I&D Blog

This is cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution. Patrick was a participant in the event:

This week I am in Budapest for the Berkman Center’s conference on “Building a Framework for the Study of Internet and Democracy” (and the Global Voices 2008 Summit later in the week). I have been invited to moderate the panel on “Democratization and Authoritarian Regimes,” which closely overlaps with the topic of my dissertation.

The conference will include the following 5 panels:

* Networked Public Sphere and Media. This panel will ask whether networked communication will lead to more democratic, deliberative and inclusive public spheres. The panel will include presentations by Lance Bennett, Bruce Etling and Michael Xenos.

* Methodology. As the title suggests, this panel will address challenges in methodology and research design vis-a-vis the study of the Internet’s impact on democracy. Michael Best, Corinna di Gennaro and Victoria Stodden will figure as panelists.

* Political Parties and Elections. Does the Internet make a difference to election campaigning by increasing citizen participation and turnout? The panelists for this discussion will be Urs Gasser, Rachel Gibson and Stephen Ward.

* E-Mobilization and Participation. This panel addresses the topic of digital activism. Networked technologies are said to unite, motivate and enable citizens to take their political future into their own hands. What impirical evidence exists? The discussion will include presentations by Marshall Ganz, Helen Margetts and Beth Kolko.

* Democratization and Authoritarian Regimes. Is the information revolution empowering repressive regimes at the expense of social movements? The panel will weigh the arguments presented by cyber-optimists and skeptics. Joshua Kauffman, Gwendolyn Floyd and John Kelly will figure as panelists.

Clearly the panel topics interweave which should make for a rich dialogue over the two-day period. I plan to blog live from each panel (apart perhaps from the one I’m moderating).

This is cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution:

The first panel at the Berkman Center’s conference on Internet and Democracy in Budapest, Hungary, was launched with an engaging presentation by Lance Bennett on youth civic engagement and new, participatory media. Lance clearly showed how traditional notions of what constitutes a citizen is changing. The focus today is on on lifestyle politics and affiliation rather than static membership. Some examples of youth-based, online initiatives include Puget Sound Off and Your Revolution. The latter is a Facebook application that allows you to register to vote straight from your profile. The application also allows you to invite your friends to register and to connect with other groups, projects and conversations.

Michael Xenos gave the second panel presentation on new mediated deliberation. The problems of traditional deliberation is that the “space” for dialogue is constructed with a limited role for non-experts. Michael poses the following question: how do blogs compare to traditional news outlets in terms of serving mediated deliberation? For example, amount of coverage, constructed debate and deliberative opportunities? He presented the findings from his current research that reviewed the New York Times stories on Alito and the reaction of this coverage in the Blogosphere. Using content analysis and regression analysis Michael concludes that the Times coverage appears to be “event-based” in comparison with the “information-based” nature of blog discussions. Independent patterns of discourse emerge in Blogs. Some questions for future research include: how can we compare the editorial decisions of a networked system to those made by traditional editors and news outlets? How can we further trace the indirect effects of online deliberation?

Bruce Etling gave the final presentation on the Berkman Center’s new Media Cloud Project in order to address the following research questions:

* Is there greater autonomy of the individual, and has that led to greater empowerment? (This question relates to the spirit of my blog, i.e., iRevolution)
* Have the gatekeepers really been removed, or just repalced by a new set?
* Who determines who is allowed to speak, how open is the space really?
* Has something enw occured? is a new type of political behavior made possible by the effective distributed collaboration allowed by the interent?
* How does filtering for accreditation and political relevance occur?
* Agenda setting and meme tracking: where did the story start, who started it, when?
* Amplification: when did story go viral, where, and how was it amplified; when did it die?
* Iran: what issues are allowed to be discussed in the blogsphere v newspapers?

