The Digital Divide

This story is no mere hypothetical. In Kenya in early 2008, a period of violent political unrest followed a contested election.¹ Skilled political activists, taking advantage of Kenya’s partially networked environment, provided firsthand accounts of the election and its aftermath that helped to shape what people in Kenya and others around the world came to know about what happened in those heady days.

In Kenya, Internet and cell-phone penetration is relatively low by global standards, but the country’s elites are online. Just as important, there is a large diaspora community of Kenyans who use the Internet as a primary means of communication. Within the wired subpopulace of Kenyans, there is a growing, vibrant community of people who are writing and posting digital media to the Web in highly sophisticated ways, geared toward having a political impact. Young people played a leading role in the election narrative. But Kenya is not the only developing country where the Web, and young people, are beginning to influence the course of important events.²

The new mode of activism, made possible by the use of networked digital tools, leads to benefits for citizens of established democracies, countries in transition, and authoritarian regimes alike. First, as the Kenyan example demonstrates, it is possible to harness the Internet’s power to render more transparent the actions of a specific government. This transparency matters both in times of crisis—in an unruly election, for example—and in times of orderly governance. Second, the Internet can provide a means for ordinary citizens to participate in the way that public events are told to others, set into context, understood by people far and near, and remembered for posterity. The traditional hierarchies of control of news and information are crumbling, with new dynamics replacing the old. These new dynamics will lead to a more responsive politics.

The ability of networked activists to transform politics in some countries could prove to be the single most important trend in the global Internet culture. The early signs of a culture of civic activism among young people, joined by networked technologies, are cropping up around the world. If these early signs turn into a bigger movement, politics as we know it is in for big changes.

Presidential campaigns have drawn a lot of attention to the role of Digital Natives in politics, but these campaigns are only the very beginning of the story. Howard Dean’s presidential primary run in 2004 is the paradigmatic example. Led by campaign manager Joe Trippi and visionary organizers like Zephyr Teachout and Jim Moore, the Dean campaign used the Internet to harness grassroots energy, to pull new people into the campaign, and to raise a great deal of money online. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign has done all that the Dean campaign did, and more, online. Participation in electoral affairs is a starting point and has led to a lot of hype, but it is also not the most important aspect of how Digital Natives are participating in civic life.

The Internet has not fundamentally changed the nature of political action, nor has it brought millions of new people into civic life. The Internet provides tools that empower people, young and old, to have a greater level of direct, personal participation in the formal political process—if they want to. No new technology is going to make someone have a conversion experience. What the Net provides is an increasingly useful, attractive platform for those who are predisposed to be active in civic life. The Internet makes possible new and occasionally astonishing things for a set of highly empowered individuals. Young people can gain access to far more information than ever before. They can reach out to other people far more efficiently. With huge ambition, one or two people can establish a news operation that can put huge pressure on mainstream news providers, offer alternative viewpoints, and reach a global audience on a modest budget.

That said, we must acknowledge up front that our argument about the political potentialities of the Internet is not data driven. The data do not support the argument that Digital Natives, or anyone else, are, in large percentages, using new technologies for purposes of civic activism. The story of the effect of Internet use on politics is just now breaking; these issues are playing themselves out, right now, in different contexts around the world. The terrain is unsettled. The scholarly field studying these issues is nascent. Empirical evidence is more or less nonexistent. Our interviews and focus groups suggest that the percentage of Digital Natives doing new things online in the activist realm is modest, at best. Most studies that others have conducted regarding the levels of participation have confirmed what we found. The fault lines in the relevant debates are becoming clear, but there’s no consensus as to the likely outcome or impact. Though our instinct is to be hopeful, our frame of reference needs to be skeptical.

It is also important to recognize that the story of civic engagement online is not solely about Digital Natives. It can be, and should be, a story about people of all ages. The single best thing that could be accomplished online would be a connection across generations, especially one that is geared toward taking advantage of the networked public sphere in the public interest.

Digital Natives have been at the forefront of the movement to change politics through use of digital tools. Though the Internet doesn’t change everything when it comes to politics, in a few instances use of new technologies has made a notable difference in terms of how campaigns are conducted. Examples where the netroots have made a difference include South Korea in 2002, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004 and 2005, and the presidential primary elections in 2004 and 2008 in the United States.

