Netroots, Élitism and Old-Fashioned Activism
There is a huge irony that the “new social media” activist movement has found itself today in Congress House having an old-fashioned face-to-face discussion, with face-to-face networking at the Netroots UK event. The fact that you had to already be connected with these people on twitter, or if you’re lucky facebook, or be a reader of quite specific blogs, to know about this event adds to the irony of a movement that is claiming to be horizontal in a manner that avoids elites.
I, sitting in the library this morning, decided to alert attendees of the Netroots conference to this irony by twitter this morning. I made a claim that even if the new media did not exist, we would use the age-old methods of phoning people up or meeting face-to-face to organize actions. Indeed, that’s entirely what UK Uncut did at the beginning (and still do), with their “meeting in a pub”. Indeed the strength and number of activists has, in contrast to Clifford Singer’s claims (thanks for the hat-tip in the Grauniad btw Clifford) been 1) reporting in the traditional mass-media by the likes of Johann Hari, 2) already existing networks such as climate camp, 3) traditional parties backing it and telling their members to turn up (see my piece on this from a few months back), and 4) again face-to-face radicalization in the rather non-new-media setting of university occupations where people sit down together and discuss politics.
I am not claiming that social media is not useful, nor am I claiming that it hasn’t given a voice to people who previously were unconnected to activist movements, but I think we need a level of suspicion about claims that technology can be the political basis for new movements. Furthermore we should be aware that despite claims of horizontality in social networks is actually based on quite the opposite. Social networks as we know them through twitter are pyramidal in structure. The ability to contact lots of people is the same as the ability to contact one or two well connected people at the top of the network to throw things back down to the grass-roots. He who shouts the loudest (or already has the best organized networks) is the most heard, and this remains a problem. If your comment is contentious enough, if you’re already well connected, or if you hit something Zeitgeist-y (as we did with water cannons) you have a chance, yes, just a chance of spreading the message.
Indeed in claiming that we could do activism just as well with a phone-book and traditional modes of networking I was accused by Guy Aitchison of OpenDemocracy and the UCL Occupation of being politically élitist. On the contrary, Maeve McKeown of Student Theory tweeted this morning “#netrootsuk Where are all the schoolchildren who were so crucial in the protests?” If nothing else has pointed to the new élitism of this movement, her tweet has. We should, of course, try to use the new media, but we must be aware of its limitations, not kid ourselves about how big this movement is getting by making the obfuscatory claim that the new media allows us to talk to everyone all the time. The student occupations in the last months even failed to talk to each other effectively. Those of us who tried our hardest to put them all in contact know this failure only too well.
Reader Comments
I think the real problem is the conflation between “horizontality” and participatory. The two are not the same thing, although they are most often complementary.
The “new” social media give emerging networks a degree of openness, a certain public element which could never have been achieved before with closed-end networks between specific individuals (as with a ring-around*) – they foster participation to a level which could otherwise normally only be aspired toward.
You’re spot-on about the networks being essentially pyramid in structure. The only difference is that the pyramid’s lower tier is not closed off.
It’s a mistake to confused this kind of participation with horizontality, and potentially very dangerous not to appreciate and appropriately deal with the leadership structures that emerge too.
*To my juvenile brain, this sounds very funny and rude.
What you said on Twitter Jacob was: “the point is that the people involved (in UKuncut etc.) are basically the same people you’d get from a ring-round.”
This, I described as “activist elitism” – your perpetuating the idea that the people involved in the anti-tax dodging movement are basically a small group of people who already know each other, they’re all in your phone book, a “ring around” as you say. That’s just not an accurate description of how UK Uncut worked, I’m afraid. Many hundreds of new people were brought into the movement thanks to Facebook and Twitter – some organised their own sit-ins, some joined others. On one Saturday in December there were 50 simultaneous UKUncut events across the UK. No matter how good your activist phonebook, I doubt you’d have been able to organise those.
I agree that social media isn’t the be all and end all – on and offline networks will interlace and reinforce each other. As do new and old media.
I wonder if what we’re seeing is a kind of elitist disdain, by more experienced activists, at the democratisation of activism brought about by new media. Your insistence, on another thread, that UKUncut in London is ran entirely by a “private” group of activists kind of suggests this.
