How has the spread of digital media across international boundaries affected the role of civil society under authoritarian regimes? Examining the case of Cuba, this paper compares civil society dynamics prior to the internet – in the early to mid-1990s – and a decade later. It finds that in the pre-internet period, civil society’s focus was on behind-the-scenes struggles for associational autonomy within the state-socialist framework. A decade later, digital media has supported the emergence of a new type of public sphere in which the civil society debate involves autonomous citizen action. However, its effects on political reform depend on the extent to which web-based voices connect with off-line debate and action.
The Cuban state has had an authoritarian hold over the public sphere through a formal monopoly on mass media. However, societal actors from various social and political backgrounds have used web-based media to raise their voices and claim public space and citizenship rights. For example, they have used:
- Digital recordings posted on the web: These make transparent events that occur behind closed doors. Sometimes these have brought to light civic actions by Cubans that would otherwise have been unknown among the wider public.
- Email: This facilitates horizontal voice and the decentralised circulation of information.
- Blogs: The growing number of blogs by Cuban citizens has become a key political battlefield over the possibilities and limitations of Cuba’s public sphere.
People’s web-empowered ‘voice’ in Cuba is becoming what can be understood as citizen action in an authoritarian context. For example, citizens using digital media have developed a collective identity (such as that of the ‘independent blogger movement’). Transitions from virtual to physical space have included:
- Bloggers’ direct interaction with actors in Cuban society through public appearances, such as at cultural events
- Organisation, such as of a ‘blogger academy’ involving regular meetings
- Bloggers’ connections with other social actors, such as with the Catholic group Convivencia, imprisoned dissidents and an organisation created by the relatives of political prisoners
- Critical academics’ and grassroots cultural activists’ public demonstrations against state repression – for example, protesting against state police harassment of bloggers.
The internet has led to the emergence in Cuba of a self-assertive ‘citizenship from below’. This demands a widening of the public sphere and a greater degree of citizen autonomy from the state. The expansion of voice, the reassertion of citizenship rights and the web-based support for practical civic action have changed state-society relations.
The state’s grip on the physical space remains firm, though, and in this arena the costs for collective action are high. The presence of many voices on the internet cannot lead to reform or regime change on its own. Therefore:
- For wider change to occur, competing visions within the political elite or changes in the external constellation of allies and foes need to emerge.
- Once these conditions arise, the web will play a crucial role in shaping any process of broader political change.
- Although the state accepts that its media monopoly has become porous, it now focuses on keeping the pluralism of the web-based voice from spilling over into Cuba’s non-virtual public sphere.
