Opinion Sur Joven

For some sectors this is an ideal method, a way of replacing the obsolete and passive representative democracy: enabling people to participate from home with just a click. Rousseau’s dream is now possible: we can all vote from home and be part of the “general will”. The Internet allows that and much more.

It allows anyone to have their own means of communication: information production and distribution is no longer monopolized by large companies; anyone can have a blog and say whatever they want, whenever they want, to as many people as they want. There’s no need to wait until publication, there’s no boss censorship, no sponsors’ opinions must be obeyed and there are no physical limitations for the message to reach its recipient. No judgments whatsoever.

Anyone can run for elections through the Internet. Although online publicity is still a limited industry, there’s no need to pay thousands of dollars to make a spot anymore: anyone can shoot a home video with a digital camera and upload it to YouTube. It only takes some creativity regarding its presentation; then people will start watching it.

The Internet allows generating a collective spirit. Using tools such as Wikipedia, we can propose collective discussions on certain entries and reach conclusions we would otherwise not be able to reach. By discussing certain issues -for instance, Hugo Chavez’s biography- and generating reasoning, all participants are doing politics. Encyclopaedias used to be limited, and their contents were decided by a few people; now we all collaborate to build them.

The Internet allows generating free discussions through forums and blog comments. In traditional means, there’s always an opinion filter, whether due to lack of space or time. Now, if creators allow it, it’s free. Any blog post may have hundreds, thousands and even millions of comments.

All this is possible thanks to the Internet. So, taking all these advantages into account, people should be more willing to participate in public matters. Or shouldn’t they?

The new public sphere

One of the most important experts in Internet and new technology issues, Yochai Benkler, explains the two reasons why he believes the Web is revolutionizing the public sphere. In the first place, according to him, the architecture the Internet was built upon generates a paradigm change: in the past, any type of communication was unidirectional; that is, a medium would decide to publish or broadcast something and the readers or the audience would passively consume it. At most, they were able to send letters or call to express an opinion. The Web’s architecture is “multidirectional” and turns all users into potential message senders and recipients.

The second change has to do with the very low costs of entry to send the message: anyone with Internet access may publish whatever they want. “The easy possibility of communicating effectively into the public sphere allows individuals to reorient themselves from passive readers and listeners to potential speakers and participants in a conversation”, explains Benkler in Chapter 7 of his book, “The Wealth of Networks”.

In the past, whenever someone wanted to say something, they had to raise a significant amount of money to generate a medium: a magazine or a radio or TV show. But doing it guaranteed that someone would read, listen to or watch it. With new technologies, it’s only a matter of wanting it.

Hugo Pasarello Luna is a young political scientist who was and is concerned about generating citizen awareness on voting. To start his contribution he created Argentina Elections, a website “to analyze the Argentine elections” and “strengthen and deepen the public debate about the Argentine electoral regime and its influence in the political system”, as it reads in its mission statement. The site was created by him and in 2007 nine volunteers participated in it: they studied, researched and were finally able to publish their works, which were read by thousands of people the days before the 2007 presidential elections in Argentina. “Very few sites treat this subject from an academic, professional and independent viewpoint. The website offers a great deal of information on Argentina’s electoral system and elections per se, including material that is sometimes difficult to find in mass media, such as all candidates’ platforms”, Hugo explains.

If someone wanted to know the platforms of each party before this site was created, they had to take a bus to the National Electoral Chamber and request photocopies of all lists. The Internet brought the possibility to browse each political party’s website and -if it was online- download its platform. But now it’s even easier: it can be done through Argentina Elections, in a simple way and a sole place. But did this possibility make millions of people rush to the site and download the parties’ platforms? Does this make parties be more careful when building their platforms because they know people are watching them? Probably not. But at least some people are better informed than they used to be.

