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

[Andrew Feenberg]

This is a great discussion. I think we need a sophisticated understanding of technology to get beyond the opposition between the corporate and the revolutionary theme with regard to the Internet. The Internet was originally developed by the military to share computer time and to test a redundant communication system able to survive EMP. This origin required a non-hierarchical system, a network with multiple pathways for signals. That is what we have inherited as the Internet today. It is not neutral nor is it deterministically fated to support one side or the other in political struggle. It is ambivalent, available for different possible developments. One of those developments takes advantage of the network as the basis of social networks. In certain political contexts such as the Occupy movement that has democratic implications (in the strongest sense). But the Internet also records everything and exposes it to further exploitation. That makes possible the advertising uses that underpin corporate activity on the Internet. We can imagine the system developing in different directions because it has these very different aspects and potentials. But this is also why a discussion that seeks the "essence" of the Internet is bound to be inconclusive. 


Whether on the whole the Internet is good or bad does not seem to me an answerable question. What is true is that it is not a broadcast system (yet) and so long as it remains a true network it will be open to political usages. I'm for that. 

----- Original Message -----

From: "ben klass" <benjiklass at hotmail.com> 
To: "christian fuchs" <christian.fuchs at uti.at>, discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net 
Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 4:26:32 PM 
Subject: Re: [ICTs-and-Society] Subject: RE: Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society 


I am glad that there is a "back and forth" going on, as I think it allows us to be constructive, and create a more developed understanding of the issues that concern us. Jodi said most recently that what has been striking to her has been "the amassing of people outside and face to face, trying to produce new kinds of being together in person". This is also striking to me. But what differentiates these movements from past ones, such as anti-globalization protests and the 2003 anti Iraq war protests in the States, is the methods of organizing and the ongoing publication of these events. All of these movements, past and present, have taken as central the IRL aspects mentioned, and would not have been effective otherwise. In that regard they are all similar. But what is most striking to me in this context is that movements such as 'Occupy' have been organized in a decentralized, non-hierarchical fashion enabled by network use; in other words, these new movements have been able to successfully grab hold of the tools of network media for their own uses, rather than simply being the subject of commercially dominated industrial media institutions, who, as Megan pointed out, are as likely as not to simply ignore them when it is convenient. 


Jodi said pertaining to these movements that focusing on the tools for the movement causes us to lose sight of what is being destroyed and what is being built. How can that be so? Focusing on the tools used to create a movement, to facilitate its goals, and to spread awareness can only, in my estimation, enlighten us to both the broad strokes as well as the particular details of the given movement. By focusing on how networked environments add to these movements, we do not lose sight of what is being built and destroyed. In fact, by broadening our view of how these movements are formed, carried out, and ultimately their effects, we gain insight into the nature not just of their outcomes but of the movements in totality. To be clear: I am suggesting that the focus on networked media as methods for promoting struggle add to our understanding of these struggles, it does not detract from it. 


Further, and I think that this is a reiteration of a point I and others made previously: I do not equate awareness with political action. What I do suggest is that awareness is at least a prerequisite of political action. While presence of the former may not necessarily indicate the presence of the latter, without awareness, how is it that political action can come about? Jodi's conception of "face to face" interaction being necessary to spark meaningful movements and action is certainly germane. However, as Andrew initially pointed out, networked media have significantly less friction than methods previously available before widespread use of social media was the norm. True, lasting bonds can be formed by knocking on doors; but Gladwell was wrong when he suggested that the sit-ins he focused on could only have come about in the context of the close-tie relationships that he wrongly associates exclusively with IRL relationships. He said:" There was a pause, and McCain said, in a way that works only with people who talk late into the night with one another, 'Are you guys chicken or not?'" Why does this only work in such a way? I contest that it does. When you go door to door to gather support for a movement, or to raise awareness, you are faced with a scarcity of resource (time, geography, etc) that is quite frankly eliminated by creating groups on FB. True, the relative turnout of online organization may be less than IRL, but the possibilities presented of increased absolute turnout are exponentially greater, given that the scarce resources that are required by IRL awareness raising simply do not apply online. 


Jodi points out that " 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." Earlier she pointed out that the translation of this type of awareness into her concept of "democracy", or as I understand her to mean ' concrete public expression translated into political action within existing 'democratic' institutions' - was nowhere to be found. I have to strongly contest this assumption. Awareness of the MPAA's attempt to railroad the US government into passing the SOPA/PIPA legislation translated directly into political action (the quashing of the bill); and furthermore this awareness was raised solely online, through groups such as reddit, who organized the boycott of godaddy.com. In Canada, last year, one of our "Big 3" Telco's attempted to impose a wholesale billing practice that would have effectively ended independent competition in the Canadian ISP market, but after Openmedia.ca raised a staggering 500,000 signature petition in just under a week (amazing given the esoteric nature of the issue and the fact that Canada's total population is only roughly 34 Million) the effort was thwarted. In some regards, these may not qualify as sweeping, radical movements, but they most certainly do serve as unequivocal examples of online activism being directly translated into political action. 


When Christian first entered this particular discussion, he said: "I think that what we have to see [is] that the most frequent claims about social media [...]are that Facebook, Twitter, etc are revolutionary - and by revolutionary they mean the technology itself and that it automatically brings about more democracy. [...] The problems are social media ideologies and how corporate social media functions for exploiting the digital labour of users." Indeed, the ideological claims made by such technological evangelists are intended to obfuscate both the actual, potentially radical uses of these technologies, as well as the fact that Facebook, Google, etc are not benevolent, neutral entities. They exist according to their goals: to exploit the free labour of their users by capturing the surplus value they generate, by trading information for ad revenue. Facebook is not your friend. It is not giving you something for free. It, itself, is not radical. But its uses potentially are. The problem is the seeming contradiction between the fact that using Facebook for radical aims at the same time entrenches and solidifies its success as a capitalist, exploitative institution. Although this tension must be recognized, and alternatives explored, Facebook does not at this time prevent its users from expressing themselves radically. (With exceptions, of course, as the leak of their censorship guidelines illustrates.) If people truly start to believe that their benign actions on Facebook ("Liking" a cause, joining a group) are acceptable substitutes for deeper and more substantial engagement in politics, then I will have to reverse my claims. But this is not how things stand at the moment, as Megan has pointed out. 


Christian then asked: "But what shall be the desirable form of democracy? Liberal representative democracy that is inherently bound up with the idea of private property and therefore inequality - or socialist participatory democracy?" This question speaks to the heart of the matter. A rough expression of what I think a desirable form of democracy might look like is one in which the public, as a network of individuals, can inclusively deliberative and express their desires and interests based on a neutral platform; which desires and interests will then be collectively translated into substantive political action that is reflective of them. Are we ineluctably bound to Facebook, a non-neutral, capitalist institution, as this platform, just because it is the dominant one at the moment? I don't think so. Alternatives that have the potential to disconnect public political expression and action from property-based platforms must be explored. But that doesn't take away from the fact that such platforms are contributing, not by their capitalist nature but by the options they make available to individuals and collectives, to a progressive transformation of democratic expression. 


> Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:46:54 +0100 
> From: christian.fuchs at uti.at 
> To: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net 
> Subject: [ICTs-and-Society] Subject: RE: Social Media, Democracy and, Politics in the Information Society 
> 
> 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 
> 
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