Consumer Networks and the Diffusion of Power

This report was prepared by David Bosworth and Richard Thomson.

A YouGov@Cambridge event, in association with CSaP and Cambridge Public Policy

YouGov@Cambridge is a new collaboration between YouGov and Cambridge – specifically with POLIS and Cambridge Public Policy. This blossoming partnership is creating a new kind of research forum, where world-class thinkers can connect with the public pulse directly through YouGov’s international polling.

On 8 and 9 September, the first YouGov@Cambridge Forum, in association with Cambridge Public Policy and CSaP, marked the formal launch of the collaboration.

In the modern globally interconnected world, the pace and possibility of communication has never been greater. The internet, television and radio provide universal platforms for collective thinking, where everyone’s voice can be heard. These new media have accelerated the timeline for sharing information and are putting unprecedented demands of accountability on politicians and leaders around the world. The role of public opinion in political dialogue can no longer be censored or controlled. The internet in particular has facilitated free speech and provided a medium for sharing political thinking in areas where this was previously impossible.

Nowhere is the diffusion of power more apparent than the incredible rise of Wikipedia. As founder Jimmy Wales explained, the modest aim of Wikipedia is to provide “Global access to all of human knowledge for free”. By providing an open, neutral and free source of information, Wikipedia has generated an informed, educated population with the tools and desire to bring about institutional change anywhere in the world. It is only by educating people of the alternatives that they can make a choice; neutrality is a key philosophy of Wales and Wikipedia.

The new digital environment created by sites such as Wikipedia as well as Facebook and Twitter has, according to Hillary Clinton provided “a new nervous system of our planet”. One participant described how this led to the awareness of the “vulnerability, fragility and brittleness of power.” The inability of a government to control the spread of information leads to a “deficit of legitimacy” where the public expect complete transparency from their leaders. One question raised was “Do politicians lead public opinion or follow it?” and it was suggested that maybe we are witnessing a shift where new forms of communication make it more difficult for politicians to lead opinion.

There is no more pertinent an example of the impact of new media than the Arab Spring. Considerable emphasis was put on how social media enabled like-minded people to organise themselves to co-ordinate rallies and protests and avoid government forces. Of course, these methods are available to both sides, with police and the army using social media to manage responses to protests. The role of conventional media such as television and radio must also be credited, providing a further medium for communication which is especially important in instances such as Libya where access to the internet was removed by leaders to try to stifle rebel communication. Those in power have no choice but to face up to unpopular public opinion and how they react to that could define their leadership in this new age of communication.

Increasingly, governments are being forced to open up to the electorate. The “post-bureaucratic age” has come to define a world where faceless centralised government can no longer function. Instead the pace and volume of information flow has led to a need to return to localisation and accountability, returning power to individuals and communities.

A key element of the government’s strategy on transparency is its open data project, data.gov.uk. Tim Kelsey and Rufus Pollock were on hand to explain the government’s motivation behind opening up vast quantities of information regarding government spending and resources. By liberating data on health, crime and spending, it is hoped that members of the public will identify the best way to share and utilise such data. Already a range of services has began to emerge, for example to enable people to identify the best schools in their area. In addition, it is hoped that people will use these data to hold institutions to account and pressure them into being more efficient, and that it will give rise to a nation of “garage entrepreneurs” who will find ways of monetising the processing of the data.

An area where transparency is promoting change is in international development. By requiring overseas agencies and governments to be transparent about how British aid is spent, the transparency model is exported, promoting accountability in governments that have historically acted in a secrecy. This is leading to an international standard of open government, allowing for easy and balanced comparison of world governments to determine how accountable their leaders are to their citizens. By highlighting how accountable a government is compared to others, its citizens are given an additional tool when calling for change.

Further insight into the importance of electronic media was given by Imran Kahn, Chairman of the PTI (Movement for Justice) in Pakistan. Social media in Pakistan has played a key role in influencing public opinion, particularly among the youth who feel that they have been able to become part of the political debate. Additionally, television coverage of small protests contributed to the (temporary) reinstatement of the Chief Justice. Both conventional and new media play a role in promoting change.

The fragility of institutions extends to the West, Nassim Taleb observed. Western society has become obsessed with the new – “neomania” – even though older, fully-developed technologies almost always outlive new inventions (for example, the chair will likely outlast the television). Increasingly new technology is corrective, arising only to fix problems created by other recent developments. This neomania manifests itself in government: the rise of the internet and global communication has diverted attention from local concerns; the corrective development of social media has led to a repersonalisation of the model of leadership. An obsession with globalisation has contributed to the fragility of global banking markets. Fragility is a side-effect of technology, by creating larger and larger systems they become inherently self-destructive as institutions do not scale in the same way that a country cannot operate simply as a large town. If the lessons from the current economic problems are to be learnt, we must learn not to protect these large and fragile institutions; instead we should allow them to fail early and often.

It was suggested by one contributor that the equilibrium of power may be shifting in the direction of the electorate rather than the elected, and this put in question leaders’ ability to govern effectively in such a networked society; perhaps we are now living in a “post-trust era”. Opinion on this was divided, with others commenting that politicians have always had to work in the context of public opinion. Sometimes they go with it, other times they gauge public opinion and steer it in a certain direction. New media do not change this but may require a firmer stance in an attempt to swing public belief. Another suggestion was that social media offered politicians a profitable means of communication; they are able to utilise it to engage with the public while at the same time being forced to work harder to change the direction of public opinion.

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