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The many faces of (soft) power, democracy and the Internet
Telematics and Informatics 30 (2013) 322–330
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Telematics and Informatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tele
The many faces of (soft) power, democracy and the Internet
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Keywords: Soft power E-democracy Peer-to-peer Internet Censorship
a b s t r a c t Starting from a brief roundup of the correlation between ICTs and politics in Asia, and especially China, this introduction to a special issue on China explores a number of the more political and technological issues related to power and the Internet. It highlights some opportunities and dangers from a democratic technology perspective. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice’’ Deng Xiaoping ‘‘The most basis premises of China’s approach is that reforms must be pragmatic and build on local circumstances’’ Peerenboom (2008: 295) 1. Democracy in Asia The Asian political landscape presents a variety of systems and models ranging from authoritarian ones on one extreme and relatively developed democratic systems on the other (see Held, 1987, 1993 for a theoretical overview; Gunaratne, 2000; Morlino et al., 2011; Rodrik, 2011; or Rondinelli and Heffron, 2007 for an Asian typology). Consequently, policies related to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are invariably among the most politically sensitive in most countries. However, ‘‘with the development of global networks, governments will have to deal with a complex mix of forces representing the state, business, technology and the citizen. . . Needless to say, the new information technology will defy the traditional forms of state control such as direct censorship’’ (Goonasekera and Chun Wah, 2001: XIV). Indrajit Banerjee (2003) is even more outspoken: ‘‘Asia is still discovering the Internet and issues of access, in a larger sense of the term, of censorship and regulation, and de-politicization and self-censorship still restrict the political impact of the Internet in Asia. The relative immaturity of Asian democracies themselves constitutes an important impediment to greater public and political debate, participation and the promotion of civil and political liberties. Notwithstanding these limitations, the Internet has, to a limited extent, provided for an expanded political and public sphere and the voicing of alternative political views. In a context where the mass media has often been strictly controlled by the state, the Internet offers a new channel of communication, a new voice, a new hope for those who have been marginalized and prevented from participating in the political process’’ (Banerjee, 2003: 22). He therefore predicts that ‘‘the Internet will completely break down political control and pose a threat to all authoritarian regimes’’ (Banerjee, 2003: 11). Assessing the arguments and findings of a number of political scientists and Internet researchers he identifies correlations between the Internet and democratisation, and between network connectivity and political freedom. Similar arguments have been developed by, inter alia, Norris (2002, 2010), Shirazi et al. (2010) or UNDP (2004) in general, and Zheng (2007) for China. Put in political terms, this leads to statements like this one by the former US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton: ‘‘We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community’’ (Clinton, 2010).
0736-5853/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2013.04.001
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2. Modernization, the Chinese way Most of these authors, implicitly or explicitly, start from a perspective on the role and place of communication for development or social change that is grounded in the so-called modernization paradigm (Servaes, 1999, 2008). The modernization paradigm has long been avowed on both ends of the ideological spectrum, both by the classic liberal and neo-liberal theorists like Keynes as well as by the classic Marxist thinkers. In this regard, both ideologies have a lot in common. The differences in approach lie on the level of the means, the relative role that is assigned to the market versus the state. But the objective is the same: development on the basis of a Western vision of growth and progress. The obstacles for development are indicated only in the traditional sectors of a society and are initially only attacked with economic means. Where liberals try to achieve development by means of a massive transfer of capital and technology to the so-called Third World, the classic Marxists strive for state intervention, the stimulation of the public sector, and the establishment of the heavy industry as an initial step in the development process – in other words, development according to the Soviet model (Galtung, 1980; Sparks, 2007). Some scholars (Bartolovich and Lazarus, 2007; Chang, 2008) claim that even in Mao’s China this view on development was of great importance. Since the revolution there have been two ideological lines. The first stands for a highly centralized, technocratic guidance of society towards modernization; the second line is based upon the elimination of the so-called Three Great Differences (that is, city versus country, mental versus manual labour, worker versus peasant), a collective functioning on the basis of mass democracy, and self-reliance. These authors state that these lines continue to guide the Chinese development process in apparently ‘non-antagonistic’ contradiction. With Deng Xiaoping’s focus on the four modernizations – agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology – the Western perspective became more explicit as the example. However the management of these modernizations remained largely Chinese: ‘‘An unprecedented partnership between a communist party and capitalist business holds. It remains an uneasy, unstable and unholy alliance, but an alliance nonetheless that, in the short term, has turned more than a century of conventional wisdom on its head. It may have taken decades, but a broad consensus has now developed at the top of the Party, that far from harming socialism, entrepreneurs, properly managed and leashed to the state, are the key to saving it’’ (McGregor, 2011: 197–198; see also Jacques, 2012; Peerenboom, 2008). Song Shi, in this special issue, assesses how the modernization discourse has seeped into the rationale of Chinese civil society organizations and their use of Web2.0 technologies. As is the case for the general modernization dichotomy between ‘developed’ and ‘less developed’ sectors and regions, he finds similar forms of regional inequality in the adoption of Web2.0 style technologies. His findings confirm those by Fulda et al. (2012) who observed an incremental change from government control (guanzhi) to public management (guanli) and to network governance (zhili). 3. Power and its disguises In all societies, power is based on two main fundaments. The very first is the naked ‘‘political power (that) grows out of the barrel of a gun’’, a famous quote attributed to Mao Zedong. No social order can persist without the monopoly of military might that is entrusted to the state. One only has to refer to the past or recent events in Iraq or Afghanistan to find sad examples for such a claim. The second important factor is the consent of the governed. Both elements are needed to achieve a stable social order. No government can survive based on might alone and this is particularly so in democratic societies, where the consent of the governed has to be explicitly given every few years during more or less democratically organised elections. The important question is: how can one achieve such consent? An answer to this question leads to the problem of power and the legitimization of power relationships. Each social order can be characterized by an interrelated division between an (economic) base and an (ideological and symbolic) superstructure. According to Pierre Bourdieu (1979) the dominant classes call upon an ideological and symbolic preponderance not only to maintain their position in the social hierarchy but also to justify it. This system has a ‘symbolic power’ because it is capable of construing reality in a directed manner. Its symbolic power does not lie in the symbolic system itself, but in the social relationships between those who exercise the power and those who are subject to it. Symbolic power functions mainly ‘unconsciously’ as the legitimization criterion for the existing social and economic power relationships and creates ‘myths’ and ‘ways of life’. So, in reality, not only normative, but also and especially power factors play a role in policy and planning, and certainly when it comes to confirming and carrying out policy recommendations (Burawoy, 2012). The traditional interpretation of the power concept refers to material or immaterial perceived possessions in a narrow as well as a broad meaning, that is, a property or possession that is handled by actors in a mainly intentional, direct or indirect manner. Max Weber’s definition which describes power as the capability of one individual or social group to impose its will, despite the objections of others, is often quoted in this context. One can find such a static perception in different functionalist as well as classic-Marxist theories. In such definitions power is one-sidedly situated with the so-called ‘power holders.’ Their position of power rests on a conflict relationship that can only be ‘resolved’ by consensus on one side or by struggle on the other (Servaes, 1981). Critical social-philosophers and post-structuralists have pointed out the limitations of such a power concept. Michel Foucault (1980), Anthony Giddens, and Jürgen Habermas, for example, state that the relationship between power and conflict is
