The Internet: A room of our own?

EVGENY MOROZOV

The debate about the impact of the In- ing media diversity, the role of social network- ternet on democracy is barely a decade old, but ing in political mobilization, and so forth. It’s it has already sowed great confusion in the easy to overestimate the obscurity of such minds of academics and practitioners alike. It seemingly arcane discussions; after all, it’s not doesn’t help that both of these concepts repre- the first time that academics or bloggers can’t sent complex, multilayered, and abstract ideas make up their minds about a subject with dubi- that do not lend themselves to easy or precise ous relevance to the real world. And yet, many measurement. We have little choice but to of the assumptions underpinning our thinking reach for the best readily quantifiable proxy, about the impact of the Internet on democracy which usually only obfuscates the relationship shape policymaking inside the world’s most further. powerful institutions preoccupied with promot- The Internet part of the equation is relatively ing democracy, human rights, or an open socie- easy to grasp; the rate of Internet diffusion has ty (my own host institution—the Open Society been one reliable indicator. Other tangible prox- Institute—is on this list and is not innocent of ies—the number of Internet or mobile phone relying on similar assumptions). users per capita or more complex indicators like One could say that the Internet has acquired the density of a national blogosphere—are also a cult following among such institutions. While quite straightforward, if not conclusive. Meas- the U.S. State Department wraps its own efforts uring democracy, on the other hand, requires us to use the Internet to promote democracy to substitute something more tangible: human around the globe in the dry rhetoric of “Public rights, freedom of expression, transparency and Diplomacy 2.0,” other agencies closely associat- corruption, civic engagement, media concentra- ed with and funded by the U.S. government— tion, and even more esoteric indicators such as Internews and the National Endowment for the diversity of the public sphere (itself often re- Democracy being the two most visible—are ac- quiring another host of proxies to be measured tively recalibrating their toolkits to fit the age of properly). Factor in the vast economic, techno- new media. European governments and foun- logical, and political differences across countries dations are also not far behind, with the Dutch in transition, dictatorships, and established and Danish governments at the forefront of democracies, and it’s clear why the study of the supporting the use of new media and the Inter- Internet’s impact on democracy won’t earn any- net for digital activism. one the Nobel Peace Prize in the foreseeable fu- One particular assumption made by many of ture. us early in this game was that cyberspace would For all these reasons, the grand debate of the provide the breathing room that civil society last decade has by now split into numerous (and especially civil society in authoritarian nano-discourses that have acquired a life of countries) needed to operate. Armed with their own: the role of mobile phones in eco- cheap and easy-to-use tools for fundraising, ac- nomic development, the role of blogs in increas- cessible ways of self-publishing, and effective

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platforms of mobilization (first MySpace, now host of NGOs and activists rely on the same Facebook and MeetUp), civil society organiza- mash-up technology—usually in less effective tions could transcend the resource gap and in- ways—to showcase illegal logging, pollution, stitutional inefficiencies that had plagued their and even ethnic attacks). Russians are not alone work in the past; they would be leaner, faster, here; nationalist groups in many other coun- and stronger. It’s only now that we discover tries, from Turkey to India, are exploiting cyber- that leaner doesn’t always mean louder, partic- space to publish previously unavailable nation- ularly for civil society organizations with con- alistic materials and add to their ranks. troversial (at least by local standards) agendas. Similarly, pseudoscience has found a second Although the Internet may have made many of home on the Internet. Banned from the class- their peripheral activities easier, it has often room, it’s making a comeback on Facebook and made their core activities—such as advocacy YouTube. For example, aggressive antivaccina- and awareness-raising—more difficult and less tion communities have eagerly embraced the effective. Web to spread their antiscientific statements on This unexpected outcome is easier to explain a scale that was probably never available to than it seems. Cyberspace politics is a zero-sum them in the pre-Internet age. A 2007 study by a game; although Internet technology has cer- group of academics from Canada analyzed all tainly decreased the power of the nation-state— unique English-language YouTube videos (at much as gunpowder or the printing press did in that time, all 153 of them) that contained any earlier stages of history—it has also empowered messages about human immunization; the re- those whom we wouldn’t necessarily list as searchers found that a third of them were out- “friends of civil society” (once again, analogies right negative about its value and another fifth with gunpowder and the printing press, and were ambiguous, with negative videos usually their heavy use by extremist and militaristic or- receiving much higher ratings by YouTube ganizations, are worth reflecting on). So, if we users. Of the negative videos, almost half con- are ultimately concerned with limiting the tradicted existing reference standards on immu- power of the state—and when it comes to coun- nization (the antivaccination movement is also tries like China and Russia, our concerns are extremely active in the developing world; well justified—the Internet’s impact has been UNICEF reports that its recent awareness-rais- very positive. However, this is only one part of a ing campaign ran into powerful online opposi- much larger picture; the pernicious influence of tion from vaccination-denialists). In addition to the nation-state has often been replaced in cy- illustrating the appeal of cyberspace to advo- berspace by a host of decentralized, uncontrol- cates of pseudoscience, this case raises an inter- lable, and ultimately more dangerous elements. esting question about whether a technology They have not only survived into the cyber age; company such as YouTube (and ultimately its they seem to prosper in it. parent company, Google) should verify scientific claims made in the videos uploaded to the site; if yes, how should they go about it? (Google For example, nationalists in Russia (as faced a similar set of problems when it erro- well as in many other countries) rely on the In- neously classified a video documenting prison ternet for fundraising, propaganda, and mobi- abuse in Egypt as too violent, overlooking its lization and recruitment of new supporters. social role.) The editorial and fact-checking lay- Most disturbingly, DPNI (which is the Russian ers of traditional media organizations would abbreviation for the Movement Against Illegal make it unlikely that such videos would ever be Immigration), the most active of such organiza- aired, for there is usually someone on staff to tions, is on the cutting edge of Web innovation, distinguish facts from opinions; how user-gen- going so far as to create visually appealing erated sites will cope with this challenge is not “mash-ups”—combinations of different data yet clear. streams—that “mash” census data about the lo- Much has been made of bloggers’ ability to cation of various ethnic minorities living in take on corporations and hold them account- Russian towns with actual online maps of the able. Consumerist.com, a popular consumer- neighborhoods where they live (curiously, a oriented blog has emerged as, perhaps, the most

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notable of such sites, attracting complaints from activists aiming to thwart the censorship at- dissatisfied customers all over the world and ad- tempts of governments—will be successful, but vising them on how to fight back. A typical blog the early signs are not encouraging. post from The Consumerist—entitled “How to Paradoxically, Western governments, which Launch an Executive Email Carpet Bomb”—of- like to be seen as the biggest advocates of free fers tips for “rattling the corporate monkey tree speech in the world, deserve a fair share of to make sure your complaint gets shoved under blame here. Governments in the United King- the nose of someone with decision-making dom, Canada, Australia, and in much of Scandi- powers.” However, corporations themselves navia (to mention just a few) are currently de- have not been slow to exploit cyberspace for bating or enacting draconian Internet laws to their own purposes, with many of them relying target Internet pirates and child predators. The on “search engine optimization” (SEO)—a set of very act of lumping of these two groups togeth- online techniques to boost their Google rank- er illustrates the governments’ profound misun- ing—to make themselves easier to find. Now, derstanding of the Internet. A glimpse at any re- they have stepped up their efforts, hiring the cent report—like the one that found that 95 services of dedicated SEO firms that can ensure percent of music downloads are illegal—would that any online complaints about corporate mis- make any discussion of criminalization of Inter- behavior posted by the likes of The Consumerist net piracy impractical, if not outright silly. will be almost impossible to find on Google. ComplaintRemover.com, the most visible of such companies, advertises “Do you need nega- A much bigger problem about these tive information removed? We are masters at laws is that they add legitimacy to Internet cen- knocking bad links off the front pages of search sorship campaigns in China, Thailand, Vietnam, engines!” boasts its front page. In some sense, Turkey, and Russia, with the only difference cyberspace has made life relatively easy for being that in the latter case these laws are used companies: they don’t need to beat up journal- primarily to crack down on political speech ists anymore; they just need to beat up Google. under the banner of a war on “online vulgari- The latter can be done quietly, privately, and at ty.” But note that some of the pornographic little expense—to their finances or their reputa- sites blocked in the much-discussed Chinese tions. The buck doesn’t stop with consumer-ori- crackdown at the beginning of this year are ented blogs: Western governments are also now back online, this time with even more quite eager to beat Google’s search algorithms: pornographic content, while some of the politi- Britain’s Office for Security and Counter-Terror- cal sites that were shut down during the same ism is planning to coach moderate Islamic crackdown are still silent. groups in SEO, so that they can “flood the In- Some governments are combining aggressive ternet” with positive interpretations of Islam. Internet laws with truly innovative measures There are many other reasons why the Internet aimed at identifying and barring undesired con- has failed to amplify the voices of civil society. tent early on in the publishing cycle. The Thai The most obvious one is that governments have government, for example, uses the country’s se- mastered the tricks of Internet censorship; this vere lèse majesté laws, prohibiting any offensive has