The role of social media in triggering and facilitating the currently world-wide Occupy Wall Street protests - of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, and kindred systems in obtaining word out concerningOccupations, and documenting them for the planet to examine and be part of - has been remarked upontherefore typically on nearly appear a banality. however the link between social media and direct democracy is true and profound, ANd is that the current end result of an evolution The role of social media in triggering and facilitating the currently world-wide Occupy Wall Street protests - of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, and kindred systems in obtaining word out concerning Occupations, and documenting them for the planet to examine and be part of - has been remarked upon therefore typically on nearly appear a banality. however the link between social media and direct democracy is true and profound, ANd is that the current end result of an evolution of media and political expression that began in precedent days.
Back within the body politic of Athens, within the time of statesman, direct democracy arose, partly owing to the new attainment that allowed voters to learn of public events and also the views and actions of their leaders. The words that these folks browse were written, that meant that anyone United Nations agency needed to put in writing and be browse might do therefore. Writing and business were even as concerning as simple, in alternative words, as reading.
All of that modified dramatically with the invention of the machine, that had the rattling results of spreading the word to millions, however the anti-democratic impact of greatly reducing the quantitative relation of revealed writers to readers. uncountable folks became familiar with reading words written by a couple of others. Unsurprisingly, once democracy slowly re-emerged within the Renaissance and also the Age of Reason, it absolutely was not the direct democracy of Ancient Athens. Instead, it absolutely was a representative quite democracy, during which nonappointive officers created all the choices, and every one the folks might do was vote the representatives up or down. This was nearly precisely parallel to the transformation in info production and reception led to by the machine, during which all the folks might do is browse and agree or ail a book or pronunciamento or pamphlet, and in no approach write or manufacture it, unless you were within the but one-percent of the population lucky to possess a monarch's or a printer's (later publisher's) favor.
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This difference of producer and client - few producers and legion shoppers - wasn't solely continued however exacerbated by the arrival of broadcast media, that reduced the quantity of producers (harder to urge your views on radio and tv than in newspapers, that a minimum of has letters to the editors) whereas increasing the quantity of shoppers. folks in representative democracies became higher au fait, however the knowledge was created by fewer and fewer folks. In some countries, like the USSR and Nazi Germany, this difference was masterfully well-mined to try to to away with democracy altogether.
New New Media by Paul LevinsonThe introduction of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube within the initial decade of the twenty first century shifted that quantitative relation back to a a lot of even distribution of producer and client for the primary time since the written manuscript command sway in Ancient Athens. These new media live on-line, however they were not like alternative new media like Amazon and iTunes, that still last the foremost half like ancient business media, with few producers and plenty of shoppers. In distinction, anyone will Tweet, post a standing on Facebook, transfer a video to YouTube - any client might become a producer. that is why I say these new social media don't seem to be simply new however "new new media".
People within the streets, difficult freedom and justice within the Arab Spring, and redress of economic grievances within the us, Europe, and Asia, square measure the healthy and long-overdue political expression of the revolution in social or new new media. The Occupy movements square measure expressing a discontentment with others creating choices for U.S.A. - with our nonappointive representatives doing the bidding of banks instead of the those who nonappointive them.
With suggests that of expressing one's affairs of state in nearly everyone's pockets and hands, the age of mass media and representative democracy may perhaps be in irreversible decline, replaced by the a lot of equitable system of direct democracy during which the bulk not solely actually rules, however during which everyone's views will get a public hearing, and everybody will vote at any and every one times. Campaigns like Dylan Ratigan's to "get the cash out of politics" could also be well which means, however miss the purpose that it's representative democracy itself that has to go or be reworked into a system of democracy that continuously moves to the people's views.
I talked concerning all of this somewhat a lot of and semiconductor diode a discussion once the 7:15pm screening of artist Shlain's new motion picture Connected, at the Angelika Film Center in ny town this Wed, October 19.
I additionally mentioned several of those problems on cheerio Street speak, Fox-NY-5, on a panel taped on weekday October twenty and broadcast weekday October. Video is here:
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