Engaged society vs Twittering society

David Sasaki, of the Global Voices fame, recently challenged me to write at least one positive post or essay for evern ten that are negative. I can’t yet live up to that challenge but I am eager to try bit by bit.

There is an interesting (and somewhat too upbeat for my taste) story in the Jakarta Globe today on how the Indonesian civil society has been mobilized to get two senior members of the country’s anti-corruption body out of detention:

When Bibit and Chandra were first detained on Oct. 29, few people anticipated the kind of uproar that would ensue. But public opinion swung dramatically to the side of the KPK officials, as demonstrated when a Facebook group set up in support of the two officials attracted tens of thousands of hits. With the Internet pushing Bibit and Chandra’s agenda, countless prominent individuals also rose to the challenge and rallied behind the antigraft officials’ cause. That, combined with the revelation of incriminating wiretaps — made public on the instruction of the Constitutional Court — culminated in their release.

…the two important developments in the case are, first, the way Indonesia’s civil society rallied around an issue of national importance, and second, the way the Internet helped to facilitate this trend.
 
Freewheeling and unregulated, the Internet has played a critical role, serving as a platform for independent debate, so much so that mainstream media are left with no choice but to start reporting issues that are causing waves in cyberspace.

This dramatic flattening of the media landscape lessens the power and influence of owners, editors, producers, journalists and indeed columnists such as myself. For many, this sort of transparency will be painful. At the end of the day, you, the reader, are in charge.

And one can only expect this process to accelerate, as technological change gathers momentum. While there were only 25 million Internet users in Indonesia in 2008, mobile penetration is 60 percent and soaring on the back of a 40 percent annual growth. At the same time, the explosive increase in handheld computing devices, such as BlackBerries, also signals a dramatic expansion in Internet usage. As a result, ordinary people can shape all aspects of news-making, tipping the balance of power away from the elite.

These are all important points. I do agree that in societies that have SOME media freedom and SOME civil society, the Internet can greatly amplify their work, potentially even getting tyrants (or semi-tyrants in this case) out of power. That’s why Twitter is so great at helping to preserve (improve?) the British democracy – but can’t really do much when it comes to bringing democracy to places like Turkmenistan or even Iran.

The big question is: what comes first, the engaged society or the twittering society? Looking at the case of Indonesia described above, to me the answer is pretty obvious: you first need to have informed/active citizenry and at least some quasi-democratic institutions – and Twitter revolutions would follow. You can’t start with twittering citizenry and NO democracy in sight – and expect that it would suddenly drop from the skies as the masses begin twittering.