Citizens Go Online

Probing the Political Potential of the Internet Galaxy

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

London, August 2009

Abstract

This dissertation critically develops the proposition that the Internet provides a framework that offers unprecedented opportunities for individuals and groups to engage with the political process by challenging existing power holders. It explores the complex relationship between the Internet, the changing dynamics and meanings of power, and the wider role citizens can play in network-enhanced political spheres.

The dissertation questions a conventional line of interpretation of the political relevance of the Internet: the view that Internet networks are tools that basically enhance governments’ power of control over their citizens. While distinct traces of evidence for this view can be found, especially in states that rely on autocratic forms of government, closer inspection shows, particularly in countries obeying the rules of democracy, that average citizens are increasingly successful in using the Internet to alter in their favour the dynamics of prevailing power relations.

This study argues that there are three combined factors that are driving this trend. First, the network’s structure is intrinsically resistant to total control by a few actors. Secondly, attitudinal change is occurring among individuals and groups, so that with the expansion of the Internet Galaxy, new standards for judging the quality of political participation are being adopted, above all because the potential reach of political action is transcending the limits of traditional practices of citizenship.

Finally, this dissertation explains that we are witnessing the birth of a new form of power, one that I call power as shared weakness (PSW). At the base of this new concept of power is the idea that within the decentralised and ethereal environments that emerge from distributed electronic networks, power relations are influenced by two distinct variables: structural weakness and consciousness of that weakness. The power to do things and achieve certain ends in the Internet Galaxy is directly proportional to the degree of knowledge the actors involved in a power struggle have of those two variables. The particular dynamics that inform the many examples of power contestations analyzed here suggest in fact that the Internet Galaxy is a peculiar organizational setting within which the intrinsic quality of power struggle is based on a collectively shared sense of weakness that affects the whole galaxy; that is, power springs from the recognition that within this galaxy, no one is ever in the position to dominate it fully. Such shared knowledge, this dissertation argues, becomes a powerful enabler (the gestalt switch) of new bold and irreverent forms of resistance that through the use of the Internet (and, at large, the whole gamut of new communication media) stand in strong contrast with traditional patterns of domination.