Does Twitter contribute to political incivility?

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Like millions of Americans, I tuned into President Obama’s State of the Union address this week. Unlike last year, there was no single outburst that drew the attention of the news media, like when Rep. Joe Barton (R-SC) shouted “you lie!” at an immigration policy assertion by President Obama:

But there were numerous occasions where voices called out during the speech, usually urging the President on, but sometimes sounding like groans of disapproval. The regularity of these reminded me more of the often raucous sessions of the UK Parliament during Prime Minister’s Questions, than of the normally rather silent State of the Union speech. Fellow C-SPAN junkies will know immediately what I’m talking about; those who haven’t had the pleasure of watching a distinctly different type of parliamentary system in action should see what happens when opposition-party Members of Parliament let the Prime Minister have it, directly to the PM’s face in the parliamentary chamber—as happened last March concerning the recent Western intervention in Libya:

But back to this side of the Atlantic. In normal times, at least until recently, any utterance during a president’s annual address to Congress represented a fairly serious type of faux pas. Rules of civility and respect between the branches of government generally shut down such behavior. But this norm seems to be breaking down before our eyes. (Or ears.)

What’s contributing to this? It seems to me that there are likely two causes (among many, no doubt) to which we can safely point.

First, although it is a lively subject of discussion among political scientists, there is widespread agreement that there is left-right polarization — at least among elected officials — in the U.S. Whether this is a result of the demands of the electorate, or rather is a result of the candidates on offer by the parties, is an open question. Throwing all of these elected officials in a congressional chamber during a State of the Union address — with the eyes and ears of the country tuning in — is, perhaps, too much of a temptation for certain of these officials to resist.

But the question that more interests me is related to the proliferation of always-on online services that allow us to express ourselves to, at least potentially, tens of millions of people in an instant. Twitter and Facebook are the two most obvious of these, with increasing numbers of congressmembers turning to microblogging services to get messages out to their constituents and, indirectly, the broader public via more mainstream media coverage. The standard press release put out by their offices can be supplemented with shorter, more concise messages. With Twitter-enabled smartphones, how can a congressmember resist firing off the occasional, testy message from the floor of the House of Representatives, particularly if they are frustrated by parliamentary minority status?

The political predominance of the ideals contained in the First Amendment and the case-law to which it has given birth over two centuries reflects an American fondness for self-expression. Twitter, Facebook, and the growing ubiquity of devices that allow access to such services, may very well egg us all on in this pursuit. Like much modern technology, we have not yet fully incorporated the digital world into our old social norms. The State of the Union address is likely no exception to this ongoing process.

Universities, beware: you’ve (all) got pepper spray on your face

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In the wake of the use of pepper spray on peaceful demonstrators on the campus of UC Davis, the university’s administration, along with the police department under its control, finds itself on the receiving end of bad press across social and traditional media. As someone who cares about the ethical values and health of American higher education, it’s a stunning sight.

To focus on how the proper response by those police would have been to arrest demonstrators in violation of police orders — not to resort to the use of force, chemical or otherwise — would miss the larger point.

UC Davis Police Department Lt. John Pike pepper-sprays passive, peaceful protestors in the campus quad

Combining UC Davis’s problem with Penn State University’s recent abuse scandal and with broader doubts earlier this fall about the generalized “shame of college sports”, there is now an unusually high level of public attention being paid to the internal workings, governance, and institutional culture within the American university. Add in the national debates over for-profit colleges, the problem of mounting student debt, and a need for more of a focus on technical colleges to build different types of labor skills, and the situation becomes even more complex.

All of this risks aggravating a long-underway process of erosion of the social contract between the university and broader society. College and university officials — in particular presidents and those vice presidents who handle relations with the public and with government — should be losing sleep.

Universities are granted a privileged place in our society. They are largely autonomous and self-governed, to varying degrees immune from political and legal pressures in the rest of society; are viewed as the unique, if imperfect, unbiased generators and repositories of knowledge; and are entrusted with the formation of informed young citizens, highly-trained experts, and the future cadre of professors. All of this is perpetually at risk, to be defended by faculty and administrators as a legitimate allocation of political and moral authority.