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of an accidental nature. They, nevertheless, do not deny the fact that the exercise of power is an asymmetrical phenomenon but, instead, believe that power is ‘all embracing’ and ‘all mighty’ and has to be coupled with the concept of ‘interest’. Power and conflict often go together, so they argue, but this union is not because one logically implies the other, but because power has to be seen in concert with the pursuit of interest. While power is a characteristic of every form of human interaction, contrapositions of interests are not, meaning that power is a dual concept that can be interpreted in two ways. Looking at power in a static way, there are those who have power and those who endure power. But if interpreted in a dynamic way, one could say that even the powerless exercise power over the powerful. Thus power concerns the possible effectuated and asymmetrically divided ability of one actor (power holder) to put into order, inside a specific interaction system, the alternatives of actions of one or more actors (power subjects). Power centres on the capability to regulate and structure the actions inside asymmetrical relations. In other words, to exercise power is not the same as suppression (Servaes, 1989). Lukes (2005) further distinguishes between three aspects of relational power: it is not only about strategies to change people’s behavior, but also the public, hidden, and invisible faces of structural power. Put in a more straightforward way, the discussion on power and its disguises shows us that the majority has to share a common world view claiming that the current social order is the best, the only one possible, or at least, the lesser of evils. Such a worldview depends to a large extent on information and knowledge, which may or may not contradict the existing predominant world view. A small amount of dissonant information is not a problem as such dissonance can be explained away. A large amount of dissonance, however, may invariably lead to a questioning of the status quo. In addition, ‘‘Two great power shifts are occurring in this century: a power transition among states and a power diffusion for the world of nationstates and the world of non-state actors’’ (Nye, 2011: xv). 4. Power: hard, soft, partial or smart? The former dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Joseph Nye (1990), introduced the concept of soft power in 1990. In Nye (2004), he argued that culture, political values and foreign policies have become new dimensions for international relations which are not directly dependent on the hard power of economics and military might. Soft power exercises influence indirectly by creating a certain climate, which may result in changes in influence over diplomatic decisions by the public opinion rather than by political elites only. For countries with differences in political, economic and cultural systems, the best way to influence public opinion is to increase mutual understanding and respect of differences through positive media messages, and to encourage more cultural, educational and business exchange between countries (Altinay, 2011; Cohen, 2011; Naim, 2013; Semetko et al., 2011). Nye argues that public diplomacy is an important tool in the arsenal of soft power, and that, in a certain sense, soft power can only be achieved through public diplomacy (Nye, 2008: 95). Obviously in unison with the US State Department he later introduced the concept of ‘smart power’: ‘‘Smart power is the combination of the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction’’ (Nye, 2011: xiii). National images abroad and at home are widely regarded as a state’s intangible soft-power resource. While, externally, becoming essential elements of a state’s strategic asset, they, internally, contribute to political capital for both democratic systems and authoritarian regimes alike. The potential for the news media to influence public opinion development and the constraints under which news organizations operate should be integrated into the discussion of theory and practice of public diplomacy and international relations between these societies. International relations and foreign policy are influenced by public opinion, and public opinion may be influenced by information in the media (Altinay, 2011; Hayden, 2012; Wang and Schoemaker, 2011). 5. Public diplomacy as soft power The term public diplomacy was coined in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (Wolper, 1991). His concept was summarized in an early Murrow Center brochure: ‘‘Public diplomacy. . . deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications.’’ (Cull, 2009a,b: 19 – also quoted by Xiong, 2013). As a successful case in US–China public diplomacy, the US–China Internet Industry Forum (UCIIF) proves that, in neopolitics there exists a rule from coexistence, complementation to convergence and innovation, which has a close relationship with its diplomatic operations (Xiong, 2013). This case also provides important inspiration for the future of US–China relations. It will have an influence over diplomatic decisions, which were usually decided by political elites (Deutsch, 1966). The initial concept of public diplomacy refers to state-driven activities such as scholarly exchanges, cultural events, and state-supported broadcasting to foreign audiences. Over the past decade, however, a new public diplomacy perspective has developed which refers to activities that are beyond state actors. It has become a more fluid concept in the context of the new media and Internet environment. Nevertheless, it remains universally acknowledged that public diplomacy is targeted at the foreign public that bear directly on another government’s foreign policy decisions, performed by both government and private individuals and groups,
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through influencing directly and indirectly those public attitudes and opinions; and its ultimate purpose is to promote the national interest (Anneier and Lorentz, 2012; Fulda et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2012; Li, 2011; Semetko et al., 2011; Sharma, 2009; Wang, 2011). At present, the public diplomacy tools adopted by both China and the US are varied (Hu, 2011; Li, 2011; Nathan, 2011; Servaes, 2012b; Tang and Wang, 2003; Tang, 2011). However, according to Xiong (2013), in this special issue, China has two disadvantages: the first is these public diplomacy tools are trying to win a foreign public’s appreciation, but are not open to discussion; the second is that most tools’ policy effects are difficult to control or evaluate. Brzezinski (2012) and Shambaugh (2013) seem to share this view. Shambaugh observes that China’s global presence is more broad than deep, and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power – what he terms a ‘partial power’. Brzezinski argues that the world after 2025 will not be Chinese, but more chaotic: ‘‘The strategic complexities of the world in the twenty-first century – resulting from the rise of a politically self-assertive global population and from the dispersal of global power – make such supremacy unattainable’’ (Brzezinski, 2012: 119–120). Jacques (2012: 609–610) concludes that, for the time being, China gets very little soft power in the West, for mainly three reasons: (1) China continues to be viewed as ‘‘still a relatively poor developing country’’, (2) ‘‘the absence of a multi-party democracy’’, and (3) at least until recently, China could not enjoy the ‘appeal’ that Western nations, especially the US, had in the rest of the world: cultural capital and ‘national brands’ such as Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Broadway, great sporting events, mega-stars and celebrities. However, as has been pointed out in some of the articles in a special issue on US-Chinese Mass Communication and Public Diplomacy (Servaes, 2012a), the staging of the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, the opening of Confucius Institutes, the emerging interest in learning Mandarin, and the growing popularity of CCTV programs and blockbuster movies may have triggered the start of a change in this regard (see also Kurlantzick, 2007 and Wang, 2011). 6. Internet freedoms Probably inspired by US President Franklin Roosevelt’s proclamation on 6 January 1941 of the four fundamental freedoms that people ‘‘everywhere in the world’’ ought to enjoy – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear, Hillary Clinton delivered a major foreign policy address on Internet Freedom in January 2010 in which she outlined Five Key Freedoms of the Internet Age: Freedom of Speech: blogs, emails, text messages have opened up new forums for the exchange of ideas. Freedom of Worship: the Internet enhances people’s ability to worship as they see fit. Freedom from Want: online connections expand people’s knowledge and economic opportunities including locating new markets. Freedom from Fear: those who disrupt the free flow of information threaten individual liberties and the world’s economy and civil society. Freedom to Connect: connecting with others near and far offers unprecedented opportunities for human cooperation. Yuezhi Zhao (2008) vividly recalls the tumultuous time, between 1975 and 1980, that the ‘four great freedoms’ (sida ziyou), which were the cornerstones of the Chinese Constitution of 1975, were deleted in 1980. It meant the end of an era for cultural and political freedoms, but it ‘‘became China’s entrance ticket to the world system’’ (Zhao, 2008: 19). Shirazi et al. (2010) investigated the relationship between the global expansion of ICT and the level of democracy within nations. They analyzed archival data on 133 countries from 1995 to 2003, which was the period-of-time of explosive ICT expansion. Some important findings of their study are: (a) there is a growing digital divide in democratic freedoms among countries; (b) in spite of rapid ICT expansion in some countries, Internet filtering is having a significant impact on democratic freedoms: ‘‘It is important to note that most of the countries located in the low performers category, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Tunisia and China, impose heavy and systematic censorship on Internet and other ICT media (. . .). In addition, there are a number of countries whose ICT infrastructures are highly developed but rank below the world average on democratic freedoms. These countries include some of the Middle East countries of the Persian Gulf region such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates as well as Singapore in Asia.’’ (Shirazi et al., 2010: 27). Guangchao Charles Feng provides us with a detailed assessment of China’s Internet censorship. He argues, as do many others (see e.g., Barme, 2013; Pang, 2012; Sun, 2010; Qiu, 2009), that the Chinese government is torn between its massive drive for marketization and the need to curb cyber dissidence. He investigates how the Chinese state censors the Internet by tracing the trajectory of mechanisms to block websites non grata. Results show that Chinese government’s Internet control methods are diverse with systematic collaborations from local authorities at various administrative levels. He also found evidence that the government has customized blocking strategies for what it considers to be important websites. The efficacy of China’s Internet censorship system is being questioned. ‘‘While state censors were quick to block undesirable information from the Internet, netizens were just as fast in getting around the blocks to publicize their causes and protests’’ (Barme, 2013: 129). As a result, some authors (see Song Shi’s contribution or Chin-fu Hung, 2012) remain rather optimistic: ‘‘The Internet is facilitating political liberalization in Chinese society. The mushrooming online discussion forums and blogosphere have created and nourished a ‘virtual’ space for Chinese civil society to emerge. Providing a platform for the public to express opinions and discuss (current) affairs, the cyber community has not only pushed for associative and communi-
