Recasting the Net

As part of the 4iP/POLIS “Recasting the Net” series, we have been talking to a range of people about the impact they think the web is having on power, politics and institutions. Most recently we talked to Jo Swinson, Liberal Democrat MP for East Dunbartonshire, about whether new technology has the power to transform that eldest of institutions – Parliament. On the day that Twitter yet again hit the headlines for its role in exposing the Trafigura case, Jo talks about how these tools are helping her to build relationships with her constituents, and how they compare to more traditional forms of communications. She also discusses why some politicians are sceptical of digital media, and whether they will ever embrace it fully.

In addition to its impact on political institutions, Jo also talks about some of the challenges affecting young people’s use of the web – including digital exclusion and cyber-bullying. The “Recasting the Net” series will be exploring some of these issues in our next event on young people’s use of the web, which will take place in Glasgow on November 26th. For more information please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

A couple of weeks ago we held a lively debate in Birmingham looking at the impact of the web on politics. With an ‘expert political panel’ that included Councillor Paul Tilsley, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council, Emily Benn (who was standing in for her grandfather, Tony Benn, who was unfortunately unable to make it due to ill health), PPC for East Worthing and Shoreham and Charlie Elphicke, PPC for Dover and Deal, as well as some West Midlands-based campaigners and bloggers talking about some of the exciting work digital media is enabling them to do in the region, the event explored how those in (or seeking) power are now being held to account by citizens using new digital tools.

The panel responded to presentations from Tony Walley and Mike Rawlins from the Pits’n'Pots blog in Stoke, Nick Booth from Help Me Investigate and the Social Media Surgeries, and Audrey Miller, a campaigner for the Jubilee Debt Campaign,  In addition to some heated debate on the cost of Birmingham City Council’s website, the evening explored the local, national and international potential for digital media, the relationship between amateur blogs and traditional local newspapers,  questions of access and inclusion, and whether a modern MP can afford to ignore digital media. 

If you didn’t manage to come along on the night or follow the twitter stream at #recasting, we filmed the whole event so you can catch up online here.  You can also read a summary of the night and some of the questions it raised at Charlie Beckett’s blog, who chaired the evening.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to the evening and please join us for the next event in the series, which will be taking place in Glasgow in November. If you would like any more information in the meantime, please contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

As part of our Recasting the Net series, we spoke to a number of people who are currently exploring the way digital media is changing our lives. In these clips, representatives from Google, the RSA and the Citizenship Foundation talk about the extent to which the web had led to a radical transformation of society, including its impact on politics, institutions and young people. 

Ade Sofola, Director of Youth Act at the Citizenship Foundation talks about the challenges young people face as they learn to make the most of the web, how online tools can be used for offline campaigning , and whether the web is an inherently democratic tool.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive at the RSA states that while the web has been transformative, it “is an amazing form of communication when people want to be mobilised”. He states that for the web to be truly effective we need a new kind of political discourse and explores the idea of web ‘older brothers’ to help guide people on the internet.

Peter Barron from Google talks of the democratising force of the web, its impact on institutions and politicians use of social networking, stating that the rise of the internet has led to “probably the biggest revolution in the history of the world”.

Recasting the Net wants to encourage debate on these issues so please view, share and let us know your thoughts on the ideas expressed in these films! If you have any difficulties accessing these clips, we are also happy to provide transcripts of the interviews. 

Recasting the Net: A prestigious new series of live and online debates, curated by LSE think-tank POLIS and Channel 4’s 4iP team, designed to explore and discuss the next phase of the web, comes to Birmingham on 17th September to discuss the impact of online tools on how we are holding power to account.  Are we experiencing a fundamental shift in how the public interact with the institutions which govern their lives, or are we simply seeing a migration of the same conversations, approaches, and voices to online platforms? 

Here in the West Midlands there is a strong and vocal social media community, typified by activity such as the Social Media Surgeries, and the 4iP and Screen WM funded projects Talk About Local, Yoosk and Help Me Investigate.  How are the online tools now available transforming politics, and are we hearing a broader and more diverse range of voices than presented to us by traditional media?  Are we creating accessible spaces in which open and frank discussions can take place between citizens and their elected officials?

