the net delusion?

I’ve been reading Evgeny Morozov’s provocative book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, and it, combined with the recent uprisings in the Middle East, have got me thinking a lot about the role of the internet in mobilizing activists and social reformers. Morozov, like Malcolm Gladwell, is not optimistic about the power of the internet to mobilize people and spur social change. I haven’t yet finished the book and so I’m sure there is more to his argument, but he rejects the idea that the internet is basically democratizing. It can be just as easily used by monopolistic and authoritarian forces as it can by activist consumers or democratic freedom fighters. People use the internet more for mind-numbing entertainment than they do for political reform or social change. The internet can be a powerful tool for dictators who want to appease their resistors.

But Morozov wrote this in 2010. He might be whistling a different tune had he seen the uprising in Egypt or the civil war in Libya. Or he might simply say that these movements would have happened anyway – the internet played no role in pushing these changes. I suppose it’s possible that Twitter, Facebook, other social media, and cell phone texts may have played no functional role in spurring these changes. We know that the Egyptian government tried to thwart reformers’ efforts by blocking access to social media sites, and yet the revolution carried on anyway. But does that mean that activists just found a way to get around the firewalls? Was their use of social media one step ahead of the government? Or was the movement to unseat Muburak simply a function of people looking out the window and seeing the smoke in the air and rushing to join their comrades in the streets?

Morozov’s book should make us skeptical of net-utopian thinkers who believe that the internet has freed the world from anti-democratic powers. Information alone isn’t the source of authoritarians’ power. Obviously, there are other structural forces at play here that reinforce power relations. However, I also don’t want to discount the role of social media and internet technology in promoting social change. As I’ve said before, the real power of the internet in facilitating activism may be in its ability to create new audiences and common knowledge, bringing local atrocities or problems to a global stage. Inasmuch as the larger public becomes aware of local grievances and puts pressure on power-holders, local activists increase their leverage in promoting change. We shouldn’t ignore this important function of social media given that most protests seem to generate power by activating the larger public interest (does a protest that doesn’t get media coverage really exist?).

What are the other functions of internet technology and social media in promoting social change? What do we really know about this?