Archive for the 'Media' category
American politics: Is Obama progressive-fools’ gold?
July 16, 2008 4:35 pmAn Article:
Ben Tanosborn
It happens time and again as America’s quadrennial campaigns to gain residency at the imperial White House gather momentum. Although our forever-cloned candidates, one for each of the two indistinct political parties, are asked to address each and every issue of the day, soft-hearted – or perhaps civically-ignorant – Americans that we are, we usually give candidates a free pass, not forcing them to commit to any specific color in their answers, true chameleons they are. And the press, with its own corporate mission, self-preservation, plays the usual economic game in its key role of as a pleasing whore.
Progressives as well as many other change-clamoring Americans, particularly legions of young college students – many, first-time presidential would-be voters – volunteered to give this new political face of great hope, a man articulating change with a great amount of credulity, the reins of that sempiternal “lesser evil” party of peace-makers and lowly economy’s downcasts. Of course, having reached that all important milestone which assured him the backing of the Democratic Party, Barack Obama had few options but to accept being placed in the waiting “golden stable” where he gets new handlers claiming to have magical knowledge with which to plot how the presidential race must be ran, not to place… or to show, but to win.
So now that face of great hope has been lifted, not to remove any wrinkles, young man that he is, but “to add” the necessary patriotic wrinkles required to be acceptable to what the new handlers consider to be the candidate’s initiation of trust from Middle-America, not a geographical location but a state of mind: that non-existing, totally equivocated middle of the road of an economically and morally decrepit, fading nation where the imperialism-cancer is already hovering around stage IV having spread to many, if not most, aspects of American life. This while flags wave high in glory, and flag pins adorn the lapels of politicians and their brethren, our corps of elite corporate crooks. Could it be that it isn’t change that Americans want… only a return, by whatever means, to easy credit, low oil prices and continuance of that fantasy dream of wealth as a birthright, or one created by motivational charlatanry, rather than the product of one’s labor?
Obama’s hundred-and-eighty-degree turn from progressivism and change should come as no surprise to those of us oft-scalded by American fraudulent politics; although we cannot help but feel deep pain for our idealist young people getting their initiation of fire. Obama is in the hands of the handlers (visible and invisible) who require his adherence to flip-flop ambidexterity about Iraq, NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association), separation of church and state; and, recently, his unnecessary and obscene vote in the Senate favoring more federal surveillance on the citizenry. One wonders how Obama might have voted in 2002 on the Iraq resolution had he been then a member of the Senate… with advisers; and not just an Illinois citizen unattached to the powerful.
If we add to all the above his ceremoniously recorded adhesion not long ago to AIPAC (Israel’s lobby) and his of-late windmill attitude to just about anything and everything, one must ask, is there really much of a difference between Barack Obama and John McCain? Well, age for one thing; and, most definitely, brains. But as for everything else, including critical foreign policy change, the two senators might have been birthed by the same mother as non-identical twins.
Some people, who have followed Obama’s political evolution since Hillary Clinton’s abdication to what she claimed to be her Democratic Party throne, are quick to give him the benefit of the doubt, saying that once he gets to the White House he’ll be his own man and his deeply imbedded progressive ideas will take root. Fools we are… has that ever happened before…well, in recent memory? Not a chance!
Even President Carter, as honorable a president as this nation has ever had, found it necessary to bend later on in his administration to the influence that the Miami Mafia (exiled Cubans) had on Florida politics. Castro’s Cuba, or rather the apolitical Cubans in the Island, had to suffer the consequences of America’s WIR (Weapons of Ill Resort): embargoes, economic sanctions and other destructive, anti-people dirty tricks which are constantly being performed secretly.
There are three key issues for Americans which overrule everything else, issues that have been addressed with ignorance and/or triviality by both Obama and McCain. They are: the complete overhaul of an economy in shambles; the imperialistic treatment we give to our presence in both the Middle East and Southwest Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq and the military-infested waters of the Persian Gulf, for which a more apropos name would be the Pentagulf); and our irreverent, imperialistic position towards Russia. The latter, an issue which is not being played much by the American media… but an issue that will comeback for sure to hunt us… and hurt us. Unlike Germany and Japan, Russia is not a defeated country… and to treat her with triumphal disdain and bullyism could ultimately exact too-high a price for the United States.
