Master´s Thesis By Nina Zöpnek
Mapping the News – How an inter-disciplinary approach between the artistic form of social mapping as implemented by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes and investigative journalism can allow to re-think news representation
A theoretical approach in the shape of an investigative article
rMA Cultural Analysis (Arts and Culture) Supervised by Dr. Joost de Bloois June 2017 Universiteit van Amsterdam
Historically speaking
Staying on track with the latest news updates in any shape or form currently seems like an almost impossible task. Whether one is particularly interested in the news or not, the overwhelming fragmentation of the journalistic profession makes it a difficult endeavour to keep an overview. Updates are constantly offered as articles in newspapers, news shows on radio or television broadcasting, instant news updates on websites or apps, news excerpts in social media, podcasts on recent occurrences, images, or video clips, … And the list of what counts as news items could be expanded. One of the main reasons why it has become so difficult to keep up with the constant flow of information is the internet. Its introduction into our everyday lives is one of the biggest challenges journalism1 had and still has to face. Historically speaking, it is a rather long record that is currently being disrupted. The concept which we today refer to as “the press” has had a privileged monopoly over exposing and reporting on political and economic facts, transitions, and misconducts for approximately half a millennium. Its strength was born out of a technological advancement – namely the Gutenberg Press – and is now being undermined by another progression in technology and the changes this inherently entails: the rise and spread of the internet. With the Gutenberg Press and the concept of reproducing texts through printing, the first forerunners of today´s newspapers can be located in Europe in the late 15th to early 16th century. The increasing spread of Protestantism and its focus on a more widespread literacy within society for various reasons2 laid the groundwork for the success of public newspapers (Gawthrop and Strauss 39). Later, during the 18th century, newspapers “played a crucial role in exposing scandals and investigating the wrongdoings of public officials” in Europe and the newly independent United States of America, which is still one of the roles of news outlets today (stanford.edu). The big difference between newspapers of the past and now, however, is that their standpoints today are often required to be less political and more objective (as far as objectivity can go within journalistic reporting). By the early 20th century, newspapers had become an important medium to inform the public about important issues, to question the government, and to hold it accountable, affording the industry its role as the Fourth Estate. When radio broadcasting and later television broadcasting came into being, however, they “damaged its monopoly over the dissemination of information” (stanford.edu). The next, and so far biggest, challenge for print journalism arrived when Arpanet, “the first prototype of the internet”, was decommissioned in 1990, and the internet was introduced for
1 In this paper the term “journalism” will refer to what would traditionally be newspaper journalism, if not stated otherwise. Due to technological advancements it refers to more than articles in printed newspapers, but also online articles, and publications in news apps which might be supported by documentary photography and documenting video clips. 2 According to Gawthrop and Strauss, during the time of the Lutherian Reformation there was the aim to increase education – and therefore literacy – in order to be able to choose from a higher number of educated people because “the expanding state and the aggressive church needed a large recruiting pool for their proliferating bureaucracies” (p. 39). Although the connection between the rise of Protestantism and literacy might not be as clear, and implemented due to different reasons as often believed (where common belief is that Protestantism propagated literacy so that believers were not dependent on the priesthood anymore), it still laid ground for a more educated and bureaucratic way of life. (Gawthrop, Richard, and Strauss, Gerald. “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany”. Past and Present, no. 104, 1984, pp. 31-55) 1 public usage in the following years (Cantoni and Tardini 221). Since then it has confronted the profession of journalism with a number of new challenges. Steadily, the utilization of the World Wide Web by the public increased over the following years, leading to continuous augmentation of its capacity for quicker searches, an advance in the speed of loading images and viewing video clips on screens, an increase in complex interaction between users, and much more. All of these constantly improving features resulted in the emergence of online websites of various kinds, including those of newspapers, journals, and magazines. Within that trend, an increasing number of blogs were created, chat rooms invented, and slightly later along the timeline social media as we know it today came into being. Simultaneously, technology kept adapting to the constant changes and advancements in the internet, maybe even creating a symbiotic relationship with it, within which the hardware and the software keep pushing each other to new heights. As much as the technological market expanded and improved, it was one invention in particular which forever changed our relationship with the internet: Steve Jobs´ first generation of the iPhone released in 2007. It was the introduction of the multi-touch smartphone exactly one decade ago which marks the turning point in technological progress and the public utilization of the online network.
Individual drops of a fluid concept
On first glance and taken individually, all of these inventions, alterations, and enhancements mentioned above might not seem very influential on the changes within the profession of journalism. A combination of them all, however, has inevitably changed the industry, “representing something of a paradigm shift in how journalists have traditionally functioned” (stanford.edu). It has progressively become an “industry in transition” (Deuze and Witschge 121) wherein the core concept of the newsroom has become “increasingly fluid” (Deuze and Witschge 128). And the individual drops seem to be impossible to collect, even by the professionals of the field, as it is not yet clear which effects the technological changes and their subsequent modification of daily modern life will have on the profession. So far it has entailed a persistent necessity to experiment and “transition” from one mode of conduct to another, and to adopt a certain “fluidity” that serves the acceleration within journalism and our contemporary lifestyle in general. In short: professional journalism has fragmented into a less homogeneous concept due to the various changes that have occurred throughout the past five decades or so. It has lost its forward momentum, trying to adapt to these alterations while simultaneously attempting to maintain its centuries-long traditions, instead of seizing the opportunity to re-invent its approach towards its manners of implementation. Several improvements within the internet – such as the increase of its speed, its growing capacity, the expanse in connectivity between the rising numbers of users, and the mobility of the network leading to the web´s democratization – were above all seen as competition instead of as a potential tool for the profession. The increased individualization of the internet still represents an obstacle:
“Web logs, later known as blogs, became an immensely popular way for everyday citizens to update the world about their lives and news – democratizing the news reporting function outside of the small elite of journalists that had previously controlled
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the media. These blogs linked to articles and provided immediate opinions and analysis, and represented an entirely new way to report on news than previously seen.” (stanford.edu).
In other words, these improvements within technology sparked a new form of the movement of citizen journalism in which individuals who are not affiliated to professional journalism gather information and distribute it through new, personalized channels. According to Bowman and Willis, it is not inherently damaging when
“a citizen, or group of citizens, [play] an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (9).
The concept of citizen journalism, however, became more complex since the publication of their study in the year of 2003. The fast-paced growth of the internet allows every citizen with access to the world wide web to contribute in one way or another: articles or postings of any kind can be commented on individually, virtual discussions may be sparked from these in chatrooms or on social networks, images and video clips can be uploaded as sources of proof or commentary, and personal standpoints can be easily shared with the vast amount of people in the online communities. By the end of the 1990s, forerunners of weblog publishing systems and content management systems comparable to today´s Wordpress and Wix boosted the surge in personal publishing (Gill, 1). The fact that these websites offer templates and function as homepage model kits allows for any individual who wants to spread thoughts and opinions on topics of their choice to easily build a website. This, in turn, enables citizens untrained in the profession of journalism to assume certain roles which journalists used to represent. Technological improvements as the above mentioned, the subsequent personalization of the internet, and the increasing shift towards a prosumer capitalism have effects on the distribution of news and the formation of public opinion. Although the “concepts of the prosumer, one who is both producer and consumer, and of prosumption, involving a combination of production and consumption, are certainly not new”, there have been “various social changes (e.g., the rise of the Internet and of social networking on it) [which] have greatly expanded both the practice of prosumption and scholarly attention to it” (Ritzer et al. 379). The fact that we now not only consume news, but simultaneously produce a publicly accessible dialogue with it, means that a potential audience does not have to rely solely on news organizations anymore in order to receive information about and interpretations of political occurrences, current social affairs, or economic developments. And while living and taking part in a prosumer capitalist society results in the circumstance that we increasingly assume the roles of professionally trained people, without having similar knowledge or being financially reimbursed for these actions, it also entails the establishment of various online services progressively more manufactured to suit every individual´s lifestyle. As Isabell Lorey words it,
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“[t]he private and the public, once a pair of opposites, have been becoming increasingly blurred for some time now: the formerly private is not only ever more present in public, but self-relations and working relations are also interlocking in such a way that new public spheres are emerging. Through communication and services, production becomes social in a new way. This transformation of production is accompanied by practices of subservient self-government, of which the self-exposure of the seemingly private self in (social) media is only one symptom” (73).
In this newly social manner of production that includes the blurring of the lines between the producer and the consumer “no material things are manufactured in the classical sense, but socialities do emerge in them” (Lorey, 75). Within the sphere of the press, this involves increasingly well-established citizen journalism and personalization of news outlets, leading to the fact that people nowadays can search effortlessly for the presentations and interpretations of topics that are most suitable to their opinions and can easily avoid any sentiments that do not match their own worldviews. The increasing influence and reliance on citizen journalism, however, can do more harm than good if not implemented thoughtfully, as untrained individuals might lack an understanding of the journalistic code of ethics and the importance of fact-checking contributions which are meant to be published (Barnes 19). Moreover, this kind of individualization of approaching information in combination with technological advancements such as, and especially, the iPhone, led to a radical change in the ways in which journalism is produced, consumed, and paid for, according to Joseph Lichterman (niemanlab.org). Footage contribution by citizens had already existed before the publication of Apple´s new smart phone. For example, images, instant messages, videos, and e-mails had been sent to news outlets while and during the aftermaths of the bombing of the London metro-system in 2005 (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk). It was the iPhone, however, with its full touch screen and its progressive technological innovations which forced news outlets to adapt their coverage to the small screens in our pockets. Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, consumption of online news has become increasingly convenient. Newspapers have produced condensed layouts, especially designed for smartphone screens, in an increasing number of applications that allow direct access from any place in the world that offers connection to the internet. Because of this, it has become easier for us as prosumers to consume the news, while simultaneously producing a dialogue with and around it. These developments, however, led to a declining number of people willing to invest financially in the production of news, especially in the final daily product of the newspaper. It is the demographic group of the younger generations in particular who are unwilling to pay for it, and there is understandable fear within the journalistic profession that this generation might never acquire the habit of reading traditional newspapers (Kuhn 143). The resulting loss of revenue, in turn, sparked changes within the working structure of journalism. Newspapers cannot afford to offer a high number of permanent positions to journalists, let alone adequate funds for investigative work, which is the most important but also most expensive branch of this industry (Houston 46). As a result, incomes are more instable; the majority of jobs are assigned on freelance basis and there is more competition 4 for the few job positions that do exist. The attempt to make up for lost revenue through subscriptions has led to the creation of a mobile advertising industry, selling advertising space on newspaper websites to companies which, in turn, could attract a certain audience reading certain newspapers. At the same time, the rapid changes experienced within the journalism industry, occuring in order to match our increased modern pace and reduction in available finances, has brought on a growing entrepreneurial mindset, starting in the early 1990s (Deuze and Prenger 245):
“Entrepreneurship is at the heart of breakthroughs in journalism, most notably when it comes to the introduction of new genres and news formats, investigative styles and techniques, and the development of an occupational ideology that can be both a flag behind which to rally in defense of tradition and routine, as well as providing fuel to release forces of change” (Deuze and Prenger 235).