This is cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution:

The second panel kicked off with a presentation by Rachel Gibson and Stephen Ward entitled: “Reinventing the Party? The Role of ICTs in Party Politics.” For this research, Rachel and Stephen examined the influence of ICTs on parties campaigns and organizational change, drawing on cross-national research in five European countries. The new era of campaigning is characterized by increased personalization, targeting, and shift towards informalizing politics. Interactivity and decentralization/fragmentation are also defining features. The assumption is that the effect of ICTs on party systems is enhanced pruralism via lowered costs and fewer edited communication.

The general conclusion is normalization. Major parties still pre-dominate (content/connectivity) although it is a more equal communications medium for minor parties than TV, radio, and print. New media “widens” rather than levels the communication playing field. Some questions still remain, however. Are ICTs extending the reach of political parties? Are they deepening engagement? Are they flattening hierarchies?

Extending reach of parties? ICTs as a recruitment tools? Increases in efficiency, marketing; collapsing geo boundaries; reaching new audiences.

Deepening engagement: ICTs as actvist tools? Online recruitment is becoming the most important method but is replacement rather than an additional method. Overall, most survey evidence suggests those who engage online are already politically active. That being said, there is some potential to reach beyond usual suspects (especially students) but dependent on, the issues, methods and style of engagement (viral marketing/humor is important). ICTs also generate additional participatory spaces; networking and enabling activists.

Flattening hierarchies: ICTs as democratic tools? Is activism deepening? Only ICTs most used by already active (super activists?) to engage further; more educated/informed activist & supporters; but, online joiners relatively passive? Networked individualism - increasing connections but weak ties?

Are ICTs changing parties? They encouraging low intensity participation. ICTs are used to enhance profile of leaders; erode traditional geographical collective structures; creatie new communities of interest around personalities & issues; beginn to reshape parties & impact on party democracy but outcome depends on indiviudal party (goals and culture).

In conclusion, parties adopted cautious approaches to new ICTs; ICTs accelerated some trends that pre-date Interent (personalization, invidividualism); Renewal via ICTs unlikely since technology alone does not address fundamental disatisfaction with parties. However, ICTs may well be beginning to reshape and reconfigure party organizations; No one-size-fits-all model, American patterns will not necessarily be replicated globally.

Urs Gasser gave the second presentation. His interest is on political participation in advanced democracies, such as Switzerland where there are half-a-dozen elections per year. Urs gave the project SmartVote as an example, which provides information for citizens (users) with matches to candidates running for elections. SmartVote is basically a sophisticated profile matching tool. In 2007, over 85% of candidates running in elections participated in SmartVote by answering a questionnaire of some 70 questions.

The most surprising finding is on the impact of traditional media vis-a-vis the success of SmartVote. One question is how this will impact political parties since this service matches individal candidates, not parties, with citizen preferences. The cultural factor turns out to be particularly important to the success of SmartVote. The website could also be used as an accountability tool by going back to the information posted by candidates following the elections.

Cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution:

The third panel of the Berkman Conference on Internet and Democracy was started with a presentation by Marshall Ganz on lessons learned from traditional approaches to mobilization and how these compare with new methods. Some of the main points I took away from Michael’s presentation and the question & answer session follow.

* Individual liberty, equality and collective capacity are three fundamentals of democracy.
* Transformation and exchange are more important than aggregation of individual interests and values.
* So what kind of institutional arrangements promote individual liberty, equality and collective capacity and how can/does the Internet facilitate this process?
* Social movements arise from purposeful actors to form new partnerships, common values and collective action. There is often confusion between social movements and fads.
* The role of leadership is a process whereby individuals are inspired to respond creatively and with a common purpose in the face of uncertainty.
* Social movements mobilize individuals through tiers of leaders. Martin Luther King was not the only leader in the civil rights movements. The traditional perception of social movements led by one characteristic leader is misplaced. Social movements are not completely decentralized either.
* Leadership is not about command and control but rather about mobilization.
* Social action must be understood both in strategic and motivational terms.
* YouTube has allowed for the sharing of people-interest stories, which tend to be more credible than deliberate, structured political commercials and
* While the Internet provides for anonymity, this undermines the sharing of experiences and common values.
* While the dramatic reduction in networked communication has been discussed at some length, the motivational factor has not. The narrative, the common purpose and inspiration to act must be present in order to encourage individuals to turn to the Internet to seek further information and form social groups. Networked communication facilitates the dissemination of the narrative.
* Q & A: Mobilization patterns on the Internet are different from those in good old traditional social movements. So how much from traditional social movement theory and practice apply?