Join The Rt Hon TONY BENN, CHARLIE ELPHICKE, Conservative Prospective MP for Dover, Cllr PAUL TILSLEY, and chair CHARLIE BECKETT on 17th September.

Spaces are limited so to ensure a place please RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Recasting Power
Thursday September 17, 2009 at 6:00pm
Austin Court
80 Cambridge Street
Birmingham, England B1 2NP

We are currently busy planning for the next event in the 4iP/POLIS “Recasting the Net” series, which will take place in Birmingham on September 17th. This time we will be exploring the impact the web is having on political life – how it is being used to hold power to account and whether online participation can be as effective as offline participation. We are still finalising the participants, but if you would like to join us on the night please contact recasting @channel4.co.uk

Many of the issues we will be exploring at the event are touched on in Matthew Hindman’s new book, The Myth of Digital Democracy. One of the staples of journalism is the straw man: the threat that never existed or the claim that was never really made. With the Internet this straw man is Joe Trippi and the few other people who have insisted that the Internet is innately democratic and that it will have revolutionary political consequences.  The Myth of Digital Democracy has them in its sights. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about democracy and the Web.

And yet I always struggle in lectures or talks when I have to find quotes from these digital utopians. I can always cite lots of people (like me) who argue that the Internet has given us great tools and that it offers huge potential for civic engagement and public self-expression. I can even find examples, from Mysociety to Iran and Twitter that show concrete cases. But I don’t know many serious people taking about a revolution. Most of the visionaries that I do find are in America, but then the USA has always had a strong and admirable political tradition of activist idealism in contrast to the cynical and brutal realities of its actual public life.

So I find myself agreeing with a lot of Hindman’s thesis. I just object to the frame of his argument against some supposed ’myth’.

“The Myth of Digital Democracy” is based on some fascinating empirical research on the use of search and blogosphere traffic. It is a rational and balanced description of how the Internet - still in its infancy or adolescence - is creating patterns of interaction and distribution with data. Hindman is surprised that it reflects existing social and media patterns. I am not. Media has and always will be a medium not a dominant social construct in itself.

These are the limits of Online (American) Politics that Hindman carefully categorises:
1. Political traffic is a tiny portion of Web Usage: Porn gets 100 times the traffic of political websites
2. The link structure of the Web limits the content that citizens see: because we are taken to the most popular sites we get near-monopolies
3. Search Engine Use Is Shallow: We get taken to the familiar not the best or most relevant
4. Digital Content IS Expensive To Produce: going online is cheap but being successful through marketing, capacity and software development is expensive so early entrants dominate
5. Social Hierarchies Quickly Emerge - A List bloggers are difficult to shift, so again we get near-monopolies

So, Hindman argues, there is actually a smaller public sphere in the digital world. The net narrows political discourse. It creates what he calls ‘Googlearchy’.
And this is even before we get to a discussion about whether all this political new media has any impact on real politics. He rightly points out that there is ‘a difference between speaking and being heard’. He acknowledges that Obama benefitted hugely from online campaigning - especially in terms of fund-raising - but can a President rule differently or digitally through the Internet?

Overall, Hindman is curiously disappointed that although the Internet works for the public, it has not created a race of super-political citizens spending their days consuming political blogs and analysing governmental data online:

“Citizens are more likely to get the weather report and the sports scores online than to follow political issues”

Well, that ’s me, too, I am afraid. But it doesn’t mean the Internet hasn’t enpowered me or enriched my political discourse.

