Palestinian Education System

The very nature of the internet, and the fact that its core features are so different to those of previous media, has led to a long discussion about the net’s effects on society and democracy. It is well known that the internet’s structure as a decentralised and

rhizomatic network of networks promotes a radically different mode of private and public communication to the one we had been used to until recently. As Newhagen and Rafaeli (1996) note, hypertextuality, packet switching, synchronicity and interactivity make up the internet’s “architecture” – its DNA so to speak. Online communication can be anonymous and personalised (narrowcasting) as opposed to the top-down model of mass

communication through printed press and broadcast media. Furthermore, the internet combines and integrates text, image and sound (multimedia) in a digital, virtual

environment potentially beyond temporal and spatial boundaries. The boundaries

between the public and the private, and those between the central and the peripheral can also be blurred in the virtual world (Mitra 2001).

The dual role of the mass media as the de facto public sphere, i.e. as the space in which debate on public affairs takes place, and also as a “fourth estate” scrutinising the three formal branches of government, was noted in the previous chapter. Given the traits just outlined, the potential of the internet to become a new, democratic public sphere (Poster 1995), i.e. a central space of political debate and a channel of interactive communication

between government and citizens, and between citizens themselves, is striking, as is its potential as a facilitator of direct civic action. Several studies have applied Habermas’

criteria of universal access, rational-critical deliberation and equal participation onto the internet (e.g. Dahlberg 2001a, 2001b, 2001c).

This potentially perfect match can only really be understood if we go back to the principles of citizenship and community. As Coleman (2004: 14) notes:

“To be a citizen… is to enter a communicative relationship with the social world… It is because people’s experiences and interests are always disconnected from one another that the binding ties of citizenship perform such a vital social function, for there can be no community without communication, no citizenship without the prospect of connecting with strangers”.

Therefore, civic participation is fundamentally a communicative process.

Subsequently, it could be argued that if our means of (civic) communication are changing, then perhaps the substance and process of civic participation might be altered. For instance, Oblak (2003) claims that“expanding participation practices to include new digital, more interactive facilities, formed on the basis of the new

information services and computer networks, challenges existing understandings of the idea of political participation itself”. The web is known as a “pull” medium – in contrast to “push” broadcast media – because it is structured around the user’s conscious choice of source and retrieval of information out of a virtually endless pool of data. Thus the net could potentially be a better gauge of citizens’ political

preferences and activities than previous outlets without the arguably distorting mediation of editors, pollsters and gatekeepers.

If, indeed, the internet can be the carrier of such fundamental change in the political status quo, then that could have profound consequences in terms of power structures and hierarchies. Hacker (1996a) argues that moving away from broadcasting to

interactivity requires that we build new systems that are grounded in transparency and feedback:

“Linear communication supports traditional power structures resting on active leaders and quiescent citizens. Interactive communication creates more symmetry in communication between leaders and citizens. This shifts the balance of power and is a threat to leaders who wish to remain elitist in their administration. Interactive approaches to political communication expand the public sphere and decrease the elite sphere of power and influence”.

On closer inspection, though, it appears that the constituting elements of cyberspace are markedly different – even contrasting – to those of democracy. The logistics and

complexities of contemporary policy-making and public administration processes require a finite space in which meaningful civic communication can develop. This, in turn,

requires the setting of rules as well as boundaries of some sort, i.e. drawing a line between those included in and excluded from that process and “imagined community”

(Anderson 1991). Democracy as we know it requires at least two fundamental elements in order for the demos to hold power: (a) spatial boundaries delineating the community and (b) a set of rules constituting the community.

Yet, cyberspace by its nature is resistant to the existence of both a finite geographical space and rules. According to Katz (1998: 103) there is a “lack of fit between geopolitical boundaries and the boundaries defined by the new media technology”; Holmes (2002) concurs noting that “[s]tate-bound kinds of citizenship cannot be considered coterminous with the kinds of citizenship which are achieved on the Internet”. Holmes does indicate that a global sense of citizenship is possible. Similarly, Poster (1999: 236) calls the net a

“paranational culture that combines global connectivity with local specificity, a “glocal”

phenomenon that seems to resist national political agendas and to befuddle national political leaderships”.

These profound matches and mismatches between cyberspace and democracy, which were charted during an era of fast and global technological and social change, allowed for the development of quite radical discourses highlighting either the revolutionary change or the disastrous impact caused by the medium, starting in the late 1980s and receding somewhat in the late 1990s. Typical of the former, optimistic view are

contributions such as the early writings of Rheingold (e.g. 1993, 2002) predicting the rise of virtual communities and smart mobs, and the work of organisations such as the

Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT). More recently proponents of the Open Source movement claim that “the Free Software experiment successfully undermines the private property rights based form of ownership” (Pedersen 2004: 11).

The critique of that thesis has been equally powerful and grand in its predictive scope.

Jones (1996) argued that the creation of a global polity aiming at securing universal rights could act as a catalyst for the formation of a “World State”: “There can be no universal cyberspace. A total war between limited sovereignties and global tyranny lies before us”. Other scholars stress the dangers and negative effects allegedly caused by the technological revolution, e.g. social isolation, the loss of face-to-face contact, the compromise of our privacy and freedom, the multiplication of libellous or factually incorrect messages, the fragmentation of the democratic domain leading to inequality and lack of collective identity (Virilio 1997).

The fear is that democracy will crumble “as the social fabric of society becomes fragmented and people become more isolated from one another” (Fisher and Wright 2001: 4; also Castells 1998, Nie and Erbring 2000, Uslaner 2004). Katz has repeatedly (e.g. 1998) argued that the multiplication of new media technologies is leading to the segmentation of the public sphere and the loss of collective identity and shared experience. Zizek (2006: 30) warns that “the hype of freedom on the web masks both disparities of power and the dangers of blurring real and virtual identities”. Finally, the internet’s reach, anonymity and lack of gatekeeping makes it particularly conducive to extremism; the proliferation of websites and forums harbouring fundamentalist causes and promoting radical practices demonstrates the potential for civic empowerment that is not necessarily benevolent (Banaji 2008a).

However, the interpenetration of online and offline practices, as well as the vastness of the factors at play, make the quest for a “black or white” effect futile. Fisher and Wright

(2001: 1) have called that discussion “ideologically charged, filled as much with the hopes and fears of individual authors as with the reality of the medium’s effects”.

Similarly, Stevenson (2000: 204) highlights the technologically deterministic nature of many of these claims: “it is as if they have allowed themselves to [be] defined by the discourse of the other, and in doing so have robbed us of a future defined by political agency”. International surveys, such as the one carried out by Norris (2001) found on the one hand a substantial and growing digital divide across and within nations, and on the other hand a consistent relationship between civic engagement and use of online political resources. Hence, it is becoming increasingly clear that the relationship between the internet and democracy is one which involves complex and multiple dynamics and one that has been posing a series of opportunities and challenges.