Arsonist Bush may be lighting up most destructive fires around the world, but no one hears either McCain or Obama speaking of putting them out.
Tags: Ben Tanosborn, democracy, economics, media, politics
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Democracy, Politics, Media, Ben Tanosborn
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The Surge in Iraq is probably making things even worse
August 7, 2007 6:25 amFor those of us who have had considerable doubts as to the veracity of the latest claims coming from the Bush Administration and the select members of the Military Generalship, who serve as the Administration’s proxies, regarding the current success of the “Surge,” in Iraq, I can assure you that your cynicism is well founded.
As was reported in the Washington Post on Sunday, August 5th * - the Bush Administration has been less than candid and, in fact, deceitful with respect to the current, “Surge;” not to mention every other aspect of their conduct in the Executive Branch of Government. As it turns out, the reduction of violence in Iraq, which the Generalship has attributed to the cooperation of local tribal leaders, is certainly not the consequence of the American Military forging alliances with organic elements in the Iraqi population; instead, we have merely been arming as well as bribing Sunni sections of the Baghdad population, in order to entice them into suppressing the violence in the neighborhoods in which they have influence, which I suspect to be a social dynamic comparable to the power wielded by a warlord, or something along those lines.
* http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080407A.shtml
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As to whether the local tribal leaders are, indeed, turning against al-Qaeda is an issue that remains unresolved, due to the ambiguities resulting from the morphing semantics with which the lexicon, al-Qaeda, has been endowed on occasions involving various circumstances, in which the expression has been appropriated for purposes of political expediency.
Therefore, the banner, al-Qaeda, has been deployed in modes not keeping with conventions or standards of veracity or consistency; other than a congruency resulting from the Administration’s relentless introduction of the phrase, al-Qaeda, into public discourse every opportunity that the Administration gets. In fact, since the Bush Administration uses this label to depict nearly every instance of insurgent or terrorist violence, it is probably better at this point to discard with the term, al-Qaeda, altogether. The significance of the expression has been so depreciated that its continued invocation might result in an inadvertent contribution to the persistent and over arching disinformation campaign being waged by the Bush Administration upon the American public.
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Interestingly, however, there is more to this scenario with respect to the larger political dimensions compelling these unruly and unpredictable flows and collisions of human interaction in Iraq. Assuming one has not been living in cave - or, to qualify: a cave that is unlike the one inhabited by Bin Laden, which, apparently, is furnished with the necessary technology to keep abreast of recent events as well as producing an occasional press release; not to mention the medical equipment necessary for kidney dialysis - he or she should be well aware of the parliamentary stagnation that is preventing Iraqi sectional reconciliation.
The indications of discontent among the Shiites in Iraq’s Parliament - who, despite the pressures placed upon it by the American Embassy, went on recess during the month of August - point to the fact that the American Generalship is actively arming Sunni sections of the Iraqi population. For the Shiites, this amounts to nothing less than an existential threat. We must not forget that the battles being waged by Sunni organic elements upon, ‘al-Qaeda,’ are occurring within the context of a lager conflict: the Iraqi Civil War, which amounts to a conflict drawn along the lines Islamic sectarianism - the Sunni and the Shiites.
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With the aforementioned considerations in mind, it is nearly unimaginable how the current policies in Iraq - which, granted, might be quelling violence to some degree in the streets of Baghdad - could possible lead to a larger political accomplishment, where the sections of Iraq came to a consensus, forming some treaty upon which the future organization of the country could be based.
Sadly, in my own opinion, this surge - similarly to every other strategy undertaken in Iraq and, let us be frank, in the, ‘War on Terror:’ another expression that is literally void of substantive meaning - is just another folly in a long chain of mishaps that are metaphorically comparable to the treatment of walking pneumonia with opiates: the pain might subside as the patient’s illness intensifies.
Russell Cole
Tags: foreign policy, Global, media, politics, Terrorism, war
Categories: Commentary, Global, Politics, War, Media, Terrorism, Foreign Policy
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Does Media Matter?
March 16, 2007 8:18 pmI have been a member of an organization for several months now, which operates on a national basis and performs the task of assessing the accuracy of journalistic content delivered over sources of mass media, such as newspapers, television, and radio, called Media Matters, which can be found at the following URI:
I suppose this organization does a valuable service by rendering those who distort information accountable for their dissimulations. However, more fundamentally, I wonder: Does traditionally mass media matter, in the sense that it is something that should be the target of activist resources implemented for the purpose of making these corporate institutions who monopolize, currently, sources of mass communications and the discourse they distribute more accurate and non-partisan?
