Information Orders and New Communications Technology

NO 10
2012
Published by Swedish Institute
of International Affairs. www.ui.se
Information Orders and
New Communications
Technology: Democratic Hopes
and Authoritarian Pitfalls
Johan Lagerkvist (Ed.)
Contributions by:
Evgeny Morozov
Visiting Scholar, Stanford University
Kristina Riegert
Professor, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University
Johan Lagerkvist
Senior Research Fellow, Swedish institute of International Affairs (UI)
Contents
Information Orders and Democracy: Toward a New Research Agenda ............... 3
Johan Lagerkvist
Freedom to Sell: Why “The Internet Freedom Agenda” Fails to Thwart the
Global Trade in Surveillance Tools. ........................................................................... 7
Evgeny Morozov
How Democracies Build Tools for Dictators............................................................. 9
The False Innocence of Silicon Valley .................................................................... 12
From Tools to Policies ............................................................................................. 14
Before The Revolutionary Moment: The Significance of Lebanese and Egyptian
Bloggers For Mediated Public Spheres. ................................................................... 20
Kristina Riegert
Blogospheres as Alternative Publics ........................................................................ 22
Egypt and Lebanon: Two Very Different Contexts for Blogospheres .................... 25
The Top Bloggers and Local Media ........................................................................ 28
Blogging Content during 2009-2010 ....................................................................... 34
Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 37
References ................................................................................................................ 39
China´s Authoritarian Information Order: Dealing With New Media Capitalists
and Emergent Civil Society. ...................................................................................... 42
Johan Lagerkvist
Research Questions .................................................................................................. 43
Thorny Dilemmas for Chinese ICT Entrepreneurs .................................................. 44
A Subdued ICT Industry .......................................................................................... 45
Microblogging Businesses in China ........................................................................ 47
Real Name Registration: From Blogging to Weibo................................................. 49
Pleasing Both Consumers and Censors ................................................................... 51
Tolerating the Authoritarian Information Order ...................................................... 54
References ................................................................................................................ 56
Information Orders and Democracy: Toward a New
Research Agenda
Johan Lagerkvist
The democratic revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the broader unfolding of
events during the Arab Spring of 2011, ignited debates about digital technologies and
social media usage and their consequences for social protest mobilization,
democratization, and prolonged struggles to consolidate democracy in countries long
dominated by authoritarian political culture. The Arab Spring demonstrated the
liberalizing role that new communications technology can play under certain
circumstances, but did not eliminate suspicions that constraining contextual factors
can hinder the development of open information orders. Partly because of the political
upheaval in North Africa and the Middle East, augmented by social media and do-ityour-self- journalism, and partly because of ongoing research projects the Swedish
Institute of International Affairs on digital politics and emerging civil societies in East
Asia, the institute on 9 February 2012 organized a one-day seminar – “Information
orders and new communications technology: democratic hopes and authoritarian
pitfalls” – as a stepping stone toward establishing a new research program. As its
point of departure, the program holds that the historical and socio-cultural settings of
individual countries must be thoroughly analyzed when attempting to explain how
authoritarian regimes and post-authoritarian newly democratized countries deal with
new communications technologies. While information orders are often characterized
by resilience, they are not immune to the destabilizing risks associated with flows of
information. Moreover, how such orders are challenged by use of information and
communications technologies (ICTs), actors in civil society and, in turn, how
authoritarian regimes seek to contain information flows and social media networking
are important for understanding the interplay between national-authoritarian and
global-anarchic environments.
3
The paper presenters at the seminar – Evgeny Morozov, Kristina Riegert, Alexandra
Segerberg, Johan Lagerkvist – all discussed the increasing transnational links and
communication networks between the global and the national, as well as the
competition and cooperation between business, state and societal interests that they
bring. Important questions that were raised included: How do various national
interests and transnational linkages impact on different authoritarian political systems
in diverse national contexts such as the Middle East and East and Southeast Asia?
And how does state power react to new social media and communications technology
that have the potential to empower civil society? To what extent are Internet
censorship, law-making, media ownership, propaganda, and surveillance effective
tools for authoritarian regimes and the nominally democratic in managing processes
of globalization, democratization, and democracy?
Based on their presentations at the seminar, Evgeny Morozov, Kristina Riegert and
Johan Lagerkvist contributed three essays to this UI occasional paper. Evgeny
Morozov’s essay “Freedom to Sell: Why “The Internet Freedom Agenda” Fails to
Thwart the Global Trade in Surveillance Tools” critically engages with the “Internet
freedom agenda” of the Obama administration in the United States. Using the current
crisis in Syria as a case, he argues that the sanctions regime used against authoritarian
regimes is too broad to be effective. Particularly problematic is the lack of policies
and regulations preventing the sales of surveillance systems and products from
Western high-tech firms to the world’s dictators. West European and American
companies are selling (some of them proudly so) products to authoritarian countries
such as Syria, Iran and China, while Western governments at the same time attempt to
train dissidents to acquire the online skills needed to stay away from the monitors and
security apparatuses of these same authoritarian states.
Kristina Riegert’s essay “Before the Revolutionary Moment: Lebanese and Egyptian
Bloggers Stretching the Boundaries of Mediated Public Sphere” analyzes in-depth the
two blogospheres of Lebanon and Egypt, prior to the outbreak of the Arab Spring and
4
the revolutionary uprisings that were fuelled by activists and social media users. She
makes the important case, backed up by rigorous fieldwork, that the Egyptian social
media users and bloggers were but a tiny part of the broader and much larger network
of revolutionaries who ultimately ousted President Mubarak from power. Certainly,
the English speaking liberal-democratic inclined elite were important, functioning as
bridge-bloggers to a global audience of transnational activist networks and
international news media. Yet, the visibility and hand-picking of a resourceful
minority of bloggers/activists risk inflating their value at the expense of larger, but
more obscure phenomena that arguably demands much more legwork of both
journalists and scholars to uncover.
Finally, Johan Lagerkvist’s essay ”China’s authoritarian information order: dealing
with new media capitalists and emergent civil society” describes and analyzes the
setting of social media providers and entrepreneurs in a media landscape of replete of
pervasive censorship of online expressions. He explains the uneasy position of
Chinese microblogging companies Sina and Tencent, focusing on their dual role as
both facilitators and monitors of social media in China’s locked-in public sphere. The
analysis shows how the collusion between commercial actors of China’s social media
sector and the Party-state’s control agencies has only been temporarily resolved,
making cadre-capitalist cooperation inherently unpredictable and increasingly
tenuous. Evidenced by fieldwork conducted in Beijing during the fall of 2011 at Sina
and Tencent headquarters, the party-state cannot – and does not – fully trust
businesses in the social media sector to fully comply with implementing policy that
relates to agenda of social and political stability. The difficulties of establishing a
waterproof real name registration system for microblogs since 16 March 2012 to
prevent leakage of sensitive rumors, well illustrates the ad hoc nature of the current
alliance of cadre and capitalist interests.
In sum, the 9 February seminar at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and
these three essays illustrates that there is a pressing need for new theorizing about
5
both triggering factors and the complex interplay of prerequisites in transitions to
democracy, as information and communications technologies increasingly empower
citizens, digital media empires, and state actors alike. Challenging, undermining and
maintaining various authoritarian information orders are becoming a central feature of
domestic and international politics in our time. In the wake of the Arab Spring
revolutions directed against one form of authoritarianism, consolidation of democracy
and prolonged struggles against new forms and constellations of authoritarianism are
becoming features of digital politics worldwide. Understanding this dynamic across
world regions and a range of political systems that “color” their national media
systems and information orders have become increasingly necessary to investigate.
Thus, there is a pressing need to embark on a new research agenda for different
disciplines within the social sciences.
6
Freedom to Sell: Why “The Internet Freedom Agenda”
Fails to Thwart the Global Trade in Surveillance Tools
Evgeny Morozov
To listen to leaders of the Western world sing praises to ambiguous ideals like
“Internet freedom” while bashing their opponents in Moscow, Tehran or Beijing, one
would think that the West itself is the paragon of ethical behavior, a staunch defender
of bloggers' rights and gamers' freedoms. Alas, there is a lot of grand and highfalutin
talk of values, ideals and – here comes that vapid and dreadful word! –
“empowerment,” but very little by way of actually doing something to offend the fat
but innovative cats of Silicon Valley and help the dissidents in China, Syria or Iran
evade pervasive surveillance of their regimes.
Perhaps, it's time to entertain the idea that the dissidents need no more trainings by
Western consultants – the staple of Western “Internet freedom” initiatives. For such
trainings are just a lazy and rather ineffective way of dealing with the actual problem,
which is the proliferation of new and powerful surveillance tools, created and
marketed by American and European firms to almost anyone who would ask
(including the secret police of some of the most heinous authoritarian regimes).
Instead of training dissidents how to cover their tracks online, why not ensure that
Western technology is not used to hunt down those very dissidents?
Take Syria, one of the many horror stories of the modern surveillance trade. Late in
2011 it emerged that 13 internet filtering servers manufactured by Blue Coat
Systems 1, a California-based company worth over $750 million, mysteriously made
their way to Syria, where they were used to censor the Internet. Blue Coat Systems
acknowledged that its products had been used in the country but denied it had made
1
“U.S. Firm Acknowledges Syria Uses Its Gear to Block Web,” The Wall Street Journal, 29 October
2011
7
any sales to Syria, claiming that it had shipped them to a Dubai distributor who was
meant to pass it on to Iraq's Ministry of Communications 2. Leaving aside the deep
irony of seeing a “free and liberated” Iraq abetting the Syrian dictatorship with the
purchases of latest censorship gizmos from its liberators (probably with their own
money), this explanation is not without its flaws (some technologists have pointed out
that Syrians were using more servers than Blue Coat Systems had shipped to Iraq 3,
while Iraqi politicians flatly denied any knowledge of the deal 4).
But the Blue Coat story pales in comparison to that of the Italian firm Area SpA,
which won a 2009 tender from the Syrian government and was all set to start building
a $17.9 million electronic panopticon that would record every email sent in the
country 5. Area withdrew from that contract in late November; it's unclear whether it
did so because of public pressure – Bloomberg News was particularly nosy about its
dealings with the Syrian regime but a leading Italian newspaper La Reppublica also
picked up the story – or because of technical problems, which are not unthinkable
given the unrest in the country. However, before withdrawing Area had assembled a
stellar list of suppliers and collaborators – including American companies NetApp
and HP. Both of them denied having any advance knowledge that the hardware they
had sold to Area would be used in Syria but Bloomberg News uncovered emails
showing that NetApp's technicians had indeed known that their firm's hardware was
heading to the country6.
