dan mcquillan's List: social media campaigning IS71055A - lecture 2 - agile campaigns and social movements

• Like many people, I've learned to live with a generalised, low-level irritation about the content of some of the tabloids.
• That evening I began tweeting (@the_z_factor), knocking around a few ideas with friends: egging NewsCorp's offices? Going to the shops on Sunday and turning over all the copies of the paper? It didn't seem enough. The only way to show the company how people really felt was by hitting them where it hurts: their wallets. And while I didn't think I could reach their regular readers to ask them not to buy the paper, I realised who I could influence, with a following wind and enough people behind me: their advertisers.
• went on to the News of the World's website. There were a couple of advertisers there, but most were behind the paywall. I tweeted them anyway. Immediately, my tweets were retweeted. And again. I roped in Andy Dawson (@profanityswan) – he was angry too, I knew, and more importantly he has a big following on Twitter. He researched more advertisers for me, and we began sending out tweets, telling people to send their own messages rather than retweeting ours for maximum effect. I made a Word document, stored it online and started sending out links to it. The activity was building; I was transfixed by my computer screen, and the dog didn't get an evening walk.
• Tony Kennick (@thegreatgonzo) got involved. He had an idea: we could build a web page with "tweet me" buttons, to make things even easier for people. By Tuesday morning it was up and running, and by 11am Roy Greenslade had linked to it on his blog.

• That's when things really started to take off. Messages of support began flooding in, as well as offers of help; @EroticPuffin looked up email addresses for executives at the companies and supplied an Excel file ready for mail merge, and various people sent new advertisers for us to add to the list and new ways for people to make a difference.

  It's times like this when Twitter really comes into its own.
• or every 5,000 tweets with a funny cat photo there's a moment like this, when Twitter remembers what it can really do.

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• Online politics is the flowing, ever-shifting practice of micro-political decisions and stances, which might be termed “Liquid Politics”. The powerful currents of these Liquid Politics tend to go unnoticed until they come together in one of the many “Agile Movements” that emerge from time-to-time.
• But if we look inside these movements we see complexity, and we can detect a core of deeply rooted pre-industrial human behaviours mediated through a digitally interconnected global society. This combination of ancient practices and new technology means that Agile Movements, or something like them, are unlikely to be a fad.
• At one end we may see very little change as the power of institutions withstands these social forces. At the other end we may see collapse in party politics and asynchronous processes of representative democracy, as we know it. What seems likely is a mid-point where traditional institutions and structures become more open, participative and malleable recognising that a connected society needs a new dynamic democratic bargain.
• To be human in any society is to be political – we do politics all time. Almost every choice we make can be seen in a political light. Yet ‘politics’ at the individual level has often been used to denote a small set of our actions, typically things like voting or making overtly public stances on certain issues. Politics on the grand scale has been seen as the business of governing nation states and the relationships between states. The interface between these two types of politics has been confined to discrete acts of voting or interacting directly with representatives e.g. writing to them. Institutional politics has been presented to the citizens through traditional broadcast outlets such as newspapers and television that construct it as political universe for citizens to observe.

  • nice structural thumbnail

• Politics framed in this way is a system of two worlds that meet occasionally on distinct terms. This system of politics is entirely reasonable in an age when humans are confined to physical meetings and postal systems, and the average person can only expect to gather an audience for their messages composted of those geographically close who shared enough interest or at least curiosity to listen. That is, this is reasonable when physical constraints limited the scope of action that could practically be called politics in any effective sense.

   

  We do not live in such an age – but our political system still does.
• n this paper we will look at how a new politics termed Liquid Politics has emerged from the affordances of the internet, and how Agile Movements are continually emerging from the underlying flow of micro-political acts.
• We will examine some of these movements in detail to understand how both they and the underlying politics that generate them result in a combination of ancient human practices sited in a new technological atmosphere.
• we shall review three key changes that the internet has brought in the relationship of the individual to the whole. These we shall term: Amplification, Association and Agency.