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cative freedoms, but has also catalyzed greater changes towards a new chapter for China’s state-society relations in the Internet age’’ (Hung, 2012: 168). However, according to the 2013 report on surveillance of Reporters Without Borders (2013), there is a growing trend for regimes – including China – who are trying to control news and information to do it subtly – not with big blocks on content, but refined surveillance on targets who are often unaware of it. And, the report continues, ‘‘democratic countries seem increasingly ready to yield to the siren song of the need for surveillance and cyber-security at any cost. This is evident from all the potentially repressive legislation that is being adopted or proposed, . . . The United States . . . Britain . . . the Netherlands would all sacrifice online freedom of expression to combatting cyber-crime. If governments that traditionally respected human rights adopt this kind of repressive legislation, it will provide the leaders of authoritarian countries with arguments to use against the critics of their own legislative arsenals’’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2013: 4). Which reminds us of the more general caution made by Peerenboom: ‘‘The proliferation of non-liberal democracies and soft-authoritarian regimes has blurred the lines between democracy and authoritarianism. Rather than simply classifying regimes as democratic or authoritarian, and then turning a blind eye to what goes on in democracies while shining a floodlight on every shortcoming in authoritarian states, we need to examine how all states actually operate, to hold all states equally accountable, and to avoid painting all authoritarian regimes with the same broad brush.’’ (Peerenboom, 2008: 295) 7. Power and e-democracy Is China’s Internet policy a force for democratization? The Economist does not believe so: ‘‘Not only has Chinese authoritarian rule survived the Internet, but the state has shown great skill in bending the technology to its own purposes, enabling it to exercise better control of its own society and setting an example for other repressive regimes’’ (The Economist, 5 April 2013). They call it ‘‘adaptive authoritarianism’’. But, put in a more general way: does the increasing usage of online political forums lead to a more deliberative democracy anywhere? Kies (2010) attempts to answer this question by presenting the evolution of the public spaces in a historical perspective, by defining and operationalizing the deliberative criteria of democracy, and by measuring and evaluating the impact of virtualization of the political debates under these perspectives. He looks at the extent to which different categories of the population debate online, at the categories of actors hosting online political forums, and assesses the quality of the online political debates in different contexts. His work aims to provide a more balanced evaluation of the impact of virtualization of the political debates and to enrich the evolving deliberative theory with new findings. This reasoning leads to a consideration of the importance of information and knowledge in the democratic process (Servaes, 1998, 2005a,b). Our current democratic societies are characterised by a plurality of competing power centres, and by a plurality of information sources (Hacker and Van Dijk, 2001; Hepp et al., 2008; Poullet, 1998; Slevin, 2000). This balance is theoretically and practically guaranteed by the freedom of the press. However, critical scholars such as Herman and Chomsky (2002) have argued that the freedom of the press is the freedom of those who own one, and that hence we do live, to a great extent, in an era of ‘manufactured consent’. Extending the metaphor used by The Economist to describe the situation of the Internet in China, one could argue that while most Chinese know that they are communicating in a ‘giant cage’, most Westerners do not seem to realize that they do so in a ‘golden cage’. Andrea Ricci (2003), building on the Italian political scientist Sartori, reminds us that the sheer size of contemporary political issues makes it impossible to follow the model of ancient Greece. Indeed, since the Greek Forum, it has not been possible to implement many-to-many dialogue on such a grand scale. The problems are too complex, and often out of the community’s reach, out of the community’s sight: ‘‘The community itself does not succeed in relating with its parts; it’s simply incapable of perceiving itself; it’s therefore an illusion to achieve, electronically, direct relationships between all the members of our (contemporary) communities. The public debate that would result from this would be partial, amputated, and sense of direct relationship between all the members of the demos would simply vanish. At the same time, with this type of direct e-democracy, a large, non-expert audience (always a sub-set of the universe of those having the right to choose), would be called to decide on urgent, serious and even dangerous matters without any form of preparation.’’ (Ricci, 2003: 145). After an in-depth ten-year long assessment of political party websites, Ricci arrives at the rather sobering conclusion that the relevance of party websites ‘‘as a source of political information should be weighted against the role that TV continues to play. Usability is poor, the audience remains secondary and not necessarily so influential (at least to change the course of elections)’’ (Ricci, 2013: 258–9; see also Holmes, 1997; Jones, 1995; Smith and Kollock, 1999). 8. State-Media In line with the above observations about the Chinese Internet policies and the ‘non-antagonistic’ party-business relationships, Minghua Xu, in this special issue, while comparing two important market-oriented television policies after China’s accession into WTO, finds that the effectiveness of Chinese state’s control power has not been weakened but strengthened with its adoption of market-oriented reform in the post-WTO period. Under such circumstances, the future of Chinese television is less likely to evolve into a free competition mechanism, but more likely into a pattern in which the state-owned media capitals achieve rapid growth and dominance through the process of market-oriented reform, and private and foreign ones have to choose for collaboration or even dependence upon the former. Others have arrived at similar conclusions; see, e.g., Curtin (2012) and Zhao (2008).
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Hanlung Fu and David Atkin compare the strategies behind the quest for national DTV standards by retracing the key policy initiatives in China and the US. Their analysis suggests that protectionist impulses shaping distinct standards for the US, China, and other regions dampen prospects for a global standard in DTV. However, the US has been more successful at maintaining the kind of balance between industry and governmental policy that is critical to maintain technological innovation and a competitive marketplace (see also the special issue of Telecommunications Policy, edited by Xia, 2012). Jia Lu and Ian Weber explore the relations between technology adoption, content consumption, and modern communities in Chinese television. The results indicate that the space-biased feature of television is enhanced by a combination of spacebiased technologies and ritualized contents (i.e., drama and popular entertainment). Meanwhile, the over-emphasized space-biased feature is counterbalanced by a combination of time-biased technologies and instrumental contents (i.e., knowledge/information programs). Of more importance, the study supports three development trajectories of modern communities and media: (1) the larger scale the community has, the more the community relies on media to organize and coordinate; (2) the larger scale the community has, the less the community is tied to the traditional sources; and (3) the larger scale the community has, the less the community has shared cultural practices. See also the interesting study by Wallis (2013) on young migrant women and their mobile phones; and Sun’s (2010) field study of Internet cafes. 9. The potential of the Internet Patterns of access to information have changed in the last decade with dramatic improvements in some areas and new information gaps opening up in others (Iden and Methlie, 2012). The 2003 Digital Review of Asia Pacific (Saik Yoon, 2003) highlights many ways in which information is transmitted and made available within countries, between countries and to broader publics. Nevertheless it does not always adequately deal with the rapidly changing nature of the information environments in which governments, institutions and ordinary people make their economic, social and political decisions, particularly as new information gaps threaten to further marginalise the poor (Dai, 2003; Muller, 2004; Poullet, 1998). Much is being written about phishing, malware and cyber attacks and with good reason as these attacks are escalating. However, less attention is paid to the big business monopolies that are taking over the Internet. According to The Economist of 23 March 2013, China is ahead of the USA or other Western countries in the e-commerce market. One giant firm dominates the market: Alibaba, by some measures already the world’s largest e-commerce company. ‘‘Alibaba thus sits at the heart of ‘bamboo capitalism’—the sprawling tangle of private-sector firms that are more efficient than China’s state-owned enterprises’’ (The Economist, 2013a). Consumers seem to be less concerned as long as they do not have to pay for their services. Ads pay for the Internet, or at least for what most of us do online. Search, social networking, news, e-mail: if you did not pay for that, an ad did. And online, ads are not going anywhere but up. Hence, the potential for subtle and not so subtle control, for gross invasion of privacy, is very real. The very weapon against such control, i.e., encryption, creates as many problems as it solves, because it paradoxically allows certain forces to further elude the law. In general, one could say that if destructive and authoritarian/totalitarian political forces would again gain the ascendancy, their toolbox would be dramatically