Cyberpolitics

0. Recap: Web 2.0: Technology and Politics

Picking up discussion from the blog: Web 2.0 information distribution character VS. brain washing. (what do we mean by brain washing?) 

1. Introduction:

From the rise of mass society and to the internet era

2. Background and Politics of “Mass” society:

2.1. Age of the Crowd

Industrial Revolution (1760s-1830s), Age of Imperialism (1860s) post-industrial revolution

Democracy in America (1835 and 1840) and the Old Regime and Revolution (1856) – by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Culture and Anarchy (1869)- by Mathew Arnold (1822-1888)

2.2. Capitalism and Mass society (State and individuals)

Karl Marx (1818-1883): The Communist Manifesto (1848) – All That is Solid Melts into the Air / mass production / alienation – Elaborated by Marshall Berman

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917): Suicide (1897) – Anomie

Max Weber (1864-1920): Protestant ethnics and spirit of capitalism (1905) – individual work ethnics

2.3. Frankfurt School (1930) on ideology and critical theory

2.3.1. Walter Benjamin (1892-1940): The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (pdf) (1935)

- Problematique: Oppression and resistance in superstructure
- The conditions of art in the age of Mechanical reproduction
- Aura: historical and spatial distance, mystic and religious value
- reader gain access to authorship
- Photography and film: mass consumption
“The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject.”
“The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious
impulses.”
- fascism organize the proletarian masses by giving them freedom to express but not changing the property structure – fascist aesthetics – war as a goal for the mass movement
- Communism responds by politicizing art.

2.3.2. Adorno (1903-1969) and Horkheimer (1895-1973): The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944)

- Monopoly and identical mass culture
- cultural business rather than art
- consumer culture – production leaded – passive reaction
- radio: turns all participants into listeners
- every technical media are forced into uniformity
- triumph of invested capital
- the falling apart of the whole and parts, structure and details, e.g film
- the end of style due to a “system of non-culture”
- liberalism – supply and demand market – rather than establishing style and tradition – innovation – not to conform means to be “self-employed”
- technological reason – organized amusement
- represses sublimation – love into romance, happiness into laughter
- advertising – representation of social power  – separation of form and content e.g hk developer ad.
- ideology of freedom

2.3.3 Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979): One Dimensional Man (1964)

- post-war industrial society and role of critical theory
- productive apparatus (supported and extended by technical apparatus) tends to become totalitarian to the extent to which it determines not only the socially needed occupations, skills, and attitudes, but also (defines and creates) individual needs and aspirations. It thus obliterates the opposition between the private and public existence, between individual and social needs (e.g facebook: blurs the line between work and leisure). Technology serves to institute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social control and social cohesion.
- In the medium of technology, culture, politics, and the economy merge into an omnipresent system which swallows up or repulses all alternatives. Technological rationality has become political rationality.
- positive thinking, liberation of imagination (one-dimensional) vs. critical, poetic

2.3.4. Critique of Frankfurt School: 陳光興: 媒體/文化批判的人民民主逃逸路線 (1992)

2.4. The Mass Society and contemporary politics

The Mass Society, from Power Elite – by C. Wright Mills

- Opinion making by power elite via “secret” network and mass media.
- Authority formally resides ‘in the people,’ but power is in fact held by small circles of men. That is why the standard strategy of manipulation is to make it appear that the people, or at least a large group of them, ‘really made the decision.’ – i.e. spin doctor.
- Men in masses are gripped by personal troubles, but they are not aware of their true meaning and source. Men in public confront issues, and they are aware of their terms. (problem lies in education)

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988) e.g. U.S War in middle east

3. The History of mass media and New media revolution

3.1 Case study: paper media history in U.S

Dan Gillmor: We the Media, Grassroots Journalism by the people, for the people
佐滕卓己, 現代傳媒史, 北京大學出版社

- Publick Occurrences (25 Sept 1690), 1st U.S. (Boston) newspaper
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): Pennsylvania Gazette
- Stamp Duty (1765): colonial repression of press freedom
- Thomas Paine (1730-1809): early pamphleteer
- Independence of U.S.A (1776) Note: Media and nation building – imagined community
- 1st Amendment by democrats (1787): press freedom
- 1800s: Postal system for newspaper distribution
- 1814: Times’s printing machine 500 X 4 page / hr
- 1833: New York Sun by Day Benjamin. H (Crime and Scandal)
- 1835: New York Herald by Bennett, James Gordon (Social reform)
- 1844: telegraph – factual information
- 1848: Associate Press founded (6 newspapers)
- 1851: New York Times by Raymond, Henry Horace
- 1861-1865: U.S Civil War: Information based; no more anonymous report (military
- 1885: Printing machine: 25,000 / hr
- 1900: Associate Press (690) – fair and objective rather than localism
- 1900s: Corporate era – 1960-70s – monopoly of big media. e.g Cable
- 1980: beginning of the Internet Era – BBS
- 1999: anti WTO and IMC movement
- 2001: Sept 11 blogging (rise of citizen media)

3.2 Mass media and politics of opinion making

- News and opinion as consumption
- Spin doctor and P.R politics
- Corporatism and monoploy – hidden political agenda and economic interest
- Where’s the market? The compromise of speech freedom (same as Yahoo! and Sina in China)

3.3 Implications of internet based grassroots journalism

- role of producers and consumers blurs
- new journalistic practice: factual, subjective, conversational, transparent, process, user-generated ethics. see: Earn your trust (2005)
- politics of opinion making (refer to the discussion of Web 2.0 and brian washing)
- democracy – internet mob or critical mass?
- information monoploy – neoliberal corporatism – how about incorporation?
- network effect and tribalization
- utilitarian individualism – expressive individualism – how to transgress from individual expression to social / structural change?
- digital divide

Ref:
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People by Dan Gilmor

4. Hong Kong: the development of blogging

4.1 Hong Kong blog distribution (via sidekick Aug 2007):
Xanga 370016
Y!Blog 38680
Mysinablog 2411
Live Space 2143
Hompy 1445
Blogspot 2282
Mocasting 432
WordPress 128
Hkbloggers 17
Small BSP Independent Blog 629

4.2 Discussion
Book: Why we blog? 點止日記咁簡單
Blog is blog
Blog 2005
Blog 2006

4.3 Political action
Blog ring: Beyond the Stars

4.4 Discussion: What can you tell about blogging in Hong Kong? The difference between blog and BBS in its localization process and political influence in Hong Kong?