Networked Communications and Social Media:

New Identities, New Societies, New Religions?

Charles Ess Professor MSO (med særlige opgaver), (2009 – 2012)Institut for Informations- og MedievidenskabÅrhus Universitet

<[email protected]><[email protected]>

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Philosophy Information ethics privacy

Political philosophy – modern liberal democracy

Phenomenology

Communication theory /

historyMcLuhan-

Kondor

New Media / Digital Media

Computer-Mediated

Communication

empirical research- privacy

-democracy online

- religion online / online

religion

Comparative Philosophy / Religious Studies

(Abrahamic Religions, Confucian thought, Buddhist traditions, Indigenous

traditions)

SELF / IDENTITY //

COMMUNITY?vis-à-vis

Mediated Communicatio

n?[Cultures /

cultural perspectives

Phenomenology Embodiment

Virtue ethics]

Computation / “computational turn”

Backgrounds -

Warning! Kantian transcendental unity of apperception at work …

Backgrounds -

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work in progress: co-editor (with May Thorseth, NTNU), Trust and Virtual Worlds: Contemporary Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2010);’Co-editor (with Pauline Cheong, Peter Fischer-Nielsen, Stefan Gelfgren), Church and New Media (proposed)

Overview …1. A theoretical framework for analyzing computer-

mediated communication (CMC): McLuhan-Eisenstein-Innis-Ong + Baron (2008) / Kondor (2009)

Correlation between prevailing communication technology and sense of self / selves // identity / identities

Shift from modern / atomistic / autonomous individual to relational, “smeared-out” self.

2. Empirical turn – predictions fulfilled!(?)A. Privacy and democracy: fading hopes?B. Contemporary religious institutions and the renegotiation of

authority online.

3. Concluding remarks: future selves? future societies? future religions?

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key questions:1) what sort of self / selves emerges in correlation with secondary orality?2) ethical / political possibilities of such selves?

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I. Communication theory: “classic” Innis-Eisenstein-McLuhan-Ong / contemporary - N. Baron (2008), Z. Kondor (2009): from orality, literacy and print to the secondary orality/literacy of cyberspace

orality relational selves inextricably interwoven with community

(non-democratic)

(orality)-literacy relational selves /reflective / rational selfhood

(authoritarian / hierarchical

regimes)(orality/literacy)- print

“atomic” individual – Cartesian mind vs. body / Kantian autonomy

modern liberal state /

democratic polity

secondary orality of electronic media / cyberspace?

networked individual / relational – “smeared out” self

???

orality – (pre-agricultural): repetition (rhyme) and performance (song, dance as “technologies of memory” – e.g. The Iliad, The Odyssey) – cf. Baron, 185

literacy – (agricultural) writing / textsrise of critical thinking, logic, natural science – PreSocratic

philosophy (Socrates – still “purely” oral?), Plato, Aristotle (cf. Baron, 195f.) rise of reflective self – e.g., as fostered through diaries, letters

as “technologies of the self” (1st ct. Rome – Foucault; Baron 195)

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I. Communication theory: Innis-Eisenstein- McLuhan-Ong-Baron-Kondor

print – Protestant Reformation Scientific “Revolution” rise of modern nation-state and liberal democracies … the analytical-systemic view of Newtonian mechanics as applied to all aspects of life (including markets / capitalism as now separate from ethical / political / religious spheres of life – McLuhan)

Lutheranism 101: sola scriptura – the individual + his (her) Bible… (as standardized, “fixed” by print)

modern conception of “the individual” as a “psychic atom” radically distinct from Others, esp. Cartesian dualism(Kantian autonomy as perhaps more community-oriented)

Henry Rosement, Jr. – “the peach-pit self”(cf. Baron, 186ff.)

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secondary orality of electronic media (Ong):the culture of secondary orality reintroduces the immediacy

of oral communication, brings sound and gesture back into the human sensorium,

and changes written text from something that is fixed and

unchangeable to something malleable, or as Richard Lanham puts it, “volatile and interactive” (1993, 73, in O’Leary & Brasher, 1996).