Helen Margetts gave a presentation on the Internet and the logic of collective action. vis-a-vis petitions Helen carrried out an experiment by drawing on the behavior of some 50 individuals (students and non-students). She used a treatment group and control group in order to measure differential impact. The first group received information about a petition and who else had signed the petition. Group 2 received no information.

The results show that treatment had some effect on signing, with 64% of the treatment group signing the petition versus 54% for the control group. However, the analysis yielded results that were not statistically significant. However, when the petition is signed by large number of individuals (> 1 million) significantly more people signed when in receipt of information. For a ‘middle’ number of signers, significantly fewer individuals followed up and signed the petition themselves. For low number (

Cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution:

I moderated the final panel of the day, which focused on the impact of the Internet on democratization and authoritarian regimes. Gwendolyn Floyd and Joshua Kauffman led the first presentation. Gwendolyn and Joshua recently returned from a field study in Cuba and emphasized the importance of working in developing countries in order to seek insight into the possible future scenarios of the information society in repressive contexts.

The exchange of non-state information in Cuba occurs at the extremities of informality. Indeed, distributed public spheres are facilitated by the distributed transportation network, i.e., taxis and buses. Clandestine libraries also exist. Because of limited ICTs and access, people have built their own antennas and satellite dishes (hidden under a potato bag as one picture revealed). Crackdowns and confiscations of satellite dishes and any connected technologies recently have recently occurred. This was because the state noticed that the youths began combing their hair differently, which they concluded could only be happening if they were exposed to (illegal) satellite television channel(s).

There is Internet in Cuba, all through satellite. There is also a large parallel market that operates vis-a-vis ICTs. When Joshua and Gwendolyn were in Cuba they decided to put a sign up “Free Internet Access Available Here” in a marginalized neighborhood. People knew what the Internet was and suggested they take the sign down with haste lest they get in trouble. Flash drives are also widely used to share non state-controlled information.

So Gwendolyn and Joshua have developed a device that allows for the rapid copying of flash drives without the need for a computer. This means that data on flash drives can be copied during a taxi ride, for example. The device also includes a small LCD screen and a built-in speaker. It can be operated using batteries and/or solar power. In addition, the device can be plugged into a television to watch video clips since there are virtually no computers in Cuba while one in five Cubans own a TV.

Gwendolyn and Joshua also spoke about Cuba’s University of Information Science (UCI), the largest university in Cuba with some 10,000 students. The university is a direct extension of the state, which uses surveillance as market research on public opinion which they can then respond to without acknowledging the existance of the surveillance infrastructure. Students work on developing technologies and software for surveillance purposes, such as pattern recognition of visual images. For example, one project extracts headline information from CNN broadcasts by recognizing any text that might be displayed on the screen. This technology proved key in disseminating a YouTube video of (non-UCI) students challenging government officials directly at a university talk.

It was particularly insightful to learn the selection criteria for students accepted to the program: (1) highly developed computer and analytical skills; (2) lack of world knowledge and interest in world affairs. Students are also kept on campus six days a week. The presenters are working on a follow up project to introduce the technology in Burma. The challenge, like in Cuba, is twofold: (1) how to extract sensitive information, and (2) how to create and maintain a secure network of sensitive information.

One of the important findings from their research in Cuba was that people are not prepared to take on the responsibility that comes with democratic action and activism simply because the idea is particularly foreign to Cubans given the long history of state control. Understanding the local culture and history is absolutely critical before introducing any type of “liberating technology.” In Cuba’s case, the question is how to promote small “d” democracy? How does one ready a people for small “d” participation? Another question is whether technology that facilitates information dissemination increases incentives to engage in activist events because of the assurance that these will be widely distributed?

