Jude Geiger's Seminar Blog

Monroe Price, in Media and Sovereignty The Global Information Revolution and Its Challenge to State Power, understands technological and geopolitical determinism, the influence of trade, and ideology as the major factors causing the changes he describes (13). Other factors include demography and history (16) and a still later reference would require law and culture to be included as important causal agents (49, 57). Needless to say, there are a lot of potential agents, but few, if any, examples of direct causation.

This idea is further complicated because none of these elements can exclusively cause change. However, they merit attention because these factors can interact with each other in order to cause change. Price values their explanatory power when considered in relation to each other, or to employ his term, as “constellations of change” (13, 15). These factors intersect with politics. “A rhythm developed between the ideological and the actual, the motivation and the realization” (14, describing Russia).

Agency exists in Price’s account, and the most important agency resides with the most powerful entities. Price is interested in the agency of governments such as the United States and understands agency in terms of power. Those with a great deal of power are likely to possess more agency. For example, the V-chip corresponded to a demand for a V-chip like device among American politicians. These political needs led to the conception of the technology and its development (126). Political self interest can influence the development of technology.

Agency does not reside merely with the government. For example, a scholar such as Lawrence Lessig can possess agency and shape the law, especially when powerful entities, such as the Supreme Court, lack knowledge or experience with technology (151). In some ways, Lessig is an exception. Individuals and those with less power tend to have decreased agency in this account. However, the masses certainly do not lack agency. The powerful, and politicians in particular, are themselves influenced by public opinion, as seen in the information policy concerns raised by the World Trade Center attacks (177).

Furthermore, the products of agency, such as law and technology, seem to possess an interesting agency of their own. For example, Price states, “Media laws are to be evaluated not merely in terms of a relatively simplistic notion of cause and effect. Laws and their adoption have a pervasive aspect themselves, in structuring society that cannot be measured in terms of an occasional impact” (49). Price’s main point is that a law may not have its intended result, and even if it does so, the law may have unforeseen cultural implications outside of the courtroom. Likewise, technology may have a causal role. “Every new technology reorders the world around it.” (145). For example, the V-chip may block potential avenues for free speech (136).

Price discusses many variables, and the process of obtaining different results is complicated. It seems that one could change a variable and it could modify the web of relationships between these different causal factors in unforeseen ways. One could pass a law designed to promote the media and democracy only to find that the law has the opposite effect. Fortunately, Price provides some guidance. Price highlights what he sees as the most important agents. “The world is a kind of force field where blazing technologies interact with gargantuan media entities and transformed geopolitical realities. Together, these lead to new forms of social and governmental response” (228). If one wants to promote change, technology, the media, and government are of primary importance. It would help to have at least one of these factors on your side. Furthermore, Price understands most concerns to be settled through compromise. For example, self-regulation represents a compromise between media and government (104). From this perspective, those with agency (that are human) balance their interests. In order to change society, obtain a good bargain. Change is not so much about altering society as it is about reconciling competing interests.

Posted by jgeiger3 at 08:15 PM | Permalink

A draft of my paper for this class may be found here: Download file

Posted by jgeiger3 at 07:26 PM | Permalink

A copy of my original open source paper may be found here: Download file

Posted by jgeiger3 at 07:24 PM | Permalink

Harold Innis was a scholar who had many thoughts on communication. Indeed, it seems that there was not a form of communication he didn’t find to be of interest. He had thoughts on technologies that ranged from cuneiform to the calendar. Needless to say, if Innis were alive today, he surely would have some thoughts about the Internet, and blogs in particular. In The Bias of Communication, Innis analyzes the history of the newspaper and publishing in great detail. I suspect that he would provide a similar exploration of the Internet rather than reduce it to a tidbit, or “idea file,” as he does with many of the other technologies he discusses.

One of Innis’s contentions is that the defeat of John Adams and the repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1789 were a tribute to the power of the press (157). This makes me suspect that Innis would be very interested in the power of blogs on the Internet. He would be intrigued by the Swiftboat bloggers in the election of 2004 and might even go so far as to attribute John Kerry’s defeat to the rise of this new technology, just as the power of the press determined the election of 1800.

