Networked Public Sphere
Description
Yochai Benkler:
"The mass-mediated public sphere used to concentrate the production of stories about who we are, what challenges face us, and how we might overcome them. The public at large was reduced to passivity in this model of production; we were no more than “eyeballs.” The networked public sphere is comprised of e-mails and e-mail lists, blogs ranging from individual thoughts to professional and semi-professional new voices like Instapundit or Talking Points Memo, to vast collaboration platforms like DailyKos with thousands of contributors, or flash campaigns that re-purpose other platforms, like the Burma campaign on Facebook. A dozen or more years of experience with the networked public sphere has taught us a lot about how it can operate. It is not, it turns out, the republic of yeoman authors that some hoped it would be. But neither is it the trackless cacophony of antagonistic echo chambers that others predicted. Instead, we have seen a public sphere where millions, rather than hundreds or thousands, can participate in setting the agenda, filtering what is important, and telling our common stories. Not everyone; but a large and significant change from where we were a mere decade ago.
The most visible successes of the networked public sphere have been in the domain of playing watchdog. Older stories from the past half decade are well known: the critique of Diebold voting machines; the CBS/Dan Rather report on George Bush’s military record; the debates that led to Trent Lott’s resignation. More recently, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo uncovered the U.S. Attorney purge that resulted in Alberto Gonzales’s resignation. A collaboration initiated by Porkbusters, and ultimately encompassing blogs on both sides of the American political blogosphere, mobilized readers to investigate the identity of a senator who secretly blocked legislation that required more transparency in government spending, an investigation which successfully identified the culprit and forced removal of the block. Recently, we have begun to see organizations like the Sunlight Foundation provide better tools for collaborative production of the watchdog function. This foundation funds projects that take government data and collate and render it in platforms that allow citizens to collaborate on investigating and identifying problems about which they particularly care.
Both the rise of networked debate and the rise of a peer-produced watchdog function characterize a vastly different role and level of mobilization for citizens than was typical as recently as a decade ago. The social distance between any citizen and someone who can speak and be heard by a substantial community has shrunk. Instead of six degrees of separation, it is now no more than one or two. As we walk around with video cameras in our pockets (our mobile phones), we can capture images and sounds and expect to be seen and heard, as we never could before. As these capabilities increase, we are already seeing, and will likely continue to see, a shift in attitude—from passive acceptance of forces greater than ourselves, to a sense that what we see, care about, and say could become the subject of a broader community of concern and action. And this attitudinal change is the linchpin to the possibility of a change in practice." (http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/37)