Jared Cohen - The New Digital Age

We’ve seen this already with the self-fulfilling prophecies of “buzz-worthy” American presidential candidates. Herman Cain, a relative unknown outside the business world, became highly visible for a period in the 2012 presidential campaign, and he was treated as a serious contender by some despite his political unsuitability for the position—something that revealed itself slowly over weeks, but surely would have been discovered instantly had he been vetted by the party establishment. Political celebrities like Cain will exist in multitudes in future revolutionary movements because flash-in-the-pan charismatic figures who have a strong online presence will rise to the top of the pile most quickly. Without the experience of taking political heat, these revolutionary celebrities are likely to be thin-skinned and will be exposed easily if there is no substance behind their flash.

How opposition movements handle the challenge of finding sustainable leaders will depend on where they are and how many resources they have. In countries where the revolutionary movements are underfunded and under the nose of the regime, pruning the crowds to find genuine leaders will be difficult. In well-resourced and more autonomous movements, however, a crop of consultants might well identify born leaders and subsequently help develop the skills and networks they need. Unlike the run-of-the-mill political consultants of today, these people will have degrees in engineering and cognitive psychology; technical skills; and a much firmer grasp of how to use data to build and fine-tune a political figure. They will take a promising candidate whose prominence exceeds his credentials and measure his political potential through a variety of means: feeding his speeches and writing through complex feature-extraction 1and trend-analysis software suites, mapping his brain function to determine how he handles stress or temptation, and employing sophisticated diagnostics to assess the weak parts of his political repertoire.

Many activist groups and organizations will project a virtual front that is far grander than their physical reality. Imagine a new opposition group being formed just days after a revolution in Algeria, which successfully recruits brilliant digital marketers and designers from the Algerian diaspora in Marseille. The core group consists of only five members, all twenty-somethings barely out of college with almost no prior exposure to politics. Their organization has no track record, but with its sophisticated digital platform they appear to the Algerian public competent, highly motivated and widely networked. In reality, they are disorganized, lacking in vision and wholly unprepared to take on any real responsibility. For groups like this, the dissonance between online presentation and actual operational capability will cause delays and friction within emergent movements. In extreme circumstances, we could see an entire movement that, online, looks like a genuine threat to a regime, when in fact its efforts represent little more than a clever use of technology and actually pose no threat whatsoever. By raising expectations and creating false hope around a movement’s prospects for success, opposition groups that can’t ultimately rise to meet the challenge may do more harm than good, serving as a costly distraction for the rest of the population.

No doubt every revolution in history has had its share of organizational weaknesses and false prophets, yet in the future, such flaws run the risk of heightening public disenchantment with opposition groups to an extreme degree. If society at large loses faith in a rising movement and its ability to deliver, that’s enough to stifle a transformative opportunity. When combined with the instability of leadership, dissonance between the physical and virtual fronts will thoroughly curtail a movement’s prospects for support and success in any given country. The consequence of having more citizens informed and connected is that they’ll be as critical and discerning about rebels as they are about the government.

This critical eye toward potential opposition forces will have consequences for returning exiles and members of the diaspora, too. Typically, exiles parachute into a country with international support but a limited grasp of the needs and desires of their home population. This disconnection from the realities on the ground has manifested itself in some public flameouts (like onetime Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi) and very public struggles (like those of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan). On one hand, greater connectivity will decrease the gap between the diaspora communities and the population at home, so returning exiles seeking to have an impact on the revolutionary process will find themselves better suited to connect with local actors. On the other hand, the populations at home will be better informed about the exiles who return (who, no doubt, will have generated long trails of data online about their background and activities), and this information will be used to shape narratives about them before they arrive.

Imagine a prominent Eritrean diaspora member, who made a fortune in the Western media industry, gathering a large virtual constituency with lots of online supporters, both internationally and at home. He might find it difficult to create a physical constituency in Eritrea, since many local citizens might be skeptical of his background or his ties to international media. Promises that played well on the international circuit, and with his online audience, might ring hollow to the population back home. Returning to his country expecting to find a path cleared for his political future, he could well watch his promising head start wash away as locals spurn him in favor of a leadership contender they can relate to better.

Successful leaders with ties to the diaspora will be the ones who adopt a sort of hybrid model, whereby the desires of the virtual and physical constituencies are both addressed and somehow reconciled. Winning over and making use of both those groups will be a challenge, but it will be critical for sustainable leadership in the digital age.

A wave of revolutionary false starts will lead successive generations to demand from their opposition groups not only vision but a detailed blueprint of how they intend to build a new country. Such expectations will be true particularly for newer dissident organizations that, in the absence of a track record, still have to demonstrate their bona fides to the public. This follows naturally in the footsteps of technology trends like greater transparency and free access to information. Potential supporters will act more like consumers, less swayed by political ideals than by marketing and product details. There will be more avenues to become a leader (at least in name) and with so many leadership candidates and so little to go on, people will bestow and withdraw their loyalty with ruthless calculation. But competition is as healthy for opposition groups as it is for companies.

Would-be demonstrators looking for a leader will expect any serious opposition group to do its institution-building online, including indicating who the ministers will be, how the security apparatus will be organized, and how goods and services will be delivered. Today, particularly in countries where connectivity is slow to spread, opposition leaders can make vague statements and give assurances that they know what they’re doing, but an informed public in the future will demand the details. To the extent that opposition groups exist before a revolution begins—whether in the country itself or in exile—they would be wise to genuinely prepare themselves. Proofs of preparedness to govern will be more than an exercise; the designs will be taken literally as the foundation of a new system. Any opposition group unwilling to produce them or unable to execute them effectively might find lingering praise for its community-organizing skills, but its leadership and governance credentials would certainly be called into question.