<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div><h3 style="font-weight: normal;" class="entry-header"><font size="2">Hello, everyone. Trebor asked me to post this to the list (I thought I had... but maybe not). If the formatting and links get screwy, you can see the online version here:</font></h3><h3 style="font-weight: normal;" class="entry-header"><span><a target="_blank" href="http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/07/social_media_an.html">http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/07/social_media_an.html</a></span><font size="2"> <br></font></h3><h3 style="font-weight: normal;" class="entry-header"><font size="2">-Ulises<br></font></h3><br><br><h3 class="entry-header">Social Media and the Networked Public Sphere</h3>
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<div class="entry-body">
<p><br></p><p>
Can social media increase and improve civic participation? If so, in
what ways? There's a lot being said and written about the subject these
days, but it is difficult to get a clear overview of the opinions. I
attempt here to collect viewpoints both for and against the premise
that social media is creating a better public sphere, and analyze them
in the context of what constitutes a public and its antithesis, a mass.
In presenting what are sometimes extreme positions within this debate
(too idealistic v. too critical), my hope is to begin to understand the
reality that lies in the middle, and come closer to understanding
social media's potential (and limitations) as a tool to bring about
social change.
</p>
<p>At a general level, we could say that on one side of the debate are
those who believe that social media can increase civic participation
and shift the balance of power away from the institutions that
currently stand in the way of change. On the other side are those who
warn that social media can only offer a reduced form of participation,
that it diminishes the value of individual contributions, and that it
leaves social systems more prone to manipulation by lowering their
intelligence to the minimum common denominator (i.e., stupidity or
mediocrity).
</p>
<p>
Thus, the debate can be framed in terms of whether social media can engender democratic <em>publics</em>
that embody an intelligence and capacity for action greater than the
sum of its members, or whether it will merely continue to support the
production of anti-democratic <em>masses</em> of disenfranchised and
alienated consumers. Of course, social media is a big label
encompassing many different technologies, and even the same
technologies can be applied differently in various contexts. But while
features and applications might differ, the people contributing to this
debate are obviously focused on the aggregated impact that social media
is having on our societies rather than on specific examples of
applications.
</p>
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<div class="entry-more">
<p>
The effects of social media are probably most visible in emerging forms
of public discourse and collaboration. Given that our notions of
democracy are closely tied to the ability to voice one's opinion and to
the ability to organize collective action, this is not surprising. The
more opportunities for discussion and collaboration (such as those
allegedly generated by blogs and wikis), the healthier the public
sphere and the healthier the democracy, goes the argument.
</p>
<p>
In his book <em>The Power Elite</em> (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1956) C. Wright Mills summarized, with a touch of dry humor,
this model of democratic "authority by discussion:"
</p><blockquote><p>The people are presented with problems. They
discuss them. They decide on them. They formulate viewpoints. These
viewpoints are organized, and they compete. One viewpoint 'wins out.'
Then the people act out this view, or their representatives are
instructed to act it out, and this they promptly do. (pp. 299-300)</p></blockquote><p>
Idealists believe that social media improves the processes described
above by giving us more efficient tools for discussion and for 'acting
out' what comes out of these discussions. But the problem is that, in
practice, democracy does not unfold so neatly. Mills argued that an
unequal distribution of power and knowledge allows a small elite to
impose its viewpoint on the population (through the media, for
instance) while convincing them that it is the people's will that the
elite is carrying out on its behalf. Authentic democracies require an
informed public to operate. Conversely, oligarchies require the
consensual passivity and ignorance of a mass. But what role exactly do
publics and masses play in each situation? </p>
<p>
Below, I extract from Mills' argument three features of a democratic
public sphere and present his analysis of how a public reflects those
characteristics, while a mass doesn't. I then summarize some arguments
from the social media debate which suggest how social media realizes,
or fails to realize, that particular feature of a public sphere. I
would like to point out that although there are many people
contributing to this debate, I am only citing some of the authors I am
most familiar with.
</p>
<p>
FEATURES OF A DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC SPHERE:
</p>
<p>
<strong>1) Balance between the ability to produce and consume ideas</strong>
</p>
<p>In a public, according to Mills, "as many people express opinions as
receive them." In a mass, "far fewer people express opinions than
receive them; for the community of publics becomes an <em>abstract collection of individuals</em> who receive impressions from the mass media" (Mills, 1956, pp. 303-304; my emphasis).
