Cyberactivism: Blogging Communities Together

The evolution of the internet has transformed the methods in which activists and those with political relations have used new media to construct social and political awareness (Khan & Kinellner 88). Internet activism and new media have been used to affect various political agendas and start the communications necessary to begin movements for social, political and economic reform. This adaptation of the internet into contemporary culture shifted the strategies used to inform people on a global scale without the influence or bias of mass media and corporate news broadcasts. This use of new media technology, to gather and inform activists, changed the playing field for staging events of mass organization such as the 1999 Carnival against Capital leading to the Battle for Seattle.

Neoliberalism seeks to transfer part of the control of the economy from state to the private sector. This total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services was intended to eventually benefit everyone as the best way for economic growth. Part of the neoliberalist agenda was to cut public expenditure for social services like education and health care— reducing the safety net for the poor. The funding cuts took place in the maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply— again in the name of reducing government's role. The privatization processes included the selling of state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although this was done in the name of greater efficiency, privatization mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more into the hands of a select few and made the public pay even more for its needs. It eliminated the concept of “the public good” or “community” and replaced it with “individual responsibility”— pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them if they fail, as "lazy."

The internets cross communicational method allowed for the masses to understand the greater implications of what neoliberalism was and how it affected their communities as a whole. Indymedia, a global participatory network of journalists that report on political and social issues, originated from this mass protest. According to its homepage, "Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth." Indymedia was founded as an alternative to government and mainstream media, and seeks to facilitate people being able to publish their media as directly as possible. The general rule is that content on Indymedia sites can be freely reproduced for non-commercial purposes.

This international protest movement which surfaced in the wake of excessive globalization policies was a major leap in cyberactivism, setting the platform for normalizing the uses of the internet for organizing activism. The increase in easily accessible technologies for information, with devices such as smart phones, PDAs, laptop computers etc have socially linked activists. However with this accessibility of the internet, the implementation of “powerful governmental surveillance systems” has also come to play (Kahn & Kellner 89). The patriot act has allowed the Bush administration to discontinue websites it suspects of terrorism but also are compiling lists of site they find suspicious. The internet has created a new for of what we know as public, it is the virtual public sphere and an exemplary form of a digital panopticon. The versatility of the internet as a two-way method of communication also allows internet users to arm themselves and fight back against these threats to their privacy. By creating open-source software users are allowed to share information without the risks of being monitored anonymously (Kahn & Kellner 89).

This sharing and dissemination of information has led to online networks that organize people to take action in various forms, and it’s not always political. The organization Improv Everywhere “causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places.” They have successfully executed over 80 missions that gather thousands of “undercover agents” in one space to perform one single act in unison. This type of organization was made widely possible due to the communicational power the internet allows for.

The Blogging community’s emergence has developed into a highly sophisticated networking of interactive information sharing.

“If the World Wide Web was about forming a global network of interlocking, informative websites, blogs make the idea of a dynamic network, ongoing debate, dialogue and commentary central and so emphasize the interpretation and dissemination of alternative information to a heightened degree.” (Kahn & Kellner 91)

Blogs are changing the way we use the internet, and the ways people are utilizing the tools that blogs provide are astounding. Websites like The Huffington Post, which is a liberal news website and aggregated blog. The Huffington Post publishes scoops of current news stories, links to selected prominent news stories, and provides a liberal counterpoint to sites such as the Drudge Report Compared to other left-wing blogs such as the expertise-heavy Znet or the long-established Daily Kos The Huffington Post offers both news commentary and coverage. The comment section is home to discussions on politics, religion, and world affairs.The blog was named among the 25 Best Blogs of 2009 by Time Magazine, it won the 2006 and 2007 Webby awards for best political blog, has been ranked the most powerful blog in the world by The Observer.

The 2008 election was an especially historic one for a number of reasons. Obama completely changed campaign strategies and campaign financing, and that's one of the biggest causes as to why he beat out John McCain for the presidency.

