Social Media, Governance, and Political Reform

Over the past few years, many technophiles, activists, and political observers have been lauding the potential of social media platforms such as Facebook, SMS, Twitter, and YouTube to improve governance and foment political change. To date, we possess largely anecdotal data on the impact of new media and technologies on political reform. For example, many argue that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have played critical roles in organizing the recent protests in Egypt, Iran, Moldova, and Tunisia. Moreover, anecdotal evidence suggests that cell phone technologies can play an instrumental role in revealing electoral fraud by improving election monitoring and reporting techniques. Yet, in spite of the anecdotal evidence that supports these developments and their use in specific instances, there is a dearth of empirical analysis on the subject. We lack studies that trace the causal impact of these technologies on political reform and improved governance. As a result, a number of open questions remain. Some areas that mandate more serious inquiry are the following:

• Evidence of Political Change. While we know that social media can play an important role in publicizing political activities such as protests, do we have evidence that such actions have led to substantive political change? Is it possible to develop a set of indicators to more effectively gauge the impact of new technologies and media on questions of political change?
• Technology and Governance. That social media can help coordinate large and discrete activities, such as protests and election observation, is clear. Is there any evidence that these technologies can help to improve day-to-day governance and improve political accountability? Moreover, as a transparency instrument, mobile governance relies on outflows of information from citizens to each other, and to governments and NGOs. Therefore it is important to consider how citizens can be persuaded to adopt such technology. What incentives do citizens have to participate in mobile governance, and how can new technologies be employed to complement advocacy efforts already underway?
• Questioning Access and the Digital Divide. Many social media technologies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, require access to functional Internet connections, however most people in developing countries lack access to such technologies. Rather, the most common technology in developing countries is a basic cell phone. Since the countries with the worst governance tend to be the poorest ones as well, how relevant are these advanced technologies to the people living in the countries with the worst forms of governance?
• Dictators versus Demonstrators. How quickly are regimes opposed to the spread of these technologies learning how to block them and/or employ them to suppress political dissent more effectively? For governance projects, technical questions relating to how data will be managed, and by whom, are worth considering. U.S. policy in this area also seems to work in contradictory ways: while the U.S. State Department has emerged as strong advocate for Internet freedom, the U.S. Department of Defense is building more effective programs to monitor the use of the Internet.
• Substitute versus Complement. Is social media a complement to direct political action or a substitute for it? Does it pose problems to the nature of direct political action today, and if so, how? Are people who use social media for political purposes more likely to take direct action, such as participating in a protest, or are virtual protests becoming substitutes for actual ones?

This issue of Democracy and Society will take a broad and analytical perspective to the impact of social media on political reform and improved governance. We seek to gain leverage not on anecdotal or circumstantial evidence of these impacts, but to demonstrate causal effect. We are also interested in exploring how we can employ such technologies away from large scale and discrete events, such as protests and elections, to more everyday issues of governance. Finally, we are interested in studies that illuminate how we can employ more modest technologies, such as SMS, to improve governance and catalyze political change.

Please email submissions to democracyandsociety [at] gmail [dot ] com. For additional information, please visit www.democracyandsociety.com or contact Deborah Brown or Ayesha Chugh at democracyandsociety [at] gmail [dot ] com.

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Here’s a brief review to ring out the old year.

Top Posts

On Facebook

• Federalism and Democracy Development
• I Can’t Believe these People Govern Us
• Human Rights, Media Manipulation and Technological Attacks
• Diplomacy and Development: Best Friends for Life
• Busted

On the Blog

Returning from last year, Why Do People Protest still lands in the Top 5 posts on the blog.  The other Top 5 posts are:

• The Simpsons Turn 20
• Here’s a Dumb Idea
• The ‘Africa Porn’ Problem
• Event: Emerging Leaders for Democracy

Most Commented

Another of last year’s posts (Obama Needs a Vision Check) continues to be one of the most commented posts.  The others include:

• Freedom of Religion and US Foreign Policy
• I Stand by My Post
• Our Long National Nightmare Is Over
• Economic Success & Regime Change

Thank You

We’d like to say thank you to all of our Fans, Friends and followers, and in particular, to the following for ReTweeting, linking, and generally loving our stuff!

