Global Business, Emerging Markets and Human Rights: old concerns and fresh hopes?

The use of social media has become a way of life for millions in recent years. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and networking sites like Linked-in have become essential for communicating, making contacts, keeping up-to-date and spreading the word. The vast majority of users are interested in catching up with friends and relatives, enjoying a joke, and trying to advance their careers. It might be argued that freedom to communicate and access information – either electronically or in more traditional ways – may be construed as a human right. Otherwise we are ignorant, isolated, kept in the dark. We might choose to be like this, but most of us seek the company of others, information, knowledge, and the chance to access opportunities in our businesses and careers. However, in a number of countries social media is seen as threatening to the authorities. Governments are concerned about the information and communications channels open to their populations. The recent Arab Spring movement was largely organized through social media – and even on a small-scale, individual basis through the sending of emails and mobile phone text messages. The People‟s Republic of China has always shown a particular concern with public information and communication channels. From the 1990s, long before social media as we know it now became popular, the authorities were blocking Hotmail and mobile phone signals; for many years they had controlled the media and tapped landline telephones. Foreigners working in China and unable to contact their families at home in the low-cost and convenient way of sending emails on free platforms – now Gmail is more popular that the old Hotmail – are compensated by their employers as suffering an additional hardship. The history of the control of the media in China goes back at least to the days of Chairman Mao and the coming to power of the Communist Party; in Iran this concern is more recent, particularly related to the Islamic Revolution. Now, social media is liable to being blocked, although risk-taking and techno-savvy Persians are getting round it. The apparently innocuous act of ladies taking off their headscarves and waving their hair around in public places, being photographed and posting these images on Facebook, has become popular. Pictures of clerics looking grumpy, humorless and intolerant, caught in unflattering poses, are equally well-received by Iranians flaunting small freedoms won at great effort. In Turkey, the clampdown on social media is much more recent and particularly since the March 2014 election. The justification expressed by the authorities has been one of protecting citizens‟ purity from corrupting influences, such as pornography and allegedly tasteless popular culture from the USA. Some citizens believe it. Others complain that it is a form of self-preservation on the part of the ruling party, eager to prevent criticism from being disseminated. Many find it inconvenient and disturbing. What next? This paper seeks to provide insights into an apparently new form of human right – to access social media without third-party restriction, for whatever purpose or reason.