COVER STORY • Digital Society — Issues & Challenges • 3

The Impact of Digital
Technology Upon
Democracy
Author Jillian C. YorkBy Jillian C. York

Introduction
In the nearly three decades since the invention of the World Wide
Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, we have witnessed dramatic changes todemocracy around the world, many of which were assisted by digitaltechnologies. At the same time, the increasingly rapid innovation in
Silicon Valley, China, and elsewhere has led us to a point in whichgovernments and publics alike are struggling to keep up with thedevelopment of new technologies, leading to potential threats to theexisting world order.
Digital technology — be it the Internet, digital assistants such as
Alexa, or the artificial intelligence (AI) powering self-driving cars andother automated tools — has the potential to shape the way we view
the world and interact with one another. It can facilitate freedom of
expression and access to information, bring about revolution, andtransform our economies — but as we’ve seen more recently, it canalso enable the spread of populism and misinformation, and be usedby state or non-state actors to manipulate publics.
There is a tendency amongst both experts and lay commentators
alike to ascribe solely negative or positive attributes to digitaltechnology, resulting in a false binary of “good” or “bad”. Indeed,although most technology is not inherently neutral — that is, it canbe imbued with the values and biases of those who create it — it canbe used in ways that are detrimental or beneficial, sometimes by thesame actors.
This paper will explore the ways in which digital technology —particularly the Internet — has influenced global society, and inparticular, the impact that it is having on democracy and democratic
participation.

The Internet & Elections
The Internet was initially developed to make communication
between researchers and labs across disparate geographic areas
more convenient. The invention of the World Wide Web enabled
access to the network by 1991, and just four years later around 16
million people worldwide were online.
Web usage spread rapidly and by the year 2000 there were 400
million users globally, according to data from the International
Telecommunications Union. The Internet as a tool for politics anddemocracy promotion was still nascent, but in 2004 US presidential
candidate Howard Dean’s campaign became the first to make
12 Japan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 2018significant use of the web for fundraising and campaign promotion.
The keys to Dean’s success were a digital-savvy, agile staff, and acore of passionate supporters, many of whom were bloggers.
Although his main online presence, a group on Meetup.com, hadonly 3,000 members, a 2004 WIRED magazine editorial commented
that “3,000 passionate supporters who are connected via the Internet
are influential in a way that an equivalent crowd would never be if
you had to gather it via direct mail or a telephone survey.”
Dean lost the election, but his legacy as “the web’s candidate” wassecured — and his fundraising success ensured that the web would
begin to play a major role in politics in the United States andelsewhere. At the same time, the potential that Dean’s campaign
exposed would alert less democratically-inclined governments to thethreat the web posed to their survival.

A Game of Cat & Mouse
In 2004, the same year that Dean unearthed the potential of the
web for political campaigns, the president of the Maldives, Maumoon
Abdul Gayoom, was discovering its perils. When unplanned protests
rocked the capital of Malé, with protestors demanding the release ofpolitical prisoners (including the dissident writers of an e-mailnewsletter) and Gayoom’s resignation, the president cut off thecountry’s access to the Internet entirely, in order to prevent
information about the protests from reaching the rest of the world.
Gayoom’s decision would have lasting repercussions. Just three
years later, unrest in Myanmar’s capital of Yangon led to full-scaledemonstrations that would later be referred to as the Saffron
Revolution. In response to the growing protests, the government
attempted to block access to any websites or services that could be
used to publish information about the protests, but web-savvy
activists were able to circumvent the blocks and began sharing
images and videos of the situation on the ground. In the absence ofinternational media, these images were the only ones to reach therest of the world.
The government, following Gayoom’s lead, cut off Internet access,resulting in a global outcry — and global online action. Bloggers andgroups on social networks such as Facebook urged online and offline
actions, including street demonstrations, in support of the country’s
protesters. “The marches,” wrote Sarah Lai Stirland in an October2007 piece for WIRED, “organized at a lightning pace by volunteers
using Facebook, show the increasing power and reach of a socialhttps://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