A study by the Center for Social Media defines “public media” as “projects and behaviors that address and mobilize publics, within any media”. When they say “public”, they refer to Jürgen Habermas’s term: citizens concerned about public matters. The existence of these types of media -according to the authors, Pat Aufderheide and Jessica Clark- improves the quality of democracy since spaces and tools are generated for citizens to discuss and talk about the public issues they’re concerned about. At the same time, they may try to reach conclusions regarding the solutions for those problems. The public they refer to is related to Habermas’s term, “public sphere”: “social spaces and practices in which people discover their public aspects and find political mechanisms to resolve them”. These types of media are mechanisms to communicate about what happens in that public sphere. It is important to say the concept includes the so-called citizen journalism, though it’s much wider. The one and only requirement to make them “public media” is that they’re not unidirectional. That is, that anyone can enter and participate in the debate that medium proposes.

Hundreds of virtual spaces in the world with online media or proposals are created by people for a sole purpose: convincing others that certain matters are important to improve the societies we’re living in.

Any communication tool enables cyber-activism. Benkler mentions primitive tools and more complex ones. For instance, e-mail messages. During the export taxes conflict between the Argentine government and farmers, hundreds of mails were sent requesting society to support one side or the other: they ranged from explanations on how farmers’ earnings were affected by those taxes to requests to “defend the popular Government” by some officialist organizations (for more information on this conflict, read this Opinión Sur Joven article. This participation method is particularly conducted through contact networks as well as e-mail groups.

Static websites are the second option; for example, they are useful to spread an NGO’s ideology. Anyone can publish texts and images. The third step -in terms of time and quality- was taken with dynamic websites: these sites may be constantly updated, anytime, anywhere. Among these dynamic sites, blogs have become the most popular tools, especially because they are free and very easy to use. An important feature of blogs is that people can leave comments below each post. So it’s no coincidence that Jay Rosen, the civic journalism movement creator, once said “a blog is a little First Amendment machine”, referring to the United States Constitution clause guaranteeing freedom of speech. According to Benkler, “this culture is fundamentally different from the mass-media culture, where sending a five-hundred-page report to millions of users is hard and expensive”.

Fundación Generación Libre is an Argentine NGO promoting citizen participation through the use of new technologies. Its main activity is to offer virtual and face-to-face courses focused on the use of the Internet as a social participation tool. Some citizen participation websites were inspired by these experiences: one devoted to art and culture (www.entuarte.com)), another one devoted to citizen journalism (www.gritoargentino.com) and a Latin American news site (www.noticiaslatinoamericanas.com)).

What’s interesting about these websites is that any user may post an article, whether it’s an opinion, information, etc. These are citizen participation proposals, but they aim not only at informing, but also at receiving people’s thoughts and opinions. That is, these sites are designed as means for activism and participation.

Juan Carlos Bermudez, coordinator of Red Camaleon, tries a similar formula with an alternative space with news, opportunities and dialogue of differences between young people. According to Juan Carlos, “the site basically creates a public agenda surrounding youth issues, where young people or their organizations post their opinions, share information and communicate with others”. The website includes forums, internal blogs and other tools promoting content creation, publicity and participation. “We propose discussions on agenda issues and organize reflection meetings with other entities”, he adds.

All these models are in constant change. As Jay Rosen says in a text inviting people to get involved in citizen journalism, “a mix of professional and amateur talent. Some formatting, some freestyling. Some things decided by editors, others left to participants. We don’t know what the optimal mix is yet”.

Cyber-activism keeps growing. Benkler describes the case of the Philippine citizens who used SMS messages to organize a movement against the ruling government. In Argentina, for example, it is said most demonstrations held last year during the farmers/government conflict were also arranged by SMS messages and e-mails.

Are the Internet and new technologies the means to stop citizens’ apathy and lack of participation in democracy? Is the Net the solution for our democratization problems? Is it the key to eliminate authoritarianism and abuse of power, and to promote deeper democratization? The answer to all those questions is no. Neither the Internet nor the new technologies can reach all that by themselves. They’re just another means to inform and be informed. “The networked public sphere is not made of tools, but of social production practices that these tools enable”, says Benkler.

In the next article we will analyze other uses Internet has to encourage participation, and essentially the criticism to this ideal world many experts forecast due to the use of the new technologies.

Continue reading the second part of this article.