The Amateur

Computerist

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

Fall 2019 The Net, Netizens and Netizenship Volume 32 No. 2

Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 1

Researching the “Net” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Significance of the Net and the Netizens . . . . . . . Page 6

Michael Hauben . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Netizens and the Vision for the Future . . . . . . . Page 17

Culture and Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 21

Emerging New Form of Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . Page 27

Experiences at 6

World Internet Conference . . Page 28

Rise of Social Media in the Philippines . . . . . . . Page 30

Introduction

This issue of the Amateur Computerist in-

cludes articles written over a spread of 26 years.

Michael Hauben wrote his article “The Net and

Netizens: The Impact the Net Has on People’s Lives”

in 1992-3 and posted an early draft online on June 10,

1993. Based on this article, Michael gave a talk in

1994 to the students and faculty in the student ACM

chapter at Columbia University. That talk is featured

as the first article in this issue. Michael’s article was

posted originally in 1993. It was then published in the

print edition of Netizens: On the History and Impact

of Usenet and the Internet in May 1997. And, since

1994, there have been numerous books and articles

quoting from Michael’s article.

Other articles in this issue include the

Wikipedia entry for “Michael Hauben” (p. 13) and his

analysis of “The Impact of the Internet on the Emerg-

ing Global Culture” (p. 21). There are two articles by

Ronda Hauben about the Significance of the Net and

the Netizen and about a Vision for the Future of the

Net shown by the 2008 Candlelight demonstrations in

South Korea. The issue concludes with a summary of

experiences at the 6

World Internet Conference in

China and then an analysis of culture and social

media in the Philippines.

Also in this issue is the text of a short talk

Ronda Hauben was invited to present at the 6

World

Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, China. Ronda’s

talk, “The Netizen as the Emerging New Form of

Citizenship,” was presented as part of the Cyber-

culture and Youth sub forum held on Oct. 21, 2019.

In her talk Ronda quoted from a journal article written

to discuss efforts by Turkish netizens to encourage

friendship between the Greek and Turkish people

using Facebook posts. In the journal article, the

Turkish scholars quote from Michael’s article, the

“The Net and the Netizens...” as a description of what

these efforts toward Greek-Turkish people’s friend-

ship represent. Quoting Michael, the Turkish authors

of the paper write that a Netizen (net citizen) exists

“as a citizen of the world thanks to the global connec-

tivity that the Net makes possible.”

In 1993, Michael noted he was making “only

a prediction of the future.” But this prediction has, in

many ways, now become the present reality for

netizens around the world as it has for Turkish and

Greek netizens. This demonstrates that Michael’s

netizen discovery was an important scientific discov-

ery that gave a name and recognition to a phenomena

that at the time was only coming into being.

The recognition of the importance of the

netizen phenomena has intermittently received prom-

inent acknowledgment. And, still 26 years later it was

presented at the Cyberculture and Youth sub forum at

the 6

World Internet Conference. The 140 Chinese

and international attendees heard how “The Netizen

is the Emerging New Form of Citizenship” as a

contribution to the vision for the future made possible

not only by the Net but also by the Netizen.

Page 1

[Editor’s Note: The following is a speech given to

the Columbia University Student ACM Chapter on

April 24, 1994. It was based on a paper titled “The

Net and Netizens: The Impact the Net has on Peo-

ple’s Lives,” available now as Chapter 1 of the

netbook “The Netizens and the Wonderful World of

the Net: An Anthology” at: http://www.columbia.

edu/~hauben /project_book.html, and as Chapter 1

in the print edition, Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer

Society Press, 1997.]

Researching the “Net”

A Talk on The Evolution of

Usenet News

and The Significance of the

Global Computer Network

by Michael Hauben

I – You Are a Netizen or a Net Citizen

Welcome to the 21

Century. You are a

Netizen, or a Net Citizen, and you exist as a citizen

of the world thanks to the global connectivity that

the Net makes possible. You consider 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. Virtually 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 infra-

structure currently exists. The Net – or the Internet,

BITNET, FIDOnet, other physical networks, Use-

net, VMSnet, and other logical networks and so on

– has rapidly grown to cover all of the developed

countries in the world. Every day more computers

attach to the existing networks and every new com-

puter adds to the user base – at least twenty five

million people are interconnected today. Why do all

these people pass their time sitting in front of a

computer typing away? They have very good reason

to! Twenty five million people plus [in 1994] have

very good reason not to be wrong. [Twenty-five

years later, in 2019, there were 4.3 billion active

internet users.]

We are seeing a revitalization of society.

The frameworks are being redesigned from the bot-

tom up. A new more democratic world is becoming

possible. According to one user, the Net has “im-

measurably increased the quality of…life.” The Net

seems to open a new lease on life for people. Social

connections which were never before possible, or

which were relatively hard to achieve, are now fa-

cilitated by the Net. Geography and time no longer

are boundaries. Social limitations and conventions

no longer prevent potential friendships or partner-

ships. In this manner Netizens are meeting other

Netizens from far-away and close by that they

might never have met without the Net.

A new world of connections between people

– either privately from individual to individual or

publicly from individuals to the collective mass of

many on the net – is possible. The old model of

central distribution of information from the Net-

work Broadcasting or Publication Company is be-

ing questioned and challenged. The top-down

model of information being distributed by a few for

mass-consumption is no longer the only News. Net-

news brings the power of the reporter to the

Netizen. People now have the ability to broadcast

their observations or questions around the world

and have other people respond. The computer net-

works form a new grassroots connection that allows

the excluded sections of society to have a voice.

This new medium is unprecedented. Previous grass-

roots media have existed for much smaller-sized

selections of people. The model of the Net proves

the old way does not have to be the only way of

networking. The Net extends the idea of networking

– of making connections with strangers that prove

to be advantageous to one or both parties.

The complete connection of the body of citi-

zens of the world that the Net makes possible does

not exist as of today, and it will definitely be a fight

to make access to the Net open and available to all.

However, in the future we might be seeing the pos-

sible expansion of what it means to be a social ani-

mal. Practically every single individual on the Net

today is available to every other person on the Net.

International connection coexists on the same level

with local connection. Also the computer networks

allow a more advanced connection between the peo-

ple who are communicating. With computer-com-

munication systems, information or thoughts are

connected to people’s names and electronic-mail

Page 2

addresses. On the Net, one can connect to others

who have similar interests or whose thought pro-

cesses they enjoy.

Netizens make it a point to be helpful and

friendly – if they feel it to be worthwhile. Many

Netizens feel they have an obligation to be helpful

and answer queries and follow-up on discussions to

put their opinion into the pot of opinions. Over a

period of time the voluntary contributions to the Net

have built it into a useful connection to other people

around the world. The Net can be a helpful medium

to understand the world. Only by seeing all points

of view can any one person attempt to figure out

either their own position on a topic or in the end,

the truth.

Net Society differs from off-line society by

welcoming intellectual activity. People are encour-

aged to have things on their mind and to present

those ideas to the Net. People are allowed to be in-

tellectually interesting and interested. This intellec-

tual activity forms a major part of the on-line infor-

mation that is carried by the various computer net-

works. Netizens can interact with other people to

help add to or alter that information. Brain-storming

between varieties of people produces robust think-

ing. Information is no longer a fixed commodity or

resource on the Nets. It is constantly being added to

and improved collectively. The Net is a grand intel-

lectual and social commune in the spirit of the col-

lective nature present at the origins of human soci-

ety. Netizens working together continually expand

the store of information worldwide. One person

called the Net an untapped resource because it pro-

vides an alternative to the normal channels and

ways of doing things. The Net allows for the meet-

ing of minds to form and develop ideas. It brings

people’s thinking processes out of isolation and into

the open. Every user of the Net gains the role of

being special and useful. The fact that every user

has his or her own opinions and interests adds to the

general body of specialized knowledge on the Net.

Each Netizen thus becomes a special resource valu-

able to the Net. Each user contributes to the whole

intellectual and social value and possibilities of the

Net.

II – Licklider, the Visionary

The world of the Netizen was envisioned

some twenty five years ago [now over 50] by J.C.R.

Licklider and Robert Taylor in their article “The

Computer as a Communication Device” (Science

and Technology, April 1968). Licklider brought to

his leadership of the U.S. Department of Defense’s

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) a vi-

sion of “the intergalactic computer network.”

Whenever he would speak of ARPA, he would

mention this vision. J.C.R. Licklider was a prophet

of the Net. In his article Licklider establishes sev-

eral helpful principles which would make the com-

puter play a helpful role in human communication.

These principles were:

1. Communication is defined as an interactive cre-

ative process.

2. Response times need to be short to make the

“conversation” free and easy.

3. The larger network would form out of smaller

regional networks.

4. Communities would form out of affinity and

common interests.

Licklider focused on the Net comprising of a

network of networks. While other researchers of the

time focused on the sharing of computing resources,

Licklider kept an open mind and wrote:

...The collection of people, hardware,

and software – the multi-access com-

puter together with its local commu-

nity of users – will become a node in

a geographically distributed com-

puter network…. Through the net-

work, therefore, all the large comput-

ers can communicate with one an-

other. And through them, all the

members of the super-community

can communicate – with other peo-

ple, with programs, with data, or

with a selected combinations of

those resources.

Licklider’s understandings from his 1968

paper have stood the test of time, and do represent

what the Net is today. His concept of the sharing of

both computing and human resources accurately

describes today’s Net. The networking of various

human connections quickly forms, changes its

goals, disbands and reforms into new collabora-

tions. The fluidity of such group dynamics leads to

a quickening of the creation of new ideas. Groups

can form to discuss an idea, focus in or broaden out

and reform to fit the new ideas that have resulted

from the process.

Page 3

The virtual space created on non-commer-

cial computer networks is accessible universally.

This space is accessible from the connections that

exist; whereas social networks in the physical world

generally are connected only by limited gateways.

So the capability of networking on computer nets

overcomes limitations inherent in non-computer

social networks. This is important because it re-

duces the problems of population growth. Popula-

tion growth no longer means limited. Rather that

very growth of population now means an improve-

ment of resources. Thus growth of population can

be seen as a positive asset. This is a new way of

looking at people in our society. Every new person

can mean a new set of perspectives and specialties

to add to the wealth of knowledge of the world.

This new view of people could help improve the

view of the future. The old model looks down on

population growth and people as a strain on the en-

vironment rather than the increase of intellectual

contribution these individuals can make. However,

access to the Net needs to be universal for the Net

to fully utilize the contribution each person can rep-

resent. Once access is limited, the Net and those on

the Net lose the full possible advantages the Net can

offer. Lastly the people on the Net need to be active

in order to bring about the best possible use of the

Network.

Licklider foresaw that the Net allows for

people of common interests, who are otherwise

strangers, to communicate. Much of the magic of

the Net is the ability to make a contribution of your

ideas, and then be connected to utter strangers. He

saw that people would connect to others via this net

in ways that had been much harder in the past.

Licklider observed as the ARPANET spanned two

continents. This physical connection allowed for

wider social collaborations to form. This was the

beginning of Computer Data networks facilitating

connections of people around the world.

My research on and about the Net has been

and continues to be very exciting for me. When I

posted my inquiries, I usually received the first re-

ply within a couple of hours. The feeling of receiv-

ing that very first reply from a total stranger is al-

ways exhilarating! That set of first replies from peo-

ple reminds me of the magic of E-Mail. It is nice

that there can be reminders of how exciting it all is

– so that the value of this new use of computers is

never forgotten.

III – Critical Mass

The Net has grown so much in the last 25

years, that a critical mass of people and interests has

been reached. This collection of individuals adds to

the interests and specialties of the whole commu-

nity. Most people can now gain something from the

Net, while at the same time helping it out. A critical

mass has developed on the net. Enough people exist

that the whole is now greater than any one individ-

ual and thus makes the Net worthwhile to be part of.

People are meshing intellects and knowledge to

form new ideas. Larry Press made this clear by

writing:

I now work on the Net at least 2

hours per day. I’ve had an account

since around 1975 but it has only

become super important in the last

couple of years because a critical

mass of membership was reached. I

no longer work in LA, but in cyber-

space.

Many inhabitants of the Net feel that only

the most technically inclined people use the Net.

This is not true, as many different kinds of people

are now connected to the Net. While the original

users of the Net were from exclusively technical

and scientific communities, many of them found it a

valuable experience to explore the Net for more

than just technical reasons. The nets, in their early

days, were only available in a few parts the world.

Now however, people of all ages, from most parts

of the globe, and of many professions, make up the

Net. The original prototype networks (e.g.: ARPA-

NET in the USA, NPL in the United Kingdom,

CYCLADES in France and other networks around

the world) developed the necessary physical infra-

structure for a fertile social network to develop.

Einar Stefferud wrote of this social connection in an

article:

The ARPANET has produced sev-

eral monumental results. It provided

the physical and electrical commun-

ications backbone for development

of the latent social infrastructure we

now call ‘The Internet Community.’

(ConneXions, Oct. 1989, Vol. 3 No.

10. p. 21)

Many different kinds of people comprise the

Net. The University Community sponsors access for

a broad range of people (students, professors, staff,

Page 4

professor emeritus, and so on). Programmers, engi-

neers and researchers from many companies are

connected. A K-12 Net exists within the lower

grades of education which helps to invite young

people to be a part of our community. Special Bul-

letin Board software (for example Waffle) exists to

connect Personal Computer users to the Net. Vari-

ous UNIX bulletin board systems exist to connect

other users. It is impossible to tell exactly who con-

nects to public bulletin board systems, as only an

inexpensive computer (or terminal) and modem are

required to connect. Many common bulletin board

systems (for example, FIDO board) have at least e-

mail and many also participate through a gateway to

Netnews. Prototype Community Network Systems

are forming around the world (e.g.: In Cleveland –

the Cleveland Freenet, In New Zealand – the Well-

ington Citynet, In California – the Santa Monica

Public Electronic Network, etc.) Access via these

community systems can be as easy as visiting the

community library and membership is open to all

who live in the community.

