Internet Studies 102

I would like to say I learnt alot while studying this course and this course really broadened my knowledge about many topics but none more so than Dignity and how peoples dignity is affected.

I would like to thank Thembisa Waetjen and Prinisha Badassy for all their help during this course, as i took Inst102 as an elective this semester.

My Final Project - Essay

Last week was a very busy week for me trying to finish my movie project, and on Monday when I was trying to upload it to my blog and it wasn’t working I will be honest I was stressing, but I managed to get to UKZN and upload it just a few minutes before the deadline.

This week I will be working on my essay. This essay is really helping me broaden my knowledge about firstly what dignity is and secondly how peoples dignities are impaired.

My essay will be following on from my movie on the topic of poverty and I will be referring to the two articles by Appiah and Ramphele and using their ideas of a perfect society.

With exams just around the corner I am hoping to finish my essay and get it out the way as soon as possible so I can concentrate on my Internet studies test on Wednesday and my exams starting on the 8th.

Lecture Notes For October

1 October 2008

How do technologies of the internet change our social and political landscape?
New field in scholarship: e.g. effect of new generation or ‘digital natives’
What about the effects of democracy? E.g. political campaigning and voting?

But other basic questions about democracy currently at stake:

Can democracy thrive in a one party state?
Does democracy mean that two parties in one powerful nation can vote over whether to bail out bank failures that have potential global effects on finance markets all over the world?
Is floor crossing a betrayal of democratic practice?
What if everyone has the right to vote, but no one cares?
OR, what if no one cares enough to read the news to see what the issues and debates of the day actually are?
Does democracy mean that you can invade other countries and create war to force them into setting up democratic governments?

Our question last term: what kinds of social networks are created through different technologies of communication?

Writing as technology: script, paper, printing
Relevant theorists - Anderson, De Tocqueville, Habermas

Critical model also has important things to say: From a Marxist School of scholarship – The German Ideology

“Dominant ideas will be those that favour the interests of the ruling classes and those with power”

Example of theory from this perspective

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media 1988

“Propaganda model” (Us Case study)


Basic argument:

Mass media is a business and what it sells is not just news but also readers and audiences to advertisers. Its goal is to try to get people to read its papers and watch its programs so that it can attract advertising sponsors

Therefore the media create systematic biases

Filters

ownership
funding
sources
flak
ideology

Does this mean that no news is worth reading? No! but you must be an active agent, not passive of consumer of news

So, what about the internet society? How does the internet change things, if at all?

New technology: what are its properties?

virtual, not paper and ink
imagination – global not national
new form of literacy
new technologies – digital divide

3 October 2008

Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda theory of news media

Filters

Ownership
funding
sources
flak
ideology

Case of US media as industry: 6-10 companies own/control almost all the media

E.g. Sony

Who are the ‘big 10’?

Powerful media moguls: Rupert Murdoch

Robert McChesneys argues that media monopolies in the USA are a threat to public interest. I.e. a threat to free press that is concerned with debate, and therefore, to democracy

Others say that mass media benefits from competition and large scale dissemination, news syndicates, etc. Also that it is pointless to criticize this process since this is the way monopoly capitalism works.

Who owns SA newspapers?

independent newspapers
Johnnic Communication
Media 24/ Naspers
Caxton

When a state owns and controls the media, there are certainly issues about the free press and democratic debate. Patterns of ownership of the press in capitalist societies pose different challenges and different solutions

But, how do we know whether there are stories that the public has the right to know, but which are not reaching that public?

Civic initiatives: Project Censored

How do they define censorship?
As project censored, we examine the coverage of news and information important to maintenance of a healthy and functioning democracy. We define modern censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets.

8 October 2008

Internet news and democracy

A few more issues that we can consider
© Access and availability of technologies (digital divide)
© Censorship and filters
© Uses towards development and by grassroots democratic movements
© Commodification of news

Headlines that sell
è Sex, violence, traumaè Deviance
è Personal dramas of public figures
è Celebrity and royalty and politicians
è Emotion
è Disclosure of secrets
è Scandal
è Confessional narrative


What is the potential impact of the commodification of news on democracy?

