ICT’s and the prospects for democracy: Will the “Netizens” participate?

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Thursday August 07, 2008 19:01 by Arnold Capp

Will technology achieve what failed in the past?

Idealists and utopians would claim that this phenomenon is the beginning of the disentanglement of the public sphere and political debate from the traditional dominance of political parties, big business, corporate media and vested interests who dictate what can and cannot be discussed, what is relevant and what is news-worthy. The political participation of the ordinary citizen could eventually be conducted entirely through electronic means. Instead of representative government it is suggested in the future technology will enable all citizens to engage in the ongoing political debate. The pattern whereby citizens vote at the end of each government term with paper ballots could be replaced with a form of direct democracy. History would have turned full circle as a global village like the ancient Greek city states would decide its priorities bypassing the traditional power structure of wealth and power.

But is this realistic?

Before discussing the possible future impact of ICT’s on democracy it is worth discussing how democracy became dominant in Western society and how Western style democratic society is the currently unrivalled viable model of social organisation. In this way the optimism and high expectations that internet will transform the participation of citizens in modern democracy can be understood fully.
Ancient Greece was the breeding ground for democracy for various reasons. The Greek peninsulas, and rugged mountains ranges, isolated valleys and scattered islands meant that city states could emerge independently of each other. Though Athens and Sparta were the strongest, on land and sea it was difficult for any city state to dominate the others for very long and an aspiring king or tyrant who did so would not have the resources to hold his kingdom together. Most of these cities numbered only a few thousand inhabitants so it was a practical possibility for the elite of wealthy landowning aristocrats who entitled themselves to citizenship to participate directly in political debate and government. It was also possible for the wealthier monolithic Persian Empire and its numerically larger army and navy to be defeated by the less numerous armies of the poorer and internally divided Greeks at the battles of Marathon and Salamis arguably because the superiorly motivated Greek warriors were defending their individual rights and personal stake in the government of the various city-states unlike the Persian hordes who were forced to slavishly obey Xerxes. Without the sophists who practically invented political oratory and educated the children of Greek aristocrats it is unlikely Greece would have been able to challenge the power of Persia.
The imperialism of the Roman republic, in many ways the cultural successor of the Greeks, was fatal to its democracy as ambitious individuals such as Pompey Magnus, Caesar, Mark Anthony and finally Octavian acquired unprecedented wealth and power corrupting and finally extinguishing the democratic system altogether. The European kingdoms that replaced the disintegrated Roman Empire were characterised by absolute monarchs who claimed to be divine representatives surrounded by the most powerful princes of the church and nobility who maintained the system of feudalism. It was not until the commercial success of Italian merchant city states, the Protestant Reformation, conflicts such as the English Civil War and the American and French Revolutions that the power of the middle classes could be slowly exerted to challenge the old order. The development of the printing press enabled the Bible and the writings of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau and Paine to be read by the layman encouraging the rational and religious questioning and the political struggles that overcame the tyranny of the Church and Monarchy.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century most of the world was ruled (against its will) by Britain, the most powerful democracy in the world and its imperial European rivals. Empires could not have come into being or survived without sail and steam travel, railways and later telegraph communication. Liberal and female emancipation movements played their part in getting the democratic franchise extended to the working classes (vitally important to prevent their grievances igniting the class war prophesied by Karl Marx) and the “weaker sex,” both historically excluded from the traditionally wealthy and male chauvinist political world. This would not have been possible without modern mass media communication such as newspapers that influenced public opinion and publishing houses that popularised the work of highly influential writers and thinkers such Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill and Emile Pankhurst.
For those who may have believed in the eventual emergence of a peaceful unified global, liberal-capitalist, democratic and multi-cultural society, the Great War and subsequent events were cruel body blows. Marxists violently hostile to “bourgeois” democracy drew the conclusion that a proletarian seizure of the means of economic production, coercion of labour and central planning was the way of the future. However in most European countries democracy gave way to fascist movements, constituting remnants of the ancien regime, industrialists terrified of communism, militarists, intellectuals impatient with disjointed democratic decision making and extreme nationalists obsessed with reversing racial and cultural intermingling. This period of totalitarian dictatorships and the struggle against them was characterised by mass propaganda most notably cinema newsreels glorifying Hitler and Stalin and patriotic British and American war movies.
At the close of the Second World War in 1945 and the Cold War in 1989-1991, both extreme-right and extreme-left ideologies were apparently forever discredited. Television allowed Western mass audiences to witness scenes of unrest and the collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe, the decisive conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the moon landings and the fall of the Berlin Wall. To a historicist, the beginning of the 1990’s appeared to auger the inevitable global triumph of capitalism and democracy. It is generally believed that lingering problems in the developing world will be overcome if those societies imitate the practices of the First World. In theory therefore the current violent rejection of Western culture by Islamic fundamentalism can only lead one way or another to its ultimate defeat and assimilation due to the manifest political, economic and crucially technological superiority of liberal secular democratic capitalist society. According to Francis Fukuyama, “English liberalism, as we saw, emerged in direct reaction to the religious fanaticism of the English Civil War. Contrary to those who at the time believed that religion was a necessary and permanent feature of the political landscape, liberalism vanquished religion in Europe.
