Public Sphere can be defined as “the communicative institutions of a society, through which facts and opinions circulate, and by means of which a common stock of knowledge is built up as the basis for collective political action” (McNair, 1995)
McNair explains the development of the Public Sphere in the diagram below.
From this, we can see that the traditional role of citizens in the Public Sphere is as receivers of political information through the media, with limited feedback. However, due to the participatory nature of the Internet, individuals can produce and distribute their own political media. But to what extent have people been using this oppotunity to create something meaningful?
Amanda Koster explains that: "Everybody seems to be rallying an audience with all this social media, so why not rally an audience, have that directed attention, but then tell stories that are actually going to make a difference in people's lives"
Campaign Project:
For this project, we were required to produce an alternative media campaign video (or a series of short videos) to raise awareness of a particular cause or issue. I based most of my research on the Battlefront website, which is an excellent example of the grassroots activism through social and digital media.
Rationale:
My group found it very difficult to decide on a cause or issue that we felt stongly enough to campaign about. Even to the point where we decided we just didn't care about anything. This revelation is the basis of our video:
We can all agree that the Internet has changed the way we communicate with each other, as demonstrated here by the BRILLIANT Bill Bailey. He illustrates the popular belief that communication online is inferior and unnatural in comparison to traditional face-to-face contact.
If you have a facebook page and go to De Montfort University, you'll have heard of Matt Hawk. He is one of those people who adds literally everyone with a connection to DMU. What is the point? When i first drafted this entry, he had 2293 friends. I had a quick check today (09/02/10) and he's got 2449!
And in the time I was making that picture up on Photoshop, he added another 2 friends! He can't possibly know that many people, so why has he added them as Facebook friends? I believe he does it to increase his 'Social Capital'.
Bourdieu and Wacquent (1992) define social capital as "the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalised relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition". In other words, social networking sites allow the maintenance of existing relationships and the formation of new connections. This can be seen especially in the use of Facebook by students. They can maintain relationships with friends and family from home whilst at University, and can form new connections easily by adding friends and joining social groups.
There are three measures of social capital as defined in Putnam's groundbreaking book 'Bowling Alone' (2001).
Bridging
Bridging refers to the formation of relationships between people with loose connections. These relationships provide information or new opportunities, but not emotional support. According to Williams (2006), "the social capital created by these networks generates broader identities and generalized recipriocity", allowing offline social capital such as job opportunities or new love interests to be generated by online tools.
Bonding
Bonding is the reinforcement of existing relationships with close friends and family on social networking sites. Facebook has been especially useful for me to stay in contact with people as I have lost three mobile phones since being at DMU (but that's a story for another day!)
Maintained Social Capital
Maintained Social Capital relates to how easy it is to communicate and remain involved with old friends or people that you met once at a party. Ellison, Steinfield and Lampe (2007) defines the use of social networking sites this way as a "low maintenance way to keep tabs on distant aquaintances" as you can comment or like their status'/birthdays/photos without actual physical interaction.
Nie (2001) argues that using the Internet detracts from face-to-face time with others and diminishes an individual's social capital. However, I don't believe that to be true. Social networking keeps people in contact with each other if they live too far away to visit, and it is now easier than ever to make new friends and enhance existing relationships. Online interactions are not replacements for those in the real world but a new way to enjoy relationships.
