communication technologies and change

7/30/2019 Communication Technologies and Change

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Communication Technologies

and Change

Lecture 9

Week 10


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Todays lecture

What is governance?

Relations of visibility and questions of governance.

Media regulation?

#destroythejoint

Activist groups and practices of mobilisation.

Thanks Getup!

Communication platform assemblages Social media

The creation and control of agency


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WHAT IS GOVERNANCE?


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What is governance?

Traditional view

Sovereign power power over life and death

State-based politics

Top-down conception of government

Current ACT election

Liberal Democratic politics

Access power through political representation


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What is governance?

Governmentality

Study of the art of government

Government, broadly conceived

Comes from Michel Foucaults College de France

lectures 1978, 1982-1984

Neoliberal governmentality

Power is decentred and citizens play an active role

in their own governance.


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What is governance?

People take over control of their own lives

Power is dispersed

Governmentality of health

Function of lifestyle rather than chance

Responsibility placed on individuals

Managed by analysing populations (biopolitics)

Health security insurance, risk Insure against possible future events

Calculus of probably across entire populations


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What is governance?

The ensemble formed by the institutions,

procedures, analyses and reflections, the

calculations and tactics that allow the exercise

of this very specific albeit complex form of

power, which has as its target population, as

its principal form of knowledge political

economy, and as its essential technical meansapparatuses of security. (Foucault 2007: 108)


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What is governance?

Power relations internalised

Relations of visibility

Not just what you see

Visibility as a function of knowledge and technologicalassemblages

TV show House

Medical doctors capacity to render visible disease

and affirmity Function of technical knowledge, probabilities and

analysis of symptoms via medical technology


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What is governance?

Compositions of relations that produce

different visibilities

Road safety

At risk populations

Insurance

Self-policing?

Technological visibility speed cameras, point-to-

point


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What is governance?

Data retention legislation

Would enable the Federal government to

potentially assess online activity

Producing new forms of visibility

Data in this context means meta-data about

online activities

Produce an aggregate appreciation of online

population


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What is governance?

Dismantling of the centralised top-downregulatory agencies in the 1980s and 1990s

Open up regulatory process

Online transparency, let citizens regulate

Regulatory solutions through market mechanisms

Fair Trade movement

Gov 2.0 movement Part of the Department of Finance and

Deregulation (ironic title in context of today!)


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What is governance?

Media regulation?

Focus of the Convergence Review The review considered the existing regulatory framework

applying to media and communications services includingbroadcast and mobile, in addition to internet content such aswebsites, internet applications and both audio and audiovisualmaterial.

Examined whether current regulation and policy frameworksremain the most appropriate and effective means in aconverging environment.

Aimed to ensure that media and communications services areprovided within an environment that fosters competition, istechnology-neutral, encourages a diversity of voices, andprotects Australian culture, community values and citizens'rights.
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_reviewhttp://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/convergence_review


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What is governance?

Independent Media Inquiry

The effectiveness of the current media codes ofpractice in Australia, particularly in light of

technological change that is leading to themigration of print media to digital and onlineplatforms.

Report suggested increased opportunity for

citizens/audiences lead regulatory framework My submission: explored power relations of

cross-platform media assemblages
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiryhttp://www.dbcde.gov.au/digital_economy/independent_media_inquiry


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What is governance?

Recent Gender Wars

Largely organised around

comments made by

radio broadcaster Alan

Jones

MRN station 2GB

eventually pulled all

advertising

Released a statement

Jenna Price responded

on ABCs AM radio show
http://www.afr.com/rw/2009-2014/AFR/2012/10/07/Photos/6ee985ee-102b-11e2-9f93-49336f40a88b_Macquarie%20Radio%20Network%20Limited.pdfhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-08/anti-jones-campaigner-denies-cyber-bullying/4300628http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-08/anti-jones-campaigner-denies-cyber-bullying/4300628http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-08/anti-jones-campaigner-denies-cyber-bullying/4300628http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-08/anti-jones-campaigner-denies-cyber-bullying/4300628http://www.afr.com/rw/2009-2014/AFR/2012/10/07/Photos/6ee985ee-102b-11e2-9f93-49336f40a88b_Macquarie%20Radio%20Network%20Limited.pdf


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ACTIVIST GROUPS AND PRACTICESOF MOBILISATION


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Activist Groups and Practices of

Mobilisation
http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/wikileaks/assange/sign-the-petition


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Mobilisation


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Mobilisation

Not what to think but what to think about(Cohen 1963)

Agenda-setting, salience

Affective salience tone of message

Substantive salience informational content

Transfer of object from one agenda to anotherfirst-level agenda setting (what to think about)