The current slew of problems facing colleges and universities all too easily joins up with an enduring critique which portrays these institutions as “elitist” and “divorced from the reality of the people.” Whether this perspective is fair or accurate is irrelevant. It is the perception of many people in a country where anti-intellectualism is often so present in the culture that it is a perennial ingredient in key political campaigns. (Candidate for the US Senate in Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, is one of the latest to feel the sting of that strain of American politics.)

In economic terms, society has registered its decreasing concern with the health of institutions of higher learning. State contributions to public colleges and universities are dramatically down over the last 20 years, and federal grant support in some areas of study is dwindling. A new social contract negotiated under present conditions between colleges and universities, and the society that permits and facilitates their autonomy, would probably be one that higher education officials would sign only under duress.

Politics are back on US campuses in a big way, but it’s hardly because students are protesting. No amount of pepper spray can dislodge the coming external scrutiny. In fact, such tactics could hardly be more harmful—to all involved.

On Chinese censorship, free-marketeers ally with free-speech advocates

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Free-speech advocates have critiqued China for its censorship of content on the Internet. Its “great firewall” — officially designated the “Golden Shield Project of the Ministry of Public Security” — prevents Internet users in China from accessing information its government deems undesirable. (Curious if a specific site is visible in China? Check it out.)

Until recently, campaigns against the firewall have been launched primarily by free-speech advocates, some of whom have also engineered and popularized online tools to allow Internet users behind firewalls to access censored content. These advocates have been pushing more open governments to press the issue, officially, with China.

The activists are no longer the only ones talking about this issue. In January 2010, two economists with a Brussels-based European policy think-tank wrote in the Wall Street Journal that:

[Chinese Internet censorship] is correctly viewed as a major free-speech problem, but that’s only part of the damage Beijing is doing. Blocking the Internet blocks commerce and trade, and China’s latest moves may well run afoul of its World Trade Organization commitments.

The argument is that China’s censorship policies constitute an illegal trade barrier under World Trade Organization rules. There is evidence to support this claim, as U.S. and other non-Chinese electronics manufacturers, along with Internet-services companies, have had to alter technological specifications to be able to export to the Chinese market. For instance, Apple’s iPhone arrived in China two years after its introduction elsewhere, as it was forced to remove the hardware that enabled the iPhone’s wifi capabilities; the Chinese government wanted to force iPhones in China to communicate with the Internet exclusively through cell signals it could easily control. Wifi capabilities undermined that exclusivity. (Later models included wifi, but only a non-standard version of it that allowed the Chinese government a high level of control when compared with other, standard wifi implementations.)

The merger of free-speech and free-market advocates seems underway, on the heels of news that the U.S. Trade Representative has demanded answers of the Chinese government about its censorship policies. The questions are pointed, and inquire not only about policies, but also about the agencies that enforce those rules, the reasoning behind them, the possible preferential treatment of Chinese over non-Chinese Internet companies, and other points that the Chinese government found offensive:

[The Chinese government is] willing to work with other parties to step up communication and exchanges about the Internet and push for sound development of the cyberspace. But we oppose using Internet freedom as an excuse to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.

If the U.S. pushes the case and files a complaint with the WTO, the outcome of the case could be trade sanctions against China. European and other governments could join in. Either way, this step will give hope to some free-speech advocates—particularly since all of this is set against a backdrop of increasing efforts by world governments to assert control over both the hardware of the Internet as well as the data it transmits.

Free speech is only part of the story, of course. In a difficult economic time, electronics products and services companies will take whatever assistance they can get. The U.S. Trade Representative has served notice that the U.S. government has them in mind. If it can be seen to push Western values at the same time, it’s an added bonus.

The alliance between free-speech advocates and free-marketeers may be one of convenience, or of truly overlapping values. Either way, it gives credence to those who claim that the rules and institutions of global capitalism can, under the right circumstances, bring about positive changes on human rights.

From Cairo to San Francisco: elites will be elites

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I study how political elites react to new technologies in liberal democratic countries. I regularly argue that these elites are “no more angelic” than their counterparts in authoritarian regimes. This statement is sometimes met with a raised eyebrow: surely I can’t mean that political officials in the United States are as ill-intentioned as those in, say, Mubarak’s Egypt?

