ambiguous role of the internet in modern society. Using examples of environmental

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1 What changes and challenges does our system face in dealing with rapidly changing connectivity and communication? Dr Marianna Poberezhskaya (Nottingham Trent University) Talk: UMC Nottingham - The Great Charter 2.0: Democracy for a Digital Age. Friday, May 22, :00pm - 9:00pm Abstract: In my presentation, I would like to outline a few arguments concerning the ambiguous role of the internet in modern society. Using examples of environmental campaigning and other political cases, I try to demonstrate that the role of new technologies has to be considered with a fair share of scepticism. The same characteristics of the internet can equally contribute to the development of the civil society but can also slow it down or even harm its democratic political processes. The internet and in particular new and social media now represent a big part of our political reality and influence various aspects of our lives. With almost 90 per cent of the UK population having internet access and with over 75 per cent of them accessing it daily, we can no longer underestimate its influence. Today I would like to outline a few challenges and opportunities, which the new forms of communication have brought to the development of the civil societies around the world. However, before I proceed to my arguments I would like to refer to the work of two influential scholars: Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, who over three decades ago critiqued the monopolisation of information within the Western media which led to the manufacturing of consent in public discourse. Their work provided evidence of how major American media outlets, rather obviously, promote the views and interests of the elite.

2 Herman and Chomsky (2002) in an updated version of their book, Manufacturing Consent, acknowledged that the internet could provide better representation for civil society by breaking through the elite dominated traditional media realm. However, at the same time the authors concluded that it is very unlikely that the internet will bring significant changes in the way media operate within market driven economies. It is around this ambiguous role of the new media in forming civil society that I develop my argument. With the development and popularisation of internet and new media, we can witness the emergence of a new platform which is available to civil society to raise the discussion to the next level by openly debating all aspects of various political and social problems, scrutinising state policies and industry s impacts, or even mobilise public discourses by directing and re-directing civic and political activism (Misnikov 2012: 2). For example, if we look at the area of environmental politics, a number of scholars have demonstrated that in the United States we can already witness how internet-mediated advocacy organisations influence climate change related policies (e.g. Hestres 2013). Boykoff (2013) refers to the interesting observations reached by the Pew Centre Project for Excellence in Journalism, which demonstrate, through their comparison of old and new media coverage of global warming, that the issue was more salient within the latter platform. Hence we can argue that the internet is more open for discussions on such controversial and important issues such as climate change or environmental degradation. It allows people (audiences) to directly engage with the presented issues and express their own vision and opinion on it. Arguably, new media become even more important in authoritarian regimes rather than democratic ones. Since the traditional media are highly centralised in those societies, the internet becomes particularly important for collective mobilisation (Koltsova and Scherbak 2014: 2). Evidence in support of this argument can be found in the role new media played during the Arab Spring (where social media were used not only for spreading information

3 inside the involved countries and organise people to protest, but also to communicate their messages to the outside and send evidence of the mischief happening within the region); the Hong Kong protests (the so-called umbrella revolution produced a global outreach throughout the social media with Chinese government making sure no messages reached the mainland); the Turkish Gezi park social uprising (also encouraged the Turkish leadership to restrict the use of social media in the country) (Kaan and Vehbi 2015, Lotan et al. 2011, Yung and Leung 2014) or the civil protests against electoral results in Russia in December 2011 and March 2012 (Koltsova and Shcherbak 2014). Rettberg (2008: 156) points out that participatory media that makes publishing available to everyone is like fire, once people, even in restricted societies, get a taste of media content they can create, it becomes difficult to completely extinguish it. Going back to the examples of the positive role of media in environmental politics, the new media played a great role in the worldwide phenomenon of the anti-shale gas protests movements. For example, the social media has allowed UK anti-shale environmental groups to create national and international alliances or networks through which they collaborate, support each other s initiatives, exchange information, and share successful practices. For example, owing to the development of the internet and various social networks, members of the shale gas protest movement in Wales have managed to get in touch with people facing the same problem in Canada, while French activists share their successful practices with British and American campaigners. Despite the positive tendencies of new media s role in environmental communication, some scholars are still cautious in evaluating its overall contribution. For example, O Neill and Boykoff (2011: 248) warn their readers that all of relatively positive effects of new media that are reported have a flip side: the spreading of dis-information (along with information). Instead of unifying various social groups new media can increase fragmentation or only

