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Cuban digital identity: A summary of recent evidenceAuthors:Guy Baron and Gareth Hall, Aberystwyth University, UKEuropean LanguagesHugh Owen BuildingAberystwythSY23 3DYgub@aber.ac.ukCuban digital identity: A summary of recent evidenceAbstractWith the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, many people predicted the imminent collapse of the Cuban authoritative regime and some critics saw the Internet as playing a major part in that collapse. But this has simply not been the case as Raúl Castro followed his brother Fidel into power and the socialist system remains today. It is a widely held viewpoint that Internet use in Cuba is restricted due to a number of factors and this paper intends to examine those factors and asks to what extent the lack of access to the World Wide Web has helped to maintain (with some evident changes) the socialist status quo on the island. The article will also examine how the Internet is used to represent the nation externally and ultimately argues that the Cuban government is negotiating a fine line between taking full economic advantage of what the Internet can offer and hampering its use as a mechanism for the subversion of the Revolution in the face of continued US aggression.Keywords: Cuba, Internet, Identity, Technology, Digital, Revolution, ‘Secrets are over [...] We are facing the most powerful weapon that has ever existed, which is communication.’(Castro, 2010)With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, many people predicted the imminent collapse of the Cuban authoritative regime. As Bert Hoffmann (2003: 296) points out some critics saw the Internet as playing a major part in that collapse. But this has simply not been the case as Raúl Castro followed his brother Fidel into power and the socialist system remains today. It is a widely held viewpoint that Internet use in Cuba is restricted due to a number of factors and this paper intends to examine those factors factors and asks to what extent the lack of access to the World Wide Web has helped to maintain (with some evident changes) the socialist status quo on the island. The article will also examine (via an analysis of a number of websites) how the Internet is used to represent the nation externally and ultimately argues that the Cuban government is negotiating a fine line between taking full economic advantage of what the Internet can offer and hampering its use as a mechanism for the subversion of the Revolution in the face of continued US aggression.The Cuban telecommunications industry was nationalised in August 1959 and ‘by the end of 1960 the regime had effectively asserted control over print and broadcast media’ (Kalathil and Boas, 2001). As the Cuban Constitution says (quoted in Díaz Rodríguez and Sokooh Valle, 2013: 66) the mass media forms part of ‘state or social property and cannot be the object, under any circumstances, of private property,’ (author’s translation). Over the course of the next 40 years a number of institutions were created to deal with telecommunications and new technology (the Ministry of Communications-MINCOM-was established in the early 1960s). In the 1970s the USSR agreed to help Cuba develop a computer industry and the first computer assembly line produced 100 minicomputers in 1976 (Valdes and Rivera, 1999: 141). Cuba first engaged with the Internet in 1981, sending its first email to the USSR with a primitive connection, but the Cuban government did not see information technologies as important for developing the economy until the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade later. It wasn’t until 1989 that Cuba made its first email contact with another source outside the Soviet Union, making contact with Peacenet in Canada (Venegas, 1999). From the outset, however, even before the first network connection, Cuba realised that the Internet would become an important phenomenon, that ‘it would have a profound impact on individuals, organizations and society’ (Press, 2011). But since those early days Cuban connectivity to the World Wide Web has not developed as many would have hoped. The Cuban government’s Internet priorities have largely followed that of the UN through UNESCO (United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organization). As Cristina Venegas (1999) points out, in 1997 UNESCO’s Executive Council discussed the problems that face developing nations with respect to information technologies and agreed to focus attention on ‘community programs and the strengthening of development sectors like education, prior to wiring each individual home’, and Cuba’s Internet development has largely followed this line of argument partly due to economic restraints – the obvious difficulty in a developing country in getting everyone connected domestically.As Hoffmann (2003: 299) points out Cuba was the leader of new technology in Latin America before the Revolution with the most televisions per head of population, but after 1959 communications were not seen as part of national development, only as important for national defence and security. For example, until 2000 the heads of MINCOM were always members of the military. In 1996 Cuba decided to connect to the Internet, creating the Ministry of Information and Communications [Ministerio de la Informática y las Comunicaciones] (MIC) in 2000, from which the Programa Rector para la Informatización de la Sociedad (PRIS) was implemented. According to López García (2013: 69) this was a state policy to gain access to the benefits that derive from information and communications technology. López García argues that Cuba recognises the potential of the Internet but that connection to it privileges institutions and businesses that have the greatest impact on Cuban society. But the combination of an ageing telecommunications infrastructure, much of it from the 1940s, and the economic crisis beginning in 1989 made any technological advancement extremely difficult and so Cuba began to lag behind other Latin American and Caribbean nations in terms of Internet connectivity.But the Cuban government has always been suspicious of the advancement of new technologies and the effects that they may have on the maintenance of the socialist system, especially when these technologies emanate from the US. As Venegas (1999) points out: ‘The Helms-Burton law of 1992 calls for the improvement of telecommunications connections and information exchanges with Cuba, in order to increase the potential for change.’ There has been a history of using communications to bring down the Cuban regime and a certain amount of paranoia about new communications technology is entirely understandable, resulting in the necessity to maintain some form of control over Internet use. Previously, communications had been signalled as viable means for bringing about the end to the Castro regime. In 1983, The Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act established Radio Marti, followed by Public Law 101-246 in 1990 which created TV Marti. Both Radio and TV Marti, ironically named after José Martí, Cuba’s greatest hero of independence, broadcast anti-Castro propaganda funded by the US government, with the goal of disrupting the social and political environment on the island. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Torricelli, the emboldened senator from New Jersey authored the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) which in addition to tightening the embargo, called for improving telecommunications connections with Cuba in order to force change. (Venegas, 1999).So, for a number of reasons explained below, Internet use in Cuba is severely restricted at domestic level.RESTRICTIONS ON INTERNET USE IN CUBABy 1996, the Cuban government decided that it would engage with the Internet and took control of its use on the island. In their study of Internet use and control in China and Cuba Kalathil and Boas quote Decree Law 209, passed in June 1996 to govern Cuba’s connection to the Internet. The law: ‘stated that access would be selective and would be granted “in a regulated manner […] giving priority to the entities and institutions most relevant to the country’s life and development”’ (Kalathil and Boas, 2001). This can be read either as in line with UNESCO’s policy as described above or as something more sinister; a desire and intention to censor and restrict Internet use at the level of the individual citizen. As opposition to the Cuban regime was already using the Internet by this time from the US to promote counter-revolutionary activity, this type of reactive response was understandable. In their study, Kalathil and Boas suggest that ‘authoritarian regimes are finding ways to control and counter the political impact of Internet use’. In the case of Cuba, they argue that the government has maintained state control of the Internet through both ‘reactive and proactive strategies.’ Although Cuba has no central government agency involved in censorship of Cuban media, the control of content is often left to editors who are tied to the power structure and benefit from maintaining it – as Kalathil and Boas say, these people ‘share the perspective of regime elites’.According to Larry Press there are a number of limitations to Internet use in Cuba, not just financial or lack of access to a computer. Cubans are allowed direct access to computers at various sites, including hotels and recently instigated Internet cafes (although in both places at around 4-5 CUC an hour with the average wage around 15 CUC a month, the cost is often prohibitive). As del Valle (2013) recently reported in Juventud Rebelde, this service was extended in June, 2013 at 118 ‘salas de navegación’ across the country. The price to connect to the national intranet is only 60 cents per hour, but to surf the web costs around 4.50 CUC an hour. Recent developments also include a pay-as-you-go, universally available internet access service, but again, the cost for the average citizen is prohibitive and of course the service requires an internet-enabled device, again a costly product for the average Cuban. But he says that the filtering of content and activity also limits Cuban’s access via what is known as the AvilaLink ‘information management’ programme, apparently used in places where multiple computers are in use (Press, 2011). Cuban users, Press argues, are fully aware of the possibility that their Internet use is being monitored and so this would automatically restrict their experience. Uxo (2009: 12.5), however, argues that this monitoring is both ‘erratic and arbitrary’, ‘dependent to a great extent on the administrator of each area, where filters or controls governing one Internet connection may be completely lacking for others.’ As García Pérez et al (2006) say: ‘Internet policy has been one that has been heavily regulated by the state.’ But the official argument for the lack of Internet access on a daily basis in Cuba is that there are limited resources and technology to deliver it to everyone and the official line is to not fear counter-revolutionary information being spread over the Internet. Melchor Gil Morel, vice-minister of Informática y Telecomunicaciones has said: ‘No le tenemos miedo a la información contrarrevolucionaria. La información contrarrevolucionaria se basa en mentiras’ (Hoffmann, 2003: 314).Reactive strategies then are important for the Cuban regime to counter the huge amount of subversive material that comes from outside the island, over which the regime has no control. ‘The largest share of Cuba–related political information on the Internet emanates not from domestic sources, but from foreign–based organizations trying to influence Cuban politics and U.S. policy toward Cuba’ (Kalathil and Boas, 2001). Kalathil and Boas go further to argue that the more subversive material that exists against the regime, the more the position of the regime’s hardliners with respect to Internet control is strengthened, and so anything regarded as a ‘tool of US aggression’ has heavier restrictions placed upon it. Watchful of organisations that have external links, the Cuban government:is undoubtedly concerned about the potential use of e–mail for logistical organization among politically threatening CSOs [Civil Society Organisations]. As a result, it has carefully meted out access among CSOs according to their political orientation. Dissident and human rights organizations openly opposed to the regime have little hope of gaining Internet access: most have their telephone calls regularly monitored, and several have had computers confiscated by the authorities. (Kalathil and Boas, 2001).Cuba is seen as an Internet enemy by Reporters Without Borders, the largest press freedom organisation in the world. According to their 2009 report, although Cubans are allowed to access the Internet in hotels for example, the cost of doing so is prohibitive. The report also quotes Vice-Minister Boris Moreno: ‘The use of the Internet [must serve] to defend the Revolution and the principles in which [Cuba] has believed for years’ (Reporters Without Borders, 2011a). This defence has included, according to Reporters Without Borders, the repeated arrest and interrogation of bloggers like Yoani Sánchez (the last time in October 2012), whose Generation Y blog is highly critical of the Cuban government. Other bloggers, such as Luis Felipe Rojas, have been arrested several times and Cuban dissident and cyberjournalist Guillermo Fari?as Hernández (“El Coco”), winner of the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament, was arrested three times in less than 48 hours in January 2011. Punishments are apparently severe for online opposition to the regime, although there are no journalists currently in prison on the island. The last one, according to another report from Reporters Without Borders was Albert Santiago Du Bouchet, who arrived in Spain in April, 2011, along with 36 other Cuban dissidents who were released on condition that they agreed to go into exile (Reporters Without Borders, 2011b).As is well known Cuba has a state interventionist model when it comes to the economy, typical of socialist countries, the state becoming the owner of the means of production and the distribution of goods and services. The same then applies to the Internet and the use of it when globalisation becomes a central issue in the development of the economy. As previously said, for Cuba the development of the Internet was not a priority in the 1990s due to the forced austerity of the Special Period but such development is highly significant, as Hoffmann points out, due to state monopoly of the media. He quotes Article 53 of the Cuban Constitution:Se reconoce a los ciudadanos libertad de palabra y prensa conforme a los fines de la sociedad socialista. Las condiciones materiales para su ejercicio están dadas por el hecho de que la prensa, la radio, la televisión, el cine y otros medios de difusión masiva son de propiedad estatal o social y no pueden ser objeto, en ningún caso, de propiedad privada, lo que asegura su uso al servicio exclusivo del pueblo trabajador y del interés de la sociedad. (Hoffmann, 2003: 296).So the Internet immediately poses a dilemma for the Cuban government in the potential for a lack of control over such a mass medium, but at the same time its power as an economic, social and political force must be recognised and harnessed. To this end a more proactive use of the Internet developed as early as 1996 when the Cuban air force shot down two private planes flown by an anti–Castro exile group. As Kalathil and Boas (2001) say: ‘the recently established online edition of the state newspaper Granma Internacional was the only way for foreign audiences to read the Cuban government’s version of events.’ So, as Kalathil and Boas point out, in addition to the strategy of access restriction, ‘the state has also promoted Internet development in areas it considers priorities. According to its “plan for informatization of Cuban society,” the regime seeks to guide and channel the growth of the Internet so that like other media its primary impact is to serve the political goals of the revolution.’ Partly this has been as a defence against the regime’s negative image in international media. There are a number of government–affiliated websites that offer official perspectives on current events, with frequent criticism of the United States. For example the recently established site cubavsbloqueo.cu (Cuba versus the blockade), for instance, rallies opposition to the US embargo of Cuba and the international edition of the Communist Party’s newspaper Granma can be read in six languages.All of this seems to point towards a desire by the Cuban government to control Internet use on the island and use the medium to promote Cuba’s socialist system. But an important question to ask is whether the increasing use of the Internet at the level of civil society actually promotes and encourages democratisation of authoritarian regimes? Corrales and Westhoff (2006, 911) try to explain differing Internet use across nations and they find a ‘complex relationship between political liberties and Internet adoption’ in which ‘not all authoritarian regimes discourage Internet use similarly [but]states that repress political and economic rights [...] are less likely to adopt liberty-promoting new technologies,’ adding that authoritarian regimes tend to encourage television use as it is relatively easily controlled, but that they often discourage Internet use. They attempt to describe the type of Internet control used by authoritarian regimes. ‘We suggest that there are three types of state policies to control the Internet: blockage, access restrictions, and content control. They range from the most to the least draconian. At the most extreme level, an authoritarian regime might seek to block the Internet entirely. This is more likely to happen in the poorest authoritarian regimes, where the state presumably has no interest in the economic gains afforded by the Internet, and societal demand for the Internet is low’ (925). If any of this is true in Cuba it would appear that access restriction is the main source of control over Internet use for the Cuban government.Cristina Venegas (1999) argues that simply equating technological freedom and access to information with some kind of democratic change is teleologically naive. She cites Enrique González-Manet, a professor of Communication at the University of Havana, who has been one of the country's leading exponents of the uses and possible repercussions of technology in developing nations. He sees the emergence of the Internet as a type of revolution that cannot be stopped but warns that views of it as a great equalizer and force for democracy are misleading since we must take into consideration that in the Third World, ‘75% of the population barely has access to 10% of communications media, 6% of the telephones, 5% of the computers, and 2% of the satellites.’ Kalathil and Boas (2001) agree and argue that although most media commentators believe that the Internet is inevitably a force for democracy, ‘no significant body of scholarly work has sought to address the widespread popular belief that the Internet will undermine authoritarian rule.’ But it appears that there is some truth in the reasoning suggested by Corrales and Westhoff that authoritarian regimes seek to somehow repress new communication technologies. According to Larry Press (2011) there are three reasons for the lack of free and open access to the Internet in Cuba: ‘the US embargo, the Cuban economy, and the government's fear of information freedom’. The embargo has made it difficult for Cuba to obtain the raw materials necessary to set up an Internet infrastructure (routers, modems etc are extremely expensive and not freely available). Due to the collapse of the USSR (Cuba’s main trading partner) and the subsequent Special Period in Peacetime that Cuba suffered, it is understandable that those first tentative steps to Internet connectivity were delivered a significant economic blow even before the project could really get off the ground. At that time (early 1990s) Cuba was not as open to foreign investment as it is today and so the development of such an expensive project was all but halted.HOW DO CUBANS CONNECT TO THE INTERNET?Many Cubans have a restricted connection to the Internet on a daily basis as the government has been gradually developing networks in the workplace for this to happen; there were nine of these in 1992 but dozens of public domestic networks and hundreds of “local”, “private” networks today (Valdés and Rivera, 1999: 142). This access is in line with government policy that regards the Internet from a ‘collectivist perspective’, as a ‘social tool controlled by the state with a view to benefitting the community’ (Uxo, 2009: 12.6). The Internet in Cuba has not been regarded from an individualistic perspective as it is in liberal democracies and so it would not be politically or socially palatable to simply open it up to everyone. But perhaps this is slowly changing. So most Cubans access the Internet in public companies and institutions, or at school but according to Hoffmann: ‘Users have to sign a document that says they must not look for content that violates national laws that are racist, pornographic or anti-Cuban’ (Hoffmann, 2003: 315). He says that each company has someone responsible for Internet security and websites are regularly checked. It is also worth pointing out that the term ‘Internet connection’ does not mean the same thing to everyone. For Cuban officials it can often mean simply sending emails or using the national intranet, rather than the liberal democracy definition meaning to have the ability to surf the World Wide Web freely.The limited connection that Cubans have gives them access to public services and information and is organised according to a number of principles, according to (López García, 2013: 71), such as:The defence of security, sovereignty and technological independence.The integration and interconnectivity of standards.To share wherever possible the existing infrastructure.To guarantee the visibility of content.The bodies of the state central administration are responsible for the content and the services provided. But all this takes place under difficult economic circumstances and, as already observed, there is a relatively low level of Internet penetration across the general public. In fact, according to López García (72), only 15% of women and 12.6% of men regularly use computers and 75% of men (70% of women) say that they never do. Resolution 73 from the Ministry of Culture on 16 September, 2009 established the Law on the National Registry of Websites (Reglamento del Registro Nacional de Sitios Web - RNSW). Under