The Amateur

Computerist

Fall 2014 Upcoming Book “In the Era of the Netizen” Volume 24 No. 1

Contents

Editorial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Participatory Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Culture and Communication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

New Dynamics of Democratization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Rise of Netizen Democracy.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Candlelight 2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Graduation Presentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Is This a New Era?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Editorial

In his research and writing in the early 1990s,

Michael Hauben identified the emergence of the

netizen. This conceptual grasp of an important new

phenomenon spread around the Net and so around the

world.

While this development of the netizen was

recognized in the 1990s, Michael had foreseen that

with the new millennium and the spread of the Net the

netizens would become more of a phenomenon that

one could observe and identify as a significant form

that was emerging.

“Welcome to the 21

Century,” Michael wrote in

1993. “You are a Netizen (a Net Citizen), and you

exist as a citizen of the world thanks to the global

connectivity that the Net makes possible. You con-

sider everyone as your compatriot. You physically

live in one country but you are in contact with much

of the world via the global computer network. Virtu-

ally you live next door to every other single Netizen

in the world. Geographical separation is replaced by

existence in the same virtual space. The situation I

describe is only a prediction of the future, but a large

part of the necessary infrastructure currently exists.”

What form this phenomenon was to take in the

early days of the 21

Century has now been demon-

strated.

In South Korea, the new century (actually also

the new millennium) was marked at first by a struggle

against the powerful conservative media which at the

time determined the activity of the ruling strata of that

nation. Then the Anti-Chosun movement as it was

called, named after the Chosun media grouping,

morphed into support for a presidential candidate who

was willing to fight against the domination of this

media.

The netizens rallied behind this presidential

candidate and lo and behold, he won the presidency in

2002. A newspaper which grew up online and gave

him support, OhmyNews was an important part of this

victory.

Similarly in China, netizens were active criticiz-

ing abuse in their society. Especially after 2003 there

were many different critiques contributed to by

discussion among those who were able to be part of

this political discussion because of the internet. In

2008, a struggle developed against the misrepresenta-

tion of an important event in China by much of the

mainstream western media. This situation gave birth

to the anti-cnn website, which documented the west-

ern media false narratives about what was happening

in China.

While these particular national forms developed,

there was also an international effort to challenge

western media misrepresentations on a number of

blogs and website in various countries. This has

spawned a number of website, discussion groups and

articles that carry on this work. We call this phenome-

non ‘netizen journalism’ or the emergence of a new

netizen media.

This issue of the Amateur Computerist gathers

some of the articles documenting these developments

and which are part of a draft version of a new book.

The new book, In the Era of the Netizen: Models

for Participatory Democracy, still in draft form, is an

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/

Page 1

effort to document netizen developments of the early

century. We call this period the Era of the Netizen

to point out that while netizens contend with other

forms of political activity, the netizen is becoming an

increasingly significant factor in the contest over the

future. This is why we propose that human society has

now entered the Era of the Netizen. We foresee in the

long run that netizenship will be the dominant identity

and practice among the people of the world.

[Editor’s Note: The following was written in 1995 for

the Columbia University course “Radical Tradition in

America.”]

Participatory Democracy:

From The 1960s and SDS

Into The Future Online*

by Michael Hauben

The 1960s was a time of people around the world

struggling for more of a say in the decisions of their

society. The emergence of the personal computer in

the late 70s and early 80s and the longer gestation of

the new forms of people-controlled communication

facilitated by the internet and Usenet in the late 80s

and today are the direct descendants of 1960s.

The era of the 1960s was a special time in

America. Masses of people realized their own poten-

tial to affect how the world around them worked.

People rose up to protest the ways of society which

were out of their control, whether to fight against

racial segregation, or to gain more power for students

in the university setting. The Port Huron Statement

created by the Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS) was a document which helped set the mood for

the decade.

By the 1970s, some of the people who were

directly involved in student protests continued their

efforts to bring power to the people by developing

and spreading computer power in a form accessible

and affordable to individuals. The personal computer

movement of the 1970s created the personal com-

puter. By the mid 1980s they forced the corporations

to produce computers which everyone could afford.

The new communications media of the internet grew

out of the ARPAnet research that started in 1969 and

Usenet which was born in 1979. These communica-

tion advances coupled with the availability of com-

puters transform the spirit of the 1960s into an achiev-

able goal for our times.

SDS and The Need for Participatory

Democracy

The early members of SDS found a real problem

in American society. They felt that the United States

was a democracy that never existed, or rather which

was transformed into a representative system after the

constitutional convention. The United States society

is called a democracy, but had ceased being demo-

cratic after the early beginnings of American society.

SDS felt it is crucial for people to have a part in how

their society is governed. SDS leaders had an under-

standing of democratic forms which did not function

democratically in the 1960s nor do they today. This is

a real problem which the leaders and members of

SDS intuitively understood and worked to change.

An important part of the SDS program included

the understanding of the need for a medium to make

it possible for a community of active citizens to

discuss and debate the issues affecting their lives.

While not available in the 1960s, such a medium

exists today in the 1990s. The seeds for the revival of

the 1960s SDS vision of how to bring about a more

democratic society now exists in the personal com-

puter and the Net. These seeds will be an important

element in the battle for winning control for people as

we approach the new millennium.

The Port Huron Statement and Deep

Problems With American Democracy

The Port Huron Statement was the foundation on

which to build a movement for participatory de-

mocracy in the 1960s. In June 1962, an SDS national

convention was held in a UAW camp located in the

backwoods of Port Huron, Michigan. The original

text of the Port Huron Statement was drafted by Tom

Hayden, who was then SDS Field Secretary. The

Statement sets out the theory of SDS’s criticism of

American society. The Port Huron convention was

itself a concrete living example of the practice of

participatory democracy.

The Port Huron Statement was originally thought

of as a manifesto, but SDS members moved instead to

call it a “statement.” It was prefixed by an introduc-

tory note describing how it was to be a document that

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should develop and change with experience: “This

document represents the results of several months of

writing and discussion among the membership, a draft

paper, and revision by the Students for a Democratic

Society national convention meeting in Port Huron,

Michigan, June 11-15, 1962. It is presented as a

document with which SDS officially identifies, but

also as a living document open to change with our

times and experiences. It is a beginning: in our own

debate and education, in our dialogue with society.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 329)

This note is important in that it signifies that the

SDS document was not defining the definite solution

to the problems of society, but was making sugges-

tions that would be open to experiences toward a

better understanding. This openness is an important

precursor to practicing participatory democracy by

asking for the opinions of everyone and treating these

various opinions equally.

The first serious problem inherent in American

society identified by the Port Huron Statement is the

myth of a functioning democracy: “For Americans

concerned with the development of democratic

societies, the anticolonial movements and revolutions

in the emerging nations pose serious problems. We

need to face the problems with humility; after 180

years of constitutional government we are still striv-

ing for democracy in our own society.” (Port Huron

Statement in Miller, p. 361)

This lack of democracy in American society

contributes to the political disillusionment of the

population. Tom Hayden and SDS were deeply

influenced by the writings of C. Wright Mills, a

philosopher who was a professor at Columbia Univer-

sity until his death early in 1962. Mills’ thesis was

that the “the idea of the community of publics” which

make up a democracy had disappeared as people

increasingly got further away from politics. Mills felt

that the disengagement of people from the State had

resulted in control being given to a few who in the

1960s were no longer valid representatives of the

American people. In his book about SDS, Democracy

is in the Streets, James Miller wrote: “Politics became

a spectator sport. The support of voters was mar-

shaled through advertising campaigns, not direct

participation in reasoned debate. A citizen’s chief

sources of political information, the mass media,

typically assaulted him with a barrage of distracting

commercial come-ons, feeble entertainments and

hand-me-down glosses on complicated issues.”

(Miller, p. 85)

Such fundamental problems with democracy

continue today in the middle of the 1990s. In the Port

Huron Statement, SDS was successful in identifying

and understanding the problems which still plague us

today. This is a necessary first step to working toward

a solution. The students involved with SDS under-

stood people were tired of the problems and wanted to

make changes in society. The Port Huron Statement

was written to address these concerns: “… do they not

as well produce a yearning to believe there is an

alternative to the present that something can be done

to change circumstances in the school, the work-

places, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this

latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of

change, that we direct our present appeal. The search

for a truly democratic alternatives to the present, and

a commitment to social experimentation with them, is

a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which

moves us, and we hope, others today.” (Port Huron

Statement in Miller, p. 331)

Describing how the separation of people from

power is the means used to keep people uninterested

and apathetic, the Port Huron Statement explains:

“The apathy is, first, subjective – the felt powerless-

ness of ordinary people, the resignation before the

enormity of events. But subjective apathy is encour-

aged by the objective American situation – the actual

structural separation of people from power, from

relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-

making. Just as the university influences the student

way of life, so do major social institutions create the

circumstances which the isolated citizen will try

hopelessly to understand the world and himself.”

(“The Society Beyond” in the Port Huron Statement,

in Miller, p. 336)

The Statement analyzes the personal disconnec-

tion to society and its effect: “The very isolation of

the individual – from power and community and

ability to aspire – means the rise of democracy with-

out publics. With the great mass of people structurally

remote and psychologically hesitant with respect to

democratic institutions, those institutions themselves

attenuate and become, in the fashion of the vicious

cycle, progressively less accessible to those few who

aspire to serious participation in social affairs. The

vital democratic connection between community and

leadership, between the mass and the several elites,

has been so wrenched and perverted that disastrous

policies go unchallenged time and again.” (Port

Page 3

Huron Statement in Miller, p. 336)

The Statement describes how it is typical for

people to get frustrated and quit going along with the

electoral system as something which works. The

problem has continued, as we now have all time lows

in voter turn-outs for national and local elections. In

a section titled “Politics Without Publics,” the State-

ment explains: “The American voter is buffeted from

all directions by pseudoproblems, by the structurally

initiated sense that nothing political is subject to

human mastery. Worried by his mundane problems

which never get solved, but constrained by the com-

mon belief that politics is an agonizingly slow accom-

modation of views, he quits all pretense of bothering.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 337)

Students in SDS did not let these real problems

discourage their efforts to work for a better future.

They wanted to be part of the forces to defeat the

problems. The Port Huron Statement contains an

understanding that people are inherently good and can

deal with the problems that were described. This

understanding is conveyed in the “Values” section of

the Statement: “Men have unrealized potential for

self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding,

and creativity. It is this potential that we regard as

crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human

potential for violence, unreason, and submission to

authority. The goal of man and society should be

human independence: a concern not with the image of

popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is

personally authentic; a quality of mind not compul-

sively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one

which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one

which represses all threats to its habits, but one which

easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history,

one which openly faces problems which are troubling

and unresolved; one with an intuitive awareness of

possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability

and willingness to learn.” (Port Huron Statement in

Miller, p. 332)

Participatory Democracy

Those participating in the Port Huron convention

came away with a sense of the importance of partici-

patory democracy. This sense was in the air in several

ways. The convention itself embodied participatory

democracy through the discussion and debate over the

text of the Statement as several people later ex-

plained. The Port Huron Statement called for the

implementation of participatory democracy as a way

to bring people back into decisions about the country

in general, and their individual lives, in particular.

One of Tom Hayden’s professors at University of

Michigan, Arnold Kaufman, came to speak about his

thoughts and use of the phrase ‘participatory democ-

racy.’

Miller writes that in a 1960 essay, “Participatory

Democracy and Human Nature,” Kaufman had

described a society in which every member had a

“direct responsibility for decisions.” The “main justi-

fying function” of participatory democracy, quotes

Miller, “is and always has been, not the extent to

which it protects or stabilizes a community, but the

contribution it can make to the development of human

powers of thought, feeling and action. In this respect,

it differs, and differs quite fundamentally, from a

representative system incorporating all sorts of insti-

tutional features designed to safeguard human rights

and ensure social order.” (Miller, p. 94)

“Participation” explained Kaufman, “means both

personal initiative – that men feel obliged to help

resolve social problems – and social opportunity –

that society feels obliged to maximize the possibility

for personal initiative to find creative outlets.”

(Miller, p. 95)

A participant at the Port Huron convention,

Richard Flacks remembers Arnold Kaufman speaking

at the convention, “At one point, he declared that our

job as citizens was not to role-play the President. Our

job was to put forth our own perspective. That was

the real meaning of democracy – press for your own

perspective as you see it, not trying to be a statesman

understanding the big picture.” (Miller, p. 111)

After identifying participatory democracy as the

means of how to wrest control back from corporate

and government bureaucracies, the next step was to

identify the means to having participatory democracy.

In the “Values” section of The Port Huron Statement,

the means proposed is a new media that would make

this possible: “As a social system we seek the estab-

lishment of a democracy of individual participation

governed by two central aims: that the individual

share in those social decisions determining the quality

and direction of his life; the society be organized to

encourage independence in men and provide the

media for their common participation.” (Port Huron

Statement in Miller, p. 333)

Others in SDS further detailed their understand-

ings of participatory democracy to mean people

becoming active and committed to playing more of a

Page 4

public role. Miller documents Al Haber’s idea of

democracy as “‘a model, another way of organizing

society.’ The emphasis was on a charge to action. It

was how to be out there doing. Rather than an ideol-

ogy or a theory.” (Miller, pp. 143-144)

Tom Hayden, Miller writes, understood participa-

tory democracy to mean: “number one, action; we

believed in action. We had behind us the so-called

decade of apathy; we were emerging from apathy.

What’s the opposite of apathy? Active participation.

Citizenship. Making history. Secondly, we were very

directly influenced by the civil rights movement in its

student phase, which believed that by personally

committing yourself and taking risks, you could enter

history and try to change it after a hundred years of

segregation. And so it was this element of participa-

tion in democracy that was important. Voting was not

enough. Having a democracy in which you have an

apathetic citizenship, spoon-fed information by a

monolithic media, periodically voting, was very

weak, a declining form of democracy. And we be-

lieved, as an end in itself, to make the human being

whole by becoming an actor in history instead of just

a passive object. Not only as an end in itself, but as a

means to change, the idea of participatory democracy

was our central focus.” (Miller, p. 144) Another

member of SDS, Sharon Jeffrey understood “Partici-

patory” to mean “involved in decisions.” She contin-

ued, “And I definitely wanted to be involved in

decisions that were going to affect me! How could I

let anyone make a decision about me that I wasn’t

involved in?” (Miller, p. 144)

It is important to see the value of participatory

democracy as a common understanding among both

the leaders and members of SDS. While the Port

Huron Statement contained other criticisms and

thoughts, its major contribution was to highlight the

need to more actively involve the citizens of the

United States in the daily political process to correct

some of the wrongs which passivity had allowed to

build. Richard Flacks summarizes this in his article,

“On the Uses of Participatory Democracy”: “The

most frequently heard phrase for defining participa-

tory democracy is that ‘men must share in the deci-

sions which effect their lives.’ In other words, partici-

patory democrats take seriously a vision of man as

citizen: and by taking seriously such a vision, they

seek to extend the conception of citizenship beyond

the conventional political sphere to all institutions.

Other ways of stating the core values are to assert the

following: each man has responsibility for the action

of the institutions in which he is embedded ….”

(Flacks, pp. 397-398)

The Need for Community for Participatory

Democracy

The leaders of SDS strove to create forms of

participatory democracy within its structure and

organization as a prototype and as leadership for the

student protest movement and society in general. Al

Haber, the University of Michigan graduate student

who was the first SDS national officer, describes the

need for a communication system to provide the

foundation for the movement: “The challenge ahead

is to appraise and evolve radical alternatives to the

inadequate society of today, and to develop an institu-

tionalized communication system that will give

perspective to our immediate actions. We will then

have the groundwork for a radical student movement

in America.” (Sale, p. 25)

He understood the general society would be the

last place to approach. There was a need to start

smaller among the elements of society that was

becoming more active in the 1960s or the students.

Haber outlined his idea of where to start: “We do not

now have such a public [interaction in a functioning

community] in America. Perhaps, among the students,

we are beginning to approach it on the left. It is now

the major task before liberals, radicals, socialists and

democrats. It is a task in which the SDS should play

a major role.” (Miller, p. 69)

The Port Huron Statement defines ‘community’

to mean: “Human relations should involve fraternity

and honesty. Human interdependence is a contempo-

rary fact; …. ‘Personal links between man and man

are needed.’” (Port Huron Statement in Miller, p.

332)

Prior to his full time involvement with SDS,

Hayden wrote an article for the Michigan Daily

describing how democratic decision making is a

necessary first step toward creating community.

Hayden’s focus was on the University when he wrote,

“If decisions are the sole work of an isolated few

rather than of a participating many, alienation from

the University complex will emerge, because the

University will be just that: a complex, not a com-

munity.” However, this sentiment persisted in

Hayden’s and others thoughts about community and

democracy for the whole country. (Miller, p. 54)

Page 5

This feeling about community is represented in

the Port Huron Statement’s conclusion. The State-

ment calls for the communal sharing of problems to

see that they are public and not private problems.

