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

[Dean, Jodi]

Andrew's use of the term "civic use" of the internet is interesting. It points to the fact that there is nothing particularly revolutionary, left, liberal, or progressive about using
networked media for organizing. The convenience is convenience regardless of political outlook. 

"Use of the internet" doesn't tell us anything--virtually everyone and everything
uses the internet. It's what spam, porn, activists, World of Warcraft, and cute kittens have in common.

If one's view is that any kind of politics is laudable, then one might celebrate this. I don't think any politics is laudable. 

Even if I did, I would still be critical of a one-sided celebration of the politics of networked media. Here are just a couple of reasons:

1.  The turn out rate for mass emailings/FB invitations is lower than with direct contact.
2.  Reliance on electronic media means less direct involvement with people (so, instead of going door to door and building knowledge and connections first hand, one relies on a database of phone numbers).
3.  Capacities for organizing diminish: people think that all that is necessary is an FB page.
4.  Political action becomes synonymous with awareness.
5.  Political action becomes seamlessly integrated with consumption and entertainment; the content may be radical but the form is not.

Jodi Dean
(not part of the conference but lurking on the list)


________________________________________
From: discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net [discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net] on behalf of Andrew Feenberg [feenberg at sfu.ca]
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 2:17 PM
To: christian fuchs
Cc: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
Subject: Re: [ICTs-and-Society] Plenary session 3 “Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society” (Christian Christensen, Peter Dahlgren)

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.


_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
http://lists.icts-and-society.net/listinfo.cgi/discussion-icts-and-society.net
_______________________________________________
Discussion mailing list
Discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net
http://lists.icts-and-society.net/listinfo.cgi/discussion-icts-and-society.net