Lecture New Media New Citizenship

 Week 6: Cyberdemocracy

& politics (1)Marianne van den Boomen

What is citizenship about?

location, nation, state, nation-statepolitics, elections

rules, regulation, law, rights, duties culture, ideology

public infrastructure, state and non-state mediapublic debate, public spherevalues, norms, habits, traditions

belonging, communityparticipation, shared moralitydifferentiation, assigning subject positions

inclusion/exclusion on all the above levels

Preliminary definition

Citizenship is the sense of belonging to and participating in an abstract social whole, on

a mediated level somewhere between politics, cultures and ideology.

Toolbox1. Rights: human, civil, political, & social rights; historical non-progress; minority rights; right to be understood

Cyborg rights? Rights in cybersace?

2. Public sphere: public infratstructure, public debate; capitalism & bourgeois culture; counterpublics; popular culture, 'spam', modernism/ postmodernism

Postmodern digital public sphere with digital spam? Virtual communities?

3. Subjection/subjectivation: surveillance & discipline; normalization & internalisation of subject positions; Foucault, power & knowledge grid, Panopticism

Poststructuralist digital subjects with distributed fragmented identities?

4. Inclusion/exclusion: subject positions defined by class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, nationality, ability etc

Role playing cyber identities without stereotypes? Online gender blurring?

Cyborg studies beyond classic dichotomies?

5. Democracy: state organisation; representation; equality & difference

New media as a tool for democracy?

Updated definition

● Citizenship (being a legitimate subject) ● is the sense of belonging to (having been assigned a

subject position, by formal rights and disciplining) ● and participating in (by means of a mediated public sphere) ● an abstract social whole (state, nation, community,

democracy)● on a mediated level somewhere between politics,

cultures (modern/postmodern, elite & popular culture)● and ideology (subject positioning by in- & exclusion, and

formation of disembodied subject notions).

Politics

Where to locate politics?● state, government/administration, parliament,

political parties, governmental institutions● law, formal arrangements, rights & duties, contracts ● public infrastructure, public sphere, media in general● power & knowledge grid; education, work, NGO's etc.● inclusion/exclusion based on subject positions● 'the personal is political'

Politics = any kind of regulation of citizens...

'The Virtual Political System'Conventional model of 'official politics'

Society // Subjects // Public sphere // Rights // Politics

Critique on model

• Technology, economy etc. has no link to whatsoever (cf. cyborgs)

• No direct feedback from public sphere to subjects/citizens

• Media independent of interest groups and politics, suggestion of neutral refelction of citizens minds

• Media only as 'news media'

• No informal popular culture involved, except for explicit organisations

• No noise, no spam, no trivia (Habermassian?)

• Legal domain is just an intermediairy or filter, not a contested space in the making

• Policy is a straightforward matter of 'output'

• No space for analysis of inclusion/exclusion, all citizens are considered equal, disembodied

Representative democracy•parliament and government + political parties + elections = politics •proportial representation of voting citizens = representative democracy•statistics + benchmarks + standards = measuring democracy

Digital 'offcical' politics •Elecronic voting •E-governance •Biometric pasports •Online governmental debates

In search of online politics(the 'official' way)

Keywords and hits in search engines

2000 2006 (Google) Government 12.650.000 1.620.000.000 Interest groups 4.750.000 21.400.000 Political parties 1.880.000 22.000.000 Elections 1.618.000 138.000.000 Parliaments 888.000 3.240.000

More interesting keywords (2006) Politics 446.000.000 Citizen 149.000.000 Gender 175.000.000 Ethnicity 42.600.000 Public 2.490.000.000 Community 2.320.000.000

Free 2.950.000.000 Download 1.550.000.000 Games 749.000.000 Computer 500.000.000 Sex 191.000.000

Appropriating online politicsTrippi's campaign for Howard Dean• Political campaigning the American way: mobilizing people, fund raising, vote raising, crowd raising • No money, so 'let the people do it themselves' ('I AM Howard Dean!' cf. Kennedy)• 'It wasn't for the campaign, it was for their community'. Rhetorics?

Internet technologies & dynamics• Do It Yourself culture, grass root organising, volunteers • Software a la Friendster, Meetup, GetLocal, blogs!• Ghostwritten blog? No, too stiff, must be authentic...• Turn the audience into a speaker, with real influence• 'Open source' campaign?• 'One problem with running an campaign open source is that you open it up to every crank with a computer' (cf. DDS)• 'Ideas from the grass roots don't have to go back up to the headquarters to be adopted' (cf. Norris)

Appropriating politics online

Howard Dean's Scream

Dean scream

Blogging politics, politicians blogging

Politicians blogging

• Femke Halsema, Zalm, Jan Marijnissen• Why do blogs seem to work? cf. several failed online government projects on mobilizing citizens voices and participation in real legislation issues...

Blogging politics

• Political blogs, but also general blogs like Geenstijl.nl• New public sphere, distributed civil journalism, distributed subjects?

Femkes blogZalm blog

Digital City (DDS)Poldermodel of politics• Consensus and harmony, between relatively autonomous pillars • Welfare state, subsidy culture, but in rapid decline• 1994: DDS as online experiment during municipal elections, to close the gap between politics and citizens

But also bottom-up aspects• Amsterdam media culture, grassroots and semi-institutionalised • Local TV-channel with citizen's acces (sold later)• Hacktic (Xs4all) and De Balie: technology, culture & politics• Do It Yourself culture, few professionals and lots of volunteers

Killed by dot.com economy?• From foundation to company, professionalisation• From free access and communities now a paid provider

Public domain, public sphere? Public domain between state and market• professionals, hardware, bandwidth• every virtual community has an economy!

The community question• Horseless carriage syndrome? • between the local and the global• distributed communities, subcultures, popular cultures

Public sphere between politics and culture• social contract: no internal democracy in DDS• 'The fairly obvious fact that politics constitute only a small fragment of our daily lives has also proved on the Net.' • Is a digital public domain desirable or feasable? No, according to Lovink & Riemens... Yes, according to Castells...