Lecture 9 - Participatory Learning, Democracy and New Media Lecture Notes PDF

Participatory Learning, Democracy and New Media. Democracy and Citizenship Democracy – Demos: The people – Kratos: Power Citizenship – From the Latin civitas, citizenship was a notion created in ancient Rome to designate the whole body of Roman citizens. – The idea of c...

Participatory Learning, Democracy and New Media. Democracy and Citizenship Democracy – Demos: The people – Kratos: Power Citizenship – From the Latin civitas, citizenship was a notion created in ancient Rome to designate the whole body of Roman citizens. – The idea of citizenship was closely related to the notion of “city”, civitate, which designate the Community created by all the citizens. – According to Rousseau, this union of cives, citizens, is a political association, sovereign and independent. Public Sphere According to Jürgen Habermas, this notion refers to the development in the XIX Century of a “sphere of private people coming together as a public” in order to discuss and debate “matters of common interest” Habermas – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. It emerged in large part as a result of early modern media. Habermas traces its origin to the appearances of modern newspapers and coffee houses in the eighteen century. A place where discussion takes place regarding the common good and the ways of doing things in a society.  Public Opinion The formulation of consensus, agreements and of opinion held in common by the public, that is, the citizens of a particular society. A position generated by dialogue and discussion. It is not just the sum of individual opinions, illustrated for example in public opinion polling. Historically, the possibility of entering the public sphere and take part in the generation of public opinion has been very constrained and highly regulated by mass media corporations and the government. Public Opinion, Democracy and Mass Media For most part of the twentieth century, it was clear that major media companies controlled the flow of information to the public. This “narrow pipeline” of information created by media corporations was unlike to transmit ideas that opposed dominant interests. Public Opinion, Democracy and Mass Media This commercial control by corporations results in the commodification of media where not public service neither public space are the bottom line. Instead, media corporations are articulated around profit. Because audiences are sold to advertisers as commodities, the role of individuals as citizens is diminished. This situation leads to a very weak public “whose deliberative practice consists exclusively in opinion formation and does not encompass decision making” Nancy Fraser – Rethinking the Public Sphere “Democratization” “one must always remember that the term “democratization” can be misleading. The demos itself, in the sense of a shapeless mass, never “governs” larger associations, but rather is governed. What changes is only the way in which the executive leaders are selected and the measure of influence which the demos, or better, which social circles from its midst are able to exert upon the content and the direction of administrative activities by means of “public opinion.” Max Weber: Bureaucracy Media Democratization Media Democratization Nowadays, the accessibility of the Internet, the abuses of both private and public forms of ownership and the hypercommercialism that has accompanied globalization have combined to establish alternative media organizations. “Those silenced by corporate media have been among the first to transform their computer into a printing press. This opportunity has benefited third parties, revolutionaries, reactionaries, and racists alike. It also sparks fear in the hearts of the old intermediaries and their allies. One person’s diversity, no doubt, is another person’s anarchy”. – Henry Jenkins, 2006. Media Democratization The barriers to media ownership have decreased considerably with the greater availability of communication technologies. Individuals with minimal skills and relatively inexpensive equipment can establish their own media projects. This new engagement in media is widely understood as a democratization of communication or media democratization.  Democracy and New Media This diversification of communication channels is important at a political level because it expands the range of voices that can be heard. New media brings the public space and the realm of the political closer to the everyday life of individuals. New media operate with different principles than mass media: Access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer communication. Blogging “Blog” is short for Weblog. Blogs are a form of grassroots communication that involves summarizing, debating and scrutinizing information. They are generally linked to other sites. Because of this, blogging is actually a form of community in which each blogger challenges the assumptions and ideas of other bloggers. Many bloggers define themselves explicitly in opposition to mainstream media.  Blogging Mainstream journalism is increasingly unreliable. – It is guided by ideological agendas. – Reduces a complex world to one big story. – Generally, trivializes the events being reported. “the bloggers will be jousting with mainstream journalists story by story, sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, but always forcing a segment of the public to question dominant representations.” – Jenkins Photoshop for Democracy According to one of the creators of Photoshop, John Kroll, this program has allowed people to manipulate and recirculate diverse images with the objective of making political statements. These Photoshop images generally use themes from popular culture to make their political statements. Photoshop for Democracy “Some might well argue that circulating these images is a poor substitute for more traditional forms of political activism. I wouldn’t totally