Wresting Power from the Few?

Remember when TIME magazine selected external pageYou – Yes, You – as Person of the Yearcall_made? It was back in 2006 when the magazine’s editors decided that the year’s big story was about community and collaboration on the internet – i.e., “about the many wresting power from the few…and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.” Given the overarching theme we have explored over the last thirteen weeks – that the international system is undergoing fundamental and irreversible changes in its structure – we think it is only right to close the first part of our three-part Editorial Plan by revisiting TIME’s initial claim. We believe it’s right not only because social media has stopped being a “massive social experiment” and has become an integral (and complex) part of people’s lives, but also because the topic points us towards the second part of our plan, which will begin on April 2. Indeed, if the initial part of the plan focused on answering a simple question (how is the structure of international system changing at its most fundamental level?) then the second part begs us to answer a follow-on question – if the international system is transforming itself in major ways, what impact are these changes having on power relationships throughout the world, whether formal or not? While answering this question is our next overarching objective, we have a transitional one we need to address this week – are the internet and social media helping to change the international system by empowering non-state actors and individuals? In other words, is the internet further eroding the state’s traditional monopoly on power when it’s the state that ultimately controls access to new and old media in the first place?

To try and answer this final question, today we pit Evegeny Morozov’s external pageCan the Internet Liberate the World?call_made, which argues that governments (particularly repressive regimes) have been strengthened rather than weakened by the rise of internet-focused media, and Clay Shirky’s external pageThe Political Power of Social Mediacall_made, which more typically argues that it has permitted loosely federated citizens to organize and act in unprecedented ways. Finally, and in order to clarify their respective positions further, we feature TED talks by Morozov and Shirky on this important issue.

Authoritarian Deliberation

Morozov’s argument – that internet-focused media provides governments the opportunity to cement their power over individuals – largely focuses on the case of authoritarian regimes. Yes, he acknowledges that the internet is remarkably resilient and offers many opportunities to circumvent state censorship and control. However, to assume that this resilience provides an insurmountable challenge to all authoritarian governments is wrong, as the following TED talk illustrates.

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Morozov argues, for example, that:

1) The sources of an authoritarian state’s legitimacy and control are complex – they depend on much more than the skillful blocking or manipulation of information.

2) Not all internet-based social mobilization is harmful to a state – it can spur those in power to address specific problems, thus helping bolster the state’s legitimacy rather than detracting from it.

3) Groups with the greatest ability to mobilize internet support might not necessarily be the ones that are able to mobilize mass support ‘on the ground’.

4) In the aggregate, manipulating the internet may be more effective than outright censorship. Indeed, authoritarian states can:

• Use ‘authoritarian deliberation’ to ‘spin’ the messages they would like to disseminate.
• Accrue open-source intelligence on activists and their foreign donors or supporters.
  
• Try and make the public share the blame for unpopular decisions (“we asked you”).
• Use or reach out to ‘harmless’ bloggers in order to demonstrate your ‘democratic’ credentials at home and abroad.

An environmental approach

While Shirky readily acknowledges that states have the means to monitor and co-opt peoples’ internet-centered activities, and thus retain their traditional power, he does see social media as a positive, power-shifting tool. It does, after all, fabricate “condition[s] of shared awareness.” It also confronts governments with a “conservative dilemma.” If they now have to account for anomalies in their policies, they can react with censorship, propaganda or a complete shutdown of the internet, but if they do so they also risk politicizing a much larger group of otherwise apolitical actors. (This is indeed what happened when Hosni Mubarak disrupted internet and mobile communicationsat the height of the Egyptian 2011 uprising.)

But like Morozov, Shirky believes that analysts and policy makers nevertheless overestimate the prominence and importance of censorship. He accuses the United States Government, for example, of adopting an ‘instrumental’ view of internet freedom. While Washington primarily concentrates on preventing ‘rogue’ states from censoring information from outside their borders, it should actually encourage the proliferation of community- and communication-related activities on the internet. The internet, after all, is by definition a public sphere; peoples’ mentalities are shaped by media and by conversation. Social media, in turn, are long-term tools that empower individuals and strengthen civil society; they are not short-term instruments designed to pursue country-specific policy goals, at least not ideally. To illustrate this point and others, Shirky highlights the difference between traditional forms of media and social media in the following TED presentation.

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Indeed, in Shirky’s view shaping public opinion is a two-step process. Opinions are first transmitted by media, but they are then echoed by friends, family and colleagues. Traditional media, however, had a curiously asymmetrical relationship with these two steps – i.e., media that was good at generating conversations was not necessarily good at creating and sustaining groups, and vice versa. Social media, for the first time in history, simultaneously supports both functions. Political and apolitical speech is now interwoven to an unprecedented degree, and then compounded through further conversation.

The final truth, of course, may be that Morozov and Shirky are both right. To bend and extend George Orwell’s once infamous insight, we might say that in freedom there exists the potential for slavery, but in slavery there are also the seeds of freedom. The internet, in other words, does sustain traditional power relationships, but it can also shift the dynamics of power, most prominently through dialogues that politicize the once apolitical.