2
Ibid.
“Behind Blue Coat: Investigations of commercial filtering in Syria and Burma,” Citizen Lab, 9
November 2011
4
"What Was Iraq’s Role in the Export of Banned US-made Web Watching Gear to Syria?", Niqash, 28
November 2011
5
"Italian technicians are aiding Syria with surveillance," Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Dec 1, 2011
6
"U.S. Calls for NetApp Probe on Syria Spy Tech" Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nov 9, 2011
3
8
How Democracies Build Tools for Dictators
Perhaps, the reticence of Western leaders on the question of surveillance is not
accidental. Many of the tools that are now aggressively deployed by dictators have
been initially developed to suit the needs of Western law enforcement and intelligence
agencies. Left with no easy means to monitor Skype calls and online chats of
terrorists and drug dealers, they inadvertently created this cyber-spying industry,
which is now aggressively expanding worldwide.
It's useful to pause here and consider the origins of this new industry. Up until very
recently, the debate about the future of online surveillance in democratic states has
been dominated by two options. First, governments could require that all providers of
software and hardware incorporate backdoors into their products by design, i.e.
become "wiretappable" in the same way that phones have been required to be
"wiretappable". The major arguments against this option are that it may stifle
innovation in the technology sector and actually decrease security, as ubiquitous
backdoors can be manipulated by third-party hackers.
The second option is to build spying software that, instead of exploiting built-in
backdoors in a particular software (e.g. Skype), would compromise the security of just
one computer - the one belonging to the suspect. This way, there is no need to require
technology companies to build products that are faulty by design. The risks to
national security are also minimized, as the spying operation would be highly
targeted. Civil liberties advocates are also happy: this solution doesn't give
governments the kind of infrastructure to spy on anyone they like: when Skype,
Gmail and Facebook all have default backdoors, this temptation may be too great to
resist, especially in the middle of the war on terror. In fact, this is why many smart
technologists - including free speech advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have preferred this second approach to backdoors 7.
7
I have covered this issue in more depth here http://edge.org/conversation/code-is-law
9
Given the current legal regime, there are few barriers that prevent Western firms that
produce keyloggers or spyware from exporting their technologies to the Middle East
or China. High demand for their products in the West ensures low costs and constant
innovation. The sophistication of Egypt's security apparatus is directly proportional to
the sophistication of methods pursued by NSA and FBI; a failure to recognize this
link between domestic and foreign agendas – a failure which underpins much of
Hillary Clinton's “Internet freedom” agenda that focuses on empowering bloggers, not
restraining America's own technology firms – guarantees that dictators have easy
access to Western surveillance tools. Unfortunately, this may be one of those cases
where US-led efforts to promote Internet freedom abroad are doomed regardless of
what the US chooses to do domestically – whatever happens, the idealists in Foggy
Bottom are bound to lose. Having FBI and NSA push for backdoors in internet
services would affect global standards and eventually make these services easier to
wiretap by any foreign governments, democratic or not. The reason why authorities in
Iran and Belarus can easily track their opponents is because Nokia-Siemens and
Ericsson supply them with the same kind of technology that is demanded by Western
governments (who, of course, require a possibility for “lawful intercept” of
communications). But if the US government abandons its plan to create backdoors
and pours tax money into creating tools that provide for easy tracking and wiretapping
instead, this might also strengthen the security apparatus of authoritarian states, as we
saw in Egypt.
From the perspective of dissidents, it's not obvious which approach is better: knowing
of potential backdoors, they may take extra precautionary steps; the reason why so
many Egyptians were caught off-guard when it turned out that authorities are
eavesdropping on Skype is precisely because they believed that Skype was impossible
to break into. The broader problem here is that anything that will allow Chinese
dissidents to breach the firewalls put in place by their government might also be used
by anyone in America to conceal drug trade. There are no easy ways around this
problem other than to require that US-funded anti-censorship tools work only when
10
used in China (i.e. when accessed from Chinese IP addresses) but this could make it
easier for the Chinese authorities to identify and block them 8 .
So while Western policy-makers are sorting out their problems, Western firms are
busy expanding worldwide. Boeing-owned Narus – a US firm that sold monitoring
equipment to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and was exploring a deal with Qaddafi 9 – has
more than a tenuous connection to the National Security Agency (Narus equipment
was used in the now infamous AT&T's San Francisco facility, where wiretapping was
taking place.) FBI has developed and deployed several Web spying tools of its own –
and we can only guess about the NSA, since the agency is notoriously secretive about
its dealings. European firms that offer a panoply tools for eavesdropping on Skype
calls still primarily cater to the needs – often quite legitimate ones – of the Western
governments. Likewise, the reason why the likes of Siemens and Nokia manufacture
technology that allows for listening in on cellphone calls or for monitoring text
messaging is because current industry standards require them to do so.
Still, the ubiquity of European firms among supplies of such hardware is alarming.
Area's helpers in Syria included not just HP and NetApp but also Germany's Utimaco
Safeware AG and Frances' Qosmos SA. In Egypt, protesters who stormed the
headquarters of the secret police in March 2011 were surprised to discover pitches for
advanced surveillance gear from European technology firms 10 ; similar
documentation was uncovered in Libya after Gaddafi's fall 11 (to add insult to injury,
it may be that Gaddafi got his surveillance equipment from the French firm Amesys
while the late dictator was visiting Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007; another troubling sign
of Western complicity in enabling authoritarian repression 12 ).
8
I have written more about this problem in my review of Susan Landau's book. It's available here:
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/evgeny_morozov_internet_spying_privacy.php
9
"Foreign Firms Helped Gadhafi Spy on Libyans," The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2011
10
“Document Trove Exposes Surveillance Methods,” The Wall Street Journal, 19 November 2011
11
"Foreign Firms Helped Gadhafi Spy on Libyans," The Wall Street Journal, 30 August 2011
12
Ibid.
11
The False Innocence of Silicon Valley
It's unclear to what extent such gear was actually in use; it may be that the rulers of
both countries may have been swept out of office before they had a chance to fully act
on those offers. However, analysis of similar schemes deployed in Iran, Bahrain and
Syria suggests that regimes that do take the timely precautions and build a powerful
surveillance apparatus do gain a powerful advantage over their opponents. It's
primarily British and German firms that have catered to the surveillance needs of Iran
and Bahrain (and in the case of Britain's Creativity Software – which supplied
telecommunications equipment to Iran – was “proud” to do so, as it acknowledged in
a public statement 13).
And it's not just surveillance gear; customized censorship solutions sell well too. A
March 2011 study by the Open Network Initiative, an academic group that studies
Internet freedom, found that Netsweeper (a Canadian company) along with America's
Websense and SmartFilter (the latter now owned by Intel) cater to the censorship
needs of governments in the Middle East and Africa 14. Numerous other American
companies – from Cisco to HP – have been considering helping China with its
ambitious agenda of fitting the country with ubiquitous video surveillance 15 ; we do
not know how many of them have resisted the temptation in the end.
As the technology of facial recognition technology (FRT) improves, we are bound to
see many Western offerings in that niche as well; an Arab Spring, where the face of
every protester could be easily identified and matched to their Facebook profile,
might easily have a very different outcome. However, it's not just companies: some
Western universities may be complicit as well. Scientists at UCLA – with some
funding from the Chinese government – have built an “image-to-text” system that
13
Quoted on Privacy International's website: https://www.privacyinternational.org/pressreleases/creativity-software-declare-themselves-proud-to-supply-surveillance-technology-to
14
"U.S. Products Help Block Mideast Web," The Wall Street Journal, 27 March 2011
15
“Cisco Poised to Help China Build Surveillance Project,” The Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2011
12
automatically produces text summaries of the captured video frames. This provides
for easy search of CCTV footage, boosting China's sprawling complex of video
surveillance. Perhaps, this is a worthy contribution to science – but it's an even better
contribution to the well-being of the Chinese Communist Party.
But it is Internet giants like Facebook and Google that could make facial recognition
technology dictators' best friend. So far, Facebook hasn't released any groundbreaking
technology; most probably, the company licenses its current FRT from an Israeli startup called Face.com. However, Facebook has one advantage over other providers of
FRT: the sheer amount of photos that it posses are mind-boggling (4 billion photos
are uploaded to the site every month). And it's not just photos – Facebook already
knows the names of people who are likely to appear in your photos (i.e. your online
friends); the most likely backgrounds of your photos (place where you study, live,
travel, or go to work); your approximate age and gender; and a heap of other
information that may help it build the ultimate FRT technology (or, at least, the
ultimate face search engine). Facebook's data repository puts in a brand-new category
all by itself.
Google, too, may revolutionize the field – if it wants to. Even though in May 2011
Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, named automated facial recognition as
one of the technologies that even his company finds creepy 16 , it is probably just one
of Google's rhetorical ruses. Google has previously acquired several start-ups –
Like.com and Neven Vision – that worked in face and other types of visual
recognition technologies. The company also keeps patenting technologies that may
turn into a powerful player in FRT. One recent Google patent – published by the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office on the very day that Schmidt renounced FRT – would
allow the company to build a biometric database of celebrities' faces, which would be
16
"Google warns against facial recognition database," The Daily Telegraph, 18 May 2011
13
matched with their mentions in the news 17. Another recent patent would allow Google
to divide an image into separate objects – a building, a street name, a person, etc –
and receive information about each of them individually18. The company has also
patented the ability to increase the accuracy of facial recognition by tapping into the
social networking profile data 19 . It seems that if Facebook succeeds in convincing the
public about the normality of FRTs, it's quite likely that Google would reverse the
course and enter the field ("Technically, we can pretty much do all of these things",
Google's engineering director for image-recognition development told CNN last
year 20 ). Apple and Microsoft are also not far behind in terms of patents and acquired
FRT start-ups.
From Tools to Policies
Putting limits on the sale of surveillance technology has proved nearly impossible but
in December 2011 the European Union did the unthinkable: it banned European
companies from exporting such tools to Syria 21 . The only country to object and seek
special waivers for its own technology companies was Sweden, which has large
presence in the Syrian mobile sector. Sweden's reasoning was that tapped and
monitored mobile phones are still better than no mobile phones and that by forcing
Swedish companies out of Syria, EU would essentially be thwarting the opposition.
This is not an unassailable assumption but the Swedish government is correct to
believe that sanctions on technology exports are at best ineffective and at worst
counterproductive.
