2.2. The Public Sphere

Goals of learning from this lesson

• What is a public sphere?
• How are imagined communities - such as nations - affected by the mass media?
• How do you explain that audiences may be transformed into pro-sumers/prod-users by internet technology?
• Why is there a division between centripetal and centrifugal media?
• When can the internet be regarded as contributing to centrifugality?

The lecture

This lecture in my BA Course on Media & Politics at Lillehammer University College can be viewed below as a Prezi-presentation.



The literature:
Curran, J. et al. (2012). Misunderstanding the Internet. Chap. 2, 4. 68p.
Hodkinson, P. (2011). Media, culture and society. Chapter 9. 18p.

Watch relevant videos

Habermas' Public Sphere

Yochai Benkler on Truthiness and the Networked Public Sphere

Eli Pariser - The Filter Bubble: What The Internet Is Hiding From You

Watch more on the YouTube playlist



Useful links

• Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.
• Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Standage, T. (2013, June 22). Social Networking in the 1600s. The New York Times.
• Green, M. (2013). The Lost World of the London Coffeehouse. The Public Domain Review.
• Clinton, H. (2010, January 21). Remarks on Internet Freedom. U.S. Department of State. Both transcript and video of her speech is included. 
• Jared Cohen: The Engine of Freedom. Google's Jared Cohen is one of the premier optimists about the internet's ability to create a free public sphere.
• Or check the sobering statistics from Freedom House and World Press Trends and the Economist's piece on A virtual counter-revolution.
• Tim Berners-Lee: Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality.
• David Hardake: How TV and the Internet are Changing Arab Politics. Full lecture on video.
• Gauntlett, D. (2008). Wikipedia explained. Theory.org.uk.
• Stanger, J. (2011, December 8). The “Digital Public Sphere” and the “Indifference of 25 Year Olds”. Center for Digital Information.
• Rasan, I. (2014, June 6). Graffiti: a new form of expression on the walls of Cairo.
• Tiezzi, S. (2014, August 20). China’s Quest to Build an “Influential and Credible” Media. 
• Calhoun, C. J. (Ed.). (1992). Habermas and the Public Sphere. MIT Press.
• Dahlberg, L. (2001). Extending the public sphere through cyberspace. First Monday, (3)
• Etling, B., Roberts, H., & Faris, R. (2014). Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 2427932). Rochester, NY: Berkman Center for Internet & Society 
• Ichijo, A. (2013, June 17). The durability of nations and nationalism.

• Eriksen, T. H. (2006). Nations in cyberspace.  ASEN conference, London School of Economics
• Karner, C. (2013, May 3). From collective myth to counterpublics: negotiating national identity in an age of global flows.
• Etling, B., Society, H. L. S. B. C. for I. and, & Project, I. & D. (2009). Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture, and Dissent. Internet & Democracy Project, Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
• Farrell, H., & Sides, J. (2010). Building a Political Science Public Sphere with Blogs. The Forum, 8, 10.
• Fuchs, C. (2014). Social Media and the Public Sphere. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 12(1), 57–101.
• Geiger, R. S. (2009). Does Habermas Understand the Internet? The Algorithmic Construction of the Blogo/Public Sphere. Gnovis, 10(1).
• Habermas, J., Lennox, S., & Lennox, F. (1974). The public sphere: An encyclopedia article (1964). New German Critique, (3), 49–55.
• Johannessen, M. R., & Følstad, A. (2014). Political Social Media sites as Public Sphere: A Case Study of the Norwegian Labour Party.
• Kellner, D. (2001). Techno-politics, new technologies, and the new public Spheres. Illuminations, January.
• Stray, J. (2011, November 29). What should the digital public sphere do?
• Valtysson, B. (2012). Facebook as a Digital Public Sphere: Processes of Colonization and Emancipation. tripleC - Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation, 10(1), 77–91.

1.4. The audience

Goals of learning from this lesson:

• What is "the propaganda thesis?
• How are opinion leaders siuated in the flow of information?
• How do you explain correlation between use of media and personal attitudes/behaviour?
• Why does the audience's reading of media texts sometimes deviate from the preferred reading?
• When is it reasonable to describe audiences as active, creative and productive?

The lecture

Fifth lecture in my BA Course on Media & Politics at at Lillehammer University College can be viewed below as a Prezi-presentation.

The Literature: 

• Hodkinson, P. (2011). Media, culture and society. Chap. 5. 18p.
• Oates, S. (2008). Introduction to media and politics. Chap. 4. 24p.