While I sympathise in some ways Jacob, you may be interested to know that: a) this is a strategy conference, it’s not the strategy in action, which means some of the claims that it is necessarily imbued with elitism is wide off the mark; this is a perfectly good space for hacktivists on and offline to work out next steps. You may well wish to take issue with how best it has managed to do that – and I will level some criticisms and praise later on, perhaps tomorrow on TCF – but we must critique the conference for what it is: a space for people with leftwing views to work out how best to take this new movement to its next stage, and utilise existing social networking tools (which have been effective, if not for working out solutions to problems, but certainly for organising and connecting people).
b) the attitude among many here is that the next stage for the movement in terms of organisation will not begin and end online – in fact I’d risk a guess that most people here would find it absurd and naive to assume the internet will be the sole medium for our activism.
In short – lets be careful at what we’re levelling by way of criticism to the conference, lets remember that the consensus here is that social media tools are a helpful asset, not the be-all and end-all.
Am normally on board with you on most things Jacob, but not this. Ill stick to the twitter comments since others have spoken on the other issues.
Twitter networks aren’t pyramidal in structure, nor does their structure entail a trivial difference… it is not the case that being able to connect to many people is exactly the same as being able to throw some information to the top of a pyramid structure and have it passed back down. What it means is that the spread of information, its behaviour, in our society is entirely different. It is faster. It is more diffused. It avoids traditional filters of information much more effectively.
If you were looking at a huge map of the entire twitter network, im sure you can section many parts of it off that had formed into vaguely pyramid-like behaviour, but that would only be a very small fraction of the entire twitter network and not indicative of the behaviour as a whole or in many other parts. And that’s only talking about the friend network. The mention-network is another matter. See…
http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/#user-thethirdestate
…for how difficult it is to translate that into a pyramid structure.
Now yes, it hasn’t completely evened the playing field. People who can afford blackberrys and other expensive techno stuff are gonna be able to have a large presence. That’s just a fact of living in a capitalist society. Nevertheless, spreading information has gone from starting up costs that include printing press, technical team, large resources for investigators etc, to virtually zilch.
The student occupations could probably have done with some more communication, but there was still communication there, and probably a lot more than could’ve have been done without online resources. I compiled a document of all Lib Dem Mps with contact details, constituencies and how big their majorities were in the election, so we could call their offices and lobby them. I could’ve got on the phone to each and every occupation, one at a time and read the whole list out loud to them. I suppose we could’ve faxed them as well. But as it was, I put it up as a google document, so that not only did everyone have access to it, but they could edit it as was needed. Specifically, when people called the office and got an answer, they could write, in instant time, for everyone else to see, how each MP was planning to vote.
Jacob has a point. Having a conference that is entirely centered on online activism is a mistake. This isn’t about networks as much as network professionals. Professionals have displaced the role of activists in mass branch political organisations and this is at least in part implicated in the decline in membership of political parties – leaders listen to focus groups, marketing experts and media experts, not activists with a troublesome committment to principle. Unless net professionals are subjected to the control of democratic structures that are based on real human social networking they will usurp the role of activists in the anti-cuts movement.
“Mediated channels of political mobilization supplement, rather than replace, the older direct forms of electioneering, but they also bring in their wake a coterie of campaign professionals, including fund raisers, public relations experts, pollsters, and advertising agents. The most recent stage in this process concerns the rise of the internet and the way that parties have adapted to this new technological environment. Theories of campaign modernization suggest that many party organizations in older democracies have become more professional, financially subsidized, and media-orientated, reducing their dependence on volunteer grassroots labor for get-out-the vote drives and fund-raising activities.”
Pippa Norris on Political Parties (Democratic Phoenix)
Agree very much with what Carl “the ghosteater” Packman said. Where I disagree with jacob is his assertion that only a limited network of people would have heard about and had access to this event. In the month of
December alone 139,000 people visited lib con where they would have seen it publicised. And from what I understand it involved far more people than many formally more “grassroots” activities.
Thanks for that Reuben heh
YES, YES AND YES AGAIN.
Thank you Jacob, for saying what I thought, and saying it very well indeed.
Adrian, with respect, that’s nonsense.
