The Great Debate UK
Does the Internet empower or censor?
What if the Internet is not really a utopian democratic catalyst of change?
The Web is often seen as a positive means of instilling democratic freedoms in countries under authoritarian rule, but many regimes are now using it to subvert democracy, Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor at “Foreign Policy“, proposes.
The Internet can actually inhibit rather than empower civil society, Morozov, argued in a lecture on Tuesday at London’s Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Social media platforms are being used by certain governments to create a “spinternet” to influence public opinion. They are also being used as part of a process of “authoritarian deliberation” to try and increase the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, he said.
Morozov spoke with Reuters after the lecture.
Sadly I missed his talk at the RSA however the issues which he raises I have thought about. Namely how non-democratic states use the web. In terms of exploiting the potential of the web to communicate misinformation and propaganda this does not surprise me at all. That they can carry out this task with a high degree of skill and creativity would also be consistent. In the 20th century both the Nazis and Communist regimes were adept at using cinema (though communist regimes produced better cinema than the Nazis) to control and subvert with propaganda. Like the web cinema was a new technology and Lenin would take cinema to the masses on a train trip throughout Russia.
What Evgeny Morozov portents is and I hazard a guess is a kind of free world web which encourages, welcomes and develops the tools for people to interact with, create content for and broadcast to anyone they wish. While on the other side a web grows up were interaction is limited and broadcast is the key feature of web use and only a limited amount of people have the means to broadcast. Morozov has highlighted an issue that I need do much more thinking and he opens up a debate that is marginally more interesting than whether we download a music track for free or not.