The Geopolitics of Cyberspace

by Blake Harris

 
© Copyright 1995, 1999 Blake Harris
 

Even many of those who have never read William Gibson now know that he was first to coin the word "cyberspace" in his science fiction story Burning Chrome and again in his novel Neuromance}. Originally, cyberspace referred to a hallucinatory virtual reality generated by a dense matrix of computer networks. Mercenary hackers jacked their nervous systems directly into "the net" so they could overcome complex, and sometimes lethal security measures to break into computer installations across the planet.
 

As yet, Internet and the lesser computer networks of today bear little real resemblance to that corporate-controlled cyberspace of the future which Gibson envisioned. Nevertheless, many important issues currently being debated about net access, commercialization, privacy, encryption and the future of the net will determine the very nature of the cyberspace which evolves in the decades ahead.
 

In a speech given at the National Academy of Sciences' Convocation on Technology and Education, Gibson called proposals to ensure free speech and open access to Internet a "national adventure... of quite extraordinary importance." Raising the specter of a vast and disenfranchised underclass, he suggested that an open and free Internet might offer "nothing less than this nation's last and best hope of providing something like a level socioeconomic playing field for a true majority of its citizens."
 

"Historians of the future -- provided good dreams prevail -- will view this as having been far more crucial to the survival of democracy in the United States than rural electrification or the space program" he said.
 

Gibson is far from alone in his belief that Internet -- or the future global net which evolves from it -- may extend something of a last hope for democracy as we know it.
 

Even the mainstream media has begun to sing praise to Internet's bedlam of free expression. Now that "giant information empires own everything else," New York Times Magazine recently proclaimed, Internet remains "anarchic" and "democratic" -- "the most universal and indispensable network on the planet." U.S. News & World Report pointed out that on Internet "everyone has a virtually unlimited right to express and seek information on any subject." Harper's Magazine suggested that Internet marks "not the beginning of authority but its end" and described cyberspace as "a country of decentralized nodes of governance and thought" where "the non-dogmatic--the experimental idea" and "the global perspective" all work to counter centralized power and authority.
 

Internet is today repeatedly called the last uncensored mass medium because, as yet, no one owns it and with no center, it is difficult to censor in the traditional sense. Anyone, for example, can post anything to any unmoderated newsgroup and this will be carried by any host system offering the newsgroup to its users. Self-regulation, in the past, has largely been the order of the day, with a gradient of measures being taken against the irritating offenders by other newsgroup readers.
 

Simply ignoring offensive posts, "flaming" (sending highly critical responses), complaints to the administrator of the system through which the offender is posting, mail bombing the offender (sending quantities of material to the offender's email address) and putting enough pressure on system administrators to eventually deny repeated offenders access to the net have all worked to keep newsgroups loosely regulated by fellow users.
 

Posts designed to inflame have started to be more frequently augmented with other harassment tactics, including flooding newsgroups with so much useless material that they might be dropped by host systems -- a tactic recently adopted by someone apparently trying to close down the alt.2600 hackers newsgroup, for instance -- and forging messages, including cancel messages, which in effect remove a previous post from most systems carrying a newsgroup.
 

Nevertheless, Internet has operated largely as an information free-for-all. Dedicated Usenet readers have proved willing to put up with a considerable quantity of relatively non-informative posts to glean information or communication which they considered valuable.
 

Many newsgroups take on a life of their own, becoming in a sense their own distinct community. Regular posters get to know each other, and as discussions progress, a kind of group identity can develop. As sociologist, Emile Durkheim, noted almost a century ago, "When a certain number of individuals in the midst of a political society are found to have ideas, interests, sentiments, and occupations not shared by the rest of the population, it is inevitable that they will be attracted toward each other under the influence of these likenesses. They will seek each other out, enter into relations, associate, and thus little by little, a restricted group, having its special characteristics, will be formed in the midst of the general society."
 

