Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Arely Zimmerman & Andres Lombana (Part I)

Arely

My interest in participatory politics is connected to my work in immigrants’ rights movements in the United States, and more specifically, the activism of undocumented youth from the 2007- to the present. This activism was initially focused on achieving immigration reform and passing the DREAM Act, but has now shifted its focus on challenging U.S. immigration enforcement and detention policies.  When I initially began my research with MAPP (Media Activism and Participatory Politics), I focused on the liberatory potential of youth’s engagement with digital and social media. I argued that by mastering these new technologies, youth were able to shape the immigrants’ rights agenda for a decade.

However, with the rise of Trumpism, the initial optimism about new media has waned. For youth, the hard-won victory of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which granted a limited protection from deportation, was followed by the election of Trump, the rescinding of DACA, and the attacks on Sanctuary cities and campuses across the country. New media technologies, which were once presumed to be emancipatory (for better or worst), have become the primary tools of authoritarian white supremacist rule. Trump uses twitter extensively to set and frame his agenda, to degrade members of minority groups, to circulate false ‘news’, and to shape mass public opinion on immigration. On the other hand, the “coming out” stories that young people used to humanize the immigration issue have become obsolete. Young people realize that immigrants are surveilled and activists are monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother. Under this new regime, many activists abandoned more public sites like DreamActivist. They went “underground”. Civil disobedience actions- while still in use- have also waned. What does this say about participatory politics? Well, what it shows us is we have to seriously consider how these new technologies are being used in anti-democratic ways. We also have to consider that participation is a privilege of citizens- primarily white citizens- in this context. While communities of color and immigrants still use social media to document harassment, hate crimes, etc., the risks of “coming out” using social media are too high a price to pay. Like a colleague of mine writes, undocumented youth’s activism is now defined by the refusal to speak.

Andres

Hola Arely! Your research on immigrants’ rights movements in the U.S. and youth activism sounds fascinating. It is a crucial theme that is at the center of political debates in several countries, particularly in the U.S. with the context of a demographic shift that touches all social dimensions. The educational dimension is perhaps the one I am more familiar in this space, since I had the opportunity of studying and working with Latinx immigrant youth for several years while doing my PhD and living in Austin, Texas. Through several ethnographic and action research projects in public schools, community organizations, and creative collectives, I experienced, first hand, the current transformation of the U.S. population and the challenges that many Latinx youth confront as they try to actively participate in the culture, economy, and politics of a rapidly changing society. Studying how this youth population leverages digital tools and networks for learning and developing career trajectories allowed me to better understand how digital inequalities have evolved, and how beyond access to technology and gaining digital skills, it is critical that minority and non-privileged youth also have access to social and cultural capital. First and second generation Latinx immigrant youth that grow up in working class home environments, poverty contexts, and attend low-income public high schools usually have limited access to networks of support that are rich and diverse in social and cultural capital. That fact creates barriers of participation (in culture, politics, economy) that are more difficult to overcome than the ones of material access to technology and skills. That was one of the findings from the ethnographic work I conducted with the Connected Learning Research Network’s Digital Edge team led by Craig Watkins at a public high school and one of the central themes I explored in my dissertation. (see the Doing Innovation website here).

The optimism on the liberatory potential of new media technologies has decreased in recent years as the political climate has changed not only in the U.S. but also in several countries around the world. The world wide web just turned 30 years old last month and, although we have seen it as a generative space of innovation, democratization, and activism, we have also become more aware of its transformation into a space of surveillance, harassment, data exploitation, market concentration, and disinformation. Moreover, as you point out, what used to be considered emancipatory tools for marginalized and oppressed populations have also turned out to be the tools for radical, supremacist, far right movements and governments. In Latin America, for instance, we have seen how a powerful radical right movement successfully has leveraged social media such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Twitter, for spreading disinformation and misinformation, creating political polarization, and ultimately, winning elections (e.g. 2018 presidential elections of Colombia and Brasil). In the Colombian case, that is the one I am more familiar with, the new right-wing government and its far-right party have used these tools and networks to undermine the implementation of a peace deal that was signed in 2016, the transitional justice process, and the construction of an inclusive and plural historical memory of the armed conflict (the oldest in the Americas with more than 60 years). Such memory building process was at the core of the peace process that took place between 2012-16, and helped to empower several minority groups victims of war (e.g. women, youth, afro-colombians, and indigenous populations) with digital tools for telling their stories with their own voices, documenting their territories, and advocating for their rights. Memory is a contested space in a country where there is no consensus about peace, justice, and the transition to a post-conflict scenario. Digital tools and networks, in such context, can also be leveraged to exacerbate the polarization and construct a historical memory that is exclusionary.

As we confront a moment of crisis in participatory politics and democratic processes, both conservative and progressive movements are leveraging "any media necessary" for getting into power and pushing their agendas. Their communication strategies involve using both old and new media, and both public and private platforms. Private messaging tools like Whatsapp, for instance, have become one of the most effective media in Latin America and other parts of the so called Global South for spreading news, photos, videos, music, and any kind of digital content. The private and encrypted quality of Whatsapp has made this platform a productive spaces for both far-right radicalization, and progressive and social justice organizing. I wonder to what extent the youth activists in the U.S. that "have gone underground" after the 2016 elections are leveraging encrypted communication tools in order to avoid being tracked. What kind of technology infrastructure is supporting their move to the underground? How has this move changed their communication tactics?

Arely

Thank you Andres for your response. I would like to clarify what I mean by “going underground” and be more specific about the kind of media they are leveraging in response to your query.

I will answer your question by recalling the 2016 elections and its aftermath. The day after the election, I met with students to reflect and strategize about how to move forward. At the time, the college where I was teaching was trying to implement a set of institutional responses to mediate the harmful effects of any policy changes ushered in by the new administration. I served as an advocate for undocumented and DACAmented students. DACAmented students were particularly afraid that by applying for DACA they had put their parents in harm’s way essentially handing over information on their addresses, etc. While my college wanted to do the “right thing”, they failed miserably to make students feel safe. They rejected appeals to declare their campus a sanctuary campus, they failed to commit to not working with federal agents if they came on campus, and they also were slow in finding ways to fund students when their DACA work permits expired. All of this uncertainty mobilized students to action. Rather than hide, they staged a direct action on campus. Yet, they also made a conscious decision to use SIGNAL instead of SMS to communicate with me and each other. Students felt a new sense of vulnerability and fear of surveillance, even from their would-be allies.

Many of my students had been active in the national immigrants’ rights movement and the public campaigns for the DREAM Act. Going “underground” also meant being more strategic about sharing their stories on public platforms to wider audiences. Even though my students engaged in one direct action on campus, they were less willing to engage in forms of civil disobedience off campus. They were also less willing to use blogging/vlogging to reveal their status online, as had been the repertoire of contention from about 2007-2015 (and that I write about in an article in IJOC).

Another departure from the past was students’ hesitation to speak in front of cameras. On the day of the direct action on my campus, reporters asked for interviews with participants and they nominated a U.S. citizen to speak for them. This was a departure from the past when undocumented youth were adamant about speaking for themselves.This signaled that the political context (as well as the political opportunities) had changed under Trump. Activists navigated these contexts in different ways. I don’t necessary think that their refusal to speak publicly meant that their activism also stopped. It simply meant that it would be channeled in different ways, and that the risks of using social media outweighed the benefits.

Now I’d like to circle back to some of the insights you provided in your post. I am very intrigued by your findings that:

First and second generation Latinx immigrant youth that grow up in working class home environments, and attend low-income public high schools, usually have limited access to networks of support that are rich and diverse in social and cultural capital. That fact creates barriers of participation (in culture, politics, economy) that are more difficult to overcome than the ones of material access to technology and skills.

This makes me think of the students/youth we interviewed for the MAPP (Media, Activism and Participatory Politics) project with Henry Jenkins. Those activists were first gen Latinx students from very low income high schools but had overcome some of these barriers to participation. I speculated that it was their access to “other” forms of capital- for example, the presence of student groups/organizations on their campuses, mentors/teachers who were connected to immigrants’ rights groups, and “contextual” capital in their local neighborhoods (mainly in Los Angeles) with a history of activism that propelled these students to movement participation. Undocumented student activism is particularly rich to study given that social capital is so important for political participation and all indicators would point to it being low for these students. What do you think?

Andres

Yes, I totally agree that accessing "other" forms of capital is critical for overcoming barriers to participation. I do believe that has been the case for many of the first gen Latinx students that have moved up in the socioeconomic and educational ladder in the U.S. Moreover, being able to connect to organizations that support immigrant and Latinx communities, and that keep the longer histories of immigrant rights alive in a local context can be super empowering for youth. Geography and local context matter for all kinds of participation. Although it is true that the Internet and the networked communication environment have made physical distance irrelevant for several processes and allowed people from any part of the world to connect and collaborate, geographic proximity is still relevant. Particularly for accessing certain forms of capital such as social and cultural one, it is crucial.

In contrast to the first gen Latinx students you interviewed in L.A., none of the Latinx students (all of them Mexican-Americans) I encountered at Freeway High School in Austin, TX, connected to local community groups such as immigrant rights movements or to ethnic organizations that could help them to expand their social and cultural capital and to diversify their networks. Their school and households were located in a suburban area of Austin, far away from the inner city and disconnected from the neighborhoods of vibrant cultural and economic activity.

Surrounded by food deserts, with limited recreational areas, and with precarious public transportation, this area had experienced a process of povertization in the last decades similar to the one of other American cities. Growing up in working class Mexican immigrant families, attending a low-performing school, and living in a suburban poverty context, made access to social, cultural,  educational, and other resources difficult for this youth.

Despite having access to mobile phones and networked computers at home, and developing a range of new media literacy skills, many of the Latinx students I met at Freeway High remained disconnected from opportunity. Paradoxically, although they were proud about living in Austin, identified with the creative and high-tech ethos of the city, and wanted to follow careers as filmmakers, fashionistas, and game designers, most of them could not follow the pathways they dreamed, partly because their lack of access to diverse networks of support, mentors, and cultural and social capital.

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Arely Zimmerman is Assistant Professor of Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Andres Lombana-Bermudez (@vVvA) is an assistant professor of communication at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia. He is also an associate researcher at the Centro ISUR at the Universidad del Rosario, and a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.  

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Andrew Scrock & Moritz Fink (Part II)

Andrew:

I appreciate how you and Marilyn are reviving culture jamming! It is a valuable concept that helps us understand how using cultural symbols originating in corporations can be wielded for expressly political purposes. I’ve been slowly collecting zines and guides, like The Art and Science of Billboard Improvement and Advertising Shits in Your Head that describe ways to reclaim public space. Being post-“cyberspace” has (thankfully) returned us to question how urban infrastructures can be hacked and repurposed. The Simpsons also brings us back to Henry’s foundation in thinking about how popular culture can provide the vocabulary for political self-expression and identity work. Many of the civically-minded geeks I’m following sometimes refer to themselves as “civic technologists” – and I simply call “techies” – do both of these things. They work on civic infrastructure and try to organize by using symbols drawn from popular culture. For example, they are organizing to build and encourage adoption of services that improve the way low-income families get food assistance and enable residents to buy lots of land in their neighborhood for a dollar and develop them for their community. Because their work is arcane and difficult, they will never be a social movement like Black Lives Matter. Rather than their mobilization, techies face different challenges, like how to create and share a collective political identity for infrastructural politics that resists absorption into bureaucracy.

Jake Brewer Imagined as a Rebel Pilot

Popular culture is part of the ways techies shape and share a political identity, such as borrowing from transmedia franchises like Star Wars. One of the first techies to use symbols drawn from popular media was Jake Brewer, a political insider I write about in my book “Civic Tech.” Jake rose to prominence through the Sunlight Foundation and joined the White House as a Senior Technology Advisor, before working on immigrant rights. He frequently referred to techies as the “rebel alliance,” a concept that allowed them to think of themselves as outsiders even as they worked inside government to improve it. To Brewer, the Empire symbolized everything that government should not become: an authoritarian state that ignored the will of the people. Tragically, he was killed in a charity bike ride. After his death, pins were made that showed Brewer in the cockpit of an X-Wing fighter. “He saw the American revolution as unfinished,” wrote Micah Sifry, “and believed that techies and open democracy activists were indeed part of the continuing #RebelAlliance fighting the Empire.” Brewer still serves a touchstone for the identity of techies because he was an astute political maneuverer who managed to both keep his deeply-held convictions and build collaborations inside of government. You also can see Star Wars imagery in the unofficial US Digital Services mascot, Mollie the crab, and tweets by their cousin department, 18F.

Applying a lens of media activism and culture jamming can also help us understand the current backlash against tech companies that surveil, classify, and sell the data of users. The video “Dear Tech” appeared as an advertisement during the Superbowl, bankrolled by IBM and viewed by over a hundred million people. In it, celebrities like Janelle Monae (the Electric Lady herself!) call for “AI that helps us see the bias in ourselves” and “Blockchain to help reduce poverty.” Watching this video, I was sympathetic to the ideas of reducing poverty and bias. The problem I and others saw was that the video read like a plea from individuals for more tech to solve the very problems that technology corporations produced. In response, a group of critics led by Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab (including friends of Civic Paths like Ethan Zuckerman, Safiya Noble, and Sasha Costanza-Chock) made a video that parodied this ad. Instead of “Dear Tech,” it was titled “Dear Tech Company.” It used the same facing-the-camera format and dramatic swells, while putting the pressure on tech companies to reform the way it collects data, listens to employees, and listens to the public.

In flipping the script, they added a new critique: technology companies, not just users, should change the way they operate and act politically, such as through lobbying and non-engagement with local communities. For an example of how these conflicts are playing out on the ground, see Molly Sauter’s sharp pieces about Sidewalk Labs/Google’s bid for Toronto’s Quayside. The original video encouraged us to think about technological problems as being solved by individuals clamoring for more but better technology. The remix encouraged us to recognize that unjust technologies mirror the organizational practices and corporate desires of their creators. I would go even further. Our obsession with reforming “big tech” says quite a bit about our collective inability to imagine a publicly-owned alternative. The techies I’m working alongside are involved in this very effort by reforming government services to be more equitable and just. There is a certain strain of “tech bros” out there that naively believe complex social problems can be alleviated with simple technological solutions. However, the idea that every geek is a “tech bro,” or that one drop of technology in a comprehensive reform strategy makes it “technocratic,” is incredibly dangerous. Our shared future civic life will probably involve technology. We need politically-aware, ethical, and organized political actors – most importantly, the builders and institutional boundary-crossers.

Mo:

Your example of techies appropriating Star Wars’ iconography is intriguing. Indeed, commercial culture – including pop culture products such as Star Wars or The Simpsons as well as brands such as Coca-Cola – has offered a wealth of imaginary worlds shaping popular mythologies, which are shared by millions of people all round the world. In this regard, the power of the symbolic must not be underestimated in political terms. By appropriating narrative storyworlds (e.g., Star Wars, The Simpsons) or corporate identities (e.g., Coca-Cola), activists equip themselves with a widely understood and appealing visual vocabulary to raise awareness for their causes, and to align with sisters and brothers in spirit.

Consider Barack Obama’s 2009 election campaign, which was effectively propelled through pop art imagery – an important factor in creating the overwhelming Obama-hype as well as in fostering voter mobilization. One of the images circulating at that time, by the L.A.-based artist Mr. Brainwash, presented Obama in Superman getup in front of the American flag.

It’s a very patriotic motif and, at the same time, a great example of what the Civic Paths group has conceptualized as “civic imagination.” For many supporters, Obama was not so much a presidential candidate bound to political realities, as he was a symbol for a better, more just America. This messianic connotation was expressed by associating the Senator from Illinois with the utopian character of Superman. A similar desire for this messianic quality is visible in the iconic “HOPE” poster designed by street artist Shepard Fairey. Strikingly, the image’s visual style is not only reminiscent of a certain socialist “hero-aesthetic” in the vein of the famous Ché Guevara poster; moreover, “HOPE” exhibits an ironic twist achieved through a graphic sensibility that recalls Fairey’s portfolio as a professional graphic designer who previously conceived ads for companies such as Hasbro, Nike, and Pepsi.

This is to say, it seems insufficient to classify contemporary cultural productions into those originating from some kind of “bad” capitalist bloc à la the Frankfurt School’s culture industry and those emerging from some kind of “authentic” folk culture. The bulk of materialized culture will carry elements of both commercial and grassroots culture. To comprehend and decipher the ambiguities and particularities at work in a given cultural artifact is certainly one of the great challenges of the cultural experience today.  

In that sense, the entrepreneurship of street artists like Shepard Fairey or Banksy may be viewed in contradiction to the political outlook conveyed in their works. Why? Because the cultural critic in us considers branding strategies, which have become somewhat intrinsic to our culture at large, to reinforce the capitalist ideology. But would Fairey’s or Banksy’s artworks have the same effect and impact without their propagandistic qualities? Certainly not. Culture jamming has typically adopted Madison Avenue’s strategies and repurposed the persuasive power of advertisements, especially since many culture jammers (like Fairey) have been professionally trained graphic designers themselves, many of which moonlighting at Madison Avenue. Conversely, the ad industry has imported culture jamming into its toolbox as forms of guerilla marketing, which doesn’t necessarily mean cooptation in the negative sense of the word. Take, for example, Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s anti-tobacco Truth campaign at the millennial turn – which was quite similar in style to Adbusters’ earlier anti-tobacco ads, as discussed by Michael Serazio in his contribution to our edited volume.

Repurposing elements of power – whether cultural, financial, or institutional – in a collaborative attempt to make this planet a “better world” suggests a link to the techie-activists you were talking about. Their affiliation with institutions may provide potentials of conflict with their political points of view. But, as I understand it, they’re looking for ways to execute a bread-and-butter job with an alternative work ethic. That is, whether they are critical of their employers’ institutional politics or not, they try to take liberties in favor of what they consider important in moral terms of the “common good.” This emancipatory approach in relation to the dominant capitalist culture by carving out micro-level “real utopias” – contexts where the “little man” is able to perform acts understood as bolstering change and resistance – reminds me of Michel de Certeau’s example of practices he calls la perruque (the wig). The term refers to employees carrying out work for themselves instead of doing work they’re assigned to by the employer. (Needless to say, tasks meant to promote the common good may ultimately be more valuable in a civic context than to aimlessly surf the web.)

Technology has certainly been another significant domain where power is executed and can be repurposed. I completely agree that it’s one of the big problems of our age that technological development is mostly in the hands of corporations. But, as your example of the techies demonstrates, there exists a considerable group working at pivotal places in the tech business that identifies with the history of nerd culture and its anarchic conduct. To them, the internet is a public space in the utopian sense of not being controlled or monitored. What they see and want to change, however, is a dystopian space controlled by capitalist interest groups and authoritarian government branches.

Andrew:  

This has been a wonderful conversation. I appreciate your invoking of De Certeau… and Obama is an apt model for techies! Those who were young adults in the late 2000’s were mobilized by the messages of hope in his first campaign and helped get the vote out for him. Obama also was bullish about trying to institutionalize technology design at the federal level through the US Digital Service, appointing CTOs, and so on. He forever will inform the way they think about moderate democratic politics. The question I return to is if techies’ infrastructural politics can change larger political and technical systems (that often move at a glacial pace, or are yoked to capitalist impulses)? Or if they are ways to – like De Certeau’s vison of tactics as taking shortcuts through the city – carve new routes and spaces that form sites of organizing outside of institutions. I admit, this discussion of institutional reform opens up far more questions, some of which lie outside of mediated politics, than it provides easy answers.

We’ve also managed to put into fruitful conversation two traditions in communication that are often kept distinct: media and technology. Many techies struggle with gaining widespread recognition for their predominantly administrative work. They try to employ memes and imagine themselves as a social movement proper. But, simply put, often their work is quite boring. (who Who really gets excited about fixing the department of motor vehicles (DMV)?) As a result, non-profit tech design organizations that are good at media, like Code for America, use social justice storytelling and patriotic imagery to make powerful arguments about the “public good.” This is what lets them tap into multiple funding streams from private tech companies and non-profit foundations. Clearly, one lesson is that we need to keep both media and technology traditions in the room to understand political organizing.

I feel like I have taken up space benefitting from applying your concepts about media activism and culture jamming to techies, while not asking enough questions that might help us think about the inverse question: how has technology changed the work of media activists and culture jammers? While not all media-oriented activists and culture jammers use social media platforms, it is clear in an age of unbridled populism and white nationalism that these are often the conduits for radicalization and resistance. Do they see hacking and reconfiguring digital platforms as a form of “billboard banditry,” as you put it, to reach a mass audience? Has this changed in the last ten years? Where are the valuable opportunities for this political work?

Mo:

Great to hear that our take on culture jamming adds to your research, Andrew. Certainly, the new media environment of “social” media (or whatever we want to call communication platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) has shaped media culture to great degrees, and thus provided new instruments for media activists and culture jammers. While “hackers” have comprised a subculture of technology geeks, which has partly informed the concept of culture jamming as laid out by cultural critic Mark Dery, I don’t see hacking per se as culture jamming. Creative as the sabotage of digital infrastructures may be, it doesn’t necessarily share culture jamming’s impulse of raising public awareness, of sparking up the civic consciousness, of “exposing institutional or corporate wrongdoing,” as Dery put it in his 1993 manifesto, Culture Jamming, which is also reprinted in our collection.

But, sure, the digital world constitutes a public space for our networked society that invites for media activism and acts of culture jamming. An early example here is the Yes Men’s launch of a faux WTO website, www.gatt.org, in the year of 2000 (which is no longer active but still accessible through the Internet Archive). Notably, the two activists didn’t hack the WTO’s internet presence, but rather used the web’s surface to adopt the organization’s identity. Surprisingly, perhaps, many fell for the Yes Men’s coup, believing the website was authentic. As a consequence, the Yes Men were officially invited as WTO representatives to conferences and other public events, which enabled the duo to proceed with their hoax, and to circulate subversive messages in the name of the WTO.

On the other hand, I’m afraid that the mediasphere is much more complex today than in earlier days. Digital platforms may offer new venues for activists, but echo chambers and filter bubbles make it increasingly difficult to reach people’s attention and promote social change. Also, creative forms of protest – what we defined as culture jamming – has long since ceased to be solely a phenomenon associated with a liberal or leftist political position.

I’m shocked again and again that the meaning of what we call the “public good” seems to be as disputed as ever: The visual culture around Obama that we saw during his landmark electoral campaign also influenced Trump’s campaign. Thanks to its power as forms of guerilla communication, which aims to go “viral,” culture jamming has been coopted not only by the ad industry but also by political movements – both on the left and on the right. Occupy Wall Street and its artistic sensibility is still fresh in our minds, but neo-Nazi groups and right-wing populists such as the AfD, Germany’s far right party mentioned earlier, have also tapped into brandjacking, the civic imagination, and internet memes to popularize their campaigns.

So, I think you’re absolutely right. Intervention and reconfiguration within the technology sector – e.g., by techies acting as media activists – is an important way to reclaim not just the datasphere itself as a democratic space, but also the civic imagination as a form of democratic expression rather than of vulgar populism and hate speech.

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Andrew Schrock earned his Ph.D from the Anneberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He is currently a researcher at Chapan University and an instructor at UCLA and USC. His research considers how grassroots groups and governments can ethically use technology to improve life for residents. He is particularly interested in taking an organizational perspective on public sector technology design, and how organizing can lead to institutional change. Andrew’s research has appeared in New Media & Society; The International Journal of Communication; and Big Data & Society. For more on Andrew’s work and teaching, please visit his website at aschrock.com.

Moritz Fink is an independent media scholar based in the Munich area, Germany. He has published on contemporary media culture and popular satire. Mo’s latest book, a cultural history of the veteran TV show The Simpsons, will be released by Rowman & Littlefield in June. He contributed to this blog in the past with posts about remix culture and media pranks, and is the coeditor of Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance (NYU Press, 2017

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Andrew Schrock & Moritz Fink (Part I)

Opening Statements

Andrew

I’m quite excited for this discussion! Like quite a few participants, I started in Civic Paths after Henry started at USC. Our research group was a vibrant, exciting free trade zone of ideas. It drew my attention to ideas about participation and organizing, themes that inspired me and I explored more deeply in my post-doctoral fellowship. These days, after writing a book on the nascent “Civic Tech” movement, I research and write about organizing around technology design in the public sector. The groups I’m working with are either non-profits, work within government, or collaborate with the local community. Often, they participate in improving government or providing new paths for collective action through technology design and development. In the process, they have to do all the usual organizational things: mobilize participation, build partnerships, and lead collaborative projects around social problems. To me, the crucial question is how they might bolster existing civic institutions using infrastructural politics, and result in better outcomes for people in need.

To me, the biggest recent development is the increased role of media technologies in politics. Like many communication scholars, the platforms that captivated me during my early career (particularly Facebook) have been dubious stewards of the public good. For example, Siva Vaidhyanathan has written about how Facebook exacerbates inequality, and Safiya Noble critiques the way online search engines represent Black women. These critiques are well-founded and necessary, revealing a close alignment between platforms and politics. However, I also worry that the reason technology companies hold so much power is we have failed as a society to create alternatives in the public sector. The response when I mention “public sector technology design” to my friends is often utter confusion. There is no collective idea of democratic institutions for technology, in the same sense that there is for media (e.g. “public broadcasting”). Trump also takes up so much political attention that I worry we might miss the extremely mundane and less sensationalist stories about organizing and slow, deliberate institutional change that is happening on a different timeline.

Personally speaking, several questions from Civic Paths, as filtered through the last few years, still inform my own work. First, we are in an era defined by “#resistance.” This should draw our attention to the question: how do we think about resistance? Many of the geeks I research are working inside government to make services more equitable for low-income Americans, and improve the alignment between policy-making and technology design. Their “resistance” takes the form of collaboration within institutions, rather than adversarial efforts to change them from the outside. They are what Debra Meyerson refers to as “tempered radicals” – people with deeply-held social values who use communication strategies to slowly shift organizations to be more equitable and inclusive. For me, tempered radicalism is a helpful way to think about resistance: as an organizational process led by people with deep personal convictions.

Finally, Civic Paths’ ongoing research on the civic imagination draws attention to how participation is driven by hopes for a better world. To add a bit to this idea, since the sad recent passing of Erik Olin Wright, I’ve been returning to his writing on “real utopias.” Technology has an admittedly fraught relationship with utopianism. Critical scholars are right to point out how promises about technology are often made by hucksters with something to gain. Still, I enjoy Wright’s scholarship because it positions change as a progressive effort achieved through conscious work on tangible projects that slowly change institutions to be less capitalist, rather than a purely Marxist position of radical upheaval. Our attention should still be placed about how hope circulates through ideas that give shape to possible worlds.