While overall blog mentions of Obama and McCain varied greatly during the last year (and we can't say if those were positive or negative posts), close to 500 million blog postings mentioned him since the beginning of the conventions at the end of August. During the same time period, only about 150 million blog posts mentioned McCain (though it would also be interesting to see similar statistics for Governor Palin as well).

Obama had a clear advantage on the Web compared to McCain. He was able to use the Internet and social media to reach out and gain traction among potential voters. Obama's presence on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter were clearly felt. The New York Times chronicles how Obama successfully used social networks in his campaign. On MySpace, Obama had over 800,000 supporters. McCain had over 200,000. Videos on Obama's YouTube channel got over 18 million views, while McCain's channel had just 2 million. While it is true that Obama's voter demographic matches with Internet users, Obama's overwhelming advantage suggests that the Internet will play a huge factor in future elections. This grassroots campaign effort mobilized millions of voters and led to a record in voter turnout, which led to an eventual victory for Barack Obama.

The people working for the President-Elect were by far the more active - and the savvier - of the two US Presidential candidates in terms of understanding and effectively employing social media as a way of engaging and motivating voters.



It was the transparency of the new media technology that allowed for open discussions between supporters, lobbyists and politically aware persons that allowed for the profound impact on this election. The new alternative to corporate funded media and news networks put the information right into the hands of those that mattered most— the voters.

The Newest media holding true to the oldest issue

Materialist Feminism is basically a theoretical framework for studying feminist knowledge (class, divisions of labor, state/government power, economic power, gender identity, racial identity, sexual identity and national identity. The idea is to systematically approach topics on multiple levels. In other words materialist feminist theory looks at the global oppression of women, people of color, and political minorities in terms of their concrete economic and social conditions. Do they have access to free education? Can they pursue careers? Do they have access or opportunity to become wealthy? If not, what economic or social constraints are preventing those women from doing such things and how can that be changed?

The immergence of the internet was originally optimistically viewed as a potential ground leveler where people from all social and economic status can merge together on a virtual plane that fostered interactive communication and dialogue and can create a diverse community of thinkers. It does in many ways hold true to this idealized view but the emergence of conglomerates and corporations brining their marketing methods to the internet, with levels of capital unattainable for most, created a great divide. The media producers were no longer anonymous users posting alternatives to mass media; instead mass media covered the internet spectrum. The internets flexible nature and the original intent to offer an alternative to mainstream media falls short according to cyberfeminists, because of the extreme commercial nature of the media. Its intent is no longer to bridge gaps but to promote consumerism.

Worthington uses the concepts of materialist feminism to highlight how the website ivillage.com promotes a prototypical view on female lifestyle. She “draws on hegemony theory to envision commercial websites and portals as important ideological institutions that normalize dominant prescriptions for gendered behaviors.” She asserts that the site in fact promotes a postfeminist ideology claiming that the problems women face in their daily lives can be easily mended through consumer-based solutions— overlooking the and ignoring the sexual divisions of labor, cultural expectations, and historical oppression.

Worthington’s examination of the ivillage site allows for one to note the particular notions of gender that the site itself promotes. The postfeminist perspective the site takes draws very clear lines in gendered tasks promoting that “domestic tasks were the province of women.” The content generated from ivillage narrowly describes solutions to problems faced by well-off, economically secure women with families. The site ignores all other types of female societal situations and idealizes the female experience. In doing this, the site creates a hegemonic stance on female behavior that is proliferated through the web at an easier and quicker pace because of the internets ability to promote discussion. Worthington addresses the issue of website content. What is being promoted as an overarching solution to problems women face in their daily lives at ivillage is hardly representative of all female experience as a whole. When big business has the ability to market a website widely throughout the internet, one must be wary of the types of messages they are distributing through the web and who then it is reaching.

