Digital Media and Society

Democracy in a Digital Age

Zizi A. Papacharissi

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745658995
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Online technologies excite the public imagination with narratives of democratization. The Internet is a political medium, borne of democracy, but is it democratizing?

Late modern democracies are characterized by civic apathy, public skepticism, disillusionment with politics, and general disinterest in conventional political process. And yet, public interest in blogging, online news, net-based activism, collaborative news filtering, and online networking reveal an electorate that is not disinterested, but rather, fatigued with political conventions of the mainstream.

This book examines how online digital media shape and are shaped by contemporary democracies, by addressing the following issues:

• How do online technologies remake how we function as citizens in contemporary democracies?
• What happens to our understanding of public and private as digitalized democracies converge technologies, spaces and practices?
• How do citizens of today understand and practice their civic responsibilities, and how do they compare to citizens of the past?
• How do discourses of globalization, commercialization and convergence inform audience/producer, citizen/consumer, personal/political, public/private roles individuals must take on?
• Are resulting political behaviors atomized or collective?
• Is there a public sphere anymore, and if not, what model of civic engagement expresses current tendencies and tensions best?

Students and scholars of media studies, political science, and critical theory will find this to be a fresh engagement with some of the most important questions facing democracies today.

1

Contemporary Democracies, Civic Engagement, and the Media

“Change life!” “Change society!” These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space … new social relationships call for a new space, and vice versa.

Lefebvre (1974/1991, p. 59)

On the evening of November 4, 2008, the day of the fifty-sixth United States presidential election, thousands of Chicago residents enthusiastically made their way to Grant Park, where the soon-tobe next President of the United States, Barack Obama, would be hosting an election night party. While the entire park area was available to Obama supporters to celebrate, and crowd projections neared a million, a smaller area had been sectioned off for the media and a few thousand attendees who were fortunate enough to procure tickets to the event. Tickets had been made available just a few days earlier, via a complex network of contacts assembled through Obama’s Illinois supporters – people who had made donations, worked in phone banks, traveled to battleground states to campaign for Obama, or signed up to receive e-mail updates from the campaign. The Obama campaign had gained a level of media-savvy notoriety by using cell phone data to send context-specific text messages, Facebook applications, and a variety of new media tools in innovative ways during the campaign.

On the night of the election, ticket holders had to proceed through a variety of screening points, so as to be admitted, ticket in hand, to the event. Seven screening points and three security checks later, the last of which employed a screening protocol equivalent to that of boarding a commercial air carrier, ticket holders were admitted to the event, equipped with giant screens, showing the latest results and result projections. The same mega-screens had been placed throughout the remainder of the park and in other public areas. Forced to wait for several hours until the results would be final and the President-elect would appear on the stage, these select few thousands amused themselves by commenting on the variety of a generally festive mix of music played on the PA system and election coverage, courtesy of CNN. Event attendees discontent with the level of information provided by CNN quickly pulled out their mobile devices, mostly iPhones or Blackberries, and googled results and projections as reported by other mainstream media and alternative news sources. Those seeking even higher levels of involvement were actively updating their status on Facebook and tweeting their latest impressions of the event they were attending. Several, if not the majority, of the attendees spent a great deal of time on their cell phones, communicating with others. A popular conversation topic, and close second to election results, was wifi access and cell phone signal availability, or lack thereof. One might expect that media access, essential to experience the event live, from home, would become irrelevant to those select few attending the coveted event live. On the contrary, for those at the event, the absence of convenient domestic access to media was felt, and addressed, through the use of mobile devices.

When eventually, at 10 p.m. Central Time, Barack Obama was proclaimed President-elect, the crowd cheered enthusiastically. It was a historic moment; the first African-American President of the United States to be elected. Everyone was emotional, many cheered, several wept tears of joy, hugged, and waited, in a state of mixed elation and disbelief, for President Obama to appear for his acceptance speech. As the President emerged on the stage, cheers, cries of joy, and music all blended together in jubilant noise; people clapped; and most raised not flags or other emblems of fraternity but their cell phones and cameras, in salute, to the new President-elect. As they took photographs, captured video, or just left the line open for loved ones on the other end listening in, the new President began to address a crowd of digitally enabled and digitally extended citizens (see image 1).

