The Internet, Chapter 7, "The Public Sphere"

Subject to continuous change

wikipedia

What media are included in the public sphere?

*Were* newspapers, magazines, radio and television, *now* the internet is included

What has changed since the famous 1996 declaration? Note the EFF's campaigns abroad.

- China's controls over the internet - one person's free speech can translate into unacceptable persecution of another through cyber-harrasment and defamatory comment

Why is Wikipedia profiled here in a chapter on the public sphere?

- prosumer driven - chronicling of history as it happens - people who share a passion share a project

What are the other general principles shared by "Wikipedians"?

- unbiased - act in goo faith NPOV - neutral point of view

How does this role differ, compared to the traditional reporter?

---- ?

Why does Wikipedia improve with increased use?

7 step validation process 1. article assignment 2. fact checking 3. review 4. copy-editing 5. approval 6. open review 7. open copy-editing

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here."

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996 - Barlow - liberationist manifesto

How do wikis differ from blogs?

Blogs - time-based logic Wikis - space-based structure, enable their users to create a network of knowledge, represent a rapidly changing microcosm of the structures of the wider web beyond their own technological boundaries

First purpose of critique was to introduce

Citizen-journalist blogging

IMC

Independent Media Center, Indymedia slogan: 'don't hate the media, be the media'

Why is a public sphere necessary for democracy?

It provides citizens information needed to create a democratic society, information that can be censored or withheld by a monarchy - facilities participation in society

One co-founder of the EFF

John Perry Barlow - Grateful Dead lyricist

What is McKee's concept of the public sphere?

McKee suggests that the public sphere in contemporary culture has moved from Habermas's restricted ideas concerning the bourgeoisie - now it is multi-class, emotional; inclusive of genders, sexual orientations, and educational in/experience, *diverse and fragmented*

Note the Salam Pax and Guardian example: This example is used to illustrate how various information sources can be triangulated to help the reader determine the validity and authenticity of any given content. The author walks the reader through the various options for checking the validity and authenticity of this piece: Note the sources that she examines.

Name - Salam Pax was a *pseudonym* - was a useful source for many in framing opinions and informing discussions McCarthy's *Guardian* story - had the brand of an authoritative media source - provided evidence that Pax existed but was not an analysis of his relevance or why he became a phenomenon on the internet and a much-quoted personal perspective on the Iraq War

What is the role of scholarly articles in this regard?

Scholarly articles are subject to *double-blind* peer review - article is judges on basis of merit instead of reputation of the author - best possible sources to inform a persuasive, well-informed argument

What is the EFF's purpose?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation - to protect freedom of speech on the Internet - to promote people's civil liberties - and to defend them

What are McKee's criticisms of the public sphere as defined by Habermas?

The concept of 'coherent' public sphere has been compromised by its expansion past the bourgeoisie, and the inclusion of popular culture and the mass media - becoming more trivialized, commercialized, and turned into a spectacle - more inclusive and moving away from a cultural space dominated by white, Anglo, middle-class, serious, educated, masculine values

How did Habermas define public opinion within the public sphere?

The tasks of criticism and control which a public body of citizens informally - and in periodic elections formally as well - practices *vis-a-vis* the ruling structure organized in the forms of a state

How do new authorities (e.g., Wikipedia) contribute to an individual's ability to judge the validity of given content?

Wikipedia can make a credible starting point (but not end point) when judging the validity of content - links to primary sources

Why did Google view YouTube as an attractive company to purchase?

YouTube compliments Google's mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful

How does Habermas conceptualize the public sphere?

a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere come into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body.... the public sphere as a sphere that mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere - *that principle of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities*

How does he redefine the notion of political action?

argues that popular culture does not produce political apathy - Internet, citizen-produced info - changes culture rather than legislation, recognition rather tan redistribution - more voices to be hear

Memes are understood as the fundamental elements of culture, akin to genes in science: What is the role of memes in social networks? (Note also how the insider's understanding of the role of poorly translated language in context in video games has actually spawned new creative output.)

artistic fragments and ideas that are adopted by large communities of users and then employed as part of the indicators of community membership - become the mechanisms via which cultural practices are originated, adopted, and sometimes retained within social networks

buyer beware

caveat emptor

How has YouTube changed the potential for expression in the public sphere?

community members were readily able to find content of interest and share it with friends while still gaining a sense of an overall Youtube brand and service

What did YouTube bring to Google?

digital video

How does McKee defend the contemporary public sphere from charges of trivialization and spectacle?

diversity of perspectives effectively enriches culture

Why doesn't the academic community yet trust Wikipedia?

encyclopedias aspire to be infallible, but Wikipedia requires that the perfect never be the enemy of the good - doesn't need to be flawless, just needs to be better

Note how YouTube treats copyrighted materials: Why is this approach necessary?

forward-looking agreements - old media conglomerates can finally reach the audiences that abandoned them for the on-demand world of the internet

What are the key features of a wiki?

include mechanisms to see the changes made to pages over time, features to notify key people when a page is changed, and discussion pages which are tied into entries where issues can be addressed

Can be deleted at any point

material accused via Google

smallest possible element of culture, analogous to the gene in biology

memes

Commercialization relates to

middle-class-based judgements - *dumbing down of media content* - *Big Brother and Wife Swap*

Who was excluded?

people caught up in day-to-day working and fighting, and women

How does Chad Hurley characterize YouTube's contributors and users?

played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new *clip culture*

What does it mean if the "perfect becomes the enemy of the good"?

pushing yourself to an impossible "perfect," and therefore getting nowhere, accept "good

Note the role of new online resources (e.g., Google Scholar and Google Books).

ranked on same principles as Larry Page's PageRank innovation, which underpins the search engine itself - full-text data base - makes sense to look further - better to refer to Hamilton and Jenner (implicitly comparing their account with the scholarly contraction of Haas)

Scholarly work should draw upon

scholarly work instead of Google or Wikipedia

Note the description of information selection and evaluation: How has the old model for establishing information validity and authenticity changed?

the approach of blogging and community-based media production is *'publish first' and then the reader checks the quality afterwards*

What is viral marketing?

the attempt to exploit the net-work effects of word-of-mouth and internet communication in order to induce a massive number of users to pass on marketing messages and brand information "voluntarily"

Who is the new gatekeeper?

the reader

What is the role of the citizen journalist?

the stories produced by citizen-journalists are not the final product, they are the starting point, the goal of every story is to start discussion

What is the cultural value of highly popular YouTube videos, according to Burgess and Green? Note how the online community is described.

the success of these prosumer videos lies not in their professionalism, but in their capacity to offer cultural material - the community is not a passive recipient of the user-created viral video, instead meme do necessary and additional work by essentializing elements of the video in a manner which allows the cultural fragments to acquire specific meanings in new contexts

Who does most of the work on Wikipedia?

volunteers

What role does vigilance play?

watched entries - biographies of political figures - religious faiths and movements

Who were the members of the "bourgeois society"?

wealthy, educated men, usually merchants and writers, who were not part of the "ruling class" and not involved in parliament - *met in coffee houses in London*

Trivialization is conservative speak for

women's perspectives

Whose values and perspectives should also be included?

women, working class, "black" and "queer" audiences