Materialist Feminism views gender as a social construct. Women are not required to be child bearers and fulfill childbearing duties. Society forces that upon women. Thus, in a materialist feminist utopia women would be treated socially the same as men and childbearing and its related activities would be more happenstance and less expected as a "womanly duty". This utopian ideal however is dependent upon having an economic and social situation which allows women to pursue careers and activities that are unaffected by their sex. Worthington states that the type of information, advice, topics discussed and ideologies of ivillage.com reinforces gender norms. Because the site is so popular to a wide variety of women, this type of information does not address all women nor does it help women in the struggle of equality with men in society. It constructs the ideal that the responsibilities typified as “female” and “male” are natural and innate and not a product of social constructions.It is motivations for profit that drive the discourse that maintains gender inequity.

Feminism--- Re- Writing Copyright Privilege (Bartow)

Copyright laws are written and enforced to help certain groups of people assert and maintain control over the resources generated by creative productivity. Because those people are predominantly male, the copyright infrastructure plays a role (One that is largely unexamined by legal scholars) in helping to sustain the material and economic inequality between women and men. Ann Bartow considers some of the ways in which gender issues and copyright laws intersect. She proposes a feminist critique of the copyright legal system by advocating for lenient copyright protections, and emphasizes the importance of considering the social and economic disparities between women and men when evaluating the impacts and action intellectual property laws hold in the process of creating cultural capital and what that means in the grander scheme of power relations.

Bartow speaks from a feminist perspective pointing out the substantial differences between men and women within the context of copyright law seeing the divides (which go overlooked due to more obvious and perhaps more pressing issues related to gender inequality) as fundamentally social. Bartow recognizes and brings attention to the infrastructure of copyright law as gender biased seeing it as unjust, contingent and imposed but also complicated in its solution.

Feminism seeks to empower women on their own terms. To value what women have done, what they have the ability to create and the methods they use to create. Copyright law was created to facilitate commerce; however they are created by men. The rigidity of copyright law, which protects only an individually created work, does not allow for the methods used by women’s creative endeavors to be recognized or legitimized for commercialization. Because of this Bartow concludes that women do not have the opportunity to seek royalties. The action of not pursuing commerce is then not voluntary. Creative industry sectors are dominated and controlled by men (i.e. publishing, film, television, theater, art dealing and music business). Consequently men choose what will be commercialized; they do so with a male established criterion setting the standard based on what men deem as worthy of commercialization, which Bartow suggests is gender biased when considering the different interests of both men and women.

The gender-linked social norm of collaborative engagement to create work suggests that if a woman seeks to obtain “individual authorship rights and attribute credit to their work” she then faces being labeled selfish and greedy (however I question who is doing the labeling, men or other women?).

Secondly if they do keep to the “collaborative norms” and do not seek to actively call themselves “sole authors” of a work, they loose the opportunity to gain recognition, control and the possibility of income. In not gaining this recognition and visibility in the commercialized domain, female work then is categorized and “typecast” in a way where it becomes less important within the framework of society. Female work looses its strength when comparing it to male created work because it is not shown in a light that showcases its force.

Women may need to adopt male views and strategies to succeed in male-dominated sectors, according to Bartow. However this then creates a form of overshadowing, a hierarchy that deems male “stratagem” better than or more effective than female methods. Copyright forces women to compare their work to that of men, to measure their work by male standards, on male terms. Bartow’s assessment of copyright analysis does seek to access the male world. She does criticize female exclusion from male pursuits. Creating a more lenient ideology of copyright laws, one that is not set by a male standard and places value on male interests and methods of creating work, allows female work to be valued, but also to have access to the process of definition of value itself. In this way, the demand for access to gain the right of copyright protection for “non-traditionally” accepted material also becomes a demand for change in how society views female interest. It becomes a legitimizing force which brings in the pursuits to create cultural and economic capital from the women’s point of view, from the standpoint of their social experience as women.

The issue with copyright law is not the gender difference but the difference gender makes, the social meaning imposed upon women through the technical wording and process of obtaining copyright—what it means to be a woman or a man is a social process and, as such, is subject to change. Feminist copyright law theory does not seek sameness with men. It instead criticizes what men have made of themselves, of their work— it points out the disparities in consumerism and the intermediate factors that attribute to a notion of male superiority in creative work. Bartow claims that copyright law must seek a transformation in the terms and conditions of power itself.