this law websites are obliged to declare a thematic profile, objectives, potential users, and dates of use, thus prohibiting the publication of content and services without the authorisation of a state institution that becomes ultimately responsible for the site. This therefore severely limits the creation and development of virtual communities as they need to search for state entities to support them.However, as Hoffmann (2003: 315) says some people access sites such as hotmail or yahoo illegally at work. He uses as an example the Faculty of Literature at Havana university which has a room with 20 computers ‘where the students can send emails and surf the web with little interference (supervised however)’. But, although there are a number of networks, private, individual access to the Internet is not easy in Cuba; such access is simply not a priority for the Cuban government. As Kalathil and Boas (2001) say: ‘the Cuban government has endeavoured to leverage the capabilities of the Internet to improve the social conditions of the Cuban people.’ As such its principal effort in this area involves Infomed, a medical information network operated by the Ministry of Public Health. Since its inception in 1992 Infomed has connected medical centres around the country to such services as electronic journals and searchable databases. The system has been a boon for Cuba’s otherwise struggling health system, which is plagued by shortages of paper and difficulty in distributing information. Infomed has featured an international e–mail link since its beginning, and with its connection to the Internet it helps to promote Cuba’s health system abroad and facilitate relations between Cuban doctors and their foreign counterparts.But it is well known that an increasing number of users manage to connect to the Internet illegally from home, using passwords from their workplace or accounts acquired through the black market or personal connections. According to García Pérez et al (2006): ‘Despite the efforts of the government and resources put in place obstructing any flow of foreign information, more and more Cubans are managing to access information—sometimes about Cuba—from sources outside the country. They do so for curiosity, entertainment purposes, or looking for news about the outside world and also about their own country not provided by the local media.’ But estimating precisely the extent of this underground Internet use is impossible, although it is undoubtedly limited by the considerable expense and difficulty of obtaining an Internet–capable computer. A study of 38,000 people by the Cuban National Statistics Office (ONE) in 2009 illustrates that only around 2.9% of respondents had had direct access to the Internet in the previous year (Dirección de Turismo, Comercio y Servicios de Cuba, 2010). However, according to Andrea Rodríguez of Associated Press, ‘outside experts estimate the real figure is likely to be 5 to 10 percent accounting for black market sales of dial-up minutes’ (Rodríguez, 2012).The majority of access to the Internet in Cuba (around 60%) is done at school according to the ONE survey, while access at home accounts for some 20%. Only around 20% of the Cubans in this study accessed the Internet at least once a day while most said they connected between once a week and once a month. In relative terms Internet use is expensive and slow in Cuba and so Internet use is not as frequent as it is in developing nations, but this is only to be expected. Table 1, taken from the ONE survey illustrates just how infrequent Internet use really is in Cuba.[Insert Table 1]In terms of geographic location, in tune with government policy as a rule, Cuba’s Internet provision is well dispersed nationally with the main internal networks (Infomed, serving the health community and Tinored serving the NGOs for example) spread across the island in all areas. Havana still has the largest percentage of Internet access but other areas are also connected. Connecting externally is a continuous problem though as Cuba has to rely on satellite connectivity and so connections are slow by comparison with the developed world. The Internet is more than simply a technical tool and possesses huge potential to generate transformative processes and, as Díaz Rodríguez and Sokooh Valle (2013) point out, can provide for inclusive and productive dialogue between individuals and state institutions. But currently Cubans are isolated from the World Wide Web in global terms and this implies a type of social exclusion that might have detrimental long term effects on the island’s population. HOW DOES CUBA PRESENT ITSELF ON THE INTERNET?In this section we examine how Cuba is presented to Internet users from around the world by presenting a provisional snapshot of how Cuban society, culture, and politics is presented to ‘observers’ of Cuba through the medium of the Internet, but also to determine the interest in and engagement with Cuban websites from Internet users. We conducted two analyses on Cuban data, first using web analytic software of the most recurring and visible websites and second, by performing a thematic analysis of Cuban website content. To conduct our explorative pilot study, several domain names associated with Cuba were used to inform our initial searches (e.g. .cu; ), but also specific key word searches relating to Cuba. These domain names and keywords were generated through examples from Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski & Zittrain (2008), as well as search strategies used in media framing analysis (e.g., Giles & Shaw, 2009). The domain names were entered into several search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) and initial