Activism Online?COM 327

April 3, 2014

QUIZ!

1. “Thus, exploring the formation of participatory publics on Facebook is best done through a study of _________, as they represent the moment at which me-centric profiles are put together and publicized” a) groupsb) likesc) pokesd) Zuckerberg

2. 2. ” A common conception of participatory media is that they enable ____________ voices to express themselves” a) marginalizedb) lunaticc) hipsterd) political

3. “In the summer of 2007, Canada’s national broadcaster (the CBC) launched a Facebook campaign to uncover the top wishes of Canadians.

People, whether from Canada or abroad, were invited to join the Great _____________ Wish List group on Facebook”. a) Northernb) Canadianc) Hockeyd) Bieber

4. Throughout the article, Langlois et al use term “__-centric” to refer to the ways information (including political information) is presented on Facebook. a) “me-centric”b) “ego-centric”c) “Afro-centric”d) “non-centric”

BONUSThe “double articulation” that the authors look at consists of the intersection of “politics and _________”. a) public nudityb) piracyc) coded) rhetoric

Aaron Swartz: “Internet Pirate”1986-2012

As a teenager, helped develop the technology behind:• Reddit• RSS• Creative Commons (with

Lawrence Lessig)

Arrested January 6, 2011, for downloading 4.8 million JSTOR articles from MIT servers

JSTOR (Journal Storage):• One of the leading subscription-based

storage houses for scientific publications

• Compiles (publicly-funded) research and makes it available to university libraries for an annual subscription fee

• Initially charged with breaking & entering, grand larceny & unauthorized access to a computer network

• State charges dropped in March 2012 • Federal charges for “computer fraud” and accessing a protected

computer introduced in September 2012• Max. 50 years in prison & $1 million in fines• JSTOR asked federal prosecutors to drop the case (they didn’t)• Swartz hung himself on January 11, 2013

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)

Highlights of the CFAA (among other things):• Formed in 1984 to combat “malicious” hacking (harm to economic

and/or political interests)• Bans “unauthorized access” to “protected” computers• Includes penalties for violations of Terms of Service

“when Swartz tried to download thousands of academic articles, he did so as an authorized guest user of the M.I.T. network. He didn’t actually “hack” or “break” into the network; he violated the terms of service for guests by downloading too much stuff”

Tim Wu, New Yorkerhttp://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/03/fixing-the-worst-law-in-technology-aaron-swartz-and-the-computer-fraud-and-abuse-act.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAcEzhQ7oqA

WarGames (released in 1983):

No fewer than six different anti-hacking bills were introduced that year, and Congress convened its first hearings as soon as politicians returned from their summer recess. Rep. Dan Glickman, a Kansas Democrat, opened the proceedings by saying: "We're gonna show about four minutes from the movie 'WarGames,' which I think outlines the problem fairly clearly." A House committee report solemnly intoned: "'WarGames' showed a realistic representation of the automatic dialing and access capabilities of the personal computer.”http://www.cnet.com/news/from-wargames-to-aaron-swartz-how-u-s-anti-hacking-law-went-astray/

Swartz’s “Open Access Manifesto” (2008)

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends....

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It's called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn't immoral — it's a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt

How does political participation on social media work?

ANT: Social formations are created through collaboration between human and non-human actors

Theoretical background“Actor network theory” (ANT)

Bruno Latour, John Law, Michel Callon

Society is produced through a constant “push-pull” relationship between humans andj technologies

We don’t just act on or through technologies ; they act on us.

How does the design of technologies – the CODE – determine what and how we can communicate?

we understand technologies as “social actors” best when they work against us

How does -

• Facebook’s interface - • its systems of social network formation

- • and its underlying code –

- determine what kind of political action is capable (or not) through Facebook?“software processes, and informational architectures, now play a central role in providing the very material means of existence of online publics and in framing the scope of online political practices” (p. 417)

“double articulation”

“The process is not simply one of human actors mobilizing communication technologies, but also of communication technologies enabling new patterns of political organization”

“double articulation”

“On the one hand, the specific informational dynamics for sharing information on Facebook are mobilized for a political cause: spreading a political anthem to large audiences. Code…t also enables new forms of more hidden political practices that make use of the surveillance potential of Facebook to gather information about users subscribing to this application—their demographic profiles, their likes and dislikes, their network of friends, et cetera” (p. 420)

Spreading a political message

Contributing to Facebook’s data gathering

“Facebook has been instrumental in expanding the political dialogue among voters and we couldn't be more excited about the opportunity to offer our readers a look inside this very telling conversation.”https://www.facebook.com/notes/us-politics-on-facebook/politico-facebook-team-up-to-measure-gop-candidate-buzz/10150461091205882

But Facebook doesn’t just “expand” political activation – it shapes & constrains it

case study #1:“the aggregation of publics”

“During the Ontario election, there were numerous local groups focusing on similar issues, thus showing that Facebook can be used not only to publicize issues, but also to foster a process of satellization of issues within smaller personal networks.”

Facebook allows typically neglected groups to have a voice…

“A common conception of participatory media is that they enable marginalized voices to express themselves. And indeed, in the case of the Ontario election, Facebook allowed for the emergence of marginalized issues and publics.

Some of the most popular Facebook groups during the election in terms of number of members focused on issues that were not prominent in the traditional mass media.” (p. 422)

Organized more around ISSUES than political parties

It also sorts us into “aggregates” based on interests, demographics, ‘likes’, etc.

Christian Fuchs:“Facebook is a panoptic sorting machine”

Facebook helps “reshape our conception of the public from a large body of concerned citizens to smaller aggregations of users.” (p. 422)

case study #2:“reifying a public”

Using Facebook to portray a nation / community / group

back to itself

People, whether from Canada or abroad, were invited to join the Great Canadian Wish List group on Facebook and define their own wish to see what “Canadians hope for the country’s future”

case study #2:“reifying a public”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhZJgZfsGW8#t=84

“This example of how a pre-existing network of interest (the anti-abortion movement) could push for an issue online and have it reified as a Canadian wish supposed to be representative of all Canadians revealed how political strategies can make use of informational dynamics (“friending”) in order to legitimize an issue” (p. 424)

case study #3:“opening the black box”

Using the Facebook API (application programming interface) to look ‘under the hood’ of Facebook

When collecting groups during the Ontario election, we noticed that one of the blind spots of the Facebook user interface was that it did not enable the visualization of links between groups, something we wanted to investigate, because it would answer the question of whether members of different publics share common issues.

case study #3:“opening the black box”

When assessing the strategies of political organizations on FB, we have to look not just at the content of their messages but also at what kinds of networks they form.

Not just a matter of ‘reading messages’, but of ‘visualizing connections’

* Facebook itself hides this information

implicationsFrom “issue publics” to “issue networks”?

To understand how politics works on Facebook, we can’t just look at what issues people are identifying with / friending / liking, but when & how issues are connected together

“Networks—as assemblages of people, technology and social norms—arrange subjects into structures and define the parameters for their interaction, thus actively shaping their social realities. But what does the social network include, and what is left out? Informational dynamics cannot be seen as supports of communicational dynamics anymore, but as directly intervening in the communicational, cultural, and by extension political planes.”

Translation: Facebook isn’t just a new ‘channel’ or ‘avenue’ for political participation; it shapes how that participation is carried out. It is a political actor