This is where the development of the internet fits into the accepted narrative. In the West the average citizen owns a personal computer or has access to one at work, in public libraries or internet cafes which connect him/her with almost limitless, unrestricted and unregulated information. The private citizen is no longer forced to depend solely on official state information or large privately owned media corporations with vested interests to tell him/her what is going on the world. The public sphere is no longer confined to the parliamentary debating chambers, editorial and letter columns of newspapers or the current affairs news programmes. While traditional news media; radio stations, television news shows, newspapers, magazines etc have their own websites and journalists and newshounds who write syndicated articles have their own online presences, the customers of political news and information can use and contribute to discussion boards, blogs, social networking sites and a host of other websites. The power of individuals and small groups of citizens to influence the politics through the web is immense. This is evident in a number of high profile controversies in U.S. politics where ruthless political rivalries have produced surprising political upsets due to embarrassing disclosures on the internet which were only later picked up by the mainstream media organisations.
In August 2006, incumbent Republican Senator for Virginia, George Allen who was allegedly a prospective US President candidate made racially derogatory remarks about S.R Sidrath, a student of Indian ancestry who filmed him on a camcorder as a “tracker” for the campaign of the opposition Democratic candidate Jim Webb. The video posted on the popular Youtube website , contributed to Allen’s electoral defeat and the end of his political career.
During the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Democrat hopeful Senator John F. Kerry, campaigned against incumbent President George W. Bush on an anti-Iraq War platform trading on his status as a decorated Vietnam veteran in contrast to Bush, who was a former fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard with no experience of combat allegedly due to preferential treatment. During a broadcast of CBS’ 60 Minutes Wednesday, it was alleged that a series of memos had been uncovered among the papers of Bush’s former commanding officer Lt. Colonel Jerry B. Killian that were critical of his service record. Doubts were raised on a conservative blog that the memos supposedly dating from 1972 were in fact forgeries. An investigation proved that the memos were indeed forgeries produced on Microsoft Word and contributed to the end of the distinguished career of veteran news anchor Dan Rather. Meanwhile John Kerry’s war hero image was discredited by a television and internet campaign on behalf of a group of fellow Vietnam veterans who accused Kerry of lying about alleged U.S. atrocities during the conflict and fabricating stories of his war heroics. In the 2008 U.S. Presidential election race both rivals for the Democrat Party candidacy Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton have been embarrassed by videos posted on Youtube. Obama was forced to distance himself from his pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright who had made controversial racial remarks. Hillary Clinton had claimed a trip to war-torn Bosnia during the 1990’s was accompanied by sniper fire only for archive news footage to surface on the internet that demonstrated this was not the case.
In contrast during the early 1960’s the mainstream media often failed to scrutinise or conspired to cover up the flaws of democratically elected leaders. The clean cut image of President John F. Kennedy, an notorious womaniser, would have been difficult if not impossible to maintain had modern technology such as digital mobile phone cameras and the internet existed. Videos of Kennedy’s murder would certainly have quickly appeared on Youtube in the same way that internet videos of the assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto quickly clarified the manner of her death at the hands of a lone gunman/suicide bomber.
However in societies that deny democratic freedoms and human rights to their citizens the internet is heavily regulated or simply blocked and users are persecuted. During a 2006 drive to purge the Islamic Republic of Iran of western cultural influence, President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad banned high speed facilities that had enabled users to download Western movies and music incompatible with the country’s deeply conservative religious ethos. Academics and students complained that the move limited their ability to perform research. In Saudi Arabia, innocently using Facebook, a social networking site that is ubiquitous in the social lives of many young people in Western countries, can have fatal consequences. Alan Thornton writes than in 2002, Zhu Ruixing, who emailed a pro-democracy newsletter to some friends was likely to go to jail for three years and China shut down political bulletin boards and instituted strict censorship schemes that prevent people within China from accessing some Western sites such as news from CNN the BBC, Reuters and The Washington Post. Imprisonment and worse of political dissidents is a matter of routine in China which has been a single party Communist state since 1949. For citizens of impoverished North Korea, the presence of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il, an absolute ruler who operates a Stalinist dictatorship makes the question of internet access moot.
However there are reasons to be hopeful. According to Freedom House, the criteria for an electoral democracy include:
1. A competitive, multiparty political system.
2. Universal adult suffrage.
3. Regularly contested elections conducted on the basis of secret ballots, reasonable ballot security and the absence of massive voter fraud.
4. Significant public access of major political parties to the electorate through the media and through generally open campaigning.