Blogging it up lke a Fem

Current copyright doctrine believes that works should remain linear, hierarchical and controlled. The exclusive rights granted by copyright, especially and specifically the right to adaptation of a work creates a kind of authorial control not only over the work itself but also of the use of the work. The feminist perspective examines the role between relational webs of meaning rather than a linear ideal. Feminist discourse involves a non-hierarchical deconstruction of the copyright ideals of “work protection”. It lends its importance toward an acceptance of collaborative work maintaining the idea that a unified construction of a work designed and composed between more than one creator is a valid work form. Digital media holds this same sort of thought, a fluidity of titles between the “creator” (author) and the user (reader). Within the blogosphere the method of textual constructions is comprised of multiple contributors. The reader has a participatory role in the “progress of knowledge” which copyright laws frustrate and dampen with the rigidity of its boundaries. Feminist modes of thinking are deeply intertwined within this construction of work manifestation. It opens those borders and allows for a higher creative process without the fear of copyright infringement.
Intellectual property is the basis for copyright. Creating a defined ownership of a work for a period of time generates a patriarchal state of functioning. The authorial principle of “owning” ones work is geared toward an attachment of “commodity authorship”, work is then “property”. If the work is believed to lead to economic gain, then the law can protect this property. Copyright law protects and privileges work that is created by a single person, not allowing for the penetration of the feminist ideology of collaborative, relational cultural production (Hvizdak 118). The binaries established by copyright law benefit the patriarchal power structures. It separates the author from the user leaving the latter in a position of inferiority. The user is not a part of the collaborative process to generate new cultural capital. They are left outside of the process and subject to punishment by law if they use the copyrighted material in ways the law deems violating. This thought then signifies that culture and creation stem from a singular source, leaving no credit to the outside influences that allowed it to come to fruition (Hvizdak 119). But it also ignores the main fact that without an audience, there would be no purpose for the work nor would there be any economic gain from it either.
Blog culture perhaps represents the complete opposite of what copyright law attempts to achieve in “protecting” the ownership of work. In the formation of a blog it is evident that the posted piece is comprised of a multitude of outside sources. These sources are linked to the page and made visible; the user can visually see the “seems” of a fashioned piece and the notion that the ideas of the work deriving from a singular entity id shattered. This complicated the idea of creation established by copyright. Why then is protected? The answer is simply no one. Within the blog community there is no need to protect ones work since the cultural ideology of bloging comes from sharing thoughts with others. The option of “commenting” on a blogged piece allows for an instantaneous doctoring of the ideas. It is not a stagnant static work but one that is transient and fluid in its discourse within the community. The ideas are never limited because the opinions are not restricted. What starts off as a simple idea posted for all to see then has the potential to become something far larger and perhaps more important that initially assumed.
A blog cannot be popular and pure at the same time. A blog can either be pure in its content or become popular because of its ability to morph the original intent. In other words a blog ceases to be pure the moment it become popular. This is in complete defiance of copyright’s purpose. Copyright restrictions attempt to preserve the purity of a piece, in doing so it also blockades the process of thought. A blog is popular only if it is measured. Hit meters, being featured, being linked or in other words any comprehensible (visible, audible, feelable etc) result (as a cause of measure) that gives the visibility is a measure of popularity. The purity mentioned here can be seen as the preservation of the patriarchal power. In allowing for this sort of discourse that power is lessened and gives way to a more feminist mode of interaction, one that creates community and cultural capital that is boundless. It is this back and forth of thought, this blurred boundary between user and creator that helps to understand alternative ways of intellectual property systems.

Bring on the voices of America: Ethnic Media (Deuze)

Ethnic media is growing rapidly within the “media information sector.” Forty-five percent of all African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American and Arab American adults prefer ethnic television, radio or newspapers to their mainstream counterparts (Dueze 262). These "primary consumers" are at the frontlines of a technological communicative change that is allowing for a more focused attention on such minority groups.

