The Global Village or the Digital Divide?

 

 

“Global village” was coined by Wyndham Lewis in 1948. (1)  Marshall McLuhan defined it in the early-1960s (2) to mean that mass media had the power to collapse the barriers of time and space, thus allowing people to interact instantaneously on a global scale. They were the early prophets of electronic interdependence, even though that global village metaphor preceded the Internet by four decades.

 

 But it’s 2007, and here comes Clay Shirky, a fervent prognosticator for the World Wide Web, and with it, here comes everybody else. (3)  The Internet has drastically lowered the transaction costs of getting electronically published.  Everyone is now potentially an author online. Any amateur social networker can participate. Any blogger can post unfiltered ideas or broadcast news. And savvy political figures should know by now that the Internet can be used to forge a shared vision and foment group action.

 

The Internet’s power to mobilize groups and form public opinion is now clearly evident in the 2008 US presidential elections. This video’s message is that “No one will run for President again without putting the Internet at the very heart of their campaign.” (4) [The full video is at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7575878.stm

 

 

 

 

 

But it is not only Americans who participate in electing a new US leader. As the sole superpower within a globalized economy, what happens in the US attracts the rest of the world, who also votes in the court of global public opinion. Although he is in a tight race within the US, Obama is the clear winner abroad particularly in Western Europe, as is evident from the BBC’s overseas poll on Obama. And it’s not just passive. There is a continuing multilingual debate asking whether Obama can change the view of America in the world.

 

Shirky’s most valuable point is that the Internet allows global citizens to form all kinds of groups with little effort. The Internet does this by allowing us to sift through ideas, pool similar sentiments, forge a collective intelligence, and precipitate collective action. Forming online social networks is a form of revolution that could promote democracy. Shirky gives the example of political activism in Belarus. A more current example is the Facebook group called Anti-Harper Vote Swap in Canada, which has amassed more than 7,000 members in just two weeks. Canadian liberals have launched this Facebook site in a bid to oust the Conservative Party from power in the October 2008 parliamentary elections. (5)

 

With the Web, global citizens are now faced with the prospect of truly free speech. This has important implications outside the US, particularly in developing countries.  Can cheap digital media allow protestors to topple repressive governments and ruling elites? Text messaging played a big role in organizing flash mobs and diverting protestors out of the army’s way during the 2001 ousting of President Joseph Estrada in the Philippines. But historical upheavals, although high in profile, are exceptional cases. The global public citizen’s clamor for transparency and fighting corruption can be a more widespread and sustained use of social media. For example, the World Bank’s blog for CommGap (Communication for Governance and Accountability Program) promotes investigative journalism approaches based on crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and community-funded reporting. The World Bank also web-streams brown bag lunches for those who signed up in the internal Anti-Corruption Thematic Group.

 

So everybody who wants to be in is here. But are they really? Shirky, who sometimes comes through as a technological idealist, does not dwell much on the downsides and limitations of digital media. Since the mid-1990s, there is a small counter-literature suggesting that rather than a global village, what we have is a digital divide. Governments like China and Iran censor the Internet. The economically disenfranchised and ethnic minorities in most countries do not have equal access to global news and online communities, often simply because they cannot afford and do not have the infrastructure to connect. And the presumption that the Internet can unite groups and harmonize ideas may be unfounded. The opposite may be true. The Internet can also allow people to form fiercely segregated geographic and special interest groups.

 

Not everyone’s here yet, it seems. Many are left behind. There are some who came but shouldn’t have. And maybe some who are here should not be hanging around indefinitely. I will be discussing these in one of my next blogs.

 

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(1) America and Cosmic Man, 1948.

(2) The Gutenberg Galazy, 1962 and Understanding Media, 1964.

(3) Here Comes Everybody, 2007.

(4) “Democracy Digitised”, BBC World News America –

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7575878.stm

(5) In this scheme, a supporter of the leftist New Democratic Party whose candidate has little chance of winning in his district, say, could pledge to vote for the centrist Liberal candidate instead, in exchange for a Liberal supporter agreeing to vote NDP in a district where the NDP has the best chance. The point is to maximize the chances for beating the Conservative candidate in the district and oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The Canadian election board has determined that the tactic is not illegal, as long as nobody offers money or goods in exchange for votes. (Source: The Week, October 3, 2008 issue)

 

The First Campaign: unpacking ideology and contributing content

 

The underlying theme of “The First Campaign” is that the technological medium has become the message itself. For the 2008 presidential elections, the Internet and burgeoning channels of social media will have the unprecedented power to chart the race and influence the outcome.

 

Within the compressed period of the last 5 years or so, political campaigning has had to move away from the legacy left by the pack journalism of the 1972 Nixon-McGovern presidential contest. That was when reporters—the “Boys on the Bus” covering that campaign––incestuously group-thought to decide what was newsworthy. The press navel-gazed, ended up covering itself, and produced filtered news that did not reflect the ideological diversity present in any political race. Today’s digital world is even farther away from the 1948 Truman-Dewey campaign when individual contact with voters and grueling tours were essential tools for campaigning, before television took over for good.

 

This cannot and will not happen again. Today, voters and citizen journalists have the power to unpack homogenized ideology. What constitutes “the press” has been transformed to include the wired and hooked electorate who can become involved instantaneously through blogs, text messaging, video-sharing and social networking. They can now push their own content into the mainstream. Even television’s role will probably diminish. With its traditional requirements for prior programming, big production and network stars, television cannot deliver unfiltered news content on the spot, just in time, truly on demand.