As empirical research repeatedly demonstrates, the content distributed through mass media that pertains to sectors of American society is - more often than not - supportive of conservative views. This, of course, is at odds with the political ideologies possessed with the majority of journalists who - according to the survey research that is conducted - possess leftist political leanings. Nevertheless, the actual products of their work, that make it through the corporate establishments responsible for rendering the news, are often endorsements of conservative policies; especially with respect to the economy and the proffered descriptions concerning the health of the economy; reports of which often only integrate into the analyses indexes that reflect the state of the economy for investors while neglecting to include aspects of the economy relevant to laborers, such as wage growth; or, contrarily, wage stagnation, which happened to be an aspect of the economy stretching back to the 1990’s that was, more times than not, omitted from reports and analyses introduced by sources of journalism.
Conservative elements in society have for quite some time complained that journalism in this country was liberally biased. In their self proclaimed effort to counteract this ideological slant, they have created institutions serving as media outlets, which are decidedly conservative, despite their professed devotion to the dissemination of journalism that is, ‘fair and balanced.’ In fact, for many of us, who suffered through the prelude to the war with Iraq, the conservative slant to journalism prevalent in mass media has become a matter that is increasingly noticeable and, even, vexing to the point of agitation.
Consequently, advocates for more responsible journalism - which fails to bow down to those in power; or ceases to understand itself, and operate accordingly, in a modality that reflects a particular sociopolitical ideology’s interests by reverberating talking points and other forms of communications that qualify as propaganda; certainly not journalism. Subsequently, major national affiliations, such as Media Matters, have been created by the Left in opposition to the present state of journalism, which seems to be increasingly the conduits for press releases by conservative institutions in society.
However, returning to the question originally posed in this brief essay - does media matter? - I have to question whether these types of strategies oriented toward affecting the corporate institutions responsible for the dissimulation of conservatively slanted journalism - in some instances, blatant propaganda - is the best use of resources. We, here, at the Populist Party of America have taken a different route toward publicizing our cause - differing from other groups that attempt to reform and penetrate through corporate mass media - that effectively bypasses the traditional institutions that serve as clearing houses for descriptions of sociopolitical reality permitted to be distributed through devices of mass communications. In fact, we have been doing it to some degree of success, as our Internet based forms of content distribution are growing rapidly and now bordering upon the quantity of audience members and contributors - a role that we attempt to encourage among all of our audience members in a strategy that has embraced Web 2.0 and social media - that rivals more mainstream sources of information and editorial.
Therefore, reflecting upon the success that has been garnered by Populist America’s refusal to submit to the authority of the traditional brokers of media space - spaces which would never have offered any coverage for our political sentiments with which to begin - we have cultivated an audience, whom we hope to make contributors, through opportunities to publish and distribute their thoughts concerning social and political events and issues; (after all, in a democracy we should all see our selves as participants, not merely consumers).
So, I suppose, in response to the question; does media matter? the following answer is best suited: It only assumes significance if you make it matter by continuing to treat it as though it has legitimacy and supremacy over all other forms of communications. However, if you attempt to make your own media matter, then - in this age of limitless potential for publicity, ushered in by the expansion of the Internet - you can acquire an audience despite your refusal to submit to the old guard of communicative forms that are quickly becoming obsolescent, anyway.
Russell Cole [send him email]
Tags: communications, Internet, journalism, mainstream media, media, media matters, Net Neutrality, politics, populist party, power, Russell Coles Blog, Social Change, society, web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Society, Populist Party, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0, Power, Politics, Net Neutrality, Social Change, Media, journalism
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An Astounding piece of Artistry; a multi-media ethnography of Web 2.0
February 7, 2007 3:15 am`It is not that often that one comes across a piece of art that is moving to the extent that it compares to this brilliant production depicting the possibilities engendered by digital text and the Web 2.0 social formations that are built upon it. Too often, those in the social sciences are too cautious to tackle issues of contemporary relevance. This production, however, defies those stereotypes by addressing a social transformation that is still in the making. I highly suggest watching this video. I for one found it very compelling.
