William H. Dutton discusses the concept of the 'Fifth Estate,' a collective of networked individuals using the internet and social media to enhance accountability among powerful actors such as governments and businesses. He explores historical and contemporary shifts in power dynamics influenced by digital communication, highlighting examples like Greta Thunberg and Darnella Frazier, whose actions exemplify grassroots civic engagement. The document concludes with reflections on threats to this new form of accountability, including misinformation and institutional challenges.

1. The Fifth Estate and Its Future
by
William H. Dutton
Senior Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute
Martin Fellow, Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre, Oxford University
Visiting Professor, Media and Communication, University of Leeds
Presentation for the Seminar on Contemporary Issues of Communication and Culture, Escola de
Sociologia e Políticas Públicas, Lisbon University Institute, Lisbon, Portugal, 29 April 2021.

2. The Fifth Estate
§ Press since the 18th
Century - the ‘Fourth Estate’
§ Internet in the 21st -
enabling a Fifth Estate
Internet enabling a critical mass of individuals to
source information, and network in ways that support
distributed social accountability in business, industry,
government, politics & media.

3. Outline
• Two Examples
• The Concept of Power Shifts Tied to the Internet
• The Concept of a Fifth Estate related to other Estates
• Evidence supporting this power shift
• Networked Individuals and Networked Institutions
• Strategies of Fifth Estate Actors and Examples
• Enemies of and Threats to the Fifth Estate
• Prospects of its Future
• Discussion, Questions, …

4. Greta Thunberg
2003: Born in Sweden
2018: Began skipping school days as a fifteen-year-
old to protest outside the Swedish Parliament for
action on climate change. Her sign read: Skolstrejk
för klimatet (School strike for climate)
2018: Spoke to UN Climate Change Conference
2019: Toured North America for interviews and
speaking engagements with her father, then sailed
across the Atlantic to speak at the UN Climate
Action Summit
2019-21: Three consecutive nominations for the
Nobel Peace Prize

5. On 20 April 2021, a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police
officer was convicted of murder in relation to the arrest of
George Floyd on May 25, 2020, for using a counterfeit
$20. The conviction was based largely on video of the
arrest in broad day light.
The video was shot by a 17-year-old teenager in
Minneapolis, who was exiting a convenience store, saw
the arrest taking place, and took the video on her mobile
phone of a police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck
for over 9 minutes.
When she returned home, she posted the video onher
Facebook. It was viewed and shared widely. George
Floyd’s death became a global symbol tied to Black Lives
Matter #BLM
That teenager, Darnella Frazier, was the 2021 recipient of
the Benenson Courage Award from PEN America, a
leading literary and human rights organization.
The Teen Who Created the Video of George Floyd
Darnella Frazier

6. The Internet & Digital Media Are Reconfiguring
Access to:
Information
People
Services
Technology
• How you get information
• What you know
• How you communicate
• Who you know
• How you obtain services
• From whom, from where
• How you do what you do
• What know-how you require

7. Power Shifts of the Internet: New Conventional Wisdom
Institutions,
such as Gov’t &
Business
Organizations
Citizens,
Consumers

8. A Complex Set of Social and Technical Changes
Summed Up in a Metaphor for the Digital Age
The Fifth Estate is a collectivity of civic-minded
individuals who use the Internet and related
social media in ways that enhance their
communicative power vis-à-vis governments,
business, industry and other actors and
institutions.

9. Not a Social Movement, But a Collectivity of
Individuals Holding Powerful Actors Accountable?

10. Early but Narrow Conceptions of Fifth Estate
Bloggers
•Extension of the 4th Estate
Whistleblowers
•Holding the 4th Estate Accountable

11. The Fourth Estate
• “[Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in
Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder,
there sat a Fourth Estate more prominent far than
they all. It is not a figure of speech, or witty saying;
it is a literal fact – very momentous to us in these
times.”
• Thomas Carlyle (1831), Heroes and Hero-Worship,
at www.gutenberg.org.etext/1091
• Thomas Macaulay (1828), “The gallery in which
the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the
realm.”

12. Pre-Industrial Landed Estates to the 21st Century
Pre-Industrial Estates 21st Century Roles of
Clergy Experts, such as Public Intellectuals
Nobility, Aristocracy Business, Industry and Economic Elites,
Internet Industrial Elites
Commons, Governing Body Government, Politicians & Regulators
Press (4th Estate) Journalists and the Mass Media
Mob Civil Society, Networked Individuals, Mobs

13. Montesquieu’s Tripartite System into the 21st USA
Tripartite Modern US Separation of Powers
Courts Judiciary
Monarch Executive
Parliament Legislative
Press as 4th Journalists and the Mass Media
Mob Civil Society, Networked Individuals, Mobs

14. Emergence of a New Organizational Form:
Networked Individuals
Source
Information
Join & Create
Networks
Enhance
Informational and
Communicative
Power

15. Inductivist: Shaped by Surveys, Cases & Studies
Surveys
5th Estate
Concept
Cases
Dynamics,
Strategies
Targeted
Studies

16. Oxford Internet Surveys
• 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2019
• Cross-sectional Surveys versus Panels
• Multi-Stage Probability Sample
• England, Scotland & Wales
• Respondents: 14 years and older
• Face-to-face Interviews, High Response Rates [Online in 2019]
• Sponsorship for 2013 from the Nominet Trust, Ofcom, UK
Research Councils, dot.rural
• Component of World Internet Project (WIP)
Quello Search Study
• 2017
• Funding from Google, Inc.
• 14,000 respondents, 2,000 in seven nations

19. First Port of
Call
Search v Sites
Social Cues &
Collaboration
Centrality
Significance
Trust

20. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Spectators
Attentives
Fifth Estate
Percentage of Users
Percentage ofUsers
Fifth Estate defined by being networked (beyond the home), producing content
(writing blogs, posting text and photos), sourcing (following search), collaborating
(following cues), trusting (content, providers), centrality (viewing net as essential for
information).

