The Internet: Good for Democracy?

Despite theoretical deliberations, there is no contradiction between the street and cyberspace.
- Geert Lovink and Florin Schneider

No one was killed in The Battle for Seattle. Despite the tanks, projectiles, troops, OC spray, CS gas, broken glass, fires blazing, batons striking, no one died. People cried, bled, lost teeth, got their noses crushed inward, got burned, got beat, got knocked back, and got arrested. And everybody saw it. It was all recorded by cameras and camcorders. And because of what happened, the head of the police force resigned, and the event the thousands of demonstrators disapproved of, a new round of worldwide trade talks, couldn’t proceed. Their mission was accomplished.

The demonstration in the streets was a nationally organized event, not by word of mouth, but by new technological tools like the internet and cellular phones. Outside the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference of 1999 on November 30th, protesters stood firm behind the idea that multilateral trade policies favoring global corporations were unacceptable, telling the WTO, a group of government representatives who set international rules regarding trade and tariffs, that they were not welcome. The National Guard had to be called in, a curfew enforced and to the euphoria of the rioters, the trade talks were cancelled and had to be postponed to a future date. The internet played an important role for organizations like the Sierra Club, Corporate Watch, Direct Action Network, and the steelworkers union which used the information superhighway to create a united front against the WTO’s free market liberalization agenda. “Websites offered resources to those planning to attend, from maps of Seattle to legal advice, while email and listervs were used to coordinate, inform, organize and train. The Ruckus Society used the Net to provide manuals and organize action camps for training in non-violent civil disobedience, from urban abseiling to crafting soundbites,” writes Graham Meikle, lecturer on Media and Communication at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia in his book entitled FutureActive, Media Activism and the Internet.

At least in this example, the internet can foster a greater involvement in the political process, but overall, is the internet really delivering on its early hype of being a revolutionary tool for increasing the participation of the average individual in the democratic process?
There is no doubt that the internet has the potential to become the most effective tool in political participation ever. The speed at which information travels, and the input that one person can have on many is unparalleled. At the beginning of its ascension, the internet was described as “the early, turbulent days of a revolution as significant as any other in human history” and predicted further to “surpass all previous revolutions – the printing press, the telephone, the television, and the computer – in its impact on economic and social life” (Davis 9). Nothing in the past can compare to YouTube (a Google website that allows users to post video clips online) or Blogging, where one can post an original thought or idea and have thousands of people from across the world chime in and share in the experience. But is it really working to get people involved in the political system?

There are countless case studies like the WTO meeting in Seattle, where the internet has organized protests for a cause, when haste is needed or not. Examples such as during Christmas of 1998, where expatriate Eric Lee, came across a story on BBC about a Chinese union organizer who faced a treason trial and a likely death penalty for organizing protests by workers who’d lost their jobs. Lee sent out a bulk e-mail to all of the addresses on his LabourStart list, a news and resources website for trade unionists. Lee recalled that within minutes he received feedback from a South African labor group, a protest message, and then a message from a group of activists in Sheffield who said they had contacted their representative in Parliament. Then the coordinator of Austrian LabourNet translated his message into German and forwarded the message to their trade union contacts, and sent a faxed protest to the Chinese embassy in Vienna. The chain continued until it reached half a dozen Chinese embassies. And this was on Christmas, when human rights and labor rights activists were off on holiday leave. The Chinese unionist was sentenced to ten years in jail. Lee stresses that this mini-network he created within hours may have had no effect, but just the sheer passage of information is truly stunning.
The internet is not all about politics however. Everything nowadays is on the Internet: entertainment sites, sports sites, online shopping sites, health information sites, the latest news on your favorite celebrity, and of course, what makes up a huge bulk, pornography. “It does not necessarily follow that making information more readily available to more people and allowing the individual more control over that information produces well-informed a politically engaged citizens,” writes Richard Davis, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, in his book The Web of Politics. “Even among those who go online, many will choose to do so for other purposes than politics. For them, the Internet has work functions, personal communication advantages, or mere entertainment value, but it is not a tool for political participation.”

