'Free country, free internet': the symbolic power of technology in the Hungarian internet tax protests. (January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ferrari, Elisabetta
• Is Part Of: Media, culture, and society. Volume 41:Number 1(2019:Jan.)
• Page Start: 70
• Page End: 85
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Subjects: activism -- Hungary -- internet -- internet freedom -- internet tax -- modernity -- protest -- symbol -- technological imaginary; Mass media and culture -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Wireless communication systems -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 302.2305
• DOI: 10.1177/0163443718799394
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0163-4437

Abstract

In 2014, the Hungarian government announced the introduction of a tax on internet usage. The proposal generated large protests, which led to its eventual withdrawal. In this article, I investigate the puzzling success of the 'internet tax' protests: how could a small tax on internet consumption generate so much contestation? I argue that the internet tax was able to give way to a broader mobilization against the government, because of the symbolic power of the idea of 'the internet', to which different political meanings can be attached. Through interviews with Hungarian activists, I reconstruct how the internet was associated with a mobilizing discourse that I term 'mundane modernity', which reproduces tropes of Western modernity about the equalizing properties of technology, progress, and rationality, while grounding them in the everyday practices of internet use. I then discuss the types of freedom embedded in mundane modernity and assess its political limitations.