There is this mystical connection between technology and democracy. Not all technologies are democratizing or democracy-related. Most technology has little to do with the condition of democracy. Yet, technologies that afford expressive capabilities, like the radio, television, the Internet, and related media, tend to trigger narratives of emancipation, autonomy, and freedom in the public imagination. All too often then, we wonder, at the appearance of a newer communication medium, how it will affect our conventions of democratic governance. Usually, these discourses are framed within utopian and dystopian polarities that represent hopes and fears projected onto these newer technologies. It is not uncommon for people to make sense of the new by categorizing it as positive or negative, as a way of relating it to their everyday lives and goals.

Figure 1: On election night, November 2008, Chicago crowds welcome President-elect Obama, mobile devices in hand

Democracy naturally combines these personal trajectories of advancement and failure in everyday life through a commonly shared system of decision-making. More than a political system of governance, a democracy is a guarantee of equality, freedom, the possibility of civic virtue or areté. To the Ancient Greeks, areté extended beyond civic obligations and was used to express the point where an individual attains a state of excellence, approaching the true and optimal essence of what it means to be a human being. Areté was the journey to and the outcome of a fulfilled life, a life lived to its fullest potential, and thus a happy life. It is telling that the notion of areté is irrevocably connected to the condition of democracy for the Ancient Greeks, and this marks the conception of democracy as an ideal state of governance.

It is perhaps this ideal state that Olafur Eliasson, Danish-Icelandic artist and professor/founder of the Institut für Raumexperimente, a laboratory for spatial research, had in mind as he envisioned a permanent outdoor installation for the Bard College campus entitled Parliament of reality (see images 2 and 3). A contemporary play on the Althing, the Icelandic Parliament, founded around AD 930 and held outdoors until the late eighteenth century, Parliament of reality is a complex art installation meant to create new spaces that evoke and permit the practice of democratic deliberation. This contemporary interpretation of a deliberative space is structured around a circular island in the center of a pond, paved with stones in a pattern echoing the meridian lines of nautical charts and the compass. The island was envisioned as a space where individuals could come together and negotiate ideas and arguments, in other words, a contemporary agora or public sphere (www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/sites/permanent.php?g=394130&type=1, accessed February 4, 2010).

Eliasson has created several installations founded upon the overlap of public and private, outdoor and indoor spaces. His work is mostly about how space is modified by perception, and how perception itself is modified by the geometries of space, thus approaching the question of the social construction of space from a variety of different contexts. His Weather project (www.olafureliasson.net/works/the_weather_project_5.html, accessed February 4, 2010) simulated the outdoor conditions of weather and the experience of sun in the indoor setting of Tate Modern open space, thus inviting visitors to reconcile and adjust their conventions of outdoor and indoor behavioral reactions to the weather. Other works, like the New York City Waterfalls (www.nycwaterfalls.org, accessed February 4, 2010), challenge our conventional understandings of space and distance, while his most recent exhibition, Take your time, uses spatial reconstructions of geometric shapes and color to engage how visitors perceive themselves in relation to space in everyday life and vice versa (www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/olafureliasson/#/intro/, accessed February 4, 2010).

Figures 2 and 3: Parliament of reality, 2006–2009, by day and by night. Concrete, stone, stainless steel, water, trees, other plants. Dimensions variable; CCS Bard and The Luma Foundation. Photo: Karl Rabe; © 2009 Olafur Eliasson.

As a permanent installation, Parliament of reality is of interest here because it proposes a new contemporary space for the pursuit of imperatives that have guided our understanding of equality, freedom, and community for millennia. This new space, constructed within an established structure, is intended to inspire a re-interpretation of how we socially relate to space, time, and each other. Individuals are temporarily disconnected from their surroundings and placed within an island of deliberation, so as to reconnect with each other through conversation. The installation functions as comment on the present state of democratic deliberation and suggestion for the reinvention of discourse. Of course, it is unclear whether the artist was intentionally responding to Lefebvre’s call for the production of new spaces that sustain new social relationships, only for them to be reinvigorated by the novelty of relationships they help create. Yet, the installation claims place, constructs new space, and invites participants to reexamine how they connect to each other. Parliament of reality could have been constructed anywhere on the Bard College campus, yet it is telling that the artist saw fit to place it within a pond, to be connected with the remainder of the campus through a bridge, the shape of which shifts as individuals traverse it to enter the parliament. In disconnecting citizens only to reconnect them again, Eliasson acknowledges the need for temporary retreat from the public spaces that we occupy, re-use, and possibly tire of during our everyday routines to a private new space, connected, but also removed from that which is formally defined as public. The artist plays with our conventional understandings of public and private, as this private space is invented solely for the purpose of inspiring public communication. And it is telling, of course, that the experience of traversing the connective bridge is crafted so as to emphasize the shift in perspective that occurs as the traveler leaves public space and approaches a private realm, constructed solely for the purpose of communication.