COVER STORY 3

Photo: Alan C., 2007

Citizens of Myanmar demonstrate against the government during the 2007 Saffron revolution.

networking site originally designed to help college students finddrinking buddies.”
In the Middle East, activists were connecting across borders
through online platforms. Tunisian exiles connected with theircounterparts back home, resulting in innovative tactics to expose thecorruption of the ruling Ben Ali family. In one instance, activists
exposed first lady Leila Trabulsi’s use of the presidential airplane forprivate shopping trips in Paris by comparing the government’s
official travel schedule with photographs posted to websites tracking
air travel.
Similarly, for Palestinians — separated by borders andidentification documents — the Internet became a means of not only
connecting families but also re-building national communities
separated by occupation and war. As Miriyam Aouragh wrote in her
2011 book Palestine Online: Transnationalism, the Internet and theConstruction of Identity, the result of Internet technology is that “thenation state is no longer a privileged space for the imagination ofidentity” and that the Internet enables a form of “long-distancenationalism”.
Throughout the world, governments began cracking down on
Internet usage, through the establishment of laws as well as throughextralegal or extrajudicial blocking and filtering of online content.
Their targets varied — Turkey, for example, was interested inpreventing criticism of the government, while Pakistan’s blocks werelargely aimed at content deemed insulting to Islam, and China’s
captured wide swaths of information — but their methods were by
and large the same.

The Internet Rises Up
By 2010, there were nearly 2 billion Internet users worldwide, andsmartphones had entered the market, bringing the web to thepockets of many who could otherwise not afford a connected device.

In Tunisia, which was among the first countries to offer public
Internet access (in 1996), penetration was close to 40%, andTunisians had found the web offered more access to information andfreedom of expression than government-restricted traditional media.
In the preceding few years, Tunisia’s government had increasingly
begun to crack down on the web, blocking numerous news andpolitical websites. In 2008, a brief ban on Facebook led to a lawsuit
and street protests, and the government quickly reversed its decisionat the request of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Despite theknowledge of what their government was capable of, Tunisians took
to the Internet to debate politics and engage in social activism,
including a campaign against Internet censorship.
In late 2010, protests broke out in Sidi Bouzid and, owing in largepart to the spread of information on Facebook and blogs, quickly
spread to Tunis and other parts of the country, resulting eventually inthe resignation of Ben Ali. In his final, televised speech, he promised
various reforms, including the end to Internet censorship in the
country.
The success of the Tunisian uprising led to a flurry of
demonstrations throughout the Middle East and North Africa, mostnotably in Egypt, where protests called for on Facebook resulted inthousands taking to the streets and eventually overthrowing thelong-time president, Hosni Mubarak. These initial victories, as well
as more minor victories in Morocco (where the monarchy concededreforms following protests organized online), led to the Internet
being hailed as a force for democracy.
Despite these victories, or perhaps because of them, authoritarian
governments in the Middle East and beyond — as well as, in several
cases, democratic governments — were increasingly restricting
freedom of expression and association online. In countries such as
Saudi Arabia and China, the decision to censor was opaque andunexplained. In more democratic countries, however, censorship wasoften enacted under the guise of public or children’s safety, or for
economic reasons, as in the case of proposals to censor copyrightviolations or cut off Internet users who engaged in such acts, as was
proposed in France.
By 2012, the OpenNet Initiative — a joint project of several
academic institutions including Harvard University and the Universityof Toronto — estimated that 47% of the world’s Internet users wereviewing the Internet through a fractured lens; that is, they wereexperiencing Internet censorship.

