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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

blogging, little magazines, public sphere « Previous | |Next »
May 18, 2006

Guy Rundle, an Arena Publications Editor, has returned to the debate about the significance of blogging on Crikey Daily.

His initial reflections, which started the recent round, had explored the possible affinities between the brave new world of blogging, and the old and forgotten one of CB radio. It was an odd affinity to explore, given the way that some blogs situate themselves in terms of the formation of public opinion on public issues, attempt to broaden the public debate beyond the often narrow concerns of the Canberra Press gallery, explore issues traditionally dealt with by the little magazines in the public sphere, the differences between blogging and reportage, and the link between blogging citizenship and public intellectuals.

Rundle's was a deflationary approach. His return to the debate picks up on the response from Australian bloggers:

Mark Bahnisch of LP ---or Larvatus Prodeo---suggested I take another look at the blogosphere, as something which can build an audience and provide alternative running commentary and opinion. John Quiggin suggested that a better analogy---other than the evolution of 17th century pamphlets into newspapers---was with the rise and fall of little magazines, as audiences, readers and preoccupations change, and that the blog was putting the gatekeeper function of the editor into a pretty substantial crisis.

Rundle is not persuaded by these responses from Australian bloggers.

He says his concern is about both form and content of blogs:

I rarely read the brace of key Australian blogs (LP, Quiggin, Catallaxy etc) not because their contributors are not interesting but because their sprawling form makes them a poor investment of scarce time. Some of them are simply groups of friends thinking out loud, which is fine. But those seeking to use the more open form as a new type of media, as Quiggin seems to suggest, seem likely to fail simply because they take the more-is-less principle to its asymptote. The voluminous chains of partial ideas, comments on comments, previous references, etc seems open--- but they're actually insular, since there are few entry points that can be grasped whole.

In that respect, I think many collective bloggers are conning themselves a bit, and avoiding the harder task of writing more sustained pieces, for the sake of the easy buzz of a quick upload--- and thus wasting a great deal of their creators' productive time.


I'll accept the more-is-less and the insularity arguments with qualification---sometimes the material is partial and rough because it is a draft or a jotting that is then worked up elsewhere.The analogy is an artist's sketch book. Nietzsche's notebooks also come to mind.

Secondly, many blog posts are engaged in contesting different interpretations of the meaning or significance of political events. However blogs are not little magazines such as Borderlands with their academic articles on public issues. Though the group blogs could evolve into become more like a digitial Arena Magazine, at the moment they are more akin to the op eds in the corporate media, or the talking head shows on television run by journalists. What they enable is more diverse voices to express themselves--voices that are not normally heard in the powerful corporate media or in the magazines based in the academic expert culture. This is something to be welcomed and celebrated.

Rundle's form argument is strange given the greater acessibility of digital achives to the print archives of Arena and the linking capacity of the blogs to good articles and documents on the internet. This opens up access to worthwhile material that is often overlooked in the public sphere and so informs the deliberation on an issue.

What is also odd the way that Rundle's content argument fails to link 'the new type of media' to liberal democracy; and to the rejection by some of the media's watchdog role on behalf of citizens sections of the corporate media (eg. Murdoch's Fox Television). The significance of Quiggin's link to the 17th century pamphlets into newspapers is that these were the first form of the public sphere in liberal democracy. The mass media of an industrial modernity was the second form. Digital media in postmodernity is the third form. There was not even a gesture to the internet and democracy by Rundle. ye the the public sphere is the site in which the struggles that traversed civil society is played out, with opposing forces organizing their own communities.

The tendency of the public sphere is to degenerate from a sphere of rational-critical debate into an arena in which competing interest groups struggle for power. Isn't debate crucial for political life? If debate being the core of political lifeI mean what Hannah Arendt means: that it is only through the exchange, modification, and criticism of opinion that political deliberation proceeds. Blogs live with the diversity of opinon.

Rundle doesn't even bother explore the possiblities of bloggers contributing to deliberation in the public sphere. So his responses can only be considered shallow and partial.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 3:32 PM | | Comments (8)
Comments

Comments

Gary, I have heard/seen Guy and his colleague Paul James speak on several occasions. They know their stuff.
I think bloggers are quite limited. Sure they can spread ideas quickly and help to expose the lies of those in power.