A virtual group meeting in cyberspace frequently takes on those dynamics found in most small groups. More than half a century's research devoted to analyzing the formation and functioning of small groups is now applicable to the new phenomena of cyber-groups. For instance, Harvard researcher Robert F. Bales theorized:
 

"It is to the advantage of every individual in a group to stabilize the potential activity of others toward him, favorably if possible, but in any case in such a way as he can predict it... All of them, even those who may wish to exploit the others, have some interest in bringing about stability. A basic assumption here is that what we call the `social structure' of groups can be understood primarily as a system of solutions to the functional problems of interaction which become institutionalized in order to reduce the tensions growing out of uncertainty and unpredictability in the actions of others."
 

Social writer Alexis de Tocqueville observed the predilection of American society to form groups and associations of all kinds. This, he believed, was closely associated with he principle of equality which, as he saw it, was the fundamental theme of the American system. "Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations," he wrote. But more important, he maintained that without an ability associate in the pursuit of common ends, a democratic society would fragment and stagnate, eventually giving way to some authoritarian form.
 

It has long been understood that the key to social change of virtually any description lies in the creation of groups or associations united by some common purpose. But less obvious is the fact that groups are now also regarded as the key influencing individuals.
 

Psychologist Kurt Lewin argued that "... it is usually easier to change individuals formed into a group than to change any one of them separately."
 

Studies on the way mass media succeeds in formulating public opinion once operated on the assumption that the media sent out a message at one end and Mr. or Ms. Public received it at the other with nothing in between. However, researchers Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz argued that opinion research had to focus on long-range public symbols and events and that these must be analyzed in relation to a highly complex set of interlocking and overlapping groups. The group or groups that individuals belonged to helped to determine how they will respond to mass media influence-attempts.
 

Cyber-groups, as a natural development, will inevitably become more prominent in efforts to promote and organize social change. But the reverse also is true. Cyber-groups will also increasingly become a target for professional propagandists, advertisers and social designers of all descriptions.
 

Leonard W. Doob of Yale University, wrote in Public Opinion and Propaganda that propaganda is "a systematic attempt by an interested individual (or individuals) to control the attitudes of groups of individuals through the use of suggestion, and consequently, to control their actions."
 

It is because cyberspace lends itself to the formation of cyber-groups that it is such an enticing target for those propagandists and social engineers who seek to manipulate social trends and convictions from behind-the-scenes.
 

As Steve Crocker, one Usenet contributor astutely put it in an article in the alt.activism newsgroup, whoever controls socialized images to a large extent also controls behavior. ""These images are our primary tools of conceptualization, which we use in understanding who we are, where we are situated in society and in history, and what actual or potential significance our activities have in life," he wrote. "Because of decentralized origination of messages [on Internet], the ability of one poster to interrupt another, the lack of a mechanism to censor content, and the speedy but non-sychnronous mode of conversation it is possible for `fringe' ideas to be heard and to rise or fall on their merits, alongside conventional ideas. Thus, we have a real possibility, for the first time in many years, to create communities of thought in which our socialized images are constructed in a participatory fashion, and can reflect reality as we actually experience it, rather than as some central authority has decided it is appropriate to appear."
 

This is one reason why Internet might be aptly described as a democratizing force. Yet this new power of computer networks also offers an unprecedented challenge to professional propagandists. The tendency for the formation of cyber-groups added to the interactive nature of the net could make Internet, or its successor, one of the most powerful mediums for long-term, behind-the-scenes social engineering.
 

In theory, the net's anarchic freedom offers the best defense against carefully orchestrated social manipulation. Just as the basic premise of democracy is that the commonsense of the majority will lead to rational choices and the prosperity, health and survival of the society generally, so it might be argued that this same commonsense can defeat any attempt to utilize the net for social manipulation, control and propaganda.
 

But already we see the net's anarchic freedoms eroding, not through the actions of "big brother" or a central control, but rather through the existing social controls so necessary for the protection of the rights of both individuals and minorities.
 

As The Nation pointed out in a recent article, "despite the claims made for the net, its freedoms are restricted in familiar ways..." because it "... reproduces many problems and obstacles found outside cyberspace." The article went on to explain how libel and copyright laws have started to be applied to Internet's virtual interchanges.
 