Only by communicating and sharing these problems

through a community will it be a chance to solve them

together. SDS called for the new left to “transform

modern complexity into issues that can be understood

and felt close-up by every human being.” The state-

ment continues, “It must give form to the feelings of

helplessness and indifference, so people may see the

political, social and economic sources of their private

troubles and organize to change society ….’” (Port

Huron Statement in Miller, p. 374)

The theory of participatory democracy was

engaging. However, the actual practice of giving

everyone a say within the SDS structures made the

value of participatory democracy clear. The Port

Huron Convention was a real life example of how the

principles were refreshing and capable of bringing

American citizens back into political process. The

community created among SDS members brought this

new spirit to light. C. Wright Mills writings spoke

about “the scattered little circles of face-to-face

citizens discussing their public business.” Al Haber’s

hope for this to happen among students was demon-

strated at Port Huron. SDS members saw this as proof

of Mills’ hope for democracy. This was to be the first

example of many among SDS gatherings and meet-

ings. Richard Flacks highlighted what made Port

Huron special. He found a “mutual discovery of like

minds.” Flacks continued, “You felt isolated before,

because you had these political interests and values

and suddenly you were discovering not only like

minds, but the possibility of actually creating some-

thing together.” It was also exciting because, “it was

our thing: we were there at the beginning.” (Miller, p.

118)

The Means For Change

SDS succeeded in doing several things. First,

they clearly identified the crucial problem in Ameri-

can democracy. Next, they came up with an under-

standing of what theory would make a difference. All

that remained was to find the means to make this

change manifest. They discovered how to create

changes in their own lives and these changes affected

the world around them. However, something more

was needed to bring change to all of American soci-

ety.

Al Haber understood this something more would

be an open communication system or media which

people could use to communicate. He understood that,

“the challenge ahead is to appraise and evolve radical

alternatives to the inadequate society of today, and to

develop an institutionalized communication system

that will give perspective to our immediate actions.”

(Sale, p. 25) This system would lay the “the ground-

work for a radical student movement in America.”

(Sale, p. 25) Haber and Hayden understood SDS to be

this, “a national communications network” (Miller, p.

72)

While many people made their voices heard and

produced a real effect on the world in the 1960s,

lasting structural changes were not established. The

real problems outlined earlier continued in the 1970s

and afterwards. A national, or even an international,

public communication network needed to be built to

keep the public’s voice out in the open.

Members of SDS partially understood this, and

put forth the following two points in the Port Huron

Statement section on “Toward American Democ-

racy”:

– “Mechanisms of voluntary association must be

created through which political information can be

imparted and political participation encouraged.”

– “The allocation of resources must be based on

social needs. A truly ‘public sector’ must be estab-

lished, and its nature debated and planned.” (Port

Huron Statement in Miller, p. 362)

International Public Communications

Network – or The Net

This network and the means to access it began

developing toward the end of the 1960s. Two mile-

stones in the genesis were 1969 when the first

ARPAnet node was installed and in 1979 when

Usenet started. Both are pioneering experiments in

using computers to facilitate human communication

in a fundamentally different way than already existing

public communications networks like the telephone or

television networks. The ARPAnet, which was a

prototype for today’s internet, and Usenet, which

continues to grow and expand around the world, are

parts of the Net, or the worldwide global computer

communication networks. Another important step

toward the development of an international communi-

cation network was the personal computer movement,

which took place in the middle to late 1970s. This

Page 6

movement created the personal computer which

makes it affordable for an individual to purchase the

means to connect to this public network.

However, the network cannot simply be created.

SDS understood that “democracy and freedom do not

magically occur, but have roots in historical experi-

ence; they cannot always be demanded for any society

at any time, but must be nurtured and facilitated.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 361)

Participants on the ARPAnet, internet and Usenet

inherently understood this, and built a social and

knowledge network from the ground up. As Usenet

was created to help students who did not have access

to the ARPAnet, or a chance to communicate in a

similar way, they came to it in full force. In “Culture

and Communication: The Interplay in the New Public

Commons,” Michael Hauben writes that the on-line

user is part of a global culture and considers him or

she to be a global citizen. This global citizen is a net

citizen, or a Netizen. The world which has developed

is based on communal effort to make a cooperative

community. Those who have become Netizens have

gained more control of their lives and the world

around them. However, access to this world needs to

spread in order to have the largest possible effect for

the most number of people. In addition, as some

efforts to spread the net become more commercial,

some of the values important to the net are being

challenged.

A recent speech I was invited to present at a

conference on “the Netizen Revolution and the

Regional Information Infrastructure” in Beppu, Japan

helps to bring the world of the Netizen into perspec-

tive with the ideas of participatory democracy:

“Netizens are not just anyone who comes online, and

they are especially not people who come on-line for

isolated gain or profit. They are not people who come

to the net thinking it is a service. Rather, they are

people who understand it takes effort and action on

each and every ones part to make the net a regenera-

tive and vibrant community and resource. Netizens

are people who decide to devote time and effort into

making the Net, this new part of our world, a better

place.” (Hauben, Hypernetwork '95 speech)

The net is a technological and social development

which is in the spirit of the theory clearly defined by

the Students for a Democratic Society. This under-

standing could help in the fight to keep the net a

uncommercialized public common (Felsenstein). This

many to many medium provides the tools necessary

to bring the open commons needed to make participa-

tory democracy a reality. It is important now to spread

access to this medium to all who understand they

could benefit.

The net brings power to people’s lives because it

is a public forum. The airing of real problems and

concerns in the open brings help toward the solution

and makes those responsible accountable to the gen-

eral public. The net is the public distribution of peo-

ple’s muckraking and whistle blowing. It is also just

a damn good way for people to come together to

communicate about common interests and to come

into contact with people with similar and differing

ideas.

The lack of control over the events surrounding

an individual’s life was a common concern of protest-

ers in the 1960s. The Port Huron Statement gave this

as a reason for the reforms SDS was calling for. The

section titled “The Society Beyond” included that

“Americans are in withdrawal from public life, from

any collective efforts at directing their own affairs.”

(Port Huron Statement in Miller, p. 335)

Hayden echoed C. Wright Mills when he wrote,

“What experience we have is our own, not vicarious

or inherited.” Hayden continued, “We keep believing

that people need to control, or try to control, their

work and their life. Otherwise, they are without

intensity, without the subjective creative conscious-

ness of themselves which is the root of free and

secure feeling. It may be too much to believe, we

don’t know.” (Miller, p. 262)

The desire to bring more control into people’s

daily life was a common goal of student protest in the

1960s. Mario Savio, active in the Berkeley Free

Speech movement, “believed that the students, who

paid the university to educate them, should have the

power to influence decisions concerning their univer-

sity lives.” (Haskins and Benson, p. 55) This desire

was also a common motivator of the personal com-

puter movement.

The Personal Computer Movement

The personal computer movement immediately

picked up after the protest movements of the 1960s

died down. Hobbyist computer enthusiasts wanted to

provide access to computing power to the people.

People across the United States picked up circuit

boards and worked on making a personal minicom-

puter or mainframe which previously only large

corporations and educational institutions could afford.

Page 7

Magazines, such as Creative Computing, Byte and Dr.

Dobbs’ Journal, and clubs, such as the Homebrew

Club, formed cooperative communities of people

working toward solving the technical problems of

building a personal and inexpensive computer.

Several pioneers of the personal computer move-

ment contributed to the tenth anniversary issue of

Creative Computing Magazine. Some of their impres-

sions follow: “The people involved were people with

vision, people who stubbornly clung to the idea that

the computers could offer individuals advantages

previously available only to large corporations ….”

(Leyland, p. 111) “Computer power was meant for the

people. In the early 70s computer cults were being

formed across the country. Sol Libes on the East

Coast and Gordon French in the West were organiz-

ing computer enthusiasts into clubs ….” (Terrell, p.

100) “We didn’t have many things you take for

granted today, but we did have a feeling of excitement

and adventure. A feeling that we were the pioneers in

a new era in which small computers would free

everyone from much of the drudgery of everyday life.

A feeling that we were secretly taking control of

information and power jealously guarded by the

Fortune 500 owners of multimillion dollar IBM

mainframes. A feeling that the world would never be

the same once ‘hobby computers’ really caught on.”

(Marsh, p. 110) “There was a strong feeling [at the

Homebrew Club] that we were subversives. We were

subverting the way the giant corporations had run

things. We were upsetting the establishment, forcing

our mores into the industry. I was amazed that we

could continue to meet without people arriving with

bayonets to arrest the lot of us.”

The Net and Conclusion

The development of the internet and of Usenet is

an investment in a strong force toward making direct

democracy a reality. These new technologies present

the chance to overcome the obstacles preventing the

implementation of direct democracy. Online commu-

nication forums also make possible the discussion

necessary to identify today’s fundamental questions.

One criticism is that it would be impossible to assem-

ble the body politic in person at a single time. The net

allows for a meeting which takes place on each per-

son’s own time, rather than all at one time. Usenet

newsgroups are discussion forums where questions

are raised, and people can leave comments when

convenient, rather than at a particular time and at a

particular place. As a computer discussion forum,

individuals can connect from their own computers, or

from publicly accessible computers across the nation

to participate in a particular debate. The discussion

takes place in one concrete time and place, while the

discussants can be dispersed. Current Usenet news-

groups and mailing lists prove that citizens can both

do their daily jobs and participate in discussions that

interest them within their daily schedules.

Another criticism was that people would not be

able to communicate peacefully after assembling.

Online discussions do not have the same characteris-

tics as in-person meetings. As people connect to the

discussion forum when they wish, and when they

have time, they can be thoughtful in their responses to

the discussion. Whereas in a traditional meeting,

participants have to think quickly to respond. In

addition, online discussions allow everyone to have a

say, whereas finite length meetings only allow a

certain number of people to have their say. Online

meetings allow everyone to contribute their thoughts

in a message, which is then accessible to whomever

else is reading and participating in the discussion.

These new communication technologies hold the

potential for the implementation of direct democracy

in a country as long as the necessary computer and

communications infrastructure are installed. Future

advancement toward a more responsible government

is possible with these new technologies. While the

future is discussed and planned for, it will also be

possible to use these technologies to assist in the

citizen participation in government. Netizens are

watching various government institutions on various

newsgroups and mailing lists throughout the global

computer communications network. People’s

thoughts about and criticisms of their respective

governments are being aired on the currently uncen-

sored networks.

These networks can revitalize the concept of a

democratic “Town Meeting” via online communica-

tion and discussion. Discussions involve people

interacting with others. Voting involves the isolated

thoughts of an individual on an issue, and then his or

her acts on those thoughts in a private vote. In society

where people live together, it is important for people

to communicate with each other about their situations

to best understand the world from the broadest possi-

ble viewpoint.

The individuals involved with SDS, the personal

computer movement and the pioneers involved with

Page 8

the development of the net understood they were a

part of history. This spirit helped them to push for-

ward in the hard struggle needed to bring the move-

ments to fruition. The invention of the personal com-

puter was one step that made it possible for people to

afford the means to connect to the Net. The internet

has just begun to emerge as a tool available to the

public. It is important that the combination of the

personal computer and the net be spread and made

widely available at low or no costs to people around

the world. It is important to understand the tradition

which these developments have come from, in order

to truly understand their value to society and to make

them widely available. With the hope connected to

this new public communications medium, I encourage

people to take up the struggle which continues in the

great American radical tradition.

Bibliography

Felsenstein, Lee. “The Commons of Information.” In Dr. Dobbs’

Journal. May 1993.

Flacks, Richard. “On the Uses of Participatory Democracy.” In

Dissent. No. 13. November 1966. Pp. 701-708. Reprinted

in The American Left. Edited by Loren Baritz. Pp. 397-405.

Freiberger, Paul and Michael Swaine. Fire in the Valley: The

Making of the Personal Computer. Osborne/McGraw-Hill.

Berkeley. 1984.

Haskins, James and Kathleen Benson. The 60s Reader. Viking

Kestrel. New York. 1988.

Hauben, Michael. Culture and Communication: The interplay in

the new public commons – Usenet and Community. 1995.

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/usenet-culture.txt

Hauben, Michael and Ronda Hauben. Netizens: On The History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. Los Alamitos, CA.

IEEE Computer Society Press. 1997. Also available (1994):

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook/

Hauben, Michael. “Netizens and Community Networks.”

Presentation at Hyper network '95, Beppu Bay Conference.

November 24, 1995. Beppu Bay, Oita Prefecture, Japan.

Leyland, Diane Asher. “As We Were.” In Creative Computing.

Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp. 111-112.

Marsh, Robert. “1975: Ancient History.” In Creative Computing.

Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp. 108-110.

Miller, James. Democracy is in the Streets. Simon and Schuster.

New York. 1987.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. Vintage Books. New York, 1974.

SDS. Port Huron Statement. June 15, 1962. As found in Miller.

Pp. 329-374.

Terrell, Paul. “A Guided Tour of Personal Computing.” In

Creative Computing. Vol. 10 no. 11. November 1984. Pp.

100-104.

* This article is online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netdemocracy-60s.txt

[Editor’s Note: The following is an expanded and

updated version of a paper prepared for the IFIP-WG

9.2/9.5 Working Conference on Culture and Democ-

racy Revisited in the Global Information Society,

May 8 - 10, 1997, Corfu (Greece). A version appears

as Chapter 17, in An Ethical Global Information

Society: Culture and democracy revisited, Jacques

Berleur and Diane Whitehouse, Editors, IFIP, 1997,

pp 197-202.]

Culture and Communication:

The Impact of the Internet on

the Emerging Global Culture

by Michael Hauben

Any document that attempts to cover an

emerging culture is doomed to be incom-

plete. Even more so if the culture has no

overt identity (at least none outside virtual

space). But the other side of that coin pres-

ents us with the opportunity to document the

ebb and flow, the moments of growth and

defeat, the development of this young cul-

ture. (John Frost, Cyberpoet’s Guide to

Virtual Culture, 1993)

ABSTRACT

As we approached the new millennium, social

relationships were changing radically. Even in 1969,

the anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote of an

“approaching worldwide culture.” While she wrote of

a global culture made possible by the electronic and

transportation advances of her day, her words actually

foresaw fundamental changes that have been substan-

tially enhanced by the computer communication

networks that were just beginning. A new culture is

being formed out of a universal desire for communi-

cation. This culture is partly formed and formulated

by new technology and by social desires. People are

dissatisfied with their conditions, whether traditional

or modern. Much of the new communication technol-

ogy facilitates new global connections. This article

will explore the emerging culture and the influence of

Page 9

the net on this new participatory global culture.

I – The Emerging Globalization of Every-

day Life

The concept of a global culture arises from the

extensive development of transportation and commu-

nication technologies in the twentieth century. These

developments have linked the world together in ways

which make it relatively simple to travel or communi-

cate with peoples and cultures around the world. The

daily exposure of the world’s peoples to various

cultures makes it impossible for almost any individual

to envision the world consisting of only his or her

culture (Mead, 1978, p. 69). We really are moving

into a new global age which affects most aspects of

human life. For example, world trade has become

extensive, more and more words are shared across

languages, people are aware of political situations

around the world and how these situations affect their

own, and sports and entertainment are viewed simul-

taneously by global audiences. The exposure to media

and forms of communication helps spread many of

these cultural elements. While television and radio

connect people with the rest of the world in a rather

removed and often passive fashion, computer net-

works are increasingly bringing people of various

cultures together in a much more intimate and grass-

roots manner. A global culture is developing, and the

Internet is strongly contributing to its development.

Culture is a difficult concept to define. Tim North

has gathered six different definitions in his unpub-

lished master’s thesis (1994, chapter 4.2.1):

1. Culture: The shared behavior learned by

members of a society, the way of life of a group of

people (Barnouw, 1987, p. 423).

2. A culture is the way of life of a group of

people, the complex of shared concepts and patterns

of learned behavior that are handed down from one

generation to the next through the means of language

and imitation (Barnouw, 1987, p. 4).

3. Culture: The set of learned behaviours, beliefs,

attitudes and ideals that are characteristic of a particu-

lar society or population (Ember and Ember, 1990, p.

357).

4. Culture … taken in its wide ethnographic sense

is that complex whole that includes knowledge,

belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabil-

ities and habits acquired by man as a member of a

society (Tyler, 1871; cited in Harris 1988, p. 122).

5. Culture: The customary manner in which

human groups learn to organize their behavior in

relation to their environment (Howard, 1989, p. 452).

6. Culture (general): The learned and shared

kinds of behavior that make up the major instrument

of human adaption. Culture (particular): The way of

life characteristic of a particular human society

(Nanda, 1991, p. G-3).

One common category in some of these defini-

tions is the passing of previously learned behavior

from one generation to the next. Another common

category in North’s definitions of culture is the

importance of experience and patterns of behavior

being shared among a group of people.