The use of the Internet to deepen the participation of individuals in formal political campaigns comes at a welcome moment in history. Over the past twenty years, there’s been a lot of hand-wringing about the purported decline in voting among young people in the United States. At the same time, there has been a recent increase in other kinds of civic involvement that point to opportunities that Internet-based activism could exploit. This divergence suggests that it isn’t that kids are apathetic. It’s just that they are interested in changing the world through ways other than voting. During the last thirty years of the twentieth century the youth vote fell precipitously. In 1972, fully half (50.3 percent) of all eligible Americans aged eighteen to twenty-four voted in the election that gave Richard Nixon his landslide victory over George McGovern (the percentage for all age groups combined was 55.2).³ In 2000, only about one-third (37.3 percent) of eligible young Americans voted in the excruciatingly close general election between George W. Bush and Al Gore (this time, the percentage for all age groups was 51.3).⁴ The decline among young voters occurred even though the voter-registration process had become dramatically easier—through motor-voter, same-day registration, aggressive registration drives, and ubiquitous registration forms. This is not just an American phenomenon. Youth in the United Kingdom were also less likely to vote in elections than older citizens.⁵

But by other accounts, many young people demonstrated that they are more engaged than ever—just in ways other than voting. During this same period, young people got involved in public service outside the political sphere more extensively than ever before. Young volunteers stepped up the time they spent helping out in AIDS hospices and homeless shelters, teaching in Head Start centers, providing disaster relief in developing countries, and doing other good works. So while the number of young Americans voting in the presidential elections declined between 1972 and 2000, increasing numbers of young people were participating in public service before they graduated from college.⁶

Although these trends were emerging even prior to 9/11, that event—and the consequent outbreak of war—meant that a lot of people, particularly young people, were galvanized in ways that the Internet was poised to take advantage of. Some were nudged into political activism by a sense that America was increasingly becoming isolated in a post-9/11 world at precisely the moment when we should be drawing closer to other cultures.⁷ Others—particularly youth outside the United States—were stirred to action by the reaction of the world’s lone superpower to the terrorist crisis. The polarizing effect of a world divided between sharply differing ideologies at the start of the new millennium created an environment that drew people into the debate, including youth.

The decline in the youth vote and the concurrent rise in youth participation in other civic activities set up a dynamic that those promoting use of the Internet could exploit. The Internet offers a way for young people to be engaged in civic affairs that combines the political with the cultural, social, and technological. It also provides a medium through which the creativity of Digital Natives can affect politics. For some young people, interest in politics on the Net offered a path that would lead them back to the polls, too.

Politicians didn’t see this potential to engage young people in campaigns right away. Most got off to a slow start in using the Internet as part of their campaigns, but the most savvy among them have caught on quickly of late. American political campaigning on the Internet began in earnest in the 1996 presidential election in the United States and has been surging ever since. Candidates, particularly Republicans in the early days, established their own websites during the campaign cycle. Little more than virtual billboards, these websites offered campaign material that would ordinarily be printed on leaflets, but in an electronic form. In the 2000 presidential election, candidates’ Internet presences began to develop beyond just a Web page, a photo, and a list of issues. Internet users in the 2000 election cycle could further connect with politicians through making online donations, seeing a candidate’s speaking calendar, and viewing photos of political events.⁸

The 2004 presidential election cycle in the United States marked a watershed in participation in online politics, which continues to this day.⁹ New participants, many of them young people, entered the political process, and campaigns deployed new information technology tools with vast potential. A fresh crop of young, wired leaders joined the political fray. For many of the young new politicos, faith in the grassroots organizing potential of the Internet—also called the “Net roots”—is an essential motivating force. They didn’t get involved in politics because of the technology, but the technology became the medium that drew them together. The Internet became the common network, both literally and figuratively, of a new generation of activists who came of age in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 election cycles. In 2004, the percentage of young voters surged (to 47.7 percent). This percentage still lagged behind the percentage for all age groups combined (55.3 percent), but it signaled the possibility of a new trend.¹⁰ By 2008, candidates didn’t just have their own websites; they had entire Web strategies, Web teams, and multiple points of presence online, including Facebook and MySpace accounts and YouTube videos of speeches.

The Internet enables traditional political campaigns to be more efficient and to increase online participation, but it does not change campaigning altogether. Big-time political campaigns are still largely about fund-raising (both online and off), which in turn pays the bill for copious amounts of television advertising. The political process hasn’t changed fundamentally just because more money is being raised online. But the Internet has become an essential component of the all-important fund-raising process, largely through small donations. In 2000, Senator John McCain’s campaign made headlines when it raised nearly $7 million online.¹¹ Senator John Kerry’s campaign raised $45 million online in the first five months of 2004 alone, with an average contribution of just over $100.¹² Kerry’s total online fund-raising during the primary topped $80 million.¹³ Barack Obama eclipsed records yet again in 2008, raising a total of more than $235 million by May 2008, the vast majority of it online—in the primary alone.¹⁴ Internet fund-raising works primarily because it makes donating easy—no checks, stamps, or envelopes. Many campaigns take donations via PayPal, which means it takes only a single click of the mouse to donate to a favorite candidate. In turn, the new technologies enable candidates and their organizers to reach out to donors and likely donors more easily and less expensively than in the past. The Internet helps motivated organizers to develop relationships with those who are inclined to help, but who are too busy, too shy, or otherwise disinclined to reach out to others themselves. It’s much easier to send someone an e-mail to ask for money than it is to call someone up or knock on doors, and it’s easier for the average voter to click on a link to donate instead of having to go write out and mail a check.

