The network effect

In the early days of eCommerce we talked about network externalities - how the internet reduced time to market, increased choice and reached out to consumers. Did politics just catch up?

Two things happened that hint towards a political coming of age for the internet. The first, Obama's new White House follows his call for greater civic responsibility and transparency. It not only starts blogging but builds a web-front door through the catchy-titled ‘Office of Public Liaison'.

The second is Gordon Brown's embarrassing climb-down on MPs expenses. Whatever you think of the issue (and does anyone really think that MPs have a right to be exempt from public scrutiny?), it seems probable that this u-turn was made all the more rapidly because the web was used effectively to mobilise huge support against it. Although it must be noted that MP's appetites seem to have waned somewhat too.

Like the ‘road tax' petition, it became very clear to the government very quickly that what they were proposing was unacceptable to voter.

But the reporting of this has a hint of hyperbole about it. The suggestion is that the internet saved us from this travesty of democracy. It didn't, people did. The internet is a network - a tool. What this demonstrates is the internet's power to reach many people very quickly... fast mobilisation, some might say ultra-fast, when the issue catches the public imagination. This is something that has largely remained lost on governments and politicians, although it's come into sharper relief through the digital tidal wave of Obama's presidential campaign.

As in the fairy tales of our childhood, the media's last-century way of thinking requires the deification of a ‘hero' and corresponding ‘villain'. This doesn't work online either; success is dependent on the network, not the individual. Information spreads rapidly in a viral fashion through many hands. It is true that within the network there are the mavens - the ultra-connected who discover issues first and propagate them more widely. But they are still part of the bigger network and without that network their ability to create change would wither too.

Barack Obama said in his inaugural address that citizens need to recognise "that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world" or, as Billy Bragg puts it, "responsibility for changing the world lies not with the performer but with the audience." When we connect, the internet becomes a powerful tool to make this happen.

Andy Williamson
Director, eDemocracy Programme