Networking Dissent Cyber-Activists Use the Internet to Promote
Democracy in Burma
Tiffany Danitz and
Warren P. Strobel
Part Three
The Internet's Impact on Activism
Advantages of Using the Internet
The case studies and the Internet Activist Survey (seeAppendix A)indicate that the Internet, including electronic mail, the World Wide Web and its other facets, gives grassroots groups an important new tool for attempting to foster political change. Some of these advantages appear to be merely evolutionary improvements on "older" technologies such as the telephone and fax machine in terms of speed and cost. Other advantages appear to be truly revolutionary, reflections of the Internet's unique nature. Of course, no technology by itself guarantees a successful campaign, but the Internet gives its users more power when other forces come into play.
The Internet is inexpensive and convenient. Sending messages via electronic mail is far less expensive than using the telephone, fax machine or other technologies, especially when activists must communicate over long distances and reach members of the network who live in remote areas (as in the case of Burma's borders). Moreover, as we saw in the PepsiCo case, organizers can distribute campaign materials (posters, photographs, recordings and the like) far more cheaply-and, of course, rapidly and easily-than would be the case if they used the postal mail or other means to distribute physical copies of the materials.
While some start-up costs are necessary (a computer, a modem, an Internet account), these are not beyond most individuals' means. Our survey revealed that many activists make use of freely provided university e-mail accounts.
Cost and the labor of the core organizers are, of course, vital considerations to grassroots groups and nongovernmental organizations that rely on grants and donations that make up their shoestring budgets.
The Internet is an organizational tool "par excellence." Without the Internet, it would have been virtually impossible in the case of Massachusetts-or many other cases not cited here-for activists to coordinate and bring the pressure to bear that they did. Burma activists were dispersed around the United States and around the world; but, because of the Internet, they might as well have been around the block. Neither did the fact that Massachusetts has a minuscule Burmese population matter. A "virtual community" for action was created and acted in concert once its members saw a target of opportunity in the selective purchasing legislation. Coordinating such a campaign via traditional telephone trees or fax machines would have been all but impossible because of the need to act quickly and the sheer physical distances involved.
Moreover, because the Internet permits them to rapidly exchange messages or send the same information to hundreds of recipients around the world, activists are better able to coordinate with a greater number of individuals and refine ideas. "Listservs" like BurmaNet are particularly suited for rapid brainstorming, because a single individual can send out an idea in an e-mail and can rapidly receive feedback from many different sources.85 A handful of organizers can rapidly generate dozens of letters and e-mails to decision makers, the "cyber" equivalent of lobbying, with a few well-timed on-line appeals. The number of people involved in a campaign doesn't matter as much-it can be quite small-as it does in other activities, such as demonstrations and protests.
This seems to be a revolutionary state of affairs for, perhaps the first time, the Internet allowed members of the international community to comment and affect domestic, local legislation, a privilege once reserved for lobbyists or, at the very least, registered U.S. voters. This might be called "cyber-diplomacy."
The Internet puts information in the hands of organizers fast.In the Massachusetts and PepsiCo cases, proponents of measures against SLORC used the Internet to gather and transmit up-to-date information about conditions within Burma and the policies toward that country of various governments around the world. This helped make their arguments particularly effective and ensured there was no "disconnect" between them and the pro-democracy movement inside Burma. Knowledge, as they say, is power.
The Internet allows rapid replication of a successful effort. Organizers of a successful Internet campaign can immediately share their winning (or failed) strategies with cohorts anywhere on the globe.
A success in one locale does not automatically translate into success in another, due to local conditions and factors. But in the selective purchasing campaign, activists in New England e-mailed the text of proposed legislation, press releases and other material to colleagues who wanted to wage a similar effort elsewhere.86 They could then tailor the materials to their own local conditions. This, of course, is similar to the use fax machines have been put for years. But with the Internet, many more sources can be reached at once. And with the World Wide Web, for example, the materials can be posted permanently for downloading, anytime, anywhere.
The Internet also helped other related campaigns coordinate and "compare notes." These included activists trying to foster change in Nigeria or Tibet, or who are primarily interested in environmental issues, such as the destruction of teakwood forests in Southeast Asia.