enhanced. However, at least according to some (Bauwens, 2005; Morozov, 2011), so would be the possibilities of the opposition. While cyberspace does not directly lead to democracy, it offers lots of possibilities of conducting resistance, and it dramatically ‘raises the stakes’ of the political game. Networks are increasingly important in this information age; hence the importance of network analysis and, what Boulding (1989) calls, ‘‘integrative power’’: empathy, trust and social intelligence as the more important components to achieve results. The impact of new ICTs on civil society, participatory democracy and citizenship is of immense contemporary concern. This impact is usually associated with the demand of universal access. But universal access/service alone does not suffice. The way Stephen Coleman puts it: ‘‘If citizenship requires universal access, democracy needs trustworthy channels of information and deliberation if it is to prosper’’ (2001: 124). In other words, modern citizenship needs the demand for and provision of information in order to develop the proper rights and responsibilities in the conditions and complexities of a Knowledge Society (Mansell and When, 1998; Mattelart, 2001; Servaes, 2005a; Webster, 1995). It is in this context that the Internet may have the potential to change the rules of the game. The Internet makes it possible potentially to reach large numbers of people, for what is, compared to traditional mass media, a marginal investment. This fact raises the number of people able to broadcast a message. What the Internet does on the costing side is to lower the transactional costs of doing business (and this includes political busy-ness), and of organising. It may be said that the Internet is, and could increasingly become, a major tool for the self-organising of social groups. Combine both the hypothesis of cheaper information diffusion and self-organising and you get the effect of diffusing ‘information power’ and hence ‘power’ itself, to a much larger number of actors. This could re-balance power relationships in the public sphere, but may perhaps lead, over a certain time, to another kind of society—a move away from mass society, towards a more localised kind of networked society, based on the co-existence of varied subcultures (Van Dijk, 2012). See also Jack Qui’s (2009) interesting analysis of the working-class network society in urban China. Another important innovation of the Internet is the collective discussion that it enables. True, most newsgroups and blogs are of a deplorable quality, but their existence is significant. With more experience and better software, these tools may be adjunct to democratic processes, for example in the information gathering phases. Used intelligently, certain search facilities and computer conferencing software has positive potential. But even used spontaneously as it is now, it is not without effects on the political process. Again the reason is that such uncensored forums do create uncontrolled information flows that
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cannot be controlled by the mass media and the ‘powers that be’. Therefore, the Internet could be viewed as a social laboratory for experimenting with new ways of developing self-government for social groups using the Internet, as advocated by the movement for a creative commons. Therefore, Michel Bauwens (2005) envisions a new template of human relationships in the future: ‘‘Peer to peer is a specific form of a network, which lacks a centralized hierarchy, and in which the various nodes can take up any role depending on its capabilities and needs. Peer to peer is an ‘egalitarian’ network if you like, a form of ‘distributive and cooperative intelligence’’’. 10. By way of conclusion Opportunities must be taken, else they disappear and their vacuum is filled by negative alternatives. A properly defined democratic technology movement could actively develop democracy-enhancing tools (see, e.g., MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; Sclove, 1995, 2010; Servaes, 2005a, 2013). It would actively fight to broaden the benefits of technology to all potential have-nots. It would actively fight to preserve hard-won democratic freedoms, in this new dimension of life. China seems to be one of the laboratories where this experimenting takes places. So far, obviously with rather mixed results – sometimes liberating, most often repressive from a social justice perspective (Hamelink, 1999; Schlosberg, 2013; Wronka, 2008; Zheng, 2007). Whatever the outcomes, we hope that the articles in this special issue offer some food for thought in the search for realistic alternatives. References Altinay, H., 2011. Global Civics. Responsibilities and Rights in an Interdependent World. The Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC. Anneier, Helmut K., Lorentz, Bernhard, 2012. Bridging the Turst Divide – Cultural Diplomacy And Fostering Understanding between China and the West. Stiftung Mercator, Essen. Banerjee, I. (Ed.), 2003. Rhetoric and Reality. The Internet Challenge for Democracy in Asia. Eastern Universities Press, Singapore. Barme, G. (Ed.), 2013. China Story Yearbook 2012. Red Rising Red Eclipse. Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University, Canberra. Available from:. Bartolovich, C., Lazarus, N. (Eds.), 2007. Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies. Peking University Press, Peking. Bauwens, M., 2005. Peer to peer and human evolution. On ‘‘the P2P Relational Dynamic’’ as the Premise of the Next Civilizational Stage. Foundation for P2P Alternatives, ChiangMai. Available from: . Lukes, Steven, 2005. Power: A Radical View. Palgrave Macmillan, London.
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Norris, Pippa, 2002. Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Norris, Pippa (Ed.), 2010. Public Sentinel. News Media and Governance Reform. World Bank, Washington, DC. Nye, Joseph S., 1990. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Basic Books, New York. Nye, Joseph S., 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in International Relations. Public Affairs Press, New York. Nye, Joseph S., 2008. Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, vol. 616 (No. 1) (March 2008), p. 95. Nye, Joseph S., 2011. The Future of Power. Public Affairs, New York. Pang, Laikwan, 2012. Creativity and its Discontents. China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses. Duke University Press, 328 pp. Peerenboom, Randall, 2008. China Modernizes. Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? Oxford University Press, Oxford. Poullet, Y., 1998. 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Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder. Saik Yoon C. (2003) (ed.) Digital review of Asia Pacific. Penang: Southbound. Schlosberg, Justin (2013). Power Beyond Scrutiny. Media, Justice and Accountability. London: Pluto Press. ISBN: 9780745332918. Sclove, Richard, 1995. Democracy and Technology. The Guilford Press, New York. Sclove, Richard (2010) Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model. Using Citizen Participation, Collaboration and Expertanalysis to Inform and Improve Decision-Making On Issues Involving Science and Technology. Washington, DC: Science and Technology Innovation Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (April 2010). Semetko, Holli A., Christian Kolmer, Roland Schatz, 2011. News, International Relations and Public Diplomacy, Paper Presented at Conference on ‘‘The EU, US and China: Towards a New International Order’’ at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, 22–23 April 2011. Servaes, Jan (Ed.), 1981. Van ideologie tot macht. Kritak, Leuven. Servaes, Jan, 1989. The many faces of power, ideology and culture. In search of a more interpretative communication research. Massacommunicatie 17 (2), 146–160. Servaes, J., 1998. Internet and democracy. Telematics and Informatics 15 (3), 123–234 (special issue). Servaes, J., 1999. Communication for Development. One World, Multiple Cultures. Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ. Servaes, Jan, 2005a. Knowledge is power (revisited): Internet and democracy. Media Development LII (No. 4), 42–50. Servaes, J., 2005b. Beyond differences in cultural values and modes of communication. In: Shi-Xu, Kienpointner, M., Servaes, J. (Eds.), Read the Cultural Other. Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonisation. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 49–70. Servaes, Jan (Ed.), 2008. Communication for Development and Social Change. Sage, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore. Servaes, J., 2012a. The future of US–Chinese media communication and public diplomacy. Public Relations Review 38 (5), 643–938 (special issue). Servaes, J., 2012b. Soft power and public diplomacy: the new frontier for public relations and international communication between the US and China. Public Relations Review 38 (5), 643–651. Servaes, Jan. (Ed.), 2013. Sustainability, Participation and Culture in Communication. Theory and Praxis. Intellect-University of Chicago Press, BristolChicago. Shambaugh, David, 2013. China Goes Global. The Partial Power. Oxford University Press, New York, 423 pp. ISBN13: 9780199860142. Sharma, Shalendra, 2009. China and India in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge University Press, New York. Shirazi, Farid, Ngwenyama, Ojelanki, Morawczynski, Olga, 2010. ICT expansion and the digital divide in democratic freedoms: an analysis of the impact of ICT expansion, education and ICT filtering on democracy. Telematics and Informatics 27, 21–31. Slevin, J., 2000. The Internet and Society. Polity Press, Cambridge. Smith, M.A., Kollock, P., 1999. 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United Nations Development Program, New York. Van Dijk, Jan (2012). The Network Society, third ed. Sage, London. Wallis, Cara, 2013. Technomobility in China. Young Migrant Women and Mobile Phones. UP, New York, 288 pp. Wang, Jian (Ed.), 2011. Soft Power in China. Public Diplomacy through Communication. Palgrave/Macmillan, London. Wang, Xiuli, Schoemaker, Pamela, 2011. What shapes Americans’ opinions of China? Country characteristics, public relations and mass media. Chinese Journal of Communication 4 (1), 1–20. Webster, F., 1995. Theories of the Information Society. Routledge, London. Wolper, G., 1991. The Origins of Public Diplomacy: Woodrow Wilson, George Creel and the Committee on Public Information. Brookings Institute, Washington, DC. Wronka, Joseph, 2008. Human Rights and Social Justice. Sage, Los Angeles. Xia, Jun., 2012. China’s 3G industry and beyond – structural reform, competition regulation, and evolution. Telecommunications Policy 36 (10–11), 793– 1014 (special issue).