Theorist: Richard Sennet
è The fall of public man, 1986
è Argues that contemporary culture has eroded the boundary between public life and private life. ( The boundary which Habermas said was crucial for rational – critical debate )
è Public concern has been replaced with a desire for intimate knowledge
è We are taken to be ‘good’ and ‘honest’ if we tell people everything
è Disclosure of feelings and internal lives – daytime tv, talk shows, tabloids
è What counts as insight and analysis?
è This kind of culture deprives us of having much in common with each other except secrets, confessions, mundane details of personal and internal landscapes
è News companies have to please sponsors or they lose funding

Is Sennet right?

è Entertaining and expensive
è But, they appeal to the enjoyment of gossip
è The verification of their truth is therefore not always important: their articles are more emotion than opinion
è They invite us to apply judgement or derision
è They offer a feeling of moral high ground to the reader
è They celebrate improbable content
è They bring the rich, powerful and famous down – levelling
è They trade in the economy of emotion
è They evoke a world with few real life consequences for the reader
è They appear to disclose secrets
è Revel on conspiracy secrets
è Relish confessional tell all narrative and exclusive disclosure
è Generate and sustain celebrity cults

Why this quest for disclosure
© Historical form of the diary – arose at the same time as the newspaper as a genre of writing, record of the self
© Diaries are where individuals recorded mundane thoughts and things they could not tell others
What is a personal blog?
Often a personal diary that is available to the public
Performance - like reality television, people play to the camera to create a drama of their emotions and lives.
Personal blogging reflects the new culture of disclosure and pseudo-intimacyDisclosures and exhinitionists


How do these forms affect Habermas’s notion of the public sphere?

Several views
Harmless and entertaining
Escapist

Is hard news becoming more tabloid like?
Stories that indulge in the gruesome and morally repugnant
Stories that focus on dramas of single case to highlight an eventLanguage framing

Is language of ‘real news’ always neutral and objective?
Can newspapers influence how the public behaves? Can it contribute to xenophobia and other forms of fear and hatred?
Can newspapers help appeal to the best and most generous parts of human nature?

15 October 2008

Reporters without borders 2007 Press freedom rankings

Shows restraints that some countries have. The press and freedom of press that some countries have or government restrictions that countries have.

Government censorship of the Internet vs. Grassroots Internet democracy

The case of Burma – Myanmar

What happened there?

mass [non-violent] protests by pro-democracy groups, including Buddhist monksviolent repression of protests by military groups

* Tourism is one of its major industries
* But has been growing concern about repressive and authoritative government, and human rights violations.

Brief history

Was a British colony until 1948
1948-1962 Democratic republic – ‘Union of Burma’
1962 – 1988
1962, democratic rule ended by a military coup d’etat
1988 saw a new political opposition to a government, because of a falling economyAaun Sun Suu Key, influenced by Ghandi she adopts a non-violent approach to protestsShe is the ‘Nelson Mandela’ of Burma

Pro-democracy – refers to the country as Burma
Military – refers to the country as Myanmar

1990 – Aaun San Suu Key is put under house arrest
-- is still there today!
-- won the Nobel peace prize in 1991

Recent context

Government raises petrol by 500%
Monks are killed and tortured
Government shuts down internet accessJ
ournalists are warned not to report regarding the protests
Evidence provided by the ONI

Open Network Initiative
2005 – does not cover current events
Still provides a prospective regarding restrictions and content filtering

Burma – Most restricted regime on censorship and content filtering

Censorship of internet parallels a policy that limits freedom of speech
Internet is very costly and access is mainly to internet cafes
State peace and developmental council uses software to regulate filtering
Access to 11% of content of the internet was denied
Access to 85% of email provided was filtered
Access to pornographic content was restricted and filtered by 65%
Information on the Burmese state was restricted by 80%

Fortinet – Politics of profit at any human costs

Internet provider – tags and firewalls

General censorship laws in BurmaGeneral media regulation
-- everything needs to be presented to a security board before printedOutside communication had to be registered
-- if not, the prospect of jail for 7-15 years
Broadband is too expensive
Dial up internet is far too slow

Facebook as a mobilization tool

Group – “Support the monk’s protest in Burma”
Membership – Half a million
September 29 100000 joined in one day.