4 reach and influence people who are already committed to certain political goals. Speaking again about the climate change case, it has been demonstrated that the new media have an ability to re-inforce and re-establish the sceptical positions where they make it even easier to question climate change science and propose a range of climate sceptics or climate denials arguments (Lockwood 2008). Another observation concerns the new media capacity to integrate online social networks with those formed in the physical context of everyday life (Athique 2013: 103). That is, people who express their opinions in support of, or against certain policies, already propagate these ideas in the off-line world. Therefore, the social media create so-called echo-chambers which have limited effect on people who are indifferent to the topic, and often fail to change people s minds, but instead re-inforce existing beliefs and values (Garrett 2009). This leads to two outcomes. From one side, the online debates and discussions leave out the people who do not have strong beliefs about either side of the arguments or are disinterested in politics altogether. On the other side, the online echo-chambers re-enforce extreme feelings and opinions on the subject matter, whether it is being people joining the hate-campaign against fallen heroes (politicians or celebrities who have committed some kind of perceived or real crimes) or users cementing their extreme political views (including tragic situations of radicalisation). This latter point, obviously, allures to the much feared online campaign organised by the ISIS terrorist organisation which manages to utilise technology to its utmost advantage and recruit supporters even from the most advanced and democratically stable society (such as the UK). In addition, new media, often praised for their communication freedom, are not completely free of censorship. It has been suggested that online activists, journalists or regular users also feel certain restrictions within the new media domain which are mostly imposed on them by the structure of the media. From one side, the censorship can be imposed

5 by the extensive surveillance conducted by the official authorities in the name of national security. For example, Reporters Without Borders have included the UK Government Communication Headquarters in their list of enemies of the internet for their extensive intrusion into people s exchange of personal and professional information (this scandal was exposed by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden). Furthermore, the openness and interconnectivity of new and social media can also expose their users to greater hostility and cyber-bullying (since it becomes much easier for the offender to expose his/her feelings without fearing the immediate repercussions that would normally result from personal communication). One of the latest victims of online abuse became JK Rowling (the author of the Harry Potter series) for her political views (support of the Scottish No campaign). Of course this is not the most extreme case of cyber-bullying but it does demonstrate the degree of vulnerability of anyone who openly expresses his/her political views on the internet regardless of one s social status. The unexpected results of the 2015 UK parliamentary elections, which have arguably divided the country along party preference lines, have straight away become evident through dozens of news articles, memes, and on-line discussions, continuing the pre-election and election arguments. In conclusion, the internet has been proclaimed by some scholars as a fifth estate (with the first three being the branches of governmental power and the fourth one represented by traditional media), which means that it becomes an active actor of various political and social processes and provides another source of checks and balances in democratic societies. However, I would also like to argue that we should remember that whilst new technologies can act as an extremely powerful tool in both authoritarian regimes and democratic ones, such as the United Kingdom, we should still remain slightly sceptical about the extent of its powers. My argument is informed by the idea that the internet is still just a tool, which can be used both for enhancing democratic processes and for disrupting them, or even slowing

6 democratic development down. As any other medium, it can demonstrate its various sides depending on the intentions of the user. Bibliography Athique, A. (2013). Digital Media and Society: an Introduction. Cambridge: Polity. Boykoff, M. (2013) Public Enemy No. 1?: Understanding Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change, American Behavioral Scientist, 57(6): Garrett, R. K. (2009) Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among Internet news users, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14 (2): Herman, Edward and Chomsky, Noam (2002) Manufacturing Consent. The Political Economy of the Mass Media. With a New Introduction by the Authors New York: Pantheon Books. Hestres, L. (2014). Preaching to the Choir: Internet-mediated Advocacy, Issue Public Mobilization, and Climate Change. New Media &Society, 16 (2): Kaan, V. and Vehbi, G. (2015) A social influence perspective on expressive political participation in Twitter: the case of #OccupyGezi, Information, Communication and Society, 18(1): Koltsova, I. and Shcherbak, A. (2014). LiveJournal Libra! : The political blogosphere and voting preferences in Russia in , New Media and Society, doi: / , Lockwood A. (2008) Seeding doubt: how sceptics use new media to delay action on climate change. Association for Journalism Education (AJE) Annual Conference New Media, New Democracy?, Sheffield University, 12 th September Lotan, G., Graeff, E., Ananny, M., Gaffney, D., Pearce, I., & boyd, d. (2011). The Revolutions Were Tweeted: Information Flows during the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions, International Journal Of Communication, 5: Misnikov, Y. (2012). How to Read and Treat Online Public Discussions among Ordinary Citizens Beyond Political Mobilisation. Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media, 7: 1-37, (accessed 1 February 2014). O Neill, S. and Boykoff, M. (2011) The role of new media in engaging individuals with climate change. In: Whitmarsh L, O Neill SJ, and Lorenzoni I (eds.) Engaging the Public with Climate Change: Communication and Behaviour Change. London: Earthscan; 2011, Rettberg, J. (2008) Blogging. Cambridge: Polity. Yung, B. and Leung, L. (2014) Diverse roles of alternative media in Hong Kong civil society: from public discourse initiation to social activism, Journal of Asian Public Policy, 7(1):