In addition to the living body of resources

this diversity of Netizens represent, there is also a

continually growing body of digitized data that

forms a set of resources. Whether it is Netizens dig-

itizing great literature of the past (e.g.: the Guten-

berg Project), or it is people gathering otherwise

obscure or non-mainstream material (e.g.: Various

Religions, unusual hobbies, fringe and cult materi-

als, and so on), or if it is Netizens contributing new

and original material (e.g.: the Amateur Computer-

ist Newsletter), the net follows in the great tradition

of other public bottom-up institutions, such as the

public library or the principle behind public educa-

tion. The Net shares with these institutions that they

serve the general populace. This data is just part of

the treasure. Often living Netizens provide pointers

to this digitized store of publicly available informa-

tion. Many of the network access tools have been

programmed with the principle of being available to

everyone. The best example is the method of con-

necting to file repositories via FTP (file transfer

protocol) by logging in as an “anonymous” user.

Most (if not all) World Wide Web Sites, Wide Area

Information Systems (WAIS), and gopher sites are

open for all users of the Net. It is true that the cur-

rent membership of the Net Community is smaller

than it will be, but the net has reached a point of

general usefulness no matter who you are.

All of this evidence is exactly why there

could be problems if the Net comes under the con-

trol of commercial entities. Once commercial inter-

ests gain control, the Net will be much less power-

ful for the ordinary person than it is currently. Com-

mercial interests vary from those of the common

person. They attempt to make profit from any avail-

able means. Compuserve is an example of one cur-

rent commercial network. A user of Compuserve

pays for access by the minute. If this scenario

would be extended to the Net of which I speak, the

Netiquette of being helpful would have a price tag

attached to it. If people had to pay by the minute

during the Net’s development, very few would have

been able to afford the network time needed to be

helpful to others.

The Net has only developed because of the

hard work and voluntary dedication of many peo-

ple. It has grown because the Net is under the con-

trol and power of the people at a bottom-level, and

because these people have over the years made a

point to make it something worthwhile. People’s

posts and contributions to the Net have been the

developing forces.

IV – Network as a New Democratic Force

For the people of the world, the Net

provides a powerful way of peaceful assembly.

Peaceful assembly allows for people to take control

over their lives, rather than that control being in the

hands of others. This power has to be honored and

protected. Any medium or tool that helps people to

hold or gain power is something that is special and

has to be protected. (See “The Computer as Democ-

ratizer,” Amateur Computerist Newsletter, Vol. 4,

No. 5, Fall 1992)

J.C.R. Licklider believed that access to the

then growing information network should be made

ubiquitous. He felt that the Net’s value would de-

pend on high connectivity. In his article, “The Com-

puter as a Communication Device,” Licklider ar-

gues that the impact upon society depends on how

available the network is to the society as a whole.

He wrote:

For the society, the impact will be

good or bad depending mainly on the

question: Will ‘to be on line’ be a

privilege or a right? If only a favored

segment of the population gets a

chance to enjoy the advantage of ‘in-

Page 5

telligence amplification,’ the net-

work may exaggerate the discontinu-

ity in the spectrum of intellectual

opportunity.

The Net has made a valuable impact to hu-

man society. I have heard from many people how

their lives have been substantially improved via

their connection to the Net. This enhancement of

people’s lives provides the incentive needed for

providing access to all in society. Society will im-

prove if net access is made available to people as a

whole. Only if access is universal will the Net itself

truly advance. The ubiquitous connection is neces-

sary for the Net to encompass all possible re-

sources. One Net visionary responded to my re-

search by calling for universal access. Steve Welch

wrote:

If we can get to the point where any-

one who gets out of high school alive

has used computers to communicate

on the Net or a reasonable facsimile

or successor to it, then we as a soci-

ety will benefit in ways not currently

understandable. When access to in-

formation is as ubiquitous as access

to the phone system, all hell will

break loose. Bet on it.

Steve is right, “all hell will break loose” in

the most positive of ways imaginable. The philoso-

phers Thomas Paine, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and

all other fighters for democracy would have been

proud.

Similar to past communication advances

such as the printing press, mail, and the telephone,

the Global Computer Communications Network has

already fundamentally changed our lives. Licklider

predicted that the Net would fundamentally change

the way people live and work. It is important to try

to understand this impact, so as to help further this

advance.

[Editor’s Note: A version of the following article

appeared in Rhetoric and Communications E-jour-

nal, Issue 27, March 2017. That journal can be seen

online at: http://journal.rhetoric.bg/.]

Considerations on the

Significance of the Net

and the Netizens*

by Ronda Hauben

Topics: netizens, communication processes, com-

munication channels, citizen empowerment, models

for democracy, nerves of government, social impact

Abstract

The book Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet celebrates in 2017 the 20

anniversary

of its publication in English and Japanese editions in 1997.

The book documents how along with the development of the

Internet came the emergence of a new form of citizen – the

netizen. In his pioneering online research in the early 1990s

Michael Hauben gathered data and did analysis demonstrating

that not only the Internet but also the netizen would have an

important impact on society. This article explores Hauben’s

research recognizing that netizens are a new social force. The

article also looks at other contributions which help to provide

a conceptual framework to understand this new social force.

Media theorist Mark Poster’s work about netizens is discussed,

as is Karl Deutsch’s theoretical understanding of the role of

communication in creating a new model for good government.

But it is the candlelight revolution by citizens and netizens in

2016-2017 in South Korea which demonstrates in practice the

importance of the netizen forging a new governance model for

participatory democracy.

Key Words: netizens, communications, empower-

ment, impact, citizen, watchdog, democracy

Introduction

With the introduction of the Internet, the

question has been raised as to what its impact will

be on society. One significant result of the impact

already is the emergence of the netizen. Michael

Hauben’s work in the 1990s recognized the signifi-

cant impact not only of the development of the

Internet but also of the role of the netizen in forging

new social and political forms and processes.

While the role of netizens in working for

social change has been documented around the

world, the role of netizens in working for social and

political change has been an especially important

Page 6

aspect of South Korean experience for nearly the

past two decades. Most recently, however, wide-

spread political and economic corruption at the

highest levels of the South Korean society has led

citizens and netizens to take part in peaceful but

massive candlelight demonstrations advocating the

need for fundamental change in the political and

economic structures of South Korean society. The

question has been raised whether there are models

for such change. In such an environment there is a

need to consider the importance of the Internet and

of the Netizen in helping to forge the new forms for

grassroots participation in the governing structures

of society. At such a time it seems appropriate to

consider the conceptual framework for the role of

the netizen in contributing to a new governing

model for society

These developments in South Korea come at

a time when the book Netizens: On the History and

Impact of Usenet and the Internet celebrates the 20

anniversary since its publication in 1997, making a

review of the significant contribution of the book

particularly relevant to the events of our time.

Looking Back

Twenty years ago in May 1997, the print

edition of Netizens: On the History and Impact of

Usenet and the Internet was published in English.

Later that year, in October, a Japanese translation of

the book was published. In 2017, we are celebrating

the occasion of the 20

Anniversary of these publi-

cations.

In honor of this occasion I want to both look

back and forward toward trying to assess the signif-

icance of the book and of Michael Hauben’s discov-

ery of the emergence of the netizen. I want to begin

to consider what has happened in these 20 years

toward trying to understand the nature of this ad-

vance and the developments the advance makes

possible.

By the early 1990s, Hauben recognized that

the Internet was a significant new development and

that it would have an impact on our world. He was

curious about what that impact would be and what

could help it to be a beneficial impact. He had rais-

ed a series of questions about the online experience.

He received responses to these questions from a

number of people. Reading and analyzing the re-

sponses he explained:

There are people online who actively

contribute to the development of the

Net. These people understand the

value of collective work and the

communal aspects of public com-

munications. These are the people

who discuss and debate topics in a

constructive manner, who e-mail an-

swers to people and provide help to

newcomers, who maintain FAQ files

and other public information reposi-

tories, who maintain mailing lists,

and so on. These are the 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.

The book was compiled from a series of ar-

ticles written by Hauben and his co-author Ronda

Hauben which were posted on the Net as they were

written and which sometimes led to substantial

comments and discussion.

The most important article in the book was

Hauben’s article, “The Net and Netizens: The Im-

pact the Net Has on People’s Lives.” Hauben open-

ed the article with the prophetic words, which ap-

peared online first in 1993:

Welcome to the 21

Century. 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 consider

everyone as your compatriot. You

physically live in one country but

you are in contact with much of the

world via the global computer net-

work. Virtually, you live next door

to every other single Netizen in the

world. Geographical separation is

replaced by existence in the same

virtual space.

Hauben goes on to explain that what he is

predicting is not yet the reality. In fact, many peo-

ple around the world were just becoming connected

to the Internet during the period in which these

words were written and posted on various different

networks that existed at the time.

But now twenty years after the publication

of the print edition of Netizens, this description is

very much the reality for our time and for many it is

Page 7

hard to remember or understand the world without

the Net.

Similarly, in his articles that are collected in

the Netizens book, Hauben looked at the pioneering

vision that gave birth to the Internet. He looked at

the role of computer science in the building of the

earlier network called the ARPANET, at the poten-

tial impact that the Net and Netizen would have on

politics, on journalism, and on the revolution in

ideas that the Net and Netizen would bring about,

comparing this to the advance brought about by the

printing press. The last chapter of the book is an

article Hauben wrote early on about the need for a

watchdog function over government in order to

make democracy possible.

By the time the book was published in a

print edition, it had been freely available online for

three years. This was a period when the U.S. gov-

ernment was determined to change the nature of the

Net from the public and scientific infrastructure that

had been built with public and educational funding

around the world to a commercially driven entity.

While there were people online at the time promot-

ing the privatization and commercialization of the

Internet, the concept of netizen was embraced by

others, many of whom supported the public and col-

laborative nature of the Internet and who wanted

this aspect to grow and flourish.

The article “The Net and Netizens” grew out

of a research project that Hauben had done for a

class at Columbia University in Computer Ethics.

Hauben was interested in the impact of the Net and

so he formulated several questions and sent them

out online. This was a pioneering project at the time

and the results he got back helped to establish the

fact that already in 1993 the Net was having a pro-

found impact on the lives of a number of people.

Hauben put together the results of his re-

search in the article “The Net and Netizens” and

posted it online. This helped the concept of netizen

to spread and to be embraced around the world. The

netizen, it is important to clarify, was not intended

to describe every net user. Rather netizen was the

conceptualization of those on the Net who took up

to support the public and collaborative nature of the

Net and to help it to grow and flourish. Netizens at

the time often had the hope that their efforts online

would be helpful toward creating a better world.

Hauben described this experience in a

speech he gave at a conference in Japan. Subse-

quently in 1997, his description became the preface

to the Netizens book, Hauben explained:

In conducting research five years ago

online to determine people’s uses of

the global computer communications

network, I became aware that there

was a new social institution, an elec-

tronic commons, developing. It was

exciting to explore this new social

institution. Others online shared this

excitement. I discovered from those

who wrote me that the people I was

writing about were citizens of the

Net or Netizens.

Hauben’s work which is included in the

book and the subsequent work he did recognized

the advance made possible by the Internet and the

emergence of the Netizen.

The book is not only about what is wrong

with the old politics, or media, but more impor-

tantly, the implications for the emergence of new

developments, of a new politics, of a new form of

citizenship, and of what Hauben called the “poor

man’s version of the mass media.” He focused on

what was new or emerging and recognized the

promise for the future represented by what was only

at the time in an early stage of development.

For example, Hauben recognized that the

collaborative contributions for a new media would

far exceed what the old media had achieved. “As

people continue to connect to Usenet and other dis-

cussion forums,” he wrote, “the collective popula-

tion will contribute back to the human community

this new form of news.”

In order to consider the impact of Hauben’s

work and of the publication of the book, both in its

online form and in the print edition, I want to look

at some of the implications of what has been written

since about netizens.

Mark Poster on the Implications of the

Concept of Netizen

One interesting example is in a book on the

impact of the Internet and globalization by Mark

Poster, a media theorist. The book’s title is Informa-

tion Please. The book was published in 2006. While

Poster does not make any explicit reference to the

book Netizens he finds the concept of the netizen

that he has seen used online to be an important one.

Page 8

He offers some theoretical discussion on the use of

the “netizen” concept.

Referring to the concept of citizen, Poster is

interested in the relationship of the citizen to gov-

ernment, and in the empowering of the citizen to be

able to affect the actions of one’s government. He

considers the Declaration of the Rights of Man and

the Citizen as a monument from the French Revolu-

tion of 1789. He explains that the idea of the Rights

of Man was one effort to empower people to deal

with governments. But this was not adequate

though the concept of the rights of the citizen, he

recognizes, was an important democratic milestone.

“Human rights and citizenship,” he writes,

“are tied together and reinforce each other in the

battle against the ruling classes.”

He proposes that

“these rights are ensured by their inscription in con-

stitutions that found governments and they persist

in their association with those governments as the

ground of political authority.”

But with the coming of what he calls the age

of globalization, Poster wonders if the concept “citi-

zen” can continue to signify democracy. He won-

ders if the concept is up to the task.

“The conditions of globalization and net-

worked media,” he writes, “present a new register

in which the human is recast and along with it the

citizen.”

“The deepening of globalization processes

strips the citizen of power,” he writes. “As eco-

nomic processes become globalized, the nation-

state loses its ability to protect its population. The

citizen thereby loses her ability to elect leaders who

effectively pursue her interests.”

In this situation, “the figure of the citizen is

placed in a defensive position.”

To succeed in the

struggle against globalization he recognizes that

there is a need to find instead of a defensive posi-

tion, an offensive one.

Also he is interested in the media and its

role in this new paradigm. “We need to examine the

role of the media in globalizing practices that con-

struct new subjects,” Poster writes. “We need espe-

cially to examine those media that cross national

boundaries and to inquire if they form or may form

the basis for a new set of political relations.”

In this context, for the new media, “the im-

portant questions, rather, are these:” he proposes,

“Can the new media promote the construction of

new political forms not tied to historical, territorial

powers? What are the characteristics of new media

that promote new political relations and new politi-

cal subjects? How can these be furthered or en-

hanced by political action?”