4 October - International Bloggers Day for Burma

Human rights watch says that it has sources that can verify that more people are arrested than the government admits.

Burma is a case that demonstrates

Powerfulness of the internet
Availability of information technology

22 October 2008

Photography and power

Propaganda, persuasion and contemporary photography

the photograph as a major technology of the 20th Century

Shaping understanding of news
Iconic photographic images and our understanding of past events

War and photograph today

photographer’s strategies for reportage and persuasion
effort at control and censorship

But why trust photographers?
Why?
Why not?
Contemporary photographic alteration and manipulation

July 22, 2006
August 5, 2006

Same woman, 2 different dates, same situation

All photographs are ambiguous … yet it might be that the photographic ambiguity, if recognized and accepted as such, could offer to photography a unique means of expression.

…Full of meanings, [the photograph] is a dense text

Censorship and the power of photography in the age of the electronic image

Embedded journalism and the US military {Iraq 2003}

*Photos of USA fatalities rarely published
* Photos of USA torturing Iraqi civilians

24 October 2008

Dilemmas in social photography

Sex and violence sells papers
Social commentary – voyeuristic gaze onto other people’s experiences

Ernesto Nhamvuave

No one truly knows this person
He was burned alive with xenophobic violence that was in South Africa
Don’t know the individual itself

Photos (Domestic violence)

Portray violence
Hard to concentrate on the individual face
We see the problem that she represents

The first image

At first glance it is domestic violence
“just another victim”

We see through the lens of a social issue

Beautiful suffering

Photography and the traffic in pain
Photographers dealing with the issues that are present in the social realm

Berger- Mohr

A seventh man
Migrant workers in the UK
Invisible people
Temporary on visas
Generic image

Alex Kayser

Of soldiers and bankers

Formal men – bankers
Dressed in suits and sitting down
Showcasing authority, individualism and confidence
Soldiers
Start with a close up of one soldier
Sad eyes, blank expression
Showcasing vulnerability
No individualism
Gets lost when with all the other soldiers

MY FINAL MOVIE PROJECT

Notes for the month of September

These are all my lecture notes for September

17 September 2008

News under repression

When: 1970 and 1980s
Where: Apartheid South Africa

Repression

violence
detention
trials
information control
Bantustan policy

Contestation

unions
youth
UDF/ Inkatha/ Unity movement
ANC/PAC/ Black consciousness

Response to information control

How?

Marginal/ underground
cheapcontrol process
gathering information
production
dissemination

What?

research
utilize what is there – courts, lanour

Problems

banning of publications
banning of people and organizations
distribution
money

10 September 2008

Alternative press in South Africa

In the 19th C, states and independent African Kingdoms

But community is increasingly imagined and organized as unitary and national with the rise of mineral revolution and SA war

Politics and publications.

Circulation

Literacy among adult African people rise steadily

1930s economic crisis and political repression destroyed alternative efforts to publish. Socialist journals the exception. Inkululeko and the Guardian

Commercial pressures and white ownership

Four phases in the history of alternate press

The African mission press – 1830s – 1880
the independent protest press – 1880s – 1930
searly resistant press – 1930s – 1960s
the later resistance press 1960 –

Focus on second phase

Eastern Cape – Tengo Jabavo and Imvo Zabantsundu
John Tengo Jabavo – 1959-1921
King Williams Town, Nov 1884. Imvo Zabantsundu launched: Sought to articulate and unify the interest of the emerging African Christian middle class

1887 – The parliamentary voters registration act
1892 – the franchise and ballot act

Northern Cape – Solomon Plaatjie Plaatjie and Koranta ea BecoanaSol Plaatjie
– 1876-1932Early education and work in Mafekeng and Kimberley.
Coverage of siege of Mafekeng – beginnings of his journalistic career.

