Pam Brown's Blog l emission - control. net

Distributing Politics and the Future of Democracy

In a fascinating new study entitled "A Tale of Two Blogospheres: Discursive Practices on the Left and Right" researchers affiliated with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society found that left-wing and right-wing bloggers use technology differently.  Left-wingers are more likely to choose a collective approach and form sites with multiple bloggers and that allow reader participation than right-wing bloggers who tend to favor individual blogger sites. 

In some ways this isn't surprising because the major ideological distinction between left and right is how the collective and individual are valued, but what does this mean for the future of the internet?  And even more importantly, what does this mean for the future of democracy?  Can an individual use the power of the internet to influence politics more powerfully than in previous media environments such as print and television?  What are the differences in the ways an individual can impact power using network technology?  Is the internet just more of the same media power structure in a new form?  Or will it develop in a way that allows individuals a new form of power that enables greater social impact by the individual?  Can we envision a society with a new form of democratic public sphere in which power is distributed more equally because our individual voices are more powerful? 

It seems to me that if the left continues to dominate the blogosphere, it may be possible to develop a society based on a decentralized power structure.  It seems to me that the battles we are fighting today - from health care reform to Wall Street reform and to net neutrality - are over how power is distributed across the network of the new political economy we see taking form.

A Tale of Two Blogospheres

New Study: Liberals More Open Than Conservatives Online

The Sociology of Political Blogs: An Interview with Yochai Benkler

Critical Themes Wrap Up

The 2010 Critical Themes Conference was a huge success, and I'm glad to say that I was able to present some ideas that look at neoliberalism as part of the technological revolution unfolding before our eyes.  Here are a few links to articles I've written that are published online, as well as the complete video I excerpted during my presentation.  I will continue to post thoughts and articles as I work on the project over the next year.

Related articles online:

The Fiction of Unemployment Numbers

Progressives Need a Narrative that Resonates

Who Broke America’s Jobs Machine?

Let’s Not Pivot to Jobs

Complete video from presentation:

Let’s Not Pivot to Jobs

There’s been a lot of talk over the past couple of weeks - the weeks after the loss of the Democratic “super majority” and with it the likelihood of any meaningful health insurance reform - that Obama’s best political move now is to “pivot” to jobs.  Why so-called progressives would encourage him to do this is beyond me.  In fact, to me it sounds like a Republican wet dream - first, the failure of health insurance reform, and then the failure to bring back jobs, a recipe for a disastrous presidency for sure. 

Liberal economists (especially Paul Krugman) have felt that the stimulus package wasn’t big enough to promote job growth, even if it was big enough to slow job loss.  But perhaps, even a bigger stimulus really couldn’t have promoted job growth in the same way that strategy may have worked in past economies.  In this meltdown whole industries collapsed, leaving millions of workers not just unemployed, but without an employable skill set.  Many disenfranchised workers are mid career, stuck with years of specific industry experience that’s now leaves them both overqualified and under-qualified at the same time.  Many others are entry level, living at home, working in internships and McJobs, unable to obtain career-building work in the first place. 

Economists tend to focus on data, and sometimes fail to fully appreciate the real world, day-to-day, lived experience beyond the numbers.  What jobs would have been created by a bigger stimulus?  I have a friend who worked in the publishing industry; I don’t think her job would have been saved.  The whole industry is disappearing before our very eyes.  She considers herself having “taken early retirement.”  I have many friends who are self-employed.  At what point is there so little business that you go from self-employed to unemployed?  And what’s the lived difference between the two categories, if you have no other skills to trade on anyway?  And eventually almost everyone who can’t find an actual job, gets tired of saying that they’re unemployed, and becomes self-employed.  That’s exactly what my friend who works in publishing did.  This middle ground between unemployed and employed skews the numbers, rendering them an inaccurate measure of what’s happening on the ground.  So much of the job loss has been due to industry transformation that I suspect that middle class jobs would not have been very impacted by more stimulus, even if the numbers camouflage that lived experience.  And this is what Obama promised he was going to turn around - we work harder, we get paid less, we’re tired, fatigued, exhausted and broke.

Progressives Need a Narrative that Resonates

Let’s face it - January was an unimaginably rough start to the New Year for progressives.  First, the painful and surprising loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to a crass, pickup truck driving teabagger, who tried to sell his daughters on national TV, and who promised the country to derail health insurance reform.  Then, the announcement of the big, unfathomably huge, gargantuan Wall Street bonuses totaling almost the exact amount that taxpayers had forked over in the bailout, ultimately culminating in a 100 million dollar payday for Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankenfein, and the need for anti-nausea drugs for the rest of the country.  With the administration’s most important social policy change unlikely to result in anything meaningful, and the financial crisis turning into a coup for banks, burning rage for the people, and a public relations nightmare for the beleaguered administration the week before the State of the Union speech, things didn’t seem like they could get any worse.  And then - whammo – seemingly out of nowhere, the Supreme Court rules that corporations can make unlimited campaign contributions, expediting the retreat of democracy to an insidious and uniquely American form of corporate fascism.  On the year anniversary of the election of the first black president, and just after our national reflection on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., there’s every reason for progressives to ask, “why, oh why?” 

 

Some answer that it was a failure of the democrats to support Martha Coakley that led to the humiliating loss of the key seat.  Others blame her for an untimely holiday vacation.  Others say she was simply a bad candidate, and mean that she didn’t come across well enough on television.  Some argue that we should have let the banks fail.  Others that they had a gun to their head and a bomb strapped to their back, and we had no choice but to hand over the dough.  Still others feel that allowing corporations carte blanche contributions won’t change much at all – either the people will still prevail, or it’s merely the breakdown of an illusion anyway. 

