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)

Discussion

Cautionary remarks by Danah Boyd:

"A key aspect of SNSes is scale. Telephones allow people to communicate over long distances. Activists know that the bullhorn of the Web lets them reach many more people, even in the context of a supposed shared space. The Internet not only collapses space and time, but beyond bandwidth, there is no additional structural cost between communicating with ten people and broadcasting to millions.

Infinite scaling may be structurally possible online, but the attention economy—the tax on people’s time and attention—regulates what actually scales. Just because someone wants to reach millions does not mean that they can effectively do so. Content may be public, but the public may not be interested in your content. Likewise, just because a private message is intended for ten people does not guarantee that it will stay just with those people if there is broader interest. Public and private are only guidelines online because there are no digital walls that can truly keep what is desired in and what is not out.

This possibility of scaling is what tickles the fancy of most political dreamers, who see the Internet as the ultimate democratizing technology. However, people pay attention to what interests them. Not surprisingly, offline or online, gossiping is far more common and interesting to people than voting. While the Internet makes it much easier for activated people to seek out information and networks of like-minded others, what gains traction online is the least common denominator. Embarrassing videos and body fluid jokes fare much better than serious critiques of power. Gossip about Hollywood celebrities is alluring; the war in Iraq is depressing.

Over the last decade, the dominant networked publics have shifted from being topically organized to being structured around personal networks. Most users no longer seek out chat rooms or bulletin boards to discuss particular topics with strangers. Instead, they are hanging out online with people that they already know. SNSes are explicitly designed to be about “me and my friends.” Structurally, a social network site is the quintessential personal network tool. People are exposed to the things that their friends choose to share. If that content is valued, it is spread further through friend networks. Lack of shared interest results in a lack of spreadability.

Social network sites create cavernous echo chambers as people reiterate what their friends posted. Given the typical friend overlap in most networks, many within those networks hear the same thing over and over until they believe it to be true. It was the echo chambers of the blogosphere in 2004 that convinced mass media that Howard Dean had more traction in the U.S. presidential campaign than he did. Echo chambers are problematic because they give the impression that activists have spread a message further than they have.

Just as politically engaged people know one another, alienated and uninterested people mainly know people like themselves. Bridging the structural holes that divide these groups is just as challenging online as offline, if not more so. Offline, you know if a door has been slammed in your face; online, it is impossible to determine the response that the invisible audience is having to your message. " (http://rebooting.personaldemocracy.com/node/54)