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.

Culture Jamming it up

In Kalle Lasn’s book Culture Jam he identifies the element of the United States that has led to the current sense of malaise experienced by today’s youth and the nostalgia for an American Dream. Lasn believes that we as American have been unknowingly recruited into a cult of our own making and “set into roles and behavior patterns we did not choose.” We are consumers bound by the constant onslaught of advertisements that drive us to believe that we need to buy, obtain, purchase— for Lasn we have been brainwashed unknowingly and unaware.

Jackson Lears essay, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony” suggest another idea. If Lasn believes Americans are victims to corporations without any fault, the Lears suggests, based on Gramsci’s Prison Notes that perhaps the masses are more aware than we would like to admit. Gramsci suggests a notion of a divided consciousness; brainwashing the masses is not the method in which one gains Hegemony but instead a suppression of certain views of American life are replacing it by allowing “public discourse to make some forms of experience readily available to consciousness while ignoring or suppressing the others.” This is done through mass media or as Lasn puts it the player is the corporation.

Culture Jam gives a brief history of American uprising against corrupt political systems. The Boston Tea Party is the example used to show the American people beginning to understand their own strength when working together. Early American sentiment of corporate power was always held in suspicion. They were kept under close scrutiny of by the state and were very limited in how much action they can actually take; if any violation occurred they were dissolved— corporations were controlled by the people and not the other way around. The Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad Supreme Court decision was the pivotal moment that changed this way of corporation governing. After having gained much control and power through the disorder of the civil war, this decision, which deemed that a corporation was a “natural person” under the constitution and therefore had protection under the Bill of Rights allowed for corporations to sit on the throne of power.

Because corporations were not equal to the average citizen in that they had far more money and financial support than any citizen can have alone it created a rift of social and political power that would have serious repercussions for decades to come. Today 42 percent of the worlds wealth is controlled by the top five hundred corporations. Corporations free buy each others stocks and shares. They lobby and bankroll elections. They manage and broadcast airwaves, set our industrial and economic agendas, and grow as big and as powerful as they want. Proving President Lincolns foreshadowing of “An era of corruption in high places [where] wealth is aggregated in a few hands…and the republic is destroyed.”

Mass media is a major tool in controlling America’s flow of information. Corporations control the media and therefore control what we buy, what is popular and where the flow of trends go. The 2001 film Josie and the Pussy Cats pokes fun at mass media and its control on consumer culture. In the film the record label MegaRecords, headed by the trendy and scheming Fiona (Parker Posey) pumps out pop bands and, through an arrangement with the United States government, get teens to buy their records and follow "a new trend every week" by putting subliminal messages under the music. These messages change weekly; “Orange is the new pink!” The Government's motive in the scheme is to help build a robust economy from the "wads of cash" teenagers earn from babysitting and minimum wage jobs. One particular scene features a Goth girl in a record store who goes against the pop-culture trend, doesn’t listen to the music MegaRecords produces and believes it’s all a big corporate scheme— Alan Cummings Character Wyatt Frame immediately calls in for reinforcements and has the girl kidnapped “taken care of” and the threat diminished. This hilarious and exaggerated depiction of mass media’s ability and control may not play-out in reality the same way but Lasn suggests that it comes very close.

If we use the Goth girl in the film to represent subculture and Wyatt to represent corporate power we can understand the workings of how a particular historical bloc becomes hegemonic while subcultures form in resistance. In the film because the media conglomerate MegaRecords was able to control almost every facet of consumerism their ideologies on trends prevailed. They were able to convince mass culture that their products were “cool” by constantly bombarding people with its images and messages embedded within their music and advertisements. They achieved hegemony by covering all grounds economically and developed a “worldview that appealed to a wide range of other groups within the society” their claim being that these particular products, colors, latte’s would serve in the consumers interest because it would make them trendy, cool, popular and stylish— they succeeded in making their products signify the “popular teen”. While the subordinate groups, (the Goths, rebels, emo kids) who sensed the corruption in the scheme did not have the economic power to gain the media control to promote their ideals and therefore it did not become the hegemonic trend. What the film recognized was in order to continue to keep the youth buying the products they needed they too needed to constantly change the fad, change the subliminal messages in their music and keep the youth wanting more. The movie recognizes that hegemony is “a continuous creation” and they did not allow the counterhegemonies to remain a live option.

However if there are counter-hegemonic groups aware of the media manipulation there most be some sort of consciousness in the hegemonized groups that they too are being controlled. Gramsci describes this as a “half-conscious complicity in their own victimization”. As young teenagers with limited amounts of spending money keeping up with the trends becomes costly, however because their ideals have been “muddled by assimilation to a dominant culture”, they still behave against their own interests in order to maintain their status as “cool”.