“In contrast to the citizen of the nation,”

Poster notices, the name often given to the political

subject constituted on the Net is “netizen.” While

Poster makes it seem that the consciousness among

some online of themselves as “netizens” just ap-

peared online spontaneously, this is not accurate.

Before Hauben’s work, netizen as a concept

was rarely if ever referred to. The paper “The Net

and Netizens” introduced and developed the con-

cept of “netizen.” This paper was widely circulated

online. Gradually the use of the concept of netizen

became increasingly common. Hauben’s work was

a process of doing research online, summarizing the

research, analyzing it while welcoming online com-

ments at various stages of the process and then putt-

ing the research back online, and of people embrac-

ing it. This was the process by which the foundation

for the concept of “netizen” was interactively estab-

lished.

Considering this background, the observa-

tions that Poster makes of how the concept of

“netizen” is used online represents a recognition of

the significant role for the netizen in the future de-

velopment of the body politic. “The netizen,” Poster

writes, “might be the formative figure in a new kind

of political relation, one that shares allegiance to the

nation with allegiance to the Net and to the plane-

tary political spaces it inaugurates.”

This new phenomena, Poster concludes,

“will likely change the relation of forces around the

globe. In such an eventuality, the figure of the

netizen might serve as a critical concept in the poli-

tics of democratization.”

The Era of the Netizen

Poster characterizes the current times as the

age of globalization. I want to offer a different

view, the view that we are in an era demarcated by

the creation of the Internet and the emergence of the

netizen. Therefore, a more accurate characterization

of this period is as the “Era of the Netizen.”

The years since the publication of the book

Netizens have been marked by many interesting de-

velopments that have been made possible by the

growth and development of the Internet and the

spread of netizens around the world. I will refer to a

Page 9

few examples to give a flavor of the kind of devel-

opments I am referring to.

An article by Vinay Kamat in the Reader’s

Opinion section of the Times of India referred to

something I had written. Quoting the article “The

Rise of Netizen Democracy”, the Times of India

article said, “Not only is the Internet a laboratory

for democracy, but the scale of participation and

contribution is unprecedented. Online discussion

makes it possible for netizens to become active in-

dividuals and group actors in social and public af-

fairs. The Internet makes it possible for netizens to

speak out independently of institutions or offi-

cials.”

Kamat points to the growing number of

netizens in China and India and the large proportion

of the population in South Korea who are connected

to the Internet. “Will it evolve into a fifth estate?”

Kamat asks, contrasting netizens’ discussion online

with the power of the 4th estate, i.e. the mainstream

media.

“Will social and political discussion in social media

grow into deliberation?” asks Kamat. “Will opin-

ions expressed be merely ‘rabble rousing’ or will

they be ‘reflective’ instead of ‘impulsive’?”

One must recognize, Kamat explains, the

new situation online and the fact that it is important

to understand the nature of this new media and not

merely look at it through the lens of the old media.

What is the nature of this new media and how does

it differ from the old? This is an important area for

further research and discussion.

Looking for a Model

When visiting South Korea in 2008, I was

asked by a colleague if there is a model for democ-

racy that could be helpful for South Korea – a

model implemented in some country, perhaps in

Scandinavia. Thinking about the question I realized

it was more complex than it seemed on the surface.

I realized that one cannot just take a model

from the period before the Internet, from before the

emergence of the netizen. It is instead necessary

that models for a more democratic society or nation,

in our times, be models that include netizen partici-

pation in the society. Both South Korea and China

are places where the role not only of citizens but

also of netizens is important in building more dem-

ocratic structures for the society. South Korea ap-

pears to be the most advanced in grassroots efforts

to create examples of netizen forms for a more par-

ticipatory government decision making process.

But China is also a place where there are significant

developments because of the Internet and netizens.

In China there have been a large number of

issues that netizens have taken up online which

have then had an impact on the mainstream media

and where the online discussion has helped to bring

about a change in government policy.

In looking for other models to learn from,

however, I also realized that there is another rele-

vant area of development. This is the actual process

of building the Net, a prototype which is helpful to

consider when seeking to understand the nature and

particularity of the evolving new models for devel-

opment and participation represented in the Era of

the Netizen.

In particular, I want to point to a paper by

the research scientist who many computer and net-

working pioneers credit with providing the vision to

inspire the scientific work to create the Internet.

This scientist is JCR Licklider, an experimental

psychologist who was particularly interested in the

processes of the brain and in communication re-

search.

In a paper Licklider wrote with another psy-

chologist, Robert Taylor, in 1968 a vision was set

out to guide the development of the Internet. The

title of the paper was “The Computer as a Commu-

nication Device.”

The paper proposed that essen-

tial to the processes of communication is the cre-

ation and sharing of models. That the human mind

is adept at creating models, but that the models cre-

ated in a single mind are not helpful in themselves.

Instead it is critical that models be shared and a pro-

cess of cooperative modeling be developed in order

to be able to create something that many people will

respect.

Nerves of Government

In his article comparing the impact of the

Net with the important impact the printing press had

on society, Hauben wrote, “The Net has opened a

channel for talking to the whole world to an even

wider set of people than did printed books.”

I want

to focus a bit on the significance of this characteris-

tic, on the notion that the Net has opened a commu-

nication channel available to a wide set of people.

In order to have a conceptual framework to

understand the importance of this characteristic, I

Page 10

recommend the book by Karl Deutsch titled, The

Nerves of Government. In the preface to this book,

Deutsch writes:

This book suggests that it might be

preferable to look upon government

somewhat less as a problem of

power and somewhat more as a

problem of steering; and it tries to

show that steering is decisively a

matter of communication.

To look at the question of government not as

a problem of power, but as one of steering, of com-

munication, I want to propose is a fundamental par-

adigm shift.

What is the difference?

Political power has to do with the ability to

exert force on something so as to affect its direction

and action. Steering and communication, however,

are related to the process of the transmission of a

signal through a channel. The communication pro-

cess is one related to whether a signal is transmitted

in a manner that distorts the signal or whether it is

possible to transmit the signal accurately. The com-

munication process and the steering that it makes

possible through feedback mechanisms are an un-

derlying framework to consider in seeking to under-

stand what Deutsch calls the “Nerves of Govern-

ment.”

According to Deutsch, a nation can be look-

ed at as a self-steering communication system of a

certain kind and the messages that are used to steer

it are transmitted via certain channels.

Some of the important challenges of our

times relate to the exposure of the distortions of the

information being spread. For example, the misrep-

resentations by the mainstream media about what

happened in Libya in 2011 or what has been hap-

pening in Syria since 2011.

The creation and dis-

semination of channels of communication that make

possible “the essential two-way flow of informa-

tion” are essential for the functioning of an autono-

mous learning organization, which is the form

Deutsch proposes for a well-functioning system.

To look at this phenomenon in a more prac-

tical way, I want to offer some considerations raised

in a speech given to honor a Philippine librarian, a

speech given by Zosio Lee. Lee refers to the kind of

information that is transmitted as essential to the

well being of a society. In considering the impact of

netizens and the form of information that is being

transmitted, Lee asks the question, “How do we

detect if we are being manipulated or deceived?”

The importance of this question, he ex-

plains, is that, “We would not have survived for so

long if all the information we needed to make valid

judgments were all false or unreliable.” Also, he

proposes that “information has to be processed and

discussed for it to acquire full meaning and signifi-

cance.”

“When information is free, available and

truthful, we are better able to make appropriate

judgments, including whether existing governments

fulfill their mandate to govern for the benefit of the

people,” Lee writes.

In his article “The Computer as a Democr-

atizer,” Hauben similarly explores the need for ac-

curate information about how government is func-

tioning. He writes, “Without information being

available to them, the people may elect candidates

as bad as or worse than the incumbents. Therefore,

there is a need to prevent government from censor-

ing the information available to people.”

Hauben adds that, “The public needs accu-

rate information as to how their representatives are

fulfilling their role. Once these representatives have

abused their power, the principles established by

[Thomas Paine] and [James] Mill require that the

public have the ability to replace the abusers.”

Channels of accurate communication are

critical in order to share the information needed to

determine the nature of one’s government.

Conclusion

The candlelight revolution is still in process

in South Korea. It is demonstrating in practice that

we are in a period when the old forms of govern-

ment are outmoded. The paper by Licklider and

Taylor proposes that the computer is a splendid fa-

cilitator for cooperative modeling. It is such a pro-

cess of cooperative modeling that offers the poten-

tial for creating not only new technical and institu-

tional forms, but also new political forms. Such new

political forms are more likely to provide for the

democratic processes that are needed for the 21

century. Hence it is the efforts of citizens and

netizens who are involved in collaborative model-

ing to create the more participatory forms and struc-

tures as is happening during the candlelight pro-

cesses being explored in South Korea that provide

Page 11

for the development of a more equitable and demo-

cratic society.

References/Citations

1. Hauben, M., R. Hauben, (1997), Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, Los Alamitos: IEEE

Computer Society Press, p. 3. Also available online in an ear-

lier draft version, http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/. Retrieved

on Jan. 18, 2017.

2. IBID., p. ix.

3. IBID., p. 233.

4. Poster, M., (2006). Information Please. Durham: Duke Uni-

versity Press, p. 68.

5. IBID.

6. IBID., p. 70.

7. IBID., p. 71.

8. IBID.

9. IBID., p. 77.

10. IBID., p. 78.

11. IBID.

12. IBID., p. 83.

13. Kamat, V. (2011, December 16), “We are looking at the

Fifth Estate,” Reader’s Opinion, Times of India, p. 2.

http://

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/ampnbspWe-are-look

ing-at-the-fifth-estate/articleshow/11133662.cms, Retrieved on

Jan. 10, 2017. The quote is taken from Hauben, R. “The Rise

of Netizen Democracy: A Case Study of Netizens’ Impact on

Democracy in South Korea”

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh 120

/other/misc/korean-democracy.txt, Retrieved on Jan. 10, 2017.

14. In South Korea there are many interesting examples of

new organizational forms or events created by netizens. For

example, Nosamo combined the model of an online fan club

and off-line gathering of supporters who worked to get Roh

Moo-hyun elected as President in South Korea in 2002. Also,

OhmyNews, an online newspaper, helped to make the election

of Roh Moo-hyun possible. Science mailing lists and discus-

sion networks contributed to by netizens helped to expose the

fraudulent scientific work of a leading South Korean scientist.

And in 2008 there were 106 days of candlelight demonstra-

tions contributed to by people online and off to protest the

South Korean government’s adoption of a weakened set of

regulations about the import of poorly inspected U.S. beef into

South Korea. The debate on June 10-11, 2008 over the form

the demonstration should take involved both online and off-

line discussion and demonstrated the generative nature of seri-

ous communication. See for example, Hauben, R. “On Grass-

roots Journalism and Participatory Democracy.”

http://www.

columbia.edu/~rh120/other/netizens_draft.pdf, Retrieved on

Jan. 10, 2017.

15. Some examples include the Anti-CNN web site that was

set up to counter the inaccurate press reports in the western

media about the riot in Tibet. The murder case of a Chinese

waitress who killed a Communist Party official in self defense.

The case of the Chongqing Nail House and the online discus-

sion about the issues involved. See for example, Hauben, R.

(2010, February 14). “China in the Era of the Netizen.”

http://

blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2010/02/14/china_in_the_era_of_

the_ netizen/, Retrieved on Jan. 10, 2017.

16. IBID., Netizens.

17. “The Computer as a Communication Device,” (1968,

April) Science and Technology. http://memex.org/licklider.

pdf, pp. 21-41. Retrieved Jan. 21, 2017.

18. The Licklider and Taylor paper also points out that the

sharing of models is essential to facilitate communication. If

two people have different models and do not find a way to

share them, there will be no communication between them.

19. IBID., Netizens, p. 299

20. Deutsch, K., (1966), Nerves of Government, New York,

The Free Press, p. xxvii.

21. See for example, Hauben, R., (2012, Winter), “Libya, the

UN and Netizen Journalism,” The Amateur Computerist, Vol.

21, No. 1.

http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn21-1.pdf, Retriev-

ed Jan. 10, 2017 and Hauben, J., (2007), “On the 15

Anni-

versary of Netizens: Netizens Expose Distortions and Fabri-

cation.”

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

/presentation_2.doc, Retrieved on Jan. 10, 2017.

22. Lee, Z. (2011), “Truthfulness and the Information Revol-

ution,” JPL 31, p. 105.

23. IBID., p. 106.

24. IBID., p. 108.

25. IBID., Netizens, p. 316.

26. IBID., Netizens, p. 317.

27. M. Hauben explains: “Thomas Paine, in The Rights of

Man, describes a fundamental principle of democracy. Paine

writes, ‘that the right of altering the government was a national

right, and not a right of the government’.” (Netizens, Chapter

18, p. 316)

28. Hauben, R., (2016, December 21), “Ban Ki-moon’s Idea of

Leadership or the Candlelight Model for More Democracy?,”

http://blogs.taz.de/netizenblog/2016/12/21/leadership-or-

candlelight-democracy/, Retrieved on Jan. 21, 2017.

Bibliography

Deutsch, K. (1966). Nerves of Government. New York: The

Free Press. New York.

Hauben, M. & Hauben, R. (1997). Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. Los Alamitos:

IEEE Computer Society Press. Online edition:

http://

www.columbia.edu/~rh120, Retrieved on Jan. 11,

2017.

Hauben, R. (2005). “The Rise of Netizen Democracy: A Case

Study of Netizens’ Impact on Democracy in South

Korea.” Unpublished paper. Retrieved from

http://

www.columbia.edu/~hauben/ronda2014/Rise_of_Net

izen_Democracy.pdf, Retrieved on Jan. 11, 2017.

Komat, V. (2011, December 16, p. 2). Reader’s Opinion:

“We’re Looking at the Fifth Estate.” Times of India.

Retrieved from

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ho

me/opinion/edit-page/We-are-looking-at-the-fifth-

estate/opinions/11133662.cms, Retrieved on Jan. 11,

2017.

Lee, Z. E. (2011). “Truthfulness and the Information Revolu-

tion,” Journal of Philippine Librarianship, 31. pp.