On August 1901, Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette) was launched.
News exchange from other countries and regionsLike Jabave, Christian, critical of Africans who did not give up traditional ways to become ‘civilised’ i.e. liberal-conservativeTsala ea Becoana
He joined the South African Native National Congress SANNC that formed in 1912 and was elected as Secretary General

Natives’ Land Act 1913Tsala’s circulation rose to 4000 by early 1914.
Plaatje= most widely read black journalist of his dayDelegation to EnglandNatalOne example is John Dube’s illanga Lase Natal, started in 1903.
Condemned slaughter rebels during Babbatha uprising.
But generally conservative in viewAnother example: Mohandas K Ghandi and Indian Opinion. 3 individuals founded Madanjit Viyavaharik, Mansukhal Hiral Nazar and Ghandi

In English, Hindi and Guajarati, Urdu and Tamil1st issue 4 June 1903 : 3paims of newspaper: imperial values, create unified Indian community out of extremely diverse populationremained elite in outlook, but did condemn indenture as a system of cruelty and evil

in 1907 the Transvaal government passed the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance resistance and goal – newspapers praised those in goal and condemned collaboratorsIndian opinion published inspiring quotations from authors such as Henry David’s Thoreau’s “on the duty of civil disobedience”

Satyagathra and Gandhi

All these examples use platform of newspapers as platform for civic engagement, to unify community opinion, to transform conditions in their world. All had hopes for change and believed in the principles of existing parliamentary system. Advocated for inclusion.

My Lecture Notes For August

These are most of the lecture notes I took in August

29 August 2008
Importance of the free press

News media as a way of speaking truth to power

Public sphere as a place of debate and free exchange of ideas

A check on state abuses of power.

Example

McCarthyism in the US

CBS – Columbia Broadcast News
Edward R Morrow and news team

Film: Good Night and Good Luck
Nominated for Oscar Awards

McCarthy’s “rooting out communists” has been compared to Bush’s War on Terror in which people are targeted if they are not “native” American.

The McCarthy era

McCarthyism
Late 1940 – early 1950

Context of Cold War
Soviet Union tests atomic bomb in 1949

Execution of Rosenberg’s’ in 1953
Communist party in early 20th C

Questioning loyalty and accusations of espionage

Loyalty letter

“Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist party of the US?”

Hollywood – Black list – pressure to name names

HUAC – House Un-American Committee


27 August 2008
Research ethics

Issues

power of the researcher – making private things public
“informed consent”
Vulnerable populations
Children
Prisoners
Mentally ill or disabled
Victims of trauma
Refugees and those without legal status or in danger of arrest
Potentially stigmatized individuals

sensitive information and confidentiality

Principles

Protection and respect – do not harm

Will my interviews create harm, confusion or embarrassment?
Will the fact of my interview place my subject in danger?
Will revealing my identity of my source compromise their well-being in any way?
Is this person in a position to give informed consent?
Does this person I interview believe that they do not have a choice?
Are they under the impression that they will be rewarded if they answer or punished if they do not?

Transparency

contact details
research description
how data will be used?

Professional ethics

agreement to represent the best aspects of academic professionalism (conduct)
representing the UKZN community
ensuring your work is original – not plagiarized
issue of faking the data – accountability issue

Permission/ informed consent
photographs
use of names
avoiding terribly personal questions

22 August 2008
Community

The people who are most local and central to you represent your community

This does not represent the notion of a political community as that involves the nation

Newspapers and nations

Community

Various meanings and realities
Examples, intimate vs. abstract

Political community and the contemporary and normative idea of ‘the nation’

Benedict Anderson (1936- ) wrote a book called Imagined communities 1983

Asked:

Why are the people ready to die or kill of behalf of the nation
What explains nationalism and patriotism?
Why are people so committed to nations?
Why do people think that their personal interest is the same as the interest of every person in the country?