The internet, according to Davis, has its negative effects as well, even socially. “A major social cost of the Internet is the growing tendency toward social isolation. The Internet may connect us virtually with the far reaches of the globe, but leave us with little real contact with those who live next door.” He then quotes Stephen Doheny-Farina, a mass media professor at Clarkson University, and author of many works that study the relationship between geophysical communities and computer technology, as saying pertinently, the “net seduces us and further removes us from our localities.” Richard even continues to argue that the Net could be perceived as better than the real world because of the ability to control it by a user. Bill Mitchell, Editor of Poynter Online, an online journalism site, agrees. “There is an anti-social aspect to the internet, the emergence of digital media probably encourages people to spend time behind the keyboard, which we may have ordinarily spent debating with people, going to meetings, or holding demonstrations.” He also sees the internet’s sheer power as an educator also. “You have at your fingertip information and news from a much wider array of sources. It makes so much useful information available to people that it at least has the potential to help democracy.”

But the internet is not the only thing that can isolate someone socially. The television is always there to pick up what attention the internet has not taken. Perhaps both have led to the dulling of social activism from the masses but the potential of the internet to educate the masses cannot be overlooked. Its potential as a great equalizer in society alone is something to be excited about. “No computer is ‘above’ any other… neither IBM nor the White House has any special advantage over a 15-year-old clever enough to set up his own connection. Class, hierarchy, and even physical location count for nothing on the Internet” (Davis, 21).
So it comes down to the user, and his ambitions, to choose. Like it has always been. You choose to get involved, or you don’t. The only difference is there is more to choose from. There is more political information, and there are more distractions. You have your congressional representative’s inbox at the tip of your finger, or the trigger of a joystick in a game of combat jet fighting with three guys from Tokyo. Which are you going to choose?

Another argument is that if you have a computer hooked up with the internet, what do you need to protest for? You’re probably wealthier than the norm, and don’t have any immediate concern to criticize the system. University of Miami Journalism Professor Michael Salwen comments: “Blogs, news, and the exchange of information are beneficial. The only problem is that those without internet access are not part of the process, and these people come disproportionately from the lower classes.” It is true though, that with the decline in the cost of computers and internet access, many more first-world inhabitants have access to the internet whether it is at home, at a library, or at work, than ever before.

“With the exception of the already politically interested, most people will not normally gravitate to political information, even if it is readily available. The majority of adult Americans do not watch national network television news regularly. More than four in 10 adults do not read a newspaper daily” (Davis, 24). Other factors of life are just more important: obtaining an income in an ever more competitive world, raising a family, securing a modest standard of living.
One of the most important jumps that the internet has created is the ability for the user to become a participant in the media, as opposed to just a member of an audience. The newspaper, radio, television, and cable technologies did not allow for user involvement, and if it did, it was never as fast as the Internet can possibly be, which is instantaneous. It is also another way for traditional news media to be transported.

The WTO was unable to hold their trade talks in Seattle on N30, because of the outcry from the public in Seattle over the WTO’s globalization practices, the WTO has not held another Ministerial Conference within our borders. The 5th Ministerial Conference held in 2005 had a riot, and actually had a death. The self-inflicted stabbing of Kun Hai Lee, who was a Korean farmer, was performed to represent how “the WTO kills farmers”. Those were his last words before he proceeded to slash himself to death with a blade.

The internet is a tool. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but it seems like a majority believe that the latter vastly outweighs the former. The internet gives more voices and more information to more people. Like all media, there are other things you can do with it than stay informed and active. With the newspaper you can read the comics and do the word searches, with magazines, you don’t need to pick up the political journals, rather the Cosmopolitan, or the Penthouse, with the radio, you can listen to sports, comedy, instead of NPR, and with television you can watch just about anything, instead of C-SPAN. The internet is no different, only you have more choices.

And that can be a problem for most humans who would rather stay ignorant and happy on the cooking or home gardening network rather than up to date on the latest civil right to be eliminated, or the latest country we’ve told what to do. But that’s just it, it’s a human problem. But the beautiful thing about a democracy is you have the choice whether to be involved, or not. You cannot force someone to vote, pay attention, or care about anything. The internet gives you more options, more outlets of communication, more information and more things to keep your mind occupied, but it’s up to the human to make the decision of what he or she will do. There will be those who battle the police and those who watch it on TV whether you have the net or not, it’s just now, more people know about it. Maybe more people will care that way, maybe not, it’s up to us.

Works Cited:

1. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet, Graham Meikle, 2002. Routledge, Great Britain.
2. The Web of Politics: The Internet’s Impact on the American Political System, Richard Davis, 1999. Oxford UP, New York.