Not exactly, no—but the behavior can be motivated by a similar desire.

A protestor compares the BART (San Francisco Bay area) transit police to dictators who have, like BART, recently shut off cell-phone signals in response to planned protests

I usually reply to my questioner by stating that the primary desire of political and economic elites is almost always to remain in power. This desire motivates them to control information and technological systems as much and as effectively as they can. Often, though, the conversation trails off at that point, as if my point were simply academic or hypothetical.

But we now have two glaring examples of democratic political authorities behaving in what are fairly new and, for many, stunning ways. First, in response to the riots in the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron argued that social networking and other technologies should perhaps be controlled and censored by the government to prevent or suppress protest and rioting. I suppose it’s a legitimate point of debate, and if Cameron is simply inviting a societal discussion about how social networking plays into modern protest movements, then perhaps there is a place for such a move. Perhaps.

The second example, however, is more active and striking, and it comes from a place long-considered to be among most liberal places in the United States: San Francisco. There, in response to a planned protest of BART (the transit authority covering the greater San Francisco area) police brutality, that same authority shut down cell-phone sites in many of its stations.

I admit to being surprised when I read this news. Despite my regular argument that this sort of thing should be expected even in democratic countries, I had to re-read the headline on this news story twice to be sure I’d read it correctly. In an attempt to be charitable, I told myself that BART was simply overreacting out of fear of a dangerous protest it feared it could not control. Maybe this is accurate. Maybe BART now wishes it hadn’t done what it did.

But somehow that doesn’t reassure me. The precedent of a police authority in the United States shutting down all cell service in an effort to prevent or deflate a political protest — particularly one about that very police department’s actions — has now set up an inevitable and classic legal and political battle between the brute force of the state and the communicative rights of the people.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle quoted legal experts expressing serious concern and surprise about BART’s action, and outlined the First Amendment concerns that will be raised as a result of this incident. BART almost seems to be doubling down, making things easier for the lawyers who will challenge them, as this line from the agency’s official statement illustrates:

No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an interest group that argues for digital freedoms, asked in response: “What does that mean? We can’t talk?”

Whatever happens, I’ll never again have to make a purely theoretical assertion when I claim that political elites in democracies should be considered just as susceptible (if perhaps somewhat less malicious) as dictators to exercising their authority to prevent people from using information and communication technologies to protest the actions of those in power. We now have examples. It may be good news for my research argumentation, but sometimes one doesn’t like being right.

Benedict Anderson & YouTube: the “imagined concert”

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Like a lot of people, I listen to music using iTunes when at home. There’s nothing particularly unusual about that. But I noticed something today that made me think about just how much we’ve integrated the logic of social media into our digital device use and consumption of media.

When I am enjoying a new album or song I’ve just discovered, I find that iTunes now feels isolating. Without even thinking much about it, I’ll sometimes open the web browser and look up the song on YouTube. Listening to the music while I am on the site gives me the impression that I’m no longer performing a solitary act, but instead am participating in a social moment. This is true even if there is no real video to the YouTube clip, so it’s not even particularly about having some sort of interesting visual to look at while the audio plays.

Benedict Anderson wrote about the “imagined community” that helps comprise a nation. He said that people think of themselves as part of a very large social unit, feeling that they have much in common with millions of people whom they will never meet. His underlying argument is that a nation is a socially constructed — imagined — community of people.

The Internet definitely constructs a similar type of imagined grouping. Social networking sites, like Facebook, take advantage of our offline social connections, but sites like YouTube place us in contact with others whom we will never meet. In fact, the sites are engineered to do so. Apparently, it’s working; I can’t be the only one who now seeks out this sort of “imagined concert”—even if it’s something that happens without always being aware of the reasons for doing so.

Oh, and the song that was playing when I realized this? Bon Iver’s “Minnesota, WI”. Here you go. (For the full faux-concert experience, the YouTube site is probably best…)

Week 2 omnibus: privacy, ethics, civic behavior… and dinner

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The final week of the OII Summer Doctoral Programme was full of great talks and social events, of which a few were particularly noteworthy.