The net interfaces and has impact on the world beyond its cyber-borders and, following the laws of physics, there is always a reciprocal. But more than this, the social crises which confront us outside the net inevitably become a vacuum which increasingly pull the net into the fray.
 

THE HIDDEN CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY
 

It is the very nature of the Information Society that posses one of the most serious threats to the future of democracy. This threat is not just the potential for increasingly totalitarian regimes to use computers to monitor virtually all aspects of their citizens' lives. The greater danger lies in the hidden control and manipulation of the beliefs and actions which the large majority are covertly lead to embrace.
 

In his book Powershift, Alvin Toffler suggests that highly sophisticated "info-tactics" will be increasingly used to manipulate populations:
 

"Before we understand the sophisticated techniques that will shape political power in the future, we need to look at the methods used by today's most successful power players. These `classic' techniques are not taught in any school. Shrewd players of the political game know them instinctively. The rules have not been formalized or set down systematically.

"Until this is done, talk about `open government,' an `informed citizenry,' or `the public's right to know' remain rhetorical. For these info-tactics call into question some of our most basic democratic assumptions...

"Baffling new issues about the uses and misuses of knowledge will arise to confront business and society as a whole. They will no longer simply reflect Bacon's truth that knowledge is power, but the higher level truth that, in the super-symbolic economy, it is knowledge about knowledge that counts most."
 

The potential for psychological manipulation and control has been a concern raised by some of this century's most astute writers. In 1953, for instance, in his book The Impact of Science on Society, Bertrand Russell wrote:
 

"The opinion that snow is white must be held to be a morbid eccentricity. It is for the social scientists to make these maxims [of mass psychology] precise, and to discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.

"Although this science will be diligently studied, it will rightly be confined to the governing class and the populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. [emphasis added]

"When the techniques have been perfected... diet, injection and injunctions will combine from an early age to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and in any serious criticism of the powers that be will be psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves to be happy, because the government will tell them that it is so."
 

This passage has haunted me ever since I first came across it several years ago. Russell certainly was not just another crank conspiracy theorist. Yet, here he was suggesting that techniques not only could, but would be developed that strike at the very heart of freedom and democracy as we know it.
 

The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated -- a frightening concept. As a writer, my first inclination was to relegate it to that mental bin of 1984-style warnings which one leaves for future generations to worry about. But Russell's passage continued to nag at me. I began to wonder just how far we had already come down this road. The more I study this issue, the more I am convinced that freedoms we assume are still ours are under assault in ways which most people do not understand. Perhaps it is as Toffler suggested, the vital issue we have to confront is not only who has access to information or knowledge, nor what that information will consist of, but rather the higher-level truth that knowledge about knowledge is starting to determine who holds the reigns of power, especially behind-the-scenes.

INFORMATION AS COMMODITY VERSUS INFORMATION AS POWER
 

The idea that "knowledge is power" has become possibly one of the most quoted (and least understood) truisms of the Information Society.
 

There are many ways of looking at knowledge or information, especially when we consider the volume of information that becomes readily available through computer networks and databases.
 

In his book The Geopolitics of Information, Anthony Smith addresses the context in which we think of this continuous stream of information:
 

"It is possible to view information as a social resource of a special kind rather than as a produced commodity, a resource which enables other resources to function productively since it is the existence of salient information which determines the value and existence of other resources. Creating blockages in the flow of information is the technique of power within autocratic systems of government and these are generally in themselves hindrances to economic expansion. That is partly why the argument about "free flow" [of information] is the modern counterpart of the more traditional argument about free press. It is no longer possible to separate official attitudes to political censorship from the policy of a society towards its information flow as a whole."
 

Smith goes on to argue that when information is treated as a resource, questions of social allocation and social control become increasingly important. By its very nature, much like mineral resources, information which is generated by a society or a country as a whole has to be allocated to specific interests to be exploited. Flows of information can be diverted or made to circulate only within certain groups or for specified purposes. And he adds:
 

"The problems of privacy, access, commercial privilege, public interest, are problems of allocation and priority and value of the kind that every society has had to debate incessantly in history and now has to do so again in this new guise."
 

