Thursday, February 28, 2013
The opening keynote is by Beth Coleman from MIT. In ‘Tweeting the revolution’ she talks about the rhetoric of activism, how collective histories of collective action take shape in the networked media. How do the public and the civic, but also the poetic, constitute themselves on these media like Twitter and Facebook and would it be possible to develop some kind of ethical framework for that?
By now we are all aware that the Egyptian revolution wasn’t perhaps all in all a Facebook revolution. The social networking site was important for logistical reasons, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Coleman recalls the argument of Malcolm Gladwell against ‘clicktivism’: just liking a Facebook page can’t be enough to truly engage, there needs to be a bodily presence, you have to have ‘skin in the game’. Coleman seems to agree on that, but wants to add that the distinction between real life and something like cyberspace seems totally outdated. We need to think about the tweeted revolution with the intertwining of cyberspace and real space as the basis. The Arab Spring truly was the biggest uprising since 1968, says Coleman, but the differences are as big as the similarity in impact is.
Who didn’t see ‘the MOST AMAZING video on the Internet‘ (and that’s quite a statement, right?), a compilation of scenes from Egypt around #Jan25? A student from Georgia put it together, sitting behind his desk in his dorm room, wanting to help, take part, engage. He must have devoted hours to the video, and the result is engaging indeed, sending shivers down your spine. Amazing to me is the music score mostly, a full on American tearjerker rock song (not my favorite genre). The end shows a quote by JFK. So at the same time as being very touching and effective, it gives you a feeling of propaganda of the American kind. Whether you like that or not, it’s a long way removed from objective journalism.
This leads to the ethical point Coleman is making. She doesn’t judge the student making this video in his spare time, his engagement should be applauded in the least. What the video shows is the need for a responsibility on the side of the viewer. ‘Where do the images come from,’ she should ask herself, ‘are they correct’? It is also necessary to read the language of the video, the rhetoric if for example the revolution. (This reminds me of the use of the iconic picture of the French Revolution, which was copied in the iconic picture of the American victory in WWII – and in many more places.)
The rhetoric of these videos do not only deal with facts, concludes Coleman, but also with social relations surrounding the video like in Iran. Through video is it possible to engage socially, even while not being there in the square, in the flesh. Another example, from the US, is a video in which young gang-style guys reclaim a murder scene with a taping of (again) amazing dance moves. Turf Feinz RIP Oscar Grant video: This is comparable or at least somehow related to occupying a square, says Coleman, because both are ethical engagements. It’s about being with someone via mediation, not despite mediation. The question of being there in the skin is simply a bit old fashioned. You can be there and engage without physical presence, through the enveloping sphere of video.
If you’re interested in this topic, be sure to check out the Facebook Riot panel at Unlike Us #3, and the new Network Notebook by Andreas Treske, The Inner Life of Video Spheres: Theory for the YouTube Generation.