  • explication is a bit palid, especially the Agency
• To take a specific example, some studies of the attitudes of players of online games have shown effects such as a positive impact on civic participation (Williams 2006) – which is not surprising if people spend time in environments and with groups where they are empowered at least within that context (Castronova 2007)[6]
• These tools enable political sentiment and action to coalesce around a node – which may be a person or more likely a site, or even a hash tag that spans multiple platforms. The simple overt acts noted above are given greater resonance in these group contexts that, on the whole, ebb and flow through people’s internet lives.
• Multi-modal existence is intrinsic to Agile Movements; online and offline are simply different aspects of these movements, which continually combine and re-combine Tweeting from a live event. This can be contrasted with traditional groups that give primacy to physical events and meetings, and use online tools as a support for the ‘real’ group. This means that Agile Movements in all their instantiations tend to have less demarcated boarders than traditional organisations, with transition in and out of the group being much freer.
• one can be a part of an Occupy movement by tweeting about it, by donating online or leaving a book for the library, being physically present at a camp and uploading a smartphone video, or by staying and being a part of the camp. To use the Burning Man phrase this ‘Radical Inclusion’ is both physical and virtual and is at the heart of the organisational structure (or lack there of) of the groups we will look at.
• This Radical Inclusion enables a flow into and out of groups. This allows political movements (both virtual and physical) to form seemingly in an instant and dissipate just as quickly. This is the nature of Agile Politics and it is not confined to a specific set of movements we see at the moment. These individual movements are simply the visible signs of a larger underlying trend of old sensibilities combined with new tools.
• A number of movements typify the practice of Agile Politics. These include: Occupy, Anonymous, The Tea Party, and to some extent The Pirate Party and Al-Qaeda.

  • misidentification
• The media in particular tend to identify individuals as leading, speaking for, or being a member of a given movement. Whereas in interviews a typical response from someone who self-identifies with an Agile Movement will be: “I don’t speak on behalf of….. but what I think is…”

• . The closest thing to an ideology that Anonymous has is summed up as follows (Crenshaw 2011):

   

  1. Do it for the lulz.

   

  2. Internet censorship is bad.

   

  3. Don’t hurt cats.
• These essentially come from the web site 4Chan and the /b/ image board which can be considered as the one thing that binds Anonymous. However everything to do with 4Chan and this simple ideology is difficult to explain because of the dense semiotic layering. That is, few things literally mean what they appear to mean nor do they mean the opposite – most are signs to yet more signs.
• At first sight /b/ looks chaotic and offensive. It is. And in a sense it isn’t. In Turner’s anthropological terms, /b/ can be seen as a liminoid space (Turner 1982) that acts as an on going ever-evolving initiation ritual.
• That is, a necessary but not sufficient condition for being considered by others as Anonymous is commutative competence indicated by, among other things, the appropriate use of in-group markers. Like many in-group markers, those outside the group often mistake these competences as incompetence – in this way they act as a purposeful cultural barrier, a linguistic and discursive boundary maker, between those in the know and those outside.
• For example the phrase “i can haz lulz” may look incorrect as it contains seeming misspellings, grammatical and temporal errors. In fact it follows a highly formalised code typically of the normative nature of many subcultures.

• Two key tropes that are often repeated on /b/ because of their symbolic power are:

   
   
  • “Rule 34”
   
  • “Not your private army”
• Rule 34 refers to the so-called Rules of the Internet[7]. Rule 34 states: “There is porn of it, no exceptions”. This is a humorous, accurate and powerful statement. It is a declaration of the power of the community to transform the meaning of anything. The notion of pornography is being used for a number of reasons. Many of the users of /b/ like and consume pornography. Also pornography denotes the opposite of the sacred or cherished. Hence whatever you hold dear (including the community itself) can transformed into something that you are supposed to hold in the opposite regard. Though given the community’s practices of consumption and self-production of pornography, this inversion of value is itself inverted. The statement is also a playful challenge – if anything can be turned in to pornography then what about a chair, or an bishop, or the number seven, or last Tuesday. Lastly – it is funny. There is also a deeper cultural argument for use of the fetishisation of the banal that stems from writers such as J G Ballard (Ballard 1990).

