Over a decade ago, I started to call attention to the importance of the Internet as a political force. In the last year, the Internet has begun to show what it can do.
Last week, an extraordinary election was held in Korea. The Uri, or Our party, barely two years old, decisively took over the National Assembly. It was done using the Net. It is no accident that the political coming-of-age of the Net came about in Korea where almost 70% of its households are broadband connected. Starting as a social movement organized through the Net, the new Uri party became a political phenomena.
In December 2002, the Uri party used the Net to go around Korea's traditional political structures and elect Roh Moo-hyun President. Korea's national politics have traditionally been regionally based. However, using the Net, the Uri put together a new political coalition based not on geography, but age, bringing together those under 30. Paradoxically, the Uri also used the Net to involve citizens at local face to face meetings.
The Net was used to begin to break the overwhelming political influence of Korea's giant corporate conglomerates, the chaebols, who funded (both legally and illegitimately) much of Korea's politics. The Uri use the Net to help fund their campaign with tens of thousands of small contributions.
Just as importantly, the Net allowed the Uri to go around Korea's established status quo political media. One Net news organization, Ohmynews, is helping redefine journalism. Founded only four years ago, the online news service can gets as many as 20 million hits a day in a country of 40 million. While Ohmynews has 40 full time employees, it uses over 23,000 "citizen reporters," and editorial policy is voted on by their readership.
Thursday's election showed the new politics of the Net are no fluke. A month ago Korea's old political establishment still controlled the national legislature and impeached President Roh. Advancing the new Net politics, the Uri party tripled their seats in the legislature, giving the Uri a 150 to 50 seat advantage, which will most likely lead to the overturn of Roh's impeachment.
It is not just in Korea that the Net has begun to test its political legs. Here in the United States we have also seen the Net tentatively begin to walk.
In the last several years, the most influential new political organization has been Moveon.org, totally organized through the Net. Last year, we witnessed the accomplishments of the Dean presidential campaign. Though unsuccessful in electing its candidate, the campaign revolutionized election financing and began creating and leveraging new political associations and tools, for example their use of Meetup.com.
We have begun to see the promise of the Net many of us hoped for in the early 1990's. In that time important lessons have been learned. Most critically, we now understand technology alone determines no outcomes. It is a function of how people use and shape it. The Net has begun to be used for democratic revitalization because the decentralized architecture created by its founders favorably enables a democratic peer to peer politics.
Yet, we are all well aware that large forces, particularly in the corporate sector, are trying to change and reconfigure the Net's architecture. For the latest on this, see Larry Lessig's excellent Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and control Creativity.
We also see there were important issues that drove the success of Net politics. The Dean campaign ignited a widespread concern about the failure of many of our political and government processes leading into the Iraq war. In Korea, younger generations were in part moved by the unfair advantages in both politics and the economy gained by entrenched interests. They felt threatened by an archaic foreign policy that dwells in the past and seems overly reliant on the threat of military force and violence. Neither issues is foreign to the American public.
For someone who looked ahead with optimism over a decade ago on the Net's role in revitalizing our democracy and helping create a more peaceful global community, the Net's first political steps are a very hopeful contrast in a world in which those prospects seem obscured in deepening shadows. The question is where do we go next?
Posted by mitch@osafoundation.org at April 19, 2004 08:21 AM(woops, no links allowed). I also just did a blog post on this topic. Read it at http://www.foreignsubstance.com/post/2004/4/16/13189/4332.
Posted by: bart at April 19, 2004 09:46 AM
I also did a post on this topic. Read it here:
http://www.foreignsubstance.com/post/2004/4/16/13189/4332
Posted by: bart at April 19, 2004 09:48 AM
Meanwhile, in the U.S., "attempts by municipalities across the country to build advanced telecommunications networks...are being stymied by a Supreme Court decision and opposition from major telecommunications companies."
http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-5193926.html?tag=nefd.lede
Posted by: joe at April 19, 2004 12:18 PM
I think what we should do next is make a news service or some other new sort of network. Barlow and I were just talking about this yesterday.
I agree heartily that the Korean case has much to inspire us, and some important things to teach us. Most interesting to me is how a tightly coupled action and feedback system has been established between Ohmynews and voters--such that in realtime people are mobilized. And the links are short and direct: I go to Ohmy for news, and I care; Ohmy tells me the situation, and I decide to act; Ohmy sums up the effects of our collective action, and we celebrate.
By contrast, the online links being established by progressive organizations in the US are long and indirect: I see something on TV and I go to a website and sign up; I get an email and decide to give money; money is raised and we celebrate money; the money is spent on TV ads and traditional door-to-door canvassing and get-out-the-vote activities; other people not in the online network do or do not take action.
