A report on the control of the Internet in China and Cuba wants to refute the faith that the Internet has a democratizing and subversive effect, but is simplified in a comparative manner
Media and telecommunications are supposed to break up the clip of author’s regimes and counter their censorship. You have seen this when collaping the Eastern Block. Media should not only beat punches into the walls, so the view of the "Feigned" could go to the tempting good and leisure and leisure world, but also through snowball effects the freedom movements in their own land. Many see on the Internet, not ultimately tensioned medium of freedom of expression and the free flow of information that breaks up dominant structures in countries that want to wear behind walls. Wrong, at least in the medium term, means a report provocative, which examines the relevance in China and Cuba. But what does he want to tell us ultimately?
Really smart one gets out of the working paper "The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian regimes: China, Cuba and the Counterrevolution" The journalist Shanti Kalathil and Taylor Boas, employees of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which the study has also published. Pretty banal is the thesis that you do not know Know, how the Internet affects the policy in the long term, but that it does not openly closed companies with enrolled human rights and lack of freedom of expression. But who has said this so? The authentic states try either to reduce the use of the Internet possible, as the unpleasant re-posted the internet ban in Afghanistan, or to control it. Sure you do that, but the interesting question is, with what success? And can now be found after the internet has found in the most autoritar governed states at best for a few years long? Is the internet not only for authoritar systems, but for each system dangerous? In any case, not only commodities of democracy and freedom of expression, but also the enemies of democracy or criminals can be organized.
But even if one remains only with the well-knitted thesis of the authors, who turn against the blue-absorbance of the internet terminal physicists and show which control areas carried out authorite regimes, so remains in other ways "Departure" Expires questionable or. Only a provocation. For example, both in China, which operates an offensive Internet policy, as well as in Cuba, which wants to restrict the access possible, only a negligent small number of burgers at all the possibility to use the internet. In China, according to official estimates, the 26 million people of more than one billion Internet users, the first connection with the Internet was set up on a University of 1993. The Internet cafes, through which many people and, above all, young people receive a difficult Internet access, are a late appearance and are accordingly controlled accordingly. Only only thousands of internet cafes were closed after a nationwide review due to alleged security shortage. This is a sign of the (yet) existing power, but also shows that underground does a lot and sets the government to animeration. In Cuba probably only 60.000 people of a total of 11 million inhabitants have Internet access. Only in 1996 was the first connection with the internet. There are hardly any internet cafes that are still sharply controlled.
A mass medium as in the western countries is the internet here, as in most other autoritaries, do not have to do with the technical backdrop and lower prosperity, but also with the policy of the regime itself. At least it seems to give a connection between the fear of the rulers from the new media and the actually possible use of the Internet. The authoritarian a state is, the lower is usually the internet usage (Burma, Iraq, Laos, Afghanistan …To). So you could say that the authors of the report, if they provocatively criticize the often well-expectations of technology – the simplified equation Internet = democracy strikes not only the well-known equation market economy = democracy, but is also usually in the sense of this neoliberal ideology Used -, a wishful thinking is owned quickly in frustration and inherent in our consumer and media society: if something does not show its effect, it is not useful.
Ultimately, the technical tutorial idea suggests that the global information ripples are set up boundaries and thereby undermine authoritar structures that the Internet will inherent a democratizing and customizing power that, once freed like the mind in the bottle, will prevail. The authors of the report say that political studies so far "This convenient opinion" Hardly confessed, during "A series of case studies from around the world show that autorite regimes find opportunities to control the political influence of internet usage and contribute to this resistance". With strategies such as the restriction of Internet access, the monitoring of Internet use, the installation of filters or the use of the Internet, to enforce and distribute its own interests, so the thesis, authoritar governments the problems associated with the Internet for them Do not just go loose, but also to expand your own power over the internet.