Mo

Thanks, Andrew! It’s exciting to learn about your trajectory as both a scholar and an advocate of civic media usage, as we’re taking part in this virtual conversation series. As for myself, I’ve got a German academic background. I studied American Studies at the University of Munich, where I also completed my PhD, with a strong emphasis on cultural and media studies. I got to know Henry Jenkins’s work, as well as himself in person, roughly 10 years ago, when I was working on my dissertation about the cultural meaning of the TV series and media phenomenon The Simpsons. What still fascinates me is Henry’s way of viewing alternative cultural traditions not necessarily in opposition to mainstream culture – completely unlike the dichotomous model that used to dominate the scholarly discourse about popular culture as I had known it.

That subcultural elements and what we associate with mainstream culture can coexist, and even converge, is what I find perfectly reflected in The Simpsons’ legacy of 30+ years of popular satire. This can be said for the show itself in that the political and aesthetic properties of a multibillion-dollar entity might originally have been understood as critical in relation to the dominant capitalist culture. However, it is even more true that The Simpsons has entered the realm of participatory culture, providing a yellow utopia that so many people can relate to.

Sarah Banet-Weiser has argued that the cultural ambiguity inherent to media brands such as The Simpsons reflects a neoliberal logic that is neither purely oppositional nor purely conformist. Often enough, both dimensions will characterize a certain pop culture product. And it would be way too easy to simply equate this with “cooptation” or “incorporation” in a post-Marxist sense. Notoriously, The Simpsons envisioned a female President of the United States of America named Lisa Simpson following a profligate President Trump (weirdly enough, in an episode aired years before Trump ran for office). That way the show’s political humor fueled the imagination of millions of viewers, many of whom speak out against Trump (actually I wonder if there are any Trump supporters among Simpsons fans).

That Trump is not The Simpsons’ president was corroborated by a series of promo-clips ridiculing the presidential figure by showing him in his nightdress and exposing Trump’s signature head of hair as a toupee. The Simpsons, in other words, has become a shared point of reference for the anti-Trump camp, while at the same time, the show’s ties to Fox television and, ultimately, to the Trump-supporting Fox News channel seems totally irritating. Needless to say such contradictions have characterized The Simpsons since the series’ inception, it’s striking how satire TV and other pop culture venues increasingly participate in the real-world political discourse.

If there ever has been a firm division between “resistance” and “the system” – subordinate vs. dominant cultural forces – this line has gotten increasingly difficult to draw in the digital age. In fact, most of us align with “the system” by subscribing to media conglomerates such as Facebook or Twitter. But at the same time, these commercial communication platforms offer new possibilities of amplifying voices of criticism and dissent.

For example, when Trump came into office and ordered government officials to belittle mention of climate change issues, some National Parks Service staff demonstrated dissent through Twitter. It connects to what you, Andrew, just referred to as “tempered radicalism” when NPS Twitter accounts went rogue, exposing the President’s reactionary worldview, while anonymous NPS workers created alt-Twitter accounts such as @AltUSNatParkService to add a corrective voice. In a similar vein, Trump’s favorite PA tool, Twitter, has produced a number of counter-Trump accounts such as the handle @MatureTrumpTwts, whose mission is to “translate” the U.S. President’s imprudent tweets into “mature,” presidential language, or otherwise comment on Trump’s political style and rhetoric.

With my coeditor, Marilyn DeLaure, I’ve discussed creative acts of resistance under the rubric “culture jamming” in what became the anthology Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance. The concept “culture jamming” might have a reactionary connotation to those who view it wedded to the Adbusting movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But as our book has shown, the concept still has merit. Culture jamming has evolved into a palette of tactics essential to protest culture in the contemporary media environment. Steeped in the tradition of alternative media practices, acts of culture jamming – people appropriating the symbols, the performative style, and the communication channels provided by corporate culture to smuggle subversive messages into everyday life experiences – seem to be the weapon of choice in societies that are fundamentally shaped by, and hardly can escape, that very corporate culture.

Rather than to radically reject the “system” in a revolutionary sense, as did its Marxist forerunners, today’s culture jamming tries to take advantage of the tools commercial culture has to offer, to use them rather than to demonize them. Consider the recent acts of billboard banditry in Germany where jammers have modified Coca-Cola Christmas billboards to read “For a peaceful time: Say no to AfD,” referring to the German far-right party that has gained alarming popularity in the last few years. The activists made use of what is also called “brandjacking” -- assuming the corporate identity of a certain brand to insinuate voices of cultural criticism into the mainstream discourse. Surprisingly enough, Coca-Cola did not condemn the remade ads.  “Not every fake must be false,” Patrick Kammerer, a Coca-Cola Germany executive, commented via Twitter, accompanied by a picture of the reworked billboard. Kammerer’s message was later retweeted by Coca-Cola Germany itself.

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Andrew Schrock earned his Ph.D from the Anneberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He is currently a researcher at Chapan University and an instructor at UCLA and USC. His research considers how grassroots groups and governments can ethically use technology to improve life for residents. He is particularly interested in taking an organizational perspective on public sector technology design, and how organizing can lead to institutional change. Andrew’s research has appeared in New Media & Society; The International Journal of Communication; and Big Data & Society. For more on Andrew’s work and teaching, please visit his website at aschrock.com.

Moritz Fink is an independent media scholar based in the Munich area, Germany. He has published on contemporary media culture and popular satire. Mo’s latest book, a cultural history of the veteran TV show The Simpsons, will be released by Rowman & Littlefield in June. He contributed to this blog in the past with posts about remix culture and media pranks, and is the coeditor of Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance (NYU Press, 2017)

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Rox Samer and Raffi Sarkissian (Part II)

Rox

So, totally unplanned, we both chose to turn to humor, together inadvertently arguing for its pervasiveness and endurance across feminist and queer activism and culture. Also, what we’re both noting is finding it in unusual places. Gay marriage activism circa 2008 and lesbian feminism in 1970s make for strange bedfellows, as they say. In a way, though, they are both historical periods affiliated with sober or somber figureheads (or at least who we picture as not having the greatest senses of humor). They’re thought to be unfunny. How much of that is stereotype? How much of that is the most well-known media of these times and these topics? Why are we both digging into these archives and finding humor?

Raffi

For me, it is that it just keeps coming up in a lot of the things that I’m researching. I agree to an extent when you say it shows up in unusual places, but I feel for both of us, the more we find them the less these places seem unusual.

 Rox

Yes, it gets less surprising.

 Raffi

And the more it makes sense that these are the spaces where you would find this kind of humorous and irreverent politics because, as you started to point out, we are certainly not seeing anything like that in the movement leaders, through the major figureheads, especially in hierarchical organizations where there is more pressure (whether from outside or within) to be “on message,” to abide by the politics of respectability. For example, drawing on my work on Proposition 8, an alliance of major LGBT organizations essentially came together to form the committee that would front the No on Prop 8 campaign back in 2008. The campaign relied on a marketing firm to construct the messaging, including all the TV ads. Not only were these ads what you would expect from typical campaign spots—serious, alarmist, attacking, defensive—but they also lacked any explicit LGBT representation and outreach to communities of color. So the grassroots video-based campaigns we saw spreading on YouTube (a couple of which I linked to in my opening statement) were implicitly responding to the rigidity of the “official” campaign by playing around with content (the type of arguments against the proposition), representation (the people and communities voicing their stances), and genre (challenging what campaign ads or PSAs look like). Even the ones not using comedy outright were still playing with genre and formats, and I think that is more broadly what we are both seeing in our archives: play and performance.

And this is coming from communities on the ground, those who are affected, those whose daily lives are most impacted by the homophobia we see informing the practices and ideologies on the right. Whether self-described activists or simply affected and ally constituents, they took to the emerging-at-the-time affordances of digital video distribution—remember, this is the first presidential election cycle since YouTube came on the scene in 2005. These participants were not just responding to the conservative Yes on 8 campaign, but to the conservative and mismanaged politics of our own No on 8 campaign, run by those figureheads of the mainstream LGBT movement. It became an outlet and an invitation to use creativity and collaboration. Humor becomes one of the mechanisms that activists and participants without as much power use to cope with the barrage of negativity and to (re)commit themselves to their battles, personal and collective. When I interviewed some of the creators of the “Gathering Storm” parodies (a couple overlapping as prior No on Prop 8 activists too), some upon reflection pointed out the function of these playful and parody breaks as a release valve for the tensions and feelings from the more intensive work of political organizing. Others pointed out how the creative process, which included comedy and collaboration, was their form of organization and activism.

Rox

I like these connections between our two archives and the balancing of serious and the silly (which is central to Susan Sontag’s theorization of camp). I’m not sure mine is camp. Part of me wishes I could claim it was. But looking at feminist fanzines of 70s there is a similar simultaneity of very serious discussion speaking to gendered lives and experiences but often by way of genre, either through science fiction or fantasy novels or other media dealing with alternative worlds or futures or looking to developing technologies but through a more speculative mindset learned through such close fannish engagement with concepts of futurity. One case in point is the subject of cloning, which mid-century was developing and which a number of these feminist science fiction authors and fans were paying attention to. For many, the interest stemmed from the possibility that cloning could be wielded for freedom, namely freedom from cis hetero patriarchy and the position assigned to people born into certain bodies and people born into others (an early theorization of which many of them had also encountered in Shulamith Firestone’s 1970 The Dialectic of Sex).

These discussions of topics such as cloning and alternative reproductive futurity would happen in feminist fanzines in letters of comments, structured symposia, or even through reviews of recent science fiction publications or other media. Often humor comes in and contributes to such discussions through the editorial work of fanzine editors, who choose, among other things, when to solicit fan art and where to place it in relation to these more textual contributions. In the case of Janus, Jeanne Gomoll, one of the fanzine’s editors worked professionally as an illustrator and included many of her own illustrations across the pages of Janus. Often quite cute, this art brings a levity to these heavy topics, providing a kind of sideline commentary that is endearing, witty or both. For example, in one of these articles on cloning, titled “If the Sons of All Men Were Mothers,” the author Ctein worries, having read Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, that when women are “freed” from reproduction, they’ll nonetheless retain the “chains” of patriarchy. The article includes a header of a cartoon of a giant sperm—a very friendly, smiley sperm—who is saying, “Let one who is without kin cast the first clone.”[1] So while the author of the article is pessimistic, the sperm stands in for those who would like to hold open the possibility of freedom with (if not through) cloning and is slyly naming for whom the stakes are highest, i.e. queer and trans people, those denied support and access to normative forms of reproduction. To me this “silly” or playful image reads as a queer/trans pushback to what could often be a super straight and cis discourse around reproductive freedom. And I think this relates to what you’re researching, as in both cases the most serious of conversations are being done through humor that doesn’t simply counterbalance but paradoxically underscores their very stakes.

Raffi

This notion of stakes also informs a great deal of my approach and analysis of these grassroots and ordinary video campaigns to both Prop 8 and “A Gathering Storm,” being as the two cases are explicitly about same-sex marriage. I think it is easy for many, especially those of us whose politics are quite left of assimilationist moves, to dismiss the work of these videos and their participants as not high-stakes. Yet, as I mentioned in my opening statement, the rhetoric and strategy animating the arguments by Yes on 8 organizers and the National Organization for Marriage are plainly rooted in tried and true homophobia. And that is what many of these videos are responding to. They were also attuned to the exploitative racial politics of the original ad and how so much of the right’s fear-mongering is tied to an exploitative appeal to communities of color. This was one of the ways several “Storm” parodies used humor and satire to mount this critique. My favorite line, for instance, is when one of the subjects in “Response to NOM’s Gathering Storm” claims the gays “are taking away my Asianinity.” There is much more to mine here, but I also want to turn to considering some more recent activism beyond marriage.

A complementary example is the more recent direct action group Gays Against Guns (GAG), which formed following the Orlando massacre at the Pulse nightclub in 2016 (and has since opened up multiple chapters). GAG follows more directly in the footsteps of ACT UP/AIDS demonstrations and street theater. GAG is not part of my formal research, but I have been following their actions on social media. Given the gravity and urgency of gun violence, their events expectedly confront this seriousness head on. A staple of their protests is the inclusion of striking white figures:

“Our Human Beings usually make an appearance—silent, veiled, dressed all in white, they bring a somber, memorial energy to our actions. They’re not vague performance art—each one represents a particular victim of gun violence. Most of us have been a Human Being at least once—it’s very moving.”[2]

 At the same time, they are unapologetically irreverent (and fabulous) in their tactics, language, and iconography, particularly their protest signs and street paraphernalia. A witty sense of play and creativity drives many of their activities—showing up in drag at rural gun shows, staging a mock funeral to mourn the presidency, and “My Bloody Valentine,” a February 14 event personifying the union of deadly moneyed politics and the NRA. They have also recently started a podcast where they combine reporting on the gun violence epidemic with contributions from Sing Out, Louise! —"a resistance singing queertet performing in and around New York City.” While most of their activism seems directed toward street protests, as opposed to the video productions I cover, much of their work spreads across different media and networked platforms. (See here for trailer on documentary about GAG).

Rox

You gesture to what I know you write about at greater length elsewhere about connections between these materials and queer activism from the seventies and on. This time what I was also reminded of when watching these videos was the activism of the Lesbian Avengers. These intersectional or multivalent points you’re discussing, whereby these videos are not exclusively or even arguably mainly about gay marriage itself but the sexism and particular forms of homophobia undergirding the vitriol of anti-gay marriage activism, are reminiscent of the points made the Lesbian Avengers in some of their earliest actions. The Lesbian Avengers started out as a New York City activist group coming out of ACT UP in the early 90s. They were very much informed by the practices of ACT UP but wanted to extend zap actions and the like to address issues outside of AIDS, including hate crimes and various pieces of anti-gay legislation and policy being initiated around the US. At one of their first actions (and it may have been their very first) they addressed changes in the New York City public school curriculum. This was the era of multiculturalism and there was much discussion as to what was going to be included if curriculum was going to become more diverse. Some folks opposed the inclusion of gay and lesbian history in particular, so on the first day of school the Lesbian Avengers showed up outside an elementary school in the district where such opposition was strongest and handed out purple balloons to children that said, “Ask About Lesbian Lives.” The five and six-year-old kids loved it. They were like, “BALLOONS!” But many of their parents wouldn’t let them keep the balloons, and the kids cried.

I was reminded of this action (and it’s documentation by Su Friedrich and Janet Baus in the video documentary Lesbian Avengers Eat Fire Too) in the”Darkness” parody video you shared where one of the subjects worries that her kids will go to school and learn that “gay marriage exists.” Both actions/texts call attention to the banality of what is being opposed by the right—kids are going to learn—namely, that lesbians and gay men, that queer people, exist, that’s all. That’s the threat. And arguably what handing out those balloons to children thus reveals is the deep wells of hate and fear feeding the protesting of such banality. In showing up outside school grounds and handing out balloons that say, “Ask About Lesbian Lives,” the Lesbian Avengers revealed that it wasn’t just about school curriculum or queer history or the existence of queer history but the persistent belief that children and queer people should not mix. Many Americans could not (and still cannot) think of queerness and kids together outside of the stereotype of queer people as pedophiles. Another way of putting this, which is made ever the more evident in your parody videos, is the threat queerness poses to heteronormativity. Many queer scholars would like to hold open a gap between gay marriage activism or gay rights and queer politics, but the responses gay marriage inspires reveals that, for those on the right, even something so basic and normative as gay marriage threatens to throw the whole system into a state of chaos. Marriage becomes redefined and heteropatriarchy that much more unstable, revealing its fragility in the face of repetition with a difference once again.

Raffi

Yeah, in fact I decided to look up to see if National Organization for Marriage was still around, and sure enough they are recycling the same arguments, most recently against the recent iteration of the Equality Act in Congress. In high contrast, LGBT rights and discourses in the decade since Prop 8 and “A Gathering Storm” have made impactful strides and moved onto more intersectional movements. Here, I am thinking about campaigns like Undocuqueer, #FreeCece, and the aforementioned GAG, not to mention queer visibility and representation in broader movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. What has changed the most since 2009 is the wider palette of digital platforms that individuals and communities are using and adapting to their needs and desires. Consequently, how and where we see, experience, curate, and interact with these flows of engagement is also constantly changing. And I think this is still tied to the idea of play, with both content and genre, that we have been discussing. Twitter, for instance, has become the go-to platform when it comes to the spread of memes and generally playing with the formatting boundaries of its platform. This also brings me back to the part of your opening statement where you bring up the archival Instagram accounts you follow and the way they serve as a prophylactic of sorts to the constant stream of “new” content. I follow some of those and similar accounts (like @lgbt_history) and I too enjoy the temporal interruptions they provide. Instagram seems to be making more inroads into the ways we use video as well. And I know you’ve been working on a project along those lines.

Rox

Yes! I’m currently developing a project on “Trans Instagram.” I study how trans celebrities, artists, and activists and their followers create a counterpublic through their circulation of selfmade images and media of trans life. Obviously, in many ways trans celebrities are using the platform as cis celebrities do—to promote their TV series and shows and create a “brand.” But there’s also so much to what they photograph and share and how that exceeds such frameworks too. One of my favorite examples is Trace Lysette’s Instagram stories about her plants. That Lysette names her plants and interacts with them in the ways that she does has nearly nothing to do with her appearances on Transparent or Pose, but it does provide a window in to the life and mind (and sense of humor) of one fabulous trans person, which in and of itself provides a much needed silly and banal supplement to the few (and quite often tragic, fetishizing, isolating or otherwise melodramatic) representations of trans people on TV. Depending on one’s own curation of one’s Instagram, such a “story” might flow (ala Raymond Williams) into another, if very different, trans “story” and that one into yet another. I like to joke that, as a trans person, Instagram is my trans TV.

Raffi

That’s a great example not just of the functions of particular content people are posting, but also how we configure it into spaces and narratives of both political and personal value. Whether through content, aesthetics, or genre, all these examples attest to the sustaining practice of humor and play in the politics of queer cultural production. And I think you’re really onto something by conjuring Williams’ flow in this new context. Dare I say, queer/trans/feminist activism is ordinary?

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Rox Samer is an Assistant Professor of Screen Studies in Clark University’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts. Rox is currently working on a book manuscript, Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s, as well as a documentary film, Tip/Alli, on the work, life, and influence of feminist science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice B. Sheldon, 1915-87).

Raffi Sarkissian is a lecturer in media studies at Christopher Newport University. He earned his PhD from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. His research analyzes LGBTQ representation in popular culture and digital video activism, queer film festivals, and the politics of award shows. He has published articles in Spectator journal and an edited volume on Queer Youth Media Cultures.

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Endnotes

[1] Ctein, “Future Insulation: If the Sons of All Men Were Mothers,” Janus 12-13 (Summer/Autumn 1978), 44-6.

[2] Gays Against Guns, “GAG: A Primer.” https://www.gaysagainstguns.net/single-post/2016/12/14/GAG-A-Primer-A-Getting-to-Know-Us-FAQ (accessed March 29, 2019)

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Rox Samer and Raffi Sarkissian (Part I)

Rox

In the bulk of my research, including my book manuscript, Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s, I write about participatory cultures of the past. If not networked in the same way cultures are today, I have found feminist media cultures of the 1970s to work not totally dissimilarly, the circulation of feminist film and video and the fanzines of feminist science fiction fandom connecting women of disparate locations and identities around a shared interest in particular genres or forms and/or women’s cultural production more broadly. Feminist film and video and feminist science fiction literature have largely been written about in disparate disciplines (cinema and media studies and literature) but from relatively synonymous perspectives that look to particular texts as contributions of authors (such as Barbara Hammer or Joanna Russ) that advance their theorizing of gender and sexuality at the height of lesbian feminism. In my interdisciplinary project, I instead turn to the cultures through which these films, videos, novels, and short stories circulated and the meaning made of them by disparate audiences. As a result, an alternative model for feminist historiography, one which frees us from feminist genealogical commitments to self-survival in favor of regeneration, emerges.

Drawing on correspondence, videos, records, and ephemera now located in the collections of feminist media workers, I explore how the distribution and exhibition of feminist film and video recrafted feminist relationality both between and among women located in the women’s movement’s metropolitan and college town hubs and those of suburban, rural, and imprisoned women’s communities. In 1975, feminist media workers gathered at two conferences—the Conference of Feminist Film and Video Organizations in New York City and the Feminist Eye Conference in Los Angeles—in order to begin building a feminist media network through which they might reduce excess labor in programming and distribution and generate ideas between feminist communities. At the New York conference they drafted and signed an “Ongoing Manifesto” (sometimes cited as a “Womanifesto”) in which they wrote, “We do not accept the existing power structure and we are committed to changing it by the content and structure of our images and by the ways we relate to each other in our work and with our audience.” They saw this politicized media practice as “part of the larger movement of women dedicated to changing society by struggling against oppression as it manifests itself in sexism, heterosexism, classism, racism, ageism, and imperialism.”[1] I offer a history of two projects emerged from these conferences with the goal of continuing this ongoing work of changing society by way of media and feminist media worker/audience relations: the National Women’s Film Circuit (NWFC, 1975-80), a distribution system that circulated preconstituted packages of multigeneric feminist films through as wide a non-theatrical feminist US market as possible, and International Videoletters (1975-77), a monthly exchange of documentary video between US feminist communities with international aspirations. As NWFC packages and International Videoletters traveled to not just New York City, LA, Tucson, Rochester, and dozens of other locations, they initiated a series of intimate intellectual exchanges between US feminist communities largely impossible through other forms of political organization. In watching feminist films and videos together, often pursuant to lively discussion, audiences participated in nothing less than the temporary construction of an alternative reality. For two hours at a time feminist spectators perceived differently together and were moved to think and feel more expansively. This labor of reception was done with those on the screen and those behind the screen image’s cameras (who, in the case of the videoletters, might the following month be the ones in the audience themselves). Both intellectual and embodied, this affectivity put what I term “lesbian potentiality” in movement. Individuals’ felt sense that society could someday be substantially different gained force and momentum through the virtual creation of such a world among and between local feminist communities.

I also study how, unable to find a home in either the broader feminist culture or fandom proper, feminist science fiction authors and their early readers created their own counterpublic: feminist science fiction (SF) fandom. I examine the unique form of feminist consciousness raising that materialized across and between the letters of comment, book reviews, and fan art that appeared in Khatru, The Witch and the Chameleon, and Janus fanzines of the 1970s and in the programming of the feminist SF convention WisCon (1977-present) before arguing feminist SF fandom’s openness to accountability and vulnerability when thinking through differences and its self-reflexive and citational sense of humor are responsible for the rare endurance of this 1970s feminist counterpublic. Across the early feminist fanzines and WisCon programming parody, irony, satire, and what I can only describe as profound silliness were used to illustrate key points, demonstrate acquiescence, and poke fun at one’s own feminist zealousness (or, as fandom included men, even one’s failed attempts at feminist allyship). After being chastised for handing his colleagues in a Khatru symposium on “Women and Science fiction” what Russ called “the Baboon Theory of Human Behavior,” James Tiptree, Jr. (who two years later would be outed as Alice B. Sheldon) took on the part of the deferring male, exclaiming, “I feel about as relevant as a cuckoo-clock in eternity.”[2]

Jeanne Gomoll, Janus 9 (1977), 17

Often jokes reference recent events in more mainstream fandom and/or the “mundane” world. Hank Luttrell’s review of Star Wars, published in Janus 9, declared itself the “last Star Wars review,” calling attention to the obscene amount of attention the film was receiving in both mainstream fandom and the culture at large. For Luttrell, Star Wars is but one entry a growing body of pulpy comic book SF films that actual bear greater resemblance to Westerns, which helps them “get away with a general lack of social or political meaning” as well as its “casual attitude toward scientific accuracy.”[3] And while Luttrell finds Princess Leia to be a “surprising departure from the movie-serial mold” in that she is smart and adept, he muses, “You can’t help but wonder why [otherwise] it was that only white, blue-eyed, male Flash Gordons ventured into space.”[4] Janus editor Jeanne Gomoll made a collage to accompany the review, in which the characters of the film echo the reviews’ sentiments. Obi Wan Kanobi is pictured saying, “But it’s so redundant!” Luke Skywalker declares, “I’m gonna be sick,” and Chewbacca perhaps putting it best, “Grrrrrrr!” On its own, this collage would hold little meaning. However, in the context of this review and from the perspective of those who share Luttrell’s reservations about the film, it offers a hilarious critique. While anti-feminist mainstream fandom and the sexist “mundane” world might be no fun—both of which loved Star Wars—that need not be the case, these feminist fans insisted, for their fan world.

Like most social movement historians, I write this history hoping it will be of use to younger generations. It hopefully gives a sense of the ongoing and enduring work of feminist participatory cultures. Just as today’s participatory cultures are far from homogenous and can often be a challenge to navigate, Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s reveals that the politics of participatory cultures past were far from as simple themselves. The stakes of doing this work only grow as the speed of digital cultures accelerates. The internet thrives on the new. Every week we learn of a new “first” achievement or hear of an unprecedented atrocity being committed. It’s not that such achievements should not be celebrated, nor such atrocities critiqued and resisted, but the temporality of digital culture is so fast that it’s as if the clock of history is constantly being re-set. It’s for these reasons that I enjoy following Instagram accounts like @lesbianherstoryarchives, @onearchives, and @digitaltransarc (or as I recently learned about in SCMS presentations by Marika Cifor and China Medel, @theaidsmemorial and @veteranas_and_ rucas), which disrupt the constant present of my feed (#TBTs notwithstanding).

This persistent emphasis on newness risks escalating the generational divisions of queer feminist historiographies. This is one of the reasons I write about feminist SF fandom. It has managed to adapt over the years, its tradition of humor facilitating difficult discussions of difference oftentimes seemingly impossible in other spaces. In 2013, one of WisCon 37’s most popular panels was “Cousin of Return of Sibling of Revenge of Not Another F*cking Race Panel,” the annual iteration of a game show format panel, complete with a giant dice, in which six science fiction and fantasy authors of color got “their geek on about any number of pop culture topics—none of them related to race.”[5] The first of such panels was organized years before as a response to the experience of SF&F authors of color at WisCon, who found they were always expected to talk about race and race alone, a pattern that prevented them from interacting at the convention fully as people with additional experiences, passions, and interests related to the subjects at hand. There are many elements that factor into the longevity of feminist institutions, but, as Michfest has sorely demonstrated, intergenerational collaboration (or the lackthereof) is one of them. In Convergence Culture, Jenkins writes, “Collective intelligence can be seen as an alternative source of media power.”[6] Such collective intelligence, I argue, should be generated not only within extant participatory cultures (including those, like feminist SF fandom, which are constantly regenerating) but between nonextant and current participatory cultures as well.

