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The Ethics of Representation and the Internet
Introduction
There is no doubt that the Internet, more than any other media, has widened the information landscape in the global world. This holds true because of the unprecedented and emerging rapid connectivity from the widespread availability of Internet technology. The Internet remains a major medium through which information on world affairs (politics, economy, education, religion, culture, business, medicine, etc.) is disseminated. It is a bearer of messages that influence our dispositions and ways of thinking. With users being active participants in online activities, the Internet cannot be considered a passive venue for the dissemination of information. It not only shapes the everyday lives of users, but it is also constantly in the making. There is no doubt that networking through the Internet has proved indispensable. It is common to say that we live in a global village. The Internet globalizes the local and localizes the global in such a way that one can read about events happening elsewhere; and activities in one’s backyard are circulated with dispatch beyond frontiers. It has become a medium that erases time and space. Various religious, marginal cultural, and diasporic groups are making their voices heard on the Internet, through self-representation; rather than outsider representation. In principle, freedom of self-representation, more than ever, is open to many. The importance of the Internet in our everyday lives cannot be over emphasized. CNN reported in mid-December 2008 on a survey in the United States in which people were asked to choose whether to give up the Internet or sex. The majority of people surveyed chose to give up sex. They said that Internet is better than sex. It has been widely reported in the American press that President Barack Obama successfully used the Internet for campaigning and fundraising during his election bid. His use of the Internet was said to be unprecedented. However, in spite of the touted good tidings arising from the Internet, there are troubling concerns that call for attention. It appears that the producers of Internet programs are so given to commercialization that consideration of ethics suffers a major blow. The spirit of the neoliberal economy tends to overshadow ideals. There is an expressed anxiety, sometimes, on the incompetence of those behind materials displayed on the net. Also worrying is the imbalance in the flow of information between northern and southern nations. In this case, Africa is mentioned as lagging behind in providing information on the Internet to the rest of the world. These concerns are posers for the authenticity of representation in cyberspace. I argue in this work that discerning the issue of representation and authenticity on the Internet requires cyberliteracy; which means more than knowing just how to use the Internet. Problematizing the concept of authenticity reveals how issues of representation, especially cultural and religious, should be approached without giving in to naiveté. This is vital in tracking the revolution taking place through the Internet.
Internet Technology: An Unparalleled Revolution
Internet technology is grandly revolutionary. Users, though diverse in nature, actively create content for the medium and are transforming the technology and as well being transformed by it. However, the Internet is a double-edged sword that has both merits and demerits.
Like many others, I see the Internet as an unprecedented and immeasurable revolution that spreads with unimaginable speed. It is as epoch-changing as Gutenberg’s printing press. However, it is also quite different from Gutenberg’s revolution in writing and printing. Gutenberg has been credited with transcending orality through the art of writing and printing, but the pace of that revolution was slow and steady. According to Newby (2004, p. 45), it took many centuries for this revolution to be felt in all parts of the globe. However, the Internet, within a short period of time, and in varying degrees, has reached everywhere. The Internet is not only unique in the speed with which it spread. It has also changed the global equation in all walks of life be it democracy, economy, education, or religion. It is apropos here to quote directly from Dawson (2004, p. 385) thus:
Media are not neutral or passive conduits for the transfer of information. They mold the message in ways that crucially influence the world views we construct. They adjust our self-conceptions, notions of human relations and community, and the nature of reality itself. Unlike previous media, however, the Internet has blossomed almost overnight, and its astonishing growth is proceeding at an accelerating pace.
Much is contained in this passage. Primarily, it acknowledges how the Internet is both bearer and the message. Users of the Internet cannot pretend neutrality. Human relationship is profoundly altered. Dawson (2004, p. 386) argues further that the Internet is very interactive, relatively less expensive to use and truly global in outreach. The interactivity engendered by the Internet is unsurpassed in the history of communication. Time and space are shrinking in its wake. In the mind of Mitra (2002, p. 27), people are spared long waits for information. This happens because the “traditional boundaries and hurdles to information availability simply evaporate” in the widened horizon of cyberspace. Even those confined by geography, like Al-Qaeda, can reach out to the world and create global events.
The walls hampering communication circulation are breaking down with the presence of Internet. An unforeseeable era of freedom of interaction and communication has come upon humanity. Dawson (2004, p. 389) describes this freedom as an “escape from the established restrictions” rampant in various societies. Any person with a little computer knowledge can launch a webpage. This freedom constantly defies regulations. Nevertheless, a lack of control of the web means that anything enlightening, humorous, or unsavory, can be discovered there. Many voices can and do surge forward about various issues; however rules for detecting valid or authentic material remain elusive. The challenge posed by the competing voices on the net is for that which is most appealing to a searcher at a particular time rather than what is true, useful, or authentic. This means that the apparent authentic voice, as Mitra calls it, may not be the truly authentic one. Mitra (2002, p. 28) says: “In cyberspace it is the discursive power of the speakers that becomes most important.” Moreover, even when netizens are able to determine the real voice to trust, they must also pay attention to the fact that the speaker can tailor his/her message to appeal to prejudice or preconceptions. According to Mitra, “trustworthy voices bring the ideological baggage that implicates the speaking positions.” Weighing representations and other materials on the Internet urgently calls for vigorous action.
