Tweeting Tyrants: Dictators Heart New Media
New Media Empowers All Forces
In a U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing on new media in authoritarian regimes, Morozov last week warned that new media "will power all political forces, not just the forces we like."
Despite efforts to encourage the growth of pro-democratic groups online, he said research into the blogospheres in Egypt, Palestine and Russia suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and groups of Russian nationalists and fascists are among the most active users of blogs and social media.
"Blind support for promoting blogging and social networking may have a lot of very unpleasant unexpected consequences," Morozov said.
While it's true that governments may have lost some power to Internet-based modes of communication that empower many voices, he said authoritarian regimes have benefited from those same communication channels in other ways.
"The Internet has made it much more effective and cheaper to spread propaganda," Morozov told ABCNews.com.
Yep. And if we look at the Iranian election protests in hindsight, the Iranian government likely benefited more from their ability to track and choke off social media use than protest organizers benefited from their use.
Services like Twitter were useful for conveying the message of the protesting elites outside the country but were less useful in organizing events because of limited penetration and the ease with which the government could choke off Internet and aspects of cell service (like SMS).
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