17
It's available here: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nphParser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r
=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220110116690%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110116690&RS=DN/20110116690
18
Available here: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nphParser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearchadv.html&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20110035406.PGNR.&OS=dn/20110035406&RS=D
N/20110035406
19
“Google Seeks Social Networking Face Recognition Patent," Information Week, 14 Feb 2011
20
“Google making app that would identify people's faces,” CNN.com, March 31, 2011
21
“European Union Bans Exports to Syria of Systems for Monitoring Web, Phones,” Bloomberg
BusinessWeek, December 1, 2011
14
America's own sanctions against Syria are a surreal case in point. How did technology
from Blue Coat or NetApp or HP end up Syria? It's not because there are no sanctions
on Syria; those are in place since 2004 and are extremely broad in their scope,
requiring any American company seeking to make its services or products available in
Syria obtain a US government license first. Rather, it's because the distributed,
decentralized and highly modular way in which modern surveillance tools are
developed and traded cannot be captured and regulated by the current sanctions
regime. As long as components can be shipped to some third country – Moldova,
Azerbaijan, Somalia? All three of them? – they might be easily re-exported to the
sanctioned country (which is what seems to have happened with Area in Italy). If the
younger Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer, was contemplating where to
focus his efforts today, the smuggling of surveillance equipment might seem more
lucrative than guns.
In fact, the broad scope of the current sanctions regime, while unable to ban the sale
of surveillance and censorship technology, ends up constraining what ordinary Syrian
citizens – including the dissidents – can and cannot do online. Few American
technology companies go through the hassle of obtaining government licenses to
operate in Syria; as a result, for a long time Syrians couldn't download many of the
products – from Google Chrome to Google Earth – that are used by their peers in
Egypt or Tunisia. They can't even top up their Skype accounts, so they can't call their
families abroad 22. If there were a perfect example of a stupid and ineffective
sanctions regime, this is it – but the US government is not keen to change it,
preferring to waste time on honing its cyber-emancipatory rhetoric about blogger
empowerment instead.
As for the future of surveillance industry, it looks very bright – and very liquid. If,
until very recently, this industry was funded almost entirely by various agencies of the
22
“When Sanctions Make Things Worse,” Aljazeera.com, 23 November 2011
15
US government and In-Q-Tel (CIA's venture fund), now investors from the private
sector are paying increased attention to this field as well, with venture capitalists
showing up at industry events and promising easy money for cutting-edge ideas.
Much of this sudden interest can be attributed to the spectacular success of Palantir –
a data-mining company co-founded by the staunch libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel
and Alex Karp, the former student of Jurgen Habermas turned Palantir's CEO, which
has become the darling of the American intelligence community. Virtually all venture
capitalists overlooked Palantir when it was first seeking funding almost a decade ago
– and few want to make the same mistake again.) Thiel's involvement with the project
is probably reassuring to other entrepreneurs: if helping to boost the surveillance state
looks kosher for a self-avowed libertarian like him, it must be kosher for everybody
else too. Thiel's rationale here, however, is also far from impeccable; he thinks that
we need to develop Palantir-like technology – which basically helps the spooks
connect the dots before anyone has even seen the dots – because “we cannot afford to
have another 9/11 event in the US” 23 . Very libertarian, this: the more data we
surrender to our government, the less likely another 9/11 is to occur.
As the Palantir example demonstrates, it's unlikely that the providers and developers
of such tools have any trouble sleeping at night. First of all, the fact that such
technologies are developed under the semi-official auspices of the War on Terror
allows the manufactures and popularizers of such tools to present themselves as
saviors of civilization – even if those very tools then end up being used to crush
uprisings and imprison dissidents. (And this is meant literally: as Jerry Lucas –
something of an impresario for the official and unofficial gatherings of the
surveillance industry – has recently told The Washington Post: “This technology is
absolutely vital for civilization.” 24)
23
"Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon" Bloomberg BusinessWeek, 22 November, 2011
24
"Trade in surveillance technology raises worries," The Washington Post, December 1, 2011
16
Second, the logic of tool neutrality – the presumption that it all depends on how
technologies are used by people – is quickly invoked to deflect any responsibility
from those designing and selling the tools. As a German executive of one such
company told the Wall Street Journal “it's like a knife. You can always cut vegetables
but you can also kill your neighbor.” Comparing NSA to a vegetable-lover wielding a
knife is quite rich – but so is the assumption that vendors are in the dark as to how
their tools are being used. Much of modern software and hardware requires constant
updates and periodic communication with the home server; it's not unfeasible to
expect technology firms to actually check whether gadgets are used to cut vegetables
or kill neighbors.
And is the US State Department doing much on this front? No – quite the opposite.
Instead of bashing companies like Cisco for their alleged role in facilitating the
building of the Chinese system of Internet controls, the State Department lavished an
award on that company – in recognition of Cisco's “corporate excellence” 25 ! Oh –
and a few months before that notorious award, the State Department took Cisco
to...Syria and brokered a meeting with President Assad 26 . Of course, Syria is closely
watched at the moment – it's unlikely that many Western companies would risk doing
business there.
But what about authoritarian states that are seen as Western – or, at any rate,
American – allies? What about Bahrain or Saudi Arabia? The latter is a beneficiary of
gigantic amounts of American aid; in 2010 Washington approved a $60 billion arms
deal with the Saudi government 27 . If Washington can send $60 billion worth of tanks
to helicopters to the country, what's to prevent it from selling $6 million worth of
surveillance gear? Furthermore, what's to prevent the Saudis from reselling it to other
25
"Cisco Receives U.S. State Department Award for Corporate Excellence," Cisco Blog, 17 December
2010
26
"U.S. Deploys Tech Firms to Win Syrian Allies," The Wall Street Journal, 15 June 2010
27
“U.S.-Saudi Arms Deal Moves Ahead,” The Wall Street Journal, 12 September 2010
17
governments? In fact, it's the sales of Western surveillance gear to American “allies”
that need to be monitored most closely, for it Silicon Valley might find the temptation
to make a quick buck at the expense of human rights in the region simply irresistible.
The inconsistencies of American foreign policy aside, it's quite urgent that Western
governments take drastic steps in addressing the surveillance problem. Time is
working against them, as Chinese, Indian and Russian companies are quickly
developing similar capabilities. It used to be that only behemoths like China's Huawei
were significant actors on this stage (Huawei has significant presence in Iran 28 and
all over African continent– perhaps, a good reason for concern) but now there is also
a swathe of small and niche start-ups that cater to particular demands of their host
governments or international clients.
As Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan have documented in great detail 29 , Russian
start-ups have already developed advanced capabilities for voice recognition. Given
the still present concern that Russia and its immediate ex-Soviet neighbors may still
experience some kind of a localized Arab Spring 30 , one expect regional demand for
such tools to grow only stronger. The Chinese government too has been aggressively
marketing its domestic technology abroad; thus, both Moldova 31 and Belarus 32 have
announced that they were getting equipment for video surveillance from China (in
Moldova's case, it was part of China's economic aid given to the country).
The thorny issue of surveillance in authoritarian states – and the role that Western
technology companies play in facilitating it – reveals some of the profound
ambiguities inherent in a term like “Internet freedom.” The problems outlined in this
28
“Huawei, Chinese Tech Giant, Aids Iran,” The Wall Street Journal, 27 October 2011
“Just business: how Russian technology provides the eyes and ears for the world’s Big Brothers,”
openDemocracy, 25 January 2012
30
"CSTO wants to monitor the internet to prevent a repeat of Arab revolutions," Moscow News, 13
September, 2011
31
“China to grant Moldova 9.5 million dollars for economic, technical development,” MOLDPRESS,
16 December 2011
32
“Belarus Seeks China-Made Surveillance Gear,” The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2011
29
18
essay make it clear that most problems that need to be solved by Western
policymakers do not sit in an independent intellectual category that can be neatly
bracketed out from domestic politics and lobbying by Silicon Valley, privacy laws
that guide technologies like facial recognition, the complexity of sanctions laws
written before the Internet, and so forth. While capacity building – training bloggers
and activists from authoritarian states how to use tools to evade Internet police – is
important, it cannot be the sole component of a successful “Internet freedom”
strategy. Making the Internet more conducive to dissent would require a lot of hard
work – in Washington, Brussels, the Bay Area, national capitals – and this hard work
cannot be replaced with capacity building exercises. Given that Russia and China are
rapidly becoming important players in the global surveillance trade, it's imperative
that Western governments rethinking their cavalier approach to the issue.
19
Before The Revolutionary Moment: The Significance
of Lebanese and Egyptian Bloggers For Mediated
Public Spheres
Kristina Riegert
For many countries across the Arab world, 2005 marks the rise of the social media for
airing controversial ideas, critiquing the powerful, and sharing popular culture.
Intellectuals, politicians, students and activists have since then become adept at using
Internet-enabled media to expose minority discrimination, the public sexual
harassment of women, as well as the systematic torture, abuse and corruption by the
authorities. It may also be said that in a number of cases the negative publicity has
forced Arab governments to take action. However, aside from increasing the speed of
communication and promoting the engagement of the ‘activist’ classes, the impact of
the social media on the mediated public sphere is not exactly clear.
There were numerous deep-rooted causes for the spread of the mass demonstrations
demanding ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’ that swept the Arab region in 2011, and they were
no doubt fuelled by the simultaneous expansion of the social media. That said, low
and varying Internet penetration would make it misleading to conclude that the social
media alone are responsible for the mass character of this unrest. Rather, the
interaction between social media platforms and pan-Arab and Western satellite
television meant that the ideas and actions circulating on the Internet reached both
national and international audiences in a whole new way. Indeed, the mainstream
media have been busy in the last decade positioning themselves in relation to social
media, utilizing citizen journalists as sources and honing crowd-sourcing techniques,
something that in turn amplifies issues among social media users themselves.
This evolving relationship between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media is what Andrew Chadwick
calls a ‘hybrid media environment’, in which the hegemonic mainstream media are
20
challenged by new media actors, resulting in power struggles, to “control, police and
redraw boundaries” of political communication between various actors, organizations
and assemblages in the field of news media (Chadwick, 2011: 10). Naomi Sakr has
recently argued that the ‘satellite-internet divide’ in Egypt was incrementally bridged
in the years prior to the revolutionary moment, not only due to the rise of bloggers but
because “concerned Egyptian citizens, journalists and politicians made heavy use of
the online space for political communication precisely because mainstream offline
media were largely closed to them” (forthcoming, 20). Egypt is not the only society
with a dominant state media and censorship where digital media have become portals
for alternative information and hubs of civic activism and resistance (Lagerkvist,
2010; Srebreny & Khiabany, 2010; Kulikova & Perlmutter, 2007; Taki, 2010). This
poses interesting questions for how the power contest between mainstream/alternative
media and between foreign/national media plays out in authoritarian and transitional
societies, rather than the late modern democracies discussed by Chadwick.