1. The conference wasn’t about exclusively online activism. It was about how the web can supplement and support all forms of activism. On and offline reinforce each other – it’s not a dichotomy – as I point out above.
2. The internet, and social media especially, has democratised activism. It’s not just a “tool” for parties and organisations to “engage” new people. It means those people can themselves organise collectively without the need for parties and organisations. Some traditional organisations on the left are now feeling uneasy that their monopolies over dissent are being threatened (just like record companies, newspapers, other institutions threatened by the web).
Guy, you keep going on and on about how the traditional organisations are feeling threatened by the movement being taken out of their hands. I don’t know where this is coming from, but it is certainly not what is happening here. In fact many of us old activists are fucking glad that people are organising themselves, doing all sorts of stuff that hasn’t been done before etc. The point is that there are theoretical and practical problems that need to be addressed such as claims of horizontality, claims of leaderlessness, claims of “democratisation of activism.” These do need to be explored, and sharpish. If not, there are serious theoretical and practical implications for the movement. This is not about the old left trying to gain power, but about a broadly naive and undertheorised movement refusing to acknowledge that saying things are democratic or avoiding elites doesn’t make them so. I recommend you engage in the debate rather than making ad hominem remarks. Apart from anything, it is within the new movement that people are really having personality cults, attempts at taking power and setting agendas, not in the old.
To take part in a large-scale action planned for next Wednesday (26 Jan 2011) against the banks, please send out the following tweet:
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Hit back at the banks: BANK RUN on Revenge Wednesday, 26 Jan 2011. Info at: tinyurl.com/bankrun2011 PLEASE FORWARD THIS
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…and circulate the following info by any means possible…
BANK RUN ON REVENGE WEDNESDAY, 26 JAN
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On Wednesday 26 January 2011, thousands of people in the UK will try to cause a bank run by withdrawing money from their bank accounts, in person, at high street bank branches.
The hope is that the movement will snowball.
Everyone is welcome. Just print out the form below, fill in your details, and take it to your bank, preferably around lunchtime, e.g. about 1pm. Even better, print out multiple copies and hand them round. Use email, Twitter, Facebook too.
When the first bank branch says it won’t pay out people’s money, let everyone know, using every means possible. Take photos. Use mobile phones, send tweets, get the journalists in on the picture. This movement is decentralised. It is what you and we make it.
Note that this idea was tried last December, after being suggested by Eric Cantona. Unfortunately it didn’t go very far, mainly because the organisers asked people to “sign up” online. We’re not asking you to sign up to anything. In particular, you do NOT have to give any personal details to anyone. The form below is just for giving to your BANK.
If you can only afford to withdraw 10 pounds, please do it. If you can afford to withdraw thousands of pounds, do that too. EVERY LITTLE HELPS. Banks cannot withstand everyone withdrawing even a tenth of what they’ve got in the bank. LET’S SEND THESE PARASITES A MESSAGE THEY’LL NEVER FORGET. It’s an open secret that they’re holding the country to ransom. Let’s kick ‘em where it hurts.
This is the financial system’s MAJOR WEAK SPOT. That’s why the Dutch government is considering making it illegal to call for a bank run. Because they’re SCARED. In 2009 there was a bank run against a Dutch bank. This was considered to be a particularly unpleasant bank, which had been encouraging millions od Dutch people to get into debt who couldn’t afford it. People did a run against it, and it went bankrupt. How sad.
In Britain, you’d be hard pushed to name a bank which DIDN’T try to get people into massive debt they can’t really afford.
Here’s the bottom line: THE BANKS HAVE GOT IT COMING TO THEM.
So please take part. Spread the news. Distribute this leaflet. Print your own. Just do a little bit to help, and we’ll be strong and we’ll blast the damn banks like they’ve never been blasted before.
Please print the following, complete the details, and hand it to your bank around 1pm on 26 Jan 2011.
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NAME: _________________________ _
ADDRESS:_________________ ____________
_________________________ _______
ACCOUNT NUMBER: ___________________
SORT CODE:____________________ __
NAME OF BANK:____________________ _
To: the Branch Manager
Dear Sir,
I wish to withdraw ____________ pounds from my account in cash, immediately.
Yours sincerely,
__________________ (signed)
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