Relevant videos to watch

Stuart Hall - Representation & The Media. Go here for Part II | Part Three | Part Four

 Michael Wesch: An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Cory Doctorow: Rethinking Property Rights in the Digital Age

Watch more on the YouTube playlist


Useful links

• PBS Frontline. (n.d.). Digital Nation - Life On The Virtual Frontier.
• Vinik, D. (2014, June 10). Does Fox News Cause Ignorance, or Do Ignorant Viewers Prefer Fox News? The New Republic.
• Barker, M., & Mathijs, E. (2012). Researching World Audiences: the Experience of a Complex Methodology. Participations, 9(1).
• Bowman, S., & Willis, C. (2003). We media: How audiences are shaping the future of news and information.
• Carpentier, N., & Dahlgren, P. (2011). Interrogating audiences: Theoretical horizons of participation. Communication Management Quarterly, 6(21).
• D’Addario, D. (2013, March 19). Ten years of Iraq War films: Why audiences shunned movies about Mideast.
• Drotner, K. (2004). Disney Dilemmas. Audience Negotiations of Media Globalization. Nordicom Review, (1-2).
• Hermes, J. (2009). Audience Studies 2.0. On the theory, politics and method of qualitative audience research. Interactions: Studies in Communication &# 38; Culture, 1(1), 111–127.
• Kamerer, D. (2013). Estimating online audiences: Understanding the limitations of competitive intelligence services. First Monday, 18(5).
• Kyriakidou, M. (2014). Distant Suffering in Audience Memory: The Moral Hierarchy of Remembering. International Journal of Communication, 8(0), 21.
• Livingstone, S. (2003). The changing nature of audiences: From the mass audience to the interactive media user. A Companion to Media Studies, 337–359.
• Metykova, M. (2008). Drifting apart? European journalists and their audiences. Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 5(2), 42–59.
• Prior, K. S. (2013, October 18). The New, Old Way to Tell Stories: With Input From the Audience.
• TNS Gallup - Medier - Reports and statistics about Norwegian media use.
• Statistisk Sentralbyrå: Norsk Mediebarometer - More general trends and over longer time periods.
• International Telecommunications Union - Lots of data and info from the relevant IGO..
• UNESCO - Communication and information - The UN organization.
• The World Bank - Global information and communication

Lecture on Norwegian Culture and Society

At Lillehammer University College there is a course specifically designed for foreign exchange students to learn more about the Norwegian Society.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of giving a lecture on how the Norwegian society is challenged by globalisation and the fact that "it is a tiny country in the world", as once stated by a former prime minister. Below you can browse through the Prezi-file from the most recent lecture, held on April 4. 2014.

Sportsdiplomati

Nå som OL starter er det verdt å minne om at sport er høyst relevant i studiet av internasjonale relasjoner. Sportsdiplomati har både sine talsmenn (Goldberg 2000) og kritikere (Rubin 2014). Det kan være grunnlag for mellomstatlig diplomati (Griffin 2014) jfr. ping-pong diplomatiet mellom USA og Kina. Du kan også lese et intervju med Griffin her - eller se ham i YouTube-videoen under.

Selvsagt er sport også et instrument for staters propaganda innad og offentlig diplomati utad. En klassiker er naziregimets OL i Berlin i 1936. Afro-amerikaneren Jesse Owens' fire gull i friidrett bidro imidlertid til å reverse en del av effekten. Se videoen under om Jesse Owens og Berlin OL i 1936.

I hvert fall i ett ekstremt tilfelle har sport (fotball) til og med vært utløsende årsak til krig (Veytskin et al., 2013). Se videoen under om fotballkrigen mellom Honduras og El Salvador.

Litteratur:

Ford, M. (2014, February 7). The Geopolitics of Winter Olympic Medal Counts. The Atlantic. 

Goldberg, J. (2000). Sporting Diplomacy: Boosting the Size of the Diplomatic Corps. The Washington Quarterly, 23(4), 63–70. 

Griffin, N. (2014). Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World. Simon and Schuster.  

Rubin, M. (2014, February 6). Rings of Fire. Foreign Policy. 

Trenin, D. (2014, February 7). Politics No Stranger to the Games. Carnegie Moscow Center.

Veytskin, Y., Lockerby, C., McCullen, S., Schorr, M., Barrett, L., & Leachman, C. (2013). The Soccer War. Soccer Politics / The Politics of Football.