</p>
<p>
Advocates of social media argue that it represents an opportunity to
reverse a process of massification and returns people to the status of
a public. This is because social media, they argue, allows individuals
to become producers, not mere consumers, thus making it possible for as
many people to express as to receive opinions. This position is
captured in Jay Rosen's manifesto <a href="http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr.html">The People Formerly Known as The Audience</a>.
According to Rosen, users of social media are saying to the old media:
"You don’t own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur
zones. You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t
one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us." I also
have <a href="http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/05/socialist_softw.html">suggested</a>
that the alternative models of participation, collaboration and
ownership that social media makes possible can have a significant
social transformative power. If you change the ways of producing and
consuming culture, you change society.
</p>
<p>Alternatively, critics of social media are not convinced that it
fundamentally changes the balance between production and consumption.
As I have <a href="http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/06/the_people_curr.html">argued</a>
(yes, I tend to argue both sides!), when looking beyond exceptional
examples, the new forms of production that social media affords amount
to nothing more than new forms of consumerism for the majority of
users. Production is the new consumption. Indeed, social media
generates more opportunities for people to express themselves. But the
majority of people remain equally susceptible to impressions from the
mass media because they fail to evolve into anything more than an
"abstract collection of individuals," as Mills puts it (this <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp">recent Pew study</a>
seems to support the claim that most bloggers, for example, prefer to
talk about themselves and avoid political topics). In other words,
giving means of expression to each individual in a mass is not enough
to transform the mass into a community of publics . The other features
of a democratic public sphere will further clarify why this is the
case.
</p>
<p>
<strong>2) Affordable and effective means of producing ideas</strong>
</p>
<p>In a public, Mills argues, "communications are so organized that
there is a chance immediately and effectively to answer back any
opinion expressed in public." In a mass, "the communications that
prevail are so organized that it is difficult or impossible for the
individual to answer back immediately <em>or with any effect</em>" (Mills, 1956, pp. 303-304; my emphasis).
</p>
<p>
Again, supporters of social media claim that we are entering an age
when it is indeed possible for individuals to respond to any public
opinion. The cost of becoming part of the networked public sphere has
become negligible, and new models of participation are being developed
and tested. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, recently launched an <a href="http://campaigns.wikia.com/wiki/Mission_Statement">initiative</a>
that seeks to redefine the political process: "If broadcast media
brought us broadcast politics, then participatory media will bring us
participatory politics. One hallmark of the blog and wiki world is that
we do not wait for permission before making things happen. If something
needs to be done, we do it." While not everyone will use this
opportunity to become a full-fledged activist, Ross Mayfield <a href="http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/07/long_tail_of_ap.html">argues</a>
that social media can provide different levels of participation to
accommodate even the most apathetic: "few of us have time or interest
in politics, but there is a way for us all to have civic engagement
within our means. That way is though social software." He goes on to
describe how social software is changing the public sphere:
</p><blockquote><p>The cost for personal publishing has fallen to
zero. Its common for citizens to express a facet of their identity
online. The cost for group forming has fallen to zero. Networked
appeal has proven itself as a fundraising mechanism. A broad
conversational network and common sense repository supports collective
sense making. Today social software has gained use broad enough to
support civic engagement.</p></blockquote><p>
While individual opinions can be dismissed, argue enthusiasts, social
media represents a more effective public sphere because it aggregates
the voices of thousands and is able to respond to issues immediately
(the 'collective common sense' Ross is talking about). Using James
Surowiecki's thesis about the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds">wisdom of crowds</a>,'
advocates propose that social media engenders an intelligence of its
own, an intelligence aggregated from individual contributions but
greater than the sum of them, and which allows for a more effective
process of generating and selecting the best ideas and responses.