The response of netizens to this call for urgency may not be uniform. They do not all share the same attitudes or dispositions. Dawson (2004, p. 393) relying on the work of Annette Markham, identifies three ways by which users relate to the Internet. The first group sees the Internet as a tool that is merely used. For the second group the Internet is more than a tool; it is a home or an environment where one lives with others. The third group is similar to the second, in which the Internet is integral and coterminous with one’s life, but with this group, indispensability and inseparability of the Internet from human activities is underscored. Using these three categories of users, it is clear that the ability to judge the authenticity of representation online greatly depend on the group one belongs to.
The first category of users could be said to exhibit narrow mindedness by taking the Internet as a mere tool (see Karaflogka, 2002, p. 288; Scheifinger, 2008, p. 234). It makes it dangerous since users can easily fall prey to negative impacts of the online materials. As aforementioned, cyberspace is not neutral. If that is the fact, how can the Internet be a mere tool to be used? For instance, the second category of users would be very unlikely to bother about the dividing line between virtuality and reality. As a matter of fact, there is no demarcation between real and virtual for this group. Everything found on the Internet is real; hence the urgency we already advocated for would matter less to this group. Definitely, the concern of authenticity of representation makes no difference. I think Brody’s warning of information naiveté could be useful for this class of users in their disposition towards the Internet. According Brody (2008, p. 1124) information naiveté is the willingness of netizens to accept everything online to be valid. This type of disposition is dangerous according to Brody (2008, p. 1125) because “the electronic information environment encourages the delivery of bits of information that have been removed from their contexts.” Hackett (2006, p. 73) concurs: “As professors we are supposed to warn our students of the trivial, if not duplicitous, content of many websites.” Hackett is a distinguished professor in the study of religion at the University of Tennessee in America and is very much concerned about information naiveté as she acknowledges that in cyberspace, a thin line exists between reality and virtuality. The undeniable actuality of the high possibility of trivial material being available online should discourage any form of information naiveté. The third group may be better equipped and enabled to evaluate the authenticity of online materials. Conceiving cyberspace as part and parcel of their lives, may motivate them to approach it with critical seriousness.
These three categories of netizens are not exhaustive. Mitra’s (2002, 29) push beyond classification on how netizens behave on the Internet, is helpful here. First, Mitra agrees that neither pessimistic nor optimistic perspectives on the Internet are tenable. Pessimistic attitudes lead to information-rejection – with every representation in cyberspace considered untrustworthy. However, adopting an optimistic perspective seems to require a positive disposition to accord validity to any voice on the Internet that is confirmed as credible. According to Mitra, it is more realistic to strike a midpoint between pessimistic and optimistic perspectives, since neither of the two is fully realizable. I would even suggest that we go beyond classification of users. It could happen that a user of the Internet drifts between one perspective and the other. At one moment he behaves as if the Internet were a mere tool; at another time, as if it is more than a tool. Use actually occurs along a continuum of effort uses. Ultimately, it is important for netizens to be cyber-literate to discover the immensity and complexity of the Internet. The open possibility of the cyberspace is still nascent. The ability of Internet audiences to judge the authentic representation online needs enormous effort.
Problematizing the Concept of Authenticity
It is the intention here to veer into the problematic nature of the concept of authenticity. It is not to be taken for granted that its meaning is easily understood. For instance, does authenticity imply originality? Equally, how does originality remain unaffected and for how long? If changes occur in the original over the course of time, does it make what was authentic inauthentic?
The concept of authenticity subsists in fluidity. What it meant in one era changes over time, as does context. It is an indication that the concept itself is still in the making. Emphasis on authenticity appears to be recent. According to Starn (2002, p. 8), the sharpened attention paid to the idea of authenticity emerged in the 1990s. For him, historically, there was no clear precedence in the construction of the concept of authenticity. What Starn referred to was the policy started by the World Heritage Group to determine monuments that would qualify for inclusion on the World Heritage list. He tried to show how difficult it was to arrive at the criteria for evaluating an authentic monument. As Starn (2002, p. 3) writes, “the concept of authenticity is fuzzy and an easy target for criticism.” There were some monuments that were repaired in an attempt to preserve them. This mending process generated heated debate as to whether the amended monuments were still original. There no were quick solutions to the tension. The uneasy tension could make some suggest giving up the idea of authenticity.