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Xiong, Chengyu, 2013. Coexist, complement, converge and innovate: the public diplomacy of US–China Internet industry forum. Telematics and Informatics 30 (4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2011.11.002. Zhao, Yuezhi, 2008. Communication in China. Political Economy, Power and Conflict. Littlefield, Lanham, Rowman. Zheng, Yongnian, 2007. Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Jan Servaes Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Tel.: +852 3442 8622. E-mail address: [email protected]
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The many faces of (soft) power, democracy and the Internet
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Keywords: Soft power E-democracy Peer-to-peer Internet Censorship
a b s t r a c t Starting from a brief roundup of the correlation between ICTs and politics in Asia, and especially China, this introduction to a special issue on China explores a number of the more political and technological issues related to power and the Internet. It highlights some opportunities and dangers from a democratic technology perspective. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice’’ Deng Xiaoping ‘‘The most basis premises of China’s approach is that reforms must be pragmatic and build on local circumstances’’ Peerenboom (2008: 295) 1. Democracy in Asia The Asian political landscape presents a variety of systems and models ranging from authoritarian ones on one extreme and relatively developed democratic systems on the other (see Held, 1987, 1993 for a theoretical overview; Gunaratne, 2000; Morlino et al., 2011; Rodrik, 2011; or Rondinelli and Heffron, 2007 for an Asian typology). Consequently, policies related to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are invariably among the most politically sensitive in most countries. However, ‘‘with the development of global networks, governments will have to deal with a complex mix of forces representing the state, business, technology and the citizen. . . Needless to say, the new information technology will defy the traditional forms of state control such as direct censorship’’ (Goonasekera and Chun Wah, 2001: XIV). Indrajit Banerjee (2003) is even more outspoken: ‘‘Asia is still discovering the Internet and issues of access, in a larger sense of the term, of censorship and regulation, and de-politicization and self-censorship still restrict the political impact of the Internet in Asia. The relative immaturity of Asian democracies themselves constitutes an important impediment to greater public and political debate, participation and the promotion of civil and political liberties. Notwithstanding these limitations, the Internet has, to a limited extent, provided for an expanded political and public sphere and the voicing of alternative political views. In a context where the mass media has often been strictly controlled by the state, the Internet offers a new channel of communication, a new voice, a new hope for those who have been marginalized and prevented from participating in the political process’’ (Banerjee, 2003: 22). He therefore predicts that ‘‘the Internet will completely break down political control and pose a threat to all authoritarian regimes’’ (Banerjee, 2003: 11). Assessing the arguments and findings of a number of political scientists and Internet researchers he identifies correlations between the Internet and democratisation, and between network connectivity and political freedom. Similar arguments have been developed by, inter alia, Norris (2002, 2010), Shirazi et al. (2010) or UNDP (2004) in general, and Zheng (2007) for China. Put in political terms, this leads to statements like this one by the former US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton: ‘‘We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community’’ (Clinton, 2010).
0736-5853/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2013.04.001
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2. Modernization, the Chinese way Most of these authors, implicitly or explicitly, start from a perspective on the role and place of communication for development or social change that is grounded in the so-called modernization paradigm (Servaes, 1999, 2008). The modernization paradigm has long been avowed on both ends of the ideological spectrum, both by the classic liberal and neo-liberal theorists like Keynes as well as by the classic Marxist thinkers. In this regard, both ideologies have a lot in common. The differences in approach lie on the level of the means, the relative role that is assigned to the market versus the state. But the objective is the same: development on the basis of a Western vision of growth and progress. The obstacles for development are indicated only in the traditional sectors of a society and are initially only attacked with economic means. Where liberals try to achieve development by means of a massive transfer of capital and technology to the so-called Third World, the classic Marxists strive for state intervention, the stimulation of the public sector, and the establishment of the heavy industry as an initial step in the development process – in other words, development according to the Soviet model (Galtung, 1980; Sparks, 2007). Some scholars (Bartolovich and Lazarus, 2007; Chang, 2008) claim that even in Mao’s China this view on development was of great importance. Since the revolution there have been two ideological lines. The first stands for a highly centralized, technocratic guidance of society towards modernization; the second line is based upon the elimination of the so-called Three Great Differences (that is, city versus country, mental versus manual labour, worker versus peasant), a collective functioning on the basis of mass democracy, and self-reliance. These authors state that these lines continue to guide the Chinese development process in apparently ‘non-antagonistic’ contradiction. With Deng Xiaoping’s focus on the four modernizations – agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology – the Western perspective became more explicit as the example. However the management of these modernizations remained largely Chinese: ‘‘An unprecedented partnership between a communist party and capitalist business holds. It remains an uneasy, unstable and unholy alliance, but an alliance nonetheless that, in the short term, has turned more than a century of conventional wisdom on its head. It may have taken decades, but a broad consensus has now developed at the top of the Party, that far from harming socialism, entrepreneurs, properly managed and leashed to the state, are the key to saving it’’ (McGregor, 2011: 197–198; see also Jacques, 2012; Peerenboom, 2008). Song Shi, in this special issue, assesses how the modernization discourse has seeped into the rationale of Chinese civil society organizations and their use of Web2.0 technologies. As is the case for the general modernization dichotomy between ‘developed’ and ‘less developed’ sectors and regions, he finds similar forms of regional inequality in the adoption of Web2.0 style technologies. His findings confirm those by Fulda et al. (2012) who observed an incremental change from government control (guanzhi) to public management (guanli) and to network governance (zhili). 3. Power and its disguises In all societies, power is based on two main fundaments. The very first is the naked ‘‘political power (that) grows out of the barrel of a gun’’, a famous quote attributed to Mao Zedong. No social order can persist without the monopoly of military might that is entrusted to the state. One only has to refer to the past or recent events in Iraq or Afghanistan to find sad examples for such a claim. The second important factor is the consent of the governed. Both elements are needed to achieve a stable social order. No government can survive based on might alone and this is particularly so in democratic societies, where the consent of the governed has to be explicitly given every few years during more or less democratically organised elections. The important question is: how can one achieve such consent? An answer to this question leads to the problem of power and the legitimization of power relationships. Each social order can be characterized by an interrelated division between an (economic) base and an (ideological and symbolic) superstructure. According to Pierre Bourdieu (1979) the dominant classes call upon an ideological and symbolic preponderance not only to maintain their position in the social hierarchy but also to justify it. This system has a ‘symbolic power’ because it is capable of construing reality in a directed manner. Its symbolic power does not lie in the symbolic system itself, but in the social relationships between those who exercise the power and those who are subject to it. Symbolic power functions mainly ‘unconsciously’ as the legitimization criterion for the existing social and economic power relationships and creates ‘myths’ and ‘ways of life’. So, in reality, not only normative, but also and especially power factors play a role in policy and planning, and certainly when it comes to confirming and carrying out policy recommendations (Burawoy, 2012). The traditional interpretation of the power concept refers to material or immaterial perceived possessions in a narrow as well as a broad meaning, that is, a property or possession that is handled by actors in a mainly intentional, direct or indirect manner. Max Weber’s definition which describes power as the capability of one individual or social group to impose its will, despite the objections of others, is often quoted in this context. One can find such a static perception in different functionalist as well as classic-Marxist theories. In such definitions power is one-sidedly situated with the so-called ‘power holders.’ Their position of power rests on a conflict relationship that can only be ‘resolved’ by consensus on one side or by struggle on the other (Servaes, 1981). Critical social-philosophers and post-structuralists have pointed out the limitations of such a power concept. Michel Foucault (1980), Anthony Giddens, and Jürgen Habermas, for example, state that the relationship between power and conflict is
