There is a lot of talk about Corporate Social Responsibility these days. Beyond the obvious warm and fuzzy feeling we get when a Megacorp’s actions closely align with our own individual values, companies are ever more enshrined as both individuals in law and communities of individuals in theory. They therefore need to appear as both responsible neighbours and upright citizens. The threat being that if consumers grow fed up with a corporation’s unsavoury profit-seeking, they will take their choices elsewhere. At the forefront of the CSR movement sits the internet’s various corporate citizens. With the advent of Google’s “you can make money without being evil” edict (apart of a larger ten-point socio-economic manifesto) and the increasing technophile dominance of the World Economic Forum at Davos, every mention of the internet, social networking, new media or Web 2.0 comes neatly wrapped in the language of “tecchie ethics”. 
 

 

So one could imagine the furore which has met Google’s recent threats to censure China’s, and by implication, its own, censorship practices. Various pundits, from Human Rights Watch to Harvard Academics, have interpreted Google’s threat to leave as a clarion call to arms in the fight for free information. After all, every totalitarian regime, from Cuba to Iran, has one thing in common: strong surveillance apparati.  Why not start with China?

 

Guardian Technology Editor Charles Arthur’s take on Google’s late-arriving ethical stance is typical of the virtual Free Info! movement. For Arthur, any company that makes information available to everyone aids in rooting out “corruption, lies, and misinformation” and helps “bring down tyrants.” “The medium”, according to Joe Trippi, “also demands authenticity.”  It is no wonder some describe pro-internet forces as evangelists and their house, the internet, a broad church.

 

Others like Evgeny Morozov, who gave a recent talk at POLIS Journalism and Society, prefer their Kool Aid watered down. According to Morozov, “Internet activism so often fails to convert online activity into any meaningful action in the real world.” The battle rages.

 

WARNING: THE REMAINING DISCUSSION HAS BEEN CONSORED BY THE POWERS THAT BE. TO LEARN MORE, VISIT THE MEDIA SOCIETY BLOG.