Expat-ing Democracy

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List of Charts

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Chapter 1: Media & Technology’s Function in the Quest for Democracy

1.1   Communicating Democracy in the Middle East

The concept of democracy promotion or “democratization” has troubled researchers since the dawn of political science research and has been a subject of much debate since 1830, a time when even Great Britain—in some ways the most democratic European nation of that era—allowed barely 2% of its population to vote for one of its Houses of Parliament. As will be further discussed, “democrats” – or those who believe that liberal values and basic human freedoms should serve as a basis for political governance – hold that the values of democracy should be promoted, and that an effort should be made to influence political systems to move in this direction or at least to become more protective of human rights and individual freedoms. The founders of democracy envisioned it as a just and universal system that offers inalienable rights to all. They also saw it as a paradigm of governance that challenges the traditional authoritarian system and hence one that should be promoted.

Promoting the “democratic paradigm,” as will be further discussed in Chapter 2, was historically an intellectual pursuit, a task for local democracy forces. Following WWII, this began to change and democracy promotion gradually expanded to other domains. The Cold War, solidifying a bi-polar international system, served as a convenient platform to translate the “democracy promotion” agenda to action. Democracy promotion was no longer an abstract idea but rather a “soft power” tool and a means to “influence foreign governments, foreign publics, and world public opinion through the non-forcible projection of culture, ideology and political value systems.”¹

Values and culture are instilled in a community or society when there is a steady promulgation of ideas. One of the first concrete actions following WWII was the creation of Radio Free Europe in 1949 under the motto “Free ← 7 | 8 → Media in Unfree Societies.” The radio, which gradually grew in its coverage, was aimed at offering an alternative media environment while challenging Soviet propaganda. Radio Liberty followed suit, airing in the Soviet Union. Language coverage grew and gradually expanded beyond Europe and the Iron Curtain, reaching Asia and the Middle East. The communist side reciprocated with similar steps as well.² Both the Western Allied governments and the Soviet Union could never have produced or maintained sufficient public support and jingoism for the long conflict without the media’s contribution to the emerging “war of ideas.” Following the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, the topic of “democratization” received additional attention in light of new data which demonstrated links between democracy, economic prosperity, international stability, and peace as well as a positive, contemporaneous relationship between media liberalization and democratization.³

Following the events of Sept. 11, 2001 and the launch of the “war on terror,” more attention was shifted to the Middle East, a region which still suffers from a significant “democracy deficit.” In this respect, the process of democratization in the Middle East was also framed as a potential long-term policy answer to the problems of fanaticism and terrorism, two traits appearing to have prevalence in the region. Naturally, these issues came to a head again in 2010 as the region claimed its own “Arab Spring” with attempts to trigger democratically oriented revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Syria and the Gulf. These attempts that seemed to be spontaneous, young, and heavily broadcast proved to be a hopeful sign of the young “Facebook generation” that became mature enough to lead a change. However, the failure of most of these attempts, the introduction of the expression “Islamic Winter” in place of “Arab Spring,” and overall turmoil brought some of the basic questions back to the table: Can democracy be established and can it flourish in the Middle East? Can the moderate camps assume positions of leadership? What was the meaning of these “Facebook revolutions?” And can technology play a constructive role in helping moderate camps alter the balance of political power? ← 8 | 9 →

The Middle East is still characterized as a region that is reluctant to welcome cultural, societal, or political changes. The Middle East has not been heavily influenced by the waves of democratization that have doubled the number of democracies in the world during the last two decades, and quadrupled them since the end of the Second World War. Alongside this process, the past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a shift in the balance of power since the end of the Cold War and the establishment of the US as the global hegemon, the one remaining superpower in the world. The end of the Cold War and the beginning of the unipolar era was not free from clashes, which were often triggered by new nationalist sentiments and/or religious awakenings. Some of these newer conflicts, such as those in former Chechnya, Yugoslavia, Sudan, and later in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq aligned their key players according to old and familiar lines of ethnic, national or religious divisions. These developments also resulted in the creation of 35 new countries in the world since 1990, many of them affiliated with ethnic or religious groups that sought further independence such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Macedonia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Serbia, Slovakia and recently, South Sudan. The Middle East saw the emergence of three de-facto (although not yet recognized by the UN) states, Palestine, Kurdistan and the Islamic State. This discourse, which was further, delineated by Samuel Huntington’s seminal work The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, triggered additional research in an attempt to evaluate the possible reasons for the lack of change in the political environment of the Middle East.

The literature, which will be further reviewed in this work, has long focused on the potential contribution of media and new media to democracy and civil society. Much of the literature has described the media as a fourth branch of government⁴, or a watchdog, which safeguards the democratic process. The relationship between media and social change has been framed by classic works such as Four Theories of the Press, which explains existing relationships specifically between media and government.⁵ The four models of these relationships, Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility Theory and Totalitarian, shed light on the different ways in which media ← 9 | 10 → works vis-à-vis government and society. These models are differentiated according to parameters which include the purpose of a given media structure, its ownership, the control of media and the limitations placed upon it (that is, what cannot be published). Although this taxonomy was later criticized as simplistic and insufficient,⁶ or as failing to pass the test of modern times⁷, scholars continued to follow the lead of Siebert, Peterson and Schramm by developing more acute models in order to explain the relationship between the media, society and politics.

Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) developed the important concept of opinion leaders and formulated the two-step flow of communication theory, which frames the relationship between media and public opinion. Their study shows that opinion leaders – also called “primary group” leaders – serve as intermediaries between messages and public opinion. Leaders of the primary groups are also the main players in the media environment, and their opinions will therefore be evaluated initially on their primary group credentials and later on the merits of their message. In other words, since opinions and value systems are formed in primary groups, their leaders (or gatekeepers) serve as the best agents for changing those opinions, irrespective of any others, which may circulate in the media or elsewhere. Other studies have further established this point. In a study by Kalichman and Hunter (1992), data was gathered in Chicago before and after the November 7, 1991 televised press conference by popular basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson, in which he announced his retirement from professional basketball after being diagnosed as HIV positive. The researchers found a marked change in perceptions of AIDS, with an increased concern over the disease and greater interest in AIDS-related information. They also found that all the men interviewed in the study had heard or read about Magic Johnson’s HIV infection; the majority (86%) had engaged in frequent discussions about AIDS with their friends during the three days following his news conference and most reported that their interpersonal interactions with peers had reinforced their concerns about HIV and AIDS. Juxtaposed with new media technology, these ideas have since developed to show how a relatively small group of activists and citizen journalists can help form ← 10 | 11 → an alternative information environment, which challenges the narrative presented by state-sanctioned media.

Before Lazarfeld, Charles Mills (1951) had already warned against the manipulative functions of the media, which are likely to strengthen the power of the dominant elite that has greater access to them. For Mills, mass media can influence the creation of a “mass society,” characterized by the “transformation of public into mass.” The impact of the mass media is crucial in this “great transformation,” because it shifts “the ratio of givers of opinion to the receivers” in favor of small groups of elites who control or have access to it.⁸ Moreover, mass media outlets engage in one-way communication not allowing feedback, thus obliterating another feature of a democratic public sphere.⁹ Jürgen Habermas (1989) echoed Mills’s warning but offered a remedy by arguing that critical media can actually revitalize the public sphere and that it contributes to the process of democratization. He sought to do this by “setting in motion a critical process of public communication through the very organizations that mediatize it.”¹⁰

The emergence of new media appears to have strengthened these convictions. Kellner (2000) argues that the rise of the Internet helps this revitalization by expanding the realm for democratic participation and debate, through the creation of new public spaces for political intervention. He also argues that the state-controlled public broadcasting system “collapsed in the era of globalization where commercially-based cable television has marginalized public broadcasting” and that the new media outlets “have multiplied information and discussion, of an admittedly varied sort, and thus provide potential for a more informed citizenry and more extensive democratic participation.”¹¹

Likewise, Benkler (2006) contends that Internet technologies are transforming key social infrastructures, including those supporting the “public sphere” which he defines as “a particular set of social practices that members of a society use to communicate about matters they understand to be of public concern and that potentially require collective action or ← 11 | 12 → recognition.”¹² For Benkler, the new model of media created by information and communication technology (ICT) is inherently more democratic, inclusive, and interactive when compared to older methods of mass-media production and control. He proposes that Internet technologies—even under conditions of censorship—can undermine the control of oppressive regimes, so that it can function as a catalyst for democracy. This work will attempt to put some of his assertions to the test.

The Arrival of Technology to the Middle East

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a relatively new medium that has only recently become available to groups in the Middle East. In the last two decades, its rate of penetration has accelerated significantly, particularly in the areas of Internet and satellite communication. Pan-Arabic television networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have changed the map of Arabic broadcasting and challenged the previously existing monopoly on communications held by most governments in the region. The Internet, which finally made its way to the Middle East, has created another powerful source of free information and a series of new challenges to governments, which quickly sought to limit its influence.

According to the InternetWorldStats/ Nielsen ratings, Between 2001 and 2011 the increase in Internet usage throughout the Middle East grew by 1,987%.¹³ In real numbers, the number of Internet users in the region grew from 3,284,000 in the year 2000 to 90,000,000 in 2012. In 2009, – at the eve of the “Arab Spring” the number of Internet users in the Middle East reached 45 million, nearly matching the average world penetration of 24.7% and at the end of 2013 it reached 103 million, or 45% penetration.¹⁴

Cell phone penetration demonstrated a similar growth. According to the World Bank statistics, the MENA region has grown 40-fold, since the year 2,000 where 16.5 million users were listed. InternetWorldStats notes ← 12 | 13 → a 60- fold growth in cell phone usage in Egypt between 2000 and 2010, from one to 60 million users. Official 2011 numbers from Egypt’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology report a 30.05% Internet penetration rate, and a cell phone penetration rate of 91.32%.¹⁵