101-109.

http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/jpl/art i

cle/viewFile/2779/2597. Retrieved on Jan. 11, 2017.

Licklider, JCR, & Taylor, R. “The Computer as a Communica-

tion Device.” (1968, April). Science and Technology.

Page 12

http://memex.org/licklider.pdf. pp. 21-41. Retrieved

Jan. 21, 2017.

Poster, M. (2006). Information Please. Durham: Duke Univer-

sity Press.

* This article is a revised version of a presentation made on

May 1, 2012 at a small celebration in honor of the 15

Anni-

versary of the publication of the print edition of the book

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet.

[Editor’s Note: The following is the text of the

Wikipedia entry for Michael Hauben at https://en.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hauben]

Michael Hauben

Michael Frederick Hauben (May 1, 1973 –

June 27, 2001) was an Internet theorist and author.

He pioneered the study of the social impact of the

Internet. Based on his interactive online research, in

1993 he coined the term and developed the concept

Netizen to describe an Internet user who actively

contributes toward the development of the Net and

acts as a citizen of the Net and of the world. Along

with Ronda Hauben, he co-authored the 1997 book

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet.

Hauben’s work is widely referenced in

many scholarly articles and publications about the

social impact of the Internet.

Early Life

Hauben was born on May 1, 1973 in

Boston,

Massachusetts, son of Jay and Ronda Hauben. He

was an active participant in the Bulletin Board Sys-

tem (BBS) communities in the Detroit/Ann Arbor

area in Michigan where his family had moved.

Work and Scholarship

Hauben participated in the founding meet-

ings of the Amateur Computerist

in 1987. From

1991 to 1997 he attended

Columbia University in

NYC, earning a BA in Computer Science (Colum-

bia College 1995) and an MA in Communication

(Teachers College 1997). During his studies at CU,

Hauben did much of his original research and writ-

ing. He was all that time an active employee of the

CU Academic Information Systems (AcIS), serving

for one year as a Postmaster and Consultant for

Electronic Mail.

Hauben was co-author of the book Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Inter-

net, a draft of which was put online in 1994. Print

editions in English (IEEE Computer Society Press)

and Japanese (Chuokoron-Sha, Inc.

) were pub-

lished in 1997. Based on his interactive online re-

search, Hauben coined the term ‘Netizen’ and intro-

duced it into popular use. In the Preface to Netizens,

Hauben wrote: “My initial research concerned the

origins and development of the global discussion

forum Usenet…. I wanted to explore the larger Net

and what it was and its significance. This is when

my research uncovered the remaining details that

helped me to recognize the emergence of Netizens.

There are people online who actively contribute

towards the development of the Net. These people

understand the value of collective work and the

communal aspects 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.”

Hauben observed that, “The word citizen suggests a

geographic or national definition of social member-

ship. The word Netizen reflects the new non-geo-

graphically based social membership. So I con-

tracted the phrase net.citizen to Netizen.”

His 1993 article “Common Sense: The Im-

pact the Net Has on People’s Lives”

was an analy-

sis of responses Hauben received to questions he

posted on newsgroups and mailing lists. The article

begins:

Welcome to the 21

Century. 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. Virtually, you live next

door to every other single Netizen in

Page 13

the world. Geographical separation is

replaced by existence in the same

virtual space.

This article became Chapter One of Netizens.

While still an undergraduate, Hauben began

to develop a theoretical framework for his vision of

the social impact of the net and the netizens. In his

article “The Expanding Commonwealth of Learn-

ing: Printing and the Net,”

he applied his study of

the Printing Revolution especially the work of Eliz-

abeth Eisenstein to an analysis of the trajectory in

which the Internet and netizens are taking society.

He wrote, “Comparing the emergence of the print-

ing press to the emergence of the global computer

network will reveal some of the fascinating paral-

lels which demonstrate how the Net is continuing

the important social revolution that the printing

press had begun.” Quoting Hauben’s work, one au-

thor wrote, “On the extraordinary explosion of

knowledge with the Gutenberg printing press, see

Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Mod-

ern Europe. On the intellectual foundation of the

Internet actually being based on the Gutenberg

printing press, see Hauben, The Expanding Com-

monwealth of Learning: Printing and the Net.”

Using a similar method of analysis, Hauben

found insights about the Internet in the understand-

ings of the 19

Century Scottish philosopher James

Mill about the importance of “liberty of the press”.

He argued that the net was making it possible for

citizens as netizens to be the watchdogs over gov-

ernments which Mill argued was the function of

liberty of the press. In a footnote to his article “The

Computer as a Democratizer,”

referring to Usenet,

Hauben wrote that “the discussions are very active

and provide a source of information that makes it

possible to meet James Mill’s criteria for both more

oversight over government and a more informed

population. In a sense, what was once impossible, is

now possible.”

Hauben was invited to Japan in 1995 by

Shumpei Kumon, sociology professor and director

of GLOCOM (the Japanese Center for Global Com-

munication).

In Japan, Hauben was welcomed in

Tokyo at GLOCOM and then in Oita by members

of COARA,

the computer network community in

Beppu. At the Hypernetwork ‘95 Beppu Bay Con-

ference,

Hauben spoke about “The Netizens and

Community Networks.”

He was interviewed by

the local Nisshi-Nippon Press. Then in Kyoto, he

attended two network conferences and was an hon-

ored guest at a reception with the Mayor. Hauben

was a speaker also at the GLOCOM Intelprise-En-

terprise Collaboration Program (IECP). Throughout

his stay in Japan, Hauben met Japanese computer

and network enthusiasts to discuss the growing im-

portance of this new medium and his vision of

netizenship. Hauben also appeared in documenta-

ries about the Internet on TV Tokyo and in write-

ups in newspapers in Tokyo and Oita. Prof. Kumon

included a chapter by Hauben in his 1996 book The

Age of the Netizen. In 1997, the Japanese translation

of Netizens: On the History and impact of Usenet

and the Internet was published in a run of 5000

copies.

When he returned home from Japan, Hauben

broadened his vision of the impact the Internet and

the netizens would have on society. He saw in the

work of the American anthropologist Margaret

Mead that even in the 1960s a global culture was

emerging. Using the writings of Mead, he countered

the critics who claimed that the Internet’s mass cul-

ture was snuffing out cultural differences. He saw

instead that “more and more people of various cul-

tures are understanding the power of the new com-

munication technologies. More and more people are

reacting against the mass media and corporate dom-

inance and calling for a chace to express their views

and contribute their culture into the global culture.”

Hauben presented his analysis of Internet culture at

the 1997 IFIP WG 9.2/9.5 conference in Corfu,

Greece.

Hauben also explored the question whether

participatory democracy and netizenship are related.

He studied the Port Huron Statement created in

1962 by the Students for a Democratic Society

(SDS) and other sources to see what lessons he

could learn about the 1960s that would help to un-

derstand the importance of the Internet and the

emergence of the netizens. He opened his analysis

with the observation that “the 1960s was a time of

people around the world struggling for more of a

say in the decisions of their society…. People rose

up to protest the ways of society which were out of

their control….” Hauben’s conclusion was that “the

development of the Internet and emergence of the

netizens is an investment in a strong force toward

making direct democracy a reality. The new tech-

nologies present the chance to overcome the obsta-

cles preventing the implementation of direct democ-

Page 14

racy. Online communication forums also make pos-

sible the discussion necessary to identify today’s

fundamental questions.”

Hauben was an avid music fan. He was a DJ

of ambient techno music on WBAR,

the Barnard

College student radio station. With Min-Yen Kan

he developed one of the original web sites for band

listings, the Ever Expanding Web Music Listing!

In 1996, an article in The Daily Herald (Chicago,

IL) described the Ever Expanding Web Music List-

ing as “probably the World Wide Web’s most com-

prehensive one-stop resource for all things musi-

cal.”

In the late 1990s, Hauben did online reviews

of live music performances in New York City. He

was concerned that the youth music scene in NYC

not slip into drugs and commercial dominance. He

analyzed trends in youth music culture and sent out

pointers to upcoming events.

He saw peer-to-peer

music reviews as an alternative to commercial ad-

vertising.

Influence of Hauben’s Work

In the second half of the 1990s, the Internet

rapidly spread around the world. Online and off-

line, the term netizen was becoming widely used.

Scholars began to refer to Hauben’s research. For

example, the Polish scholar and diplomat Leszek

Jesien,

quoting Hauben, urged the European polit-

ical leaders to look at netizenship as a possible

model for a new European citizenship. Boldur

Barbat, a Romanian scientist, reviewed Netizens

concluding it is a catalyst for the continuing of in-

formation technology and an optimistic future.

Citing Hauben’s work, Cameroonian sociologist

Charly G Mbock

saw netizenship as a necessary

component of any fight against corruption and as a

sign of hope for “a more equitable sharing of world

resources through efficient interactions.” Turkish

educator Dr. E. Özlem Yiðit

and Palestinian

scholar Khaled Islaih

also referred to Hauben as a

source of their understandings of the importance of

netizenship for their respective communities.

Hauben’s work on netizens and the Internet is

known in China and has influenced how some aca-

demics and government officials analyze the impact

of the Internet on society.

In his study of new me-

dia and social media in the Philippines, Aj

Garchitorena, as some of his theoretical foundation,

cited Hauben’s work especially Hauben’s “Theory

of the Netizen and the Democratisation of Media.”

Garchitorena also built on Hauben’s insight that the

net “brings the power of the reporter to the

Netizen.”

With its spread, two general uses of the term

netizen developed. Hauben explained, “The first is a

broad usage to refer to anyone who uses the Net, for

whatever purpose…. The second usage is closer to

my understanding… people who care about Usenet

and the bigger Net and work toward building the

cooperative and collective nature which benefits the

larger world. These are people who work towards

developing the Net…. Both uses have spread from

the online community, appearing in newspapers,

magazines, television, books and other off-line me-

dia. As more and more people join the online com-

munity and contribute toward the nurturing of the

Net and toward the development of a great shared

social wealth, the ideas and values of Netizenship

spread. But with the increasing commercialization

and privatization of the Net, Netizenship is being

challenged.” He called on scholars, “to look back at

the pioneering vision and actions that have helped

make the Net possible and examine what lessons

they provide.” He argued that is what he and the

Netizens book tried to do.

One contributor to the 2004 celebration of

the 250

Anniversary of Columbia University in

New York City, referring to Hauben’s contribution

wrote, “While the prevalence and universality of the

Internet today may lead some to take it for granted,

Michael Hauben did not. A pioneer in the study of

the Internet’s impact on society, Hauben helped

identify the collaborative nature of the Internet and

its effects on the global community.”

Legacy

After sustaining injuries resulting from an

accident in December 1999 when he was hit by a

taxi, Hauben died in New York City

on June 27,

2001, a victim of suicide. At the time of his death,

he had lost a job, accumulated a large credit card

debt, and was about to lose his apartment.

The significance of Hauben’s contribution to

the appreciation of the emergence of the netizen is a

deeper sense that the Internet is accompanied by an

expansion of the fullness of human empowerment.

In 2012, cultural anthropologist Shirley Fedorak

summed up Hauben’s contribution. She wrote.

“Studies have found that greater participation in the

political landscape is influenced by access to in-

Page 15

formation…. Indeed, Michael Hauben identified a

new form of citizenship emerging from widespread

use of the Internet. Hauben coined the term

netizens, and he considered them crucial for build-

ing a more democratic human society. These indi-

viduals are empowered through the Internet and use

it to solve socio-political problems and to explore

ways of improving the world.”

Bibliography

! Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet. published May 1997. by IEEE Computer

Society Press. (

ISBN 0-8186-7706-6)

! “Culture and Communication,” chapter in The Ethical

Global Information Society: Culture and Democracy

Revisited. Jacques Berleur and Diane Whitehouse.

Editors, IFIP, pp. 197–202. published 1997 by Chap-

man & Hall.

! “Netizens.” in CMC Magazine. February 1997.

http://www

.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/feb/hauben.html

! “Birth of Netizens,” chapter in The Age of Netizens.,

Shumpei Kumon. published 1996 by NTT Press,

ISBN 4-87188-461-9

! “Netizens” in The Thinker. Vol. 2, No. 5. February 2, 1996.

p. 1. Stanford University.

! “Online Public Discussion and the Future of Democracy.”

in Proceedings Telecommunities 95: Equity on the

Internet. Victoria, B.C, Canada.

! Co-author, “Interview with Henry Spencer: On Usenet

News and C News,” chapter in Internet Secrets. ed-

ited by John R. Levine and Carol Baroudi. published

1995. by IDG Books.

! “Exploring New York City’s Online Community,” in CMC

Magazine. May 1995.

http://www.ibiblio.org/cmc/

mag/1995/may/hauben.html

! “Participatory Democracy From the 1960s and SDS into the

Future Online.” 1995. reprinted in Amateur Com-

puterist Vol. 11 No. 1.

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

ACn11-1.pdf

! “A New Democratic Medium: The Global Computer Com-

munications Network,” in HKCUS Quarterly. No. 14,

July 1994. p. 26. Special Issue on Hong Kong Media

Facing 1997.