been the most accessible and often the most material aimed at the reigning sovereign, to go reliable way to neutralize the dissemination of after administrators of critical Web sites. The critical information on the Internet. To the great most recent case is that of Cheeranuch Prem- disappointment of free-speech advocates, global chaiphorn, the Web administrator of Prachatai, backlash against Internet censorship has been the most influential Thai political Web site, who extremely limited, with several American com- was recently detained because a comment criti- panies feeling bold enough to supply govern- cal of the king was discovered on the site. The ments such as China’s with technology that is Thai authorities also “crowdsource” the process being actively used for censorship. It’s too early of gathering URLs of sites to be blocked by en- to tell whether nascent international efforts to couraging their loyalists to submit such sites for draw more attention to this issue—such as the review (a site named ProtectTheKing.net is a Global Network Initiative, a consortium of cor- primary collection point of the offensive URLs). porations, human rights groups, and individual

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Predictably, it’s a one-way street: there is no in cyberspace, where free speech is possible in similar invitation to submit sites to unblock. theory, but increasingly unavailable in practice. However, censorship is not the only way to CYXYMU is not an isolated case. On the first silence critical opinions and unwanted informa- anniversary of the monks’ uprising in Burma, a tion online. Cyber attacks are increasingly be- similar fate befell the three major Web sites of coming a weapon of choice, not only for gov- the Burmese exiled media—Irrawady, Mizzima, ernments but for anyone else with a grudge and the Democratic Voice of Burma. Adminis- against particular ethnic, political, or sexual mi- trators of the Web sites speculated that the at- norities. Distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) tacks were launched by the junta to limit ex- attacks—whereby servers of a given Web site pected demonstrations. Oppositional Web sites are overloaded with bogus requests to “serve” a in Kazakhstan and Mauritania have recently ex- page—don’t only make important content tem- perienced similar problems, quite possibly at the porarily inaccessible, they also put a huge drain hands of their own governments or agents affili- on staff and physical resources. While the media ated with them. Nonpolitical Web sites are be- tend to focus almost exclusively on cyber at- coming regular targets of cyber attacks as well: tacks against military and government targets— in February 2009, virtually all major gay Web the overblown coverage of “cyberwars” in Esto- sites were unavailable for more than a week, as nia and Georgia have brought such dramatic a result of a massive wave of denial-of-service terms as “cyber-Katrina” and “electronic Pearl attacks. This trend is not limited to countries Harbor” into public use—civil society organiza- like Russia or Burma; many of the Web sites tions are hit the hardest. If left unchecked, raising money to oppose Proposition 8 in Cali- DDOS attacks, which are increasingly cheap to fornia last November were attacked as well, organize and can be rented on the black market, most likely to make them unavailable for those may erase all the social capital that NGOs and who wanted to donate money to gay-friendly even bloggers have cultivated online. causes. That is one of the cases where neither The oft-quoted story of CYXYMU, a popular the “leaner” nor the “louder” benefits that the blogger from Georgia, is a case in point. A Internet was supposed to bestow on civil society refugee from the earlier war in Abkhazia, are obvious. CYXYMU emerged as one of the most visible and consistent critics of how both the Russian and Georgian governments handled last year’s To understand how cyberspace may war in South Ossetia. Blogging in Russian, he fail to empower civil society, there is no better has cultivated a relatively large following in case to study than that of Russia. Both the title both countries, particularly among the users of and subtitle of “The Web that Failed: How op- LiveJournal, one of the most popular blogging position politics and independent initiatives are platforms in post-Soviet cyberspace. However, failing on the Internet in Russia,” a recent study in October 2008, somebody got angry at his of the Russian Internet published by the writings, and his blog—also hosted by LiveJour- Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, nal—fell victim to a massive wave of cyber at- are right on target (disclosure: it was funded by tacks, so severe that millions of other LiveJour- the Open Society Institute, where I am a fel- nal blogs became inaccessible for more than an low). One of its conclusions is worth quoting hour. The only way to reduce the damage was here: temporarily to delete CYXYMU’s account from In the Russian context, new communications LiveJournal, which its administrators did. Cyber developments are not yet breaking down attacks followed the blogger even after he set up well-established patterns of power. The state a new blog on WordPress.com, another popular remains the main mobilising agent in Russia. blogging platform (his account was quickly It [the Internet] does operate as a platform deleted from there as well). DDOS attacks which the state uses increasingly successfully against his new and old URLs continued un- to consolidate its power and spread messages abated for more than six months. We should of stability and utility among the growing recognize CYXYMU for what he is—a “digital number of Russians regularly accessing web- refugee” and a victim of geopolitics playing out sites and blogs.

