Transformation janschmidt umea_2011_print

Another structural transformation of the public sphere?

On recent challenges and current research projects

Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt

Senior Researcherfor digital interactive media and political communication

Umeå, January 2011

Public Sphere Page 2 of 27

Agenda

• Introducing my background

• Structural transformation of the public sphere?

• Current research projects at the Hans-Bredow-Institute

- Personal public- Rediscovering audience

• Discussion


The Hans-Bredow-Institute


The Hans-Bredow-Institute

• Founded in 1950 – leading independent media research institute in Germany, funded by City of Hamburg and various other public institutions (e.g. Federal Media Authorities) as well as by competitive research grants

• Named after Hans Bredow (1879-1959) – originally a broadcast technician; Commissioner for Broadcasting in the Ministry of Posts in the Weimar Republic; banned from work after the Nazis got into power; central figure in building public broadcasting system after 1945

• Scope of Research: Focussing on the structure of mediated public communication - understanding the underlying determinants, assessing future opportunities and risks, and providing orientation for the actors involved

• Interdisciplinary perspective: combining social sciences and legal studies within various research programmes


Research Programmes

1. „Foundations of societal information“ – how does society keep itself informed?

• e.g. project on the media repertoires of the german population

2. „Types of public communication“ – how is the changing media system structured?

• e.g. study on „Leitmedium Internet?“ for German Parliament

3. „Between reception, interaction, and production“ – how do users‘s roles change?

• e.g. study on adolescents and Web 2.0

4. „Long-term media effects “ – are there any, and if yes: which and how?

• z.B. the role of television in forming images, attitudes & beliefs about the Holocaust


Agenda




- Personal public- Rediscovering audience

• Discussion


Another structural transformation of the public sphere?

CC-BY-SA-3.0, Wolfram Huke - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JuergenHabermas_crop2.jpg

CC-BY-SA-3.0, Takk, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Televison_Hungarian_ORION_1957.jpg


The context (in brief)

Basic trends contributing to structural changes in the public sphere today:

– The Technological Convergence / Digitization

– The Political-Economical Globalization, „marketization“

– The Social Networked Individualism

Not only the social contexts, but also the internal structures of mediated spaces are changing

– Governing / Regulating mediated spaces

– Producing public spheres


Governing mediated spaces

Governing / regulating convergent digital media / mediated spaces

– Law e.g. free speech; media concentration laws

– Social Norms e.g. news factors; personal authenticity; community standards

– Contracts e.g. personal data service, transferring ownership rights

– Software Code e.g. default settings of visibility or filtering; aggregation, the „app“ model

more universal

morecontextual

? Interplay of these factors


Producing the Public Sphere

Producing the Public Sphere in Digital Media – Co-produced by professional, participatory & technical intermediation (Neuberger 2009)

1. Changes within professional intermediation:– Shifting balance between public and private media – re-organization of journalistic practices in convergent media (e.g. newsrooms; transmedia

news reporting)

2. Growing importance of participatory intermediation – lowered barriers for "making information public" (publishing - filtering – distributing) – new entrants / new voices – but not per se democratic/inclusive/emancipatory

3. Technical intermediation – the „hidden gatekeepers“– Algorithms and software code are providing deep structure of public sphere– Only seemingly neutral – but designed with (implicit or explicit) interests and assumptions


Agenda




- Personal publics- Rediscovering audience

• Discussion


Starting point: Social Web Practices

Social Web lowers barriers for …

www.flickr.com/photos/44029537@N00/12760664/

– Identity Management (Presenting individual interests, opinions, experiences, skills, etc.)

http://flickr.com/photos/mylesdgrant/495698908/

– Relationship Management (Maintaining existing and building new relationships)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axels_bilder/1267008046/

– Information Management (co-creating, filtering and re-distributing relevant information / knowledge / content)


Identity management

http://themiddleeastinterest.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/matrix.jpg

Persistent Myth: The Internet as „cyberspace“, where people leave their bodies behind to create new identites


Identity management


Articulated social networks

• 12-24-year-old Germans using SNS (in 2008) had …• … an average: 130 friends

• … of which they have personally met:

most of them: 85 percent

less than half: 5 percent

• … considered close friends:

most of them: 15 percent

less than half: 62 percent

Quelle: Schmidt/Paus-Hasebrink/Hasebrink 2009


Identity Management for articulated social networks

64,856

3,20

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

It is important to me to show my trueself online

Certain information about me areaccessible only for friends or contacts

I have profiles where I present myselfcompletely different from what I am.

