Howard Rheingold: 'Why the history of the public sphere matters in the Internet age' (2009)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZB4mlnTis2Y
About: Howard Rheingold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold talks about the relevance of the 'public sphere' in relation to the then, emerging pervasiveness of the Internet. Context: https://people.well.com/user/hlr/howard.html Transcript: "the term public sphere refers to that two-way flow of information in a democracy that enable citizens to have some reasonable idea of the workings of the state a notion that's sometimes called transparency and that enables citizens if if they are able to organise and to understand the issues of the day and to communicate about it to influence the policies of the state a a a general force known as public opinion the phrase the public sphere is most widely associated with the German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas and uh because Habermas writes in in the way that a a very serious philosopher does his work has not been widely disseminated among the the people who are interested in the future of the Internet and among journalists although I'm sure that anyone who is thinking about how democracy is going to fair in the Internet Age and and every journalist understands the particular role of communication media in and somehow uh balancing the citizens and the state the reason we go to the history of the public sphere going back to the English Civil War and the petitioners who made use of the new availability of print is that the period we're in today is is really a transitional period uh just as in the 16th and and 17th century print literacy was changing the way in which people communicated and the way in which people received information about the state the Internet is only a decade or two decades old in regard to its its spread among the world's population and institutions are evolving I think among Internet enthusiasts there's been a polarisation between the kind of utopian ideas of electronic democracy and and and the Very opposite the the notion that the ability of everyone to contribute has just uh entered so much noise into the system that that really although publishing and communication has been democratised the public sphere has been degraded there's also the the notion uh that as newspapers as the the primary way in which information about the state and public opinion emerged in early democracies as those institutions as the the the businesses that support newspapers are facing problems in fact may become extinct there's a real worry about again a kind of polarised idea of the mainstream media versus bloggers in their pyjamas I think in in both cases it helps to look at the history because the public sphere was not so much invented as evolved you talk about the mainstream media and bloggers in their pyjamas today you might well have been speaking about the uneducated vulgar petitioners in the days of the English Civil War and the the more refined Aristo aristocratic classes in both cases the literacies that emerged from a new medium a new technology began to spread and people armed with with those literacies were able to invent new forms of collective action and I think that what we're seeing today with the emergence of blogs and wikis of YouTube and many other ways in which citizens can contribute information misinformation and disinformation is the the beginning of an evolution so Habermas uh as I noted was a political philosopher and there's been an an entire School of discussion and critique of of his work um most most notably Nancy Fraser critiquing the idea of a bourgeois public sphere that's confined largely to bis to middle class white men and introduces the idea of 'publics'. I'm interested in the history because recently a historian by the name of David Zaret has written a book on the origins of democratic culture [(2000)] in which he said in effect it's too bad that the whole philosophy of the public sphere stems from the work of a political philosopher who whose work is largely cerebral certainly based on historical evidence but not empirical in the way that uh historians work is and Zarah said in effect if Habermas had the tools of a historian might have looked at source documents and found that instead of the Enlightenment philosophers who gathered in the coffee uh shops of London and uh Paris and Amsterdam and Philadelphia in the 18th century that in fact a far less uh aristocratic more vulgar less educated population of the various religious factions the the the religious dissidents in England who were intimately connected with English politics because of course if there was a Catholic or a Protestant on the throne and they and they changed sides a couple of times then the the people who dissented from from that reigning theology were were in trouble so it was really literally a life or death matter to talk about theological issues during this period and of course there really wasn't what we call transparency you could be hanged for revealing what was said in Parliament and of course the the state did not have to answer to the public there was really no influence of public opinion on the state somehow or another over a per period of a century or two that situation changed and we now have parliaments making policy rather than monarchies and presumably publics who influence policy now of course in the early 20th century Walter Lippmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann questioned whether in America the the country uh he was living and and and in and writing about the citizens are are qualified are educated enough to make the decisions necessary for governing a a complex democracy the American public in Lippmann's terms were were sheep were easily misled and of course famously John Dewey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey responded in his review in The New Republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Republic and later writings that in effect if our our citizens are are ignorant and easily misled then then perhaps we need better institutions for informing them we need better journalism and we need to educate them we need a better public education system so this this issue of whether and how citizens can communicate with the state and and know something about the state is something that's that's been a a live debate for quite some time I think that today as we're looking at the impact of Internet technologies the emergence of many to many communications whereas the the printing press was was a a really a broadcast medium in which a few people who had access to printing presses were able to influence and persuade many we now have an age in which for better and for worse every desktop connected to the Internet can influence and persuade are we going to to emerge from that that cacophony with some kind of coherent way of conveying the workings of the state without uh too much overt manipulation by the state and by powerful interested actors and are we going to see the emergence