Merlyna Lim and Mark E. Kann

The Internet is now integral to politics. Within more-or-less democratic systems, it is common for citizens, political parties, candidates, fund-raisers, consultants, lobbyists, interest groups, legislators, and bureaucrats to have online strategies for advancing their goals. Indeed, today’s “e-government” literature is saturated with Internet uses to help individuals, groups, and officials communicate and compete more effectively, improve job performances, enhance public services, strengthen legitimacy, and heighten impact.

However, the growing importance of the Internet to politics does not mean that the medium necessarily fosters greater democracy. On the one hand, skeptics point out, the same wealthy, powerful interests that dominated conventional politics in the pre-Internet era continue to dominate political decision-making in today’s networked world. On the other hand, the vast amount of information available on the Internet is more than a storehouse of public knowledge; it is also a treasure trove for anti-democratic forces intent on monitoring, scrutinizing, and sanctioning dissidents in particular and citizens in general.

We suggest that the Internet does invite greater democracy|but our focus is not on conventional politics. Rather, we believe that online deliberation and online mobilization are the most promising avenues for fostering greater citizen participation, both inside democracies and against anti-democratic forces. Consider these examples.

What should be built on the World Trade Center site in the aftermath of September 11? A program called “Listening to the City Online” hosted a two-week Internet discussion in 2002. Some 800 citizens posted more than 10,000 messages to deliberate the redevelopment of the site and plan a memorial for the victims. Citizens’ informed, thoughtful views played an important role in the decision-making process.

What can activists do to publicize their struggles against injustice? During the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, activists took a do-it-yourself approach consistent with the motto, “Don’t hate the media|Become the media.” They created the Independent Media Center, which used the Internet as a medium for reporting, framing, and analyzing events. This alternative news organization helped relatively powerless groups frame and disseminate their message as well as exercise leverage against a powerful, international organization.

Does the Internet promise to become a new, democratic public sphere where those who rarely participate inform themselves, deliberate important issues, find their political voice, and thereby reshape political culture if not public policy? Is the Internet likely to function as a democratic instrument for activists who challenge the authority and hegemony of powerful economic and political elites at home and abroad? In this chapter, we compare online efforts to promote deliberative democracy and democratic mobilization to understand how scholars and activists are using the Internet to advance democracy. We conclude by considering the likely consequences of online deliberation and mobilization for the future of democratic participation.

Let us state from the outset that efforts to promote democratic deliberation and mobilization overlap. Public deliberation, such as the “Listening to the City Online” program, can be a prelude to mobilization, a form of mobilization, and a prefiguration of a more democratic future. Democratic mobilization, such as the “Battle in Seattle,” elicits deliberation over goals, strategies, and tactics. Still, priorities differ. Deliberative democracy prioritizes the centrality of public talk in democratic governance; democratic mobilization emphasizes public activism against undemocratic forces. We foreground these differences to show why online activism, rather than online talk, is likely to have a greater impact on the future of democratic participation.

The Internet as “Convivial” Medium

Ivan Illich[1] argues that “convivial” defines a society that strives to maximize individual creativity, imagination and energy rather than to maximize outputs, which usually leads to industrial modes of production. Illich chooses the term conviviality to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. It refers to autonomous and creative interaction among individuals, and interaction of individuals with their environments, in contrast with the conditioned response of individuals to the demands made upon them by others and by artificial man-made milieu. Illich considers conviviality to be individual freedom realized through interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. Ultimately, a convivial environment favors the freedom, autonomy, equality, and creative collaboration conducive to democracy.

Is the Internet a convivial medium? Does it have features that empower people and make it difficult for elites to control the content and flow of information? The Internet has four characteristics that contribute to its conviviality: convergence, low cost, broad availability, and resistance to control and censorship.[2]

The Internet is a convergence of communication technologies. It can be configured similar to print, broadcasting, telephony, ordinary carriers, or an amalgam of these technologies. The Internet has advantages over previous media. It not only facilitates one-to-one communications (as with telephone and telegraph) or one-to-many communications (as with newspapers and television); it also facilitates many-to-many and (more recently) peer-to-peer communications and sharing.

Convergence is achieved at low cost. The Internet has become a relatively inexpensive technology, generally cheaper than the telephone. It is close to Paul Baran's dream of a technology of “anywhere, anytime, at zero cost.”[3] It was designed to be a low-cost, widely distributed technology. This design influenced how the technology developed. It is inexpensive and easy to publish material on the Internet, through the Web, or by email. Texts and images can be published without editorial control. And they can achieve wide circulation.

Through Internet cafés and other public access points, the Internet is broadly available not only in developed countries but also in developing countries. Moreover, Internet usage has grown faster than any other media or communication technology. Even for small organizations, the Internet already offers the least expensive means of communication capable of global reach, anywhere where there is telephone communication.

The decentralized character of the technology makes it difficult to control or censor. The Internet is a real-time distributed network of networks. While it is not non-hierarchical, generally the Internet is less hierarchical than previous media and communication technology. Censorship, surveillance, and disruption can and does occur but within limits. A firewall can be set up and filtering can be applied, as in China, but sufficiently savvy users usually can find ways to get messages to their intended destinations. Meanwhile, the sheer volume of information flooding the Internet limits the effectiveness of most surveillance and censorship efforts.

