Internet and the Public Sphere

The Internet’s impact on the public sphere, in my opinion, is immense. Although some authors found that conversations online were less diverse and more one-sided than on traditional media (Gerhards and Schafer 2010), I attribute these findings to the authors’ method. Their online sample consisted of 144 web sites as a result of popular search engine results, but they did not specify whether or not their sample consisted of social networking sites, message boards, listservs and other technologies that might be more conducive to participatory conversation.

I can’t imagine how traditional media would be more inclusive and diverse than these forms of new media. Perhaps research of this nature needs to focus more on the individual user. Maybe participation varies depending on the skills and interest the user has in new media. I was always an early adopter and couple that with the fact that I went to high school in a very small town and the Internet was my saving grace.

I was a member of a listserv for music fans when I was younger. I checked my email every day after school and read perspectives on a variety of music related topics every afternoon. After a few months, I developed friendships from all over the world. A handful of us broke apart and created our own Yahoo groups email list of 12 members. We discussed politics from around the world, human interest topics, music, food, and a variety of other topics.

More than 10 years later, we are all still participating in this group. I literally grew up with these people and now I have an understanding of and appreciation for cultures originating in South Africa, Germany, New Zealand, Korea, Brazil, and Sweden. With the invention of Facebook, I have friended these people and broadened our relationship to include photos, videos, and more interpersonal interactions. This group of people have become an important part of my life and I am a more well-versed and diverse person because of it. Isn’t this the goal of a public sphere?

My example shows clearly how the Internet can be a tool to encourage participation. As a 16 year old in small town Oklahoma, I did not have many other opportunities to discuss a wide range of topics with people with varying opinions. Journalists should be happy to adopt these new media tools to help them act out their social responsibilities. I find “traditionalists” as defined by Sue Robinson to be in journalism for the wrong reasons. Why would journalists want to stifle participatory discussion in any way, shape, or form? Isn’t the point to encourage citizens to want to become more informed and included?

We need a solution... any takers?

After completing the readings for this week, it is apparent to me that the topic of children and the future of media is an important one that needs serious updating. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the readings because the topics were varying and interesting. However, I did notice that a lot of the data seemed almost irrelevant by today’s standards.

For example, there are two qualitative studies identifying themes that occur in children who have grown up with the internet. The first was written in 2006 by McMillan and Morrison. They talk about some things that are certainly still relevant today, but some of their identified categories were grossly outdated. For example, the category describing “real communities” versus “virtual communities” can hardly be thought of in this way anymore. The authors state: “many informants warned about the potential downside of communities that were defined by technology and interests, rather than geography and relationships” (p. 85).

As a result of social networking sites (which more than likely hadn’t permeated the online world at the time of this study), the majority of online relationships are also “real world” or even geographical relationships. As I read the updated article on this topic (Hundley and Sheyes, 2010), I expected this to be addressed. It did to some extent as the authors discussed how most teenagers didn’t add friends to their MySpaces that they didn’t know in real life. “Evidently most of the students we spoke with disclosed that everyone on their MySpace ‘friends’ list were people they already knew. Therefore, it seems clear that the friends and relatives with whom they are familiar with or have face-to-face contact with are the same people as their online friends” (p. 428). Still, the authors reported that more than half of their subjects had never heard of Facebook and did not even know about smart phones that could access email and the internet. These two inventions alone (not to mention Twitter and apps) have literally transformed the way kids use the Internet and without including them, the discussion automatically becomes incredibly dated.

That being said, I realize how difficult it is to conduct time consuming qualitative studies of this nature in a changing technological environment. Still, the fact that an article published in 2010 (Hundley and Shyles, 2010) can feel so outdated is a finding in itself. The real question is: how can we study these things methodologically when they are constantly in flux? We are once again presented with the methodological impossibilities that studying new media presents to us. The only solution is to use the technology as a means to the end. In a world where data can be transmitted instantaneously, there has to be a quicker way to get and analyze this type of important, contextual information. I’m going to go all academic and not offer any real solutions as I’m not a techie and have no idea how we can do this. I am, however, very good at identifying the problem.