Raffi Sarkissian

It’s a funny thing. The more I work on researching the participatory cultures of LGBTQ activism, the more I find how integral humor, parody, and play are—and have been—in sustaining the civic and political engagement of these movements, their networks, and individual contributors. I am currently working on a manuscript, It Gets Popular: LGBTQ Video Activism in the Digital Age, in which I make a studied analysis of three particular cases of grassroots LGBTQ video activism that sprung up and spread in the late 2000s on YouTube an social media. Each of these cases—centered around California’s Proposition 8, the anti-gay “Gathering Storm” ad, and the It Gets Better Project—is actually a constellation of different grassroots campaigns, group organizing, and movement participation that cohere around their inciting objects of critique. Together these cases, I argue, present an important inflection point—in terms of representational, organizational, and institutional politics—for LGBT video activism in the emerging networked and digital era. What I’d like to tease out for this conversation is one of the threads that stood out in my research, analysis, and interviews conducted on these videos: a parody and play approach to their activism.

The memetic response to “A Gathering Storm,” a 2009 anti-gay marriage ad airing in a few states and posted online, illustrates such a move. The original ad, made by the National Organization for Marriage, features hired actors against a stormy green-screen backdrop, warning audiences that the advance of gay marriage will take away their rights and freedoms. The video engendered a swift response, inspiring not just widespread ridicule and condemnation online, but immediately annotated, remixed, and mashed-up renditions of the ad. These first reactions were individually edited, animated, or vlog-style videos, what we typically see in response to viral content. Within a few days, though, organized parody productions—written, assembled, and shot—also started appearing on YouTube as well (a couple sampled below).

A parody of the recent National Organization of Marriage's anti-gay commercial "Gathering Storm" Original commercial available at http://tinyurl.com/NOMgatheringstorm Written by Zane Johnsen Directed and Edited by Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Clark Johnsen Honors: #63 - Most Discussed (4.14.09) - News & Politics #62 - Most Viewed (4.14.09) - News & Politics

Parody of the National Organization for Marriages Ridiculous ad featuring Teresa Wang, Melissa Lopez, Diem Tran, Sara Pollaro, Boo Jarchow, and Sabrina Petrescu. Witness the end result of no production value and no experience!

What struck me about these group efforts in particular was the seeming simultaneity of their response and similarity to their approach. They all dove headfirst to reveal and revel in the campy excess of the original ad, zeroing in on its artifice (bad acting, bad special effects), transparent baiting (particularly around race and fear tactics), and an overall lack of self-awareness of the ad’s use of gay iconography. It was “low-hanging fruit” as one of my interviewees would describe. The creators and participants I talked to during my research also revealed the relative ease and speed with which they organized their parody productions. Common in their descriptions was an organic, spontaneous, and mostly DIY assembly: scripts developing over phone calls or single coffee sessions, getting a crew of friends together on short notice, editing and uploading it online ASAP.

The collaborative process described above, I argue, added an affective valence to these videos. What further emerged from my interviews was the intentional use of comedy and parody by the creators as a way to process and respond to the homophobic ad and its preposterous rhetoric. This kneejerk turn to comedy and satire called upon a legacy of humor and play in histories of LGBTQ activism. In my research on the various movements from the sixties and on, for instance, I came across the prevalent use of zaps as part of an artillery of tactics activists used in street spectacles and public demonstrations. Per Sara Warner,

The term refers to playful methods of social activism and mirthful modes of political performance that inspire and sustain deadly serious struggles for revolutionary change […] zaps combine physical comedy, symbolic costumes, expressive gestures, and farcical timing in brief, improvised skits that are designed to shock and awe people, jolting them out of their complacency and fixed frames of reference.[1]

Though the freedom to marriage on the surface does not seem as high-stakes, the participants recognize the violence in the arguments and strategies that animate many of these contemporary anti-gay campaigns. Their response through the organizing, production, and release of these videos online, then, operate as digital incarnations of zaps. They translate currencies of queer activism—camp humor and theatrical performance—to participate in the new economies of networked video activism.

This kind of grassroots video production was also on display in LGBT activism during the 2008 election when California had Proposition 8, a measure to ban same-sex marriage, on the ballot. Not all the independently-produced online video campaigns here incorporated comedy or a play on traditional campaign ads, but several did go the route of parody, like the Mac v. PC style “No on 8” ads, or satire (like the video below), preceding “A Gathering Storm” in negotiating the spreadable potential of video activism in the still emerging economies of networked publics.

Don't eliminate marriage for anyone. This November, Californians will vote on Prop 8, a ban on marriage for same sex couples in California. Prop 8 "eliminates the right of same sex couples to marry." Pledge to vote No on Prop 8: http://www.couragecampaign.org/NoOnProp8

A couple related impulses motivate my post here (and my research overall on digital video activism moving forward). First, paying more attention to the function that play and humor serve and the social effect they produce and provoke in political activism at large and participatory politics in the digital era in particular. One of the key questions I hope to explore further in this conversation and blog series is where we see this kind of work today, how it has evolved in the decade since Prop 8 and “A Gathering Storm.” The cases I cover telegraph something about a particular time and focus—by and about certain interests, priorities, communities—when it comes to both LGBTQ activism and the uses of digital platforms for political organizing. LGBTQ issues and representation mushroomed both in national politics and media industries since. What happens to the type of tactics detailed in this post within an environment of hypervisibility and profitability of (some) queer content today? I have some answers but I am hoping others join in the discussion and help broaden the picture.

The second impulse, shared among many media studies scholars, is the importance of taking stock and documenting these digital artifacts and their structures of feeling. I was drawn to these videos as the object of my scholarship because of the role they played in my engagement with LGBTQ organizing and activism during that time period. Yet, when I started my research on these videos and campaigns in earnest many years after they were first uploaded, I often had to rely on my own memory of the content, webpages, and online discourse to track some of them down. Given the rate at which we are producing content and the ease with which we move from one form or style to another, either as consumers or creators, it is imperative to analyze our political engagement with media, its historical antecedents, and the affective shape it takes today. This is then not just about preservation, but to better understand the context and emergence of these participatory moves—if not fully movements—to trace how they developed, evolved, and continue to inform the genres, practices, and politics of queer digital publics.

Rox Samer is an Assistant Professor of Screen Studies in Clark University’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts. Rox is currently working on a book manuscript, Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s, as well as a documentary film, Tip/Alli, on the work, life, and influence of feminist science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice B. Sheldon, 1915-87).

Raffi Sarkissian is a lecturer in media studies at Christopher Newport University. He earned his PhD from the Annenberg School of Communication at USC. His research analyzes LGBTQ representation in popular culture and digital video activism, queer film festivals, and the politics of award shows. He has published articles in Spectator journal and an edited volume on Queer Youth Media Cultures.

Endnotes

[1] “An Ongoing Manifesto,” February 2, 1975, Box 15, Ariel Dougherty Papers, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Box 64, Joan E. Biren Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.

[2] James Tiptree, Jr., “Women in Science Fiction: A Symposium,” Khatru 3 & 4, ed. Jeffrey D. Smith (November 1975), 101.

[3] Hank Luttrell, “The Last Star Wars Review,” Janus 9 (1977): 17-18.

[4] Luttrell, “The Last Star Wars Review,” 18.

[5] WisCon 37 Pocket Program Book, 55.

[6] Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York and London: NYU Press, 2006).

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Ashley Hinck & Liana Gamber-Thompson (Part II)

UPDATE: Great news! LEGO has announced it will not renew its contract with Shell. This is a massive victory for over 1 million Arctic Defenders globally. But Shell is still trying to drill for oil in the Arctic. Click here to demand permanent protection for the home of the polar bears: http://grnpc.org/IgHEe --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We love LEGO.

Ashley

Liana, thanks for that opening statement. One thing that I particularly love about our opening statements is the way in which they point to the wide variation inherent in the intersections between fandom, politics, and participatory politics. Combined, you and I cover a lot of ground. Sometimes I worry that people see fandom, politics, and participatory politics as one-off case studies or a flukes. I worry that they wonder, “Yeah the Harry Potter Alliance is doing interesting stuff, but surely they must be the only one combining fandom and politics in this way. This is just too weird--too unusual.” And yet if we combine your work with mine, wow, there are a lot of examples of fandom intersecting with politics. And those examples are wide-ranging. It’s not just the Harry Potter Alliance and the nerdfighters. It ranges across political ideologies (progressive vs. conservative), across sexuality (nerdfighters), race (DREAMERs), fan cultures (geek culture like Star Wars and sport culture like Husker football), age (youth like the Harry Potter Alliance as well as adults like Adult LEGO fans), and tactics (electoral politics, activism, and creative expression). And I think that illustrates how important the intersection between fandom, politics, and participatory politics is. It’s not something we can ignore if we want to understand the contemporary landscape of citizenship, civic engagement, and politics.

Liana

Yes, I love your point about how these combined case studies show the breadth of examples we have of politics and fandom intersecting at many points along the political spectrum. The other cases you list here (sports fandoms for instance) also illustrate the varied nature of fandom itself. I think “fandom” often becomes shorthand for science fiction fandom or “geek culture,” but as someone who is invested in the intersection of music fandom and politics, I’m quick to point out how important it is to explore fan culture outside of the canon. I love cultural anthropologist Maureen Mahon’s work, for example, which illustrates this point well and shows that the demographic contours of fandoms can often turn stereotypes on their heads (she’s written about black girls’ and women’s involvement in/centrality to rock n’ roll). Henry’s recent three-part interview with Nancy Baym on music fans and relational labor is also a must read. I could talk all day about how there are so many corners of fandom that need to be further explored, but maybe this would be a good time to talk more about how we define politics. I’d be really interested to know more about how you gauge what “counts” as political or as participatory politics in your own work. What are your lodestars for thinking about how fandom gets translated into civic action?

Ashley

Those are really useful points about how we define, conceptualize, and shorthand fandom. I just added Maureen Mahon’s book to my reading list! Thanks for the suggestion. =) As for how I define and conceptualize politics, I find Rob Asen’s conceptualization of citizenship really useful for me. It defines citizenship as a process of public engagement--a particular mode. This emphasizes the communication aspects of any intersection between fandom and politics (important for rhetoric scholars like me). I leave questions of trends, correlations, and demographics to the political scientists and other social scientists. My own disciplinary and methodological tools are tied to viewing communication as public texts in a very humanities way. What about you? How do you conceptualize politics in your own work? And I wonder if that’s tied to your discipline at all?

Liana

That’s a fascinating touchstone for thinking about politics; coming from Sociology, Asen’s work isn’t something I’ve engaged with much, but it’s nevertheless really useful to think of citizenship through the lens of discourse theory and to frame it as something that’s dynamic, unruly, and even playful (and, of course, that’s shaped by communication). In Sociology, I think we often get caught up in “base/superstructure” or “politics/culture” binaries which I think often miss the iterative, ever-shifting nature of citizenship.

In terms of how my disciplinary background influences my overall approach to politics, I would say that I’m always thinking about how social structures bump up against our everyday lived experiences; this includes facets of our lives that often feel like individual choices, such as taste cultures and even how and why we take up political action.

Positionality is also always on my mind. That is, how does my perspective as a white, cisgender, middle-class woman impact how I conduct research and the suppositions I have about what counts as political? When I was in grad school, that notion was widely accepted in my progressive bubble, but I quickly realized that any effort not to remain “objective” in social science research more broadly was often maligned as some kind of relic of ‘70s-style consciousness-raising. I think that notion has really shifted again, though (and for the better!), with more persistent narratives around identity coming into public discourse, academic and otherwise.

One area where I think sociologists have been especially useful in picking up where more humanistic readings of politics leave off is in its interpretations of how the enactment of citizenship can reflect and reify social inequality (Evelyn Nakano Glenn, for instance, has an incredibly vast body of work that grapples with the tension between the American Creed of everyone being “equal” under the eyes of the law and our simultaneous obsession with excluding whole groups of people--now more relevant than ever!).

Something I know we can agree on, too, is that politics has many faces beyond “traditional” mechanisms of change, such as voting (interestingly, I found that the young libertarians in my By Any Media Necessary case study identified as categorical non-voters but were hugely engaged in/knowledgeable about politics). In the social sciences, there is actually a lot of rich scholarship on varying forms of political action, despite my earlier griping about binarism (James C. Scott’s ethnographic work from the ‘70’s on “everyday forms of resistance” in Weapons of the Weak still totally holds up, IMO), yet this idea that participatory forms of politics or fan-based citizenship, for instance--or even just engaging in civics online--is somehow not as legitimate as voting or street protests still persists in both academic circles and popular culture.

When we were working on By Any Media Necessary, we were trying to challenge Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that digital activism (way back when we were first encountering the notion of Twitter revolutions; it seems like eons ago!) was less risky (and less valuable) than tradition forms of protest like lunch counter sit-ins. One good example that subverts Gladwell’s narrative is from my work with Arely Zimmerman on DREAMer activists, who often “came out” as undocumented online in videos uploaded to Youtube--who weren’t, in many cases, putting their physical bodies on the line--but who were actually putting themselves at tremendous risk, with one possible outcome being deportation. 

It seems like I’m reflecting on disciplinary boundaries here as much as on definitions of politics. While you get at this some in your introductory statement, I’d be interested to hear more about how your training as a rhetorician informs your interpretations of citizenship, political engagement, or even inequality.

Ashley

Oooh! I love thinking of citizenship as iterative! That’s so interesting!

You mentioned that sometimes “participatory forms of politics or fan-based citizenship, for instance--or even just engaging in civics online--is somehow not as legitimate as voting or street protests still persists in both academic circles and popular culture.” I feel that in communication too. It seems to be connected to two assumptions (or maybe perceptions). One assumption is that fans are not serious (the titles of my papers sometimes elicit nervous laughter at communication conferences). The other assumption is that political actions online are only surface level--despite the great work of folks in our field (Ethan Zuckeman’s lecture comes to mind here and certainly, like you just mentioned, your book with Henry categorically disproves any concerns about surface level activism). And yet, in the broader communication discipline, I sometimes encounter a weird kind of burden of proof--there’s an assumption that political action online is surface level unless otherwise demonstrated.

Sometimes, it’s hard to simultaneously argue that we should take politics that is blended with fandom seriously, while also admitting that it might support inequality or that some cases might be ineffective. I tried to do that a little bit in my own work, but that mostly fell on the “cases that were ineffective side. In my book, I looked at one case that could have tapped into fans as an audience but failed to do so. They had everything set up, but ended up directing the critique at the fan object, which, as you can expect, turned fans away. I looked at another case that anchored their appeals completely in fandom at the expense of any connection to public culture. I think these cases are useful in showing the places where politics blended with fandom may fall short (or if we’re feeling gutsy, we might say “fail”).

I’m really interested in hearing your thoughts on the relationship between participatory culture/fannish politics and inequality. I try to think about the ways in which some fan-citizens get to be read as citizens or fans and how that might affect their enactment of fan-based citizenship or participatory politics. And I try to think about the implications of fan-based citizenship enacted by predominantly white fandoms. But it’s a tough question that I’d need to figure out how to dive in deeper into.

Amy Brandzel’s 2016 book Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative asks some of those questions. She argues that citizenship is a mechanism of inequality and dehumanization. She calls for a shift away from it. I think your question about how we conceptualize citizenship and its relationship to inequality is a really smart one. In rhetoric, we tend to see citizenship as good and productive--it’s part of our disciplinary story going back to Aristotle. Work like Brandzel’s calls us to reconsider those questions.

Liana

I haven’t read Brandzel’s book, but while we’re trading reading list recommendations, I’ll certainly be putting it on mine! It seems especially timely as I still process the news about the terrorist attack (rooted in white supremacy) on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 50 people were killed. The growing number of these attacks brings into relief the fact that, for many immigrants and native groups alike, the “protection” of citizenship is anything but.

And I hear you about being mindful of inequality both within fan communities and with regard to who gets to be read as a fan citizen and why, and that’s certainly something I will continue to wrestle with. I think shining a spotlight on non-white fandoms and looking for how narratives of all sorts can be meaningful across a wide range of communities can be a useful start. For instance, Henry and others members of our team have written about how superhero narratives, from Wonder Woman to Black Panther have inspired fans and activists to both imagine a better world and act to smash injustice (sorry, I just feel like smash is the right word when we’re talking about superheroes!). To bring in another example related to participatory politics and immigration/citizenship/belonging, I love how immigration rights activists have leveraged the mythology of Superman toward civic ends by celebrating the fact that “Superman was an Undocumented Immigrant.”

The fact that pop culture representations like these can spark the Civic Imagination--the idea that our collective vision for what a better future could look like can help bridge perceived cultural gaps between diverse communities--should give us hope for fandom and its capacity to enable us, not only to engage politically, but to address inequality as well.

On an even more meta level, I’m also reminded of political philosopher Danielle Allen’s work here; Allen who, as a foil to Brandzel, I think certainly finds hope and value in the political ideals laid out by the founding fathers, makes an interesting argument in her 2014 book, Our Declaration, that it was the founders’ intent for freedom and equality to be mutually reinforcing in the Declaration of Independence (and yeah, she does address the boundaries of these white slave owners’ definitions of equality). Instead, in America, we’ve become so obsessed with the notion of [individual] freedom, that freedom’s reliance on equality for revolution has become obscured. Only by dignifying groups who do not wield power can we elevate these ideals, and perhaps, as scholars, we should make a commitment to do just that.

Ashley

I love your turn to thinking about how popular culture narratives can be used to address inequality. I think what is implied there is that popular culture narratives can also be marshalled to enhance inequality. That’s troubling to think about, but also essential. As we were getting ready to start this conversation, one question you suggested we might explore was, “What does an “ethical” participatory politics look like? Is there such a thing?” I love the way your question orients us as scholars, critics, and fans. It calls us to think carefully about when participatory politics and intersections between fandom and political action are ethical, emancipatory, and progressive, and even more importantly, in what ways. Not all participatory politics (or fannish politics, fan activism, or fan-based citizenship) will be praiseworthy just because they it sit at the intersection of fandom and politics.

Dan Brower and Rob Asen I think model this kind of orientation really nicely in their book on public modalities. They say, “The critical character of this project does not arise from an inherent quality of a modality per se, since processes of public engagement may advance praiseworthy or censurable ends. Rather the critical character of public modalities arises from the intervention and judgment of the scholar, who discerns the values implicated in particular engagements and judges their progressive or regressive qualities” (p. 21).

Some cases of fandom intersecting with politics might be successful, some might be emancipatory, and some might ethical. I think part of what we, as scholars, can do is work through those complexities. In other words, our work isn’t done when we name something a case of participatory politics or fan-based citizenship or other intersection of participatory politics. Indeed, that is just the beginning of our work as scholars.

Liana

I feel like that’s a perfect point to wrap up this discussion, which has been such a pleasure. You so eloquently remind scholars that it’s possible to be rigorous yet not impartial, cautious yet hopeful. And importantly, we can use our own passions and interests to explore the crossroads of fandom and politics while retaining a critical lens.

And though it’s so necessary to leave room for conversations about how participatory politics may, too, reproduce structures of inequality, require more self-reflexivity, and play out in unethical ways, I’m still an optimist. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the weight of what’s happening on the national stage in my everyday lived experiences in a way I never have before; the state of civil discourse (or lack thereof) takes a mental and physical toll. But even--especially--when I leave my academic hat at the door, I’m confident in saying that we, as fans and activists (and fan activists!), can use the texts we love to change the world. Because if what we love can help us imagine a better future, we can use the language of fandom to make it a reality.  

Ashley

What a beautiful sentiment to end on: exciting and invigorating. Thanks so much for the conversation. This was great! I’m walking away with lots of ideas to chew on and new books to add to my shelf. I’m excited to continue our conversation with folks online through the comments or on Twitter. =)

____________

Ashley Hinck is Assistant Professor, Communication Department, Xavier University

Liana Gamber-Thompson is Digital Project and Operations Manager at EdSurge. 

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Liana Gamber-Thompson & Ashley Hink (Part I)

Opening Statements

Hinck

In 2007, when I was a senior in college, one of my best friends told me about a podcast created by a group called the Harry Potter Alliance. At the time, I remember listening to it, loving it, and wondering why nothing in my persuasion class seemed to reflect either the Harry Potter Alliance’s use of the internet to do organizing or their use of fandom to do politics. From there, I fell down a rabbit hole, assisted by many friends in many fandoms. I went to graduate school and ended up writing a MA thesis and a PhD dissertation about how fandom, politics, and the internet intersect.

Now, I’m an Assistant Professor at Xavier University and I’ve published two books: Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World (LSU Press, March 2019) and Poaching Politics: Online Communication in the 2016 US Presidential Election co-authored with Paul Booth, Amber Davisson, and Aaron Hess (Peter Lang, November 2018), along with a handful of other articles and book chapters (which you can find here). Across my research, my goal is examine the ways in which fan cultures, identities, and practices contribute to, transform, or contest political cultures, identities, and practices. I’m a rhetorician by training, which means my questions center around how we use fandom to construct, deploy, and perform communication in order to do politics.

As a rhetorician, my starting point is public culture and rhetorical texts. From John Dewey to G. Thomas Goodnight, communities and social interaction have been seen essential for the functioning of democracy. In many ways, social ties are at the very center of public culture and civic action. From that point of view, we shouldn’t be surprised that we are increasingly seeing intersections between fandom and politics. Fan studies scholars have long pointed out that fans form rich communities around fan-objects (for example, see Baym, Hellekson & Busse, and Jenkins). This is becoming even more common as the internet makes it easier than ever to form communities across great geographic distance. Fandom is an important source of social ties and communities. In my book chapter in Theorizing Digital Rhetoric, I argue that it’s no wonder then that those social ties translate to political ones as well.

And indeed the social ties of fandom have translated into all sorts of publics, civic action, and political cultures.

In some cases, fandom has served as the foundation for political action—what I call fan-based citizenship. In these cases, public engagement emerges from a commitment to a fan-object. In my book, Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World, I examine cases like Star Wars, Nerdfighters on YouTube, adult fans of LEGO, Husker Football, and Harry Potter. For example, the TeamMates nonprofit invited Husker football fans to volunteer to mentor school-aged children during their Coaches Challenge campaigns. Nerdfighters deliberated about public issues and charities during the annual Project for Awesome. Across each case study, I argue that fans anchor their civic appeals in the ethical frameworks emerging from their fan objects (particular interpretations of values operating at a general and abstract level). Thus, popular culture fandom becomes a source of public values that can be used to guide civic action through public communication.

The cases I examine in my book demonstrate that fan-based citizenship doesn’t just occur in activism, but also as volunteerism, charity donations, and electoral politics, including the most recent US presidential election. Indeed, I think scholars, pundits, and citizens will have trouble understanding the 2016 US presidential election if we don’t also understand fandom and how it intersects with politics. 

One way in which we see fandom operating in the 2016 election is as an identity/group membership that had bearing on one’s presidential vote. In 2016, Paul DeGeorge (co-founder of the Harry Potter Alliance and co-founder of Harry and the Potters) launched the Nerds for Her website and online store, selling buttons and tshirts that displayed “Hufflepuffs w/Her” in Hufflepuff colors, “Choose Her” slogans next to Pokemon balls, and “the only logical choice” next to the Vulcan salute. The store was an extension of a project DeGeorge started in 2008 and refined in 2012 when Obama was running. In 2016, DeGeorge transformed the “Wizards for Obama” slogans to “Wizards w/Her.” The buttons, t-shirts, and digital downloads invited fans to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 based on their fan identity and the ethical frameworks that came along with that. In an interview, DeGeorge explained, “I was trying to link up a member group, like Teachers for Obama.” Candidates regularly campaign by appealing to group membership identities like union member, woman, or teacher. DeGeorge invited fans to use their fan identity in the same way (Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World).

Fandom also affected how politicians and fan-citizens engaged the 2016 election, applying fan practices to and integrating fan identities into electoral campaigns. In Poaching Politics: Online Communication in the 2016 Presidential Election (which I co-authored Paul Booth, Amber Davisson, and Aaron Hess), we examine the way in which participatory cultures affected the 2016 election. We argue that individuals claimed campaign discourse as their own, transforming the long-assumed relationship between citizens and campaigns from one in which citizens were passive and rational to one in which citizens are active and affective as well. In the 2016 election, we saw this emerge around fan culture and troll culture (two prominent and long-standing participatory cultures).

One chapter of our book traces how politicians came to adopt fan identities and practices during their campaigning. For example, during the primaries ahead of the 2016 election, Ted Cruz performed a Star Wars fan identity on the campaign trail, integrating it with his political persona. Cruz’s integration of his fan identity into his candidate personae invited voters to imbue him with the “cool” that his awkward persona sorely lacked, while also allowing him to court the voting bloc of Star Wars fans (a significant number of voters).

On the other side of the aisle, MoveOn, the well-established progressive political organization, deployed Harry Potter in an attempt to garner support for Hillary Clinton in their online video advertisement “Merkely Potter” on Facebook and YouTube. MoveOn’s ad used the same approach as the cases of fan-based citizenship I studied in my book, Politics for the Love of Fandom. They invited voters to apply a Harry Potter ethical framework (respect, tolerance, etc.) to voting, arguing that Harry Potter fans who supported those values should vote for Hillary Clinton. In doing so, MoveOn constituted Harry Potter fans as a voting bloc. This was particularly important because the Millennial voting bloc was both large and up for grabs (particularly as young people supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries). MoveOn constructed a political argument that called Harry Potter fans to vote for Hillary, not because they were Democrats, but because they were Harry Potter fans.

Fandom also played a critical role in the surge of progressive organizing and activism after Trump’s 2016 election. In our Poaching Politics book, we trace the way in which fandom was used to attack Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff. Ossoff was running for a seat in the House of Representatives that was vacated after Trump appointed Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services. During the race, a conservative PAC released an advertisement attacking Ossoff that utilized footage of Ossoff delivering lines as Han Solo and goofing around with lightsabers. The ad asserted: “Ossoff really wants you to think he’s ready to be in Congress” and then goes on “You see, Osssoff was just a college kid, doing things like dressing up with his drinking buddies and pretending to be Han Solo.” While the attack ad attempted to use Ossoff’s fandom as evidence that he was young and inexperienced, Better Georgia, a progressive organization, released an advertisement that reframed the same evidence of Ossoff’s Star Wars fandom as beneficial. The ad stated, “Jon Ossoff. Honest. Serious. And so ready. Sorry Trump Republicans. But District 6 has a new hope.” Ossoff and his supporters eventually leaned into his Star Wars fandom, integrating it into his political persona. Ossoff’s case demonstrates how political personae integrated with fan identities can become contested on both sides, with implications for what kind of leader the candidate might be. While Ossoff eventually lost (by only a few points), his campaign illustrates the changing terrain of fandom in elections.

Citizens too (not just politicians) utilized fandom during the surge of progressive organizing after Trump’s victory. During the research for my book, Politics for the Love of Fandom, I met a group of writers and librarians who found themselves devastated after Trump’s 2016 victory and were looking for ways to do good and create change. They stumbled upon the Harry Potter Alliance and decided to form their own chapter. The chapter ran two campaigns within the first six months. For these citizens, who felt spurred to action by Trump’s victory, it made sense to turn to fan activism.

