The Political Impact of the Internet

By Ronald Meinardus

As we know it today, the Internet is just 10 years old. The invention of point-and-click browsers has not only revolutionized the personal communication habits of many of us. Digital technology has also had a considerable impact on other spheres of life, notably the economy. In many countries, the Internet has also affected political communication, even the political system as a whole.

In the early stages, back in the 1990s, the new technology created what may be called an internet-euphoria. Optimists assumed the digital technology would lead mankind into a better world, creating more chances for mass participation in the political and economic "marketplace." These euphoric assessments have given way to more cautious appraisals, as more and more people become conscious of the potential dangers of the technological developments.

"The digital divide is one of the greatest impediments to development, and it is growing," says James D. Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank. For him, as for many others, the growing technological divide is the result of underlying economic disparities and underdevelopment. These prevent large segments of the world population from gaining access to the digital technology. The numbers speak a clear language: While today more than half of all North Americans regularly surf the internet, only 0.02% of Ethiopians, 0.08% of Cambodians or 0.7% of Indians have that opportunity. There are currently twice as many users in Sweden than across the vast continent of Sub-Saharan Africa, writes Harvard professor Pippa Norris and warns of a "new virtual Berlin Wall splitting rich and poor worlds."

How one evaluates the impact of the internet on society, is dependent on one's respective vantage point. This has become clear to me after spending the last decade or so working in so different places as Germany, South Korea and now the Philippines. While all three nations may be termed democracies, they are very different in terms of economic development, and, consequently, also poles apart regarding internet penetration and the impact of digital technology on politics.

For politics in the Philippines, the internet to this day plays hardly any role at all. With the exception of one left-wing group, none of the mainstream political parties represented in Congress has its own website. There are a handful of personal homepages run by senators, and, of course, the government departments and agencies have their sites. But for the great majority of the political class in the Philippines, the digital age seems to have not yet arrived. Recently, I wanted to send an electronic message to the members of the House of Representatives. As a newcomer to the Philippines, I was surprised to discover that two out of three parliamentarians do not have an e-mail account.

This is not to say that politicians in the Philippines don't like to communicate or have a problem with modern technology. Quite the opposite is the case, if one considers the popularity of technically highly sophisticated mobile telephones and the much-quoted world-supremacy of the country in the "art" of sending text messages (SMS). The lack of enthusiasm for digital politics may be attributed to the relatively low Internet access rate in the Philippines. With only two to three percent of the population online, there are much more effective ways to reach the masses than sending e-mails or posting websites. From an electoral angle, however, this may soon change: Just in time for next year's general elections, Congress has enacted the Overseas Absentee Voting Law which, for the first time in history, entitles an estimated seven to eight million overseas Filipinos to cast their votes. "These people rely heavily on the Net to communicate," says a political strategist in Manila, who is working to set up a party website in the near future. From what I hear, at least two of the major Philippine parties are in the process of setting up their own presence in the World Wide Web (www).

Asia's digital powerhouse and undisputed leader in the political use of the internet is South Korea. Students of digital politics are full of admiration for what one reporter recently termed "the most advanced online democracy on the planet."

The rise of "webocracy" in South Korea, as it has also been termed, became apparent to a wider international audience during last year's presidential elections. These were won by a politician, who no longer relied primarily on the traditional mass rallies, but instead exploited the possibilities of the internet and other modern communication devices systematically.

Roh Moo-hyun, who claims to be the world's first leader to understand HTML internet code, succeeded in mobilizing millions of mainly young supporters, who regularly logged onto his website to donate money and receive political updates. Tens of thousands of e-mails flooded into Roh's mailboxes. Many of the messages contained policy recommendations which the candidate promised to consider seriously in his decision making.

"South Koreans call it digital democracy and e-politics," writes one correspondent.

"They have become the world's leaders in cyberspace campaigning." No doubt, the new technology has opened the door to new forms of grass-roots participation. More importantly, there are indications that on-line politics are changing the traditional power structures -- as the internet has made the political process more transparent, more communicative, more participatory, in short, more democratic.