Parliament of reality relies on a reorganization of space to suggest the possibilities for new relations and conversations that may occur in the geographies of new space. This book is about the reorganization of space that technology permits, and the social relations and conversation that emerge and inspire it. It is common to connect technology to the discovery or rediscovery of the new. Thus, it is technologies of transportation and communication that enable discoveries of new worlds of expression, activity, and prosperity through narratives of utopian hopes and dystopian fears that make for a geography of the new (Morley, 2007). These mostly imagined geographies of the new have been the subject of scholarly attention through a variety of analytical tools. Lewis Mumford (1934) employed the construct of the machine to explicate the interplay between technology and civilizations, via processes that were both socially shaped and shaping of technology. Carey (1989) told the story of the telegraph to explain the ability of technology to reconfigure time and space, thus restructuring conventional geographies and proposing new ones. Similarly, Marvin (1990) traced how the decoupling of time and space enabled by electricity and the telephone reorganized social relations, and more recently Gitelman (2006) compared technologies of sound recording and digital recording to show how media become both subjects and instruments of history making. What is of interest here is the ability of media to transform and be transformed by social relations, via processes that lead to revised and newer social routines, rituals, and communicative habits. This book is about the new(er) and reinvented civic habits that emerge out of democracy’s complicated relationship with technology.

Media and the mythology of the new

We have become accustomed to greeting the new, including new technology, via the discursive polarities of utopia and dystopia. The stories that we imagine about technologies reflect corresponding mythologies of our expectations of the new and our disillusionment with the old. Utopia, as Laclau (1991) suggests, becomes “the essence of any communication and social practice” (p. 93). We acknowledge this tendency, but rarely do we question this morally based bias to view things as inherently positive or negative, good or bad, helpful or disadvantageous. To a certain extent, this is part of a natural reaction to organize events surrounding us, and categorize them within our individual ecologies as beneficial or contradictory. These myths of technologically enabled utopias or dystopias then predispose our reaction to technological innovation in ways that operate outside the realm of pragmatism. And yet, the power of the myth lies not in its ability to reflect reality, but rather in the promise it holds for escaping or reinventing it. Mosco (2004) suggests that, “useful as it is to recognize lie in the myth … myths mean more than falsehoods … they are stories that animate individuals and societies by providing paths to transcendence that lift people out of the banality of everyday life. They offer an entrance to another reality, a reality once characterized by the promise of the sublime” (p. 3). Essential as it is to ground our expectations of technology in reality, it is equally necessary to acknowledge the myths that drive our proclivity to use it. Yet it is in this complex weave of reality and fantasy that technology interacts with culture – thus, in Heidegger’s (1954/1977) terms, simultaneously enframing and de-worlding the ontology of human existence.

Myth does not operate without metaphor. Metaphor permits the comparison of new experiences to past ones. It is employed to capture the meaning of contemporary events and inject elements of continuity into experiences that, without it, appear fragmented and accidental. All too often we use metaphors of the past to understand the new, thus contributing to a mythology of the new that bears little relation to reality. Needless to say, metaphor, as part of mythology, possesses solely explanatory power, and ceases to be effective when employed in a prescriptive manner. In a sense, this book is about metaphors that no longer work, and new language that emerges to describe newer civic habits and reform existing ones. What is new about these habits comes from the ways in which they challenge expectations we hold of democracy and the ways in which democratic conventions adjust to respond to these habits.