Historically, during most periods, culture has

changed slowly and has been passed on from genera-

tion to generation. In the last half of the twentieth and

the beginning of the twenty-first century, however,

for most peoples the normal rate of cultural evolution

has been accelerating. Mead (1978, p. 64) writes that

while in the past, culture was transmitted from the

older generation to the younger with slow change

from generation to generation, today the younger

generation learn from both their elders and their

peers. The learning from peers is then shared with

their elders. Human culture gets set by how people

live their lives (Graham, 1995). Culture is created and

re-enforced through how that person lives in context

of society and social movements. One is taught the

culture of his or her society while growing up, but

those perceptions change as he or she matures, devel-

ops and lives an adult life. Culture is not statically

defined. Rather, a person grows up into a culture and

then can contribute to its change as time progresses.

(Mead, 1956)

People are increasingly living a more global

lifestyle, whether mediated through television, radio

and newspapers, travel or actual experience. This

global experience is facilitated by the ability of the

individual to interact with people from other cultures

and countries on a personal level. Images and

thoughts available via mass media show that other

cultures exist. But when people from different

cultures actually get a chance to talk and interact, then

the differences become less of an oddity and more of

an opportunity (Uncapher, 1992). Professor Dennis

Sumara argues that the formation of self-identity is

influenced by relations with others. He writes:

The sense of self-identity … emerges …

from our symbiotic relations with others. In

Page 10

coming to know others we learn about our-

selves. It is important to note, however, that

it is not a static or unified self that we come

to know, for in the coming-to-know – we are

changed. We evolve through our relations

with others …. (Sumara, 1996, p. 56)

That implies that people and cultures change from the

interaction with other people’s cultures. This new

interaction and subsequent change is part of the

formation of a global culture.

There are critics (Appadurai, 1990, etc.) who

claim this global culture, or mass culture is snuffing

out individual differences for a pre-packaged com-

mercial culture. These critics call for the isolation of

communities from each other so that uniqueness can

be preserved. This criticism misses that human

culture is a dynamic element of society, and freezing

it would produce a museum of human society.

Uncapher (1992) correctly points out that what these

critics do not recognize is that more and more people

of various cultures are understanding the power of the

new communication technologies. More and more

people are reacting against the mass media and

corporate dominance and calling for a chance to

express their views and contribute their culture into

the global culture. As an example, Margaret Mead

tells a story (1978, pp. 5-6) of returning to a village in

New Guinea which she had visited three decades

earlier. She wrote(p. 5):

In the 1930s, when one arrived in a New

Guinea village, the first requests were for

medicine … and for trade goods. The Euro-

pean was expected to bring material objects

from the outside world …. But in 1967 the

first conversation went:

“Have you got a tape recorder?”

“Yes, why?”

“We have heard other people’s singing on

the radio and we want other people to hear

ours.”

The presence of radios made the villagers aware of

the music of others, and they wanted a part of their

culture broadcast around the world.

Mead understood the importance of diversity to

the survival and strength of a species, whether human

or animal. However, she also understood that part of

the global commonality was through the spread of

scientific understandings and technological develop-

ments. The desire for technology is strong among

those who have only heard about its advantages. She

wrote, “People who have only seen airplanes in the

sky and heard the wonderful ways of radio, satellites,

telescopes, microscopes, engines, and script are eager

to experience these things for themselves.” (Mead,

1978, p. 121) The Internet is one of the new techno-

logical advances of today, and can be seen to fit with

the above examples. It is important to understand that

coupled with the desire for the technological advances

is the understanding of the need to control the intro-

duction of such technology and participate to have its

use benefit the particular peoples in their particular

needs. The peoples of the world understand that with

the implementation of technology comes a responsi-

bility for the management and careful handling of that

technology. Mead writes about this (1978, pp. 153-

154):

… the very burgeoning of science that has

resulted in world-wide diffusion of a monot-

onous modern culture has also stimulated

people throughout the world to demand

participation. And through this demand for

participation in the benefits of a monoto-

nous, homogeneous technology, we have

actually generated new ways to preserve

diversity.

Even in the primitive communities that Mead

studied in the Pacific Islands, she recorded that these

people adopted democracy and the use of technology

with their own variations and new aspects that served

their own needs. The new advances in communication

technologies facilitate new democratic processes.

People are discovering new ways to participate and

add their cultural contributions to a larger world.

Efforts to communicate via technology require the

acceptance of technological standards and the build-

ing of a common technical framework. The growth of

communications networks and standards at the same

time allows diverse cultures to share and spread their

varying cultures with others.

II – Global Contact over Computer

Networks.

The new media of forums, newsgroups, email,

chat rooms, blogs and webpages on the internet

facilitate the growth of global interactive communi-

ties. These electronic communication forms are made

available through community networks, universities,

the workplace, portals and internet service providers

(Hauben & Hauben, 1997, p. 8). Human culture is

Page 11

ever evolving and developing, and the new public

commons that these technologies make possible is of

a global nature. A growing number of people are

coming together online and living more time of their

daily lives with people from around the world.

Through the sharing of these moments by people,

their cultures are coming to encompass more of the

world not before immediately available. Mead (1978,

p. 88) understood that a global community and

awareness would require the development of a new

kind of communication that depended on the partici-

pation of those who previously had no access to such

power or such a voice.

Newsgroups and forums are a relatively young

medium of human discourse and communication. The

Usenet technology, one of the first broad newsgroup

networks, was developed by graduate students in the

late 1970s as a way to promote the sharing of infor-

mation and to spread communication between univer-

sity campuses. Their design highlighted the impor-

tance of the contribution by individuals to the com-

munity. The content of Usenet was produced by

members of the community for the whole of the

community. Active participation was required for

Usenet to have anything available on it. It was the

opposite of a for-pay service that provides content and

information. On Usenet, the users produced the

content, i.e., talk, debate, discussion, flames, report-

age, nonsense, and scientific breakthroughs filled the

space. Usenet was a public communications technol-

ogy framework which was open. The users partici-

pated in determining what newsgroups were created,

and then filled those newsgroups with messages that

were the content of Usenet. In forming this public

space, or commons, people were encouraged to share

their views, thoughts, and questions with others

(Hauben & Hauben, 1997, p. 4). The chance to

contribute and interact with other people spread

Usenet to become a truly global community of people

hooking their computers together to communicate.

People both desire to talk and to communicate with

other people (Graham, 1995; Woodbury, 1994).

Usenet was created to make that communication

happen. In time it also gave a public voice to those

who would not have had the opportunity otherwise to

have their voice heard. By promoting a democratic

medium, these graduate students who created Usenet

were helping to create the kind of medium Mead

believed was an important condition toward the

development of a global culture.

In a study about the global online culture, Tim

North (1994, chapter 5.2) asked the question “is there

an on-line culture and society on Usenet?” His con-

clusion was that there was a definite Usenet culture.

He listed four of the important defining aspects of this

unique online culture,

1. The conventions of the culture are freely

discussed.

2. The culture is not closed to outsiders and

welcomes new members.

3. There is a strong sense of community within

the Net culture.

4. It’s what you say, not who you are.

North described the Usenet culture as open and

welcoming of newcomers even if there was an occa-

sional unfriendliness to “newbies”. He focused on

how the online culture was documented and available

so newcomers could figure out how the community

functioned and more easily join it. But also not only

was the documentation available online to learn from,

it was open for discussion.

Another researcher in the 1990s, Bruce Jones

described the fullness of net culture:

… the Usenet network of computers and

users constitutes a community and a culture,

bounded by its own set of norms and con-

ventions, marked by its own linguistic jar-

gon and sense of humor and accumulating

its own folklore. (1991, p. 2)

Jones elaborates on what he saw to be an egalitarian

tendency or tendency to contribute to the commu-

nity’s benefit. Jones wrote:

… the people of the net owe something to

each other. While not bound by formal,

written agreements, people nevertheless are

required by convention to observe certain

amenities because they serve the greater

common interest of the net. These aspects of

voluntary association are the elements of

culture and community that bind the people

of Usenet together. (p. 4)

While North proposed that Usenet was a distinct

culture, he argued that it could not be considered a

separate society. Rather, Usenet was “a superstructur-

al society that spans many mainstream societies and

is dependent upon them for its continued existence”

(1994, chap. 4.2.2).

North argued that the Net does not need to

provide the physical needs made possible by a soci-

ety. He wrote:

Page 12

In this superstructural view, the Net is freed

of the responsibilities of providing certain of

the features provided by other societies (e.g.,

reproduction, food and shelter) by virtue of

the fact that its members are also members

of traditional mainstream societies that do

supply them. (1994, chap. 4.2.2)

Rather, those who use the Net live in their daily

offline society, and come to the Net for reasons other

than physical needs. Others (Avis, 1995; Graham,

1995; Jones, 1991) also studied this new online

culture and its connection to the growing global

culture. They saw there are a distinct online culture

and a distinct offline global culture. While the online

culture strongly contributes to the developing global

culture offline, it is not the sole contributing factor.

The contribution of the online culture to the global

culture through such technologies as forums and

electronic mailing lists is important as the online

media requires participation of the users to exist.

Since as media forums, newsgroups and social

websites encourage participation, they support the

contributions of many diverse people and cultures to

the broader global culture.

Both the technological design of opening one’s

computer up to accept contributions of others and the

desire to communicate led to the creation of an

egalitarian culture (Jones, 1991; North, 1994; Wood-

bury, 1994). People have both a chance to introduce

and share their own culture and a chance to broaden

themselves through exposures to various other cul-

tures. As such, the online culture is an example of a

global culture which is not a reflection of purely one

culture. Instead, it both incorporates cultural elements

from many nations and builds a new culture (North,

1994). Self-identity evolves through relations with

others. (Sumara, 1996, p. 56) The new connections

between people of different cultures allows each

culture to broaden itself based on the new understand-

ings available from other places; culture changes

through the exchange with new ways of understand-

ing and life. And this change and shared changes gets

shared around the world.

III – Community Networks making Online

Access Available.

Being a relatively young medium, the Net is

available to a subset of the world. However, this is

rapidly changing. Projects are extending the connec-

tions to undeveloped countries and the basic technol-

ogy needed to gain access is as simple as a computer

and modem connected to the local telephone or

amateur radio network. More and more people around

the world are getting online via mobile devices.

Another hurdle to overcome is technical training.

However, the democratic ethos of the Net spreads

through the help that users offer each other online. A

large number of people who are on the Net want more

people to be able to use computer technology. Many

are helpful and take the time and effort to spread their

knowledge to others who desire to learn. Similarly

everyone online at one point was new and learning.

This experience of ‘newbie’-ness provides a common

heritage to unite people. The problems encountered in

implementing and using new technology encourages

people to connect to others using the technology. This

is an incentive to hook into the internet where such

people can be contacted. The commonality of people

participating in the same technology creates a basis to

develop commonality toward other interests.

Community networks in the 1990s provided a

way for citizens of a locality to hook into these global

communities for little or no cost (Graham, 1995).

Community networks also provided a way for com-

munities to truly represent themselves to others

connected online (Graham, 1995; Weston, 1994).

Without access made available through community

networks, through publicly available computer

terminals or local dial-in phone numbers, only those

who could have afforded the cost of a computer and

the monthly charges of commercial internet service

providers (ISPs) or online services or who had access

through work or school would represent themselves

(Avis, 1995). Particular portraits of various cultures

would thus be only partially represented. Also, when

access is available and open to all, a greater wealth of

contributions can be made. For example, there was a

strong push in Canada and Canadian communities to

get online. A lot of grassroots community network

building took place. A Canadian national organiza-

tion, Telecommunities Canada, stressed the impor-

tance of contributing Canada’s various cultures to the

online community and in this way made a contribu-

tion to the whole community (Graham, 1995; Weston,

1994). In a similar way, Izumi Aizu (1995, p. 6) says

that Japan had “an opportunity to bring its own

cultural value to the open world.” He continues, “It

also opens the possibility of changing Japan into a

less rigid, more decentralized society, following the

Page 13

network paradigm exercised by the distributed nature

of the Internet itself” (Aizu, 1995, p. 6).

There is something to be said about the attraction

of representing one’s self to the greater community.

The many-to-many form of communication where an

individual can broadcast to the community and get

responses back from other individuals is an empower-

ing experience. No longer do you have to be rich and

powerful to communicate broadly to others and to

represent yourself and your own views. This power is

making it possible for individuals to communicate

with others of similar and differing interests around

the world. Grass-roots organization is boosted and

even the formation of local community groups is all

accelerated. Development of the commons to the

exclusion of the big media representations makes this

an electronic grass-roots medium, or a new enlarged

public commons (Felsenstein, 1993).

The online culture is primarily a written one,

although much of the text is written generally in an

informal, almost off-the-cuff fashion. While people

will post papers and well thought out ideas, much of

the conversation is generated in an immediate re-

sponse to others’ messages. This text can feel like a

conversation, or a written version of oral culture.

Stories akin to the great stories of the pre-history

come about. Legends and urban myths circulate and

are disseminated (Jones, 1991). Pictures and other

non-text items can be posted or sent in messages, but

these non-text items are primarily transferred and not

modified, thought upon or communally worked on as

are the textual ideas. Graphics and graphical commu-

nication and collaboration occur more on websites,

although they are still a less effective communication

medium. The common shared online language was in

the beginning English (Aizu). That is changing. Other

languages exist in country hierarchies and news-

groups and in mailing lists, along with chat rooms,

search engines and web pages. Moreover, all these

developments, textual or graphic, make possible a

global conversation of diverse views. Mead recog-

nizes that “True communication is a dialogue.”

(Mead, 1978, p. 77) She points out that real communi-

cation occurs “… in a world in which conflicting

points of view, rather than orthodoxies, are prevalent

and accessible.” (Mead, 1978, p. 80)

IV – Conclusion

The new global culture is forming in several

ways, none of which is a generic corporate rubber

stamp. People are taking charge. They are bringing

their own cultures into the global culture and spread-

ing this new culture around the world. This is taking

on a general form and an online form. The online

form provides a strong means by which people can

spread their ideas and culture which in turn affects the

broader global culture. This broader global culture

also has an effect on newsgroups or online media. The

ability to express oneself to the rest of the world is

addictive and the rapid increase of new people joining

the online global community makes that manifest.

“The voiceless and the oppressed in every part of the

world have begun to demand more power …. The

secure belief that those who knew had authority over

those who did not has been shaken” (Mead, 1978, p.

5). Mead states later, “There are new technological

conditions within which a new initiative for the

human race is possible. But it will not be found

without a vision.” To the former call for brotherhood

and sisterhood or of loyalty to kin and one’s ances-

tors, Mead proposes, “we can now add a vision of a

planetary community.” She explains that “Within

such a vision, the contributions of each culture … can

become complementary.” However, Mead empha-

sizes, “but within the new vision there must be no

outsiders.” (pp. 147-148)

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Japan Emergence of Netizens. Institute for HyperNetwork

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International University of Japan. Available:

http://www.nira.or.jp/past/publ/review/95autumn/aizu.html

Appadurai, Arjun. (1990). “Disjuncture and Difference in the

Global Cultural Economy,” Public Culture, 2, 1–24.

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way: The Role of Community Networks. Unpublished

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[Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from a

longer chapter with the same title which will be part

of the new book.]

The New Dynamics of

Democratization in South

Korea: The Internet and the

Emergence of the Netizen

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

I – The Global Internet and the Netizen

Experience in Korea

In 2002, the Sisa Journal, a South Korean

weekly, named ‘Netizens’ as the Person of the Year

(La 2003, p. 1). This represented a rare recognition of

a new and significant phenomenon that has emerged

with the development and spread of the internet

(Hauben 1997). The netizen has become a significant

actor in the struggle for democracy. Nowhere was this

more pronounced than in South Korea.

Describing the progressive impact that the

internet is having around the world, Choi Jang Jip, a

professor at Korea University, writes (2000, p. 46):

[A]ccompanied by the development of

communication technologies globalization

creates new elements that enable people to

counter undemocratic or anti-democratic

elements …. In the instrumental sense,

globalization enables communication for

democracy in cyberspace. In terms of con-

tent, a greater affinity between worldwide

democratic values and norms and the unique

experiences of younger Koreans in the de-

mocratization movement becomes possible.

Many South Koreans are dissatisfied with the

process of democratic development in South Korea,

Choi recognizes that it is not political parties but the

internet and the democratic processes that the internet

makes possible that provide a continuum with the

democratic processes and practices that helped to win

the June 1987 victory in South Korea. He explains the

reason:

Political society is preoccupied with political

parties, political elites, and mass media,

which produces and transmits dominant

discourse … however, cyberspace has no

Page 15

barriers to entry and is an absolutely free

space over which no hegemonic discourse

can exercise a dominant influence. (Choi

2000, p. 40)

Choi maintains that the Korean experience of

democratic practice is important not only for the

democratization struggle in Korea, but also as an

indication of a worldwide struggle for democracy to

come:

The citizen movement using Internet is just

a beginning stage. It will become popular in

the near future and change the quality and

contents of movements because of the rapid

internet diffusion and information expan-

sion. (Choi 2000, p. 50)

There is a need to document and understand the

experience of netizens in Korea not only to support

the democratization struggle in Korea itself, but also

toward understanding the contribution of this netizen

experience to the worldwide struggle for democracy.