Statements on self-disclosure online (2008; 12-24-year-olds; agree/fully agree in %)

Source: Schmidt/Paus-Hasebrink/Hasebrink 2009


Structure of personal publics

Personal Publics emerge when and where users make available/filter information which is…

(a) personally relevant to them, [instead of being selected according to news factors / news values]

(b) directed to an (intended) audience of strong and weak ties,[instead of a disperse and unknown audience]

(c) presented to engage in conversation.

[instead of to publicise]

Personal publics are public in the sense of „accessible“, but not necessarily in the sense „of general interest“



Blurring of communicative roles - „sender“ and „receiver“ becomes „produser“ (A. Bruns)

Twitter and Facebook have popularized the idea of the „stream“ – the more or less constant flow of information about your social network instead of rather static text


Journalistic Publics & Personal Publics

Within the personal publics, Anschlusskommunikation (=„follow-up communication“) of the former audience is becoming visible: Users comenting, linking, bookmarking, (re-)tweeting, digging, sharing or liking content provided by mainstream media

Online-platforms of established media outlets get a lot of attention within these new publics

Personal publics and the „traditional“ public sphere are complementing each other

„Twittercharts“ nach Verweisen



• Personal publics (being a subtype of networked publics) have a specific communicative architecture (boyd 2008), being…

– Persistent

– Replicable

– Scalable

– Searchable


Architektur netzbasierter Öffentlichkeiten

These technological characteristics not only afford the emergence of personal publics, but also change the balance between self-disclosure and privacy – via the concept of „audience“

Intended audience: What is my general idea of an audience when using a specific tool or service?

Addressed audience: Which people do I address in a specific situation?

Empirical audience: Which people do actually read/view any given information?

Potential audience: What is the „technological reach“ – who might possibly read/ view any given information?


Agenda




- Personal publics- Rediscovering audience

• Discussion


Journalism and Audience: a Complicated Relationship

Journalism as a practice is still rooted in the “condition of mass communication”

– journalists’ knowledge about and attitudes toward the audience used to be formed without direct experiences and interactions

– Research on the journalism-/audience-relationship used to be based on mass-media-assumptions: asymmetry between journalism and audience

– Sociological inclusion theory (and its application to journalism) has considered the audience as being included into journalism by “merely” accepting communication offers, by being the necessary counterpart to acts of publishing


Problems of Inclusion in Journalism

Journalism has to deal with two factors: the restriction of journalism’s ability to include the audience, and increasing demands for inclusion of the audience.

– The ability of journalism to include the audience is decreasing (indicators: e. g. decreasing faith in the mainstream media, declining audiences as to the news, ‘journalistic’ activities of the audience within their personal publics)

– Through their own engagement with journalism within networked publics, the “people formerly known as the audience” (Jay Rosen) not only become an active part of the public sphere, but also form expectations about journalism and its inclusionary practices


Heuristic Research Model (proposed research)

audience

inclusion performance

•participatory practices

•degree of community orientation

inclusion expectations

•motives for participation

•evaluation of the own influence

inclusion performance

•forms of audience participation

•journalistic products/output

•work processes/routines

inclusion expectations

•attitudes towards the audience

•journalistic role perception

•strategic relevance of audience participation

journalism

inclusion level

inclusion divergence


Conclusion / Summary

The public sphere is changing – and our concepts and theories have to change, too.

Analyzing, explaining and understanding public spheres within digital, converging media has to take new agents into account

– the former audience and their personal publics– the architecture of technical mediation – software code and its affordances as well as

the underlying interests and power structures

There have been times where being a media sociologist has been less interesting! :-)


Thank you!

Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt

Hans-Bredow-Institut

Warburgstr. 8-10, 20354 Hamburg

[email protected]

www.hans-bredow-institut.de

www.schmidtmitdete.de

www.dasneuenetz.de


Relevant Literature

– Benkler, Yochai (2006): The Wealth of Networks. How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven/London.

– boyd, danah (2008): Taken out of context. American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics. Berkely. Online: http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf.

– Bruns, Axel (2008): Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond. From production to produsage. New York.

– Jenkins, Henry (2006): Convergence Culture. Where old and new media collide. New York.– Neuberger, Christoph/Christian Nuernbergk/Melanie Rischke (Hg.) (2009): Journalismus im

Internet. Profession – Partizipation – Technisierung. Wiesbaden. – Papacharissi, Zizi (2010): A private sphere. Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge.– Schmidt, Jan (2009): Das neue Netz. Merkmale, Praktiken und Konsequenzen des Web 2.0.

Konstanz.– Schmidt, Jan/Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink/Uwe Hasebrink (Hrsg.) (2009): Heranwachsen mit dem

Social Web. Berlin.

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