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of an accidental nature. They, nevertheless, do not deny the fact that the exercise of power is an asymmetrical phenomenon but, instead, believe that power is ‘all embracing’ and ‘all mighty’ and has to be coupled with the concept of ‘interest’. Power and conflict often go together, so they argue, but this union is not because one logically implies the other, but because power has to be seen in concert with the pursuit of interest. While power is a characteristic of every form of human interaction, contrapositions of interests are not, meaning that power is a dual concept that can be interpreted in two ways. Looking at power in a static way, there are those who have power and those who endure power. But if interpreted in a dynamic way, one could say that even the powerless exercise power over the powerful. Thus power concerns the possible effectuated and asymmetrically divided ability of one actor (power holder) to put into order, inside a specific interaction system, the alternatives of actions of one or more actors (power subjects). Power centres on the capability to regulate and structure the actions inside asymmetrical relations. In other words, to exercise power is not the same as suppression (Servaes, 1989). Lukes (2005) further distinguishes between three aspects of relational power: it is not only about strategies to change people’s behavior, but also the public, hidden, and invisible faces of structural power. Put in a more straightforward way, the discussion on power and its disguises shows us that the majority has to share a common world view claiming that the current social order is the best, the only one possible, or at least, the lesser of evils. Such a worldview depends to a large extent on information and knowledge, which may or may not contradict the existing predominant world view. A small amount of dissonant information is not a problem as such dissonance can be explained away. A large amount of dissonance, however, may invariably lead to a questioning of the status quo. In addition, ‘‘Two great power shifts are occurring in this century: a power transition among states and a power diffusion for the world of nationstates and the world of non-state actors’’ (Nye, 2011: xv). 4. Power: hard, soft, partial or smart? The former dean of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Joseph Nye (1990), introduced the concept of soft power in 1990. In Nye (2004), he argued that culture, political values and foreign policies have become new dimensions for international relations which are not directly dependent on the hard power of economics and military might. Soft power exercises influence indirectly by creating a certain climate, which may result in changes in influence over diplomatic decisions by the public opinion rather than by political elites only. For countries with differences in political, economic and cultural systems, the best way to influence public opinion is to increase mutual understanding and respect of differences through positive media messages, and to encourage more cultural, educational and business exchange between countries (Altinay, 2011; Cohen, 2011; Naim, 2013; Semetko et al., 2011). Nye argues that public diplomacy is an important tool in the arsenal of soft power, and that, in a certain sense, soft power can only be achieved through public diplomacy (Nye, 2008: 95). Obviously in unison with the US State Department he later introduced the concept of ‘smart power’: ‘‘Smart power is the combination of the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction’’ (Nye, 2011: xiii). National images abroad and at home are widely regarded as a state’s intangible soft-power resource. While, externally, becoming essential elements of a state’s strategic asset, they, internally, contribute to political capital for both democratic systems and authoritarian regimes alike. The potential for the news media to influence public opinion development and the constraints under which news organizations operate should be integrated into the discussion of theory and practice of public diplomacy and international relations between these societies. International relations and foreign policy are influenced by public opinion, and public opinion may be influenced by information in the media (Altinay, 2011; Hayden, 2012; Wang and Schoemaker, 2011). 5. Public diplomacy as soft power The term public diplomacy was coined in 1965 by Edmund Gullion, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University (Wolper, 1991). His concept was summarized in an early Murrow Center brochure: ‘‘Public diplomacy. . . deals with the influence of public attitudes on the formation and execution of foreign policies. It encompasses dimensions of international relations beyond traditional diplomacy; the cultivation by governments of public opinion in other countries; the interaction of private groups and interests in one country with another; the reporting of foreign affairs and its impact on policy; communication between those whose job is communication, as diplomats and foreign correspondents; and the process of intercultural communications.’’ (Cull, 2009a,b: 19 – also quoted by Xiong, 2013). As a successful case in US–China public diplomacy, the US–China Internet Industry Forum (UCIIF) proves that, in neopolitics there exists a rule from coexistence, complementation to convergence and innovation, which has a close relationship with its diplomatic operations (Xiong, 2013). This case also provides important inspiration for the future of US–China relations. It will have an influence over diplomatic decisions, which were usually decided by political elites (Deutsch, 1966). The initial concept of public diplomacy refers to state-driven activities such as scholarly exchanges, cultural events, and state-supported broadcasting to foreign audiences. Over the past decade, however, a new public diplomacy perspective has developed which refers to activities that are beyond state actors. It has become a more fluid concept in the context of the new media and Internet environment. Nevertheless, it remains universally acknowledged that public diplomacy is targeted at the foreign public that bear directly on another government’s foreign policy decisions, performed by both government and private individuals and groups,
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through influencing directly and indirectly those public attitudes and opinions; and its ultimate purpose is to promote the national interest (Anneier and Lorentz, 2012; Fulda et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2012; Li, 2011; Semetko et al., 2011; Sharma, 2009; Wang, 2011). At present, the public diplomacy tools adopted by both China and the US are varied (Hu, 2011; Li, 2011; Nathan, 2011; Servaes, 2012b; Tang and Wang, 2003; Tang, 2011). However, according to Xiong (2013), in this special issue, China has two disadvantages: the first is these public diplomacy tools are trying to win a foreign public’s appreciation, but are not open to discussion; the second is that most tools’ policy effects are difficult to control or evaluate. Brzezinski (2012) and Shambaugh (2013) seem to share this view. Shambaugh observes that China’s global presence is more broad than deep, and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power – what he terms a ‘partial power’. Brzezinski argues that the world after 2025 will not be Chinese, but more chaotic: ‘‘The strategic complexities of the world in the twenty-first century – resulting from the rise of a politically self-assertive global population and from the dispersal of global power – make such supremacy unattainable’’ (Brzezinski, 2012: 119–120). Jacques (2012: 609–610) concludes that, for the time being, China gets very little soft power in the West, for mainly three reasons: (1) China continues to be viewed as ‘‘still a relatively poor developing country’’, (2) ‘‘the absence of a multi-party democracy’’, and (3) at least until recently, China could not enjoy the ‘appeal’ that Western nations, especially the US, had in the rest of the world: cultural capital and ‘national brands’ such as Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Broadway, great sporting events, mega-stars and celebrities. However, as has been pointed out in some of the articles in a special issue on US-Chinese Mass Communication and Public Diplomacy (Servaes, 2012a), the staging of the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai Expo, the opening of Confucius Institutes, the emerging interest in learning Mandarin, and the growing popularity of CCTV programs and blockbuster movies may have triggered the start of a change in this regard (see also Kurlantzick, 2007 and Wang, 2011). 