Additionally, Innis would be interested in the political nature of blogs. He would be curious to understand the connections between bloggers and politicians. He would want to determine if bloggers had ties to political campaigns in the same manner that newspapers, such as the United States Telegraph, were connected to various Presidential administrations (164). Innis would be quite curious to learn with whom the swiftboat campaign truly originated.

He would also follow with a similar concern. Just as the election of 1800 demonstrated the power of the press, so too did it demonstrate the rise of a partisan press. Innis would be concerned that blogs demonstrate the rise of a partisan Internet and that once again, “Freedom had become license” (157). Furthermore, in his history Innis notes that “Technological advances in the production of newspapers and of paper supported the competition of a new type of newspaper” (159). Innis would see the development of technological innovations in the production of websites as leading to a new form of website, the blog. He would suggest that the technology of the blog challenges other websites, such as those found at CNN . Likewise, this “new type of newspaper… emphasized more sensational news” (160) just as blogs emphasize more sensational items.

Innis, of course, would attempt to relate blogs to other forms of technology. Innis argues that the press used the new technology of the telegraph to its own advantage (167). Innis would want to determine how blogs have been used by the modern media. He would search for examples of how the popular press used information found on blogs to their own advantage. For example, Innis would ask how the swift boat campaign become adopted by the major media. He would want to understand blogs as a potential resource for more traditional forms of journalism. Just as the telegraph led to demands for faster news (168), Innis would be interested in how the rise of blogging led to a demand for more personalized and interactive news, and would be particularly interested in any mainstream media sources that adopted blogging strategies.

Innis would also be interested in the implications of this technology and its use of language. Innis contended that, “The existence of a large population with a single language gave the telephone a position of greater importance in the United States than that of the telegraph in Europe with its numerous languages” (173). He would likely find that blogs are more important in the United States than elsewhere for the same reason.

He might find that the political disturbances of the early Twenty-First Century were the result of a period of adjustment in which other forms of mass media adapted to the Internet and to blogs. This parallels the political disturbances of the late 1800’s that were caused by the adjustment of newspapers to the telegraph (175). He attributes the election of Franklin Roosevelt to fourth term to the power of the radio (188). Likewise, Innis would suggest that the demand to impeach the current President or at least remove his cronies, is a result of the partisanship of blogs and the inability of the media to provide credible forms of commentary.

Innis contends that history is cyclical and that the cyclical nature of history has not been fully explored in the field of communications. It is important to study history because it might repeat itself (xxvii). In the case of the Internet, and blogs in particular, Innis would likely make this connection. Innis might claim that we need not interpolate his ideas to the Internet; they are already present. In the Bias of Communication, he had already written “the book” on the Internet.

Posted by jgeiger3 at 07:33 PM | Permalink

My revised prospectus may be found here: Download file

Posted by jgeiger3 at 06:10 PM | Permalink

Harold Innis’s book, The Bias of Communication is a “classic” but also has been, in my opinion correctly, described as “difficult” and “a struggle” because the book does not develop a sustained argument. However, Innis’s work may better be understood as an “idea file.” In the introduction to the book, Paul Heyer and David Crowley recommend that it be read as an “idea file,” or as a database composed of information gleaned from secondary readings, thoughts, and notes (x). They state, “We suggest readers consider approaching Bias in this manner, as an informative and exciting glimpse of a mind in process as well as the outline of a larger scholarly project” (x).

One of the ideas contained in Innis’s work is that the development of the radio caused specific political effects. One of Innis’s broad conclusions is that, “an appeal to the ear made it possible to destroy the results of the Treaty of Versailles as registered in the political map based on self-determination. The rise of Hitler to power was facilitated by the use of the loud speaker and the radio” (81). Innis’s argument is that the radio allowed the creation of an appeal to (German) language communities living outside of the German state.

In some ways, this is a very useful idea. However, Innis’s “idea file” approach leaves much to be desired. Because this idea, like most of Innis’s claims, is neglected and not fully developed, it is difficult to accept. One of my greatest concerns is that Innis fails to fully recognize that one need not be a native speaker of a language in order to communicate in that language. Innis briefly mentions propaganda in a sentence (81) but fails to explore the meaning of that sentence. Fortunately Susan J. Douglas, although writing about a different time period, does so. She notes that even the early radio was used by Germany to present its case to the American public and this was also attempted by the British Marconi Company (275). While radio might encourage language communities, Innis’s idea needs to more fully address why the ability of others to communicate in another nation’s language lacks importance.

