Global Fairness in Digital Interaction: a Rhizomatic Analysis of Social Imaginaries
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Ph.D. Dissertation Global Fairness in Digital Interaction: A rhizomatic analysis of social imaginaries Verónica Yépez Reyes ‘we can insist that food be not just ecologically sound but socially fair—to the extent that fairness is possible in an unequal world.’ (Warne 2011:160) Cover: Raquel Carrasco Santos, artisanal crabber from El Oro, Ecuador Photo: © Martina León 2011 - [email protected] Print: Print & Sign, SDU To Mami and Papi This dissertation brings to an end three outstanding years in Denmark that were made possible thanks to a scholarship from the National Secretariat for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation (SENESCYT) of Ecuador. I also owe thanks to the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (PUCE) for their support, and to the Doctoral School of the Humanities at the University of Southern Denmark for accepting my research project. I have been able to travel so far and engage in this academic journey and I am very grateful to all the people who have contributed to it. I am in debt to my supervisor Nina Bonderup Dohn for her numerous and detailed observations, for her professional advice, timekeeping and preciseness, but mostly for her continuous support and encouragement to bring this dissertation to completion. I also wish to thank my co- supervisor Johannes Wagner, who always brought thoughtful and inspiring perspectives to my study, changing constantly the drift of the analysis. I wish to extend my gratitude to all the people from the Department of Design and Communication (IDK) of the University of Southern Denmark at Kolding campus. The list is too long to name all the administrative and academic staff with whom conferences, meetings, lunches and fellow breakfasts have been shared. Thank you very much for your support, your patience, your encouragement for speaking Danish and explaining to me those taken-for- granted things, and also for blaming the bad weather in chorus with me. I am especially grateful to the members of the Research Group Didaktik, Design og Digitalisering, for hosting me and sharing their inspiring projects in each session. My gratitude goes also to my enthusiastic fellow PhD students at IDK, who have made my life in Denmark straightforward, have helped me more than once with language gaps and misunderstandings and with whom I have gone through this academic journey. Special thanks to Else Lauridsen for her help with the Danish translation, for her endless support, for the interesting discussions and arguments, and for all the shared chocolates. I am also grateful to the organisations studied for their active work in pursue for global fairness, and to their staff, particularly to Johanna Renckens from VECO Andino and Johan Lindahl from the SSNC, who have set time aside in their busy agendas to help me understand posts and tweets. I have been blessed to have a second family in Denmark (Mor, Far, Rikke, Stine), who have always been there during these three years, encouraging me and even taking care of my daughters while I wrote and read. The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without all their love, help and support. In addition, I am also thankful to my sister Amparo, who has been an online support and help 24-hours-a-day, rephrasing and clarifying my misfortunes. Finally, I am so very grateful to my husband Victor and my daughters Avelina and Rebeca who have followed me in this adventure, have grown with me and cheered this opportunity to learn and live. This study addresses and links three features of the social: social imaginaries, social movements and social media. Its aim is to answer the question of whether and how are the social imaginaries of global fairness present in digital interaction. The term ‘social imaginary’ was first coined by Greek-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) referring not to something unreal or fictitious existing only in the mind of an individual, but to the shared frameworks within which people organise their collective social world. This notion has been revisited throughout time by different scholars, among whom Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s work Modern Social Imaginaries (2004) is renowned. In 2009, political scientist Manfred Steger suggests the rise of the global imaginary and within it, the emergence of alter-globalisation imaginaries led by social movement organisations, countering market-driven globalisation (Steger & Wilson 2012; Steger et al. 2013). At the core of this project is the understanding of communication as a tool for change (Marí Sáez 2012; Chaparro 2015; Tufte 2015) sustained on digital interaction, which is defined as the multi-way communication process mediated by the internet