Lasn explains the movement to end this and make more people aware that they are being duped by corporations. He describes the Culture Jamming movement as a sort of outlet of stopping, interrupting or jamming the messages media sends to its viewers and make them more conscious to take action together to fight against the pollution of information feed via advertisement. Billboard defacing, counter-commercials, and the internet all hold a power that we together can grab hold of and use to our advantage.

At a recent conference geared on Gender I attended a discussion panel on censorship. One of the attendees of the panel Christine Koh, a former Wheaton student and current founder and editor of Boston Mamas.com shared a story. Online marketing at Boston.com set up a Google Adwords campaign such that if a user types “bostonmamas.com” into the search engine, the top sponsored ad that results is for BoMoms. Meaning, they created a campaign to intentionally and duplicitously advertise themselves as “Bostonmamas.com. When Koh cought wind of this scheme she immediately went to the higher-ups of the Boston Globe without response. She took instead took to her blog and announced to her readers of the unjust methods of campaigning the Globe had created to attack her readership. Koh wrote a letter to the Globe and in the spirit of full transparency, this letter was also posted at BostonMamas.com. Her readers took to the web with fierceness and posted comments, tweets, and other blog posts in her defense. After bombarding the web with responses to the Globe’s actions against Koh’s site they removed the link without a word. Koh posted this response to the initiative on her blog:

“I’m incredibly grateful to everyone for their support following last week’s unfortunate dealings with Boston.com online marketing. The subsequent comments, tweets, and posts truly reflected the passion that readers and bloggers have for transparency, as well as the beauty and power of social media.”

Koh’s resistance to Google and the corporate owned Boston Globe proved successful. Her website will remain easily accessible. This example of the “little guy” v. the Big Dog and how together through the channels we do have readily available to us we can help put big business back in its place.

Mark Dery describes Lasn’s Culture Jamming effort and its move to the internet. “Jammers are heartened by the electronic frontiers promise of a new media paradigm— interactive rather than passive, nomadic and atomized rather than resident and centralized, egalitarian rather than elitist.” Compared to the one way flow of received information from the televisions in our living rooms, the internet provides for two-way communication. One is able to respond to the media on a large scale and disseminate thoughts and ideas but also comment on them rebut them argue them.

“This medium gives us possibility that we can build a world unmediated by authorities and experts. The roles of the reader, writer and critic are so quickly interchangeable that they become increasingly irrelevant in a community of co-creation.”

Even so as experienced by Christine Koh and the attack on Bostonmamas.com, big business will always try and monopolize the spread of information however the internet provides the tools to fight back.

Thinking in regards to the Bubble I can see this website becoming a tool to start the dialogue needed at Wheaton College. On our campus there is currently only one source of information dispersal to the student community, that being the Wheaton Wire. Because this newspaper has a complete monopoly on information and its print form does not allow for an organic flow of conversation it is difficult to refute it or have discussions on its effectiveness and/or its content. How would be able to confront the Wire if the only way to do so is through the Wire? The Bubble strives to break this cycle. By adding the online component to our journalistic efforts it can become a method of activism that defeats the static one-sidedness of the information monopoly.

The current saturation of relatively inexpensive multimedia communication tools hold tremendous potential for destroying the monopoly of ides we have lived in for so long…A personal computer can be configured to act as a publishing house, a broadcast quality TV studio, a professional recording studio, or node in an international bulletin system.

The future of the Bubble is yet to be seen however with the right components and situation on campus it can become a necessary almost inextricable tool for campus information and communication among students. The ability for the Web to create communities is where we hope to bring the Bubble magazine— a “Universe of Technological Communication- patrolled by groups of communication guerillas” can exist and will possibly change the way Wheaton perceives consumerism, media and journalism, the possibilities are perhaps boundless.

Attempting to understand Jakson Lears and Gramsci

I must have read the Jackson Lears piece about three times now and each time I’m not quite sure if I grasp the concepts he extracts from Antonio Gramsci. So I looked up some other reading on Cultural Hegemony to gain a better understanding of Lears and Gramsci himself. After doing this I came across a few interesting authors on the subject of Hegemony and included in this blog some of the ideologies they received from Gramsci as well.

Hegemony is the dominance of one nation or culture over the other. This dominance creates norms, socially, politically and otherwise. For Gramsci hegemony takes on a specifically Marxist character. Of Gramsci’s era, the dominant class of a Western Europe nation was the bourgeoisie, while the crucial subordinate class was the proletariat. He refers to the leadership of the proletariat over the other exploited classes. The proletariat for Gramsci must be the leader of the struggle of a whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle for all the working and exploited people against oppressors and exploiters (Anderson 17).