6. Internet freedoms Probably inspired by US President Franklin Roosevelt’s proclamation on 6 January 1941 of the four fundamental freedoms that people ‘‘everywhere in the world’’ ought to enjoy – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear, Hillary Clinton delivered a major foreign policy address on Internet Freedom in January 2010 in which she outlined Five Key Freedoms of the Internet Age: Freedom of Speech: blogs, emails, text messages have opened up new forums for the exchange of ideas. Freedom of Worship: the Internet enhances people’s ability to worship as they see fit. Freedom from Want: online connections expand people’s knowledge and economic opportunities including locating new markets. Freedom from Fear: those who disrupt the free flow of information threaten individual liberties and the world’s economy and civil society. Freedom to Connect: connecting with others near and far offers unprecedented opportunities for human cooperation. Yuezhi Zhao (2008) vividly recalls the tumultuous time, between 1975 and 1980, that the ‘four great freedoms’ (sida ziyou), which were the cornerstones of the Chinese Constitution of 1975, were deleted in 1980. It meant the end of an era for cultural and political freedoms, but it ‘‘became China’s entrance ticket to the world system’’ (Zhao, 2008: 19). Shirazi et al. (2010) investigated the relationship between the global expansion of ICT and the level of democracy within nations. They analyzed archival data on 133 countries from 1995 to 2003, which was the period-of-time of explosive ICT expansion. Some important findings of their study are: (a) there is a growing digital divide in democratic freedoms among countries; (b) in spite of rapid ICT expansion in some countries, Internet filtering is having a significant impact on democratic freedoms: ‘‘It is important to note that most of the countries located in the low performers category, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Tunisia and China, impose heavy and systematic censorship on Internet and other ICT media (. . .). In addition, there are a number of countries whose ICT infrastructures are highly developed but rank below the world average on democratic freedoms. These countries include some of the Middle East countries of the Persian Gulf region such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates as well as Singapore in Asia.’’ (Shirazi et al., 2010: 27). Guangchao Charles Feng provides us with a detailed assessment of China’s Internet censorship. He argues, as do many others (see e.g., Barme, 2013; Pang, 2012; Sun, 2010; Qiu, 2009), that the Chinese government is torn between its massive drive for marketization and the need to curb cyber dissidence. He investigates how the Chinese state censors the Internet by tracing the trajectory of mechanisms to block websites non grata. Results show that Chinese government’s Internet control methods are diverse with systematic collaborations from local authorities at various administrative levels. He also found evidence that the government has customized blocking strategies for what it considers to be important websites. The efficacy of China’s Internet censorship system is being questioned. ‘‘While state censors were quick to block undesirable information from the Internet, netizens were just as fast in getting around the blocks to publicize their causes and protests’’ (Barme, 2013: 129). As a result, some authors (see Song Shi’s contribution or Chin-fu Hung, 2012) remain rather optimistic: ‘‘The Internet is facilitating political liberalization in Chinese society. The mushrooming online discussion forums and blogosphere have created and nourished a ‘virtual’ space for Chinese civil society to emerge. Providing a platform for the public to express opinions and discuss (current) affairs, the cyber community has not only pushed for associative and communi-
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cative freedoms, but has also catalyzed greater changes towards a new chapter for China’s state-society relations in the Internet age’’ (Hung, 2012: 168). However, according to the 2013 report on surveillance of Reporters Without Borders (2013), there is a growing trend for regimes – including China – who are trying to control news and information to do it subtly – not with big blocks on content, but refined surveillance on targets who are often unaware of it. And, the report continues, ‘‘democratic countries seem increasingly ready to yield to the siren song of the need for surveillance and cyber-security at any cost. This is evident from all the potentially repressive legislation that is being adopted or proposed, . . . The United States . . . Britain . . . the Netherlands would all sacrifice online freedom of expression to combatting cyber-crime. If governments that traditionally respected human rights adopt this kind of repressive legislation, it will provide the leaders of authoritarian countries with arguments to use against the critics of their own legislative arsenals’’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2013: 4). Which reminds us of the more general caution made by Peerenboom: ‘‘The proliferation of non-liberal democracies and soft-authoritarian regimes has blurred the lines between democracy and authoritarianism. Rather than simply classifying regimes as democratic or authoritarian, and then turning a blind eye to what goes on in democracies while shining a floodlight on every shortcoming in authoritarian states, we need to examine how all states actually operate, to hold all states equally accountable, and to avoid painting all authoritarian regimes with the same broad brush.’’ (Peerenboom, 2008: 295) 7. Power and e-democracy Is China’s Internet policy a force for democratization? The Economist does not believe so: ‘‘Not only has Chinese authoritarian rule survived the Internet, but the state has shown great skill in bending the technology to its own purposes, enabling it to exercise better control of its own society and setting an example for other repressive regimes’’ (The Economist, 5 April 2013). They call it ‘‘adaptive authoritarianism’’. But, put in a more general way: does the increasing usage of online political forums lead to a more deliberative democracy anywhere? Kies (2010) attempts to answer this question by presenting the evolution of the public spaces in a historical perspective, by defining and operationalizing the deliberative criteria of democracy, and by measuring and evaluating the impact of virtualization of the political debates under these perspectives. He looks at the extent to which different categories of the population debate online, at the categories of actors hosting online political forums, and assesses the quality of the online political debates in different contexts. His work aims to provide a more balanced evaluation of the impact of virtualization of the political debates and to enrich the evolving deliberative theory with new findings. This reasoning leads to a consideration of the importance of information and knowledge in the democratic process (Servaes, 1998, 2005a,b). Our current democratic societies are characterised by a plurality of competing power centres, and by a plurality of information sources (Hacker and Van Dijk, 2001; Hepp et al., 2008; Poullet, 1998; Slevin, 2000). This balance is theoretically and practically guaranteed by the freedom of the press. However, critical scholars such as Herman and Chomsky (2002) have argued that the freedom of the press is the freedom of those who own one, and that hence we do live, to a great extent, in an era of ‘manufactured consent’. Extending the metaphor used by The Economist to describe the situation of the Internet in China, one could argue that while most Chinese know that they are communicating in a ‘giant cage’, most Westerners do not seem to realize that they do so in a ‘golden cage’. Andrea Ricci (2003), building on the Italian political scientist Sartori, reminds us that the sheer size of contemporary political issues makes it impossible to follow the model of ancient Greece. Indeed, since the Greek Forum, it has not been possible to implement many-to-many dialogue on such a grand scale. The problems are too complex, and often out of the community’s reach, out of the community’s sight: ‘‘The community itself does not succeed in relating with its parts; it’s simply incapable of perceiving itself; it’s therefore an illusion to achieve, electronically, direct relationships between all the members of our (contemporary) communities. The public debate that would result from this would be partial, amputated, and sense of direct relationship between all the members of the demos would simply vanish. At the same time, with this type of direct e-democracy, a large, non-expert audience (always a sub-set of the universe of those having the right to choose), would be called to decide on urgent, serious and even dangerous matters without any form of preparation.’’ (Ricci, 2003: 145). After an in-depth ten-year long assessment of political party websites, Ricci arrives at the rather sobering conclusion that the relevance of party websites ‘‘as a source of political information should be weighted against the role that TV continues to play. Usability is poor, the audience remains secondary and not necessarily so influential (at least to change the course of elections)’’ (Ricci, 2013: 258–9; see also Holmes, 1997; Jones, 1995; Smith and Kollock, 1999). 8. State-Media In line with the above observations about the Chinese Internet policies and the ‘non-antagonistic’ party-business relationships, Minghua Xu, in this special issue, while comparing two important market-oriented television policies after China’s accession into WTO, finds that the effectiveness of Chinese state’s control power has not been weakened but strengthened with its adoption of market-oriented reform in the post-WTO period. Under such circumstances, the future of Chinese television is less likely to evolve into a free competition mechanism, but more likely into a pattern in which the state-owned media capitals achieve rapid growth and dominance through the process of market-oriented reform, and private and foreign ones have to choose for collaboration or even dependence upon the former. Others have arrived at similar conclusions; see, e.g., Curtin (2012) and Zhao (2008).
