becomming engagable
DESCRIPTION
Presentation at the European Consortium of POlitical Research conference in Reykjavik 2011TRANSCRIPT
Jakob Svensson
Karlstad UniversitySweden
Becoming Engagable Discipline and Participation among Activists in
Southern Stockholm
Work in Progress
Starting point
New media is supposed to flatten out governance hierarchies and distributing power more evenly (Rheingold, Shirky among others)
Starting point
New media is supposed to flatten out governance hierarchies and distributing power evenly (Rheingold, Shirky among others)
What happens to relations of power in new media and communication environments?
(n)ethnographic case study
Aspudden and Midsommarkransen
Save the bathhouse
Conclusion
By following twitter accounts, joining e-mail and SMS-lists, Ning- and Facebook groups, activist became updated on the activities in the neighbourhoods and could engage if suitable and interested.
Conclusion
The mobilizing potential of new media
However this mobilizing potential is not understood in this paper terms of flattening of hierarchies and distributing power more evenly
A shift from more tangible hierarchical power structures to more non-transparent relations of power
Conclusion
The rise of social media and its access from mobile and hand-held computing devices, seems to encourage or even demand/ push for social negotiation of the political self through practices of updating
Conclusion
Through norms of connectedness and responsiveness, updating becomes a pivotal practice in our late modern and digital time
The increasing importance updating could be analyzed as the online affording new opportunities of information and participation.
Conclusion
Ground my findings in theories of power and discipline (Foucault) and of reflexivity in late modernity (Giddens - I argue that a kind of network logic is imposing behavioural patterns of reflexive updating and self-disclosure, disciplining activists to become engagable
Hence we should not forget that new opportunities of information and participation are based in a logic with other mechanisms of status and reward mechanisms - power relations
