Digital Democracy in the Private Sphere
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1. The document discusses how technology and digital media are blurring the lines between public and private spheres and spaces. This convergence allows for new forms of civic engagement and political participation to take place. 2. Old models of representative democracy are declining as citizens engage in more personalized and private forms of political expression online. Citizens can publicly engage in political activism from private spaces through social media. 3. This represents a shift towards more fluid, flexible notions of citizenship as political activity migrates to digital spaces and architectures online.
![[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],[object Object],A control is not a discipline. In making highways, for example, you don’t enclose people but instead multiply the means of control. I am not saying that this is the highway’s exclusive purpose, but that people can drive infinitely and ‘freely’ without being confined yet while still being perfectly controlled. This is our future. (Deleuze, 1998, p. 18)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
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Digital Democracy in the Private Sphere
- 1. Democracy in a Digital Age Zizi Papacharissi, PhD Professor and Head Communication, U of Illinois-Chicago
Editor's Notes
- 2 criteria of visibility and collectivity (Weintraub, 1997)
- Organization of individual ecologies Visibility and collectivity Thewaysinwhichindividualsinternalizetheconvergenceofpublicandprivate, operateinthesocial,andabsorbtechnologicalconvergenceasaudiences,publicsandcitizens areexploredinthenexttwochapters. Privacy, not privatism
- The architecture of these spaces informs human action by suggesting, concealing or disrupting activities, “organizing,” in Michel de Certeau’s (1984) words, “an ensemble of possibilities and interdictions . . . while the walker actualizes some of these possibilities” (p. 98). it is the fluidity and interconnectedness of overlapping capabilities that allows multiple networked planes of activity to form and host participatory and multimedia acts of consumption/production Intellectual antecedents : de Certeau – convergence of consumption and production (cultural poaching) Toffler’s prosumers
- Instead, it is reflexively articulate through discursive practices, that allow both the formulation of agonistically framed arguments, and agonistically exercised claims to power. It is in this contemporary architecture, more reflective of current relations between power, ideology and identity that convergent technologies contribute to a liquid and ever-evolving, ever-imperfect democracies and citizens
- Michael Schudson (1998) actually traced the first instance of this complaint to the 18 th century and the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who observed that “We have physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, and painters; we no longer have citizens.” (Rousseau, 1750, as cited in Schudson, 1998, p. 365). Schudson recorded this as the first proclamation of the end of citizenship, but this also presents a first attempt at associating the ascend of the professional sphere and the workplace with a possible displacement of civic activity that previously resided in spheres now occupied by professions. This concern then re-emerges in a variety of writings of intellectuals and academics affiliated with political science, sociology and communication. de Toqueville (1835/1840), despite his admiration for the American model of democratic equality, expressed concerns on the incompatibility of a material culture that prioritized seeking material security with the independent pursuit of intellectual freedom. Dewey (1927) was hopeful about the role of communication and journalism in energizing a Great Public , but also concerned about the influence of commercial hegemony. Lippmann (1925) worried that individual members of the public were much too self-centered to care about public policy, and were frequently summoned to contribute to democracy through formulaic exercises, which merely required that they “do as little as possible in matters where they can do nothing very well” (p. 198). C. Wright Mills (1953, 1956) cautioned that mass society communication channels prescribe civic engagement that is so organized, it frequently effectively renders individuals disinterested observers or “strangers to politics” (p. 328). Riesman (1950) located these behaviors in his citizen type of the indifferent ; spectator citizens whose politics is driven by a consumerist approach and whose beliefs frequently reside in the “Don’t Know” polling response. Sennett (1970) connected civic passivity to the excessively organized order of modern urban living and the subsequent rise of a new Puritanism. Lasch (1979) explained civic apathy as a symptom of materially driven, self-absorption and evolving narcissism. Putnam (1996) traced the historical progression of citizenship in the modern era to structure a similar argument, finding television guilty of displacing time previously devoted to community involvement more generative of social capital. This sequence of citizenship critiques progresses in reverse-direction reproducible irony: Putnam (1996) idealizes the great civic generations that Riesman and Mills had dubbed indifferent; Riesman and Mills confront the civic indifference as a condition singular to the socio-economic hierarchy of their era implying a comparison with a past ideal state. Yet, in that past state, Lippman and Dewey had already expressed concern over the indifference of citizens, and had delved into the past in search of an ideal community, a past de Tocqueville, and before him, Rousseau, had also surveyed to no avail, in pursuit of the missing citizen.
- A complex argument, made in 200 pages. I cannot convey complexity of argument. But I can give you a sense of its progression (slide?) and present some interesting ideas for discussion and seek your feedback Bloggin is not democratic. Not democratizing. Is it political? Yes. Is it only political? NO
- Not all provides an opportunity for expression different from conventional mobilization, opinion expression, or protest. Not all issues on our radars warrant these types of reaction; several simply evoke sarcasm, humor or satire, which are equally important forms of political thought and expression.
- Mouffe (2005) terms a “conflictual consensus,” and attempt a real confrontation based on a shared set of rules, and despite disparate individual positions (p. 52). Mouffe (2005) defined agonism as a “we/they relation” where the conflicting parties, although acknowledging that they are adversaries, operate on common symbolic ground and see themselves as belonging to the same association. In this context, “the task of democracy is to transform antagonism into agonism” (p. 20). Democratizing? No. Democratic? No. Borne out of democracy? Yes