In order to get a better understanding of the role of social media during the Arab
uprisings, this essay takes a closer look at some seminal social media users – popular
bloggers in two Arab countries Lebanon and Egypt – prior to the unrest. In doing so,
it focuses on the most linked to and most visited bloggers, their relationships to
mainstream media and each country’s specific political and cultural context,
especially its mediascape. 33 By giving an overview of who these bloggers are, their
networks, what types of issues they blog about and to whom, we are in a better
position to assess what role blogging had in inspiring the events that have led to the
Arab uprisings in 2011.
33
The project on which this essay is based is interested in the nature and impact of the most ‘popular’
Arabic and English language bloggers in Lebanon, Egypt and Kuwait in the pre-revolutionary period
2009-2010. It is a collaboration between Media and Arabic studies professors Kristina Riegert and Gail
Ramsay and financed by the Swedish Research Council.
21
Blogospheres as Alternative Publics
It is not a forgone conclusion to ask whether the most ‘popular’ Arabic blogs stretch
the boundaries of the mediated public sphere, transcending the political and cultural
norms governing mainstream media. The most popular blogs are not necessarily
political; they may be business blogs, entertainment blogs or diary-style blogs. As
websites written in reverse chronological order, blogs are incredibly rich, often
mixing autobiographical narratives, political engagement, consumerist critique,
poetry, and satire, YouTube clips, or commentary on daily life. Especially in
countries with Internet filtering and heavy-handed involvement in gender relations,
religion, and entertainment, blogs may be more apt to focus on technological
‘gadgets’ and restaurant reviews than political commentary (i.e. in the Gulf States).
This means that analysis of the blog content is required in the latter case, whereas an
idea about whether the blogs form their own networks and what their linkages are to
the mainstream media can be gleaned by interviews and more quantitative means.
Our definition of the most ‘popular blogs’ rests on a combination of the most often
linked to blogs in each blogosphere combined with the most highly ranked in terms of
visitors. 34 These blogs, we reasoned, are those most likely to be picked up, linked to,
or ‘stolen’ from by the mainstream media. Relationships between the mainstream
media and bloggers can be difficult to trace in Arab countries, due to widespread ‘idea
theft’, censorship and filtering, and technological anomalies, but we can get an
overview of blogger networks through their hyperlinks, through citations of them and
mainstream media through search engines as well as from blogger’s own accounts.
We chose the top Lebanese and Egyptian Arabic and English language non-
34
Alexa (www.alexa.com) is a web traffic analysis site that provides ranking and analysis of visitor
statistics and averages for a three-month period. Alexa alone is not considered a reliable indicator, so
those chosen come from the top 30 ‘most linked to blogs’ according our link impact analysis (Thelwall,
2009) which also had the highest traffic according to Alexa.
22
commercial, active, individual blogs 35. We interviewed 17 of these 21 bloggers
personally or via Skype (with video). Our textual analyses cover at least every tenth
blogging day of these blogs during the period between 1 April 2009 – 30 April 2010
to see what types of subjects the bloggers focus on and how they express themselves.
Middle East studies scholar Mark Lynch (2011) has argued that the most likely effect
of the Internet will be an incremental widening of Arab public spheres rather than
fundamental change, because Arab governments may yet adapt to and stifle the
Internet challenge. Whether blogospheres can most aptly be described as extensions
of mediated public spheres, or as alternative or ‘counter’-public spheres, blogs can be
thought of as accessible online spaces where people gain a degree of publicity and
interaction for issues the blogger(s) have decided are of concern. By choosing popular
bloggers we signal that we are interested in the type of alternative public that is not so
isolated from the dominant mediated public sphere as to be irrelevant. Some attention
needs to be paid to them by the more established actors in society - either the media,
civil society and religious organisations, or official authorities.
Non-affiliated bloggers emphasise their independence from established media
organisations, marking their authenticity with subjective audience address, signalling
first-hand experience and trustworthiness (Atton 2008, 43). The popular bloggers we
interviewed in Lebanon and Egypt are no exception. Few of them even admitted to
belonging to a social or civil society organization. That said, most participated in an
ad hoc way in civil society organisations’ or NGOs’ charity drives, workshops,
protest demonstrations, or human rights campaigns (prisoner abuse, women’s rights,
minority issues).
35
The reason there are eleven blogs in the Egyptian case and only ten in the Lebanese case is because
Manalaa.net, run by a couple, were not very active during our time period. Therefore not much could
be said about the content, but since this blog was among the top most linked to and visited blogs, and
also a seminal Egyptian blog whose founder started one of the most important Egyptian blog
aggregators, we include it here.
23
The Lebanese and the Egyptian bloggers told us that the aim of their blogs was to
freely express their opinions about politics, society and culture, many saying that
opinions such as theirs were not adequately reflected in the mainstream media. While
this does not preclude the possibility that some bloggers started their blogs to launch a
career in the media (whether artistically or journalistically), it also points to a
subjective feeling of not being represented in mainstream society. Thus, blogging can
seen as part of “alternative media spheres” where publics that feel marginalized use
campaigns and alternative media to make their voices heard, and hoping to make an
impact in the dominant public sphere (Wimmer, 2009; Warner, 2002).
At the very least, blogging functions as online spaces where bloggers post about their
concerns and issues. Through interacting with others online and offline, they form
their own community, parallel to the mainstream (Fraser 1990). Those bloggers we
interviewed demonstrated an awareness and interest in their readers: they knew how
many readers they had, which countries they came from and, through the ‘comments’
function and Twitter, they interacted with many of them. Secondly, they knew most
of the other bloggers included here, either through reading them regularly, or via other
online platforms, or through meeting them at ‘bloggers’ meetings’, conferences on
social media, ‘tweet-ups’, protest demonstrations or other common causes. Figures
1.1 and 1.2 demonstrate also that the bloggers link (i.e. ‘cite’) each other, forming a
network. The red squares denote Arabic language bloggers and the blue (and purple)
circles are English or mixed language blogs.
24
Figures 1.1 and 1.2 Egyptian (left) and Lebanese (right) Bloggers Interlinking Networks (with
SocSciBot webcrawls, see Thelwall, 2009).
One interesting point that could be made is that the Lebanese bloggers appear better
interlinked, whereas the Egyptian English language bloggers are not linked to as
often. This could be explained by the more common use of English in the wider
Lebanese blogosphere. Nonetheless, these link networks together with our interviews
demonstrate that ‘bloggers’ or ‘social media activists’ as some call themselves, form a
special type of sub-identity, whether or not they agree with each other on substantive
or ideological issues. Indeed, writing of Lebanese bloggers, Jurkiewicz (2012)
describes an intensive cooperation (as well as conflict) around common initiatives,
offline meetings and friendship as well as online discussion and comment.
Egypt and Lebanon: Two Very Different Contexts for
Blogospheres
To generalize about public discussion in the Arab world, controversial topics have to
do with sex (premarital, extramarital, homosexuality), religion (sectarian issues,
interpretations of one’s own religion or criticizing religious authorities), and politics
(criticizing the current leadership, the army or governmental system). Taboos against
25
public discussion of these issues vary, of course, widely across the Arab world as well
as the sanctions for breaking them (from censorship, Internet filtering, incarceration to
death). The bloggers we interviewed felt that blogs were ideal spaces for airing
controversial political and social issues, or criticising political and cultural norms in
their respective societies.
The conditions for such free expression did however differ significantly between
Lebanon and Egypt, for while the former had little formal government censorship,
bloggers in the latter risked fines, harassment, physical harm, arrest or imprisonment
for crimes such as insulting President Mubarak, the Supreme Council of Armed
Forces (SCAF) or Islam. For Egypt, it is a great paradox that despite its blogosphere
being one of the largest and most lively blogospheres in the Arab World, and
relatively early regional adopters of Facebook and Twitter, Egypt was cited in 2009
by Reporters without Borders as an “Internet enemy”. 36
The rise of blogging in Egypt has been attributed to their documentation of incidences
of election fraud and the ensuing Kefaya (“Enough”) Movement protests in 2005
against the corruption of the regime of President Mubarak. These pioneering bloggers
were human rights activists and citizen journalists, who criticised government and
business corruption, systematic torture, labour exploitation, and defending womens’
and minority rights. Their online and offline mobilisation became an inspiration for
tech-savvy youth around the region as to what could be done in the face of heavy
handed government repression (Hamdy, 2009, Radsch, 2008). That same year in
Lebanon, blogging mushroomed after the assassination of former Prime Minister
Rafik al-Hariri. The ensuing mass demonstrations that came to be called the
36
At least three bloggers were imprisoned during 2010 and many more detained, fined and had their
computer equipment confiscated according to Freedom House. One of the bloggers in our sample, Alaa
Abd El Fattah here was held for over two months during 2011 for taking part in a protest staged by the
Egyptian Copts which resulted in the death over 20 people. Journalists also face fines, beatings, and
imprisonment due to various laws and their inconsistent application. See
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2011/egypt.
26
“Independence Intifada” forced the Syrian army to withdraw after 30 years in
Lebanon.
A second generation of bloggers appeared in both Egypt and Lebanon in 2006
(Radsch, 2009; Taki, 2010). In Egypt, this related to demonstrations against the public
sexual harassment of women and to the increase of Muslim Brotherhood bloggers. In
Lebanon, a new generation began blogging as a result of the Hizbullah-Israeli war,
which virtually closed Lebanon off from the outside world for a time. The so-called
‘third generation’ bloggers appears harder to fix to a specific time, but they tend to
appear in 2007. Radsch (2009) has characterised this latest Egyptian blogging
generation as one in which the ‘subaltern groups’ began blogging in greater numbers.
Like their predecessors however, many are human rights focused. In contrast, this
third generation in Lebanon has diversified away from human rights and politics to
arts and entertainment blogs, business blogs, and lifestyle blogs (Jurkiewicz 2011).