Likewise, Innis’s thought contains an interesting understanding of German language communities prior to the resolution of World War II. In essence, he is arguing that Germans composed a diasporic community. While this idea is not explained further, prior to the defeat of Hitler, ethnic Germans lived in nations that were reachable through radio broadcasts from Germany, and were located in places such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. I think the idea that radio technology, compared to print, is more effective in reaching diasporic communities is potentially useful. However, Innis needs to explain why these diasporic communities were so easily tapped by Hitler. In contrast to Innis, Miller and Slater explore how the Internet has connected the Trini diaspora. For example, they note that “Internet facilities- above all the chat room- provide places in which to be Trini, and as part of this they become Trini places” (88). The Internet performs a similar function for Trini’s as Innis argues the radio did for Twentieth Century Germans. Yet, the Trini’s are not attempting to establish a Trini empire. While this may be due to Trinidad’s lack of military power, I do not think this is the main explanation. Innis needs to explain how the radio led to the conquests of Hitler in much more detail. Why was the German diaspora such an easily tapped resource?

Finally, I believe that many of the concerns I have with Innis’s work are related to his emphasis on structure at the expense of agency. Innis’s argument seems to suggest that once a technological structure is in place, certain results will follow. The radio is created and Hitler and World War II is its result. However, this account does not explain why these results are not seen across the board. If the radio creates a drive for empire, then why have we not seen every diasporic community become a foundation for empire? For example, there has historically been a large Chinese diaspora. Yet after the creation of the radio, television, and the Internet, we have not seen the rise of a movement to unify the Chinese diaspora living in states not historically associated with modern China under the control of the Chinese government. While China has recovered Hong Kong and would like to establish control of Taiwan, it does not seem interested in taking control of geographic locales such as the Philippines or Singapore, where there are large ethnic Chinese communities. The explanation seems to be at least partially due to agency. Not every culture or every individual experiences the medium in the same way.

Furthermore, how does a nationalist voice compete with a foreign propagandist? This cannot be explained through language or the medium alone. It is probable that a foreign enemy can find a native speaker to convey their propaganda or a non-native speaker that speaks the language as well a native speaker. The reason seems to rest in agency, listeners encounter and experience propaganda differently depending on whether it originates within or outside of ones own nation. The radio cannot fully explain Hitler’s success unless the agency of ethnic Germans is considered.

Did the radio play a role in Hitler’s rise to power? Probably. Was the radio also used to contest Hitler's power? Probably. However, Innis does not provide us with enough information in order to reach a conclusion. In any event, I cannot accept that the role of the radio was as straightforward as Innis claims. While the radio may have aided Hitler, it did not give birth to him. Innis’s broad structural contentions provide sites for more nuanced explorations. However, their deterministic, structural presentation suggests that these are more “thoughts” or “idea files” than developed, detailed arguments that one can easily accept.

Posted by jgeiger3 at 02:51 PM | Permalink

Based on our discussion in the first half of class today, I thought that you might find Professor Jack Balkin's humorous piece "How to Win Cites and Influence People" to be of interest. It loaded slowly on my computer, so if the above link does not work, it might be easier to link to Balkin's list of academic publications (the article is the last link on the list).

Posted by jgeiger3 at 07:48 PM | Permalink

One of the conclusions made by Daniel Miller and Don Slater in their book, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach, is that “Right now the Internet has created more decommodification that anything since early socialism” (171). Miller and
Slater correctly follow this statement by noting that the Internet has also increased levels of commodification in other areas (171) but their focus on decommodification is interesting and unique when compared to ideas presented in other readings in this class.

Miller and Slater’s argument is partially based on Trini culture. They explain that, “it is worth noting the ability to obtain things for free is seen as a national trait that is mentioned with pride in any of the joke lists that relate to the specific character of ‘being Trini’” (169-170). Also, this argument is based on the evidence that MP3 is one of the most popular search terms online for Trinis and that many Trinis use the Internet to obtain access to magazine content and to obtain software and games (170). They also note that the biggest savings was related to the reduced number of overseas phone calls required (170).

