After the U.S. elections: Do we live in the same country?

“Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.” – President Obama in his victory speech in Chicago, November 7, 2012

In the wee hours of this morning, following the results of the 2012 election in which 130 million U.S. citizens voted, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney participated in a time-honored tradition of U.S. presidential politics: the deliverance of concession and the proclamation of victory.

In their respective speeches, both men spoke about bipartisanship and articulated their imaginings of a nation their particular notions of the nation—not the nation-state—of America.

Each man put forward his definition of the United States as a nation—his vision of America, American values, and what it means to be an American.

In his concession address in Boston after midnight on Wednesday morning, Governor Romney spoke about what motivates, renews, and compels this nation, expounding the indispensable role of social leaders and the stability of home life:

“We look to our teachers and professors. We count on you not just to teach, but to inspire our children with a passion for learning and discovery. We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: Honesty, charity, integrity, and family. We look to our parents. From the final analysis, everything depends on the success of our homes.”

Governor Romney describes America as a majestic country built on the values of honesty, charity, integrity, and family. However, his belief that America is great nation where “everything depends on the success of our homes” is seemingly rooted in a local mindset. 

In contrast, President Obama is not limited to the local example of the nuclear family unit. He says “we believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag. To the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner. To the furniture worker’s child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president.” These are American dreams. These make up a sense of shared destiny.

Moreover, Governor Romney’s articulation of the America is utterly different compared to President Obama’s imagined nation and his belief that a shared destiny is what sets America apart from all other nations:

“What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what

makes America great.”

President Obama uses the word ‘share’ in three instances throughout his speech. The word ‘share’ does not make an appearance in the governor’s language.

President Obama chooses instead to emphasize the idea that America is united by a deeply felt sense of shared destiny.  In his rhetoric, he indicates that he is one of us by saying “we” more than 50 times in his speech (Governor Romney says “we” 11 times and his address is considerably shorter).

While Governor Romney does speak out against “partisan bickering and political posturing” and underscores how “our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work,” he remains partisan to the very end despite his best efforts—underlining the role of “Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels.”

President Obama’s address culminates with the following assertion, which omits any mention of political party and affiliation: “I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.”

I share the President’s belief in our collective sense of destiny and his vision of our nation; who we are as a people.  The difference in their language and tone during the campaign and after raises the following question, however: Do they live in the same nation—the same imagined community? From a communication standpoint, is bipartisanship possible going forward? Is there a language for bipartisanship? Do we live in the same nation or do we circle in our own national orbits? How do we communicate across the aisle? Is there just an aisle or other entire countries within our domestic politics?

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Transcripts: Governor Romney - http://www.netnebraska.org/node/824669

President Obama - http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/11/07/transcript-obamas-victory-speech/

"We're Living in Google's World"

At a briefing I attended last week, a Congressional staffer from the Department of Defense said that their biggest perceived threat is non-state actors. His statement coincides nicely with our class discussion and readings pertaining to the growing influence of non-state actors, specifically Google. Google is now considered as an influential international actor. There is a timely article in the NYTimes published on November 3, 2012, entitled, “Google Casts a Big Shadow on Smaller Websites”, that speaks to Google’s growing power.  The article concerns a government investigation on Google violating antitrust laws by stifling competition. It opens with a narrative on the decline of Nextag’s online traffic from Google’s search engine in which the CEO of Nextag acknowledges, ““We’re living in Google’s world.” The article considers the manner in which other websites are reliant on Google and their ranking in search results.

In the article “Google Earth and the nation state: Sovereignty in the age of new media” by Sangeet Kumar, he states that scholars, uncertain of how to approach Google as a powerful non-state actor, have elevated its status, “calling it ‘a sovereign entity equivalent to a nation’.” (p.159) Google is equated to a nation-state because of ‘its tip tier intellectual talent, financial resources in the billions of dollars, and world-class information-processing resources combined with ten years of interaction data’ (p.159). Due to its intellectual power, it has been able to challenge nation-states. The NYTimes article addresses how other websites live in Google’s shadow, proving that, as non-state actors continue to grow, they simultaneously shift the global power.