Ever since this change of mind, competition has grown not only amongst distinguished news outlets but also between newly established innovative news platforms, individual journalists, and online displays for citizen journalism. As almost half of the world´s population3 has, more or less, regular access to the internet in some form, the content of the internet – and subsequently of the news – is more user- generated than at any given point in the past. For the press, this meant losing its monopoly over ethically correct and critical news dissemination (Srnicek 41). It implies a shift towards a system in which the collection of user data works for businesses or governments in order to be able to cater to already existing audiences and possible new interested parties on an increasingly personalized level. The production and circulation of news at specifically targeted audiences, therefore, has progressively become a new and dangerous business format which social networks like Facebook – whether deliberately or not – support and help to grow. The exact mechanisms will be explained in more detail in the next section. In order to somewhat contain false or targeted contributions, keep an overview over them, and to ensure the maintenance of high quality, professional journalism is increasingly attempting to incorporate citizen journalism and a dialogue with the public into their own work, therefore gradually adapting to the demands of our already highly virtualized lifestyles. This constant attempt of regaining the position of the gatekeeper within the world of the news amongst trying to optimize coverage for the small screens of smartphones and adapting to people´s demands, while still maintaining quality reporting in condensed form on small budgets, has led to a fragmentation of journalism. News organizations and their editors are no longer considered to be the sole decision makers within the industry of information dissemination, nor the main sources for it due to the internet. Everyone, including reporters themselves, approaches the web for information and a multiplicity of sources. “If knowledge is power, the web is the greatest tool in the history of the world” (theguardian.com). To help strengthen the position of information which has been researched in the ethically correct manner within this powerful tool and increase its educational capabilities, therefore, it will be the aim of this thesis to provide the theoretical outline of an inter-disciplinary
3 Considering that there are approximately 7,5 billion people currently living on this planet, about 3,7 billion people used the internet on the 31st of March 2017 (“Internet World Stats”. Internet World Stats, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm. Accessed 23 May 2017.). 5 approach between the visual arts and investigative journalism that could possibly allow us to halt the fragmentation of journalism and to re-think the representation and distribution of news and knowledge.
What´s Trump got to do with it?
The current state of fragmentation and disorientation in the profession of journalism was surely a slow and creeping development happening over decades, without outside observers consciously being aware of it or professionals knowing how to combat it. It was only during the 2016 Presidential campaign of the United States of America, and after the election, that the actual scale of the crisis which journalism is presently facing revealed itself to the public. Although the newspaper industry has had to fight for its acknowledgment since radio and television broadcasting were introduced in the early to mid- 20th century, it was still considered the most prestigious and effective branch of journalism. It was the New York Times, for example, that revealed Lyndon B. Johnson´s lies about the Vietnam War in the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Washington Post exposed the Watergate scandal around President Nixon, leading to his resignation from office in 1974. And it was again the Washington Post which picked up the matter of the Lewinsky affair connected to President Clinton from the website of The Drudge Report and introduced it to the greater public in 1998. Occasionally, the investigative branch of newspapers still gets to follow in its own footsteps. This was illustrated, for example, by the publication of the Panama Papers in April 2016, where various collaborating news outlets researched and released information on the issue of widespread tax evasion, connected to the company Mossack Fonseca in particular. Online platforms like WikiLeaks, however, offer the possibility for whistleblowers to circumvent direct communication with news organizations and to simply upload confidential documents anonymously, thereby redistributing the significance newspapers used to have until a few decades ago. After the 8th of November 2016, however, when the world found itself faced with newly elected U.S. President Donald John Trump, it was not only the already crumbling significance of newspapers that was called into question, but also their abilities to adequately question and interpret global events. News organizations and their readers started to question the coverage of events and polls of the preceding months. It seemed incomprehensible and unlikely that the majority of political journalists and political scientists had read the polls wrong up to the date of the election. In the months following the aforementioned coverage debacle, the reasons for it were gradually revealed. Again, these were linked to the internet and the high degree to which it individualizes the news and updates one receives. The so-called filter bubble or echo chamber created through algorithms, tracking peoples´ online interests and search histories make it difficult, or sometimes almost impossible, to leave this individually created news- universe and get insight into occurrences on the other end of the political spectrum, according to Eli Pariser (youtube.com). As briefly mentioned above, this isolation is owed to an underlying business and advertising model of social networks like Facebook, and is meant to personalize our internet content in order to increase revenue of all companies taking part in this concept. The way it works is the 6 following: large internet platforms like Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and others collect data from their users, such as personal information, search preferences, and suspected interests based on search results. This data is then sold to other companies aiming to attract our attention through individualized advertising. By directing our attention towards commodities that largely fit the interests we have revealed on one of the data-collecting platforms, they anticipate more purchases leading to greater returns (Srnicek). For example, if my search history on Google discloses my potential interest to fly to Delhi with a budget airline, for the next week or so, I will be targeted with advertising about cheap flights to India and potential places to stay on any website where travel platforms owning my information have bought an advertising spot. The same concept – in a slightly altered form – applies to news dissemination on social media and search engines. In these cases, newspapers do not pay for the listing on our personal news feeds or list of results. It is based on the brands and news outlets we like on Facebook or search for in Google, the public personae we follow, and the type of postings we like and comment on, that the content of the personalized internet gets manufactured to our taste. The information we are fed, therefore, is not meant to broaden our horizons. Rather, individual filter bubbles are created to only intensify the views and opinions we already have. This also ensures higher revenues and more clicks for various platforms and companies. It does not result in a balanced image of our environment, according to Pariser (youtube.com). The months before and after the 2016 U.S. election made very clear that everyone who is part of an online community is affected by these filter bubbles. It so happens that professional journalism, which would ensure its own ethically correct implementation and maintenance of high quality standards, is especially endangered by these processes.
“Once the exclusive source of news for people across the world, newspapers today are confronting greater competition from more places than ever before. At the same time, there is growing concern that journalism on the internet is failing to uphold the basic values of journalism and that […] democracy is increasingly at risk due to the lack of quality information” (stanford.edu).
An online project by the MIT Laboratory for Social Machines called The Electome (fig. 1) lays out rather clearly how filter bubbles can affect research and information distribution. By means of maps and data analysis they show how the election narratives of the candidates, the public, and the media interacted throughout the 2016 presidential election campaign. One of their maps, featured in a Vice article published on the 8th of December 2016 (news.vice.com), visualizes the danger our filter bubbles can have on responsible media coverage of political issues. Figure 1: The Electome, The Media Bubble is Real, 2016. 7
The vast majority of verified journalists mainly interacts with a less conservative, centre to centre-left audience and therefore cannot offer a well-balanced analysis of public preference. It is owed to the individualization of news gathering and to social media platforms like Facebook, adding an additional layer to the news industry, that the information circulated is carefully selected to cater to every individual´s interest and political stance. Moreover, based on the business model explained above, misinformation can circulate more widely and more easily than ever before. Due to the fact that Facebook does not consider itself to be a news platform and, therefore, did not so far fact-check the information spread on its site, the rise of fake news – especially during the heated months of the presidential campaign – was another symptom of the illness from which professional journalism currently suffers. Social platforms can, on the one hand, be a new way to reach a greater audience. Referring back to the business and advertising model these networks are based on, however, it is no wonder that professional journalism is facing the loss of its role as gatekeeper. Through the personalization of web content, its function as the Fourth Estate is currently endangered.
The Fourth Estate
In order to understand the significant role journalism has historically occupied within the social life of democracies, it is necessary to elaborate on its function as the Fourth Estate. This role is highly demanding, as it expects the industry to thoroughly investigate and examine the occurrences in our environment, while preferably taking an objective standpoint within the representation of facts and actualities. It is not quite clear by whom the term “the Fourth Estate” was originally coined. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (oxforddictionaries.com) it might have been first used by the Irish political theorist and philosopher Edmund Burke in the Annual Register of 1789, which is a reference work that annually records and discusses important occurrences and has been published without disruption since 1758. Others say the term was not officially introduced until the early 19th century. Regardless of its origin, “the Fourth Estate” refers to an additional position next to the existing three estates of society: the church, the nobility, and the lay people; or, in modern society: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches of government (thoughtco.com). The supplementary estate, in the current usage of the term, refers to the press and all its contributing members who have taken on the responsibility within journalism to “make the actions of the government known to the public” and to “expose people to opinions contrary to their own” (stanford.edu). Democracies require informed citizens, if they are to work in the deepest sense of the underlying Greek word “dēmokratía”, which literally means “rule of the commoners”. As “[n]o governing body can be expected to operate well without knowledge of the issues on which it is to rule, and rule by the people entails that the people should be informed”, upholding journalism and adapting it to outside changes is an essential public good (stanford.edu). Whether or not the press is currently performing its duties in regards to its role as the Fourth Estate to the best of its ability is debatable. That does not, however, diminish the fact that, without qualitative journalism, “the feedback loop is broken and the government is no longer accountable to the people” (www.stanford.edu). Unfortunately, it is partly correct 8 when Kathy Gill states in her short article about the definition of the Fourth Estate and its current suitability in connection to the press that it “is somewhat outdated unless it is with irony given the public's mistrust of journalists and news coverage in general” (thoughtco.com). But this current situation, which has been on the rise during the course of the past years, does not entitle journalism (or whatever its future equivalent will be) to give up the responsibility of its role as the Fourth Estate. Or to say it in Anderson´s words,
“[m]ore than any one strategy or capability, the core virtue in this environment is a commitment to adapting as the old certainties break and adopting the new capabilities we can still only partially understand, and to remember that the only reason any of this matters to more than the current employees of what we used to call the news industry is that journalism – real reporting about whatever someone somewhere doesn´t want published – is an essential public good” (Anderson et al 122).
The type of journalist performing his duties within the Fourth Estate, and who would concur with Anderson´s statement with a high probability, is called the detached watchdog and is still dominating the journalistic field in most western countries. “A defining characteristic of this cluster is the relatively high regard the journalists in this group pay to their social position as detached observers. It is this position from which they articulate their sceptical and critical attitude towards the government and business elites” (Hanitzsch 485). It is also the journalists who are part of the group of the detached watchdog, who are highly likely to abide by the guidelines of the journalistic code of ethics. Although there are several foundations dedicated to ensuring and securing the implementation of ethical journalism (e.g. the Society of Professional Journalists in the USA, the European Federation of Journalists, or the International Federation of Journalists), their ethical guidelines are a set of abiding principles that do not vary greatly from each other. The three core values of international journalism are “truth, independence and the need to minimise harm” (ifj.org). It is the aim of this theoretical exploration to work towards a new concept of journalism based on an inter-disciplinary approach with the visual arts that upholds these principles, while attempting to re-think the channel through which the Fourth Estate is currently being implemented.
Noticeable action
Returning to the topic of the current fragmenting and disorientation of the press, after having elaborated on its historically grounded significance as the Fourth Estate, it needs to be mentioned that the revelation of the current shortcomings of journalism did not go unnoticed – neither by professionals, nor by the public. In response to the predominantly negative news about the state of the media, there has been an increased hunger for finding creative solutions by professionals themselves. There is an overall consensus that journalists and media professionals in general need to re-focus on their role as society´s watchdog in order to report on events as transparently as possible and thereby feed the national or global population the information that true democracies demand.
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As a result of this reclaimed awareness of the responsibility of the press, lately there has been a growth in the publication of new critical online media, an increase in crowdfunded business models, and an overall dedication to fact-checking news reports. One such example that combines all the aforementioned concepts is the newly launched online newspaper WikiTribune, called into life by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales (wikitribune.com). It is his aim to establish an online newspaper that is fully funded by supporters, does not receive its revenue from advertising, and bases its professionally authored articles on evidence provided by volunteers, which is then fact-checked and compiled into articles by the hired journalists. In addition, not only those representing the profession of journalism have reacted to the unveiling of the problems of the media, but also the consumers have taken noticeable action. The prevalent manner in which this shows is the increase in newspaper subscriptions since the end of 2016, especially for newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post (niemanlab.org). The gradual return of willingness to invest in well-researched daily reports after months of being served wrong or controversial news shows the public interest in being correctly informed and up to date. Journalists and media professionals have been rather surprised by this widely-felt public reaction, as insight into the fragmentation of the media simultaneously sparked an increase of public distrust towards the profession – if the general sentiment voiced publicly after the election is to be taken seriously. Now the question arises if the time we are facing under a U.S. presidency that promotes alternative facts itself and takes liberties with the truth necessarily means the downfall of ethically conducted journalism, or if it could rather be an opportunity for the profession to re- invent itself and establish new relations with its readers? As much as the internet has contributed to the current fragmentation and disorientation of the industry of newspaper journalism, it can also be viewed as an opportunity. “The internet needs to be seen not as a replacement for newspapers, but rather providing these with an additional platform for the provision of a broader range service to existing and new audiences” (Kuhn 151). In combination with innovative ideas it could provide the industry with a chance to improve itself and cater to new societal needs. Although it is currently hard to define the term newspaper journalism, we are now given the chance to coin it anew.