An Internet characterized by convergence, low cost, broad availability, and resistance to control is a “convivial medium” that affords a greater scope for freedom, autonomy, creativity, and collaboration than previous media. However, there is nothing inherent in Internet technology that automatically achieves this potential. The Internet more readily lends itself to convivial uses than other media technologies but, ultimately, human choices and power politics will decide if the technology’s democratic potential is fulfilled. Below, we explore two choices for fulfilling the Internet’s potential to enhance freedom and autonomy through political participation: deliberative democracy and democratic mobilization.

Deliberative Democracy

Theories of deliberative democracy attracted great attention in the 1990s when John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas published treatises on it. Rawls’s Political Liberalism begins with the assumption that people have different comprehensive views of the good. The best way to build a stable society that respects these differences is to institute a deliberative democracy in which citizens have the knowledge and desire “to follow public reason and to realize its ideal in their political conduct.” Deliberative citizens “explain to one another . . . how the principles and policies they advocate and vote for can be supported by the political values of public reason.” They deliberate “as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes . . . they would think it most reasonable to enact.”[4]

In early writings, Habermas traced the rise and fall of eighteenth-century coffee houses and salons where middle-class people discussed issues and where, ideally, “no authority beside that of the better argument” prevailed. This public sphere atrophied with the emergence of mass society.[5] In the 1990s, Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms revisited possibilities for a renewed public sphere centered on deliberations that are inclusive, public, and free from inequalities and coercion. Deliberative citizens would follow the force of the better argument and function “as a sounding board” for the political system.[6]

Many scholars have refined these theories. Some emphasize diversity and equality as well as mutual respect and toleration.[7] Others prioritize participants’ willingness to listen and be open to change.[8] Still others see deliberation as a source of decisions that are justified, widely accepted, binding, but open to future challenge.[9] A sub-debate concerns whether rational discourse should be augmented by other communicative modes|such as storytelling|that afford women and minorities better opportunities to articulate their views.[10] Most deliberative democrats agree with Jane Mansbridge: “The quality of deliberation makes or breaks a democracy. Good deliberation produces, along with good solutions, the emotional and intellectual resources to accept hard decisions.”[11] Deliberation is the bedrock of legitimacy.[12]

Advocates also suggest that deliberation deepens democracy. It produces a more informed public opinion. It transforms fickle public preferences and “non-attitudes” into thoughtful, durable beliefs and ordered priorities.[13] It “helps citizens to form opinions . . . where they might otherwise have none” and “offers a way|perhaps the only acceptable way|of getting people to justify their views so that we can sort out the better from the worse.”[14] It thereby improves “the completeness of the debate and the public’s engagement with it.”[15]

A more informed citizenry is likely to develop sophisticated “powers of judgment about public matters.”[16] Because deliberative citizens must judge what kind of arguments will appeal to other citizens and “what would count as a good reason for all others involved,” citizens become more cognizant (and caring) about other people.[17] This other-directedness generates “public-spirited perspectives” that encourage individuals to “treat others with respect as equals” and “make sacrifices for the public interest.”[18]

Online Deliberation

In the late 1990s, scholars began to adapt deliberative democracy to the Internet. After the millennium, the growth of online deliberative forums was sufficiently robust to support the formation of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium (http:// www.deliberative-democracy.net), the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (http://www.thataway.org), and other online hubs, clearinghouses, and training centers. The founders and advocates of online deliberation envisioned cyberspace as a new, democratic public sphere where peer-to-peer exchanges and many-to-many forums would enable large numbers of citizens to deliberate on a broad range of public issues and express their informed, thoughtful views in ways that would influence and express public opinion as well as urge if not compel cooperation by political decision-makers. Their practice so far has been more modest. For the most part, they have made online forums available to citizens and nonprofit organizations that invite the public to deliberate local issues; and they have offered online services to elected officials and political bureaucrats who want to consult with a broad range of citizens and stakeholders.

Several challenges had to be addressed for deliberative democracy to be adapted to the Internet. One involved pace. Deliberation is a slow process, requiring time for thinking, expressing, listening, researching, arguing, reflecting, and evaluating. Benjamin Barber notes that Internet technology favors the speed that deliberative democrats associate with mindless, impulsive politics. Anthony Wilhelm worries about an online tendency toward “push-button” democracy. In response, promoters of online deliberation recommend software applications that provide time for thoughtfulness by slowing down online deliberations. Another challenge involves organization. Deliberation is constrained by the rules of good reasoning and reciprocity. Enforcing such rules may require “intervention, education, facilitation, and mediation|all anathema to devotees of an anarchic and wholly user-controlled net whose whole point is to circumvent facilitation, editing, and other ”˜top-down’ forms of intervention.”[19] Users who might otherwise participate are likely to avoid or subvert forums where free expression is constrained. Advocates of online deliberation respond by fostering an Internet culture marked by civility and transparency.

Meanwhile, online deliberation promises to solve problems associated with face-to-face discussions. Internet talk is scalable. An ancient barrier to democracy was that only a few people could assemble in one place at one time to carry on public discourse. The Internet solves the problem of place by enabling vast numbers of people to assemble in virtual space. It solves the problem of time in two ways. First, “the asynchronous nature of online engagement . . . makes manageable large-scale, many-to-many discussion and deliberation.”[20] Second, the Internet can host an unlimited number of forums. No one has the time to deliberate on every issue but many citizens will deliberate on issues of importance to them.

