I’ll admit, I’m feeling mighty foolish at the moment, especially after the reading we did for this week. A few weeks ago I talked about how I was delusional to the fact that I could use my network of friends (and others could do the same) to influence them and other networks to overcome clicktivism and be more service-oriented. In fact, I am (was?) basing my entire project on that main point.
Apparently, according to Morozov, I was being too “cyber-utopian” and idealizing the internet and networks far more than I should have been. He says that:
The idea that the Internet favors the oppressed rather than the oppressor is marred by what I call cyber-utopianism: a naive belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge its downside (p. xiii).
I wouldn’t say that I have refused to acknowledge the dark side of the Internet because if you’ll recall, I myself mused on the fact that the government in Egypt could have used the Internet to trick protesters instead of turning it off completely.
However, Morozov makes a good point. We need to be aware that just like coins, duck tape, and The Force, the Internet has two sides, and when we blatantly ignore one to the praise of the other, we cause more problems than if we had weighed both sides. BUT, I think it goes both ways. While being cyber-utopian and believing that the Internet can solve all evils (“internet-centrism”) and is inherently democratic is one sided, so is going the opposite direction and saying that the Internet actually doesn’t fix anything and we are deluding ourselves by thinking that it does. While I do think that Morozov tries to find a balance between the two in his argument, I get the feeling he’s trying really hard to reject all cyber-utopian ideals more than finding the good in them (probably because he too (like I) had jumped on the bandwagon too quickly.
He admits that in the backlash of realizing that he had been cyber-utopian himself, he was “tempt[ed] to throw [his] hands up in despair and give up on the Internet altogether” (p. xv). But, he then realizes that that too would be wrong:
Rather, the lesson to be drawn is that the Internet is here to stay, it will continue growing in importance, and those concerned with democracy promotion need not only grapple with it but also come up with mechanisms and procedures to ensure that another tragic blunder on the scale of Abu Ghraib will never happen in cyberspace (p. xv).
In this point, he is right. As much as some like to ignore it or think it’s insignificant, the Internet is here and we have to deal with it and its impact to us socially, economically, and politically. Now that we have it and it is continuing to evolve and change how things work, we need to start recognizing how we too might need to change and evolve how we do things as well. And in order to decide, we need to look at it with both perspectives in mind.
Morozov’s Slacktivism
I LOVED that Morozov had an entire chapter on slacktivism in his book. Because not only does it have to do with the topic and project I’m pursuing, but he made some rather valid arguments that either backed up my original thoughts or made me reevaluate others. He discusses an experiment by Colding-Jorgensen in which someone created a Facebook group to protest the destruction of a fountain that was never actually going to get destroyed, and it soon gained over 20,000 members in protest to save the historical fountain. Morozov remarks that there are two ways to look at this experiment. The first being that:
His online friends were likely to share his concern for the preservation of Denmark’s cultural heritage, and since joining the group did not require anything other than clicking a few buttons, [his friends] eagerly lent their names to Colding-Jorgensen’s online campaign. If that request had come from some unknown entity with few historically conscious contacts, or if joining in required performing a number of challenging chores, chances are the success of that crusade would have been far less spectacular (p. 180).
This option would then imply that there would be no reason to pay attention to it because more than likely, nothing will result from having members in a Facebook group because it’s so easy to join said group. But, the other option is:
Another, more optimistic way to assess the growth of activism on social networks is to celebrate the ease and speed with which Facebook groups can grow and go viral. From this perspective, Colding-Jorgensen’s experiment has shown that when communication costs are low, groups can easily spring into action…. Proponent s of this view argue that Facebook is to group formation what Red Bull is to productivity (p. 180).
This one would then imply that because of activism on social networks, it makes it easier and faster to create awareness for causes etc. and that would be a valuable resource that one should not ignore. But, with both options, Morozov points out that they are missing the real point. For it’s not important to determine whether or not we should ignore Facebook groups or embrace them as the new form of activism; rather, it’s more important to look at those that make up the group than that the group has high numbers of members. In analyzing both views on the experiment, Morozov remarks that
Neither offers a good account of what membership in such networked causes does to the members themselves…. Nor do these two competing interpretations indicate what kind of effect such online campaigns may have on the effectiveness and popularity of other offline and individual activist efforts…. Before policymakers embrace digital activism as an effective way of pushing against authoritarian governments, they are well-advised to fully investigate its impact both on its practitioners and on the overall tempo of democratization (p. 183).
