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Based on the general feedback that we all received on Monday, I thought a quick revision to my lesson plan was in order. I added some additional readings that will relate to the discussion held near the end of the class session, and I also corrected a typo. My revised lesson plan can be downloaded here.
My lesson plan can be downloaded and viewed here.
Today's question: Communication technologies have always had a role in political life. Is there something fundamentally or causally different about the newest information technologies in the political sphere? For example, you might consider: What aspects of communication and culture are structurally different about the political sphere as opposed to other kinds of activities? What aspects of new communication technologies (like blogs, online donations, citizenship, and political campaign software [e.g., VoteMover etc.]) are different from the older communication technologies that have been used for politics? Please refer to the Howard reading in supporting your answer.
The Decline of the Public Sphere and Hypermedia Campaigns.
While indeed communication technologies have played a critical role in the political life of campaigns for generations, there has been a fundamental shift in not only how “new” communication technologies are applied within campaigns in shaping and targeting their audience, but those applications have also altered the notion of the public sphere itself. Howard, in his work, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, notes three essentials that are required for a healthy public sphere. They are:
1.) It requires the fact of shared text, regularly published and generally accessible- citizens must be confident that the text is indeed shared across the polity so that everyone has access to the same quality of information. (p. 182)
2.) It requires the act of conservation through which we constitute the public sphere when we discuss the affairs of state and share the floor without discrimination. (p. 182)
3.) It requires the space for action: legislatures, courts, voting booths, and places of administration where decisions are made and enacted. Howard notes that one commentator believes that “the more of these spheres the better, so that different people can communicate their needs to one another.” (p. 183)
It would appear the new communication technologies support all of these three critical aspects for guaranteeing the health of the public sphere, however as Howard quite deftly indicates, the hyper campaign manager is not really interested in the health of the public sphere, and perhaps, not even that vested in the success of either major political party. Rather the managers main concerns is the success rates of each of their campaigns, so that they can then continue to sell their services to those that are willing to pay top dollar, and thus guarantee their further financial and political successes.
Howard details how the political messages are “narrowcast”, and thus modified depending upon the intended audiences race, class, gender, zip code, income level, religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and educational background. In turn he notes that “ The tools of a political campaign, the choices that campaign managers make about manipulating data, ideas, and people, reflect their own political norms.” (p. 203) Given the necessity of having the same information available for everyone in the interest of the public sphere, the campaign manager’s interests are in direct conflict with that essential. Similarly, online candidate blogs, youtube press announcements, electronic “meet and greets” all do provide greater access to political candidates, but that is at the loss of real life interactions with the voting public. That is why we have seen a resurgence and political realignment of when the primaries occur across the states, moving them eariler and eariler so that they might get a glimpse of a political candiate running for president, other than them spending all of the time and capital in Iowa and New Hampshire. Political campaign messages are becoming more and more unidirectional, broadcast to us via the internet. When this used to occur on television, it was at least parsed by geographic region, now there are multiple subgroups being tracked, and distinct messages are crafted for each. Online political chats are as scripted as political conventions, and they usually only pose softball questions that are begging to be hit out of the political park. While one could argue that this has been going on for decades, with the new communication technology available today, the effects are magnified and are eroding the very notion of the public sphere. Do you doubt that it this erosion is happening? Then come and join me in the "free speech zone" located a mile and a half away from the convention centers for the Democrats and the Republicans in 2008, and tell me that these developments are good for democracy.
I wanted to offer a quick post to clarify one of my criticisms of Howard's book New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. Christan pointed out that it was not a fair criticsm to ask for the "feel good" ending that I expressed - namely that Howard provide some form of identification of strategies that would help the "managed citizen" thwart the involuntary collection, manipulation and parsing of credit data shadows, browsing histories, or geographic assumptions via zip code. While I fully acknowledge that this may well be another book that begs to be written, I believe that this is still an oversight for Howard not to include it in his work. Given the assumption that he is not writing for the hypermedia campaign manager, the only other entity in his title is "The managed citizen". Other than being directed and "narrowcasted" surely "citizens" play some kind of role in this thing called democracy don't they? The other audience for this book is of course political scientists- surely they would have some concerns and ideas about the effects of these new campaigns have on democracy? If this book is offered as a warning about what goes on within these firms, as I believe the project was intended to be, Howard has to be more than just a canary in a coal mine.
As we saw through www.mybestsegments.com no one, including Howard fit the data profile based on zip code. He does not drive a mercedes, and no one in class fessed up to reading the WWE Magazine. While one of the data mining politico guru's could argue that those studies used on the website are the bluntest of instruments, specifically those that are free- it does not sit well with any of us that believe that we are more complicated than the websites that we visit, the things that we buy, or the geographic area where we live. Don't think that these firms really matter? Check out this link and pay particular attention to the line "pushing democracy forward."
Lastly, did anyone else find it ironic the number of Canadians involved in the dicussion about American democracy? I guess this is what happens when your national motto is "Peace, Order, and Good Government."
Today's Question: Assess one of the following concepts in light of either Howard's own examples or other material from this semester: (1) epistemic heterarchy, (2) political redlining, (3) political culture. You might consider one or more of the questions: How does Howard define the concept? How is it used? Is it analytically useful? Does it depend on important assumptions that are not stated? Given what you know about communication technology, does the definition imply a causal relationship that you find credible?