Another advantage of online deliberation is that it has a capacity to bring together a mix of people who would not ordinarily encounter each other or talk to each other in everyday life. Online forums that are designed to ensure diversity may reduce common misunderstandings across class or racial divides, promote a degree of empathy, and foster greater mutual respect if not consensual agreement. By contrast, there is evidence that deliberation among like-minded people tends to produce greater polarization and extremism on public issues.[21]

The ghost haunting efforts to wed deliberative democracy to the Internet is the rule-bound nature of rational discourse. Deliberation is disciplined. It is constrained by rules; it requires mechanisms for enforcing rules; it demands procedures for disputing enforcement mechanisms and decisions. Further, enforcement can be complex. It may be done on a transparent, case-by-case basis by a facilitator whose ultimate tool is exclusion, but it may be opaque and automatic by being written into software applications.

Deliberative democrats’ fascination with rule-bound discussion is one indicator of their distrust of the demos as well as their hesitancy to push democracy beyond conventional representative government. Let us make this point by way of contrast. Theorists and activists in the 1960s and 1970s sought to deepen democracy by promoting individual self-development, decentralized power, economic and political equality, citizen participation, and direct citizen influence in decision making in opposition to powerful elites who dominate the corporate economy and political institutions. These democrats were concerned about public apathy, ignorance, and impulsiveness, but they believed that active political involvement (not deliberation) would reconnect citizens to egalitarian traditions, educate them to their authentic needs, link their interests to the common good, foster the understanding needed for solving complex problems, and produce a sense of democratic community. By contrast, deliberative democrats|offline and online|emphasize “talk” aimed at improving “the quality of democratic judgments.”[22] They do not foreground political struggle against inequalities and elite power, nor do they prioritize popular sovereignty over centralized decision making.

Stephen Coleman and John Gotze assert that, “the object of online deliberation is to inform elected representatives”and “enhance their legitimacy as political mediators of the public voice.”[23] When the main object of the public sphere is to legitimize the authority of government officials, earlier visions of democratic liberty in opposition to elite power tend to be ignored, devalued, or discarded. Consider that deliberative democrats often recognize that inequalities (based on class, sex, race, etc.) may compromise public talk. Rather than confront these inequalities, they tweak the deliberative setting and “attempt to bracket the effect of these inequalities upon deliberation by appealing to the goodwill and normative commitments of participants.”[24] To a degree, deliberative democracy aims at political stability regardless of ongoing inequalities.[25]

In some respects, deliberative democracy inhibits democracy. Harry Cleaver suggests that the time and energy people devote to deliberation is time and energy that is diverted from more fruitful kinds of participation. On the one hand, deliberative talk accomplishes very little when economic and political elites are unresponsive to people’s expressed needs and desires. On the other hand, history suggests that social and political activism, not deliberation, is what is most likely to bring about democratic change.[26] Moreover, empirical evidence suggests that an emphasis on deliberation may reduce citizens’ willingness to be politically active.[27] Critics do not deny deliberation’s importance to democracy but they deny that it is democracy’s defining characteristic.

Deliberative democrats also exhibit exclusionary tendencies. They distrust populist “initiatives, referenda, and recall, because these measures generally take place under conditions that are even less deliberative than ordinary elections.”[28] Public preferences unseasoned by deliberation are suspect. This has three implications. First, we cannot presume that the people should govern themselves; we must ask if the people have qualified themselves (by deliberation) to govern. Second, anyone who disputes the rules of rational discourse may be excluded from deliberations (for example, Rawls excludes religious fundamentalists). Third, people who prioritize other modes of political expression|such as participatory culture or political activism|declare themselves outside the deliberative public sphere.[29] These tendencies have become sufficiently apparent that deliberative democrats now make explicit pleas for inclusiveness.

Does online deliberative democracy realize its democratic promise or manifest its democratic shortcomings?

The scholars, programmers, and organizations that have developed, tested, and marketed online deliberative forums distinguish ordinary Internet chatter from the new, deliberative public sphere they hope to create. Steven Schneider reports, “Despite the proliferation of political talk|dispensed from millions of Web sites, tens of thousands of chat rooms and newsgroups . . . there are still too few opportunities for individuals to converse with each other in the rational, deliberative and friendly environment that a flourishing democracy demands.” Only systematic, rational discourse will “move people beyond the graffiti-esque quality of much online messaging.”[30]

Today, individuals and organizations that wish to host online deliberative forums can choose among several discursive modes and software options. First, they can select offline deliberative practices that have been adapted to the Internet. James Fishkin’s innovative Deliberative Polling, which combines face-to-face talk and public opinion surveys, is now being conducted online, reducing organizing costs and participant inconveniences.[31] Beth Noveck recommends adapting the Citizens’ Jury model to an online environment. A Citizens’ Jury consists of a randomly selected, representative panel of citizens who meet for several days to examine a public issue. The jury hears amateur and expert witnesses, deliberates on the issue, and presents recommendations to the public. Noveck’s idea is to assemble citizens’ juries online and employ new media tools to “delineate a problem, visualize and map out causes and effects, think through options, provide information and collectively design solutions.”[32]

