Extreme Democracy …

Extreme Democracy                                                          87



                                                                        7
               From the Screen to the Streets
                      By Howard Rheingold




It has taken 10 years of talk about "new media" for a critical mass to
understand that every computer desktop, and now every pocket, is a
worldwide printing press, broadcasting station, place of assembly, and
organizing tool--and to learn how to use that infrastructure to affect change.
Previous technologies allowed users only to communicate one-to-one
(telephones) or few-to-many (broadcast and print media). Mobile and
deskbound media such as blogs, listservs and social networking sites allow
for many-to-many communication. This provides opportunities and
problems for progressive political activists in three key areas: Gathering and
disseminating alternative and more democratic news; creating virtual public
spheres where citizens debate the issues that concern democratic societies;
and organizing collective political action.

The new news
Blogs and moblogs, such as the international network of Independent Media
Centers, South Korea's influential OhMyNews and MoveOn.org's
misleader.org are signs of what San Jose Mercury-News columnist Dan Gillmor
calls an emerging "we journalism." Each of these sites offers up-to-the-
minute news alerts, provided by a combination of citizen-reporters and
trained staff. While the owners and administrators of such sites range
widely--from passionate individuals to collectives to upstart nonprofits--
these blogs are markedly more democratic than their corporate-run, top-
down brethren.
Internal and external forces, however, threaten to undermine "we
journalism" before its impact is fully realized.
Misinformation, disinformation, incredulity and magical thinking all are
problems on the supply side of these new reporting modes. Aggregators of
Extreme Democracy                                                            88

blog postings--which rank blog listings by popularity, similar to Google's
page rank technology--already serve as a filter for this flood of amateur
journalism. And reputation systems, filters and syndication services also
could develop into useful tools for assessing the veracity of information sites.
But political activists and those who sponsor progressive projects also have a
role: For "we journalism" to have long-term credibility and lasting impact,
progressives must fund, staff and promote media literacy--teaching users to
create and consume this new journalism.
Activists also have a role in turning back corporate attacks that seek to
privatize the Internet by regulating content and limiting amateurs' ability to
produce cultural works that compete with media conglomerates.
Today, a small number of broadband Internet providers, such as Comcast
and Viacom, are pushing for regulations that would enable them to pick and
choose the content that travels over their part of the network. The courts
also are coming to bear in this fight, as companies work to extend copyright
far beyond its original intent and establish digital rights schemes that make it
difficult to produce or distribute digital content not authorized by the
entertainment industry.
The consolidation of media ownership in the hands of a small number of
individuals or cartels--who exchange political funding for legislative and
regulatory favors--is being fought by organizations such as the Electronic
Frontier Foundation. But activists who have not been involved in technology
or media issues need to join in this battle, because communication media
under dispute are profoundly political tools. In coming decades, Internet-
based media will exert more and more influence over what people know and
believe and how they can organize and assemble for collective action.

The electronic town square
Network TV news and talk radio are hardly examples of the reasoned debate
philosopher Jürgen Habermas had in mind when he described the public
sphere as central to the life of a democracy. Indeed, they are an example of
the manipulation of public opinion via popular media that he warned about.
Online and many-to-many technologies can shift the locus of the public
sphere from a small number of powerful media owners to entire populations.
The value of Internet discourse in this effort has not been proven, however,
perhaps because the literacy around this use of media has not had sufficient
time to mature--the World Wide Web is barely 10 years old, and has been
gaining uninitiated users each year.
Now, for better and worse, citizens are arguing with each other--with
varying degrees of civility--and sometimes marshaling evidence to buttress
logic in countless blogs, listservs, chat rooms and message boards. The
quality and level of know-how and the willingness of a significant portion of
the population to adopt and self-enforce online etiquette will determine
whether reasoned debate will flourish online or be drowned out by surlier
Extreme Democracy                                                           89

forms of argument. Activists and journalists must take a leading role in
determining the success of this outcome by wielding these technologies
skillfully and purposively.

Organizing collective action
Only recently have political activists successfully used many-to-many media
to mobilize large-scale collective action such as street demonstrations and
protests, electoral fundraising, get-out-the-vote campaigns and legislative
lobbying. Technologies and methodologies are developing very rapidly at this
point, and so are the political moves to neutralize them.
In the United States, Howard Dean's presidential campaign has mobilized
the self-organizing capabilities of blogs. Meetup.com and online fundraising
propelled this underdog to front-runner status. If Dean wins, 2004 will be
the watershed political event for the Internet that the Kennedy-Nixon
debates were for television in 1960. In a few years, MoveOn.org also has
grown from a Web site protesting the Clinton impeachment to an effective
lobbying movement that influences legislation and elections. MoveOn.org
played an important part in the recent effort to lobby Congress to overturn
the FCC's deregulation of media cross-ownership.
Innovations aren't confined to the United States. Neither ex-President
Estrada of the Philippines nor newly elected President Roh in South Korea
would be in their present positions if smart mobs had not worked so
effectively. In the Philippines, a million citizens used SMS to organize street
demonstrations that helped topple the Estrada regime. In South Korea, the
cyber-generation, seeing their favored candidate losing in exit polls, used a
Web site to organize a get-out-the-vote campaign involving 800,000 personal
e-mails and uncounted SMS messages, turning the tide in the election's final
hours.
Activists should now concentrate their efforts in this last sphere--
technology-amplified collective action. The above examples are just the
beginning. The capabilities of media are multiplying, the number of people
who use their mobile phones as Internet connections and text-messaging
media is growing explosively. And activists are only beginning to experiment
with ways to multiply their ability to organize collective action.
Influencing elections and legislation is the sine qua non of effectiveness. In
the next few years, peer-to-peer, self-organized, citizen-centric movements
enabled by smart mob media will either demonstrate real political influence,
be successfully contained by those whose power they threaten, or recede as a
utopian myth of days gone by. What progressives know now, and what we
do soon, will decide which of those scenarios unfolds.