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Cyberlibertarian Dreams: Producing Privilege and Power in Journalistic Discourses of the Internet

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CYBERLIBERTARIAN DREAMS: PRODUCING PRIVILEGE AND POWER IN JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSES OF THE INTERNET A Dissertation Submitted to The Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Michael Buozis May 2020 Examining Committee Members: Brian Creech, Advisory Chair, Media and Communication Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Media and Communication Devon Powers, Media and Communication Sean Phelan, Massey University, New Zealand ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, when the Internet emerged as a focus of popular discourse, through the early 21st century as the Internet became a dominant communication technology, cyberlibertarianism—a combination of absolutist free speech and free market ideals—has shaped popular conceptions of what freedom means on the Internet. Journalism has served to reify these values over the last three decades, adopting cyberlibertarian precepts as common sense in debates about issues such as government regulation, the privatization of cyberspace, and the moderation of content on platforms. This dissertation develops a critical genealogy of cyberlibertarianism revealing how this ideology helped perpetuate the very forms of power and privilege—based on race, gender, and class—it promised the Internet would erase. Through discourse analysis of popular and tech journalism over the last three decades, this dissertation first explores how journalists used two public figures to make common sense of cyberlibertarian ideals in their respective historical contexts: John Perry Barlow in the 1990s and early-2000s and Aaron Swartz in the 2000s and early-2010s. Shifting to a contemporary context, this dissertation then explores how journalists have relied on cyberlibertarian ideals to make sense of tensions between free speech and hate speech and harassment online and of the increasing power tech corporations exert over the public regulation of speech. This analysis shows that journalistic practice has reified the cyberlibertarian ideals which underpin much public policy and corporate practice regarding how speech on the Internet ought to be regulated. This research asserts the need for more concerted critical journalistic discourses that dislodge the cyberlibertarian common sense which has naturalized the power of tech corporations over so much public life. ii For Alison, Eliza, and Sadie, who bring me joy. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Without the unending commitment of time, energy, and thought from my advisor, Brian Creech, this project and all my scholarly pursuits would have been impossible. Thank you for listening and reading with patience and care. Your mentorship has not only guided my research but has also served as a model for kindness, humility, and professionalism. I am endlessly grateful to my committee members, Fabienne Darling-Wolf and Devon Powers, and my external reader, Sean Phelan. Thank you, Fab, for encouraging my engagement with critical theory and journalism studies and for supporting my work from the very first semester I entered the program. Thank you, Devon, for bringing enthusiasm and rigor to this project and for encouraging me to think practically about how to get it finished. And thank you, Sean, for offering valuable insights on this work at a time when the world was, to put it mildly, distracting. My deepest gratitude to Carolyn Kitch, who sparked my interest in research way back when I was a student in the M.J. program and has never hesitated to offer support ever since. I really wouldn’t have done this without you. Thank you to the many faculty mentors I’ve worked with along the way, who have shaped my teaching and scholarship, especially Aryeh Botwinick, Bruce Hardy, Magda Konieczna, George Miller, Nancy Morris, and Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. And thank you to Nicole McKenna, for making it all possible. iv To the friends I’ve made at Temple, there’s no way I can do justice to the support each of you have shown. Thank you especially to Urszula Pruchniewska and Shannon McLaughlin Rooney for the solidarity and commiseration in tough times, and for good humor and cheer always. Thank you to Emil Steiner for the enthusiasm and energy and constant presence across the aisle in the PhD office. Thank you to everyone from my cohort: especially to Diantha Vliet, for the essential gift of good conversation and to Lee Tae Cobb, for reminding me, and the rest of us, to take a deep breath and remember what’s important. Many thanks to the old friends who suffered me when I was insufferable through this process. Spare yourself what follows! Eternal thanks to my family: Alison, Eliza, and Sadie, who have sacrificed the most and whose love has kept me sane; Bob and Debbie, who have been endlessly generous in so many ways, especially in caregiving and encouragement; Dad, Meg, and Devin, who have always been there to share the good things in life; and the memory of my mother, who would have been proudest of all. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 Disrupting the Common Sense of Cyberlibertarianism .................................................. 5 A Journalistic Genealogy of Cyberlibertarian Doxa ..................................................... 10 2. THEORY: CYBERLIBERTARIAN IDEOLOGY AND INTERNET FREEDOM .... 20 Cyberlibertarianism and Negative Freedom ................................................................. 21 Doxa, Ideology, and Discourse ..................................................................................... 30 Journalistic Affinities with Cyberlibertarianism ........................................................... 45 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 48 3. LITERATURE AND HISTORY: A GENEALOGY OF CYBERLIBERTARIAN INTERNET FREEDOM ................................................................................................... 50 Internet Freedom and the Ideology of Cyberlibertarianism .......................................... 52 The Idealization of Freedom in the History of the Internet .......................................... 57 Cyberlibertarianism: What and Who is Internet Freedom For?.................................... 73 Privilege and Cyberlibertarian Ideology ....................................................................... 79 Cyberlibertarianism’s Contemporary Discursive Reach .............................................. 87 vi Alternative Visions of Internet Freedom ...................................................................... 94 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 101 4. METHODOLOGY: JOURNALISTIC GENEALOGY ............................................. 102 Normativity and Reflexivity ....................................................................................... 105 Genealogical Archives ................................................................................................ 107 Analytical Archives .................................................................................................... 110 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 116 5. MAKING COMMON SENSE OF THE CYBERLIBERTARIAN IDEAL: THE JOURNALISTIC CONSECRATION OF JOHN PERRY BARLOW ........................... 117 Journalism, Barlow, and Cyberlibertarian Ideals ........................................................ 120 Barlow’s Declaration and its Legacy .......................................................................... 125 The Popular Press Consecrates Barlow ...................................................................... 132 The Rugged Cowboy Hipster of Internet Freedom..................................................... 139 Interpreting a Cyberlibertarian Internet for Mass Consumption ................................. 146 Complicating Internet Freedom in the Tech Press ...................................................... 154 Conservative Unorthodoxy and the Depoliticization of Internet Freedom ................. 160 Keeping the Legacy Alive: The EFF Remembers Barlow ......................................... 165 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 168 6. INTERNET FREEDOM, FREE CULTURE, AND FREE INFORMATION: AARON SWARTZ AND CYBERLIBERTARIANISM’S NEOLIBERAL TURN ..................... 171 The Internet’s Boy Genius Next Door ........................................................................ 175 Granting the Coder Ethical, Political, and Cultural Expertise .................................... 178 Politics by Proxy and by Code .................................................................................... 181 vii United States v. the Robin Hood of Internet Freedom................................................ 184 The Boy who Would Have Saved the Internet and the World ................................... 188 For the Sake of a Technocratic Public .......................................................................
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