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This points to a broader trend where Krem- provide space for seemingly meaningful deliber- lin-affiliated public relations technologists in- ation without any intention of engaging in creasingly turn to cyberspace to generate fresh regime-level democratization. Of course, pursu- ideas on how to keep the current regime in ing such a policy requires giving up a modicum power. Virtually all the political technologists of of political power, when it comes to selecting yesteryear—those who were instrumental in participants and prioritizing projects, for exam- getting Boris Yeltsin reelected in 1996 and ple, but it ultimately pays off as an “investment” Vladimir Putin elected in 2000—are now active- in the future. ly experimenting with cyberspace. Gleb The term “authoritarian deliberation” gained Pavlovsky, perhaps the most famous of that co- currency when it was used to describe the Chi- hort, has paved the way; his think tank—the nese public sphere, which does provide the illu- Fund for Effective Politics (FEP)—has arguably sion of new models of governance without hav- been the most effective player in shaping Russ- ing any significant impact on the regime itself. ian ideology during the Putin era. Sensing a “The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political De- tremendous opportunity on the Internet, FEP velopment” by He Baogang and Mark Warren, has ventured into what can only be called “so- the seminal paper on “authoritarian delibera- cial networking with a Kremlin twist.” By tion” in the Chinese context, explains why: launching liberty.ru—half social network and What they [the Communist Party of China— half group blog (think Huffington Post meets CCP] gain is the ability to legitimate policies the DailyKos meets Facebook), Pavlovsky man- by reference to a relatively inclusive delibera- aged to tap into the creativity of Russian Inter- tion process rather than to an official ideology net users for his own ideological projects— or the variable benefits of economic develop- while also giving his online community the im- ment. These effects in turn can increase the pression that they have influence over the political capacities of the CCP while further- Kremlin’s agenda. ing the careers of party officials. Under this When asked recently about his motives for scenario, then, the functional effectiveness of launching a Web2.0-friendly project like liber- authoritarian deliberation stalls regime-level ty.ru (not to mention giving it such an un- democratization. The CCP continues to en- Kremlin-like name), Pavlovsky answered with courage local officials to develop participatory atypical frankness. and deliberative institutions to curb rampant Based on the FEP polls in 2006-2008, we corruption, reduce coercion, and promote identified three major clusters in Russian so- reason-based persuasion....But ultimate con- ciety. The biggest one is that of Kremlin loyal- trol over agendas as well as outcomes re- ists; the smallest one is the politicized opposi- mains with the Party and beyond the reach of tion; the cluster in the middle—14-20% of democratic processes. the population—is the creative class. Baogang and Warren point out that in the They...are part of a new economic system. Chinese case “authoritarian deliberation” pre- They are the trendsetters: journalists, adver- dates the Internet: consultative meetings, public tisers, PR experts, IT specialists, Internet hearings, deliberative polls, citizen rights to sue users....These people are able to shape and the state, and even some kinds of autonomous promote new ideologies...[Liberty.ru] will civil society organizations started appearing two help political parties tap into their collective decades ago. However, what the Internet pro- wisdom, see what these people are really vides is many more opportunities to make the concerned about; [the parties] would even be provision of deliberative elements more effective able to borrow some major policy points from (and also very cheap). Despite recurring censor- these online discussions. ship campaigns, civil society is, indeed, provided Pavlovsky’s activities, which, in essence, with more and more space on the Internet, es- allow the Kremlin to tap into the collective un- pecially after Wikipedia introduced many people conscious and use it both to identify new ideas to various Wikipedia-like governance processes. and promote old ones, are in line with what po- And blogs provide a mechanism for self-expres- litical scientists call “authoritarian delibera- sion and even harsh criticism of authorities. tion”—the practice of authoritarian regimes that