Inter-disciplinary approaches
Various journalistic innovations have been released on the market in the past few years, attempting to move towards a new definition of the fragmenting concept of newspaper journalism. Selected from a wide range of novel ideas, Quartz, for example, is a digital news outlet that engages with its audience mainly via a smartphone app designed like a messaging service, sending brief messages with the hard facts of the daily news to its readers, also including entertaining GIFs or short riddles. Vox Media, on the other hand, made it its goal and business concept to “explain the news”, as stated in their slogan. It offers a wide range of explanations about politics and culture with varying degrees of length and in-depth research. These two examples represent not even a handful of attempts to reform journalism, but already, they provide a taste of the increased entrepreneurial mind-set within the industry, which Mark Deuze and Mirjam Prenger refer to in their collaborative essay (2016). 10
The majority of novel ideas again cater to individual needs rather than establishing a new monopoly within the journalistic industry and might be contributing towards its fragmentation, rather than halting it. However, we might either have to face a completely new and unfamiliar structure of the media landscape in the future, or we will be confronted with a major fragmentation before a renovation and reassembly of it. Innovation, however, can only come from trial and error. And as none of the newly formed concepts for the industry have their basis in the visual representation of the news, this is where the idea of an inter-disciplinary approach between the arts and investigative journalism might fill a gap. Due to a personal frustration with the concept of the news I started searching for news outlets, websites, and applications that could satisfy my needs in regards to updates and accompanying elaborations. My dissatisfaction was based on a constant sensation of irritation grounded in the fear of having overlooked essential information that could tie various lose strands of social, political, and economic occurrences together. As I didn´t find what I was looking for within journalism, I needed to expand my search into other disciplines. It so happened that the conceptual art works by Mark Lombardi sparked an inspirational thought on how to possibly re-think what we nowadays associate with the definition of “the press”. Could a visual approach towards news representation, supported by the traditional textual implementation, allow a more inter-connective understanding of our political, social, and economic environments? The basic concept of this theoretical experiment is based on the following: In an increasingly globalised and complex world with constant news updates in multiple shapes and forms it can be very easy to lose track of what is happening in separate parts of the world and how these events might be connected to each other, or to things that have happened in the past. It is even harder to predict how these occurrences might spark reactions or influence developments in the future. With journalistic articles mainly being presented in the linear form of texts, audibly via podcasts, or sometimes with the help of visual documents such as photography and film, it would require additional effort to keep an overview (as if from aerial perspective) so as to have solid insight into the complexity of world politics. Inspired by the works of the artists Mark Lombardi (fig. 2) and the Bureau d´Etudes (fig. 3), I have come to the conclusion that world news could be more revelatory if presented as a map or a visual network that indicates how all individual strands are interconnected.
Figure 2: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979—90, 5th Version, 1999. (see appendix A)
Figure 3: Bureau d´Etudes, Infowar/Psychic war, 2003. (see appendix B) 11
The map-like structures of the art works of the aforementioned artists, and the dedication to revealing and visually representing information that can only be obtained through intense personal and timely efforts, must also be possible in an innovated journalistic endeavour. What these visual arrangements could allow – and what I believe is currently missing in the news – is a clear explanation of interconnections between political, social, and economic occurrences. The works of the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes are inspirational examples of attempts to inter-disciplinarily combine the fields of investigative journalism and the visual arts in order to create a symbiosis that allows both disciplines to thrive within the project, while simultaneously creating a new space for processing information. In order to perform real inter-disciplinary work, a space free from the institutional boundaries of both disciplines would need to be created for the experimentation with and expansion of their respective limitations, while adhering to the ethical code of the profession of journalism. Attempts to visually represent daily news as maps, similar to the ones created by the aforementioned artists, could allow for a new kind of media production in which information is revealed to the public that would normally be inhibited by certain market structures, political or economic dependencies, and technological limitations. If the attempts by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes at mapping out the structures of the world were transferred into the journalistic field, they could look like networks in which the nodes would be individual occurrences of various natures and the threads would stand for their inter-connections. Re-thinking the representation of information in this manner could uncover massive blind spots and vast amounts of information that have been cast aside due to various reasons such as not fitting the scheme of popular news values, not fitting into certain news companies´ agendas, and specific manners of framing certain topics. The investigative work done by Mark Lombardi, the Bureau d´Etudes, and numerous other artists has the power to reveal information that is usually kept from the public due to set political and economic structures without having to undergo the same censoring process as journalistic articles. Art works are not created by the standards of news values that need to be satisfied, nor on the same basis of adhering to capitalist concepts such as generating revenue. Art is created for art´s sake. And that might be the strengthening and liberating element news maps could add to ethically conducted journalism. I argue that the revelation of insightful and connective information is necessary for public education on which, in turn, the maintenance and strengthening of democracy depends. Perchance, presenting it in visual form could be one of many solutions to the current disorientation of journalism. It is at least worth a try.
Obsessing over revelation
In order to arrive at new ideas that could potentially help to re-think the current concept of journalism and to rebuild it from its fragmented and disoriented state, I draw upon various sources for inspiration. The origin of the idea that will be explored in this thesis lies in the arts, or more specifically, in the inter-disciplinary works by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes. Being not only an inspirational source for a possible new kind of information distribution, the investigative approach of these artists is also a symptom of their time. Both, the 12 contemporary fine arts and the media, have become more diverse, less uniform, and difficult to keep up with over very similar and largely overlapping timeframes. Artistic processes and journalistic production have been influenced by the same aspects at the same time such as an increasingly globalized environment that is “culturally diverse, technologically advancing, and multifaceted" (getty.edu). While journalism has fragmented into various different projects which approach the profession from numerous angles, contemporary art is characterized by its multiplicity of mediums (getty.edu). A combination of the two, therefore, is a logical union in order to make the arts more politically critical again and the media more aesthetically attractive to a wider audience. Let us look at the sources of inspiration for this thesis chronologically. The American artist Mark Lombardi started his Narrative Structures in 1994, in a time when the internet had only very recently become publicly accessible and did not yet offer the convenience of online news dissemination, easily accessible information, or the immediateness we profit from today. Hence, reliant upon the more time-consuming processes of conducting research in the pre-internet era, his networks were hand-drawn over the course of several years. He continued working in this manner until his unfortunate death in 2000 (Hobbs 13). For him, drawing his narrative structures was a way to understand his own thoughts, to “get the story straight” in order to produce “cartographies of the social terrain in which he lived” (youtube.com). Accurately described by Lombardi´s artist friend Greg Stone, his drawings are spherical and delicate images which, at closer proximity, reveal their heavy content for which these structures seem almost too fragile (youtube.com). The main topic of his works are high-level political intrigues which span the globe and reveal direct or indirect connections of various companies, organizations, or individuals to these widespread manipulations. The content of his cartographic drawings is always based on facts about various political scandals surrounding such institutions and issues as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the Vatican Bank, the arms deal of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, and many more (Hobbs). Through intense research on numerous contemporary and highly topical occurrences, he is able to represent his findings in network drawings of centralized information which had previously been fragmented among a wide range of sources. All of the connections he exposed were embedded in public information available to anyone with the same interest in being politically updated. Because of his research and his attempts at working out the world´s political and economic ties, he “sorted current information which made him seem almost prophetic” and offered us an understanding of the world that is still valid today (youtube.com). One of Lombardi´s most famous Narrative Structures is George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90. The timeline of the drawing covers the decade between 1980 and 1990 and reveals many connections between several oil companies, George W. Bush, and other firms, banks, and individuals of financial, corporate, or political nature. Simultaneously, the concept of the timeline allows for a visualization of gaps within the artist´s findings and serves as a basis for the spatially overwhelming illustration of the temporal dimension of the chosen decennium. Although at times hard to follow and time-consuming to read, the drawing unveils the rough structure of direct and indirect ties between dozens of beneficiaries of the global political and economic systems. 13
The map is set in a time before George W. Bush became Governor of Texas, and later President of the United States. It deals with his ties to the worldwide oil industry, and starts two years after he had founded his own oil drilling company called Arbusto Energy in 1978 (fig. 4).
Figure 4: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, 5th Version, 1999, detail.
Roughly speaking, the network drawing reveals that another Texan oil company, Spectrum 7, bought George W. Bush´s enterprise a few years after he had established it but named him general manager of the merged enterprises, affording him stock shares at the value of $1.1 million (Hobbs 99). Several years later, and despite financial losses, Spectrum 7 in turn was bought by another small Texan oil-drilling company known as Harken Energy, which also assigned George W. Bush a seat within its board and, additionally, paid him to work as an advisor. Shortly after he was assigned this position, the Harvard Management Fund invested a sum of $30 million into the company, which was probably “linked to Bush being a graduate of the Harvard Business School” (Hobbs 99). Besides Bush and the oil companies he was involved in, it mainly features the former director of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) James R. Bath, ties to Osama bin Laden´s half-brother Sheik Salim bin Laden, interference by Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh4, connections to Anton Rupert5, and many others of their collaborating partners. In the last year of the 1990s, the timeline comes to an end with the notation of “$848K” and “July 1990: Bush bails out with profit” (fig 5).
4 Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh was a close associate of the Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mafouz, through who, it seems he bought the Main Bank of Houston which, in turn, had close ties to the businessman James R. Bath (“Bush, the Saudi billionaire and the Islamists: the story a British firm is afraid to publish”. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/31/pressandpublishing.saudiarabia. Accessed 31 March 2017.). 5 Anthony E. Rupert was a South African businessman and millionaire, who established the tobacco company Rembrandt and connected investment group (Remgro) and holding of luxury ware (Richemont) (“Anton Rupert”. Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Rupert, Accessed 31 March 2017.). 14
Figure 5: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, 5th Version, 1999, detail.
This leads to the assumption that George W. Bush very conveniently backed out of this nebulous network with a financial profit of $848.000 by the end of the decade. A move which made him seem guilty of insider trading, as Harken Energy announced bankruptcy only shortly afterwards (youtube.com), or as Zdebik formulates it in Networks of Corruption
“Lombardi shows how Bush, with the help of George Bush Sr., Yale friends, his ties to the Harvard Business School, certain Saudi investors, and Bahrain officials, kept a network afloat just long enough to cash in at the expense of American taxpayers under the cover of the Gulf War” (66f.).
The Gulf War mentioned by Zdebik happened in the same year, and only two weeks after Bush took himself out of the deal. The notations at the end of the drawing maintain that the Iraqi then-head of state, Saddam Hussein, invaded the small neighbouring country of Kuwait.6 All of the information given and the connections revealed in Mark Lombardi´s drawings were derived from the artist´s own archive, consisting of 14.000 index cards that held the information of his years-long research, as stated in the documentary Kunst und Konspiration. (youtube.com). Besides art theory, in-depth research and archive creation were his forte, due to his background as head researcher at a revelatory exhibition called Teapot Dome to Watergate in 1973 in Syracuse, curating the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM) in Houston, and working as a librarian and archivist at the Houston Public Library (Hobbs 15). This experience and his passion for high-level political intrigues led Lombardi, in the end, towards the creation of art that included his research from the past years. What he created from that were not only drawings abstractly critiquing the political and economic systems, but his
“delicate graphite drawings elaborately detail the myriad of interconnections of financial corruption that extend beyond national boundaries and form the basis of a new
6 The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 is seen as a controversial move by the then head-of-state Saddam Hussein. Kuwait was accused of stealing petroleum from Iraq, which was not only theft of property. But the small country´s production of petroleum also capped profits of Iraq, which was dependent on high revenue to finance its war with Iran (“Invasion of Kuwait”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait. Accessed 20 February 2017.). 15
supranational political force, thus frustrating any nation´s aspiration for world hegemony, even the United States” (Hobbs 19).
Despite consisting of pure revelatory fact at their core, Lombardi´s Narrative Structures are still nebulous and demand a high degree of attention from their audience. They do not include biographies of the individuals or descriptions of the mentioned corporations and only roughly state their connective natures through visual distinctions between the connecting lines and arrows.7 The art historian Robert Hobbs states correctly that
“[a]lthough the ostensible subject of these works appears to be the unveiling of conspiracies – and certainly the criminal component of the work continued to be an important factor for this politically motivated artist – his work began to transform his major goals from those of a sleuth to those of an architect of knowledge. In the process of developing his art, he became fully aware that information never constitutes an enumeration of mere facts, because the act of cataloguing is itself a means of redirecting, constraining, and reshaping such data” (Hobbs 17).