This understanding of decommodification is not dominant in Susan Douglas’s exploration of the radio. In her book, Inventing American Broadcasting, Douglas notices a wide number of elements related to the development of the radio. In its early history, Douglas suggests that radio promotion focused on the decreased costs of wireless telegraphy and that radio would decrease the power of telegraph companies (25). This story is not primarily about decommodification; it is about market competition and obtaining services at a lower cost rather than for free.

Douglas does note that some writers recognized the potential for radio users to save money. For example, with radio, one author argued that individuals who could not previously afford to attend concerts could now hear the music over their radios and that radio reduced the need to have the financial resources to obtain good seats at a concert (308). However, Douglas ultimately concludes that “In these press accounts there was no tension between corporate ambitions and individuals desires: they were really the same thing (314). While the potential for radio broadcasting to provide information content for free is mentioned, it is not framed in terms of decommodification and it is not a dominant idea in Douglas’s account.

The easiest manner to explain this phenomenon is by exploring each author’s method. Douglas is largely conducting a discourse analysis of the radio’s development. The newspapers and promotional materials she examined did not mention the decommodifying potential of radio. In contrast, Miller and Slater conducted ethnographic and survey research. Their informants mentioned the decommodifying potential of radio.

This explanation, while likely accurate, does not explain why individuals living in the early age of radio did not consider decommodification seriously and why those in the early age of the Internet chose to mention it. This might be explained by differences in technology. There are more free things that can be obtained via the Internet that can be possessed in tangible form. MP3’s obtained over the Internet are pieces of property that can be stored on ones computer or burned to a compact disc. Magazine articles can be printed out. In contrast, radio broadcasts are ephemeral. The common radio user would not have the ability to store radio recordings in a permanent form until the invention of the cassette tape (or possibly the eight track?). This may partially explain why decommodification did not play as large of a role in the conceptualization of the radio.

However, other factors recognized by Miller and Slater, such as the money saved through email communications, do not reflect a form of decommodification related to tangible property. This would seem similar to a potential use of wireless telegraphy/ telephony. With the radio, amateur operators no longer had to pay for postage just as with the Internet emailers no long have to pay for long distance phone calls. I would not attribute this to a difference between Trini culture and American culture. However, I would attribute it do a difference between culture at the beginning of the Twentieth Century and culture at the beginning of the Twenty First Century.

In the early days of radio, in the United States and Western Europe, where radio was first developed and where Douglas focuses her work, it generally was not a good idea to be associated with socialism. If the “free” aspects of radio were discussed by the press, this would likely be understood as a threat to the American way of life. I would argue that the liberalism at the turn of the century was if anything harsher than the version of neoliberalism being advocated today and that threats to property were not smiled upon. Furthermore, the ideas of communism and socialism boded for the American public in the early Twentieth Century. The revolution in Russia was very real and individuals believed that it could spread. In contrast, communism is not understood as a serious threat to the United States today, or its close neighbors such as Trinidad. Indeed, the difference between property rights and commons is today often portrayed by authors (Benkler provides an example) as that between sharing and not sharing. Tropes of communism and socialism are not required components of the discussion. Therefore, it is easier for journalists and informants to talk about ideas such as file sharing and magazine reading as decommodification today as opposed to one hundred years ago. There is little risk that one will lose her job, friends, or social standing for doing so.

Furthermore, many of the businesses and individuals involved in the promotion of radio were concerned that radio might be nationalized by the American government, and the Navy actually did take over control for a short period of time (Douglas 276). Emphasizing the decommodifying potential of radio could have encouraged greater governmental control, something no large group involved in radio outside of the Navy wanted. In contrast, government ownership of the modern Internet is not understood as a serious threat, although the concept is still debated.

The contrast between Douglas and Miller and Slater is certainly methodological. However, the larger explanation for this difference likely is due to differences of technology, culture, and business interests.

Posted by jgeiger3 at 01:29 PM | Permalink