II – A Model for Democratization

Along with the recognition that the experience of

democratic struggle provides the basis for the contin-

uing struggle for democracy in South Korea, Choi

believes that there is a need for public understanding

of democracy. He writes:

In any given nation or society, democracy

develops in parallel with the level of under-

standing in that society. In order for democ-

racy to take root and to develop in quality,

[a] social understanding of democracy has to

develop. This is why civic education for

democracy is important, and it is necessary

to increase public interest and participation

through such education. When this happens,

people's intellectual curiosity for under-

standing will increase, and so will their

social participation. This is how democracy

develops. (Choi 2005, p. 13)

To develop such an understanding, he proposes

the need for critical discussion and debate about

democracy (Choi 2005, p. 13). Such a process of

discussion and experimentation with democracy has

been happening on the internet in South Korea. Yet

because it is taking place at a grassroots level, online

and in the Korean language, it is little understood and

even more rarely considered in the world outside of

the internet. Choi himself wrote a book translated into

English (2005), Democracy after Democratization:

the Korean Experience, documenting the history and

progress of the struggle for democracy in South

Korea. The only clue in his book of the online devel-

opments, however, is the cover, which shows a

massive demonstration in Seoul that took place in

2004 that was made possible by the online democratic

developments. The online newspaper OhmyNews is

credited for the photo. Thus, the book and its cover

demonstrate the confusion about the contribution to

the democratic struggle in South Korea by the internet

and the netizens. This is understandable as the

internet and the netizens are relatively recent phenom-

ena and their contribution to the struggle for democ-

racy is still poorly understood. This article is intended

as a contribution to the discussion and debate about

democracy that Choi advocates.

III – A New Model for Democracy and the

Need for a Communication Infrastructure

Before discussing the internet and the netizens

and their impact on the democratization struggle in

South Korea, however, I want to propose a model for

democracy that I will utilize in this article. A number

of Korean scholars note that a minimalist conception

of democracy is inadequate as a goal. Han Sang-Jin,

a professor at Seoul National University, disagrees

with scholars who depend on institutional politics

from within the political system (1995, p. 131). Han

writes:

If the outside energy dries up or disappears,

it seems very unlikely that any political

leader or faction would pursue structural

reform. by its own initiative.

As part of his support for grassroots political

activity, Han proposes the need to support a culture of

diversity, a culture which nourishes the quest for a

conscious social identity. He writes:

Crucial for democratic consolidation … is

the capacity of civil society as the basis of

democratic institutions in which cultural

identities and diversities are nurtured and

developed. It is probably in this sense that

one may expect that new visions for civiliza-

tion will also come from East Asia. It is

indeed tempting to think about the possibil-

ity, and it will be as much so in the future as

it is now. (Han 1995, p. 13)

Han’s intuition that democratic development

requires a cultural process is similar to the model for

Page 16

democracy created by the Students for a Democratic

Society (SDS) in the U.S. in the early 1960s. An

essay by Arnold Kaufman, a professor at the Univer-

sity of Michigan, inspired the development of the

SDS model of democracy which has become known

as ‘participatory democracy.’ The essay Kaufman

wrote, “Participatory Democracy and Human Initia-

tive” helped to set the foundation for the SDS model

of democracy.

Kaufman writes, “Participation means both

personal initiative – that men feel obliged to resolve

social problems and social opportunity – that society

feels obliged to maximize the possibility for personal

initiatives to find creative outlets” (Quoted in Hauben

1995). Thus for Kaufman and then for the SDS, the

concept of participatory democracy had two aspects,

one a role for the person as part of a social process,

and two, a role for the society to encourage the

creative initiative of the person.

This is different from the minimalist conceptions

of democracy and from conceptions relying on an

elite to make the decisions for the population, or

proposing that democracy means facilitating institu-

tional competition among an elite. Kaufman, and

subsequently SDS, proposed a model for democracy

which had three elements:

(1) The involvement of ordinary people actively

participating to foster the changes they desire in their

society.

(2) Some structural connection between the commu-

nity of ordinary people and those in society who make

the decisions.

(3) A commitment by society to foster the creative

development and functioning of the population.

SDS saw the need for a communications infra-

structure to provide a public space for discussion and

debate among the community of ordinary people as

crucial for its vision of democracy. For such public

discussion “mechanisms of voluntary association

must be created through which political information

can be imparted and political participation encour-

aged,” proclaims the Port Huron Statement of SDS in

the section “Toward American Democracy” (Hauben

1995, p. 7)

In a paper he wrote about the SDS vision of

participatory democracy and the internet, Michael

Hauben, then a student at Columbia University,

described how the creation and development of the

internet has provided just such a communications

infrastructure identified by SDS as necessary to

realize their model of participatory democracy.

(Hauben 1995, p. 7)

…

VIII – Conclusion

In his book Democracy After Democratization,

Choi (2005) explains the significant role that the

mainstream conservative media has played in Korean

society since the June 1987 democratic victory. In a

chapter titled “Politics Ruled by the Press,” Choi

describes the power of the press over political institu-

tions of South Korea. “If anyone asks me who moves

the politics in Korea,” he writes, “I would say it is the

press.” (p. 41)

According to Choi’s argument, it is not South

Korean government officials who determine the

political issues and priorities to be considered. Instead

it is the press that sets the agenda and priorities for the

political officials, who “adjust their role according to

what is reported that day in the press.” (Choi 2005, p.

41) The conservative press wielding this power (Choi

wrote the Korean original of his book based on

lectures prior to the Dec. 2002 election of Roh Moo

Hyun) was in possession of what Choi characterizes

as unbridled power, unchecked by any democratic

process. Choi proposes that democracy is a process by

which justice emerges from the conflict between

various opinions and interests. To have a democratic

society, a continuous process of reform is needed, one

that can continually counter the resistance to

democratization of the conservative vested interests.

Otherwise the society can regress and there is the

danger of reactionary forces gaining dominance. To

continue the advance toward a more democratic

society, Choi maintains that there is a need for

“efforts to continually develop institutional mecha-

nisms to defend it, [to] foster values appropriate to it

and further nurture it.” (2005, p. 50)

The online media then developing in South Korea

is a new form of an institutional mechanism. This

institutional mechanism is helping to defend, foster

and nurture the continuing development of democracy

in Korea. Similarly, the netizens, the online citizens

who participate in online forums discussing and

debating the issues of the day and the social goals

needed to continue the struggle for democracy, are the

heirs of the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s.

Netizens in Korea have developed and contribute

Page 17

to many online forms. These include Cyworld, blogs,

websites for the discussion of music or human rights

or ecology issues, just to mention a few. Also there

are websites where serious social or political ques-

tions are raised, as for example, where the authentic-

ity of photos of human rights violations by the North

Koreans were challenged.

In 2005, three websites for the discussion of

scientific developments gained the spotlight in news-

papers and scientific journals around the world. These

websites were Scieng (Association of Korean Scien-

tists and Engineers) (www.scieng.net), BRIC (The

Bio-logical Research Information Center)

(bric.postech.ac.kr), and the Science Gallery of

DCInside (www.dcinside.com). They gained promi-

nence in a controversy that developed in South Korea

over possible ethical and fraudulent breaches in

stem-cell research by a prominent scientist. Issues

raised on these websites led to articles in the print

media in Korea (Chosun Ilbo 2005a) and around the

world and even in international scientific journals

(Chosun Ilbo 2005b). Young scientists in Korea

posting in BRIC were proposed as the ‘Netizens of

the Year’ for the role they played in helping to un-

cover fabricated data and false scientific claims in

well respected scientific articles by Hwang

Woo-sook. He had been a nationally and internation-

ally acclaimed scientific researcher.

The subject matter of these online forms, how-

ever, are not the salient aspects. Rather, it is the fact

that via this new form of communications media,

netizens are able to speak out about their views and

the problems they deem important and to hear and

think about the views and concerns of other netizens.

One of the early participants in the U.S. student group

SDS remembers a talk by Arnold Kaufman at the

SDS conference creating the Port Huron Statement on

participatory democracy. She writes (quoted in

Hauben 1995):

At one point, he declared that our job as

citizens was not to role-play the President.

Our job was to put forth our own perspec-

tive. That was the real meaning of democ-

racy – press for your own perspective as you

see it, not trying to be a statesman under-

standing the big picture.

Such a process makes possible the active involve-

ment of people in the discussion of issues they find of

interest. As each person argues for his or her view-

point in discussion with others with similar or differ-

ent viewpoints, a vibrant debate can ensue. It is just

such a process that Choi considers necessary for

democracy. This is the kind of process that has been

nourished by the online media in South Korea and it

has in turn led to the spread and continuing develop-

ment of the internet.

The online media has had an impact on many

areas of Korean society, including election cam-

paigns. The General Election campaigns of 2000 and

the Presidential Election campaign in 2002 were

especially impacted by online discussion and debate.

Describing the role of the internet in the 2000 elec-

tion, Jeong Hoiok (2000) then of Ewha Woman’s

University, writes:

The 16

general election [April 2000] was

the first in Korea in which the real world and

virtual world came together thanks to infor-

mation technology. Indeed, even well estab-

lished candidates have come to actively use

the Internet as an effective campaign tool,

while the homepage of the anti-incumbent

Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General

Election was visited by more than 900,000

Internet users. Even the Central Election

Management Committee made the headlines

when it disclosed on the Internet the military

records, personal assets, and any criminal

records of registered candidates. Moreover,

a number of websites are actively engaged in

political activities on an ongoing basis.

In a special feature of the French newspaper, La

Monde, about the 2000 Korean General Election,

published on April 25, 2000, the editors observed that

“the Internet served as a catalyst for the development

of a new form of democracy,” during that election.

The editors then predicted that, “Once today’s infor-

mation technology is fully applied, this will signifi-

cantly contribute to furthering Korea’s democratiza-

tion.” (Hoiok 2000, p. 5)

The varied forms of online media that have

developed in the past several years in Korea are

helping to nourish a new form of democracy, partici-

patory democracy. Participatory democracy, in turn,

is helping to foster the continuing development and

spread of the internet in Korea. The continuing

development of the internet and of the netizens

protects and nurtures new online forms that have

become a new institution for the continuing struggle

to maintain and extend democracy.

Page 18

Note:

See article in Korean:

http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_co

de=300437

There was a response in English by dongilone:

“I have firmly believed that truth prevails in the long run. I am

choked with overflowing emotions of relief and joy, when I am

aware that the future of Korean science will not be withered,

with your brilliant performance, suffering frequent slanderings

and other physical and mental threats to you young scientists,

from blind followers of the God Lie. Momentary bitterness of

setback is to be welcomed when lasting longer sweet fruit is to

be savored.

I am proud of you young scientists.

I treat you all a large barrel of Makoli.”

http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_co

de=299945

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No. 5. P. 1.

The Rise of Netizen

Democracy: A Case Study of

Netizens’ Impact on

Democracy in South Korea

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

The history of democracy also shows that

democracy is a moving target, not a static

structure.

John Markoff

What does it mean to be politically engaged

today? And what does it mean to be a citi-

zen? The transformation of how we engage

and act in society challenges how we per-

ceive the concepts of civic engagement and

citizenship, their content and expression.

The introduction of new information tech-

nologies, most notably in the form of

internet, has in turn reinvigorated these

discussions.

Ylva Johansson

Someone may construe that in South Korea

politics the major source of power moved

from ‘the muzzle of a gun (army)’ to ‘that of

the emotion (TV)’ and then to ‘that of logic

(Internet)’ in a short time.

Yun Young-Min

Abstract

South Korean netizens are exploring the potential

of the internet to make an extension of democracy a

reality. The cheering during the World Cup games in

Korea in June 2002 organized by the Red Devils

online fan club, then the protests against the deaths of

two Korean school girls caused by U.S. soldiers were

the preludes to the candidacy and election of Roh

Moo Hyun, the first head of state whose election can

be tracked directly to the activity of the netizens. This

Page 19

is a case study of the South Korean netizen democ-

racy. This case study is intended as a contribution to

a needed broader project to explore the impact

netizens are having on extending democratic pro-

cesses today.

I – Preface

In the early 1990s, a little more than two hundred

years after the French Revolution, a new form of

citizenship emerged. This is a citizenship not tied to

a nation state or nation, but a citizenship that embod-

ied the ability to participate in the decisions that

govern one’s society. This citizenship emerged on the

internet and was given the title ‘netizenship.’ The

individuals who practice this form of citizenship refer

to themselves as ‘netizens.’

In the early 1990s, Michael Hauben, recognized

the emergence and spread of this new identity. In the

book Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet, he describes how he came to recog-

nize that not only was there a new technical develop-

ment, the internet, but also, there was a new identity

being embraced by many of those online. Hauben

writes:

The story of Netizens is an important one. In

conducting research five years ago [in 1992-

1993] online to determine people’s uses of

the global computer communications net-

work, I became aware that there was a new

social institution, an electronic commons

developing.

It was exciting to explore this new social

institution. Others online shared this excite-

ment …. There are people online who ac-

tively contribute toward the development of

the Net. These people understand the value

of collective work and the communal as-

pects of public communications. These are

the people who discuss and debate topics in

a constructive manner, who e-mail answers

to people and provide help to new-comers,

who maintain FAQ files and other public

information repositories, who maintain

mailing lists, and so on. These are people

who discuss the nature and role of this new

communications medium. These are the

people who as citizens of the Net, I realized

were Netizens …. (T)hey are the people who

understand it takes effort and action on each

and everyone’s part to make the Net a regen-

erative and vibrant community and resource

…. The word citizen suggests a geographic

or national definition of social membership.

The word Netizen reflects the new non-

geographically based social membership. So

I contracted net.citizen to Netizen.

Just as many different meanings have developed

for ‘citizen,’ so ‘netizen’ has come to have several

meanings. The early concept of ‘netizen’ is ‘one who

participates in the affairs of governing and making

decisions about the internet and about how the

internet can impact offline society.’ A further devel-

opment of this concept is ‘one who is empowered by

the net to have an impact on politics, journalism,

culture and other aspects of society.’

This case study

will explore this new socio-political-cultural identity,

the identity of the netizen in the context of recent

developments in South Korea.

While there is a large body of literature about the

internet and its impact on society, there has been

considerably less attention paid to those who are

empowered by the internet, to the netizens, who are

able to assume a new role in society, and to embody

a new identity. This case study will explore how the

netizens of South Korea are helping to shape the

democratic practices that extend what we understand

as democracy and citizenship. Their experience

provides an important body of practice to consider

when trying to understand what will be the future

forms of political participation.

II – Introduction

In his article “Where and When was Democracy

Invented?,” the sociologist John Markoff raises the

question of the practice of democracy and more

particularly of the times and places where innovations

in democracy are pioneered.

Markoff writes that a dictionary in 1690 defined

democracy as a “form of government in which the

people have all authority.” (p. 661) Not satisfied with

such a general definition, Markoff wants to have a

more concrete definition or conception of democracy.

He wants to investigate the practices that extend

democracy. He proposes looking for models or

practices that will help to define democracy in the

future. Such models or practices, he cautions, may be

different from what we currently recognize as demo-

cratic processes. “We need to consider,” he writes,

“the possibility that somewhere there may be still

further innovations in what democracy is, innovations

Page 20

that will redefine it for the historians of the future.”

(p. 689)

Markoff suggests that researchers who want to

understand the means of extending democracy in the

future not limit themselves to the “current centers of

world wealth and power.” (p. 663) Similarly, he

proposes that the poorest areas of the world will not

be the most fruitful for researchers looking for inno-

vations in democracy.

Considering Markoff’s guidelines, South Korea

fits very appropriately with regard to the size and

environment likely to innovate democratic practices.

Events in South Korea confirm that indeed there are

pioneering practices that can give researchers a

glimpse into how democracy can be extended in a

practical fashion.

III – The South Korean Netizens

Movement

Various factors have contributed to democratic

developments in South Korea. For example, the

activities of Korean non governmental organizations

(NGOs) have played an important role. Similarly, the

student movements at least since1980 have served to

maintain a set of social goals in the generations that

have grown up with these experiences. Government

support for the spread and use of computers and the

internet by the South Korean population has also

played a role.

For the purposes of this article, however, I want

to focus on the practice of the Korean netizen. Along

with the pioneering of computer networking in South

Korea (1980s) and internet technology (1990s), there

was the effort to maintain internet development for

public purposes. This is different from how in the

1990s, for example, the U.S. government gave com-

mercial and private interests free reign in their desires

to direct internet development.

A – South Korean Networking as a Social

Function

This case study begins in 1995.

In 1995, the U.S. government privatized the U.S.

portions of the internet backbone. The goal of the

U.S. government was to promote private and com-

mercial use. At the same time the concept of netizen

was spreading around the U.S. and the international

networking community, partially in opposition to the

trend of privatization and commercialization.

In South Korea, however, there was a commit-

ment to “prevent commercial colonialization” of the

South Korean internet. The effort was to promote the

use of the internet for grassroots political and social

purposes, as a means of democratizing Korea. In a

paper presented in 1996, “The Grassroots Online

Movement and Changes in Korean Civil Society,”

Myung Koo Kang,

documents the netizen activity in

South Korea to “intervene into the telecommunication

policy of the government which is pushing toward

privatization, and to build an agenda for non-market

use of the electronic communications technology.”