In the mind of Adam Phillips, the idea of authenticity is difficult to pin point due to the contention surrounding it. Phillips (2007, p. 37) however, argues that the essentialistic understanding of authenticity may not be relevant anymore. There was a time then when authenticity was viewed in terms of valuable essences. Phillips (2007, p. 38) likens authenticity to the idea of phantom-limb effect, where “an absence acknowledged through an apparent presence – is clearly at work in the idea of authenticity.” Phillips discredited what he was made to believe as child that he had a true and authentic self. To his dismay later on life, he discovered that there is nothing like a given authentic self. Phillips shows how the tone of authenticity has changed in the three examples used in “The authenticity issues.” (Phillips, 2007). The first example was that of the poet John Clare who saw authenticity as ascription. The feeling of pleasure and pain in what he read during childhood had an impact on him because he allowed them authenticity. For Clare, authenticity is something one confers. The second example comes from John Banville’s great novel The Newton Letter (1982), the story of a man who discovered his multiple personalities by falling in love with more than one woman at time. He came to realize that his authenticity consisted in dividedness of selves. Therefore, for him, authenticity is not something true or real – but rather giving up such possibilities. One’s authenticity resides then in knowing that the real and authentic has no center. The third example came from Wendy Lesser, an American writer of a memoir Room for Doubt. She viewed authenticity as something that is accepted without doubt – in adopting the credulous mind of a child. Authenticity here is built on blind trust. The three examples Phillips selected reveal how fluid the concept of authenticity is.
The work of Chhabra (2005) Defining Authenticity and Its Determinants: Toward an Authenticity Flow Model further problematizes authenticity. This work explained how determination of the authenticity of Scottish goods sold by vendors in the United States and Canada depended more on the process of negotiation than on essentialist understanding. The different parties – producers, suppliers or vendors and receivers or tourists are all coopted in determining an authentic Scottish heritage product. Different ways of perceiving the authenticity of heritage sales are echoed by various authors mentioned by Chhabra (2005, p. 65). For Asplet and Cooper (2000), goods are taken to be authentic if they are locally made. Authenticity according to Cohen (1988) is a social construction and serves as a critique of the essentialist view of MacCannell (1989). The authenticity of heritage material is also said to have been constantly distorted as the work of Hollinshead (1998) and Bhabha (1994) show. What Chhabra tries to demonstrate is that setting criteria for determining authentic heritage is not simple.
There is also a struggle among the population of Israel to define clearly what it means to be an authentic Jew. Jews belong to three major religious groups – orthodox, conservative, and liberal. The tendency is for one group to deny the others authenticity. With secularism where individuals have the freedom to follow the promptings of their hearts, there are bound to be multiple ways to act as a Jew. Charmé (2000) reflected on the challenges of how to know an authentic Jew. For him, different understandings of authenticity exist side by side and no single perspective can resolve the challenges. For instance, does being an authentic Jew entail loyalty to tradition or continuity with Jewish identity? The constitutive elements of Jewish tradition and identity are not givens. Therefore, there is no certified criteria to determine who is an authentic Jew.
Another work worth mentioning in laying out the problem of authenticity is by Tariq Mustafa (2008). Mustafa set out to take advantage of science to analyze the status of authenticity in matters of revelation. Mustafa sees authenticity of revelation based only on faith to be insufficient. The primary concern for him is detecting an authentic revelation from the multitude of claims to divine revelation. In order to be able to differentiate authentic revelation from false ones, Mustafa suggests several criteria. Some of his 15-point criteria are useful in this examination. For him, revelation should be consistent and free from contradictions; its appeal should be based on rational grounds and must not depend on blind faith; it should contain information that can be verified or rejected; the character, conduct, and behavior of the bearer of the message should be worthy of emulation. But the criteria themselves are not free of challenges. For instance, who determines whether a claimant to revelation is of questionable character or not? What are the grounds for setting these criteria? The issue of determining authenticity of revelation still looms large.
As Chidester (2005, p. 190) observes, authenticity of religion and religious practices is often contested. In fact, some bluntly declare the idea of religion to be merely human invention and hence not authentic. Yet, some religions are still seen as authentic while others are not. The determination of authenticity becomes more problematic too, in the presence of an avalanche of virtual religions that often mock the so called true religions. The fact that virtual religions exist as either a mockery or critical review of the established religions implies that all is not well with religion. The use of rationality during the Enlightenment to probe the reasonableness of Christian claims of revelation is tantamount to doubting the authenticity of religious practice in general. Although some cases of fraudulent activities in the name of religion are easily verified and discredited, not all cases can be.
Chidester (2005, p. 193) shows that religious authenticity consists of one religion declaring the other false, or declaring some internal claims within a religion to be heresies. The Roman Catholic Church in the medieval era excommunicated many on the basis of apparent heresies. The great reformation of Luther in the sixteenth century was also a critical indictment of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Today, which Christian group among the myriad denominations could be said to be the authentic Christianity? This question applies to other world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and traditional religions all of which are split into various voices claiming to be authentically speaking for a religion. Chidester (2005, p. 212) suggests that since so called fake religions all have serious impacts on the lives of people, they be allowed authenticity. For him, they are at worst real or authentic, even if fraudulent. Alberts (2008, p. 137) corroborates Chidester in according authenticity to apparently false religions. Alberts is convinced that “authenticity in religion is not a status to be determined” without question.