Smith's suggestion that there is a "geopolitics" to information itself is an interesting one. It is premise worth examining in some detail.
 

Originally the subject of geopolitics focused upon the analysis of geographical influences on power relationships in international politics. Thinking along this line began after F. Ratzel, Professor of Geography at the University of Munich, emphasized the importance of space in the mechanics of statecraft. "The decay of every state is the result of declining space conceptions," he said. And he added that space was not only the vehicle of power, but that it was power.
 

The actual term "geopolitics" was coined by one of Ratzel's disciples, the Swedish political scientist, Rudolf Kjellen. He defined geopolitics as "the doctrine of the state as a geographical organism or phenomenon in space."
 

"Being a political science, geopolitics views the state as an entity and seeks to contribute to our understanding of it as a political organism," said Kjellen. "Political geography, on the other hand, studies the earth as the abode of human communities in their relationship to the other capacities of earth."
 

A school of German geopoliticians lead by Karl Haushofer soon emerged which grabbed hold of the subject and used it as a basis for rationalizing Nazi expansionist propaganda. They argued that geopolitics was a discipline that taught students the art of politics and strategy in accordance with "the history-tested lines running across the face of the earth."
 

In early geopolitical theories, such things as the acquisition of natural boundaries, access to important sea routes and the control of strategically important land areas were seen as fundamental factors in the development of any national policy.
 

However, technological developments in the later half of this century have allowed many states (and other social organisms) to overcome limitations placed upon them by geographical location. In the modern context, geopolitics is less and less geography bound and today might be better defined as a study of relationships between space and power as these apply to social organisms.
 

It is not a new observation that a social body can be seen to behave in many ways like a single organism which is composed not of cells, but of people. Kjellen suggested this, for instance, in his book The State as an Organism, published in 1916.
 

With the arrival of cyberspace, following the same train of logic, we are also now confronted with an new kind of entity --the cyberspace organism which exists not in physical space, but rather in digital space.
 

THE GEOGRAPHY OF CYBERSPACE
 

Cyberspace is very aptly named because it is a kind of space.
 

Internet users -- the net.citizens of cyberspace -- actually tend, after a while, to think of newsgroups, conferences or forums as virtual geographic locations that one goes "to" and departs "from." There is a "hereness" and "thereness" to these groupings of computer messages.
 

The geographical space analogy is one that has frequently been used to help explain cyberspace to the uninitiated. In an article written for the Whole Earth Review several years ago, for instance, John Perry Barlow, later a co-founder of the Electronic Freedom Foundation, suggested that cyberspace had much in common with the 19th Century American West. "It is vast, unmapped, culturally and legally ambiguous, verbally terse (unless you happen to be a court stenographer), hard to get around in, and up for grabs," he said. "Large institutions already claim to own the place, but most of the actual natives are solitary and independent, sometimes to the point of sociopathy. It is, of course, a perfect breeding ground for both outlaws [i.e. computer hackers] and new ideas about liberty."
 

When we think of cyberspace as a kind of digital space, then the analogy can be taken much further than this. Cyberspace becomes open to geopolitical analysis.
 

Or more accurately, there is a geopolitical window through which many of the fundamental issues concerning Internet and cyberspace can be viewed. The fundamental issues concern space, power, and to a large extent, the kind of organism that will evolve as a result of structural decisions that are made in the next few years.
 
 

INTERNET AND PROPAGANDA
 

One Internet user recently sent a brief, but interesting public post which I saved because it very much aligned to my own thoughts on the subject:
 

Internet is a fascinating lab for the study of idea dissemination. A number of times I have watched how an idea briefly mentioned in one post will suddenly get a great deal of play a few weeks latter. Even more interesting is how the idea might suddenly appear in posts in another group. My study of this is informal and intuitive, but I have a sense that somebody who carefully studied the communication dynamics (and coincidences in the cases where causal effects are hard to find) could exert a great deal of control over what was discussed and how. Since Internet originated ideas have a small, but growing influence over the "mass consciousness" of the nation, this capacity could be exceedingly useful to tacticians and strategists who want to have some voice in the "national agenda."
 

