MARCH/APRIL 2009

Texting Toward Utopia

Does the Internet spread democracy? Evgeny Morozov

In 1989 Ronald Reagan proclaimed that “The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip”; later, Bill Clinton compared Internet censorship to “trying to nail Jell–O to the wall”; and in 1999 George W. Bush (not John Lennon) asked us to “imagine if the Internet took hold in China. Imagine how freedom would spread.”

Such starry–eyed cyber–optimism suggested a new form of technological determinism according to which the Internet would be the hammer to nail all global problems, from economic development in Africa to threats of transnational terrorism in the Middle East. Even so shrewd an operator as Rupert Murdoch yielded to the digital temptation: “Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere,” he claimed. Soon after, Murdoch bowed down to the Chinese authorities, who threatened his regional satellite TV business in response to this headline–grabbing statement.

Some analysts did not jump on the bandwagon. The restrained tone of one 2003 report stood in marked contrast to prevailing cyber–optimism. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s, “Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule,” warned: “Rather than sounding the death knell for authoritarianism, the global diffusion of the Internet presents both opportunity and challenge for authoritarian regimes.” Surveying diverse regimes from Singapore to Cuba, the report concluded that the political impact of the Internet would vary with a country’s social and economic circumstances, its political culture, and the peculiarities of its national Internet infrastructure.

Book Reviews

A new civil servant: the computer and government mechanization: The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer by Jon Agar. MIT Press, 2003. £32.95 (576 pages) ISBN 0262012022

D. Rutter^a

 

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CIRC 2009: The Chinese Internet and Civil Society: Civic Engagement, Deliberation and Culture May 27-29, 2009

The theme of the 7th Chinese Internet Research Conference, "The Chinese Internet and Civil Society: Civic Engagement, Deliberation and Culture," is designed to bring together scholars and professionals to examine the Chinese Internet from socioeconomic, political and cultural perspectives. While there has been significant research on the political implications of the Internet in China, we have yet to fully understand the changes the Internet is fostering in civil society, or on the intersection between the market and the state, as well as the Internet's cultural implications for identity formation, emergent cultural phenomena and social networking. This conference seeks to explore these uncharted areas through sessions on Public Sphere and Deliberation; Censorship, Surveillance, and the State of the Chinese Internet; Civil Society in China - Challenges and Opportunities; Women and Minorities; Civic Engagement and Participation; Panics, Nationalism; and Grassroots Culture, among others.

On May 29, a small post-conference workshop will concentrate on prominent academics, bloggers and policy analysts on Chinese Perspectives on Internet governance.

China has the largest number of Internet users in the world--300 million, or roughly the population of the United States. China's blossoming online political dialogue, some of which includes the country's political leaders, has prompted questions about whether the Internet could lead to a political revolution. At the same time, however, Beijing continues to employ various forms of online censorship and surveillance. Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, says the Chinese Communist Party seems increasingly inclined to try to use the Internet as a tool to gauge public opinion on local issues. At the same time, he says, it seems bent on strongly policing online dialogue to keep a handle on public opinion.

Qiang says strong Internet voices are emerging in favor of democratic reforms in China. He notes that this strain of opinion can at time conflict with nationalistic voices in the country, such as those that emerged in response to last year's pro-Tibet rallies, which have also been amplified by the Internet. But Qiang says nationalistic and reform-oriented voices also overlap. "The same people who are very nationalistic" on issues like Tibet can be "very vocal to support political reform," he says. Qiang says the "jury is still out" on what China's experience with the Internet says about the medium as a democratizing factor. He stresses, however, that the Internet has proved to be a liberal force for the Chinese society, and could, in the long run, lead to a less repressive government in the country.

Why assume that Chinese Internet users will suddenly demand more political rights, rather than the Friends or Sex in the City lifestyles they observe on the Internet?