In Philip N. Howard’s text, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, he provides an expose of the political culture of the ”hypermedia campaign manager”, and how the values of this particular subset of politicos have changed the tone, discourse, research and funding structure, and actual practice of politics in the last few election cycles. Care should be taken here as Howard’s definition of “political culture” is really focused upon the ideals and values of those who create political discourse these “hypermedia campaign managers”, rather than citizens, consumers or narrowcasting subjects. While Howard notes “ there is no correct or even consensus about the definition of political culture” (p. 54) his project is to reveal how “ their (hypermedia campaign manager’s) choices about an exostructure of media and information management shaped the way the rest of us experience and participate in political life.” (again, p.54)
Howard provides the following description of these campaign managers, they “ … are men under the age of thirty who graduated in political science and love being involved in the new economy. More important, most have worked with one another on projects or appeared together in conference panels. They regularly met for happy hour, and several marriages within the community help to solidify identity”. (p. 47) Consumer models, the amassing of data shadows, and the collection and parsing of information culled from consumer credit card companies drive the campaign manager’s attitudes towards the citizen/consumer. They believe that “citizens are political and genuinely interested in specific issues that affect them” (p. 46) and these managers assume that the direct, digital democracy is superior to representational democracy as it removes any possibility of miscommunication, or misintereptation of the message that their political masters wish to project to sway public opinion. Is this really a “better” form of democracy? Cannot people acknowledge that they might not have a personal stake in an issue, or even vote against their own “best” interest? Since when is “public opinion” the normative equal of “informed consent” to be governed or even democracy itself?
All of which leads me to my frustration with the way that Howard has approached this book- Yes this is critically important subject matter, but by “pulling back the curtain” on the current trends of contemporary campaign management in the form of an expose, he has framed the debate in particularly stilted terms. If you are troubled or angered by the narrowcasting that is occurring, Howard implies that you are either misinformed or naïve about the current trends in campaign fundraising and management. Troubled by the deep implications that these trends have for our democracy, and notions of citizenship? Well, isn’t that quaint. The fact that over half of the eligible public does not vote can be explained by the campaign managers by the fact that they are still working on refining their profiling metrics or that the consumers do not see the national elections as holding any aspect of self interest, or by a cynic as that these citizens, to use Price’s terminology “have left the market.” Regardless the consequences are the same…
Today's Question: In several of the books we've read so far, we have found the hope or fear that new communication technologies challenge national borders or that they create new conditions for international unity (e.g., they will "bring the whole world together" or make place irrelevant). The Price book is an extended analysis of this one idea. Throughout the book Price compares and contrasts the consequences of specific technologies (satellite radio, AM radio, shortwave radio, the Internet, television, newspapers, books, etc.) for transnational migration, identity formation, international relations, and domestic politics. There are several examples in each chapter from specific places. Speaking generally, where is the agency (meaning: the means of action) in Price's accounts? In other words, is there an account of causation here, and if so, what is it? What leads to the consequences identified here, and what would we need to change to obtain different consequences?
I feel obligated to remark on the ramifications of Price's work in Media and Sovereignty and the events that are currently unfolding in Iran and Britain concerning the detained British sailors and marines. We are witnessing the intersection of traditional concept of national sovereignty in terms of a nation state's right to protect and guard its borders and territorial waters, with the political assertion of sovereignty played out on an international level through the broadcasting the "confession" of the British marines of violating Iran's territorial waters some six times. I am using quotation marks not to assign any kind of truth value to the statements as being an admission of guilt, but to use the tone that is expressed in much of the western media reports on the validity of these statements. (Examples to be found at CNN, The BBC, CBS News, and of course, the "fair and balanced" Fox News. It is also interesting to see how other western media are reporting this story and how they are dealing with the "confessions". (The CBC, ABC, Der Spiegel On Line with a particularly biting commentary from Monty Python's Terry Jones in the Guardian)
While the specific area of the territorial waters has been under dispute for some time, the growing issue is the actual broadcast images and video of the detained sailors /marines internationally directly against the terms of the Geneva Convention concerning the rights and treatment of prisoners of war, yet as many political observers and cartoonists have noted, the United States seems to no longer adhere to these standards in the international "War on Terrorism". (See image below) Furthermore, President Bush is furthering his own political "axis of evil" agenda by referring to the detained sailors as "hostages- which conjures a host of images concerning the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis that ultimately cost Jimmy Carter the Presidency of the United States. [Speculation has it that this hostage crisis was guided and resolved because of Ronald Regan's secret deal to sell arms for hostages (aka Iran-Contra Affair).]
As for the question of agency within Price's Media and Sovereignty it appears to me that Price does his utmost to avoid assigning any real agency to any particular actor, be they nation states, NGO's, multinational corporations, or perhaps the most frustrating vague terminology in the entire work, "citizen consumers". I felt as if Price wanted to issue some powerful warnings and testimonials about the current trends in the monopolization of media power, but ultimately, he seems to only offer tepid statements such as "... there are assertions of national identity in the interstices of commercials in their depiction of idealized home life, opportunities to travel, or of a certain idea of traditional family values. "Free and independent media," because of their dependence upon advertising, alter citizen priorities as between the state and consumerism". (p 38) His introduction of the concept of a "market of loyalties" seems to be useful in discussing the shifting developments of communication technology and concepts of statehood and national sovereignty, yet I feel particularly disturbed by its implications and its utter abandonment of the concept of the "marketplace of ideas". I believe that the adornment of the market place of ideas and the construction of a market of loyalties are direct result of the interdependence and mutually beneficial relationships that multinational corporations, media monopolies and nation states have with one another. Reducing citizenship to consumerism is one of the deep implications that this strange, new market holds, yet Price avoid talking about the inherently hegemonic nature that the "Market of Loyalties" encourages and breeds. We may indeed be reduced to mere consumers instead of citizens, but that title still provides us with a certain level of economic agency that Price does not seem to admit. Commercial boycotts are effective ways of expressing social and political desires, and are unfortunately often more effective in providing real change than voting in civic elections.
Indeed, while the concept of the marketplace of loyalties may be on the rise in the brave new world of multinational media conglomeration, but it ultimately appears that Brand America is not selling like it used to.