[Cf. “the fluid word” as much more the construction of “communities of interpretation” (including previously fragmented, marginalized ones – GLBTq / neo-Nazi hate groups)

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And/or: “secondary literacy”? – …an epoch that is characterized by the rationality of literacy, but which allows for multimodal enhancement due to changes in

communications technology. Now there is no need to constantly translate or encode

experiences and ideas into verbal, and thus propositional, structures. This possibility increasingly opens the floor to the idea of perceptual and motor processes which do not need permanent conceptual supplementation (though sometimes conceptual apparatuses might facilitate responses).

embodiment (keep in mind …)Zsuzsanna Kondor, “Communication and the Metaphysics of Practice: Sellarsian Ethics

Revisited,” in Kristóf Nyíri (ed.), Engagement and Exposure: Mobile communication and the Ethics of Social Networking, 179-187. Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 2009. P. 180

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Nota Bene: At stake in these considerations are not simply the artifacts or

objects conveyed by a medium: If anything, there are more books – and texts (SMS, FB, Twitter,

Blogs, etc.) – than ever.

Rather, at stake here are the skills and practices afforded by each medium – some of which are explicit, articulate, teachable – some of which may belong to the more tacit dimensions of how we learn to engage and communicate in our world as embodied beings…

And again: what sort(s) of self / selves // identity / identities are fostered by these skills and practices?

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Consider: reading and writing in Literacy-Print vs. reading and writing in “the age of fast text” (Baron)

Handwriting – even when aided by the “new efficiency” of cursive writing (1st ct. Rome) – requires time:

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Reading is fast, but handwriting is slow – it retards thought’s due process, it consumes scupperfuls of time, it pushes every competing utterance away – and that is its great virtue, in fact, over mere underlining, and even over an efficient laptop retyping of the passage: for in those secret interclausal tracts of cleared thought-space … new quiet racemes will emerge from among the paving stones and foam greenly up in places they never otherwise would have prospered.-- Nicholson Baker, who “copies out passages longhand when he wants to understand or reflect upon the words of others” (Baron 2008, 197)

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I. Communication theory: Innis-Eisenstein- McLuhan-Ong-Baron-KondorMore broadly, since Erasmus, there is the recognition / emphasis in Western traditions that writing out important quotations from others, e.g., in a “Commonplace Book”, is part of how one thereby forms one’s mind / self:

Erasmus … proposed that individuals could strengthen their minds through guided use of the written word. In his manual On Copia of Words and Ideas, Erasmus counseled young men to read the works of great (inevitably dead) writers and then copy out important passages into a commonplace book, following an older medieval tradition. These passages were to be organized into conceptual categories, committed to memory, and then incorporated through paraphrase into the young man’s own thinking and writing. …

… The Renaissance commonplace movement, of which Erasmus was the best-known proponent, thrived up into the nineteenth century, with a gentleman’s commonplace book serving both as a vehicle for and a chronicle of his intellectual development. The initial scribal act was a necessary component in this stepwise development in the life of the mind.

Baron 2008, 196f.

(Cf. Puritan / Protestant emphasis on solitary reading of the Bible, reflection / interpretation as central to the formation and fostering of one’s spiritual development.)

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(Commonplace book image from: http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/Commonplace

Book-PlimptonMs276-England16thCentury.jpg)

And: as scholars know well:It is through the various techniques we have developed – underlining,

marginalia, re-reading the same (fixed, stable) text, developing and defending interpretations through the hermeneutical circle (thereby engaging logic, argument, critical analysis, etc.) – of “of coming to grips” with the extensive texts made available in articles and books

that we develop careful and defensible understandings of important texts, furthering both our own (self) understanding and, though dialogue and exchange, that of others.

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Again, key question …what sort of self/selves / sense of identity/identities is fostered through these practices and techniques, as afforded via literacy-print as modalities of communication?