Mark Lombardi´s Narrative Structures are more than a means to organize and interpret the gathered publicly available information. They also hint at a lack of information, at holes and inconsistencies within certain narratives, a characteristic only rarely seen in journalistic work. Where journalism is eager to avoid reference of inconsistencies still in accordance with a certain set of old news values, which calls for unambiguous stories (Galtung and Ruge 1965), the art works of Lombardi are intended to pinpoint where the need for clarification exists. “With their minimal diagrammatic aesthetic, Lombardi´s artworks represent what he sees as nebulous, clandestine, and often invisible corruption” (Zdebik 66). Inconsistencies within ongoing research and missing information on a topic are normally concealed by the way the press currently handles reporting in order to simulate clarification of intrinsically complex structures and to come across as a structuring authority over information. Instead of clarifying information by forcing it into chronological and linear structures, however, I will explore the possibility of promoting the revelation of inconsistencies within a news narrative and the more natural rhizomatic structures of simultaneity and disorderliness. Endorsing these concepts as the basis of his artworks, Mark Lombardi had to apply clean and minimalist manners of visual representation in order to facilitate the process of reading his mappings. He therefore draws on the aesthetic means of conceptualism, an art movement that became prevalent during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. During these tumultuous years in politics, which will be examined more closely later in this thesis, artists “attempted to bypass the increasingly commercialised art world by stressing thought processes and methods of production as the value of the work” and expressed the widely felt dissatisfaction with political, social, and economic occurrences in their art works (tate.org.uk). However, the aesthetic representation of the final artistic product had become less important than the
7 The rough visual description of connections by means of various kinds of arrows include the following: Influence or control, interdependent relations, cash flows and credits, sale or transfer of assets, blocked or incomplete transactions, and sale or outsourcing of realty (“Kunst und Konspiration – Mark Lombardi”. YouTube, uploaded by Augen auf Hirn an, 21 April 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrPZ0hz3Q4.). 16 underlying idea. The use of scripture, diagrams, maps, and readymades were the predominant manners of artistic articulation for conceptual artists. German artist Hans Haacke, one of the main representatives of the conceptual art movement, served as an important inspiration for Mark Lombardi, especially the implementation of Haacke´s investigative art works about two New York real-estate groups. Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 on the one hand, and Sol Goldman & Alex DiLorenzo, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real- Time Social System as of May 1, 1971 on the other show the enormous influence conceptual art had on the aesthetics of the representation of Lombardi´s own investigative work (Grasskamp et al. 47). Throughout these works, Hans Haacke “documents the ownership and control of urban space” in New York by two real-estate firms which “represented the biggest concentration of real estate” in the city (macba.cat). The aesthetic representation of the work resulted in a kind of archive, consisting of numerous photographs of the houses owned by above mentioned companies and detailed information recovered about their acquisition in New York public records. These he synthesized into diagrams and maps (macba.cat). This structured representation of a research archive was the basic inspiration for the works of Mark Lombardi. He did, however, take this investigative approach to a grander level by focusing on global scandals which he translated into spatially overwhelming drawings to reveal their scope in visual detail and size.
Public vs. institutionalized
Similarly, and yet with different execution, the artist duo Bureau d´Etudes offers another way of mapping out the structures of the world. However, “[if] Lombardi´s work has an obvious focus on the aesthetic (and if it circulates mainly within the art world), Bureau d´etudes seems to make aesthetic subservient to the transmission of information to the public” (Zdebik 71). Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt established Bureau d´Etudes in Paris in 1998. Since their founding they have
“been producing maps of contemporary political, social and economic systems that allow people to inform, reposition and empower themselves. Revealing what normally remains invisible, often in the shape of large-sized banners, and contextualizing apparently separate elements within new frameworks, these visualizations of interests and relations re-articulate the dominant symbolic order and actualize existing structures that otherwise remain concealed and unknown” (bureaudetudes.org).
The self-chosen name Bureau d´Etudes implies that they see their projects as a study site that dedicates itself to the analysis and description of global connections in political, economic and societal matters. Like Mark Lombardi, they make use of publicly available information for their maps and arrange it in new, insightful ways (hausderkunst.de). They thoroughly research a range of topics that have a direct or indirect effect on the global society. However, the nature of the content of their maps varies slightly from Lombardi´s maps, as they do not specifically investigate how individuals and companies are involved in dubious or scandalous interrelations. Rather, they examine political, economic, and societal interconnections on a
17 grander scale. Some of their organigrams8, for example, depict and explain the global administration of terror (2014), the workings of world politics (2005), or how our planet´s resources are governed (2007) (bureaudetudes.org). Although the aim to better understand the complex structures of world politics is similar in terms of artistic approach, it is the execution of the maps that reveal Lombardi´s and the Bureau d´Etudes´ different methods and understandings of the research material gathered and visually implemented. First and foremost, the bodies of the maps vary, as mentioned above. While Mark Lombardi´s focus lies on the detailed dissection of interconnections between individual players within the political and economic spheres of global society – which are often closely entangled – the maps of the Bureau d´Etudes explain the overarching structures of various sections of global politics and economics. Although company names and names of individual people playing important roles in these structures are still mentioned in their maps, the emphasis lies on the illustration of the mechanisms of various industries and political endeavours, and their influence on society. Additionally, the aesthetic approach of the Bureau d´Etudes to constructing their map-like structures differs from Mark Lombardi´s. The final artworks do not adopt the minimalist, conceptual style we encounter in Lombardi´s pieces. Rather, they apply colours, short explanatory texts, visual symbols suiting the topics of the individual maps, and the diagrams are composed digitally. The differences in visual representation and modes of composition are based on differences in the artists´ approaches and result in distinctive manners of application. Primarily, Mark Lombardi´s fragile map-drawings were the results of a years-long research he conducted himself in order to understand the political and economic events occurring during his lifetime. His method was a highly personal one, started during a time when a digital representation of his archive would have been highly complicated and requiring extraordinary technological skills. The approach of the French artist duo, on the other hand, is based on a more communal grass roots thinking with the aim of creating tools for society to empower itself. For this purpose, the digital creation has a great benefit. Whereas Mark Lombardi´s art can mainly be appreciated in its entirety in its original form when exhibited, the majority of the maps created by the Bureau d´Etudes are available on their website and downloadable as PDFs. Consequently, the digital availability of the Bureau´s maps allows for an easier dialogue with society. They have been distributed at protests and public gatherings in order to inform people about underlying structures of the current topic of protest (spatialagency.net). In this sense, the maps are in line with the historical development of newspapers and share characteristics with their precursors: newsletters. As the name already suggests, these were newspapers, in the form of a letter or manuscript, that were read out to the public at fairs, markets, and inns (Arblaster, 22). The fact that the maps of the Bureau d´Etudes can be digitally altered and expanded whenever necessary as political, economic, or social structures and interconnections develop means that they share great conceptual resemblance with what the old newsletters
8 An organigram is an organization chart. It was one of many possible expressions to refer to the mappings of the Bureau d´Etudes. 18 developed into: the digital newspapers of today. Their digital nature allows both, the newspapers and the maps, to be updated according to necessity. The artistically created diagrammatic structures, however, tend to reveal their status as a work in progress, contrary to newspaper articles. Where journalistic work is inclined to present a coherent narrative, the mappings of the Bureau d´Etudes – similar to those of Mark Lombardi – expose gaps and inconsistencies. These basic shared features between the digital maps and newspapers were helpful in developing a potentially viable idea for an interdisciplinary approach between investigative journalism and the visual arts. The characteristics of being constant works in progress meant to educate society from within are, however, also the reason why a majority of their pieces cannot be found in the institutionalized spaces of museums or art galleries, as these tamed environments would defeat their revolutionary purpose. The philosopher Brian Holmes states:
“Activities like those simply can’t appear on the walls of the art world. In this sense, half the work of Bureau d’Etudes remains underground: the refusals and denunciations are clear, the cooperation and subjective play remains almost invisible. And maybe it’s better that way: how could you successfully represent an alternative, radically democratic experience?” (springerin.at).
The Bureau d´Etudes´map with the title Infowar / Psychic War – Marrying the Mission to the Market, for example, illustrates and explains the global structures of the world of the media (fig 6). The concept of the media in this particular case includes newspaper organizations, radio and TV broadcasting, as well as entertainment media like magazines and film production. It is, therefore, the perfect example for the exploration of this thesis. Created in 2003 – so presumably not depicting the latest state of the media system – it shows the interconnections and interdependencies of media companies worldwide. Figure 6: Bureau d´Etudes, Infowar/Psychic war – Marrying the Mission to the Market, 2003.
Its structure is not based on a timeline, like Lombardi´s George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, as it does not analyse changes that have happened within the
19 world of the media during a certain period of time. Rather, it illustrates the structures of the media system as they were in 2003. The information is arranged in a circular diagram at the centre that then branches out into international media organizations according to the influence the core enterprises exert on them. In the main circle the Bureau d´Etudes located companies and individuals with great influence and control over most international media, which are mainly based in the United States of America. The shaded boundary of the circle contains international media and broadcasting companies directly influenced by the central organizations (fig. 7). Unsurprisingly, the main companies within these two spheres of the diagram are predominantly Western. In the peripheries of the circle there is a wider selection of global media players which are directly and indirectly influenced by the companies in the central circle and its shaded boundary. Media in Brazil and media in Japan seem predominantly independent, whereas the media of rest of the world are intensely intertwined (fig. 8 and fig. 9).
Figure 7: core circle with shaded boundary
Figure 8: Brazilian media seemingly only influenced by Walt Disney
Figure 9: Japanese media standing independently at the top right corner of the diagram 20
Although created with the purpose of clarifying the international media system, the map demands thoughtful consideration from its audience. Similar to Mark Lombardi´s drawings, the overall structures of the depicted system are quickly revealed, while a more in-depth understanding would require an immense background knowledge of the topics presented. While the confusion and lack of disentangling description of the illustrations are probably intended and indicate the hidden structures on which world politics are widely based, I would argue that a fruitful symbiosis of image and text could allow for a more effective performance of both concepts, respectively. These nebulous characteristics within the artistic form of social mapping of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, based on extensive omission of verbal descriptions of their findings, make evident my supposition that cognitive maps could not be the sole source of public information within the project of re-inventing the representation of the news. Journalistic articles alone could not fulfil the requirements of explaining the interrelated structures of global occurrences to their full extent, either. By creating a synergy between textual explanation and diagrammatic illustration, however, it is the aim to design a new manner of conducting journalism that could enable the people to literally imagine global political occurrences for a more holistic understanding.
The concept of the map
As unique as the maps created by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes may be, they are part of a widespread movement in contemporary art. But before elaborating further on that matter, we should have a closer look at the concept of the map. In historical terms, maps are visualizations of landmasses and bodies of water. They are meant to illustrate the size and shape of countries, continents, and territories and “are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world” (Harley 129). However, an additional purpose behind the creation of maps is not as innocent as it may seem on first glance. Rather, their creation often relates to the illustration of power – power over a certain territory, the people inhabiting it, and the culture they embody. Maps as such have existed since antiquity for bureaucratic and military reasons, and have helped geography grow as a discipline. Their increase in importance during the past centuries is again linked with changing power structures and goes hand-in-hand with the ascent of the nation state in the modern world where they were used as a sign of supremacy within the continuous implementation of European imperialism. Often land was claimed on paper before it was physically brought under the leadership of a Western nation, and lines were drawn as boundaries to visualize the containment of the subject of conquest. But more importantly, maybe, “[m]aps were used to legitimize the reality of conquest and empire” (Harley 132). Nowadays, the majority of maps are Western-centred, and the sizes of a number of countries are distorted due to the fact that their visual representation has not been adjusted from spherical to one dimensional depictions. The type of map which is maybe the most well-
21 established one today was created during the 16th century by Gerardus Mercator and gained great recognition due to its conformal projection, which used to be important for seafaring. The map centres itself around Europe, where Mercator was also from, and features the most powerful and influential colonial powers of modern history.