A Moral Epidemic?

As I settled down to read Lessig’s book about copyright and artistic value, I was prepared to endure many pages of dry, legal jargon. Instead, I got pages and pages of the emotional, gushy language you would expect to find in a teenage girl’s diary. Lessig had turned copyright infringement into a passionate and meaningful subject of morality akin to the abortion or global warming debates, or any other standard procedure that should be technical but ends up being very emotional. I have to admit, I never thought of copyright laws as affecting the future state of the world’s children. I know that a college kid gets busted from time to time, but does that really make entire generations into criminals?

Copyright infringement is obviously a big deal and is costing the entertainment industry millions, if not billions, of dollars. We should discuss it and scholars (or how about some high paid corporate geek?) do need to figure out a system that works in order to save a dying industry. However, I don’t know if couching it as a moral catastrophe is the way to approach the topic. To me it seems a generational problem that will work itself out. There are millions of videos out there on YouTube (or wherever) that incorporate “remixed” artistic products and I don’t see a big deal being made of them. Take for example the “guilty dog” video on YouTube that has recently gone viral. I saw the video on Good Morning America broadcasted to thousands of viewers, and there were no copyright issues. Is this still a problem? If so, is it really the intense moral issue that Lessig is trying to make it? This paragraph is kind of a rant because I can see being passionate about your topic of choice, but to make it about your kids and the future of the world’s kids seems a bit much to me.

It is true however, as Lessig explains, that artistic products create local culture when the product “comes to have a very specific and local meaning for people according to where it is that they’re hearing it. What goes hand in hand with the moment of reception is a dimension of personal translation.” Ok, true. This quote reminds me of last year’s debate between the people of Louisiana and the NFL over the Saint’s phrase “Who Dat?” The franchise tried to ban the great people of Louisiana from making t-shirts and bumper stickers with the famous phrase on it the year that the Saints won the Superbowl. Louisianans would have nothing to do with it, as they maintained the phrase was a part of their culture and a product of their own. Nevertheless, if I remember correctly, the people of Louisiana prevailed.

So yes, there is an important “war” going on here between the entertainment companies and collective cultures. Remixing products does serve to educate and to unite communities, so it needs to be protected from silly lawsuits like that of the dancing 18 month old baby. Still, like many scholarly books, what does Lessig do to help solve the problem? Very little. His quote in the conclusion states: “Let’s get on to the hard problem of crafting a copyright system that nurtures the full range of creativity and collaboration that the Internet enables.” No duh, Lessig. Don’t you think corporations have been working on this for years now? Thanks for the help, buddy. Oh, and I very much enjoyed reading your emotional collection of sappy anecdotes that clearly visualize what a life or death issue copyright laws have become.

SNS and interpersonal relationships

This week’s readings were very interesting, although I was puzzled by the privacy theme. It seems to me like the theme was more how social media are changing interpersonal communication and thus, relationships. While the Boyd article did discuss privacy issues on Facebook, I thought the major implications were how the newsfeeds were impacting how we view, form, or maintain friendships.

The articles discussed a few major points worth pointing out. The first is that social media seem to be quantifying friendship. Now, as Boyd says, people think of their relationships in terms of quantity. How many “Friends” do I have? How many comments are on my wall? How many “likes” do I get on a status or photo upload? Popularity is now a clearly viewable and measurable construct. I remember high school days well, and I can’t imagine how much this idea must complicate the delicate social system that reigns there.