John Kelly’s work blends social network analysis, content analysis and statistics to render complex online networks more visible and understandable. John began his presentation by showing the different structures/typologies/clusters of blogospheres in different languages. Which of the network structures might reveal more democratic societies? Individual blogs can also be color coded to represent different ideologies and attitudes to public issues. See my previous blog entry on the Iranian blogosphere here. John asks whether it is possible to have an online democratic society operate within an offline repressive regime?

John compared the network structure of the Iranian and Russian blogospheres that showed evident differences in structure. The former was more mixed while the latter clearly more clustered. His network visualization software also depicts how the networks appear differently depending on where blogs are blocked or not within the countries in question. More detailed characteristics of individual blogs can also be depicted as a social network, such as age, areas of interest and so on. Of particular interest are blogs that critize the current goverment. Key word social network rendering can also be visualized, such as blogs that use terms such as democracy, Palestine etc.

During the Q & A session, it was argued that the Blogosphere is not representative of any nation state in terms of age, gender, economic status, education, etc. On the other hand, even if Blogospheres are characterized by the participation of elites, the number of different elites and arguments/ideologies can serve as a good sign of democracy in (virtual) action.

Cross-posted from Patrick Meier’s blog, IRevolution:

The final panel of the Berkman Center’s conference addressed the issue of methodology and empirical evidence in the study of the Internet and Democracy. Victoria Stodden and Corinna di Gennaro introduced the panel by outlining three core questions:

* How do we formulate testable hypotheses?
* What existing theories can we build on?
* What are appropriate methodologies?

Michael Best gave the first presentation on various methodological approaches. He began by making a distinction between democracy and Democracy. The former is people-centric while the latter is state-centric. Michael defines the relationship between the two as follows: democracy in the absence of Democracy. The distinction provoked a serious of questions and discussions. Do we mean bottom-up versus top-down? Informal versus the formal? Are the terms mutually distinct? Are we better off thinking of a spectrum? As far as we know, there is no theory of everthing vis-a-vis the study of Internet and Democracy that relates small d and big D democracy.

Quantitative studies (with K. Wade) suggest that a 1% increase in networks associates with a point increase on the democracy scale. Over the 1990s the Internet came to explain ten times more variations in levels of democratization. There is no statistically significant correlation between Internet usage and democracy in the Middle East and Asia regions. In his work, Michael combines natural language parsing with time series analysis and stylostatistical analysis.

Another research question Michael is pursuing is how new interactive media can help to reconcile and heal a nation such as Liberia. A pressing challenge is how to reach out to rural Liberians. The project developed a rural interactive mobile multi-media kiosk that can be added to the back of a 4×4. See TRCofliberia.org for further information.

Victoria Stodden is doing research to understand the relationship between Internet diffusion and democracy. The first stage of her research focuses on the Middle East and country-level analyses. The most reliable and consistent source of ICT data is from the International Telelcommunication Union (ITU), an organization that surveys local federal governments. On democracy data, the Freedom House data has a lot of inertia in that there is minimal variation in that dataset. The best source seems to be the World Bank Governance indicators. In particular, these include “Voice and Accountability” and “Rule of Law”.

Her analysis suggests that beyond a particular threshold of “Rule of Law”, the amount of mobile phone use (per 100 inhabitants) takes off. The threshold figure appears to be 40 users per 100. Internet use appears to accelerate faster with an increase in “Rule of Law” figures. She also measured the World Bank’s “Voice and Accountability” indicator against mobile phone use and Internet use.

The presentation prompted numerous backs-and-forths on the reliability of the data and the challenges of concluding certain trends. These are the same challenges that the conflict analysis field has faced over the past 5 years. Using macro-level aggregate data means making a host of assumptions regarding what these measurements mean vis-a-vis the questions we are asking. As long as we are transparent about these assumptions, there is no harm in proceeding with country-year econometric analysis. Ultimately, however, these studies need to be completemented with process-tracing methods and field-based qualitative research. This nested analysis approach is the one I am taking for my dissertation research.

