Cyberpolitics

1
Cyberpolitics

• CMC LM 3

2
"Politicians used to put out leaflets with
pictures of their family and pet dog and copies
of their lousy speeches and it would be enough.
Unfortunately many politicians now just create a
web site with pictures of their family and pet
dog and their lousy speeches but it is not good
enough," Stephen Coleman, Oxford Internet
Institute
3
The Technology out there is going to change the
country therefore it is going to change
politics.Doug Bailey, publisher, Hotline

• I cant think of anything except kissing babies
  that you cant do online Michael Cox, scientist
  George Washington University

4
Characteristics of the Internet

• Seen as an unusual form of communication that
  falls neither into private or public form of
  communication.
• Has various various features email, publishing
  showcase. Organisational facilities, synchronous
  and asynchronous features, bulletin boards, chat,
  MUDs, etc
• Can be one to one or one to many.
• Can be non-hierarchical and anarchical

5
Internets features for political Empowerment

• Internet has a five plus one component email
  penetration, electronic newsletters, electronic
  forum, archive for easy retrieval, the world wide
  web which is also publishing showcase. The
  plus-one component is the existence of
  informational and organisational links for
  spreading material and co-ordinating activities
  in offline mode (Walsch 1999 2).

6
Internet and Politics

• With the advent of new media, there has been much
  speculation about its effects on enhancement of
  the political in many societies.
• This notion of the technology offering
  opportunities for broadening political
  participation has been discussed in many
  political frameworks from totalitarian systems to
  democratic frameworks.
• In effect, there is a sense of technological
  determinism with regard to this sort of
  speculation.

7
Participatory Democracy

• Democracy hinges on the principle of
  participation and representation.
• The internet due to its features of connectivity
  and interactivity promises the capacity to
  facilitate mediated democracy.
• The public and ruling elite can in a theoretical
  sense communicate without the distortion of media.

8
Democracy and the Internet

• In a liberal democratic framework, the Internet
  has often been associated with the notion of
  virtual public sphere.
• Habermasean public sphere was based on rational
  discourse and participation being the pillar of
  democratic decision making.
• In this sense, the Internet offered the potential
  for citizens to interact with the process of
  policy making.

9
Critique of the virtual public sphere

• This notion of the Internet constituting a
• virtual public sphere has been criticised
• Technology does not fix the problem of apathy nor
  can it induce participation.The core issue
  associated with the decay of democracy remain.
• It can lead to a form of mouse-click democracy
  where people become trigger-happy (plebscitary
  democracy.
• Even if everyone took part how will governments
  deal with all this feedback?

10
Critique of Public Sphere

• What about issues of digital divide? Issues of
  accessibility and use, education levels.
• There were concerns about the bias of the media
  which tended to favour the more educated and the
  politically more engaged.
• It also assumed that the new medium was free from
  refeudalisation (Habermas) which the
  traditional media is often accused of.

11
The Internet and Authoritarian Governments

• The Internet as having the potential to challenge
  the dominant discourse of the government and
  traditional media.
• Giving dissidents a global platform to
  disseminate their views.
• Links them with other like-minded people
• Access alternative forms of information

12
Activism and Democratisation

• Hill and Hughes (1998129-130) research found
  that 'people were becoming internet activists to
  share beliefs.'
• They also point out that people posting Internet
  messages that oppose specific governments and
  governmental policies are doing so in those
  newsgroups that are, on average, devoted to
  countries that are low in democratization.
• They infer that 'maybe people do use the Usenet
  newsgroups as a relatively safe form of political
  expression against less-democratic even
  repressive regime (Hill and Hughes 1998 88).
  Specifically Internet message about the less
  democratic nations is far more likely to be
  anti-government.

13
Degree-Zero Politics

• Tiziana Terranova (2002) points out the Internet
  offers the potential for the production of
  different type of politics where the capacity to
  connect and disconnect is used productively.
• social movements can form on the Internet but
  rarely do they solidify into concrete social
  movements which spillover in the offline society.
  These virtual formations melt back into the
  virtuality and she terms this quality degree
  zero.
• Harry Cleaver (1979) refers to this aspect of
  virtual activism as hydrosphere - a fluid space
  changing constantly and only momentarily forming
  those solidified moments that we call
  organisations.

14
Distinct Characteristic of Cyberpolitics

• Politics in cyberspace has its own distinct
  characteristics above all much of the
  information that makes its way into virtual
  reality is unreliable.
• For example some of the pictures of atrocities
  against Chinese Indonesian women (2000) posted on
  a website for overseas Chinese turned out to be
  photographs of outrages committed elsewhere and
  at other times. Yet is it precisely the ease with
  which virtual reality can be manipulated that
• makes it ripe for the politics of mobilisation
  (Hughes 2000 204).

