Presentation on technology and social change by Evgeny Morozov at one of the thematic sessions at the Skoll World Forum 2009 in Oxford

1. Technology and Social Change
Re-examining 3 Key Assumptions
By Evgeny Morozov
@ World Skoll Forum 2009

2. Assumptions
Assumptions
1. Data Will Organize Itself
2. Technology Will Democratize Our Public Sphere
3. Civil Society Will Flourish on the Web

3. Assumption #1:
Data Will Organize Itself

4. Semantic Health Search: CureHunter

5. CureHunter.com - II

6. Hakia: Curated/Verified Health Search

7. Aggregation is cheap; curation isn't

8. Growing availability of user-contributed data

9. Predicting Epidemics with Flu Trends

10. Tracking Crime with WikiCrimes

11. Tracking Crises with WikiMapAid

12. Tracking Conflict with Ushahidi

13. Can We Trust User-Submitted Data?

14. Determining “trusted” content

15. Assumption # 2
Technology will democratize our public sphere

16. I. Does Internet Breed Polarization?

17. Shared National Experiences

18. “Shared National Experience”? No, thanks

19. Blogs add more value
Ashley Esarey, based on 2006 data/500 blogs

20. II. Does Deliberation Come at the Cost of
Participation?

21. Pajamahadeen vs Movement Builders

22. There's less politics online than we think

23. Deliberation vs Participation in the US
Blog-readers: as polarized as US senators

(more polarized than TV news audiences/non-
blog readers)
Cross-cutting exposure to blogs with

different ideological positions doesn't lower
participation (especially on the left)
Farrell et al. (2008)

24. III. Is New Media More Participatory
and Democratic?

25. Anyone can contribute but not everyone
does...
Wikipedia: 1% of users responsible for half of the

site's edits
Digg: top 100 users responsible for half of the

site's top stories
98% chance your submission won't make the

Digg frontpage today

26. Gameabiliy and astroturfing; notable
clients

27. Masses vs Elites

28. Top political bloggers vs top columnists
elite education: 66% of columnists vs 73 % of

bloggers
doctoral degrees: 20% of columnists vs more

than 50% of bloggers
columnists score better on gender/ethnic balance

Top bloggers far better educated than CEOs of

American companies
Matthew Hindman, Myth of Digital Democracy (2009)

29. Assumption # 3
Civil Society Will Flourish on the Web

30. Does technology erode state power?
“The role of the nation state will change
dramatically and there will be no more room for
nationalism than there is for smallpox...many of
the values of a nation-state will give way to
those of both larger and smaller electronic
communities...”
Being Digital (1996), Nicolas Negroponte

31. 1. Nationalists

32. 2. Anti-vaccination
2007 study by U of Toronto: 153 YouTube
videos about vaccination and immunization.
More than half of the videos portrayed
vaccinations negatively or ambiguously.
Of those videos, almost half contained
messages that contradict the 2006 Canadian
Immunization Guide

33. 3. Corporations
Aggressive SEO/Removing Complaints

34. Online Doesn't Always Mean Louder

35. Politics of Censorship are Global
Censorship campaigns in UK, Australia, Canada
give extra legitimacy to campaigns in China,
Thailand, Vietnam...

36. Thailand: Crowdsourcing Censorship

37. Democratization of “cyber-attacks”


38. “Digital Refugees”

39. Exiled media from Burma

40. Russian LGBT online community+US

41. Dictators Don't Necessarily Hate the Web

42. “Spinternet” of China, Russia, Iran

43. China's 50 Cent Party (wumaodang)
~280,000 members
Regular National/Local Trainings
“Priority” Sites Required to Cooperate

44. Russia: “New Media Stars” start-up

45. Iran: Spinning Religious Discourse
“Bureau for the Development of Religious Web
Logs” established at the Religious School of
Qom in 2006
350 teachers and clergy in Qom were trained,
with at least 800 students
Particular concern: blogging women

46. Thank you!
Email: evgeny.morozov@gmail.com