</p>
<p>
Immediate and low-cost response? Yes. Effective? Not so much, say the critics of social media. In an <a href="http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge183.html">article</a>
that has generated a fair amount of debate, Jaron Lanier warned of the
danger of endowing social media with a more effective intelligence than
our own: "The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The
value is in the other people. If we start to believe the Internet
itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those
people and making ourselves into idiots." In a follow-up <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/06/25/qa_with_jaron_lanier/?page=full">interview</a>, Lanier elaborated:
</p><blockquote><p>"Let me be specific: I don't like people pretending
something better than themselves exists in the computer. This is a
great danger... You get a bunch of people together on a project, and
they quickly become anonymous. They contribute to some sort of
computer-mediated phenomenon, and treat the results as an oracle."</p></blockquote><p>
Supporters of social media have <a href="http://www.edge.org/discourse/digital_maoism.html">contested</a>
Lanier's claims that it undermines individual contributions and
suggested that it is effective precisely because of them. Wales, for
example, says that "authoring at Wikipedia, as everywhere, is done by
individuals exercising the judgment of their own minds." Clay Shirky
adds that "individual motivations in Wikipedia are not only alive and
well, it would collapse without them." </p>
<p>
It is because we believe (rightly or wrongly) that social media
aggregates the best of individual contributions that we trust the
results. But what is at stake here is precisely the way the
computational processes of social media get to define what constitutes
sociality. Trebor Scholz, for example, <a href="http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2006/6/17/collective-action.html">describes</a>
how individual contributions are not simply channeled by social media,
but fundamentally transformed in the process (in this case, he is
talking about social bookmarking): </p><blockquote><p>Individual goals of participants are not always
shared by the "group," which gives the del.icio.us project a decisively
non-collaborative character. What does collaboration mean?
Collaboration is generally a risky, intensive form of working together
with a common goal. The gain or loss is shared among all. Cooperation,
on the other hand, is a less intensive form of working together in
which participants account for gain or loss individually. Contributors
have individual goals. </p></blockquote><p>
According to these definitions, while social media users may cooperate,
they might not necessarily be collaborating. Could this be enough to
distinguish a public from a mass? I had made a related argument <a href="http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2005/04/tag_literacy.html">previously</a>
(again, talking about social bookmarking): "tags have to make sense
first and foremost to the individual who assigns and uses them. And
yet, the whole point of distributed classification systems (DCSs) such
as del.icio.us and flickr is that the aggregation of inherently private
goods (tags and what they describe) has public value..." However, if
the code aggregates contributions by disaggregating goals
(individualizing motives), what exactly is the public value of social
media?
</p>
<p>In other words, we should ask whether in processing individual
contributions, social media's code engenders affordances more along the
lines of a public or a mass. The answer to that question is directly
related to Mills' last feature of a democratic public sphere.
</p>
<p>
<strong>3) Ideas are translated into action</strong>
</p>
<p>
According to Mills, in a public, "opinion formed by such discussion readily finds an outlet in effective action, <em>even against—if necessary—the prevailing system of authority</em>."
In a mass, "the realization of opinion in action is controlled by
authorities who organize and control the channels of such action"
(Mills, 1956, pp. 303-304; my emphasis). </p>
<p>
This is where the virtual rubber must meet the actual road, so to
speak. Advocates of social media believe in its power to unleash new
forms of action extending beyond the boundaries of cyberspace into the
'real' world. The Open Planning Project's (or <a href="http://topp.openplans.org/about.html">TOPP</a>) mission statement, for instance, states that:
</p><blockquote><p>Instead of harassing our overworked public
officials, TOPP believes in building tools that will ultimately aid
them directly, increasing efficiency in true democratic decision making
through projects that streamline citizen involvement and enable the
accessibility and effective use of public information... TOPP wants to
bring people out of the virtual and in to the real, where the network
can have a huge effect, by motivating for change in a community, and
bringing people together for action instead of just talking.</p></blockquote><p>
Not only are critics skeptical of social media's ability to ignite
action in the 'real' world at a large scale but some, like Nicholas
Carr, argue that new social media initiatives will end up merely
replicating the same forms of authority and governance that are
currently the source of the problem. This is because it is we who shape
social media by encoding our forms of sociality into it, not the other
way around. Thus, according to him, social media experiments are bound
to result in un-innovative forms of social action. Citing an <a href="http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview.html"> interview</a> with some of its most active members, Carr <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/07/emergent_bureau.php">quips</a>
that Wikipedia has "become more interesting as an experiment in
emergent bureaucracy than in emergent content." He illustrates by
pointing out that "the rules governing the deletion of an entry now
take up '37 pages plus 20 subcategories.' For anyone who still thinks
of Wikipedia as a decentralized populist collective, the interview will
be particularly enlightening."
