New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology » October 28: The Internet, Part 3

October 28: The Internet, Part 3

Plan for the Day

  • Critical Media Analysis Essay (Due 11/25)
  • Misunderstanding the Internet, Chapters 5 “The Internet of Me (and My Friends),” 6 “The Internet of Radical Politics and Social Change,” 7 “Conclusion”
  • Heads up for Wednesday, 10/30

Chapter 5: “The Internet of Me (and My Friends)”

  • Earlier in the chapter, the authors claim facebook visitors logon “for an average of 19.37 minutes per day” (the source isn’t available anymore, but I found it on the Wayback Machine; it’s cited on p. 145). Does that seem like a lot of time, a little time, an appropriate amount of time?
  • Consider examples of the hegemonic groups that best reflect the authors claim that “The more powerful and influential you are, the better placed you are to get your message across” (p. 147).
  • The authors note that the internet has the potential for “increased sociality…to bring new understandings, as we are increasingly subjected to a wider range of viewpoints and encouraged to deliberate freely within a variety of networks” (p. 149). Are users really getting new ideas? Also, is it possible for users to reflect upon all the new ideas they may come across?
  • Probably the biggest capitalism critique of the chapter (p. 151):
    • “But all of our online comings and goings leave digital footprints that can be tracked, analysed and commodified. Social media applications attempt to extract value from our every online move: the choices we make, the sites we visit, who we talk to and who we follow all create data that is mined and sold to third parties for profit.
    • “McChesney argues that the hyper commercialism, advertising and monopoly markets we now find online enhance rather than disrupt the contours of capitalism and lead to rampant depoliticisation and undemocratic, commercial media policy, as the point of government regulation pivots on helping corporate media maximise their profits rather than advancing the public interest…”
    • “…digital networks…have privileged ‘accumulation strategies that are designed to reward corporate interests more than to empower individual actors’…”
  • Consider the nuanced argument about autonomy that the authors cite from Castoriadis (p. 152).
    • Also, Castoriadis claims autonomous societies recognize their institutions are self-made; whereas, heteronomous societies consider their values come from external authorities:
    • “among the gods, in God, among the ancestors, in the laws of Nature, in the laws of Reason, in the laws of History.”
    • p. 152: “we are excessively and ever more deeply commodified as so much more of our daily habits and rituals take an IT form…..It certainly does not confer autonomy from capital but, rather, the profound and subcybernetic commodification of online human creativity.”
  • “In a consumerist society, autonomy enacted through communication-led media may in fact amount to little more than an active endorsement of individualisation and an extension of a neoliberal approach that prioritises the self” (p. 152).
  • The authors cite Curran’s (who’s an editor of the book) observation that “‘leading websites around the world reproduce the same kind of news as legacy media. These websites favour the voices of authority and expertise over those of campaigning organizations and the ordinary citizen’” (p. 157).
    • Do consumers really want to or know how to find alternative sources?
    • Consider the book’s discussion (and your own understanding) of echo chambers.
  • If, as the authors point out, “it is always more likely that social media will replicate and entrench social inequalities rather than liberate them” (p. 163), what we need to happen before social media could be a tool for liberation?
  • p. 164: “…when we are acting out our political citizenship online, when we sign the petitions, blog about a political issue, tweet a link to a critical website or share details of a protest on Facebook, we fall prey to the illusion that this social network…can make a real difference to social and political injustices. So we end up simply preaching to the converted and ever more populating the comfort zones of our own limited echo chambers. Meanwhile the poor get poorer, the rich get richer and environmental degradation continues apace.”
    • Wow! That sounds like something I’d say…hmmmm.