The many instances of the conundrum surrounding the idea of authenticity establish the difficulty experienced when considering the authenticity of representation on the Internet. The mediated nature of online material is indisputable. This mediatedness allows producers to remove things from their original context by way of abstraction. This can happen in such a way that what netizens see on the Internet is some steps removed from what it should be. A lot of simulations and imitations can occur with online materials. We have noted before that the Internet does not provide an easy way to determine authenticity. This difficulty doubles as netizens attempt to judge the authenticity of online representations because of the increasing virtuality of cyberspace. The ability to evaluate also depends on the kind of user one is. There are users whose ability to judge the authenticity of online representation is attenuated. We should also not forget that the line separating the authentic from the false is not clear either in online or offline representations.
Issues of Representation: Cultural and Religious
There is hardly any world discipline or activity that cannot be represented in cyberspace. We are aware that political advocates, commerce, healthcare providers, education, and business enterprises all use the Internet in sophisticated ways. Here we have chosen to examine cultural and religious representations. Whatever we say about these two areas however is also relevant to others. Our focus will be on how cultural and religious groups exploit the opportunity available on the Internet for making their voices heard globally. First, cultural representation.
One of the opportunities offered by the Internet is freedom of self-representation. Before the presence of cyberspace, several barriers prevented some cultural units from reaching out to the world (Mitra, 2002, p. 29). This is no longer the case. Marginalized voices are now heard on the Internet. Landzelius (2006a, p. 1) calls it homing on cyberspace. When we discuss cultural representation, we pay attention more to indigenous people whom Landzelius says have been isolated and denied access to the mainstream affairs of society. The same holds for diaspora of minority groups who live in communities where ruling cultural norms dominate that often exclude them from the centre of political and economic influence. These diasporic groups are able to find ways of being at home online thus avoiding the nostalgia of disconnection from their lands of origin.
The point at issue is not whether indigenous or diasporic groups make a home in cyberspace, but to what extent online homing is authentically a home. This is the aspect that appears problematic in indigenizing Internet technology. Normally, home is associated with a place and to be identified as belonging to a home implies being part of a place. This idea of home is now contradicted by online homing, which is not dependent on physical place. Invariably, the idea of home has been transformed. When we talk of indigenous cyberactivism (Landzelius, 2006a), we must recognize that it mainly happens in the high-tech countries of Europe and North America. That explains why most examples of natives on the Internet are from these countries. Illustrations of indigenous cyberactivism rarely come from African countries. Despite the global spread of the Internet, Africa features few if any examples.
We shall pinpoint some examples of indigenous cyberactivism from Landzelius (2006a, pp. 7ff ), to demonstrate how indigenous people participate in mainstream affairs, thanks to cyberspace. The Navajo people in the southwestern part of United States of America can now engage in activities that were not possible before the advent of the Internet. With computer-mediated communications they were able to break barriers that excluded them for years. The environment in which they live is so rugged that it hampers physical connectivity. With electronic voting they now participate in electoral processes that were hitherto difficult. In Canada, too, there is a drive by the government to get every part of the country connected through cyberspace. The remotest places that are difficult to reach physically are provided with basic services – elearning, ejustice, ecommerce and ehealth, through the Internet. The first areas of Canada on its margins are drawn into the center through the Internet. Other instances of indigenous people gaining visibility and empowerment through the Internet are many. We mention only a few of them: the Zapatista group that put up strong electronic campaign of protest against the Mexican government; the Ngati Awa natives from New Zealand reclaiming their rightful place previously denied them. However, the virtuality of their representation on the Internet has both merits and demerits.
Diasporic groups use the Internet to register their presence and connectedness to their places of origin. It is a kind of speaking out on behalf of their distant members. Most diasporic cyber activities take place in industrialized nations by people who experience a form of nostalgia about estrangement from home. Sometimes the planners of the diasporic cyber-representation, in connection with their place of origin, have never had any physical contact with their homeland. The actuality of such people belonging to the claimed place of origin calls into question the real identity of some diasporic persons. Few diasporic instances can be given. There are two chat sites (Planet Tonga and The Kava Bowl), created by diasporic groups from of Pacific island of Tonga who claim to speak for the community. Franklin (2004, p. 5) gives the history of how Taholo Kami set up the Pacific Forum as an online meeting place for Tongans suffering from loneliness. The first challenge that arose was the issue of determining belongingness through language identity. Evidently, not all the diasporic members are fluent in (or even speak) their native language; thus it became a big issue to decide which language to use as a medium of communication. Nevertheless, through cyberspace youth, both at home and in the diaspora, opened their culture to the wider world. They gained empowerment through the chat site, although their activities were virtually constituted. There is also the example of second-generation Harari youth from Ethiopia whose parents departed for the West years ago. Some of these youth have not experienced what it means to be Ethiopian by actually living in Ethiopia. However, such youth, through cyberspace, claim Ethiopian identity and speak on behalf of their assumed homeland. Composing life or home online will definitely reconfigure the idea of locality and life offline. The Burundian Hutus and Tutsi exemplified the advantage of virtuality, in creating fora in cyberspace to initiate healing of wounds after their bitter war. Both diasporas and those at home participated online in building relationship that went beyond ethnic divides.
