Beware of 'virtual colonialism'

In the days after the Presidential elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Western media peddled propaganda for their broad international audiences, posturing as the only credible sources of news on the events taking place in Iran.

The West even claimed that they introduced Tweeter as the emancipator of Iranian people and considered the culture and ideas that they present to be desired by Iranians.

They even argued that "without Tweeter, Iranian people did not have sufficient power and self-confidence for freedom and democracy". From such claims it can be inferred that virtual empires like Tweeter are a forum for marketing Western slogans on "liberal democracy", "freedom of speech", "freedom of religion", "pluralism", and "civil values". A key point here is that Western sloganeering is packaged as universal values for all of humanity.

Many users conceive the internet as a free world in which all have a chance to access any pages for free and even create their own websites. These users consider the internet as a world in which supply and demand of information are offered freely without any central authority.

Despite the seemingly free appearance of virtual space, it does not denote equal access to the data for the users. This is so because users have to choose a few specific websites among the extremely many websites available to them.

This fact leads to the promotion of the status of search engines like Google, Yahoo, and bing (MSN) because it is the search engines that offer you a limited number of websites among the millions available, with certain rankings and pre-programmed algorithms which determine the ranking rules. This can be referred to as "soft filtering of power" or determination within the free framework of information.

Although search engines never prohibit one from entering any other websites, they automatically create a virtual distance between you and some websites. While some search engines, in appearance, seem to work without any ideological tendencies and interest, in practice they are not that fair and objective as their work is based on unwritten hegemonic rules.

The huge amount of information in virtual space makes it difficult for an internet user to make informed judgements on the credibility of the information. Thus users select their desirable search engines largely on the basis of perceived neutrality, speed, efficiency, comprehensiveness and legitimacy. It is through legitimacy that these search engines gain a tremendous degree of soft power over their users because they can direct the flow of information on various issues such as politics, economic, and culture.

Therefore, despite the democratic appearance of virtual space, the search engines can covertly lead their users toward the discourses that are consistent with various pre-defined objectives of those who control the search engines.

Successful social networks such as Facebook are other central components of virtual space. With over 500 million members from all over the world, Facebook has managed to redefine the concepts such as

"friends", "relationship", and "family", as well as the culture of routine daily activities such as greeting. Although users have significantly contributed to the creation of these communities, the principles and discourses dominating these virtual communities influence their members in creating their own identity.

Facebook is thus, in essence, a continuation of monopolistic policies of the global hegemony which invites every nation to follow its model in spite of diversity and plurality. It is a real tool of soft power whose appearance is attractive and liberal yet, in practice, it seeks to collect comprehensive information and create a platform which can be used by the West in all sorts of ways

Yahoo, as the most visited website in virtual space, has an undeniable role in articulating the dominant Western discourse on important topics of the day. Undoubtedly, the first page of Yahoo is the default page on many internet users' browsers. This implies that anytime the user attempts to enter the internet he/she sees the first page of Yahoo, and he/she will be exposed to news and different photos that Yahoo is offering him/her without his/her explicit request for such material.

Yahoo recruits the internet users to Western values and culture. Since a lot of the news on Yahoo is about American pop culture, for example, news and photos of American actors and actresses, the power of Yahoo at influencing users of virtual spaces has generated soft power for America.

As rightly put across by Imam Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution: "One of the enemy plots that have unfortunately affected the countries and our dear country (Iran) immensely, and their impact remain to a great deal even today, is alienation of the colonised nations from their true being and inclination to the Western culture.

To that end, they depreciated their self, their culture and their power, and considered West, the superpower, the best races and preferred their culture so that they tended to West as the promised land, thus dependency on the pillars of Western power became an inevitable precept.

"The story of the sorrowful dependency is long and the shocks we have suffered and are even suffering today are deadly."

In view of the fact that some Western slogans on "democracy", "freedom", "human rights", and "pluralism" have all become universal, it can be inferred that the West has relatively gained significant power in shaping public opinion and global culture through virtual empires that are headquartered in America. In fact, global norms are now conflated with Western norms. This, in turn, has strengthened Western soft power in the real world, for instance when you look at scientific exchanges, scholarships, film and music, television and satellite networks, conferences, and so on.

Third World countries and Moslem states should seriously consider investing in the virtual world as it is a new world that exists parallel to the material world. It contains more potentialities than the real world.

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Johnson Ali Mikuku, is the president of the Zimbabwe National Association of Moslem Students.