Politics

Singapore.


The next paper in this ICA 2010 session is by Aaron Veenstra, whose interest is in the cognitive processing of blog-based information. He begins by raising the problem with the term 'new media' - an idea which remains in flux, to which new communication tools are constantly added. There remain significant gaps in the blog literature, too - we still have only a general definition of what blogs are, indeed.

The readers of blogs, Aaron suggests from previous work, are more susceptible to framing effects than other media users; there is a constraint of attitudes and a set of responses to media content which is not found in users of other media. The focus here is on political blogs, whose technical definitions are workable but remain dynamic, and which are difficult to define from an informational perspective. Especially at the popular end, there are significant inconsistencies between blog formats and styles; at the bottom end, there is a similar fuzziness.

Singapore.


The next session at ICA 2010 starts with Sandra Hsu, whose interest is in the distinctions between active and passive blog use. What are the relationships between these uses? What is the impact of blogging, especially of political participation? How do users select the media they use? What is the role of interactivity, and how does blog-based discussion unfold?

The core hypothesis of this research was that active blog use will predict online and offline political participation, while passive use will not. This was tested using a Web-based survey with some 1,100 respondents. Participants were categorised for their online and offline participation, their level of discussion with people connected by weak ties, their reasoning strategies (backing up argumentswith facts) and their level of engagement with non-like-minded participants.

Singapore.


The final speaker on this panel at ICA 2010 is James Hay, who questions the assumption that the move from broadcast to networked media results in a greater potential for grassroots activism and alternative media practice. Grassroots activism is now also often seen as astroturfing - a kind of genetically modified grassroots - and we have seen a resurgence of populism as well.

Such tendencies are predicated often on new media practices, and there is a legacy of the popular in cultural studies which is now being trumped by a focus on grassroots; the media economy, too, is increasingly organised around the management of populations (not least also aiming to know more about the life of population). New forms of populism from the US Tea Party movement on the right to its counterparts on the left still need to be explored more energetically by the people who research user-generated content.

Singapore.


Mel is followed at ICA 2010 by Jack Bratich, who highlights the importance of convergence outside of media convergence, and also introduces the idea of divergence as the opposite of convergence - what are the conditions for social antagonism as a form of divergence, and how is such antagonism dissuaded and diverted? Reality TV, for example, is a set of dividing and organising practices that might produce a new kind of antagonism around the programme as a kind of subject.

Second, as media are now incorporated into more conventional practices (warfare and the military is one example), what are the conditions of dissent? Jack introduces the idea of polemology as the study of warfare (which gave us de Certeau's work on strategies and tactics, for example), and suggests that Jenkins now argues that fans have already won the war, so there is no longer a clear antagonism between fans and producers; Jack suggests, by interest, further research into the phenomenon of user-generated discontent.

Singapore.


The final speaker in this session at ICA 2010 is Lynn Comella, whose focus is on adult entertainment - a global industry which is increasingly delineated by different interests and tastes, and one which is subject to high levels of criticism and antagonism. It has been underresearched so far, and policy decisions tend to be driven by moral outcries rather than evidence-based research. Communication research provides a robust framework here, but lags behind in its work on research into sexuality in general and adult entertainment in particular.

Singapore.


The next session in this ICA 2010 pre-conference starts with Andy Ruddock, who begins by focussing on George Galloway as a successful Labour candidate in Britain who appeared on Celebrity Big Brother. He describes this as an interesting new approach to political communication that shows the change in media and communication practices in the new media environment.

Galloway's appearance on Big Brother was a point of controversy; it was described as furthering his ego rather than doing proper political work. However, his counterargument was that this reached a different audience - so how do we read and research this from a communication studies perspective? We need new methods that provide new analyses of randomly occurring data and allow for the indeterminate outcomes of media practices across various domains.

Hong Kong.


Finally, we move on to Francis Lee as the last speaker on this second day of The Internet Turning 40. He notes that a few weeks ago, some 150,000 people commemorated the Tian An Men massacre in Hong Kong, and other public rallies are now also becoming commonplace - more and more people are now prepared to participate in such demonstrations. Mainstream media, interpersonal connections, and online media are combining to enable such activities; Hong Kong is becoming 'a proper society'.

What role does the Internet play in this, then? The Internet is used as a means of coordination and mobilisation, as a means of facilitating the formation of movement networks, as a platform for collective or individualised protest actions, and as a channel for persuasive messages and information. For social movements in the online information environment, the Net can be considered as an alternative medium, enabling them to bypass the mass media and transmit oppositional views; also, compared to conventional media, people are less likely to be exposed to discordant views and messages, and a form of self-reinforcing groupthink can develop, particularly with the move towards Web 2.0. This facilitates a heightened audience selectivity.

Hong Kong.


We move on to Hu Yong as the next speaker at The Internet Turning 40, who highlights the anti-Green Dam movement in China which opposes Internet censorship. In June 2009, the Chinese government introduced regulation that from 1 July that year, it required each new computer to have the 'Green Dam Youth Escort' filtering software pre-installed, which would filter specific 'unhealthy' - pornographic - Websites and information (previously it had been thought that this software was only required for school computers).

Hong Kong.


The first speaker in the post-lunch session this second day of The Internet Turning 40 is Cherian George, who begins with the story of a Singaporean dissident, the former lawyer Gopalan Nair, who has been a staunch (even rabid, Cherian says) critic of Lee Kuan Yew and his - or now, his son's - government. In a blog post, Nair has openly acknowledged the fact that he has defamed Lee, gave his full address and contact details, and dared the police to arrest him - which they did. He was quite literally asking for trouble.

Hong Kong.


The final speaker in this session at The Internet Turning 40 is Jack Qiu, who highlights the impact of the current financial crisis (in a study focussing on China and South Korea) and begins by playing a melody originally created to commemorate the Kwangju massacre in Korea which has now been repurposed as a kind of pan-Asian "Internationale" (and was performed in this version by the New Labour Art Troupe, a migrant workers orchestra in China which has released three CDs so far and also published its music online under a Creative Commons licence).