If the different experiments in China and Cuba are described to keep the Internet under control and to use for their own purposes, this representation is certainly largely true, but does not say anything about whether and as indeed through the controlled and uncontrolled information rivers and communications not long-term a new dynamic and a big opening penetrates than this was the case before the internet. It is true that authorite regimes, if you had the opportunity, have tried from the beginning to control the introduction of the Internet. Both random examples show that the control of the Internet does not only provide unimpaired monitoring, but that they are becoming more and more difficult to circumvent and remain anonymously with increasing amount of Internet users as well as the technical ways to remain anonymous, for example, political organizations, human rights groups or even Individually, individual in the country and outside will always find paths to receive and ship information, even if they are relatively complicated.
China tries to smash the opposition or groups like Falun Gong in the country and block access to websites of foreign media or opposition groups, but that is and remains a sisyphous work that does not achieve perfect censorship, during the possibilities of fast, Inappropriating and breezing information and communications ribbon, in any case, raise large punches into the boundaries than this was previously possible with other media. The book did not cause causal the revolution, but the possibilities who opened the printing technology were mailling for the circulation of ideas and the spread of a certain culture.
Uberndies must not necessarily be accompanied by an undermining authoritarian regime with an explicit political opposition. Alone the contact and communication options affected by the Internet, for example by email, chats or newsgroups that can escape the familiar and local forcels, have an explosive force, which ultimately breaks a too strong control of individual freedoms. That’s why cultures in which, as in some Islamic countries or just in China, the social life is still strongly regulated, most fear of the Internet. And here it could be the women who use the internet for their own liberation. Also the permanent possibility alone to see that it is different elsewhere, traditions and rule of law break down in the long term.
The authors have conflicted in the addition of the government activities, which effectiveness these really have, especially as what people do despite prohibitions and censorship does not happen in all openness. And if, for example, if the approach to Falun Gong Halanger or LIN HAI, which was convicted in 1999 due to alleged transmission of email addresses to Regimegegner in the US to two years of prison, send the news about e-mail, then this single trap could quite only the top of the Eisberg.
Both China and Cuba show that although the Internet of the Internet is made out of the self-interest of the regime for all control, improvement and censorship attempts, connecting to the global economy, technology and science to find that this individualized and two-channel mass medium is far from More difficult than the more common single-channel mass media is to control and that it has to spread, you want to keep the connection. At this ambivalence to demand the dissemination of the Internet from the economic interest and to control their use in detail, presumably authoritar regimes will disintegrate in the long term, which does not necessarily have to live that democratic structures must arise from such a decay. Loosen autorite regimes, so often relaxes how to see the case of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, the geographical clamp, which stops the state together.
The internet is only one, albeit more powerful and because of its options for the people of the enforcer influence, which acts on power structures in a country. If autorite states try to control certain ideas or values rather, democratic states have at least similar problems when it comes to the circulation forbidden content. As long as the world stays plural and there are different legal systems, you will not be able to control the internet without lame or fading out of it.
Presumably Afghanistan under the rule of Taliban does not control the absolute control not by controlling access (Cubas) or the use (China), but equal to the abolition of the Internet, together with the possible in-house isolation of the country and the regulation goes down to details of people’s life (Taliban continues to build on the country’s leveling). Television and satellite firing are already forbidden long, phones are hardly available. To banish the Bose from the Holy Island, musical instruments, computers, videos, movies and playback devices for videos, movies and claybander, but also pictures of people or playing cards are prohibited. Entertainment, as rulers have recognized, is also subversive for an authoritarian regime, during these capitalist systems with coarse social inequalities. Any system that seeks to realize a panopetic control is necessarily for closed custody, which must be disconnected from the ale world and its influence. Afghanistan is also decoupled by the global economy. Not only because of the DURRE, the country becomes always poor and are more and more people confronted with the hunger. The religious experiment of Taliban is (hopefully) convicted in the long term to fail. The missing flow of goods and information is first replaced by the person fleeing from poverty and the custody until internally exploding the conflicts.