• Gregg Wilhauck at the CIPE Development Blog
• John Brown’s Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review
• Everyone over at The Democratic Piece
• @SMSLegal @pcdnetwork @mmckone @NDItech @penelopeinparis @auerswald @viewfromthecave @USIP @elizabethcutler @demdigest @vargheseanand @amellionaire @Adamdougl @odonnellm @DavidJandura @SwahiliStreet @xrauscher_ @intljurist @Tobias_B @gerardtmccarthy @CIPEGlobal @iapss @msfsinfo @Grieboski @LisaofArabia @Snov @GUInstituteLSGS @electionguide @woodenbeirut @arenda @Tosk59 @GUConflictRes

Happy New Year from all of us at D&S and Georgetown CDACS!

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Image courtesy of worsttech.com

So, in the wake of the most recent WikiLeaks scandal, the diplomatic cabletastrophy, the MasterCard “cyber attacks” and the attack on the Iranian nuclear program lots of new language has been added to the media vocabulary.  Until just a few weeks ago the vast majority of Americans had no clue what a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, nor certainly viewed internet crime as any sort of national security issue.  Now it seems politically motivated cyber attacks are all the rage, and though these are the newest forms of political attacks popularized in news media, they’ve been a popular  weapons against human rights organizations for ages.

Yet, not surprisingly, one rarely if ever hears about cyber attacks on human rights organizations and sources of independent media.  Perhaps at least in part because excluding major efforts of governments and the like, they tend not to actually be that big of a deal.  Contrary to the sea of tweets and TV news stories, cyber attacks, while certainly pretty fierce and frightening displays of political beliefs, tend not to cause earth shattering meltdowns.  As with more traditional political attacks, these recent attacks have had an impressive impact in bringing public attention to a host of differing political ideologies.

If not for sharp manipulation of mainstream media sources, WikiLeaks probably never would’ve stood out among the sea of nerdy political sites.  Whatever the WikiLeaks scandals amount to in history, the organization certainly will have had a profound impact on the US populace and international community in bringing the influence of technology into the public eye.

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Image courtesy of J.Anderson & The Tech Herald

James Glanz & John Markoff’s recent New York Times article on China’s discomfort with the internet is another in the recent string of articles discussing the WikiLeaks scandal and foreign policy.  I have to admit, on reading their article I found myself more than a little tickled at some of the issues brought up.  In light of the scandals, one could certainly argue that the government of China has been rather reasonable in fearing the dangers presented by the internet.  Given my appreciation of democracy as the preferred method of governance, of course I think China would be well served to loosen up, but in my own country the government’s reaction to the diplomatic cabletastrophy has been anything but forgiving.

I’m sure that there will be lots of news in the next few days regarding the accusation of Chinese “cyber attacks” on Google, but the issue I find interesting is one that seemed largely a side note.  On reading the article I was struck by the continued “misunderstanding” regarding China’s interpretation of the relationship between private organizations and the governments they exist in.  Earlier this year drama arose between the governments of China and Norway, over the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.  Along similar lines, in the recent diplomatic cable leak there are claims that Chinese officials put pressure on the United States government to censor Google Earth.

Warnings that the US would be responsible if terrorists used the information presented through Google to attack China, strike me as similar to the issues between China and Norway.  These incidents speak to a strange broader problem in China’s government either honestly or rhetorically failing to understand the separation between government and private institutions. In some ways I suspect WikiLeaks has a great deal more to fear from antagonizing the government of China, even collaterally, than it does the government of the United States.

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Image courtesy of Beehivecity.com

More likely than not if you’re reading this blog and interested in issues of foreign policy you’ve heard about the most recent WikiLeaks controversy.  Regardless of one’s opinion on American foreign policy, and however one may feel about organizations like WikiLeaks, a quarter-million confidential diplomatic cables being publicly released is a pretty big deal.  Judging by the reactions of our administration the “candid” nature of these cables is likely to cause all manner of problems in regard to the country’s current efforts abroad.

