For my question, and something that I have been interested in for a long time, I was wanted to know whether the internet has been a catalyst for political change, or whether it is more likely to be used to oppress.
In order to learn a little bit on this topic I used ProQuest to initiate a search. While looking for a newspaper article I wanted to choose something pre-Arab Spring in order to see if the internet had played a positive or negative role in revolutions of the 1990’s.
I found an article from 1999 published by the New York Times. Its tile is “The Internet Changes Dictatorship’s Rules: Rewriting Rules For Dictatorship” by Barbara Crossette. The article describes how the ruling Chinese leaders are in a panic over a subtle movement of Chinese expats who are starting a movement that almost seems comical compared to what the PRK leaders have had to deal with in the last couple of years. This movement is a peaceful internet community of people who believe that Buddhist style breathing can bring on supernatural powers.
It is important to understand that the PRK was not afraid of 1 billion of its citizens suddenly turning into democracy superheroes. It was worried that people were able to organize at all. One quote which I found interesting and also telling is
“It demonstrates in a flash of instant history that authoritarians, already flummoxed by the fax machine and the cellular phone, may be facing the biggest high-tech challenge of all in the internet.”
History will show us that the internet will be used as an increasing way to anonymously get out information in order to facilitate change, and that social media will allow people to organize without risking a government swat team barging in. It will also be used to repress, It is a two way street and governments will learn quickly. Repression will come in the form of mis-information, cutting servers, tracking ip addresses, and other things.
