Jared Cohen - The New Digital Age

Staging a revolt used to be exclusive to the subset of individuals with the right weapons, international backing and training. Much of this exclusivity has been shattered as communication technologies break down age, gender, socioeconomic and circumstantial barriers that previously prevented individuals from taking part. Citizens will no longer experience injustice in isolation or solitude, and this globalized feedback loop where people all around the world can comment and react will inspire many populations to stand up and make their feelings known. As the revolutions of the Arab Spring demonstrated, once the so-called fear barrier has been broken down and a government appears newly vulnerable, many otherwise obedient or quiet citizens don’t hesitate to join in. One of the positive consequences of social media in the Arab revolutions, for example, was that women were able to play a much greater role, given the choice of expressing themselves on social networks when going to the streets was too risky (although many women did take the physical risk). In some countries, people will occasionally organize protests online or in the streets every day, simply because they can. We saw this when we visited Libya in 2012. As we met with ministers in the transitional government in Tripoli, they mentioned casually that there were small groups of protesters nearly every morning. Were they worried?, we asked. Some were, but others shook their heads, almost chuckling, and said it was a natural reaction after more than forty years of oppression.

Virtual space offers new avenues for dissent and participation, as well as new protections for potential revolutionaries. For the most part, dissidents will find their world safer due to the mass adoption of communication technologies, despite the fact that the physical risks they face will not change. (Nor will connectivity shield all activists equally; in countries where the government is very technically capable, dissidents may feel as vulnerable online as they do on the streets.) Arrests, harassment, torture and extrajudicial killings will not disappear, but overall, the anonymity of the Internet and the networked power of communication technologies will provide activists and would-be participants with a new layer of protective insulation that encourages them to continue on.

Certain technological developments will assist activists and dissidents significantly. Accurate real-time translation software enables information-sharing beyond borders. Reliable electronic access to outside information and to diaspora communities helps counter intentionally misleading state narratives and amplifies the size of the support base in a demonstrable way. And secure electronic platforms that facilitate money transfers or information exchange further connect protesters to outside sources of support without compromising their current position.

In these new revolutionary movements, there will be more part-time and anonymous activists than today, simply because citizens will have greater agency over when and how they rebel. Once, being a revolutionary entailed total personal commitment, but today, and even more so in the future, multifaceted technological platforms will allow some to participate full time while others contribute on their lunch breaks. Activists in the future will benefit from the collective knowledge of other activists and people around the world, particularly when it comes to protecting themselves—secure protocols, encryption tools and other forms of electronic security will be more widely available and understood. Most of the people who will come online in the next decade live under autocratic or semi-autocratic governments, and history suggests that theocracies, personality cults and dictatorships are much harder to maintain in an era of expanding information dissemination; one only need recall the contributory role of the glasnost (“openness”) policy to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the end, we’ll see a pattern emerge across the world in which populations with access to virtual space and new information will continually protest against their repressive or non-transparent governments online, in effect making the state of revolutionary gestures permanent.

Connectivity will change how we view opposition groups in the future. Tangible organizations and parties will still operate inside countries, but the profusion of new participants in the virtual town square will dramatically reshape the activists’ landscape. Most people will not identify themselves with a single cause but instead will join multiple issue-based movements spread over many countries. This trend will both help and frustrate campaign organizers, for it will be easier to estimate and visualize their support network but it will be less clear how interested and committed each participant is. In countries where freedom of assembly is limited or denied, the opportunity to communicate and plan in virtual space will be a godsend, irrespective of who joins in. But generally, it will be up to those in leadership positions to make the strategic decision as to whether their movements actually have the support of the masses, rather than being a very large echo chamber.

For opposition groups, the online world offers new possibilities for critical tasks like fund-raising and branding. Organizations may choose to present themselves differently in different corners of the Internet to reach different demographics. A Central Asian resistance group might downplay its religious overtones and champion its liberal positions while on English-language platforms dominated by Western users, and then do the opposite on the networks within its own region. This is not unlike what the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties do today, or how Al Jazeera’s autonomous English- and Arabic-language operations differ in tone and coverage. (For one example: On a designated day of protest in the early stage of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Al Jazeera English was quick to report on the number of protester deaths but, oddly, the Al Jazeera Arabic website did not, focusing instead on a minor overture by Bashar al-Assad to the country’s Kurdish minority. Some analysts suggested that the disparity was due to the Arabic station’s political deference to Iran, Syria’s ally and a neighbor of Qatar, the home of Al Jazeera.)

While the branding possibilities for these groups grow, the old model of an opposition organization is shifting: Groups today have websites instead of offices; followers and members instead of staff; and they use free and publicly available platforms that liberate them from many fixed costs. There will be so many of these digital fronts in the future that competition for attention between groups around the world will grow fierce.

The profusion of new voices online and the noise they’ll generate will require all of us to adjust our definition of a dissident. After all, not everyone who speaks his or her mind online—which to some degree is almost everyone with an Internet connection—can be branded a dissident. The people who surface in the next wave of dissident leaders will be the ones who can command a following and crowd-source their online support, who have demonstrable skill with digital marketing tools, and, critically, who are willing to put themselves physically in harm’s way. Digital activism, especially when done remotely or with anonymity, lowers the stakes for would-be protesters, so true leaders will distinguish themselves by taking on physical risks that their virtual supporters cannot or will not. And it’s more likely than not that those who have deep knowledge of constitutional reform, institution building and governance issues but lack the tech savvy of other activists will run the risk of being left behind, finding it difficult to stand out in a virtual crowd and to prove their value to new, young leaders (who may fail to understand the true relevance of their experience).