The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

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The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom Pub. Date: 2/28/2012 Publisher: PublicAffairs

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Overview

“The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire?

In this spirited book, journalist and social commentator Evgeny Morozov shows that by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder—not easier—to promote democracy. Buzzwords like “21st-century statecraft” sound good in PowerPoint presentations, but the reality is that “digital diplomacy” requires just as much oversight and consideration as any other kind of diplomacy.

Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of “Internet freedom” might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.

Editorial Reviews

Lee Siegel

As Evgeny Morozov demonstrates in The Net Delusion, his brilliant and courageous book, the Internet's contradictions and confusions are just becoming visible through the fading mist of Internet euphoria. Morozov is interested in the Internet's political ramifications. "What if the liberating potential of the Internet also contains the seeds of depoliticization and thus dedemocratization?" he asks. The Net delusion of his title is just that. Contrary to the "cyberutopians," as he calls them, who consider the Internet a powerful tool of political emancipation, Morozov convincingly argues that, in freedom's name, the Internet more often than not constricts or even abolishes freedom.
—The New York Times

Library Journal

Morozov (contributing editor, Foreign Policy), currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University, here examines the evolving role of the Internet in activism, dissent, and authoritarian regimes. He investigates the impact of a range of media on social revolution and activism from television in East Germany to Twitter during Iran's Green Revolution, intertwining that analysis with discussion of the ways governments are able to use the Internet for surveillance of political activity, propaganda dissemination, and censorship. In his complex examination, he analyzes the effect of the proliferation of available entertainment and access to consumer goods on the potential for political activity, arguing that opening societies to further consumerism and to Western cultural media has in some ways deterred political activism. Morozov's argument that the West conflates democratization with consumerism uncovers a critique of the West here for its complacent belief that the Internet and supposed freedom of information is a certain pathway to democratization. VERDICT Highly recommended and likely to be popular with political observers, policy wonks, activists, information junkies, and academics. [See also The Offensive Internet, reviewed on page opposite.—Ed.]—Candice A. Kail, Columbia Univ. Libs., New York

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Kirkus Reviews

In his debut, Foreign Policy contributing editor Morozov pulls the Internet into sharp focus, exposing the limits of its inner logic, its reckless misuse and the dangerous myopia of its champions.

The author provides a damaging assessment of domestic and foreign Internet policy that remains entertaining despite its dour warnings. As the Internet becomes more widely available in remote corners of the world, writers Morozov, it becomes harder to regulate. Even without a blueprint or common grammar, policymakers, social critics and social scientists tend to embrace online communication as an emancipatory political mechanism that promotes democracy. Everywhere, commentators focus on the amazing revolutionary potential of the Internet to broadcast political struggle, rather than the political struggle itself. In 2009, thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran to protest what they saw as the fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Armed with smartphones and Twitter accounts, protestors were able to reach the world in a matter of minutes, and images of police brutality quickly reached the Internet-surfing world via Facebook and Twitter. When the initial exuberance behind the "Twitter revolution" waned, the Iranian government used the same social-networking sites, even YouTube, to identify and arrest would-be insurrectionists. As the Internet proves ineffective in the struggle for global democratic revolution, it expertly transforms entire populations into passive consumers of commercial mass media, revealing one of the most fundamental of political problems: motivation. Assuming that the Internetcanbe regulated, how can it promote global democracy while the world's connected millions are surfing YouTube for funny cat videos? It's a hopeless battle, but despite the immeasurable barriers to Internet-driven democracy, Morozov still believes the Internetcanbe used to promote democracy, as long as new policies are unbiased, realistic and cognizant of the connections between the Internet, local political contexts and foreign-policy agendas. Easier said than done.

A serious consideration of the online world that sparkles with charm and wit.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781610391061
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication date: 2/28/2012
Pages: 448
Sales rank: 172,657
Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.10 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Evgeny Morozov is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and Boston Review and a Schwartz Fellow at the New American Foundation. Morozov is currently also a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He was previously a Yahoo! Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Open Society Institute in New York, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. Morozov’s writings have appeared in the Economist, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Boston Globe, Slate, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the San Francisco Chronicle, Prospect, Dissent, and many other publications.

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