Second, developers have established completely online forums that promise to bring information, rationality, reciprocity, and civility to the Internet’s new public sphere. Unchat founders promise to marry “the proven value of facilitated group conversation to the efficiency of the Internet to create productive, democratic decision-making.”[33] Web Lab hosts online dialogues “designed to avoid the pitfalls and weaknesses of typical computer bulletin-boards: the ”˜drive-by’ postings encouraged by the Internet’s easy anonymity and fluid boundaries; the assertion of polarized positions, where the give-and-take of civil discourse would have more social value; and the pandering to appetites for quick sensation rather than the creation of a real forum.”[34] An Evergreen State College team has developed e-Liberate, which applies Roberts Rules of Order to online discussions.[35] Information Renaissance sponsors online forums that assemble “members of the public to learn about a complex issue and discuss it with subject experts, public advocates, and policy makers.” Online participants access a briefing book, participate in dialogues, consult experts, and make recommendations.[36]

Third, some groups sponsor Internet-assisted forums. America Speaks hosts the 21st Century Town Meeting, using Internet technology to merge small, face-to-face group dialogues with large-scale gatherings, followed by online deliberation.[37] Another group favors Wisdom Councils, in-person deliberations extended with “group-ware.”[38] Others promote Internet-assisted consultation and rulemaking to enable the citizens and stakeholders to give informed advice to public officials who makes laws, policies, and administrative rules.[39] The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) promotes citizen consultations, including online forums and bulletin boards, citizens’ juries, and e-community tools.[40]

[Sidebar 1 here]

All three approaches emphasize rule-bound deliberation. Typical rules are intended to foster equality (everyone should be able to contribute), diversity (of participants and positions on issues), and common goals.[41] Procedural rules are important. For example, “The navigation of Unchat is expressly designed to promote . . . deliberation. A participant wanting to jump into a conversation must first pass through the library. . . . After the library, participants may be asked to take a quiz.”[42] Most online forums have a facilitator “to provide discursive focus, stimulate groups into interacting constructively, build a sense of team spirit or community, referee, troubleshoot and keep time.”[43] The facilitator might be a professional or participant whose job is to keep discussions on track and enforces discourse rules.

Jay Bregman’s detailed “conversational rules” require online participants to respect each other’s deliberative capacities, commit to discourse as a means of problem-solving, and be open to change. Participants must consent to prepare ahead of time by reading “comprehensive, unbiased, and well-balanced information packets.” They must strive to understand those with whom they disagree, speak freely but not monopolize discussions, and keep messages brief. A moderator is a “necessary evil.” Bregman calls for two moderators, one a facilitator, the other a technical advisor. The good news is that moderators can bracket inequalities (founded on race, class, gender, religion, education, etc.) by administering “a carefully-constructed deliberative procedure . . . to make each member’s views and reasons carry equal weight in the discourse.”[44]

Complementing Bregman’s rules, Ben Edelman details specifications for deliberative software that can solve problems such as excessive posts from a single person, ad hominem attacks, and spamming. He regrets the need for “rules of participation” but notes that the costs of “top-down, externally-enforced rules” can be minimized if the rules embedded in software are made transparent and if recourse exists for appealing the rules and their administration.[45]

Web Lab also embeds rules in code. Participants must register, “creating a ”˜screen name’ and password, providing an email address, some basic information about themselves, and a short self-description.” The software assigns a small number of diverse individuals to a dialogue group, which is then closed to new members but open to online discussions. Participants receive brief biographies of other members. Discussions are self-moderated but observed by a monitor to “watch for technical glitches, spot interesting dialogues to highlight in the Featured Posts section, or bring important issues you ask us to address to our attention.”[46] Unchat software allows participants to take turns wielding the gavel to enforce a fairly strict set of rules; however, users may seek to modify the rules.[47] Finally, e-Liberate has embedded rules promulgated by online displays regarding what “legal actions” are available to participants at any point in a discussion.[48]

The degree to which online forums are preoccupied with rules, procedures, and moderators varies. But most groups that host online forums see rules as a matter of survival. Clay Shirky notes, “The communities that thrive [online] violate most or all of the earlier assumptions. Instead of unlimited growth, membership, and freedom, many of the communities that have done well have bounded size or strong limits to growth, non-trivial barriers to joining or becoming a member in good standing, and enforceable community norms that constrain individual freedoms. Forums that lack any mechanism for ejecting or controlling hostile users . . . have often broken down under the weight of users hostile to the conversation.”[49]

This preoccupation with rules is also consistent with online deliberative democrats’ modest aspirations for democracy.Effective online forums produce three results. First, participants become more thoughtful and their views are taken more seriously. When deliberators know that their informed voice is being heard, they are likely to overcome their distrust of public officials.[50] Second, public officials become more trusting of informed citizens and, by listening to them, achieve greater legitimacy in their legislative and policy-making functions.[51] Third, online deliberation “deepens the relationship between decision makers and the public,” inviting people to become more engaged in civic life while expanding “the scope, breadth and depth of government consultations with citizens.”[52] The ideal result is a partnership that “acknowledges a role for citizens in proposing policy options and shaping the policy dialogue|although the responsibility for the final decision or policy formulation rests with government.”[53] Jim Rough emphasizes, “Elected officials retain all existing powers, enhance their informal power and are better appreciated for what they do.”[54]

Organizers of online forums clearly desire to make deliberation safe for public officials and urge them to involve themselves in deliberation. They believe this will encourage greater public participation in discussions as well as increase the likelihood that the public’s informed voice will not only be heard but also heeded by public officials. From the vantage point of deepening democracy, this desire to include public officials is both promising and problematic. It is promising in the sense that it encourages civic engagement and it potentially closes the gap between citizens and their representatives. This fosters a sense of efficacy, builds social capital, and encourages popular participation in public life. Furthermore, to the extent that deliberative forums deliver thoughtful recommendations, law-makers and policy-makers will have a greater incentive to solicit public advice and be guided by citizens in the future.