You can watch it on YouTube at the following URI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
Tags: academy, anthropology, ethnography, media, society
Categories: Commentary, Society, Media
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Episteme 2.0
A study in the sociology of mass media and the sociology of social movements; both directed upon the emerging venue of mass communications, referenced as the World Wide Web, exploring the transformation of sociopolitical possibilities engendered by the proliferation of a representational space that is largely free from institutional gate-keeping devices and a means of publicity that is easily accessible and obtainable by a vastly greater proportion of the population
Forward to Episteme 2.0
Abstract
The forward of the document will outline the scope of the study - including the relationships of the research to preexisting literature, also devoted to the subjects referenced in the content matter herein. In short, the executive summary will serve as a type of abstract. However, since the document object, abstract, is typically not included in the contents of manuscripts that purport to be more than articles, the deployment of the artifice, forward, is more appropriate in this context; a document object that entails many of the same significations; however, it allows for greater flexibility when it comes to the duration and specificity of the content.
Scope and Objectives
This document expresses an assessment of the prospects for the Human Condition in the emerging epoch termed by Castells as the Network Society. The study is not a foray into futurism; nor, does the document constitute a relapse into the absolutism1 of historicism, and the ideological dogma that it inspires. The document and its flow of contents explores a field of diverse possibilities that are hypothesized to exist and reside in the current social configuration - which, of course, is a material and ideological formation that has connections to the past; a process that currently instantiates a field of potential trajectories that, presumably, can be actualize through the way we orient and posture ourselves in the present in order to react and contend with the contingencies arising from our historical situated-ness; thus shaping the unfolding of the future in the most informed and equipped manner, according to the aesthetics2 most desirable.
Operational Context
For the purposes of this meta-brief - emanating from and referring back onto - the document at hand, I shall attempt to reduce the complexities, which can be derived from a thorough analysis of the current transformations that are refitting society, into two contrasting - although inter-related - patterns embodying thematic qualities; one, which I interpret positively; and, one which I interpret negatively.
Most salient to any considerations concerning the material conditions that are instantiated by the emergence of the Network Society and - to be more precise, referring to the circumstances found in American social formations - are the alterations in the economic institutions forming the relationships between those who dictate the terms of employment and those who are obliged to acquiesce to those terms when procuring employment. The changes undergoing the form assumed by the relationships between firms and employees are significant to the point where is compelled to reconsider the analytics typically attached to the conception of elements - as the concept has been generally understood in the context of industrial capitalism. It is not a stretch to suggest that employment is a term that should be discontinued as a reference to the non-standard terms of employment suffered by skilled laborers in the Informational economy. The socio-grammatical conventions forming the family resemblance of economic institutions that have been spawned by the material conditions in which agents and the aggregates - that they collectively form -who find themselves situated in the information economy - embody characteristics, rendering them qualitatively unique exemplars of sociality. Therefore, the referring expression, virtual employment, will be used as a designator, when signifying instances of this social phenomenon, hence forth.
In order to provide definition to virtual employment, some extended remarks are necessary: The current economic condition - informational capitalism - in its most rudimentary dimensions, instantiates an input to output dynamic that has diverged from the traditional, industrial capitalist relational function, which assumed the form of raw materials transformed into commodities. The information economy - in opposition - can be understood - in the most generic of terms - as a mode of production that involves the input of information and the output of reorganized information; a construct, which can be referred to - for the sake of clarity - as knowledge. It is important, here, to mark a distinction between organization and reorganization, because the former applies to previous designs that exist prior to the latter’s inculcation.
In order to begin to understand this - what is the most basic of representations corresponding to the processes involved in informational capitalism - the precise nature of the function embedded within this relation needs further specification: Reorganization is a transformation that differs from the concrete functions found in industrial capitalism, constituting the mechanisms included in the operations performed upon the input - raw materials - in the sequences involved in the modes of production. The reorganization of information into a form of knowledge involves a transformation that cannot be routinized into the machinery of production - unless one is to reduce the available vocabulary to strictly materialist terminology - because the invention of the mode production qualifies as the production, itself. Therefore, keeping with the distinction declared between information and knowledge, as soon as knowledge has been produced, through the function implied in the input - output relationship of informational capitalism, the reorganized information - which has been transformed into knowledge - is reintegrated into the process as the input variable, and - once again - assumes the form of information. Consequentially, by definition, the mode of production cannot be mechanized because it would lack the properties qualifying as the connotative definition of production, as it is defined in the processes of informational capitalism; namely, the innovation of reorganized information; a definition that excludes standardized procedures, because such mechanics would entail the absence of innovation.