Kang describes the formation of the Solidarity of

Progressive Network Group (SPNG) in 1995. He

wrote, “It is now estimated that the South Korean

online community is populated by as many as 1.5

million users.” (p. 117) In the early 1990s, commer-

cial networks like Chollian, Hitel, and Nownuri were

main providers of internet access in South Korea.

Those interested in developing the democratic poten-

tial of the internet were active in these networks in

newsgroups devoted to specific topics or on internet

mailing lists. Online communities developed and the

experience was one that trained a generation in

participatory online activity. Describing the experi-

ence of being online in one of these communities in

the early 1990s, a netizen writing on Usenet explains:

There was Hitel, Chollian, Nownuri, three

major texts based online services in Korea.

I think they boomed in early 90's and with-

ered drastically as the Internet explosion

occurred in mid and late 90's.

They provided the BBS, file up/download,

chatting and community services.

Their community services were very strong.

I also joined some such groups and learned

a lot. Community members formed a kind of

connection through casual meeting, online

chatting, study-groups and etc. The now

influential Red Devils … was at first started

as one of such communities. It introduced

new forms of encounters among the people

with the same interest.

They also had some discussion space, simi-

lar to this news group and people expressed

their ideas ….

B – How the Net Spread

When the Asian economic crisis hit South Korea

in 1997, the Korean government met the crisis par-

Page 21

tially with a commitment to develop the infrastructure

for high speed access. It gave support for the creation

of businesses to provide internet access and to provide

training to use computers and the internet. Describing

the program of the South Korean government, Kim,

Moon and Yang write:

It invested more than 0.25% of the GDP to

build a high-speed backbone and is also

providing more than 0.2% of GDP in soft

loans to operators from 1999 to 2005.

Along with the financial and business investment,

the government supported training programs in

internet literacy. One such program was called the

“Ten Million People Internet Education” project to

provide computer and internet skills to 10 million

people by 2002. Unemployed South Korean house-

wives were particularly targeted and reports indicate

that 1 million were provided with courses as part of

the 4.1 million people who participated in government

initiated programs. Primary and secondary schools

were also provided with high speed internet access.

internet cafes with high speed access called PC-bangs

spread widely, offering another form of cheap internet

access.

C – Netizen Events

Several developments in the first few years of the

Century demonstrate the impact the spread of the

internet has had on South Korean society. A key

result of widespread access to the internet in South

Korea has been the emergence of the netizen and of

examples of netizen democracy.

1) The Red Devils and World Cup Cheering

The Red Devils is a fan club for the South Ko-

rean national soccer team. It developed as an online

community. The club became the main soccer cheer-

ing squad. Its original name had been “Great Hankuk

Supporters Club” when it was created in 1997. It was

renamed “Red Devils” after an online e-mail process

“collecting public views through e-mail bulletins.”

The 2002 Soccer World Cup was held in South

Korea and Japan. The Red Devils utilized the internet

for the World Cup cheering. Describing how the

internet was utilized, Yong-Cho Ha and Sangbae Kim

write:

(T)he Web was a thrilling channel for many

soccer fans across the country to satisfy their

craving for information on the Cup. The

2002 World Cup provided Koreans with an

opportunity to facilitate the dynamic ex-

change of information on the Web. In partic-

ular, the existence of the high-speed Internet

encouraged the dynamic exchange of infor-

mation about World Cup matches, players

and rules. The Internet, which has become

an essential part of everyday life for the

majority of Koreans, helped raise public

awareness about soccer and prompted mil-

lions of people to participate in outdoor

cheering campaigns.

Major portal sites were flooded with post-

ings on thousands of online bulletin boards.

Online users scoured the Web to absorb

detailed real-time match reports, player-by-

player descriptions, disputes about poor

officiating and other soccer information.

“Instant Messenger” also played a role in

spreading real-time news and lively stories

to millions of people. Korea has more than

10 million instant messenger users and many

of them exchanged views and feelings about

World Cup matches though the new Internet

communications tool.

During the World Cup games held in June 2002,

crowds of people gathered in the streets in South

Korea, not only in Seoul. The Red Devils organized

cheering and celebrating by 24 million people.

Sociologist Sang-Jin Han describes how the Red

Devils carefully planned for the massive cheering

“through on-line discussions about the way of cheer-

ing, costumes, roosters’ songs and slogans, and so

on.” The Red Devils functions democratically and has

online and off-line activities. “Anyone who loves

soccer can be a member of the Red Devils,” Sang-Jin

Han explains, by going to the website, logging on,

and filling out their form. The website is

http://reddevil.or.kr. When the club started they had

200 members. During the world cup events, they had

a membership of 200,000.

The massive street celebrating during the soccer

games has been compared in importance with the

victory of the June 1987 defeat of the military govern-

ment in South Korea.

To understand this assessment, it is helpful to

look at an article written during the event by Byung-

chan Gwak, the culture desk editor of Hankyoreh, a

South Korean newspaper. I will quote at length from

this article as it provides a feeling for the unexpected

but significant impact that the World Cup event in

Page 22

2002 had on Korean society. Byung-chan Gwak

writes:

To be honest with you, I was annoyed by the

critics who compared the cheering street

gatherings in front of the City Hall in June

2002 to the democratic uprising in June

1987. Much to my shame I criticized the

foolish nature of sports nationalism … and

even encouraged others to be wary of the sly

character of commercialism …. However as

time passed, I began to wonder whether I

wasn’t being elitist and authoritarian …. I

was blind to a changed environment and to

a changed sensibility. I assumed that people

were running around because of blind na-

tionalism and commercialism.

However, this was not a group that was

mobilized by anybody nor a group that

anyone could mobilize …. On June 25, I

wandered around Gwanghwamoon and in

front of City Hall trying to get an under-

standing of the future leaders of this country.

Otherwise, my clever brain told me, I would

end up an old cynic confined to my own

memories. After spending a long day wan-

dering amongst young people, I finally

understood. Although trying to understand

their passion through this experience was

like a Newtonian scientist trying to under-

stand the theory of relativism, I understood.

What we had experienced at that moment

was the experience of becoming a ‘Great

One.’ In a history with its ups and downs,

we had more than our share of becoming

this ‘Great One’ The 4.19 Revolution [1960]

and 6.10 Struggle [1987] are two examples.

So are the 4.3 Cheju Massacre [1948] and

the 5.18 Democracy Movement [1980]. The

gold collection drive during the IMF finan-

cial bailout was part of this effort too –

trying to find a ray of hope in a cloud of

despair ….

The flood of supporters in June 2002, how-

ever, was no longer about finding hope. It

was about young people dreaming dreams

that soared higher and further than those of

the past generations. Unlike the older gener-

ation, the younger generation is ready to

meet the world with open hearts. They have

the imagination to reinvent it and the flexi-

bility to come together and then separate as

the occasion calls for it. The whole world

was rapt with attention on ‘Dae-han

Min-gook (Great Korea)’ not just because of

our soccer ability but because of this young

generations’s passion and creativity. Does

this mean that their dreams have come true?

No. Does this mean that all this was nothing

more than one summer night’s feast? No.

These dreams will continue to flourish and

the responsibility for making sure that they

do belongs to the older generation, which

has had the experience of becoming a Great

One through such events as the 6.10 or 4.19

….

Not only did the cheering crowds joyously

celebrate the Korean team victories in the World Cup

events, they also helped clean the streets when the

event was over. Another aspect of the Red Devils

achievement was to remove the stigma attached to the

color red. Previously, avoiding the color red was a

form of anti-communism in South Korea. The Red

Devils’ organization of the street cheering is a demon-

stration of how communication among netizens that

the internet makes possible had a significant impact

on the whole of South Korean society as the celebra-

tion unfolded off-line.

Recognizing the importance of analyzing this

experience to the people of Korea, a symposium was

held on July 3, 2002 by the Korean Association of

Sociological Theory shortly after the World Cup

events.

The title of the symposium was “World Cup

and New Community Culture.” The theme was

“Understanding and Interpreting the Dynamics of

People (National People) Shown at the 2002 World

Cup.” Sang-Jin Han described the dynamics of the

culture that emerged from the World Cup events. Cho

Han Hae-joang writes (p. 13):

What Han found during the collective gath-

ering was a new community that possessed

values of open-mindedness and diversity, of

co-existence and respect for others …. Im-

pressed by the cheering crowds, Han

Sang-jin suggested looking for a point where

the values of individualism and collectivism

can synergize rather than collide. He wrote

‘If there is a strong desire for individual

self-expression and spontaneity blooming in

the on-line space on one hand, there must be

a strong sense of cohesion and desire for

Page 23

unity in the socio-cultural reality on the

other. The new community culture will be

equipped with the ability to harness these

two forces into a symbiotic relationship.’ In

fact, at the symposium, many sociologists

confessed to having been astounded at wit-

nessing what they had considered to be

impossible ‘the coming together of the

generations and the coexistence of the val-

ues of collectivism and individualism.’

Influenced by the joy of the World Cup experi-

ence, the committee of Munhwa Yondae ( Citizens’

Network for Cultural Reform) organized a campaign.

They sought to reclaim the streets for public purposes,

and to designate July 1 as a holiday. Also they gave

support to the campaign to establish a 5-day work

week and one month holidays for Koreans.

2) Candle-light Anti U.S. Demonstrations

On June 13, 2002, while the World Cup games

were being held in South Korea and Japan, two 14

year old Korean school girls were hit and killed by a

U.S. armored vehicle operated by two U.S. soldiers

on a training exercise. Once the games were over,

many of those who had been part of the soccer cele-

brating took part in protests over the deaths, demand-

ing that those responsible be punished. In November,

2002, the two soldiers were tried by a U.S. military

court on charges of negligent homicide. The verdict

acquitting them was announced on November 19,

2002. Some protests followed. Then on November 27,

2002, at 6 a.m., a netizen reporter with the logon

name of Ang.Ma posted a message online on the

OhmyNews website saying he would come out with a

candle to protest the acquittal of the soldiers. On

Saturday, November 30, four days later, there were

evening rallies in 17 cities in South Korea including

thousands of people participating in a candlelight

protest in Seoul. They demanded a retrial of the

soldiers and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South

Korea. In subsequent weeks, candlelight demonstra-

tions spread and grew in size. Protesters also de-

manded that the Status of Forces Agreement Treaty

(SOFA) between the U.S. and South Korea be

amended to give the Korean government more control

over the activities of the U.S. troops in Korea.

The impact of the “candlelight vigils that started

from one netizen’s [online -ed] suggestion last

month,” is described in a newspaper account:

In Gwanghwamun, Seoul, the candles, lit

one by one, form a sea. Tonight, on the 28

without exception, the candles have gath-

ered. About 1200 citizens gathered in the

‘Open Citizen’s Court’ beside the U.S.

embassy in Gwanghwamun sway their bod-

ies to the tunes of ‘Arirang’ which also

played during the World Cup soccer matches

last June. Middle-school student Kim

Hee-yun says, ‘Every Saturday, I come here.

There is something that attracts me to this

place.’

Opposition to SOFA and to the presence of U.S.

troops in South Korea continued to grow. The most

well known outcome of this movement and the event

most often cited as a result of the power of Korean

netizens, is the election of Roh Moo-Hyun as Presi-

dent of South Korea on December 19, 2002.

The

internet and netizens played a critical role in Roh’s

election.

An article in a women’s newspaper on Dec 7,

2002, refers to the importance of netizens in South

Korea:

The netizens of the Korean Internet power-

house are magnificent. They are reviving the

youth culture of the Red Devils and the myth

of the World Cup to create a social move-

ment to revise SOFA.

3) Korean Netizens and the Election of President

Roh

Of the candidates potentially running for the

Presidency in South Korea in 2002, Roh Moo-Hyun

had been considered the underdog and least likely to

win. He had made a reputation for himself by his

willingness to run for offices where he was unlikely

to win, but where his candidacy might help to reduce

regional antagonisms.

Another basis for Roh’s

popularity was his campaign plank advocating citizen

participation in government. Roh had opened an

internet site in August 1999 and his site was one of

the successful candidate websites at the time. In the

April 2000 election, Roh ran for a seat to represent

Pusan in the National Assembly as a means of contin-

uing his struggle against regional hostilities.

Though he lost that election, thousands of people

were drawn to Roh’s website and the discussions that

followed the failed election effort. Through these

online discussions, the idea was raised of starting an

online fan club for Roh. The Nosamo Roho fan club

was started by Jeong Ki Lee (User ID: Old Fox) on

Page 24

April 15, 2000.

Nosamo also transliterated as

‘Rohsamo,’ stands for ‘those who love Roh.’

The fan club had members both internationally

and locally with online and offline activities orga-

nized among the participants. When Nosamo was

created, a goal of the organization was a more partici-

patory democracy. Sang-Jin Han, reports that using

the internet, the online newspaper OhmyNews, broad-

cast “live the inaugural meeting of the club held in

Daejon on June 6, 2000 through the Internet.”

In Spring 2002, the Millennium Democracy Party

(MDO) held the first primary election for the selec-

tion of a presidential candidate in the history of South

Korea. Nosamo waged an active primary campaign.

“In cyberspace, they sent out a lot of writings in favor

of Roh and Rosamo to other sites and placed favor-

able article on their home pages.” (p. 9) The internet

activity of the fan club made it possible for Roh to

win the MDP nomination. Nevertheless, he was still

considered a long shot to win the Presidency.

Early in the 2002 campaign, the conservative

press attacked Roh. In response, more and more of the

public turned to the internet to discuss and consider

the responses to these attacks. Analyzing how these

attacks were successfully countered via online discus-

sion and debate, Yun Young-Min writes, the “politi-

cal influences” in discussion boards “comes from

logic, and only logic can survive cyber-debate. This

is one of the substantial changes that the internet has

brought about in the realm of politics in South Ko-

rea.”

Also Yun documents that as the attacks in-

creased, so did the number of visits recorded by Roh’s

websites and other websites supporting the Roh

candidacy. (pp. 148-149) In a table comparing visits

to websites of the two main candidates, Yun docu-

ments a significantly greater number of visits to the

Roh website and Roh related websites as opposed to

the websites of his opposing candidate. (p. 151)

Along with the Roh websites, the online newspa-

per OhmyNews was helpful to the Roh candidacy.

OhmyNews developed a form of participatory citizen

journalism. The online newspaper helped Roh counter

the criticism of the conservative press. Roh gave his

first interview to OhmyNews after winning the presi-

dency.

The night before the election, a main supporter of

Roh, Chung Mong-joon who had formed a coalition

with Roh for the election, withdrew his support. That

night, netizens posted on various websites and con-

ducted an online campaign to discuss what had

happened and what Roh’s supporters had to do to

repair the damage this late defection did to the cam-

paign. An article in the Korea Times

describes how

the online discussion helped to save Roh’s candidacy:

The free-for-all Internet campaign also

helped Roh when he lost the support of

Chung Mong-joon just a day before the poll.

Unlike other conventional media such as

newspapers and televisions, many Internet

websites gave unbiased views on the politi-

cal squabble between Roh and Chung, help-

ing voters to form their reaction …. The

Internet is now the liveliest forum for politi-

cal debate in Korea, the world leader in

broadband Internet patronized by sophisti-

cated Internet users ….

The Korea Times reporter describes the activity

of netizens to get out the vote on election day in

support of Roh:

As of 3 p.m. on voting day, the turnout stood

at 54.3 percent, compared with 62.3 percent

at the same time during the presidential

election in 1997. Because a low turnout was

considered likely fatal for Roh – the young

often skip voting – many Internet users

posted online messages to Internet chatting

rooms, online communities and instant

messaging services imploring their col-

leagues to get to the voting booth. The mes-

sages spread by the tens of thousands, play-

ing a key role in Roh’s victory.

During Roh’s election campaign, netizens turned

to the internet to discuss and express their views,

views which otherwise would have been buried. “The

advent of the internet can bring, by accumulating and

reaching critical mass in cyberspace, a political result

that anyone could hardly predict. No longer is public

opinion the opinion of the press …. In fact the press

lost authority by their criticisms,” Yun concludes.

Because of the internet, Kim Yong-Ho observes,

there is the “shift from party politics to citizen poli-

tics.”

The attitude of the two main candidates

toward the internet proved to be a critical factor

determining the outcome of the election. Roh’s main

opponent approached the internet as a “new technol-

ogy.” For Roh and his supporters, however, the

internet became “an instrument to change the frame-

work and practice of politics.” (p. 235) “Certainly,

politics in Korea is no longer a monopoly of parties

and politicians,” conclude Yong-Chool Ha and

Page 25

Sangbae Kim.

4) High School Students Protest Hair Length

Restrictions

An example of how the younger generation in

South Korea found the internet helpful was the

struggle of high school students to oppose hair length

restrictions set by the government and enforced by

their schools. Teachers in some South Korean schools

cut the hair of students who have hair longer than the

school regulations permit. Such involuntary hair

cutting, students explained, was not only humiliating,

but also can leave them with a hair cut that is un-

seemly. Considering the many pressures that high

school students in South Korea are under, an editorial

in the Korea Times,

explains:

Most egregious of all are their hairstyles –

buzz cuts for boys and bob cuts or ponytails

for girls …. At some schools, teachers still

make narrow, bushy expressways on the

crowns of boys’ heads with hair clippers,

and lay bare girls’ ears with scissors. They

say these are for the proper guidance of

students by preventing them from frequent-

ing adult-only places and focusing on only

studies. But this is nothing but violence and

abuse.