Therefore using these criteria it was concluded that in 2005 there were 122 jurisdictions that could be identified as electoral democracies. But for many people in the world who do not have running water, electricity, adequate food to feed their large families, a basic standard of literacy, access to the internet at the level enjoyed in Western countries is a luxury far beyond their reach. Realistically as their focus is devoted to basic day-to-day survival there are limited opportunities to participate actively in politics in the physical world let alone the virtual. The sheer physical remoteness, harsh environmental conditions and unstable political situations in many regions of the world simply do not permit the physical infrastructure necessary to support the internet to be established. Generally speaking only in modern industrialised societies is ubiquitous internet access possible. It should be no surprise, therefore that English speaking users in the West dominate the internet.
The emergence of the internet has aroused hyper-enthusiasm among optimistic adherents of a rapid social transformation:
From the start, the World Wide Web has been a vessel of quasi-religious longing. And why not? For those seeking to transcend the physical world, the Web presents a readymade Promised Land. On the internet, we’re all bodiless, symbols speaking to symbols in symbols. The early texts of Web metaphysics, many written by thinkers associated with or influenced by the post-60s New Age movement, are rich with a sense of impending spiritual release: they describe the passage into the cyber world a process of personal and communal unshackling, a journey that frees us from traditional constraints on our intelligence, our communities, our meagre physical selves. We become free-floating netizens in a more enlightened, almost angelic, realm.

But the most obvious problem is that in even in Western societies internet access is not uniform. An October-December 2007 Pew study of internet usage based using the parameters of age, geography, race, gender, educational attainment and household income demonstrated that the demographic who make use of the internet are predominantly those who are young, urban, white, male, college educated and in the upper income brackets. Clearly if the internet is set to become an engine for dramatic political transformations in the future then it is obvious that until the rest of the world achieves the same level of economic prosperity and internet penetration as Western society particularly in the U.S. where 80% of adults were online by December 2007, that transformation will benefit only a fraction of the global population in the interim.
The political parties in the United States are leading the way in the use of the internet to get voters engaged. Mark Kann et all write:
The Democratic and Republican National Committees have embraced the idea of online communities as a means to disseminate their messages, engage citizens in dialogue, and expand the universe of potential voters through innovative outreach efforts. For example, Republicans’ MyGOP facilitates online users efforts to plan a house party, conduct surveys, contact elected officials, call talk radio shows, help register voters, draft letters to local newspapers, and raise money. By joining old political methods with a new technology that is more familiar to younger citizens than to older ones, both political parties are hoping to attract young American’s interest, support and loyalty.

