Information technology and democracy “Part 2”

The impact of Information Technology (IT) on the world in society, economy, governance, and ideology is so immense and fast that nobody could have predicted or anticipated the consequences. It so destabilized social and political order that the powers are still grappling with its advantages/disadvantages and how to cope with them. Now, comes Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is an additional geometric leap in IT, that is further unsettling the world order.

While I may have touched the above topic in my previous columns, I didn’t write a part 1 of this article, because that part is still happening. It was in the beginning of the 21st century or the year 2000 that the power of IT was starting to be appreciated by governments of all shades of ideology. The autocrats who had always wanted to control the information that was available to the people, and had experienced protests, demonstrations, and revolution fueled by newspapers, radio, television, and informal communications, realized the negative implications of massive readily available information. So, restrictions on the access to the Internet and to IT communication was the first order.

As IT technologies advanced further and faster and restrictions and censorship became insufficient to control the flow of information, repressive governments/tyrants added to controlling or managing the information by disinformation and fake news sponsored by their governments. This is happening in many countries like China, Myanmar, Russia, Hungary, Iran, Venezuela, Senegal, Turkey, Syria, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other countries in varying degrees of severity. This is the Part 1.

Part 2 is the continuing attacks on democracy with more severity by autocrats, populist politicians, extreme right ideologists and religious fanatics using IT technologies that are continuing to advance. Official and technical censorships, signal disruption and access limitation will be increased. Dedicated, targeted and enlarged troll farms/influencers will be 24/7, to limit positive information about democracies and extol the good side of undemocratic governments. There are already whole bureaucracies/offices, some of them sited in foreign countries targeting their overseas nationals to restrict/influence them with official government information. Soft sell to the more affluent and hard sell to the less-affluent citizens. At the current state of world affairs, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine ongoing, the civil war in Sudan, the rebellion in Myanmar and Senegal, and various social unrest in many countries, the IT war between ideologies will intensify. With the AI ability to create fake video/audio and other disinformation materials, anti-democratic promoters will use them all.

The pushback and countermeasures by democratic governments and institutions are and have been at work at countering the initiatives of the anti-democracy groups. Responsible counter-propaganda which includes fact checking and reality reporting have surfaced even if flooded with state sponsored disinformation. They have stood their ground even without a structured organization and logistics due to the self-limiting nature of disinformation and fake news. The inundation of fake information eventually turns off audiences, especially if the reality on the ground doesn’t correspond with the disinformation. That, China, North Korea, and Russia have to intensify their strict censorship, that the rebels in Myanmar, Iran, and Senegal are willing to die, and many people in other countries are risking in criticizing their governments shows that democracy will hold globally.

At the beginning of the 20th century, 50% of the world was under some kind of democratic government. There have been shifts to semi-autocratic/less democratic governments but there have also been movements to more democratic governments, and more active people power movements. At the end of 2020, the balance between democratic and autocratic governments have not shifted significantly. It’s a great consolation that in the 18th century only 10% of the world was under some kind of democracy. As access to information is a vital ingredient of democracy, the IT revolution will eventually be more positive for democracy.