Political use of the Internet in authoritarian countries

undermine the authoritarian monopoly of its information control. The decentralizing effects of the Internet will eventually bring about the breakdown and collapse of the highly hierarchical and centralized national information system and thus initiate political change towards democratisation. Decentralising effects of the Internet are responsible for the quick dispersion of political information into all directions regardless of information national boundaries.

Since the arrival of the Internet in China in 1994, Internet use has grown rapidly.

The estimated number of Internet users has increased from 400,000 in 1997 to 22.5 million in 2000 (ITU, 2001). More and more people are increasingly turning to the Internet, particularly young urban professionals and well-educated segments of Chinese society (Yan, 2000). About 270 universities are connected to the Internet. Newspapers are also coming to terms with the Internet. By the end of 1998 some 82 newspapers had launched their own sites to provide their services online (Yan, 2000).

This exponential growth of the Internet in China has implications for the information sovereignty. Indeed, in most respects, it is in this area that its impact is the greatest. The Internet is about the diminuation of sovereignty in the sense that the Chinese authoritarian regime’s ability to manage international and global information flow is weakening. Thus it would seem that the information revolution represents a fundamental assault on the traditional conceptual barricades of information sovereignty.

Dissidents and pro-democracy groups such as the Chinese Democracy Party and religious sects like the Falun Gong were at the front run in adopting the Internet to disseminate alternatives to state-controlled information at a low cost and to rapidly mobilize members. A famous example dated back to 1999, when one of the most prominent Chinese democracy activists sent e-mail messages to Chinese government agencies and ministries. It was also reported that another Chinese dissident has distributed from his exile a newsletter to over 250,000 Chinese mail accounts (Yan, 2000). In an act of defiance, a pro-democracy group celebrated the eighth Tiananmen Square in June 1997, when they published an online-magazine, Suidao, (Chinese for “Tunnel”), which contained anti-government material. This might lead to the emergence of what has come to be termed as “Cyber dissidents” culture, which is taking foot in China. In the context of an emerging information system characterized primarily by a plurality of discourses, political discussions that are critical of the government are slowly generating.

Being aware of this new and unprecedented situation, the Chinese Communist party’s bureaucracy which controls the Internet and the information flow responded with a number of restrictions, including content and access regulation, a wide use of technological filtering and monitoring methods (e.g. the great Firewall) (Dai, 2000).

Like many other authoritarian regimes across the world, China has imposed a relatively high number of regulations on the political use of Internet technologies, particularly the Internet, on the basis that monitoring and limited Internet access is necessary to protect the political values and cultural identities of its society. The government has attempted to block websites deemed to have politically sensitive content and websites of some international news organizations like CNN, the New York Times and Human rights organizations (Sussman, 2000).

The Internet is gaining popularity amongst Chinese young educated people as a tool that supplies unrestricted access to the pipeline of information. The freewheeling nature of cyberspace may erode their control over the population.

Hill and Hughes suggest that the use of the technological diffusion and the political use of the Internet in developing countries have encouraged the development of more critical citizens who question traditional sources of authority, including government. The growth of the number of Internet users among the younger generation has been marked by a gradual decline in support for traditional sources of political authority, including established hierarchical institutions.

The use of the Internet will increase demands for new forms of political engagements via social movements and other groups. The implication of this intensive use of the Internet by these groups is that the erosion of faith in authoritarian egimes is in an irreversible process. Studying whether there is a relationship between a nation’s level of democratisation and the percentage of anti-government messages found in the country’s subject newsgroup, Hill and Hughes conclude that the Internet “will bring a wider democratic revolution in the world”.

1.4.3.3 Negative

It is true that powerful ideas are easily circulated online. It is easy to distribute political reports that are denied access in the mass media. However, in China, sending any message on domestic political or religious issues and containing critical content pertaining to the Chinese government’s official position, is illegal. China is developing and experimenting with new proactive strategies (Kalathil and Boas, 2001). As Kalathil and Boas observe such measures are implemented by the Chinese government in order to serve many objectives. The first is to strengthen the Communist party’s central authority. The second is to circulate the pro-party propaganda campaign, counter-information on government and nationalist material through the use of electronic means such as regime-sponsored web site or government-orchestrated chat rooms. The aim behind these proactive methods is to revitalize the regime’s legitimacy in a rapidly changing environment.

Evidence presented by Kalathil and Boas demonstrates that by the mid 1990s authoritarian regimes, such as many countries in the Islamic World, Africa, Latin America and East Asia, were well positioned to control the flow of political information on the Internet (Kalathil and Boas, 2003).

2 The Moroccan national information system

The development of the national information system in Morocco has followed in the footsteps of many third world countries. The forty-four year domination by the regime has significantly influenced the post-independence development of the national information system. The treatment of the national information system in this work is to demonstrate how the traditional media system has operated and how this situation has been advantageous only to the regime and not to other political forces, including Islam-oriented movements.

This chapter first provides a historical review of the national information, by reviewing the major stages, with a particular focus on the stage under the reign of King Hassan II. It then examines critically, albeit briefly, the various roles of the national information system in in the Moroccan political field, including the process of political independence, nation-building and the democratic transition period.

The first section of this chapter describes the formation and emergence of the national information system, following its historical development from early pre-colonial stages until the present time, with particular emphasis on the “rise of the network society”

that contributes to the emergence of an autonomous information system characterised by a wide range of pluralism. The second section examines how the regime has used the media system for its political objectives. It also analyses how the regime has functioned and which interests it has represented, by demonstrating the relationship between the opposition and the regime and the growing insignificance of its information system.