Ethnic media, like other news media, recognize that an informed public will help keep the government liable for their actions. Armed with knowledge of current events and political issues, the public can become wiser participants in societal decision-making. Ethnic media also cultivates democracy in ways that the mainstream seems to have neglected. Univision, for instance, has led citizenship and voter registration drives during the past two presidential elections by placing voter registration cards in their newspapers (Naleo.com). This involvement in the democratic process might appear improper to some traditionalists. But according to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, this is the US news media's fundamental role: to further democracy (spj.org ).

Day after day, the various branches of ethnic media follow some of the most important and controversial issues. Some of these issues only grab the attention of the mainstream media companies sporadically. Take immigration. A reader might find a story now and then on CNN or The New York Times. But Impremedia, which owns eight Spanish-language print newspapers including Hoy New York, features as many as 10 immigration stories on its website every day (Impremedia.com).

The otherwise invisible communities - ethnic minorities, immigrants, young people - are then pushed into the public sphere of political, social and economic discourse. It “thus fosters ethnic cohesion and cultural maintenance and help minorities integrate into the larger society” (Dueze 270). Ethnic media provides a vital role in the way information is target toward the interests of the underrepresented. The Internet and its two-way discourse has allowed for a surplus of ethnic media outlets to sprout up in view.

The change from a singular majority targeted interest media toward independently generated media is one of the key elements in “using and making your own media” (Dueze 270). Community media, as it is described as in the Dueze essay, strengthens participatory culture (Dueze 269). In doing so minority representation increases substantially, moving toward a “multi cultural convergence culture” (Dueze 271).

Let’s Engage in Culture Online and Off

Citizenship is something which has been under development since at least the American Revolution. Recent movements toward a culture that has developed virtually instead of face-to-face had pushed for a greater understanding on what impact that has in “real” society. Being and existing in reality is blurred when the internet and communities that are present in that form are indeed undeniably in existence. Because of that fact the outcomes of the discourse from those built communities have an impact that must be acknowledged as culturally significant.

In the beginning there was citizenship formed around civil and economic rights. These were comprised out of the rights to trade, property rights and rights to a fair trial. Political rights were significantly developed during the 19th century and comprised of the rights to free association and the right to vote in democratically held elections.

Cultural citizenship deals with the aspects of life which create a sense of being and identity within an individual and groups of individuals. This sense of social being is what is described as social “being.” This symbolic aspect of society is very much related to citizenship and is culturally embedded. What is represented in all media forms is therefore an essential part of citizenship. Through combining all aspects of citizenship it would mean that every individual is embedded in a mutually constructed system of rights and responsibilities. As society progresses so the elements within a concept such as citizenship deepen and change.

The media is now so fundamental to creating and communicating ideas, representations and senses of communities both thick and thin and the institutions which themselves may be thick or thin. With the development of a variety of web based tools such as blogs which allow for anybody with access to a computer and the internet to publish the creation of a rich electronically based public space has now become a reality which can keep developing. This can provide us with both material and symbolic needs in which physical needs interact with and are a part of cultural and social needs expressed through the virtual forming a sense of community never before imagined.

Through a new method of information dispersal, one that is not only supplied but also interactive, such as the internet, communication has reached a newer level of possibility. Online communities do not solely exist within the web, those communities formed upon shared interests and ideas, easily transcend into the real. The internet then serves as a foreground, a platform for locating and contacting people to begin the conversations necessary to make action. This action happens organically and shifts in ways that may not in initially be intended, but that is indeed the beauty of creating networking sites. People find methods to use websites in way that were both unintended and surpasses even what the creators of the site envisioned.

However, the policing and restricting of the internet as free space, by corporations and copyright laws, is the digresser in the movement toward fostering community. With such potential just through mass communication alone and the instantaneous feed and feedback of information through the internet, one can surely say that the internet has become inextricably bound to the way in which 21 century human beings create community. Internet society and physical society work with one another, movements are started, forums created, meet-ups are organized and as we witnessed in this years presidential campaign, elections are won. Through the use of the internet, this particular election proved a very different race. Running strategies were curtailed to reach an audience that had never before been considered. Online advertisements, Youtube videos, blog discussions, articles from ad hock websites sprouted like dandelions, and ed-opt articles of online news papers (Huffingtonpost.com) never mattered more. We saw first hand the power the internet had upon creating community, and starting action in a time when America called for change, the internet sent out that call and the voters answered in the real world not just the virtual. The use of communication tools and participatory media has created an enactment of cultural citizenship.