The Internet allows users to select their level of activity. Using the same type of computer and communication equipment, different activists can choose how active they want to be in a given campaign. They may elect to simply keep up on the news, by subscribing to BurmaNet, reading soc.culture.burma and browsing the various Burma Web pages. At a higher level, they may post articles and comments on the various newsgroups, add their names to electronic petitions, fill out surveys and download campaign materials for use. At the highest level, they may use the Internet to organize and carry out a specific campaign for political change.87
The Internet helps publicize the cause and the campaign. Obviously, this is especially true when a campaign scores successes. There seems little doubt that the Internet-as the pamphlet, telephone and fax machine did for previous generations of dissidents-helped activists broadcast news around the world about their campaign and about the situation of the people in Burma, prompting a wider public debate. This, of course, is the first goal of any global grassroots campaign.
In the Massachusetts selective purchasing and Pepsi cases, the campaign led to dozens of articles in the Boston newspapers, as well as national publications such as USA Today and The New York Times. Once it became clear that Governor Weld would sign the selective purchasing legislation, traditional media from around the world descended on Massachusetts. Radio and television outlets from Europe, Asia and Australia were suddenly-and probably for the first time-focused on a local bill in a U.S. state legislature.
Wielding political power via the Internet is sufficiently new that many of the traditional media seemed to be drawn by the novelty of how the cyber-activists were doing what they were doing as much as what they were doing. Whether this novelty wears off as the Internet becomes a more widespread tool of political activism remains to be seen.
Either way, it has been noted elsewhere that grassroots political campaigns, which do not use force or violent coercion, depend heavily on words and images, as well as reason.88 The Internet helps spread these words and images to what the activists hope will be a sympathetic public.
The Internet-based activists have a leg up on non-Internet-based groups. Grassroots organizers, whether involved in the Burma campaign or other efforts, were among the first to understand the political powers of the Internet. While SLORC and international corporations doing business in Burma have begun to realize the power that the tool gives their adversaries and have tried to emulate it, the pro-democracy movement has been consistently ahead in its use of the Internet. This raises the question of whether the Internet is by its very nature more suited to decentralized groups and inimical to hierarchical organizations.
SLORC, because of the relatively impoverished nature of the country it rules, does not have the full infrastructure needed to make maximum use of the Internet. Even if it did, it is far from clear that it, corporations or governments sympathetic to it could use the Internet in the same way. It is far easier for activists using a worldwide network to play "offense" by exposing SLORC and campaigning for change, as was done in these cases, than it is for their opponents to play "defense." It is unclear what SLORC would use the Internet for. Answering the activists' charges directly only gives them wider currency. The alternative is advertising and image making, such as that represented bywww.myanmar.com. But many, if not most, Internet users are instinctively wary of authority and organization and are unlikely to warm to the enticements of a government or corporation.
There are several disadvantages, or potential disadvantages, to using the Internet that can limit its usefulness to grassroots groups engaged in political action. Many of these "downsides" depend on how the Internet is used. Like the advantages of the Internet noted above some have to do with the new medium's unique characteristics.
It is dangerous to rely solely on a single source of communication. Although the Internet was designed precisely to continue working during an emergency (a nuclear war), disruptions can and have occurred. In July 1997, Internet traffic "ground to a halt" across much of the United States because of a freak combination of technical and human errors, presaging what some Internet experts believe could someday be a more catastrophic meltdown.89 On April 20, 1997, the Institute for Global Communications' computer server, which hosts BurmaNet and many other listservs related to peace and human rights, "crashed." Two days later, President Clinton announced that he was imposing federal economic sanctions on the SLORC regime. The IGC server was not restored until April 24, which meant that activists were seriously impaired in getting news and discussing this watershed development for several days.90 The Free Burma Coalition "would probably fall apart if the Internet connection were all of a sudden turned off," Marco Simons said. "Maybe we rely too heavily on it."91
Other technologies, such as the telephone and the fax machine, still have advantages in particular situations, particularly if the sender needs immediate acknowledgment that the information has been received.
Communications over the Internet can be easily monitored. Without a doubt, SLORC and its sympathizers monitor the public discussion on BurmaNet and other channels of discussion. Such monitoring allows the Burmese regime and perhaps even corporations targeted by the campaign to electronically eavesdrop on pro-democracy groups' activities. However, several respondents to the Internet Activist Survey, as well as several interviewees, did not see this monitoring as necessarily a bad thing. As one BurmaNet subscriber put it: "I hope they read some of our stuff. They must learn in some manner."92
Private, one-to-one electronic mail messages are slightly more secure, but these can be "hacked" by anyone with sufficient technical knowledge.