References

1. Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the His-

tory and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer

Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, May 1997

http://www.wiley

.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0818677066.html

2. The Amateur Computerist Newsletter 1988-present http://

www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/acnindex2.html

3. Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet (Japanese), Chuokoron-Sha, October 1997,

ISBN

4120027333

4. Michael Hauben, “Preface: What is a Netizen?” in Netizens:

On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, pp. ix-

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

5. Michael Hauben, “Common Sense: The Net and Netizens,”

Part I/III, alt.culture.usenet, July 6, 1993

https://groups.google

.com/forum/#!msg/alt.culture.usenet/M-C3Kq2ssRY/

hY66QIJA_I8J

6. Michael Hauben, “The Expanding Commonwealth of

Learning: Printing and the Net” in Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, pages 291-304

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

7. Gerald L. Stevens, Revelation: The Past and Future of

John’s Apocalypse, Pickwick, 2014

ISBN 978-1-62564-549-4,

p. 131 https://books.google.com/books?id=JhqQBAAAQBAJ

&pg =PA131

8. Michael Hauben, “The Computer as a Democratizer,” in

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet, pp. 315-320

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

2014/demo cratizer.pdf

9. Center for Global Communications, International University

of Japan (GLOCOM)

http://www.glocom.ac.jp/e/

10. Mieko and Kenichi Nagano, “A memory of Michael

Hauben, the inventor of NETIZEN,” Oita, Japan, August 6,

2001

http://www.coara.or.jp/~mieko/hauben/hauben.htm

11. (Hypernetwork ‘95 Beppu Bay Conference), Oita, Japan,

Nov. 23-25, 1995 http://www.coara.or.jp/BBC/url.html

12. Michael Hauben, “The Netizens and Community Net-

works,” CMC Magazine, February 1997 http://www.decem

ber.com/cmc/mag/1997/feb/hauben.html

13. Michael Hauben, “Culture and Communication,” in The

Ethical Global Information Society: Culture and Democracy

Revisited, Jacques Berleur and Diane Whitehouse, Editors,

IFIP, Chapman & Hall, 1997, pp. 197–202

https://archive.

org/stream/springer_10.1007-978-0-387-35327-2/10.1007-

978-0-387-35327-2_djvu.txt

14. Michael Hauben, “Participatory Democracy From the

1960s and SDS into the Future On-line,” Columbia University,

1995

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

60s.txt

15. WBAR: Barnard College Freeform Radio http://www.wb

ar.org/

16. Michael Hauben and Min-Yen Kan, “Ever Expanding Web

Music Listing!” (1991-2001)

http://www.columbia.edu/~hau

ben/music/web-music.html

17. “CYBERSPACE: The Internet rocks! Here’s your guide to

getting plugged in,” The Daily Herald (Chicago, IL), January

26, 1996, p. 56

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/128

98495/

18. Michael Hauben, “The Netizens Cyberstop Music Page”

(last modified: Oct 19, 1996)

http://www.columbia.edu/~hau

ben/music/index.html

19. Leszek Jesien, “The 1996 IGC: European Citizenship Re-

considered,” Instituts für den Donauraum und Mitteleuropa

(IDM), March, 1997

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

of_the_Netizen/resources/European_Citizenship_Reconsidere

d-LJesien.doc

20. Boldur Barbat, “Review of Netizens,” Studies in Informa-

tics and Control Journal, Vol. 7 No. 4, Bucharest, December

1998

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

resources/Review_of_Netizens-BBarbat.txt

Page 16

21. Charly Gabriel Mbock, “Social Sciences and the Social

Development Process in Africa.” in Social Sciences and Inno-

vation, OECD, 2001, pp. 157-172

https://books.google.com/

books?id =LncFo1_SDxcC&pg=PA157

22. E. Özlem Yiðit, “Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers’ Per-

spectives Towards Netizenship,” The Turkish Online Journal

of Educational Technology, Vol. 13 Issue 2, April 2014, pp.

123-124

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ10229 18.pdf

23. Khaled Islaih, “Palestinian Diaspora: Building Transna-

tional Capital,” Palestine Economic, Policy Research Institute,

2011, p. 18

http://www.mas.ps/files/server/ 20141911094704-

1.pdf

24. Yun Tang, Lifeng Sun, Hai Qin, Shiqiang Yang, and

Yuzhuo Zhong, “When Most Quickly Developing Technique

Meets with Most Quickly Developing Country: Towards Un-

derstanding Internet in China,” pp. 2 and 3

https://pdfs.

semanticscholar.org/f441/f5f46f5e85db3ca488c37b

f0f2dc70d5b2ef.pdf

25. Aj Garchitorena, “Pop Culture and the Rise of Social Me-

dia in the Philippines: An Overview,”

http://werdsmith.com/p/

ARutG2rFJ

26. Michael Hauben, “Preface: What is a Netizen?,” in

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet, p. xi

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

27. Simon Butler, “Michael F. Hauben,” Columbia 250, C250

Celebrates Your Columbians, 2009

http://c250.columbia.edu/

c250_celebrates/your_columbians/michael_hauben.html

28. Andrew Orlowski, “Michael Hauben, Netizen, Dies: Our

Tribute,” The Register (U.K.), June 30, 2001

https://www.the

29. Horvath, John (July 27, 2001).

“Death of a Netizen”,

Heise. Retrieved June 6, 2015.

30. Shirley A. Fedorak, Anthropology Matters, Second Edi-

tion, University of Toronto Press, 2012, p. 120

https://books

.google.com/books?id=X5JeG0ZaqBQC&pg=PA120

External Links

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the

Internet

Table of Contents (online edition)

Michael Hauben Collected Works

The Netizens Cyberstop (Hauben’s original home page)

Ever Expanding Web Music Listing! (1991-2001)

C250 Celebrates Your Columbians: Michael Hauben

Internet Pioneer

A Memory of Michael Hauben, the Inventor of NETIZEN

Memorial Page

J.C.R. Licklider And The Universal Network

Netizen Participation in Internet Governance

[Editor’s Note: The following is a slightly revised

version of a presentation made to a Social Move-

ments class at Barnard College in Nov. 2017.]

Netizens and the Vision for

the Future of the Net

A Special Moment and

Netizens in Candlelight 2008

by Ronda Hauben

Part I – Context

First I want to offer a context for the origins

and importance of “The Net and Netizens; the Im-

pact of the Net Has on People’s Lives,” an article

that became the basis for Chapter 1 of the book

Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and

the Internet. Then I will take a brief look at netizen

activity in the 2008 Candlelight demonstrations in

South Korea.

The article and the chapter are a collection

of some of the experiences made possible by the

Internet in what might be called the Dawn of the

Internet’s development. The author of the article,

Michael Hauben is also the co-author with me of

the book. I will refer to this book as the Netizens

book in this talk. The book was first put online Jan

12, 1994 and then published in a print edition in

May 1997.

In 1992-1993 Michael was an undergraduate

student at Columbia University and at the time he

was interested in studying communication and the

potential impact of the Internet. In 1992, he enrolled

in a course in ethics and computer science. The pro-

fessor wanted students to do a project, which was

not based on information from books.

The obvious possibility for Michael was to

go online and try to gather material about a question

he was deeply interested in, which was the impact

that the Internet would have on society.

The Internet had been in the process of de-

velopment for 20 years by this time. But it was only

in 1992-1993 that it was becoming accessible to the

public and connections were becoming available to

people and institutions around the world.

So this was, one can say, a special moment

when Michael was able to be online at Columbia

Page 17

University and able to do research for his class us-

ing the Internet.

There is another aspect of this moment that

is important to recognize. The research process cre-

ating the Internet was in general a public process.

Public funds were used and during this period it was

available free to those with an educational purpose.

Commercial entities, during this period were re-

stricted in what they could do online. Michael’s use

of the Internet fell within its education scope. In

general those online did not pay time or access

charges for the time they were online. At the time,

there were also commercial networks like Comp-

userve where one did pay time charges for being

online. But also the U.S. government was claiming

that in the next few years it would make the Internet

commercial and turn it over to private corporations.

In planning his project, Michael formulated

a few questions and sent them out online, via some

different networks that were available and on mail-

ing lists he had access to. In the appendix to the

book version of Chapter I, there are copies of some

of the questions Michael posted online for his re-

search.

Fairly quickly, he received a number of sub-

stantial email responses to his questions. He gath-

ered these, studied the content and then wrote the

article he called “The Net and Netizens: the Impact

the Net has on People’s Lives.”

Essentially what the “Net and Netizens” ar-

ticle does is document a number of ways that the

people who wrote him had found the Net to be a

significant contribution to their lives.

As I remember this period, those of us who

had gotten access to the Net were busy exploring

what this access would make possible.

For example, an Irish expat living in the

England was able to keep up with events in Ireland

by reading a weekly newsletter sent out online by a

man who worked for a computer company in

Galway. A music fan in the U.S. was able to learn

from the Internet about a Roger Waters concert held

in Berlin one week after the Berlin Wall came down

and so was able to go to Berlin in time for the con-

cert. There were four computer science researchers

in different parts of the U.S. who were able to write

a research paper because of the connectivity the Net

made possible. There was a poem written by two

people using the Net together, which one of the au-

thors described as “a surprisingly good poem.”

These are just a flavor of some of the differ-

ent contributions to people’s lives that the Net made

possible which people online shared with Michael

via email or as comments on his posts.

There are two special aspects that he in-

cluded in the Net and Netizens. First is the refer-

ence to the vision for the Internet that was put for-

ward by JCR Licklider whom Michael calls a

“prophet of the net.”

Licklider was a psychologist and computer

scientist brought by the Department of Defense’s

research entity known as ARPA to be the head of its

first “Information Processing Techniques Office”

(IPTO). Essentially, Licklider recognized the im-

portant role that the computer could play in human

communication. “When minds interact, new ideas

emerge” was one of his understandings that helped

to guide the research for the development of the

Net. In a paper Licklider wrote with another re-

searcher Robert Taylor in 1968, they recognized the

creative role of the new forms of communication

that the Net would help bring into being, and the

collaborative activity that these new forms of com-

munication made possible.

Another significant aspect of the “Net and

Netizens” article is the introduction and explanation

of the new identity of the Netizen that had emerged

with the development of the Internet.

Remember, the article was written in 1992-

1993. Yet it begins with a prediction for the future

in the new century that at the time was just a few

years away.

The article opens with the greeting:

Welcome to the 21

Century. 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….

It goes on to explain that the situation being

described “is only a prediction of the future, but a

large part of the necessary infrastructure currently

exists….” And this new infrastructure would make

possible some important developments. Among

these Michael proposed was that “a new world of

connections would be possible, from individual to

Page 18

individual or from individuals to the collective mass

of those on the Net. The old model of distribution

of information from a central network broadcasting

company was being questioned and even chal-

lenged. The top-down model of information being

distributed by a few for mass consumption was no

longer the only news. Now the formerly excluded

sections of society would have a means to have a

voice.”

But for these developments to be realized,

there would be the struggle to make access to the

Net open and available to all.

When Michael posted his articles like the

Net and Netizens, he was greeted with encourage-

ment. And the concept of netizen spread both

around the Net and then off-line. For example one

of the netizens writing Michael was Philip Fleisser

from Ottawa. He encouraged Michael to put to-

gether his articles in a book and to gather other arti-

cles as well which Phil tentatively titled “Readings

on the Emergence of a Better World Due to the Par-

ticipatory Nature of Public Computer Networks.”

As the concept of netizen spread, Michael

recognized that two different uses of the concept

were developing. In a talk he gave at a conference

in Japan, he pointed out that one use of the concept

was to refer to all users as netizens. But this was not

the usage that he had in mind for the concept when

he introduced it. For Michael the discovery of the

emergence of the netizens was based on the recog-

nition of the empowerment that the Net made possi-

ble and the identified netizens as those who used

this empowerment to contribute to the net and the

larger world it was part of. Michael reserved the use

of the concept of Netizens to describe such users.

In May of 1997 the Netizen book was pub-

lished in a print edition in the U.S. and in October

1997 it was published in a Japanese edition. Five

years ago in 2002 in South Korea some of the sig-

nificant potential of the netizens which Michael

foresaw was demonstrated, with the candlelight

demonstrations and the netizens electing the Presi-

dent.

Part II – South Korea and Netizens

Over the years there have been many exam-

ples of researchers referring to netizen develop-

ments in various parts of the world. Some of the

most advanced examples of both the research and

practice of netizens have been in South Korea.

There is a proud tradition of protest and sac-

rifice on the part of South Koreans to win the mini-

mal democratic rights they have gained. Also South

Korea is one of the most wired countries in the

world where a larger percentage of its population,

compared with many other countries, have access to

high speed Internet connectivity.

My connection to South Korea began in

February 2003 when I saw a headline on the front

page of the Financial Times newspaper that the new

President of South Korea had been elected by

netizens. For me, of course, this was a surprising

and important headline.

I began to try to learn what was happening

in South Korea. I learned that many netizens in

South Korea had backed Roh Moo-Hyun who was a

candidate for the South Korean Presidency from

outside the political mainstream. Roh Moo-Hyun

won the election in the December 2002. That event

and subsequent events I learned about led me to

understand that already in 2003 netizens had be-

come an important phenomenon in South Korea.

I learned, too, that the Korean word for

netizen is , the same as the English word,

though spoken with a Korean pronunciation

“netijeun.”

I was also encouraged to see that our book

was known in South Korea, and that over the years,

several commentators and scholars in South Korea

have written about the importance of the concept of

netizens.

Part III – 2008 Candlelight Demonstrations

By the 2007 South Korean presidential elec-

tion, however, a law came into effect which penal-

ized with fines or even jail time netizens who tried

to post online about the election. And the posts

were removed. That censorship contributed to the

conservative candidate Lee Myung-bak being

elected with the lowest percentage of the population

voting in the election. Then in April 2008, the

newly inaugurated president Lee Myung-bak met

with the U.S. President George W Bush. On April

18 President Lee signed an agreement to end the

former restrictions on the import of U.S. beef into

South Korea.

The new beef import agreement provided

that beef of any cut, any age and with bone in, could

be imported into South Korea from the U.S. This

was a striking departure from the previous beef

Page 19

agreements which since 2003 had required U.S. im-

ports to meet requirements designed to protect the

South Korean public against exposure to the human

version of Mad Cow Disease.

On April 29, a South Korean TV station

aired a documentary exposing the poor U.S. safety

practices in inspecting U.S. beef for Mad Cow Dis-

ease. Following the program there was increased

online discussion about the problem of importing

U.S. beef given the minimal U.S. government in-

spection of this beef. In response to a lot of online

discussion about the beef deal, a candlelight demon-

stration was called for May 2, 2008 by middle-

school girls and high-school students using their

cell phones and a fan website among other online

sites. The efforts of some of the members of one

online group called “Soul Dressers” helped orga-

nize toward the May 2 demonstration. Over 10,000

people are reported to have come to the demon-

stration. When that large turnout appeared at the

demonstration, many were surprised and it was de-

cided to continue the next day.

Then for more than 100 nights candlelight

demonstrations were held in South Korea protesting

the Lee Myung-bak actions and asking for regula-

tions against the import of what much of the South

Korean public deemed potentially unhealthy beef

imports from the U.S.