Gramsci defines hegemony as a form of control exercised by a dominant class, in the Marxist sense of a group controlling the means of production. Gramsci's "hegemony" refers to a process of moral and intellectual leadership through which dominated or subordinate classes of post-1870 industrial Western European nations consent to their own domination by ruling classes, as opposed to being simply forced or coerced into accepting inferior positions. (Lears 568)

Gramsci uses the classical base-superstructure model of Marxism. The economic base included only the material necessary for production. The superstructure was arranged in two halves.

• "Social hegemony" which includes the "'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group [i.e. the ruling class – in Gramsci's Western Europe, the bourgeoisie]; this consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.
• "Political government" which includes "apparatus of state coercive power which 'legally' enforces discipline on those groups who do not 'consent' either actively or passively. This apparatus is, however, constituted for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed"

Through a societies superstructure hegemony becomes a form of control. Superstructure is used in three particular ways: Institutions which are the legal and political forms of the existing real relations of production; Forms of consciousness that express a particular class view of the world; political and cultural practices which covers a range of activities when men become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out.

The two superstructures do not function solely on their own but come together to create the integral state. Gramsci uses the idea of the “state” to signify the “governmental-coercive apparatus”. This includes the functions of social hegemony and political government. The state is dictatorship plus hegemony. Political society plus civil society equal the state, in other words hegemony is protected by coercion. “Ruling groups do not maintain their hegemony merely by giving their domination an aura of moral authority through the creation of perpetuation of legitimating symbols; they must also seek to win consent of subordinate groups to the existing social order.” (Lears 569)

When a group develops its own particular world view, what Gramsci refers to as a “historical bloc” it may or may not become hegemonic. This depends on how the group establishes itself within the framework of other groups and classes. Hegemony can only be achieved when a historical bloc develops a world view that is appealing to multiple groups within a wide range of society and they must be able to claim that their view is for the benefit of society as a whole (Lears 571). Thus the system of hegemonization is constant, it is a life cycle that consistently meets protest and must be legitimized repeatedly. Power is then fluid it belongs to many and culture is shaped by many, though the hegemony can serve the interests of some groups better than others. Subordinate groups may participate in legitimizing their own domination half-consciously. Lears speaks of a hegemonic continuum which can be closed or open. In the closed continuum the subordinate groups “lack the language necessary even to conceive concerted resistance” and in the open continuum “the capability for resistance flourishes and may lead to the creation of a counterhegemonic culture”. The idea of “contradictory consciousness” allows for one to understand that domination and subordination is fluid as well, it is not built in all defining categories, which according to Lears has opened possibilities for more complex ideas of popular culture.

In an attempt to apply this to a more tangible ideology I present to you Google. Google, used by millions as a search engine but also with the company’s vast methods of organizing your online life (i.e. Google chrome, Google Calendar, Google Docs) it has quickly become a favorite among internet users. If we consider Google the dominant group, which has successfully validated its ideologies, values and uses to the public domain, we can see the contradictory consciousness Gramsci speaks of. Currently Google is now recording the types of websites you visit in order to gather a behavioral profile of your interests purportedly so that they can send you targeted advertising. This policy is in addition to their current policy of keeping a record of every single web search you have ever made along with as much other personally identifying information as they can gather. They claim that they are doing this in order to personalize and simplify the online experience per user making it more efficient and enjoyable. The information gathered can be readily handed over to authorities upon request. They can receive detailed web histories and behavioral profiles in a flash. In doing this they are violating the online privacy of millions. One can safely say that many users will willingly allow for this to happen in order to gain the “perks” Google offers. This is an act done puposly. It is easy for an internet user not to use Google, but instead an alternative web browser such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, but subordinate groups may continue in maintaining the Google universe even if it means it will legitimize their own subordination.

Aside from Lears I stumbled across this interesting reading by Raymond Williams on Hegemony:

1. Hegemony constitutes lived experience, "a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives" (100).
2. Hegemony exceeds ideology "in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily abstracted as 'ideology'" (109)
3. Lived hegemony is a process, not a system or structure (though it can be schematized as such for the purposes of analysis)
4. Hegemony is dynamic - "It does not just passively exist as a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not all its own."
5. Hegemony attempts to neutralize opposition - "the decisive hegemonic function is to control or transform or even incorporate [alternatives and opposition]" (113).
6. One can argue persuasively that "the dominant culture, so to say, at once produces and limits its own forms of counter-culture."
7. Hegemony is not necessarily total – "It is misleading, as a general method, to reduce all political and cultural initiatives and contributions to the terms of the hegemony."
8. "Authentic breaks within and beyond it . . . have often in fact occurred."

Works Cited

Anderson, Perry. "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci." New Left Review 100 (1976): 5-78.

