Privilege, Conservatives & The Internet

by Rick Rockwell

Some doubt that a digital divide still exists. That divide between those who take internet access for granted and those who can only get it at school or work or the library if they are lucky has shrunk considerably in the U.S. One source puts regular internet penetration of the U.S. population at about 70 percent.

But a different divide exists. Countries like the U.S. where the upper class and middle class have easy internet access are divided from the rest of the world where the internet is still emerging.

Latin America is certainly one of those regions where internet access is not universal.

Chile has the highest penetration, according to the website Internet World Stats (a firm in Colombia, so likely the Latin American estimates are accurate, and they do correlate with other sources): at about 42 percent. There’s also Argentina at 34 percent, and Costa Rica at 21 percent.

But look at Nicaragua: three percent. Or consider Venezuela, where 13 percent have access.

Is it any wonder then who is using the internet in those countries?

Looking at large swaths of Latin America, usually the internet is only available on a regular basis to the elite. Now, there’s no ideological entryway to the upper class. You can be a rich leftist. But truly, many people in the upper class are conservatives or neo-liberals who are more concerned about protecting their investments than the plight of the poor.

And so, the quality of communication coming from Latin America via internet, especially in countries with elite penetration rates, tells us the information may be skewed from a certain class level.

Sometimes the people writing from their positions in the class system do not even realize how they sound. For instance, a blogger in Venezuela discusses her feelings about President Hugo Chavez and what she sees as radical transformations of her country. She tells her readers she is from the middle class. That means one thing in the U.S. and Europe, but it may not be an accurate reading of where she actually stands in Venezuela. She is part of that elite 13 percent with internet access. Read deeper: her family has a live-in maid, and she travels to Mexico on class trips. Meanwhile, most Venezuelans live on two dollars a day. So perhaps her protestations of Chavez and his reforms, her threats to become part of the country’s elite brain-drain, and her other concerns come from threats to her economic status rather than any real repression.

If there were real repression from leftists like Chavez, would blogs like The Devil’s Excrement exist, unless it was hosted completely outside Venezuela?

These blogs express fear about threats to freedom in Venezuela. Press freedom groups have complained about Chavez. However, he isn’t shutting down opposition websites or newspapers. Although his moves to shut down one Venezuelan network, on the surface, appear questionable, the history of that network’s connection to the unsuccessful coup gives pause.

The complaints of these Latin American bloggers should not be ignored, because even in a skewed way, they track the powerful. But readers should remember, they are also hearing from a powerful class of writers when consuming that material. Let the reader beware, writers of privilege often have a larger purpose behind their complaints.

(For other recent pieces on this theme, please see:

• "Chavez, Walters & The Art of Media Relations;"

• "Bush & Chavez in the Echo Chamber;"

• "Bush: Winning & Losing the Propaganda Battle;"

• "Bush & Chavez: Invoking Bolivar;" and

• "Venezuela: Politics, Propaganda & Polarization.")

(Photo by Eylem Cülcüloglu of Istanbul, Turkey via stock.xchng.)

internet
blogs
politics
Venezuela
Latin America
conservative blogs
Hugo Chavez
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