The Social Media Era
Although social media most certainly played a role in theorganization of the Arab uprisings, its role was exaggerated bymedia. Nevertheless, social media’s place in the activist toolkit was
secured, with movements from New York to Thailand becoming
reliant on social networks for disseminating information andorganizing protests.
Social media has undoubtedly enabled certain movements toJapan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 201813

COVER STORY 3

Photo: Jeon Shooing, 2018Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, visits the Seoul National Cemetery in South Korea.

thrive. The Egyptian uprising of 2011 was in some ways the result ofyears of strong ties amongst activists, but without Facebook — theplatform on which the call to take to the streets on Jan. 25, 2011 wasmade — the demonstrations may not have gained the critical mass
they needed to succeed. Similarly, in the US, the Black Lives Mattermovement was the outcome of building frustration and organizing
amongst African-American communities throughout the country, butsocial media enabled the movement to take advantage of a critical
moment of national anger and, by using a hashtag on Twitter, garnerwidespread support and attention.
There is, however, also a risk to the increased utilization of closed,
proprietary social networks by social movements. Although we often
treat them as such, these platforms are not the town square; rather,
they are like a shopping mall or company town, undemocratically
governed and unaccountable to the public. Both of theaforementioned movements have experienced this firsthand: thepage that eventually called for demonstrations in Cairo was taken
offline just three months prior when its administrator ran afoul ofFacebook’s rules, while activists involved in the Black Lives Mattermovement have complained of the platform removing images
discussing racism.
More recently, events surrounding the US and Philippine elections
have brought into sharp focus the question of whether social media
is good for democracy. In a prepared testimony submitted to the US
Senate judiciary committee, Facebook admitted that around 120
Russian-backed pages created 80,000 posts that were viewed
directly by 29 million Americans during the 2016 presidential
election campaign. The company has admitted to uncovering similar
behavior in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections as well.
In the Philippines, where Facebook is a leading provider of news
and information and is often available for free to mobile subscribers,
the platform is said to have been a key to the election of illiberal
populist President Rodrigo Duterte. According to an article byjournalist Davey Alba for Buzzfeed, doctored images and propaganda
about Senator Leila de Lima, a fierce critic of Duterte, began
14 Japan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 2018

circulating on Facebook shortly after his ascension to the presidency.
Duterte had publicly threatened to “destroy” de Lima, and the images
became part of that campaign.
In a letter to Buzzfeed, de Lima wrote of Facebook: “We wereseduced, we were lured, we were hooked, and then, when we
became captive audiences, we were manipulated to see what otherpeople — people with vested interests and evil motives of power anddomination — wanted us to see. It was a slow takeover of ourattention. We didn’t notice it until it was already too late.”
Propaganda disseminated on social media has not only influenced
elections; in Myanmar, it may have contributed to the ongoing ethnic
cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya population. UN human rights
experts investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar haveconfirmed that Facebook played a role in spreading hate speechagainst the Rohingya minority.
Just as social media allows social movements to take advantage ofattention and quickly build up their networks, so too does it allow
bad actors to disseminate propaganda and misinformation which,once released, can be nearly impossible to counter with truth. The
deleterious effect this has on democratic participation, thoughdifficult to quantify, is clear.
The “echo chamber”, a media phenomenon by which individuals
are exposed only to information from like-minded individuals, hasbeen exacerbated by what Internet activist and commentator Eli
Pariser calls the “filter bubble”, a state of isolation (again, often with
only like-minded individuals) that occurs as a result of algorithms
selectively offering up content based on a user’s searches, “likes”
and other online activity. Legal scholar Cass Sunstein has referred toecho chambers as “the enemy of democracy”, citing diverse debate
and freedom of speech as fundamental elements of a democraticsociety.
Indeed, the ways in which algorithms have segmented elements ofsociety into their own “filter bubbles” has resulted in a scenario
where the very essence of truth is now in question. Furthermore, theinformation collected about us could be used to nudge us toward
particular voting systems. In the most recent US presidential
election, Facebook allowed presidential campaigns to upload theiremail lists and voter files containing real names, political habits, andcontact information to the company’s advertising network, enabling
candidates to micro-target voters with ads that suit their personal
preferences and lifestyles. This practice, assisted by machinelearning algorithms, has put Facebook at the forefront for campaign
spending in the US.