There's got to be a better way!
I've explored this a bit more in a post inspired by your post: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jim
Regards and best wishes in the revolution, Jim
Posted by: Jim Moore at April 19, 2004 12:49 PM
My opinion, as being a Korean myself, is that people shouldn't overestimate the effects of the net on politics in korea..at least not yet.
I couldn't say that the net didn't have influence on the rise of the Uri, but the results of the election doesn't make it quite obvious. The election actually got led by regionalism and the peninsula got divided vertically(see http://vote2004.imnews.imbc.com/main.htm yellow:the Uri). Because of the sudden rise of the online culture, the alienation of people that benefit from it and people that don't is making things weird like this.
Reports say that the net - with politic parody cartoons, civilian news sites like ohmynews and seoprise - led younger people to gain interest on politics which was obviously a mess, and influenced the result. But before looking at the direct effects that the media made, there were happenings like the cartoonists being restrained because of the parodies, passing a bill to force people to use certificates for sites that contain politic opinions - even personal sites - to block anonymous criticisms(what century are we at??). And perhaps those led lots morea younger people to gain interest by reflex.
We're still in a transitional period when it comes to political matters, yet still having "primitive" problems when it comes to the internet despite the success. And the results should not to be overestimated.
Yet, i believe that we're shaping into a good role model and at least have a bright future on net politics.
Posted by: charlz at April 19, 2004 08:35 PM
You may be interested in my essay on the recent election and the transformation of the Korean political scene - including the role that technology is playing - here : http://www.emptybottle.org/glass/2004/04/new_day_dawning.php
It is a bit overenthusiatic to attribute too much of the election result to the growing netizenry, just as it was a little sanguine to describe the Uri Party's victory (as Josh Marshall recently did) as a manifestation of anti-American (or anti-Bush) sentiment. These are part of the story, but it's a bigger one than that, I think.
charlz is right, in other words. (I'm not Korean, but I've been here in Korea for many years.)
Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken at April 19, 2004 10:41 PM
...although the somewhat breathless English-language page at OhMyNews might paint things in a slightly more self-serving light. Heh.
http://www.ohmynews.com/specialpage/special_view.asp?menu_code=04219
Posted by: stavrosthewonderchicken at April 19, 2004 11:47 PM
My answer to the question "where do we go next" is "to the center." The Net is the younger generation's 'unfair advantage' that needs to be balanced before democracy can flourish in the information age.
OhmyNews is biased just as the old media in Korea was. Now young Koreans must learn to recognize where they are in respect the the 'center' instead of seeing themselves as the center.
Posted by: Don Park at April 20, 2004 01:06 AM
Don,
I think you are spot on. I am less familiar with the Korean experience, but MoveOn.org in particular has co-opted the democratic potential of the Internet for partisan purposes. And even MoveOn's advocacy model uses centrally-created, emotional appeals to spin its supporters to action rather having a neutral forum for citizens to decide on collective action. There is an opportunity, but it certainly not clear that we are availing ourselves to it.
- Mike
Posted by: Michael Weiksner at April 20, 2004 08:06 AM
Right on, Michael - Moveon is more a cult than a democratizing force. It's kinda like TM that way, come to think of it. And the WELL.
Hmmmm....I think I see a pattern here.
Posted by: Richard Bennett at April 21, 2004 11:01 AM
Read it at http://www.foreignsubstance.com/post/2004/4/16/13189/4332.
Posted by: MiC at July 9, 2004 05:11 AM
I think 1st Lt. Mark V. Shaney USMC said it best when he said:
"Responsible journalism should include responsibility for one's actions in publishing a news story in such a way that puts many other people in harm's way; has a direct result of publication of a particular story might have on other people.
"We are a people that cherish the democratic system of government and therefore hold the will of the enemy is trying very hard to portray our efforts over here, you can refute them by knowing that we are failing, even if we are making the whole world safer. "
Raymond Onnar
And as always: "Quidquid excusatio prandium pro!I think 1st Lt. Mark V. Shaney USMC said it best when he said:
"Responsible journalism should include responsibility for one's actions in publishing a news story in such a way that puts many other people in harm's way; has a direct result of publication of a particular story might have on other people.
"We are a people that cherish the democratic system of government and therefore hold the will of the enemy is trying very hard to portray our efforts over here, you can refute them by knowing that we are failing, even if we are making the whole world safer. "
Raymond Onnar
And as always: "Quidquid excusatio prandium pro!
Posted by: Raymond Onar at July 12, 2004 06:41 AM