Chapter 6: “The Internet of Radical Politics and Social Change”

This chapter is the one that’s supposed to show us the future! The interconnected themes of radical transnational political activism are below:

  • speed and space–Rapid response across borders with minimal resources
  • connectivity and participation–Offers social empowerment, tool for social change; raises awareness
  • diversity and horizontality–Converging interests and decentralization
    • Horizontality: happens at a much more flat level than it used to; organization can be spread out, no hierarchy
    • Examples: Arab Spring and Women’s March
    • Black Lives Matter was known before this book’s 2nd edition. I’m surprised there wasn’t some reference or even brief description of Black Twitter‘s response to police brutality in Ferguson, MO.
    • p. 175: “It is the ability to form networks and build alliances at the click of a mouse that is felt to be conducive to the building of oppositional political movements that can spread…”
      • More able to facilitate “alternative forms of political activism that work at the margins of the dominant sphere.”
  • p. 178: “…technological ease of communication leads to abundance of information that will automatically result in political gain.”
    • They authors don’t advocate this argument.
    • That puts “a heavy onus on the power of networked communication to meet political demand”
    • “we side-step a deep broad interrogation of the conditions required for people power to overtake corporate and state power.”
    • What do we miss when we think technology changes society? Does enhancement of access via technology help change social norms or power structures?
  • p. 180: Because problems are produced globally (even if a few hegemons pull the strings), citizens can be resentful of their governments, leading to a rise of populism.
  • p. 183: It takes some cash to be an effective digital activist…
  • p. 184: “Politics and political organisation emerge from histories that do not evaporate in the face of technology.”
  • p. 188: “connectivity and participation online have also been fiercely criticised as weakening radical politics and offering pseudo-participation that is illusory rather than actual (Dean 2010).”
    • compulsive hashtag “solidarity”
  • p. 191: Is the speed with which social media operates (instant gratification) conducive to democracy?
  • p. 197: “Technologies are never neutral. They are enmeshed with the systems of power they exist within.”
    • “Radical politics is of course about more than communication and more than participation in communication; it is about more than protest; it is about social, political and economic transformation.
    • “I’d argue that this isn’t a right vs left issue because the rise of populism has quite a bit of anti-elitist rhetoric.

Conclusion

What an “egalitarian” technology the internet is! Citizens United v. FEC also reflects American as opposed to democratic values. In theory, a democracy is equal voices, but, when corporations can purchase advertisements and have larger mouthpieces, it’s hard to say “free speech” is equal. An absolute libertarian might object, and I’d be happy to have that conversation…

  • Consider these quotations all from p. 204:
    • “The internet market, on closer scrutiny, turns out to have many of the problems associated with unregulated capitalism.”
    • “Social media are more often about individual than collective emancipation, about presenting self (frequently in consumerist or individualising terms) rather than changing society, about entertainment and leisure rather than political communication (still dominated by old media) and about social agendas shaped by elites and corporate power rather than a radical alternative.
    • “Social media, in other words, are shaped by the wider environment in which they are situated rather than functioning as an autonomous force transforming society.”
  • Young people and identity politics over class-based concerns:
    • “Young people who have rejected traditional party politics, who have moved away from class-based concerns to a radical politics of identity and who express political interests and hopes that are borderless have adopted the internet as an organising and campaigning tool” (p. 205).
  • If we consider the internet, originating from taxpayer funding, a social good, how might we want to regulate it?
    • p. 206: “regulation of vital public resources is both possible and desirable to promote ‘socially useful’ outcomes and to check the power of unaccountable forces, whether they are market or government based.”
    • p. 207: “Our belief is that it is possible to establish publicly funded bodies (with membership drawn from different parts of society) and systems of oversight (which are accountable to those publics) that have an arm’s-length relationship to the state.”
    • p. 208: “we are calling for measures – for public control of a key utility – that have been applied to other key sections of the economy and society (parts of the automobile industry in the US; banks in the UK; airlines in Argentina; mortgage providers in the US).”

Of course, as we know, regulations might need to be beyond party politics. Just as we allow the destruction of the environment through de-regulating based on which party is in control, political parties have agendas regarding communications.

Next Class

We’re going to delve into more discussion on social constructions of sexuality and the media’s role in reproducing certain images, narratives, and normsthe public sphere next week.

Don’t forget that you have your Critical Analysis of Culture Essay due in four weeks on November 25th.

Works Cited (not from Curran, Fenton, and Freedman)

Castoriadis, Cornelius. “The Nature and Value of Equality.” Translated by David A. Curtis. Philosophy & Social Criticism 11, no. 4 (1986): 373–390. https://doi.org/10.1177/019145378601100404.