User:Natasa Siencnik/essay/draft-2b/

Essay Draft

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

Working Title

Introduction
- debate about democratizing nature / democratic potential of the Internet
- gap between the supposed democratic potentials of the internet and the practices emerging in the field
- concept of participation is at the heart of many current debates about politics and technology
- (technological) optimistic (utopian) and pessimistic discourses
- polarization keeps on repeating itself with introduction of every new technology, most recently social media
- positive:
- openness, liberalization, democracy, freedom of speech, and communications
- empowers individuals and fosters genuine political discussions
- web enables new forms of participation in economic and public life
- potential of digital media communications to revitalize the public sphere
- negative:
- perceived as a threat
- Machiavellian tool that leads to increased state surveillance and monitoring of citizens
- overload of information
- weak-tie-relationships and clicktivism
- understanding current phenomena of political struggle and activism for social change
- critical media literacy in times of war and crisis
- everywhere we hear about how social media and micro-blogging has brought about a tremendous change in the organization of social movements and political activism
- brief introduction to current political situation in the Middle East
- Moldavia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, current situation in Libya / Croatia (to close?)
- in this essay i want to investigate this political promise of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 and Participation
- Short description of Web 2.0
- shift from earlier, supposedly less participatory, web technologies
- read/write web > blogs, photo and file sharing systems (e.g. YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare), collaborative sites (e.g. Wikipedia), social network sites (e.g. Facebook, Friendster, mySpace, Second Life)
- plethora of social media available on the internet
- largely designed for personal presentation
- thresholds for participation are lowered
- political speech and action sometimes emerge
- enable social and economic empowerment
- liberation ascribed to the participatory and collaborative possibilities of new technologies
- shift the power from governmental institutions to individual citizens
- fast adoption of Internet by a wide range of individuals, groups and protest movements
- empowering potential of the Internet > Cyberdemocratic society where all are equal (–> Lévy)
- Lévy anticipated the fall of dictatorships around the world and the advent of what he refers 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"
Western Democracies
- concern or lack of public participation in modern (Western) societies
- 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
- internet's potential use for increased state surveillance at the expense of civil liberties such as privacy (–> Orwell)
- state characterized by simulacrum and manipulation
- growing gap between "information-rich" and "information poor"
Public Sphere (–> Habermas)
- assumptions about nature of political communication and functioning of the so-called "public sphere"
- what is the "public sphere" (–> Habermas)
- space for democratic form of political debate
- public sphere constitutes a "network for communicating information and points of view" (Habermas, 1996)
- individual autonomy in terms of social relations
- public sphere is not a forum for political action
- public sphere is a forum for debate
- separate from the political apparatus
- argument that the Internet offers a better medium for the creation of a public sphere
- where a truly democratic form of political debate can take place
- Are digital media and social Web use redefining the public sphere, and if so how and for whom?
Disappearance of Public Space and Formation of Non-Places
- in economically developed world, the disappearing public sphere plays people into the hands of the social Web
- Where can you meet face to face except in a noisy cafe, a transitory undifferentiated mall, or a parking lot?
- French philosopher Marc Auge adds highways, airports, and hotels to this list and calls them "non-places"
Networked Public Sphere (–> Benkler)
- Benkler (The Wealth of Networks): "new network information economy, characterized by non-market modes of participation and production, makes possible a public sphere that better serves the exercise of political freedom necessary in a liberal democracy"
- allows a new, more democratic and participative, form of political communication
- empowerment of individuals
- elimination of communication costs
- makes it easy to distribute a political message
- low-tech interventions can also be highly effective
- Gladwell: "New tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With social media the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coordinate, and give voice to their concerns."
- but "if everyone can speak at once, no one can be heard"
- Benkler: set of criteria, derived from Habermas, by which to judge the efficacy of the new networked public sphere:
- must be open to everyone
- filtering relevant information
- systems for accrediting information sources that are likely to be reliable
- capable of synthesizing public opinion, bringing together disparate individuals into coherent public opinion
- independent from government control
Networked vs. Mass-Mediated Public Sphere / Producer vs Consumer
- democratizing effects must be measured as compared to the commercial, mass-media-based public sphere
- not as compared to an idealized utopia that we embraced a decade ago the Internet might be
- some of the hype about democratization of media may be true: witness the meteoric rise of social network platforms and citizen journalism
- industrial model of mass media does situate the audience as consumers, passive or active, of media products
- the same people who "consume" what is on the web increasingly produce it
- there is no longer the distinction so central to media and communication studies between producers and consumers, nor between authors and audience
- access to media production and distribution is available through blogs, videoblogs, digital transmissions, and YouTube
- create new theories of how power, discourse, and poesis circulate in relation to the combinatory function and apparatus of digital distribution
- Hassan Ibrahim: comments about this new hybrid form that combines classic TV with Web-based digital media
- "It's a revolution. It's a revolution because for the first time an average human walking down the streets of Jakarta, New York, or Khartoum, or Darfur, can actually pick up the phone and dial a number and report what they see #*you're recruiting journalists from all over the world, people who know nothing about the secrets of the trade, of the industry, but they just saw something and they want to report it. And that's a revolution, when you have millions and millions of reporters around the world."
- micro-blogging tools such as Twitter are filling gaps in news media coverage
- tweeting may raise public awareness and emotions on the issue
- but has this ever lead to any substantial change?
