Raising the voice of people through digital technology defines the meaning of digital democracy. Mostly inhabited by developing poor states, the Global South is still reluctant to come to terms with the reality of people’s voice. Informal platforms erected by digital technology, encompassing social media, have been offering an alternative to otherwise available formal platforms amenable to control by the state machinery. Pakistan offers an example.
On their lands, the Global North fought World Wars to protect and proliferate democracy, expressing the voice of people. Democracy brought along another phenomenon called privatization, untying the state’s control from people’s lives. In developed affluent states of the Global North, privatization eased the path to social activism. This is where a difference lies. Mere yearning for democracy is insufficient unless it enfolds privatization which sets entrepreneurship free from the shackles of the state’s regulations. Currently, Pakistan is heading for further privatization coupled with reducing the size of the state machinery. The compulsion is economic sustenance predicating on self-reliance, as the age of foreign aid running the state is over, though the state is still fighting the rearguard battle. Nevertheless, the state’s retreat is discernible.
Pakistan is still refusing to learn from recent experiences of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, where social media upended coercive ruling systems working to the disadvantage of people in general. The reigning systems were hell bent upon retaining inherent monopolies – under one ruse or another, the favoured one is national security – over the lives of people. Such systems run not only on the state’s regulations but also on the state’s ego swollen in the colonial era, as certain states are inured to seeing their citizens (assuming them subjects) submit completely. Any act short of absolute submission is considered akin to revolt, read now terrorism. Contrarily, social platforms constructed by digital technologies offer people opportunities to talk about the kind of life they want to live and the kind of system they like to have around them. People tend to use digital technology to share their thoughts, views and leanings. This is how digital technology engenders digital democracy.
Currently, Pakistan is overwhelmed by digital democracy, making people defiant to any coercive system which could control them. All efforts to slow down the internet speed – and hence access to social media – to shift people back to watching electronic media preferably are underway. The collateral damage is being borne by the section of economy which is fed by free lancers earning foreign exchange. Understandably, this is a war of attrition, one is trying to wear the other down. An economic loss is affordable but not a lapse in the state’s longing for retaining authority.
In Pakistan, electronic media exist with two drawbacks. First, electronic media are vulnerable to control and manipulation by the state authorities. This shortcoming has undermined the credibility of electronic media in the eyes of people. Second, electronic media offer a one way journey. That is, whereas electronic media can influence people’s thoughts, people cannot affect electronic media in return. This incapacity of people has turned them to using social media which permit them to share their thoughts unobstructed and unabated. This is the point where the state is in clash with people. The state wants people not only to be influenced but the state also wants people stop sharing their thoughts with their fellows unless monitored.
Whereas electronic media need viewers, social media need participants. This point makes both kinds of media stand apart. Ratings offering a kind of feedback to electronic media is inferior to the feedback given to social media by instant comments, likes and dislikes. Further, “dislikes” can root out a narrative on social media, unlike the case with electronic media, which keep on bombarding viewers with pedestrian, doubtful, and sometimes dictated narratives, disrespecting the sanity of recipients.
For electronic media, the state wants viewers who are gullible to an offered narrative and who are ready to acquiesce in their decisions. On the other hand, people want to chat with one another informally before reaching a conclusion. Social media offer the kind of platform people look for, and this is why social media embody the concept of digital democracy. Nevertheless, there are five reasons for certain states such as Pakistan to hate social media and hence abhor digital democracy.
First, digital democracy offers multiple platforms to break silence and raise one’s voice. Breaking silence is abhorred by the states running their affairs on despotic patterns of the Cold War (1946 -1991). As most developing states could not experience true independence owing to the Cold War realities, these states did not learn to be free and extend freedom to their citizens. Such states still yearn for a Big Brother who could dictate them and, in turn, they could play the role of Big Brother on their citizens. Second, digital democracy embodies representative democracy. Compared to developed states, where the system of electoral transparency is well-established, rigged elections and puppet governments still prevail to control democracy in developing states. This is why in developing states a stiff resistance against digital democracy has been witnessed.
Third, digital democracy defies a controlled system. Again, the Cold War habits of controlling societies are still extant in developing states. In digital democracy, the controllers see their monopoly gone. They are antagonist to any hint of awareness, which can hold them accountable. It is accountability that is fearful. Fourth, digital democracy challenges fake news and shuns contrived history. It is the state that spreads fake news and spawns delusional history to hoodwink its people into living in a fool’s paradise. Digital democracy promotes access to information and endorses the originality of news. Fifth, digital democracy challenges the mode of governance and the formula of the distribution of wealth. No fait accompli except the will of people.
In short, the digital age cannot be reversed, so is the case with digital democracy.
Dr Qaisar Rashid
The writer is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com