These case studies all illustrate the complex inner-workings of the intersection between fandom and politics. But they also illustrate two larger points about fandom in the 2016 US presidential election: 1) We shouldn’t be surprised that fandom is giving rise to political action—these citizenship performances reflect where our social ties and our communities are. 2) We can’t understand the 2016 US presidential election without understanding fandom. It may be easy for journalists on the campaign beat or for political scientists specializing in voter turnout to ignore fandom as something unusual or an exception to the rule that can be ignored. Yet, I think the cases I’ve discussed here demonstrate that fandom is actually at the center of the 2016 election. If we want to understand American politics in the 21st century, we have to understand fandom too.

Uploaded by MoveOn on 2016-11-03.

Gamber-Thompson

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” is testifying before the House Oversight Committee as I write this introductory statement, the often tense back and forth pumped out from a portable speaker in my kitchen as I ponder the state of participatory politics today. Needless to say, so much has changed since 2015, when my co-authors and I wrapped up our fieldwork and analysis for By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism (Jenkins et al., 2016), and I’m thrilled to think about what current iterations of participatory politics look like in conversation with Ashley Hinck, whose fascinating body of work on fandom and politics explores how citizens and politicians alike have deployed fandom toward civic ends.

First, a little bit about me: I’m somewhat of an outlier in this group of marvelously smart and accomplished academics who are also participating in these discussions on participatory politics. After finishing my PhD in Sociology (with parenthetical notation in Feminist Studies) in 2010 and a dissertation on teenage girl music fans, I spent almost four years at USC working with Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova on the Media and Participatory Politics Project (MAPP), which has now transformed into the even richer Civic Imagination Project. After that, I made the leap to the non-academic world and haven’t looked back. For the past five years, I’ve worked primarily in the education and technology space, first at the non-profits National Writing Project and Connected Camps, and most recently at the edtech media company, EdSurge. As such, I’m really glad to re-join this conversation on participatory politics and to hopefully bring some of that “on the ground” experience into it as well.

One professional project I worked on that’s germane to this conversation is Letters to the Next President 2.0. This was a national, large-scale, multi-modal writing project supported by the National Writing project and KQED that engaged and connected young people, aged 13–18, as they researched, wrote, and made media to voice their opinions on issues that mattered to them in the 2016 presidential election. You can see their finished letters here; these expressions of youth voice give an often poignant look into the issues young people are wrestling with, partisan politics aside.

I’m also excited about this conversation on a few different theoretical fronts. First, the connection between fandom and politics is a topic I explored in By Any Media Necessary in my case study on libertarian youth, in which I tried to show how participatory politics is enacted in non-progressives spaces. While studying the student group, Students for Liberty, I found flourishing fan communities built around shared admiration for a range of libertarian schools or theory like Anarcho-capitalism and classical liberalism, as well as the movement’s influential intellectual figures, from Friedrich Hayek to Murray Rothbard. The creative productions of young artists/theory fans like Dorian Electra and other YouTube stars such as PraxGirl and Token Libertarian Girl further helped bridge the gap between fandom and politics for a new generation of libertarians.

Electra, who I interviewed for By Any Media Necessary and whose artistic output I chronicled closely, now spends time challenging gender norms and toxic masculinity rather than mainstream economic theories and is a good example of how fandoms, along with the personal investments of those in them, change over time. Electra, who identities as non-binary, has retired all libertarian-leaning work from their official Youtube account and tours frequently with the likes of pop sensation Charli XCX.

Along with thinking about participatory fandom together, I’m equally as excited to think about the affective dimensions of contemporary politics alongside Ashley. Drawing on Jenkins (1992), Van Zoonen (2005) explains that academic and popular discourses often hold that fandom is primarily an affective enterprise, while political activities are more rooted in critical cognitive assessments that constitute good citizenship, such as informed knowledge of current events. Jenkins and Van Zoonen both argue against such a dichotomy, and the libertarian case study is just one of many that demonstrate how fan practices bridge with political and civic activities in ways that combine rational discourse with more affective expressions. The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA), which Ashley Hinck describes here and which my colleague, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, also wrote about in By Any Media Necessary, is another great example.

The importance of affect for participatory politics was also a theme In DREAMing Citizenship: Undocumented Youth, Coming Out, and Pathways to Participation, also in By Any Media Necessary, in which my co-author Arely Zimmerman and I looked at how DREAMers, who were just starting to become recognized on the national stage at the time the book was published, built on historically situated practices of mobilization and used new media for movement building. We argued that DREAMer participatory practices, both affective and tactical (Johnson 2009), constituted a new repertoire of action (Tilly 1978) to effect change that supported members of traditionally marginalized groups in becoming civically engaged. We examined coming out videos and other “testimonios” to show how the affective and strategic were mutually reinforcing for DREAMers and their political goals. 

Our analysis, which directly connected the emotional experiences of DREAMers to their political work, is part of the effort to develop what Jeff Goodwin and others (Jasper 1998; Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001) have termed an emotional sociology: a sociology attuned to the potential causal significance of emotions because they are “constitutive of social relations and action—and not simply as individual, psychological reactions but as intersubjective, collective experiences” (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001, 283). We found that DREAMer’s online storytelling practices, combined with an explicit legislative agenda, helped propel the movement forward and set the stage for widespread visibility.

I had the unfair advantage of reading Ashley’s intro before I finished my own, but her question about what different disciplinary lenses can teach us about participatory politics seems especially important for this conversation. I’m looking forward to hearing her perspective, as a rhetorician, on the state of participatory politics, and seeing where and how it intersects with my sociological perspective during the course of the conversation.

____________________

Ashley Hinck is Assistant Professor, Communication Department, Xavier University

Liana Gamber-Thompson is Digital Project and Operations Manager at EdSurge. 

Participatory Politics in an Age of Global Crisis: Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Nicholas John (Part Two)

Nicholas John

In a way we’re talking about similar things but in different ways. We’re both interested in the place of social media in political deliberation, especially in the context of Israel, where we live and work. We’re both interested in the negative trajectory that political talk seems to be following in Israel, as elsewhere. In other words, we have both been looking at social norms for discourse on social media and wondering what the role of social media is in shaping them. There are clearly pre-internet rules of etiquette that determine which topics can be discussed in public; on the other hand, the algorithmic ranking of social media feeds rewards engagement but tends to be agnostic regarding content. You ask, how can we encourage better political discussion? I ask: how limited is our understanding of such efforts? I think that these questions maybe converge when we see that the features of social media that maybe have deleterious impacts on the quality of talk (an emphasis on engagement, virality, spreadability) also determine the limits of our knowledge about social media, which do not give access to data about negative feedback.

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

I agree we’re both interested in the place of social media in political deliberation, but wouldn’t necessarily sign on on the idea of a ‘negative trajectory’ that political talk is following, nor necessarily that social media have deleterious impacts on quality of talk. It may be a bias in the way I select cases for study (see some of my thoughts on the matter here), but I can find myself encouraged by social media political talk. I’ll give two examples.

One is the case study I mentioned briefly in my opening statement - two large-scale Israeli WhatsApp groups devoted to informal political talk, created by Israeli political blogger Tal Schneider. In this group, a heterogeneous group of Israelis from a variety of ages, including secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews; a wide range of political views from extreme left-wing to extreme right-wing spends their time debating Israeli politics. What amazes me about this group is not only the extent and excitement around political talk (they’re all self-proclaimed political junkies) but the fact that this varied group is able to discuss the most controversial topics in Israeli politics while (usually) maintaining civil discussion.

In a less extreme case, my colleague Ioana Literat and I examined youth political expression around the 2016 election in a range of online affinity networks. We found that youth were using creative practices to express themselves politically around the elections, using it as a way to reclaim agency towards the political process, to offer support towards others in light of the election results, or to reimagine an alternative political realm. Online spaces provided young people with important spaces to exert their political voice and to find their way around the complex political reality.

In these cases, I wouldn’t say social (or digital) media were deleterious to political talk. Perhaps we can tweak our question to, under what conditions can different contexts (including social media) enable constructive political expression and discussion? And, to respond more closely to the important points you raise, to what extent are we able to constructively study and analyze these spaces, given constraints created by social media platforms?

NJ

I don’t think I would want to make the argument that social media are bad for political talk. I mean, they might be, but that question is slightly outside what I consider to be my field of expertise. I would certainly not want to argue with your claim that we can find fantastic examples of productive political talk that is computer/smartphone-mediated. After all, you’ve found them and studied them (to our considerable edification). However, these examples could be the exceptions to the rule that proves the rule. They certainly prove that the technologies of social media do not necessarily have to lead to polarization and a breakdown in civility, and there is something optimistic in that. 

But I think that I’m more of a pessimist than you are. Right now I’m writing up findings from interviews with 20 Palestinian citizens of Israel who unfriended Jewish Israelis on Facebook against the background of the Israel-Palestine conflict. These acts are important--certainly for the people who carry them out. Yet they are invisible to researchers for reasons, I argue, that sit in a kind of elective affinity with the commercial objectives of social media platforms. We cannot measure unfriending and we cannot see it by ourselves. We can talk to people about it, but we cannot collect data in ways that we have learnt to do from social network sites. This is because we are studying an absence, and not a presence; a nothing, and not a thing. This is not to take anything away from the fascinating examples of productive political expression that you have identified. It is to say that there are invisible phenomena that we should also study.

NKV

Ha, yes, the optimism/pessimism question is one that often crops up around my research (I believe am in good company there with my advisor and mentor Henry Jenkins :) ). In our 2016 book By any Media Necessary, we explain that our perspective to examining youth participation is one of “cautious optimism” (p. 9). Even with the political, social and technological developments that have happened since 2016, I do still stand behind that approach--to me, cautious optimism is important both empirically (in being open to seeing the positive aspects of participation) and ideologically. After all, the questions we’re dealing with here are ones that affect our everyday lives and future, and I insist on maintaining some optimism regarding these aspects! 

That being said, I benefit a lot from having difficult and challenging conversations with great colleagues like you, as well as imaginary conversations vis-a-vis the work of many fantastic scholars, not to mention simple reality, that forces me to grapple with many serious and grave concerns regarding the future of (youth) participation (online). Being more aware of the role of social media platforms in making some data invisible--data that is crucial to our understanding of the phenomena we’re studying--is one such important take-away.  

________________________ 

Nicholas John is a Lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include technology and society, the internet, social media, sharing, and unfriending. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Age of Sharing. This book offers an innovative approach to sharing in social media, specifically by linking it to sharing in other social spheres, namely, consumption and intimate interpersonal relations. The book won the Best Book award from the Israel Communication Association, and the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers. Nicholas is also interested in disconnectivity, which he sees as a neglected aspect of digital culture. In particular, he is fascinated by Facebook unfriending, particularly when it is politically motivated. He sees unfriending as a new political and social gesture that we know very little about. His teaching looks at the complex interrelations between technology and society.

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work focuses on civic and political engagement in the context of the changing media environment, particularly among young people. Neta has published work in leading communication journals, including the Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication,Social Media + Society, and Computers in Human Behavior. She is a co-author of the book By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism published by NYU Press in 2016. Neta received her Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Participatory Politics in the Age of Global Crisis: Neta Kligler-Vilenchik and Nicholas John (Part One)

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik

I want to take the opportunity of this conversation series to think through a thought I've been playing with for a few years now around participatory politics, that has to do with my own research and personal trajectory.

My work on participatory politics started in my PhD program, when I was working with Henry Jenkins and later became part of the Youth & Participatory Politics network (which I'm assuming Sangita Shresthova and Joe Kahne mentioned in their conversation a few days ago). At USC, we were interested in the ways young people found their way to civic engagement through popular culture interests, and the case study I came to work on was 'the fandom case,' which included theHarry Potter Alliance, Imagine Better, and the Nerdfighters- which were all groups that built on young fans' passion towards popular culture content, and mobilized that interest towards engagement in and around social issues (You can read more about that work, much of it co-authored with USC colleagues,here,hereandhere).

One of the things that characterized our work was the basic premise that young people (in the US) as a baseline are not very civically/politically engaged (though of course this varies between civic and political engagement - many young people are active in volunteerism or 'social justice' issues, but shy away from partisan politics that is seen as divisive and dirty), and so we were looking for pathways that got them more interested and involved, and that got them to see the relevance of politics to their everyday lives. The general idea was, more engagement = more social good.

While at USC, I also collaborated with Kjerstin Thorson and Emily Vraga to look at young people's political expression on Facebook, in the context of the 2012 election. We found that the young people we talked to tended to see Facebook mostly as a social space (one to share cute cat photos and stories about your latest vacation), and - based on that perception - were hesitant about expressing political views, that were seen as divisive, on Facebook. They preferred social harmony over political discussion, transferring onto Facebook the idea that "You don't discuss politics or religion." The few people who did post political opinions on Facebook were seen negatively, as 'ranters', who deviated from the (preferred) social norms.

In 2015, I finished my PhD at USC and was very fortunate to join the Department of Communication & Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Besides getting great new colleagues, the move back to Israel confronted me with a different relationship between young people and politics, which made me question some of my working assumptions from the US context. In Israel - as I know well enough as an Israeli - politics is perceived very differently from the generally political avoidant-norms I encountered in my work with US youth. 

(And a word of caution here. Of course it's a gross over-generalization to talk about 'US youth' - or 'Israeli youth' for that matter - as one common entity, but this is a blog conversation, so humor me... I'll deal with justifying these large-scale comparisons when I respond to reviewers ;-) ). 

So in Israel, in general, talking politics is perceived as a valuable and even enjoyable activity, and people do it all the time, at the check-out counter at the supermarket (happened to me just this morning), with colleagues at work, over beer with buddies. And a very similar pattern occurs on Facebook. Working with doctoral student Yifat Mor and my senior colleague If at Maoz, we found that young Israelis held very different norms around talking politics on Facebook: They saw Facebook as an appropriate venue for political talk, enjoyed using it to share their views (and to sound smart). They were, however, aware that they may have diverse audiences, and that in some contexts what they say can be misunderstood or used against them, so they employed impression-management techniques to balance saying what they wanted about politics without offending or annoying those who don't see eye-to-eye with them too much...

So it seems that in Israel the picture around young people and politics was quite different. Young people didn't need to be 'persuaded' or 'pushed' towards politics - they were already quite interested and engaged in politics, had quite clear opinions, and were not very hesitant about expressing them. So what do I do here as a scholar of youth political participation - am I out of work? 

Not really.

The thing is that politics in Israel is also - and increasingly so - characterized by properties that are hardly beneficial for democracy. Over the years that I spent studying in the US (2008-2015), Israeli politics became not only more right-wing oriented, but also less tolerant and civil. People - including politicians, opinion leaders, and everyday people on social media - allow themselves to say malicious things towards other social groups (left-wingers, Arabs, settlers) that wouldn't have been acceptable in the public sphere a few years ago. The peak of that was in 2014 during the Israeli-Gaza conflict - which I'm sure you'll mention, Nik, in relation to your first unfriending study - but the aftershocks of it were still highly visible in 2015 and beyond when I returned to Israel. The two clearest indications of the political malice online is the Berl Katznelson 'hate report,'that monitors hateful and inciting speech towards different social groups online; and the Facebook page of Israeli ex-rapper 'The Shadow,' which includes not only his own racist and inciting content, but comments from regular users (identified on Facebook, with their picture and link to their own profile and everything!) so unseemly it makes you lose faith in humanity. 

So in Israel, it seemed, the problem is not - how do we get young people more engaged in politics, but rather - how do we encourage the kind of political participation and expression that is beneficial towards democracy? That includes listening to the other side, and acknowledging their right to have views I don't agree with, without disrespecting them as human beings and fellow members of a democratic nation.

In the latter installments I'll talk about one group I found in Israel (surprisingly, taking place on WhatsApp!) which somewhat encouraged me that such participation is possible, but first... back to the US.

Enter the elections of 2016, and particularly the immediate post-election context, with the new political reality represented by President Donald Trump. As I first witnessed, and later studied (with my colleague Ioana Literat), some of the reactions of (mostly liberal-leaning youth) around the election of Trump, as well as the reactions of their Trump-supporting peers, I felt I was seeing a picture that resembled much more closely the Israeli political reality. These young people didn't need to be persuaded that politics matters to them or is relevant to their everyday life - this was perfectly clear to them. They had political views and they expressed them very clearly. But again the question was, is all political expression and participation good political expression and participation? Or may we be seeing the rise of youth political expression that is characterized by a disconnect from 'the other side,' that may make it increasingly difficult to talk across ideologies and function together as members of a democracy?

In short, is US politics post-2016 plagued by similar problems as Israeli politics?

If so, perhaps the question shouldn't be how do we get young people more politically involved, but rather - what kind of political involvement is beneficial towards democracy, and where and how can we encourage it?

Nicholas John

In the last couple of years I have been finding myself increasingly interested in questions about the scope and depth of our knowledge about online political participation and civic engagement. The more I look into these questions, the greater my discomfort with the growing gap between the quality and quantity of knowledge held by different stakeholders: social media platforms, politicians and their institutions, the public, and academic researchers. However, it is not simply that the public, for instance, is not interested in knowing about how politicians are using social media to shape debates and opinion; it is that there are mechanisms that prevent the public from attaining such knowledge. It is not the case that academics, for example, are not interested in gathering knowledge about the role of bots in political discourse; it is the case that in many instances they lack access to the data that would enable the production of truly useful knowledge.

I came to this realization back in 2014, during the war between Israel (where I live) and Hamas in Gaza. At some point, the press started reporting on waves of unfriending between Israelis from different sides of the political map. I naively approached Facebook’s research team to ask for data—aggregated, anonymous—about the rate of unfriending among Israeli Facebook users during the weeks of that war. It seemed obvious that Facebook could provide that information. It seemed obvious that such information is of significance to anyone interested in the role of social media in process of polarization. Even looking at it through Facebook’s eyes, if people connecting with one another is politically and socially important—and this is Facebook’s fundamental vision and belief—then people disconnecting from one another is equally important.

Here, though, we find a huge blind spot: not only does Facebook not enable researchers to know about unfriending, it similarly does not enable individual users to know about it either (external developers sometimes produce tools that will notify you if you have been unfriended; Facebook breaks them as soon as it becomes aware of them). Looking into this further, I learnt that the technical means that Facebook makes available to the public for querying its database—it’s Application Programming Interface, or API—is extremely selective regarding the types of information rendered accessible. Specifically, activities defined as negative feedback, such as unfollowing, blocking, removing a Like, or unfriending, are impossible to study using tools provided by social media platforms themselves. Put simply, knowledge about a swathe of forms of digital political expression is unattainable using tools provided by Facebook and others for learning more about connectivity.

Another type of ignorance about the political implications of social media derives from the platforms’ opacity and refusal to answer quite simple questions about data they themselves voluntarily present to the public. A striking example of this is a web page (not a Facebook Page) that Facebook published for a decade, with a hiatus of a couple of years. On this page Facebook claimed to document the number of Facebook friendships formed across the lines of violent and protracted conflicts, such as between Indians and Pakistanis, and Israelis and Palestinians. The message of the page, which sat first at peace.facebook.com and later at Facebook.com/peace (for those interested in looking it up in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine), was that Facebook brings people together where national leaders fail to do so. Communication technologies are portrayed as enabling grassroots ties, an argument Facebook applies to itself and, for a decade, substantiated via its “World of Friends” page. 

Given the huge research potential of data about such Facebook friendships, I started paying spzzecial attention to this page, keeping track of the numbers reported daily. It was then that I began to suspect their veracity. For example, the number of friendships formed between Facebook users in Israel and the Palestinian territories was recorded at 200,000 per day. Some cursory googling showed me that Israel has about 4.7m Facebook users, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip around 1.7m. So if Facebook’s numbers are right, every single Palestinian Facebook user makes an Israeli Facebook friend every 8.5 days, and every Israeli Facebook user makes a friend in the Palestinian territories at least once a month. Because I didn’t trust these numbers, I surveyed Israeli Facebook users and learnt that on average they make less than 6 Palestinian friends a year. For these and a number of other reasons I reached the conclusion that these potentially fascinating and hugely useful numbers are unreliable.

Wanting to know what Facebook had to say about this, I wrote to the press office and the research team. At no point did I get any answers (though the page was shut down in February 2019, which is perhaps a kind of answer). There can be no doubt, though, that Facebook could provide answers, both about friending and unfriending, without any impact on their users’ privacy. Imagine how fascinating—and, for researchers, important—it would be to know about patterns of unfriending among Democrats and Republicans in the US during and since the 2016 presidential campaign.

This is not to say that we are in a state of no knowledge, but researchers need to be creative—and in possession of significant research funds—in order to reach the knowledge that the platforms could provide with very little effort. I have commissioned surveys to gauge the extent of politically-motivated unfriending in Israel, as have other in the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Colombia, and elsewhere. A Twitter bot identification project in Israel is reliant on crowdsourced funding and the goodwill of Twitter users to let a researcher analyze following networks. A particularly creative project underway in Israel is inviting Facebook users to take screenshots of political ads they see in their feed, along with the “why you are seeing this” text in order to create a database in a way that does not fall foul of Facebook’s anti-scraping rules.

 We need a clearer view of computer-mediated political activity. Such a view is currently obstructed by social media platforms’ data access policies, or by their refusal to explain data they are voluntarily publishing. Users and researchers lack the power to shift the position of some of the most powerful corporations in the world, and we are all worse off for that.

________________

Nicholas John is a Lecturer at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include technology and society, the internet, social media, sharing, and unfriending. He is the author of the award-winning book, The Age of Sharing. This book offers an innovative approach to sharing in social media, specifically by linking it to sharing in other social spheres, namely, consumption and intimate interpersonal relations. The book won the Best Book award from the Israel Communication Association, and the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers. Nicholas is also interested in disconnectivity, which he sees as a neglected aspect of digital culture. In particular, he is fascinated by Facebook unfriending, particularly when it is politically motivated. He sees unfriending as a new political and social gesture that we know very little about. His teaching looks at the complex interrelations between technology and society.

Neta Kligler-Vilenchik is Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work focuses on civic and political engagement in the context of the changing media environment, particularly among young people. Neta has published work in leading communication journals, including the Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication,Social Media + Society, and Computers in Human Behavior. She is a co-author of the book By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism published by NYU Press in 2016. Neta received her Ph.D. in Communication from the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Caty Barum Chattoo and Jeffrey Jones (Part Two)

Responses

Caty Borum Chattoo:  

Your experience with the term “civic” matches my own in terms of whether or not young people embrace it semantically. In university classes focused on communication and storytelling for social justice, I position the idea of “civic” as a dominant element. But I do so with the recognition that the term might be new – but also with the motivation that it might also be inspiring. The ideals of “civic” help to capture their imaginations about who they are as human rights actors – as individuals who move through the world not merely (or foremost) as consumers of material things, but as members of publics with fundamental human rights and the ability to affect change through their voices and ability to coalesce around social problems that matter to them.

These are exciting moments in the classroom, actually, when this kind of framing provides language to help position and identify the inner-workings of people-powered change, or perhaps it simply resonates with their natural proclivities, given that their digital identities have already empowered them with the language and tools of creative engagement beyond anything natively understood by older generations. I don’t know, of course, precisely what they get out of it. But I do know that introducing thinkers like Dewey and his concepts of “publics,” and civic and its concept of a shared system of communal values, is the backbone of inspiring students to come with me on a journey to learn how social change happens, and how social change has unfolded historically, powered by the relentless pursuit of justice by individual people who demanded remedy.

At the same time, as you also convey, young people are practicing civic engagement in ways that are breathtakingly new and exciting. I work with and study activists, and this bears out. In the young advocates for gun control or climate or racial justice, we see a full embodiment of their own voices as they leverage the participatory tools of the networked media age without fear or hesitation in their right to be heard. And this is where I think our two essays connect in the grand ideas about contemporary civic practice in service of issues that matter. So much of my research and writing – and indeed, work with change-making organizations – is devoted to lifting up the power of creativity, culture, and real storytelling in social change work. While we certainly need to convey facts and statistics – information – to help publics understand the prevalence or severity of daunting issues, we also certainly know enough from decades of research to understand that those are not the elements that actually engage people and encourage them to participate. Too many well-established civil society organizations still rely on communicating dire facts and information almost exclusively.

And yet, here we are in the beautiful chaos of the digital media era, with all of its possibilities for creating narratives and capturing attention through creativity and culture. This is where I come back to your idea of young people and voice, and my work about culture and creativity in social justice work: Young activists do not need to “learn” these ideas, even if the semantics around “civic” might be fresh to them. This is their native practice, engaging through social media and telling and sharing stories. Indeed, the young activist I write about in my opening reflection, 26-year-old Amanda Nguyen, didn’t think twice about leveraging the cultural, civic practice power of comedy – of all things – in a movement designed to change legislation around sexual assault, one of the most harrowing issues to address. She, and the young activists you mention, exemplify the cadre of social justice leaders Henry Jenkins and his colleagues write about – they do their work “by any media necessary.” So, this is a totally new interplay we will continue to follow as young people shift the reality of what civic practice looks like, along with the creative and storytelling machinations they employ to spark it in the first place. It’s all very hopeful to me, ripe for discovery and research and new ideas.

And yet, while my optimism is real, I come back to a question I pose to myself as much as anyone: Our civic fabric is deeply damaged by polarized ideas and the way we even dehumanize one another in our dialogue about public issues, so how will we build and repair from this moment? A new Pew study finds that Americans find it increasingly stressful to even talk about issues with people with whom we’re pretty sure we disagree. I come back to the idea of culture and creativity and storytelling every time, though, inspired by the idea that new generations of young people who want to pursue social change will embrace this idea organically, without needing to be convinced. But how will we come together in these endeavors if our divides continue? How will communal values – “civic” – be established as we shape a new way of being after this political moment has ebbed? Or maybe it won’t ebb, and this is the new normal. How do we build civic practice and shared concepts of social good in such a world?

Jeffrey Jones:

Well, you have truly asked “the question” of our day, one which we will be wrestling with and trying to answer for many years to come. Before I attempt an answer, though, let me reiterate your point about young people and their natural proclivity to “act” through social media, to use the tools that come naturally to them for communication, expression, and mobilization--for what us observers call civic practice. 

What’s important here is that the tools we use really matter. Digital and social media have the structural advantages of widespread dissemination, feedback/participation, amplification, dialog, rebuttal, contestation, etc. built into them. That is, digital-social media embody the dialogic components that Dewey (writing in the 1920s) and Carey (the 1980s) found missing in the mass communications of the 20th Century, structured as they were toward the top down, with controlled access, limited distribution, no feedback loops or avenues for participation, awash in spectacle and distraction. The downside, as we have seen, is a robust propensity toward troll culture, where racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, violence, and so forth are just finger clicks away from dominating the tenor and tone of all public conversations (as the saying goes, “don’t read the comments”). The upside, though, is that those who have typically not been given a voice in public spaces or who have been relegated to the margins--young people, immigrants, the marginalized--can and now do have a voice, one that can speak, rally, mobilize, etc. No invitation is necessary, no permission is needed, no training is required. And thus, we are seeing young people, people of color, women of the #MeToo era, sharing their voice and making it public. And as you say, once that has happened, all manner of creative civic practice can and has emerged. 