Stepping back from what has been analytically deposited thus far, some relationships between firms and the labor that firms employ become transparent: The modes of production can be understood as the persistent reorganization of the processes embedded in the modes of production, which constitutes the mode of production, per se; consequently, exacerbating the pace of de-skilling - a term that extends, most generally, to developments that render employees obsolete - which creates volatility in the employer market. It should also be mentioned that the reorganization of data additionally includes the implementation of new grammatical schema deployed for purposes of structuring the classifications of document elements; the attributes of the document elements; and the possible values that the attributes can instantiate under varying - (although defined) - circumstances; because the procedure of implementing a new form of information technology necessitates the reorganization of the work flow processes utilized by an organization; thus, such a retrofitting constitutes the reorganization of information; specifically, the information - as it is defined and comes to be defined - within the work flow of the restructured social organization.
Returning to considerations conducted upon the nature of the relationships among firms and the labor they hirer, the conditions necessitating the augmentation of new labor become transient, reflecting the events in an organization’s state of affairs, where it must transition its ordering of information in order to reflect the evolving conditions of information technology. Therefore, the skills that are acquired when augmenting the labor capacities of the firm, as it transitions to a new state of information management.
In order to explain this theme through comparison, one can reference the present trends in Information Technology management, which now relies heavily on the implementation of virtual computing environments, in order to test software compatibility and to leverage available resources performed within spaces of productivity - that demand no institutional restructuring and fail to entail any necessary legacies, which might be incurred if the firm had originally adopted the workers as actual members of the institution; a relationship with the significance of manifesting all of the traditional definitions of expectations and obligations associated with employment.
The more sanguine of the two contrasting themes is the intellectual product of postmodern social theory - as well as, Castells, who might not necessarily fit within this rubric - who have argued for the acknowledgment of an emerging social condition resulting from the proliferation of digitally encoded communicative technologies - the virtual spaces of representation they entail - and the existential freedom to stylize one’s persona provided for within the digital matrix from which virtualism manifest - subsidiaries to Informationalism can be summarized under the slogan, re-enchantment.
The allusion to Weber, in this context, is appropriate, since there there is an empirically contingent subject to processes of confirmation juncture between two states that can be marked as qualitatively distinct from one another, through reference to the following contrasting characteristics: First off, the emphasis placed upon innovation - or creativity - calls for organizational environments structured according to flexibility, allowing for production to occur when inspiration precipitates insight, leading to innovation; a state that offer definition to production in the context of informational capitalism. Industrialism, on the other hand, prioritizes scheduling and efficiency, providing for the synchronization of events - performed by machines and their human appendages. Industrial Capitalism required the orderly sequencing of events in order to successfully enact it processes constituting the modes of production. Such an organization calls for the regimentation of social activity reflecting a synchronous layout of stages included in the operations through which output was generated.
It is too soon to fully address this topic in the context of the document object - executive summary - belonging to the document structure. Nevertheless, since the reference - to which the following brief remarks point - is transparently ostensible, it can be mentioned, without too much disruption, that the flow of time in the Informational Economy instantiates different schematic qualities. In fact, the flow of time can be bannered under: an asynchronous dimension to the relations among digital objects and the relationships they intermediate during interactions among social counterparts. This state of affairs, in the of electronic interchange, through which transactions occur, exchanging information, need not be sequential, and, therefore, the forms of reciprocity that transpire can include objects that are not defined by any linear processed ordering of events. In other words, communications can address data objects in a recursive fashion; an aspect of the distant immediacy that characterizes the flow of events that occur in the virtual spaces engendered by the expansion of Internet infrastructures; or, what can be referred to, using Castells’ terminology, as Informationalism; the technological paradigm related to a pattern of productivity that is defined by exemplars constituting digitized communications.