sites were recorded into a database where any duplicates were noted, and dead / dummy sites removed. In total we examined 256 websites between the period of August, 2012 and January, 2013 and through analytics software (Alexa) could only identify a limited number of websites with an IP address located in Cuba including, for example, an official government website and that of Havana University (see table 1 for list of websites). As such, we did not remove websites based on geographical location of the IP address given that external hosting of websites is not an uncommon practice; it might also be indicative of the lack of infrastructure in Cuba to host websites. Overview of resultsIn our analysis, the majority of websites were dedicated to promoting tourism or education and current affairs and in this respect is similar to any other country that uses the Internet to inform individuals about daily news, events and culture. In our first phase of analysis we obtained descriptive statistical data about the Cuban websites through web analytic software (Alexa) that provided data about the sites’ global ranking, number of pages visited, time spent viewing the website, and its bounce rate (the percentage of visits to the site that consist of a single page view). For illustration, an outline of the 20 most recurring websites obtained across the search engines are provided in Table 2. Unlike other countries, data demonstrates that despite these websites being some of the first to be found through search engines, and therefore highly visible to Internet users, they attract very little attention in terms of length of time and pages viewed by visitors. Visitors spent less than five minutes on each website and this is also evident in each website’s low global rankings that show low popularity relative to websites across the world. Some speculative conclusions for the limited time spent on each website might be the relatively limited quality of the website and navigation where some links and pages do not work or do not have any content. Paradoxically, the alternative might be that visitors may have actually found the information they wanted quickly. However, the former conclusion is likely given the very low global ranking of many of the websites, but also in some instances little or no data was retrievable through web analytics suggesting limited interest in Cuban websites. The only website to have visitors spend an average time of more than five minutes was the site of the national ballet () and attracted visitors primarily from Mexico, Spain, the USA, and from individuals within Cuba. For those websites with higher global rankings, a similar pattern emerged to less popular websites regarding time spent on each website, further suggesting limited interest and engagement with Cuban websites, and in some cases (e.g. ), from Cuban citizens. Despite low global rankings of Cuban websites, there are still hundreds of thousands of individuals accessing these sites and often leaving very quickly, too. However, these individuals are leaving with an impression of Cuba that may confirm stereotypes about Cuban culture and society. In fact, in Psychology research, impressions about objects and individuals can be made within 100ms of exposure and become particularly difficult to change if they confirm an already held belief.In our second analysis, we used qualitative methodology to examine how these websites present an image and impression of Cuban society. In order to examine the websites and generate common themes about Cuban society, culture, and politics, a thematic analysis (TA) was performed using Braun & Clarke’s (2006) six step procedure. In general, TA is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data that minimally organise and describe any given data set. Thematic analysis identified two core themes running through the Cuban websites. As expected, there was a clear distinction between promoting Cuba for tourism, and Cuban current affairs that usually focussed on Cuban political figures or US political news. In general, the tourism websites naturally promote Cuba as a culturally rich, diverse, and modern progressive society whilst emphasising its traditions. The current affairs pages often discussed Cuban or US political affairs, but also promoted Cuba as a leader in the pursuit of education and science. These two themes are discussed further below with examples.[Insert Table 2]Theme 1: Cuba as a modern, progressive and culturally rich countryMany of the websites that promoted Cuban culture were often aimed at tourism describing Cuba as possessing a modern but diverse culture that is enriched through its traditions, sport, landscape, and arts. However, some sites also target Cuban nationals, such as those related to sport and the arts. Sport and tourism were primarily promoted through a growing ‘Cuban Style’ and ‘Surfing Revolution’ surf scene () promoting Cuba to US travellers as a non-traditional location for surfing, giving advice on how to prevent US immigration from knowing you had visited Cuba. Interestingly, this site also promotes a growing female surf scene, aimed at young teenage female surfers rather than adults. Baseball, Cuba’s national sport, has one website dedicated to promoting the sport in Cuba and is more directed at Cuban nationals. provides information about baseball teams in Cuba and the current league system and its players. This site also incorporates some blogs although much of the site is difficult to load and not active. Directed at both national and international visitors is Ballet Nacional de Cuba, which provides information about learning ballet at the school for international students, as well as providing touring