How to Access Twitter in Turkey Despite the Ban, Block and Censorship

As I'm sure all of you know that, the other day, Turkey's PM Erdogan went public with the not only ill-considered and unjustified, but plain stupid, call to "block" access to twitter from Turkey as a first step in a campaign to "wipe out" social media from  the country - and immediately a tame court stepped up and did its duty in this country of (obviously not) rule of law. Stupid, that is, unless his objective is to hurry the country back to the dark ages, shut down international trade, tourism and so on. But perhaps this really is Mr. Erdogan finally showing off the Taliban willy of his inner self in public. Or is it maybe, which seems more likely guven his actions, that there's enough substance in the corruption charges he in this way allegedly is trying to silence for him to be scared out of his wits? Who knows? In any case, it seems that Erdogan is not very strongly supported even by his own political allies on this. Reports about this are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here to name just a few.

Now, there's nothing new here. Just one more pathetic little man in the upper management going crazy for power and privilege, no more being able to stand being criticised – we've seen it so many times before and very recently in Ukraine and Russia. Turkey and Erdogan is just more of the same, only this time within the NATO costume, so going for reprisals as in  the Ukraine case will not be as handy for the US and EU as in the ongoing Ukraine and Crimea crisis. Lucky then that there are effective ways of making this lunacy of policy making completely impotent.

For there are many, many ways in which Twitter can still be accessed from Turkey and to get at those, it would seem, Turkey would have to shut down all telecommunication. As I said, the dark ages. Suck on that, Mr. Prime Minister and see if you dare that one to cover your obviously exposed behind.

Once again, Wikileaks has stepped forward and is providing ample instruction and help on this supporter forum page. Hopefully, people in Turkey are reached by this information, are able to access the page and/or spread its content in other ways. Let's make this a Streisand effect par excellence, shall we!

Now Online: Special Symposium of Public Health Ethics: New Media, Risky Behaviour and Children

All good to those who wait, it's said, and in this case this certainly holds up to scrutiny...

 

Yesterday afternoon, a special symposium in this year's first issue of the journal Public Health Ethics, guest-edited by myself and my colleague Karl Persson de Fine Licht, on the topic of New Media, Risky Behaviour and Children, went online after about 2 years of work, starting with this call for papers. In addition, the call came out of a preceding European project, running 2011-12, taking off as an original idea at a workshop we held in Gothenburg in October 2011. We are, of course, mighty grateful to the PHE editors-in-chief duo of Angus Dawson and Marcel Verweij, who accepted our proposal, remained committed to it and has offered all support needed under way.

The full table of content looks like this:

Introduction 
Christian Munthe and Karl Persson de Fine Licht
Editorial: New Media and Risky Behavior of Children and Young People: Ethics and Policy Implications. Introducing the Themes and Pushing for More 

Original articles
Julika Loss, Verena Lindacher, and Janina Curbach
Do Social Networking Sites Enhance the Attractiveness of Risky Health Behavior? Impression Management in Adolescents’ Communication on Facebook and its Ethical Implications

Joakim Forsemalm
Consolidated Youth Jury: Alcohol Prevention for Young People from Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. A Swedish Case Report
  
K. P. Mehta, J. Coveney, P. Ward, and E. Handsley
Parents’ and Children’s Perceptions of the Ethics of Marketing Energy-Dense Nutrient-Poor Foods on the Internet: Implications for Policy to Restrict Children’s Exposure 

Boudewijn de Bruin
Alcohol in the Media and Young People: What Do We Need for Liberal Policy-making?

Case Discussion  

Kate L. Mandeville, Matthew Harris, H. Lucy Thomas, Yimmy Chow, and Claude Seng 

Using Social Networking Sites for Communicable Disease Control: Innovative Contact Tracing or Breach of Confidentiality?

Jasper Littmann and Anthony Kessel 

Accounting for the Costs of Contact Tracing through Social Networks  

André Krom 

From Facebook to Tracebook: A Justified Means to Prevent Infection Risks? 

Mart L. Stein, Babette O. Rump, Mirjam E. E. Kretzschmar, and Jim E. van Steenbergen 

Social Networking Sites as a Tool for Contact Tracing: Urge for Ethical Framework for Normative Guidance

David M. Shaw 

Communicating About Communicable Diseases on Facebook: Whisper, Don’t Shout  

Thomas Ploug and Søren Holm 

Take Not a Musket to Kill a Butterfly—Ensuring the Proportionality of Measures Used in Disease Control on the Internet

Now, I would myself very much have preferred to have the entire issue open access, for anyone to probe, but since that would cost about €1500 / article, and there are 11 articles in the symposium, there was no financially feasible way of managing this. One of the contributions is open access, due to it having been written in a context where funding for that objective has been available, but this is normally not the case for ethicists, social scientists and practitioners – unlike our more wealthy cousins within clinical and laboratory health science, I might add.

For access, your best bet is through a university library, a student or staff at a university with access, or you can try contacting individual authors and/or look around for so-called postprints posted in public archives.