These demonstrations were nonviolent eve-

ning vigils with candles. People of all ages and all

walks of life took part, from students to families, to

older people.

Though called to protest the U.S.-South Ko-

rean beef agreement, the underlying demand of the

demonstrators was that the program of Lee and his

conservative party not be allowed to take South Ko-

rea back to the days of autocratic rule. There was

also a call for Lee Myung-bak’s impeachment.

People participated both online and in per-

son at the demonstrations. Among the participants

were “members of a cooking club, a classical music

society, a fashion club, a U.S. major league baseball

watching club,” and other similar groups on the

Internet. “Some of them joined the protests with

their flags, distributed snacks and water to fellow

protesters and started fund-raising for paid adver-

tisements in daily newspapers.” One researcher who

described these various participants and their activi-

ties noted that such online clubs and groups had not

previously engaged in politics. But remarks made

by some in the group led others to join the online

discussion and participate in trying to get a harmful

government policy changed.

Part IV – Closing Observation

In the Net and Netizens, Michael writes,

“The Net introduces the basic idea of democracy as

the grassroots people power of the Netizens.” One

report by the international TV channel France 24,

agreeing with Michael, describes what happened:

In South Korea a new form of dem-

ocratic expression has emerged via

the Internet. Its followers call them-

selves Netizens and when demon-

strating against the government they

carry their laptops to broadcast the

event live....

One researcher, Min Kyung Bae poses the

problem as the contrast between “Analog Govern-

ment, Digital Citizens.”

He documents how the

South Korean government continues to follow old,

outmoded ways from pre-digital days. While the

netizens, the digital citizens, are acting in line with

the new capabilities and advances of the times. Min

argues that, “The gap between Lee’s 1980's style

analog government and the digital citizens of 2008

is huge.” He gives as one example that the “Lee

administration was more interested in knowing who

paid for the candles than in understanding why peo-

ple were holding them.” Min explains that when

Lee Myung-bak closed off the Plaza to the public,

the netizens took on to create an online public

square and from that online commons to move the

public back onto the off-line public square.

Min ends his article with the call, “Analog

politicians must realize that the Internet offers an

opportunity for a breakthrough to improve Korea’s

stagnant political culture. The candles lighting up

Gwanghwamun Plaza are carrying the demand that

representative democracy evolve into a new form

suitable to the Internet age.”

Notes:

1. A 42 minute film, “Shall We Protest?” is online which doc-

uments how the 2008 candlelight demonstrations in South

Korea were initiated by high school students. It can be viewed

at:

http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/shallweprotest/

videos/ShallWeProtest1.3en.ogv/

2. Nathalie Touret, “South Korean ‘Netizens’ Take to the

Streets,” France 24 International News, June 18, 2008.

Page 20

3. Kyung Bae Min, “Analog Government, Digital Citizens,”

Global Asia, Vol. 3 No. 3; Sept. 2008, pp. 94-103. Online at:

http://www.globalasia.org/v3no3/feature/analog-government-d

igital-citizens_kyung-bae-min

[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

Democracy Revisited in the Global Information So-

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

appears as Chapter 17, in An Ethical Global Infor-

mation 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

incomplete. Even more so if the cul-

ture has no overt identity (at least

none outside virtual space). But the

other side of that coin presents us

with the opportunity to document the

ebb and flow, the moments of

growth and defeat, the development

of this young culture. (John Frost,

Cyberpoet’s Guide to Virtual Cul-

ture, 1993)

Abstract

As we approached the new millennium, social rela-

tionships were changing radically. Even in 1969, the anthro-

pologist 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

substantially enhanced by the computer communication net-

works that were just beginning. A new culture is being formed

out of a universal desire for communication. 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 tech-

nology facilitates new global connections. This article will

explore the emerging culture and the influence of the net on

this new participatory global culture.

I – The Emerging Globalization of

Everyday Life

The concept of a global culture arises from

the extensive development of transportation and

communication technologies in the twentieth cen-

tury. These developments have linked the world

together in ways which make it relatively simple to

travel or communicate 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 consist-

ing 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 simultaneously by

global audiences. The exposure to media and forms

of communication helps spread many of these cul-

tural elements. While television and radio connect

people with the rest of the world in a rather re-

moved and often passive fashion, computer net-

works are increasingly bringing people of various

cultures together in a much more intimate and

grassroots manner. A global culture is developing,

and the Internet is strongly contributing to its devel-

opment.

Culture is a difficult concept to define. Tim

North has gathered six different definitions in his

unpublished 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 lan-

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

3. Culture: The set of learned behaviours,

beliefs, attitudes and ideals that are characteristic of

a particular society or population (Ember and Em-

ber, 1990, p. 357).

4. Culture … taken in its wide ethnographic

sense is that complex whole that includes knowl-

edge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other

capabilities and habits acquired by man as a mem-

Page 21

ber 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 instru-

ment of human adaption. Culture (particular): The

way of life characteristic of a particular human soci-

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

One common category in some of these def-

initions is the passing of previously learned behav-

ior from one generation to the next. Another com-

mon 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

generation to generation. In the last half of the

twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first cen-

tury, 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 gen-

eration, today the younger generation learn from

both their elders and their peers. The learning from

peers is then shared with their elders. Human cul-

ture 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 so-

cial movements. One is taught the culture of his or

her society while growing up, but those perceptions

change as he or she matures, develops and lives an

adult life. Culture is not statically defined. Rather, a

person grows up into a culture and then can contrib-

ute 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 cul-

tures 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 coming to know others we

learn about ourselves. 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-pack-

aged commercial 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, Mar-

garet 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 re-

quests were for medicine … and for

trade goods. The European was ex-

pected 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 sing-

ing 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.

Page 22

Mead understood the importance of diver-

sity to the survival and strength of a species,

whether human or animal. However, she also under-

stood that part of the global commonality was

through the spread of scientific understandings and

technological developments. The desire for technol-

ogy 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 won-

derful ways of radio, satellites, telescopes, micro-

scopes, engines, and script are eager to experience

these things for themselves.” (Mead, 1978, p. 121)

The Internet is one of the new technological ad-

vances 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 ad-

vances is the understanding of the need to control

the introduction of such technology and participate

to have its use benefit the particular peoples in their

particular needs. The peoples of the world under-

stand that with the implementation of technology

comes a responsibility 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 diffu-

sion of a monotonous modern culture

has also stimulated people through-

out the world to demand participa-

tion. And through this demand for

participation in the benefits of a mo-

notonous, 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 as-

pects that served their own needs. The new ad-

vances in communication technologies facilitate

new democratic processes. People are discovering

new ways to participate and add their cultural con-

tributions to a larger world. Efforts to communicate

via technology require the acceptance of technolog-

ical standards and the building of a common techni-

cal framework. The growth of communications net-

works and standards at the same time allows diverse

cultures to share and spread their varying cultures

with others.

II – Global Contact over Computer Net-

works

The new media of forums, newsgroups,

email, chat rooms, blogs and webpages on the

internet facilitate the growth of global interactive

communities. These electronic communication

forms are made available through community net-

works, universities, the workplace, portals and

internet service providers (Hauben & Hauben,

1997, p. 8). Human culture is 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 on-

line 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 com-

ing to encompass more of the world not before im-

mediately available. Mead (1978, p. 88) understood

that a global community and awareness would re-

quire the development of a new kind of communi-

cation that depended on the participation 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 communi-

cation. The Usenet technology, one of the first

broad newsgroup networks, was developed by grad-

uate students in the late 1970s as a way to promote

the sharing of information and to spread communi-

cation between university campuses. Their design

highlighted the importance of the contribution by

individuals to the community. The content of Use-

net 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, discus-

sion, flames, reportage, nonsense, and scientific

breakthroughs filled the space. Usenet was a public

communications technology framework which was

open. The users participated 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

Page 23

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 cre-

ated 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 conclusion was that there was a definite Usenet

culture. He listed four of the important defining as-

pects 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

occasional 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 on-

line 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 conventions, marked

by its own linguistic jargon 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 some-

thing to each other. While not bound

by formal, written agreements, peo-

ple nevertheless are required by con-

vention to observe certain amenities

because they serve the greater com-

mon interest of the net. These as-

pects of voluntary association are the

elements of culture and community

that bind the people of Usenet to-

gether. (p. 4)

While North proposed that Usenet was a

distinct culture, he argued that it could not be con-

sidered a separate society. Rather, Usenet was “a

superstructural society that spans many mainstream

societies and is dependent upon them for its contin-

ued 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:

In this superstructural view, the Net

is freed of the responsibilities of pro-

viding certain of the features pro-

vided by other societies (e.g., repro-

duction, 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 off-

line society, and come to the Net for reasons other

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

1995; Jones, 1991) also studied this new online cul-

ture and its connection to the growing global cul-

ture. They saw there are a distinct online culture

and a distinct off-line global culture. While the on-

line culture strongly contributes to the developing

global culture off-line, 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 on-

line media requires participation of the users to ex-

ist. 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;

Woodbury, 1994). People have both a chance to

introduce and share their own culture and a chance

to broaden themselves through exposures to various

other cultures. As such, the online culture is an ex-

ample of a global culture which is not a reflection

Page 24

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 understandings available from other

places; culture changes through the exchange with

new ways of understanding and life. And this

change and shared changes gets shared around the

world.

III – Community Networks making On-

line 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 con-

nections to undeveloped countries and the basic

technology needed to gain access is as simple as a

computer and modem connected to the local tele-

phone or amateur radio network. More and more

people around the world are getting online via mo-

bile devices. Another hurdle to overcome is techni-

cal 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 com-

puter 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 peo-

ple 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 communities to truly represent themselves to

others connected online. (Graham, 1995; Weston,

1994) Without access made available through com-

munity networks, through publicly available com-

puter terminals or local dial-in phone numbers, only

those who could have afforded the cost of a com-

puter 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 por-

traits of various cultures would thus be only par-

tially 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 organization, Tele-

communities Canada, stressed the importance of

contributing Canada’s various cultures to the online

community and in this way made a contribution 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 cul-

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

also opens the possibility of changing Japan into a

less rigid, more decentralized society, following the

network paradigm exercised by the distributed na-

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

There is something to be said about the at-

traction of representing one’s self to the greater

community. The many-to-many form of communi-

cation where an individual can broadcast to the

community and get responses back from other indi-

viduals is an empowering 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 forma-

tion of local community groups is all accelerated.

Development of the commons to the exclusion of

the big media representations makes this an elec-

tronic 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,

Page 25

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 communication and collaboration occur

more on websites, although they are still a less ef-

fective communication medium. The common shar-

ed online language was in the beginning English.

(Aizu) That is changing. Other languages exist in

country hierarchies and newsgroups and in mailing

lists, along with chat rooms, search engines and

web pages. Moreover, all these developments, tex-

tual or graphic, make possible a global conversation

of diverse views. Mead recognizes that “True com-

munication is a dialogue.” (Mead, 1978, p. 77) She

points out that real communication 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

spreading 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 peo-

ple 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 op-

pressed 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 possi-

ble. 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 ancestors, Mead proposes,

“we can now add a vision of a planetary commu-

nity.” She explains that “Within such a vision, the

contributions of each culture … can become comple-

mentary.” However, Mead emphasizes, “but within

the new vision there must be no outsiders.” (pp.

147-148)

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3. pdf

[Editor’s Note: The following is the text of a pre-

sentation made at the Cyberculture and Youth sub

forum at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen,

China on Oct 21, 2019.]

The Netizen as the Emerging

New Form of Citizenship

by Ronda Hauben

I am happy to be here today to make a con-

tribution about the nature and importance of

netizens.

In my talk I want to focus on this significant

phenomenon that has emerged along with the

Internet's development. That is the Netizens.

First I want to give an example.

Recently Facebook users in Turkey have

been finding ways to enhance Turkish-Greek

friendship. They post about similarities in Greek

and Turkish culture with the mission of diminishing

the historic hostility that is common between the

two peoples.

In a study,

Turkish researchers sought to

determine if these online friendship groups between

the two peoples help to build friendly feelings on a

cultural basis. The study stresses that the effort is to

discuss subjects like foods the two groups eat that

are similar, pictures of holidays each group cele-

brates, and music video clips by each of the two

groups. Such postings are intended to convey the

common idea that people of both groups are “ordi-

nary people with common world views.”

This study refers to the definition of the

word netizen provided by Michael Hauben in the

book Netizens: on the History and Impact of Usenet

and the Internet.

A Netizen (net citizen) exists “as a citizen of

the world thanks to the global connectivity that the

Net makes possible. You consider 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. Virtually you live next

door to every other single Netizen in the world…. A

new more democratic world is becoming possible

… that allows excluded sections of society to have

a voice.”

Such activity on the part of netizens of dif-

ferent nations is intended to create a peace commu-

nications channel for building peaceful feelings be-

tween different peoples via the netizen contribu-

tions to the Internet.

This is an example of online activity that is

consistent with the definition of netizen acting as a

citizen of the Net, as a net citizen.

The concept of the citizen of the net was

part of the original definition of the word netizen.

But the word has also come to be used as describing

all users online. Netizens in the original definition

describes those who actively contribute to the de-

velopment and defense of the Internet as a global

communications platform. It describes those who

come online for public rather than simply for per-

sonal and entertainment purposes.

Why is this distinction important?

There is universal appreciation that the

Internet is a major advance in human communica-

tion. But it is less well understood that the Internet

brings to ordinary people an empowerment, a

greater chance to have a fuller spectrum of informa-

tion and opinion and a chance to participate and get

feedback.

Feeling that empowerment, some people

online, not all people but some, adopt public pur-

poses. They become citizens of the net. This is an

ongoing process. Having online search engines, a

wide variety of information repositories, and differ-

ent sources of news and eye witness reports, make

people better informed. Plus the possible contact

with other people not restricted by location, is a

force to increase people’s confidence and ability to

Page 27

make a contribution toward the solution of the prob-

lems of their society, and in so doing they help to

build a more peaceful world in the process.

Thank you for your attention.