Fahmian Lets make some profit: Cultural Profit that is

Across the globe, from New York to Japan to Sydney, a new cultural space is emerging— the digital commons. In it, users are creating culture and knowledge, be it by blogging, making videos, remixing songs or writing software. While it may manifest itself in different ways in different places, this movement, much like the nature of the internet itself, has become a truly global one, and is serving as a way to transcend barriers across cultures.

Many of these barriers are already breaking down— the lines between “amateur” and “professional”, “user and “Creator”, “writer and “reader” are becoming increasingly blurred. Within just the music industry alone artist’s have been able to jumpstart there careers right from their own personal computers. Musicians and new-media entrepreneurs have recognized that the web could have a profound effect on the business by giving artists the ability to circumvent the big record labels and market themselves directly to music fans. Independent artist Ingrid Michaelson was discovered on the social networking site Myspace. As a result, it was picked up by various other blogs, and tens of thousands of downloads later, it had made its way into the main stream. Her song “The Way I Am” has been sampled on an Old Navy commercial and “Breakable” and “Corner of Your Heart” were both featured in episodes of “Grey's Anatomy.” In many ways her story can be seen as a lesson in semiotic democracy and the grassroots, viral nature of the internet. She had merely published her work to MySpace and without any further effort on her part, people around the world started listening to her music. Her artistry has become a part of the Digital Cultural Revolution without even realizing it.

By posting ones work online and allowing others free access to it, it then enters a common space of cultural information that is available for the public at large to share, rework, and remix. This process, easily and readily available to anyone with a computer and the dedication to commit to it, can be seen as a method of opposing traditional copyright, which locks down and prevents such access and reworking of a particular artist (corporation, business etc.). Those who use this oppositional method of “self-publishing” their work, art, music, writing etc, then belong to a public domain and attribute a small part (or largely) to this growing pool of global information. Wikipedia is an example of this. The post-it-yourself information gathering website had become the world’s largest user-created encyclopedia. Those creators who use alternative methods of information dissemination by opting for various other licenses that is not as strict as copyright laws are adding to this knowledge space.

What the digital space recognizes is that creation is not produced out of a vacuum; we inevitably build upon the works of others, be it consciously or subconsciously. Thanks to advances in digital technology and communications networks, we are entering a new era of creative production. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the internet was viewed as having unlimited, even unrealistic potential as a medium for commerce. Now, it has increasingly become a platform for cultural communication, yet this new expansive space has produced a new battle—one that is being fought digitally between the “little guy” and big corporation.

“Anti-corporate Warriors” as they have been called, such as ® tmark, adbusters, and Negativland are all, in their own way fighting back in the name of intellectual property protection. These organizations, through various tactics, keep in balance the attacks made on small business and independent artists, attacks that restrict what information, art, or ideas they post which they have deemed “in violation of their own copyright laws”. The dissemination of intellectual property, or access to knowledge, is one of the key pillars of democracy. As information courses ever more rapidly through the internet, barriers to access are gradually reduced. This is what big business is fighting to take control over. It is this same idea of rapid information dispersal that IP Guerillas are also using it to try and keep the internet the last free space for cultural dividends.

Yet as we enter this era of democratic cultural production, the law is increasingly out of touch with reality. There's a complete lack of congruence between what is on the books and what is actually happening in the real (or digital) world. Because of this incongruence independent online users can be bullied by big business but at the same time this blurry boundary also provides for a method to fight back with. If the laws are not clear then neither are the violations. The internet resembles the “lawless Wild West”, and some have called for its regulation while others believe it to be a space for freedom in every sense of the word.