On the other hand, a partnership between citizens and public officials is problematic. When Benjamin Barber called for deliberative democracy in his 1984 book, Strong Democracy, he argued that deliberative talk must be linked to citizen decision-making and democratic activism. He argued that citizens are sovereign and have a right not only to deliberate but also to decide public issues and mobilize against dominant elites that monopolize decision-making power.[55] By contrast, online deliberation is not premised on citizen sovereignty, decision-making authority, or political struggle against dominant elites. Rather, it emphasizes constrained talk and mostly accepts the current distribution of power by ceding decision-making authority to public officials who|partners or not|rarely defy the interests of dominant elites.

Overall, online deliberative democrats do help to fulfill the convivial potential of the Internet. They provide many people access to forums for deliberation on a range of public issues. They try to involve decision-makers in online forums, thereby assuring participants that their voices will be heard. Their efforts contribute to building a new public sphere where rationality rules, citizen voices are heard, and public officials heed the demos. The growth of this new public sphere should result in greater citizen satisfaction, greater government legitimacy, and greater political stability within established governmental jurisdictions|such as cities, states, and nations. However, online deliberative democracy does not directly address ongoing inequalities that threaten individual liberty, autonomy, creativity, and democratic collaboration. Nor does it directly address issues that reach beyond established government jurisdictions to the global arena. In effect, it contributes to democratic government where it more-or-less exists but it does not contribute to struggles that mobilize people to contest the influence of local and global elites who use economic as well as political power to undermine human rights, perpetuate injustices, and defeat democratization.

Democratic Mobilization

Social scientists consider democratic mobilization within the category of “social movements,” which can be defined as broad social alliances of people who are connected through a shared interest in blocking or promoting social change. The main theories relate social movements to people’s grievances and abilities to mobilize resources (resource mobilization theory),[56] political opportunities structures and the degree of openness of related political systems (political opportunities approach),[57] and belief systems that involve values and symbols specific to groups with collective identities as agents of change (in new social movement theory).[58]

Despite variations in emphasis, these theories generally link social movements to the failure of post-modern democratic systems to guarantee freedom, equality and fraternity.[59] Some scholars and activists believe that democracies are degenerating into authoritarian technocratic states, as those states are subjugated to market forces. In turn, people are dominated by state technocracies and market forces, and people’s main social role has become that of manipulated consumers.

For Alain Touraine, the state, the market, and the domain of communications and media are gradually diminishing the liberty of the individual.[60] For Habermas, the expanding structures of state and market economy colonize individuals’ public and private sphere, or “lifeworld.”[61] New social movements patrol the boarders between the lifeworld and the state-market system. They seek to protect the “grammar of ways of life” and “civil society” from system encroachments.[62]

Social movement activism is not without problems. While striving for inclusiveness, autonomy, and ultimately democracy, mobilization sometimes focuses activism on undemocratic goals. So-called “civil” society cannot always cleanse itself from uncivil elements. Furthermore, democratic mobilization has a tendency to be exclusively oppositional to political systems or market forces. Its “disruptive” nature invites radical, changes, even when activists call for reforms. Despite these problems, most activists mobilize to achieve a variety of democratic goals.

Online Mobilizations

Historically, activists have incorporated many technologies into their mobilizations, including newspaper, radio, television, film, and other media and communication apparatus. By the early 1990s, activists also embraced the Internet.

The past decade witnessed the rise of online democratic mobilizations by which progressive activists confront nation-states and global centers of power through new forms of communication, community building, and resistance.[63] The recent upsurge of online mobilizations includes global support for peace movements, opposition to the Iraq war, and protests against neo-liberal organizations. These democratic mobilizations, relying heavily on the Internet, have rapidly proliferated.[64] Online mobilizations have also developed at the local and national levels, yet involve actors focused on global issues. Some of the most prominent examples include online activism in support of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico,[65] the Free Burma Coalition, and the pro-democracy movement and political revolution in Indonesia in May 1998.[66]

The Rise of Independent Media as an Alternative to Mainstream Media

The convivial nature of the Internet allows democratic activists to establish alternatives to mainstream media. Indymedia, described below, is one of many examples of how individuals and groups can use the Internet as independent media that are self-governing and free from corporate and government control.

[sidebar 2 here]

Usually, mainstream media, with or without collaboration by activists, have played an important role in portraying political activism, redefining social movements, and reframing identities and issues promoted by mobilized citizens. The Internet allows activists themselves to frame their issues and shape their public identities.

One-to-one, One-to-Many, and Many-to-Many

The Internet allows online organizers to combine the advantages of one-to-one communication, one-to-many broadcasts, and many-to-many media. This enhances opportunities for activists to mobilize and promote their causes.