OII Senior Researcher and privacy expert Ian Brown spoke about some of the latest social scientific research on privacy attitudes and behaviors. One interesting finding that will surprise some was that teenagers are far more likely to alter the privacy settings on Facebook than their parents; this suggests that “digital natives” have privacy instincts and behaviors that are much more contextual than those who learned how to use the Internet later in the course of their lives.

A subject participating in the Virtual Milgram experiment.

We also had a session on the ethics of Internet research, which is a very hot topic at the moment. We discussed the virtual Milgram experiment, which uses virtual reality to simulate, using an avatar projected on a screen, the infamous Milgram experiment which measured the willingness of research participants to follow the orders of authority figures by administering (fictive) electrical shocks to a person in the next room whenever an incorrect answer to a question was given; cries of pain rang out as these “shocks” were administered, with researchers pushing the participant to continue. Some argued that the virtual version of this test posed no ethical dilemma, but I disagreed, for two reasons: (1) I wondered what the generalizabililty of the experiment could possibly be, since it concerns a virtual person and not a real human being, and (2) even if it is a useful study, I question the researcher’s ethics, since in the future we are more likely to interact with virtual avatars, and so encouraging people to treat these digital “beings” in anti-social ways could have a seriously negative impact on relationships between humans. (It reminded me of the central ethical and moral issues in the Cronenberg film eXistenZ.)

Recent research into media resources of interest groups are causing a re-thinking of Olson's "Logic".

OII Professor Helen Margetts talked with us about the expanding field of lab-type studies in political science and economics. One area that has received increasing levels of attention is the visibility of civic behavior. For example, researchers in the U.S. have found that people are more likely to vote if they know that their neighbors will find out whether they voted or not. Another interesting point — particularly to political scientists — was a comment about Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action, which described the difficulty of getting people to act in large groups, since people can free-ride on the efforts of others. Olson remarked, in a footnote, that if interest groups somehow controlled media resources, they could bring about this type of civic visibility and, perhaps, get around this free-riding problem. Recent research by Lupia & Sin (2003) argues that the Internet has provided this resource, requiring a re-thinking of the limitations Olson described.

SDP participants begin arriving for farewell dinner.

And the entire gang of SDP participants — along with a few staff, including our beloved programme director, Dr. Victoria Nash — sat down for a farewell dinner. A great way to say goodbye to new friends and colleagues! A very productive and intellectually encouraging two weeks. Thanks to all.

Week 1 catch-up: social networking with Pimm’s

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The first week of the OII program concluded yesterday. It was full of great presentations—here are a few examples.

The New Scientist analyzes academic citations of stem cell researchers using NodeXL.

Marc Smith and OII Research Fellow Dr. Bernie Hogan talked about how to apply social network theory to new political questions, by tracking, for example, Twitter hashtags pertaining to certain topics. The program they use has been developed in large part by these two. It works as an add-on to Excel, and is called NodeXL. You’ll need to be running the Windows version of Excel to make it work, but it can do an awful lot, with a pretty intuitive user interface. You can check out an example analysis undertaken by New Scientist magazine to look at academic citations among stem cell researchers. (There’s also a handy book available for those who want both an introduction to social network analysis and to the operation of NodeXL.)

Queensland University of Technology PhD student Mark Bilandzic gave a presentation on his work at QUT towards developing a hybrid space where library patrons could come and share their expertise with others through computer-mediated communication. For example, a visual-display panel could indicate where you are seated and what you are working on at a given time; the idea is to facilitate more fruitful and rewarding interactions in what might otherwise be quite sterile and quiet environments.

A French Minitel terminal.

Julian Mailland, a PhD student at the USC Annenberg School, talked about his research into how a state’s political values make their way into communications systems design—in particular the development of information protocol systems, such as the French Minitel. He compares this to the U.S.’s current stated goals to develop an “open Internet”, opening up creative routes for analysis. He also showed us some pretty great, geeky pictures of old ASCII art from the Minitel system.

And finally, a very social weekend was finished up with a BBQ at the home of OII Director and Professor William Dutton. First-timers to the UK discovered the inimitable and refreshing Pimm’s. A fitting end to the first week.

Day 2: The crowd on the couch

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Great second day, including the first of the presentations by fellow students.

