"When philosophy paints its grey in grey then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." -- G.W.F. Hegel, 'Preface', Philosophy of Right.
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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
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democracy, blogging, gatekeeping
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February 19, 2008
In the introduction to the forthcoming International Blogging, edited by Adrienne Russell and Nabil Echchaibi Adrienne Russell says that:
To many, the spread of the American blogging model around the world—including its norms and practices and modes of operation—effectively represents the spread of democracy. The rhetoric that surrounds blogging essentially describes the liberating potential of a new (American) cultural product, created and distributed globally through inherently democratizing digital tools and networks. More specifically, a rash of recent works outlines the emergence of a new more horizontal politics and journalism driven by blogs and the networks blogs seem to engender.... These works mostly derive from compelling anecdotal evidence but also mostly overlook or ignore the ways power dynamics offline influence developments online. There remains generally a crucial lack of integration in new-media studies between online and offline realities. The theoretical links scholars have been forging, myself included, between democracy and the internet generally and blogs in particular form the great bulk of popular as well as official thinking, obscuring variable contexts and hemming in larger realities.
Recent writing on the liberatory potential of digital media constitutes the latest chapter in the promotion in the West of media as perhaps the key tool in the spread of democracy.
Russell adds:
Digital communication in general has been touted for its independence relative to mass communication, its lack of gatekeepers, its mostly unmediated network qualities. ...Discussion of blogging takes this thinking to new levels. Blogging is celebrated as extended public journaling, pure multimedia freedom of expression, produced anywhere in the world there is internet access and available for eyeballs the world over to take in. The democratic character of blogging is accepted as inherent, the very essence of both the act and the product, the starting point of any larger discussion.Blogs are seen as part of, even perhaps fueling, a trend toward more outspoken, unruly, and mobilized publics, even if the manner in which these publics are being received is accepted as highly contextual
In the blogosphere, as on the internet more generally, new forms of gatekeeping have arisen and new sets of skills are becoming established practice, the prerequisites for entree into the realm of those with power on the web.
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I'd argue that the American blogosphere has evolved along the lines of the public sphere ideal, but the Australian blogosphere has evolved along the lines of a public culture model. The Australian one seems to be more about simply being heard which has closer links with the private domain of identity than the public domain of deliberative democracy.
Differences between the Australian and American political systems have been used to explain differences between the two blogospheres, but we also have a different democratic culture here. We've developed gatekeeping practices alongside the A-list type that have more to do with the personal capacities and identity of participants than a pecking order of professionalism or factual accuracy.
Power on the web tends to be measured the wrong way I think. It tends to be calculated on the basis of hits, links and comments, but I'd argue that power in the Australian space needs to be measured according to who is saying what, and why they're clustered on the internet instead of (as opposed to as well as) in traditional media.
That's what I reckon anyway.