Of our chosen top Egyptian bloggers, mainly all are first generation veterans with an
average age of 34 - several were over 40 years of age when we interviewed them. 37
Most of these bloggers are well known internationally in the online activist world,
some could even be described as celebrities; they had good connections to
mainstream media and among youth movement, both inside and outside Egypt. By
2011 most of the Arab language bloggers had moved much of their activity to Twitter
and Facebook, and were blogging infrequently, however the English language
bloggers continued to be active and were linked to by Western media.
In contrast, the top Lebanese bloggers were younger and could be said to come the
third generation bloggers; although the average age was 29, most were closer to their
mid-twenties. With a couple exceptions, most did not have the same celebrity status in
relation to the mainstream media as the Egyptian bloggers. A couple others had by
37
The onsite interviews took place in Beirut, November 2010 and in Cairo, March 2011.
27
2011 opened new blogs, moved to Facebook or become more infrequent. The use of
Twitter and Facebook was not as often mentioned by Lebanese bloggers as
alternatives or complementary tools as among the Egyptian interviewees. One can
only speculate as to the reasons for the later adoption of Twitter and Facebook among
the Lebanese top bloggers – perhaps because fewer of the Lebanese considered
themselves to be ‘social media activists’.
The questionable staying power of even the most popular bloggers raises questions
about the sustainability of blogospheres over time. After all they are not paid, as
journalists are, to produce a certain amount of text on a regular basis – only a few of
them earned much money from ads. The great majority of bloggers tend to be active
only during certain periods. On the other hand, the top bloggers in our sample that
have slowed down have continued on other social media platforms. Khamis, Gold &
Vaughn (2012) have emphasised how the various social media platforms were used
during the Egyptian Uprisings in 2011 for different purposes, so it is unlikely that
sucessful bloggers simply disappear or stop taking part in online discussions
altogether. How individuals utilise different social media platforms to create their
online presence is one interesting and often overlooked avenue of study in analyses of
social media. Traditionally, the focus has rather been on the blurred boundaries
between offline and online activities, especially when it comes to activism. In this
case, many of the bloggers also worked as freelance journalists, and/or participated ad
hoc demonstrations, protests and campaigns.
The Top Bloggers and Local Media
Western observers have noted that the adoption of citizen journalism and social media
by the mainstream media is driven by conflict and crisis, when the latter are unable to
be at the right place at the right time or when their watchdog role is compromised.
This observation must be modified to have relevance to mainstream Arab media,
which have by and large been appendages to power, either being state-owned or
controlled by powerful groups/business interests close to the state.
28
This is particularly true of Egypt, where state or privately owned (but government
friendly) media have long been dominant. However, since the turn of millennium, this
dominance has been challenged by the success of political talk shows on satellite
television channels, the launch of online portals and or online versions of the new
independent newspapers and from the rise of blogging (Sakr, forthcoming). Omnia
Mehanna (2010) attributes the breakthrough of blogging in Egypt in 2005, in part, to
the transnational Arab media. She says that the broadcast of Al Jazeera’s programme
“Taht Al-Mighar” (Under Examination) in May 2006, which mainly dealt with
Egyptian bloggers’ documentation of incidences of election fraud in the presidential
and parliamentary elections of 2005 and other human rights violations, was a turning
point. This episode, featuring several of the bloggers discussed here, sparked an
upswing in blogging among a whole generation of disgruntled segments in society
and also put bloggers on the Egyptian media radar. As she describes it, “/…/some
newspapers started paying attention to the blogs, copying, sometimes without
permission, stories and pictures from them.” (p. 199)
Figures 1.3 and 1.4 depict the link citation relationships between our bloggers and
some of the top news sites for Lebanon and Egypt. 38 The diagrams represent URL
citations (of blogs or websites) found in the top blogs and the media sites of each
other. These could, but do not have to be hyperlinks (as were the previous set of
diagrams), rather they are a search engine’s return of blog citations and their
connectivity to certain chosen top media sites. 39 Although not as comprehensive as
hyperlinks, the citations returned by such a search, are according to webometric
analyst Mike Thelwall (2009), comparable to a hyperlink network.
38
Taken the last two weeks in April 2011. The link analyses were made between april-june 2011.
URL citations are defined by Thelwall as “the inclusion of an URL (or URL without the http://) in a
web page, with or without a hyperlink. For example, ‘I like news.bbc.co.uk’ is an URL citation in this
page for the BBC news web site.” See http://lexiurl.wlv.ac.uk/searcher/FAQ.html#URLCitation.
Accessed: April 16, 2011. Having analysed hyperlink relationships for the Lebanese blogosphere, we
found the URL citations to return a similar overall pattern of results.
39
29
Figure 1.3 Network Diagram of Link Citations Between Top Egyptian Blogs and Local Online Media
(black arrows denote where media cite to blogs).
30
Figure 1.4 Network Diagram of Link Citations Between Top Lebanese Blogs and Local Media (black
arrows denote where media cite to blogs).
From both diagrams, it is clear that the Egyptian and Lebanese news sites (nodes in
yellow circles) tend to link to one another rather than to the blogs (English language
blogs are blue circles and Arabic language in red squares). The blogs cite the media
and each other quite a lot, but especially the Egyptian news sites cite more seldom the
blogs (denoted by black arrows). Some interesting exceptions should be noted,
however. These are Nawara Negm (tahyyes.com) and Alanay who are cited by El
Shorouk, 40 and state-owned Al Ahram which cites Wael Abbas, Manal and Alaa's Bit
40
The local media sites for Egypt are the independent online newspapers, almasryalyoum.com,
dostor.org, shorouknews.com, and the state-owned ahram.org.eg, and the privately financed
youm7.com and masrawy.comAl Youm al Sabe´a translated as 7th Day. It a liberal private newspaper
rumoured to be owned by business interests close to the Mubarak regime. Masrawy is one of the oldest
online news sites in Egypt, and describes itself as a news portal. It is owned by businessman Naguib
Sawiris who also has shares in Al Masry al Youm and Orascom Telecom.
31
Bucket, and Ana-Ikhwan. Here it should be noted that no less than five of the
Egyptian bloggers either are free-lance journalists, work as columnists or have
previously worked for news organisations. Nawara Negm (tahyyes), writes a column
for the independent newspaper al-Dostor (dostor.org) and edits and translates for
Egyptian State Television. Abdel Monem Mahmoud (ana-Ikwan) and Hossam elHamalawy (3Arabawy) are both trained journalists, and have worked for Al Jazeera
and the LA Times respectively. Traveller within (Mohamed Dashan) freelances with a
column for al-Masry al-Youm. Wael Abbas (misr digital), one the most internationally
famous of all the bloggers, had previously worked as a Middle East correspondent for
the German news agency Dpa. Obviously, being a journalist or writing for a media
outlet has some explanatory power regarding the link citations. On the other hand,
bloggers often link to their own articles in newspapers, but the newspapers do not
have to do the reverse.
In a politically and socially polarised country such as Lebanon with 18 recognised
religious confessions, it comes as no surprise that the Lebanese media system is
divided along confessionalist lines. This means that differences of opinion and
various inflections on events can vary substantially in both the offline and online
media system. Although confessionalism is part of the fabric of Lebanese society, two
major political power blocs emerged after the retreat of the Syrian army in 2005: the
March 14th movement (i.e. Future Movement Sunnis, various Christian and
Armenian factions) and March 8th movement (i.e. Shia Muslim factions and Michel
Aoun’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement). In this context, it is interesting to note the
high number of mutual citations between these online media in the Lebanese network
Diagram 1.4 above. Also, interesting is the high number of mutual citations between
‘old’ media press outlets, such as an-Nahar and as-Safir, and ‘new’ online news
outlets such as tayyar.org, elnashra.com, ‘Now Lebanon’ news site and the online
leftist March 8th newspaper Al-Akhbar.
32
Lebanese media citations of blogs are more common than in the Egyptian case. Angry
Arab is the most often cited by the media. Being a veteran blogger and a Middle East
scholar, he writes a regular column for the leftist March 8th-supported newspaper AlAkhbar. Tayyar.org (supporting the Free Patriotic movement) and As-Safir are citing
+961, Saghbini, Hummus Nation and Trella. NowLebanon (Future Movement site)
seems interested in linking to several of the English-language blogs, although none of
the bloggers write for them. Here again, it should be noted that four of the Arabic
language bloggers are currently writing or have written for al-Akhbar and As-Safir,
and this may be responsible for some of these links to some of those bloggers 41. The
new online media such as elnashra.com, nowlebanon.com and tayyar.com thus appear
to be citing blogs.
More Lebanese bloggers are cited by the Lebanese media and more of them are
interlinked than among the Egyptian bloggers. This is counter-intuitive since the
Egyptian bloggers, according to our interviews, were more known the media than the
Lebanese bloggers. As noted above, this may be due to the Egyptian media simply
‘borrowing’ ideas from the blogs without attributing them, or to the limitations in the
number of queries (1000) allowed in the search engines. Another linking method
(www.issuecraweler.org) demonstrated that the same basic overall pattern applies:
overall none of the local media link as much to the blogs as the blogs link to them. In
any case, it is clear that in both cases, these bloggers appear to be known to the local
media and can therefore count on having their voices heard in one way or another.
41
These are as noted above Angry Arab who writes a column, Hannibael (Hani Naim) free lances for
both Al Akhbar and As-Safir and Kharbashat (Assad Thubian) (was freelancing for As-Safir). Saghbini
had previously written for Al Akhbar but left it.
33
Blogging Content during 2009-2010
The content of both the Egyptian and Lebanese top bloggers can be said to have
stretched the boundaries of the public sphere and pushed issues not prioritised in the
mainstream media of each country.
In the Lebanese case, the bloggers were critical of the politics of sectarianism and the
media system it has spawned. Some criticized the Abrahamitic religions by giving
examples of paganism in the region. Others engaged with day-to-day dysfunctions of
life, the plight of the Palestinians and foreign maids in Lebanon, environmental
degradation and climate change, or excessive commercialism and consumerism. Four
of the bloggers used satirical commentary, humour, irony or sarcasm to criticise
governmental authorities, powerful groups in Lebanese society, ad agencies, or social
norms and values. Although the English-language bloggers tended to be more
interested in the day-to-day and less ‘socially activist’ than their Arab-language
cousins, almost all of them expressed frustration and deep dissatisfaction with the
Lebanese confessional system. Similarly, gender discrimination was an issue in the
Arabic language blogs and not exclusively the domain of the two female bloggers,
Maya Zankoul and Independence 05 (now Funky Ozzy). Both of these two English
language bloggers discussed the sexism and discrimination encountered as women in
Lebanese society. Yet, their blogs were not exclusively concerned with womens’
issues. In this way, the women bloggers in this sample should not be singled out as
the only voices speaking out about discrimination. Most of the bloggers also told us
that they didn’t think there was any significant difference between female and male
bloggers regarding content.