Another thing you say is vitally important, which is that such empowerment can lead young people to think of their identities in new ways. And the way that is most exciting to me is their identity as “citizens.” By having voice, we see our citizenship differently. Too often in the past citizenship was seen as a “duty” or an “obligation” (indeed, Boy Scouts--one of the strongest civic organizations in training young people--still employ these words when encouraging citizenship). Or citizenship was connected to the sine qua non of civic practice, voting occasionally. Now in this creative digisphere, citizenship is or can be about telling our stories.  And when we tell stories, most often the best stories are personal stories, ones that are derived from personal and local experiences. As former House Speaker Tip O'Neill famously put it, “all politics is local.”

So what we see is not just organizations mobilizing for criminal justice reform, but people posting videos of police violence and intimidation of black kids for just being black. We don’t just see organizations trying to counter the NRA with rational gun laws, but also David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez talking about the horrific mass murder of their Parkland High School friends. We don’t just see climate change deniers given equal time on cable news networks to sow doubt and confusion, but also 15-year old Greta Thunberg publicly shaming older generations of politicians at a UN Climate Change conference because it is the younger generation that will bear the costs of their cowardice. In each instance, young people found their voice and identity as citizens to speak for change because it was personal, and local. And we know these young people’s names not because it is so unusual to hear young people speak publicly (though it is), but because their testimonies were powerful, precisely because they were personal. 

But let me now attempt a feeble answer to your difficult question about how to restore the civic fabric and bridge partisan and ideological divides. The concept of bridging that divide is a popular one on the political left and middle (I’m not sure those on the right feel similarly), and indeed, is grounded in liberal democratic thinking that through dialog and deliberation we can arrive at commonality and the common good. Certainly Dewey and Carey felt that way, as we have discussed, but they never imagined an America where its democratic norms, traditions, and civic culture would be so thoroughly and rapidly challenged (if not upended). 

First, many of the things we believed in, that many of us took for granted as beliefs that transcended both major political parties--the rule of law, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, fair elections, unbiased courts, anti-corruption of government officials, the value of a free press and watchdog journalism--are actively being challenged by an authoritarian leader, a cowardly GOP, and an electoral base that seems completely fine with it all. 

Second, it is important to note that there are groups who have helped create this divide and who benefit greatly from having it being a divide (and an angry one at that). This includes right-wing media, evangelicals, the NRA, oil companies, even the GOP more broadly. Often emanating from these groups are ready-made talking points that citizens have taken up and use. Perhaps more insidious, though, is that they have formulated ways of thinking, an epistemology that stands in stark contrast to liberal democratic thought. This includes a rejection of evidence, a rejection of standard terms of debate, the contestation of “truth” and how it is arrived at. So when Carey suggests that it is shared beliefs that maintain society, it would seem incumbent that our communications try to tap into these shared beliefs as starting points for agreement. But how we go about bridging a divide when there are such enormous ruptures in shared beliefs and agreed upon ways of thinking is going to be tremendously difficult. 

What is also pernicious is that while we have these new means for engaging in communication that could enrich the local community (“social media”), our civic culture is so infected with the older forms of mass communication that have, as Carey put it (quoting Camus), “replaced dialogue and personal relations with propaganda and polemic.” Watch most discussions of politics on Facebook and you will see how clearly we mirror the talking heads on cable news. We want to win points, not find common agreement. People typically blame the platform (Facebook) while the problem is really a toxic civic culture. We see no commonality because we don’t see political talk as a road toward that end. 

In sum, I don’t know how to bridge the divide and restore the civic fabric. I think history has shown that there are, at times, bad actors in public life who simply must be defeated, not negotiated with. While sometimes that involves violence, we are still at a place in America where those defeats can happen in the courts and at the ballot box. And perhaps those defeats will be lead by young people and young female legislators (like AOC) who know how to deftly employ digital media to craft a new and fresh conversation that will encourage broader participation and engagement. 

Which begs my question back to you:  if digital media invites broader participation and storytelling from an array of fresh voices (like the young people and marginalized we’ve mentioned here), what types of stories (or how they are told) can unleash the civic imagination? How does storytelling utilize creativity and culture for social justice ends, for offering fresh avenues into intransigent issues such as rape culture, gun culture, racism, or science denial? Can such storytelling offer a way out of this toxic civic culture I have described?

Caty Borum Chattoo:  

I deeply appreciate this question about mediated storytelling and the contribution to shaping and repairing civic fabric – that is, the tapestry of human experiences and individuals and heroes and villains and values that tell us who and what we are as a society, and an aspirational set of ideals that brings us back to what we care about. At this juncture, divisive hatred surely is not what we want, but anger permeates so much of this moment. It’s awfully hard to move forward solely from the vantage point or motivation of anger, even to right grievous wrongs. I center this question in service of social justice – what kinds of stories, told by which storytellers, and to what end, to build the kind of compassion and connectedness that brings a culture together? Mine is hopelessly idealistic framing, I know, but to quotethe environmentalist Paul Hawken, “The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful.”

There are, of course, different forms of mediated storytelling created and marshalled for social justice purposes – that is, the process and pursuit of fairness and equity for all people. There is a place for anger as a motivating source of energy, to be sure, but I’d like to focus this response on the place of empathy and human connection and optimism and hope.

Given the participatory tools of the networked era, social justice organizations and individuals are creating their own stories for dissemination across a variety of digital platforms. I’d like to suggest here that one of the great challenges is resisting a knee-jerk tendency to simply echo back the ideological polarization that is packaged up and sold to us by cable news outlets – that is, commercial enterprises that have benefited greatly from this culture of discord – or by the political machines in Congress, who likewise stir up vocal supporters through extreme rhetoric. We have to be smarter and more courageous.

Here’s an example of what I mean: From well-establishedresearch, we know, for example, that climate change is now well-understood by a vast majority of Americans as a real, human-caused phenomenon that requires intervention. The idea of “climate deniers” is fringe, believed by a fringe contingent, but used for political gamesmanship. And yet, we still see well-meaning campaigns promoting stories and narratives about climate change deniers as a public engagement strategy. Not only does this not reflect the reality of real public opinion in this country – but instead, the red-meat potential of “deniers vs. science” as drama carried out by pundits – but other research shows we damage the ability to have meaningful conversations with a wide swath of people when we employ this kind of divisive messaging.

So, what I’m suggesting here is that the kind of mediated stories that will help repair our damaged civic fabric, and indeed, shape a new one for a different future, will not be focused on polarized and divisive policy arguments, but will instead spotlight the lived experiences of people – deep, intimate, vulnerable, hopeful. Documentaries about social issues do this well, and if we’re talking about tactical outcomes here,my own researchhas found that elected officials on both sides of the dominant political aisle can come together when they witness human lived experiences behind hot-button issues. The path to enlightenment and compassion through storytelling comes from an emotional connection to stories and characters, not through the strength of a policy argument or the degree to which the tenor of anger matches our own.Social justice stories that employ comedyare important, as well, because of the motivating emotions of hope and optimism injected into seemingly intractable, impossible social problems, as well as comedy’s ability to entertain us.

Storytelling is, of course, dominantly reflected in the entertainment marketplace, and we know that the streaming era has competitively pushed open entirely new arenas for innovation to voices who have been traditionally marginalized and underrepresented – people of color, women, ethnic minorities. (To be sure, a great deal of work remains ahead in the business of equitable representation in the business of Hollywood, but there is great reason for hopeful forward momentum.) What’s particularly meaningful about this trajectory is the extent to which this digital generation of diverse storytellers – like Issa Rae, Hasan Minhaj, and many others – is entertaining us by embodying their full life experiences, asserting full cultural citizenship. This benefits us all in service of long-term social justice. These are the kinds of stories to create, lift up, study, and honor.   

I’ll end with another quote from Paul Hawken’s terribly inspiring missive, as it so accurately describes the kind of courage we will need as we move forward: “Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done…Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.”

Jeffrey Jones:

It is interesting that you end with a quote using seven words with the prefix “re,” meaning “again” or “back.” There is an aspect in our discussion of looking forwards (form, build, imagine, consider), but also backwards at the same time, at what we have lost or should try to be again as a nation--for me, the dialogics of community exchange inherent in civic practice, for you the hope and optimism of an America not consumed by this fire of anger and hatred. 

My discussion of civics (even Carey and Dewey) suggests that we should look backwards or should re-engage with ideals of community that allow for participation and an inclusive politics of practice, but done for the 21st Century.  Indeed, I am sure many readers thought of high school in the 1940s and 50s when they read the word “civics,” the mandatory class in which we learned about government, but also the constitution.  As Frank Zappa noted, when civics classes were replaced with social studies in the 1960s and 70s, we stopped the intense study of the constitution. Here too we have lost something: “If you don’t know what your rights are,” Zappa contends, “how can you stand up for them? And furthermore, if you don’t know what’s in the document, how can you care if someone is shredding it? 

I think we both agree that the current moment can be served better by moving beyond a citizenship dominated by divisive 24-hour news programs and into civic spaces of robust and inclusive storytelling that offer the imaginations and lived experiences of people who have far too seldom been included in the construction of our democratic social order.  One of the privileges of doing the work I do--Directing the Peabody Awards--is we get to see and recognize (perhaps even culturally validate) so many of these storytellers, including two you just mentioned, Issa Rae and Hasan Minhaj. 

The Peabody Awards are an exercise in recognizing civic storytelling at is best. From 1200 yearly submissions, we choose 30 winners and 30 nominees from across news and documentary and entertainment programming in TV and radio and the web--”stories that matter,” as we call them. All are, as you say, vehicles for the emotional connection that comes from stories of the human lived experience. They are simultaneously powerful and moving and invigorating, and at times, downright depressing (as human avarice, deception, corruption, violence, hatred, and so forth typically are). Yet in the end, such civic storytelling is somehow hopeful, precisely because media makers are using narrative to move us to see, recognize, and understand these issues, doing so with tremendous depth and clarity of vision. 

Ultimately, these are stories that appeal to us as citizens of a community (local, national, and global), and within that appeal is the belief that we as a community can, given sufficient willpower, address them. What three bigger issues can one imagine than global ecological disaster through climate change, racism, and guns treated as false idols (protected by America’s sacred text)? Yet as I argued above, I think these new youthful voices we are seeing and hearing are hopeful ones. They are civicly engaged, using stories that have the power to prompt further engagement, perhaps in the process restoring our civic fabric.  And in that, you and I share a degree of civic hope and optimism for restorative justice and change through the product of our civic imaginations. 

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Caty Borum Chattoo is Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, based at American University's School of Communication in Washington, D.C. Her documentaries have aired on TV outlets in the United States and internationally, and she is the author of two forthcoming books about the role of creativity and storytelling in social change (comedy and documentary, respectively). www.cmsimpact.org 

Jeffrey Jones is Executive Director of the Peabody Awards and Director of the Peabody Media Center at the University of Georgia. He is the author and editor of six books, most of which deal with citizenship as relates to popular media and culture.

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Participatory Politics in the Age of Crisis: Caty Borum Chattoo and Jeffrey Jones (Part One)

‘On Shaping New Civic Fabric: Reflections on the Role of Creativity & Culture in Social Justice’

Caty Borum Chattoo (Director for the Center for Media & Social Impact, American University School of Communication)

“What is the problem you’re trying to solve?”

A colleague posed this question in my office a few weeks ago. We were discussing a particular scenario, but I’ve let the query reverberate internally, evolving into a kind of compass to guide a pile of prospective projects. It’s a decent existential place from which to contemplate civic practice and my perspective about the questions that remain and the challenges that lie ahead.

Across different industries, I’ve spent my entire career in service of social justice through the means of media, storytelling, and communication. But only now can I see a deeper understanding of how it all fits together, and more importantly, how it can fuel new curiosities and contributions. A quick glimpse into the journey: As a public health and media researcher out of graduate school, I worked on a philanthropic team that collaborated with entertainment producers and writers to incorporate pro-social HIV messages into top TV programs, and then evaluated how audiences learn and feel and even behave differently after watching. In my work on a national youth civic engagement initiative founded by the legendary Norman Lear, our route to encouraging voter registration and behavior was enabled by entertainment and comedy. I produced (and still produce) social-justice documentaries designed to engage audiences around issues ranging from human rights abuses to environmental justice to global poverty. I was a senior executive at a global communications agency, where I focused on social marketing and behavior-change communication, a research-based strategy that centers around audience targeting and precise messages to encourage healthy behaviors and prosocial norms.

I believe in all of this work, but aspects of it made me feel impatient – or rather, recognition of the fact that the various approaches often work in silos. We were not nearly stretching past the safety of templates and industry traditions and models of doing business. We – people in service of research and strategy around social justice and the role of media – were not sufficiently coloring outside the lines and experimenting. Research-derived messages alone often are too clinical to compel people to care about human rights and social justice challenges. The entrenched organizational and cultural norms of each area of work – scholarly and market research, communication strategy, storytelling – often prevent the kind of cross-pollination that leads to innovation.  

Feeling impatient – and curious – sparked the career revelation and manifesto for my current research, creative, and convening efforts at the innovation lab and research center I now direct: Positive social change is a long game that ebbs and flows, not easily reduced to behavior change or message targeting; the role of creativity and culture is and must be the centerpiece of efforts to expand social justice in the evolving information age. A favorite quote from the author Tom Robbins captures my perspective: “Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”

Enter the networked era – and the awakening of new creativity and activists who have exploited the possibilities of participatory media and pushed past the gatekeepers of the analog media age. Despite the constraints of digital platform dominance – which are considerable, like surveillance and corporate power over the information ecology – social justice activism is enjoying a resurgence of creativity. Activists, particularly new ones, are embracing culture as a mechanism to reflect and increase equity. Traditionally marginalized groups are capturing attention and telling their own stories, not trying to assimilate into versions of themselves deemed acceptable to pre-set power dynamics. It all matters in the remaking of our national and global civic fabric – which I envision as a rich tapestry of human stories and values and heroes and villains and norms that comprise the meaning of “civic” in Henry Jenkins’ articulation of it, as “a shared set of norms and values to which we return.”[1] From my perspective, the effort to build a strong, sustained, diverse, optimistic civic fabric is the one of the most important contributions to long-term social progress. It shapes the values and beliefs that underlie policy and norms alike. Believing and acting on this idea requires that the various “industries” of communication and social justice (foundations, researchers, strategists, storytellers) coalesce and actively collaborate with one another. Shaping civic fabric for the long game compels us to not feel content solely with one short-term effort at a time – to want more than only one measurable metric of influence. This way of thinking insists that civic imagination – envisioning the world we want to create, not only its problems – is a vital ingredient of every effort for change. It requires that storytelling and creativity play starring roles, and that we understand that these ideas are not synonymous with targeted key messages or predictably tidy tactics or a mere constellation of facts we transmit to people. It’s a lens that welcomes hope and optimism into dire social problems that can seem too impossible to tackle, and it encourages empathy and human connection, often more powerful forces than statistics when it comes to shifting perspectives.  

And so, this is one problem I’ve been striving to solve: How can social justice organizations and efforts more readily understand and embrace the profound function of creativity and culture in social change? What research and insights are necessary to help contribute to this work? What does it look like when creativity helps to fuel civic practice?

What it looks like, gleaned from creative projects and book research (in comedy and social-justice documentary storytelling, respectively) over the past several years, is inspiring: A young activist, Amanda Nguyen, passes unprecedented new sexual assault survivor laws partially enabled by engaging the public through comedy. Caring Across Generations works with The Second City, the legendary comedy group, to help empower a marginalized caregiving workforce to tell their stories, training them through improv. Independent documentaries create counter-narratives or break new stories or mobilize publics in ways that expand justice on a range of topics, from domestic violence to sex trafficking to environmental contamination. In the entertainment marketplace, comedy truth-tellers like Hasan Minhaj and Francesca Ramsey are talking about racism and student loan debt – they are connecting with young audiences who absorb the realities of the world around them partially through their generation’s digital-native creativity, in a media ecology where the boundaries between news and entertainment are hopelessly blurred.

And yet, the paradox: We are re-shaping our civic fabric to more readily embrace ideas and people who haven’t traditionally enjoyed full cultural access and cultural citizenship, re-fashioning a way of co-existing with one another as the digital media era has opened the playing field, at least partially. But we’re also engaged in this work while partisan divides expand and trust in news declines. Authoritarian messages tell us that access to information is an enemy of the people. Creativity and free expression are increasingly challenged. The ties that bind us together as publics, not just individual consumers of products – the notion of the “civic” as a shared set of communal ideals – feel weak.

While we embrace the renaissance of creativity, culture, and media power rendered a bit more possible in the evolution of the transforming digital age, we have to face the herculean task: Repairing and re-shaping our torn civic fabric from the damage of a Trump-era attack on news and even creative industries, alongside a culture of violence and hatred, is a generation of work that lies ahead. But fundamentally, it requires that we agree on the very idea that “civic” – that is, the values of public good and equity – is something to strive for, to pass on to a new generation, and that being civically engaged for the sake of community well-being is a shared value in itself. It feels like we are just beginning. Generating the questions and creative ideas and research projects that get us there: Those are the problems I’m trying to solve.  

‘Is “Civic” a Meaningful Word to Young People? No, but they may be an inspiration for rescuing its meaning’

Jeffrey Jones (Director, Peabody Media Center and George Foster Peabody Awards, University of Georgia)

The term “Civic Engagement” was popularized in the 1990s in political science to address what was often seen as a deficit thereof in the American polity. More recently, the employment of the word “civic” has found new uses, including phrases such as “Civic Imagination” (Henry Jenkins), “Civic Hope” (Rod Hart), and “Civic Fabric” (Caty Borum Chattoo). Even the MacArthur Foundation has a large grant project called “Civic Storytelling.” 

We talk about “civic” as if the term is widely understood and utilized. But what if it isn’t? In particular, what if young people—the citizens we are increasingly looking to for help and leadership in mobilizing against gun violence, police violence against minorities, and climate change—don’t know or use the word? This is the question that Andrew Slack, founder of the Harry Potter Alliance, posited in a Facebook post earlier this year. 

When talking about public life in one of my classes recently, I used the word, but then paused to test Andrew’s question. “Civic. How many of you know what that means?,” I asked. A smattering of hands raised, which was then followed by several weak attempts to define it. To cut to the chase, not many of these 18-21-year old students could define the word, and they certainly weren’t using it when conceiving of public life or their role as citizens within it. 

Thus, to follow Andrew’s line of questioning, if young people don’t know or use the word, is it worth rescuing from the Ivory Tower? Do we need to popularize the term, or find a new one? Does the word simply mean “politics?” In short, what is its continued value as an active word of choice by those seeking to address public life?

“Politics,” of course, is and has long been a dirty word, or at least a pejorative one. Politicians has been ridiculed in literature and poetry for millennia, while the modern-day Republican Party has spent the last forty years railing against it. In contrast, the word “civic” not only escapes these burdens but often carries a hopeful invocation in its usage—civic virtue, civic responsibility, civic participation, civic culture. The contemporary uses noted above—imagination, hope, fabric—follow in this same vein, suggesting a belief that there is some form of redemption or pro-social outcome inherent in the word.

I won’t attempt a definition of the word here but will simply point to some of its more common meanings and associations. Cities are best at locating the word in the physical world—civic centers and civic auditoriums are two examples. The word’s cousin, Civil, is used in invoking civil society, or institutions and associations that buttress public life. These include churches, volunteer organizations, youth leagues and activities (sports, band, scouting), libraries, councils and commissions, and so forth.  These are all institutions built by communal labor, entities typically dominated by volunteers more than paid labor. Even the word itself rarely sits alone; it is coupled with some other word to share meaning (unlike “politics”).

At the heart of all of these is community, the connections with others through which we share something in common, often best achieved as a group.  At the local level (as resident in the uses of civic and civil society noted above), such sharing and commonalities is fairly obvious (faith, family, geography, infrastructure). At the national level, though, such sharing seems less of a given. We share ideologies, political parties, and perhaps even positions on issues (taxation, regulation, welfare policies), but the bonds of communal connection are more ephemeral, perhaps best rendered in nationalized symbols, myths, and traditions than in common public self-determination.

Seeing the word civic as intimately related to community brings to mind Jim Carey’s discussion of the ritual view of communication (Communication as Culture), and the root of the word shared with others such as “communion,” “commonness,” and “communication.” A ritual view of communication is linked to “sharing,” “participation,” “association,” and “fellowship.” For Carey, society benefits most from communication systems dedicated less to control (of people) and more toward the representation of shared beliefs that maintain society.

Carey invokes John Dewey in his concern that the public has become spectators of public life rather than participants in its making. The public is asked to ratify a political world that is already represented (by news media, experts, officials, political consultants), not to be active in its construction. For Carey, our institutions of public life, especially our communication networks, have failed the public. Not only has community life atrophied, but the basic skills necessary to be engaged and self-constituting publics have withered as well. “We lack not only an effective press but certain vital habits: the ability to follow an argument, grasp the point of view of another, expand the boundaries of understanding, debate the alternative purposes that might be pursued.” 

What seems vital in this discussion is that public life via “politics” and mass communication has been rendered a spectator sport. What Carey and Dewey are asserting, instead, is that an informed and engaged public must, by necessity, be a self-constituting one, brought together through our communicative acts and institutions that facilitate it. As Carey argues, “what we lack is the vital means through which this conversation can be carried on: institutions of public life through which a public can be formed and can form an opinion.”

What is at stake, I argue, is that public life must be grounded in similar feelings of commonality and community, of connectedness, and of the ability to have these expressions manifest in communicative action. In short, the feelings and forces that constitute “civic” at the local level should be at play in constituting national public life as well. “Politics” is controlled by forces beyond our reach. “Civic” life, however, invests the community as constituents in its making.   

But rather than just proffer theories, I believe the contemporary landscape offers rays of hope for civic practice and public revitalization. In particular, what we are seeing through three specific mobilizations around issues--Gun Control (Parkland students, March for Our Lives), Climate Change (Greta Thunberg, school strike for climate), and racial injustice (Black Lives Matter)—at the intersection of youth and digital/social media is the emergence of a national and global politics much more strongly tied to ethos of local civic practice than old school politics. 

In each instance, the local is strongly impacted and has been part of the reason behind the mobilizations. News presents the visual evidence, but then through social media, young activists naturally turn to the channels through which they conduct their lives to make their case that previous generations, who seem to take the issues of racism, guns, and a warming planet as problems too big to tackle, are implicated (and condemnable) for their intransigence. Of course, these are big national and global political issues that will be dealt with (or not) through traditional political institutions. Yet there is a degree of witnessing, or a testimonial quality to these media engagements. Their invocation is to a commonality of experience, their appeal is through sharing. The personal is political, for sure, but also local.

In sum, this moment where youth + tragedy + digital/social media engagements = political activism has emerged in ways that suggest, at least to me, there is a particularly affecting communal quality here that is more than simply the politics of old. Rather, what I am seeing invokes a new brand of civics--one where the local experience is emblematic of the broader challenges we as a nation and global polity face (somewhat like Stonewall), one where an array of creative cultural expressions will be employed, where new forms of civic imagination (see Jenkins et al., By Any Media Necessary) will be deployed to mobilize and activate a polity that has been asleep for far too long.  There may not be a singular “New Hope” on the horizon, but I think the early evidence suggests that our most recent steps backwards in our national politics has, paradoxically, awakened a civic hope that is just now beginning to take shape.

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Caty Borum Chattoo is Director of the Center for Media & Social Impact, based at American University's School of Communication in Washington, D.C. Her documentaries have aired on TV outlets in the United States and internationally, and she is the author of two forthcoming books about the role of creativity and storytelling in social change (comedy and documentary, respectively). www.cmsimpact.org 

Jeffrey Jones is Executive Director of the Peabody Awards and Director of the Peabody Media Center at the University of Georgia. He is the author and editor of six books, most of which deal with citizenship as relates to popular media and culture.

Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Sangita Shresthova and Joe Kahne (Part 2)

Joe

I think you are right that educators’ need for resources related to these sizable changes is enormous right now.  The basics are clear - there are huge and new opportunities for youth to learn about issues and perspectives, voice their views, mobilize others, and work to shape the conversation.  At the same time, of course, considerable challenges confront everyone when it comes to new digital dynamics.  In schools, concerns range from cyberbullying, to the spread of misinformation, to dysfunctional and toxic exchanges between those holding differing political views.  And, of course, as the blogs in this series will detail, these kinds of dynamics have implications that extend far beyond education.  But since my work is centered in education, I’ll dive in there.  A couple of points:

• Schools are not the solution. Many look to education to solve social problems.  That’s understandable, they are such a convenient access point.  But it’s also clearly problematic.  The problems with our politics reflect deep cultural and structural dynamics.  The idea that teachers and schools can be the solution is clearly unrealistic.

•  Education is likely part of the solution (and of course, at times, part of the problem):  Though not a solution, schools can help.  They do provide an access point - one with funding - and one that reaches, depending on the grade level, almost all youth.  Moreover, education occurs both in and out of school - and institutions that work to support youth outside of school can clearly also help.

• Digital media learning can help advance an equity agenda.  Looking back, I think if there’s one place where we were surprised by the survey data, it was with respect to the notion of the digital divide.  We started, in many respects, assuming that kids of color and youth from lower income families would be subject to the digital divide and that’s not what we found.  There are some sizable inequalities when it comes to certain kinds of technology (owning desktop and laptop computers, for example).  But young people’s levels of engagement in digital forms of participatory politics are relatively equitable across race and socioeconomic status and it is definitely not the case that white youth are leading the way (Details see Section 4  here).  Indeed,  those supporting participatory politics have many opportunities to promote an equity agenda.

• There’s a need to transform civic education for the digital age. Educators and, even more, school systems, have been largely caught flat footed when it comes to the digital revolution and its participatory possibilities.  There are technical challenges, to be sure.  Just getting youth and teachers access to the right equipment and connectivity is hard and expensive.  And there are lots of very real problems associated with online activity ranging from cyberbullying to inappropriate content being accessed and shared.  It might be tempting for some to say, “don’t worry about it,” but few school leaders have that luxury.  This doesn’t mean policies banning cell phones or severely limiting online access in schools are warranted.  But it does mean recognizing that some very bad things can happen online, being respectful of parental concerns, and thinking carefully about how best to support young people. 

These concerns, while relevant, aren’t the biggest problem.  In our work, we’ve found that the biggest need is for a clear vision of powerful models for leveraging the power of new digital media.  Educators have not received much time and support and are only just beginning to identify age appropriate goals, craft plans, develop skills, and leverage the potential.  Helping educators inside schools and out feels crucial.