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Hanlung Fu and David Atkin compare the strategies behind the quest for national DTV standards by retracing the key policy initiatives in China and the US. Their analysis suggests that protectionist impulses shaping distinct standards for the US, China, and other regions dampen prospects for a global standard in DTV. However, the US has been more successful at maintaining the kind of balance between industry and governmental policy that is critical to maintain technological innovation and a competitive marketplace (see also the special issue of Telecommunications Policy, edited by Xia, 2012). Jia Lu and Ian Weber explore the relations between technology adoption, content consumption, and modern communities in Chinese television. The results indicate that the space-biased feature of television is enhanced by a combination of spacebiased technologies and ritualized contents (i.e., drama and popular entertainment). Meanwhile, the over-emphasized space-biased feature is counterbalanced by a combination of time-biased technologies and instrumental contents (i.e., knowledge/information programs). Of more importance, the study supports three development trajectories of modern communities and media: (1) the larger scale the community has, the more the community relies on media to organize and coordinate; (2) the larger scale the community has, the less the community is tied to the traditional sources; and (3) the larger scale the community has, the less the community has shared cultural practices. See also the interesting study by Wallis (2013) on young migrant women and their mobile phones; and Sun’s (2010) field study of Internet cafes. 9. The potential of the Internet Patterns of access to information have changed in the last decade with dramatic improvements in some areas and new information gaps opening up in others (Iden and Methlie, 2012). The 2003 Digital Review of Asia Pacific (Saik Yoon, 2003) highlights many ways in which information is transmitted and made available within countries, between countries and to broader publics. Nevertheless it does not always adequately deal with the rapidly changing nature of the information environments in which governments, institutions and ordinary people make their economic, social and political decisions, particularly as new information gaps threaten to further marginalise the poor (Dai, 2003; Muller, 2004; Poullet, 1998). Much is being written about phishing, malware and cyber attacks and with good reason as these attacks are escalating. However, less attention is paid to the big business monopolies that are taking over the Internet. According to The Economist of 23 March 2013, China is ahead of the USA or other Western countries in the e-commerce market. One giant firm dominates the market: Alibaba, by some measures already the world’s largest e-commerce company. ‘‘Alibaba thus sits at the heart of ‘bamboo capitalism’—the sprawling tangle of private-sector firms that are more efficient than China’s state-owned enterprises’’ (The Economist, 2013a). Consumers seem to be less concerned as long as they do not have to pay for their services. Ads pay for the Internet, or at least for what most of us do online. Search, social networking, news, e-mail: if you did not pay for that, an ad did. And online, ads are not going anywhere but up. Hence, the potential for subtle and not so subtle control, for gross invasion of privacy, is very real. The very weapon against such control, i.e., encryption, creates as many problems as it solves, because it paradoxically allows certain forces to further elude the law. In general, one could say that if destructive and authoritarian/totalitarian political forces would again gain the ascendancy, their toolbox would be dramatically enhanced. However, at least according to some (Bauwens, 2005; Morozov, 2011), so would be the possibilities of the opposition. While cyberspace does not directly lead to democracy, it offers lots of possibilities of conducting resistance, and it dramatically ‘raises the stakes’ of the political game. Networks are increasingly important in this information age; hence the importance of network analysis and, what Boulding (1989) calls, ‘‘integrative power’’: empathy, trust and social intelligence as the more important components to achieve results. The impact of new ICTs on civil society, participatory democracy and citizenship is of immense contemporary concern. This impact is usually associated with the demand of universal access. But universal access/service alone does not suffice. The way Stephen Coleman puts it: ‘‘If citizenship requires universal access, democracy needs trustworthy channels of information and deliberation if it is to prosper’’ (2001: 124). In other words, modern citizenship needs the demand for and provision of information in order to develop the proper rights and responsibilities in the conditions and complexities of a Knowledge Society (Mansell and When, 1998; Mattelart, 2001; Servaes, 2005a; Webster, 1995). It is in this context that the Internet may have the potential to change the rules of the game. The Internet makes it possible potentially to reach large numbers of people, for what is, compared to traditional mass media, a marginal investment. This fact raises the number of people able to broadcast a message. What the Internet does on the costing side is to lower the transactional costs of doing business (and this includes political busy-ness), and of organising. It may be said that the Internet is, and could increasingly become, a major tool for the self-organising of social groups. Combine both the hypothesis of cheaper information diffusion and self-organising and you get the effect of diffusing ‘information power’ and hence ‘power’ itself, to a much larger number of actors. This could re-balance power relationships in the public sphere, but may perhaps lead, over a certain time, to another kind of society—a move away from mass society, towards a more localised kind of networked society, based on the co-existence of varied subcultures (Van Dijk, 2012). See also Jack Qui’s (2009) interesting analysis of the working-class network society in urban China. Another important innovation of the Internet is the collective discussion that it enables. True, most newsgroups and blogs are of a deplorable quality, but their existence is significant. With more experience and better software, these tools may be adjunct to democratic processes, for example in the information gathering phases. Used intelligently, certain search facilities and computer conferencing software has positive potential. But even used spontaneously as it is now, it is not without effects on the political process. Again the reason is that such uncensored forums do create uncontrolled information flows that
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cannot be controlled by the mass media and the ‘powers that be’. Therefore, the Internet could be viewed as a social laboratory for experimenting with new ways of developing self-government for social groups using the Internet, as advocated by the movement for a creative commons. Therefore, Michel Bauwens (2005) envisions a new template of human relationships in the future: ‘‘Peer to peer is a specific form of a network, which lacks a centralized hierarchy, and in which the various nodes can take up any role depending on its capabilities and needs. Peer to peer is an ‘egalitarian’ network if you like, a form of ‘distributive and cooperative intelligence’’’. 10. By way of conclusion Opportunities must be taken, else they disappear and their vacuum is filled by negative alternatives. A properly defined democratic technology movement could actively develop democracy-enhancing tools (see, e.g., MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1985; Sclove, 1995, 2010; Servaes, 2005a, 2013). It would actively fight to broaden the benefits of technology to all potential have-nots. It would actively fight to preserve hard-won democratic freedoms, in this new dimension of life. China seems to be one of the laboratories where this experimenting takes places. So far, obviously with rather mixed results – sometimes liberating, most often repressive from a social justice perspective (Hamelink, 1999; Schlosberg, 2013; Wronka, 2008; Zheng, 2007). Whatever the outcomes, we hope that the articles in this special issue offer some food for thought in the search for realistic alternatives. References Altinay, H., 2011. Global Civics. Responsibilities and Rights in an Interdependent World. The Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC. Anneier, Helmut K., Lorentz, Bernhard, 2012. Bridging the Turst Divide – Cultural Diplomacy And Fostering Understanding between China and the West. Stiftung Mercator, Essen. Banerjee, I. (Ed.), 2003. Rhetoric and Reality. The Internet Challenge for Democracy in Asia. Eastern Universities Press, Singapore. Barme, G. (Ed.), 2013. China Story Yearbook 2012. Red Rising Red Eclipse. Australian Centre on China in the World, Australian National University, Canberra. Available from:
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MacKenzie, D., Wajcman, J., 1985. The Social Shaping of Technology. Open University Press, Milton Keynes. Mansell, R., When, U. (Eds.), 1998. Knowledge Societies. Information Technology for Sustainable Development. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mattelart, A., 2001. Histoire de la société de l’information. La Decouverte, Paris. McGregor, Richard, 2011. The Party. The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers. Penguin, London. Morozov, Evgeny, 2011. The Net Delusion. How not to Liberate the World. Penguin, London. Morlino, L., Dressel, B., Pelizzo, R., 2011. The quality of democracy in Asia-Pacific: issues and findings. International Political Science Review 32 (5), 491–511. Muller, S., 2004. Internet: le bug Nord-Sud’, Le Monde 2. MAI 8, 10–12. Naim, Moises, 2013. The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge isn’t What it Used.... Basic Books, NY. Nathan, Andrew, 2011. What China wants. Foreign Affairs 90 (4), 153–158. Norris, Pippa, 2002. Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Norris, Pippa (Ed.), 2010. Public Sentinel. News Media and Governance Reform. World Bank, Washington, DC. Nye, Joseph S., 1990. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. Basic Books, New York. Nye, Joseph S., 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in International Relations. Public Affairs Press, New York. Nye, Joseph S., 2008. Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science, vol. 616 (No. 1) (March 2008), p. 95. Nye, Joseph S., 2011. The Future of Power. Public Affairs, New York. Pang, Laikwan, 2012. Creativity and its Discontents. China’s Creative Industries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses. Duke University Press, 328 pp. Peerenboom, Randall, 2008. China Modernizes. Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? Oxford University Press, Oxford. Poullet, Y., 1998. Freedom and information highways or how to ensure electronic democracy. Telematics and Informatics 15 (3), 163–180. Qiu, Jack Linchuan, 2009. Working-Class Network Society. Communication Technology and the Information have-less in Urban China. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Reporters Without Borders, 2013. Enemies of the Internet. RSF, Paris. Available from:
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Xiong, Chengyu, 2013. Coexist, complement, converge and innovate: the public diplomacy of US–China Internet industry forum. Telematics and Informatics 30 (4). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2011.11.002. Zhao, Yuezhi, 2008. Communication in China. Political Economy, Power and Conflict. Littlefield, Lanham, Rowman. Zheng, Yongnian, 2007. Technological Empowerment: The Internet, State, and Society in China. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Jan Servaes Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Tel.: +852 3442 8622. E-mail address: [email protected]