Digital Activism and Feedback-Democracy

In a key insight about the changing nature of the media, Marshall McLuhan wrote that the rise of communications enabled by electricity was not just a technological revolution, but had “organic character.” (McLuhan, Understanding Media, Chapter 25)

Democracy... Feedback (poster by Manuel Casal Lodeiro)

The networks out of nearly instantaneous communication, the reduction of time and space by electrical pulses, was akin to how the central nervous system works, where every element connected to any other one, in fact subverting the structures of command and power in existence in a pre-electrical social order. The Internet is the latest development towards McLuhan’s vision of a deconstruction of industrial age hierarchy.

Most technologies developed and used by humans are political in nature. They change the way humans interact and the values of a society. Communications is no exception; moreover, it is an intrinsically political set of technologies. In the sense of the “social determination” of technology, communication technologies are devoid of value or political aims. It is a society, and its political bodies, that define how to shape a particular technology and how to use it.

The single biggest impact of the Internet is that it democratized the tools of communication. Pundits expect that the incremental use of open communication technologies by citizens will bring about an augmented democracy and increased participation. Transparency and accountability will be a reality. It should be very difficult to conceal information or prevent access to it, or restrain its influence in future events. A new democratic system of feedback will emerge from the ideas of modern democracy.

Feedback-democracy is a construct where the political system receives nearly instantaneous messages (and noise), to govern the course and ascertain the political, social and economic pulse of the nation. Such may be the political impact of reduced friction in communications, felt in the upper tiers of government as well as in segregated groups.  Real time policy making, but also surveillance and state control.  The post-modern panopticum.  Digital activist are here in the ”control” part of the equation.

Manuel Castells writes about the social impact of the Information Revolution, in special in terms of the political significance: “Differential timing in access to the power of technology for people, countries, and regions is a critical source on inequality in our society.” (Castells, The Rise of the Network Society) Access means the possibility to use technology to effect change, that is, to reach and mantain political power.  To organize and protest, to be an activist and a reactionary, in real-time and not post-mortem.

However, not long ago in a New Yorker article, a skeptic Malcolm Gladwell declared that, “the revolution will not be tweeted”, to dismiss the political impact of digital activists. On December 9, 2010, El País opens an article about the WikiLeaks case with the statement: “The Internet stages a revolution,” and goes on to describe the concerted actions and attacks of hackers and digital activists against corporate and government websites. La Razón, a daily in Mexico City asks preemptively “Cyber-activism or Cyber-war?”

Politicians routinely declare digital activism a meaningless “fad” or a practice with the force to effect political change. (see my Post) This is a sign that it is a very new and little understood phenomenon. Research on digital activism deals today with the study of cases, and there are cases to support either position. It is hard to measure what aggregate impact digital activism has had so far, and little quantitative research is available. (see: Mary Joyce, Digital Activism Decoded)

Mary Joyce has identified three different positions, and research methods, towards digital activism. The first group is the “Optimists” represented by writer and NYU scholar Clay Shirky and Harvard’s Law School Yochai Benkler. Optimists are strong believers in the power of communications technology and social networks to effect change in social and political structures.

On the other side of the debate are the “Pessimists”. The writer and blogger Evgeny Morozov, and of late best-seller author Gladwell, best represent this group. Pessimists think that the new technology has an impact, but rather a negative, or at least a distorted one, as Morozov explains in his “Google Doctrine: the fervent conviction that given enough gadgets, connectivity and foreign funding, dictatorships are doomed.” (in his upcoming book NetDilusion) Totalitarian governments have much more powerful tools of control and repression in the new technology, and have no misgivings about using them. The positive representation of digital activism is overblown.

Somewhere in the middle of the debate are the “Persistents.” (Joyce) Here the idea is that digital activism is not something that exists by itself, but rather a new tool at the disposal of traditional activists. Certain groups choose to use digital technologies to further their political agenda, but the tool in itself is only a means to an end. No movement is only digital activism, there is always some kind of organization behind, be it a social movement or a government. Persistents “see neither salvation nor damnation in digital technology, but instead believe that little will change and previous political power distributions will “persist”.” (Joyce) Moreover, they may be optimists or pessimists.

Digital Activism, and its corollary, feedback-democracy, is a field where much research and much writing will be done in the coming years.  It is not clear if it will be a force for good or a new form of control and repression. Digital activists are creating quite a stir in the last weeks, surrounding the Wikileaks case, the DOS documents and the hacktivism that ensued.

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