  • nietzsche
• While “Rule 34” is a statement of the power of the community, “not your private army” is a seeming refutation of that power. The phrase denotes that the community knows it has power but that the power cannot be used or targeted by any member of the community. This speaks to an anti-leader notion that we will see recurring in all Agile Movements.
• There are hundreds of similar symbolic phrases and images, and many variations on each theme. These are constantly combining and recombining to make new meanings.  Attaining and maintaining communicative competence in the symbolic meanings that flow through /b/ requires participation in online fora in which this competences is continually developed and changed.
• /b/ acts as an on-going membership rite, as it contains many of the elements identified and outlined by Tuner referencing Van Gennep’s 1908 Rites de Passage. Specifically 4Chan and /b/ are separate spaces that require the individual to find, enter and understanding them (as the rules there are different). The sense of time in 4Chan may be altered, messages move at an unbelievable pace that can lead participants to a type of flow state; also many who post there do so in the middle of the night. The language is highly symbolic – what words there are seem meaningless or have little relation to the meaning one might suppose; much of the communication is in the form of images rather than words (a 4Chan post must contain an image). Lastly there are, at least superficially, simple symbolic inversions of meaning – bad taste is good.

• At this level /b/ can be seen as layers of challenge to both the newcomer and the participant. Indeed, many posts are explicitly written as challenges, the underlying layers of which are:

   
   
  • Don’t be offended
   
  • Offend us
   
  • Keep up
• To use Van Gennep’s terms, after setting up the separated ritual space participants that enter it are in a state of transition. With /b/ this state is constantly challenged. Those that do gain an expertise of the cultural markers gain status in the hierarchy of /b/ for a time but will most likely be left behind as new, unexpected markers come and go. Also /b/ is completely anonymous in the literal sense (hence the name ‘Anonymous’[8]). So generally no one knows who the individuals that attain status are anyway. Events occur on /b/ that few witness; these sometimes become an essential part of the lore of /b/. Those that were not there are no longer part of the new in-crowd, whatever their previous status was. For example, at the time of writing, liking My Little Pony is important to people on /b/; however this may have changed by the time you read this. Those that pass through this into Van Gennep’s final state of incorporation do so by either exiting /b/ (possibly to return), or becoming part (for a time) of one of the many movements, both political and humorous, that emerge out of /b/.
• As Coleman and others have documented (Coleman 2011; Crenshaw 2011) the movements that emerge from 4Chan have more of a structure than 4Chan generally, and /b/ in particular. This is because they need at least a minimal form of leadership and direction. Leadership in these movements tends to be pseudonymous, and power is either tacit (through displays of expertise and communicative competence) or through some direct power such as having privileges on a chat board or IRC channel.
• the author’s personal observations of Occupy London and the online global Occupy presence.

• The fluidity of form and hierarchy maintained by Anonymous is more difficult to sustain in an on-going physical encampment, but there are models of self organisation that Occupy seems inspired by, such as the ten principles of Burning Man[12].

   
   
