really Junaid? Have you never travelled in a plane??!

The point is not that one or more of these factors could not have played a part in the tragedy. But that they were discussed ignoring the fact that even with the best and youngest of aircraft, the most skillful of pilots and the best of professional environments, accidents can and do happen with freak forces of nature. What purpose exactly is served, aside from filling up airtime space, from making conjectures whose actual answers will not be known until a proper inquiry is held? Or is creating pointless agitation among the public at large the job of news media? A debilitating lightning strike or devastating wind shear (as is now being discussed) could have solely been responsible without any of the factors being discussed coming into play.

Which brings me to the speculation that swamped Twitter and Facebook right after the crash. Truth be told, it was no better than the conjecture of the television anchors. One common refrain was the age of the aircraft that went down (more than 27 years according to this report in Dawn quoting AviationSafety.net), as if no old planes ever fly anywhere else in the world. In fact, as this answer points out, the average age of DC-9 aircraft operated by the US carrier NorthWest Airlines in 2005 was 34 years old! And that theoretically, depending on regular checks and maintenance, planes can continue to fly forever. (Here's some more info on life spans of aircraft in case you're interested.) In fact, the main reason fleets are replaced is because newer aircraft are more fuel efficient (but fleet replacement, as was blithely being suggested by certain people, obviously requires a lot of investment capital). Once again, the point is not that the age of the aircraft could definitely not have played a part in the tragedy. Only that picking on this one factor without any proof of it being a factor is as absurd as anything the channels were doing.

The other great target of social media activists seemed to be, as is always the case, Geo. I am hardly a defender of Geo's excesses, but as someone who watched most main channels' coverage of the incident, I can tell you that Geo was far more restrained than some of the others. By far the worst in terms of absolute absurdity were Express and ARY, mainly because there seemed to be no sensible editorial control and a surfeit of banal posturing from their reporters. As an example, in one segment on Express, the reporter held up a burnt out fire extinguisher because the anchor goaded him to get in amongst the debris and then spouted this gem: 'This cylinder is a fire extinguisher, used to extinguish fires, but when the plane caught fire, even this was no use.' He then went on to pick up another piece of debris, adding 'This used to be a part of the plane but after its destruction, it is no longer a part of the plane.'

So please, hold Geo's feet to the fire by all means, but let's not lose sight of the wood for the trees.

Then, Of Course, There's Twitter

More than one commentator has ascribed the relative dearth of recent posts on this blog to our having taken the easy way out (as others before us) and our expending too much energy on Twitter. And you know what, they may not be completely incorrect. It is, of course, far easier to write pithy sentences of 140 characters rather than thought out essays - even rants - and there is more immediate feedback. Sometimes even a conversation. (And yes, I do remember our initial expression of disdain for it.) It isn't the only reason (as I've tried to explain before) but it could be one reason.

So I thought what better way to ease back into blogging after a longish hiatus by having a post about that infernal sinkhole of time and energy, Twitter, which as we all know now even has the Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, in its clutches. And what better way to really make it easy by having someone else do all the writing and my being simply the medium pointing you in the right direction. Hope you enjoy the following collection from that wonderful chronicler of workplace absurdities, Dilbert by Scott Adams. Never were truer words spoken about the Tweeting phenomenon...


Twitter 1 or Why Some People Tweet:

Twitter 2 or How To Distract Rehman Malik:

Twitter 3 or The Compulsive Tweeters (Marvi Memon Fan Group):

And then there's this kind of workplace (Jang Group Version):

At some point I'd also love to do a post about those who think they're leading some sort of guerrilla mobilization on Twitter. It is, truly, a sight to behold. When they shout (in CAPS of course) that the Revolution (all 140 characters of it) is not far off, all you can do is nod in agreement and add:

You Want 'Real' Data? You Got It

I never expected, when I wrote this small post challenging one by-the-way assertion of The Express Tribune's publisher about ET's online presence vis a vis that of its far more established rival newspaper, Dawn, that it would lead to an all-out flame war in the comments section.