Fund-raising is only one of the ways that technology has changed the campaign process; online organizing is in fact the area where the greatest, most lasting transformation can occur. A volunteer for the Ron Paul campaign, for instance, can manage an outreach effort, coordinating thousands of volunteers, from a home computer and an ordinary network connection. These new tools haven’t changed the fundamental machinery of a campaign, by any means, but they have increased flexibility and autonomy. A Web-savvy volunteer ran the entire Texas operation for the Obama campaign until the campaign leadership determined that they might have a shot at winning the prized state. At that point, the campaign swooped in to establish a formal presence a few weeks ahead of the primary—while retaining many of the structures that the all-volunteer team had set in place. Similarly, all the classic aspects of campaigning—going door-to-door using detailed walk-lists, arranging for speeches by surrogates, managing get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts—allow for forms of participation mediated by new information technologies. The use of these technologies may draw young people into the campaigns, but the participatory acts are not fundamentally altered in the process. It’s much the same activity, perhaps done more efficiently or more attractively, but it can draw some young people, particularly Digital Natives, into the political process in a fresh way.

Just as in social networks and in gaming environments, the Internet makes it possible for young people with common interests to find one another and to connect; in politics it enables young people to connect who are on the same page politically and who want to work for the same cause or candidate. In a previous era, these young people might never have found one another; the Internet makes heretofore impossible connections possible, and these connections can lead to collective action around shared ideas at much faster speeds than ever before. They are facilitated by the powerful search tools and social networking features of the Internet. All of this has had a multiplying effect when it comes to enabling young people to engage in political activity in democratic societies.

The formal political sphere is only the most obvious context in which young people are getting involved in civic life. Digital Natives are using new technologies to participate in civic life outside of campaigns in ways that are potentially more constructive to societies on an enduring basis. One of the bigger stories is how young people are using these new technologies to jump-start their own work in social causes. The networked environment is conducive to getting the word out to friends about a topic of public interest. Participation is not different, just more connected. As one student told us, she uses a MySpace page and a Facebook group to coordinate a growing network of young people interested in peer-education work on teen-dating violence. When students are working on issues of political engagement, such as raising awareness about the humanitarian crisis in Darfur or the interests of Latino/as in a given American city, they told us that their first outreach is through e-mail, instant messaging, and social networks from Facebook and MySpace.

Critics argue that the highly visible activism in social networks doesn’t add up to much. It doesn’t really mean much, these critics say, when a Digital Native joins a “cause” on Facebook. Often, that’s true. It is nothing more than a convenient way to make a statement, the digital equivalent of a “Save the Whales” bumper sticker. Viewed from this angle, it can be a relatively cheap way to speak out by a simple mouse-click, but it doesn’t accomplish much. As one college student put it: “Today it’s more like people writing their names on a big list . . . [T]he effect is lower when it’s not face-to-face, when it’s not physical.... You can let millions of people know with just one click what’s happening. But it’s hard to get all the million people involved just because of that click.”

It’s true that it doesn’t always mean much when a Digital Native “friends” a politician in MySpace or Facebook. The “friendships” between young people and politicians online are more like style choices—accessories on a social network profile—than like knocking on doors or phone-banking for a favorite cause. But neither are these acts the important parts of the story; they’re just some of the most visible. The act of joining a Facebook group may lead to participation that is bigger and better than merely clicking on “accept” in an online invitation. Some Digital Natives venture outside of Facebook to use specially designed applications such as TakingITGlobal, YouthNoise, Zaadz, or UNICEF Voices of Youth, all of which promote civic engagement and community involvement. These sites are the starting place, for something bigger than a personal statement about a public issue, and once young people do get started, they are more likely to begin to engage in some sort of action.

The medium is not the message when it comes to the political lives of Digital Natives. Internet engagement sites are usually only facilitators, rather than places of action; the civic engagement activities that result from online interactions often happen in the offline space. That said, the relevant online tools make activism less daunting and anonymous for those Digital Natives who already have an interest in civic engagement. These online tools simply make it easier for them to connect with like-minded people, or to share information and get organized.¹⁵

Digital Natives are shifting many of their core social activities from the offline space to the hybrid online-offline world. These social activities include, for some, political activism. Sometimes this activism expresses itself through traditional political campaigns. More often, and more important over the long term, this activism is expressed through a wide range of civic activities. This is not an apathetic bunch; it’s just a group of young people getting engaged in civic life on their own terms, in their own ways.