As Landzelius (2006b, p. 297) indicated, although cyberspace makes empowerment of the indigenous and diasporic people possible, it is not automatic and uniform. The result varies from instance to instance. What is undeniable is that many of the marginalized people are creating a home in cyberspace, and in so doing they are transforming the cyber-environment. Freedom in cyberspace has provided the means to put an end to marginalization and denial, and to provide entre into the mainstream.
Dominant institutions and nations also go online evidenced through different nations of the world creating websites. Volcic (2008) carried out significant work on how the former Yugoslav States took advantage of Internet technology to represent themselves to the world. The websites of these nations represent national territories, histories, products, and citizens as commodities to be marketed to the rest of the world. Volcic calls this branding a nation online for outsiders to experience. What is particularly import in this work is the possibility offered by cyberspace to these nations to self-represent rather than allowing outside representation to define them. Yet, such representation of a nation’s self is influenced by the dynamics of the neoliberal economy of commodification. Branding a self-image to conform to the neoliberal environment raises serious doubts about whether such representation leaves behind the actual history and situation (Volcic, 2008, p. 396). In the end, it may be difficult to find valuable and historically true information on the websites of such nations that critically carry the past into the present. It is for this reason that some critical media scholars advise nations to go beyond commodification in their self-branding on the Internet. Volcic (2008, p. 197), mentioned scholars who are not comfortable with a nation’s self-representation as commodified goods to be marketed. The implication is that when users go to these national websites they find an apparently real picture that is far removed from what is true. Thus, they may carry with them misleading impressions of these nations. National self-representation is inevitably connected to authenticity.
The presence of religion on the Internet defies tracking. Different religions and denominations have their websites where one can read about them. It is true that today, through the Internet, a great number of people are able to read about religion and discuss it with other people without restrictions. Dawson (2004) enumerates various religious activities that can be executed online. These range from searching scriptures with electronic indexes, viewing churches and religious centers, joining in rituals and meditation practices; watching religious videos, listening to religious music, sermons, prayers, and testimonies, and having discourses with religious leaders. With this undeniable global spread of computer mediated communication, individuals and groups can easily post their messages. Consequently, interactive responses are generated which in turn advance discussions to a higher level.
Ihejirika Chikwendu emphasizes the role of the different media types in religious conversion: for instance, his elaborate presentation of the Redeemed Christian Church of God’s use of different media types for evangelization. He underscores a vital point when he affirms that the Internet offers more opportunities and accessibility to people patronizing the Redeemed Christian Ministry than either television programs or print media ever did. He avers: “With the provision of free email boxes, members have greater possibility of communicating among themselves and with the leaders of the church” (Chikwendu, 2004, p. 129). People can more quickly participate online in religious activities such as prayer and healing that take place at the church’s church centers. The Redeemed Church is only singled out here as one of the many examples of religious use of the Internet. The Redeemed Church was founded in Nigeria by pastor Adeboye. It’s website www.rccg.com contains much information about the Church. The interactive congeniality of the Internet is also underscored by Muhammed Haron (2004, p. 154) when writing on the role of the media in both religious and social change within the Muslim communities of South Africa.
Self-declared prophets, shamen, and gurus also create various sites to propagate their belief systems. The number of religious sites is so many that we are still counting. Dawson (2004, p. 387) lists some of them. Delocalization of religion also occurs via the Internet; a situation where the Internet becomes the point of contact for online religions. In fact, for such a religion, we cannot talk of a physical place of origin. There are also numerous virtual religions that utilize the cyberspace to register their presence. Chidester (2005, pp. 200ff) provided an extensive list of virtual religions.
Chidester carried out an extensive study of one set of religious beliefs in his work “Credo Mutwa, Zulu Shaman: The Invention and Appropriation of Indigenous Authenticity in African Folk Religion.” He painstakingly reviewed the life and work of Mutwa in this study. According to Chidester, Mutwa was born in 1921 to a Christian father and a traditional religionist mother. The story claimed that when Mutwa became seriously ill, he turned to the religion of his mother for solutions. Mutwa later understood his illness to be an incident ushering him into his mission as an “indigenous healer, diviner and seer” (Chidester, 2004, p. 72). This singular event laid the foundation for Mutwa as an authentic representative of the indigenous religion of the Zulu. Mutwa consequently declared himself to be the witchdoctor of the Zulu. He claimed to have inherited this role from his maternal grandfather, who had cured his previous illness. According to Chidester’s account (2006, p. 74), Mutwa became “officially known” as the high sanusi of the Zulu people. With this appropriated title, Mutwa presented himself as an authentic high sanusi who possessed “specialized indigenous knowledge that could be used in healing, divination, education, and social transformation” (Chidester, 2004, p. 76).