The case of OpenNet, Belgrade Radio B92’s Internet in Serbia, demonstrates how the Internet functioned as both communication and broadcasting tools. When B92 Radio itself was banned, OpenNet broadcast news and online programming

[Sidebar 3 here].

Scale and time: Globally and (more) quickly

Successful online mobilization, such as the worldwide anti-war protest initiated by MoveOn.org,[67] is testimony that the Internet can facilitate global activism more directly and quickly than previous technologies. The Internet's broad availability along with its one-to-many and many-to-many modes of communication make it possibly for an organization to quickly and affordably reach a large group of people while targeting communications to specific parties. Online mobilizing also enables activists to talk back, responding by e-mail or by use of platforms that allow for questions and elaborations. The result is a partial move from “face-to-face” to “faceless” tactics, with protest happening online and in coordinated (yet physically separated) actions around the world.

For online mobilization at the local and national levels, the Internet provides a global dimension. The Zapatista movement in Chiapas is an example. One analysis of the communication dimension of the movement observed that the “most striking thing about the sequence of events set in motion on January 1, 1994, has been the speed with which news of the struggle circulated and the rapidity of the mobilization of support which resulted.”[68] The Internet and the Association for Progressive Communications networks enabled the Zapatistas to bypass government control and get out their message. Global communication networks facilitated support activities and organized protests in more than forty countries,[69] from marches, raves, and readings in San Francisco to a rally in the Piazza del Pololo in Rome.[70]

Another example is the Free Burma case. Viola Krebs writes, “Started in 1995 by a Burmese student living in exile, the cyber campaign of the Free Burma Coalition was launched in Wisconsin. Even though Zar Ni was the only Burmese within a radius of several hundred kilometers, he managed to organize a coordinated ”˜Burma Action Day’ on 27 October 1995 and to stimulate the creation of over 100 local activist groups. He and others managed to put transnational companies under pressure to stop their foreign investment in Burma.”[71] Burmese activists living in exile used the Internet to plead their cause. They coordinated their “cyber actions” on sites such as http://www.freeburma.org and, little by little, put pressure on the regime. The Internet enabled them to coordinate ground actions, such those orchestrated by the Geneva-based “Burma Peace Foundation,” which provides the International Labor Organization with reports obtained through cyber contacts, e-mail addresses, and Web sites concerned with human rights issues in Myanmar.

Low cost of operation

Online organizing tools have the potential to increase the scale of organizing efforts while keeping costs low. With e-mail, it is possible to send out one million announcements, donation solicitations, and calls for action for the price of relatively few direct mail letters. With e-mail or Web sites, it is possible to reach an audience of millions for next to nothing|compared to the price of television advertising. In some cases, the Internet may actually be the least costly way to mobilize people. The Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization demonstrated that e-mail can be very effective in the preparation for and the follow-up to demonstrations.[72]

Multiple media, “intermodality”

The Internet is rarely a sole player. The success of mass events like the Seattle protests requires the use of multiple media and organizing tactics. ”Intermodality”[73] between the Internet networks and other media networks as well as between the cyberspace and geographical “place” is necessary to support activists’ ability to produce and disseminate information as well as to organize and mobilize for action.

[sidebar 4 here]

The successful pro-democracy movement in Indonesia in 1998 shows that the linkages between the Internet and the more traditional media and existing social networks proved to be more important to the democratic mobilization than the Internet network alone. The use of guerilla radios in addition to the Internet by the Zapatistas and the hybrid use of cell-phones (texting) and e-mails in the EDSA II “People Power” movement in the Philippines in 1999[74] highlight the strategic importance of “intermodality.”

Decentralized and distributed structures

The Internet challenges conventional structures of social movement organization. Rather than rely on hierarchical and centralized communications, the Internet can be used to foster more decentralized and distributed organizational structures.[75] Previous communication technologies, even grassroots organizing techniques such as phone and fax trees, required somewhat hierarchical structures. By contrast, (unmoderated) mailing lists and peer-to-peer applications make it possible for activists to organize quickly with very little logistical coordination or organizational oversight.

Uncivil Online Mobilization

While ultimately possessing some characteristics that favor activist movements, the Internet is not a tool that can resolve all problems intrinsic to democratic mobilization. In fact, the Internet has the potential to amplify movements of any kind, regardless of their ideologies, purposes, and goals. As previously stated, mobilization sometimes focuses activism on undemocratic goals. Online mobilization is not a phenomenon exclusive to ”˜civil’ elements in society. Anarchic, radical fundamentalist, and even terrorist groups also employ online mobilization as part of their struggles and strategies. Extremist groups such as Al Qaeda as well as smaller radical fundamentalist groups such as Stormfront in the United States and Laskar Jihad in Indonesia have put online mobilizations into practice. Radical extreme fundamentalist groups rely on the Internet to widen their scope of operation, reach broad audiences, and mobilize for action in an effort to gain more influence and power. Thus, the Internet does not necessarily democratize society. Still, its conviviality does afford space for democratic movements to arise, expand, and mobilize.

“Backing into the Future”?

It is striking that online mobilizations rely on traditional tactics. This fits what Graham Meikle[76] calls “backing into the future” or, as Marshall McLuhan suggests, “when faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”[77] The tactics of online democratic mobilization, such as online petitions and virtual sit-ins, are derived from traditional activities, such as paper petitions and actual sit-ins.