"Deliberative democracy" (Credit: Robert Toth — http://bit.ly/oc1maS)

Earlier in the day, Prof. Stephen Coleman of the University of Leeds came for a conversation about creating opportunities online for democratic debate and deliberation. This line of research is led by those who hope that the Internet can provide a new space for such engagement, but the research results have been less-than-encouraging thus far, in part because governments haven’t taken up the cause. He finished his talk by posing two questions: (1) How do you, in a diverse and fragmented society, find online space to help influence policy or government?, and (2) How might you institutionalize these spaces so that they start to become effective habits for people to take part in this process?

My instinctual, American response was to say that there is good reason for us to be concerned about opening up a space where you might raise people’s expectations for having their every political whim met. That is, Americans have, since the framing of the Constitution, taken pains to limit the influence of the passions of the moment. (Exhibit A: The U.S. Senate.) The same “wisdom of the crowds” that powers Wikipedia might not be the same one you want making every political decision.

I enjoyed Prof. Coleman’s response: institutions — including potential online deliberative spaces — act, in general, to discipline people (in the “best sense of the word”) to understand and accept limitations. People don’t riot, he added, because they’ve deliberated with others and lost a vote in parliament, for example. In general, people riot when they feel that they have been ignored, or that their voice was heard but utterly disregarded.

Couch-surfing! (Credit: http://bit.ly/q0ftS6)

We also heard from PhD student Jun-E Tan about the role of trust and social capital in the “Couch-surfing” phenomenon, where people offer up a spare couch in their residence for people to stay without charge. She talked about how people present themselves in their couchsurfing.com profiles to convey the message that they are, first, not dangerous, and, second, trustworthy. They do this in many ways, one of which is by signaling that they consume products or hold values that indicate they are anti-racist and open-minded. Very interesting work!

Day 1: Of Memes and Meta

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Today began the annual Summer Doctoral Programme of the Oxford Internet Institute: an intensive two weeks of “study, discussion, reflection, and fun.” Very excited to participate.

Among the highlights today — aside from meeting a ton of compelling and friendly PhD candidates from all over — was a presentation by social networking scholar Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, who examines the actual mechanisms by which Internet use leads to political engagement. One very cool tool she showed us was the “MemeTracker“, which tracks phrases and quotes from online news and blog sources, producing a great visualization tool. Give it a look, especially if you paid close attention to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. (Remember “lipstick on a pig“?)

Visualization of key phrases/quotes by MemeTracker. (Credit: memetracker.org)

We concluded the day with a virtual conversation with Internet scholar Jonathan Zittrain, who — unless the six cups of coffee I’d consumed by that point were interfering with my judgement — is as humorous as he is prolific. And he loves meta… you meta lovers know who you are. Just for you, here’s a nice dose of meta, particularly for love-haters of modern TV journalism. Enjoy.

Facebook and the formation of interests

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Politics is largely about the formation of interests: what sort of associations does the law allow? What sorts of activities are organizations allowed to engage in? Are corporations and non-profit organizations regulated differently? Are there financial or other barriers to the formation of certain interests, such as limitations on formal labor organizations? Do social norms encourage certain categories of people to form associations, but discourage others from doing so?

A central topic of my research is how the Internet and other technologies have facilitated the formation of certain interests. Recently, I ran across a good example of an interest group that has formed, which would have been largely inconceivable.

This past week the U.S. State Department informed more than 22,000 Green Card (U.S. permanent resident permit) lottery applicants that they would not be awarded residency. They had previously been told they would. The State Department blamed a computer error.

A would-be American resident celebrates the news that he won the Green Card lottery—before he was notified it was cancelled due to a State Department computing error. The Arabic writing on the cake reads "America." (Credit: Facebook "22,000 Tears" page.)

In the past, this far-flung group would have serious difficulty coordinating to the point of being able to give an organizational form, and any sort of collective action, to their frustration. But they’ve used Facebook to show their frustration, their disappointment, and their desire to influence U.S. policymakers. A Facebook page — 22,000 Tears — shows photos, such as the one here, of some of the would-have-been American residents. Members are also organizing letter-writing drives and publicity campaigns to influence the press.

The State Department seems unlikely to be moved. But social networking allows individuals like this to exist not just alone in their sadness and anger, but in a group that can exert some degree of influence.