He continued his mission of propagating African Traditional Religion (ATR) far and wide within South Africa. His activities caught the attention of many observers at the time. In 1954 he got a job in a curio shop in Johannesburg that was devoted to providing African artifacts for tourists. Indeed, the reason for employing Mutwa at this centre was that the “employer, A. S. Watkinson, relied on him to authenticate these objects of African arts” (Chidester, 2004, p. 72). Relying on Mutwa for the authentication of these materials made sense because, Watkinson believed in him as an embodiment of the Zulu tradition. Mutwa later moved to Soweto to attend to another traditional African tourist centre.
Mutwa persuasively presented himself as an imaginative storyteller. These stories he claimed, were drawn from the authentic pool of Zulu traditional beliefs. These stories were so appealing that Watkinson sponsored a collection of them for publication (Mutwa, 1964, 1966). However, there were questions as to whether Mutwa’s imaginative presentation of the Zulu tribal history and tradition was not at variance with what was commonly known. This question cast doubt on Mutwa’s originality because the “extravagant and imaginative poetry and prose of these texts bore little if any relation to anything previously recorded in print about Zulu religion” (Chidester, 2004, p. 74).
Mutwa’s motivating goal was to develop an indigenous African tradition in Zulu land that was totally different from foreign traditions. Most importantly for Mutwa this provided the South African Black race with the ability to maintain their authentic traditions through a separate life. In Mutwa’s mind apartheid was a good opportunity for the Zulu people to preserve their original traditions from dilution that would ensue when it mixed with the white culture. Mutwa (1966, pp. 319–323; 1998, p. 13) says: “Apartheid is the high law of the Gods! It is the highest law of nature.” For him “white men of South Africa are only too right when they wish to preserve their pure-bred racial identity.” His message was negatively received by black South Africans. Even though Mutwa may have had a good mission to develop an authentic indigenous tradition in South Africa, the context of apartheid that he embraced did not convince his people. That may explain why Mutwa’s enormous achievement through his writing and activities for many years as a high Zulu witchdoctor did not endear him to the black people of South Africa.
The terrain for Mutwa changed with the arrival of the Internet. His message began to be displayed on different websites allowing it to reach many new people. According to Chidester (2004, p. 76), “Credo Mutwa’s indigenous authenticity had become global on the Internet” and hence “played an important role in a new global cultural village on the Internet.” For instance, apart from the sponsorship Mutwa received from the Ringing Rocks Foundation (established in Philadelphia in 1995), it has “promised Credo Mutwa a healing center in the cyberspace” (Chidester, 2004, p. 77).
Through the Internet Mutwa established himself as the authentic bearer of African indigenous knowledge. Consequently, according to Chidester, his authenticity was appropriated by many groups for their own projects. “For example, Credo Mutwa has been enthusiastically promoted by the African-American feminist Luisah Teish, who has her own website Jambalaya Spirit, celebrating feminist myths and rituals” (Chidester, 2004, p. 82). Undoubtedly then, the Internet has been inundated by the message of Mutwa as the authentic embodiment of indigenous religious and traditional knowledge. The enormous reach of cyberspace mediating Mutwa’s activities gained him global notoriety, which invariably contributed to new popularity at home. Chidester noted that Mutwa’s people in South Africa regarded his activities as false. They viewed his appropriation of indigenous authenticity of African folk religion as untrue. For them, whatever Mutwa did was no more than fake religion. Hence, the South African media portrayed Mutwa as “a fake, a fraud, and a charlatan,” who did not represent an “authentic voice of indigenous African religion as he appears in cyberspace” (Chidester, 2004, p. 83). It is clear here that while Mutwa’s appropriation of indigenous folk religion attracted condemnation in his homeland it gained him recognition on the global scene. According to Chidester (2004, p. 83), the reason for the global acceptance of Mutwa’s authenticity was “[i]n the cyberspace, any line that might divide folk religion from fake religion has been blurred.” In other words, the dichotomy between authenticity and fraud is too close to call in cyberspace. With this vital contribution, Chidester has opened a portal for addressing the divide between the authentic and the fraud.
When deliberating about how to champion ATR through the Internet in preparation for a conference in Nigeria 2008, I came across the website www.yorubareligion.org, I quickly sent it for comment to Ray Sesan Aina, who is a Yoruba person and a PhD student in theological ethics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He sent me an email with an evaluation of the information and claims appearing on the website. Part of the response reads:
thanks for the info and the site. I have looked at it; and it has not dampened my skepticism which I expressed earlier today before I even checked the site. I admire the so-called high-priest’s effort. Nevertheless, I think he is preying too much on oyinbo ignorance. For starters, one person cannot be a high priest [and there is even no ‘high priest’ in yoruba traditional religious system of belief; there is kekere awo – an initiate under tutelage – and there is agba awo – fully initiated and commissioned awo] for many deities to the point of mentioning … It is an exaggeration to state on the website that his father initiated him into all the Yoruba irumole. There are 401 deities in the Yoruba pantheon and they do not command worship in all the places of Yorubaland. So how could his father have done this when he lived and died in Osogbo?
His response raises the authenticity issue of the claims of the high priest who created this site.