Internet, in its current unregulated state, is wide open to propaganda of every description. Recently, for instance, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization in Los Angeles dedicated to exposing anti-Semitism, presented the FCC with comprehensive documentation that showed how extensively Internet is being used for abhorrent propaganda purposes. During their three-year investigation of propaganda on Internet, the Simon Wiesenthal Center built up a large dossier of cyberspace hatemongering that portrays cyberspace as an unchecked haven for bigots of every description. Not only did they find Jew-bashing and far-flung efforts to revise the history books concerning the Nazi holocaust, but flagrant homosexual and race-bashing as well.
 

For anyone who browses through numerous newsgroups on Internet, especially the unmoderated ones where posts are automatically forwarded around the globe without review, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's investigation will hardly prove to be a revelation.
 

However, what might be easily overlooked by those not fully familiar with the unmoderated newsgroups is that Internet's weakness (aka its openness and freedom) has also turned out to be a hidden source of tolerance and strength. Hatemongering posts rarely go unchallenged publicly. And the counter-posts and "flames" which so often appear to refute any bigotry, coming from a wide range of viewpoints, generally hit home far more effectively that the original offending messages.
 

As a cyber-organism, Internet has proven itself to be remarkably efficient in self-correction. Much like any biological organism, whenever there is an "infection" (i.e. hatemongering or bigoted post), disinfecting "anti-bodies" (i.e. flames) rush forward to attack the offending partly. Emotions can sometime run a little feverish at times, but this is, nevertheless, democracy in action. The decency and commonsense of the majority tends to prevail.
 

As a result, Internet users tend to regard the net as a powerful tool for exposing lies or inaccuracies of all descriptions. As a communication medium, it actually allows falsehoods to be exposed in a more direct and responsive fashion than could ever possible in newspapers and magazines. In a matter of hours falsehoods are frequently challenged point by point and such replies receive as much prominence as the original offending post.
 

On the surface then, Internet is a powerful anti-propaganda weapon. The problem lies not in the propaganda which is obviously propaganda, but rather in the propaganda which is not.
 

This issue -- difficult to detect propaganda and the hidden long-range manipulation of populations -- lies at the heart of the crisis which democracy itself is beginning to face.
 

Anthony Prathanis and Elliot Aronson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, write in Age Of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion:
 

"[Professional] communicators seem to be relying more and more on persuasion devices that make use of heuristics and emotions over fully informed discussion, vivid images over thoughtful discourse, meaningless association over reasoned casual analysis... The consequences for democracy can be dire.

"As more and more propagandists use simpler persuasion, the competitive urge to use simpler and simpler persuasion devices increases. As simpler and simpler persuasion devices are used, people become increasingly less informed and sophisticated about civic matters. As the populace becomes less informed, the propagandist must use even moresimplistic persuasion devices. The result is an ignorance spiral -- a cynical populace bombarded with more and more thoughtless propaganda that they have less and less skill and inclination to process and ability to understand."
 

The truth is that professional propaganda techniques today are so sophisticated that most people rarely recognize when they are being employed.
 

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis defines propaganda as "the expression of opinion or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations."
 

Jacques Ellul, the French political philosopher, argues that most people are easy prey for propaganda because they think propaganda consists only of lies. People generally do not believe that truth can also be propaganda.
 

Ellul makes the point, for instance, that most people think that education is the best defense against propaganda. However,he argues that what passes for education in the modern world is
largely "pre-propaganda" -- the conditioning of minds with vast amounts of incoherent information, already dispensed for ulterior purpose and posing as "facts."
 

Propaganda is intrinsically an undemocratic weapon. No nation or social organism can use it without undergoing some kind of transformation in the process.
 

It is one of the rules of political propaganda that to be most effective, it must be constant rather than sporadic. It must be as "total" as possible.
 