This is a valuable book but I have a problem with its assumption of a relatively purist comparative framework. My idea of Networked Journalism is not so absolute and I don’t know many people who are. So, with respect to the news media, I think that public participation in combination with a reformed media can enhance journalism. But I don’t assume that the Internet makes any beneficial outcomes of that process inevitable. Indeed, I am delighted that in a rare passage of similar synthesis and pragmatism, Hindman seems to see similar potential:
“So long as national news organisations remain strong, the blogosphere may prove a valuable supplement to traditional outlets, filtering pollitical information through a different set of constraints, concerns and biases”

Hindman seems to be comparing the Internet with an ideal rather than with what went before. He also has a very narrow sense of what is political. I think the point of the Internet is that it has made us realise how important special interests, personal experience and non-Political ideology are to the public sphere. Authentic public discourse about work, gender, family, and community usually happens away from Political sites because of the closed formulaic nature of those places. That is why conventional media and politics have become so separate from the citizen. In that sense I think Hindman is looking in the wrong place. There is more real-world political discussion on Netmums than LabourList.

One thing that does emerge from my reading of this book is that the standard idea of a political blog where one person or a small group of people articulate views and a community discusses them is limited if not dead. I agree with Hindman that the US obsession with the political blogosphere distracted people from the much richer opportunities online. US pol blogs thrives because the American mainstream political media is so boring and so editorially narrow, be it Fox News or the New York Times. Here in the UK we have much more vibrant newspaper-based political journalism as well as the vast edifice of the BBC and other public service broadcasters.

So it is not so surprising that our political blogosphere is less high profile than in America. The next UK election will NOT be an Internet election and very few contests or issues will be impacted by what happens online. But away from the overtly political websites the Internet is reconfiguring journalism and political discourse. Political journalism in the UK is already significantly networked. The blogs feed into the mainstream which itself is now widely connected online to the public. Social networks as well as specific interest websites are now framing the conversation alongside traditional media. Everywhere I look I see this as empowering individuals, allowing greater expression and interaction. That may not have created a new digital democracy, but compared to the moribund nature of the previous political settlement, I think it offers hope.

Charlie Beckett is director of POLIS, a thinktank that explores media, journalism and society. This was also posted at the POLIS blog

Earlier this month 4iP hosted the first debate in our ‘recasting the net’ series – with panellists including Matthew d’Ancona, Tom Loosemore, Charlie Beckett and Helen Milner and an audience of digital luminaries discussing the nature of the ‘digital revolution’ – if there was one, if it matters, who controls it, and what the implications are of being excluded from it.

You can now view all the foot age from the debate below and we will continue to gather more contributions on this site over the summer – so if you would like to add your thoughts about the way the web has changed our lives then please do get in touch.

Please also keep an eye out for our next event in September, when we will be Birmingham to explore the role of the web on local politics.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Monday night’s “Where’s the Revolution” event – the first in the 4iP/Polis “Recasting the Net” series being developed by 4iP and Polis. The debate featured contributions from Matthew d’Ancona, Helen Milner and myself, a crunchy chair in Charlie Beckett, and - most importantly -100+ audience members keen to contribute.

Fair to say the event explored a more diverse range of themes thank anticipated: community media, global monopolies, access and inclusion and the triumph of the academics - all within a central discussion aimed at exploring the power of the Internet to shape and determine the society, economics and democracy.

My brain hurt afterwards, due in part to Tony Curzon-Price of Open Democracy - rightly - pouring intellectual bleach into my bucket of sloppy thinking. I left the debate questioning a fair few of my assumptions.

In the spirit of the event, I wont try to present a ‘single narrative’ but instead invite you to follow the discussion at #recasting, read some blog feedback and feel free to contribute via comments below.

We will be putting footage from the event up on this site soon – and if you feel like you still have more to say then please do get in touch, as we will continue to film ‘vox-pops’ with a diverse range of voices throughout the summer.

Thanks again for contributing, and please join us later on in the year for the next event in Birmingham.

Recasting the Net is a national lecture series curated by Polis and Channel 4’s 4iP team designed to explore and discuss the next phase of the web.

The first event is on June 1st, and features lead speakers such as Matthew d’Ancona, Tom Loosemore, Charlie Beckett and Helen Milner, and will set the social and historical context for the series. It will encourage contributions from a diverse range of participants to debate how the Internet has evolved, and what are the challenges and conflicts ahead. What can we learn from the history of the web to help us set out scenarios for the future? The Internet now has a history. What can it teach us?