(recent philosophy – feminism / environmentalism / Floridi)

From the perspective of computer-mediated communication:

… the rise of networked communications, already in “Web 1.0” is affiliated with the emergence of “the networked individual”

a self that utilizes CMC technologies to sustain both weak- and strong-ties, using these to reinforce and enhance real-world f2f relationships (Wellman & Haythorntwaite 2002)

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And with “Web 2.0”?( greater) interactivity – Social Network Sites, “Pro/sumers,” etc more seamless interweaving between offline and online worlds 1990s distinction between “real” and “virtual” is no longer seen to be

meaningful (Consalvo & Ess 2010) Global diffusion, especially via mobile devices – “second wave” of

internet/web diffusion / accessibility, especially in the developing world currently, 24% of world’s population interconnected ever greater cross-cultural encounters online

Consequences for our sense of self/selves?

From Turkle’s (in)famous postmodern identity play in MUDs and MOOs to …

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Goffman and the relational self:

According to Goffman, we take on specific characters to please our current audience: we adapt to social situations and perform according to common expectations of the roles we embody (Goffman, [1959] 1990). These expectations differ according to interactional contexts; e.g. a social, career-minded, family person embodies different roles in front of her/his children, spouse, friends, and colleagues. In everyday social situations we are consequently deliberately conscious of matching our presentations of self to expectations of the roles we embody. (Lüders 2010, 457)

Revised in order to fit electronically mediated forms of communication …

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CMC & Goffman: Studies of self-performance and socialization are commonly situated within

a context emphasizing the structures and features of network societies, arguing that modern Western societies have experienced the emergence of limited purpose, loose relationships, more fluid, yet meaningful social networks (Benkler, 2006, p. 357).

Instead of depending on locally embedded, thick, and stable relations (such as indicated by Tönnies’ (1955) concept of Gemeinschaft), individuals in network societies are “more dependent on their own combination of strong and weak ties” (Benkler, 2006, p. 362); people navigate complex networks according to needs (Benkler, 2006, p. 362; Rheingold, 2002) and purposes of socialization, collaboration, and sense of belonging (Wellman, 2002).

Cf. the relational self as described by Ames and Rosemont in Confucian thought …

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Cf. the relational self as described by Ames and Rosemont in Confucian thought ……ren is one’s entire person: one’s

cultivated cognitive, aesthetic, moral, and religious sensibilities as they are expressed in one’s ritualized roles and relationships.

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It is one’s “field of selves,” the sum of significant relationships, that constitute one as a resolutely social person. Ren is not only mental, but physical as well: one’s posture and comportment, gestures and bodily communication (Ames and Rosemont 1998, 49: emphasis added, CE).Ames and Rosemont translate xin as “heart-and-mind,” to make the point that “…there are no altogether disembodied thoughts for Confucius, nor any raw feelings altogether lacking (what in English would be called) ‘cognitive content.’” (1998, 56 – emphasis added, CE).

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Email …

FB status / update

SMS

Phone call (?)

Chat

YouTube upload

Twitter / tweets

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/First_Gold_Beam-Beam_Collision_Events_at_RHIC_at_100_100_GeV_c_per_beam_recorded_by_STAR.jpg/400px-First_Gold_Beam-Beam_Collision_Events_at_RHIC_at_100_100_GeV_c_per_beam_recorded_by_STAR.jpg

So – consider the phenomenology of a contemporary networked – relational self in the age of “fast text” (Baron 2008)?

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I. Communication theory: Innis-Eisenstein- McLuhan-Ong-Baron-KondorWhat hermeneutics and other practices are fostered, afforded by such media?

Cf. the average text production of a U.S. adolescent – 80 a day; texts are usually short and ephemeral – rather literal, utilitarian, not requiring much effort at interpretation (that would defeat their purpose) …“I don’t like having the obligation to answer an email – I much prefer to more or less swim in the information stream [of FB, Twitter, etc.] …”

vis-à-vis dwelling with a complex and difficult text, fixed in print, etc.?

