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I like Revolution. About the possible democratic potential of the Internet and how people think they change the world.

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Introduction
- political implications of Web 2.0
- debate about democratising nature / democratic potential of the Internet
- utopian visions of the internet
- concept of participation
- concern or lack of public participation in modern (Western) societies
- optimism concerning the potential of new technologies
- but also perceived as a threat, a Machiavellian tool that inevitably leads to inscreased statue surveillance andm onitoring of its citizens
- negative: overload of information and practices of disinformation
- hype surrounding Internet technologies, especially concerning the revolutions in the Middle East
- brief introduction to current political situation in the Middle East
- technological utopians vs. pessimists
- polarization keeps on repeating itself with the introduction of every new wave of technology, most recently social media
- understanding current phenomena of political struggle and activism for social change
Web 2.0 and Participation
- Short description of Web 2.0 / the social web
- plethora of social media available on the internet
- read/write web > blogs, photo and file sharing systems (eg Flickr, SlideShare, YouTube), collaborative sites (eg Wikipedia), social network sites (eg Friendster, mySpace, Second Life, Facebook)
- largely designed for personal presentation
- shift from earlier, supposedly less participatory, web technologies
- liberation ascribed to the particpatory and collaborative possibilities of new technologies
- political speeach and action sometimes emerge
- adoption of internet by a wide range of individuals, groups and protest movements
- positive, glorified internet: reach, speed, reduced costs, information richness, decnetralization, absence of censorship, search engines, rise of user-generated interactive platforms
- empowering potential of the Internet > Cyberdemocratic society where all are equal (–> Lévy)
- shift the power from governmental institutions to individual citizens
- Lévy anticipated the fall of dictatorships around the world and the advent of what he reers to as "cyberdemocracy"
- "The destiny of democracy and cyberspace are intimately linked because they both involve what is the most essential to humanity: the aspiration to freedom and the creative power of collective intelligence"
- tresholds for participation are lowered
Western Democracies
- increase voter apathy, general detachment of citizens from conventional politics
- loss of legitimacy along with public dis-engagement (–> Hadt and Negri)
- emergence of a medium offering the potential to (re)connect citizens to their decision-makers
- pessimistic: internet's potential use for increased state surveillance at the expense of civil liberties such as privacy (–> Orwell)
- such state is characterized by simulacrum and manipulation, a growing gap between "information-rich" and "infromation poor"
Public Sphere
- what is the "public sphere" (–> Habermas)
- individual autonomy in terms of social relations
- public sphere is not a forum for political action
- public sphere is a forum for debate
- seperate from the political apparatus
- space for democratic form of political debate
- can Internet offer a better medium for a public sphere?
Networked Public Sphere / The Social Web (–> Benkler)
- nonmarket modes of participation and production of content (user-generated content)
- decentralized individual action
- empowerment of individuals
- elimination of communication costs
- allow new, more democratic and participative, form of political communication
- but "if everyone can speak at once, no one can be heard"?
Networked vs. mass-mediated Public Sphere
- democratising effects measured as compared to commercia, mass-media-based public sphere
- not compared to an idealized utopia
- more democratic than traditional mass media
- active participants of Web vs. passive reader, listereners or viewers of mass media?
- sceptical about ascvribing passivity to the mass media audience
- but industrial model of mass media situats audience as consumers of media products
Criteria for a new networked Public sphere:
- must be open to everyone
- filtering relevant information
- accrediting infromation that is likely to be reliable
- forming public opinion, bringing together individuals
- independent from government control
- INFORMATION #* Key Concepts:
- Assumption: a "better informed citizen" is likely to participate in politics
- Access does not equal participation, quantity not quality
- Time/space compression: rapid diffusion of information
- The end of intermediaries? alternative media space
- Media literacy skills are new barriers for participation
- DISCUSSION #* Key Concepts:
- Assumption: the "active citizen" shapes his opinion by rational debate
- Public sphere: Plurality of dynamic and complex public spheres
- Interactivity: homophily, passive forms of civi engagement
- Glocal: local activities connected to global struggle
- MOBILIZATION #* Key Concepts:
- Assumption: the "participating citizen"
- Social capital: isolation vs. interconnectedenss
- Online and offline worlds increasingly merge
- The internet empowers resource-poor actors yet new "digital" barriers to participation emerge
- Active minorities overrepresented
- Change of mobilising actors #* difficulty to estimate who participates
Social Movements Paradigm
- characterized by three elements (Rucht, 1994):
- aim for social change
- adopt identity-based network structures
- use "unconventional" means of protest
- can be defined as networks of social actors who (Tarrow, 2006):
- engage in sustained collective actions
- have common purpose
- challenge established elites
- internet allows reaching many with little recources
- medium empowers resource-poor actors who can constitute counter-publics in order to contest the mainstream public sphere
- the role of individuals, notably bloggers, in shaping current political discussions is crucial to understand how the internet is used for protest activities while it hardly fals within the social movement paradigm
Economics / Capitalism / Liberalism in Postindustrial Societies
- presume that removal of corporate ownership and control allows organic decentralisation and empowerment of individuals
- but the Internet is based and shaped by a liberal market rather than politics
- collectively constructed works have clear economic value
- but are not participating in an economic market as such
- free labour likely to be exploited
- but intenret does not automatically turn every user into an active producer
Conclusion
- more critical or sceptical approach to the political promise of Web 2.0
- true participation must mean more than simply new technologies of participation
- it is a politico-economic project, not simply a technological one
- public-private boudnary tends to decrease
- too often polarized oppositions:
- social isolation or global interconnectedness
- informed vs. apathetic citizens
- fluid forms of involvement
- shifting dependent on the context and the issue

Breindl: "The dichotomy between both realms need to be deconstructed in a world where the internet constitutes a bridge between the online and the offline, the local and the global, the private and the public. We argue for a need to overcome dichotomies and binary oppositions associated with the democratic potentialities of the internet."

Bibliography

Auge, Marc

Benjamin, Walter

Applebaum, Anne (2010) 'The Twitter Revolution that wasn't', in The Washington Post, April 21, 2009

Boler, Megan (2008) Digital Media and Democracy. Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge: The MIT Press

Breindl, Yana (2010) 'Critique of the Democratic Potentialities of the Internet: A Review of Current Theory and Practice', in tripleC Vol. 8, No. 1 (pp. 43–59)

Deibert, Ronald J (2008) 'Black Code Redux: Censorchip, Surveillance, and the Militarization of Cyberspace', in Boler, Megan (ed) Digital Media and Democracy. Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge: The MIT Press (pp. 137–153)

De Certeau, Michel (1998) The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings, University of Minnesota Press

Foucault, Michel (2004) Die Geburt der Biopolitik. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität II, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006

Gladwell, Malcolm (2010) 'Small Change. Why the Revolution will not be tweeted', in The New Yorker, October 4, 2010

Habermas, Jürgen (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005

Renzi, Alessandra (2008) 'The Space of Tactical Media', in Boler, Megan (ed) Digital Media and Democracy. Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge: The MIT Press (pp. 71–90)

Roberts, Ben (2009) 'Beyond the Networked Public Sphere: Politics, Participation and Technics in Web 2.0', in The Fibreculture Journal Vol. 14, Fibreculture Publications / The Open Humanities Press

Scholz, Trebor (2008) 'Where the Activism is', in Boler, Megan (ed) Digital Media and Democracy. Tactics in Hard Times, Cambridge: The MIT Press (pp. 355–363)

Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others, New York: Picador

I like Revolution. About the possible democratic potential of the Internet and how people think they change the world.

Bibliography

Further Reading