Attribute saliencesecond-level agenda setting(how to think about)


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Mobilisation

Inter-media agenda setting (Ragas and Kiousis 2010)

MoveOn.orgs Obama in 30 Seconds Political advertisement competition

Partisan media coverage (The Nation) Congruent (strong) first-level agenda setting

Explored relation between affective salience andsecond-level agenda setting

Obama official ads and MoveOn.orgs ads

Strong correlation between Obama negative ads andMoveOn ads

Weak correlation between Obama positive ads andMoveOn ads
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2010.515372http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2010.515372http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2010.515372http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15205436.2010.515372


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Mobilisation

GetUp! and MoveOn

Hybrid organisation a blend of traditional

hierarchical decision-making by the core staff

and Board, coupled with rapid response

networked member participation (Vromen

and Coleman 2011: 80).
http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSShttp://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSShttp://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSShttp://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSS


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Mobilisation

Membership

Members do not pay to join or receive a service

Opt in to receive emails (and they can simply opt

out at anytime as well) on GetUp! campaigns.

Recipients of GetUp!s emails choose to take

further action only on issues that matter to them.

What is this action? How is it political? Is it?


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Mobilisation

1. Send an email: to the federal or state legislature,a government agency, the government leader, acompany; to a newspaper editor;

2. Make a phone call: to the federal legislature, thegovernment leader, to fellow citizens to vote;

3. Sign an e-petition;

4. Join a local action;

5. Donate money; and/or

6. Watch a video. (Vromen and Coleman 2011: 84)
http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSShttp://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=627591033342578;res=IELHSS


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Mobilisation

2010 election

Focus: pollution, mental

health, and refugees

Rapid response Voter enrolment issue

70% of members supported

Launched High Court action

3 week turnaround

98,138 voters enfranchised

Issue Frequency %

Carbon Pollution 4 11.5

Mental Health 5 14

Refugees 3 8.5

Native Forests 1 3

Voter Enrolment 6 17

Tony Abbotts Conservative Agenda 2 6

Internet Censorship 1 3

General Election Strategy,

progressive agenda

2 6

Election Day, visibility, scorecards 5 14

Combination of carbon pollution,

mental health, refugees

6 17

Total 35 100

GetUp! Member Emails by Election Issue

1 June - 23 August 2010 (85)


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Mobilisation

Clicktivism?

One of the key opportunitiesthat the internet haspresented to contemporary

social movements is animproved capacity to organisehigh threshold offline actions.(Van Laer and Van Aelst 2010)

Creative function

Facilitating function

2010 GetUp!

7,000 people offline activities

20,000 hours volunteer work
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691181003628307http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13691181003628307


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Mobilisation GetUp!s agenda-setting capacity?

Media coverage Most neutral, including 88% of

news stories

Only 13 articles negative, mostly

about Abbott & gender ads 76% did not mention political

leaning

12% called it progressive

12% called it independent

Vromen & Coleman argue thatthe routinised recognition ofGetUp! as a legitimate politicalplayer in Australia (89)


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COMMUNICATION PLATFORMASSEMBLAGES


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Communication Platform Assemblages

Affordance theory (Gibson 1979)

Action possibilities latent in the environment,objectively measurable and independent of theindividual's ability to recognise them, but always in

relation to the actor and therefore dependent on theircapabilities (wiki)

Rather than Facebook or Twitter as a platformand interface

Think about social media platforms in terms ofthe affordances for action possibilities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance


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From a network-layered approach to

studying platforms

*The+ locus of power is shifting away from

control over content to the management of

degrees of meaningfulness and the attribution

of cultural value (Langlois 2012: 9)

Not about content, but the conditions by

which meaning can emerge (13)


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Conduits of governance in 3 ways

1. Manager of information

Abundance of information, too much!!

Selects and envelopes information in personalised

assemblages (i.e. cookie-enabled Google identity)


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2. Managing user perceptions: articulating

technical processes with cultural values

Communicative act of friending (networked

linkage) versus building actual friendships

Affordances of sharing or upvoting content

Enacts dynamics of visibility and invisibility

Produces visibilities and valorises content


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3. Shaping user agency

Level of cultural perception through distribution

of the sensible

Lazzarato, media produces a world within whichconsumers have to buy in

Level of software platform, affordances

embedded into design

Delegation of agency


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Governmental approach to platforms

Rejection of specific populations

Establishing differentialities along a continuum ofagency

Are you a super user, noob, etc.?

Two ways to think about governmentality andassemblages of communication technologies:

As citizen tools to intervene in offline governmentalprocesses and regulation

As business and government tools used to controland modulate the agency of online populations

communication technologies and change

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