disagree, especially in those situations where people are simply hitting the send key and thoughtlessly forwarding the images to everyone they know. Yet, I would also suggest that crystallizing one’s political perspectives into a photomontage that is intended for broader circulation is no less an act of citizenship than writing a letter to the editor of a local newspaper”. – Jenkins Photoshop for Democracy “For a growing number of young Americans, images (or more precisely the combination of words and images) may represent as important a set of rhetorical resources as texts. […] The tokens being exchanged are not that important in an of themselves, but they may become the focus for conversation and persuasion. What changes, however, is the degree to which amateurs are able to insert their images and thoughts in the political process – and at least in some cases, these images can circulate broadly an reach a large public”. - Jenkins Photoshop for Democracy Photoshop for Democracy Photoshop for Democracy Photoshop for Democracy Photoshop for Democracy  Participatory Politics This notion refers to the ways that the mechanisms of cultural participation get harnessed for political purposes. Participatory politics can be defined as “interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern”. Among the diverse forms of participatory politics, we find the following: – Sharing of information through social media; – Engaging in online conversations through digital forums, blogs, and podcasts; – Creating original content in the form of online videos or Photoshopped memes to comment on a current issue; – Using Twitter and other microblogging tools to rally a community towards collective action; – Building databases in order to investigate an ongoing concern.  Anonymous “Members” of anonymous are distinguished by using Guy Fawkes masks taken from the movie V for Vendetta. Anonymous has used the Internet as a platform in an attempt to hold alleged offenders and the criminal justice system accountable. The movement has been involved in a number of high-profile crime cases in Canada and the U.S. It identifies persons through a process called “doxing” –an online “treasure hunt” searching for clues in online sources, including Facebook and comment boards. Information on one site is linked to information from other sites.  Participatory Learning Today’s networked world requires new set of skills, social relationships and literacies. Participatory learning requires a shift from literacy as an individual skill towards a skill related with how we can connect with others in our community, about how we can create, circulate, collaborate, and connect with other people in our networks. Learning to thrive in a digital culture means learning how to put information into circulation. Participatory learning is the capacity to participate in larger social, networked systems. Participatory learning brings with it the responsibility for the information we produce and share with others given the impact that out communication practices can have on the people in our networks.  The monitorial citizen From the individualized informed citizen toward the collaborative monitorial citizen. The informed citizen was able to follow public policy debates because of the information revolution that took place at the beginning of the XX century. Monitorial citizens engage in environmental surveillance more than information-gathering. They are knowledgeable in some areas, aware of others, operating in a context of mutual trust and shared resources. The monitoring citizen needs to develop new critical skills in assessing information.  Entertaining the Monitorial Citizen People who watch The Daily Show are more interested in the presidential campaign, more educated, younger, and more liberal than the average American…. However, those factors do not explain the difference in levels of campaign knowledge between people who watch The Daily Show and people who do not. In fact, Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers –even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration. (Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 2004).  Entertaining the Monitorial Citizen The Daily Show’s mix of interviews and spoof segments demands an active and alert viewer to shift between the distinctions between fantasy and fact. The conventions of news reassure us that we have been provided with everything we need to know to make sense of the world. The information appears to be presented in a “fair and balanced” manner. – “You have a responsibility to the public discourse and you fail miserably…. You’re helping the politicians and the corporations…. You are part of their strategies.” (Jon Stewart in CNN’s Crossfire, 1982) By the contrary, docudrama and parody programs invite audience skepticism because the balance between these competing regimes of truth are unstable and fluid. The Downsides of Digital Democracy As with other aspects of convergence, the new political culture reflects the struggle between commercial and grassroots media. Commercial media systematically monitor alternative media channels, looking for content to appropriate and circulate. Old media still has gatekeeping abilities through its ability to amplify the impact of some user-generated content while ignoring the rest. The Downsides of Digital Democracy Virtual gated communities: – A world where you can choose media content that perfectly matches your own assumptions and political beliefs. – “A society in which it becomes easy for every small group to indulge its tastes will have more difficulty mobilizing unity.” – David Thorburn.  The Narrowing of Digital Networks Selective Sociability (Misa Matsuda) – When people have the option to associate primarily with people with whom they are most in tune, they will tend to do so. (Jenkins, 20151, p. 89) Echo Chamber Filter Bubble  The Downsides of Digital Democracy Astroturf: – Increasingly, powerful institutions or economic interests are creating fake grassroots media to deceive the public. – Videos, blogs, images circulated by political group or corporations that maintain a “plausible deniability” in terms of the origin of such media content.  