Returning to the persona that is cultivated and constructed agents assuming a presence within the milieu of the digital matrix - a social object that can be Self stylized in the context of virtual interactions with greater plasticity, options, and allowance of revisions - the existential liberties attributable to the digital matrix are related to the condition in which interactions take place: The digital matrix instantiates a field of agents that interact with one another in a disembodied state. As a result, the physical attributes that entail ascription to a particular social identity are - often in the digital matrix - stripped from the communicative affair, allowing agents to bend their identities and play in the engagements while assuming the identity and role of statuses that they might be barred from in real - according to the traditional sense - interactions. One might liken this hyper-reality to the condition that is typically referred to - in the context of social theory - as carnival.
Associated with the breakdown of social barriers in the spaces, constituting virtual reality, is the more recent development typically designated as Web 2.0. Now is not the place to elaborate in dept upon this complicated empirical phenomenon and the properties that should be extrapolated for instances of Web 2.0 when constructing a corresponding analytic. However, with respect to its relevancy to the state of carnival attributed to many virtual spaces of interaction, it should be remarked that Web 2.0 similarly negates many of the semiotic devices - extant in real spaces - whose conventional interpretation by social agents leads to the labeling of ascribed - although sometimes assumed - social identities. In the context of the interactions occurring within instances of Web 2.0, the negation of many real cultural attributes results in a leveling of the stratifications that mark real social processes of knowledge production. Web 2.0 - the most recognizable exemplar of which is probably the popular Wikipedia - democratize the production of knowledge, rendering the representational spaces in which externalizations of proposed versions of knowledge find publicity.
The emergence of the episteme, Web 2.0, signifies an area of considerable concern for the analysis expressed in this document, due to the possibilities it incurs for sociopolitical movements that have been traditionally marginalized, preventing insurgents challenging the duopoly of the legitimate American sociopolitical infrastructure from achieving only the most modest forms of success. The existing literature pertaining to this topic is sparse. However, two references to sociological subject matters - incidentally related to the problem described in the earlier propositions forming this paragraph - are worthy of mention and will be treated somewhat extensively in the chapters and sections that follow: The agricultural reform movement of the latter part of the 19th Century - referred to as the People’s Party, or Populist Party - achieved substantial reforms; mostly consisting of democratizing more directly some of the electoral processes on a Constitutional level. Most significantly, the movement brought about the popular election of Senators.
More germane to the interests of this paper, however, are the unconventional tactics employed - to certain extents - by the movement in order to actualize some of the conditions defined by its teleology. The formation of collectivities in response to the inaccessibility of capital - a circumstance attributed to the Gold Standard3 of currency evaluation, which had consequences for farmers, preventing them access to necessary sources insurance against the risks involved in the production of agricultural commodities. Specifically, the inclusion of this historical narrative contributes to a theme that appears to be emerging in the sociology of social movements, which has taken a detour from the stock of knowledge - comprising its long established conventional wisdom, which presumed the success of social movements to be the consequent of antecedents including the networking resources though which the movement could affect the decision-making of elites responsible for the formation and administration of public policy - in order to come to terms with developments in Latin America. Although the abandonment of the macro-oriented policy strategies characterizing the neoliberal ideology of global consortium, such as the World Monetary Fund, in pursuit of local, organic initiatives certainly is a recognizable factor operative in the dynamics culminating into the mass electoral mobilization, which lead to the usurpations of legitimate sociolopolitical power by populist socialist movements in Latin America, the ability of the successful social movements to opportunize off of the Social Capital produced by activism conducted at the local level - identically - cannot be ignored4. The social movements - and this might be considered an attribute belonging to the connotative definition expressed in the sociological analytics of social movements - of course, were not social formations with the degrees of institutionalization needed to qualify them as organizations - in the sociological sense of the word - although they certainly did and continue to possess a form of organization - rather, the associations5 among agents contributing to these movements constitute - if anything - instances of networking, which, in these instances, transcended nation-states and their geographical parameters.
In terms of this document, what is of primary significance, is the scope of the extension of the refitted understanding of the conditions that can lead to the success of social movements that lack the networking resources with elites who assume positions of authority in the sociopolitical structures of the legitimate apparatuses of a state. Specifically, in the context of the American state, do the virtual spaces - allowing for the formation of virtual communities - similarly generate the Social Capital necessary to spawn the degree of social mobilization necessary for populist insurrections to achieve success; a state defined by the actualization of the conditions defined in the social movement’s teleology.
The problem, as defined in this document, is relevant to the current activities typically referred to as Net-roots Activism6; a form of networking conducted through the communicative possibilities precipitated by the growth of Informationalism.
