Net Delusion

In a recent piece in The New Yorker , Malcolm Gladwell questioned whether Twitter and similar technologies will have the political efects that many presume. Now Evgeny Morozov raises the same question in a book-length treatment ( The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom ). According to the Economist reviewer, Morozov questions the claim that Twitter was key in the Iranian uprising during the summer of 2009. At the time, where were only 60 Twitter accounts active in Iran, and once the story of a “Twitter revolution” broke, the Iranian government began to crack down: “Iranians entering the country were . . . looked up on Facebook to see if they had links to any known dissidents.”

Instead of advancing democratic movements, it is possible that the internet can be used for repression. Again from the review:

“authoritarian regimes can use the internet, as well as greater access to other kinds of media, such as television, to their advantage. Allowing East Germans to watch American soap operas on West German television, for example, seems to have acted as a form of pacification that actually reduced people’s interest in politics. Surveys found that East Germans with access to Western television were less likely to express dissatisfaction with the regime. As one East German dissident lamented, ‘the whole people could leave the country and move to the West as a man at 8pm, via television.’

“Mr Morozov catalogues many similar examples of the internet being used with similarly pacifying consequences today, as authoritarian regimes make an implicit deal with their populations: help yourselves to pirated films, silly video clips and online pornography, but stay away from politics. ‘The internet,’ Mr Morozov argues, ‘has provided so many cheap and easily available entertainment fixes to those living under authoritarianism that it has become considerably harder to get people to care about politics at all.’”

The internet can become an instrument of surveillance: “Social networks offer a cheaper and easier way to identify dissidents than other, more traditional forms of surveillance. Despite talk of a “dictator’s dilemma”, censorship technology is sophisticated enough to block politically sensitive material without impeding economic activity, as China’s example shows.” And authoritarian governments can use the web for propaganda purposes, “which is why Hugo Chávez is on Twitter. The web can also be effective in supporting the government line, or at least casting doubt on critics’ position (China has an army of pro-government bloggers). Indeed, under regimes where nobody believes the official media, pro-government propaganda spread via the internet is actually perceived by many to be more credible by comparison.”