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

[Mark Deuze]

alas, I cannot make it to what promises to be an exciting conference - so perhaps I can throw in my 2 cents on this discussion from across the pond.

there are a lot of issues to disentangle when collapsing social/political activism and online/mobile/social media in a contemporary context. 

a lot of the mass protests we see today are anti-capitalist, oppositional to Empire, aimed to give voice to the voiceless vis-a-vis the 1%. 

at the same time, the key organizing, communication, and participation tools for all these protests are the products and services and infrastructures and artifacts of distinctly imperial and often corporate entities: commercial social media platforms, telecommunication providers, consumer electronics, privately operated servers/wires/routers.

does the one aspect negate the validity of the other? not necessarily. but one should not rush to judgement too quickly by all too easy theorizing (I'm not saying Marx or the 1960s have nothing to do with the current situation... I'm just noting that they may have as much as they do not). 

although there are certainly many people who click a "like" button and then move on to FunnyorDie. others smash their iPhone and pitch a tent on a public square. the effectiveness of either method of activism is again not necessarily something 'caused' by its method. 

several folks have argued that much of todays new social movements and forms of political activism - anything from the Arab uprising to Planet Occupy, from the UK riots (and subsequent cleanups) to the Italian blogosphere, and so - seems to infused with web values. 

in fact, a lot of these protests, riots (and clean-ups) around the world do have certain properties that remind one of zombies: first, they tend to be based on social movements without leaders, lacking clear hierarchical structures, and generally having no clear goals. If anything, the sheer diversity of goals seem to cancel each other out. Second, they involve people from all walks of life: from East to West, North to South, black and white, men and women, old and young - again negating distinct classifications. Finally, not only does the social arrangement of these protests rely heavily on the use of media (which in turn enable the active involvement of people not necessarily present) - they seem similarly infectious and viral as media can be. 


as so many people seem to suggest that our concurrent exposure to and immersion in media runs the risk of turning us into living dead (of which slacktivists are a mild form one could argue), it is perhaps not so strange that the relationship between contemporary media and equally current forms of political activism gets expression in zombies.

and, as literary theorists would argue: isnt the revival of zombies as the benchmark of contemporary popular culture premised on a globally felt frustration with caring about the world (its nature and its peoples) but feeling disempowered en disenfranchised to do anything about it?

perhaps we should talk about that, and a bit less whether liking something on facebook is good or bad for you, or good or bad for democracy. 

thanks for allowing me to pitch in!

yours sincerely,

Mark Deuze.

twitter: @markdeuze
blog: deuze.blogspot.com
facebook (why the hell not): facebook.com/markdeuze
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.icts-and-society.net/pipermail/discussion-icts-and-society.net/attachments/20120227/9e116076/attachment-0002.htm>