Notes

1. Burak Gümüº, A Baran Dural, Mustafa Selcuk,

“Kalimerhaba: Turkish-Greek Facebook Communities,” Atlas-

journal of Social Sciences, 2018. Online at:

https://www.acad

emia.edu/37946632/Kalimerhaba_Turkish-Greek_Facebook_

Communities

2. Michael Hauben, Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet, IEEE Computer Soci-

ety Press, 1997

[Editor’s Note: Ronda and Jay Hauben attended the

World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen,

Zhejian Province, China, Oct 20-22, 2019. Follow-

ing is a summary of what they experienced at that

conference.]

Our Experiences at the 2019

World Internet Conference

by Jay Hauben

The theme of the 6

World Internet Confer-

ence was to “Jointly Build a Community with a

Shared Future in Cyberspace.” The organizers re-

ported that there were around 1500 attendees from

83 countries. The Conference consisted of an open-

ing ceremony, 20 sub forums and a major exhibit of

Internet related technologies. There was much talk

about the expected new scientific and industrial rev-

olution coming from the combination of 5G

network technology, AI (Artificial Intelligence),

block chain, Big Data, and Internet of Things (IoT).

Especially, AI was seen as having great potential

but also great risk. A question debated at one of the

sub forums was how to build structural precautions

against the risks of AI. To me that is the most press-

ing task concerning AI.

In the opening ceremony, a congratulatory

message was read from Xi Jinping, President of

China. The keynote speakers emphasized the points

made in this message and in President Xi’s speech

at the 2

WIC in Wuzhen in 2015. Included in that

speech and repeated in the opening ceremony was

the principle, Promotion of Openness and Coopera-

tion. In 2015 President Xi said, “All countries

should advance opening-up and cooperation in

cyberspace and further substantiate and enhance the

opening-up efforts.” One of the keynote speakers

saw this openness and cooperation as the way to

build a community with a shared future in cyber-

space, the theme of the conference. It seemed the

openness discussed was aimed at countries and each

other’s IT industry not the users. To me however it

should be taken as an encouragement for the Inter-

net to be open for a broad set of voices and opin-

ions. It was also mentioned in the keynote speeches

that the Internet helps cultures to blend and guides

users to a higher level of people to people friend-

ship. Seeking such people to people friendship is

one strong motivation for our visits to China.

In the plenary session that followed the

opening ceremony, Stephen Wolff give a brief his-

tory of the Internet. Wolff had been, from 1986 to

1994, the Division Director at the U.S. National

Science Foundation responsible for managing the

NSFNET project which became the backbone of the

Internet in the U.S. Most Internet traffic at that time

passed over the NSFNET. Wolff too emphasized

that pioneers of the Internet intended openness and

universal connectivity. He gave credit to Chinese

Academician Hu Qiheng for championing China’s

connectivity to the Internet in 1994. Madam Hu

tells the story that she was prepared for formal U.S./

China negotiations to arrange China’s connection to

the Internet. She visited the U.S. in April 1994 with

that intention. But she says, at the appointment she

had with Wolff, he told her that there is no problem.

In the next few days she heard from her colleagues

in Beijing that the connection has been made, no

negotiations, no treaty. Mme Hu was part of the

international collaboration that made the Internet

and the spread of the Internet possible. Also, it was

often mentioned at this conference that 2019 was

the 25

Anniversary of China’s 1994 connection to

the Internet. 2019 is also the 50

Anniversary of the

ARPANET, forerunner of the Internet. Those anni-

versaries gave extra importance to this year’s World

Internet Conference.

Ronda made a presentation in the Cyber-

culture and Youth sub forum

hosted by the Central

Committee of the Communist Youth League and

the All-China Youth Federation. It was co-orga-

Page 28

nized by the China Federation of Internet Societies,

China Youth New Media Association and NetEase,

Inc. Besides the keynote speakers, there were 18

presenters including from China, Nepal, the U.S.,

Japan, India, Hong Kong, and Mexico each with a

limit of six minutes for their talks.

The sub forum organizers defined cyber-

culture as “the compound of new technologies and

cultural content as well as the collection of cultural

activities, forms, products and ideas in cyberspace.”

And that, “as ‘digital natives,’ young people are

being profoundly influenced by the Internet.” But,

besides being a platform for cultural exchange and

mutual learning, cyberspace and cyberculture are

venues for youth innovation and self expression.

The value to me of the sub forum was that it recog-

nized the importance of the Internet to young peo-

ple and the importance of the youth everywhere to

the Internet and to their societies. The sub forum

aimed to focus on cyber-cultural issues but also to

“encourage young people across the globe to make

their contributions to the development of cyber-

culture and online exchanges.”

After the Opening Remarks at the sub fo-

rum, a spectrum of viewpoints was expressed in the

eighteen 6-minute talks. The first presenter, Zhang

Yiwu, Professor, Department of Chinese Language

and Literature, Peking University described how

hundreds of millions of lines of original literature

have been created online by Chinese speaking

netizens and spread around the world in Chinese but

also in translation. The spread of this literature

gives the world a chance to better know Chinese

thinking and encourages young people to contribute

their writing online. Some of the other speakers

talked about aiming their products at online youth,

such as Marvel Comics and Pokémon Games. Many

saw the Internet making possible greater participa-

tion of the youth in all aspects of society. Max

Trejo, Secretary-General, International Youth Orga-

nization for Ibero-America, spoke in Spanish. He

saw that youngsters are creating, fully participating

in the production of and accessing much of the cul-

tural content on the net. They talk with each other

directly and form a bottom-up innovation process,

demonstrating that now ordinary people can have a

positive impact on each other, giving them a sense

of ownership of the cyber community. Ronda’s pre-

sentation,

broadened the spectrum of the sub forum

by seeing youth and others as not only users but

some as citizens of the Internet and of the world.

She told the story of Facebook users in Turkey find-

ing ways to enhance Turkish-Greek friendship with

the mission of diminishing the historic hostility that

is common between the two peoples. She argued

that such activity on the part of netizens of different

nations is intended to create a peace communica-

tions channel for building peaceful feelings between

different peoples via the netizen contributions to the

Internet. The net empowers some people including

young people to adopt a public purpose. They be-

come netizens, citizens of the net.

Mirroring the Internet, a strong purpose of

the whole World Internet Conference and especially

of the Cyberculture and Youth sub forum was the

encouragement and deepening of international ex-

changes toward “Jointly Building a Community

with a Shared Future in Cyberspace.”

True to this purpose, it was wonderful for

Ronda and me to meet people at the conference

from around the world as well as to make new

friends in China. We had great fun with and much

help from the English speaking volunteer guides

from Zhejian and Shanghai universities. Not only

were they helpful to non-Chinese speaking atten-

dees like us, the guides had the valuable experience

of interacting with people from all over the world

and using and improving their foreign language

skills. The Shanghai International Studies Univer-

sity (SISU) students and staff we met were serious,

friendly and hard working. We appreciated the spe-

cial care they took of us.

Our biggest surprise and treasure was to see

and say hello to internet pioneers, some of whom

we have met and collaborated with over the last 25

years. They were from Japan (Jun Mauri and Izumi

Aizu), Korea (Kilnam Chon), Germany (Werner

Zorn), France (Louis Pouzin) and the U.S. (Stephen

Wolff and Dave Farber). Mme Hu Qiheng from

China did not attend this conference but was praised

by Stephen Wolff as a valuable contributor to the

Internet’s spread to and in China. Maybe it could

only be in Wuzhen that we would see them all in

one place. Also, the food was fine for all our meals,

maybe especially the student’s lamb and noodle

soup we ate in the Scholar Noodle Restaurant in the

old town part of Wuzhen.

We did get lost sometime but that was mi-

nor. One evening when walking back to our hotel,

some local Wuzhen adults encouraged us to join

Page 29

them in their nightly dance/exercises. It was a fun

shared experience. We especially were happy to

hear the speech by Stephen Wolff in the opening

day plenary session because he summarized accu-

rately the history that Ronda, I and our son Michael

had studied and documented in the book Michael

and Ronda wrote, Netizens: On the History and Im-

pact of Usenet and the Internet.

Ronda was happy for the opportunity to be

part of the Cyber Culture and Youth Sub Forum.

She got some positive feedback after her speech

about netizens as net citizens coming online for

public not just personal or entertainment purposes.

We greatly appreciated this opportunity to

visit China again. Besides attending the conference

in Wuzhen, we had a chance to visit some dear

friends in Beijing and Shanghai. I was again im-

pressed how much Chinese people and American

people have in common. Now home in NYC, I will

look for ways to help increase American-Chinese

people’s friendship.

Notes:

1. The program of the Cyberculture and Youth sub forum was

posted in English at:

https://service.wicwuzhen.cn/forum/?

from=singlemessage#/forum_e_manual?dataId=33875164668

9529856&lang=en

2. The text of Ronda’s talk is online at: http://www.columbia.

edu/~hauben/china2019/Wuzhen-talk-2019.pdf

[Editor’s Note: The following article appeared on-

line at https://werdsmith.com/p/ARutG2rFJ. It was

likely a paper written while the author was a

masters degree student at the University of the

Philippines, 2013-2018.]

Pop Culture and the Rise

of Social Media in the

Philippines: An Overview

by Aj Garchitorena

Abstract

It is somewhat amusing that children in their forma-

tive years use technology as though it is a basic necessity for

their development. With this statement alone, it is undeniable

that commercial advancement in technology and the facility of

the world-wide web creates a sort of transcendence in a faster

and inclusive way that is not possible in the physical world.

Nevertheless, if this very modern concept, if not an advent of a

futuristic one, would be collapsed in the confines of a perspec-

tive of a still developing nation, what would be the outcome?

This study aims to look at the rise of New Media and

social media in the Philippines, as well as its effect on the pro-

motion of popular culture on the media consumers of the

country. It will focus on several facets of Philippine contem-

porary life such as the political, economic, and social, and con-

nect it with the cultural. By the end of this paper, there will be

predictions regarding the future of the Philippine experience

under these said circumstances should the current state of me-

dia in the country not change, a sort of an analysis that would

allow readers to initiate their own introspection regarding me-

dia use.

Introduction

According to the Yahoo-Nielsen Survey of

2013, the top three sources of media consumption

in the Philippines come from the television, the ra-

dio, and the continually rising internet usage. With

these media vehicles, the so-called fourth estate of

the government, one can actually deduce that

watching favorite shows on the televison, listening

to radio programs, or even surfing the world-wide

web can have political, social, and economic impli-

cations.

This paper, thus, will look at these said im-

plications – the three interconnected tiers of Philip-

pine life, said above – and connect it with the popu-

lar culture in the Philippines to give an overview to

the public regarding this obvious but unnoticed

scene in Philippine media studies. Specifically, the

objectives of this paper are:

1. to dissect the concept of popular culture in the

Philippine context and locate its origin;

2. to connect popular culture to the usage of con-

ventional media such as television and radio usage,

and the rise of and social media or new media;

3. to locate interlocking concepts regarding popular

culture and social media in the political, economic,

and social aspects of everyday Philippine life to

somewhat give an overview of the current state of

Philippine media studies. One latent objective of the

study, however, is to initiate introspection among

the public regarding their usage or personal con-

sumption of media in their everyday life.

To further give flesh and bone to the paper,

the proponent will primarily use the literature and

scholarship of the following authors:

1. Bienvenido Lumbera – for popular culture and its

origin and implications

Page 30

2. Michael Hauben – for the theory of the Netizen

and his perspectives on the individual as a user of

social media

3. Herman and Chomsky – on the political-eco-

nomic implications of media

4. McCombs and Shaw – for the Agenda-Setting

Theory of media and its implications

5. Graeme Turner – on the democratization of me-

dia

Although each author is quite focused on a

singular topic, there are still parts of each that con-

nect with each other, and will be part of the analy-

sis.

The study is somewhat limited for this will

only cover the said topic in a very macro level and

not in a more specific and specialized way. More

so, most literature except Lumbera, are from

non-Filipino authors but they do address the topic in

a very universal manner. The methodology is some-

what limited for it only includes pure archival re-

search, and bias regarding the personal usage of

media on the perspective of the author may also

cause further limitation. More so, the media to be

discussed here is the media conglomerate part of

Philippine media, and not the state-owned part for

the former is the more evident and profitable side,

while the latter is quite ignored or neglected by the

general public, and one can say, the government

itself.

This study, nevertheless, sets a ground for a

new frontier in Philippine studies research for thus

far, social media in the Philippines, except for sta-

tistical data, seemed to be untouched. No matter

how moot and futile this exercise may seem to

some, the author reiterates that things included in

the paper needed to be known by the public in a

very word-of-mouth conversational manner, and

even though everything about the topic of the paper

seems obvious, it has always been unnoticed and,

therefore, should be given the chance to be placed

under the attention and scrutiny of the general pub-

lic and not only by scholars, students, or members

of the current intelligentsia.

RELATED LITERATURE

Popular Culture in the Philippines

“Building a culture has to start with a foun-

dation, and that foundation must necessarily be the

culture of the Filipino people if this could be sepa-

rated with [from?] the encrustations grown on it by

colonial rule.”

Popular culture, according to National Artist

for literature Bienvenido Lumbera in his book Re-

valuation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Theater

and Popular Culture (1984), is highly different

from the folk culture and nationalist culture of the

Filipinos. In a nutshell, folk culture is the way of

living in a place in a specific time and portrays the

practices of a certain people, and on how they cope

to survive with nature. Nationalist culture is the cul-

ture created through colonial resistance with the

collective of people on a given place and time.

These two are different from popular culture which

can be traced even in the period of Hispanisation of

the Philippines.

According to Lumbera, popular culture in

the Philippines was created and used by the Span-

iards to the native Filipinos or Indios via plays and

literature to get the heart of the natives and win it.

The colonial origins of popular culture found in the

Philippines can be traced by looking at salient de-

velopments in Philippine literature. The first perma-

nent Spanish settlement began replacing the native

culture with a Christian and European tradition. The

children of the native elite under the tutelage of

missionaries became a core group of intelligentsia

called ‘ladinos,’ as they became instrumental “in

bringing into the vernacular, literary forms that

were to be vehicles for the ‘pacification’ of the na-

tives.” Forms of popular theater and literature such

as “the pasyon, sinakulo, and korido ensured the

acceptance and spread of Christianity, and the

komedya and awit did the same for the monarchy.”