“[T]he simple fact that Europe is at the centre of the world on this projection, and that the area of the land masses is so distorted that two-thirds of the earth´s surface appears to lie in high latitudes, must have contributed much to a European sense of superiority” (Harley 136).
It was over the course of the 1900s that maps moved away from strictly geographical and military purposes and transformed into useful tools for various disciplines (Watson 295). Technological advancements have allowed for widespread familiarization with the concept of mapping outside of geography and have thus laid the groundwork for its application in numerous circumstances, including our everyday lives. It so happened that visualizations and mappings were adopted within the realm of data representation, which had its precursors during the 16th century, and its Golden Age in the second half of the 19th century (Friendly). With the rise in statistical thinking, data collection for a variety of fields, and the development of drawing and printing technologies, visualization and mapping of data became an intrinsic part of understanding the world. The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century allowed for significant collaborations that turned data mapping into a “vibrant and multi-disciplinary research area” (Friendly 24). It is the ostensible transparency of maps and the impression that they visually organize and clarify the set-up of our environment that gives a sense of reassurance. It is a certain sense of safety that “they seem to offer in an `uncomfortable world´ as a means of navigation, plotting routes, and taming its unknown and bewildering complexities” (Pinder 453). Especially in the postmodern era, during which society began to become more aware of the intricacies of the world, the concept of mapping has become a way of attempting to understand the mechanisms of capitalism dominating all other structures. In times of insecurity and speculation “[a]nxiety is perhaps the dominant mood of today´s efforts at cognitive mapping” (Toscano and Kinkle 240), which started during the 1960s. These efforts were addressed by Frederic Jameson in 1988 and have continued to be part of intellectual discourses. There should, however, remain an awareness for the underlying political and military reasons for the creation of maps, which understandably distort the seemingly indisputable notion of them. “Transparency may be the wish image of the new cartographies but, while often being presented in seductive ways, it is not something that should go unquestioned” (Pinder 455).
22
Maps and mapping as artistic social critique
A combination of their highly visual structures, which allows for the visualization of complex political environments and their inherently political natures makes maps, in their various implementations, a suitable medium for commentaries on social, political, and economic realities. Numerous artists have therefore made maps the subjects or forms of expression of their art works. It seems that an “[a]wareness of the need for new ways of mapping spaces and places to respond to social, political and economic changes is undoubtedly fuelling cartographic imaginations” (Pinder 454). The resulting maps, which are increasingly integrated into contemporary art, are of various shapes and kinds. They may resemble the classical map wherein territory is visually represented, an example of which being Alighiero Boetti´s Mappa. For this map, Afghan women embroidered large pieces of cloth with the Mercator projection of the world. Every country is represented through its territorial shape, and its surface area is covered with a colourful image of its own flag. Other map-like art works employ the concept of cartography in different manners that may result in stylized images or diagrams that do not visually resemble a classical map. They might only rely on the overarching idea of mapping, as Mark Lombardi´s Narrative Structures or the Bureau d´Etudes´ organigrams do. The list of artists using cartography and mapping for artistic purposes is rather long and mentioning them all would defeat the purpose of this thesis. However, an awareness of the widespread application of this concept makes clear that “[t]he map is increasingly used in contemporary art as a political tool for commentary and / or intervention […]” (Watson 297). More precisely,
“the new artist is a conduit, at times a facilitator of events or environments that seek to engage with new audiences, employing terms familiar to most users. Whether or not this is by definition a radical practice, it is part of a wider shift in subjectivity in part due to the world´s now massive populations – doubled since the time of the land artists – and how we aim to communicate with each other within that world” (Watson 300).
The phenomenon of the map in contemporary art and the idea of social mapping being taken up by the “artist as a conduit” started to become extremely popular over the course of the 1970´s (Watson 297). It was during a time when the public called for social and political change for various reasons when both fields, the arts and journalism, were affected by this demand and each tried to respond in their own capacity. There were numerous reasons for public outcry and reactions within the journalistic and artistic fields: Firstly, the Vietnam War (1955 – 1975) was the first war being broadcast on international television, sparking shock and outrage at its high price – both financially and humanitarianly. It was the first time in history that evidence of war crimes, committed by governments, was widely available to the public due to advancements in broadcasting technology and widespread wealth in Western countries that allowed a large number of people to own a television set. The result of broadcasting footage of the Vietnam War on a
23 regular basis was the common public rejection of the war and then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, who supported the anti-communist South Vietnamese government. This common rejection of the war was predicated on the universal awareness of social, political, and economic imbalances, which began in the 1960s with university student protests. People began demonstrating against racial discrimination and segregation, the lack of female rights, and demanded the general right of freedom of speech as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948. Protests carried on into the 1970´s and included the surge of the environmental movement. They were characterized by an increasing distrust of the federal government due to the publication of the Pentagon Papers9 by the New York Times in 1971, revealing President Johnson´s numerous lies, and the Watergate Scandal10 exposed by the Washington Post in 1973, which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The combination of these issues and the resulting division of society sparked a desire for clarification. These demanded explanations and interpretations found their manifestation in both journalistic, and also artistic expression. With its socio-political commitment and its concentration on underlying ideas and structures, conceptualism was the understandable reaction to the events of the past decades of political and social unrest, during which it had started to emerge as an art movement. Its minimalist aesthetics, the application of text, the visual formalization of social structures, and its shift away from the aesthetically pleasing presentation of an art work towards the underlying thought processes are all resultant facets of conceptualism that came into being in response to the tumultuous decades of the movement´s birth. The desire to map out the structures of the world, however, does not end in the 1970´s. Rather, it seems like this newly found artistic form of expression found a purpose and an audience in the subsequent decades, and right up into the new millennium. Technological advancements and platform capitalism have made it possible to always carry an image of the world in our pockets, with Google Maps offering us instant orientation and a sense of safety. Social life has been made ostensibly well-structured with categorized websites, targeted advertising, and personalized information supply. We willingly give personal information to platforms, all under the cloak of enhanced efficiency and increased convenience (Marx 735). As much as these concepts are supposed to improve our social standards and security and should allow for more transparency, it becomes woefully easy to live in an ignorant, individualized universe without connection to the continuously growing complexities of globalization.
9 The Pentagon Papers were documents revealing lies by the then US President Lyndon B. Johnson. Amongst other things, the papers revealed that the President had secretly arranged the expansion of the Vietnam War with bombings of the neighbouring countries such as Cambodia and Laos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers). 10 The Watergate Scandal encompasses several illegal activities by Nixon and his administration. Part of it was breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic Party, photographing campaign documents, and wiretapping the offices. The revelation of the scandal led to President Nixon´s resignation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal). 24
The artistic form of social mapping, therefore, can be seen as a means to reconnect with occurrences outside one´s own bubble in an environment where the initial spark of production is ideally not driven by the all-encompassing structures of capitalism. What I mean by this is that cognitive maps, which visualize the findings of artistic research, are a productive way to structure information about the world in order to educate the producer and the consumers through the resulting maps. Their creation within the realm of the arts preferably signifies a disinterest in the production of revenue, as art is produced for art´s sake. The artistic Mehrwert11 these maps hold outside the capitalist notion of having to produce profits lies in the dead labour they perform when hung in exhibitions, offering their insight to an audience. This concept of the Merhwert will be explained in more detail later. However, the creation of various artistic social maps goes hand-in-hand with the shift towards increasing subjectivity within the world of journalism. Due to widespread digitalisation, the art world has experienced a similar impetus to find new ways to articulate the importance of individual views and understandings of the world. Resembling the increase in personalized blogs within the structures of the media, there is not necessarily a greater political engagement of a larger number of individuals in the art world. Instead, it seems that the increase in opportunities to voice personal opinions and different points of view has made it more acceptable to do so in the media as well as in the arts. The creation of cognitive mappings are a result of this increased openness.
“The role of politics in relation to these new, artistic mapping practices does not always indicate a greater degree of political activity or awareness on the part of artists, but reflects a shift in the role of such acts or attitudes within contemporary art practice itself” (Watson 301).
What these trends within the media and in the arts show is that the professionals of both fields and the public are coming closer together. Direct communication between experts and lay people, and inter-disciplinarity are easier than ever before due to technological advancements. These not only make it possible to inter-connect more effortlessly but also explain why information from various fields is accessible to a large audience. We can use this information, collected from a multiplicity of sources, to inform ourselves, gain deeper insight into a certain topic, read information constructed from various viewpoints, or further explore one-sided standpoints which, sometimes too conveniently, support our own biases and opinions. All the information traceable on the wide planes of the internet, in turn, can easily become the subject of artistic, journalistic, or citizen commentary.
How do maps play into this?
These commentary acts, whether of journalistic or artistic nature, mostly have similar motives and do not only concern information spread and found on the internet. They are also
11 Mehrwert literally means “surplus value”. It is a value exceeding that derived from labour power. “Already in Marx, Mehrwert is a figure of meaninglessness” (Diederichsen 23). 25
(or perhaps primarily) political and economic objects that are topical and call for attention and analysis. The underlying reasons for journalists and artists to make remarks upon topics of interest or concern (which may be very personal to the journalist or artist in question) are to understand better, structure, analyse, gain insight into, and make the public aware of the chosen issues. Based on the mapping strategies of Mark Lombardi and the digitally mapped diagrams of the Bureau d´Etudes, I am of the conviction that a combination of social mapping and investigative journalism would be a sensible inter-disciplinary approach to the current fragmentation and disorientation of journalism. This belief is based on my personal frustration with form and function of current media that make being up-to-date on international news a difficult endeavour. What is missing, in my opinion, is a clear overview of all current occurrences instead of an emphasis on only a fraction. The hybrid creation of inter-connective visual maps and diagrams with journalistic texts is based on investigation that contextualizes the illustration. This, presented within the familiar frameworks of a newspaper website, could allow for a more integral understanding of the structures of the world. The balance of the visual and the textual preparation of journalistic explanations would be a more eclectic approach to the news than its traditional plain text form that is occasionally supported by visual evidence such as photography or film. It is the graphic overview of complex and entangled issues which artistic maps like Mark Lombardi´s George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90 and the Bureau d´Etudes´ Infowar / Psychic War – Marrying the Mission to the Market give, that prompts me to advocate this theory. The fact that the objects of study of this thesis are based on publicly available information and that their aim is to clarify political, economic, and social structures of our global society makes them very similar to news stories that have been researched and written according to the internationally acknowledged ethical codes of conduct of the profession of journalism. Whether the underlying reasons for the execution of research were personal, occupational, or otherwise does not change the quality of the resulting product. There are a number of reasons for my proposal to solve the current dilemma of journalism by creating an inter-disciplinary encounter between the arts and journalism, instead of resorting to alternative forms of the journalistic profession or academic research. I see this kind of mapping as an enhancement of journalism as it is performed today. Firstly, the fact that these maps are based on artistic research ascribes them a certain inherent freedom, which the strict method of a discipline might not allow. The final products resulting from artistic research do not necessarily have to be art; rather, it is the manner in which the searches are conducted, that make it artistic (Klein, “Was ist künstlerische Forschung?” 1). Secondly, although not totally independent from the capitalist market structures, the ideal nature of the arts originates from a realm of knowledge production instead of revenue production. Before being transformed into sometimes irrationally priced goods, the initial ideas and manners of implementation are preferably not constrained by the profits-oriented
26 characteristics of capitalism. If we regard investigative journalism as a similar form of knowledge production, the logical and ideal consequence would be that journalism should also be regarded as a good or service initially free from the shackles of capitalist market structures in order to perform its role as the Fourth Estate. Thirdly, it is the visual, non-linear, diagrammatic composition of the social maps, as found in the oeuvre of Mark Lombardi or the Bureau d´Etudes, that allows for a new approach to understanding the world. News stories as we are familiar with today follow a certain linearity and chronology that often does not satisfy the representation of reality. Articles follow a linear structure in order to explain issues. Radio and television broadcasting follow a storyline that is, in turn, based on a linear text. According to Paul Rock, “the ritualized and cyclical nature of much reporting is a critical feature of the way in which the world is made known” (78). These forms of news dissemination may be supported by photographic images or, if found on the internet, with short video clips. Many of these methods are means of simplification in order to clarify current events for a widespread audience of as many spheres of education as possible. The concept of long-reads within journalism is what comes closest to the thorough contextualization I am currently missing in news dissemination. Long-reads are meant to engage with certain issues in greater detail, with reference to historic influences and possible future developments. They are the counterparts to the movement that favours shortly stated facts and descriptions of news topics which fit smartphone screens, and preclude scrolling and, therefore, the perceived loss of time. However, they are not imbued with the same potential as visual maps to comprehensibly illustrate the wide range of complexities and simultaneities of our political, economic, and social environments. On the other hand, maps as compiled by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes would enable a new approach towards news dissemination that could possibly visualize and clarify the intricate structures on which global society is built. As political, economic, and social occurrences are rarely ever based on the linear chronology they appear to have when explicated in textual form, it is necessary to rethink the manner in which information is currently processed and presented. If all relevant international interactions were visualized, they would likely result in networks or rhizomatic structures12 (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), which will be explained later in more detail. And while texts alone rarely serve as the best explanatory devices in such cases, social mapping without textual support does also not make use of its full strength. An inter- disciplinary exchange between investigative journalism and the artistic from of social mapping could, therefore, bring some light into the dark.
