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 80 DISSENT Summer 2009 INTERNET 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 DISSENT Summer 2009 81 INTERNET 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.