By Paul Goble. Wednesday, 18 July 2001 21:56 (ET). Virtual
New York.
WASHINGTON, July 18 (UPI) -- A new study challenges the assumption that the
spread of the Internet will lead to increased freedom of speech in authoritarian
countries and suggests that at least some governments have been able to use the
Internet to increase domestic control.
In a
report
released this week by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a
Washington-based think tank, two scholars, Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C. Boas,
examined the impact of the spread of the Internet in China and Cuba.
They reached the conclusion that the governments of both countries have
managed to limit political speech on the Internet and prevent web surfers from
challenging the existing regimes.
China has done so by encouraging its citizens to go online but then
carefully monitoring their use of Web sites and even blocking access to what it
considers to be politically offensive ones, while Cuba has sought to limit
access to the Internet for all but a select few.
But both countries have been sufficiently successful in controlling the
Internet that they now serve as models for other repressive states such as
Myanmar and the United Arab Emirates, the Carnegie study says.
"Taken together, the cases of China and Cuba should illustrate that
the diffusion of the Internet does not necessarily spell the demise of
authoritarian rule," Kalathil and Boas conclude.
This finding calls into question the optimistic predictions by some
advocates of the likely impact of the World Wide Web, and precisely because it
does, proponents of the Internet are likely to note its limitations: the small
sample of only two countries and the relatively brief period of time surveyed in
both.
China and Cuba may have been successful in controlling the impact of the
Web so far, but will they be able to do so in the future? Also, Internet
advocates will argue they have never insisted it could transform everything in a
positive way but only that it could serve as a useful precondition to help prod
and reinforce other developments in a particular country or group of countries.
The scope of the study is likely to be the focus of particular criticism.
There are many countries where the governments have not been able to control
Internet use and that fact has helped to transform them. And the impact of the
Internet on social and political change is likely to take longer than the period
covered by the study.
Indeed, the notion implicit in the Carnegie study that going online in and
of itself will change those who do almost overnight is simply wrong.
Those who use the Internet, like those who read newspapers or listen to the
electronic media, are affected not so much by a single exposure but by the
sustained exposure to information, an experience that ultimately leads them to
demand more from the institutions which control their lives.
Moreover, many Internet advocates are likely to argue that the Carnegie
study has effectively created a straw man by insisting that the Internet must
change everything immediately or be judged of little importance is far more
significant.
Even the most enthusiastic proponents of the Internet have never suggested
that it could transform a place where other preconditions for change do not
exist. Nonetheless, the Carnegie study is important because it will force both
the advocates of the Internet and students of political change to refine their
judgments about the role that this channel of information can and cannot play in
promoting democracy or maintaining an authoritarian regime.
The study will thus make a major contribution to the study of the impact of
communications on political life, even if some of its conclusions may ultimately
be judged as too sweeping as well.
(Paul Goble is deputy director of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The
views he expresses are his own and not those of RFE/RL.)
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.All rights
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