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised Edition. New
York: Oxford UP, 1985.

The Culture industry and Pandora's Box

 

Adorno and Horkheimer (A&H) write within the specific framework of a moment in history when Hollywood and the corporate radio networks were a monopoly of mass media. A&H suggest that film, radio and magazines are all a part one super structure. A&H consider all mass culture identical under the monopoly. That is to say, they no longer need to mask their true intentions with the façade of art, these media’s are not art but instead they are a method of business with the ultimate goal of creating funds— Moneymakers. Culture is then an industry, a money-generating tool to be manipulated by means of technology, where technology then serves to manipulate society.

This super structure is enticing, drawing people into the assumption that it is necessary. The Industry provides reason to its importance by stating there is a consumer demand and then further strengthens the industry by providing this “need” with laborers. These laborers— the managers, producers, and directors of the media— are there to fulfill the industry’s need to organize.

Technology’s function is the manipulator designed by the industry. “It is the coercive nature of society alienated from itself.” Ownership of power is transferred to technology and those who control and produce it. Through the processes of standardization and comodification, the culture industry shapes society, by means of consolidating media companies. A&H suggest that the culture industry claims to serve the consumers' needs for entertainment, but conceals the way that it standardizes these needs, manipulating the consumers to desire what it produces.

 

A&H state that society cannot resist control because we no longer have control of individual consciousness. They describe how phones allowed for a sense of control making its users subjects they are active and liberal. The television does the opposite by only allowing for one-way communication. The T.V. feeds messages to its viewer, there is no discourse, and they are all subjected to the same broadcasts creating one single idea or thought. This of course is before the thousands of channels and networks found on cable and digital television broadcasts we have today.

I am currently sitting here listening to music on Pandora.com which led me to think about the structure and design of the site. Listeners create “their own” radio stations based on a particular artist they like and Pandora generates a playlist of artists whose music is similar to the given artist. It made me think of the consumerism and the Culture Industry Adorno and Horkheimer describe in their essay.

While listening to the selections generated on Pandora for my Radiohead playlist it made me think of the types of people I know listen to this type of music in New York City. I instantly thought trendy hipsters migrating to Williamsburg Brooklyn wearing skinny jeans with dirty greasy hair and oversized headphones. (I know not everyone who appreciates Radiohead has this particular style). But looking at the selections of music Pandora came up with Death cab for Cutie, Muse, The Killers, all of these bands do indeed have similar qualities, but none of these bands I would have listened to had they not been suggested to me. I thought of the type of following for this type of music. It is indeed a culture. A&H state:

Talented performers belong to the industry long before it displays them; otherwise they would not be so eager to fit in. The attitude of the public, which ostensibly and actually favors the system of the culture industry, is a part of the system and not an excuse for it”

This was an interesting idea. A&H are basically saying that we as a mass culture have no freedom to what we find enjoyable because it is fed to us through the “culture industry”.

There seems to be only a limited bunch of groups in which one can belong to. All of these groups have already been categorized I see these distinctions in categories most clearly in New York City. Certain neighborhoods have certain types of people, all of which play into a code of dress, speak, and of course consumerism. My friends and I sometimes joke about becoming a “Chelsea boy”. A Chelsea boy can be clearly spotted: Tight designer T-shirt, designer jeans draped over a muscled body, manicured nails, waxed…everything and totally up on their pop culture. The neighborhood pushes these products to be consumed in a large way; spend enough time in Chelsea and you’ll feel its pull on you. I think this is what A&H are talking about when they say, “There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. Producers have done it for him.” The Chelsea culture appeals to the single gay white man. These men who have well paying jobs and because they are single have no monetary obligations toward family, so they spend it on designer everything, $45 dollar manicures and Prada loafers, the Chelsea culture is a money making industry. I understand that A&H are specifically speaking about mass media, but in today’s society “mass media” has changed from just the Hollywood movies and radio shows spoken of in the essay. Today’s culture is fed through multiple mass media forms, from traditional television and radio and now through the internet.

Adorno and Horkheimer speak of the culture industry in similar to the way in which Foucault speaks of power. Foucault expresses that no one can live outside of the power structure, A & H state the same of the media as if it were inescapable and all persons within society have no power to resist its force. Since our imagination of something “outside” of the culture industry is inevitably marked by the culture industry, we cannot oppose anything to it as “more free” or “truer”. I think A&H’s essay can be argued many times over, considering the advancement in technologies we have today that don’t help perpetuate the Culture industries hold over society but resist it. The internet is primarily a means of doing this, making communication easier with like minded individuals who share feelings of opposition toward the culture industry. Also the proliferation of underground media, via the web, the circulation of alternative underground cultures, fads and trends are not accounted for but perhaps supposed to be encompassed in the essay.