At the same time, one limit of the “learnings” noted above is that they say more about the potential of this direction than they do about how to get there.  Realizing this potential is hard.  Along those lines, Sangita, I’m wondering if you could say a bit more about the Digital Civics Toolkit that you mentioned above -- Feels like it provides a tangible sense of what educators both in and out of school can do.

Sangita:

Yes, for me working on the Digital Civics toolkit with Carrie James and Erica Hodgin was really such a great opportunity to think through the ways in which the findings of the network could operationalized through a more comprehensive, but still very flexible, framework. 

As we tossed around our ideas about how we could organize it, we zeroed in on the dilemmas that people of all ages, not just youth, face when they think about the ways their civic and political lives move between online and in person contexts and the tools we need to approach the decisions we make. For example, considerations about what to share and what to keep private are painfully familiar to many of us. On one hand, we may want to express our support for social issue or cause; on the other hand, we may worry about the unintended consequences that our actions might have for us, our community. So the approach we took in the toolkit very much stresses that these dilemmas are real and that there are very few simple, black-and-white answers to the questions we face. The risks of digital civics are real, as are the opportunities. We can’t just put our head in the sand and pretend that these things aren’t happening. Rather we need tools that help us navigate the decisions we will inevitably make (dismissing digital media is a decision we make) in ways help us understand and grasp both the potential opportunities and the risks involved. 

Our Toolkit is set up through 5 modules that help educators approach these topics in and outside schools. Drawing on the work of YPP, the modules are: participation (inviting folks to identify issues of shared concern), investigation (sharing tools that can help them learn more and discern what is realiable), dialogue (advice on how to approach conversations about sensitive or divisive topics), voice and action (thinking strategically about how to use media to express views and mobilize others for a cause).

Each toolkit module contains curated activities that educators (and anyone interested in this space) can easily use. The idea is that the educators can pick and choose what works for them; they can also use the toolkit in its entirety.  We have been delighted (and a little amazed!) by the positive response the toolkit has generated since we released it. We have seen social science teachers adopt our materials in their teaching. I have also been excited by the interest that our toolkit generated when I shared it with educators working media literacy.  We see as evidence that there is a real need for resources like this.

Joe:

You know, the interest in media literacy is interesting.  Often, when I talk about participatory politics and participatory media I feel like I can connect well with people who are very interested in media and with some of the academics who are doing cutting edge work, but I lose many teachers - the focus seems marginal to their main priorities.  And when educators focus on the aspects of civic education that they see as central, it feels like the reverse often happens.  So what’s interesting about media literacy is that it does feel like a place where a bridge between these communities can be built.  And, of course, there are many scholars doing innovative work at this intersection like Paul Milhailidis and Renee Hobbs.  There’s also great work done by Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Project on Civic Online Reasoning.  Some additional academic work I really like includes this piece by Ellen Middaugh and Chris Evans that looks at online public voice and this paper by Nicole Mirra and Antero Garcia  that looks at ways digital media has created new opportunities for youth civic expression and action.  And if you want to see what efforts to develop civic literacies can look like in a classroom, check out this video of Chela Delgado teaching her class how to do infographics tied to social issues. 

The other thing I’d say about these kinds of curricular efforts is that there are some strong indications that they work.  For example, we found that young people who received media literacy learning opportunities related to judging credibility were 26% more likely to judge an evidence-based post as “accurate” than one that contained misinformation.  We’ve identified a number of educational strategies that promote this outcome. 

In short, media literacy work, broadly conceived, has much to commend it.  But my foccus here has been centered on schools. And Sangita, you’ve been doing such great work connected to community based education efforts.  What lessons do you take away from that work?  And what are you currently wondering about? 

Sangita:

Though we work with educators, we also spend a lot of time engaging with communities outside formal educational settings where we we see a lot of the practices we described through YPP continuing to play out in even more fraught ways. Even though the arguments that civic and political action through digital and social media is essentially ineffective and dismissable as “clicktivism” or slacktivism” seem to have lost some steam, we do encounter many questions about what the peer-based practices we associate with participatory politics mean for democracy.  I am eager to continue to work through how the thinking, researching, and doing we did through YPP on participatory politics can help us understand and ultimately navigate the current civic and political moment. This is why I am so excited about this series on Henry’s blog as I hope it will help us start to discuss, chart and otherwise engage with the understanding the promise and challenges of participatory politics.

Since YPP, we at Civic Paths@USC have been engaging with these questions through the concept of the civic imagination, which may at first glance appear to be one step removed from the media centric practices we associate with participatory politics. In reality, they are very closely connected. The core premise of the civic imagination is this: “Before you can change the world, you have to be able to imagine what a better world would look like, and across histories and cultures, people have adapted a range of different images and narratives to envision and communicate with others the perceived alternatives to their current condition.”  For us,  the civic imagination is very much situated at the intersection of political engagement and cultural participation in ways that help us better understand how  people are able to tap, mobilize, and sustain the practices we associate with participatory politics.  In fact, the civic imagination was a key observation that grew out of the MAPP exemplar youth community case studies that revealed how groups were able to tap participatory practices to collectively create, debate and deploy inspiring narratives that would sustain their movements over time.

But returning to what I was starting to say earlier, I think there are many questions about participatory politics in 2019. The YPP Network officially ended in 2016, at a moment when politics in the United States, and indeed in other places in the world, took a decisively regressively populist, xenophobic, racist (insert other relevant descriptors here as you see fit) turn. Arguably, some of the practices we associated with participatory politics were very much part of this pivot as were other issues, among them platform vulnerabilities. At the same time, the last few years have allowed us to witness the emergence of movements that truly inspire and potentially expand the scope of what we thought might be accomplished through participatory politics. Here, the #NeverAgain movement started by the Parkland youth and their network of allies immediately comes to mind. So, where are we today when it comes to participatory politics and democracy?

Joe:

I think the point you are making here is so important.  It’s amazing how much the national focus has changed.  Initially, much of the discussion surrounding the kinds of engagement we associate with participatory politics focused on debates between those who worried that such engagement was often a distraction (slacktivism) and those who saw great potential as a new form of engagement - one that blurred with popular culture and was not dependent on elites or institutions.  It was clear that participatory dynamics created space for misinformation or racist ideas to circulate.  But while we were concerned about these, to be sure, I don’t think we realized how deep a problem such dynamics could pose or how powerfully these dynamics could be mobilized by those with particular interests, by institutions, and even by nations in ways that seriously compromise the health of our democracy.  Clearly, going forward, finding ways to respond to these risks will be enormously important  -- something I know commentators in the upcoming blogs will address.  And something I’m very much looking forward to reading.

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Participatory Politics in an Age of Crisis: Sangita Shresthova and Joe Kahne (Part I)

By Any Media Necessary: The New Youth Activism, first published in 2016, will be released soon in a paperback edition. As the authors of that book (Sangita Shresthova, Neta Kligler-Vilenchik, Liana Gamber-Thompson, Arely Zimmerman and yours truly) discussed how to celebrate this milestone, we began to talk about all that had changed since the book’s launch — not only the Trump-ing of America but political crisis and Right-ward lurches in countries all over the planet. We asked ourselves whether the concept of participatory politics made sense as we face those sobering realities.

We decided the best response was to launch a large scale conversation involving others we have engaged with through our work in the Civic Paths project through the years — former Annenberg PhD students, members of the Youth and Participatory Politics Networks, other thinking partners including those who have entered our orbit since the book was published, and folks whose work we admire but who we do not yet know well.

We wanted to insure diversity within the American context and beyond that, we wanted to include perspectives from around the world. So, starting today and running into mid-May, this blog is going to be hosting those exchanges. We will combine back and forth conversations with leading scholars, including all of the original book’s authors, as well as interviews, conducted by my current PhD students, with creative activists from a range of different social movements.

I hope that this process generates new scholarship on participatory politics and also provides would be researchers with a roadmap to what’s already out there. And above all, I hope it provides us all with food for thought as we reflect on what feels like a global crisis in the prospects of a more participatory and democratic culture.

I asked Sangita Shresthova, a co-author of By Any Media Necessary, and Joseph Kahne, the fearless leader of the MacArthur Foundation’s Youth and Participatory Politics network, to outline some of the core assumptions behind our work on participatory politics.

Joe:

A little over 10 years ago, I was approached by Connie Yowell from the MacArthur Foundation about the possibility of launching a “research network.”  And while I knew what those two words meant, I had no idea what she was proposing.  It turns out, she meant something quite wonderful. 

Connie was proposing that a multidisciplinary group of scholars work together for eight years to study the ways young people’s participation with new forms of digital media were transforming their civic and political engagement.  Our charge was conceptual, empirical, and practical.  The hope was that we could develop a conceptual frame (or frames) for these new forms of participation as well as collect qualitative and quantitative data that would enable us to examine how and how much of this activity was occurring.

Of course, we all knew that we were small actors on a big and fast expanding stage -- huge forces including cultural change, technological innovation, corporate power, and government action (and inaction) would dominate.  At the same time, we were excited by the opportunity to watch.  And since it was assumed that these changes opened up important opportunities, challenges, and risks, we also hoped to experiment with varied strategies to try and help youth make the most of these new opportunities.  This effort came to be called the Youth and Participatory Politics Research Network (YPP). 

 In this opening exchange, Sangita Shresthova and I will try to offer a brief overview of the work that followed.  But our goal is not to summarize what ten network members and roughly 30  associated researchers did over those 8 years (If you are interested, links to much of that work is housed here).  Rather we want to provide a bit of background regarding the notion of participatory politics, highlight a some of the work we’ve done and what we’ve learned, and then focus on questions related to the troubling and the inspiring aspects of the current political context and what we can do.

Participatory Politics.  What?

It’s important to state from the start that, for us, not all forms of politics are “participatory.”  Our notion of “participatory” reflects Henry Jenkins’ notion of a participatory culture (Jenkins et al. 2009).  As we have written elsewhere,

Participatory politics [are] interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern.  Importantly, these acts are not guided by deference to elites or formal institutions.  Examples of participatory political acts include starting a new political group online, writing and disseminating a blog post…forwarding a funny political video to one’s social network (Cohen, et al, 2012).

To be clear, participatory acts don’t only occur online – people had social networks before Facebook!  And it is key to recognize that much of what drives engagement in participatory politics are broad cultural shifts that have, for example, undermined the legitimacy of elites and of formal institutions and emphasized peer-to-peer learning.  In addition, we’ve found that non-political peer-to-peer social media activity often creates a pathway to political activity.  The affordances of digital media play a role here - having made it much easier to circulate media content or to mobilize one’s social network on behalf of a cause.  In short, the digital revolution has transformed many fundamental aspects of political life including how people learn about political issues, how they are exposed to and discuss varied perspectives, how money is raised, and how people are mobilized.

So, are these changes good or bad?  Both.

Inspiring and deeply troubling consequences of participatory politics are ubiquitous.  There are countless stories in which individuals and groups with little formal initial structure are able to capture the public’s attention in ways that effectively make people more aware or push back against injustices large and small.  Examples of such efforts include the early days of Hollaback, I Too, Am Harvard, and Yarnbombing. 

And there are also large scale social movements like #Blacklivesmatter, #metoo, #dreamers, and #neveragain that have both shifted public consciousness and helped mobilize for change.  Importantly, many individuals and groups that are often marginal to mainstream media institutions and power structures are able to better tell their own stories and drive narratives through these means.  At the same time, the lack of gatekeepers, when it comes to media circulation, often means that misinformation circulates freely and exposure to incivility becomes more common.  Moreover, the echo chambers facilitated by enhanced choice online may well fuel both increased dysfunctional forms of partisanship and enclaves characterized by racism and other dangerous forms of prejudice and hatred.

Where do we go from here?

Of course, there are many options.  I come to these issues as an educator – my goal is to find ways to support youth civic and political development and action.  At the moment, as we’ll discuss below, the opportunities for this kind of work are expanding rapidly and the need is clear. 

But before diving in to some of that I want to hand the blog to Sangita Shresthova so she can introduce herself and can flesh out some additional dimensions of the changes afoot and their implications.

Sangita:

Thank you for that introduction, Joe. Looking back, the work that we collectively did through YPP seems both prescient and in need of updating given the realities that have shaped our civic and political lives since the network adjourned in 2016.  Hopefully, this blog series will help us start a process that allows us to both reflect on what we found and what we think about all this now.

My entry into participatory politics came through the Media Activism and Participatory Politics (MAPP) Project based at the University of Southern California. Working with Henry Jenkins and other colleagues, MAPP became the homebase for our explorations of new forms of political activities and identities that have emerged from the practices associated with participatory cultures and are impacting how American youth think of their civic and political identities. Tasked with elaborating and detailing such activities, we conducted five in-depth case studies of youth-driven communities and networks that each bridged between cultural and political participation in their own ways.   MAPP’s contribution to the work of the YPP Network, summarized in the 2016 book, By Any Media Necessary, focused on the following five ‘exemplar’ case studies of innovative networks and organizations that recruit, train, and mobilize young activists: Invisible Children (the organization behind the infamous Kony2012 video), the Harry Potter Alliance (a nonprofit that translates Harry Potter stories into real world civic action), the DREAMer movement (made up of youth mobilized around immigration reform), Students for Liberty (a college organization that supports college-aged libertarians), and a range of projects supporting the American Muslim community.

While MAPP’s work did recognize the challenges faced by the groups we studied (surveillance concerns about American Muslims, failure of voice to  translate into political influence in immigration reform, and the damage done to young people involved in the Kony2012 debacle to name a few), our efforts focused mostly on observing, describing and ultimately valuing the activities undertaken by youth through practices associated with participatory politics. We saw our work as providing  a counter-argument to the then popularly prevalent “clicktivism” and “slacktivism” critiques of activism through new media. We wanted to recognize and engage the efforts of these young people as they took action to improve their everyday realities. Here is how we described our findings in By Any Media Necessary:

Young men and women are tapping into the potential of new forms of communication such as social media platforms, spreadable videos and memes, remixing the language of popular culture, and seeking to bring about political change — by any media necessary. In a series of case studies covering a diverse range of organizations, networks, and movements involving young people in the political process — from the Harry Potter Alliance which fights for human rights in the name of the popular fantasy franchise to immigration rights advocates using superheroes to dramatize their struggles — By Any Media Necessary examines the civic imagination at work. Before the world can change, people need the ability to imagine what alternatives might look like and identify paths by which change can be achieved. Exploring new forms of political activities and identities emerging from the practice of participatory culture, By Any Media Necessary reveals how these shifts in communication have unleashed a new political dynamism in American youth. (book description)

As we put our work on MAPP into dialogue with The Good Participation Project, the Youth Activism Project, Black Youth Project and other projects under the YPP umbrella, a complex picture of youth’s engagement with civic and political issues through cultural practices and and digital media emerged as some young people. Some young people were able to tap their peer networks for learning opportunities related to participatory politics. Many others felt they would benefit from more guidance as they navigated these spaces. Looking across the projects we identified the key practices associated with participatory politics as:

●       Investigation - Members of a community collect, and analyze online information from multiple sources, and often provide a check on information circulated by traditional media outlets.

●       Dialogue and feedback - Commenting on blogs, or providing feedback to political leaders through other digital means is increasingly how young people are joining public dialogues and making their voices heard around civic and political issues.

●       Circulation - In participatory politics, the flow of information is shaped by many in the broader community rather than by a small group of elites.

●       Production - In addition to circulating information young people increasingly create original online digital content around issues of public concern that potentially reach broader audiences.

●       Mobilization - Members of a community mobilize others often through online networks to help accomplish civic or political goals. (sourced from YPP website)

These practices then informed our  Educating for Participatory Politics initiative in which various projects developed educator facing materials to support participatory politics in-and out-of classroom settings.  These efforts in turn led to the development of the Digital Civics Toolkit,  a collection of resources for educators to support youth to explore, recognize, and take seriously the civic potentials of digital life. The launch of the toolkit in 2018 felt especially timely.

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The Blind Dead Series and the Spanish ‘Fantaterror’

The ‘Blind Dead’ Series and the Spanish ‘Fantaterror’

By Martin Villare

I confess I am a fan of horror fiction, especially film. My dissertation as an undergraduate focused on “horror and taboo” as I was trying to tackle the representation of the unwatchable on many of the movies released in the 2000-2010 decade, a decade that saw the rise of so-called torture porn and the New French Extremity. After that, I moved on and I decided to focus on Spanish horror film since it had been largely ignored in academia and I believed it had turned to be one of the most interesting representations of the genre in the last years. The international success of The Others, Pan’s Labyrinth and Rec proved audiences that Spanish films could indeed be scary and good, but…why had not Spain produced horror films before? Or, if they had, how come many of those films remain still highly unknown abroad?

On this blog, Craig Ian Mann argues that there is a wider acceptance of horror at large and in part is due to the attention that academy and studios have given to the genre since the 1990s. Indeed, the fact that many journalists and scholars talk about a “Golden age of horror cinema” (see also on The Guardian, Vice, and Culture Vultures) is indicative of this rise of interest even though I agree with Steve Jones and Xavier Aldana Reyes that this trend is based on the fact that the press ignore low-budget horror film or the contribution of many “unknown” artists that have shot cheap, off-mainstream movies. In the specific case of Spanish horror film, the industry in the Iberian country did not start to make these movies until the 1960s. There were, of course, some dramas in the 1940s that even if they had few connections with horror, at least tried to deal with supernatural themes through oneiric narratives. El Clavo (1945), Embrujo (1947) and El huésped de las tinieblas (1948) are some of the examples. However, the great precursor of the Spanish horror boom of the 1960s was Edgar Neville’s La torre de los siete jorobados (1944), a tribute to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and at the same time an homage to Carlos Arniches, one of the best satirical writers of the 20th century in Spain. 

However, Francoism never really helped to promote the national Spanish horror genre. When the Spanish horror boom started in 1968 after the release of La marca del hombre lobo/Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968), only La residencia (1968), directed by the successful Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (creator of the famous and iconic Historias para no dormir for the national TV channel), had been given subsidies. Thus, most of the films made in the next years were low-budget, shot in a few weeks and often co-produced. Luckily for the national horror film industry, worldwide cinema saw a popular resurgence of the horror genre; and after the success of Night of the Living Dead and the end of the Hays Code in the USA, more and more challenging films started to be made. 

So what do we mean when we talk about the Spanish Horror Boom?  To start with, in Spain and in Spanish film studies the trend is called Fantaterror. Paul Naschy, creator of Frankenstein Bloody Terror and its sequels about a crazy wolfman, coined this term because he was annoyed by the pejorative definitions and adjectives the Spanish press used for movies within the genre. The term involves two separate genres that did not have any particular history in Spain: fantasy and terror. And while it is true that we should not confuse both of them (since not every fantasy film is horrific and not every horror film is fantastic), it is evident that the same people who made Fataterror movies from 1968-1975 mixed ingredients from each genre equally.

The resurgence of international horror cinema opened a Pandora’s Box for Spanish horror production. It has been said that the British Hammer had a great influence on some of the most popular Fantaterror films. In fact, these years saw the appearance in Spanish movies of some of the most famous classical monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s creature, the werewolf, the mummy, and of course Amando de Ossorio’s Templar Knights.

 The Templar Knights (also known as ‘the Blind Dead’ series) were an original contribution from Ossorio to the international “monster film boom” that was taking place in many countries. The first instalment was released in 1971 and for four more years three sequels would be eventually released.  The success of La noche del terror ciego was indisputable and proved that the national horror cinema was very much alive. The story of young friends who have to face the resurrection of putrefied boneless Templar Knights conquered the Spanish audience and allowed Ossorio to continue making the rest of the films.

The tetralogy is now considered a cult series. Along with Waldemar Daninsky, the wolfman of Paul Naschy, a character that definitely fits into the same tradition of Craig Ian Mann’s studies on the werewolf, and Dr. Orloff, protagonist of Gritos en la noche/The Awful Dr. Orloff  (1962) shot by Jess Franco in France, is the most famous example of fantaterror. However, unlike its counterparts, the monsters of this series are completely original and do not have any previous filmic reference. This is one of the reasons why I chose these films to talk about the Spanish cinematic tradition of the time during late Francoism and the changes that society was experimenting with. The other reason is that these films explicitly made reference to the political climate of the time. It has been argued that ‘the Blind Dead’ series represents allegorically the threat of Francoism against the progressive movements that were taking place inside the country.  The return of the dead back to life, eager to destroy the new changes of society and its “modernization”, can therefore be interpreted as the fight for the traditional values of Francoism. 

After the success of the first instalment, La noche del terror ciego, which had attracted 789,579 viewers and box office takings of 163,324 euros of that time, the Templars were revived in three consecutive films between 1972 and 1975 (El ataque de los muertos sin ojos, El buque maldito and La noche de las gaviotas).  Ossorio’s formula, which combined Gothic elements, adult themes and saleable scenes of sex and violence, responded to the international success of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. 

Kim Newman describes Ossorio’s Templar as “uniformly tiresome – it seems as if everybody in Spanish horror film is compelled to wear Carnaby street dresses, polo-neck pullovers or macho man medallions”. Although these creations clearly form part of the zombie subgenre, the director is at pains to distinguish his monsters from zombies in a clear attempt to move away from Night of the Living Dead. 

According to Ossorio, speaking in the July 1978 edition of Fandom’s Film Gallery, 

1) The Templars are mummies on horseback, not zombies. A displacement in the relationship in Time/Space slacks their motions. 2) The Templars come out of their tombs every night to search for victims and blood, which makes them closely related to the vampire of myth. 3) The Templars have studied occult sciences and continue to sacrifice human victims to the cruel and blood-lusting being that keeps them alive. 4) The Templars are blind and guided by sound alone. All of this makes them entirely different from zombies or any other kind of living dead creature without soul or reason.

It is interesting to note that in an attempt to differentiate his creatures from zombies, Ossorio gave his Blind Dead films a uniquely Euro-gothic aesthetic by replacing explicit cannibalism with vampirism (a central theme in European folklore) and introducing pseudo-historical details, lashing of soft-core sex, sadism and occultism. By considering these creatures a mixture of vampire and mummy, Ossorio sees attributes of both in the knights. Like the vampire, they return from the dead at night seeking blood (and in the first movie, La noche del terror ciego, they even bite and convert their victims). Like the mummy, they come from a distant past and irrupt into the modern world of the narrative in order to fight it. The films represent a confrontation between tradition and a series of modern elements; namely, the new patterns of sexual behavior emerging from the Spanish economic boom of the 60s and the changing social context. The appearance of the Templars symbolizes ‘the rising of an Old Spain against a new permissive generation,’ something that the films symbolically use in their mise en-scène, iconography and editing. Therefore, we can see a parallelism between the Blind Dead tetralogy and the propagandistic movies (cine de cruzada) of the 40s, the first decade after Franco took office. 

Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)

The mere presence of the monstrous Templar Knights and their monk-warrior uniform is in a way a critique of Francoist institutions and values. Since 1939, when Franco won the war, the regime’s propaganda fought to justify the conflict by saying that it was a crusade for defending the Catholic Church and traditional Spanish values against the Red Horror and the international Marxist conspiracy.  Franco himself accused the Freemasonry of being behind the Republican side.  Obviously we can relate the secret society of Freemasonry with the Templars, a secret Christian organization that was expelled from the Church, and whose legend is used by Ossorio to portray a satanic cult that seeks eternal life.  Although the appearance of these zombie crusaders is anachronistic, they summon up a very recent past, threatening to return at a time when the Francoist state was disintegrating.

It is important, then, to understand what values cine de cruzada and the Blind tetralogy tried to overcome.  When Franco started to run Spain in 1939, prohibitions were enforced by a brutal and unforgiving regime that attempted to unify society, allowing very little personal freedom to the individual and brutally punishing transgressions. The traditional mechanism of social control in Spain, personal honor, or “a good name”, is seen in post-war films (Raza, Sin novedad en el Alcázar, Los úiltimos de Filipinas…) to be more important than personal enjoyment or satisfaction.  These films use history as the basis for a non-historical elaboration of the themes of brotherhood, tradition, crusade, obedience, self-sacrifice and a sort of transcendent experience of masculinity.

Ossorio’s films use the cine de cruzada movies as reference to portray a battle between the traditional values symbolized in the Francoist regime of the 1940s (that still continued to exist in the early 1970s), and the struggle of the new generation of young Spaniards to move forward and recuperate more liberties.

A vision of Francoism through related films, guided by the film Raza, written by Francisco Franco, who became a spiritual guide for a whole host of filmmakers, whom indoctrinated Spain for four decades.

Martín Villares is a PhD student at University of Southern California where he especializes in Spanish Film under Francoism. Previously he had pursued two bachelor’s degrees at University of Carlos III de Madrid (Journalism and Film &Media), a master’s degree at King’s College (Film Studies) and another master’s degree at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spanish Language and Literature). As a researcher, Villares’ main interests are the horror genre and also Spanish films (essentially since the end of the dictatorship until the present). In 2015 he published his bachelor’s thesis (Pornography of death) in a film journal in Spain (Scifiworld) and later on he analyzed the horror film within Spanish cinema in early 70s as part of his dissertation in the English university. At this moment he focuses on Spanish horror in the early 1970s.

Queer Fate and Mass Effect

This is another in a series of posts by PhD students in my Public Intellectuals seminar.

Queer Fate and Mass Effect

By Tyler Quick

Queer folks see potential where our peers see only impossibility. When I am told that escaping the bonds of normativity is hopeless, I think of José Muñoz’s famous summarizing of queerness: “Queerness is not here yet [...] but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” To be queer is to see all the choices that life affords you and still demand better, more just, more beautiful, more empowering options. In a culture increasingly saturated with the illusion of choice, I take comfort in my discomfort with the banality of the available courses of action to realize my dreams. I know that the alternatives I imagine now will one day inspire the resistance we communally undertake to make them possible, perhaps even after I’m long gone and not around to witness it.

This is not a position that I have come to easily, especially in my younger years. I came out in 2008 in an environment that was woefully non-hostile. This isn’t to say that it was welcoming, but rather that the normalization of gay existence underway in much of urban America, especially my hometown in Colorado, obfuscated the queer problems that I was confronting. I was accepted by my peers, but never really understood. I was told to act upon my true desires, but never presented the opportunity. I spent most of the year hiding in my parents’ basement playing video games.

But I wouldn’t just lie there mindlessly mashing buttons. I queered the shit out of my gaming. One of my favorite things to do on a Saturday night, when my friends were at parties trying to enact their heterosexual desires, was to run through the streets of the Imperial City in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, refusing to follow the story-line and instead killing the entire civilian population and hoarding their bodies in the Temple of the One. I would attempt to force pigs to breed with lions in Viva Piñata and constantly disparage my unrequited love for a gender nonconforming octopus in Animal Crossing. The only game that I did not attempt to misplay was released the same year that I came out. It was a space opera RPG called Mass Effect—the only game I perceived to operate on as queer of a logic as my brain.