Stepping out of confinements
The dark, in this case, refers to important issues that have not yet been brought to the journalistic surface in their entirety. A fraction of these topics were taken up by Mark Lombardi
12 The rhizome is a concept brought forth by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) that is based on the non-linear, intertwined structures of some subterranean roots and stems found in botany. 27 and the Bureau d´Etudes to shed more light on political, social, and economic matters that have influenced the global social fabric at a certain point in time or over a certain timespan. These topics are likely still present today, despite the passage of time since the creation of these maps. As interesting and critical as these maps and structures are, however, it is imperative to also approach them critically. Artistic research can result in insights that share characteristics with other disciplines such as the social sciences, the natural sciences, or journalism. It is based on the same desire to know as any other kind of research, but is deemed artistic due to the methods it employs and the artistic experience it conjures (Klein, “Was ist künstlerische Forschung?” 26). It “can also, among other things, produce art” (Klein, “Artistic Research does not Exist” 1). While permissive in its approach towards many topics, artistic research also entails certain shortcomings. In the case of social mappings like those created by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, the fact that they are entirely based on publicly available information is one such limitation. On the one hand, this spares the audience the time it would take to explore given issues themselves. On the other, the artists might lack research methods, and therefore information, which professional journalists possibly have access to. In some cases, however, journalism might fail in the ideal implementation of its role as the Fourth Estate due to overbearing amounts of information that need processing or restrictions that are inherent in the economy and policy of the media system. In more recent times, failure was also due to technological advancements and the increased pace of publication these inherently bring with them. As a result, competition between professional and citizen journalism emerges, and filter bubbles manifest due to the mechanisms of internet algorithms. Thus, we are confronted with two systems that can reach extraordinary results within their own frameworks but have difficulty with stepping out of them. Now the question arises if the inter-disciplinary combination of research resources of professional journalism and the less limited way of processing information of the visual arts could complement each other in order to re-think the current concept of news dissemination. When speaking of inter-disciplinary combination, I refer to what Julian Klein calls “interdisciplination” (“Artistic Research Does Not Exist” 3), wherein the participating disciplines dissolve their content-based boundaries in order to merge in a more intricate manner. Despite the dangers of lax limitations and the high potential for rapid spread of individualized (mis)information, my proposed “interdisciplination” could provide many opportunities to invigorate the future of journalism, if applied ethically. Sometimes, a lack of awareness of certain rules and restrictions of a discipline can allow for creative, innovative, and prospective strategies that would be impossible without inter-disciplinarity. The artistic approach to mapping out social and political structures seems to be one of these cases. However, new and original approaches that open up the possibility of unknown paths and novel strategies should not go unquestioned, either. Although helpful and insightful in many ways (and definitely at the core of a certain public spark of interest in political machinations)
28 this also applies to these rather new kinds of mappings, as David Pinder already pointed out (455). After having close-read the maps of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, and after having explained which characteristics make maps and mapping a popular subject of contemporary art, it is time to investigate how their aesthetics and concepts could be re- constructed for the purpose of my project. This process is not meant to criticize the art works as such but should result in ideas for possibly different implementations of them which will serve the theoretical execution of an inter-disciplinary approach between the artistic form of social mapping and investigative journalism. The maps of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes focus on the illustration and making comprehensible of publicly available information which had not been presented to the populace in its full extent for various unknown reasons. I argue that such artistic maps and diagrams could exhaust their full potential of disentangling the complexities of the world in symbiosis with journalistic texts. There are several reasons for this statement. Mark Lombardi´s maps, although pointing out and enforcing the importance of numerous globally relevant political and economic interconnections, require time and a vast background knowledge about politicians, individual businessmen, and several corporations in order to be read and understood completely. It took the artist years to complete the majority of his investigations. Many of the topics were still relevant at the time he was conducting his research and, therefore, the amount of publicly available information kept changing and adjusting to new findings. This, in turn, required a constant tracing of the issues by the artist and a concomitant adaptation of his drawings. The final art works resulting from these lengthy processes are network-structures that offer a visualization of worldwide political interconnections within certain scandals, as the one revolving around George W. Bush and his business deals in the oil industry (George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90) describes. Lombardi´s maps put onto the public radar political and economic players whom lay people had never heard of before or would not have associated with the deals involving Arbusto Energy. Additionally, the map draws connections based on the artist´s interpretation of information which did not appear in the news, such as the suggested link between George W. Bush bailing out of the oil company arrangements with financial profit in 1990 and the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein´s troops only two weeks later. It is exactly this lack of information and explanation which makes Mark Lombardi´s Narrative Structures prone to conspiracy theories. Neglecting to publish the artist´s archive, or some clarifying essays based on the archive´s content at least, also brings up questions regarding his work. His research methods draw less concern and curiosity, as they have been explained on several occasions in connected literature and documentaries. Instead, these questions refer to the details of the content of his research. What exactly did he find out? How did he draw some of the connections? Are these assumptions defendable? The majority of
29 these uncertainties could likely be answered in accompanying texts based on his archive, consisting of thousands of index cards that explain his findings and the networks he drew. Although the absence of explanatory texts is deliberate and a desired indication of inconsistencies within a narrative, I argue that a synergy between map and text would strengthen the validity of both concepts and could result in a strategy of re-thinking journalism. Similar aspects of my critical approach apply to the digital diagrams of the Bureau d´Etudes, but slightly less so than for Mark Lombardi´s hand-drawn structures. The organigrams constructed by Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt are based on a comparable concept, but a different incentive:
“On their maps, the artists show how power structures impact our society. In this way, they want to create awareness of how seemingly unrelated matters actually appear to be related when viewed from a larger perspective. The maps help disentangle complex systems and recognise our own position in them. If you know where you are, you can steer your own course, suggest alternatives and use the map to create new routes for yourself or your community” (zerofootprintcampus.nl).
Although their approach is also from the position of artists and based on publicly available information, their manner of conduct is more structured, and therefore more scientific, than that of Mark Lombardi. Their motivation is rather directed towards public instead of simply personal education. Alongside the artistic profession, the Bureau d´Etudes consider themselves to be a kind of research office, as the name already suggests. They created their own non-profit organization and gallery under the name of Syndicat Potentiel, which is located in Strasbourg, France and is a “space of creation, encounter and artistic experiences” according to its slogan (syndicatpotentiel.free.fr). In the same location, the artist duo set up a study site known as the Université Tangente, which is an institution without exams and open to all who have a desire to be co-producers of socially educating and applicable knowledge through innovative approaches (utangente.free.fr). This structured manner of accessing artistic research and opening it up to the public shows many parallels with the educational turn in the arts, which had its peak approximately a decade after the Bureau d´Etudes was established in 1998, according to Graham (29). After the Bologna Process was instigated in Europe, educational institutions (the museum, the university, and the art school) were regarded with a higher criticality that evoked the question of whether they could “potentially be so much more than they are”, in the sense that they might be able to create a wider reach than anyone would ever have thought (Rogoff 35). Similarly, the profession of journalism is currently trying to create a wider reach which can especially be felt in the creation of news start-ups based on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, such as WikiTribune (wikitribune.com). Comparable to the projects by the Bureau d´Etudes, the most recent trend within the more entrepreneurial mind-set of journalists (Deuze and Prenger 1) has been to fund their innovative projects through financial support of interested
30 individuals in order to avoid the perception of bias by accepting advertising revenue. Additionally, the content is increasingly crowdsourced13 - researched and published in coherence with the audience – as it is done in the Université Tangente. The vast archive established through the research at Université Tangente and the Bureau d´Etudes´ ability to create map-like structures that bolster an awareness of connections are also sought out professionally. For example, in collaboration with the Utrecht Department of Search, another artistic research centre located at the Utrecht Science Park, the Bureau should find innovative solutions to bring together knowledge institutions, the government, businesses, and the social and cultural societies for fruitful development of local economies and societies (zerofootprintcampus.nl). Due to their seemingly more professional14 approach to research methods as compared to Mark Lombardi, the final execution of the Bureau d´Etudes´ maps is, as already mentioned at the beginning of this thesis, quite different to that of Lombardi´s in several ways. Primarily, the final works are produced digitally, which is not only a sign of the times but also allows for easy adjustment, reproduction, and dissemination. As distribution plays an important role in their overarching activist aim of public education, the maps are made available as downloads on the Bureau´s website. Secondly, the diagrams by the Bureau d´Etudes include short explanatory texts in contrast to those of Mark Lombardi. In Infowar / Psychic War – Marrying the Mission to the Market, they provide as much basic background information as the space within their maps allows. Thanks to these additions, a possibly unversed audience should be able to approach the content at least in the most elementary of ways. It is the combination of minimal text and visual diagram that reveals at least the rudimentary structures of global media without demanding developed background knowledge of all the companies and individuals mentioned. The more versed the beholder is in the represented issue, however, the more insight they will gain from the maps. Lastly, due to the fact that they offer some textual explanation as integrated parts of the mapping structure, the organigrams of the Bureau d´Etudes are less prone to conspiracy theories than the works by Mark Lombardi. However, they do not offer enough explanation to ensure a clear understanding of political, economic, and social structures, and do not eradicate all confusion or conspiratorial thought. This is what makes them strong as artistic works, but what calls for a synergy with textual explanations, if such maps are to be taken seriously within future journalistic endeavours.