Aina’s response spurred me formulate questions and schedule an interview with Prince (Babalawo) Adigun Olosun at his base in Germany. The interview did finally take place at the IYA DUDU centre in Germany on June 8, 2008. The following are questions were used in the interview:
1 How was it possible, as indicated on your website, that you could be initiated into the cults of many deities?
2 Does the concept of high priest exist in Yoruba religion?
3 Has the Yoruba religion been officially recognized in Germany?
4 What is the desirability of Yoruba religion in Germany?
5 How has the Internet helped in promoting Yoruba religion globally?
Prince Olosun took his time to address my questions. First, he started with his own brief history. He said he was born a leader of Yoruba Traditional Religion (YTR). Born as a High Priest and to a well-known High Priest, Prince Iyanda Olayiwola-Olosun and Priestess, Anike Olayiwola-Olosun in YTR. He also lived with an Austrian woman, Susanne Wenger, who was a strong devotee of the religion. When he was born, as the tradition among YTR practitioners demands, his parents divined to know what nature had in store (his odu) for him. It was revealed that he was born a High Priest of Ifa, Ogun, Sango, Obatala, Osun, Oke, Ori, and Egbe, and so forth. It also indicated that he must receive a Western education to the highest level in order to prepare him for the modern challenges in YTR. His father then initiated him immediately to all the Irunmoles. His father also made sure that he would receive adequate knowledge to equip him in his future role as the High Priest of YTR.
He was subsequently able to study Ethnology, Education, History, Journalism, Media and Yoruba in Universities in Nigeria, Germany, and the United Kingdom in fulfillment of his destiny. He claimed also to be a trained Yoruba teacher and had worked in schools in Nigeria teaching Yoruba and had continued the same activities in Germany, Europe, and other parts of the world. According to him he published the first Yoruba religion language magazine “Akede Asa” in the early 1980s, and today he is still the publisher and editor-in-chief of Ase magazine. This magazine’s aim is to simplify YTR for practitioners and nonpractitioners. Ase is presently published in German and in English.
After his brief introduction he addressed my questions. His answer to question one was that the cult of most of the deities is in Osogbo and environs. Besides that, he said, one does not need to go to the different shrines before he or she can be initiated. The presence of a priest is all that is required for an initiation. As a child, he said, his father initiated him into all the Irunmoles in the presence of the priest. In answering question two, he said that the idea of agbaowa (i.e., elder priest) could be regarded as high priest in Yoruba religion and that it was ifa that revealed that he would be a High Priest. He answered questions three and four together: that because of their famous activities and the desirability of YTR in Germany, it has now been officially recognized and accorded all legal status. Germany has become the international headquarters for (his own brand of) YTR.
He answered the fifth question with greater enthusiasm. He underscored the pertinence of the Internet in the promotion of YTR. According to him it was the realization of the indispensability of the Internet that spurred him to study media in the United Kingdom in 2001. He became the first person to open a website for YTR. As he said, without the Internet his religion could not have achieved as much it had. For him, the Ase magazine has less outreach than the Internet. The Internet allowed him to reach out to a wider audience and in some cases carry out online services such as divination, naming ceremonies, marriages, and so forth. Moreover, the website (www.yorubareligion.org) contains all necessary information about his religion. The opportunity provided by the Internet gave them the space and freedom to practice YTR. The limitation imposed by location and authority was reduced by the availability of the Internet. One can locate them online and obtain their services and teaching. They often refer to themselves as the ibile faith congregation online.
However, the achievement and progress made by Prince Olosun and his congregation online does not convince Aina. The part of Aina’s email which says “it is an exaggeration to state on the website that his father initiated him into all the Yoruba irumole” questions the authenticity of the claims of the high priest. His criticism is in the line with the local condemnation of appropriation of indigenous religions authenticity. Perhaps Aina’s response would change if he read the report of my interview with Prince Olosun. Meanwhile, YTR is globally recognized. Its teaching and practices are being accepted at the international level.
Afe Adogame underscores the global reach of African Traditional Religions (ATR) as a result of the Internet. For him, African indigenous religion’s global spread cuts across racial lines. For instance, it is not only diasporic Africans that practice ATR; many non-African Americans have become priests and founders of neoindigenous African religions such as Ifa and Orisha religions in America. Interestingly, these priests easily “operate and communicate through their Internet websites with old and new clientele as well as with wider public” (Adogame, 2007, p. 531). According to Adogame, no other media gives African indigenous religion as much visibility as does the Internet, especially at the international level. However, one reality observed from the many websites on ATR, is that they are mainly created and run by people in diaspora. This may not be unconnected to Africa’s lag in fully joining the information age, which could have more ethical implications there than for any other continent.
Cyberliteracy and Ethical Questions
Traditionally, literacy implies being able to read and write. Cyberliteracy, too, implies being able to use the Internet. However, I want to go further than that in using this term. I agree with Laura Gurak who reminds us of the expanded meaning of literacy. Gurak (2001, p. 9) quotes from Kathleen Welch (1999) in explaining that literacy is
not only the ability to read and write but an activity of mind … capable of recognizing and engaging substantive issues along with the ways that minds, sensibilities, and emotions are constructed by and within communities whose members communicate through specific technologies. In other words, literacy has to do with consciousness: how we know what we know and a recognition of the historical, ideological and technological forces that inevitably operate in all human beings.