High school students opposed these restrictions

and practices with a website to discuss the problem

and how to organize their protests. Over 70,000

people signed an online petition protesting the hair

length restrictions and practices. Also there were

demonstrations organized online against these prac-

tices. The demonstrations were met with a significant

show of force by police and from high school teach-

ers.

5) Government Online Forums

Netizen activities in South Korea had an effect on

official government structures. Government officials

are under pressure to utilize the forms that are being

developed online. For example, the online website for

the President of Korea had a netizen section. Netizens

could log on and post their problems and complaints.

These could then be viewed by anyone else who

logged onto the website. The open forum section of

the website was left relatively free of government

restrictions or interference for a while.

Uhm and Haugue

provide a description of the

participatory sections of the President’s website. They

write:

Behind the outwardly chaotic Open Forum

of the BBS on the Presidential Website, a

team works quietly, browsing all the mes-

sages received through the BBS and other

channels for user participation, and sorting

them in terms of the need for specific

attention and governmental follow-ups. One

of the main jobs the team conducts is to

transfer each of the messages to the relevant

section of the Presidential Office, or to the

ministry in charge of the policy area con-

cerned. The other main job is to make a

daily report to the President, based on the

issues not necessarily ripe for media atten-

tion but showing signs of potential that

could push the government into difficulties.

These interactive channels function as a

dynamic store of political issues, spanning

the gamut of societal interests, ranging from

key policy issues like the amendment of

education acts to essentially private matters

like a boundary dispute between neighbors.

Korean government ministries similarly had

websites where anyone could post a message, “even

anonymously, and share them with others.” (p. 28)

These websites where offered as a place where “all

public opinion” can be expressed. (p. 28)

Posting to an official site is not necessarily

without concern about retaliation, however. Recently,

a high school student reported:

We have no channel to convey our opinions

to the education authorities. If we post a

petition to a Web site of a provincial educa-

tion office, the message is delivered to our

school and teachers give us a hard time

because of it.

There are other events which demonstrate the

power of the net and the netizen in contemporary

Korean politics. For example, there was the Defeat

Campaign for the April 2000 election. NGO’s used

the internet to wage a protest against the reelection of

a number of politicians they proposed were too

corrupt or incompetent to continue in office. They

called this a blacklist. Several of the politicians they

opposed did not get reelected.

Rather than gathering further examples, however,

there is the challenge to understand the nature of the

practice to extend democracy that has emerged in

South Korea.

Page 26

D – The Netizen and Netizen Democracy in

South Korea

One aspect identified as important for netizen

democratic activity is that the netizen participation is

directed toward the broader interests of the commu-

nity. Byoungkwan Lee writes:

People who use the Internet for certain

purpose are called ‘Netizens’ and they may

be classified in various groups according to

the purpose that they pursue on the Internet.

While some people simply seek specific

information they need, others build their

own community and play an active part in

the Internet for the interest of that commu-

nity. (Michael-ed) Hauben (1997) defined

the term Netizen as the people who actively

contribute online toward the development of

the Internet …. In particular, Usenet news

groups or Internet bulletin boards are con-

sidered an ‘agora’ where the Netizens ac-

tively discuss and debate upon various is-

sues …. In this manner, a variety of agenda

are formed on the ‘agora’ and in their activ-

ity there, a Netizen can act as ‘a citizen who

uses the Internet as a way of participating in

political society’ ….

Another component of democratic practice is to

participate in discussion and debate. Discussing an

issue with others who have a variety of views is a

process that can help one to think through an issue

and develop a thoughtful and common understanding

of a problem. The interactive nature of the online

experience allows for a give and take that helps

netizens dynamically develop or change their opin-

ions and ideas. Several Korean researchers describe

the benefit of online discussion. For example,

Jongwoo Han writes:

Another aspect of online is that participating

in a discussion with others with a variety of

viewpoints makes it possible to develop a

broader and more all sided understanding of

issues.

Jinbong Choi, offers a similar observation:

By showing various perspectives of an issue

the public can have a chance to acquire more

information and understand the issue more

deeply.

Byoungkwan Lee observes how the net provides

“a public space where people have the opportunity to

express their own opinions and debate on a certain

issue.”

Comparing the experience online with the

passive experience of the user of other media, Lee

notes, “Further the role of the internet as a public

space seems to be more dynamic and practical than

that of traditional media such as television, newspa-

pers, and magazines because of its own distinct

characteristics, namely, interactivity.” (pp. 58-59)

An important function of the internet is to facili-

tate netizens’ thinking about and considering public

issues and questions. Byoungkwan Lee explains some

of how this occurs:

Various opinions about public issues, for

instance, are posted on the Internet bulletin

boards or the Usenet newsgroups by

Netizens, and the opinions then form an

agenda in which other Netizens can perceive

the salient issues. As such it is assumed that

not only does the Internet function as the

public space, but it can also function as a

medium for forming Internet users’ opin-

ions.

Through their discussion and participation,

netizens are able to have an impact on public affairs.

Hyug Baeg Im argues that the internet even makes it

possible for Korean netizens to provide a check on

government activity:

[The] Internet can deliver more and diverse

information to citizens faster in speed and

cheaper in cost, disclose information about

politicians in cyber space that works 24

hours, transmit quickly the demands of

people to their representatives through

two-way cyber communication, and enable

politicians to respond to people’s demands

in their policy making and legislation in a

speedy manner. In addition, netizens can

make use of Internet as collective action

place of monitoring, pressuring and protest-

ing that works 24 hours and can establish the

system of constant political accountability.

The impact the internet is having on the younger

generations of Korean society has impressed several

researchers. For example, Jongwoo Han observes that

younger netizens are more quickly able to participate

in political affairs than was previously possible.

Jongwoo Han writes:

Due to its effectiveness as a communications

channel, the Internet shortens the time in

which social issues become part of the na-

tional agenda, especially among populations

Page 27

previously excluded from the national dis-

course. The time needed for one generation

to learn from the previous one is also short-

ened. In newly created Internet cyberspace,

the young generation, which did not use to

factor in major social and political dis-

courses in Korean society, is becoming a

major player. The political orientation of the

offline 386 generation was smoothly handed

on to the 2030 apolitical young generation

through the 2002 World Cup and candle

light anti-U.S. demonstrations.

(Note: The 386 generation refers to those who were

university students in the 1980s. Also they were the

first generation of Korean students who had access to

computers for their personal use. The 2030 generation

refers to students currently in their 20's and 30's and

who have grown up with the internet.)

Jongwoo Han argues that online discussion has

brought a needed development in Korean democracy.

All can participate and communicate (pp. 16-17):

Due to the revolutionary development of

information technology, the transition of

power from one generation to the next will

accelerate, thus maximizing the dynamics of

changes in political systems. The duration of

the overall learning and education process

between generations will also be shortened.

Especially, the Netizen transcends the

boundaries of age, job, gender and education

as long as participants share individual

inclinations on topics.

Explaining how the participatory process works,

Kim, Moon, and Yang provide an example from

Nosamo’s experience:

Their internal discussion making process

was a microcosm of participatory democracy

in practice. All members voted on a decision

following open deliberations in forums for a

given period of time. Opinions were offered

in this process in order to effect changes to

the decision on which people were to vote.

Such online discussion and decision making was

demonstrated when members of Roh’s fan club

disagreed with his decision to send South Korean

troops to Iraq in support of the U.S. invasion. Even

though they were members of a fan club, they did not

feel obligated to support every action of the Roh

Presidency.

The fan club members held an online

discussion and vote on their website about the U.S.

war in Iraq. They issued a public statement opposing

the decision to send South Korean troops to Iraq.

Several researchers are endeavoring to investi-

gate the netizens phenomenon and the conscious

identity that is being developed. They believe that the

internet is providing an important way to train future

citizens. For example, Sang-Jin Han writes:

I argue that a post-traditional and hence

post-Confusian attitude is emerging quite

visible particularly among younger genera-

tions who use the Internet, not simply as an

instrument of self-interest, but as a public

sphere where netizens freely meet and dis-

cuss matters critically.

In his research, Sang-Jin Han is interested in the

impact the internet is having on the democratic

development of South Korean society. He argues that

the online experience provides an alternative experi-

ence to the authoritarian and hierarchical institutions

and practices that are prevalent in society offline. The

online experience in itself is a form of a laboratory for

democracy. In the process of participating in the

democratic processes online, a new identity is forged.

One begins to experience the identity of oneself as a

participant, not observer. Contributions online are

appreciated or the subject of controversy. This is a

different world than the one the ordinary person

experiences offline and one that is a more dynamic

and creative experience. Sang-Jin Han refers to

research by Sunny Yoon about the impact of the

internet on South Korean youth. Yoon writes:

In short, the Korean new generation experi-

ences an alternative identity in cyberspace

that they have never achieved in real life.

The hierarchical system of ordinary social

reality turns up side down as soon as Korean

students enter cyberspace. In interviews,

most students claim that the Internet opened

a new world and new excitement. This is not

only because the Internet has exciting infor-

mation, but also because it provides them

with a new experience and an alternative

hierarchical. It is something of an experience

of deconstructing power in reality, espe-

cially in Korean society, which is strongly

hierarchical and repressive for young stu-

dents.

IV – Conclusion

In this case study I have explored several aspects

Page 28

of the online experience that generally are given little

attention. South Korean netizens utilize the internet

forums to let each other know of a problem or event,

to discuss problems and to explore how to find

solutions. This form of activity is a critical part of a

democratic process. It involves the participant not in

carrying out someone else’s solution to a problem, but

in the effort to frame the nature of the problem and to

understand its essence.

The internet does not require that one belong to

a particular institution. A netizen can express his or

her opinion, gather the facts that are available, and

hear and discuss the facts gathered and opinions

offered by others. Not only is the internet a laboratory

for democracy, but the scale of participation and

contributions is unprecedented. Online discussion

makes it possible for netizens to become active

individual and group actors in social and public

affairs. The internet makes it possible for netizens to

speak out independently of institutions or officials.

The netizen is able to participate in an experience

that reminds one of the role that the citizen of ancient

Athens or the citoyen just after the French Revolution

could play in society. The experience of such partici-

pation is a training ground in which people learn the

skills and challenges through the process. Considering

the potential of the internet, the Swedish researcher

Ylva Johansson refers to the potential of technology

as contributing to political participation and the

concept of citizenship on a higher societal level.

Describing this important benefit of being online,

Hauben writes:

For the people of the world, the Net provides

a powerful means for peaceful assembly.

Peaceful assembly allows people to take

control of their lives, rather than that control

being in the hands of others.

This case study of Korean netizens provides a

beginning investigation into the impact that wide-

spread broadband access can bring to society.

The

practices of South Korean netizens to extend democ-

racy is prologue to the changes that netizenship can

bring to the world, to the rise of netizen democracy as

a qualitative advance over the former concept of the

citizen and democracy.

Appendix A

The Early Development of Computer Networking in Korea

South Korea’s first networking system was the connection

of two computers on May 15, 1982, one at the Department of

Computer Science, at Seoul National University and the other to

a computer at the Korean Institute of Electronics Technology

(KIET) in Gumi (presently ETRI ) via a 1200 bps leased line. In

January 1983, a computer at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute

of Science and Technology) connected to the other two comput-

ers. These three computers at different networking sites used

TCP/IP to connect. This is the communication protocol which

makes it possible to have an internet. This early Korean com-

puter network was called System Development Network

(SDN).*

In August 1983, the Korean SND was connected to the

mcvax computer in the Netherlands using the Unix networking

program UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy). And in October 1983 the

Korean network was connected to a site in the U.S. (HP Labs).

A more formal connection to the U.S. government-spon-

sored network CSNET was made in December 1984. In 1990,

the Korean network joined the U.S. part of the internet.

* See “A Brief History of the Korean Internet,” 4.1.05

https://sites.google.com/site/koreainternethistory/publication/b

rief-history-korea-eng-ver

Notes:

See for example, Michael Hauben, Preface, in Michael Hauben

and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997, p.

ix.

Ibid., Chapter 1, p. 3.

This is a concept that Michael Hauben developed in an article

“What the Net Means to Me,” online at:

http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Work

s/Amateur_Computerist/What_the_Net_Means_to_Me.txt

“Where and When was Democracy Invented,” Comparative

Studies in Society and History 41(4), 1999, pp. 660-690. Online

at:

http://pics3441.upmf-grenoble.fr/articles/demo/where_and_

when_was_democracy_invented.pdf

A significant caveat about this case study is that computer

networking and the internet were developed relatively early in

South Korea. (See Appendix A) The country is a showplace for

the spread of broadband internet access to a large percentage of

the population. A study of the spread of the internet in South

Korea is a study of an advanced situation which allows one to

see into the future. This study raises the question of whether

knowledge of the practices of the South. Korean netizen move-

ment can help to extend democracy elsewhere around the world.

Ibid., note 1, Chapter 12, pp. 214-221.

Myung Koo Kang, “The Grassroots Online Movement and

Changes in Korean Civil Society,” Review of Media, Information

and Society 3, 1998, pp. 107-127.

Jongseon Shin, soc.culture.korea, April 10, 2005. Online at:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/soc.culture.korean/

gbZORadACPQ/IxrUYb7FuE8J

Heekyung Hellen Kim, Jae Yun Moon and Shinkyu Yang,

“Broadband Penetration and Participatory Politics: South Korea

Case,” Proceedings of the 37

Hawaii International Conference

on System Sciences, 2004, p. 4.

Ibid., p. 5.

Page 29

Sang-Jin Han, “Confucian Tradition and the Young Generation

in Korea: The Effect of Post-Traditional Global Testing,”

International Symposium Dialogue among Youth in East Asia

Project, Yingjie Exchange Center of Peking University, deliv-

ered January 14, 2004.

Yong-Chool Ha and Sangbae Kim, “The Internet Revolution

and Korea: A Socio-cultural Interpretation,” International

Conference on Re-Booting the Miracle? Asia and the Internet

Revolution in the Age of International Indeterminacy, Seoul,

South Korea, December 4, 2002. Online at:

http://www.sangkim.net/it&korea.pdf

See Hyug Baeg Im, From Democratic Consolidation and

Democratic Governance: 21

Century South Korean Democracy

in Comparative Perspective, p. 28.

Ibid., note 11, p. 10.

Translated and quoted in Hae-joang Cho Han, “Beyond the

FIFA World Cup: An Ethnography of the ‘Local’ in South Korea

around the 2002 World Cup,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,. Vol.

5, No. 1, 2004, p. 11.

Ibid., p. 5.

Ibid., pp. 17-18.

See for example, Na Jeong-ju, “Anti-U.S. Protests Held

Nationwide Over Acquittals of GIs,” Korea Times, November

27, 2002 and Na Jeong-ju, “Entertainers, Priests Join Anti-U.S.

Protests,” Korea Times December 3, 2002

Ibid., note 15, p. 22.

Kim Hyong-eok, “The Two Koreas: A Chance to Revive,”

Korea Times, December 27, 2002. This article attributes Roh’s

election to the euphoria generated by the World Cup Soccer

Games, the hostility to the U.S. generated by the deaths of the

two Korean school girls and the inadequacy of the U.S. response.

Ibid., note 15, p. 14.

Yun Young-Min, “An Analysis of Cyber-Electioneering

Focusing on the 2002 Presidential Election in Korea,” Korea

Journal, Autumn 2003, pp. 141-164.

Jongwoo Han. “Internet, Social Capital, and Democracy in the

Information Age: Korea's Defeat Movement, the Red Devils,

Candle Light Anti-U.S. Demonstration, and Presidential Election

during 2000-2002,” p. 15, no longer online. See also, Han

Jongwoo, Networked Information Technologies, Elections, and

Politics: Korea and the United States, Lanham. Md, Lexington

Books, 2012, p. 85.

Ibid., note 11, p. 8.

Ibid., note 22, p. 157.

Kim Deok-hyun, “Roh’s Online Supporters Behind Victory,”

Korea Times, December 23, 2002.

Ibid.

Ibid., note 22, p. 143.

Kim Yong-Ho, “Political Significance of the 2002 Presidential

Election Outcome and Political Prospects for the Roh Administra-

tion,” Korea Journal, Vol. 43, No.2, 2003, p. 233.

Yong-Chool Ha and Sangbae Kim, “The Internet Revolution

and Korea: A Socio-cultural Interpretation,” Paper delivered Dec

4, 2005 at the conference Re-Booting the Miracle? Asia and the

Internet Revolution in the Age of International Indeterminacy,

Seoul, South Korea, December 4-5, 2005, p. 8.

“No Forced Haircut, Please,” Korea Times, May 5, 2005.

Seung-Yong Uhm and Rod Hague, “Electronic Governance,

Political Participation and Virtual Community: Korea and U.K.