I think this is the important thing to remember, when it comes to networks and the assumptions about digital activism, and therefore slacktivism. While it is easy to join Facebook groups and donate money to charities, the people that join have their reasons in doing so, and most of them mean well but aren’t sure what else they can do. But, as he points out later, we shouldn’t misjudge quantity for quality, and that’s where we run into the problem of slacktivism and in trying to use Facebook groups and various other sites to create activists.
My Concluding Thoughts
I realize that in order to really understand and analyze ways in which to prevent or at least minimize slacktivism, I have to keep in mind that being connected to others and influencing my network is not the only way or even the right way to help the world become a better place. The Internet cannot solve everything, and the people involved in real life are just as important as the group and their online participation.
I’ll be honest, it’s still in my nature to look on the bright side of Internet freedom (and I’m not sure I can ever change that or would want to), but I recognize that with the light must come dark or else I would not see it as such. Yes it’s true, Twitter wasn’t the only thing that allowed the Iranian or Egyptian revolution to happen, but it sure helped spread the message that it was going on, right? (Which I think is still pretty important to remember.)
AKA: I Think I Just Found the Key Point of My Final Project.
Lately my posts have been focusing on how I could get people to take what they see online and actually do something in the real world. For some reason, I acted like it was some foreign concept that we have yet to discover and harness to help rid the world of clicktivism. Clearly, I’m delusional because I’ve been going about the problem ALL WRONG! What made me see the light? This book:
In it, authors Christakis and Fowler emphasize how we are all connected and how important those connections are in our lives because they determine what decisions we make and how we are influenced and how others influence us as well. We have obvious connections in our life: family, friends, and coworkers, and all of these connections “offer opportunities to influence and be influenced” (p. 22). However, the authors take it a step further saying that while everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation, we also have an influence of three degrees:
Everything we do or say tends to ripple through our network, having an impact on our friends (one degree), our friends’ friends (two degrees), and even our friends’ friends’ friends (three degrees). Our influence gradually dissipates and ceases to have a noticeable effect on people beyond the social frontier that lies at three degrees of separation. Likewise, we are influenced by friends within three degrees but generally not by those beyond (p. 28).
So, if we each have an influence of three degrees, with enough people in our network, we can affect/influence a large amount of people and in turn they can influence more people and so on. In the book, the authors cover both the negative and positive impacts of this influence on the network and individuals. But, they remark that through the network, people tend to be more altruistic because “people very often ignore their selfish tendencies when interacting with people to whom they are connected” (p. 218).
This is the key to combatting clicktivism. We need to consciously decide to act and in turn it will influence others to do so also. And in turn, if enough people in your network are visibly performing acts of service, participating in protests, debating on politics etc., then you would be more likely to do the same thing:
[O]nce networks are established, altruistic acts–from random acts of kindness to cascades of organ donation–can spread through them. Charity is just one example of the goodness that flows through networks… fund-raising efforts often seem designed to capitalize on processes of social influence and notions of community embeddedness…. Indeed, surveys of people who have given money to diverse causes find that roughly 80 percent did so because they were asked to by someone they knew well (p. 296-7).
It is through our social networks that we can spread various acts, causes, awareness, etc. and help make a greater impact on our network and in turn society at large (if we have enough people in our network that have been influenced by our actions). We are most conscious of our connections and the network through the visibleness of it on our various social media outlets. On Facebook we have various friends that we are connected to, and we can see “mutual friends” that we have in common with those we are already connected to when we get a new friend request. On Twitter, we have various followers and can see who our followers are connected to through their retweets and their “Follow Friday” recommendations. The real key, according to Christakis and Fowler, is that to positively affect and change your community, you need to “make good behavior visible… you must be the change you wish to see in your social network” (p. 3 of the “Reading Group Guide” included in a fancy schmancy version of the book).
My Project
This is where my project idea comes into play. I would like to make a change in my community, and even my network, in the hopes that people take what I have done online and be influenced to spread charity through their own networks as well. My idea is to create a place online where people can upload a picture of themselves doing an act of service. It can be as little or as big as they would like, but it has to be some kind of service and they have to take a picture of them doing it. My goal is to get 1000 pictures that I will then create a video of to upload to YouTube (and embed/link it to other sites) in the hopes that the video of others will see it and be influenced to do something similar in their own network.
