Social networking, an opportunity for authoritarian states ?

Cyberdemocracy or Cybertyranny ?

With Web 2.0, everybody gets nowadays the chance to express themselves in public and leave a durable and noticeable mark of their thoughts. This affects of course politics themselves. New media (and social media in particular) are potentially full of promises ; these media are often seen as new means of struggle against abuse of power, since they constitute tools that activists can easily access and control in order to broadcast instantly and widely whatever they want. Cyberoptimistism is a widespread opinion, even among scholars : Roy Rosenzweig, an American historian, talked great length about “the democratic triumph of the web” ; and Pierre Lévy, a renowned French philosopher specialized in the field of information ethics, introduced the notion of “cyberdemocracy”.Therefore, authoritarian states often consider Web 2.0 as a potential threat to internal security (internet censorship has become a crucial point when it comes to information control).

“Cyberdemocracy” however needs to be questioned. Whether in Russia, China or Iran, Web does not improve democracy, nor the idea of democracy ; authoritarian states use the Internet to monitor public opinion. The protests in Iran that ensued the controversial reelection of Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2009 are a typical example. Protesters used social media (mostly Twitter) to bypass censorship and relay information on the movement. But at the same time, the Iranian state utilized social media at their advantage to identify the leaders of the opposition (by cross-checking digital identities, data flows, etc…).

Social media is a double-edge technology : since the information published on social media is usually public, it can be seen by anyone and for a long time (hence the e-reputation issue or “Right to forget” bills in France). The Iranian example illustrates yet another point. The general attitude of authoritarian states towards the Internet is invariant : problematic web pages are either censored or unattainable. But minds are slowly changing.

Global social networks v national social networks

Vietnam is among the first countries (South Africa launched back in 2003 MXit Lifestyles, which has been a huge success) to adapt its national interests to Web 2.0. The beta version of a national and communist-friendly social network, go.vn (http://www.goonline.vn/), launched in May 19^th. This date marks the anniversary of Hô Chi Minh, a major figure of the Vietnamese revolution. The final version is due for the end of 2010. The network was developed by the state-owned entreprise Vietnam Multimedia (the average age of employees stands at 26). A lot of go.vn features are similar to other social networks (ie profiles, friends, tagging, etc.), but there is a trick, and a big one. To register, users need to give their full real name and the number of their national ID card.

Feels like déjà vu, don't you think ?

Le Doan Hop, Minister of Information and Communications, introduced go.vn as an alternative to “trustworthy” and “fair” foreign competition (Facebook was banned from Vietnam in November 2009). He also urged Vietnamese teenagers in search for “culture, values and services” to visit go.vn. Those services include free English tests alongside a bunch of quite violent video games. In one of those games, players can put themselves in the shoes of activists struggling to hinder capitalism.

Le Doan Hop, a new breed of cyberpundit

Alluring the Generation Y (or at least trying to)

According to Le Doan Hop, there will be 40 million users registered on go.vn in 2015 : that will represent more than half of the Vietnamese population then. There were 26 million Internet users in Vietnam back in August 2010, with an increase of 18% (when comparing those numbers with the 2009 statistics), making it one of the most rapid growth rates among developing countries. Phan Anh Tuan, an employee at Vietnam Multimedia, hopes that user comments will help the developers to improve go.vn, though he admits that traffic has been pretty low so far. In fact, a lot of youngsters do not know about go.vn, and there are a lot of critics on the Web (including boycott campaigns), sometimes funny, like this motto : “Let’s make it go for good”. And even when they know about go.vn, they do not really care since they can still access social networking sites like Facebook through anonymous proxies. The Vietnamese youth is not fooled by the government attempt to tighten furthermore its grasp on the Internet, and youngsters are unlikely to change their minds on go.vn, an inconspicuous form of state spying and overseeing.