Session 7: Web 2.0 and its Impact on Social Mobilization and Free Speech
5th Global Conference
Friday 12th March – Sunday 14th March 2010
Salzburg, Austria
“I am who I am”: The Metaphorical Representations of Politicians
Zuraidah Mohd Don
Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Malaysians are becoming more Internet savvy as they embrace the era of globalization and the growth in technology. Even the local politicians are now turning to the World Wide Web to reach out to their supporters or detractors. This paper looks at how metaphors are used to represent politicians. As such the analysis will focus on how the New Media is becoming an important tool for those who are interested in airing their political views to others. The investigation of the present study is undertaken using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) employed by Fairclough (1992, 1995, 2003), specifically focusing on the use of metaphors. According to Fairclough (1992: 194), metaphors are realised in discourse. Thus, he adds that we are constructing our reality based on the choice of our metaphor, as “metaphors structure the way we think and the way we act, and our systems of knowledge and belief, in a pervasive and fundamental way” (Fairclough, 1992: 194). The analytical system used to analyse metaphor is under the general heading of vocabulary (Fairclough, 1992: 169). In this analytical category, vocabulary is an aspect of textual analysis where individual words are examined. The investigation of metaphors involves examining the lexical items used to signify the world in different time and places and also for different groups of people. In this study, the analysis of metaphors in the New Media will look at how politicians present themselves or are presented by others. The data of the study are extracted from popular political blog sites.
“Click here to protest”: Electronic Civil Disobedience and the Future of Social Mobilization
Fidele Vlavo
London South Bank University, United Kingdom
Along with the compression of time and space, the establishment of virtual networks has facilitated the trade of products, capital and ideas but also social struggles and resistance. This convergence of opposition and dissidence has since encouraged the advent of innovative socio-political actions. In the late 1990s, Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) introduced its new form of protest: the electronic civil disobedience (ECD). Arguing against past models of opposition that no longer succeeded in the ‘physical’ world, CAE promoted the development of virtual resistance based on network hacking. From there, cyberspace becomes more than a communication channel; it is the actual site of social mobilisation and confrontation.
For this paper, I would like to trace a map of the principal issues brought up by this contemporary redefinition of socio-political activism. This task starts with the reassessment and transposition of theoretical interrogations from Henri Thoreau’s original formulation of civil disobedience to CAE’s original construct. In particular, I explore notions of legality, disclosure and legitimacy in the context of globalised resistance. Simultaneously, the theory of ECD is examined as a partial product of the ‘Internet Imaginaire’, a concept derived from psychoanalytic theory which, according to Patrice Flichy, articulates our fundamental belief in the redemptive role of digital technology. In this case, the assumption is that no meaningful social change is achievable outside of the virtual world. Eventually, the discussion draws attention to the substantial challenges paused by ECD praxis. Raising questions related to the social and geopolitical mappings of Internet, I suggest how this initially appealing proposition of radical virtual protest, discursively reinforces ideological domination and inequality in its attempt to assert cyberspace as the exclusive space for of socio-political activism.
Saving the Aporias of Journalism in Cyberspace
Ejvind Hansen
Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
The emergence of the Internet has in many ways facilitated the work of the journalist. Informations have become more accessible. It has been made possible to distribute the stories with minimal delays. And the new platforms of publication have come about.
At the same time, however, I will argue that journalism as a profession is threatened. The internet has lowered the bar of entry to publishing information and stories. Any individual with internet access can setup her own blog. Furthermore, you can subscribe to Google-news, where google-bots trawl the web for news, and serve them in an accessible manner. It is true that in Google-news it is still primarily the products of journalist work, that is being scanned, but in the outset this is not a necessary circumstance. In the long run it is thus a question, why journalists are important.
I will argue, that journalists need to reconsider their profession, if it is to survive in cyberspace. I will suggest a Derridean reading of journalism, in which it is being shown that the usefulness of journalism in a traditional setting has been founded in an aporia in the Derridean sense – ie. an aporia that on the one hand represents a paradox or tension, while on the other hand being the very source of the productivity of a certain field. I will suggest that journalism should be thought through the aporia that journalists on the one hand make room for certain voices in the public spheres – while on the other hand shaping this room, and hereby in a certain sense withdrawing the possibility of the free speech of the interviewees. The journalist operates by letting others speak – but only in certain narratives. The “microphone” of the journalist is a tensed openness.
If journalism is to survive, it is crucial to contemplate how the aporia of journalism can survive in the new cyber-setting.
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