More than judging the moral righteousness of the recent leaks or pondering the potential dangers they present to individuals in the field, this most recent WikiLeaks scandal strikes at issues relevant to all Americans.  This leak is an excellent reflection of our growing troubles with domestic privacy and the ability to speak freely. Amusingly, the fact that our government is the victim of this recent espionage has raised some interesting questions regarding the broader issue of the secure nature of communication.  In a way our government seems tragically slow to catch on to the same realities of security the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis.

I understand the importance of being able to have candid communications with Washington, but on a certain level I’m surprised that leaks of this magnitude are still possible.  I find it deeply disturbing that given the issues of domestic spying in recent years and the ongoing difficulties of keeping government secrets secret, our government continues to communicate internally in a fashion that could be so dangerous if exposed.  It seems to me that US citizens caught on much more swiftly than did our government when it comes to issues of insecure communications.  As we personally must grow more and more careful about what is said in public and through private communications like email, it gets much harder to be understanding when government gaffs like this occur.

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The companies’ volunteer founders and operators say that if they could get $30 million in funding they could ramp up their server networks to accommodate millions more users — and effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.

Got it? Give us 30 million and we will end monitoring of the internet over the world!  The technology in question is UltraReach, a type of circumvention software that allows users to evade internet firewalls.  The software works well enough, but the company’s servers keep crashing when too many people use it.  This causes them to limit the amount of people who can use it, and limit the amount of sites users can visit through it.   Diehl seems to agree with the makers of the software that they need more money, and he takes the State Department to task for not spending the money quicker to beef up the servers.

Now I’m not one of the internet skeptics who claim that technology has no effect on the relationship between the state and its people, but Diehl is acting pretty sloppy here. If he wants to jump into the whole internet freedom debate, he should at least do a little homework. If he did, he would know that not to long ago the State Department was embarrassed by pushing a technology into the field to fast. That technology, Haystack, was designed to help dissidents circumvent their government’s censorship. Unfortunately, the rush to get it out meant it was not subjected to the third-party testing that should have been done. It was revealed in September that the program left a “trail of clues” that would allow a government to track whoever is using it. Diehl should know this, it was reported in his own paper. And while I don’t blame him for not wanting to read the Washington Post, I feel he has more of an obligation than the rest of us to.

Now of course, UltraReach is not Haystack, but it is still insufficient for doing what Diehl claims it can do. The reason that Haystack was met with such hype, was that it could do things no other program could. That is, it could hide a user’s identity, and hide the fact that the user was running the software. UltraReach, in comparison, can hide a user’s identity from the government, but the government is able to detect that the program is being used. It isn’t hard to figure out why this leaves some big security holes. This shouldn’t suggest that UltraReach is worthless; it would still make life more difficult for government censors. Still, it’s hard to see how it would “destroy the internet controls” of dictatorships.

Of course there is even another factor that makes Diehl’s push for UltraReach misguided.  Circumvention software works best when it is under the radar.  A program that becomes famous is going to attract a lot of attention, not just from dissidents, but from governments as well.  (Yes censors can use Google too!)  If one piece of software becomes too famous, it will be a lot easier for government programmers to find ways around it.  The optimal scenario would be a large number of low-profile programs proliferating in the target country.   By writing about UltraReach in a well read publication like the Washington Post, Diehl is actually exposing its users to more danger.  By arguing that more money should be spent funding this one company, Diehl is advocating a flawed strategy.  Of course the UltraReach folks might not see it that way, but why would they?   They are programmers, not social scientists, and shouldn’t be considered the authoritative source on how this technology should best be used.

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The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it…we start to read faster and less thoroughly as soon as we go online. Plus, the Internet has a hundred ways of distracting us from our onscreen reading.

This sounds right to me!

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