“Backing into the future” does not imply that online activists are not being innovative. Rather, it suggests that activists frame online mobilization by the socio-technical ecology of traditional mobilization. In effect, online activists re-invent familiar activist methods. The success of online mobilization may be related to its familiarity.

Reinventing E-mail, the Simple and Familiar

Adapting familiar tactics to new media can be beneficial. Consider the use of e-mail for online mobilizations that seek to motivate people to take action. These efforts involve building trusting relationships and democratic community more than transmitting information. In this context, e-mail provides a simple, familiar means for personal, direct, and targeted communications with potential activists and allies. It may be the most important tool for successful online mobilization efforts.

New tools for fundraising and recruiting have developed from e-mail, including Convio, eBase, GetActive, TheDataBank, NonProfit Matrix, and Kintera. Combining functions associated with direct mail databases and e-mail software, these tools help organizations to send out targeted e-mails based on people’s location, interests, and track record. GetActive has an Advocacy module that helps organizations mobilize supporters to communicate directly with decision-makers. Automatic matching of supporters to elected officials enables individuals to take online action quickly. GetActive also has the Suite, a member management module that permits organizations and members to track interactions. A Fundraising module assists organizations to maximize returns from online fundraising and membership dues. The tools also support activists in ”friendraising,” a process of encouraging individuals to forward messages. To a degree, e-membership tools represent “a shift back toward hierarchical mobilization techniques like direct mail, something that seems to sit well with larger, more conservative NGOs.” [78]

Some online tools take activism in a more democratic direction by emphasizing community and interactivity. Community-organizing platforms such as CivicSpace invite organizations to build relationships, online and offline, that foster mutual trust, support collective action, and coordinate with a network of related organizations. These platforms may include open-source, free, and customizable tools to build websites, run mailing lists, organize events, host blogs, aggregate and syndicate contents, and more. CivicSpace helps bottom-up campaigns to operate on a more level playing field with more traditional top-down organizations. It may also allow top-down organizations to leverage the power of grassroots organizing.

Participatory “Remix” Culture

Activists’ “backing into the future” tendency does not prevent online innovations|such as site hijackings and other variants of hactivism or smart mobs and flash mobs. While these phenomena can be seen as digital analogues of traditional tactics such as sabotage, letter writing, phone and fax trees, and street demonstrations, they have qualities that make them unique and provide a foundation for further innovation.

One fascinating variant of online activism takes place in a hybrid realm of culture and politics. The emergence of digital networks along with social and DIY (do-it-yourself) authoring tools has fostered the rise of participatory culture. The increasing ease in acquiring tools and skills to create and distribute artifacts online has produced a remix, mash-up culture focused on politics and political issues. Remix, a term used in the music industry, refers to a newly edited version of a released musical (audio) or visual (video) composition based on the original material. Virally distributed remix videos and ads with political messages have become quite popular.

History

Political remix is not new. Remix culture borrows from many movements within late- and post-modernism such as: appropriation, collage, assemblage, Dada, and surrealism. “Collage,” which comes from the French coller and first appeared in Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning (1992), was a major turning point in the evolution of Cubism and therefore a major turning point in the evolution of modernist art in the 20^th century. Collage continued through the Dada movement and into surrealism. The Dada movement in 1910s is inherently important for contemporary culture. The Dadaists’ work is significant to most fundamental principles of today’s art: the use of collage and assemblage, the extension of the notion of abstract art to literature and film, the breaking of the boundaries of art and “everyday life”, and nearly everything which defines what we loosely call the ”˜avant-garde,” including remix.

More recently, political remix is rooted in the punk rock culture of the 1970s and Situationist ideas of détournement in the 1950s and 1960s. The anti-corporate “Do-It-Yourself” attitude of punk rock fashion, ideology, and culture is also central to political remix culture. Meanwhile, détournement (short for détournement of pre-existing aesthetic elements) involves altering and subverting images produced by the spectacle. Rather than supporting the status quo, the images’ visual meaning is changed to convey a more radical or oppositional message. Remix can be seen as a form of détournement.

What is New?

Clearly, political remix is not new. What is new, however, is our ability to use digital technology to create convincing works that may not even seem like remixes and then to distribute them on the Internet freely, widely, and in a reasonably short time. In the past, DIY culture was always samizdat, distributed to a small group only, generally through mail or in localized communities. It was convivial, but it could not reach beyond its narrow community.

Indeed, as stated by Gibson,[79] remix is the very nature of today’s digital world. New paths of information exchanges between people keep growing, making the digital world|the Internet|a socially, densely, networked world. This stimulates people to produce (and consume) by drawing information from multiple sources, remix and make it into their own, and share it to others. The emergence of the social web, Web 2.0, enables a kind of “collaborative remixability,” a phrase coined by Barb Dydwad, which means “a transformative process in which the information and media we’ve organized and shared can be recombined and built on to create new forms, concepts, ideas, mashups and services.”[80]

The Current Political Remix Movement

Political remix engages mainstream political artifacts. Remix artist-activists recognize that the products of mainstream politics (such as political news on CNN) are source material that can capture widespread attention. By mashing up, remixing, or playing out alternative narratives, remix activists transform mainstream artifacts to promote new political messages. Many remix videos edit existing ads or news footage to create parodies and satires with new political meanings.