Propaganda is most effective when it uses all means of mass communication available: press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. It seeks to attack the intellectual and emotional life of the target audience from all sides. As Ellul put it, "It seeks to invade the whole man, to lead him to adopt a mystical attitude and reach him through all possibly psychological channels, but more, it speaks to all men. Propaganda cannot be satisfied with partial success, for it does not tolerate discussion; by its very nature, it excludes contradiction and discussion."
 

This is all the more reason that Internet and all of cyberspace inevitably becomes an important target for professional propaganda efforts. And this alone will change the nature of cyberspace in the years to come.
 

The danger is that the majority of net.citizens, continuing to believe that Internet is an uncontrolled anarchy of free speech, will leave themselves wide open for sophisticated manipulation because they think such manipulation could never happen -- especially where the appearance is that almost anything goes. Being unfamiliar with sophisticated propaganda techniques, they would rarely, if ever, perceive them.
 

Added to that, it is not those things which get discussed, but rather those ideas and images which are widely accepted and generally are not discussed that become the most effective propaganda messages -- those social images and ideas that we have been led to believe already through years of mass media propaganda.

WHY SOPHISTICATED PROPAGANDA IS SO HARD TO SPOT

Modern propaganda practices and methods are insidiously designed to influence and control people without their being aware they are being influenced and controlled.
 

In psychological warfare, for instance, one aspect of the broader subject of propaganda, one is not seeking to convert or convince the enemy to believe as you believe. Rather, one is seeking to create an effect which does away to active resistance and opposition to your programs or campaigns. The techniques, as they now exist, are designed to destroy not only the will to resist, but also the ability to resist. Confusion, fragmentation of social groups, setting one social group upon another in artificially created conflicts -- these are usual objectives of psychological warfare operations.
 

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis defines propaganda as "the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals and groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations."
 

Leonard W. Doob, considered one of the foremost American specialist in propaganda, said propaganda is "an attempt to modify personalities and control the behavior of individuals in relation to goals considered non-scientific or of doubtful value in a specific society and time period."
 

Jacques Ellul, in his formidable book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, explains how propaganda techniques have advanced in the last century and a half so that today, the average citizen in a democratic nation is hardly aware that he is being subjected to psychological control:
 

"Propaganda is very frequently described as a manipulation for the purpose of changing ideas or opinions, of making individuals "believe" some idea or fact, and finally making them adhere to some doctrine--all matters of the mind. Or, to put it differently, propaganda is described as dealing with beliefs and ideas... This line of reasoning is completely wrong. To view propaganda as still being what it was in 1850 is to cling to an obsolete concept of man and of the means to influence him; it is to condemn oneself to understand nothing about modern propaganda. The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas, but to provoke action. It is no longer to challenge adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief."

The essence of modern propaganda is not changing peoples belief systems, but rather manipulating people so they will behave in the desired fashion in spite of that they believe. In an election, for instance, it is irrelevant to the election process whether people believe that a candidate shares their beliefs or desires for the country. Where this can be accomplished, of course, intellectual arguments which communicate this become part of the campaign process. But what is far more important, from the candidates viewpoint, is that people will vote for him regardless of whether or not they share all his political views. It may be enough, for example, to convince voters that a candidate is less of a threat to their personal and social aspirations than other candidates to secure enough votes to win.
 

The heart of modern propaganda efforts is the observation that people's belief systems are rarely a consistent or unified into an integrated, non-contradictory pattern. People can frequently hold a number of beliefs which are somewhat contradictory to the outside observer, but which they have somehow managed to reconcile in their own minds.
 

Added to this, people will often do things (or can be induced to do things) which conflict with what they objectively believe (or profess to believe). Behavior, influenced by emotional as well as intellectual processes, is not always empirically logical or rational.
 

In theory, then, sophisticated propaganda techniques could induce people to behave quite differently than think intellectually they should behave. And if done cleverly enough, people then begin to adjust their belief systems to accommodate their actions so they feel less guilty about what they have done.
 

Of course, this is a rather abbreviated thumb-nail look at something which is highly complex, both in its theory and techniques of application. However, it suggests something of the approach taken in modern propaganda planning.
 