Strategy Employed
The problem - can third party sociopolitical movements in the United State exploit the current transformations taking place and reorganizing the representational spaces available for obtaining the publicity associated with mass media - is addressed through empirical studies, consisting of ethnographic field research conducted upon two instances of third party sociopolitical movements: a state Green Party in the Midwest and the Populist Party of America, (located, as a headquarters, in Las Angeles California). Both cases involved what has come to be referred to as virtual ethnography.
Tactics
Although the methodological specification of ethnographic research was originally conceived as grounded theory, the immersion in the virtual spaces of the Internet and their state of disembodied communications, led to the adoption of exploratory testing, which has been taken up by others involved in the investigation of this relatively new area of sociological research.
Deliverables
Review and comparison of these two empirical subject domains has led to insights concerning the fertility of virtual communities for the cultivation of Social Capital. Additionally - through my participation in the Populist Party of America, which evolved into a commitment where I was responsible for consultation on organizational matters pertaining to communicative strategies intended for the advancement of the Populist Party’s agenda - I have been afforded the opportunity to test hypotheses concerning the successful application of the communicative devices provided by Internet infrastructures.
1 An ideological condition that marks - in many instances - the family resemblance of Modernist ideologies, which posit a singular, definitive conception of Truth, which should be ostensible to those who possess reasoning faculties, whose scope extend to all of humanity.
2Aesthetics, in this context expands to encompass as a subsidiary the concept, ethics. Perhaps a controversial partial definition. However, if ethics - which are historically contingent; oftentimes, self-imposed imperatives - are not, on occasion, the manifestation of aesthetics, then ethical considerations involved in the deliberations leading to many decisions could not be accounted for, since some decisions lack motivations related to socially imposed protocol dictating professional behavior - whose transgression would incur negative consequences for the agent.
3This is a reference to the debate that occurred at this period over the evaluation of currency in the United States. The Gold Standard was blamed for a lack of inflation, which would have made capital more accessible to farmers in the Midwest and South. The debate culminated with a famous oratory delivered William Jennings Bryan during the Democrat Convention, where he was nominated. Additionally, he received the nomination of the Populist Party.
4Due to the Marxist ideologies of many of the scholars who contribute to Latin American studies, one must, often, extricate this interpretation from the contents of studies that tend to attempt to dismiss the current regimes - installed through the processes describe - as simply continuations of classist elitism. Additionally, the revised tactic of local, organic initiatives - designed to improve communal economic conditions - as opposed to macro-policies, are simply part of a strategy to disperse the ideological foca of downtrodden classes, preventing the formation of a societal class consciousness; and instead, rendering the lower classes susceptible ideological fragmentation, resulting in scattered, local concerns that fail to conceptualize the larger structural mechanisms responsible for the persistence of poverty and class reproduction.
5Term intended to denote the relationships created through social networking. Thicker than societal relationships, but thinner than communal relationships.
6A term originating from authors who became popularized via the exploitation of the representational spaces provided by the Web. The Daily Kos attracts unique visitors to its domain in the number of hundreds of thousands.
Tags: direct democracy, economics, Farmers, government, history, labor, media, Midwest, politics, populist party, Russell Coles Blog, Social Change, society, sociology, sociology web 2.0, sociopolitical institutions, third parties, web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Midwest, Economics, Society, Populist Party, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0, Politics, Third Parties, Labor, Farmers, Direct Democracy, Social Change, Media, Sociology, History
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One tiny Step toward Web 2.0
July 12, 2006 3:31 pm
Tags: bandwidth, corporations, democracy, direct democracy, economics, government, market, media, net neutrailty, Net Neutrality, Russell Coles Blog, web 2.0
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Democracy, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0, Net Neutrality, Corporations, Direct Democracy, Media
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Senator Stevens; extraordinarily stupid Human or below average Beast?
July 10, 2006 3:14 pmAnyone who has listened to Stevens’ polemic during the Senate hearing on Net-neutrality can share in both the pain and laughter resulting from the realization that one of the most influential Senators when it comes to appropriations and other related matters is of an intellect that is so gravely substandard that it is difficult to know how precisely he manages to add tremendous amounts of pork to every piece of legislation.
