Study Group: Impact on Socio-Cultural Processes and Relationships

Impact on Socio-Cultural Processes and Relationships

Tuesday, May 16, 2000

In the fifth session, the study group turned to the impact of the information revolution in the socio-cultural sphere, looking at the rise of civil society actors in international affairs and the effect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on local and global cultures. On the first topic, William Drake noted, it is widely recognized that the Internet greatly increases the capacity of nongovernmental organizations and individuals to get their messages out, organize political actions with like-minded counterparts around the world, and so on. He suggested that the group consider how much this phenomenon has mattered in terms of international political outcomes.

On the second topic, Drake noted that the rise of global television in the 1980s and the global Internet in the 1990s has given mass publics instant access to a limitless supply of information about events around the world, and have made countries? internal affairs transparent to an unprecedented degree. Some observers argue that this global public sphere of electronic information is leading to the emergence of a global civil society that increasingly shares certain values, intellectual frameworks, and even policy preferences. But there are also countervailing tendencies, e.g. gaps in access, resistance in some places to perceived "cultural imperialism," and persistent ignorance of the news and basic facts in large segments of the population. How these forces of integration and fragmentation work together, under what circumstances one tendency outweighs the other, and the implications for world politics are questions that have yet to be answered with much clarity. We should also consider discrepancies between elite and mass culture in the information age, insofar as these may impact policy responses and social cohesion.

Having laid these issues on the table, Drake, along with Taylor Boas and Shanthi Kalathil, posed three questions for the group?s consideration. The first concerned the role of ICTs in the increasing influence of transnational advocacy networks [groups of civil society actors organized around a particular political cause]. Is use of the Internet or any other ICT a causal factor in the empowerment of such networks, or is it only a facilitating or accelerating factor, with traditional, face-to-face social connections the essential ingredient? Does use of technology induce a qualitative change in these networks? influence, or only a quantitative change? The second, related question concerned advocacy networks? efforts to publicize their agenda through different media?engaging in "information politics." Conventional analyses of advocacy campaigns and their political impact emphasize the importance of disseminating credible and independently verifiable information. New technology may make it easier to broadcast, but are networks empowered if they distribute false information? Do new media lend themselves to intentional misframing of issues, in ways that have identifiable political consequences?

A final question addressed the cultural impact of the information revolution. Does the information revolution, and diffusion of the Internet in particular, encourage a trend toward global cultural homogenization (or "cultural imperialism"), as many commentators have suggested? If so, will we also witness significant backlashes against these processes?the Jihad to counter MacWorld, or a "clash of cybercivilizations?" Alternatively, can new ICTs serve as tools for reinforcing local cultures?leading to increasing diversity or even cultural fragmentation on the Internet, but in a manner less reactionary than the backlash considered above?

On the issue of the information revolution and the rise of transnational advocacy networks, many participants did feel that the use of ICTs, and the Internet in particular, has allowed for a qualitative change in the influence of these actors. While most agreed that technologies themselves could not independently create political outcomes, many felt, as one member put it, that "the Internet gave [NGOs] the bully pulpit that they could then use to leverage to get a seat at the table." Another argued that the use of ICTs allows transnational advocacy networks to become institutionalized around specific interests?creating an anti-globalization campaign, for instance, out of individual efforts against NAFTA, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, and the World Trade Organization. A third pointed to the important role of university students in these recent campaigns, arguing that students with Internet access provide a ready constituency that can be rapidly mobilized with impressive results.

In response, several participants countered that face-to-face, personal relationships are really the key building blocks of transnational advocacy networks. While the Internet has helped increase the visibility of most advocacy campaigns, many achieved visibility and influence before Internet access was available. Even the recent protest of the WTO summit in Seattle, argued one participant, was built around networks of personal ties and relationships that had existed, in many cases, for twenty-five years. Others pointed to the importance of older technologies and argued that we shouldn?t view different media in isolation from one another. Television and the mass media facilitated advocacy networks? first leap to prominence, they maintained, and modern campaigns use a number of ICTs besides the Internet.

Several group members suggested that the importance of ICTs to transnational activism varies according to such factors as region, language, time period, issue-area, and the human actors involved. One participant focused on separate applications of the Internet, noting that individual groups may use tools such as email, newsgroups, and the Web to different extents in their campaigns, and that the impact of the technology on their activism would vary accordingly. Another member argued that while campaigns in traditional issue-areas such as human rights and the environment may have found face-to-face ties essential to their networking, recent campaigns in newer issue-areas have thrived without them. Global swarming, he suggested, may be qualitatively different from the slow, painstaking networking of the past. Participants listed several recent examples of this phenomenon, including the open source software movement, the anti-Echelon network (protesting a global communications surveillance system), and Move On, which campaigned for an end to the Clinton impeachment trial.

Addressing the issue of advocacy networks? use of the Internet for public relations and information politics, almost all group members agreed that activists were empowered by their ability to easily disseminate information online, even if that information was neither credible to nor independently verifiable by the outside world. Networks aggregate people of similar mindsets, participants argued, and with the wealth of unregulated material on the Internet, it is easy for them to find information to reinforce preconceived opinions. Many group members felt that the Internet lends itself to intentional misframing of issues and the spread of disinformation by advocacy networks, since there is no intermediary or editorial filter that determines what can and cannot be posted on the Web. In such an atmosphere, incorrect information may form the first impressions of an issue for a sizable number of people, and it may be difficult to counter these impressions with verifiable information presented later. As one participant put it, "there is enormous market value in being first to market with a piece of information, even if it?s wrong."

A few participants, however, resisted the idea that the ease of spreading skewed or false information on the Internet automatically empowers transnational advocacy networks. Credibility matters not when the network itself captures an idea, one participant argued, but when the larger, unbiased community accepts it. Another maintained that the Internet is not unique in its susceptibility to the skewed presentation of information; newspaper editors may do more fact checking than the average webmaster, but they also spin headlines and the angle of their stories toward what will sell the most papers.

On the cultural impact of the information revolution, almost all participants resisted the common notion that new media such as the Internet are biased toward global cultural homogenization. Citing the steady increase in local language content on the Internet, one study group member argued that if we see any pattern, it is a dramatic increase in the heterogeneity of the Web. Several members noted recent advances in voice recognition and translation software, trends that should bode well for non-English communication online. Another participant cited a historical analogy, noting that with the introduction of national radio networks in the 1920s, many worried that standardized English would prevail throughout the country; instead, radio has allowed regional dialects to tenaciously endure. Similarly, the Internet may provide a forum to preserve the use of small, local languages, even while a large proportion of content remains in English. Another noted that the magazine industry was once expected to meet its demise with the advent of newer media; instead, magazines have proliferated but now address narrow spheres of interest rather than the general audiences of Look and Life. Likewise, he suggested, narrowly targeted content?adaptable to cultural and linguistic variations?may come to prevail on the Internet.

While most participants agreed that the information revolution would not mean automatic cultural homogenization, many felt that homogenizing trends existed alongside the reinforcement of local culture. One noted a general trend toward the emergence of key media sources (Disney, CNN, The New York Times, etc.) and predicted that on the Internet, this pattern will coexist with diversity and fragmentation. Another argued that people around the world have shown they want content both in English and in their local languages; although we attempt to identify a bias toward one or the other, the information revolution favors both in reality. A third participant sounded the difficulty of measuring the cultural trajectory of the Internet at all. The Internet is an organism that evolves through no easily predictable path, he argued, and it is hard to say exactly who will be using the medium, or what information they will seek, in the future.

Rapporteur?s Report prepared by Taylor Boas