</p>
<p>The nature of the role that the individual plays in social media is
what limits its potential to transform society, according to the
critics. Previously, the concern was that social spaces like the
blogosphere reinforced people's narrow group identities. For instance,
Trebor Scholz (borrowing the concept of <em>plural monocultures</em> from Amartya Sen) <a href="http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2006/6/17/collective-action.html">wrote</a>:
</p><blockquote><p>The Internet becomes a fabulous host for this type
of multiculturalism. Often, no two opinions have to confront each
other. In their own inner chamber people can forget about racial,
ethnic or economical differences and just talk about the very narrow
interest set that connects them.</p></blockquote><p>
Now, asserts the critical camp, social media takes the next step by
altogether removing any trace of the individual's identity in the name
of a higher collective intelligence. Social media is built on
individual contributions, yes, but the code must remove any present
biases before aggregating them into a meaningful data set. Otherwise,
the output would be too noisy. Social media's collective intelligence,
its perceived 'wisdom of crowds,' is directly related to the degree
that its code can accomplish this cleansing of personal opinion.
</p>
<p>While valorizing this new form of computationally-derived
intelligence might not necessarily lead to a devaluation of individual
intelligence (as Lanier, Carr, et. al would seem to suggest), it's true
that it might lead to a scenario where individuals must compromise
their individuality in order to get through the filters of social
media. </p>
<p>
For example, Howard Rheingold, in his reaction to Jimmy Wales' new project, <a href="http://www.cooperationcommons.com/cooperation-commons/jimbo-wikipedia-wales-calls-for-wiki-politics">wrote</a> that
</p><blockquote><p>One important contribution to political discourse
that we could all adopt from Wikipedia is the "neutral point of view"
process: Because anyone who disagrees with you can change your wiki
entry with the click of a mouse, it is necessary to clearly articulate
the different points of view on a subject -- and to state them well
enough that someone who disagrees with your own point of view won't be
motivated to edit your statement.</p></blockquote><p>
In other words: express your point of view in such a way that your
opponent won't find anything to fault in it. If before communication
was defined as the <em>sharing</em>
of meaning, now social media provides a space where meaning can be
assembled without being shared, and provides the mechanisms to enforce
this kind of neutrality. The problem is that meaning then becomes
atomistic, a reflection of what the code has aggregated from detached
individuals, not what has emerged through debate and cooperation.
Paradoxically, social media provides less incentive for people to be
social. </p>
<p>
If the end goal is a neutral point of view, the danger lies not in
erasing the individual's contributions, but in inadequately supporting
the mechanisms that allow individuals to share meaning. Nicholas Carr's
'<a href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_law_of_the.php">law of the wiki</a>'
—which asserts that the more people involved, the lower the quality of
the wiki— seeks to name this phenomenon: unlimited aggregation does not
result in order, but in randomness. Wikipedia contributors themselves <a href="http://www.riehle.org/computer-science/research/2006/wikisym-2006-interview.html">recognize</a> that good articles are the result of small communities of experts working without interference from the larger public.
</p>
<p>
What can we conclude from the various perspectives I've summarized above?
</p>
<p>
Advocates of social media will point out that while there are
applications such as wikis and social bookmarking that embody this
'unlimited aggregation' approach, the ecology of social media is
balanced by the presence of other applications such as blogs and social
networking where individuality and cooperation are alive and well. They
might be right to an extent. By using a mix of social media,
communities can benefit both from the wisdom of crowds and the wisdom
of individuals. </p>
<p>
Social media —which makes visible the connections between the online
and the onsite— is helping us understand that reality doesn't just
serve as a metaphor for computer-facilitated interaction; rather, it is
its very medium. For the most part, critics are no longer using the
'virtuality' of the networked public sphere as an excuse to declare it
unreal or less than real. Actions still speak louder than words,
regardless of whether the words originate online or onsite. The
question we are now interested in is whether these new forms of action
can emerge even against the prevailing systems of authority, or whether
they are still organized and controlled within the framework of the
dominant sphere of debate. Will the old concepts of public and mass be
enough to capture the possibilities?
</p>
<p>
<em><br></em></p>
<p><em><br></em></p>
<p><em>Offline Reference</em>
</p>
<p>
Mills, C. W. (1956). <em>The power elite</em>. New York: Oxford University Press.</p><br></div></div><span class="post-footers"> </span></div></div></body></html>