MICHAEL HOECHSMANN, PAUL R. CARR, AND GINA THÉSÉE

INTRODUCTION

Democracy 2.0, Old and New Media, and the Quest for Engaged Participation

INTRODUCTION

The UN Declaration of Human Rights laid down what any person might reasonably expect, yet there are remarkably few people who enjoy these rights. With cameras in the hands of activists and meaningful distribution of those images, we will witness what really goes on in this world and hopefully want to change it. (Peter Gabriel, in Gregory et al, 2005) I think we are moving rapidly toward the obsolescence and eventual disappearance of a single traditional model and its replacement by others that are hybrids. (Gilberto Gil, 2007, in Rohter, 2007) In 1992, one year before the launch of the World Wide Web (WWW) and a decade before the seismic shift of Web 2.0 enabled broad social participation in the production and circulation of media texts, the renowned rock star Peter Gabriel founded Witness, an organization that “trains and supports activists and citizens around the world to use video safely, ethically, and effectively to expose human rights abuse and fight for change” (witness.org). The goal of Gabriel’s project was to put cameras in the hands of people who needed them to expose oppressive conditions and to document social movements. Twenty-five years later, the project is still running, but, as cameras have become much more prevalent, Witness can now focus more on direct campaigns, drawing attention to the valuable work that is produced. To hearken back to 1992 is to consider an era where media producers and owners, for the most part, controlled what could be published or aired. Media monopolies were based on two major edifices, one economic—producing, publishing, circulating, and broadcasting were all costly practices mainly owned by a small number of media mega-corporations—and the other political—media was produced by highly trained “experts” and the majority of these experts were White men from the global North (McChesney, 2015; McChesney & Pickard, 2011). Fast-forward twenty-five years, and there has been a profound “democratization” of access to the technological means of media production and circulation, and also to the knowledge needed to make and circulate media messages (Baym, 2015). This by no means is to deny that contemporary digital divides do not exist, and that the majority of citizens in many

xv M. HOECHSMANN ET AL. INTRODUCTION countries still do not actively participate in the newly democratized media spheres. PARTICIPATORY MEDIA CULTURES However, the landscape of how media is produced, by whom, and for what purposes has shifted, and the contributions in this book are a testament to that reality (van It is virtually impossible to imagine a society or world that is not already Dijck, 2013). The chapters assembled in this collection demonstrate the impact of the (re)presented through media forms. The popular culture imagination is already culture of participation in media-making and consuming enabled by the Web 2.0 on inhabited by pre-packaged soundbites of common-sense wisdom derived from local and broader national and international democratic processes. hegemonic sources, and the mainstream corporate media has long skillfully Another important example comes from the Brazilian Minister of Culture from demonstrated its ability to incorporate, co-opt, and sublimate yesterday’s radical or 2003–2007, the renowned musician Gilberto Gil, one of the greats of Brazil’s alternative ideas into today’s slogans and products. Nonetheless, over the last decade tropicalismo movement, who developed an initiative called Ponta da Cultura we have witnessed a profound transformation in who shapes the media and how it is (Culture Bridge) that would enable poor youth from Brazil’s favelas to not only shaped. The emergence and consolidation of Web 2.0 has irrevocably transformed to produce music, but to circulate it on the Internet. These were the heady days a number of media functions, particularly in relation to news reporting, advertising, of early Web 2.0, when the Internet transformed from a space where specialists and music and film production, and has opened and created spaces where anyone (Web “masters”) managed content for publishers to one where the majority of the with a cell-phone or computer and Internet access can, potentially, become a global material online was produced by end-users. The explosion of content on the early change-maker (Fuchs, 2017). Activist media in the era of digital citizen participation Web 2.0 earned the mythical everyone—“You”—, TIME magazine’s distinction has flourished, sometimes resulting in profound new alliances and social change, of Person of the Year in 2006. Such was the outpouring of largely Do It Yourself though often transforming into superficial forms of “clicktivism” that are feel-good, media that soon the early social media platforms, such as My Space, YouTube and but relatively ineffectual forms of social activism. With the exponential growth in Facebook, were receiving every day as much media content as was produced by technological platforms and social media, the need to understand, contextualize, the sum of all of the major television networks over the previous fifty years. Much and problematize the meaning of the media in and through Education, especially of this content was simply chatter, but the rapid growth of two-way (and, indeed, as it relates to democracy, is increasingly necessary (Ranson, 2017). The focus the beginning of multi-dimensional) participatory media production and circulation, of our book involves this intertwined nexus of activity and inter-change, linking occasioned by the new Web 2.0 platforms, as well as by the relatively low costs together media, democracy and education in their diverse, contested, nuanced, and of production equipment and the surge of broadband Internet provision by private paradoxical forms. telecommunication companies and governments, turned prevailing media models The participatory cultures that emerge as an outcome or affordance of the two- upside-down. Mainstream media, despite the corporate model, also started to re-think way media flow of Web 2.0 have tremendous potential as liberatory and democratic its traditional dissemination mode. spaces of expression. Web 2.0 enables the production and circulation of multimodal A politicized but also commercially astute musician, Gil recognized the Web texts that can spread virally by point-to-point communication to almost infinite 2.0 culture shift as an opportunity to democratize cultural expression in Brazil, to audiences, many of whom are not known (Frame & Brachotte, 2015; Jenkins, Ito, provide a platform for the voices not represented in the mainstream, and to give & Boyd, 2015). Two of the most celebrated examples of the potential and impact of participants a chance to find a way out of difficult, if not unacceptable, socio- Web 2.0 on social change are Iran’s Green Movement of 2009–2011 and the Arab economic conditions. Pontas da Cultura were designed as community hubs where Spring of 2011–2013 where (at least in Iran, Egypt, and Tunisia) social media was participants could step across the digital divides that exist in the Web 2.0 era. Like integral to mobilizing people in very concrete ways to assemble and take political another famous Brazilian, the late Paulo Freire, Gil’s initiative was focused on action (Monshipouri, 2014). The stories of the Green Movement and the Arab empowerment and an orientation toward education as dialogue and emancipation. Spring follow on the heels of similar moments in the histories of technologies and Working as Minister of Culture for the social democratic regime of Luiz Inácio Lula their impacts on social movements. These incidents often involve either activists da Silva (Lula), Gil embarked on making Brazil a partner to the Creative Commons, circumventing official channels of communication used by governments and an international Copy Left sharing initiative and another key Web 2.0 project. Said corporations, or audiences reading the official messages against the grain (Jenkins, Gil: “My personal view is that digital culture brings with it a new idea of intellectual Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, Kligler Vilenchik, & Zimmerman, 2016). property, and that this new culture of sharing can and should inform government Spontaneous contestation and conscientization occurred when the Vietnam War— policies” (Rohter, 2007). This act and the Pontas da Cultura reflected a desire to the so-called “living room war,” or the “American War,” according the Vietnamese free media, music, and art from the commercial control of large corporations, and to perspective—appeared on domestic television screens in the United States from open and nurture accessible spaces for free expression in both senses: free of charge 1965–1975. The anti-war movement in the US and internationally developed, in part, and free to explore, as well as creating and expressing alternate views and sounds. due to the impact of graphic images from the war’s front lines. While communication xvi xvii