21. Demo
• Young
• Urban
• Minorities
SES
• Educated
• Middle &
Upper Middle
• Higher Income
Work
• Managerial-
Professional
• Student
• Employed
Perspective
• Political Efficacy
• Political
Empowerment

22. Networked Individuals and the Fifth Estate
Critical
Mass
Universal
Access

23. Arenas: Networked
Institutions
Networked
Individuals
News Online journalism, BBC Online,
Live Micro-Blogging
Netizens, Citizen Journalists,
Bloggers, Whistleblowers,
Leaks, Churnalism.org, Hacking
Blacklash
Government Digital Democracy, E-
Consultation, e-Voting,
Surveillance
Obama campaign, Arab Spring,
Anti-Bribery Websites, 38
Degrees
Education Online Learning, Multimedia
Classrooms, MOOCs, Zoom
Classes
Backchannels, Informal
Learning, Rate My Teacher,
YouTube, Khan Academy, Zoom
Meetings
Health and Medical NHS Direct, e-mailing safety
alerts
Going to the Internet for health
information, networks of
patients, physicians

24. • Democratic-
Autocratic
• Not Replaced
Networked
Institutions
•Role in
Institutions
•Base of 5th Estate
Networked
Individuals
Fifth Estate Complements Institutions & Expertise and Holds Accountable

25. • Find through search or social media
• Patient or citizen finds information about problems
Sourcing
• Individual creates information: blog, tweet, video, …
• Martha Payne’s NeverSeconds
• Darnella Frazier’s video of George Floyd
Creating
• Distribute or leak information to networks
• Whistle Blowers, WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, Edward Snowden
• Generating Media Coverage, #MeToo
Distributing-
Leaking
• Self-selected collaborative networks
• Sermo, Patients Like Me, Facebook or WhatsApp Groups
Networking
• Aggregate information, observations
• Rate My Teacher, Bribery Websites, Environmental Sensors
• Crowdsolving
Collective
Intelligence

26. - Martha Payne, 9 yr. old girl in
Scotland, writes a blog for school
project: ‘NeverSeconds’
- Produced content: photos & reviews
school lunch in 2012
- Posted on her blog:
neverseconds.blogspot.com/
- Censored by her institution (her
primary school’s council)
- Over 10 million page views
- Fostered debate over the quality of
school lunches nationwide and
worldwide

27. Ratings with their Drawbacks
Rate My
Teacher
Amazon Seller
and Product
Ratings
eBay Rating of
Suppliers

29. Paul Haynes,
Crowdsolving
Detective
Paul Haynes finding the Golden State Killer
Joseph James DeAngelo
A citizen detective, Paul Haynes, began doing research a
few hours each day, rising to 10-15 hours per day from
his bedroom at his standup desk, using many online
resources, such as Classmate.com and Ancestry.com
and geo-mapping of crime scenes to search for a serial
killer, and aspects of his identity, such as a connection
with a ‘Bonnie’.
An insomniac, Paul was an unemployed 30-year-old
from South Florida, with an MA in Media Studies, when
he focused on finding the serial rapist and killer first
called the Night Stalker, then the East Area Rapist,
before he was branded as the Golden State Killer by the
crime writer, Michelle McNamara.
His work with crime writer, Michelle McNamara,
reignited FBI investigations using relatives identified on
Ancestry through old DNA at an early crime scene,
leading to the arrest and conviction of DeAngelo.

30. Attacks on
the Fifth
Estate
Experts
Business &
Industrial
Elites
Government
and
Regulatory
Agencies
Press
The ‘Mob’

31. Threats to Trust & Centrality of 5th
• Filter Bubble or bias of algorithms
• Privacy and surveillance
Search
• Echo chamber
• Reputational Damage, Mobs
Social Cues and
Collaboration
• Fake News, Conspiracies, Disinformation
• Information Warfare
Trust in the Internet
& Social Media
• Rise of entertainment
• Closing of a world on mobile apps
1st Port of Call

32. Acknowledgements: Support for Work on the Fifth Estate
• Oxford Internet Surveys: 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2019
and the World Internet Project (WIP)
• The Quello Search Study, 2017-2018, supported by Google Inc.
• The Internet Values Project: OII in collaboration with INSEAD, Cornell,
comScore, WEF, ictQATAR
• The Performance of Distributed Problem-Solving Networks (DPSN)
Project (2007-8)
• The Oxford e-Social Science Project (OeSS), Economic and Social
Research Council (2005-12)
• The Fifth Estate Project, supported by the OII, Oxford Internet Surveys
(2003-13), and June Klein, Electronic Boardroom™
• User-Driven Collaboration, Technical University of Denmark (DTU)