13 Crowdsourcing is “[t]he practice of obtaining information or input into a task or project by enlisting the services of a large number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/crowdsourcing). 14 The term „professional“ in this context is not meant to diminish Mark Lombardi´s approach to research or the manner in which he used it as a basis for his art works. Rather it refers to the fact that the Bureau d´Etudes has set up a business and a university that both centre around artistic research and are directed towards promoting it as a necessary new profession. 31
Inspirational, nonetheless
The aspects mentioned above are not meant as criticism of the art works as such and I do not view them as shortcomings within their implementation. I acknowledge that both maps serving as objects of this thesis, and all others within the series of the artists, function in accordance with their underlying reasons of execution and the purpose they were made for. However, they advanced the initial inspiration for my resulting theoretical analysis of a possibly applied project and were a motivation to attempt to take their mapping approach one step further. Let me shortly explain how I believe a combination of visual social mapping as constructed by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, and accompanying journalistic work, represented on an interactive website, could become a fruitful synthesis of two disciplines and result in a new manner of conducting journalism. An exact explanation of the practical implementation of the project will be defined later on, while here I would like to give insight into the concept I was inspired to create. Based on a very personal frustration with the fragmentation of the profession of journalism, a constant feeling of being paralyzed by the overwhelming impossibility of keeping up with the majority of global news, and the urge to find their interrelations, I developed an idea for a new type of professional journalistic conduct that has its origins in the art works of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes. The basic concept of the analysed art works is implemented in a very smart manner. Taking information resulting from profound research and turning it into a visual image that allows people to see and trace various interconnections for better comprehension is a simple and effective way to process the findings. Visualizing the theoretical facts and literally drawing connections between the characters transforms these facts into a less abstract and more approachable form of information. This manner of addressing, analysing, dissecting, and illustrating knowledge is the kind of artistic research that resulted in art, among other things (Klein, “Artistic Research does not Exist” 1). As previously stated, the linearity of texts, in combination with peoples´ lack of time or interest in engaging more intensely with the news than necessary or performing additional background research in order to draw their own educated conclusions about political and economic matters, is an issue when it comes to a full understanding of the complexities of our global environment. I am not of the conviction that insight into publicly available information will ever allow the average citizen to fully understand the interdependence of contemporary occurrences, nor all possible links to historical events. I do, however, believe that the information we are given could and should allow for a theoretical disentanglement of the structures which our societies are made to fit, if we want democratic thought to prevail in the future. As established at the beginning, real democracies can only be based on well-informed and knowledgeable societies which are partly dependent on the insight they receive through the investigative endeavours of the press as the Fourth Estate (stanford.edu). The press as we know it today struggles with adapting to the integration of technological advancements such as the smart phone and keeping up with the ensuing fundamental
32 integration of the fast-paced internet into the daily routines of society. It has felt the impact of an increase in citizen journalism, a consequence of the increased individualization in the process of gathering information, and thus, the press will have to find new and innovative ways to engage with its audience. Although, statistically speaking, there is more consumption of the news than ever before, the numbers of newspaper subscribers have been steadily decreasing over the past years (journalism.org). Instead of receiving consistent news updates in the traditional way, nowadays many people depend on coincidental encounters with news stories on the internet, leading to more digital traffic on news websites than regular subscribers (journalism.org). The problem arising from this circumstance, however, is that social media websites do not consider themselves to be official news outlets and used to claim (until the aftermath of the United States´ 2016 presidential election) that they therefore should not be held accountable for the spread of misinformation. Although social media have still not been acknowledged as news channels, Facebook has recognized its partial responsibility in spreading incorrect news and has joined the collaborative journalism verification project CrossCheck (especially designed for the French election in May 2017) to help avoid future news illiteracy (firstdraftnews.com). These efforts are good and necessary first steps in the right direction. However, they will not fully prevent internet users from coming into contact with half-truths, biased, or poorly researched news content which they might consider to be true due to a lack of background knowledge, access to balanced news contents, or deeply ingrained personal beliefs. De- contextualized misinformation can have worrisome results, as we were shown with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States this past November. Therefore, one of the many new innovations meant to keep the profession of journalism alive could be an educational inter-disciplinary approach between investigative research and the artistic form of social mapping. The result would be a digitally constructed map or network structure, leaving the realms of the normalized linear and chronological representation of news while promoting a manner of illustration more suited to the simultaneous and disorderly structures of the world. Accompanied by explanatory journalistic articles as found in the newspapers we are familiar with today, the reinvention of journalism could reach for a more holistic understanding of world politics. Before explaining the project in detail, however, let me elucidate the academic theory that delimitates the conjuncture within which this project is set, and how the structures of the extraordinariness of the arts could be advantageous to this undertaking.
The conjuncture
Due to several restrictions within the media system that are based on news values, economic, or political interests, I believe that an inter-disciplinary approach between the arts and journalism would allow a new method of news dissemination and production. It could possibly loosen some limiting structures while still devoting its manner of conduct to the ethical code held high within investigative journalism.
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Let us first look at the concept of news values which influence the choice of the stories that are actually featured in the news. These values are a set of standards first established by the sociologists Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge in 1965, based on a study of the structure of foreign news. It was revisited by Tony Harcup and Deirdre O´Neill in 2001, who expanded and slightly updated the list. If an occurrence satisfies most of their found criteria, it is more likely to be mentioned or to recur in the news. The list of values is based on the following characteristics of global events: frequency, continuity, familiarity, negativity, unexpectedness, unambiguity, reference to elites (Galtung and Ruge), celebrity, entertainment, surprise, relevance, follow-up, and newspaper agenda (Harcup and O´Neill 279). This means that occurrences which happen on a less frequent basis, have a continuous story or follow-up to report on, are culturally familiar and relevant to the audience of the news outlet in which the story is featured, are of negative and unexpected, or explicitly good nature, have clear implications, and refer to elite nations (i.e. globally influential nations) and elite people (i.e. the rich, powerful, and famous sphere of society) are more likely to be made into news stories. Based on the aforementioned values, therefore, newspaper offices produce knowledge about particular events in the world and make it seem clear to their audience which stories are worth reporting on over others. However, “the identification process is not simple. Journalists and sociologists alike maintain that the world does not appear to reporters as clearly structured entity” (Rock 74). Stuart Hall even characterizes news values as “one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society” (Hall 181). And yet, “of the millions of events which occur every day in the world, only a tiny proportion ever become visible as `potential news stories´: and of this proportion, only a small fraction are actually produced as the day´s news in the news media” (Hall 181). News values, however, are not the only structure within the complex system of news production which can be limiting of the content. In addition, it is the composition around the actual process of manufacturing the news such as the “complex set of pressures of ownership, editorial control and economic interest” that play into it as well (Miller 129). According to the philosopher and social scientist David Miller
“[t]he media operate within a complex set of pressures of ownership, editorial control and economic interest. Journalists do have some measure of autonomy in their daily work routine. But this varies greatly between radio, television and the press, between different channels or newspapers and even between different formats, be they news, current affairs or discussion programmes in the broadcast media or news, features, columns and editorials in the press. These variations are in part a result of variations in news values, but they also reflect the promotional networks which form around varying journalistic beats” (129).
The news industry, like any other industry as well, is not immune to political and economic pressures, which often go hand-in-hand. These external influences can restrict the media content and may even be dangerous to the execution of the role of the Fourth Estate by the press.
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The regulations regarding the prohibition of private media ownership and the maintenance of the freedom of the press used to be rather strict within Europe. These guidelines were meant to ensure the press´ autonomy and minimal bias. European news is still among the most firmly regulated worldwide, which is not to say their production of news and coverage is perfect but maybe among the lesser partisan ones. However, as the global media landscape is changing, the European news organizations also have to adapt if they want to hold or increase their status and be noteworthy players within global competition. Because globalization and global integration also affects the market of news media. As Miller states, “[t]hose parts of the media industry which are run by private corporations – that is most of the industry – are increasingly integrated into the global power structure” (131). Therefore,
“[t]he tendency across national markets in recent years has been towards a liberalisation of media ownership rules so as to not impede the emergence of powerful multi-media conglomerates. Governments and legislators across Europe have tended to prioritise economic objectives over concerns about pluralism and diversity. At the same time, for political reasons policy makers are frequently keen to retain key media interests in the hands of their own national companies” (Kuhn 145).
That is because the increasingly corporatist mind-set among the media system means that news organizations are tending to become more politically involved. “The media industry is very active in lobbying around issues like healthy eating and obesity as the regulation of advertising would directly impact on their bottom line” (Kuhn 131). Should newspaper organizations, for example, cease to rely on advertising revenue from fast food chains because they were more comfortable with promoting a healthy lifestyle, they would, on the one hand, have great financial losses that would impact their employees and the quality of their production. On the other hand, it could possibly cross a line with policy makers upon whom they may be directly or indirectly dependent. This is the point where stepping out of the structures of the news industry and collaborating with another discipline like the arts in order to form an inter-disciplinary space free from the institutional boundaries of both disciplines could be advantageous. It would allow for the experimentation with and expansion of some boundaries which could result in a fruitful, more critical code of journalistic conduct that is more true to the responsibilities of the Fourth Estate. The production of news in its rawest form within this aforementioned role as the Fourth Estate, detached from the economic and political structures behind it, falls into the realm of the production of knowledge, just like the arts do. Both, the arts and journalistic production, therefore, can be located within Pierre Bourdieu´s notion of the cultural capital in all of its three configurations. Let me explain what I mean by that: if we adhere to the philosopher´s observations on the concept, cultural capital can exist in an embodied state, an objectified state, and an institutionalized state (Bourdieu 243).
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The embodied state is “linked to the body and presupposes embodiment”, meaning that the knowledge poured into any resulting product has to originate from an individual´s mind, who had to invest time beforehand to acquire this knowledge (Bourdieu 244). The production of both, journalists and artists, is dependent on said time investment in order to produce what Bourdieu calls cultural capital in its objectified state, where the “cultural capital [is] objectified in material objects and media, such as writings, paintings, monuments, instruments, etc.” (Bourdieu 246). Therefore, investigative articles and completed art works can be seen as cultural capital transformed from its embodied state into its objectified state and this, therefore, means that inter-disciplinarily conducted news maps would inherently represent Bourdieu´s concept. The third form of cultural capital, its institutionalized state, normally appears in the form of academic qualifications, which “sanction [it] by legally guaranteed qualifications, formally independent of the person of their bearer” (Bourdieu 248). Said qualifications can be obtained in art and journalism but do not necessarily have to be, although in both cases they seem to be increasingly required, as they ensure the maintenance of high quality products. Further, such certified prerequisites make it possible within the journalistic and the artistic discourse to “compare qualification holders” and to “establish conversion rates between cultural capital and economic capital” (Bourdieu 248), which seems to become ever more interesting within the increasingly abstract spheres of online capitalism. Now, it is the aim of this thesis to make use of the arts´ and journalism´s inherent cultural capital in its embodied and objectified states in order to circumvent parts of the institutionalized notions of cultural capital. While academically certified knowledge would still be desired in order to ensure qualitative implementation of the inter-disciplinary project, the capitalist interest of converting the insight of the maps into financial profit would ideally not be dependent on major economic players. Crowdfunding could be of assistance instead. By combining journalistic production with artistry and translocating it into an inter- disciplinary realm that allows it to resort to the best and most suitable characteristics of both fields, the current fragmentation and disorientation of the profession could possibly be halted. Because
“[i]f economics deals only with practices that have narrowly economic interest as their principle and only with goods that are directly and immediately convertible into money (which makes them quantifiable), then the universe of bourgeois production and exchange becomes an exception and can see itself and present itself as a realm of disinterestedness” (Bourdieu 242).
This is how the extraordinariness of the arts could allow inter-disciplinarity between journalism and the arts for the creation of news maps. Removed from the realms of journalistic production and combined with artistic creation within a space that was created for its own sake, the Mehrwert that is attributed to the arts will become inscribed into the journalistic production of knowledge as a result. This statement is based on theory brought forth by the cultural scientist and journalist Diedrich Diederichsen:
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“Artistic Mehrwert tends to come up when there is a desire to justify a special effort made or expense incurred by an artist, or in the course of the production of an artwork. Or when it is a matter of weighing whether or not a certain subject or approach lends itself to artistic treatment: is there an added value involved in treating it artistically, or would it be better served by a journalistic report?” (Diederichsen 21).
But instead of having to choose between the one or the other, I would like to boldly pronounce the idea that art could be the Mehrwert to a journalistic report and vice versa. While it is true that the artistic Mehrwert is seen as “that aspect of art which cannot be captured in words” (Diederichsen 28), I would argue that a well-informed article has its Mehrwert in the unspeakable insight it can offer without which society would be left in the dark about many occurrences. In the case of news maps based on the diagrams of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, the map would be the visual explication of the journalistic text, while the textual format will support the visual image with insightful information. The Mehrwert is a type of value that goes beyond the production value of the product by which it is contained. Value is normally “determined by the average amount of labor that is socially necessary to produce a given product; it is informed by the countless acts of individual (living) labor performed by individual workers” (Diederichsen 22). The Mehrwert projected onto any product that is meant for use in daily life, like modern smart phones for example, “is meaningless and can only be legitimated by pointing to the fact that without it, the entire capitalist machine would grind to a halt” (Diederichsen 23). Through it, a communal longing is created that can only be satisfied if the newest, most up-to-date version of the object is bought. This longing will arise again once the market has produced the next, even more stylish and elaborate execution of the object of desire. The Mehrwert attributed to ordinary objects in these cases, cannot be justified other than by creating an inexplicable aura meant to increase society´s longing for objects and, in turn, the revenue produced by them. “In the case of art, however, the legendary artistic Mehrwert, is not – or at least does not seem to be – created under the sway of any globally dominant law. Instead, it refers to the temporary or exceptional suspension of laws” (Diederichsen 22f). Within the artistic social maps of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, but also in investigative journalistic work, I locate an additional value in this suspension of laws, which Diederichsen calls “dead labor” (39). Of course, artistic work still partly follows the laws of regular economy, just like journalistic production does as well. Both are based on labour time which an individual or a group of people has to invest in order to reach the completion of the work. For art it might seem “completely preposterous to apply this Marxist definition” (Diederichsen 32) but interestingly it seems less preposterous if it is applied to the value of journalistic production, although both concepts are based on the fabrication of knowledge. Each of them has undergone shifts at similar times due to the same environment that is increasingly “culturally diverse, technologically advancing, and multifaceted” (getty.edu). For both this means a constant struggle to prove their social relevance.