Mass Effect had the distinction of being one of the first video-games to become mired in the culture wars of the Bush years. The first game in the trilogy made waves because it allowed both male and female main characters to “romance” a bisexual, non-gender blue alien. Predictably, Fox News and right-wing media reacted with moral panic (peep the video above). Bioware, the company that produces Mass Effect responded by increasing the number of same-sex romance options in the in the 2012 final installment of the series’ initial trilogy, Mass Effect 3 (although notably not in the 2010 sequel Mass Effect 2)—which not only allowed for additional same-sex romance options, but also same-sex romance options with characters that had hitherto been considered heterosexual. Mass Effect was at the forefront of “queering” gaming at the beginning of this decade, but that has not left it without its queer discontents.

Cooper Lawrence and anchorman are working hard everyday to serve you lies on a silver platter, lies resulting from lack of research and understanding and complete lack of common sense... Lies like this one.

In an article published this year by the journal Game Studies, Jordan Youngblood makes a salient case against the benevolence of Mass Effect’s queer representation. His argument can best be summarized: “While Mass Effect--and BioWare more generally--may represent LGBTQ characters, it cannot truly represent queer life, queer possibilities, so long as these representations remain tethered to and in service of a set of dehumanizing, abstract gameplay systems that prioritize above all else efficiency, military dominance, and loyalty to the larger nation-state.” He argues that the inclusion of queer characters in the series—an inclusion that he is not alone in pointing out was not always enthusiastically or inoffensively stated—is indicative of a biopolitical ethos that demands “populations either [be] brought into normative line with the goal of saving the world or wiped out altogether.”

[SPOILER ALERT!]

Undergirding his argument is the plot of the original Mass Effect trilogy: at the end of the 22nd Century, our species, quickly being inducted into galactic society, is afforded a spot among the Spectres—the galactic government’s elite paramilitary and reconnaissance agency. This spot is filled by Commander Shepard, the avatar of the player who has no set race, gender, or background. Throughout the trilogy, Shepard, pursuing a rogue Spectre named Saren, uncovers a plot by synthetic, hyper-sentient beings living beyond the galaxy’s edge (the Reapers) to destroy all organic life in the Milky Way. It is slowly revealed that this is a process that occurs once every 50,000 years, and has been an unavoidable fate for several million years for countless sentient races. The trilogy is therefore set up as a battle between one woman/man and destiny.

Mass Effect features what was (at the time) a unique series of game-play mechanisms that lend it a more cinematic feel. First, the game tracks players’ decisions, ranging from the innocuous to the monumental, and uses them to inform future game-play options and plot twists across the trilogy. For example, the player is given the choice in the third installment of the game to reverse a weaponized genetic mutation (the genophage) spread by the galactic government among a rebellious species (the Krogan). To spare the Krogan from genocide has both pragmatic and symbolic benefits for the player. Saving them means that they are added to the Shepard’s army to confront the Reapers, and it also boosts Shepard’s “paragon” score. The choices that the player makes contribute to two different “morality” scores—paragon and renegade—whose accumulation affords players additional dialogue options, team members, and resources to fight the Reapers.

Similar to this is the Mass Effect 3’s “galactic readiness” score, which quantifies the preparedness of the coalition of organic species created by the player to combat the Reapers. Decisions such as the one to either enable or destroy the genophage contribute to another point system that will ultimately determine whether or not the player can defeat the Reapers in the final act. This contributes to what Youngblood describes as “machine thinking” that is necessary to “win” the game, i.e. cognition mediated by biopolitical ideology that prioritizes one specific end as the justification for any and all means. Perhaps choosing mostly “paragon” choices is the recipe for a high galactic readiness, and therefore the destruction of the ultra-genocidal Reapers, but virtuousness is still pursued only in the service of a blind loyalty to the survival of the human race, occasionally at the expense of others species’ and beings’ well-being.

Youngblood’s point is that while the game reluctantly afford players the opportunity to pursue “queer” dating and sexual relationships, it does not afford the opportunity for queer gameplay. Everything, including a system of choices that presents the illusion of free will, is done in service of a totalizing struggle merely to survive. And the real shame is that, in order to survive, one must not think queerly, follow a formulaic recipe for survival, and never give into the impulse to see what happens if an alternative route is pursued.

Henry Jenkins writes that publics of fans, “unimpressed by institutional authority and expertise, [...] assert their own right to form interpretations, to offer evaluations, and to construct cultural canons” that are “antithetical to dominant aesthetic [logics].” Here I am reminded of the massive fan resistance that occurred in reaction to Mass Effect 3’s disappointing ending. Ultimately, no matter what paragon or renegade or readiness or whatever scores the player attains, the end result is that the destruction of the Reapers coincides with the destruction of the galactic infrastructure, as well as (most likely) Commander Shepard. The ending of Mass Effect was so unexpectedly anticlimactic, boilerplate, and boring that the fan outcry was immense.

This, if anything, proves Youngblood’s contention correct. Choices made within a system with a monolithic purpose, be that system the world of a video-game or the neoliberal world we inhabit now, are not choices at all. Freedom in such a regime is merely expanded bondage, only aestheticized as liberty. And queerness here represents only frustration and the ability to imagine better endings without the means to realize them. But the fact that we are imagining differently gestures towards how even the illusion of freedom might lead to its realization.

Special Thanks to The Dollar Shave Club for Sponsoring this video! Get 1st Month of Razors for Only $1 ►► http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/matpat Explore Japan's Arcades with Me in 360º ► https://goo.gl/XLF3pr The end of MASS EFFECT 3 constitutes what is perhaps the worst ending to a video game trilogy in history.

In response to the fan disappointment surrounding Mass Effect 3’s terrible ending, some fans postulated an alternative ending. Calling their theory the Indoctrination Theory, these fans proposed that the entire game was an allegory for free will and that the blasé ending of the series was merely a reaffirmation of its central point. The raison d’être for its choice-based game-play system is that your choices matter, even when it feels like your fate is predetermined.

The Indoctrination Theory is predicated on one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit of evidence and a whole lot of supposition. Throughout the game, in the dialogue interface, renegade choices appear on the dialogue wheel in red, while paragon options appear in blue. Likewise, if a player makes it to the very end of the game, the master A.I. that controls the Reapers presents the player with the option to either destroy the Reapers (colored red) or try to control them (colored blue).

In the original Mass Effect, Saren, the rogue Spectre agent, attempts to cooperate with the Reapers, but is slowly indoctrinated by them through an ill-explained sci-fi version of mind control to do their bidding. Throughout Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard is shown to experience the symptoms of indoctrination, including hallucinations, crippling self-doubt, and even loss of motor control. The theory therefore postulates that throughout the third game, Shepard is being slowly indoctrinated, and that any choice but to destroy the Reapers is merely succumbing to indoctrination. It further suggests that the red-coded destroy button represents an inversion of the game’s choice-based gameplay. Players are conditioned to understand the renegade option as both the morally wrong option and the option least likely to lead to a tactical victory, according to the mechanics of the game as experience thus far (i.e. the galactic readiness feature). The Indoctrination Theory hypothesizes that Mass Effect is a story about freedom of consciousness as much as freedom of choice, and that the optimal ending has nothing to do with the Reaper’s defeat, but rather in learning to do the right thing as you see it regardless of how you have been conditioned to understand what doing the right thing means.

Bioware threw cold water on this theory by releasing a slightly less dissatisfying ending to the game, but its existence reveals that even though Youngblood might be right in asserting that Mass Effect is not a queer game, it may still yet be an inceptor of a queer way of engaging with games and media. The illusion of options for resistance presented Mass Effect’s fan community to imagine what resistance would look like, and the opportunity to forcibly inject it into the “canon” interpretation of the game. Years later, as I look back upon this series from the vantage point of someone who has now been openly queer for eleven years and seen even the “queer” community lapse into neoliberal normativity, I wonder if the illusion of existent freedom provides me with the cultural capital to imagine actual freedom. And while I await with Youngblood “a future where BioWare games feature a set of queer characters whose worth is established on terms beyond their eventual use and support of missions of conquest within a biopolitical context,” I am still curious as to how the logic of a game that falls so far short of such an aim produced a theory that made imagining such a future possible for me.

————

Works Cited

Jenkins, H. (2013). Textual poachers : Television fans and participatory culture. (Updated 20th anniversary ed.). New York: Routledge.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia the Then and There of Queer Futurity New York: New York University Press, 2009.

Youngblood, Jordan. “When (and What) Queerness Counts: Homonationalism and Militarism in the Mass Effect Series” Game Studies.

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Tyler Quick is a second-year PhD student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, studying queer theory, neoliberalism, and the public sphere. He can be found here on Instagram and Twitter.

A Dream is a Wish You Manifest into Your Own Reality: Celebrating All Disney Princesses as Feminists

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts created by PhD students in my seminar, Public Intellectuals: Theory and Practice

A Dream is a Wish You Manifest into Your Own Reality: Celebrating All Disney Princesses as Feminists by Lauren Alexandra Sowa

A teenage girl escapes a reluctant assassin by fleeing through an uncharted wilderness and finds refuge in managing and organizing a half-dozen miners (each with a unique, if not challenging, personality). A compassionate young woman, who is trapped in a 24/7 care-giving position through an abusive family dynamic, finds the courage to fight against her circumstances with strength and kindness. An heiress, with a hit on her life, must spend sixteen years living under an alias, separated from her family, yet makes the best of circumstances by caring for the environment; however, she is captured and drugged nonetheless, but still has the tenacity to recover from the ordeal with grace. Are these the plot-lines from new, gender-norm-breaking, female empowerment films? No – they are the plot-lines of the three original Disney Princess fairy-tales: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. In my summarization of these narratives, I have not misrepresented the heroines, but bestowed credit to them where it is often overlooked (if not negated). Disney Princesses are often critiqued for normalizing gendered behavior, specifically emphasizing their unrealistic beauty standards and focused goal of obtaining a prince to fulfill their happily-ever-after. However, as a Disney Aca-Fan and feminist, I object to this over simplification. This is not to say that I blindly defend Disney and their depiction of the Princesses, but I do take issue with this all or nothing stance. I agree with the critics in that the Disney Princesses uphold gender norms regarding dress and beauty. Other critics point to studies that indicate an increase in gender-stereotypical behavior in young girls who actively participate and play in the Disney Princess story-verse. But before pulling an Ursula and trapping the princess’ voices in a conch shell, let us take a hard look at the reality. To call the Walt Disney Company a major media conglomerate is an understatement. Much like Maleficent, the company has turned into a dragon that just keeps growing bigger and stronger. Disney culture and fandom is prevalent, powerful, and indomitable. However, when faced with some of Disney’s problematic narratives and images, I’m certainly not suggesting we just “let it go.” But I think it is incredibly fair, if not preferable, to take both a critical and celebratory view of these highly visible and influential narratives that are both culturally significant and pervasive.

There are many ways to be a feminist. For me, being a feminist and a Disney fan are not mutually exclusive. I would even argue that Disney princesses ARE feminists. Feminism not only believes in the equality of all genders, but also the equality of all races, classes, sexual-orientations and abilities/ disabilities as well as care and consideration for the environment. As I will detail in this blog post, all the Disney Princesses are feminists. They fight for their goals, follow their instincts, and treat everyone (regardless of class or beauty) with love and respect. They are also greatly impassioned by the natural environment, to the point of personifying their animal companions (show of hands of fans who can’t bear to order a flounder at a seafood restaurant – I know I can’t). Still, many viewers focus on the Princesses’ lack of agency and need for a man to be their hero. In recent years, and most likely in response to this criticism, Disney has released a series of princesses who more clearly defy their own stereotype. However, this does not mean that the previous princesses lacked autonomy or feminist qualities. Regardless of a Prince Charming, they have been breaking stereotypes and motivating young girls to fight for their goals with or without the presence of a romantic plotline. This post will explore the self-motivated, non-romantically driven actions of the Disney Princesses. Furthermore, I will look at a second, participatory project inspired by these narratives: the Dream Big, Princess initiative, where 21 young, female filmmakers from 13 countries created short films about inspiring women. Here is an example of the juxtaposition of the Dream Big, Princess campaign with the dreams of Disney’s animated Princesses.

The #DreamBigPrincess photography campaign encourages kids around the world to dream big. Thank you for dreaming big! By liking and posting #DreamBigPrincess photos on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, you helped Disney Worldwide Services achieve our goal to donate US $1M to the United Nations Foundation's Girl Up campaign.

I have classified the Disney Princesses into three groups, mostly by era, to discuss them with more clarity. Understanding the cultural context of each time period is essential to grasping how each princess was breaking normative behavior. Disney’s Golden Age Princesses include Snow White from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella from Cinderella (1950), and Aurora from Sleeping Beauty (1959). Disney’s Renaissance Princesses include Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jasmine from Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas from Pocahontas (1995). And Disney’s Post-Modern Princesses include Mulan from Mulan (1998), Tiana from The Princess and the Frog (2009), Rapunzel from Tangled (2010), Merida from Brave (2012), Anna and Elsa from Frozen (2013) (although Elsa technically goes from Princess to Queen a quarter of the way through the film), and Moana from Moana (2016).

Of the Post-Modern Princesses, the earliest and most obvious example is Mulan (1998). While Mulan falls into the generally accepted Disney Renaissance era, her personality and narrative align more with this most recent group of princesses, and I see her as the transition into this modern depiction. Mulan is not “a perfect bride or a perfect daughter” by her society’s standards. However, to save her aging father, she cuts her hair, borrows his armor, and poses as a man to fight in the upcoming war. She is not driven by romance, nor is she looking to be rescued. She struggles in a male-dominated world to prove herself and her capability. The only way she could be taken seriously is to shed all feminine attributes and learn to wield her strength both emotionally and physically.

Other examples of Disney Princesses who exhibit more apparent and straightforward examples of feminism are Tiana, Merida, and Elsa. Tiana is an independent woman who works hard in a New Orleans’s café and takes control of her life by pursuing her dream of running her own restaurant one day. Particularly moving lyrics from her song “Almost There” state:

“Trials and tribulations

I've had my share

There ain't nothin' gonna stop me now

'Cause I'ma almost there

I remember Daddy told me

Fairy tales can come true

You gotta make 'em happen

It all depends on you

So I work real hard each and every day

Now things for sure are going my way”

The song "Almost There" from Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" All content in this video belongs to Disney

Now, if this song doesn’t inspire young girls to work hard for what they want and not depend on a man to make it happen for them, I am not sure what does.

Moving forward, both Merida and Moana are strong-willed, fierce adventurers, whose stories focus on familial love and self-realization.

Then, there is Elsa, an incredibly powerful (figuratively and literally – the woman can build an ice palace and create a talking snowman with some serious weather control powers) princess who then actually becomes a Queen. Although we didn’t need yet another addition to the already over-saturated line-up of blonde princesses, Frozen IS based on a Scandinavian fairy-tale. The less obvious feminist (and non-blonde) from Frozen is Elsa’s little sister, Anna. Anna falls in love with the first man she sees, to which Elsa responds, “You can’t marry a man you just met” (a blatant critique of and attempted reconciliation with past princess narratives). And while this feels unfair to Anna, and romantic love is a prevalent frame-of-mind for her, the majority of the movie focuses on her personal journey to save her kingdom and her sister, even putting herself at risk several times without hesitation to sacrifice her life for Elsa. She shows that her bravery and independence is not reliant upon a man – the act of true love is for her sister.

Rapunzel has also been met with some criticism, as on a surface level, she falls into stereotypical Disney Princess tropes of femininity (but serious #hairgoals, amiright?). However, she navigates the adventure wielding her frying pan as a weapon and acting independently of Flynn Rider (who she is falling for, but who was only playing her initially) and her overbearing Mother (who is really just her kidnapper). She also has been locked in a tower for 18 years, so I think we can cut her some leeway (but not her hair, because then it loses its power).

Disney’s Renaissance Princesses are a complicated group to unpack. Belle is usually touted as a feminist; but if to qualify as a feminist one just has to have a love of reading and not want to marry Gaston, we might need to adjust the bar we set for Disney Princesses. Belle is an independent thinker and a woman of action. She rushes on horseback into the woods to rescue her father when he doesn’t return from the invention convention. She sacrifices her freedom to save her father from The Beast. Belle doesn’t heed The Beast’s “rules” or warnings from her animated, inanimate object friends and does as she likes whilst in his castle. She is smart, stubborn, and isn’t going to be controlled by anyone, no matter how physically overbearing he (Gaston or The Beast) might be.

Princess Jasmine is an interesting case through which to examine feminist strength. Highly offensive examples of Said’s Orientalism (are we in Saudi Arabia? Is that the Taj Mahal? Lyrics such as: “where they cut off your nose if they don’t like you face, it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home”) aside, Jasmine is undervalued. She is the first Disney Princess of color, which made her an important figure for diversity and inclusivity in Disney media. Yes, Disney still has a long way to go in this regard, and Princess Jasmine marks the beginning. She is criticized for her overtly sexualized attire, however I would argue that body shaming or slut shaming is an un-feminist behavior. The clothing of women is a complicated topic, and Jasmine deserves respect whether or not she bares her midriff. And she is, after all, the first Princess in pants.

Jasmine is resistant to the patriarchy’s attempt to dictate her future. She refuses every royal suitor and is unwavering in her belief that she should have control over her life. She even disguises herself as a peasant to escape the palace and shows compassion for those of lower class status than herself, especially when she tries to help give food to a young child on the streets.

Pocahontas is the embodiment of environmental feminism. She is deeply connected with nature and compassionately shares her views on sharing space and caring for living things with Captain John Smith. Falling in love with him happened naturally, but was never her goal. In fact, she wasn’t too excited about her arranged marriage to Kocoum. She sings:

“Should I choose the smoothest course

Steady as the beating drum?

Should I marry Kocoum?

Is all my dreaming at an end?”

Just around the Riverbend from Pocahontas with lyrics ON SCREEN. Disney owns everything. *I and a lot of other people an relate to this sing in many ways. ~Enjoy.

Pocahontas, akin to Jasmine, wants more from life than to be married off as a Princess bride. They want the agency to choose or not choose love, rather than be told who they must love by a patriarchal system. It is their set of given circumstances that are un-feminist, not their behavior.

As this blog is called “Confessions of an Aca-Fan,” I would like to take the opportunity to make a confession here. I have never had a positive response to Ariel, because I was always frustrated that she wanted to physically change who she was to get a man and could only do so by literally giving up her voice. However, upon further reflection, I have misjudged her. In the first 10 minutes of the film, she breaks all the rules of a damsel in distress when she is the one who saves the prince, not the other way around.

She uses brute strength to pull a man twice her weight through the ocean and onto the shore. Furthermore, her fascination with life out of the sea stems much deeper than her infatuation with Prince Eric. She has been collecting shore-life artifacts her whole life. “Gizmos and gadgets aplenty” are not something you accumulate overnight. Yes, she wants to win Prince Eric’s heart, but her dream is to be “up where they walk, up where they run, up where they stay all day in the sun.” She also has the impression that on the land “they don’t reprimand their daughters.” This, we know, unfortunately is not true. The land is just as patriarchal as the sea. But the important focus here is that she yearns for a place where she can make her own choices as one of the “bright, young women.”

The final group of Disney Princesses are the original three, the Disney’s Golden Age Princesses, which brings me full circle (of life). Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora demonstrate strength and grace under exceedingly unfair circumstances. Both Snow White and Cinderella were betrayed by the women in their lives who were supposed to give them care and protection. Aurora was cursed by an enraged woman who was not on the invite list. These women are not victims of patriarchy, but survivors of abuse at the hands of other women. Yet, rather than be embittered, they rise above their given circumstances, care for the creatures around them, and take risks to survive and thrive. Feminists are in romantic relationships and feminists are not in romantic relationships. For these Princesses specifically, if one wants to judge their actions solely on their narrative ending with a Prince Charming, be my (our) guest. But to do so by minimizing the complexity of their given circumstances and writing them off as prince-crazy social climbers, is quite simply, bibbidi- bobbidi-dumb!

All this to say, it is not a huge stretch to connect the actions of all the Disney Princesses to the functionality of the Dream Big, Princess campaign. The Dream Big, Princess campaign is just one example of how Disney Princesses inspire real world feminist behavior in their fans. Disney provided the opportunity to 21 young filmmakers to each shoot a short docu-video through their interviews with a global, female role model who embodies the resourcefulness and grit of Disney Princesses. These role models followed their dreams and worked hard to make them her reality. The young film makers featured were: Luiza Yoshida Bonifacio (age 16) of Brazil, Javiera Hernandez Morales (age 19) of Chile, Eugenie Chereau (age 21) of Argentina, Alyssa Schiavon Gandini (age 22) of Brazil, Eloisa Chapa Ortiz (age 15) of Mexico, Bethel Kyeza (age 16) of the UK, Sarah Gulley (age 19) of New Zealand, Lola Lizot (age 18) of France, Marisa Torre (age 17) of the USA, Marisa Umeh (age 18) of the USA, Soukaina Tachfouti (age 18) of Morocco, Tapiwa Maoni (age 18) of Malawi, Kayla Adams (age 18) of the USA, Louise Zeng (age 17) of the USA, Xiaochun Zhang (age 22) of China, Madhurima Khadilkar (age 19) of India, Nivaal Rehman (age 17) of Canada, Maryam Rehman (age 17) of Canada, Mariana Anaya (age 17) of Mexico, Jessica Zhang (age 16) of the USA, and Maud Webster (age 16) of the UK. These young women represent a diverse array of cultures and perspectives. This project gives them the opportunity to develop their media making skills and highlight the journey of female athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and activists. This link showcases their docu-videos.

 Furthermore, during the time of the campaign, for every photo or video shared by anyone with #dreambigprincess, Disney donated a $1 (up to $1 million) to Girl Up, the United Nations Foundation’s initiative supporting girls’ leadership and empowerment. Following this hashtag leads to thousands of posts from women of all ages sharing their stories of strength and perseverance. Yes, this is absolutely a marketing campaign disguised as an empowerment project. Moreover, it is an example of commodity activism. The Walt Disney Corporation benefits financially from this project as this drives the sales of its products. However, that does not negate this project’s positive impact; the girl participants are given a platform and their work will in turn inspire others. My contention is that Disney, its parks, stories, and merchandises will not turn into pumpkins at the stroke of midnight. This cultural phenomenon is here to stay. Therefore, it is advantageous to celebrate the ways in which we can tease out the good, the empowering, and the educational from this storyverse.

We can all learn from the Disney Princesses’ moxie. They persevere through loss, discrimination, and obstacles. More than their romantic relationships and physical appearances, they are heroines. So when young children say they want to be like a Disney Princess, we should support them. These characters and narratives don’t just teach that dreams come true; they teach that dreams can be obtained through persistence and bravery.

Lauren Alexandra Sowa is a 3rd year Ph.D. student and Annenberg Fellow in Communication at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She holds a Master of Communication Management degree from USC’s Annenberg and received her BFA with Honors in Theatre with a Minor in Sociology from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Currently, Lauren is studying representations of intersectionality in episodic narratives through casting practices and exploring how audiences utilize media to perform and/or redefine identities. Broadly, her primary intellectual interests include Cultural Studies, Fandom, Television/ Pop Culture, and Intersectionality. Lauren is also a member of SAG-AFTRA and AEA having performed in national commercials, television shows, and professional theater productions in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. She studied Improvisation at Second City in Chicago and trained in the Professional Acting Shakespeare Program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London (RADA). 

Understanding the Rules and Norms at Play in Magic: The Gathering

This is the third in a series of blog posts created by PhD students in my seminar, Public Intellectuals: Theory and Practice

Understanding the Rules and Norms at Play in Magic: The Gathering

by Calvin Liu

Imagine this scene for a moment.

You’re playing a game of poker with three other people, their names are Sam, Zhu, and Maria. These people are strangers to you, you saw them playing across the room and they invited you into the game. The game isn’t for any sort of real stakes. All the winnings amount to here are bragging rights. Throughout the game, you get the sense that these people know each other. Listening in on an in-joke here and there, you gather that they at least regularly play this game together. Occasionally you get included into the conversation, exchanging bits and pieces of yourself and your experience playing poker. The game winds down to a close and it’s time to reveal hands. Maria reveals a pair of tens. Zhu reveals a pair of fives. The two laugh. Sam reveals a pair of threes. “Well that’s just how it goes sometimes,” he says with a smile. Finally it’s your turn to reveal. 

You put down a Royal Flush. 

The other three go quiet. After a moment of awkward silence, they push their chips towards you and you play another round. This round is a little quieter than the last. The three other players still talk between each other, but the conversation feels different this time. You weren’t exactly clear on the context of their conversations earlier, but you at least could glean some overarching meaning. This time though, it’s inscrutable. All the esoteric references the players throw between each other is like some lost language to you. 

You push through it and keep playing, after all, you’re the stranger in the group. Again, it’s time to reveal hands. Maria shows a pair of eights and looks at Zhu. Zhu shows Ace high in hand and shrugs. Lastly Sam rolls his hand onto the table, showing 7 high and passes you an expectant look. 

With a small pit developing in your gut, you reveal a Full House.

More silence ensues, and you quickly excuse yourself form the table, feeling you’ve spent your luck for the day. You take a seat back at another part of the establishment and bury your eyes in some article. Over time, you hear the poker table returning back to its light-hearted socialization. You keep to your article, glad that you don’t find yourself being invited back.

This story is a loose allegory of some of my own experiences. But, rather than poker, my awkward little games were in the trading card game, Magic: the Gathering. I hope the tale to serve as a more accessible gateway to talk about Magic: the Gathering and thinking over group engagements with play.

For those unfamiliar, Magic, also known as MTG, is a high fantasy trading card game created by Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Magic is a long-lived game with plenty of its own history and stories to tell that many people have written at length about. I myself have enjoyed the game since 1998, which would mean I’ve been playing Magic for as long as I’ve been in the educational system. But, this blog post is going to be written primarily for people who are unfamiliar with the game. For that reason, I won’t be going too much into the mechanics and weeds of Magic and want to focus more on what’s happening between the people playing the game. 

Normally, Magic is played with two people, with each player aiming to defeat the other through a variety of means. However, Magic is a multimodal game with many different rulesets and styles of play that players may choose to follow. I wanted to focus on one popular style of play, and my preferred format: Commander. Commander, also known as EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander), is a uniquely multiplayer format. Rather than the regular 1v1, EDH usually involves a total of 4 players pitted against each other in an all-out free-for-all. The objective in EDH is the same as a 1v1 game, have all the other players defeated.

The philosophy of the game mode also differs from most forms of play. While many formats emphasize prowess at defeating your opponent, EDH instead focuses on the social aspects of play. Players are expected to socialize during, before, and after a game is played. You can see this reflected in the rules committee’s philosophy for EDH.