  1. Radical Inclusion
   
  2. Gifting
   
  3. De-Commodification
   
  4. Radical Self-Reliance
   
  5. Radical Self-Expression
   
  6. Communal Effort
   
  7. Civic Responsibility
   
  8. Leaving No Trace
   
  9. Participation
   
  10. 10. Immediacy
• The camps appear to be falling into similar structures around things such as collective decision-making, media hubs, food gifting systems, and libraries. T
• Occupy’s relationship with institutional structures and its stance are summed up well by C Einstein who states, “Demands have to be specific. Anything that people can articulate can only be articulated within the language of the current political discourse … making explicit demands reduces the movement” [15].
• The power of the undercurrent
• The structural similarity of Agile Movements coupled with their diversity of purpose and that they emerge all over the world seemingly all of the time are clues to them being an indication of a larger shift in politics, rather than the shift itself.
• Underneath these Agile Movements is a set of day-to-day micro-political acts that we might term ‘Liquid Politics’. The nature of Liquid Politics is difficult to grasp and even more difficult to explain, as it embodies and expresses deep human behaviours being transacted through systems that are themselves emerging and changing. A reductive analysis of this Liquid Politics is likely to mischaracterise it hence; it is better to look to a number of metaphors and social theories to understand its nature.
• The first useful metaphor to consider is the notion of a return to village based practices and sensibilities.
• One key difference between village life and now is that there are aspects of ourselves that in pre-industrial cultures we might have supposed to be unique. Indeed people might have though them of as odd as no one else shared them – enjoying the scent of a particular leaf, for example. With the internet though, however obscure a partial interest, love, fetish or vice we have, there are likely to be millions of other people we might virtually meet that share the same proclivity.
• The second illustrative concept is that of the Trickster recently investigated in great detail by Lewis Hyde in his work Trickster Makes This World (Hyde 2008).
• Hyde states “[the Trickster is the] spirit of the road at dusk, the one that leads from one town to another and belongs to neither” (p6).
• The idea of the Trickster is also one of adaptation. Again Hyde says, “Sometime it happens that the road between heaven and earth is not open. Whereupon trickster travels not as a messenger but as a thief, the one who steal from the gods and the good things that humans need if they are to survive in this world” (p6).
• The idea of the Trickster sounds like one that characterises humorous interventions so is only suited to movements such as Anonymous who explicitly are in it “for the lulz”.  This would be to misunderstand the metaphor. The Trickster embodies concepts of change and adaptation; it is the power and spirit of agility that within the Agile Movements described here.
• that the Rhizome “is map not a tracing, the idea of a map being oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real”
• Riding the waves
• Any alliance that is formed between an Agile Movement and any other structure is by definition weak as it requires the Agile Movement to crystallise into a static form, meaning that most of its motivating power will simply flow past.
• Governments are opening up far more data to the public, and through cloud computing individuals have access to more computing power at a lower cost than was imaginable just a few years ago. This changes the dynamics of policy making and analysis as now it is likely that an individual or group could conduct far more detailed data analysis on a subject than a government – while this may have once been a situation restricted to the policy community of think tanks and education establishments, now it is available to many.
• Conventional politics clings to its own structures and promotes them as if these particular structures represent an end-point in political evolution. Yet the political systems of today such as voting occasionally; congregating only in a physical place to debate; taking very little input from outside the process; are a product of the past.
• Voting figures demonstrate there is a gradual disengagement with certain political processes – politicians often characterise this as a lack of interest in politics. If we understand politics in the way outlined here, it is quite the opposite: it is politicians that have disengaged, not citizens.

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• A handmade campaign against welfare cuts launched by a tiny band of disabled activists took the social media world by storm.