In Egypt, the eleven bloggers differed even more clearly in ideological tone, from
Marxist, to leftist Islamist, to Liberal secular, to Islamic intellectual, to socially
conservative. Yet, these differences were overshadowed by common themes related to
the (il)legitimacy and efficacy of the Mubarak government. Among these were
documentation of the protests against the public sexual harassment of women, against
34
government corruption, arbitrary arrests and above all, the repression of free speech.
They exposed widespread police brutality and lack of accountability, and corruption
in the Egyptian administration and the business sector, the widespread poverty and
exploitation of workers (lack of minimum wage), the discrimination of minorities, and
criticism of the state-owned media for not giving a fair picture of events. The English
language bloggers all reviewed the much hailed speech of US President Obama from
Cairo in June 2009. In contrast to the Lebanese bloggers’ more diversified interests,
the Egyptian top bloggers were almost all ‘social media activists’ and human rights
bloggers. This is in a way unsurprising since these blogging veterans had for the most
part been part of the wider youth movement criticising the Mubarak government for
six years when January 25th 2011 rolled around.
So, the state-dominated Egyptian mediascape and the Mubarak political system can
be said to have shaped what types of bloggers become popular, and their blogging
themes be said to reflect their views on what was going on at the time of their
blogging. In both this case, and in the Lebanese case, these popular blogs are
disporportionately leftist and secular compared to the wider Egyptian and Lebanese
blogospheres, as well as to mainstream opinion in their societies. That said, they do
document a wide variety of issues the online youth are concerned with, as well as
events taking place in each society during 2009-2010.
The Lebanese bloggers reflect the fact that Lebanon had an election in 2009, and that
this election did not solve the polarised and deadlocked government. Even though a
vibrant variety of media represented the spectrum of political opinion, bloggers were
keen to distance themselves from these media by either ignoring ‘the partisan
political’ or dealing in issues that cut across the political boundaries, like antisectarianism, environmental and anti-consumerist stances. In Egypt, where an
authoritarian political system and censorship coexists with a vibrant intellectual
culture, sectarian tensions and a venerated religious orthodoxy, these bloggers, despite
35
their differences, could coalesce around their desire to get rid of the hated symbol of
all that was ill in society – the Mubarak regime.
Based on this and other evidence, one cannot talk about a common “Arabic
blogosphere” but a multiplicity of national and even fragmented sub-national
blogospheres (Jurkeiwicz 2011, Etling, et. al. 2009). Each country’s relationship to
the outside world, its history, patterns of political and social (and mass)
communication, and types of cultural taboos have shaped the way the social media are
being used by bloggers. This means while these bloggers certainly brought up panArab political or cultural issues (i.e. the Palestinian issue, the Iranian election,
sectarian fighting or the lack of basic human rights in the region), Hollywood film
releases or popular music, most were mainly concerned with national and local issues,
despite their otherwise cosmopolitan attitudes and lifestyles.
The use of blogging language does clearly reflect these cosmopolitan lifestyles and
these bloggers education. There were more blogs in English and in Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA) among the top Lebanese bloggers. The Egyptian bloggers tended to
use Egyptian dialect and several of what we called “English-language” bloggers also
had a considerable number of posts in both languages. There are several reasons why
language is not necessarily an indicator of transnational blogging content. First, the
English language “bridge-bloggers” address foreign audiences about events
happening in their countries and therefore are not necessarily preoccupied with events
in other countries. Secondly, while Egyptian dialect is understood throughout the
Arab world thanks to the wide circulation of Egyptian media products, its use does
not necessarily, indicate an effort to reach a pan-Arabic audience, but is an indication
of a specifically Egyptian phenomenon (cf. Mehalla, 2010). Using English and
Egyptian dialect together does though indicate and attempt to reach audiences both
inside and outside Egypt. The paradox is that these nationally oriented media-savvy
middle to upper class bloggers are for the most part, cosmopolitan in outlook and
lifestyle. Little wonder then, that the Western and regional media have picked up on
36
them as sources in the run-up to the revolutionary, particularly those five Egyptian
bloggers that have worked or are working as journalists or columnists.
Conclusion
Returning to our starting point, it is clear from the comparison between the Egyptian
and Lebanese bloggers that the former clearly foreshadowed the events of 25 January
2011 that toppled Mubarak. In this, they were just a tiny part of a much larger
network of human rights activists, labour movements, minority groups and others that
were fed up with the regime. On the other hand, their relationships with Western and
local media, and as well-known names in international activist circles, meant that
their online activism was disproportionately visible, just as their views differ from the
mediated public sphere dominating in Egypt. The drawback to this is that since the
Western media are citing mainly the English-language blogs (as well as Wael Abbas),
they are getting a more narrow view of events, and risk misunderstanding
developments that would be given a different interpretation from a Muslim
Brotherhood blogger, for example. Indeed, this warning may also be true of Lebanon,
where the Arab language bloggers tended to be more leftist and more ‘social activist’
than the English language bloggers.
Previously scholars have asked whether blogging in the Arab world is simply a
pressure-valve for the well-educated classes to ‘let off steam’ or whether they can
facilitate social change. While there is no doubt that online activism increases the
visibility of certain issues or groups of advocates, we have also shown that they
clearly reflect what is going on their own societies. The Lebanese bloggers did not
appear to have the same impact as their Egyptian colleagues, despite being linked to
more frequently by the local online media. Thus media attention could not
compensate for the deadlocked nature of the Lebanese sectarian system and the lack
of popular mobilization and public opinion for a secular political system. The
Egyptian bloggers’ anti-regime stance, on the other hand, resonated with many other
37
offline and organized disaffected segments of society, that all came together in
January 2011.
So while social media moves quickly, social change is slow and there is no straight
line between them. The blogospheres reflect their societies and mediascapes, and to
the extent that the most popular bloggers blog about the same themes, they also
document a certain period in time. Over the long term however, we have to see blogs
as part of new media ecology with Arab satellite television and new online news
outlets. Scholars have noted the contribution these have already made to a renewal of
pan-Arab identity, a broadened range of topics publicly discussed in the media, and
new interactive possibilities (Figenschou, 2010; Kraidy, 2010). The nature of social
media has to do with empowering choice and sharing: what to watch, to listen to and
what to convey to others. Albrecht Hofheinz hypothesizes that long-term everyday
Internet use encourages a sense of being in control of what one pays attention to, a
sense of entitlement to judge for oneself among various sources, and confers the right
to hold an opinion and to express oneself in public (2011: 1427). In other words, this
sense of personal empowerment should accompany a more questioning and critical
attitude towards traditional authorities.
Despite their journalist backgrounds, I would argue that these bloggers can be
considered ’new voices’, that are being heard in the mediated public spheres of
Lebanon and Egypt. Significantly women and minority bloggers add to diversity and
plurality, and their issues are taken up by this self-identifying generation of bloggers
and twitterers. True, in the light of mobilising ability of Twitter and Facebook,
blogging appears to have gone down somewhat, but we also see the same individuals
continuing on other platforms. Further research should focus on the individual use of
different social media platforms for different purposes within a social movement. It
should also address the role of social media for building more lasting democratic
institutions and the advantages and drawbacks of diasporic and transnational social
networks for building democracy after upheaval.
38
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41
China´s Authoritarian Information Order: Dealing With
New Media Capitalists and Emergent Civil Society
Johan Lagerkvist
In state-capitalist and authoritarian China, Internet entrepreneurs find themselves
caught between increasing marketization, restive social interests and state control. The
position of businesses can also be conceptualized as negotiating different notions of
reality and prescribed social norms on freedom of information, i.e. the party-state
norm and the youth/subaltern norm (Lagerkvist 2010). 42 The youth/subaltern norm is
imbued in, and finds expression through, the new social activism and citizen
journalism that further contributes to the unlocking of the Chinese public sphere
(Lagerkvist 2009).
How to deal with – and financially or politically survive – the balancing act has
engendered sharp challenges for both the party-state and Chinese entrepreneurs in the
information- and communications technology (ICT) sector since the beginning of the
1990s. Today this tension is played out through animated and hard-censored
discussions on Chinese microblogging platforms, such as Sina Weibo and Tencent
Weibo, and the party-state’s fixation on social and political stability. Just like other
communications practices on the Chinese Internet that preceded it, use of social media
challenges the Communist Party and official and traditional mass media. Leaks of
political scandals and social protests related to abuse of economic and political
powers spread like prairie fire through the online world of networked sociality.
Therefore the party-state has to prevent and forestall the transformative political
42
The youth/subaltern norm is a conceptualization of the social norm that contests and questions the
legitimacy of the elitist and hegemonic Party-state norm. It is, however, reasonable to assume that just
as there are fissures between segments in an emerging civil society and the party-state about what
Chinese patriotism means and what policy actions it should entail, there may significant overlaps
between popular and state perceptions of Internet freedom. Therefore, building a typology of social
norms related to Internet control and freedom could be a fruitful research agenda.
42
impacts of rapid technological change in the field of communications. 43 Increasingly,
efforts at maintaining the existing information order and the locked-in, yet budding,
public sphere entail practices of social control and a division of censorship and
surveillance labor between social media businesses and party-state officials.
Serving two masters with diverging interests regarding open networks and
information flow is an economic as well as a strategic burden for internet and social
media companies. How long these enterprises can, and are willing, to endure the costs
of outsourced censorship, ties into broader structural transformations in Chinese
society, such as generational change, administrative reform inside the Communist
Party, and to some extent ideational change impacted by transnational norms. Much
societal anxiety, and state attempts to defuse it, is channeled into and gets new
visibility in the world of real-time social media. As a consequence tension grows
between increasing consumer demand for unfiltered news, citizens unfettered
discussion of current affairs and the businesses that both provide and censor such
services on behalf of the state.
Research Questions
This essay attempts to shed light on the current authoritarian information order that
constrain the public sphere in China and the upholding of this order through strategic
communication, ideology and practices of coordination. The party-state norm is
articulated in the policies and ideology of the Communist Party. In this paper the
focus is on how social media and internet companies are enlisted by the party-state in
its effort to rein in and coordinate control of runaway speech – and alternative normsshaping in the Chinese online public space of social media, especially the Twitter-like
microblogs. The perspectives of professionals and business leaders in the social media
sector are scrutinized. In particular, their paradoxical role of both facilitating and
43
During 2011/12 some of the most spectacular leaks have concerned protests against land grabs in the
countryside, such as the high-profile case of the village of Wukan, and the mounting scandal around
and subsequent ousting of the colorful and very ”red” Party Secretary of megacity Chongqing, Bo
Xilai.