The free-for-all environment and social nature of this format leads to all manners of political shenanigans. Bargains are made, alliances are formed, and quickly broken, targets are marked, changed, and remarked. Common phrases and deals one might hear in a game of EDH are “I won’t kill you if you help me kill that other player,” or “Give me these resources or I will hurt you,” and “That player’s a jerk/too powerful/slowing down the game, let’s team up and kill them.” 

Yet, with all these social dimensions added on, EDH is still a game of Magic: the Gathering. The rules of the game still dictate your victory by outperforming and eliminating the other players. However, despite having codified rules, a whole separate set of expectations and norms develop among playgroups of EDH. Recall the example above about poker. Nothing in the rules of poker prohibits you from displaying a Royal Flush or a Full House. The game rules in fact encourage you to make such moves to ensure your success. Yet, making those moves may incur the scorn of and distaste of other players. Socialization may suddenly become closed to you. Coded conversations and esoteric reference, may be used as forms of exclusion or conspiracy. 

Why would playing the game the way the rules suggest you do, incur such social and political sanctions from other players? There are many factors, but the ones I wanted to focus on are social contracts and invisible social rules. 

Recall that EDH positions itself as a social format. The format encourages players to interact beyond the confines of the game environment. The mechanical rules of the game of Magic, thus serve as a proxy for social interaction. The way a person interacts with these rules and types of cards they choose to play are read as statements about their personality, intent, decorum, and experience. As these games play out, the ways that people play form a social contract where invisible rules are drafted. Actions in a game that incur social and political penalties are not necessarily about whether game rules are being violated, but whether these social contracts have been breached. Certain cards and interactions become taboo as they become indicative of undesirability socialites within a group.

For example, when playing powerful cards that assure victory, the user may hear phrases such as “I wanted to keep the game going,” or “Why do you have to be so competitive?” No mechanical rules are violated in these situations, the game allows for such cards to be played and encourages such victories to be won. Yet, the unwritten social rules in this group encourage the game to endure to prolong interaction. These phrases are indicative of social values that focus on human interactions over game objectives. By choosing to win, that player effectively makes a counter statement along the lines of “I don’t want to socialize with you further on this.”

These social contracts are not limited around concepts of victory or success in Magic. In another vein, some groups hold taboos towards cards that prolong the game, which may be indicated with phrases such as “You’re just durdling” or “Just get on the with the game.” In these scenarios, playing cards that prolong the game may be read as statements of “I am forcing you to engage with something you don’t want to.” Each playgroup develops its own preferred set of socialites, codifying them as “house rules.” However, these rules may not necessarily be visible to strangers and newcomers. This can cause friction for people trying to join new groups.

Consider again the idea that game rules serve as proxies for how we socialize between each other. The important part of that statement is the word proxy. It’s not a direct conveyance of social values and behaviors, it’s a relay, a representation.  This allows for some nuanced forms of socialization. Let me give an example in one of my personal experiences playing EDH. 

I was playing amongst a group I was generally unfamiliar with. We’re having a good time, talking about our strategies and little idiosyncrasies of Magic: the Gathering. It was our third or fourth game at a campus cafeteria and it was already well into the night. Everyone else at the cafeteria had left, but we had stayed to play one last game. Mid-way through the game, I play a card called Prophet of Kruphix, a card that has a reputation for being one of the more powerful ones in the game. There’s a bit a groaning from my opponents. 

Up til now, the atmosphere had been friendly and casual. But when I play Prophet of Kruphix, a switch flips. My opponents quickly make a pact to get me out of the game. The talks between them become more tactical as how to disrupt my plans or complaining how unfairly powerful Prophet of Kruphix is. The mirth of the earlier conversations is gone, and I begin shuffle in my seat. It’s apparent I’ve committed some faux pau, but I keep playing, hoping the tension would end along with the game. Through what I felt was a series of good decision making, I am able to survive the team up and pull myself to victory.

My opponents are less than pleased. They grumble that my victory had been off of one card. I could have listed a handful of other play decisions I made, but instead I offer an apology, saying that I included the card due to its synergy with my strategy. One of the players raises their voice at me and exclaims “Shut up!” They then walk off, pointedly leaving me by myself after a whole evening of what had otherwise been a pleasant exchange of interests. From the distance I can hear them still complaining about Prophet of Kruphix for a little while longer, but it quickly settles back to chat about Magic in general, just without me included.

That experience has by far, been the worst experience I have had in my twenty years of playing Magic: the Gathering. Though why does it still sting so personally for me, when my opponents main complaints were about the card and game? The way we play games and the ways we behave in reference in them, allows expressions that may not be appropriate in “normal” socialization. At face value, the opponents teaming up on me and shutting me off from the conversation could be read as a game statement of “You have too much of an advantage and must be dealt with.” But there’s a subtext here, one not just about my playstyle and my position in the game, but about how those inform the type of person I am seen to be and my ability to assimilate into the group. 

By opting to play an exceptionally powerful card, I break a social contract that is obviously apparent to the group, but invisible to me as a newcomer. While from my perspective, playing such a card was an exercise in my knowledge and prowess of game interactions, this violation proxies certain perceptions on me as a person: “He’s not skilled enough to win without this card,” or “He’s too competitive, he’s a killjoy.” Saying such directly, especially in a public space, would be inappropriate. Thus, they were said indirectly through complaints about the card, targeting and collusion. These modes of play acted as proxy for the exclusion and ostracism that would follow once the game was finished. 

If only these things came with a manual for newcomers.

—————

Calvin Liu is a communications scholar with a BS and MS in Information and Computer Science from the University of California, Irvine. Calvin takes an interdisciplinary approach of exploring the role of play. He examines how forms of play and technology act as proxies for the construction and negotiation of social rules. His previous work involved an ethnography into the furry fan community, a subculture sharing an interest in anthropomorphism and zoomorphism. His work in the furry subculture merged posthumanist framing alongside new media literature to analyze how identities are negotiated across artifacts and performances. Currently, Calvin is examining the relationship play has towards the construction and performance of identities. You can reach via email (liucalvi@usc.edu)

Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don’t (Fit Stereotypes): Navigating Contradictory Expectations of Women In The Workplace

This is the second in a series of blog posts created by the PhD students in my Public Intellectuals: Theory and Methods seminar.

Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don’t (Fit Stereotypes): Navigating Contradictory Expectations of Women in the Workplace

by Sierra Bray

“When I’m assertive, I’m a bitch. When a man is assertive, he’s a boss. But when you’re a girl, you have to be, like, everything. You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy… and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice it’s like… I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being!”

-Rapper Nicki Minaj on facing impossible expectations in her career

In the spring of the first year of my communication Ph.D. program, I received a message on Facebook from a former colleague, “Jessica,” whom I worked with at a previous marketing job years before starting graduate school. Besides occasionally liking each other’s social media photos (she has very cute kids), we hadn’t communicated much since we were coworkers. So, it was much to my surprise when Jessica privately messaged me—not with casual pleasantries, but to voice her feelings about a Facebook post I had recently shared about my research. 

My post had outlined some results of an experiment that my colleagues and I presented at an academic symposium [SB1] (complete with a picture of us standing next to our presentation with arms outstretched like Vanna White—I will forever be pro-corny photo poses). 

In a nutshell, our study showed that males tend to perceive an assertive woman in the workplace (one who spoke dominantly and directly) as less likable than a more passive woman. The finding that raised the most eyebrows was that older men in particular perceived the assertive woman as less likable and less competent. In any case, women who spoke up at work didn’t seem to fly too well with men. 

Though the presentation at the symposium gained us a few interested nods and technical questions about our methods, I was blown away by how much my Facebook post resonated with many women in my life who had dealt with negative blow-back from acting assertively at work. My beloved aunt Shelly added a succinct yet powerful comment on my post:

This is also where “Jessica” comes in. Her private message to me read:

As evident in this short note, I always remembered Jessica as someone with a bold personality, a sharp sense of humor, and most importantly, someone who was damn good at her job. That these traits would ultimately push her into so-called “bitch counseling” (I hear HR professionals shuddering at this phrase in the distance) is but one personal story of women who have dealt with these biases at work when acting assertively.

congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends herself against tweets that ridicule her for not looking “spirted, warm and original as usual” as Donald Trump gave the State of the Union address.

In my own experience, I constantly find myself trying to gracefully walk the line between being competent and confident, yet likable and conscientious of others in professional settings. Sometimes this aspiration manifests in something as simple as fussing over how many exclamation marks to use in an email—sound familiar to anyone? If this straddling seems like a false dichotomy[SB2] , that’s because it is one. Of course, one can be direct and get along well with others—in fact, I believe these are traits that everyone (of all genders) should at least strive to exhibit. 

However, research shows that subconscious attitudes push people to see these types of traits as binaries: if women act more assertive, they’re often automatically perceived as less of a team player, and vice-versa. Even more troubling, people tend to punish women who don’t always exhibit traditionally “feminine” stereotypes, such as being a team player, caring about relationships over self-advancement, and using more passive communication. Women who instead show more traditionally (and stereotypically) masculine traits at work—like using direct communication, being assertive, and acting confidently—can frequently face negative attitudes from others. 

These types of attitudes can be especially vicious toward women in leadership positions. At the time of writing this article, the first results from Googling “female bosses” drum up troubling headlines (and curiously all images of white, femme women) like: 

“8 Tips to Survive Working for a Female Boss”

“What’s Up with Bitchy Female Bosses?”

“Female Bosses: Why do Women Tear Down Other Women?”

“Female Bosses are a Nightmare, Reveals Study”

Screenshot of the top six Google Image results for “female bosses” as of February 2019.

(Side note: if interested in harmful representations that arise from search engine algorithms, you must read Safiya Noble’s brilliant work, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.) 

The fancy term for this scorn against women in leadership positions is role congruity theory, originally coined by scholars Alice Eagly and Steven Karau. The theory suggests that people who adhere to traditional gender norms are rewarded, and those who violate gender norms will likely experience backlash.

The result for women in the workplace? We are perceived less favorably than men as candidates for leadership positions, and when we are in leadership positions, we tend to face negative attitudes—thus, circling back to Jessica’s Facebook message about “bitch counseling.”

These types of gendered expectations can be especially stifling for women of color. In Henry Jenkins’s Public Intellectuals class, we recently read the piece Black Women Intellectuals by feminist scholar and author bell hooks. In the piece, hooks outlines how sexism and racism reinforce the idea that “Black women are on this planet primarily for the purpose of serving others” (p.153)—and that Black women may not pursue intellectual professions at least partly because of these expectations. 

Feminist author and scholar bell hooks

hooks notes how intellectualism and the life of an academic requires time to isolate oneself and to emerge into scholarly work. However, while men are often lauded for this type of isolation, women—and Black women in particular—are often looked upon disdainfully if she steps away (even momentarily) from her community for her own pursuits. 

“Within patriarchy, men have always had the freedom to isolate themselves from family and community, to do autonomous work and re-enter a relational world when they chose, irrespective of their class status. It is the image of a male figure seeking aloneness to do the work of the mind that is common in mass media, and not that of the female. That patriarchal world which supports and affirms male re-entry into family and community after time apart often punishes females for choosing to do autonomous work”— bell hooks in Black Women Intellectuals [SB3] 

Currently all of the images on Wikipedia’s “Intellectuals” page are of white men as of February 2019—many depict an isolated man looking off into the distance, as exemplified by these portraits of Milton Friedman and Jacques Barzun (the first person to add a picture of bell hooks to this Wikipedia page can email me for a prize).

Yet if these biases weren’t frustrating enough, here’s another twist: studies show that when women do “fit” certain feminine stereotypes, such as starting a family, this can negatively impact her as well. The New York Times recently published an article titled, Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies, which detailed how pregnant women are “systematically sidelined in the workplace,” not considered for promotions and raises, and fired when voicing their concerns. 

My own research backs up negative attitudes toward mothers, especially in the tech industry. In an experiment, I tested how people reacted to different online profiles of female software engineers—one who described herself as a mother, while the other did not. Overall, people perceived the “mom engineer” as a lower-quality employee and less committed to work than the engineer who did not talk about motherhood. And, perhaps unsurprising from recent news stories, significant negative attitudes came from men and participants who worked in the tech industry. 

Protesters outside the Supreme Court in Washington D.C. in December 2014 rallying around Peggy Young, a UPS worker who was fired for being pregnant.

I bring up this topic of motherhood bias to show the contradictory—and at times, seemingly impossible—standards that women are held to in the workforce. A woman who speaks up for herself is direct, and ambitious? She’s allegedly not very feminine, and not very likable. A woman who expresses her pride in being a mom and a successful software engineer? She’s not cut out to be a dedicated employee (insert long sigh here.)

On top of the seemingly endless biases outlined so far, let us also acknowledge the exponential struggles that queer and trans women face in the workforce. More than 75% of transgender people have experienced a form of workplace discrimination, and at least 25% have lost a job due to bias (according to the National Center for Trasngender Equality). Additionally, a 2016 Harvard study found that employers were roughly 30% less likely to request an interview from a female job applicant perceived as LGBTQ than one perceived as heterosexual. Thus, many queer and trans women may experience extra distress on top of the plights I’ve described so far. 

Ultimately, my research showing that these workplace biases exist is not meant to guide women how to act—it isn’t a road map promising how to get ahead by acting particularly feminine or masculine (in my eyes, anyone selling that type of road map is likely a fraud). Rather, I hope it brings some solidarity and awareness of the double-binds many women face. 

Don’t trust someone who urges you to use these harmful stereotypes to help you get ahead in your career.

As someone who constantly buries my head in research about these biases, it’s easy to become forlorn and to feel helpless about the state of things (channeling the words of my aunt Shelly’s Facebook comment, sometimes it really does“feel like it’s never going to change”). However, while I dedicate my career to looking into systematic workplace oppression, I also try to offset it with nurturing my interpersonal relationships with badass women in my life (and this also helps my own well-being). This support may look like sending advice via text on how to negotiate a raise, venting and providing a hug when something sexist happens in a meeting, or setting aside time to get coffee with older professional women who inspire me (recognizing that having a network with these types of role models is a privilege in its own right). 

At times it can feel impossible to conquer it all—for me, to attack oppressive structures, to advance in my career, to nurture relationships with my colleagues, and to enjoy quality time with my family. But in the aforementioned wise words of Nicki Minaj, “I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being!”—and there is comfort in taking stock in that. 

Sierra Bray is a Ph.D. fellow and researcher at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication. Employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, Sierra’s research converges at the intersection of organizational communication, cultural studies, and science and technology studies. Before graduate school, Sierra worked in strategic communication, marketing, and business consulting in both agency and corporate environments. Her current research focuses on how women, people of color, and people of other historically marginalized identities navigate and negotiate power in professional settings. You can reach Sierra via email (sierra.bray@usc.edu) or connect with her on LinkedIn.

What Does Art Do? Emblematic Representation and Performance Among Skid Row Artists

This is the first of a series of posts written by the PhD students in my seminar, Public Intellectuals: Theory and Practice. This professional development course, offered by USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, explores many different public dimensions of scholarship and teaching, including blogs, podcasts, op-eds, digital humanities, and policy white papers. Over the next two weeks, I am going to be sharing what the students produced on the blogging assignment. I know they would love to see feedback from readers.

What Does Art Do? Emblematic Representation and Performance Among Skid Row Artists

by Hoan Nguyen

I had an appointment with Jane on a Friday morning in Skid Row, an isolated neighborhood located just east of downtown Los Angeles. We wanted to meet at the Los Angeles California Action Network (LA CAN) where she infrequently came to play the piano in the Freedom room. She showed up very early,looked excited when I brought a camera ready to record her performance. Unfortunately, the Freedom room was fully occupied with people preparing for a party to celebrate the life of Fela Kuti – a Nigerian musician and activist. Jane’s face melted on hearing the news. Apparently she had carefully prepared for the “show”, wearing a nice grey suit and a beautiful bracelet: just one day earlier when I bumped into her for the first time, she looked pale in a wear and tear outfit, sitting on a fragile chair on the sidewalk. 

So we sat down for a long conversation in the LA CAN library instead. Jane eagerly shared her life stories: one of the most educated women in Skid Row, she was trained in a reputable music department at high school, and got a college degree in nursing in Indianapolis. She used to work in a music studio, writing songs and co-producing music, before sliding into homelessness. She talked a lot about her childhood growing up in a church where she sang and created songs for the church choir. Religion is a major part in her life; and so is music. “God brought me here in Skid Row,” she said. 

As a homeless artist, she had no musical instruments at hand except her voice. The Freedom room is her beloved place, where she can still play the piano. She sang emotionally a couple of times during our conversation. Songs heal her soul. Music tells her stories. 

“(Music) is my voice to the world. And I've been given a gift.  And I've been trained. I don't have any complaints about my singing or playing. And what's more than is that it touches people’s heart. People who live here like me who I play in front of. Some are Skid Row residents, some work here. Some of them are at Union Station and they're profoundly touched by what they hear.”

My encounter with Jane led me to wonder about art, performance, and their underlying meanings in the lives of Skid Row artists. Historically being treated as an urban ghetto hosting abandoned people as the disabled and the mentally ill, Skid Row is rarely associated with art. Art was not my initial research agenda, either. My ethnographic journey, however, awakened my curiosity and fascination with the role of non-mainstream art in this space. 

So what do art and art performance do here? 

At first glance, art is a means for individuals’ creative expression, which is perhaps a shared role of art for any artistic community! However, specific to Skid Row, art and performance, as revealed in Jane’ narratives, is associated with the creators’ personal experiences as homeless people. My fieldwork gave me more insights into the lives of these artists and musicians. I learned that homeless people use art to reflect on their transient lives on Skid Row streets, and beyond that, their desires to connect with the outside world.  Aside from songs, there were paintings, zine collections, spoken words, and music video production, among others. 

As with Jane’s, I was impressed by Pepper’s story. I met him at the Skid Row farmers’ market on a bright morning. He is a painter. People in the vicinity told me that he drew some of the best graffiti on various walls around Skid Row. During our in-depth interview, I asked him about the subject matter of his paintings and what messages he wanted to share with his audiences. He shared that his drawings told stories about beautiful things he noticed around him. 

“What about the flowers? What about the wild birds in the air? Do you care about those? So you see I deal with reality. I don't butter stuff up. If it's going to rain, I'm going to tell you it's going to rain and you might want to get ready. I'm like, hold up. Hold up. Hold up. Isn’t that rain is a good thing, right? It refreshes the air, it brings new life […]

Love, you knows, no hatred, love is beauty. Love is peace. Love is happiness. Paintings and drawings are somewhat the same as a song cuz they talk about love. Okay, my job is to bring peace of love. When I die, the next generation young kids can guide them do much. Just saw. I can show that you need no gun. You need not worry. You don't need to be fighting to be you. Love, you know. 

He also composes song lyrics and co-produces some music videos circulated on YouTube. He showed me his popular video, namely Everlast’s “Long At All,” within which he is the main character, telling stories about war, life in street, and the ephemeral nature of human life.

everlast #whiteyfordshouseofpain Everlast - 'Long At All' - Official Music Video From "Songs of the Ungrateful Living" Available now: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/songs-ungrateful-living/id466965056 Listen now along with the new album Whitey Ford's House of Pain: https://fanlink.to/wfhop Everlast USA Tour // Get tickets - https://fanlink.to/wfhop_usa 11/07 - Rochester, NY 11/09 - Clifton Park, NY 11/10 - Poughkeepsie, NY 11/11 - Lancaster, PA 11/13 - Newport News, VA 11/15 - Leesburg, VA 11/16 - Pittsburgh, PA 11/17 - Flint, MI 11/30 - San Antonio, TX 12/02 - Houston, TX https://www.facebook.com/everlastmusic https://www.twitter.com/OGEverlast https://www.instagram.com/ogeverlast https://www.soundcloud.com/whiteyford http://www.martyr-inc.com/ Directed by: Estevan Oriol

As my urban ethnographic journey advanced over the course of four months, I realized that individual work, like that of Jane and Pepper’s, is but part of a bigger picture. The other part, well organized and more publicized, is collective work buttressed by arts-based organizations and activists in the locality. Major organizations include Studio 526 and Urban Voice Project where Skid Row artists congregate frequently to practice and perform. There is also an annual art festival, namely Festival for All Skid Row Artists, deemed to be the central art event established to create a public space for Skid Row artists to showcase their works, celebrate their lives, interact with one another and the general public. 

I went to the 9th Festival for All Skid Row Artists taking place at San Julian Parkin early November 2018. I was thrilled when seeing many artists displaying their works and performing on stage during the two-day event. 

Artworks displayed at the 9th Festival for All Skid Row Artists, November 2018

In tandem with the annual festival, the Urban Voice Project held a performance event at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles, which attracted the general public.

Looking into these well-organized activities and public events, I recognized their profound implications for the homelessness and artist identities and politics of resistance that went beyond individualistic experiences. Arguably, public performances and art displays, taken together, told a story of a unified community of homeless people in Skid Row. A story of a landscape of despair. A story of the transient lives being sidelined into marginalization and isolation.

Uploaded by Hoan Sarah Nguyen on 2019-02-10.

Skid Row Zine:Lost/Found

Singing a beautiful song or performing spoken words on stage, the artists also asked the public to not look down at Skid Row, but instead, to listen to its people’s stories and understand their daily struggles. They showed a strong sense of resistance against housing injustices and social discrimination. 

At the very least, art is also a space for the creators to strategically represent their collective identity as a valued community of creativity, dignity, connectivity, and love. 

Unfortunately, the dominant discourse, both in academia and the wider society, is often skewed towards seeing art mainly as a therapy employed by social service providers to help the homeless heal their mental health problems. With that misconception, the homeless are perceived as a social problem, and so Skid Row is seen as contaminating rather than generative. 

My involvement with the community, however, suggests otherwise. I realized that Skid Row art makers are true artists. Their artworks are in turn not simply healing therapies but a tool for creative expression, collective representation and resistance. Performance is their social justice project. Art could be a powerful bridge connecting Skid Row and the outside world. 

Being one of the most stigmatized populations in America and elsewhere in the world, homeless people are more often than not physically isolated, subject to discrimination, and socially invisible. When mentioned at all, they are likely to be belittled as the disabled and passive receivers of social assistance. Outsiders hardly see any potential in them, unaware of the fact that there might be talented artists.Such expressions might invite us to rethink stereotypical assumptions. More importantly, we need to open our heart to listen to their stories and make changes in their lives through everyday practice. It can be as simple as looking at homeless people differently as they approach us on the side walk, engaging them in conversions about their life, or lending support to arts‐based organizations. Policy makers and the general public alike need to better understand the community’s lived experiences on the ground. They have to identify not only the marginalized people’s problems but also their potentials, aspirations, and agency. Only then can we meaningfully engage with the people who are living with the problems confronting America’s  cities.

Hoan (Sarah) Nguyen  is a doctoral student and graduate fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California. Her research interests include social inequality, digital divides, human agency, discrimination in the digital media, and technology for social change. Her studies examine social implications of technology use, role of digital media such as the Internet and mobile platforms in transnational migration processes and the empowerment of marginalized communities.

Relating to Music and Music Fans: An Interview with Nancy Baym (Part III)

How has the increased intimacy between performers and audiences shifted the meaning and importance of authenticity on the one hand and mystique on the other as they relate to the nature of being a “rock star”?

Well of course one defining element of intimacy is that you are meant to be authentic. Mystique may lure you in but once you’re intimate, it has no place. That’s clearly in opposition to the traditional (ha!) view of the rock star, where they are meant to be at a distance and filled with mystery. So new media and the push toward intimacy push people away from mystique toward “authenticity.” But “authenticity” is a terribly problematic term, and in this context it’s always performed (and sometime highly crafted for public consumption) anyway. It’s not actually clear to me that the masses really yearn for “authenticity” so much as they want direct interaction and immediacy. They only want authenticity when someone behaves like their imagined version of them. And there seem to be plenty of cases where we still want mystique. Take Daft Punk or Banksy. The loss of mystique is something some artists are grateful for, they’re thrilled to leave the trope of the rock star in the past and get back to something more egalitarian. Others feel like the mystique protects the music, or them, and it’s a challenge to figure out how to present themselves in a way that, as one person put it, has “boundaries without the appearance of having boundaries.” 

There is a growing interest in the concept of the “anti-fan,” represented by a recent anthology around this topic. What can the study of “relational labor” contribute to our understanding of the concept?

You can’t talk about doing relational labor without talking about anti-fans because the act of going online to communicate with fans means that you are going to encounter anti-fans. I’d like to think that the shift this book offers from audience perspective to artist perspective helps us think more about what anti-fan practices do to the humans who create the work or being hated, how those people respond to it, and perhaps how communication platforms might be better designed to lessen its impacts. Some of the older musicians I talked to laughed it off, but others had a hard time with it, even some of the famous ones you might think wouldn’t care. In a theoretical sense, from the artists’ perspective, fans are just one set of the audience they have to relate to, and there are a lot of spots on the spectrum between fan and anti-fan and also a lot of people on axes that are totally orthogonal to that one. Though I love fan studies, I hope audience studies can be more attuned to other variants of audience as well and perhaps relational labor helps us see those different facets of audience more clearly, because they call for different modes of relating.

The ethical dimensions of fandom are a recurring theme across the book and you end with a direct statement, “All of us are audiences and all of us have a responsibility to think about the well-being of those who create what we use and cherish.” What are some concrete ways you feel that fans might shoulder this responsibility?

Thanks for asking that. When you center the experience of the artist you realize pretty quickly that, even at its best, relating to audiences is hard work that puts a person’s selfhood on the line in ways that are profoundly personal. Here are a few concrete suggestions. The don’ts: Don’t expect – let alone – demand personal responses to your messages. Don’t ask favors of them that you wouldn’t ask a stranger. Realize that disclosing personal topics to them may be upsetting to them and don’t expect them to be able to help you sort out your problems even if their work does. If you’re going to say things about them that aren’t nice, don’t tag them in it. And on the other side, do tell the artists you love that you appreciate them. Tell them what their work means to you. I was really surprised to hear from nearly everyone I talked to how much it meant to hear from people who had seen their show or really thought about a song. Fans often think the artists don’t care, but like everyone else, they want to know that their work makes a positive difference in people’s lives. And a crucial, ethical do: pay for the art you love and support the fundraising activities artists offer.

You also end the book with some statements about what audiences and performers should be able to expect from each other. What would need to change for the creative industries to fully embrace the potentials of this proposed social contract?

I think we’d have to get to a point where we start from the premise that the culture industries have value because people value culture, and that culture is above all about human relationships and social order. For the last several decades, the goal of the culture industries has been to make money and the rest has come after. If we were all starting with the question of how we build better culture and how we strengthen and support relationships and communities, then we could have healthier conversations about the “value” of creative work and treat everyone involved with more reverence.