The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [80]
One of the most interesting and overlooked features of today’s globalized world is how much and how quickly authoritarian governments seem to learn from each other; any new innovations in Internet control by the most advanced are likely to trickle down to others. China’s experiments with game propaganda, for example, seem to have inspired Russian lawmakers, who in early 2010 passed a law to provide tax breaks to Russian gaming companies that would produce games with a patriotic bent. A few months later Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communication proposed a similar bill that aimed at encouraging local firms to develop more online games while at the same time restricting foreign game imports. (“Incubators of new media suppression” is how Chris Walker, director of studies at Freedom House, dubbed the likes of Russia and China.)
But it’s not just games. The use of text messaging for propaganda purposes—known as “red-texting”—reveals another creative streak among China’s propaganda virtuosos. The practice may have grown out of a competition organized by one of China’s mobile phone operators to compose the most eloquent Party-admiring text message. Fast forward a few years, and senior telecom officials in Beijing are already busily attending “red-texting” symposia.
“I really like these words of Chairman Mao: ‘The world is ours, we should unite for achievements. Responsibility and seriousness can conquer the world and the Chinese Communist Party members represent these qualities.’ These words are incisive and inspirational.” This is a text message that thirteen million mobile phone users in the Chinese city of Chongqing received one day in April 2009. Sent by Bo Xilai, the aggressive secretary of the city’s Communist Party who is speculated to have strong ambitions for a future in national politics, the messages were then forwarded another sixteen million times. Not so bad for an odd quote from a long-dead Communist dictator.
It appears, then, that the Internet is not going to undermine the propaganda foundations of modern authoritarianism. The emergence of fast, decentralized, and anonymous communications channels will certainly reshape the ways in which government messages are packaged and disseminated, but it will not necessarily make those messages less effective. But they don’t have to be decentralized; the emergence of cool, edgy, and government-loyal Internet personalities—like in the Russian case—may also boost governments’ attempts at controlling the Internet conversation.
Can supporters of democracy in the West stop or at least thwart the growth of the Spinternet? Maybe. Should they be trying? This is a much harder question to answer. We’re not completely powerless in the face of the Spinternet. Western governments could fight online propaganda in a variety of ways. For example, they might create some kind of a ratings site for all Russian or Chinese commentators, where their reputation can be ranked. Alternatively, all comments coming from one IP address might be aggregated under a unique online profile, thus exposing the propagandists working from the offices of the government’s propaganda department or even their PR consultants. But just because one could fight spin does not mean that one should. In most cases, such Western interventions would also erode online anonymity and put dissidents’ lives on the line. This may not be such a high price to pay in democracies—many still remember the news storm that erupted once it became known that the CIA is fond of editing Wikipedia pages—but in authoritarian states it may also unintentionally expose enemies of the regime.
Spin-fighting tools are, perversely, often the best instruments of monitoring and identifying dissent, and they should thus be used very carefully. The inherent tension between fighting propaganda and keeping the Internet anonymous could leave our hands tied. If we ignore this tension, we are only playing into the hands of repressive regimes.
Another reason why fighting spin is difficult