But how do individuals and groups fare who are not aligned to political parties?
Reports from China during the Tianenmen square massacre; reports from ordinary observers of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, and reports from the ground during the war in Bosnia demonstrate the power of the individual to contribute to the body of facts behind political issues. Anybody can become an online journalist commenting on the news of the day or giving eye witness testimony. Individuals or groups can present their views to a wider audience. Groups and individuals who are campaigning about human rights abuses, environmental pollution, cruelty to animals, opposition to nuclear weapons, health care for the elderly, road safety etc. can communicate with like-minded groups nationally and internationally. The co-ordinated mass demonstrations by young left-wing activists opposed to economic globalisation that are now a familiar feature of summits of world leaders paradoxically would be difficult to organise without the existence of globalised internet communities in which individuals from around the world can co-ordinate their actions. Idealists and utopians would claim that this phenomenon is the beginning of the disentanglement of the public sphere and political debate from the traditional dominance of political parties, big business, corporate media and vested interests who dictate what can and cannot be discussed, what is relevant and what is news-worthy. The political participation of the ordinary citizen could eventually be conducted entirely through electronic means. Instead of representative government it is suggested in the future technology will enable all citizens to engage in the ongoing political debate. The pattern whereby citizens vote at the end of each government term with paper ballots could be replaced with a form of direct democracy. History would have turned full circle as a global village like the ancient Greek city states would decide its priorities bypassing the traditional power structure of wealth and power. Dick Morris writes about he perceives is a growing trend:
The trend toward direct democracy, so manifest in the last twenty-five years through voter initiatives at the state level, will move online. This will open the door for informal, private referenda involving millions of voters on federal issues and on state topics, even in jurisdictions that do not normally permit voter initiatives. While these privately sponsored referenda will not be legally binding, they will exert a powerful political pull on elected officials and decision makers at all levels.

Unfortunately for the radicals and utopians present activity does not auger well for this rose-tinted view of the future. If anything the bodies and organisations who are already taking full advantage of the potential the internet has to offer are none other than political parties, big business and established mass media who already dominate newspapers, magazines, cinema, radio and television. The internet is a vast marketing tool and users of websites are easily frustrated by poor web design, bad architectural layout, graphics that take an inordinate time to load and other problems that inexperienced amateurs might be unable to rectify or ignore completely. A commercial news website with full-time staff dedicated to maintaining a slick customer friendly website will clearly have an advantage over a single individual operating a simple blog. Hundreds of millions of people are crowded together on the internet so it is a practical impossibility for each and every one of them to be heard above the chorus of the mob. Other problems are abysmal standards of content and ill-informed contributors. Ideally the internet is the collective mind of humanity but this does not impress online writers such as Nicholas Carr, who has little confidence in Wikipedia, an online encyclopaedia that any who wishes can edit:
In theory, Wikipedia is a beautiful thing – it has to be a beautiful thing if the Web is leading us to a higher consciousness. In reality, though, Wikipedia isn’t very good at all. Certainly, it’s useful – I regularly consult it to get a quick gloss on a subject. But at a factual level, it’s unreliable, and the writing is often appalling. I wouldn’t depend on it as a source, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to a student writing a research paper.

If a snap shot of the top 10 Google searches of 2004 is a reliable measure of the tastes of internet users the risqué adventures of scantily clad female sex symbols such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera and Pamela Anderson have a higher priority than political issues. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry earning more revenue than professional football, baseball and basketball in the U.S. and outstrips the combined revenues of the major television networks ABC, NBC and CBS. The number of pornographic websites exploded by 3,000 percent between 1998 and 2005 with the result that children are regularly exposed to hardcore pornography. Tim Richardson, an Internet commerce professor at Seneca College in Toronto, said the actual number of pornographic Web pages is impossible to confirm because they are so often duplicated to force Internet search engines to list them more prominently. Instead of a tool which has enriched their political participation of citizens the internet for many internet uses it is simply a means for crude sexual gratification.
While no doubt the internet has transformed the world just as the invention of books, printing, telegraphy, cinema, radio and television did in the past, it is naïve to assume as some utopians have that it will fundamentally alter the human condition. The potential of technology to influence the democratic process for the better is obvious but how this change will manifest itself is not yet clear.

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