The Digital Challenges to Democracy: Social Media and New Information Paradigms
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Digital Challenges to Democracy: Social Media and New Information Paradigms Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Exact Humanities by Research by Neelesh Agrawal 201556015 [email protected] International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad - 500 032, INDIA September 2020 Copyright c Neelesh Agrawal, 2020 All Rights Reserved International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, India CERTIFICATE It is certified that the work contained in this thesis, titled “The Digital Challenges to Democracy: Social Media and New Information Paradigms” by Neelesh Agrawal, has been carried out under my supervision and is not submitted elsewhere for a degree. Date Advisor: Dr Radhika Krishnan To Mom and Pop Acknowledgments This thesis benefits from many valuable suggestions and inspirations. The most valuable support was from my research advisor, Dr Radhika Krishnan. Her zeal and hard-working attitude was infectious. Each time I met her and discussed ideas or progress on my research work, I would not only get her inputs, but also a lot of motivation. I am extremely grateful for her support throughout my academic life. My friends and “co-researchers” at IIIT; Navya, Lata, Sarigama, Vishnu, Siddhartha, Namit, Tanmay, and Ekansh were wonderful company to be in, keeping me entertained, inspired, and providing the (occasional) useful distractions. My co-passengers on the CHD train including my co-advisee Devansh Manu, Kriti, Saumya, Srujai, Bera and Pravallika were also exciting company to have. My acknowledgement also extends to some of my senior friends at IIIT; Shreedhar, Shantanu, Ameya and Ghosh, who were instrumental in influencing my approach towards academic work. A note of regard for Prof Nand Kishore Acharya, whose classes were a treasure and whose teachings have probably been the greatest influence in shaping my social science thinking. My gratitude also extends to Dr Priyanka Srivastava who was a constant source of encouragement and guidance, and working with her enriched my research perspective. The constant emotional and moral support from my parents, my sister Doll, and my childhood friend Divyansh, was crucial in keeping me sane and focused. All my accomplishments are incomplete and impossible without them. v Abstract The social and political shifts being perpetuated by the Internet and social media are dominating contemporary discourse around politics, society and technology. The difficulties in regulating online practices, in advancing Internet literacy and moderating machine learning algorithms that govern online behaviour, and moreover in preventing malicious users from infiltrating the Internet have been highlighted by scholars in this domain. As the Internet and social media have become a ubiquitous and inseparable part of our lives, so have the social shifts brought on by them. The influence of modern technology on human behaviour, both personal and social, poses a great challenge to one of the most fundamental democratic principles; human free will. This thesis highlights the anti-democratic phenomena emerging out of the incessant use of the Internet in daily life, while also looking at precursors for these phenomena through history. This thesis employs formal analysis using natural language processing as well as actor-network theory to comprehend some of these phenomena. It also connects various theories proposed by thinkers like Kierkegaard, Chomsky and Foucault, and ideas expressed by researchers, authors and journalists in recent years, to sufficiently understand these phenomena. Through the discussions and analyses presented in this thesis, the dynamics of the social ills posed by the Internet can be better understood, and this can inform further research as well as policy-making aimed at combating these issues. vi Contents Chapter Page Abstract :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: vi 1 Introduction :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 1 1.1 Chapter Organization . 2 2 Mass Surveillance ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 4 2.1 Introduction . 4 2.2 Understanding Privacy . 5 2.3 Understanding Surveillance . 6 2.4 Trial by Data . 7 2.5 A Political History of Modern Mass Surveillance . 8 2.6 A Technological History of Modern Mass Surveillance . 10 2.7 Data Surveillance in India . 12 2.8 Pervasive Surveillance . 13 2.9 Conclusion . 17 3 Information Control and Influence ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 18 3.1 Introduction . 18 3.2 Anonymity, Commitment and Information . 19 3.3 The Splinternet and Digital Tribes . 20 3.4 Consent as a Service . 21 3.4.1 Consent: Make in India . 23 3.5 Conclusion . 25 4 Shaping Political Discourses ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 26 4.1 Motivation . 