1. New Media New Citizenship Lecture 22 November 2004 Citizenship: between politics & ideology Marianne van den Boomen

2. About the course NMNC ● Level 300: heavy workload, 20 hours a week ● Academic level: references and sources; analyzing, confronting and criticizing theory and practice Tip: scholar.google.com ● Lectures and seminars, active participation, reading in advance the literature ● Weekly assignments, presentation, paper ● Missed something? Compensate with substantial extra work

3. Grades 23 December: rough grade, based on your participation and weekly assignments so far 24 January: upgrade/downgrade/equal rough grade, based on further participation and postings, quality of your Internet history assignment, and your subgroup presentation 17 February: final grade, based on last rough grade (50%) and quality paper (50%)

5. Assignments/requirements Individual Assignments 1.Min. 7 format postings (23 Nov.-11 Jan.) 2.Internet History review assignment (23 Dec.) 3.Comments on assignments (3 Feb.) 4.Self assessment (3 Feb.) Group Assignments 5.Weekly group postings for the seminar (23 Nov.- 11 Jan.) 6.Presentation citizenship project (20 jan.) 7. Paper on citizenship project (3 Feb.)

6. Formats to choose from: 1. Select one sentence from an article that could serve as a motto on New Media & New Citizenship 2. Compare the conclusions of two articles; what's your own standpoint? 3. Criticize, argue a point where you disagree with the author. 4. Check two footnotes or bibliographical references, and report on your findings. 5. Find biographical information about the author and report on the impact 6. Connect an argumentation in the article/chapter to an actual hot issue, or to your group project 7. Review the lecture held on Monday

7. What is citizenship about? ● location, nation, state, nation-state ● politics, elections ● rules, regulation, law ● rights, duties ● culture, ideology ● education, media ● public infrastructure, public debate, public sphere ● values, norms, habits ● traditions ● belonging, community ● participation, shared morality ● differentiation, subject positions ● inclusion/exclusion

8. 5 themes in the course 1. Rights: human, civil, political, & social rights 2. Public sphere: public opinion, public debate, public infratstructure 3. Subjection/subjectivation: surveillance and data gathering, discipline, normalization of subjectpositions 4. Inclusion/exclusion: based on subjectpositions defined by class, gender, color, sexuality, age, nationality, ability etc. 5. Democracy: representativeness; equality and expression of difference; local and global structures

9. Definition Citizenship is the sense of belonging to and participating in an abstract social whole, on a level somewhere between politics and ideology.

10. Not only nation-state ● Greek city states ● Roman empire ● 18 th century Republic of Letters ● French revolution (freedom, equality, fraternity) ● European citizenship? ● World citizenship? ● Netizenship? Cyborg citizenship?

11. New media characteristics ● digital, computerised (stand alone and connected) ● access to a wide range of information ● communication at relatively low costs ● space & time compression: almost instantanious, worldwide ● do it yourself-culture: producing information, tools and environments, creating public/private spheres ● interactivity, connectivity, multimediality, virtuality ● distributed intelligence

12. Top-down & bottum-up Tension between top-down/bottum-up Politics = top-down & bottum-up! Ideology = top-down & bottum-up! Top: not a univocal monolitical unity Bottum: not a univocal monolitical unity

13. “It’s the economy, stupid.” ● education and information becoming a market with the emergence of ICT's ● general political-economical tendency to privatization, deregulation, liberalization, and commodification ● the emergence of a labour force of symbolic analysts, a.k.a. digerati or the virtual class ● the widening gap between the poor and the rich

14. “It’s capitalism, stupid.” (Barbrook) ● the rise of a virtual class: ‘cognitive scientists, engineers, computer scientists, video-game developpers, and all other communications specialists’ ● laisser faire ideology, promoting an electronic marketplace instead of an electronic agora ● myths of the free market as a determinating force of wealth and democracy ● private ownership of estate and people (slaves) as the fundament of society

15. Contradictions…

16. Barlow’s Declaration ● declaration of independence from outside powers ● intended to keep any state intervention out ● recognizing only one Golden Rule ● stating a truely democratic and egalitarian domain ● declaring no material constraints

17. Critique Trend & Barbrook ● 60s heritage of utopian visions, as a merger of alternative hippie culture and entrepreneurship ● disembodied Western platonic philosophy (free Mind, not material conditions or restrictions) ● critique on notions of inherently innovative, emancipating, democraticizing dynamics of ICT

18. Utopian perspective ● no bodily or material constraints ● autonomous new social formations (virtual communities, public spheres) ● media monopolies broken, the end of copyright restrictions ● free floating minds, free speech, free downloads ● no state subsidies or regulation needed ● clean non-polluting technologies ● everyone sender/receiver, no one is excluded, everyone is empowerd ● all information within reach, cultures and subcultures can flourish ● ultimate direct democracy (electronic agora) ● overthrow of the industrial powers that be ● new emancipating citizenship, sunny revolution

19. Dystopian perspective ● erosion of social cohesion by pseudo communities ● cultural decline, trivial entertainment and gaming, information glut, swindlers, terrorists, and perverts flourish ● state surveillance and discipline everywhere ● marketing, consumerism and media conglomerates everywhere, economy and commodification colonize everything ● exhausting natural resources by economic growth, pollution ● citizens reduced to consumers or potential terrorists ● more and more exclusion of minorities, women unfriendly, widening even more the gap between rich and poor ● state protects private ownership and slavery; only a big revolution of ownership relations will help

20. Left ● focus on social groups and equality, non-equality is not natural but social-economically induced ● improving position of the poor, low income class ● focus on including the minorities, respect for different values, 'political correctness' ● citizenship is a matter of rights and public protection of the poor and minorities ● state regulation and policies to achieve this ● focus more on collectivity and public goods than on individual freedom

21. Right ● focus on individual (or elite), non-equality is natural ● improving position of the economy/entrepreneurs (or the elite of wise men) ● focus on law and order, conformation to dominant values, 'political incorrectness' ● citizenship is a matter of duties and taking care of yourself ● minimum of state regulation, execpt for militairy defense and police force ● focus more on individual freedom than on collectivity and public goods

22. Scale from left to right communist -> marxist -> old left -> new left -> -> communitarian -> libertarian -> liberal -> new right/neo-liberal -> old right/conservative

23. Indications communist: practical perspective of total state planning and control marxist: analytical perspective, struggle between capital and labor old left: political organisation of working class, proletarians new left: division between classes has been eroded, women and minorities to be included, room for alternative bohemian life styles communitarian: focus on social cohesion in local community and civil society libertarian: leftish, with strong focus on individual freedom and independence liberal: focus on individual, belief in the justice of the free market, no law and order state new right/neo-liberal: focus on individual and established elite, belief in the justice of the free market, but law and order state needed old right/conservative: focus on established elite, strong law and order state