A more potent option is encryption, such as the previously mentioned PGP program, which, in theory, allows only sender and receiver to read the decoded message. PGP has allowed U.S. organizations backing the National League for Democracy and other pro-democracy groups to maintain regular contact with groups on the Thai and Indian borders. It has been used to set up meetings inside Burma and to transmit, almost in real-time, debriefings of activists who come out of Rangoon or other cities to the border areas. A more recent development, in reaction to increased pressure by the Thai government against democracy activists, is the construction of secure World Wide Web pages that require passwords for users to enter secure "chat rooms" where real-time conversations take place.93 These and other technologies, however, remain out of reach of many Internet users.
Opponents may try to use the Internet for sabotage. This is related to the concerns noted above, but represents a more active use of the Internet by the target of a political campaign, in this case SLORC, to trick, disrupt or otherwise sow dissension in activists' ranks.
The available materials, including interviews, discussions on BurmaNet and other on-line forums, and the Internet Activist Survey indicate that this can be a problem at times. But it is not a debilitating one, nor one that erases other advantages of the Internet for global activism. Most of those who responded to the survey said they had not experienced incidents of attempted sabotage by SLORC and expressed low or no concern about damage to the campaign from such activity.
Nevertheless, because the Internet allows for anonymity, it is possible for provocateurs posing as someone or something else to try to cause dissension or sidetrack the campaign by posting messages for that purpose.94 Okkar, who is obviously in sympathy with the regime, has from time to time posted messages on BurmaNet designed to confuse or undercut the anti-SLORC campaign. One such message, posted in February 1997, was purportedly a letter sent by a "Dr. Myron Segal" and relayed how the NLD had urged Japan not to help build schools and supply polio vaccine in Burma, in order to increase the people's suffering and dissatisfaction with SLORC rule.95 Just a month earlier, movement leader Zar Ni had posted an e-mail warning of SLORC attempts to cause dissension in the ranks. "Not just what we read as news but how we read it is going to help shape the course of action many of us take. So let's be careful in 'consuming' Burma news and reports," Zar Ni advised. He quoted from Rudyard Kipling: "Things are not quite what they seem. This is the Orient, young man."96
At other times, the Internet discussion has degenerated into rounds of finger pointing over real or imagined SLORC provocateurs, discussions that are often heavily tinged with Burmese history or ethnic politics. But U Ne Oo, a Burmese exile in Australia and long-time Internet user, argues that more recently, the Internet "seems to reach its maturity: there are less instances of SLORC being able to instigate the users [into] getting into squabbles."97
Information transmitted on the Internet is "unmediated" and can sometimes be of questionable accuracy. One of the advantages of the Internet for activists and many other users, of course, is the fact that it allows them to dispense with the traditional "filters" for news, including reporters and government officials. It allows users to self-select information they are interested in and retrieve data in far more detail than available in a newspaper or, certainly, a television program.
This same lack of structure, however, can present dangers, allowing for wide and rapid dissemination of information that is factually incorrect or propagandistic, including material that is racist, sexist or otherwise hateful and inciteful.98
In the case of Burma, the problem of false or malicious information from SLORC was discussed above. Our research came up with no instances in which the pro-democracy movement in Burma and its international supporters took a major action or made a major announcement of policy based on information that later turned out to be false.
Much appears to depend on the level of sophistication of the Internet user. As Rep. Rushing said of information, "Early on, you have to get it through your head, the fact that it is coming through a computer [does not] make it real, true." But, he added, "People pretty quickly tell you something's not true.... I'm comfortable the system's self-correcting."99
Access to the Internet is not equal and may highlight divisions between information "haves" and "have-nots." Not all who wish to play a role in the campaign for change in Burma, or in Burma's future generally, have access to the most modern tools of communication, including computers, modems and the necessary telephone lines or other means to connect to the Internet. As already noted, access to encryption methods, such as PGP, which allow for more secure communication may be limited.