NYTimes Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/technology/google-casts-a-big-shadow-on-smaller-web-sites.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

State Enemy No. 1: Media on the Internet

 China has hit their bright-red censor button...again. The victim this time: the New York Times (NYT) website and any searches for the U.S. newspaper on Chinese social networking sites. One would assume some awful event prompted the government to crack down on the information flow, like when environmental abuses were uncovered. But it wasn't. The article was actually about the wealth of the Chinese Premier and his family. (Al-Jazeera: "China Blocks NY Times Website")

Apparently, the Premier has maintained a "good-ol-boy" image, claiming to be one to fight the rampant abuses within the government, so the article was an embarrassment to both him and the communist party. Historically, China has censored media that did not support the Party line and image (like their Soviet predecessors), so it is no surprise that this article would be enough reason to shut down the website of one of the most recognizable names in journalism. However, after our discussion of Sangeet Kumar's "Google Earth and the Nation-State", I saw how the incident illustrated the issues of sovereignty in the new media age.

Kumar wrote that networks, such as news media, "decenters sovereignty", and this challenge happens because the information is "disembodied from its material medium" (Global Media and Communication 6 (2010): 157-158). There is a threat in what we cannot see or touch, so the Internet is a scary place for information to be published and accessed instantaneously around the world. Yet, as the Internet has a "borderless architecture", states can't implement laws the way they once did, which makes them vulnerable (ibid., 158-159). According to Kumar, this is why the Internet has become a battleground for many states, and his example of Google vs. India shows the new power nation states must face in non-state actors with an online presence.

One could assume this new environment would be particularly alarming for a state like China. It is a state that has controlled information within its borders with an iron fist, but would also like to be part of the modern economic and political regime. To do that, China has to have all the modern information technologies, which includes the Internet, and thus be connected to the resultant networks. So how will China balance keeping its sovereignty against these "non-state actors" while simultaneously allowing access to the global information networks it must be connected to in order to be a major international player?

Apparently shutting down specific websites as threats emerge is China's current plan. However, because they are connected to the global information network, the world can take note of every time the Party inhibits the built-in free-flow of the Internet. Can states like China, North Korea, and others that censor information continue to fight the Internet piecemeal? Or will the Internet win in the end because of its disembodied nature? As more and more incidents of China blocking, shutting down, and censoring websites become global knowledge, the Chinese government will have to decide if they want to be part of the global networks, or if they want to maintain their historical control (or sovereignty) over information.

Call a Spade a Spade

In class we discussed networks as a source of standards, and how part of a networks networking power is its gatekeeper ability to “block or allow’’ access. For networks to set common protocols paired with the power to exclude and include, prompts me to think about how this power affects individuals excluded of the network.  Richard Florida’s states that “communities are networks, not places”, if this assertion is correct than America too is a network , and also  has the power to set standards as well as exclude and include access to those outside of its network.

After Hayden’s class I began to think about my own personal account with networks and how as an African American I have many times felt excluded from powerful networks. This exclusion many times left me with feelings of powerlessness. I parallel a network’s “power” to, Peggy McIntosh’s, White Privilege. She speaks of White Privilege as an individual’s “weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurance, tools, maps, guides, code books, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear and blank checks”.  We as American’s within our network have been granted such privileges as knowing the common protocol and being included to the access of limitless opportunities that inhabitants of other countries are not.   McIntosh goes on to further state that, “whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility distress and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit and turn upon people of color”.  The American network, with is geographical location and wealth protects, Americans from hostility, distress and violence and in turn its citizens have also been trained to perceive non-American’s as either mediocre or a threat.

This obviousness leaves Americans under the facade of American exceptionalism  which is nothing more than the communication power of the American network at work. Because until we do, as McIntosh states, “ the world is not so free, one’s life is not what one makes it; and many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own”.

“Extratropical Cyclone”, formerly known as “Hurricane Sandy”

First, I hope everyone fared well during this weather, and my thoughts go out to those who were gravely affected. Seeing everyone’s post-hurricane updates and photos on Facebook and Twitter reminds me of our class discussions, and my previous posts, where we’ve talked about the increasing spreadability of content through social media.  At the same time, the likelihood of misinformation escalates as well. The growing presence of “prosumers” and user-generated content heightens the need for professional journalists to verify fact from fiction. Certainly, the picture above is a gross exaggeration, but not all the “fake” photos are quite as easy to spot. 