THE SECOND BIG SHIFT in participation online is the move away from a broadcast media model and toward a more diverse, participatory media model. In the new media environment, Digital Natives (and many other users, too) are no longer mere readers, listeners, or passive viewers. Instead, affordable Internet technology and highly interactive, easy-to-use applications have enabled individuals to become active users and participants in public conversations. As a consequence, it’s no longer a few professional journalists or powerful media conglomerates with strong commercial interests who define what we as a society talk and care about. Rather, the public agenda in the digital age is increasingly influenced by the observations, experiences, and concerns of all of us in our roles as citizens. Many Digital Natives are at the forefront of this trend; they take participation for granted as part of their media environment.

Without owning a press or having the capital to rent one, an individual activist can bring a topic into the public discourse by breaking an important story through a credible, firsthand account. The activist can shed light on issues that would otherwise have remained covered up, or that had emerged but been purposely buried again. These activists can get word out to others who need it fast, on devices that are cheap and ubiquitous. With the right command of these services, people who have traditionally been outside the mainstream of civic life can today command greater authority, and have far greater impact, than they could in an environment where the news media were tightly controlled.

Digital activists are chipping away at the corporate control of the media infrastructure.¹⁶ In the television era, people heard from the candidates but rarely met them. The conversation was mediated primarily by the TV stations. It is still true that few people meet the candidates, compared to those who experience their words through electronic media. TV remains the primary battleground on which campaigns are waged, both through advertising and news coverage. During the 2004 election, presidential candidates spent $2.66 million on Internet ads versus $330 million on traditional television ads.¹⁷ But nonetheless, the Internet has allowed citizens to sneak past the editorial cordon that has separated them from candidates in the past. In this sense, the Internet represents a continuation of a trend begun with the introduction of television into politics in the 1960s. Prior to that time, party bosses controlled access to and the message of the candidates. Both television and the Internet are part of a broader trend toward a more direct relationship between candidates and individual voters. The major political parties, along with labor unions, are part of the hierarchical framework of American politics that is under great pressure in the digital era.

Even as traditional hierarchies are breaking apart, powerful, consolidated interests still play a disproportionate role in politics, especially in America. Strong brands still have it in their power to make or break candidates. As in the commercial space, the Internet often causes first disintermediation, then reintermediation. The forums are slightly different in the digital age and modestly more diverse. Cable networks like Fox and CNN have expanded the group of networks with the power to influence elections; people like Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of the Daily Kos, Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, and Arianna Huffington and her colleagues at the Huffington Post are giving the mainstream newspapers a run for their money in the online text media world; and even small bloggers and video creators can become stars with the power to move discussions in elections.

It’s not just the relationship with the candidates that is changing in a digital age, but also the relationship of citizens to mainstream media—and to one another. Digital technologies make possible a more interactive relationship between people and media.¹⁸ Thanks to Internet technologies, Digital Natives and others are presented with near-constant opportunities to take on a more active relationship with information—not just passively accepting what is fed through the broadcast medium, but rather engaging with it and re-creating it in intriguing, creative ways. The result might be a more energized citizenry with closer ties to the public discussion about politics.

This phenomenon of citizens telling the stories of politics themselves, through digital media, could have a profound and lasting impact on democracies. Instead of thinking in terms of classical participatory politics, we should expand our frame to include the kinds of political involvement in which Digital Natives specialize. One aspect of this broader conception of participation is the making and remaking of narratives of a campaign or of other important public events. This broader frame encompasses notions of semiotic democracy. In a semiotic democracy, a greater number of people are able to tell the stories of their times. This broader group of people participates in the “recoding” and “reworking” of cultural meaning.¹⁹ For example, instead of just receiving a newscast of the day’s events in politics from one of three mainstream news channels, citizens can themselves take the video clip of a candidate’s speech, interpret it themselves, and remix it into a video that they share with friends—or with the rest of the world on YouTube. In a semiotic democracy, the story can be reinterpreted and reshaped by any citizen with the skills, time, and access to digital technologies to do so. The idea of semiotic democracy sounds academic, but it might just be the most profound difference made possible by the Internet for our time.

The fact that Digital Natives and others have this opportunity to participate actively in the news, information, and entertainment creation and dissemination process doesn’t mean that they will avail themselves of it. The Internet isn’t going to solve the problem of civic disengagement. Not everyone will be taking advantage of these opportunities—indeed, the data suggest that most of them are not at present. But as events around the world in recent years have shown, when a lot of people care passionately about something, the Internet can become an extraordinarily powerful tool of organization, recruitment, and participation in the telling of the narratives of our society.

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