Internet & Democracy Blog

Berkman friend and New School Doctoral Candidate Veronica Alfaro responds to our Burma case study, and encourages a broader view. Veronica writes:

The article seems to express a certain disappointment in that the Saffron Revolution, while engaging activists around the globe, “did not lead to tangible political change.” While the remarks made by the text are sharp, they tend to emphasize the difficulties of acknowledging “the efficacy of Internet-based activism.” I would suggest a different perspective to understand the digital activism that took place around the conflict in Burma. It is my contention that digital activism has to be understood as more than just a series of cases of successful (or unsuccessful) citizen journalism. It has to be seen as among the class of new social movements that no longer struggle only over physical outcomes, but also over the symbolic grounds and resources of cultural production – and thus, over information.

She continues:

As seen in the Burma case, throughout the I&D research paper, cyberspace constitutes a new model of political connection and contestation for the networks of civil society: But old theory does not grasp completely the complexities of current reality. In this perspective, democracy is no longer limited to debate, deliberation, and the ideal subsequent formation of state policies: the terrain of politics has to be understood also as a site of ongoing struggles and contestations carried out by unequal partners under unequal conditions. The norms of universal inclusion, equality, and “effective results” that structure traditional politics do not apply to cyberspace. Here, questions of effectiveness have to be posed in specific situations of space, time and purpose.

Read the full text of Veronica’s comments after the jump, and please keep letting us know your thoughts on our recent publications here on the blog!

Thank you all at the Internet & Democracy Research Project team at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The recently released “The Role of the Internet in Burma’s Saffron Revolution” case study is a sample of the insightful and cutting-edge research that takes place at Berkman.

As an observer of the involvement of Global Voices in the Burma protests and blogosphere (part of my doctoral research), I have an observation to make:

The article seems to express a certain disappointment in that the Saffron Revolution, while engaging activists around the globe, “did not lead to tangible political change.” While the remarks made by the text are sharp, they tend to emphasize the difficulties of acknowledging “the efficacy of Internet-based activism.” I would suggest a different perspective to understand the digital activism that took place around the conflict in Burma. It is my contention that digital activism has to be understood as more than just a series of cases of successful (or unsuccessful) citizen journalism. It has to be seen as among the class of new social movements that no longer struggle only over physical outcomes, but also over the symbolic grounds and resources of cultural production – and thus, over information.

Increasingly, movements such as the Saffron Revolution are relying on the latent dimensions of action: the networks that are submerged in everyday life. Because their a practices (e.g., blogging or citizen journalism) take place in everyday life, these movements increasingly tend to act at a distance from the sphere of official politics (and much more so in the case of authoritarian regimes), creating and expanding independent public spaces within the realm of civil society. Their forms of action, which are particular to the information society, are both “prior to” and “beyond” politics: they are pre-political because they are rooted in everyday life experiences; and meta-political because political forces can never represent them completely (thus the concern about digital activism that “does not appear to have impaired the Junta’s control of the nation”).

Global Voices, with its involvement in the Burmese protests and digital activism, represents an example of how the use of cyberspace is facilitating a virtual public sphere through communication flows, in which actors actively work to create their own space. It illustrates how information becomes central in the struggle that happens, on a daily basis, on the symbolic ground of cyberspace. People around the world could observe how, beyond spreading information, the interesting phenomenon of ordinary people posting in response to blogs: the space tagged as Burma/Myanmar, became the forum of diverse conversations. Some of them were expressions of sympathy and support for the cause — illustrations of communicative solidarity. Some of them called for specific types of action (“Here I would like to call all Burmese people to boycott China’s products”). Some of them were political statements (“Democracy, in modern world, is everyone’s birth right”). Some comments stirred debates and information exchange among readers. And last but not least, some posts called for networking and joining other discursive and cyberspace-mediated activities: from joining the “Support the Monks’ Protest in Burma” Facebook group, to sharing video and photography, and joining other activist networks.

It is my contention that absolute measures of “efficacy” and “success” of digital activism have to be discarded in the systemic context of the new social movements. The apparent limitations of new communicative practices such as blogging, are part of the process of creating new spaces for, and forms of, communication and action – spaces that are suited to the voices and actions of civil society at large.

The task for social theory is now to outline a model that is more appropriate to the networked interactions of cyberspace, and which accords with the current complexities of power, communication and information. In practice, it might seem that the traditional conception of the public sphere easily overlooks the importance and creativity of interventions such as those of the Saffron Revolution: interventions that target not necessarily (or directly) the state, but that are aimed at civil society.

A wider perspective privileges the various institutions in which the subjects of politics come to practice, mediate, and represent their actions as political. The move towards civil society allows us to emphasize the heterogeneity and contestability of the political, as well as to acknowledge the contingency, variety, and potential of a diversity of political engagements – that some have called “micropolitics,” “politics of disturbance and disruption,” and “politics of enactment and representation.”

As seen in the Burma case, throughout the I&D research paper, cyberspace constitutes a new model of political connection and contestation for the networks of civil society: But old theory does not grasp completely the complexities of current reality. In this perspective, democracy is no longer limited to debate, deliberation, and the ideal subsequent formation of state policies: the terrain of politics has to be understood also as a site of ongoing struggles and contestations carried out by unequal partners under unequal conditions. The norms of universal inclusion, equality, and “effective results” that structure traditional politics do not apply to cyberspace. Here, questions of effectiveness have to be posed in specific situations of space, time and purpose.

The importance of the recognition of a diversity of political actions becomes more pressing now, when a diversity of symbolic practices constitute and define the norms of everyday life. At a time when fewer people seems to be participating in institutional politics, a broader perspective on civil society and the public sphere allows us to avoid seeing digital activism as “ineffective,” and instead consider how politics is experienced in other forms, and by other means.

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