[ICTs-and-Society] Subject: RE: Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society

[Christian Fuchs]

From:    jdean at hws.edu


Von:
"Dean, Jodi" <JDEAN at hws.edu>
Datum:
Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:25:47 +0000
An:
Megan Boler <megan.boler at utoronto.ca>, Mark Deuze <deuzemjp at yahoo.com>, 
"discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net" 
<discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net>

I think the key points of disagreement may be in how we understand 
politics. I am not denying that people use social media in all sorts of 
ways. My argument
is premised on this use. The issue at stake is the political import of 
this use. I am not making a "master's tools" argument. Rather, I am 
arguing that as long as
we focus on the tools, we lose sight of what is being destroyed and what 
is being built. If we look at Egypt, Greece, Spain, and Occupy (I don't 
mean to exclude
other intense sites of activity, I just don't feel like I know enough to 
include them), what has been striking is the amassing of people outside 
and face to face, trying
to produce new kinds of being together in person.

Megan emphasizes awareness:

--"vast differences today in the visibility of the Arab Spring and 
Occupy compared to previous movements."

-- "misrepresentations can be solidly corrected and countered because of 
ubiquitous media"

--"much greater access to digital archives of MSM broadcast news which 
allows the powerful practice of visual remix of news, which in turn 
enables people to call out political administrations and the media on 
lies and revisionist histories."

There are problems with awareness as a political indicator, particularly 
if one is making an argument for any kind of radical politics.

1.  One always has to ask about the audience (a previous comment rightly 
brought up the question of revolution "counting" only if those in the 
"West" are aware.

2.  Awareness is a ratings-style, commercial message-saturation style, 
indicator. If awareness is what matters, then politics is the same as 
anything else about which
we "aware"--the Super Bowl, the Oscars, Lady Gaga. Presumably politics 
is not the same as these things, so there needs to be something else 
that matters in discussing it. Another example:
the Susan Komen Foundation breast cancer awareness work has increased 
awareness of breast cancer dramatically. There has not been a 
corresponding decrease in cases and deaths.

3.  One needs to ask about the connection between awareness/visibility 
and some kind of political results, effects, outcomes--ending a war, 
passing legislation, changing policy, overthrowing a government.


Megan also emphasizes organization:

--"current social media use fundamentally changes the practices of 
organizing, the potential to organize immediate, direct, "flash" actions"

---"and the sustainability of movements in terms of maintaining ongoing 
struggle and organizing through one-to-many and many-to-many social 
media."

For the most part, I agree with these claims (except for 
"fundamentally"). But I have concerns about their implications.

--flash actions: feed into a culture of quick gratification rather than 
duration; over-estimate impact of quick demos, as if thousands of people 
didn't already aggregate
in all sorts of ways in urban settings. Riots have more impact than 
flash mobs--which already seem like video entertainment. That said, 
being part of such actions
can energize participants and perhaps politicize them further. When 
Zuccotti Park was threatened with eviction in the name of cleaning back 
in October, social
media was important it getting people to turn out quickly to 'save the 
park.' Yet, the biggest numbers of people who came out for that were 
from unions, that is people
who were already organized in a more 'traditional' political group. 
Without the unions, the numbers would have been substantially smaller 
for that quick defensive move.

--sustainability: with respect to OWS, we'll know more as we move into 
spring. Real issues regarding housing and the homeless (an issue that 
has been a big deal in
NYC since the eviction), the dis-functionality of the GA, the complex 
rules of the Spokes-council, and the dispersion of actions into 
different groups often working at
cross purposes present serious challenges. There are issues of trust and 
reliability among participants, which isn't surprising since there are 
so many different political
tendencies trying to work together. Most groups continue to prioritize 
face to face meetings, although these can disadvantage people with out 
the time to devote to them. In January, a
widely circulated memo out of Tech-ops dealt with some of the 
organizational problems which included the absence of a database of 
participants that would show what people
could do and offer and help coordinate tasks and skills (this is being 
worked on). In a way, these barriers are not surprising--some people who 
are active don't have laptops.


Jodi