New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology » October 21: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 1

October 21: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 1

Plan for the Day

  • Database Culture (just the first part of the page if we need to go back)
  • Brief history of this course
  • Misunderstanding the Internet, Chapters 1 and 2
  • Critical Media Analysis Essay (Due 11/25)

Misunderstanding the Internet

Throughout the book, the authors make a point to demonstrate that the internet—a technology—is a product of the culture from which it comes and where it’s used. The internet didn’t cause capitalist or racist values; it’s used in accordance with those values. We need to start with a coupe definitions:

  • Technological determinism
  • Social construction of technology
    • Dialectic of technology?
  • neoliberalism: the idea of a total (or nearly total) market-driven economy with little or no government regulations.

Also, this book is dated, but it’s still important because it gives both a snapshot in time of digital communication and a reminder of how we often view technology through culturally consctructed lenses: We want to believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice, egalitarianism, utopia, etc. We’re a hopeful bunch. I’m interested in your ability not to claim Curran, Fenton, and Freedman are wrong but to point to specific areas related to the internet that have changed. For instance, what about these areas nearly 10 years after Curran, Fenton, and Freedman published:

Chapter 1: “The Internet of Dreams”

Potential questions to start us off.

  • Briefly discuss why we (pundits and users) assumed the internet “would generate wealth and prosperity for all” in the beginning of the world wide web (p. 2)”?
  • What are some businesses and/or industries that appear to be changing—quite rapidly—because of the internet’s communication ability?
  • The authors* point out “the underlying logic of the capitalist system: the natural processes of competition tend to diminish competition” (p. 6). How has competition diminished because of the internet since the early 1990s?
  • The authors suggest that “nationalist cultures are strongly embedded in most societies, and this constrains the internationalism of the web despite its global reach” (constraint #6, p. 10). What’s the difference between patriotism and nationalism?
  • How have “comments” sections at the end of online articles led to the idea of the “prosumer” as opposed to the old “consumer”?
  • What is the main point of the authors’ argument about how the internet facilitates activism (pp. 33-34)?

*Yes, James Curran is credited as the author of this chapter, but I’ll identify all the editors as authors in class discussions. In your own work—for instance, an essay—you should cite the chapter author appropriately.

  • p. 1: “Underlying these predictions was a widely shared internet-centrism, a belief that the internet was a determining technology that would reconfigure all environments.”
  • p. 7: “The impact of the internet does not follow a trajectory dictated solely by its technology, but is filtered through the structures and processes of society.”
  • p. 11: “…it was thought that the internet would rejuvenate democracy because the public would gain unprecedented access to information, and be better able to control government (Toffler and Toffler 1995).”
  • p. 15: “The internet has also failed to reinvigorate democracy in ways that were hoped for, due to the brake imposed by widespread political disengagement.”
    • “The survey also revealed a low level of political knowledge (Curran et al. 2014).”
    • What would Asimov say?
  • p. 15: “…accessing diverse information to hold government to account is not a priority concern of most internet users.”
    • Hence, echo chambers.
  • p. 21: “Paradoxically, the internet-based empowerment of activists is taking place in a wider political context of greater disempowerment.”
  • p. 24: “Potentially, the rise of social networking sites (SNS) could have undermined the ascendancy of legacy media, and their online subsidiaries.”
  • Scrutinize these two sentences:
    • p. 27: “The rise of blogging was overhyped. SNS is not ordinarily a politicised alternative communication system.”
  • p. 33: “…different contexts produce different outcomes, something that is repeatedly obscured by overarching theories of the internet centred on its technology.”
  • p. 33: “[Early internet assessments] failed to recognise that the impact of technology is filtered through the structures and processes of society.”

Chapter 2: “The Internet of History”

Ch. 2 questions to start us off.

  • In what ways was the US military instrumental in creating the internet we have today?
  • The authors point out, “the American state underwrote a major part of the internet’s initial research and development costs. This was not something the private sector was willing to do” (p. 51). In light of that comment, reflect on the internet as an infrastructure project like sewers, roads, train tracks, etc.
  • In the early 1990s, the internet is said to have attracted users interested in hiding their identities (p. 53). Why might that have been valued by these users?
  • How is “[d]igital capitalism…not very different from other forms of large-scale corporate capitalism” (p. 57)? Consider where these digital companies reside and do business.
  • Explain the ramifications of “Ofcom [2014] reports that the average adult in the UK now spends more time using media and communications than sleeping” (as cited in Curran, Fenton, & Freedman p. 63))?
  • Why do you think “online entertainment tend[s] to side-line political discourse” (p. 64)?
  • Consider the internet (and the related technologies to access it: smartphones, tablets, Twitter, facebook, etc.) as an extension of a user/activist in regards to the Arab Spring uprisings (pp. 66-70)?
  • The authors leave out two movements that we need to address:
    • Black Lives Matter
    • MAGA/QAnon
  • Why do we consider the internet an individualistic technology?

Maybe this is a better question for Wednesday, but I’ll ask it here: How does the internet help maintain the status quo?

  • p. 50: “The open, peer-to-peer neutrality of the system not only suited military objectives but also accorded with the ethos of academic science.”
  • p. 58: “Commercialisation of the internet…[led to software] to collate data from different sources to compile a social network analysis about the personal interests, friendships, affiliations and consumption habits of users.”
  • p. 63: “Consumers seem willing to waive their rights to privacy, and put up with a limited quota of advertising, while continuing to resist paying for online content.”
  • But what about democracy…
    • p. 64: “It was widely predicted in the 1990s that the global diffusion of the internet would assist the march to democracy.”
    • p. 65: “‘Internet diffusion was not a specific causal mechanism of national democratic growth’ (Groshek 2010: 142).”
    • “One reason why the ‘internet as the grave-digger of dictatorship’ thesis proved to be overstated was that it failed to appreciate that democracy is only one source of governmental legitimacy.”
    • “…the narcotic of an entertainment-centred popular culture.”
    • “Authoritarian governments….can monitor the internet behaviour of potential dissidents through surveillance software…”
    • In fact, can’t all governments surveil their citizens?
  • Arab Spring
    • p. 68: “In brief, there was a common thread of active opposition to the regimes in all the insurgent countries, which extended back over decades.”
    • p. 69: “Mobile phones, personal computers and social media all played a part in fanning the embers of dissent…”
    • “If the rise of digital communications technology did not cause the uprisings, it strengthened them.”
  • pp. 75-76: “…commercialisation subsequently distorted the internet in the West, while state censorship, in particular, muzzled the internet in the East.”
  • p. 76: “In brief, the rise of the internet was accompanied by the decline of its freedom.”
  • “The interaction between the internet and society is complex.”

Next Class

Continue/finish reading Misunderstanding the Internet for Wednesday, 10/23. At some point, we need to talk about the next essay: Critical Media Analysis Project, due 11/25.