Recasting the Net: Where’s the Revolution?

Monday June 1, 2009 from 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Channel 4 Television
124 Horseferry Road
London, England SW1P 2TX

If you would like to attend please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Over the coming months 4iP and Polis will be hosting further lectures around the country.

Polis is creating a series of debates with 4iP on the potential power to deliver valuable public services through the Internet. Here’s the rationale behind this contribution to the debate about what we want a Digital Britain to look like.

Is the Internet advancing faster than society can evolve? Is the rapid pace of media change even outpacing the human brain? There have a been a stack of stories recently suggesting that our synapses and even our civilisation can’t cope with the endless and accelerating, exponential explosion of digital communications.

This is one of the central themes for a new national series of debates that Polis is curating from June in partnership with Channel 4 and 4iP.  We feel that the debates about Old versus New Media are over. But there are still plenty of arguments to be had about whether the Internet makes any real difference to how we live our lives. And if it does, what are the potential hazards or benefits?

We have heard a lot from Internet enthusiasts - myself included - about how everything from democracy to art is going to be cheaper, easier and much more exciting thanks to digital technologies.

Of course, there is another perspective that says that the Internet revolution just hasn’t happened. The only thing online making money - apart from celebrity and sex - is search (Google) or retail (Amazon). Online politics has descended into the farce of the Downing Street e-petitions and scurrilous blog plotting. Mainstream journalism is dying on its feet while the digital alternative remains still-born - or so say the Internet sceptics.

This is not just about being either optimistic or pessimistic. It is about what we can do online. What is the public value of activity on the Internet? Is web-based creativity and connectivity any different from what happens offline?  Do digital platforms simply expand our communications or do they transform our relationships?

Our first event in London on June 1st will set the social and historical context for the series. The Internet now has a history which we can use to frame a critical approach to current activity and to set out scenarios for the future. We will explore the social potential of the Net, not just the technological or commercial opportunities. I am bored of the way that the Corporations have dominated this debate, so how can we inform the current policy agenda with some fresh thinking about public service online?

The acid test will be the impact the Internet has on the possession and exercise of power. Our second event in the autumn in Birmingham will look at the implications of digital media on politics in the widest sense. Is it enough for politicians to use new digital tools to carry out their existing work? Surely online political communications should be about a conversation not control? People can use the Net to participate in the political process in new ways, but what are the implications of all of these voices making themselves heard?  How can the Internet promote transparency, accountability and trust in itself and in political discourse? In the end, does the Internet tend towards extremism or a plural political discourse?

In our third event in Sheffield we will debate how arts and education organisations should respond to the digital challenge.  The Internet means we are re-thinking knowledge itself, but in reality how is Online changing culture? How can we encourage the discoverability of new cultural content? Do institutions like the British Museum, your local library or a school still matter? In a cut and paste world are we losing the ability to concentrate on complicated real life problems?

What is the right strategy for the individual and the Internet? We are all on Facebook or CCTV. So how can we use the Internet for social action rather than exclusion? In our fourth debate in Glasgow we will ask how do we give people the power and protection without losing the freedom and independence offered online?  How can people use the Internet to change our communities and our sense of citizenship? How will our privacy change and our sense of identity? What will an Internet City look like? What is friendship and family like online?

In our final debate in London we will be looking to the ‘next’ future. What are the designs and visions for the Internet tomorrow? Is this just a case of the latest version of Microsoft or can we dream the impossible digital dream?  While most of us are just starting to grapple with Facebook and Twitter, the geeks are developing new toys with abilities beyond our wildest imaginations.  Will the Internet and its effects continue to evolve exponentially or will the new technologies become adopted and subsumed? And beyond Digital Britain how is the rest of the world innovating with new technologies and connecting itself to the Web?

We want this series to be highly participative, inviting contributions from a wide range of Internet experts, practitioners, strategists, and bright new talents in the field. The live events around the country will be filmed and featured online alongside interviews with other key thinkers and doers. The aim is to create a continuing dialogue between the media and UK citizens about what Digital Britain should look like.

If you want to know more about these events contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)