The place I decided to use is Facebook. Why? Well because it is the most convenient way to reach my network. I currently have 948 friends on Facebook. If each person submits two pictures, I’d have over 1500 pictures. I know not everyone will post two pictures, and some may not post any. But, it is my hope that enough of them will contribute and then pass it on to their friends that I’ll be able to collect the number of pictures I want. And I’m more likely to get many people to submit pictures because as a center of a large social network, “more people are willing to act altruistically toward [me] than those at the margins” (p. 299). Meaning, I’d have more people willing to help a sistah out on this here project. Just have a look*:
My Visual Facebook Network
It almost looks like a little globe huh? If I can make a change that effects my little globe (that of doing service in the real world to combat clicktivism)**, then think of what the little globe could do to effect the world’s globe? I’m so excited for the possibilities, and I think that being connected and using your network to help influence others for good is a key to triumphing over slacktivism. If others are actually standing up and doing things in the real world for a cause, rather than in name only, their network will do the same as well, and in turn making the world a better place.
Now to choose whether to make a Facebook page, group, or event (or all of the above?). Oh the possibilities!
*Note: If you’d like to see a visual representation of your own Facebook network, connect to the Facebook app available at the book’s site (click here).
**Note: I realize there are already clicktivism tendencies inherent in my project and use of Facebook. However, I’m hoping that as the semester and project progresses, I’ll have addressed these problems and found what works (and what doesn’t) and have adapted my project accordingly.
Have you ever read the book Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card? If not, you really should because it is not only entertaining but despite having been written before I was born (1985) it is highly relevant to the world we live in today. Without going in great depth, the world in Ender’s Game is a futuristic one in which there is a war between humans and “buggers” (aliens), but much of the technology used and described in the fictional novel is almost identical, different in name only, to what technology we have now. All of the students have “desks” that contain their textbooks, homework, notes, etc. and are portable (much like an iPad). All of the desks can be connected to the “Nets,” and depending on the person’s access (student, civilian, official), they can communicate with others around the world that have that same access (our internet now, depending on access, allows the same thing). While the book also delves into interstellar travel and starfleet ships that we don’t have now (or do we and we just don’t know about it?), for the most part the technology translates easily from book to life.
In the book, two of the characters, both brilliantly smart and devious children, are able to use their father’s civilian access to create fake (several in fact) identities in various political chat rooms. After several months of creating their own online presence under these two differing pseudonyms, their sayings and opinions start catching on and are soon being repeated by other public officials. They are offered news columns to write these fake opinions and are invited to participate in more prestigious forums and discussions, eventually becoming the voice and standard battle cry for the rest of the world, with one side agreeing with one child and the other with the other child, inciting more than just heated debates (sorry I got to be vague so I don’t give it away!).
Now think for a moment what these two children were able to do using what we think of as the internet to the world in a fictional novel. Think something like that could be done in our world right now?
Just recently, there has been an ongoing revolt in Tunisia against the current president, which this last week was successful in removing President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power. According to the New York Times article I just linked to, the protests were spontaneous and occurred 4 weeks ago and were spread via Facebook and Twitter. While these protests were backed up by physical, real life protests (the videos of which were then shared online), it was spread through social media.
While the protests in Tunisia and the example from Ender’s Game differ in many ways, how the internet was used in Tunisia is almost like a primitive version to something like in Ender’s Game.
Which begs the question, if given enough time and enough resources, could there be an online only protest/revolution that would result in a physical change/repercussion?
Recently, I’ve been hearing radio commercials for a new show that started tonight that intrigued me. It’s on TBS, and it’s called Glory Daze. After having watched it, I will say, it’s not my type of show and I won’t be putting it on my DVR schedule, although I will say it’s mildly funny. It’s basically like an Animal House set in 1986, only not as funny or great. But, here’s what piqued my interest while I heard the radio commercial: One of the main female leads tells the main male lead that she has to go to the technology building “to learn about the future of letter writing. Something called electronic mail.” To which the male lead replies, “What? That sounds retarded! More like retarded mail!” And she responds, “I know!”
Yeah, this was the only scene I really liked in this episode. I’m just not the right audience for this show (read teenage boy). Now, the reason I thought this scene was so great is because I’m sitting in 2010, not 1986, knowing that “electronic mail” is definitely not retarded and has definitely become the future of letter writing (letter writing? people still do that?). In fact, email may become a small component of what may soon be the new future of “letter writing.”
Facebook has now unveiled it’s new “social inbox” in which your Facebook messages can be combined with texts, emails, IM/chat, all in one place so it’s faster; because according to the “young people” Mark Zuckerberg talked to, “email is too slow.”