Pervasive Surveillance
In the past few years, the term “surveillance” has become part ofour lexicon in the wake of revelations that the US — often in
partnership with other countries, namely the so-called “Five Eyes” —has been collecting massive amounts of metadata on its own citizens
and foreign citizens alike. This method of surveillance — often calledCOVER STORY 3“dragnet” or “mass” surveillance — has been widely condemned bycivil society groups as being both unnecessary and disproportionate
in the fight against terrorism.
The knowledge, or even the perception, of being surveilled canhave a chilling effect on the joint freedom of expression andassociation. An industry survey conducted by the World Economic
Forum in 2012 — a year before Edward Snowden leaked information
about the National Security Agency’s programs — found that incountries with high Internet penetration, a majority of respondents(50.2%) believe that their government “monitors what people do on
the Internet”. Simultaneously, 50% believe that the Internet is a safe
place for expressing their opinions.
But government-conducted mass surveillance is only one way inwhich data and metadata are being constantly captured about us. We
regularly give up data about ourselves voluntary to the same
companies from which we seek out news and information, enablingthem to tailor their algorithms to give us exactly what we want tosee. The pervasiveness of new digital technologies like virtualassistants such as Alexa or Siri raises questions about what,
precisely is being collected about us.
Furthermore, there is data involuntarily being collected about us as
we move throughout cities. A number of cities throughout the world
have begun to pilot facial recognition programs in public spaces
aimed at matching the faces of individuals with images contained incriminal databases or, in some cases, identifying emotions — suchas nervousness — through the use of sentiment analysis technology.
Many of these programs have been undertaken without appropriate
oversight to ensure the security of the data, and to ensure theconsideration of human rights.

Conclusion
The next few years promise even more intense development of
new digital technologies, from self-driving cars assisted by AI to the
spread of digital cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. We will
also see new technologies applied to existing practices as old as ourvery democracies, such as voting.
Take Estonia, for example. In a country where modern citizens
increasingly interact with their government through digital means, ane-voting system linked to the national ID card promised secure
voting, until a set of Finnish and American researchers found flaws in
the security of the system. While e-voting systems are intended tobring greater ease to electoral practices, security flaws threatensociety’s confidence in the integrity of elections, jeopardizing thevery underpinnings of democracy.
And in India, a controversial identity database that has begun
enrolling the country’s more than 1 billion citizens has been found tocontain serious security flaws: a software patch, easily obtained foraround 2,500 rupees ($35), allows anyone to generate new identity
numbers, creating a threat to national security.
Many new digital technologies pose unique threats to democratic

Photo: Pietro Naj-Oleari, 2011

Estonia’s e-voting system allows citizens to vote from home using their ID card.

norms, as advances in new wave technologies increasingly put
humans secondary to machines. Matthew Stender, a technology
ethicist and researcher who sits on several working groups of theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), told me that“[p]erhaps the greatest risk that AI poses to democracy is not foundin the technology itself, but in the rush for policy makers to embrace
an unproven and biased technology with little regard to its long-term
impact. In an effort to avoid uncomfortable decision making,democratic representatives and civil servants alike are laying the
groundwork to take humans evermore out of the loop.”
Nevertheless, new digital technologies have the potential tochange the very nature of governance. It is thus imperative thatgovernments and corporations involved in the development ofmachine learning and AI technologies ensure that a diverse
constituency of humans are involved in every step of the process,from design to launch. We must also ensure the security andintegrity of new technologies applied to existing systems, and notsacrifice safety for convenience.
The ability of campaigns, governments, and other actors tomanipulate trusted systems and platforms (such as, but not limited
to, Facebook) poses a very real threat to democracy that we are only
beginning to fully understand. At the same time, the ever-increasinglevel of control exerted by some governments over technology, andthe Internet, creates a hindrance to progress, including progress ofour democratic systems. As we progress toward the future, wemustn’t forget the lessons of the past. Democracy is ultimately asystem of checks and balances, and we as members of society must
use that to hold technological development accountable just as wewould our elected representatives.

Jillian C. York, a writer and activist based in Berlin, is director forInternational Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Japan SPOTLIGHT • November / December 201815