“It is Google’s policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages.”1

This is Google’s transparency pledge. Similarly, MSN (Microsot’s search engine) and Yahoo pledge their commitments to transparency and global freedom of access to information publicly. However, they’re also struggling with the (harsh) reality of operating in certain foreign countries. In the case of China, Citizen’s lab just finished a study on the censorship practices of popular search engines. The report concludes, “search engine companies maintain an overall low level of transparency regarding their censorship practices and … that independent monitoring is required to evaluate their compliance with public pledges regarding commitments to transparency and human rights.” What is even more disturbing is that in August of 2006, Human Rights Watch published a report on corporate complicity with Chinese censorship, and the citizen’s lab’s finding confirms that no substantial move has been made on the part of the involved corporations to rectify the situation. One may wonder why the corporate world has not taken any promising, proper initiatives in this regard. In an era where corporations are not merely evaluated in terms of their annual profits but also in their environmental conscientious and loyalty to shareholders, we need to also demand social responsibility.

It is interesting to note that censoring software such as Policenet, Watchdog Router (both used in China), Smartfilter (used in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia) and Fortinet (used in Burma) are developed not inside totalitarian counties but rather in North American companies(1,2). Nart Villeneuve argues that in the case of Google (that censors considerably less than the other engines), the local, authorized content are give a higher weight in the ranking algorithm and therefore the probability of a censored site being selected and presented is substantially smaller. In the case of Yahoo, he notes that, “while yahoo.com tends to not rank ‘authorized’ content as highly as google.com, the results from yahoo.cn heavily favor ‘authorized’ content.” One can argue that for search engine companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft present in China, obligatory licensing and the threat of shutdown in case of noncompliance is an imperative incentive for filtering the search result.

Although censored sites form a small portion of the net, these sites are paramount to the dispersion of alternative (at times opposing) ideologies, freedom of expression and growth of democracy. Furthermore, only through public pressure, creation of a code of conduct (1,2) for operating in censored environments and independent monitoring of corporate compliance with their public pledges can we shed light on this grim situation.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, CDT, announced the launch of a new site today that is meant to “take advantage of the extraordinary collaborative power of the Internet to help CDT craft a final version of its … draft of policy recommendations on Internet and technology policy for the next Administration and Congress.”

Similar to our objectives and projects here at the Berkman Center, CDT is concerned with:

• Protection of free speech on the Internet
• Protection of children in such an open environment (1,2)
• Role of government in Internet regulation;
  • Regulating online (government) surveillance which John Palfrey discusses in detail in one of his posts.
• Regulating the juxtaposition of the right to anonymity online, consumer privacy and protection (against predators)?
• Consideration of the Internet as an open, non-discriminatory platform where freedom of global access to it is a fundamental right

I found these very interesting. In particular, the CDT recently released an article arguing that because of the power and potential of the Internet and its tremendous utility to the development and continuance of democracy, governments should consider Internet freedom as a top human rights and foreign policy priority.

Another issue that was raised in their draft, that I found immensely interesting, alluded to the tension between the right to privacy, anonymity and protection of other individuals online. Recently, the Federal court of California charged a woman involved in the MySpace suicide case. The Federal prosecutors in this case have invoked an anti-hacker law to charge the defendant with violating MySpace’s terms of service agreement. This led me to think more about hypothetical scenarios where anonymity, privacy issues and protection clash. Where should we draw the line and say that officials have no right to use technology to determine the true identity of users? Should there be complete anonymity available at all? I ‘m sure that there are situations (for e.g. blogging from inside of a politically-stiffened country) that make the need for anonymity necessary but where is the line between the right to protect and need for anonymity?

