Activist Media Week 2 Readings

Rethinking the Black Public Sphere: An Alternative Vocabulary for Multiple Public Spheres

  • Focuses on subaltern (someone so low in social status they exist outside of the hierarchy) spaces

  • Three types of spaces:

    • Enclaves

      • Hidden safe space for marginalized groups

      • Allows for private discussion of protest

      • Gathering forces and discussing battle strategy

      • Marginalized people often denied access to dominant public sphere, forced into enclaves

      • Scripted interactions w/ the public, hidden transcripts in safe spaces

      • Discrete methods of communication

    • Counterpublics

      • What makes a sphere counter?

      • Could be a space actively engaged with progressive political action (if so there is no Black public sphere post 1970s) [Quotation shows its age]

      • Engages in debates w/ other publics, uses active strategies like sit-ins

      • Emerge in response to decreased oppression or increased resources

      • Increased communication, discussion travel out of safe spaces

      • Facilitated by access to media and distribution channels

      • Activists can be used against other black people, like “judged by the contents of their heart not the color of their skin”

    • Satellite

      • Seeks a separate place like enclaves, but not for the purpose of fleeing oppression

      • May engage in discussions w/ the outside world sometimes

      • Amish?

      • Solid group identity, separate institutions

      • Ex: Nation of Islam

      • No goal of integration

  • Author argues the separation allows for greater discussion and comparison

  • There are multiple publics, dictated by group characteristics

  • Marginalized groups create counterpublics in reaction to state exclusion

  • Group identity alone isn’t enough to differentiate between spaces

  • Thesis: In this article, I propose a different set of terms to describe multiple publics in the multicultural society of the United States without reifying the boundaries between them or entirely dismissing group identity as a reason-able criterion for defining a public sphere

  • The term “public sphere” refers to a set of physical or mediated spaces where people can gather and share information, debate opinions, and tease out their political interests and social needs with other participants

    • Can be formal or informal

  • Rise of the borsogie correlated w/ the rise of Atlantic slave trade

  • Fraser’s model of multiple publics:

    • Dominant sphere: white middle and upper class males

    • Subaltern counterpublics: The historically oppressed

      • Allows them to critique dominant publics w/o suppression

  • Felski: explores places w/in the feminist sphere for activism and progress

  • Dawson: organization of Black counterpublics has changed

    • Ex. Churches were important in the 50s, student blocs were important in the 70s

    • Lack of a unified goal (end of Jim Crow) leads to fracturing on gender and class divides

    • Black subaltern space had declined [CRT tenant of the civil rights movement as a failed project]

    • Dawson conflates political successes w/ the discursive actions of a sphere

  • Times of fragmentation lead to multiple subspheres

    • Different activities, lack of consensus

  • A Black public is an emergent collective composed of people who (a) engage in common discourses and negotiations of what it means to be Black, and (b) pursue particularly defined Black interest

  • Social hierarchy encourages the displacement of Black accomplishments in favor of white saviorism

  • Important aspects of public spheres

    • Relationship of group to dominant and institutional spheres

    • Diversity of a sphere

    • Institutional resources available to the collective

    • Specifics of their mode of communication and cultural expression

  • More ties to institutional resources = greater chance of political success

Understanding Social Media Logic (2013)

  • Social media is important for social interactions

  • Social media logic: the norms, strategies, mechanisms, and economies—underpinning its dynamics

    • Programability

      • Scheduled content, like news programs

      • Algorithms and platforms leading you to more content

        • Can also include crowdsourcing behaviors

    • Popularity

      • Mass media capitalizes on popularity of individuals, TV personalities

      • SM platforms claim to be more democratic in their popularity

      • Corporations seek to win this popularity contest

      • Most viewed profile like top 30 under 30

      • Conducts a popularity contest while actively manipulating the system

    • Connectivity

      • SM often amplifies connections already there rather than generating new connections

    • Datafication: ability to render data and quantification to new things

      • SM produces a lot of data

    • Transports info out of the social media spaces

    • Entangled w/ mass media logic

  • Mass media logic: spreads media narrative outside of its institutions

    • Mass media creates structured, controlled dissemination of information

    • Mass media accepted as neutral

    • Newspapers could frame reality and claim neutrality

    • Short bursts of focuses on events

    • Framing neutrality: bring in staging experts of institutions, media personalities

    • Public relations reps got institutions to look good to mass media

    • Can be used to activists’ advantage

  • Fast, computer communication challenges existing institutions

  • Can’t escape SM logic

9/16

  • Social media is more participatory compared to mass media

  • Mediatization: how media becomes an integral part of social life and other sectors of society

  • Popularity can overpower content

  • Spiral of silence: people become more and more silent, iniatiates more self-censorship

  • Traditional public sphere models focus too much on group identitiy

  • Squires: 3 responses determined by political, econmic, social, and cultural conditions

    • Different public spheres will have access to different reouses, have diff relationships to the state and dominant publics

  • Enclave public sphere

    • Formed in response to intense opression

  • Benefits for this typology: recognizes internal diversity, recognizing insitiutional and cummunity influence, fragmentationm nyktuoke respones

Discussion:

Counterpublic

Example: punk music community

Song promotion, clips/sound grabs, popularity, music videos, streams, awards

Analytical Essay Due in 2 weeks

  • 3 pages

  • Analyze 1-2 main points from the following videos

  • 2 of four elements of social media logic

  • Analyze at least 2 videos, including the first video

  • Include specific examples, data