Ellul points out that the propagandist tries to create myths by which man will live. He defines myth, in this context, as "an all-encompassing, activating image: a sort of vision of desirable objectives that have lost their material, practical character and have become strongly colored, over-whelming, all-encompassing, and which displace from the conscious all that is not related to it." And he suggests that such images can move man toward a desired action because it includes all that he feels is good, just and true.
 

In what ways might Internet become a sophisticated tool for the professional propagandist?
 

To answer that at least in brief, one must look at some of the standard tools of the professional propagandist. For example, apart from selecting out of a mass of facts only those which suit the proganadist's purpose, there is also the use of stereotypes.
 

As Walter Lippmann first observed in 1922, there is a natural tendency to "type-cast" people and that after a time, this picture or stereotype can become a fixed impression that becomes almost impervious to the truth or real situation.
 

Not only individuals, but also groups and even actions and events can be stereotyped. And cyberspace as a medium is particularly sensitive to stereotyping. It can be chaotic and "noisy" at times and readers frequently will form impressions of people and situations based only on the slim information presented. Once that stereotype is established, subsequent information is viewed with the stereotype in mind.
 

In what is called assertion, a propagandist, rather than arguing, will often make bold assertions in favor of his thesis. He or she will appeal to authority, mean that some authority, especially scientists or professionals, will be referenced to give credence to the propagandist's platform. Just as advertisers will sometimes say that a product is doctor or dentist recommended, so the propagandist can cleverly use some authority to back up his position.
 

One effective tool of the propagandist is putting forth a message which is not only in support of something, but which is also against some real or imagined "enemy." This has the effect of not only directing aggressions away from the propagandist, but also helps to create a group identity amongst individuals.
 

One of the most frequently used premisses of propaganda is that a message must be repeated, and that if repeated often enough, it will in time come to be accepted by the target audience. On the surface, it would appear that this would be the easiest form of propaganda to spot.
 

However, done cleverly, and by varying not only the words used, but often even the subject matter being discussed, a general impression or underlying message or image can be conveyed repeatedly without being detectable except by careful analysis of a quantity of messages over a period of time.
 

Because we are daily bombarded with propaganda in other media outlets, some of it clumsy and some of it highly sophisticated and complex, we are more susceptible to propaganda. We bring with us to the net all of our own prejudices and hastily formed pre-conceptions and we  communicate these to others whether we intend to or not. Because we are heavily propagandized already, we can inevitably become unwitting propagandists.
 

And taking the geopolitics of information into account, part of a propagandist's job might simply be to steer people away from examination and investigation of certain issues -- in other words, to help to regulate the flows of information. One of the most effective ways of doing this is taking up people's attention and channelling a group's time into other matters. One indication of professional propagandists at work is the fact that important issues receive little or no attention. The clues, in other words, include not only what is there, but also what isn't there that should be.
 

Internet and other computer networks emerged rather unexpectedly. They took on a life and a complexity of social action that governments and most other power structures never predicted. And their use, for many years, was limited to such a small portion of the population that their social significance was generally not realized until long after the fact of their establishment and unchecked growth.
 

A new communication, publishing and information distribution system was established before virtually any controls could be put into place (modern governments increasingly being of the mindset that their role is to protect their populations from every form of possible abuse). The result was an experiment in public cooperation and freedom that demonstrated yet again that democratic self-regulation, while open to abuse, does work.
 

The professional propagandists and social engineers largely ignored these computer networks and continued to concentrate on the older, more established mass media. But Internet has suddenly become of growing importance. Increasingly, other mass media are looking to Internet as source of stories. And what happens on Internet now routinely gets reported in the mainstream press.
 

What that means for Internet users is that the honeymoon is over. It will happen rather quickly now. The professional propagandists will be moving in big time and the invasion will largely be invisible. How much will Internet change as a result? That is the million dollar question that no one can answer. For that depends, in part, on the net.citizens themselves.

End

More non-fiction writing by Blake Harris can be found at: www.blakeharris.com