Metaphor and subsequent myth function in ways that are simultaneously emancipatory and restrictive. A.H. Gunkel and D.J. Gunkel (1997) have argued that expectations and experience of the past can frequently confine the promise of new technology, determining its future by the words used to refer to it, and thus rendering “naming … an exercise in power” (p. 133). Utopian and dystopian narratives permit individuals to incorporate new media into their individual ethical hierarchies, thus exercising power and ascribing ethical identity to technological artifacts that possess no specific ethos. This is a human “gesture” upon the space suggested by newer media, a way for living beings to make their mark, and then remark, space, actual and imaginary (Lefebvre, 1974/1991). Electronic media, in particular, routinely evoke the dominant metaphor of a new frontier or a new world (A. H. Gunkel & D. J. Gunkel, 1997; D. J. Gunkel & A. H. Gunkel, 2009), typically associated with a corresponding space constructed by the communicative affordances of the medium. So, thus, popular vernacular incorporates terms like “Radioland,” “TV Land,” and “cyberspace” as shared imaginary locations reified by the collective experience of technology. Much like geographically fixed worlds that humanity has conquered, these technologically enabled new worlds present imagined geographies that individuals hope to reinvent themselves in and tame at the same time. Evoking the metaphor of a new world or a new frontier suggests both an exercise in abandon and an exercise in power, as past inhabitants of new worlds traveled there to forget the past, start anew, and inevitably reshaped and were reshaped by new worlds in doing so. And so, the Internet is heralded as a new virtual homestead for community (e.g., Rheingold, 1993), an electronic frontier for democracy (e.g., Abramson, Arterton, & Orren, 1988; Arterton, 1987; Williams & Pavlik, 1994), or a new, alternative terranova for virtual gaming communities (D. J. Gunkel & A. H. Gunkel, 2009; Consalvo & Miller, 2009). As individuals greet new worlds with optimism, they are lured into forgetting about worlds of the past that let them down.

Several aptly perceive the allure of technological empowerment as having to do with sustaining popular fantasies of control, which promise ultimate autonomy and order over one’s extended environment (Castoriadis, 1975/1987; Couldry & McCarthy, 2004; Morley, 2007). Ironically enough, individual autonomy is frequently only attainable through societal processes of order and control, which are also enabled by newer technologies (Robins & Webster, 1999). Still, employment of these metaphors represents an effort to ascribe “newness,” and, by extension, to affirm the ability for this new frontier to be conquered, and thus controlled by masses feeling powerless in their contemporary environments, in a manner similar to that in which previous new worlds were inhabited and subsequently colonized. Yet it should be emphasized that autonomy and control are effected reflexively, through simultaneous processes of liberation and discipline connoted by the architectures of newer technologies. Thus, technological architectures that provide empowering options do so by multiplying layers of controlled choices people select from. Deleuze (1998) uses the metaphor of the highway, another metaphor popular in narratives of technological empowerment, to explain the process of controlled autonomy: “A control is not a discipline. In making highways, for example, you don’t enclose people but instead multiply the means of control. I am not saying that this is the highway’s exclusive purpose, but that people can drive infinitely and “freely” without being confined yet while still being perfectly controlled. This is our future” (p. 18). Similarly, new technologies suggest worlds upon which potential empowerment may be exercised. This may not be the sole function of these technologies, but it is the praxis reflective of fantasies of total control, sustained by individuals and their governments. To the extent that democracies grant absolute individual power or autonomy via a means of representatively elected elites of control, individuals may always experience a powerlessness that drives them to new democratic territories. The next few paragraphs describe the particular strand of relative powerlessness experienced by contemporary citizens.

Old and new democracy

Democracy is old. It is an old term with a long history and a variety of ethnic identities. Democracy is the majority: of the world’s 192 countries, approximately 121 are electoral democracies (freedom-house.org, accessed July 2008). Democracy is in danger, according to several reports of low voter turnouts in American and European nations. Democracy consists of cynical, apathetic, and disconnect...

Table of contents

• Cover
• HalfTitle
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Contemporary Democracies, Civic Engagement, and the Media
• 2 Public and Private Expression in Contemporary Democracies
• 3 Converged Media, Converged Audiences, and Converged Publics
• 4 The Question of Citizenship in a Converged Environment
• 5 The Public Sphere, Expired? On the Democratizing Potential of Convergent Technologies
• 6 A Private Sphere
• References
• Index