- how are digital media redefining journalistic practices?
Truth and Reality / Faith and Disbelieve / Authenticity
- crisis of public faith in media (accountability)
- desire and longing for truth expressed by public demands for media accountability
- "interactive" possibilities of social Web practices leading to different kinds of representations and constructions of truth
- Walter Benjamin: "It is hardly possible to write a history of information separately from a history of the corruption of the press." (p. 10)
- "mutual relation between systems of truth and modalities of power" (Foucault)
- Susan Sontag, p. 18: "specialized tourists known as journalists"
- Susan Sontag: "information about what is happening elsewhere, called "news", features conflict and violence"
- Mark Lipton: "One can argue that the sociability of new Web processes are producing new pathways for 'truth'
- two modes: "Truth" as propagated as fact by corporate media and "truth" as ideas that emerge from the sociability of new pathways of sharing knowledge
- our best hope for accuracy in media is double-sourcing (Hassan Ibrahim)
- use of these digital dissent media suggest a double-edged contradiction of an awareness that all truths are constructed, alongside an affective desire for truth and an urgent political need for accuracy and responsible reporting
Susan Sontag:
- p.18: response is compassion, or indignation, or titillation, or approval, as each misery heaves into view
- p. 20: Awareness of the suffering that accumulates in a select number of wars happening elsewhere is something constructed. Principally in the form that is registered by cameras, it flare up, is shared by many people, and fades from view.
- p. 22: In an era of information overload, the photograph provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it.
- p. 26: a record of the real
Media and Power
- radical rise in public uses of digital media to question dominant media control of public life
- the public agenda, and the semantic, semiotic, and visual wars fought to try to exclude the smaller voices and hence prevent other collective imaginings
- question of perception and propaganda
- maxim "the pen is mightier than the sword" > Amy Goodman: "media is more powerful than any bomb"
- Example: Al Jazeera mistake
- "When the second Intifada erupted in 1999, one of our reporters mistakenly reported that the Israelis had declared a curfew in Ramallah. He misheard the Hebrew message. And the program on the radio was an analytical program that was using examples from the first Intifada. So the Al Jazeera reported on his fraud curfew in Ramallah. People rushed to get their kids from school to bring them home before curfew. And there was huge crowding in the streets and three people died trying to get to their kids. That's a schmall example of what the media can do to people #*especially if you have a credible news outlet, people believe you and what you say is gospel truth. And if you get it wrong then people get it wrong."
Political Internet Use / Criteria for a Networked Public Sphere
- deconstructing the democratic potential of the internet
- positive, glorified internet: reach, speed, reduced costs, information richness, decentralization, absence of censorship, search engines, rise of user-generated interactive platforms
- increased access to information can lead to a better informed citizen
- but it may also lead to issues of information overload and practices of disinformation
- must be open to everyone
- filtering relevant information
- accrediting information that is likely to be reliable
- forming public opinion, bringing together individuals
- independent from government control
Three Aces of Political Internet Use
- a) INFORMATION > "informed citizen"
- info traditionally considered as a prerequisite for all forms of political participation, not only protest
- to express opinions (e.g. voting) or contesting political practices, citizens need to be informed
- internet praised for providing access to huge amounts of information
- hopes that this would lead to a better-informed society and thus increased citizen participation
- citizens have limited capacities to absorb and process information
- increased access at lower costs does not automatically increase participation levels
- idealized version of "informed citizen" doesn't correspond to reality (Vedel, 2003)
- media is an important channel for providing political information to citizens
- always criticized the mass media system for favoring the positions of dominant political actors
- adoption of internet by activist networks allows these to produce and publish alternative information
- blogs play increasing role in reversing Foucault's panopticon in which the state is watching the citizen (p. 52)
- "apart from being able to understand and interpret media texts, citizens are expected to adopt, filter and communicate masses of information coming from various sources" (Lehtonen, 2008)
- information overload
- media skills / media literacy fundamental to citizens
- > 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
- b) DISCUSSION AND DEBATE > "active citizen"
- talk among citizens is basic to their political sphere (Dahlgren, 2009)
- early enthusiastic accounts considered the internet as an incarnation of the Habermasian public sphere based on rational discourse
- increased cosmopolitanism and transnationalism that shapes current forms of protest (Tarrow, 2006)
- fears of fragmentation
- yet a renewal of the public sphere or public sphere(s)
- 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
- Global: local activities connected to global struggle
- c) MOBILIZATION
- empowering potentialities of the internet as resource-poor actors benefit from it
- lowering communication and coordination costs
- but technology strengthens above all existing power structures
- > Key Concepts:
- Assumption: the "participating citizen"
- Social capital: isolation vs. interconnectedness
- Online and offline worlds increasingly merge
- The internet empowers resource-poor actors
- yet new "digital" barriers to participation emerge
- Active minorities overrepresented
Conclusion
- more critical or skeptical 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 (–> Stiegler)
- fluid forms of involvement
- public-private boundary tends to decrease
- concern about fragmentation of the public sphere
- can therefore hardly fulfill the criteria of a Habermasian conceptualization
- but doesn't necessarily hinder cooperation among very different civil society organizations
- social media as a space of access to representation, communication, and distribution can be shared by diverse voices and visions and not dominated by media conglomerates

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."

Goralczyk: As a tool for real-time communication and a vehicle for in-the-moment information sharing, micro-bloggin can be suitable for covering leaks in mainstream media news coverage. However, in the case of political action, there is an overblown hype on micro-bloggin that misinterprets the function of these communication tools as revolutionary per se.

Bibliography

Auge, Marc (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London / New York City: Verso

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