A famous example of a remix video is “Bushwacked 2.” By carefully and elegantly editing George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, David Smab transformed it into a platform for the President to utter statements such as, “We are building a culture to encourage international terrorism,” and “I have a message to the people of Iraq: Go home and die.”[81]

[Figure 1 here]

“Hummertruth,” a spoof on a Hummer H2 commercial, is a prominent remix.[82] By adding subtitles such as “perpetual war, pollution,” creator Jonathan McIntosh transformed an SUV Hummer ad into a powerful comment on the SUV's contribution to environmental degradation. McIntosh’s effort resembles a current trend in political remix, whereby artists alter elements of popular culture to expose hidden meanings, often radically opposed to original intended meanings.

While most remix work concentrates on American politics, creative political artifacts in a non-American context do exist. Examples include “Zendanie Siasi,”[83] a political music video with sequences that emphasize oppression by the current regime in Iran, and “French Democracy,”[84] a machinima video providing an alternative narrative on recent riots in France.

Widening and diversifying public sphere

Critics may see DIY productions as manifestations of apolitical youth culture or post-modernity. Even when they are explicitly political, they may not promote democracy. Still, these amateur productions exemplify how individuals become actively engaged in the public sphere. They do not simply consume political information; they express political views by producing and distributing their own works. While not always meant to mobilize opinions or tangible actions, political remix itself is one instance of mobilization. By remixing political messages through art, videos, and audios, artist-activists help to mobilize individuals and groups around the alternative political viewpoints conveyed by their remix products. Even when remix products do not endorse particular political views, remixing itself represents an attempt to mobilize resistance against top-down, mainstream ideas. Echoing Henry Jenkins,[85] we agree that amateurs’ ability to express and disseminate their cultural preferences may be increasingly important to the articulation of democratic political beliefs and commitments in contemporary society.

Again, these works may not always foster democratic values. Like the Internet, participatory remix culture is not inherently democratic; it is convivial. It enables amateur producers to make statements that widen the spectrum of contestations over political meanings and practices. By opening a new avenue for participation, political remix culture potentially contributes to the formation of a more open, diverse, and egalitarian public sphere.

Conclusion

Because online deliberative democracy and online democratic mobilization are relatively new phenomena, it would be foolish to predict the degree to which they are likely to take advantage of Internet conviviality to deepen democracy. Nonetheless, the early indicators are sufficiently substantial to discern some likely consequences of online talk and online activism for the future of democratic participation.

First, for the foreseeable future, online deliberation and online mobilization are forms of democratic participation that have different and sometimes conflicting purposes. Rule-bound deliberation is slow and ponderous, emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge and expertise, focuses on government laws and policies, and succeeds when citizens partner with government officials in the service of good decisions, political legitimacy, and social stability. Democratic talk potentially deepens democracy where it more-or-less exists. In contrast, mobilization often requires quick, decisive action, emphasizes people’s identities as historical agents of change, focuses on corporate influence within and beyond political jurisdictions, and succeeds when activists disrupt and disable undemocratic corporate entities and dictatorships from committing injustices. Democratic mobilization deepens democracy where is does not prevail.

These differences can be complementary, but that is not always that case. On the one hand, citizens who deliberate and partner with entities such as public universities to boycott manufacturers who operate sweatshops may be working in tandem with global activist networks fighting for children’s and workers’ rights. On the other hand, citizens who deliberate with local planning officials to make their cities attractive to corporate investors may be counteracting the efforts of networked environmentalists seeking to reduce global warming. Because deliberative democracy invites stability and democratic mobilization fosters disruption of the status quo, it is likely that they will at times work at cross-purposes.

Second, the Internet will extend the reach of both deliberative democracy and democratic mobilizations and will likely do so by “backing into the future.” Offline deliberations are either the explicit source of or implicit model for developing online forums. While the Internet provides several advantages, such as the ability to host conversations with thousands of diverse participants at a time, face-to-face discussions also have advantages|especially where interpersonal trust is crucial for developing a consensus. Similarly, online mobilization has advantages that cannot be reproduced offline, but face-to-face gatherings may be necessary to sustain, organize, and focus political movements over time. Whether it is a matter of democratic talk or action, then, we can expect to see hybrid forms of online and offline participation in the future.

Perhaps the more interesting question is whether these hybrids will be sufficiently creative, engaging, and energizing to motivate the apathetic, ambivalent, or immobile among us to give democratic participation a try. Among past problems in promoting public participation is that (1) the meetings last forever and (2) activism requires great self-sacrifice and nearly full-time commitment. The price of getting involved was simply too high for most people. A great advantage of the Internet is that it opens the door to part-time deliberation and part-time activism. A great challenge facing “small d” democrats is figure out how to get people to try out online participation and then move toward civic engagement in their communities.

To date, advocates of online deliberative democracy have not demonstrated the attention-getting creativity that is evident in participatory remix culture. Internet conviviality does not have much new to offer in the way of deliberation. Offline and online, the rules of rational discourse are pretty much the same. However, the first rumblings of an online participatory culture that invites amateur participation, promotes a sense of cultural agency, and fosters peer-to-peer networks|facilitated by affordable digital technology, networked tools, and social software|indicates that the Internet may become a more powerful gateway for people on the sidelines to become local, even global activists.

 

 

 

 

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