Compared in Political Context,” paper presented at European

Consortium for Political Research, Joint Workshops, workshop

on “Electronic Democracy: Mobilisation, Organisation and

Participation via new ICTs,” Institut d’Etudes Politiques de

Grenoble, France, 6-11 April 2001, p. 24.

Bae Keun-min, “High School Students Stand Up for Rights,”

Korea Times, May 10, 2005.

Byoungkwan Lee, Karen M. Lancendorfer and Ki Jung Lee,

“Agenda-Setting and the Internet: the Intermedia Influence of

Internet Bulletin Boards on Newspaper Coverage of the 2000

General Election in South Korea,” Asian Journal of Communica-

tion, Vol. 15, No 1, 2005, p. 58.

Ibid., note 23, 17.

Jinbong Choi, “Public Journalism in Cyberspace: A Korean

Case Study,” Global Media Journal, Vol. 2, No 3, 2003, p. 27.

Online at:

http://lass.purduecal.edu/cca/gmj/fa03/graduatefa03/gmj-fa03-

choi.htm.

Ibid., note 34, pp. 58-59.

Ibid.

Hyug Baeg Im, “Democratic Consolidation and Democratic

Governance: 21

Century South Korean Democracy in Compara-

tive Perspective,” Sixth Forum on Reinventing Government,

Seoul, South Korea, May 24-27, 2005.

Ibid., note 23, p. 4.

Ibid., note 9.

An article in the Korea Times on March 24, 2003, quotes a

member of the fan club: “When we say we love Roh Moo-hyun,

we do not mean Roh is always right. We simply mean that we

love his ideas for new politics and a democracy in which the

people are the real owners of the country.” Byun Duk-kun,

“‘Nosamo’ Opposes Assistance to Iraq War.”

Ibid., note 11, p. 4.

Sunny Yoon, “Internet Discourse and the Habitus of Korea’s

New Generation,” Culture, Technology, Communication, edited

by Charles Ess with Fay Sudweeks, State University of New

York, 2001, p. 255.

Ylva Johansson, “Civic Engagement in Change – The Role of

the Internet,” European Consortium for Political Research,

Edinburgh, U.K., 2003.

Ibid., note 1, see for example Chapter 18, “The Computer as a

Democratizer,” pp. 315- 320.

Hauben quotes Steve Welch who recognized the importance of

all having access ( Ibid., p. 27): “If we can get to the point where

anyone who gets out of high school has used computers to

communicate on the Net or a reasonable facsimile or successor

to it, then we as a society will benefit in ways not currently

understandable. When access to information is as ubiquitous as

access to the phone system, all Hell will break loose. Bet on it.”

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Page 31

[Editor’s Note: The following is an edited version of

a talk given in Copenhagen on Oct 17, 2008 at the 9

Annual Conference of the Association of Internet

Researchers.]

Candlelight 2008 and the

Anniversary of ‘The Net

and Netizens’

Netizen Journalism as Watchdog

Journalism

by Ronda Hauben

[email protected]

In his pioneering research about the impact of the

internet, Michael Hauben recognized that the partici-

patory nature of the Net made possible a new form of

citizenship, a non geographic form. He called people

who were developing this new form of citizenship,

netizens.

What would be the impact of this new phenome-

non? Hauben investigated several areas where the

impact of this phenomenon was particularly striking.

One of these areas was journalism. What impact

would this new form of non geographic citizenship

have on news media? Would netizens make possible

a new form of journalism? The net “gives the power

of the reporter to the Netizen” Hauben wrote.

This article explores the nature of what this

power is. It considers the long desired goal for the

press to act as a watchdog to challenge the abuse of

power. During the more than 100 days of protest from

May through August 2008 netizens in South Korea

acted to develop such a press. In this article the events

of Candlelight 2008, particularly the events of June

11, are examined to consider what can be learned

from the experience of Candlelight 2008.

The year 2008 also marked the 15

anniversary of

the publication of the article “The Net and Netizens”

by Michael Hauben on the internet in the summer of

1993.

Hauben posted this article in four parts because

it was fairly long. It was based on pioneering research

he had done about the impact of the internet by asking

online users questions about how they were using the

net in that period of the early 1990s. Also, at the time

there was some use of the term net.citizen on the net.

Hauben contracted the term net.citizen into the term

‘netizen’. Based on the responses he received,

Hauben put together an analysis defining a new

conceptual phenomenon he called the netizen.

His article summarizing this research was spread

around the Net by the Usenet software network and

by people forwarding it to each other via e-mail.

People embraced the concept of netizen to describe

the social and political phenomenon that Michael had

identified.

Netizen is not a passive identity. Rather,

a netizen is an active participant in the affairs of the

net and ultimately of the world. Identifying as a

netizen has become an identity people online have

embraced. They consider themselves to be netizens.

In a 2006 book by Mark Poster, netizen was

described as a political concept.

The impression is

given that the concept showed up on the net more or

less spontaneously. This is not accurate. Before

Hauben’s work, the word netizen was rarely if ever

used. After the wide online circulation of his article,

the use of the concept netizen became increasingly

common. It was a process of initial online research, of

summarizing the research, of analyzing it, and then

putting the research back online and people embrac-

ing it. This was the process by which the foundation

for the concept of netizen was established.

The early 1990s was also a time when the privat-

ization of the internet was being actively promoted by

commercial interests. Spreading the consciousness of

oneself as a netizen became part of the fight defend-

ing the public essence of the net from the growing

power of commercial interests over the affairs of the

internet. An understanding of the origin and develop-

ment of the concept of netizen has in various ways

been obscured by those forces who wanted to promote

the commercial domination of the internet.

In “The Net and Netizens,” Hauben wrote that

the net represents a significant new development.

“We are seeing a revitalization of society,” he ex-

plained. “The frameworks are being redesigned from

the bottom up. A new, more democratic world is

becoming possible.” This new world had a number of

characteristics that he outlined. He described a situa-

tion where “the old model of distribution of informa-

tion from the central Network Broadcasting Company

is being questioned and challenged. The top-down

model of information being distributed by a few for

mass consumption is no longer the only news.”

Hauben observed, “people now have the ability

to broadcast their observations or questions around

the world and have other people respond.”

The computer networks, he wrote, “form a new

grassroots connection that allows excluded sections of

Page 32

Candlegirl and Her Army (Nanum Munhwa)

society to have a voice. This new medium is unprece-

dented. Previous grassroots media have existed for

much smaller groups of people ….”

The net, Hauben argued, was providing netizens

with the ability to create the content and to set the

agenda for what is to be discussed. Thus, netizens had

the power to not only determine the content for

discussion forums but also to design the forms that

online discussions take.

Hauben wrote elsewhere that in its simplest form

the power of netizens to determine the form and

content of online discussion characterizes democracy,

making the net and netizens a significant model for a

democratic society. He challenged the claim that

elections are the essence of democracy, since elec-

tions merely allow citizens to vote on candidates once

every few years. Democracy, Hauben argued, requires

the active participation of the populace and it is a

process where their discussion and debate can have

some effect on the decisions made by government.

That is what Hauben proposed to be a more appropri-

ate model of democracy.

Another one of the earliest articles Hauben

circulated online was about James Mill, the father of

John Stuart Mill. In 1825, James Mill wrote an

encyclopedia article about the Freedom of the Press.

Mill wrote that government officials are likely to be

corrupt. These officials are put in a situation where

they have power. Therefore a means is needed to

monitor and contain their use of this power. Mill

suggested society needs a press that functions as a

watchdog to oversee the use of power by government

officials. The net, Hauben wrote, makes such a

watchdog possible.

“The Net and Netizens” was first posted online in

1993. The conceptual understanding it proposed at

that time in the early 1990s was something new. The

question to be raised is: How accurate was Hauben’s

assessment of the potential of the net and of the

netizen to make a more democratic world possible?

In order to answer this question, it is helpful to

look at recent political developments in South Korea.

Netizens in South Korea have been at the forefront of

the struggle to explore the potential of the internet and

the netizens to create a more democratic society.

In 2003, an article in the Financial Times re-

ported that the new South Korean President had been

elected by netizens. It described the election of 2002.

The actions of netizens during this election made it

possible for the president to be someone from outside

the political establishment. Roh Moo-hyun was

elected for a five year term as the President of South

Korea.

Roh had run on a platform supporting partici-

patory democracy.

In 2004, the National Assembly tried to impeach

him and the netizens took up the fight against the

attempted impeachment. One of the means of fighting

for democracy in South Korea is candlelight demon-

strations. An activist in South Korea explained that

one of the sources of inspiration for candlelight

demonstrations in South Korea was the candlelight

demonstrations in Leipzig, Germany that helped to

reunite Germany in 1989.

Again in 2008, there were candlelight demonstra-

tions in South Korea. This time for over 100 days.

The first of these demonstrations was held on May 2,

2008.

The first candlelight demonstration on May 2 was

the result of online discussion and efforts by netizens

on discussion groups, which on the Korean internet

are called cafes. Realizing the concern expressed in

online discussion about what was happening in South

Korea, middle and high school students used cell

phones and fan websites to announce what became

the first major candlelight demonstration of May

2008.

The demonstration was part of an expression of

popular frustration with the new South Korean Presi-

dent Lee Myung-bak. Lee Myung-bak, a conservative

candidate, had won the presidential election in De-

cember 2007. During this election, internet posts

about the candidates by netizens were subjected to

censorship, with many of the posts being removed on

the order of the government, and over 1000 netizens

receiving summonses to report to police stations in

South Korea to be penalized for their post. This was

Page 33

part of censorship of online activity by netizens trying

to participate in the 2007 election campaign carried

out by the South Korean government from June

2007-December 2007. In April 2008 shortly after he

was inaugurated, Lee Myung-bak came to the U.S.

and signed an agreement with George Bush. The

agreement ended the former restrictions on the import

of U.S. beef into South Korea. It eliminated the

regulations that existed to provide precautions with

regard to the danger of mad cow disease or other

health concerns related to beef. Virtually all the

previous restrictions were to be removed.

Middle school and high school students felt the

change in regulations on beef would add to their

health concerns, along with their concern with other

plans the Lee Myung-bak administration had an-

nounced to make unpopular changes in the laws in

South Korea. Also there was an impeachment petition

being circulated online. A number of people in South

Korea felt that the new president and his proposed

program would take South Korea back to its auto-

cratic past. The candlelight demonstrations were a

sign that many in South Korea saw the actions of the

new president as a difficult problem for their country.

In August Oh Yeon-ho, the CEO and founder of

the internet newspaper OhmyNews gave a talk in the

U.S. about the candlelight 2008 demonstrations.

OhmyNews which was started in 2000, as an internet

newspaper pioneered a number of new forms in its

commitment to be a 21

century newspaper.

The Korean edition of OhmyNews combines

articles submitted by its regular staff with those

submitted by volunteer correspondents from the

Korean-speaking population at home and abroad. The

staff fact checks the articles and then decides which

will be put on the OhmyNews front page. The Korean

edition has a regular staff. The smaller English

language edition of the newspaper known as

OhmyNews International had only a very minimal

staff and its edition was mainly based on contribu-

tions of articles by people. The Korean edition of

OhmyNews is a major newspaper in South Korea.

There’s been a very proud tradition in South

Korea of protest and sacrifice. In 1987, though large

protests the South Koran people ended the authoritar-

ian system which had governed their country. But

only in the last 10 years had people felt that they had

some minimal level of democracy. In his talk, Oh

Yeon-ho explained that people had committed them-

selves to using the internet to try to guarantee and

spread that democracy.

OhmyNews had played an important role in the

2008 demonstrations. One of OhmyNews’ important

contributions was to start OhmyTV. Because of

OhmyTV, people around the world were able to

watch the demonstrations in South Korea. Even if one

does not speak Korean, one could have a good idea of

what was going on in the demonstrations by watching

OhmyTV which was webcast online and therefore

available worldwide. At times, OhmyNews had 24

hour coverage. Also there were articles and photos

about the candlelight demonstration. There were

articles covering the Candlelight in the English

edition of OhmyNews, some of which were translated

from the Korean edition of the newspaper.

Though ‘netizen’ is not a Korean word, it has

been adopted into the Korean language. Some online

users refer to the word netizen to describe when they

are active defending democracy using the internet.

Netizens in South Korea took on to broadcast what-

ever was going on. They would use text messages

sent via their cell phones or their laptops. They would

discuss online what was happening.

A report on the demonstrations by France24

demonstrated this consciousness of oneself as a

netizen. The reporter interviews someone she calls a

netizen with his laptop. Even when the police were

using water cannons attacking the demonstrators, one

could see some netizens with plastic over their laptops

trying to film what was going on. People took their

cameras, their cell phones and in any way they could,

would broadcast on the internet what was happening.

They would get broadcasts back from other people at

other areas of the demonstrations. Along with the

OhmyTV broadcasts, there were many other sources

of broadcasts, as for example via the Korean online

video portal Afreeca or via YouTube. People who

were not at the demonstration would discuss what

they saw and interact with the demonstrators via their

computers or cell phones. As one person explained,

netizens could go with their laptops to the demonstra-

tion. They could be at the demonstration and be

online at the same time. So these two experiences

really came together in many ways for a number of

people during these demonstrations.

Some netizens emphasized that the Candlelight

2008 demonstrations were different from the prior

tradition of demonstrations. In South Korea, there is

a tradition of militant demonstrations in the struggle

for democracy. The demonstrations in 2008, however,

Page 34

were festivals. There were people of all ages partici-

pating. There were men, women, and children at the

demonstrations. People would bring their musical

instruments. For example, in the middle of the police

attacking protesters at one of the demonstrations,

some people began to play their accordions. At other

times, there would be singing. There would be danc-

ing. There was debating. There was a free speech

stage set up. People would line up for a chance to

speak. Others would listen and react to the speakers.

And the demonstrators posted their articles, photos

and videos on the internet, so that they became the

press. Hence they were no longer dependent on how

their demonstrations were reported in the traditional

media.

In order to understand what happened during

Candlelight 2008, it is crucial to recognize that South

Korea is advanced in terms of the internet.

South Korea is among the most advanced nations

having the highest percentage of people connected

with broadband access. What has happened in South

Korea presents a glimpse into the future, demonstrat-

ing what is possible when a large number of people in

a country have access to high speed broadband

connectivity.

If the internet can spread widely and if there’s

inexpensive wireless available, people can have

access to the internet and to write, to share their

videos, and to carry on discussions about what is

happening in the world. This form of broad access can

function as a watchdog over government officials.

This was demonstrated at times during the demonstra-

tions when netizens filmed or took photographs of the

actions of the police. These films or photos at times

were a protection for people from the arbitrary actions

of the police.

A significant set of events demonstrating the

power of the internet to make possible a more partici-

patory democracy occurred during the demonstration

that took place in Seoul on June 10 and continued into

the early hours of June 11. A very big demonstration

was planned for June 10, to celebrate the victory

twenty-one years earlier of South Koreans over the

military government in South Korea in June 1987.

Some estimate as many as 600,000 to 700,000 people

participated in the demonstration in Seoul on June 10,

with over one million people participating around the

country. To prepare for the demonstration, the gov-

ernment created a blockade of the president’s house,

which is called the Blue House. To keep the demon-

strators from marching to the Blue House, the police

put up barriers. These were shipping containers, filled

with sand so they are said to have weighed 40 tons

each. They put grease on them to prevent people from

climbing over the blockade.

Netizens named this structure, “Myung-bak’s

castle.” They made a wikipedia entry for this as a

landmark of Seoul. They decorated the landmark with

their posters.

This is a photo of what happened later, after the

June 10 demonstration, from 12 midnight on June 11

until 5:30 a.m. On one side of the barrier is the crowd

Page 35

of people discussing what should they do about the

barriers.

On the other side of the shipping containers, there

are buses filled with police inside and outside guard-

ing the President’s house.

Some people brought blocks of styrofoam to the

demonstration area, making it possible to create a

structure to breach the shipping container barricade.

After the main demonstration was over in the early

morning hours of June 11, a discussion was carried

out by the demonstrators debating what to do about

the barrier. Some argued that the demonstrators

should go over the barricade. Others argued that this

was too dangerous, especially given the candles and

the inflammability of the Styrofoam and the grease on

the barricades. The discussion continued for 5-1/2

hours, with people lining up on both sides of the

debate. Through the discussion people decided not to

go over the barricade. Instead several people with

their banners went up on the barricade to show that

they could have gone over it if they wanted to but that

they had decided not to.

The photo presents the contrast between what is

often called democracy and what is much more

democratic. On one side of the barricade is the area

filled with police protecting the President from

communicating with the people. On the other side of

the barricade were the people holding a serious

discussion and deciding how to resolve a difficult

difference of opinion.

On the later side of the barricade, the people

communicated with each other, demonstrating the

power and generative nature of democracy. People

online wrote about how important it was to them, to

see that there could be a discussion where people had

real differences which they could resolve. This was

significant in two ways:

First, they figured out how to resolve the differ-

ences to come to a decision among all of them.