15
Reconciling Politics and the Internet

• Need to take into consideration issues of digital
  divide and inherent biases with the Internet.
• Issue of diffusion It does not have the
  centrality of traditional media in such
  societies.
• Governments can restrict access through
  regulations and technology proxy servers or
  banning websites even though complete control is
  questionable. Cuba simply outlaws the sale of
  personal computers to individuals. Myanmar
  outlaws personal ownership of modems. The Saudi
  government censors the Internet by requiring all
  web access to be routed through a proxy server
  that it edits for content.
• The issue of surveillance and privacy the
  Internet can be used by authorities to monitor
  their movement and discourse.

16
Internet and Complete Control

• Some of the assumptions about Internet and
  empowerment are made on the basis that it is not
  possible to control the Internet.
• While complete control is tenuous it can be
  controlled to a degree.
• According to Lessig (1999) the Internet can be
  controlled through markets, regulation, social
  norms and the code where the architecture of
  the Internet can be manipulated to receive or
  censor information.

17
So does the Internet enhance the political?

• Many theorists are divided on this.
• Technology is neither good, bad or neutral and
  its effects is moulded by the society it is
  suspended into.
• New Media itself cannot change the political
  scene, its the extent to which it is adopted
  used and incorporated into a society that
  determines change.

18
Cyberpolitics and Power

• The Internet can be used by those in power to
  further augment their presence. Hence it has been
  argued that the Internet amplifies the existing
  state of power relations in society.
• Many governments have a strong web presence. Many
  government departments and offices have online
  presence.

19
Examples of CyberpoliticsAmerican Elections

• Recently in terms of the American Elections, Bush
  campaign strategy on the Internet includes
  registering voters, identifying supporters. The
  campaign site also contains pages that display
  downloadable forms for voters registration and
  absentee voting.
• Bushs web feature include a fact or flog Log.
  The latter exposes factual inaccuracies of
  opponents.
• Kerry used to the Internet to effectively raise
  at least 14 million.
• Both candidates used the Internet to facilitate
  meetings and interaction among supporters.
  Available http//www.foxnews.com

20
Internet and the Global society

• From the mid 1990s when an avalanche of e-mails
  pushed governments to sign the international
  Treaty to Ban Landmines, civil society's
  activities have become more and more dependent on
  information and communication technologies
  (ICTs).
• Indymedia Indymedia is a collective of
  independent media organizations and hundreds of
  journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate
  coverage.. Civil society organisations like this
  are trying to publicise views independent of
  governments and authorities.

21
Internet in Asia

• The relationship between the growth of the
  Internet and attempts to control the Net reflect
  the democratic potential of the medium.
• In China, online activism have become more
  evident as Internet users express support for
  each other online.
• Falungong Spiritual Movement most prominent
  example illustrating the subversive potential of
  the Internet. E-mail played a central role when
  its members secretly planned and organised a mass
  demonstration in Beijing in April 1999.

22
Subversive Role of the Internet

• An example of the politically subversive role of
  the Internet comes from Indonesia. The fall of
  Suhartos New Order regime was said to the backed
  up by an e-mail list providing the intellectual
  elite of Indonesia with the right ammunition to
  counter the propaganda machine of Suharto.
• TheApakabar list, moderated by an American from
  Maryland in the US played a crucial role in the
  fall of the regime (Harsono, 1996 Sen and Hill
  2000). From Digitisation and its Asian
  Discontents The Internet, Politics and Hacking
  in China and Indonesia. By Joen De Kloet. Firsty
  Monday.
• Http//www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue7_9/Kloet/

23
Implications of Sept 11

• According Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) China
  has the biggest number of Internet-users in
  prison, a total of 48 as of Jan 2004 and nine in
  Vietnam.
• RSF also asserts that since Sept 11, the threat
  of terrorism has been used as justification in
  many countries to increase surveillance on the
  Internet.
• Following Bali bombing Indonesian government
  passed anti-terrorism laws, increasing police
  powers and allowing detention without trial.(Asia
  Rights (1) July 2004).

24
Where the Internet has made a difference

• In Serbia, the chief democratic radio station
  simply shifted online through servers based in
  the Netherlands when then-President Slobodan
  Milosevic shut down domestic transmissions during
  his final months in power in autumn 2000.
• The Burmese expatriate opposition operates almost
  entirely online and has begun slowly forcing
  reform in that country's autocracy.
• In many former USSR-controlled states the
  Internet was used to keep the global community
  informed