What virtues do such media foster? Cf. Vallor 2009: patience and perseverance are required for friendship, cross-cultural communication – vs. impatience with having to read texts that are too long, etc. Cf. Baron 2008

Hence:the shift from literacy-print to secondary literacy/orality is a shift from

an entire cluster of practices, affordances, “literacies” virtues, and hermeneutics to another ,

– and with it, it seems, the sort of self/selves / sense of identity/identities affiliated with each.

This, at least, is what the theory predicts …

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I. Communication theory: Innis-Eisenstein- McLuhan-Ong-Baron

A. Privacy and democracy: fading hopes?

B. The online church vs. the printed Word: contemporary religious institutions and the renegotiation of authority online.

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II. From theory to empiricism

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II. A. Privacy and democracy: fading hopes?

Privacy: philosophical perspectives, definitionsIn an age of “participatory surveillance” (Albrechtslund 2008) – what is ‘privacy’ –

and who needs it?

“core space” (my term) in which one (in Kant’s terms, as a rational autonomy) is able to deliberate, reflect, critique alternatives, and thereby freely choose / judge (phronesis) what is to be one’s own conception of the good life, including

political, religious, career, and other personal choices / commitments (in Kantian language, one’s ends)

and thus the appropriate and necessary means for achieving those ends

Foundational conception of liberal democracies, modern liberal state – cf. Isaiah Berlin's well-known account of positive freedom/liberty – 1969, 131)Deborah Johnson’s account of privacy justifications in the U.S. (2001)

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Privacy: how far does the networked / relational / “smeared-out” self seek to preserve and foster such (modern-liberal-autonomous) privacy?

Mixed picture:On the one hand – increasing interest in preserving individual-style

privacy by young people, e.g. Pew Report (Lenhart and Madden, 2007), “Facebook users’ revolt” against Beacon project …

On the other hand:

how many of us actually read the terms of service, e.g., for Facebook, etc.?

the rise of our comfort with and pleasure in “big brother” reality shows, “participatory / voluntary / lateral” forms of surveillance as fostering (pre-modern?) community (Albrechtslund 2008)

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general blurring of the earlier boundaries between “public” / “private”Porte de Choisy, 1st prize winner of the 2007 PocketFilm Festival:

<http://www.festivalpocketfilms.fr/article.php3?id_article=648>

(Images from David 2009, pp. 81, 83)


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Democracy online? Not so much …

From 1994 to 2009: Habermasian and other forms of deliberative democracy online - hopes, successes, failures

1. Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Alexis Wichowski (2010) While online discussion can be useful – for specific purposes and with careful design (not always achieved) – no examples can be cited to suggest that political conversation achieves the “lofty ideals” of Habermasian theory:a willingness to hear other perspectives, to rationally argue for one’s own opinions while grounding those opinions in sound evidence, to aim for identifying problems and solutions that will benefit the greater good (Dahlberg, 2001). (Stromer-Galley & Wichowski 2010, 181)

From 1994 to 2009: Habermasian and other forms of deliberative democracy online - hopes, successes, failures

2. Even as modified / amplified by incorporation of feminist emphases on the importance and legitimacy of emotion and narrative (i.e., beyond narrowly rational/logical emphases) – e.g., Thorseth, 2008

- hopes for realizing deliberative democracy online are countered by the predominance of, e.g.,

“the daily me” (fragmentation),problems with “noise” (too many voices, too little time), consumer-oriented media consumption, shopping, etc. (Thorseth, 2009)

dimming hopes for the Internet as perhaps overcoming “the problem of the Public” – the need to improve “the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion” (Dewey 1927, 208, in Thorseth 2008, 221; cf. Stromer-Galley & Wichowski 2010, 169.)

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Especially under Web 2.0,greater interactivity between community members as “always on,” “smeared-out selves” greater equality between laity and clergy, may favor some variants of Protestantism that seek to emphasize “community of believers,” greater equality, etc.?