Mediepåvirkning. Mediene i politikken

Torsdag 7.11.2013 hadde jeg en fin dag med filmvisning, forelesning og seminar for 3.årsstudentene på BA i pedagogikk ved Høgskolen i Lillehammer (HiL). Den inngår som en del av 15-poengsemnet Mediepedagogikk og pedagogisk formidling. I løpet av årene har jeg hatt et godt samarbeid med mediepedagogene ved HiL, gjennom undervisning hos dem, som del av deres forskningssenter Senter for Mediepedagogikk, artikkel om Hadia Tajik og digital storytelling i deres nett-tidsskrift Seminar.net og ny bok om Mediepedagogikk som planlegges gitt ut sommeren 2014. 

Min datter terroristen

Dagen ble begynt med visning av Beate Arnestads prisbelønte dokumentar Min datter terroristen, som eksempel for påfølgende forelesning og gruppearbeid/plenumsdiskusjon senere på dagen.

Jeg brukte deler av presentasjonen under, for å introdusere filmen, men ikke så mye, ettersom det ville legge for mye føringer på diskusjonene senere. Den er heller ikke opprinnelig laget for dette siktemålet, så en del er også mindre relevant.

Forelesningen

Du kan bla deg gjennom presentasjonen fra forelesningen under, lett modifisert for å kunne funke nettet.

Se ellers også podcasten under, basert på utdrag fra Øyvind Kalnes et.al. (2010), Internasjonale relasjoner. En akkurat passe lang introduksjon, nærmeste bestemt delkapittelet Medier og kommunikasjon i endring. Dette er en del av pensumgrunnlaget for forelesningen.

Guest lectures on Media, democracy and politics

In the last week of September 2012 I did two guest lectures in the course Television and new media, part of Bachelor in film and television at Lillehammer University College. They are posted below to browse through at your convenience.

Norway: The Challenges of Globalisation

Actually had fun with a lecture for foreign students about Norway and the challenges we face from globalisation - and our rather marginal international position. The course is called Norwegian Culture and Society and is offered every spring semester for students visiting from abroad. You can see an edited version of the presentation below:

Parsons, Ghonim, Web 2.0 and the Arab spring

A great reminder from Ryan Evans in a blogpost about Talcott Parsons' classic statement from nearly 50 years ago:

Since in social conditions the most effective action is collective action, the most important liberty is liberty to co-operate with others to participate in collective action. Furthermore, the most important single condition of effective co-operation is communication with others. The most important deprivations of liberty are therefore those that block communication, in order to limit or prevent altogether co-operation with others. (Parsons, pp. 41-42 in Eckstein 1964)

Evans then quotes from Wael Ghonim's new book Revolution 2.0:

Together, we wanted justice for Khaled Said and we wanted to put an end to torture. And social networking offered us an easy means to meet as the proactive, critical youth that we were. It also enabled us to defy the fears associated with voicing opposition. The virtual world seemed further from the oppressive reach of the regime, and therefore many were encouraged to speak up. (p. 66)

In the video below Ghonim speaks on TED about his experiences:

Anmeldelse En akkurat passe lang introduksjon

Forsinket julegave :) Kom over 4 siders anmeldelse av boken vår i nyeste Internasjonal politikk - og den er god. Sakser fra konklusjonen i anmeldelsen:

Kalnes, Austvik og Røhr kan gjere livet enklare for norske studentar som møter IR for fyrste gong. ..... Aller nyttigst vil kanskje boka være for studentar som har haldt på litt lenger og lurer på kva tekstar dei bør lese for å få ei god bacheloroppgåve. Då er En akkurat passe lang introduksjon til Internasjonale relasjoner ein bra plass å byrje leitinga.

Hele anmeldelsen kan leses her.

Global culture and communication

Seven weeks of intense teaching ended with exams last week. The course is part of BA-programmes in Sociology. The Powerpoint slides from the lectures are posted on Slideshare.
http://www.slideshare.net/aulestad/tag/gkkh11

New book on International Relations

Cappelen Akademisk just released a new book on International Relations, co-written with Ole Gunnar Austvik and Heidrun Sørlie Røhr. In Norwegian only, sorry about that. 

• The homepage of the book at Cappelen

It focuses on four aspects of IR; International Politics, International Political Economy, Global communication and culture, as well as War, conflicts and conflict resolution. It dedicates a chapter to each of the subjects, following an introductory chapter. You can watch a playlist containing slides from each chapter below.

There are also a number of web resources dedicated to the book: 

• Internasjonalerelasjoner.net is the main site
• A YouTube channel dedicated to IR with videos organized along the chapters of the book
• Nytt om Internasjonale relasjoner - a virtual paper with news on IR