Those jumping to ET's defence began first with trying to discredit our data, interpretation and our web-savvy, followed it up with spin about what was really meant by asserting that ET was "neck in neck" [sic] online with Dawn (hint: it can mean nothing other than readership especially when you're talking about circulations), and ended up by accusing us of carrying out some sort of campaign against ET. I was hugely tempted not to further indulge such grandiose notions of self-importance and (supposed) victimization, not to mention the fact that the comparative online reach of Pakistan's English print media is not an immensely critical issue in my opinion in the larger scheme of things or even as far as the Pakistani media is concerned.

But the reason for a new post on the same topic is because, for one, we promised an independent and thorough analysis to our readers and because some of our friends have gone to great lengths to compile the data for us. More importantly, there is a principle at stake here, namely that of our credibility. We need to set the record straight about some of the wild assertions made in the comments of the last post.

So, without further ado, we present to you a Comparison of the Top English Language News Websites in Pakistan, conducted by our friends at Creative Chaos. (In the interests of full disclosure, it should be pointed out that Creative Chaos is a technology company operating since 2000, was responsible for the pre-launch design and development of The Express Tribune's website, and has also worked with Dawn five years ago to develop their online classifieds (the site was later shut down, ostensibly because management felt it was driving traffic away from the print edition). In addition, the company's CEO, Shakir Husain, is also a columnist for The News and occasionally writes for the Dawn Group's advertising and marketing-related publication Aurora.)

The comparisons of Dawn.com, thenews.com.pk and tribune.com.pk were done using four different internationally renowned website analysis tools, i.e. Compete, WebsiteTrafficSpy, Alexa, and doubleclick ad planner by Google, all of which estimate the web traffic of sites based on numerous data streams and their own analytical algorithms. In addition, social media (Facebook, Twitter) influence of these sites was also separately analysed using Klout which basically calculates its rankings using criteria such as number of retweets, quality of tweets etc. Let us go through them one by one.


WEBSITE ANALYTICS

1. Compete
According to its website, Compete:

"Provides free information for every site on the Internet including site traffic history and competitive analytics; a list of available promotional codes across thousands of online retailers; and site-specific trust scores based on up-to-the-minute data from Compete and third party security services."

This is the data Compete generated:

Click to Enlarge

As you may see, Dawn has a substantial lead over both ET and The News. However, ET and The News can certainly be considered "neck and neck" so far with ET on the up and The News remaining more or less steady.


2. WebsiteTrafficSpy

Though there is no explanation on the WebsiteTrafficSpy website about its methodology of traffic analysis, Creative Chaos believes it aggregates different sources such as Alexa to provide a comprehensive result.

This is the data WebsiteTrafficSpy generated:

Click to Enlarge

According to WebsiteTrafficSpy's estimates, Dawn has 1.96million monthly users, putting it 685,000 ahead of ET which has almost 1.28million monthly users. The News meanwhile, with an estimated 0.93million users is about 350,000 monthly users behind ET. It also puts Dawn's pageviews at approximately 275,000 per day as opposed to ET's 125,000 per day and The News' 92,000 per day. Finally, it ranks Dawn's website at 3,927 worldwide while ET's is ranked at 8,151 and The News' at 11,503.


3. Alexa

According to its website:

"Alexa is continually crawling all publicly-available websites to create a series of snapshots of the web. We use the data we collect to create features and services: 

Site Info: Traffic Ranks, search analytics, demographics, and more
Related Links: Sites that are similar or relevant to the one you are currently viewing 

Alexa has been crawling the web since early 1996, and we have constantly increased the amount of information that we gather. We are currently gathering approximately 1.6 terabytes (1600 gigabytes) of web content per day. After each snapshot of the web (which take approximately two months to complete), Alexa has gathered 4.5 billion pages from over 16 million sites."

The overall picture generated by Alexa is as follows:

Click to Enlarge

Note that, as opposed to the vociferous pointations from some commenters in the last post that ET's ranking was only 4 or 6 places behind Dawn according to Alexa, the 'within Pakistan' ranking differs by 13 places. However, in the overall scheme of things (since sites are accessed not just from within the country) Dawn's website is ranked by Alexa at 3,914 while ET's website is ranked at 8,181, a whopping 4,267 places behind. The News, meanwhile is far behind in terms of both rankings. (These rankings are, incidentally, pretty much the same as on WebsiteTrafficSpy.)