Examples:

More photos and details of the verification process can be found in this article in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/sorting-the-real-sandy-photos-from-the-fakes/264243/

"The Connected City"

Professor Hayden shared a timely article with us concerning the topic of our class discussion last week: networks. In an interview with “Atlantic Cities”, sociologist Zachary Neal discusses his new book, “The Connected City”, in which he argues that cities aren’t simply places, rather, they’re made up of human networks. What define a community, Neil argues, are the relationships that its inhabitants develop with one another. Similarly, in her essay entitled “Networks: Emerging Frameworks for Analysis”, Amelia H. Arsenault states, “network nodes are linked according to associations” which may manifest itself as  “interpersonal interactions” or “flows of information between and within groups”.

Neal goes on to say that neighborhoods without interactions among its residents are not communities. Communities aren’t necessarily rooted in particular places, for example,  “a book club with a constantly changing venue.” Within networks, physical distance can take a backseat to spacial relations created and maintained by communication. In “Topologies of Communication”, Paul Adams proposes thinking of the world in terms of “topologies—structures of link and nodes—rather than locations”. In this way, we can consider networks as communities that transcend the boundaries of physical location. Still, Neal warns us not to ignore the significance of distance, since it exists in three ways in a city—network, spatial, and social.  He describes network distance as the number of links between two people, or how some people are closer to those in their networks while other people are further apart. The shorter the spatial distance between two people, the more likely they are to interact with one another. Social distance is the tendency for people to associate with those who share similar interests. Therefore, if two people live near one another (spatial distance), and/or share similar hobbies (social distance), they are more likely to intermingle with each other, or have mutual friends (network distance).

In terms of cities, the way it’s designed can facilitate the networks that develop. The proximity of houses, or gated communities, the structure of roads and highways, the placement of schools and parks, and so on and so forth, can determine who interacts with whom. A city’s street network shapes the distribution, circulation, and flow of people. Although Neal’s book focuses on analyzing urban networks on micro, meso, and macro level, his evaluation of social networks from the individual and communal level is relevant to our readings and class discussions.

Article: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/10/communities-arent-places-theyre-social-networks/3492/#

Media and the Berlin Wall

 

From Newseum's Two Sides, One Story.

This weekend the IC program took a trip to the Newseum, which offered many interesting communication topics to peak interest and entice further exploration. The Berlin Wall exhibit caught my attention in particular, because I had not considered before the many ways that communication played important roles in that conflict. It is interesting to take a further look at the conflict of the Berlin Wall in terms of the media.

After WWII, and prior to the construction of the wall, the media in East Berlin was controlled by the soviet government, and in West Berlin the media was privately operated. The Newseum website states that in East Berlin, where the government controlled all of the economic activity including the media, “News is a teaching tool. People are supposed to read it and learn what the government wants them to know.” The political conflict of the time led to a clash of media theory in terms of the purpose, control and use of the media. This in turn led East Berliners to seek news from West Berlin sources, via radio, television and newspapers, although it was illegal in East Berlin to do so. Then the wall was built. History.com states that,  “The official purpose of this Berlin Wall was to keep Western "fascists" from entering East Germany and undermining the socialist state, but it primarily served the objective of stemming mass defections from East to West.” Another consequence of the presence of the wall was the halt of the flow of information between the two areas. It was harder for information to spread, as the wall intended to prevent West Berlin’s news and media from entering East Berlin. However, even after the wall was built, information continued to spread across the border.
 
NEWS GETS THROUGH:

Concrete is strong, but no match for the strength of human curiosity. News finds a way to get over, around and through the Berlin Wall.

Hungry for information, many East Berliners break communist law to get and spread news from the free west.

This is a network effect: the networks of journalists, reporters, and individuals brave enough to smuggle and carry information across the borders allowed reports of both the reality of life in East Berlin to make it to the West, and news from the West to enter into the East. They used the technology available at the time to pass the information along the networks and to the other side. Amelia H. Arsenault states that, " Networks are thus, flexible, scalable, and survivable because they constantly adapt to changes in the environment, deleting and adding nodes while maintaining a unity of purpose - the survival of the network." (Networks: Emerging Frameworks for Analysis, page 16). Although the wall was strong enough so stop the flow of people across the border, it was not sufficient to stop the flow of information, which is a demonstration of the strength of information networks as well as human desire to spread and share news and information.