A Famous Astroturf Internet Parody Jenkins discusses an Astroturf internet parody that was created to discredit Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore’s Penguin Army was produced by the DCI Group, an advertising agency whose clients included at the time General Motors and Exxon Mobil. The Downsides of Digital Democracy TRUTH AND MISINFORMATION IN THE POST-TRUTH ERA Fake News Fake news is broadly defined as “information deliberately fabricated and published with the intention to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehoods or doubting verifiable facts” (EJN 2017) In Canada, the spreading of “false news” was a Criminal Code offence for many years, but this is no longer the case The term fake news has been used in recent years as a political tactic by actors hoping to delegitimize media coverage not beneficial to their cause – This tactic was most famously used by President Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election  Fake News Fake news also plays a role in Canadian politics – Leading up to the October 2019 Canadian federal election, the Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP signed on to a global election-integrity pledge that agreed to focus on reducing the dissemination of “falsified fabricated” disinformation – In September 2018, a Canadian election-integrity task force called the Critical Election Incident Public Protocol was formed to investigate any threats to the upcoming Canadian federal election, with a focus on foreign meddling – Election Canada also used technology in new ways to disseminate voting information and livestream debates, among other technology-driven promotions – There were some explicit incidents of fake news dissemination, as in the example of the news piece on Jagmeet Singh which showed him in front of a mansion with a headline explaining that he had recently purchased a $5.5 million house and was eager to show it off to the public Fake News Fake News Following the October 2019 Canadian federal election, there was nowhere near the level of fake-news-focused critique as seen with other recent elections around the world, such as the US presidential election or the Brexit vote – However, this is not to say that the issue of fake news did not affect the Canadian federal election or that other technological changes did not have an impact on the process – Canadians have been identified as the third most active posters on 4chan, one of the most popular websites for alt-right voices Fake news is a threat to the very existence of democracy and carries with it the potential of a slide into authoritarianism Source: Flew, Terry and Richard Smith. (2021). New Media: An Introduction, fourth Canadian edition. Oxford University Press. Source: Flew, Terry and Richard Smith. (2021). New Media: An Introduction, fourth Canadian edition. Oxford University Press.  Deep fakes involve the use of evolving artificial intelligence software to deceive through falsified Deep Fakes videos, audio files, or images – Through this technology, it is nearly impossible to discern if a person did or did not say what is featured In 2018, actor and director Jordan Peele used this technology to create a fake public service announcement from US President Barack Obama about fake news, which was eerily realistic This technique is not only dangerous for politics but can be extremely harmful in the personal realm as well – There has been a growing trend of using deep fake content to fabricate pornography with an unknowing female’s face placed onto another’s body  The Spread of (Mis)Information Online Social media created the opportunity to not only search for and access information that confirmed one’s beliefs, but to also form communities based on these beliefs Biased narratives, misinformation, conspiracy theories, mistrust, and paranoia spread easily via social media outlets Even traditional news outlets are not entirely objective, but they have some filters in place to create an expected level of validity, whereas online media content can be produced by anyone with no expectation of validity Algorithmically, social media encourages people to access information that confirms their beliefs, as attention is equivalent to revenue  Post-Trust Era and “Truthiness” In 2005, US comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness to describe the way politicians and others were trying to edge away from “facts” and start talking about “truth” The term is now considered more generally as “the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true” (Lexico 2020) For traditional media such as newspapers, this is a challenge to journalistic ethics and practice – The natural reaction is for journalists to “double down” on fact checking The underlying problem is that people don’t trust institutions anymore  Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? The people that live in a world where participatory culture is becoming common place.  “One of my favorite uses of #hashtag activism addressed the issue of interpretation head-on. After Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, many youth of color objected to how the teen was portrayed in mainstream media. News stories often used an old picture of Brown seemingly throwing a gang sign rather than using his very recent high-school graduation photo. Youth began posting two images of themselves – one acceptable to white society and one not – to Twitter, along with the hashtag Participation #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, highlighting the biases of media coverage of black and white deaths. In doing so, and they reminded the public of the ways in which interpretation is a structural inequity issue.” (Danah Interpretation Boyd – Participatory Culture in a Networked Era)