Liberation Technology
Source
By Larry Diamond. Essay on Liberation Technology in the Journal of Democracy.
URL = http://irevolution.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/diamond-21-3.pdf
Definition
Larry Diamond:
"“… any form of information and communication technology (ICT) that can expand political, social, and economic freedom. In the contemporary era, it means essentially the modern, interrelated forms of digital ICT—the computer, the Internet, the mobile phone, and countless innovative applications for them, including “new social media” such as Facebook and Twitter.” (http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/ushahidi-liberation-tech/)
Examples
- Is Ushahadi a liberation technology?, http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/ushahidi-liberation-tech/
- Role of the Internet in China
- Role of the Internet in Malaysia
Discussion
Is the internet a liberation technology?
Larry Diamond:
"One of the most direct, powerful, and—to authoritarian regimes— alarming effects of the digital revolution has been its facilitation of fast, large-scale popular mobilizations. Cellphones with SMS text messaging have made possible what technology guru Howard Rheingold calls “smart mobs”—vast networks of individuals who communicate rapidly and with little hierarchy or central direction in order to gather (or “swarm”) at a certain location for the sake of protest. In January 2001, Philippine president Joseph Estrada “became the first head of state in history to lose power to a smart mob,” when tens of thousands and then, within four days, more than a million digitally mobilized Filipinos assembled at a historic protest site in Manila. Since then, liberation technology has been instrumental in virtually all of the instances where people have turned out en masse for democracy or political reform.
Liberation technology figured prominently in the Orange Revolution that toppled the electoral authoritarian regime in Ukraine via mass protests during November and December 2004. The Internet newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda provided a vital source of news and information about both the regime’s efforts to steal the presidential election and the opposition’s attempts to stop it. By the revolution’s end, this online paper had become “the most widely read news source of any kind in Ukraine.” Website discussion boards gave activists a venue for documenting fraud and sharing best practices.16 Text messaging helped to mobilize and coordinate the massive public protests—bringing hundreds of thousands to Kyiv’s Independence Square in freezing weather—that ultimately forced a new runoff, won by the democratic opposition.
These digital tools also facilitated the 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (which drew more than a million demonstrators to demand the withdrawal of Syrian troops); the 2005 protests for women’s voting rights in Kuwait; the 2007 protests by Venezuelan students against the closure of Radio Caracas Television; and the April 2008 general strike in Egypt, where tens of thousands of young demonstrators mobilized through Facebook.
17 In September 2007, the “Internet, camera phones, and other digital networked technologies played a critical role” in Burma’s Saffron Revolution, so called because of the involvement of thousands of Buddhist monks. Although digital technology did little directly to mobilize the protests, it vividly informed the world of them, and revealed the bloody crackdown that the government launched in response: “Burmese citizens took pictures and videos, many on their mobile phones, and secretly uploaded them from Internet cafes or sent digital files across the border to be uploaded.” This international visibility may have saved many lives by inhibiting the military from using force as widely and brutally as it had in 1988.
In China, pervasive text messaging has been a key factor in the mushrooming of grassroots protests. In 2007, an eruption of hundreds of thousands of cellphone text messages in Xiamen, a city on the Taiwan Strait, generated so much public dismay at the building of an environmentally hazardous chemical plant that authorities suspended the project.19 The impact of the text messages was magnified and spread nationally as bloggers in other Chinese cities received them and quickly fanned the outrage. The technology is even seeping into North Korea, the world’s most closed society, as North Korean defectors and South Korean human-rights activists entice North Koreans to carry the phones back home with them from China and then use them to report what is happening (via the Chinese mobile network).20 In the oil-rich Gulf states, text messaging allows civic activists and political oppositionists “to build unofficial membership lists, spread news about detained activists, encourage voter turnout, schedule meetings and rallies, and develop new issue campaigns—all while avoiding government-censored newspapers, television stations, and Web sites.”
The most dramatic recent instance of digital mobilization was Iran’s Green Movement, following the egregious electoral malpractices that appeared to rob opposition presidential candidate Mir Hosein Musavi of victory on 12 June 2009. In the preceding years, Iran’s online public sphere had been growing dramatically, as evidenced by its more than “60,000 routinely updated blogs” exploring a wide range of social, cultural, religious, and political issues;22 the explosion of Facebook to encompass an estimated 600,000 Persian-language users; and the growing utilization of the Internet by news organizations, civic groups, political parties, and candidates.
As incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s election victory was announced (complete with claims of a 62 percent landslide) on June 13, outraged accounts of vote fraud spread rapidly via Internet chatrooms, blogs, and social networks. Through Twitter, text messaging, Facebook, and Persian-language social-networking sites such as Balatarin and Donbleh, Iranians quickly spread news, opinions, and calls for demonstrations.
On June 17, Musavi supporters used Twitter to attract tens of thousands of their fellow citizens to a rally in downtown Tehran. Internet users organized nationwide protests throughout the month, including more large demonstrations in the capital, some apparently attended by two to three million people. YouTube also provided a space to post pictures and videos of human-rights abuses and government crackdowns. A 37-second video of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan during Tehran’s violent protests on June 20 quickly spread across the Internet, as did other images of the police and regime thugs beating peaceful demonstrators. Neda’s death and the distressing images of wanton brutality decimated the remaining legitimacy of the Islamic Republic domestically and internationally. To date, the Green Movement illustrates both the potential and limits of liberation technology. So far, the Islamic Republic’s reactionary establishment has clung to power through its control over the instruments of coercion and its willingness to wield them with murderous resolve. Digital technology could not stop bullets and clubs in 2009, and it has not prevented the rape, torture, and execution of many protestors. But it has vividly documented these abuses, alienating key pillars of the regime’s support base, including large segments of the Shia clergy. While the regime has tortured dissidents to get their e-mail passwords and round up more opponents, the Internet has fostered civic and political pluralism in Iran; linked the opposition within that country to the Iranian diaspora and other global communities; and generated the consciousness, knowledge, and mobilizational capacity that will eventually bring down autocracy in Iran. A key factor affecting when that will happen will be the ability of Iranians to communicate more freely and securely online.” (http://irevolution.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/diamond-21-3.pdf)