The Internet Activist Survey found that English is far and away the language of choice for Burma activists. While few respondents said that language was a barrier to their participation, it may be that those for whom it is a problem simply are not on-line at all. There has been growing use of special fonts that permit the use of Burmese-language scripts on the Internet, but English still dominates the Internet discussion. "Thus, the discussions are dominated by non-Burmese activists and those Burmese who can communicate effectively in English. As organizing and development of leadership revolve more and more around effective use of the Internet, those who cannot write fluently or persuasively in English risk becoming marginalized."100
Like language, funding is also a major issue here. Those exile groups that are better financed (usually by Western nongovernmental groups or charities) and are located in urban centers, as opposed to jungle border areas, may have more access to the Internet and more chances to shape the opposition to SLORC. The concerns of Burma's many minor ethnic groups may go uncommunicated and unaddressed.101
The Internet cannot replace human contact in lobbying and other campaign activities. This warning was made virtually unanimously by those we interviewed. The Internet and other communications media cannot replace human interaction. Rather, the Internet has its own distinct advantages and disadvantages, and is only one of the "arrows" in an activist's "quiver."
Even in the Massachusetts selective purchasing campaign, tools other than the Internet, including phone calls and face-to-face meetings, "were more important," said Michael Beer of Nonviolence International. "At some point, local, physical interaction is going to predominate."102 Rushing, in describing the campaign, talked about the Internet's crucial role in electronic lobbying and rapidly delivering information into the hands of those who needed it. But he also returned repeatedly to how he arm-twisted his colleagues in the state legislature. The Internet "supplements" that kind of lobbying, he said. "It can fill a big void if you can't do face-to-face."103
In terms of a campaign's internal organization, the Internet also can bring changes in personal interaction. Because the Internet has become such a powerful tool of communication for campaigns, especially global campaigns, "face-to-face group meetings are necessary less often. The function of group meetings, particularly of geographically dispersed people, is now less to work out detailed strategies and more to strengthen bonds of friendship and bring in outside speakers."104 Finally, a campaign that focuses on little else but external communication and publicity-rather than human contact and internal organization-may be in danger. "There is . . . a troubling tendency among modern nonviolent movements to fixate on the media to the exclusion of other important factors." The media "have a notoriously short attention span, and there are always other conflicts that step up to take center stage. Once the media leave, what happens to the movement? If there is little in the way of sustaining organizations-or if the mobilization was media-driven-then it may crash and burn."105
The Internet may contribute to a lack of historical memory and archives for a full-scale political campaign. This is a general concern with the growing use of computers and media that work without ever putting documents into printed form. However, as noted elsewhere, archives of the BurmaNet News and related materials are kept electronically.106 For their successors, activists should pay careful attention to storing records of past debates, decisions and actions.
Internet campaigns, because of their decentralized nature, may be unstable. It is at the very least worth pondering whether, because of its fast-changing, organic and decentralized characteristics, the Internet gives rise to campaigns that grow, take action and then disappear more rapidly than in the past. Centralization and hierarchy have many disadvantages, especially in the modern world, but they do tend to lend themselves to stable structures.
In this study, we have described how a relatively insignificant constituency in the United States was able to influence American foreign policy using the Internet. The constituency's members, backed by a loose coalition of activists around the globe, with the modem as their common thread, were so influential that they thrust the United States into negotiations with the Europeans and Japanese at the World Trade Organization. There, a complaint has been filed over the Massachusetts "selective purchasing" law aimed at Burma. Resolution of that case could have a profound impact on local sovereignty issues.
We also conclude, however, that the Internet does not guarantee the success of international grassroots campaigns aimed at social or political change. It is a powerful tool when used to organize far-flung activists; to rapidly share news or replicate successful strategies from one location to another; or to focus activists on a single, well-defined goal. Traditional approaches, such as face-to-face lobbying and "retail politics," remain vital to success in many political campaigns. In addition, reliance on the Internet brings risks of electronic sabotage, monitoring or disruption by opponents.
Still, in the cases we studied, the Internet's capabilities provided a new tool for grassroots activists to counter powerful forces of multinational corporations and the regime in Rangoon. Since the Burma campaign raged across phone lines and fiber optic cables, the use of the Internet to advance work on human rights and democracy has spread to Indonesia, Nigeria, Tibet and East Timor, and has taken up such subjects as global warming and East Asian teak forests.
These and other campaigns are prime ground for further study of when and how the Internet can be best used, its limitations and its still-to-be-felt effects on political power and sovereignty.
