Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy

by Larry Diamond (Editor), Marc F. Plattner (Editor)

The revolutions sweeping the Middle East provide dramatic evidence of the role that technology plays in mobilizing citizen protest and upending seemingly invulnerable authoritarian regimes. A grainy cell phone video of a Tunisian street vendor’s self-immolation helped spark the massive protests that toppled longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Egypt’s "Facebook revolution" forced the ruling regime out of power and into exile. While such "liberation technology" has been instrumental in freeing Egypt and Tunisia, other cases—such as China and Iran—demonstrate that it can be deployed just as effectively by authoritarian regimes seeking to control the Internet, stifle protest, and target dissenters. This two-sided dynamic has set off an intense technological race between "netizens" demanding freedom and authoritarians determined to retain their grip on power. Liberation Technology brings together cutting-edge scholarship from scholars and practitioners at the forefront of this burgeoning field of study. An introductory section defines the debate with a foundational piece on liberation technology and is then followed by essays discussing the popular dichotomy of "liberation" versus "control" with regard to the Internet and the sociopolitical dimensions of such controls. Additional chapters delve into the cases of individual countries: China, Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia. This book also includes in-depth analysis of specific technologies such as Ushahidi—a platform developed to document human-rights abuses in the wake of Kenya’s 2007 elections—and alkasir—a tool that has been used widely throughout the Middle East to circumvent cyber-censorship. Liberation Technology will prove an essential resource for all students seeking to understand the intersection of information and communications technology and the global struggle for democracy. Contributors: Walid Al-Saqaf, Daniel Calingaert, Ronald Deibert, Larry Diamond, Elham Gheytanchi, Philip N. Howard, Muzammil M. Hussain, Rebecca MacKinnon, Patrick Meier, Evgeny Morozov, Xiao Qiang, Rafal Rohozinski, Mehdi Yahyanejad

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Larry Jay Diamond (born October 2, 1951) is a political sociologist and leading contemporary scholar in the field of democracy studies. He is a professor of Sociology and Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative policy think tank. At Stanford he teaches courses on democratic development and supervises the democracy program at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He has published extensively in the fields of foreign policy, foreign aid, and democracy.

Diamond is also a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is Stanford University’s main center for research on international issues. At the Institute Diamond serves as the director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. The CDDRL’s most recent accomplishment came in the spring of 2011 by building a technological community between Tahrir Square (Cairo, Egypt) and Silicon Valley (California Bay Area). This community was fully focused on helping mobilize protesters in Egypt who eventually helped in the downfall of autocratic president Hosni Mubarak.

Diamond has served as an advisor to numerous governmental and international organizations at various points in his life, including the United States Department of State, United Nations, World Bank, and U.S. Agency for International Development. He is a founding co-editor of the National Endowment for Democracy's Journal of Democracy. He is also a coordinator of the Hoover Institution's Iran Democracy Project, along with Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul.

Reviews

[Depaul University Libraries · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the past few years there has been a surge in political and social movements around the globe fueled in part by the proliferation of Information and Communications Technologies. Decades-long dictatorships have been overthrown and censorship policies challenged as more and more people demand greater rights and liberties. Social Media has served as an invaluable tool in many of these movements, providing a simple and inexpensive means to communicate, organize, and exchange ideas. However, these technologies are also being used by more authoritarian regimes to control the Internet and prevent protests from developing. In the recently published Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, Larry Diamond and Marx Plattner present a collection of thought-provoking essays on social media and their complicated role in contemporary political and social movements. Liberation Technology is available at the John T. Richardson Library, Call Number: 303.4833 L6954.

--Geoff P.

[José Porto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book. I think describe very well the reality and the power not just the social networks, but the internet in all of its dimensions.

When the author describe what happened in some countries and what is happening in others; what the people got because of the social networks usage, and what the internet makes in favor of the freedom of the people, or even what is doing against them because of the manipulation of it from the autocratic governments. Let me see and perceive an idea of what will be the participative democracy in a very close future.

Let me think how we could use the internet for the most pure and laudable purposes in purees democracies or how will be use for the bad from autocratic or demagogic governments against the people.

Anyway the author is a pioneer in this new matter that we should start to think about in a more careful manner, and very soon, more frequently because in the internet will be the future of all democracies.

[Tak Ip]

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