[Cf. Cheong et al:…the Internet contributes to a more participatory process and …

church leaders are encouraging community building and identity by having members construct their own photographs and narratives online that reflect members’ own cognitive frameworks of everyday spatial experiences related to the church. Online communication in this sense goes beyond the organizational control of both religious and geographic facts, since church leaders recognize the difficulty of regulating information online. (301; emphasis added, CE)

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II. B. The online church vs. the printed Word: contemporary religious institutions and the renegotiation of authority online.

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“Off the map” – Ultra-orthodox rejection of the

Internet

More marginalized / progressive /

egalitarian

More “conservative” / hierarchical

Institutional Characteristics

Secondary orality, interactivity(“Web 2.0”)

Literacy / print Communication Technologies

Audio-visual, chat, comments,

(micro) blogging,Social Networking

Text archives,One-to-many

“broadcasting”

Characteristic Uses of New

Media

Fideism / emotivism

Critical Rationalism

Evangelicals (U.S.)

Roman Catholic Danish Folkekirken?

“techno-pagans”

in the face of the threat of online communication / secondary orality / secondary literacy to earlier, more hierarchical, print/literacy based forms of selves / authority / community, however …

emerging practices of a) religious leaders learning to utilize and control new media for the

sake of sustaining, expanding community as now increasingly constructed and experienced in online venues

b) religious leaders thereby re-negotiate, regain some level of control, authority, e.g., through acquiring the skills, literacies needed to maintain control, presence of the institution in online settings …

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in the face of the threat of online communication / secondary orality / secondary literacy to earlier, more hierarchical, print/literacy based forms of selves / authority / community, however …

c) use of appeal to Scripture to resolve disagreements and re-establish authority of religious leaders …

print continues to anchor religious authority in the age of new media

Perhaps Ong was right: secondary orality / secondary literacy will emerge as forms of communication that supplement / complement literacy-print,rather than replace them?

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Innis-Ong appear to be correct regarding how the self changes in correlation with new communication technologies

BUT: what will happen regardinghermeneutical experiences / facilities / virtues affiliated with literacy-printvis-à-vishermeneutical experiences / facilities / virtues affiliated with literacy-print ?

III. Concluding remarks: future selves, societies, religions?

1. Secondary orality as revolutionary replacement of literacy/print loss of modern self (and thus democratic state)?

Especially if we hold to a 1990s’ dualism emphasizing “secondary orality” as replacement, not supplement to orality / literacy / print (e.g., Barlow 1996)

will such a networked, “smeared-out” self - while highly relational, more fully interwoven with a larger, indeed global community - be able to acquire and sustain the basic skills and capacities of free rationality, deliberation, judgment (phronesis), required to justify and sustain viable democratic societies?

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?


Or … 2: perhaps Ong is right?

Literacy/print supplemented by secondary orality – and with it, a hybrid self emerges that conjoins both

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the modern-private-autonomous self (and with it, the democratic state?) – i.e., one still steeped in the technologies of literacy and print as a “technology of the self” (Foucault) – still capable of using the skills and facilities afforded by literacy and print to create and foster the self required for modern liberal democracies;

with

a (“post-post-modern”) relational/ smeared out self as fostered by the technologies of electronic / networked media in a secondary orality.

+?


So what will happen?

1) Will we continue to experience – and largely with contentment (“voluntary surveillance”) the loss of individual privacy, especially in online environments shifting increasingly in favor of a relational / smeared-out self – one that seems to be at odds with the individual autonomy required for modern liberal democracy?

(Reminder: general dimming of hopes for realizing democracy online in strong forms)

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And/or

2) Reminder: the evidence from religious institutions (East and West) – so far – indeed shows Ong was right: literacy-print sustains itself alongside the migration into online environments.

3) More broadly, the findings of CMC scholarship over the last decade support Ong:

Old media rarely die, and humans remain the reference point and prototype for technologically mediated communication.

-- Klaus Bruhn Jensen (2010, 44)

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4) There may be “life-phase” / developmental changes over time that balance out emphasis on electronic media?

38(Ling 2009, 66)


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Or? (your turn) – thanks!

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