Also, it almost seems like this system of quantification is extending the popularity contest that is high school to the adult world. As Boyd said “Facebook made what was previously obscure difficult to miss (and even harder to forget)” (p. 16). Now people have to anticipate the reactions of others before they “speak” on social networking sites. Marwick and boyd (2010) discuss how ordinary people are using the strategies of the micro-celebrity to brand themselves on Twitter. People tailor the content of Tweets to appeal to their imagined audiences. It seems as if we are coming to the age when we construct our personalities and our image primarily through social networking sites. Are we nothing more than products to that need marketing strategies to be sold?

Lastly, does social media cheapen friendship? The concept of invasion, as explored by boyd (2008) is the idea that although we can only handle so much social information, Facebook assumes that we can keep track of an endless number of people. The result is that “when data are there, people want to pay attention, even if it doesn’t help them” (p. 16). This works in creating pseudo friendships where people form parasocial relationships with ordinary individuals. Where parasocial relationships used to exist only between ordinary people and celebrities, we are now seeing parasocial relationships existing between the computer nerd and the prom queen from high school days. The computer nerd can come to “know” and be “Friends” with the prom queen, when the prom queen doesn’t know anything about the computer nerd.

The Twitter Revolution

Morozov’s book focuses on his ideas of cyber-utopianism and Internet centrisim. He defines cyber-utopianism, as a “naïve belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication.” Internet centrisim is a “philosophy of action that informs how decisions, including those that deal with democracy promotion, are made and how long-term strategies are created.” This idea encourages Internet-centrists to consider the political environment of the situation involved, instead of just blindly applying the Internet as a tool for democratic change regardless of the context.

Many attempts to free nations from authoritarian rule using the Internet have failed miserably. Morozov attributes this lack of success not to the medium, but to the people using the medium as if it were a mythical magic tool that will free us all from our chains. Instead, Morozov urges us to consider the context first and choose the tools and the strategies second. If we fail to do this, he promises a backlash that could actually have effects against democracy. His book encourages us not to give up on using the Internet as a tool to promote democracy, but to use it more wisely.

Morozov’s The Net Delusion could not come at a better time as the topic is particularly timely with the overthrow of Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak. His first chapter discusses how the media jumped on the Internet bandwagon during the Iranian protests of 2009, exclaiming a Twitter revolution. He details carefully how this type of media attention couple with en email sent to Twitter by the Obama administration, went a long way to undermine the protestors’ efforts and strengthen authoritarian rule in Iran and all over the world.

Morozov details how authoritarian governments began to monitor Twitter and the content of bloggers when these spaces were previously left alone. In some cases, bloggers were arrested or penalized because of their online revolutionary content. I noticed with the recent Egypt protests that the media seemed to jump on the same new media bandwagon, this time hailing Facebook as the magical tool. Fortuna

When considering the context as Morozov asks us to, it makes sense that Egypt’s revolution would have been a success where Iran’s revolution failed. The Obama administration stayed as quiet as possible through the beginnings of this protest because they considered Mubarak to be an American ally. Even though Mubarak is a dictator, there was no political reason for Obama to want him to be overthrown. In fact, Vice President Joe Biden said that Mubarak was not a dictator and should not have to resign, but should be more "responsive" to the needs of his people. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Egyptian president to implement democratic reforms, but stopped short of saying he should leave his position. In this case, there was no reason for Egypt to suspect that the U.S. was behind the revolution in order to spread Western ideals and other countries didn’t get suspicious either.

Still, Mubarak attempted to block the Internet by restricting access to many sites and considerably slowing down the network. While Twitter was unavailable, more savvy users still found a way to get around the block by using proxy servers. A quote from Philip N. Howard, director of the Project on Information Technology and Political Islam at the University of Washington explains this. “Most of the folks who are tweeting are kind of the digital elite who can set up proxy servers and Twitter clients and get their message out,” he says. “It only takes a few thousand of those folks to feed the rest of us news about what’s going on.” Essentially then, while technology failed the revolution in the context of an authoritarian government, it was still technology that revived it again. As this technology gets more and more advanced, and people get savvier using it, will it be harder for dictators to control? It seems like such was the case in Egypt.