of new forms of public opinion formation that can influence policy I think that there are are strong signs uh that would enable you to argue either way today certainly the science of manipulating public opinion is much more sophisticated and and and much more well-funded today than it was in the time of Walter Lippmann and certainly we've seen with the Howard Dean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean campaign and then the Barack Obama campaign the ways in which citizen media and uh grassroots sometimes called 'netroots communications' and advertising have have been able to to merge with a kind of top- down political factions like the political parties that that uh VI for the the seat of power so I I think if you read Zaret and see how petitioners and the different factions in in parliament in England who were vying for power began to appeal uh to each other by saying that they had the backing of various factions of of uh unpower people uh through these pamphlets uh petitions and uh and beginnings of of newspapers they were appealing to what became public opinion uh Zaret also points out that the criticism of news media today whether it's the mainstream Media or the uh bloggers in their pyjamas reflects some of the same criticism that was levelled at the origins of the public sphere the idea is today is that the the news media being in many cases wholly owned by entertainment companies are are vulgar uh commercial and sensationalistic he points out that that this was true as well of the original newspapers that that evolved into what what many considered to be the fundamental communication medium of democracy so Paul Saffo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Saffo the future forecaster has often said that you you ought to look twice as far backwards as you're trying to look forward Wards if you're trying to forecast something and I think if we're going to forecast the future of the public sphere we need to look at the way the current public sphere originally evolved over the last couple of centuries." https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZB4mlnTis2Y?start=52&end=794 Related: "For almost a century, this disentangling of geography and perspective inspired great optimism. While [Walter] Lippmann https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann and [Harold] Lasswell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lasswell penned their anxieties of a political age dominated by propaganda, John Dewey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey saw new democratic potential in the rise of despatialized mass media. Greater capacity for indirect communication brought on by the radio and mass printing (and later television and the internet) could obviate epistemic geography entirely, bringing about a 'Great Community' coterminous with the state. As he outlined in The Public and its Problems, increasing connectivity would increase the 'extensive and enduring consequences' individual actions had on 'others beyond those directly engaged in them.' More access to information would make the social implications of individual action clearer, bringing about a newfound collective interest in controlling the mutual unseen influence individuals had on one another (Dewey, J., 1927, p. 27). Geography would play a smaller and smaller role in how individuals perceived their group identities and group perceptions" (Allen, D. and J. Pottle, 2018, p.23). Related: "This article explores a division that emerged between MySpace and Facebook among American teens during the 2006-2007 school year. At the beginning of the year, a common question in American schools was: 'Are you on MySpace?' By the end of the year, the question had shifted to 'MySpace or Facebook?' As Facebook started gaining momentum, some teenagers switched from MySpace to Facebook. Others joined Facebook without having ever been on MySpace. Still others chose to adopt both. During this period, MySpace did not lose traction. Teens continued to flock to the site, opting for MySpace in lieu of or in addition to Facebook. To complicate matters more, some teens who had initially adopted MySpace began to switch to Facebook. Slowly, a distinction emerged. Those who adopted MySpace were from different backgrounds and had different norms and values than those who adopted Facebook. White and more affluent individuals were more likely to choose and move to Facebook. Even before statistical data was available, the language teens used to describe each site and its users revealed how the division had a race and class dimension to it. Given these dynamics and Kat’s notion of MySpace as ghetto, one way to conceptualize the division that unfolded is through the lens of white flight. In essence, many of the same underlying factors that shaped white city dwellers’ exodus to the suburbs – institutional incentives and restrictions, fear and anxiety, social networks, and racism – also contribute to why some teens were more likely to depart than others. What distinguishes adoption of MySpace and Facebook among American teens is not cleanly about race or class, although both are implicated in the story at every level. The division can be seen through the lens of taste and aesthetics, two value-laden elements that are deeply entwined with race and class. It can also be seen through the network structures of teen friendship, which are also directly connected to race and class. And it can be seen through the language that teens – and adults – use to describe these sites, language like Kat’s that rely on racial tropes to distinguish the sites and their users. The notion that MySpace may be understood as a digital ghetto introduces an analytic opportunity to explore the divisions between MySpace and Facebook – and namely, the movement of some teens from MySpace to Facebook – in light of the historic urban tragedy produced by white flight. Drawing parallels between these two events sheds light on how people’s engagement with technology reveals social divisions and the persistence of racism" (Boyd, D., 2011). Bibliography: Zaret, D. (2000). 'Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England', Princeton University Press. Boyd, D. (2011). 'White Flight in Networked Publics? How Race and Class Shaped American Teen Engagement with MySpace and Facebook'. In Race After the Internet. L. Nakamura and P. Chow-White, Routledge: 203–222. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203875063-13/white-flight-networked-publics-danah-boyd https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313628404_White_flight_in_networked_publics_How_race_and_class_shaped_American_teen_engagement_with_MySpace_and_Facebook Allen, D. and J. Pottle (2018). 'Democratic Knowledge and the Problem of Faction', Knight Foundation. https://kf-site-production.s3.amazonaws.com/media_elements/files/000/000/152/original/Topos_KF_White-Paper_Allen_V2.pdf Dewey, J. (1927). 'The Public and its Problems' (P. M. L. Rogers, Ed.). Henry Holt and Company. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71000