and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). It is considered a hybrid type of communication, both individualised and connected at once (Castells 2013). While a number of studies using both online and offline research methods (Mosca 2014) have analysed current social movement organisations (SMOs), the research is scarce on SMO- enabled digital interaction in the public realm. This project aims to fill this gap following for 18 months the Facebook and Twitter accounts of five European social movement organisations and their local branches for Ecuador. The study claims that the structure of digital interaction is rhizomatic, building on the rhizome metaphor as a structure of thought proposed by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987). Digital interaction addresses multiple, diverse and scattered concerns, networks, and events, which are apparently disconnected, yet key concepts find linkages and emerge. Digital interaction also affords a multiplicity of languages to communicate simultaneously and asynchronously, which is otherwise unthinkable in face-to-face communication. However for the analysis of the contents in digital interaction for advocacy, the study takes an approach of grounded theory in search of shared ideas, desires and notions of participants that could portray social imaginaries. Findings illustrate positive and negative affordances of organisationally enabled social media for advocacy purposes, referred throughout as Advocacy 2.0, in parallel to the stages of development of the internet itself. The process followed by Advocacy 2.0 is suggested to be cyclical and composed of four stages: posting, sharing, cooperating and acting. These stages are increasingly demanding and consequently, decreasing in participants. While the first three stages happen completely in the digital world, the last stage of acting refers to both connective and collective (physical) engagement. The analysis proposes that expressivity plays an important role in digital interaction corresponding to the first two stages of this cycle. Heterogenic discourses are not unified, as some are utopian, others dystopian, and many are neutral, disinterested or dispassionate. Moreover, discourses in digital interaction are multiple and apparently disconnected. Market- oriented imaginaries stemming from the neo-liberal economic system are tangled with global fairness imaginaries sustained on economic, gender and social equality, environmental conservation and farming practices, trading and politics. Consequently, social imaginaries of global fairness are present in digital interaction and can be viewed from the stage of cooperating, suggesting both reflection and involvement in the discussion, to the stage of acting, in which participants commit to collective action in the physical world. Digital interaction enables the connection of people and issues, regardless of place, time and social and cultural differences. Advocacy 2.0 provides the means for people to share their concerns and interact digitally for realising their hope for global fairness. Denne afhandling behandler og sammenfatter tre sociale fænomener: sociale forestillinger (eng. “social imaginaries”), sociale bevægelser og sociale medier. Projektets formål er at besvare spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt og hvordan de sociale forestillinger om global retfærdighed er til stede i digital interaktion. Begrebet “sociale forestillinger” blev introduceret af den græsk-franske filosof Cornelius Castoriadis (1987). Sociale forestillinger refererer ikke til noget uvirkeligt eller fiktivt, som kun eksisterer i enkeltpersoners hoveder, men derimod til fælles konstruktioner, indenfor hvilke mennesker organiserer deres kollektive sociale verden. Begrebet er gennem årene blevet anvendt af forskellige forskere, herunder i den canadiske filosof Charles Taylors anerkendte værk Modern Social Imaginaries (2004). I 2009 argumenterede politolog Manfred Steger for fremkomsten af globale forestillinger, herunder udviklingen af forestillinger om alter- globalisering, som anført af sociale bevægelser bekæmper og imødegår markedsdrevet globalisering (Steger & Wilson 2012; Steger et al. 2013). Centralt i projektet står forståelsen af kommunikation som et redskab for forandring (Marí Sáez 2012; Chaparro 2015; Tufte 2015). Afhandlingen fokuserer på digital interaktion, der defineres som internetmedieret flervejskommunikation i brugen af informations- og kommunikationsteknologier (IKT). Digital interaktion regnes for at være en hybrid kommunikationsform, idet den på én gang både er individualiseret og forbundet (Castells 2013). Der findes et antal studier af nutidige organiserede sociale bevægelser (OSB), undersøgt med både online og offline forskningsmetoder (Mosca 2014). Der er imidlertid ikke forsket meget i offentlighedens digitale interaktion i regi