Popular culture as introduced by the Spanish was

“popular” to the extent that it was a “watering-down

of Spanish-European culture for the purpose of win-

ning the general populace over to the ‘ideology’ of

the colonial regime.” Popular culture at the time

was created by colonial authorities, with the aid of

the local intelligentsia, to promote the interests of

the Church and the State.

However, once the native intelligentsia saw

the effects of popular culture and knew how to work

its way as propaganda, they soon used the Spanish

weapon against them. In the 19

century, through

the Propaganda movement, the native intelligentsia

used the same forms of popular culture to “under-

mine the power of the abusive friars and rally the

Page 31

populace to put an end to colonial rule.” One exam-

ple is the work of Marcelo H. del Pilar when he

soon used prayers such as the ‘Aba, Ginoong

Maria’ and ‘Ama Namin’ in a sort of parody to

strike against the abusive Spanish Friars.

The advent of American colonialism

brought, the properly so-called, popular culture to

the Philippines. The liberal policy regarding the

printing press, soon through radio, television and

film, increased the circulation of popular culture

forms. Not only through these forms but also in new

media then, such as films. Hollywood films had a

near-monopoly in the Philippine market especially

in the absence of European movies due to World

War I.

Early on, the local intelligentsia had the

same apprehensions over mass media as they called

it commercialization, or vulgarization of art. Ac-

cording to Lumbera, the local intelligentsia noticed

that “Popular literature as a commodity intended for

a mass market was seen to pose a threat to serious

artistic work, because the writers accommodated his

art to the demands of the publishers and editors who

were more interested in sales rather than

aesthetics.” More so, “... popular culture is not cre-

ated by the populace ... rather, it is culture created

either by the ruling elite or by members of the intel-

ligentsia in the employ of that elite, for the con-

sumption of the populace.”; it is “...‘packaged’ en-

tertainment or art intended for the profit of rulers,

be they colonial administrators or native bureau-

crats and businessmen.”

To see it in Lumbera’s lens, “Popular cul-

ture is power, and whoever wields it to manipulate

minds is likely to find it’s literary and technological

machinery turned against him when the minds it has

manipulated discover its potency as a political

weapon.”

The Theory of the Netizen and Democ-

ratization of Media

The word netizen, though it has been used

popularly in current times, is actually a word from

the theory of Michael Hauben (1997) is a corrupted

term from the phrase “Net Citizen.” According to

Hauben, as netizens, geographical separation in the

actual reality is replaced by existence in the same

virtual space called the internet. More so, along

with the power of using the internet is the power of

the reporter given to the netizen for a netizen could

actually be a source of primary information regard-

ing certain topics or issues. Hauben profoundly cau-

tions that the internet can, nevertheless, be a

“source of opinion” though he said that a netizen

can train him/her self to discern real from fabricated

information.

This prophecy will soon be reflected in

Graeme Turner’s book called the Demotic Turn

(2010) but in a certain extreme way for even news

reports are often bent to suit the “infotainment”

genre favored by the general audience. According

to Turner, there is a rise of opinionated news as re-

porters tend to bend the news to the stories they of-

ten favor. A concrete example of this is tabloid-

ization, or sensationalising small news items and

making a big deal out of such.

The Agenda-Setting Theory

The Agenda-Setting theory of McCombs

and Shaw (1972) can be simplified by saying that

media influences people to focus its attention on

something under a certain agenda. It can make peo-

ple think that something is actually happening when

something is not, or give special attention or focus

on certain subjects or topics and hype it to make an

impression that something big is going on. To give

an example, the agenda-setting theory can be seen

in a newspaper wherein the headline is supposed to

be the biggest news there is, and the other items,

decreasing in font size and the farther its location

from the front page, the lesser priority it has. Simi-

larly, in a news program, wherein the reporter or

news anchor gives too much air time to a certain

news, or depending on the arrangement of the news

items, the more pressing issue it is. This theory can

also be applied in the radio, or on new media such

as the internet.

The Political-Economy of Media

According to Hermann and Chomsky’s Pro-

paganda Model (1988), a model they have used to

check the various political-economic implications

of mass media, there are several filters to use in re-

lation with the topic to check the propaganda ma-

chine of mass media.

These filters are the following:

1. The size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth,

profit orientation of the different mass media firms

Page 32

2. Advertising as the primary income source of

mass media

3. The reliance of the media on the information pro-

vided by the government, business, and these “ex-

perts” funded and approved by such sources and

agents of power

Note that there are also two more filters

(“Flak” as means of disciplining the media,

anti-communism as a national religion and control

mechanism) but that would be irrelevant with the

current study.

Analysis

The proponent, especially based on the his-

tory and origin of popular culture in the Philippines,

attributes the rise of popular culture to such technol-

ogies like the television, radio, and the internet, and

the popularization of the said technologies because

of the usage of such in the everyday culture. Never-

theless, the seemingly innocent usage or consump-

tion of media in different ways beholds power in its

interstices.

This paper, as mentioned will look at three

tiers on how media spreads popular culture, and

affects the aspects of Filipino life such as the politi-

cal, economic, and the social.

Political-Economic Aspect

The easier to figure out among the three is

the economic. According to Lumbera, popular cul-

ture in the rise of technologies like the television

and the radio, soon deteriorated the notion of art

and made it appear that it is consumable and a com-

modity. He called it, as he said, according to other

artists of the time, vulgarization of art. He meant

that art forms were popularized by the use of tech-

nology and were tailor-fit to exactly serve the taste

of the greater audience, sacrificing its quality in the

process. This phenomena or grievance, if one may

call it, can also be seen in Turner’s argument re-

garding the rise of infotainment. Infotainment is the

trend of making an issue seemingly pressing

enough to give an ample or little new information,

but more so, entertainment to the public.

According to the Yahoo-Nielsen 2013 Sur-

vey, infotainment is one of the most searched con-

tents and sites most visited in the Philippines. This

meant a lot of irrelevant news we see on the televi-

sion or internet that can be dismissed as a fad but

were given the limelight to amuse people, and peo-

ple seem to buy it. Just look at websites like Yahoo,

itself, for it offers a lot of interesting articles which

may seem to catch the interest of the public but also

to cross-promote.

Cross-promotion is a term referring to the

promotion of an advertisement in a very subtle way

inside another program, or the like. Aside from ac-

knowledging that the reason why there is this

so-called “vulgarization of the art” and the “rise of

infotainment” to attract advertisers to advertise in

commercial breaks during television or radio

shows, or popping-up in the websites, cross-promo-

tion has been a wide practice and people can actu-

ally sense it but not look it straight in the eye.

Imagine watching a movie and seeing a product

endorsement of the main protagonist being used in

it, say coffee, and he or she prepares and drinks the

coffee in one of the scenes – that is cross-promo-

tion. The latent or subtle manifestation of endorsing

products. Even in the internet, there are a lot of arti-

cles planted just to make an advertisement and these

are often the infotainment ones. Even video games

have cross-promoting activities, or even radio jock-

eys do it in a very conversational and suave manner.

For lots of years, cross-promotion has been com-

monly practiced, but the problem does not end

there.

Cross-promoting activities in various media

platforms cannot always be subtle, for there many

now with explicit exercise of such, and in connec-

tion with Lumbera’s sacrificing the art grievance, it

can already be seen that media does not proliferate

art, or material with high value but sacrifices all

these, even the content, form, and quality of popular

culture just to use it as an advertisement as an ex-

ample, a whole dialogue or story plot can be

twisted, to bend, bow and scrape to the demands of

the main benefactor – product endorsements.

Socio-Political Aspect

It was a common saying that whoever has

command of the economic power also wields the

political. In the study of pop culture and Philippine

media, one can already see that the economic and

political aspects were highly mutual conditions that

are beneficial to each other. This statement is logi-

cal for, according to Herman and Chomsky, media

really gets all the income from advertisements and

whoever has the bigger sponsorship gets the media

Page 33

attention, or programs will be bent according to

how their product endorsement vis-a-vis

cross-promotion would fit.

It is important to notice, however, that me-

dia’s power does not only reside on the economic,

but also to the monopoly of sources, as cited also by

Herman and Chomsky. There are limited sources by

which media can get information, and with it, they

control – government, businesses, and the like –

whatever is going in and out of the information

tube.

More over, one must also check the relation

of media to its audience. Because of popular cul-

ture, media is actually used to create a certain

agenda on its viewers, and the resulting relationship

is a political one wherein the one controlling here is

the media company or institution. According to

McCombs and Shaw’s Agenda-Setting Theory, me-

dia can make us think about something by condi-

tioning our minds in a very latent manner, most es-

pecially through salience. It means that if ever the

media company wants you to think about a political

stand or buying that special perfume, they will do it

in repetition and via cross-promotion using several

advertising techniques. Surveys such as Nielsen

give the media companies an idea what formula

would work on a sellable television show, or the

like. This can be equivocal with the idea that the

“naked” news in several western news companies

are created not because they need people to watch

news, but also to make them watch and earn their

share in the advertising arena. One can argue that

some news articles can be imaginary or bloated to

be sensationalized and news-worthy. Thus, media,

through its influences, indirectly commands the

people to behave the way that is favorable to them.

This argument, however, is rapidly changing

through leverage, for there is a thing called media

democratization and that is connected with the rise

of social media.

To break the monopoly of media conglom-

erates on the information flow can be attributed

with the democratization of media via the internet.

Michael Hauben’s theory of the Netizen, when he

coined the term in the late 1990's imagined the

world’s physical limits collapsed via the faster

streaming of information and communication via

the internet, and true enough, the effect is limitless

and transcendental – quite a benchmark of a 21

century high technology. Hauben also imagined the

democratizing power of media, for everyone can

voice out their ideas via the internet, but this can

only be achieved if everyone in the society, even

those in the margins, can be given the chance to

voice out their ideas.

In the Philippines, the internet usage pene-

tration is more than 30 percent as of 2012, and is

continuously rising (Yahoo-Nielsen, 2013). Accord-

ing to the same survey, more Filipinos use tablets

and mobile phones to access the internet, and with

the rise of smart phones in the country, we can as-

sume that the projected number can be rising expo-

nentially. However, the democratization of media,

even if away from Hauben’s ideal 100% penetration

in the society, is still evident in the society, and this

is via social networking sites such as Facebook,

Twitter, Instagram, and the like. Among the three,

Facebook, is the widely-used platform (Yahoo-

Nielsen, 2013).

Public opinion rises from these sites, prolif-

eration of liberal ideas happen especially in the

Philippines for the government never censors the

content though there was an attempt in the Cyber-

crime law. The agenda and capability seemed to

prove its political worth in the Philippines last Sep-

tember 2013 when, as though an Arab or Persian

Spring that were so-called Twitter or Facebook

Revolution, through the facilitation of social media,

many Filipinos all around the Philippines and the

world joined a simultaneous protest they called the

“Million People March” (Garchitorena, 2013).

In everyday life, one can see the leverage done

by media conglomerates in the social media scene by

making an account for famous reporters and television or

radio channels so that they can also make real-time

broadcasting simultaneous with the real-time updates of

social media information dissemination (Garchitorena,

2013). This is soon proved to be beneficial when media

companies make news out of public opinion often found

in tweets or posts in social media sites, as predicted ear-

lier on through the rise of talk radios (Turner, 2010).

There are even portions wherein mere viewers, through

mobile devices, are made to report on a first-hand ac-

count of a storm surge or anything, and send the clip via

internet instead of sending a real and trained reporter to

check out the situation. This phenomena, will, neverthe-

less, prove to be beneficial if Hauben’s theory of a

democratized society, via the internet wherein all people

are given access, plus the required training to voice their

selves out as Netizens, would materialize.

Page 34

Conclusion

To summarize the paper, popular culture was

first introduced and given flesh and bone through the

study of Lumbera. It will be the foundation of the media

we see today, and it fleshed out reasons why media com-

mands economic, political, and social power in the Phil-

ippines. Through several media theories, it was shown

that in media’s main goal via the proliferation of pop

culture creates a commercialized world as it generated

income through advertisements, and whoever commands

economic power commands the political, as well. Media

companies can also facilitate pop culture to make their

audience behave the way they would be favorable to

them, also because they monopolize the information

stream. This can also be countered with the democratiza-

tion of media through the facilitation of social network-

ing sites and by projecting ideas as a netizen on the

internet. This may cause leverage but may not com-

pletely achieve its full potential for full democratization

can be done if all people in the society can gain full ac-

cess with the said technology. It may also have down

effects for media companies can use Netizens as primary

sources of information, as though “empowering” them.

This can also be countered with education if the public

on how to use social media that would benefit them.

“Popular culture is power, and whoever wields it

to manipulate minds is likely to find its literary and tech-

nological machinery turned against him when the minds

it has manipulated discover its potency as a political

weapon.” (Lumbera, 1984)

The future of social media’s political, economic,

and social facility as a tool, or a weapon, against media

conglomerates and the advertising machinery, or the

government or any institutional agenda may still be

achieved if the general public, especially those in the

margins who were always victimized by the false images

shown through media, should discover and use its full

potential.

Bibliography

Aj Garchitorena, Picnic in the Park: The Role of Social Media

as a Precursor of a Social Movement and a Facilita-

tor in the Million People. March, 2013.

Michael Hauben and Ronda Hauben, Netizens: On the History

and Impact of Usenet and the Internet. IEEE Com-

puter Society Press. 1997.

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Con-

sent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pan-

theon Books. 1988.

Bienvenido Lumbera. Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Lit-

erature, Cinema, and Popular Culture. 1984.

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. “The agenda-setting

function of mass media.” Public Opinion Quarterly.

Volume 36, Issue 2. pp. 176–187. 1972.

Graeme Turner. Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic

Turn. SAGE Publications. 2010.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Ronda Hauben

William Rohler

Norman O. Thompson

Michael Hauben (1973-2001)

Jay Hauben

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