Alternative Media & Activism Rhetoric in Cyberculture

What does the

Citizen Journalist want?

@jennifermjones #virtualfutures

dominant narratives

access to information

user generated content

multi-platform experiences

mobile technologies

(Jenkins, 2006)

mode of production/distribution

forms of content

aesthetic quality

interaction with audiences

(Atton, 2002)

Challenge dominant narratives

Voice to marginal communities

Build networks between groups

(Downing, 2001)

different modes of address

different perspectives

story selection

(Goode, 2009: 1070)

competing with?

“It is not easy to be both an academic and an activist. The values, the audiences and the constraints are different.

Sitting down to write, you can feel yourself pulled in two different ways. The result is often muddled thinking and murky prose.There is too much ranting for an academic audience, and too much goobledgook for the activists. In

many cases, there is no prose at all, only silence and pages crumbled in the wastebasket or erased on the

screen.” (Neale, 2008 :217)

Activist and Academia

social/political context of

research environment

education of/in the future

What are the alternatives?

How do you communicate them?

online activism

(or using the internet to

communicate action?)

‘underpinned by socio-historical narratives, rather than socio-technical’

participation & being there

(Hall, 2011)

access to information

dominant narratives

dominant narratives

access to information

critique

human need

realms of freedom

(Rikowski, 2004)

participation does not begin with

the content

human connections &

relationships

reclaiming something from the

mainstream?

tools for the human condition

things

modelspeers

mentors

(lllich, 1976)

the web cannot provide new opportunities and new modes of relationship if we propose that people are able to “come together ‘out of

nothing’” in order to form new entities.

(Slevin, 2000: 113)

Thus, there needs to be motivation and a symbolic context within information can be

produced, received and distributed.

(Slevin, 2000: 113)

symbolic action

reporting the unreported

citizen media as self defense

processes of producing

content

constructing arguments

articulating different ideas about the world

workshops

access to resources

confidence buildingcritiquing ideas

no “master online citizen journalism

site lists” to sample from

(Carpenter, 2010: 1070)

Incentive to write?

Validation from the dominant narrative?

Internet as a cultural artefact?

Internet as a culture?

(Hine, 2000: 14)

Beware of the geek?

competition

applications

venture capital

“Even if geeks are ‘about’ justice and equality, the consequence of the

widespread adoption and extension of their work is the most extreme

economic inequality the world has ever known.” (Dean, 2010: 22)

the demotic turn

(Turner, 2009: 123)

not everyone that encounters the internet in this way becomes an

active producer, nor creative subject

(Terranova, 2000: 35)

Protests in Vancouver, 2010

Young reporters writing about

new library

“It may take some work to discover distortions and suppressions of information. All you need is the

desire to learn the truth.” (Chomsky, 2004: 10)

Working within constructs, on

their terms

Citizen Media as a learning space?

Full paper: http://bit.ly/virtualfutureshttp://www.jennifermjones.net

@jennifermjonesThanks to @citizenseye