43
containing freer speech. This phenomenon is especially intriguing against the
backdrop in China of a cadre-capitalist interest alliance that crisscrosses all sectors of
the economy, which necessitates closer scrutiny of the specific role, values, and
strategies of ICT entrepreneurs. Two questions follow on this particular problematic.
First, how do private social media businesses deal with the burden of delegated
control of microblogs? Second, can the party-state trust these companies to adhere to
the party-state norm on “harmony” and uphold social control over users?
Thorny Dilemmas for Chinese ICT Entrepreneurs
More than ever before the responsibility to police online society is delegated to lowerlevel entities in the long chain of control that begins with Zhou Yongkang, the
Politburo Standing Committee member currently in charge of propaganda and
domestic security. Studying the development of social media and outsourced control
of it relates to a principal-agency dilemma, whereby original tasks and intentions may
be compromised (Niskanen 1968).
Few scholars have looked in-depth at the thorny relations between new media
businesses and the party-state (Weber and Lu 2004/207; Lagerkvist 2006/2010/2011;
Min 2012). One implicit assumption in popular and journalistic accounts is that
professionals working with digital media communications, in China and elsewhere,
more easily “ought to” adopt ideas of freedom of speech and information than
professionals in other business sectors, state-owned companies, or the public sector at
large (Saxennian 2007). That many Chinese companies in the ICT sector look to the
west to absorb start-up capital from foreign venture capitalists and are listed on
foreign stock exchanges, such as NASDAQ, has probably fed into the assumption.
However, while it is likely that foreign money may make these companies somewhat
more independent than state-owned commercial enterprises, which often are
dependent on state investment and have board members who are Communist Party
officials, reality is decidedly more complex.
44
Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Beijing during the fall of 2011 devoted to
understanding potential value change and business strategies – in the face of envisaged
new regulations for social media – at the two major microblogging media companies
Sina and Tencent, the essay investigates the nature of private entrepreneurial capitalism
of the new media sector. 44 Control practices that target internet businesses and social
media use follow mainly from the party-state’s unending worry to check threats to
sociopolitical stability. Like Chinese state-owned media organizations, private media
businesses must adhere to and also aid policies set out to preserve the legitimacy of the
Communist Party. At the same time they are building the communicative infrastructure
that restive social forces use to connect and disseminate socially provocative, sensitive,
or in the eyes of communist party leaders, even worse – “subversive” thoughts and
ideas. The essay proceeds by outlining Chinese microblogging companies’ dual role as
both facilitators and monitors of social media in China’s locked-in public sphere.
Thereafter, an analysis of how the existing principal-agent problem in China’s social
media sector has only been temporarily resolved, making cadre-capitalist cooperation
inherently unpredictable and increasingly tenuous, directs spotlight to the issue of the
potential role of Chinese capitalists in a process of democratic transition.
A Subdued ICT Industry
The submissive stance of Chinese ICT entrepreneurs has been a consistent theme over
time, starting with new regulations in 1999 to prohibit new media organizations to
become also new bastions of online journalism. By and large, a general atmosphere of
giving in to old political power has pervaded in a business climate of pervasive
corruption, where profitable contracts are secured and market shares won through
friction-free and mutually beneficial cooperation with politicians and regulators.
44
In September and November 2011, I interviewed 14 informants who in their professional capacities
work as social media editors, managers and executives, as well as journalists with traditional media
organizations in Beijing. The in-depth interviews were complemented by analysis of contextual material
such as policy documents and legal texts as well as reading of weibo postings and accounts in major
Chinese newspapers, crucial when conducting in-depth qualitative studies in an authoritarian country such
as China, where statements by informants need to be cross checked against other sources when available.
45
However, that does not by definition mean that Chinese businessmen unconditionally
accept authoritarianism, ready to support political liberalization and democratization
“only when they do not perceive such a transformation to a threat to their material
well-being” (Wright 2010: 57). Rather, most of them pragmatically tolerate the status
quo since it – for now – brings more benefits than costs. As noted by Chen and
Dickson, the “continuation of regime support is contingent on the government’s
policy performance (2010: 17).”
Nonetheless, it is very rare for business leaders to criticize government policies in
public. Usually, they critique and convey their concerns about profitability to policymakers behind closed doors. Many domestic entrepreneurs have been socialized to
adhere to a legal tradition of an authoritarian developmental ethos. Its effect is a
benign circle that upholds that social and political stability are of benefit to Chinese
society as a whole, including business, since stability are prerequisites for sustained
economic growth – which in turn generates order and a more harmonious society.
Yet, it’s now noticeable that minor cracks in the relations between government
officials and capitalists in the internet and communications sector are beginning to
emerge. In recent years two examples of industry opposition stand out as exceptions
to the general trend of submissiveness. First, there was the opposition mounted to the
“Green Dam youth escort software”, an effort by the Ministry of Information Industry
(MIIT) to have all makers of laptop computers install a screening software called
Green Dam on notebooks sold in China. 45 The government’s failure to implement
Green Dam suggests that there was a limit to industry passivity, although the larger
share of complaints may in fact have originated from foreign business organizations
and domestic journalists of a liberal inclination. Second, when Google’s decided to
close its search engine in Mainland China and instead move to freer Hong Kong,
some business leaders argued that it would be detrimental for business innovation in
45
“China has not given up Green Dam plan,” The Telegraph, July 2, 2009,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5720396/China-has- not-given-up-Green-Damplan.html, last accessed September 12, 2010.
46
the ICT sector. 46 In line with this trend, there have in recent years emerged
indications that some business leaders in the new media sector are worried about the
long-term negative market effects for business of China erecting barriers to
information flows. Thus, the hitherto servile attitude of business leaders sector could
change and is – to some extent – conditional. However, divergence from business as
usual is discernible mostly when it concerns industry strategy and fiscal costs of
surveillance rather than individual or societal freedom.
Microblogging Businesses in China
Although many media companies, both new and traditional, have set up
microblogging services on their websites, the biggest players in this segment of the
social media world are Sina and Tencent. On 14 August 2009, Sina announced that
Weibo, its equivalent to the Twitter microblog, was open for registration to Chinese
netizens. By May 2011, the company reported that it had reached 140 million users
and by year’s end 2011, about 300 million microblogs were in use. If the statistics of
April 2012 from the two Chinese microblog giants are to be taken seriously, they each
have 300 million registered users. Since microblogs were introduced in the Chinese
online world in 2009 they have caught the attention (like many previous internet
applications and platform before it) of many foreign and Chinese scholars, journalists
and policymakers. Although these two companies obviously cannot represent the
whole segment of social media businesses (encompassing state-owned, collective,
foreign owned, privately owned) a few generalizable insights may nevertheless be
deducted.
As the biggest facilitators of Twitter-like services they make possible a nationwide
and semi-free platform of expression to an extent not seen in China since the chaotic
46
At the China IT Leader Summit in Shenzhen on 28 March 2010, Tian Suning of Media China
Corporation said it was unwise to turn Google into an enemy of China, and Ding Jian of Asia Info even
questioned the wisdom - short and long term - of the Chinese government’s censorship policy,
http://www.szpost.com/2010/03/china-shenzhen-it-leader-summit-to-be- held-in-shenzhen.html, last
accessed 11January 2011.
47
first period of dazibao, i.e. the big character posters criticizing the central leadership
during the Cultural Revolution’s first phase from 1966 through 1968. The arena of
microblogs has been called China’s first “free speech arena,” the Economist magazine
has argued that the impact of Chinese microblogs “cannot be overestimated,” and its
progression as a vehicle for public opinion formation has even prompted observers of
Chinese politics to call the Internet a “virtual political system.” Although the above
statements are exaggerations, Microblogging does exert pressure on the government
to pay more attention to stirrings of more genuine public opinion. As a consequence,
they have been particularly singled out and targeted by state policy, and even received
high-profile visits from members of the standing committee of the politburo of the
CCP.47
Based on the author’s ongoing fieldwork, there are indications that some younger
professionals and mid-level managers are starting to encompass a more liberal attitude
to free speech. As one manager of a social media division at Tencent herself argued:
Regarding the stance on free flow of information, I think that all companies
that are in this line of business wants more, not less freedom and more narrow
information flow. This is only natural. 48
This statement goes some way to show that whereas other industry sectors in China
may “accept authoritarianism,” parts of the ICT sector merely tolerate
authoritarianism for now. This is a sign of a transformation in outlook over the past
decade. When the author interviewed Internet industry professionals in Beijing and
Shanghai in 2004-2005, they were more prone to accept state control as a given good
(Lagerkvist 2005/2006). And they expect policy outcome to their favor as some quid-
47
In the wake of the public opinion storm on Sina Weibo after the high-speed train crash in Wenzhou
in July 2011, the politburo member in charge of domestic security, Zhou Yongkang, visited Sina
headquarters in August to learn more about the operations of the company’s Weibo service.
48
Interview in Beijing in September, 2011.
48
pro-quo. That a majority of entrepreneurs of new media and internet businesses would
resist Internet controls on any significant scale is not consistent with Chinese realities,
at least not in the short term.
Real Name Registration: From Blogging to Weibo
Wary about digital communication becoming a breeding ground for political
challenges and social instability, state regulators in China have over the years toyed
with the notion of establishing a real name registration system for Internet users
(Lagerkvist 2010). Until the deadly high-speed train-crash in Wenzhou of August
2011, however, arguments in favor of a real name registration and outlawing
individual postings on platforms that drive online public opinion were weaker than
those against. Since 2005 there has been a battle of opinion between state officials and
traditional media mouthpiece editors such as the People’s Daily newspaper and China
Central Television (CCTV) and elements of society regarding this issue. Moreover,
the concerns of legal practitioners, university academics, economists, and business
leaders as well as arguments from the security apparatus have all weighed in.
Unsurprisingly, the State Council’s Information Office, i.e. the government’s ultimate
arbiter of media control in the state bureaucracy, has shown keen interest in the
possible implementation of a real name system for internet users for a long time. 49
The central government wanted to implement a real name registration system with a
deadline of June 30, 2005 for all non-commercial websites. Websites failing to
register would not be allowed an online existence. Due to administrative and technical
problems, however, the implementation of the policy was severely hampered and the
attempt failed.