Second, they cooperatively determined how to

construct a structure that would enable them to carry

out their decision. In this example, the potential to

generate a form and content was transferred from the

online world to the demonstration area.

The discussion and decisions carried out on June

11 were by a combination of people acting as netizens

and as citizens. What they did, I want to propose,

represents an important achievement and serves as a

fitting celebration of the 15

anniversary of the

publication online of “The Net and Netizens.”

Notes:

See, for example, Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben,

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet,

IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, 1997. There is an

online version of the book at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/netbook

Michael Hauben, “The Effect of the Net on the Professional

News Media,” in Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet. There is an online version of the article at

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x13

“The Net and Netizens” is the first chapter in Netizens: On the

History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. There is an online

version of this chapter at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x01

“Socially” is used here because the concept of netizen refers to

having a concern for the well being of others, not only for one’s

own concerns and interests.

Mark Poster, Information Please: Culture and Politics in the

Age of Digital Machines, Durham NC, Duke University Press,

2006, p. 78.

For example, there was difficulty getting the book Netizens

published and distributed widely.

Ronda Hauben, “Online Grassroots Journalism and Participatory

Democracy in South Korea,” in Korea Yearbook 2007, edited by

Rudiger Frank, James E. Hoare, Patrick Kollner, and Susan

Parnes, Brill, Leiden, 2008, pp. 61-82.

Interview with Lee Tae-ho of PSPD, 18 July 2006.

Ronda Hauben, “Netizens Censored in South Korean Presiden-

tial Election, OhmyNews International, December 25, 2007.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no

=381313&rel_no=1

Ronda Hauben, “Candlelight 2008 and Behind the Scenes in

the Beef Deal: the Role of the OIE in Changing the Category of

U.S. Beef in South Korea,” OhmyNews International, May 6,

2009.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.as

p?no=385186&rel_no=1

Ibid., note 7, pp. 64-67.

[Editor’s Note: The following was presented on May

21, 1995 at a party celebrating the graduation of

Michael Hauben and some of his classmates from

Columbia University.]

Graduation Presentation

May 21, 1995

by Michael Hauben

My graduation did not end at the May 1995

Columbia University Commencement ceremonies. I

did receive my Diploma on May 17, but my gradua-

tion was not completed until May 19. On that Friday,

I was interviewed about the internet by a Japanese

Page 36

camera crew for a television documentary to be

shown on TV Tokyo. In speaking with these people

the result of my four years both here at Columbia and

connected to the outside world was revealed.

During the interview I described Netizens and the

world-wide community which the internet and Usenet

News make possible. Netizens are people who use the

various computer communications networks and feel

they are citizens of this net. People desire to commu-

nicate with others around the world. In order to

communicate, to share information and to have a

discussion, it is necessary to share a common space

and to accept differences. People who connect to the

internet willingly help others and work collectively to

have a place which allows their personal speech and

which allows the speech of others. It is in this spirit of

an open forum that we are holding this party today.

The internet and other communications networks are

about people and are about people communicating

with each other. It is this understanding and experi-

ence which I shared with the interviewers. The

internet is not about computers and isolated experi-

ences, it is a very social human experience.

I entered Columbia asking the question “Why are

people, so complacent in this country?” I asked this

question on my application essay in 1990 considering

that people in Eastern Europe and China were fighting

their governments for a better life and a better world,

while here at home little seemed to be happening to

combat the worsening times.

In thinking about this question, I chose the joint

Philosophy/Economics major as my prospective

major. My introduction to the Columbia bureaucracy

came about when upon visiting campus, I discovered

this major had been turned upside down, and was now

based in the Economics Department rather than the

Philosophy Department and was renamed Economics

and Philosophy. The emphasis was: similarly shifted

from classical philosophy to contemporary econom-

ics.

In arriving at Columbia and setting up my com-

puter account, I connected to the world by using

Usenet Newsgroups. My Unix account,

[email protected], gave me access to Usenet

Newsgroups which are public discussion forums that

are circulated around the world. It was in discussions

on these newsgroups that I developed my academic

study. I was fascinated by the internet and Usenet

News and wanted to find out more about this network

which connected people from around the world.

It was on the internet and Usenet where I posed

questions and conducted research into what other

people found valuable about being on-line and how it

was important in their lives.

In researching these questions during different

history and literature classes, along with several

independent studies, I became an active participant of

the Usenet Newsgroups and mailing lists. I submitted

questions and thought pieces to these forums, and

people around the world responded with their opin-

ions and thoughts. I became interested in the Net

itself, and I posed questions about it online. Many

people online found they shared this interest, and they

connected to me and contributed their understandings

of the value of the Net to their lives. Many of these

private electronic mail messages and public Usenet

responses were extremely thoughtful. I also raised

questions about how it was possible for such a me-

dium to develop where people were helpful to total

strangers. In starting to research the history of the

internet and Usenet News, students and professors

who were part of that history sent me personal ac-

counts and supporting documentation.

My papers and research about the internet and

Usenet have been guided and helped by many real

people around the world. When I finished my papers,

I contributed back to the Net by making them publicly

available and asking for comments and criticism. In

addition to various responses of that sort, I also

received much encouragement and support. People

wrote thanking me for making my writings available.

Also, I received various requests from professors and

others to reprint and make my writings available to

classes and other more public forums. This support

was of course in addition to help and encouragement

from my parents. All of this support came outside of

Columbia. There were two professors in the Com-

puter Science Department, namely Professor Unger

and Professor Greenleaf, and Professor Garton from

the Music Department who were helpful, but there

was very little help from the university or computer

science department as a whole. My connection to the

outside world and online community is what has both

made my research possible, and provided feedback

that this research was important and valuable to

others. I have mainly enjoyed the time I have spent at

Columbia because of the feedback I received from

other people saying they appreciated my effort, and

that my writings have been useful for more than just

a grade.

Page 37

Identification of this value to society came slowly

but surely. People sent various e-mail messages, and

this was helpful, but did not feel to be lasting. These

past two years have been marked by various events

which have helped to solidify my understanding of

the value. The word Netizen started to appear both

online and in print. Papers I wrote were published in

three journals. Ronda and I gave several presentations

in New York City and Michigan from the book we

put together. A radio station in California interviewed

me last semester. And currently Ronda and I are

negotiating with a publisher to publish our online

book in a printed form. Lastly, professors from the

Global Communications Institute in Japan have been

communicating with me about my participating at a

conference in Japan later this year. The interview on

Friday was the culminating event which identified

that this work has been recognized as important.

After four years, I feel I have answered the

question with which I entered Columbia. The internet

and Usenet News provides a place where people can

communicate with other people at a grassroots level

to make their lives better and to attempt to make the

world a better place. By connecting to others with

similar interests, questions and problems, along with

people with different understandings, it is now possi-

ble to try and do something about the world, and to

gain some power in how one lives his or her life.

All in all, while Columbia has been a difficult

place to live for the last four years, it has been an

honor to be able to contribute to the world some

understanding of how to make a better future.

[Editor’s Note: The following was presented on Feb.

21, 2014. The occasion was a meeting announcing the

projected online publication of a second Netizen book

to be a sequel to the Netizen book put online in

January 1994 over 20 years ago. A hope was ex-

pressed that there will be a series of such books.]

Is This a New Era?

by Jay Hauben

[email protected]

I – Sequel to the Netizens Book:

Remembering Lewis Henry Morgan’s

Ancient Society

I want to tell a little story and ask a question.

At a meeting discussing the new book being

worked on as a sequel to Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet, I made an observa-

tion. This new book needs an analytical framework,

a guiding idea that helps us pick what articles to put

into the book and how to tie them together so the

reader sees what we are trying to document and

understand.

As an example of such a guiding analysis, I

recalled that Lewis Henry Morgan, an American

anthropologist in his 1877 book Ancient Society, saw

human society unfolding through a number of stages.

In particular he saw that human society could not

enter the higher stage of civilization until the smelting

of iron was invented.

I was remembering where Morgan had written,

“The production of iron was the event of events in

human experience. Out of it came the metallic ham-

mer and anvil, the axe and the chisel, the plough with

an iron point, the iron sword; in fine, the basis of

civilization, which may be said to rest upon this

metal. The want of iron tools arrested the progress of

mankind in barbarism.”

Ronda Hauben, one of the authors working on the

new book, thought that such a breakthrough is what

the invention of the internet and the emergence of the

netizen represents for our time. She argued that many

great things have happened but the advance of democ-

racy has been stuck. With the emergence of the net

and the netizens, human society can now move ahead

with greater democracy and the means to solve

problems that have been unsolvable for a long time.

I thought it is the reverse. There was a great

worldwide democratic movement in the second half

Page 38

of the twentieth century as witnessed by the 1968

outburst of demands for more democracy in Paris,

New York City, Prague, Tokyo, Mexico City and in

other places around the world. Then again in 1987 in

South Korea, 1988 in Burma, followed in 1989 in

China and then Eastern Europe. Perhaps that move-

ment was even seen more recently with the Arab

Spring and Occupy Wall Street. The emergence of the

net and the netizen is the continuation of that move-

ment and they are its product.

Ronda said that we have an interesting disagree-

ment. But isn’t Michael Hauben’s article, “Participa-

tory Democracy From the 1960s and SDS into the

Future Online”

an argument that the 1960s group in

the U.S., Students for a Democratic Society (SDS),

could not succeed because it lacked a communication

network for the realization of full participation of the

members of society in the decisions that affect their

lives?

I was struck by this comparison with Michael’s

analysis and Morgan’s and decided to read Michael’s

paper more carefully.

II – SDS and Democracy’s Need for a

Communications Network

Michael begins his essay on SDS appearing to

agree with me. He writes, “The emergence of the

personal computer in the late 70s and early 80s and

the longer gestation of the new forms of people-

controlled communication facilitated by the internet

and Usenet in the late 80s and today are the direct

descendants of 1960s.”

Michael found in the Port Huron Statement

(1962),

that SDS saw that people were tired of the

problems and were yearning for change but politics

had become a spectator sport. Something new was

needed, a more participatory democracy. SDS sought

“the establishment of a democracy of … participation

governed by two central aims: that the individual

share in those social decisions determining the quality

and direction of his life; [and] the society be orga-

nized to … provide the media for their common

participation …. [C]hannels should be commonly

available to relate men to knowledge and to power so

that private problems … are formulated as general

issues.” It was necessary “to make the human being

whole by becoming an actor in history instead of just

a passive object. Not only as an end in itself, but as a

means to change, the idea of participatory democracy

was our central focus.”

Michael quotes Al Haber, first SDS national

officer, “The challenge ahead is to appraise and

evolve radical alternatives to the inadequate society of

today, and to develop an institutionalized communica-

tion system that will give perspective to our immedi-

ate actions. We will then have the groundwork for a

radical student movement in America.” Haber and

Tom Hayden, author of the first draft of the Port

Huron Statement, understood SDS to be this “national

communications network.”

But Michael analyzes that SDS could not be

sustained. He writes, “While many people made their

voices heard and produced a real effect on the world

in the 1960s, lasting structural changes were not

established. The real problems outlined earlier contin-

ued in the 1970s and afterwards. A national, or even

international, public communications network needed

to be built to keep the public’s voice out in the open.”

Today, an international, public communications

network and the netizens exist. Will human society

now make accelerated progress? Is Ronda correct that

this is a new era?

III – Is a Revolution in Human

Communications Happening?

Maybe we can see in his writings how Michael

thought about this.

I will briefly look at two of Michael’s articles,

“The Computer as a Democratizer”

and “The Ex-

panding Commonwealth of Learning: Printing and the

Net”

about the printing press.

In “The Computer as a Democratizer” Michael

writes, “The computer connects to th[e] democratiz-

ing trend through facilitating wider communications

among individual citizens to the whole body of citi-

zens.” To understand what is needed for democracy to

work, he studied an essay by James Mill, “Liberty of

the Press” written in 1825. From Mill, Michael saw

the necessity of an uncensored press “to keep watch

on … government in order to make sure this govern-

ment works in the interest of the many.” Mill champi-

ons freedom of the press, “as a realistic alternative to

Rousseau’s general assembly, which is not possible

most of the time.”

But now most people can have an “information

access and broadcast station in their very own home.”

They can participate “in debates with others around

the world, search for data in various data banks, post

Page 39

an opinion or criticism for the whole world to see.”

To Michael, it is a leap not only to have access to

information but also to be able to broadcast. He

writes, “These systems begin to make possible some

of the activity James Mill saw as necessary for

democracy to function … more oversight over gov-

ernment and a more informed population.” Also, with

the net and the netizens, a new public space is open-

ing up which can serve as an assembly of the whole

people. Michael saw that the computer and the net

remove some of the obstacles to democracy. And I

add make possible a more participatory democracy.

But is the emergence of the net and the netizen a

revolutionary development?

To answer this question, Michael studied the

history of the impact of the invention and spread of

the printing press. The modern printing press was

developed in the middle and late 15

Century. It

quickly replaced the 2000 year old scribal culture

surrounding hand copying of texts out of which it

grew. Michael writes that “This scribal culture could

only go so far in furthering the distribution of infor-

mation and ideas. Texts existed, but were largely

unavailable for use by the common people ….” The

printing press and the culture that grew up with it

broke through barriers which had previously limited

the production of books. “The broad distribution of

presses … ushered in the age of printing” which

accelerated the Enlightenment. “The printing press

facilitated the meeting of minds pursuing intellectual

pursuits. The interconnection of people led to the

quickening of the development of ideas and knowl-

edge. These progenitors of the printing trade were in

the forefront of the sweeping intellectual changes

which the presses made possible.” Michael agrees

with Elizabeth Eisenstein, the author he was reading,

that the impact of the printing press was revolutionary

not evolutionary.

Jumping to today Michael writes, “Just as the

printing press essentially replaced the hand-copying

of books in the Renaissance, people using computer

networks are essentially creating a new method of

production and distribution of creative and intellec-

tual written works today.” Besides making distribu-

tion and communication more universal, cheaper and

easier, netizens are building the net “from a connec-

tion of computers and computing resources into a vast

resource of people and knowledge.” Their activity has

opened a new kind of public space accessible to all,

inviting and encouraging participation by ordinary

people in all the questions and potentially all the

decisions of society. This public space is separate

from either commercial purposes or religious or

political limitations or ideas. The net is the “poor

people’s” public space and the poor people’s media.

Michael concludes that, in the age of the printing

press, “we, too, are in an age of amazing changes in

communications technologies, and it is important to

realize how these changes are firmly based on the

extension of the development of the printing press

which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centu-

ries.” But he also tells us that “understanding how the

printing press unleashed a communications revolution

provides a basis to assess if the establishment of

worldwide computer communication networking is

the next communication revolution.” His essay raises

the question, are the net and the netizens continuing

the important social revolution that the printing press

had begun? The first sentence of his essay answers:

“A revolution in human communications is

happening.”

Back to my question, is Ronda’s insight that we

are entering into the Era of the Netizen correct? I

would say it is hard to know. The net and the netizens

are only recent developments. Also, we are in the

middle of something very big. It is hard to see its full

meaning and impact. I do not know what has been so

strongly holding democracy back so cannot really

know if the net and the netizens have broken it. I

think Michael’s thinking was moving in that direc-

tion.

As for my thinking, I can say I hope we will see

more democracy. If pressed, I would say my guess is

that the net and the netizens are ushering in a new era,

the Era of the Netizen.

Notes:

Ancient Society, p. 42: “When the barbarian, advancing step by

step, had discovered the native metals and learned to melt them

in the crucible and to cast them in moulds; when he had alloyed

native copper with tin and produced bronze; and, finally, when

by a still greater effort of thought he had invented the furnace,

and produced iron from the ore, nine-tenths of the battle for

civilization was gained. Furnished with iron tools, capable of

holding both an edge and a point, mankind were certain of

attaining to civilization. The production of iron was the event of

events in human experience, without a parallel, and without an

equal, beside which all other inventions and discoveries were

inconsiderable, or at least subordinate, Out of it came the

metallic hammer and anvil, the axe and the chisel, the plough

with an iron point, the iron sword; in fine, the basis of civiliza-

tion, which may be said to rest upon this metal. The want of iron

Page 40

tools arrested the progress of mankind in barbarism. There they

would have remained to the present hour, had they failed to

bridge the chasm. It seems probable that the conception and the

process of smelting iron ore came but once to man. It would be

a singular satisfaction could it be known to what tribe and family

we are indebted for this knowledge, and with it for civilization.

The Semitic family were then in advance of the Aryan, and in the

lead of the human race. They gave the phonetic alphabet to

mankind and it seems not unlikely the knowledge of iron as

well.”

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/morgan-

lewis/ancient-society/ch03.htm

Available online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/CS/netdemocracy-60s.txt

SDS, “Port Huron Statement,” as found in James Miller,

Democracy in the Streets, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987,

pp. 329-374.

Ibid, note 2. Quotes are from Miller pp. 333, 144, and 374.

Available online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x18

Available online at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/ch106.x16

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

The Amateur Computerist invites submissions.

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authors and not necessarily the opinions of the Amateur

Computerist newsletter. We welcome submissions from

a spectrum of viewpoints.

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