26 4.2 Past Work and Challenges . 26 4.3 Data Description . 27 4.4 Data Extraction and Processing . 28 4.5 Method for Comparison . 29 4.5.1 TF-IDF . 29 4.5.2 Word2Vec, Smooth Inverse Frequency and Cosine Similarity . 30 4.6 Results and Discussion . 31 4.6.1 Topic 1: The Revocation of Special Status of Jammu and Kashmir . 31 4.6.2 Topic 2: Economic Slowdown in India . 32 vii viii CONTENTS 4.7 Future Work . 34 5 Online Disinformation :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 35 5.1 Introduction . 35 5.2 Misinformation Groups and their Internet Behaviour . 36 5.3 Information Manipulation: Motivations and Methods . 37 5.4 Divergence Across Platforms . 40 5.4.1 Google Search Engine (and YouTube) . 40 5.4.2 Reddit . 41 5.4.3 Twitter . 41 5.4.4 Facebook . 42 5.4.5 WhatsApp: The Anomaly . 42 5.4.6 Anonymity and Transparency . 43 5.5 Misinformation and Online Behaviour in India . 45 5.6 Conclusion . 47 6 Disinformation Trends Across Social Media Platforms: An Actor-Network Analysis :: 48 6.1 Motivation . 48 6.2 The Actor-Network Theory . 48 6.3 Understanding Actors in ANT . 49 6.4 How the network evolves in ANT . 50 6.5 Actor-networks on social media platforms . 51 6.5.1 Problematization . 52 6.5.2 Interessement . 55 6.5.3 Enrolment . 56 6.5.4 Mobilization and Analysis . 56 6.5.5 Visual representation . 57 6.6 Discussion . 57 6.7 Future Work . 59 7 Conclusion :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 60 Related Publications ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 62 Bibliography ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 63 List of Figures Figure Page 4.1 Histogram of comparison for Topic 1 . 31 4.2 Word cloud comparison for news (left) and tweets (right) in topic 1 . 32 4.3 Histogram of comparison for Topic 2 . 33 4.4 Word cloud comparison for news (left) and tweets (right) in topic 2 . 33 6.1 The honeycomb of social media [64] . 52 6.2 Visual representation for the disinformation ANT . 58 ix List of Tables Table Page 4.1 Distribution of extracted news articles . 28 x Chapter 1 Introduction “And does not tyranny spring from democracy,” asks Socrates, prompting Plato to examine how the very nature of democracy is such that it would give way to tyranny in The Republic.[88] While Plato’s critique of democracy is debatable, he did describe how a free man may tend to pursue “useless and unnecessary pleasures”, and thus only a “philosopher king” who knows what is best for everyone is the best ruler for a state. This notion has endured in the modern world too, and there has thus been an effort to “control” human free will. The intention of studying behavior and human nature and controlling actions and thoughts of people is the bedrock of certain academic disciplines. In the early 20th century, behavioural psychology emerged as a way to essentially measure all human behaviour using external stimuli. Shoshanna Zuboff identifies the founder of behavioural psychology, BF Skinner, as “an early priest of instrumentarian power”, or in other words, a pioneering force in the quest to control and study human beings.[108] Eventually, in conjunction with statistical market research, this became a crucial foundation of a novel scientific approach towards advertising. However, the conjunction of statistics and behaviorism was not limited to advertising alone. The concept was essentially rooted in an effort to make all human decision-making quantifiable, or at least amenable to scientific evaluation. The applications of this have been quick to reach socio-economic and political spheres. Many companies started evaluating potential employees using these methods, and banks started requiring borrowers to take personality profile tests. Data analytics on the Internet in the 21st century has further helped extend this concept, providing more significance to statistical and behavioural studies. It is perhaps no surprise then that groups such as the Cambridge Analytica employed behavioural psychology methods (such as Myer-Briggs and the Big 5 personality tests), among others, to build the users’ psychological profiles. The availability of large-scale data has boosted the potential of statistical and behavioural methods to be applied to ever larger domains. The manipulation of voter blocs by Cambridge Analytica is a typical example. China’s “social credit system” is another such example, where all citizens have a social ranking based on their public behaviour which is recorded through various Internet apps on smartphones. This phenomena is not limited to autocratic states such as China. Modern liberal democracies too have been trying to include social behaviour as a factor to evaluate financial credit ratings. This social behaviour is captured 1 by studying online behaviour, or “digital footprint”, on financial apps, shopping and e-commerce apps, social media and even dating apps. The