As one would suspect, Stevens has become the hired gun for the ISP’s who want to deregulate the Web, eliminating the current condition of Net-neutrality. According to Stevens, the current institution of Net-neutrality has already created a two-tiered stratified system, which would be effectively eliminated if Net-neutrality was abolished.
Here is the logic behind Stevens’ conclusion: The poor, subordinated ISP’s, such as AT&T and Comcast, are currently sufferring under the weight of content providers, such as Google, as well as, consumers, such as you and I, who eat up bandwidth created by the invenstments of these poor ISP’s without compensating the ISP’s. Despite the fact that these ISP’s continue to invest in broadband expansions, and continue to make a good deal of money, the real culprits in this debate - free-content providers, such as Google, and end-users - are unfairly eating up resources to the point where the Internet can no longer function efficiently. Stevens pointed out that members of his staff have sent him emails, which took 4 to 5 days to reach Stevens’ inbox. This backup, as it was reported by Stevens, is caused by the fact that content is “not delivered by trucks,’ rather, ”it comes through tubes,” and, of course, “these tubes can get backed up.”
I am not sure what service provider Stevens uses. However, I must conclude that Stevens’ access to the Internet relies upon an architecture that is constructed out of strings tied to metal cans. From listening to Stevens rambling during the Senate Hearing, one can only conclude that this guy does not even know what a computer is, let along the Internet.
Tags: Deregulation, Internet, Net Neutrality, Senator Stevens
Categories: Commentary, Legislation, Net Neutrality, Media
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Awakening from a Dream
May 12, 2006 4:07 pmWe, The Midwest Alliance, have ostentatiously proclaimed that the collective representation of social and political reality, which predominately defines the most basic elements of the world-views of the majority of American subjects, is a false ideology; an illusory perception propagated by the “Manufactured Consent” engendered by a media that parades itself as news, but in actuality lacks any journalistic component. The mass media is simply a means through which the managers of public relations disseminate their press releases. There is no criticality involved in the reporting.
The pseudo-journalists, whose physically attractive appearances hold our attentions captive, are not investigating a story. Rather, they are involved in a system of reciprocity with their sources, who offer them contents for their reports. This amounts to a situation where the correspondent is obliged to frame a message that projects the image that the source is involved in crafting, in order to maintain the relationship. It is embedded reporting in two senses of the word: It is dependent upon the subjects of its coverage for access to their carefully planned dramaturgical performances, and, furthermore, it is prisoner to the corporate interests that have consolidated mass media sources in America. These corporations depend upon politicians and people of power for the de-regulation of the media industry, which creates a conflict of interests that undoubtedly tarnishes any attempt at the production of authentic journalism by these profit driven entities.
Therefore, if we are two extrapolate from these two preceding propositions, we can conclude that the media has little or no independence from the elites who dominate American society. Additionally, it is our position that this representation - the conventional political wisdom of American subjects shaped by the flow of discourse emanating from these media sources - is not an effective conceptualization of America and its system of polity, at all. America is not a democracy, or even a Liberal democracy; it is Empire, which maintains a vestige of a dilute republicanism. This is not hyperbole. The rest of the world acknowledges that America is a facade of the edifice that it attempts to project as the care-keeper of the values associated with the Enlightenment. We, as Americans, are alone in our oftentimes intransigent belief that we are the messengers of freedom in the world. America implants within the Trojan Horse of “making the world safe for democracy,” a form of cultural and economic imperialism. America is Empire.
Tags: democracy, empire, journalism, media, midwest populist party, populist, populist party
Categories: Commentary, Midwest, Society, Populist Party, Democracy, Empire, Media
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Thoughts on “Spreading Freedom”
February 4, 2006 4:12 pmThe term, “Manufactured Consent,” of course, belongs to Chomsky, who places the emphasis of analysis on macro-analytic factors. However, if one were to completely understand the process through which the American false ideology - which can be summarized under the following slogan: “Spreading Freedom” - is reinforced and ingrained into the core of our misrepresentations of the world, then one would have to consider micro-analytic factors, as well. Michel Foucault is an excellent place to start, if one cares to begin to become cognizant of the particular practices performed by disciplinarians when rendering the population docile, conforming to tradition and prejudice, and ripe for exploitation.
Tags: chomsky, foucault, freedom, manufactured consent, media
Categories: Commentary, Russell Cole's Blog, foucault, Empire, Media
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