dates and workshops. In terms of attracting specific tourists, one site is dedicated to offering gay friendly holidays (). As part of the holiday, tourists will benefit from a personalized tour of Havana and Cuba as well as suggested clubs and gay friendly events and areas. However, specifically within sites directed at tourism, tradition is emphasised specifically through images of the island. For example, Cuba’s cultural heritage is typically displayed using photos of architecture, music, dance, and automobiles, as well as beautiful resorts and beaches. Some websites also expand upon the heterogeneity of its population in terms of ethnicity. For example, Cuba is described on one website () as a ‘melting pot of cultural events’ brought by immigrants from Spanish conquistadors, African slaves, French settlers from Haiti, as well as those from the Iberian Peninsula, American, Swedish, Japanese, and Jewish settlers. Such a range of ethnicity is further described on a TV production company site () aimed at international film producers to persuade them to come to Cuba to take advantage of specific locations. Their photo reel uses models of all ethnicities. Theme 2: Cuban current affairsThe second core theme to be identified related to current affairs, marked by political news and reports about Cuban political figures and events. Across the websites identified, eight featured critical news items about US politics and policies. For example, the website , devoted columns critiquing US policies that included anti-terrorism laws to policies allowing US citizens to take cruises to Cuba while Cuba is opening up travel to all its citizens. A more diverse current affairs website, cuba.cu is a highly visible site in the search engines that aims to promote Cuban culture and politics where articles and links were often promoting the current political status (as well as reporting US politics), Cuban education, and Cuban science, as well as Cuba as a destination for travel. The website also features links to DVDs that provide an official account of Cuban history and politics, as well as portal links to related sites that promote technology and science in Cuba. Perhaps the most anti-American and pro-revolution website is cubasocialista.cu the site of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This website provides links to other anti-US sites, such as antiterroristas.cu that give accounts of US actions and policies against Cuba, in particular the injustice and inhumane treatment of the ‘Miami 5’ imprisoned 14 years ago. Many of the images of both sites feature members of the Communist Party and Fidel Castro.In summary, the presence of Cuban based websites on the Internet is very small in comparison with other countries. What is available presents an image of Cuba as a welcoming tourist destination with a unique identity of its own despite the on-going tensions in their relationship with the US. Technologically, the websites are unsophisticated in comparison with UK and US internet sites and the few that are translated well are unlikely to be seen or read by those outside Cuba.THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET IN CUBASince the announcement in 2007 of the laying of a fibre-optic cable between Venezuela and Siboney in Cuba’s Eastern province, talk of fast and individual Internet connections has been rife in Cuba. The project is called ALBA-1 and should have been completed in July 2011 at a cost of $70 million, which includes a link from Cuba to Jamaica. However, news of this cable recently has been extremely hard to come by. But, according to senior analyst at Renesys Corporation, Doug Madory, Cuba has been using the cable service since January, 2013 (The Gleaner, 2013) and the recent opening of the 118 ‘salas de navegación’ appears to confirm that the cable may now be in operation. Andrea Rodríguez of Associated Press on the ground in Cuba wrote in May 2012 that, although the cable has been laid, it is not even mentioned in official reports, and nobody seems to have an official stance on what is happening to it. However she says, ‘[p]eople talk quietly about embezzlement torpedoing the project and the arrest of more than a half-dozen senior telecom officials’ (Rodríguez, 2012). The cable was meant at first to enhance the networks of hospitals, universities and other official institutions while the Cuban populace would have to wait, but a number of employees from official state institutions have reported no improvement to their Internet connections. ‘Multiple attempts to get Cuban and Venezuelan government officials to comment were unsuccessful’ (Rodríguez, 2012).Obviously there is no logic to investing $70m in an undersea cable for it not to be used but there has been speculation as to why the island has apparently not yet been properly connected to it. Cuba’s network infrastructure is severely limited; computers and systems are out of date. It may just be that the internal infrastructure needs to be updated in order to carry the new service that the cable will eventually provide. This is backed up by comments from the Deputy Minister of Informatics and Telecommunications, Jorge Luis Perdomo reported in who says: ‘the arrival of the fibre-optic cable is not a “magic wand”. The country still needs to develop domestic infrastructure of telephony and data, which cannot be done overnight’ (Deng, 2011). But the intentions of the Cuban government towards Internet access for its citizens are presented enigmatically at best. As Perdomo says: ‘There is total commitment of the Cuban government to further develop the telecommunications sector in terms of economic and social development of the country.’ Boris Moreno Cordovés, Vice-Minister of MIC, spoke recently at the National Assembly saying: ‘we will continue to intensify access [to the Internet] where it is necessary for the development of the country’ (Fontana Sábado, 2011). He commented that there did exist the will to improve Internet services if and when economic resources allowed the necessary development of the infrastructure to allow this to happen. He also made it clear that the US government had made Cuba’s access to important content and tools on the Internet very difficult, these measures forming part of the continued blockade of the island that makes it impossible for them to participate in electronic commerce for example. But what that means for day to day access for Cuban citizens is not clear. It is certainly the case, according to a computer engineer who is part of a special government group that: ‘Priority will go to improve government, business and social service networks in health and education’ (López, 2011) and that the Cuban people should not be expecting an Internet revolution any time soon. But there are signs that access to the Internet in Cuba is improving, as the recent opening of the ‘salas de navegación’ show. Recent news also hints at the possibility of gaining Internet access on mobile phones in Cuba (although at a cost) (Café Fuerte, 2014). Perhaps the Arab Spring has made the Cuban government think again about allowing free and easy access to the World Wide Web, as Rodríguez (2012) suggests, and it is well known that Raúl Castro has warned of a supposed plot by enemies of the Cuban state in the United States to wage a cyber-war against the island. ‘In 2011, a Cuban court sentenced US subcontractor Alan Gross to 15 years after convicting him of crimes against the state for importing restricted communications equipment that he insists was only meant to help the island's Jewish community gain better Internet access.’CONCLUSIONThis article has attempted to examine the use of the Internet in Cuba at a number of levels. It has shown how diffusion of the Internet in Cuba is severely limited by a number of factors, as Kalathil and Boas (2001) say: ‘including the country’s economic situation, the U.S. embargo, and the regime’s strategy of controlling the Internet by limiting public access.’ This strategy is obviously in place to limit any potential threat to the long-established socialist Revolution and Internet use in Cuba is not regarded as an individual right but should form part of the collectivist consciousness of the revolutionary process. But this is only part of the story. There is an evident desire to foster Internet use in Cuba in order to benefit the country as a whole; in terms of the Cuban economy the Internet will be vital for Cuba’s development in a global arena, given that historically Cuba has been dependent on external factors to keep the economic motors running. As Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo (2003: 17) says the role of the state in the economic development of countries like South Korea, Israel, Taiwan and Singapore has been fundamental. The Cuban state must play a similar role then in order to improve the Cuban economy, and the Internet needs to play a significant part in that development. When people speak of an ‘agricultural age’ or the ‘industrial age’, what they really speak of is economic development that comes out of those ‘ages’ (land and industry in these two cases) (Suaiden, 2013: 4). The ‘information age’ is no different; technology, information and communications are at the heart of economic development today and for Cuba to develop it must embrace this area. It is obvious then that the priority for the Cuban government is Internet development at the level of the governmental and structural and not at the level of the individual. But a new ‘literacy campaign’ at the level of civil society is also necessary in Cuba as Díaz Rodríguez and Sokooh Valle (2013) say. A type of ‘tecnodeterminism’ (López García, 2013) seems to be developing in Cuba whereby, in accordance with Marcus Leaning (2005), the way in which the Internet is used in Cuba has more to do with the organisation of society than with the inherent nature of the technological medium itself. This might prove to be highly restrictive being that for developing countries the cultural dimension of ICT is extremely important for national development and the creative use of technology such as the Internet by non-state bodies is essential, as López García (2013) says. The Cuban government is treading a fine line between individual and collective use of the Internet and there appears to be a move towards recognising that Cubans must have more open access to the Internet at an individual level. But this implies a profound change in the way that the Cuban government sees the development of the Internet and perhaps it has no bigger internal challenge.Table 1: Internet access frequency (percent)FrequencyTotalMenWomenAt least once per day22.623.122.1At least once per week35.634.936.3At least once per month30.832.129.6Less than once per month11.09.912.0Dirección de Turismo, Comercio y Servicios de Cuba (2010).Table 2:WebsiteBounce rate (%)*Number of pages viewed by visitorsTime spent on website (mm:sec)Origin of Main VisitorsGlobal rank1 118,1742 263,9694 740,3395, Mexico, Spain, USA37,2747, 2778 55.61.93:25Cuba, Spain, USA60,06811 63.52.22:28Cuba, Spain245,42112 -2.01:56-1,778,71913 47.33.13:47Cuba, Mexico158,55914 -5.002:54-9,462,64815 -7.001:52-6,688,08816 -----17 -----18 501.401:58-1,592,06019 -----20 -1-Spain4,402,356*Bounce Rate (%) Percentage of visits to the site that consist of a single page viewReferencesBraun, V. and Clarke, V. 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