Wow… email is too slow? Remember that thing we started to call “snail mail”? What are the kids calling email these days? “Sloth mail”?
I jest, but I really am intrigued by this new Facebook “Not email” system and how it will catch on (despite my ever increasing fear that Google and Facebook are trying to take over the world). I kind of like many of the features that are available, and you know what it was that made me like it? The explanatory video by Facebook:
At the end, he explains that he wants his box of letters like his grandmother had. I, too, have always wondered how I’d show my future children about how their dad and I got together/fell in love etc. through love letters (like my parents have with me) because I know that the majority of these love “letters” wouldn’t be letters at all but texts, chats, emails, FB posts/messages and the like. I love the idea of having it all in one place saved in a chat history, much like the “conversation” emails are set up on Gmail. In fact, it reminds me a little bit of the new Google Voice platform that rings all of your phones so you’re always reachable with just one phone number. Apparently we’ve fragmented ourselves so much that we need things like Google Voice and Facebook’s social inbox to put us back together again in one piece place.
Speaking of Google… apparently there’s some controversy between them and Facebook involving this not email thing. Hopefully they’ll work things out so the kids can play with these new toys. Perhaps we should suggest marriage counseling?
Although the movie is good and I recommend everyone go see it, I mean the actual social network, Facebook. In a previous post, I mentioned a Facebook experience that triggered our professor to ask how social networks make us view our friendships differently. I think we all have different tiers of friends, and in that same vein, I’d like to consider for a moment our different networks of friends that all tend to converge in a giant mess on our Facebook page. For those that need a visual, here’s what I mean:
And this is only half of my friends...
We all have different friends and are part of several different groups of friends both in our past and our present, but with Facebook they all tend to be lumped in one boat with very little controls to separate them out and limit who of your friends see what (although there are a few measures that have tried).
As Manual Castells says in his afterword “Why Networks Matter,” our “sociability is transformed in the new historical context, with networked individualism emerging as the synthesis between the affirmation of an individual-centred culture, and the need and desire for sharing and co-experiencing” (p. 223). He continues, saying that “the whole range of social practices, both global and local, communicates in the media space. The media, in the broadcast sense are the public space of our time: the space in which, and by which, societies exist as social forms of shared experience.” This, in my mind, is Facebook. It is our public space in which we share with everyone and co-experience things.
But, there’s only certain things you want to co-experience with certain people. My Facebook friends list is filled with all sorts of “friends”: my real-life close friends (yeah I said it), my coworkers, my high school friends, friends from college, acquaintances of all kinds, church friends, cousins, siblings, my mom, and yes, even my grandfather. Like Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker expound on in The Exploit: A Theory of Networks, I am a node, a vector in which not just one but several different networks intersect.
This isn’t a bad thing, but having all of these networks intersect on my Facebook makes posting status updates, links, photos and the like kind of difficult with my varying tiers of friends. I don’t necessarily want to post a funny video that might be considered crude because that could upset a few of my family members. Perhaps I want to put up a certain status, but thinking about who might see it and interpret it wrong makes me just give up and not post anything. What a dilemma! What do I do?
With these new Facebook groups, you can set up personal groups for each of your varying networks of friends and only share things with those people in that specific group. You can also collaborate together on documents (Google Wave Fail, anyone?), chat in the group, and share things without the worry of having your aunt see all of the pictures of that crazy party you went to last weekend. For more information on how this all works and the benefits of it, this article was very enlightening for me.
I’m intrigued by this new groups feature. I wonder how big it will catch on, or if like every Facebook face lift, there will be a big backlash. I think if it works like it’s supposed to, it might be very helpful to many of us whose Facebook friends come from all walks of our life. Like Castells says, “Networks matter because they are the underlying structure of our lives.” Those structures just become more apparent and visible on Facebook.
Which reminds me… I should probably start making those new groups now, if you know what I mean.
I love, love, loved Remediation by Bolter and Grusin, and I’m really mad at myself now for not having picked this day to do my case study. (Sydnie, why didn’t you tell me?) While I read it, I thought of 3 different things to talk about for my blog, and because I’m kind of indecisive about these types of things, I wrote about all three. Now, you get to pick which one you want to read about! You can pick just one, you can pick two, or read all three, it’s really up to you. This of course means after having read the chosen page, you’ll have to come back to this post to comment (I’ll put a link at the bottom of the 3 respective pages to return), but I’m hoping you’ll humor me and just go with it.