Often it is a voluntary matter that people choose to take up arms and kill/die for their country.

Proudly South African

products made in SA by SA people
the flag
the national anthem
Heritage day
Olympics
Embassies


National community must be imagined and imaginable to population at large

A nation is an imagined community

Not unreal
Even though there are different people who look different from us – they still share part in the nation

Print capitalism and the role of the newspaper

time and simultaneity
nationalizing space
standardization of language

Things that show we are part of a nation

maps
Story books
History books
Televisions
Laws
Police
Institutions

The primary tool of joining people to the nation – is the newspaper

it shows us what goes on in the world and in the country
It shows us that a lot of people have the same stake on the world.

How is this nation affected?

15 August 2008

At least four major historical conditions that are important in the history of newspaper:

the technology of script and writing invented
materials and technology for producing a newspaper
Mass literacy [lots of people who know how to read]
social institutions and ideas about politics that make newspapers marketable prospect, something that people are motivated to buy and read [e.g. state, market economy, civil society and mass education]

Paper society is not really that hard to produce

China made paper – 2nd Century BCE
Only produced in Europe – 12th Century AD

Papyrus, clay, animal skins, rocks and wax tables are mediums of what was used before paper was invented

Mass produce theory – printing processes
Block writing – full page of text

China – moveable type
Block of each letter
China used Ceramics

Europe

developments of a moveable type
Johannes Guttenburg
1440
Germany
The printing press
Metal and oil based ink

Paper manufacture in England

Craft guild as manufacturers

Single sheet
Fibers - rags etc
Frames with dry screens

Textiles and automation
“Spinning Jenny” 1765
Implication for production and social relations?

J.N.L. Robert, 1798 paper making machine
Wood pulp and chemicals 1831
Craft guilds out of business or had to adopt and build their own paper mills

Distribution: the importance of Postal services and networks

Newsletters

Apprentices would be children up to the age of 7 and spend their time picking apart the rags and wood that would be used to form the paper

James Hargreaves – Spinning Jenny

A lot of new materials are coming form the ‘new world’ – North and South America

1798

J.N.L. Robert
The mesh paper making machine that can make a role of paper
This put the craft guilds out of work

The business of making paper has sprouted other businesses as well

For distribution of paper you need some sort of transportation systems

The post office carries the news in the 18th and 19th Century

Newsletters

merchants, noble men and Kings
commodity prices, exchange rates
uprising in a particular area
fires and weather conditions
gathering information
were sold by subscription
goings on in the world

What about mass literacy? And what socio-political institutions make the newspaper a marketable and useful prospect?

History of Capitalism, the history of the public sphere and the history of the Nation –state. Intertwined


England
Pre-industrial England
‘enclosures’
In 1688, Parliament form, men of property
Class bourgeoisie and proletariat
Urbanization and factories
Ideas changing: “the enlightenment”

Monarchy ruled over pre-industrial England
Country is divided in class
Merchants did trade in between colonies and also had the newsletters
People started to debate in public forums through the medium of text

Enclosures were where the landless people could make their living and let their animals graze
These enclosures were covered with fences
They became privatized

Glorious revolution

Dutch King
Law making came into the hands of the property owning elite
Voting remained to the free English men who owned property.
A need for unskilled labour
The landless people became the working class because they had jobs in the factories

Urbanization took place because the landless people now had jobs

6 August 2008
Orality and literacy

Changes in technology do have changes in society

Not all changes in technology impact changes that take place in society

Changes in technology that impacted society

electricity
cellphone
television
radio
cars
guns
stone tools – farming

technology and historical change
writing as a technology

oral cultures have quite often been societies without writing, as illiterate or pre-literate. But this is misleading. Bias

Literacy is essential
Schools are there to improve literacy

What is lost with the invention of writing

Plato 3BCE

Plato was not happy with writing things down – the proper place was in your head

People who are born into oral cultures have a much greater capacity for memory

Writing is held in text and it can be archived

People who have been exposed to writing can only with great difficulty imagine what being in an oral culture is like.