  Over the course of Monday 9 January, hundreds of thousands of people tweeted around #spartacusreport. In the jargon, the hashtag "top trended" for most of the day. In other words, of all the topics of the day, a serious report (entitled Responsible Reform) outlining in careful detail the government's alleged multiple lies and evasions over its proposed disability living allowance (DLA) reform had proved, incredibly, hugely popular.
• Prior to last Monday, virtually all the mainstream media had ignored the report, and the campaign itself. That morning, the buzz, diligently begun by a network of hundreds of disabled people, started to grow.
• On Monday afternoon, the Department for Work and Pensions press office took to Twitter in an attempt to justify the government's reforms, using the Spartacus hashtag. This was significant: the government was having to enter the debate on the disability activists' own terms.
• By this time, the mainstream media had begun to sit up and take a closer interest in disability benefits. The following evening, after a day in which the media had picked over the government's humiliation in the Lords, the BBC's Newsnight programme invited the work and pensions minister Chris Grayling on air to debate the defeated proposals (which the coalition government intends to restore when the bill returns to the Commons). To oppose him, sat one of the principal architects of the Spartacus campaign, Sue Marsh.
• The symbolism of Marsh's Newsnight appearance, heralding as it may have done the emergence of a new form of disability activism (Marsh calls it "from-bed activism"), empowered by social media and operating largely outside conventional media and charity channels, was powerful. This kind of public hearing for disabled people was precisely what she and fellow activist Kaliya Franklin had been planning for the past 18 months, although they never quite believed they would achieve it.
• Around three years ago she started her own ironically-titled blog, Diary of a Benefit Scrounger, to monitor the proposed cuts to disability benefits. She became a prolific, highly respected blogger, guesting on the left of centre blogs Left Foot Forward and Liberal Conspiracy, as well as the Guardian's comment is free. Her blogpost just before Christmas, reporting that she had been turned down as ineligible for DLA, went viral on Twitter.
• So, why did the Spartacus campaign work so spectacularly? Marsh says: "Luck, in part. But people were desperate for [it]. We gave thousands of people something that they could easily use to express their views, and rally behind. And it gave us hope – up to then we didn't have any hope."
• Fellow Spartacus activist Franklin says it was the internet, blogs and Twitter that enabled disabled people to get their voice heard, unmediated by traditional media. "None of this would have happened without social media. The campaign has been done by people mostly from their beds. We would not have been able to find each other had we not had access to social media."
• Franklin also hosts a successful blog – Benefit Scrounging Scum – where some of her made-for-YouTube videos have become cult viewing (her "shame on you..." message to David Cameron marked the beginning of the Spartacus campaign in October 2010). One clip records her putting the Labour leader Ed Miliband on the spot at last year's Labour party conference, with Franklin's eloquence about politicians' toxic use of "benefit scrounger" rhetoric contrasting with the awkwardness of a surprised Miliband.
• Despite their success, the Spartacus campaigners are already counting the personal cost to their health. Some, already ill, have retired exhausted.
• For herself, Franklin feels this is a price she may have to accept as the welfare reform bill debate intensifies: "It's a position of moral conscience. We could not live with ourselves if we did not give everything. Those of us in the core group [of campaigners] have understood that we risk damaging our health by doing this. But some things in life are more important."

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• Spartacus is a grass-roots movement that started with the publication of the Responsible Reform report which revealed overwhelming opposition to the Government’s proposed welfare reforms, in particular the proposal to reform Disability Living Allowance (DLA). The Report was entirely researched and written by disabled people, including Sue Marsh, Kaliya Franklin, Sarah Campbell, Declan Gaffney, Mason Dixon, Leigh James, Sam Barnett-Cormack, Rhydian Fon-James and Dawn Willis  and several others.
• Responsible Reform was based on a rigorous analysis of the 523 organisational responses to the Government’s consultation on reform of disability living allowance which closed in February 2011. The report also analysed the reasons behind the increase in recent years in the number of DLA claimants.

• While there are fears that traditional methods of disability activism are on the wane, a new campaigning spirit is been forged using the social media revolution.

  The past 18 months have seen the first flowerings of a new network of activist groups and a shared, inclusive approach that has thrust their engaging campaigning style into the public eye.

  Galvanised by the government's draconian welfare reform agenda, the new activism arguably is helping to renew a disability movement thought by some to have lost its way in recent years.
• This was not a traditional campaign – one that had started with a letter to the Guardian or a meeting a in dusty civic hall and grown through charity lobbying. It grew rapidly and lived through social media networks bringing together and giving a voice to tens of thousands of people who were excluded from mainstream media and politics.
• Marsh says the approach is different from the old-style "chain ourselves to the railings" approach. It was partly a recognition that traditional activist techniques no longer guaranteed traction with politicians and the media, and partly pragmatic – the knowledge that illness or disability meant many activists were confined to their home for all or some of their life, but were able to engage productively through social media (Marsh calls it "bed-tivism").
• Twitter has given talented "accidental activists" like carer Nicky Clark the chance to change attitudes, most dramatically when she persuaded the actor Ricky Gervais to stop using the word "mong" (which she argued was an abusive term for people with Down's syndrome). Activist Kaliya Franklin's "ambush" of Labour leader Ed Miliband over the use of "scrounger" rhetoric (and the subsequent viral distribution of the encounter) had similar effects.
• It links current campaigners back with their predecessors in the 1960s and 1970s who fought so hard to win independent living for disabled people

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