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

[Luke J Heemsbergen]

Hi all,
It was pleasure to boot up this evening after being away and seeing such a lively discussion developing.

The point of merely awareness and organisation that Jodi enunciates for the social media masses does seem to follow the viral Zombie* motif that Mark offered. However, OWS in their person to person, direct action seem to be repeating the meme: in Romereo's films, Zombies gathered outside a mall of consumerism much like OWS gather outside the investment banks, waiting for their bourgeoisie. Do OWS IRL protests, produce effective or affective political results? That is to say what are the tools building or destroying? OWS seems closer to the utopic global protest practices Jeffery Juris has explored, including festival encampments and even violence, than 'effective' politics I would think although each is necessity to certain parties and viewpoints, only in tandem are they sufficient for change?

I would have to agree with Ben's sentiment on online action's potential to create political change and suggest some of his evidence to be indicative of approaching the 'desirable form' of democracy he described ('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'). 

However, I'd suggest that a neutral platform is unnecessary and indeed 'imaginary'. Ben's statement that, Facebook 'itself, is not radical. But its uses potentially are', is key. That the neutral platform is unnecessary can be seen in some of danah boyd's work with youths who, within Facebook's, restrictions, consumption, and surveillance, find innovative ways to subvert and manipulate the platform to their own social needs while rejecting some of the former's assumptions / exploitations. This pattern might be what Megan was encountering in the research she shared below; media platforms appropriate users to their design and are appropriated by their users for their own designs, which is not a new idea. The idea of neutral platform as 'imaginary' critiques the critical/utopic notion of any media that can be evolved to a specific ideal. The study of politics and governing after open-source by George Dafermos, Nathaniel Tkacz and others hint at the lack of final critical emancipation that is idealised from media or IRL. In this vein, I look forward to Peter Dahlgren's paper that will "will probe the notion of critique" for actually effecting democracy.

Finally, I will suggest that if social media add anything new to understanding and explaining politics and movements of emancipation, it is a shift from the antagonism available in classical critical studies to multiple adversarial modes of critique and existence in the vein of Chantall Mouffe. My contention is that the multiplicity of possibilities that Megan wrote as 'hybrid modalities [affording] *new* kinds of visibility, accountaibility, and organzing' will also shift the notion of critique away from the antagonism of industrial Marx and class. Possibly in its place, adversarial modalities of critique and even democracy can exist in multiplicity beside, underneath and by inverting capitalism, are becoming available. 

I would argue WikiLeaks inversion of privileged state secrets provides an example of an adversarial organisation of/through media. Dmytri Kleiner provides an adversarial 'critique' to venture capitalism in "venture communism" that makes productive commons transparent to allow an emancipatory existence in adversarial spaces with capitalism. To what extent Peter Dahlgren's talk will embrace radical movements away from structural class based explanations of politics will be interesting. How these (possibly) adversarial modes of critique and action tie into radical transparency are fascinating to me and will (hopefully) be relevant to the conclusion of Christian's paper about transparency as a political philosophy. 


best,
Luke 




(*On Zombies & Vampires: If the social media hoardes are zombies, surely Ben has given us a lively description of dominant themes of Web 2.0 entities as vampires: ephemeral, eternal and exploitative wraiths that live beneath the visible social network interactions of mediated society for profit - drip by drip. And as with Vampires' ethically uncertain counter-hegemonic place in literature, so to are our feelings towards Web 2.0 mixed.)





Luke J Heemsbergen .org
PhD Candidate, University of Melbourne




On 01/03/2012, at 6:25 AM, Dean, Jodi wrote:

> 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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> ________________________________________
> From: discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net<mailto:discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net>  [discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net<mailto:discussion-bounces at lists.icts-and-society.net>] on behalf of Andrew Feenberg [feenberg at sfu.ca<mailto:feenberg at sfu.ca>]
> Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 2:17 PM
> To: christian fuchs
> Cc: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net<mailto: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 cassette
s 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<mailto:christian.fuchs at im.uu.se>>
> To: discussion at lists.icts-and-society.net<mailto: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 ?i?ek ? 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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