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What makes the Russian case so peculiar in very good example of how techniques like comparison to the Chinese is that the blogos- crowdsourcing could be helpful. The same soft- phere—and cyberspace at large—have not only ware is now being rolled out in Zimbabwe to given the public an opportunity to blow off allow reporting of cholera outbreaks. The true steam, it has also allowed spin doctors like media darling of user-contributed Web sites is an Pavlovsky to harvest and eventually promote African initiative called Ushahidi, which has new ideologies that could fill the vacuum in an been used (with various degrees of success) to otherwise spiritually bankrupt regime. The re- allow user-generated reports (primarily via text- cent economic crisis has only highlighted the messaging) in a number of recent conflicts— fact that with all the attention that Putin and most successfully in the postelectoral turmoil in Medvedev—and less visible Kremlin insiders Kenya, but also in the Democratic Republic of like Vladislav Surkov—have paid to ideology, Congo, Gaza (where it was deployed by Al they have come up with nothing. Jazeera), and Madagascar. The technology be- hind Ushahidi is simple: anyone can send a text message reporting a particular incident and then And yet we cannot say that the Internet see this report visualized on an online map. This offers no ways of transforming regimes like not only provides almost real-time data about Russia or China. It’s just that change is likely to dangerous conflict zones, it also helps to create a come from unexpected quarters—from the need crowdsourced bank of reports that could then be for legitimacy and modest respect in the eyes of used for human rights purposes. the international community, for example, However, this revolution in data availability along with membership in elite clubs like G-8 or has brought its own problems, chiefly in the G-20. These are, perhaps, the only sticks that realm of data verification. The fundamental and Western democracies can use against the au- still unanswered question is, How much trust thoritarian rulers in these countries. Given the can we place in data that have been sent by un- brutal methods that their rulers employ to stay known third-party sources? If someone wanted in power, their legitimacy has traditionally re- to discredit authorities in Kenya or DRC, the quired manipulating international public opin- easiest way would be to bombard the service ion by preventing the locals from speaking out with thousands of bogus reports, hoping that loud or simply limiting access to sensitive gov- they would be picked up by the mainstream ernment data on human rights, pollution, or media. There is no easy way to validate the au- even disease outbreaks. Thanks to the Inter- thenticity of such reports; nor is there a way to net—and many of the phenomena it has begot- meet the strict criteria for data validity that are ten (such as crowdsourcing or citizen journal- often imposed by traditional human rights or- ism)—this is one area where we can expect real ganizations. Are some data on human rights change, particularly through the use of hybrid abuses, some of which may have been fabricat- models, where nongovernmental organizations ed, better than no data at all? This controversial partner with ordinary citizens to produce au- question divides the data community, but I am thoritative reports based on crowdsourced optimistic that we will be able to improve the methods of data gathering. algorithms and come up with “electronic lie de- To a large extent, this is already happening, as tector” tests allowing us to make better distinc- a few dozen NGOs begin tapping into all sorts of tions between valid and fabricated data. Ulti- previously unavailable data—reports on levels of mately the supply side of the data equation will urban crime and pollution, for example—which be solved; the demand side, however, will still are being contributed by regular users, many of remain problematic. What should we do with them previously unaffiliated with these NGOs. documented evidence of human rights abuses In fact, some of the most exciting projects cur- in Zimbabwe or Belarus or anywhere else? Un- rently strive to incorporate user-submitted data fortunately, the Internet offers no answers here. into traditional old-school data-gathering processes. WikiCrime, a project started in Brazil Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Socie- to allow citizens to map instances of violent ty Institute. He is at work on a book that exam- crime that often go underreported and thus ines the Internet’s impact on global politics. push governments to do something about it, is a

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