By September 2006 officials of Beijing municipality wished to implement a real name
registration system for individual bloggers to register with their real names. It was
during this particular phase, from 2005 through 2006, that state officials visited Daqi
49
Interview with senior official at the Internet Bureau of the State Council Information Office in
Beijing, 25 September 2011.
49
Net, a commercial website and blogging platform that had sought out a niche spot of
serious intellectual analysis and socio-political commentary. In 2006 Daqi
successfully tried out a real name registration system among its then cohort of elite
bloggers. The authorities were very impressed and officials from the State Council’s
Information Office visited to ask questions about the system’s operation. Due to the
resistance from academics, Internet activists, and some quarters of the Internet
industry as well as the cumbersome and costly procedure to introduce the system,
however, yet again the Ministry of Information Industry (MIIT) decided to put the
issue on the back burner. Since 2006, occasional academic studies have been
published to show how popular attitudes regarding anonymity have changed. 50
It is notable that along with growing popularity of microblogs, leaders and
professionals of the largest microblog providers, Sina Corp and Tencent, have been
silent on issues of real-name registration, censorship and costs related surveillance of
users, 51 as well as the role microblogs play for political life in China. Charles Zhao,
the CEO of Sina Corp, has been very reluctant to comment on the monitoring
practices of Sina’s weibo staff. In fact he has said that doing so would not be
constructive. 52 As the source of the least controllable mass medium in China today,
microblog providers have no choice but to acquiesce to laws, notices and regulations
from various government bodies. In August 2011, high-level Communist Party
leaders such as Liu Qi, the Mayor of Beijing, and Zhou Yongkang, the politburo
member in charge of propaganda, appeared at the headquarters of both Sina and
50
One such study was a survey conducted in Shanghai by the Chinese scholar Zhao Yawen showed
quite counterintuitive results. Zhao showed that the majority of the 607 respondents of three districts of
Shanghai were in fact in favor of establishing a real name registration system. The conclusion drawn
by the author was that “there is a widespread and great worry among people about the current Internet
environment” (Zhao Yawen 2008: 327).
51
A Sina mid-level manager interviewed in Beijing by the author on 22 September said the costs for
monitoring weibo ”do not constitute a large part of our budget.”
52
Gady Epstein, “Sina Weibo”, 14 March 2011, Forbes Asia Magazine, last accessed September 12,
2011, http://www.forbes.com/global/2011/0314/features-charles-chao-twitter-fanfou-china-sinaweibo.html.
50
Tencent to harangue staff to help create a healthy internet environment. 53
Their visits followed a summer of scandals that were hotly debated on Weibo and
other social media. Chief among these were a citizens’ outcry over perceived
corruption and incompetence in the Ministry of railways, which were seen as the
underlying causes of a high-speed train crash in Wenzhou Province on 23 July, and an
environmental protest organized through social media in the city of Dalian in early
August 2011. 54 After these public outcries, the government launched a campaign in
the state-owned media and among quasi-NGOs against the rumor mongering on Sina
Weibo. 55 It did not take long for Sina Corp to show netizens that the company meant
to take government concerns to heart. On 29 August, Sina announced the suspension
of the accounts of two Weibo users for one month because they had spread false
rumors regarding a murder case and embezzlement at the Chinese Red Cross
Society. 56
Pleasing Both Consumers and Censors
How come a repressive state such as China trust business enterprises outside the state
system to implement costly policies of monitoring of microbloggers? Compounded by
the fact that implementation of policy and law in China is often slow and cumbersome
already within layered officialdom and its more conventional chains of command
(Chen et al 2002; Diamant et al 2005). The delegation of surveillance to private
companies could potentially lead to foot-dragging as it also brings an extra financial
burden for businesses. For the Chinese party-state, the scheme to let companies do
frontline spying on the users of social media has so far been a cost-effective strategy
of monitoring deviancy in a rapidly pluralizing and emergent civil society. As
53
Michael Wines and Sharon Lafraniere, ”Chinese Protest Suspensions of Bloggers”, New York Times,
26 August 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/world/asia/27weibo.html.
54
Christina Larson, “The New Epicenter of China’s Discontent: Dispatch from a city that wasn't
supposed to be on the brink”, Foreign Policy, 23 August 2011.
55
Kathrin Hille, ”Microblogs challenge China’s ‘rumour buster,”, Financial Times, August 16, 2011,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a02331a2-c64c-11e0-bb50-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1XlXcyQ2t.
56
Wines and Lafraniere, ”Chinese Protest Suspensions of Bloggers.”
51
evidenced in the State Council reports to the national legislature in 2010 and 2011,
official figures now shows that the budget for domestic security is larger than the
budget for national defense. 57 The leaks of blacklists of sensitive keywords compiled
by commercial Internet businesses to accommodate Party-state pressure, and the giveand-take processes involving propaganda officials and actors in the state-controlled
media system, point to a potential principal-agent dilemma in the social media sector.
Reports in the immediate aftermath of the implementation of the real name system in
March 2012, indicate that Sina’s design and operation of the system has been far from
perfect, full of loopholes and plenty of possibilities to disregard or compromise using
false identities. 58 Yet, this seeming breach of trust between the principal (party-state)
and the agent (social media business), indicated also by CEO Zhao’s signals about
new regulations’ impact on revenue to shareholders and policy-makers, is balanced by
the more forthcoming behavior of Sina’s Vice President Chen Tong – responsible for
all content uploaded and posted on the microblogging platform. During the fall of
2012 Chen intended to display Sina’s pro-government credentials by inviting and
promoting government Weibo accounts. 59
Organizing conferences on government Weibo can thus be viewed as a two-pronged
strategy to display loyalist credentials while it also creates a possibility to fraternize
with officials and directly lobby for company positions on important policy issues.
The party’s Central Propaganda Department (CPD) has oftentimes summoned major
Internet companies to secret as well as semi-public conferences to admonish
executives about their obligation to participate in the construction of a “healthy
Internet”. Some of these meetings have produced joint agreements, in which firms
undertake to do their part to attain this moral objective. The intention is to maintain
hegemony over political discourse and cascading information flows. Therefore, the
57
”China domestic security spending rises to $111 billion,” 5 March 2012,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/05/us-china-parliament-security-idUSTRE82403J20120305
58
“Still the People’s Republic of Rumors”, Christina Larson, 22 March 2012,
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/22/still_the_people_s_republic_of_rumors
59
A conference on this theme was organized by Sina and Chen Tong in November 2011 in Beijing.
52
initiative of Chen Tong to organize a meeting on weibo can be seen as a clever
negotiating strategy of “staging” forthcoming and responsible behavior. On the other
hand, subtle complaints about the outsourcing of social control, may generate
consolation prizes in the form of policy rewards. As one of the leaders of the quasigovernmental organization the Internet Society of China argued:
If the ICT-capitalists want to stay in operation, they must obey the laws – and in
return they also get service and support from the government. 60
Such “policy kickbacks” are in fact needed, since new media companies find
themselves further away from the benefits that accrue to state-owned companies. One
such benefit is that non-private firms benefit much from easier access to credit
afforded from China’s state banks. Thus, with some degree of independence from
CCP policy-makers and general oversight over industry sectors also comes
vulnerability – of not being a part of the core cadre-capitalist alliance and profit
cluster. 61 Based on initial and ongoing fieldwork, the party-state’s strategic calculus
of carrots and sticks indicates that by implementing censorship and surveillance
policy, companies may receive beneficial policies in return. As argued by a top
executive of Sina:
Meeting with government leaders means there is an opportunity for us too, to
present our industry concerns – about working permits and household
registration for our workers, as well as concerns about taxes. 62
The stick is the hovering presence of arbitrary sanctions of a state that only selectively
adheres to constitutionalism and the rule of law – especially when it concerns issues
60
Interview in Beijing, 27 September 2011.
There is little evidence of party-cells or party committees operating inside new media businesses.
However, the China Media Bulletin of Freedom House reported in March 2011 that such cells indeed
existed at Sina Corp.
62
Interview with Sina manager in Beijing, 21 September 2012.
61
53
of social and political stability. The ongoing waltz between state regulators and
entrepreneurs in the social media sector is balancing act of give and take admidst
pluralist, generational, and ideational changes in society at large. Yet, businesses in
Chinese ICT businesses have to obey the municipal, provincial and central regulations
and policies to monitor citizens, and only a few of them do so reluctantly, 63 and then
more out of concern for not receiving compensation in return for their services to the
state.
Tolerating the Authoritarian Information Order
Since the late 1990s the state has decentralized and delegated more responsibility
from bureaucracy to new media companies across the whole spectrum of the
information and communications technology (ICT) business sector: from hard-ware
content producers to online service providers and internet cafés. This trend is
continuing and business compliance is part of a large and fundamental overhaul of the
Chinese media system and its modalities of control, which has been allotted bigger
shares of a growing domestic security budget year- on-year. Yet, in this paper the
business compliance with the party-state’s control policies has been problematized in
the light of social media providers having to please both the party-state censors and
their customers and users. It is argued that the party-state has temporarily solved this
dilemma by maintaining the risk of sanctions for the industry, while at the same time
rewarding compliant businesses with policy rewards. Equilibrium and continued
compliance, however, is contingent on the state’s continued reward of policy “kickbacks.” Thus, the coexistence of social media, their providers and the authoritarian
information order is uneasy. The party-state cannot – and does not – fully trust
businesses in the social media sector to fully comply with or understand the
importance of implementing policy that relates to the party-state norm on social
harmony. The difficulties of establishing a waterproof real name registration system
for microblogs since 16 March 2012 to prevent leakage of sensitive rumors, illustrates
63
Interview with Tencent manager in Beijing, 26 September 2011.
54
how a mutually beneficial alliance of cadre and capitalist interests, cannot be taken
for granted. The not-so-diligent implementation of a real name registration system for
microblogging on the part of Sina during the politically very turbulent Spring of 2012
– points to growing inconsistencies – which perhaps exist on both ends of the
spectrum of relations between officials and ICT-entrepreneurs. This may well become
a phenomenon of growing concern in the coming years, as by expansion of social
media communication platforms such as microblogging for citizens they have also
clearly laid the foundation for accountability politics.
55
References
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Lagerkvist, J. (2006). “In the crossfire of demands: Chinese News Portals between
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56
NR 10, 2012
UI Occasional Papers granskas av seniora och sakkunniga forskare på institutet.
De åsikter som uttrycks i denna publikation är författarnas.
Publicerat: 10 september 2012
ISBN: 978-91-86704-93-3
4