This way of understanding literacy is very important in the area of the Internet. The complexity and intriguing reality of cyberspace calls everyone to abandon a minimalistic view of the Internet. It is no longer sufficient merely to know how to use the Internet. The reason for this kind of literacy definition is self-evident. It reveals enormous hidden entanglements that are not easily discernible in information technology itself. According to Gurak (2001, p. 12) there are “economic and political forces that are shaping information technologies” that users may not be aware of. These “invisible” forces direct these technologies to be in line with vested interests. They are thus not free from social, political, and economic undertones. The issue of who has control over information is at stake. In most cases, there is no privacy for personal information. Copyright regulations largely benefit the few corporations that lobby for protection. This restriction better serves the interest of lobbyists and corporations than individuals. Take for instance, the involvement of Microsoft in determining the growth and direction of cyberspace. Franklin (2004, p. 226) comments: “Corporate giants such as Microsoft “discovered” the commercial potential of the Internet as a mass market(ing) medium and have turned their significant economic and meaning-making resources to molding Internet technologies after their own image.”
The commercialization of the Internet is one way for these corporations to decide the direction of the cyberspace. The Internet should not be oriented primarily as a commodity to sell. The vision planned for the Internet should be oriented to benefiting the public interest. The public must be cyberliterate to be aware of this. What cyberliteracy really means for users is the ability to know about the unwritten forces that bend technologies to yield the highest gains to a few interested parties rather than the public. Through cyberliteracy, users will develop critical approaches to the Internet by calling for active participation in giving direction to this technology. The vested interest groups would not be emboldened to give direction to the cyberspace by way of commercialization. However, several ethical questions emerge in the way cyberspace technology is operated.
The ethical challenges of information technologies are making great impact. Smith and Carbo (2008) bring to our notice the rising interest in information ethics. They discussed how the term appeared in public in the early-1980s. After a long period of development, there is now an International Journal of Information Ethics that deals with information related ethics. This work shows how urgent it has become to address ethical problems posed by information technologies, especially cyberspace. The journal basically points out that there are various ethical wrongs associated with information technologies. These wrongs include unjustified exploitation, misappropriation of indigenous knowledge, and incompetence. Mojica (2006, p. 204) also points out how nonexperts and incompetent people engage in creating material content for wikis that people access via Wikipedia. Control of the creators of information by vetting the qualification of those involved is long overdue. As Arnautu (2006, p. 24) maintains, information ethics touches human life so very deeply that it should be taken seriously.
Brody’s notion of information naiveté is at the heart of ethical challenges facing cyberspace. She argues that information naiveté bedevils the creators as well as the recipients of information. According to Brody (2008, p. 1126) information naiveté has the tendency to move both creators and recipients of information to overconfidence. The danger for producers is that they fail to warn the public of the apparent limitations associated with Internet material. This can mislead those who access the information in the dark, trusting possibly untrustworthy material from the net and perhaps acting on it foolishly or otherwise inappropriately. Brody calls for some form of regulation to enable monitoring of the process of information production.
Another aspect that poses ethical problems is the lack of intercultural consideration in the creation of information. This disability finds expression in disequilibrium in information flow. As noted earlier information technologies are socially, culturally, politically, and economically oriented. Those who control these technologies run them from their own perspective. Information flow is mostly one directional – from North to South. One example that is often used is between the West and Africa. Capurro (2008, p. 1166) maintains that such values as Ubuntu could make a good contribution to ethical development for information. Ubuntu connotes the idea of belonging together; so that whatever one does aims to benefit every other person. In this spirit, the commercialization of information technologies that overlook the public interest is less likely. It would also mean that Africa could be part of the developing information society. We should also remember that the level of accessibility to the Internet varies from place to place. Arnold (2002, p. 341) notes that there, “is an issue of the Third and Fourth Worlds getting access to this powerful medium of the First-World technology.” Without maximum accessibility to the technology in Africa, the possibility of making contributions that reflect cultural values will be limited. My personal experience in Nigeria indicates that Internet availability in individual homes is scarce. A person can hope to access the Internet at cyber cafes, but not without encountering difficulties.
Conclusion
The Internet is a central medium of communication. Its connective power has made it possible for users to avoid waiting for information. It connects people and things in a manner previously unknown in communication history. As it is not under strict regulatory policy, it provides maximum freedom for representation of material. However, unrestricted freedom can easily allow untrustworthy material to appear. Users are not always aware of the inherent possibility for representation of inauthentic material (admittedly the idea of authenticity remains elusive). It is therefore important for every user, as Gurak insists, to navigate the Internet with awareness. The capacities of users to judge the authenticity of representation without critical alertness is highly unlikely to occur without new methods to alert them or without an increase in cyberliteracy. Without the means to evaluate representation fully, the Internet will remain a double-edged sword that will deceive, misinform, and abuse.
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