Probably the political impact of the Internet is larger in South Korea than in any other country. Why South Korea, one may ask. Apart from political factors such as the existence of an energetic civic society that has been struggling for a larger say in politics for years, the answer is to be found mainly in the technical field: South Korea today has the highest broadband internet usage in the world. Nearly 70% of South Korean households now have broadband. The internet has long become part of the daily routine of most citizens. It has also become a powerful political weapon, threatening the dominance even of the once almighty conventional media.

In the debates on the political impact of the Internet two schools of thought may easily be identified. The so-called cyber-optimists argue that the new technology helps increase the role of the citizens in public affairs and therefore promotes participatory democracy. The optimists may look to recent developments in South Korea to find justification for their confidence. The so-called cyber-pessimists, on the other hand, argue that the digital technology has not (and may not have) this progressive and liberalizing effect after all. Recent empirical studies from my own country, Germany, tend to validate the scepticism of the pessimists.

In modern democracies, the media have the crucial function of disseminating information to the citizens. Reliable information is an essential prerequisite for forming political opinions – a precondition for participating in a responsible manner in the political process.

No doubt, the Internet has increased the quantity (and in some cases also the quality) of available information. Still, this availability is no guarantee that the information is actually made use of. Regarding the situation in Germany, there exists no evidence that the proliferation of political information on the Net has lead to a politically better informed and educated citizenry.

While the number of Internet-users has increased constantly over the years, about one out of two Germans is still not connected to the WWW. This compares with some 90 percent of the adult population who regularly use the conventional media (newspapers, radio, TV). Like in other industrial nations, in Germany too, the sociological profile of the Internet users diverges from the general public with a considerable bias in favour of the younger, better educated and male segments of the population.

More important than this “social divide”, I find the question: What are people actually using the Internet for? Surveys illustrate that political information plays a minor role, at best. In Germany, as probably in many other countries, the great majority of subscribers use the Internet for their personal communication (E-Mail) and entertainment. Such surveys are grist to the mill of the cyber-pessimists who raise the fundamental query why the digital technology per se should make the citizens more interested in political matters than they were before the advent of the PCs. Some actually argue that the opposite is happening - that, in other words, the Internet is not “politicizing” the masses but diverting people’s attention away from political matters.

Unlike the recent presidential elections in South Korea, where the Internet had a phenomenal impact, digital politics did not play a significant role in Germany’s general elections in September 2002. Although all major parties and most of the candidates used the new media in a professional, up-to-date and sometimes creative way, analysts agree that the impact of political websites was minimal. In Germany, as in other Western democracies, political online-campaigners encounter major problems mobilizing members of the general public for partisan politics. While the Internet no doubt is being used for political communication of political parties, it remains more or less the exclusive zone for contacting the politically converted. It is - as Harvard-professor Pippa Norris notes - a medium used “to reinforce the activism of the activists”.

While cyber-optimists had anticipated that the openness of the Internet would provide new opportunities for political mobilization and participation, reality seems to point in a different direction. Cyber-pessimists argue that the internet has actually widened the gap between a relatively small group of citizens who are politically interested and active and a majority of political dropouts. According to one German observer, this gap may even become “the most central social cleavage of the 21^st century”.

Cyber-pessimists are also not impressed by the prospects of using the Internet as a means to popularize political elections. Apart from the unresolved technical issues involved, sceptics have voiced fundamental political and constitutional concerns. There seems to be a consensus in all democracies experimenting with online-elections that these should only become an alternative to the traditional modes of voting after software has been developed which guarantees general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. Particularly, the principle of secrecy poses a challenge for the proponents of online-voting.

Apart from the technological problems, there again is the more general political and sociological issue: What makes us believe that by simply introducing new technical devices more people will be inclined to participate in political elections than without them? Empirical evidence shows that political participation is less a function of access to voting booths and other practical matters, but depends much more on economic and social determinants. In this regard, the Internet-revolution has not revolutionized the conventional wisdom according to which there exists a strong correlation between political participation and the level of the citizens’ education.

Dr. Ronald Meinardus was the former Resident Representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the Philippines and will leave Manila late September for a new posting in the Middle East. He writes a blog at www.myliberaltimes.com