 

But while all of these points speak at some level to the issues at hand, they also all fail to address the big picture:  the progressive narrative of interdependence, a “level playing field” and social welfare is failing to strike a chord, while the conservative narrative of freedom, individuality and the invisible hand sounds in tune with what many in the country believe on a gut level.  I would argue that the impact of changing media technology on these classic American narratives is the strongest and most difficult force to reckon, blowing back very rational progressive solutions to problems that will determine the future success of this country.

Corporate Branding and The White House

In her recent article on AlterNet entitled How Corporate Branding Took Over the White House, Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, revisits branding, examining how the phenomenon has changed and developed over the 10 years since publication of the bestselling book.  In the context of Barack Obama it seems self-evident that he and his team are branding virtuosos.  And, as is the case with virtually all brands, when Klein looks behind the brand, she sees little substance.  To have substance, she feels that social movements will need to be "the real thing" - yes, like the Coke ad. 

But, the question is why are social movements having such difficulty forming in the midst of corporate corruption, the influence of lobbyists, and a populous that clearly wants change?  Absent from Klein's work is an accounting for the change to social dynamics and political economy that revolutionary technological change has precipitated.  I recently revised my essay, The Failure of Culture Jamming: Resistance in a Post-social World - it addresses why some of the dynamics needed to form a social movement may have changed, and where to look for change in the future.  Unfortunately, there are still no clear answers...

Download The Failure of Culture Jamming - Pamela Brown

My Response to: "Compared to Other Rich Countries, U.S. Had Big Job Losses"

I tried to change my NYTimes moniker to "radical thinker" but somehow it reverted back to "pambrown15" - oops!  Since everyone knows who wrote the comment already, I figured I'd post it here as well...

Here's the article:

Compared to Other Rich Countries, U.S. Had Big Job Losses

Here's my comment:

It's really not surprising that this post comes via a professor at U of Chicago, the home of Milton Friedman, and the intellectual foundation of the neoliberal thinking that has caused the loss of the middle class in America, and in every country where markets have been deregulated throughout the world.

I have a feeling that most human beings would favor income without expending the energy of labor. And there are many Americans doing just this right now via investing in the stock market, where you make money not from work, but from money. Unfortunately, for most of us, we lack the money to exploit capital in this way, and are left with the crumbs.

Trust in News Media Falls to New Low in Pew Survey

From The New York Times by Richard Pérez-Peña

"Trust in news media has reached a new low, with record numbers of Americans saying reporting is inaccurate, biased and shaped by special interests, according to a survey set to be released Monday.

The survey of 1,506 people interviewed in July by the Pew Research Center showed that self-described Republicans continued to take the dimmest view of news organizations, but discontent among Democrats was catching up."

Trust in News Media Falls to New Low in Pew Survey

Want to Change the Media? Be a Lobbyist

If you're interested in media reform, take the time to read the entire speech by Craig Aaron excerpted and linked below:

"I'm here to report on what's happening in Washington.

Washington is changing. It has been a different place. Even that swampy, muggy August weather hasn't seemed so disgusting this year. There's still optimism in the air.

I'm here to tell you that if you care about media and the arts, it matters who is in the White House. It matters who controls Congress.

Maybe most of all, it matters who gets appointed to those sometimes invisible but oh-so-important places like the NEA, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Federal Communications Commission.

That's because decisions being made right now -- and in the next few years -- at the White House, in Congress, and at these agencies are going to shape the future of all media for a generation.

They will decide ...

... If the Internet will remain open and free;

... If everyone will share in the benefits of broadband;

... If we're going to have a world-class public media system; and,

... If we'll have any hard-hitting public service journalism.

The good news is we now have friends in some of these key jobs. You know them. They will read your e-mails and return your calls. They want your ideas. They want to do the right thing.

Yes, Washington is changing. But there is a whole lot of Washington that still needs to change.

At Free Press, we often find ourselves going up against big phone and cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T.

We recently looked at just the first six months of the Obama administration. And we found that those four companies and their trade associations alone had hired more than 500 lobbyists -- that's one for almost every member of Congress -- and spent more than $45 million. And that's just what they report."

Read the whole speech by Craig Aaron of Free Press

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-aaron/want-to-change-the-media_b_277338.html

Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama

"Obama's worst mistake has been to misread the election results. Much is made that he got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore, revved up young whites, and totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had finally kicked the racial syndrome. This is the stuff of media talk and wishful thinking. Despite a GOP racked by sex and corruption scandals, an anemic presidential opponent, a laughingstock vice presidential candidate, a collapsed economy and an outgoing GOP president with a rating worse than Herbert Hoover's, McCain still crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters."

Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Think Again: The Surprising Success of the Right-Wing Rant

From The Center for American Progress By Eric Alterman & Danielle Ivory:

"For once, Foxnation.com got it right. “Dems Now Get Taste of Being Called 'Racist,'” said a screaming headline, and there’s no denying it was true. How else to characterize a story in which ex-Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo and radio host Rush Limbaugh compared Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions on race to those of the Ku Klux Klan.

David Duke found this to be a bit much. After all, he wrote, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, while Hispanic, was actually part and parcel of a Jewish conspiracy. Subsequently, Tancredo was asked if he wished to reconsider his KKK analogy. Alas, he declined. He also mentioned that he wasn’t sure if the Obama administration hated white people."

Think Again: The Surprising Success of the Right-Wing Rant