I was pleased to see that the Foreign Policy editors’ blog picked up our research on the Iranian blogosphere. We are already off and running on our next blog research project, which will analyze the Arabic blogosphere and will use a similar methodology to our Iran study (a combination of social network analysis and content analysis). As we dig into the Arabic blogosphere, I was interested to see a post about Arabic bloggers on PostGlobal. Nicholas Noe and Maha Taki raise many of the same criticisms that John Kelly and I heard about the Iranian blogosphere–specifically, that the view of foreign bloggers is driven by media attention on a limited number of bloggers, often those who write in English and are therefore easily accessible to the Western press. These types of bloggers also fit with what the West wants to think about the Arabic (and Iranian) blogosphere–that it is full of secular democrats. As Noe and Taki write, “These bloggers are the type to which the Western media generally reaches out. Young, active, secular and opposing the authoritarian states of the Arab world, they fit well with the general rhetoric surrounding the use of the Internet for democratization.” As we wrote in our Iran study, “In contrast to the conventional wisdom that Iranian bloggers are mainly young democrats critical of the regime, we found a wide range of opinions representing religious conservative points of view as well as secular and reform-minded ones, and topics ranging from politics and human rights to poetry, religion, and pop culture.” We expect we will find a similarly wide range of opinions in the Arabic blogosphere.

Our understanding of foreign blogospheres is also clouded by the natural bias of bloggers (and most of us, to be fair) to inflate ones own importance and to interpret the world based on our understanding of one little corner of it–be it your hometown, or, in the online world, your network neighborhood. John Kelly calls this phenomenon ‘Network Myopia.’ Social network analysis of blogospheres allows us a better way to understand the shape of an entire blogosphere, and the issues discussed in it, than talking to a few ‘A-list’ bloggers.

Social network analysis also shows that most bloggers tend to read, write about and link to similar things, usually sources that reinforce their own views. This tendency to surround ourselves with those that think and read the same things is called homophily, a term originally coined by Lazarsfeld and Merton in 1954 and more recently discussed by Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin and James Cook in “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Berkman Fellow Ethan Zuckerman has thought a lot about this recently and has a long but thoughtful post on the subject that is well worth the read; it also has several great links. Some of the most important bloggers, then, may be those that are read by more than one network formation (or social group), and that draw different groups into debates on certain topics. In terms of the Arabic blogosphere, it will be interesting to find those bloggers that link different countries together, since early mapping of the Arabic language blogosphere seem to show that different Arabic speaking countries form the largest groups in the network.

We expect to release the results of our research on Arabic blogs this summer. In the mean time, we will present our Iran research and early Arabic maps at the Networks in Political Science Conference here at Harvard next week.

The newly launched Publius Project at Berkman has a number of excellent essays on ‘constitutional moments’ on the Internet (the project is drawing its inspiration and name from Hamilton, Madison and Jay’s Federalist Papers, which were written under the moniker Publius). Clay Shirky’s essay, and I know a number of future pieces, deserves reading by those interested in the Internet and its impact on democracy. Shirky hits on a number of themes that have also been discussed on this blog, including the use of Facebook by activist overseas to organize protests.

Shirky tells the story of 40,000 students that organized themselves on MySpace and walked out of schools to protest HR4437–a bill that would have made illegal immigration a felony instead of a misdemeanor. Shirky writes:

There were several remarkable things about the protest. The size of the walkout alone made it unusual — getting tens of thousands people to take any coordinated political action is hard. Getting high school students to do so, when most of them are too young to vote, is even harder. Being able to do so without the school administration knowing was hardest of all — keeping a secret among 40,000 people has never been trivial. And doing it all in 48 hours should have been impossible — would have been impossible, in fact, even a year before.

The thing that made an instant, secret, and huge protest possible was the spread of new communication tools, especially MySpace and text messages on the phone. Armed with these tools, students were able to coordinate with one another, not just person to person but in groups. Using these tools, the messages they exchanged went to the people who mattered — the other students — without reaching the school administrators.

Shirky points out that the tool did not lead to the protests (political motivation did), but tools did make it easier to organize incredibly quickly and without the knowledge of the “authorities.” Shirky details a number of other cases in his book where citizens organize online for both substantive and inane objectives–from passing a passengers’ bill of rights to protesting the cancellation of a TV show. He shared a number of thoughts about the book with a group here at Berkman not long ago that you can view here.

We look forward to future essays from the Publius project on the Internet and democracy–as well as future work by Clay Shirky.