Mega memory

Visual word is different than the visual object

Sound only exists as it is almost gone
Word as sound – word as events

Speech as action

Weight of words in oral cultures

Writing things down can be anonymous

Oaths and pledges – oral cultures

Ceremonial – ritual and religious utterances

Magic words – words as power

News in oral cultures – what you know about the world is told to you

Knowledge is then what can be recalled, remembered, passed down from one generation to the other

Memory aids – mnemonic devices

Thoughts in rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetition, alliteration, rhyme, formulas, clichés

Story telling vs. story writing

Oral cultures have skills that have been lost, or are threatening to become lost

Formulas for knowledge – proverbs

Orality is participatory – interactive, communal

Writing can take place removed from people, so it can be solitary

Willlem Boshoff

Artist
Used words in art to express himself.

13 August 2008
Literacy and power

Invention of writing has an impact on how a society works

Also a focus on how a political society functions

to expand communication networks
to rationalize social institutions

When a useful and new technology is developed it may affect the whole society as well as the power structure that the society has. Also, it will affect how the society is seen in the eyes of the world.

Literacy emerges among the elite
origins of class and inequality relevant to the history of literacy
Neolithic revolution, about 10 – 13 thousand years ago.
Begins in ‘fertile crescent’ also China, Egypt, and Mexico. Domestication
Impact?
Societies settle, dwellings become more permanent
Changes in land use patterns through cultivation and grazing

Elite

the rich and powerful
it emphasizes the inequalities that were found in Historical context
Kings, Priests and States

Literacy

Is a tool in political and economic power

Neolithic revolution

Neo – new
Lithic – stone

The most important revolution
The birth of farming

Writing and farming began in ‘fertile crescent’

Farming

Domesticating certain plants and animals

Domesticating

The art of growing and bringing things into your own home range

Significance?

Changes occur with farming

Hunter-gather society

Follow the herd – seasonal
Follow the plants and the route that it grows

Nomadic community

Easy to move
Small communities
You just have what you own and can carry with you
Oral culture

Information is passed down from generation to generation in an oral manner

Neolithic revolution

societies settle down
changes in land use
surplus food
Population growth with the extra food.
Land becomes privatized
Storage of food becomes possible
Change in technology and food
Private property emerges; and with it inequality [rich and poor]
Organized trade of surplus
Division of labour: hierarchical forms of social organization
Political classes: Chiefs, Kings, ruling classes, priests
Technological and intellectual innovations
Labour: Serfs, slaves, indentured labour
Military power, standing armies

Why is this history relevant for a history of literacy?

Social divisions and hierarchies
Separation is bolstered by writing
Literacy of royal courts, a specialized skill
Empires
Military command from a distance
Population registers. Taxes, Tribute etc…
Bureaucracies
Theories of rule, theories of war etc…
Loans and debts, charters and enterprise
Territorial expansion and economic networks
Law encodement

Capitalism based on private property and banking

Cultural divide between town and country

What about the non-elite majority?

“mass literacy” only recent:

Ideological reasons
Technological reasons
not yet a view that ordinary people or non elite people should make any opinion or voice in the political ideas that govern them
Riots or uprisings, but… not based on the idea that the people should rule.
Ideology and social structure not geared towards democracy

the origins of mass literacy coincide with a rise in an ideology moving towards a ‘democratization’ of politics

writing can be used to challenge power

how? Example – treason in the 18th century

Literacy, citizenship and civic action

“news media”

1 August 2008
New forms of delivery for news media
Relationship between readership and the news media

Blog
Web log
Web – world wide web
Log – journal/ record
Once a blog is published it can be edited and updated
Reasons for creating a blog
Advertise something you want to sell

Expectations of a blog
Blog needs to have a title
Blog needs to have a subtitle
It needs to be catchy
Every entry has a date
Most recent entry at the top
Each entry has a title
It can have photos
It can have hyperlinks

Group 5 and our news stories we did

A job is just a job



Mxit slut lists