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

[Dean, Jodi]

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