Now, because I don’t want you to completely jump into the dark without knowing what you’re in for, I’ll give you a little preview of what’s behind each door. Each of them involves me spoiling a movie/TV show, but some contain bigger spoilers than others. I know people get really upset about this sort of thing, so that’s why I’m warning you ahead of time. The doors are ranked according to amount of spoilage, with Door 1 being the lowest. They are as follows:
Door 1: Behind this door is my discussion of the TV show Community, specifically Episode 1 of Season 2, the newest season (it aired last week). I’ll discuss the basic plot and certain techniques one of the characters uses and show a few clips from the episode. Not much spoilage, and if you don’t care about the show… none at all.
Door 2: This door contains a discussion of the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which if you have not seen by now, you really need to. Again, just pointing out certain techniques and technologies used in the film and basic plot points. I feel like since the movie’s been out for awhile, and I’m not discussing anything major, it’s a mid-level spoiler warning.
Door 3: Enter for those who dare. Door 3 contains HUGE, MAJOR, GIGANTIC spoilers for the recent documentary Catfish. It’s not in huge release (currently it’s only available to be seen at the Angelica in Dallas and at AMC Northpark), and I’ll be giving away major plot twists and the ending. So, if you think you’ll never go see it, or don’t care, please follow me here. It’ll be an adventure for us both. If, however, you want to keep yourself fresh from the knowledge of what happens in the film, please, pick another door.
Remember, keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times, and please don’t feed the animals. Enjoy your trip!
Yesterday, despite how much I probably did not want to know, I got updates (including pictures!) of a friend’s child birth all on my Facebook news feed (luckily the pictures weren’t too graphic). Her husband took pictures of her in her hospital gown, in her hospital bed, and her walking around with her IV, and he let all of his Facebook friends know how much she was dilated and when she took the epidural. Then (finally) he posted the pictures of the baby (yes there were before and after) and all the pertinent details that come with it. Without Facebook, I probably would have never even known that my friend had a baby unless we had run into each other sometime in the future and I noticed she had a 3 year old in tow. But, thanks to the internet and social networks like Facebook, I got to know every little gritty detail of the whole miracle of life in real time.
Marshall McLuhan talks about this very thing in his book The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. He says that “now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village” (p. 157). If I had lived in a village with this friend, I probably would have been there helping with her birth, or I at the least would have heard about it. It is true that “electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of ‘time’ and ‘space’ and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men” (p. 16). Since we are far apart and rarely see each other, with new media and technologies and especially the internet, it “overthrows” time and space and allows us to know about each others’ lives as they are happening, like we would if we were right next door to each other.
In most cases, I would say this village effect is good. For example, I feel like that I know my fellow EMAC-ers a little better because I follow them on Twitter and get to read their blogs. Since our class only meets once a week and there’s not much time for “get to know you” sorts of things, having the ability to hear about their lives and learning about their personalities through their blogs and tweets allows me to feel a little more, well, neighborly every time we meet in class. Without these things, I feel like it would be a little awkward and might even hinder our discussions in class (which unfortunately is exactly how another class of mine is going). The negative is probably getting more information than you had ever wanted to know (like my friend’s birthing process).
In a small village (I think small towns qualify, too), everyone knows each other (and their business) because they are in such small quarters and see each other so often. In fact, it’s probably hard not to know about town gossip or keep yourself out of it because these people interact with you and come into your life so often. But, here is the key argument that I think McLuhan misses. While it is true it is like we are in a village because we are so socially connected on the internet, it is us that choose what we put out there. We are the ones that update our status to say what we are doing, where we are, who we’re with, etc. We are the ones that tweet about our emotions, frustrations, and goings-on for all the world to see. We get to decide who knows what about our lives and what we keep to ourselves. In turn does that make it better or worse than a village? Or does it make it something different entirely? And how does your choosing what you put out there effect the others in the “village”?
I had a friend who once told me that sometimes she doesn’t like reading her friends Facebook status updates because it seems like all of her friends had better, more exciting lives than her. They all seemed to be having more fun, getting cool things, and just doing more. It made her feel depressed about her own life, and sometimes she got jealous of these friends. But, they get to control what to say on their own Facebook. Of course they are only going to put the good things because who wants to constantly update about their life problems or the crappy things they have to deal with (aside from the occasional complaint/rant)? We all know we’d rather have our friends congratulate us and tell us we’re awesome than feel sorry for us. Right?
Oh, and guess what?! Don’t be jealous, but I totally got an iPhone 4 last week!
missnesbitpro
Miss Nesbit's Philosophies 