In case, you're interested, Alexa also provides snapshots of different parameters that can be looked at. We've included three of the ones most pertinent to the discussion at hand:

In terms of daily traffic ranking:

Red=Dawn, Blue=The News, Green=ET (Click to Enlarge)

In terms of daily reach:

Red=Dawn, Blue=The News, Green=ET (Click to Enlarge)

In terms of daily page views:

Red=Dawn, Blue=The News, Green=ET (Click to Enlarge)

4. doubleclick ad planner by Google

This is how doubleclick ad planner explains itself on its website:

"Refine your online advertising with DoubleClick Ad Planner, a free media planning tool that can help you:

Identify websites your target customers are likely to visitDefine audiences by demographics and interests.
Search for websites relevant to your target audience.
Access unique users, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries.

Easily build media plans for yourself or your clientsCreate lists of websites where you'd like to advertise.
Generate aggregated website statistics for your media plan."

The data generated separately for all three sites is as follows:

Dawn's traffic stats: Click to Enlarge

ET's traffic stats: Click to Enlarge

The News' traffic stats: Click to Enlarge

This tool once again puts Dawn far ahead of both others with almost 80,000 daily unique visitors. However, according to doubleclick ad planner by Google, The News with some 36,000 daily unique visitors actually edges out ET with about 28,000. Interestingly, The News also has people spending the most time on their site, an average of 18:20 minutes as opposed to Dawn's 7:40 and ET's 6:20. Generally, that might be considered a good thing. However something tells me that's probably simply because that's how long it takes The News' online readers to figure out how to get to the story they really want in the clutter that is that site.

Conclusion


As you can confirm from all the tools used, our original assertions using Google Trends for Websites as a tool were pretty much on the mark. They are not contradicted by a single other tool.


SOCIAL MEDIA

While we did not touch upon social media in our earlier post, since some commenters brought it up, here's a brief analysis.

Social media usage is the one place where ET has a very strong presence and ET seems to use social media well with some of its articles shared around on Facebook by the thousands. Not that it means anything in substantive terms, but Dawn has 37,000 'fans' on Facebook, followed by ET which has about 23,000. The News is almost dormant on Facebook with only 8,000 'fans'.

On Twitter, however, ET really comes into its own, with the widest reach and the largest number of users. As per Creative Chaos' analysis:

"ET's use of Twitter is by far the most aggressive. Not only do they share all links, their writers do the same as well. Very recently, Dawn has started to share its links online whereas The News remains dormant."

5. Klout

As per its website:

"The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engage audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action -- "action" might be defined as a reply, a retweet, a comment, or a click. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person's Klout Score. The 25+ variables used to generate scores for each of these categories are normalized across the whole data set and run through our analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, we apply a specific weight to each data point. We then run the factors through our machine-learning analysis and calculate the final Klout Score. The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people."

The following data was generated by Klout for all three:

Dawn: Klout score 59 (Click to Enlarge)

ET: Klout score 67 (Click to Enlarge)

The News: Klout score 58 (Click to Enlarge)

What this shows is that ET and its writers are, by far, using social media in the best way to engage audiences. How far that goes in driving traffic towards their website remains to be seen but certainly they have the right idea about digital audiences.

Incidentally, just for fun, we also checked out our own cache on social media using basically only our Twitter presence (Klout did not ask us for our Facebook account details). Here is the result for @cpyala, which as you can see is "neck and neck" in many respects with ET. Make of it what you will.

@cpyala: Klout score 64 (Click to Enlarge)

At the very least, I hope this exhaustive exposition will put to rest the sniping about us having used the "wrong tools" to show ET up and the wild assertions based more on knee-jerk reactions than any real understanding of anything. As we said last time, ET has considerable achievements to its name in its first year. If only its supporters would focus on the genuine ones rather than getting stroppy when imagined ones are called out.

Finally a big thank you to the folks at Creative Chaos for all their hard work and cooperation.