But then again those on the "right" of the culture wars are all to one degree or another apologists for the prevailing "culture" of death.And from my experience of browsing there are heaps more bloggers on the "right" than on the left. And the overwhelming tone of the those on the "right" is their punk adolescent ignorance and their sheer bad faith and bad intentions.The perpetual sneer.

Even the more intelligent ones are crippled by their "west is best and only" cultural provincialism and also their religious provincialism which is expressed by their advocacy of dim-witted (always "christian")
exoteric religiosity.And most often obsessed with what people do with their genitals.

But the blogger sitting alone at his (they are mainly male) computer is the archetype of 20th century dreadful sanity.The seemingly detached invulnerable observer.
Seemingly immune and invulnerable to the up close bodily messyness of the never ending PROCESS that participating in the building of true community really takes.

See for instance Radical Politics For Ordinary Men & Women at: www.dabase.net/radicpol.htm

John

John.
I agree with your points about Rundle and James and blogging:

I have heard/seen Guy and his colleague Paul James speak on several occasions. They know their stuff.I think bloggers are quite limited. Sure they can spread ideas quickly and help to expose the lies of those in power.

What they ignore is the potential of blogs as watchdogs for democracy and their significance in the formation of public opinion in a liberal democracy.

Re your other point:

But the blogger sitting alone at his (they are mainly male) computer is the archetype of 20th century dreadful sanity.The seemingly detached invulnerable observer. Seemingly immune and invulnerable to the up close bodily messyness of the never ending PROCESS that participating in the building of true community really takes.

True. But you can have digitial communities as distinct from face-to-face ones, and blogs can be attached to the little magazines as with some American magazines. There is nothing to stop the crowd at Arena Publications from running their own blog.

The fact that Rundle is behind a paywall doesn't help to promote discussion. Could you mail me a copy?

John,
I'll forward you the Crikey Daily when I'm back in Adelaide tomorrow night. From memory the piece is short and sweet.

I find it ironic that Arena is still behind a paywall--albeit an oldfashioned print one. The little left of centre print magazines must be doing it hard in these digital days where the conflict of opinions is in the centre of things.

If a political discussion is akin to sitting around a table at which people as citizens are gathered then a paywall makes it difficult to develop a common shared world through looking at things from different perspectives on a particular issue.

Without developing that common shared sense we are driven back on our own subjective experience, in which only our feelings, wants and desires have reality.

John, The fact that Rundle is behind a paywall doesn't help to promote discussion.

roflmgo.

There is the divide in my opinion; scarcity mentality vs abundant mentality. Industrial era vs Information age.

That isn't to say there is no place for industrial thinking in the information age, craftsmen still existed in the industrial era after all, they just weren't the primary focus of production and advance.


Cameron,
Though I accept your scarcity/abundant duality that is mapped onto industrial and information capitalist society, I'm not happy staying working within it. It strikes me that:

*the paywall is an increasing feature of the abundant digital world;

*developing weblogs into something new is becoming increasingly expensive, given the technical expertise that is now beeing required;

*the new forms of blogs and the more successful ones are becoming increasingly commercial with all the advertising.

Where that leaves me I'm not sure. In a deconstructive mode I guess.

Abundance has no gripe with capitalism or profit. Though some forms of production commoditise the output to $0 which capitalism cannot compete with (ie opensource software).

Abudance requires that the content created be permanently archivable, readable, touchable and buildable.

Advertising doesnt infringe on that capability. Putting the content behind a genuine pay-wall where the internet cannot archive/search it, does infringe on abundance and the content becomes a scarce good (ie parts of Crikey).

I think it is ironic for Rundle's arguments, that yourself and Mark Bahnisch are breaking the scarcity nature of Rundle's content by emailing it, or posting it on the web.

Cameron,
Okay. Points taken.
I'm going back to Rundle's negative remarks on blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. Consider this quote from here on the Becker-Possner Blog, which says that blogging:

is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek's thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge.

What is missing in Australia is a blog that explores current issues of economics, politics, law and policy in a dialogic format.