 

Presidential candidates as well as politicians are being yanked whether they like it or not into a technology-driven world where the media they use is just as important as what they want to say. As Garrett Graff said in his Carnegie Council interview on December 7, 2007, this is the Miranda Era of presidential campaigns and YouTube will hold candidates accountable. Political messages can no longer be manipulated as easily, because the digital natives and the creative workers of the new economy now have the means to take control of the issues, shape the debate, and move it to online and digital public fora with great speed. People are back into politics, the way it should be.

 

Digital media is so potent not only to elect presidents, but to topple them as well. In the Philippines, the public who wanted to unseat President Joseph Estrada for massive corruption used text messaging to mobilize huge crowds for mass protests at one of Manila’s main avenues, EDSA, and at the Shrine commemorating the ousting of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda in 1986 during the People Power Revolution, also on EDSA. This blog contrasts the role of cell phones between 1986 (EDSA 1 to oust Marcos) and 2001 (EDSA 2 to oust Estrada):

 

“During the 1986 EDSA revolt, most of the events were on radio [and]  government controlled television and phone service was limited, but by January 2001 the Philippines had one of the most advanced cellular phone systems in the world at the time. And Filipinos texted more than anyone else on the planet – they still do – for 2007, 60 million cell phone subscribers sent 1.68 billion text messages.

 

“So when the senators left for EDSA, a swarm of messages was sent out by those in opposition with one request. ‘Come to EDSA’ and pass this text on to your friends. Within hours the crowds grew. From ten thousand to fifty to nearly a million some say. Conservative estimates are at least a half a million people filled the streets and areas near the Shrine.”

 

When Estrada struck back, cell phones were also used to forewarn demonstrators about parts of the city where military forces are proceeding. This allowed the protesters to avoid those street intersections or move swiftly to another site. Could the army have texted and counter-strategized? No, their hands were carrying guns and water cannons. Cell phone messaging confused the army and minimized public physical harm. Estrada was deposed.

 

Today, there is a technological arsenal more sophisticated than the cell phone, giving people access to data and information in ways that were not possible before. Governments can be made more accountable, but are leaders and political candidates moral and creative enough to harness this technological power in ways that serve the public’s best interests?

 

In other countries other than the US, such as middle-income developing countries, is the technological infrastructure available to promote transparency, accountability and good governance through the Internet and social media? In dualistic economies with a small, rich class and masses of rural poor, will this kind of technology only enhance culture wars and reinforce government capture by the elite?  If that happens, has technology aided democracy or in fact eroded it?  And with citizen journalism, who will be the watchdogs? How will gossip and sensationalism be filtered out? What will be the role and rules of ethics?

 

These questions will be the subject of one of my future blogs.

 

Television and the Demise of Intelligent Public Discourse

 

 

In “The Last Campaign”, Karabell uses the Truman-Dewey presidential contest to show that 1948 was the last election when television played a minor role. Thereafter, he asserts that television became increasingly powerful in eroding ideological diversity during elections and among elected leaders. In Karabell’s view, television pulls candidates and leaders toward the center. Its very nature favors the pre-packaging of messages delivered in quick sound bites that fit within the restrictions of paid and sponsor-driven programming schedules. Today, political figures try not to veer too far away from easily digestible messages, because they have precious little time on TV to explain any off-center positions.

 

            Karabell gives many examples showing that Truman was not as blunt and spontaneous as he appeared on face value. Actually, his campaign staff conducted systematic research and information-gathering to create a packaged product, namely, the image of Truman as a man of the people who has strong and clear stands on specific issues. Many of those canned pronouncements, however, were meant to brand and to incite mistrust against the opponent. For example, he labeled Congress as “do-nothing” even though they approved the landmark Marshall Plan to ward off Communism in Europe. Neatly boxed concepts fit well on television. Blurred side-by-side with entertainment and advertising, they are easily consumed and do not provoke broad public discussion and analysis.

 

            By the 1952 Eisenhower-Stevenson race, television was already used extensively in campaigning. It spawned the creation of political and media handlers, as well as professional campaign consultants and spin doctors who could manipulate the images of candidates and political figures for television. Short spot commercials became a vital tool in crafting a friendly and warm persona for candidates in viewers’ living rooms. Because those spots were seconds long and very costly, there was every incentive to resort to negative campaigning by focusing on the worst aspects of a political opponent through a barrage of rehearsed statements. In the US today, political advertising is arguably the most intensive form of communication between candidates and voters during electoral campaigns.

 

            Pack journalism worsened television’s centrist pull, as Crouse amply illustrates in “The Boys on the Bus”. Journalists covering the 1972 Nixon-McGovern campaigns developed an incestuous relationship by depending on one another to decide what was newsworthy. The dumbing-down of American audiences was complete: television homogenized ideology, while pack reporting rounded up the herd to see only what “groupthink” wanted them to see. News became a one-ingredient cake with a glossy icing of empty calories.

 

            Will television maintain its supremacy? Most likely not, since the marketplace of ideas has become more democratic today through the explosion of social media and voter-generated content. But this marketplace may be restricted to the rising elite of digital natives. Meanwhile, large swaths of Middle America continue to depend on the hypnotic demagoguery of television. And what may have emerged are sharper culture wars among more rigidly polarized political groups cut along racial, gender and religious lines.

 

           

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