[ICTs-and-Society] Plenary session 3 “Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society” (Christian Christensen, Peter Dahlgren)

[Andrew Feenberg]

I want us to consider a naive observation about social media. A recent New Yorker article dismissed the political uses of the Internet by contrasting the courage required to participate in a sit-in in the 60s and the triviality of signing an online petition. This sort of critique of the Internet mistakes completely its significant civic role which is communicative. It enables discussion and makes it cheap and fast to assemble masses. I had a student write a biting critique of the destructive effects of the Internet on civic culture, only to organize a successful and quite large "Slut Walk" in Vancouver shortly afterwards in just a week using the Internet. I went just to tease her and asked her if she knew what mimeo machines and telephone trees were. She had no idea. I told her this would have been her communication system when I was organizing demonstrations. So, of course the Internet does not "make" revolutions. But it plays a role in them just as did Khomeini's cassettes or the leaflets passed around in the May Events in 1968. A total government and corporate takeover of the Internet might well reduce it in the future to the abject state of television, but until that happens let's celebrate its positive role where we find it. I await your critical counter-attack!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christian Fuchs" <christian.fuchs at im.uu.se>
To: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
Sent: Sunday, 26 February, 2012 11:00:29 AM
Subject: [ICTs-and-Society] Plenary session 3 “Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society” (Christian Christensen, Peter Dahlgren)

In plenary session 3 of the Uppsala conference "Critique, Democracy and 
Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society", Peter Dahlgren and 
Christian Christensen will discuss fundamental challenges for 
contemporary politics and democracy in the context of digital media.

They ask questions like: What is transparency? How can media advance the 
transparency of power structures? Is transparency a viable political 
goal? What is the relationship of WikiLeaks to power, transparency, and 
the mainstream media? How does the relation between alternative media 
and mainstream media in the age of the Internet look like? What is a 
civic sphere? What is the role of the Internet for the civic sphere? 
What are the political opportunities and limits posed by social media? 
What is democracy today? What are the political and democratic 
potentials and limits of critique today?

Discussions and comments on these contributions are welcome.

Best, CF

CHRISTIAN CHRISTENSEN
Uppsala University, Sweden
WikiLeaks: Mainstreaming Transparency?
ABSTRACT: In the period shortly after the release of the “Collateral 
Murder” video, “Afghanistan War Logs” and “Iraq War Logs”, it appeared 
that WikiLeaks had done something that many had thought unlikely: the 
insertion of a radical critique of US military and geo-political power 
into mainstream popular discourse (particularly in the US). While The 
Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel (the three newspapers chosen by 
WikiLeaks for the release of the first leaks) are not the newspapers of 
choice for many in the US, UK and Germany, the very presence of the 
material on their front pages opened up the possibility that the murky 
world of US power might now be forced to concede ground to transparency 
advocates. In this paper, I address the often contentious 
WikiLeaks-mainstream media collaboration, and the potential impact of 
this relationship upon the evolution of transparency as a political 
philosophy.

SPEAKER INFO: Christian Christensen is Professor of Media and 
Communications Studies in the Department of Informatics and Media at 
Uppsala University, Sweden. His primary area of research is in the use 
of social media during times of war and conflict, but he has also 
published on the representation of Islam, post 9/11 documentary film, 
and international journalism.

***

PETER DAHLGREN
Lund University, Sweden
Social Media and the Civic Sphere: Crisis, Critique and the Future of 
Democracy
ABSTRACT: While the advent of social media has already had a significant 
impact on people’s daily lives, it has also come to alter the character 
of the civic sphere, i.e., the broad social terrain of citizens’ 
activities.
Thus, social media in their various forms quickly became incorporated 
into discourses about democracy and the political. Clearly, social media 
can play a useful role in the advancement of democracy, but it is by now 
quite clear that they offer no simple solution to the ills that beset 
contemporary democracy. On the one hand they can just as readily be used 
for purposes that are anti-democratic, on the other hand – and in a more 
complex perspective – the contingencies of late modern capitalism 
generate a variety of conditions that intercede, in problematic ways, 
between even progressive “produser-citizens” and the advancement of 
democracy via social media. These contingencies have to do with a number 
of factors, including power relations at different societal levels 
(including the growing separation between power and formal politics), 
the imperatives of consumer society, late modern cultural currents of 
individualism, and the architecture and political economy of the net 
itself and its Web 2.0 affordances. As the global crisis deepens, these 
contingencies become more pronounced.
This presentation will highlight and exemplify these aspects, arguing 
that research needs to become more alert to such obstacles in regard to 
social media’s role and potential in cultivating the civic sphere. Even 
the notion of democracy – too often deployed as incantation – needs 
critical interrogation to elucidate its multiple and at times contested 
ideals.
In this regard, the latter part of the discussion will probe the notion 
of critique, suggesting that there is a methodological dimension that 
can be retrieved and applied to social conditions, practices, and 
discourses for progressive political purposes. The concept of critique 
of course remains multivalent; I focus on the lineage from Hegel’s idea 
of the critical reflection on unnecessary constraints on human freedom. 
Its concern is with “emancipation”.
Historically, various intellectual and political movements on the Left 
have used the no-ion of critique. Today, however, the concept seems to 
have lost its punch, due to the decline of the Left, the rise of 
neoliberalism, the growing social uncertainties, the ironic 
sensibilities of liquid modernity, and not least the current global 
crisis, in which no clear political alternative has emerged to galvanise 
the many heterogeneous strands of opposition.
I intend to explore the notion of critique as it still can be found in 
the writings of a number of contemporary theorists – Laclau and Mouffe, 
Boltanski, Bauman, and Žižek – and extract some common threads. These 
will be applied to social media and the civic sphere, against the 
background of the current crisis, with an eye towards reinvigorating 
critique as an intellectual endeavour. Also, I will briefly address the 
notion of ‘emancipation’ to see what useful meaning can be elucidated in 
regard to our contemporary horizons.

SPEAKER INFO: Peter Dahlgren is Professor Emeritus at Lund University, 
Department of Media and Communications Studies. His research focuses on 
democracy, the evolution of the media, and contemporary socio-cultural 
processes, including identity formation.


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