37
There is, however, a second part that adds to the value of art works: the speculative price, which “comes about through properties of the work that are distinct from the value of labor time and its use” (Diederichsen 37). This is because some of that value the object derives from “the dead labor that it will be capable of performing as an exhibition piece or archival object” (Diederichsen 39), in addition to the cultural capital that is inscribed into it in all its embodiments. The same could be said is true for journalistic reports. Their value does not only derive from the time it took the professional journalist to research the story and to write the article, but also from the underlying embodied form of cultural capital and the so-called “dead labour” it performs during the period of time when it is published, circulated, and read by an audience. Almost simultaneously it becomes, just like a work of art, part of an archive out of which it can be dug whenever its specific content is requested. These, and all the aforementioned characteristics shared between the arts and journalism, which approximate each other within the social mappings of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes almost to the extent that they become indistinguishable, would allow the sensible creation of an inter-disciplinary space for both disciplines. It would facilitate the application of the best qualities of each, while neglecting the less favourable ones. For example, it might enable journalistic production to step out of its current capitalist constraints and adopt the ideally less economically driven basis of the arts, while guaranteeing the compliance with the ethical code of conduct of journalism and its role as the Fourth Estate.
But why mapping?
Now, nearing the end of the theoretical exploration, the question arises why the artistic form of social mapping was chosen as the one form of creative expression out of the numerous possibilities with which to pair journalistic production. That is a valid question, because possibilities could have been uncountable and numerous other combinations might have served the same desire: to find an innovative way to rethink and revive the fragmenting profession of journalism. The reasons, however, why the art works of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes affected me and were inspirational within my desperation with the news, were twofold. The first reason, I could not express any better than Deleuze and Guattari who made the statement that “[w]riting has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come” (Deleuze and Guattari 4f). It is this basic similarity between writing a text and mapping out a structure that indicate the shared aim to clarify something – a thought, an argument, the political system, the structure of the world – that would make a combination of both concepts a powerful tool. The second reason lies in the mapping structures of these works of art that expand like networks. Their approach is visual rather than textual, and rhizomatic rather than linear. The visual aspect was important for the initial idea. Although it is the aim to promote an interaction between image and text, where the texts support the image and vice versa, the textual basis within investigative journalism is already given. What is missing is a visual aid
38 that could help people understand the facts revealed in the text, the concepts, and the role the mentioned individuals and corporations play. But even more importantly, the artistic mappings should create a new reality by connecting the dots which would help clarify and explain the connections between the various components. It should illustrate the complexity of our environment as our world does not function in a linear and chronological way. Rather, it is based on rhizomatic structures (Deleuze and Guattari). Just as in the botanical term, where rhizome refers to a mostly underground structure of intertwining plant roots and stems, this concept also applies to the mechanisms of our world. The various political, economic, and social occurrences happen in spheres invisible to the public. The actual events would be the nodes, while the interrelations are the roots sprouting from one node to another. According to Deleuze and Guattari “[a] rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (7). Moreover, “unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states” (Deleuze and Guattari 21). This conflation of traits of different natures is what journalism is currently missing and what could increase its strength as the Fourth Estate. In combination with visual illustrations of cognitive maps based on the concept of Mark Lombardi´s and the Bureau d´Etudes´ art works, journalism could make use of their aesthetic means which have the ability to show interconnections that stay hidden in the production of texts. Because if the structures of our world are not linear, then our understanding of it should not be linear either. Rather, I would like to adhere to Deleuze´s and Guattari´s understanding of resisting the prevalent linearity. They maintain that “the response of the State against all that threatens to move beyond it is to striate space” (Deleuze and Guattari 386). In order to illustrate linear resistance against the power of rhizomatic structures they juxtapose the constringency of states with the freedom of a nomadic lifestyle, respectively. Within the proposed project, rhizomatic structures of maps would attempt to resist the familiar linear arrangement of text-based news representation in order to promote a more truthful understanding of our environment. The illustration of the world in its interlaced structures, therefore, would result in maps similar to those of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes because “[t]he rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing” (Deleuze and Guattari 12). I believe that society should be confronted with the chaotic and complex structures of our environment if we are to orient ourselves and possibly take part in it. In order for this to be feasible, the rhizomatic structures would need to be normalized in the general conception of the world, which possibly could be done through the re-invention of news dissemination as proposed in this thesis. It could guarantee an effective implementation of journalism´s role as the Fourth Estate. Moreover, a profound understanding of the intertwined organisation of world politics could ensure a well-informed public on which real democracies can be based. The attempt to achieve a re-invention of the press with the aid of cognitive mapping, brought about through the combination of investigative journalism and the artistic mapping
39 of social totality, is a theoretical exploration of this possibility and only one of many ways to tackle the problem of the fragmentation of journalism. Frederic Jameson himself, although sceptical of his own concept of cognitive mapping and disbelieving the possibility of producing a correct aesthetic representation of our political and economic system, already maintained that we all carry a “mental map of the global and social totality […] in variously garbled forms” (353). “An aesthetic of cognitive mapping”, according to Jameson, would be “an integral part of any socialist political project” (353), as it would allow for a more conscious implementation of concepts such as democracy. Maybe it is the responsibility of ethically implemented journalism, amongst other educational institutions, “[t]o teach, to move, to delight” (Jameson 347), and to find innovative ways to help shape our individual mental maps with objective facts and fact- checked research that people can refer to to the extent they find applicable to their democratic idea. Because if necessary insights are withheld or undermined by flawed information, as was the case during the U.S. presidential election of 2016, the recent developments within the media and the political landscape have illustrated very clearly that “[w]hat is at stake is the figurability or representability of our present and its shaping effects on political action” (Kinkle and Toscano 8). The “inability to cognitively map the gears and contours of the world system is as debilitating for political action as being unable mentally to map a city would prove for a city dweller” (Kinkle and Toscano 7). This signifies that without understanding the non-linear, non-chronological, inter-influential, rhizomatic structures of our environment we cannot actually make use of our privilege of democracy, or rule of the people. Therefore, if we want to avoid the verification of Jameson´s statement that “conspiracy is the poor person´s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age” (Jameson 356), we have to use the crumbled fragments of journalism and rebuild a new version of it with the opportunities that present themselves through technological advancements, the integration of the internet into our daily lives, and inter-disciplinary approaches. My proposal for the reconstruction of journalism based on its fragmented pieces is the creation of an inter-disciplinary space together with the arts. It should be free from the institutional confinements of both disciplines and allow for the creation of artistically laid out journalistic social mappings that circumnavigate some boundaries with which news dissemination normally is confronted. Ideally it would allow journalism to fulfil its role as the Fourth Estate more truthfully.
Mapping the news
Based on all preceding theoretical explorations that shape the developmental process, the result is a practically implementable project of mapping the news. Let me briefly explain the system and the aesthetics I picture when thinking of the news map: The basis of it all would have to be an inter-disciplinary approach resulting from a collaboration of artists, who are versed in social mapping and investigative journalists, whose
40 aspiration it is to conduct ethically correct research leading to fact-based and truthful reporting. The platform for the cognitive maps will be a website dedicated to the project of mapping the news. It is to feature one large map on the front page, and several smaller maps in categorical divisions as we are familiar with from today´s newspaper websites. The main map on the cover page is meant to include as many political, economic, and social interconnections as possible, therefore attempting what Jameson viewed as impossible: the visual representation of our system´s total reality. Due to their digital configurations, the maps can be updated and adjusted according to new releases of background information to any topic it includes. While the main map will attempt to give an overview over social totality, the categories would focus on smaller, more contained topics such as the Panama Papers, for example. Mapping these smaller issues, while still offering insight into their interrelations with other topics, individuals, and corporations through visual and textual elaborations will slowly lead the readership to an understanding of how the various categories interconnect and, in turn, to an insightful appreciation of the main map. The structures of the maps are meant to roughly resemble those of the art works of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, employing the concept of the rhizomatic structures as put forth by Deleuze and Guattari. The maps will be made up of nodes and interconnecting lines. Whether the individual nodes represent topics, individuals, or companies will depend on various elements such as the focus of the map, the importance of the aforementioned figures, and the optimal illustration of the featured complexities. Interconnecting lines (or roots) will symbolize the inter-relations of the nodes of various natures, which is what rhizomatic structures do, according to Deleuze and Guattari (21). In the ideal implementation of the project, the nodes and lines could be clicked on in order to reach the underlying textual information that should explain the visual image in words and offer background information to the individuals, corporations, or governments involved in that specific part of the system represented in the map. Inserted in the texts could be photographs, links to secondary websites, and short video clips as in today´s newspaper articles, in order to make the textual explorations as informative and attractive to people as possible. The translation from theoretical concept to visual maps might face technical difficulties due to the possibly overwhelming size of some of them. The benefit of the physicality of the maps of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes is that their vastness literally visualizes the extent of the interlacing structures of the world. Smaller computer screens and phone screens could impede this effect. A possible solution to the problem, however, might be a zoom-in function that could allow the reader to initially see the whole map from bird´s eye perspective. By clicking on a section, the screen focuses on the selected part of the network, and the reader is presented with a more detailed, more informative illustration of the issue. The textual explanation can then be reached by tapping on a node or line.
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Conclusion
Bluntly said, the profession of journalism is shattered. As this thesis has revealed, the centuries-old institution is currently facing a state of fragmentation and disorientation due to numerous developments within technology, economy, and public demands. Harbingers of the loss of the newspaper industry´s monopoly over news dissemination were the invention and introduction of radio and television broadcasting during the first half of the 20th century. This was later followed by the decommissioning of the internet for public usage in the second half of the same century, and rounded off with the establishment of the multi-touch smartphone through Apple at the beginning of the new millennium. All of these alterations entailed economic and social adaptations, quietly changing our habits of consumption and interaction with the news. Concepts such as data farming, online advertising, citizen journalism, and individualization of filter bubbles resulted in a loss of newspaper subscribers and in an increase of coincidental encounter of news stories on the internet. Although the entrepreneurial mind-set of professional journalists has gained an intensified forward momentum, the press has not yet discovered a unified re-invention of itself wherein the internet is instrumentalized as a helpful tool, rather than being approached as a competitor. Unification of the concept of journalism might possibly not be reached soon – or maybe ever again. But with this thesis I would like to propose the possibility of approximating it. Mapping the news in an inter-disciplinary environment between investigative journalism and the arts, set apart from the confinements of both institutions, while adhering to their beneficial characteristics could lay out the groundwork of a holistic understanding of world politics. Visualizing the rhizomatic structures and intertwined processes of global occurrences, rather than normalizing a forced chronology and linearity of events should enable people to literally imagine the news and contextualize themselves within the current conjuncture. The actual implementation of such a project might be very difficult, or even impossible. But “[s]till, even if we cannot imagine the productions of such an aesthetic, there may, nonetheless, as with the very idea of Utopia itself, be something positive in the attempt to keep alive the possibility of imagining such a thing” (Jameson 356).
42
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Appendix 1
Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979-90, 5th Version, 1990, http://www.whale.to/c/lombardi1.html.
Appendix 2
Bureau d´Etudes, Infowar / Psychic War – Marrying the Mission to the Market, 2003, https://bureaudetudes.org.