Thursday, May 24, 2007
Opposite Ends: Celebrity Gossip and Iraqi Blogs' Impact on the Public Sphere
Participatory Culture
The Public Sphere
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public… to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.
This means that the public sphere can be thought of as a space – both virtual and material – where citizens find out about the social, cultural and political issues that face their communities (McKee, 2005: 5). However, critics suggest that the ‘deterioration’ (or ‘trivialisation’) of the media has led to the deterioration of the public sphere (McKee, 2005: 1). On the other hand, I would argue that the fact the media is becoming democratised and decentralised, especially in blogs, actually improves the public sphere in terms of representativeness, as more views are being represented (McNair, 2006: 144). Habermas’ notion that the ideal public sphere ‘should be unified and homogenous, refusing the fragmentation of niche markets’ is one that explicitly ignore public spheres outside of the main sphere, one that is conscious of ignoring others’ ideas that do not fit the white male middle-class ideals, and to me, this is a problem (McKee, 2005: 14). Thus, this essay works from the assumption that the public sphere should aim to represent as many views as possible in order to make meaning of politics in community, and that media that is considered ‘trivial’ (such as Perez Hilton’s celebrity gossip blog) is just as essential to the public sphere as those considered ‘serious’ (such as Raed Jarrar’s blog).
PerezHilton.com

Here is a clear example of participatory culture at work. As blogs are cheap and easy to maintain, anyone with access to the internet can create a blog and broadcast their ideas and set their own agenda. Media audiences no longer have to go through traditional media to get their ideas heard. Blogging allowed Lavandeira to express his viewpoint without having to write in to newspapers that, due to space restrictions and gatekeepers, may not even have printed his views.
Another way in which power has shifted from media producers to media consumers is in the subjective nature of blogs. Bloggers such as Lavandeira are free from professional obligations of objectivity that journalists are tied to, hence why Hilton is able to align himself with a “cause” – freeing Paris Hilton. Through the use of subjectivity, Lavandeira is able to engage – even push – others into ‘the fierce heat of online debate’ (McNair, 2006: 122; PerezHilton.com, 2007). Debate and discussion are important for a healthy public sphere, and the shift of power from “objective” journalists to ordinary “subjective” citizens stimulates a much more heated debate, and therefore a much more dynamic and healthier public sphere. In this way, we see how blogs are much more conducive to engaging citizens into public debate with the ability to instantly post and reply to comments, which facilitates discussion in a much larger, more global way than traditional media ever could. Again, this suggests the way in which power in the public sphere is shifting from traditional media producers to media consumers through participatory culture.
The second screenshot here is an example of how the use of participatory culture and blogs in identity creation becomes political, creating an explicit link between “trivial” media and the public sphere. Although discussion on this particular comments page is somewhat superficial and does not scratch past the surface, the media audiences are grappling with a very real question here about participatory culture and its impact on the First Amendment. The owners of L.A. photo agency X17 Inc sued Lavandeira for infringing copyright laws, claiming that he obtained, altered and distributed their photographs without permission or credit (Abcarian, 2006). It is an example of a current struggle of power between a blogger’s right to participate, and corporate right over intellectual property. This is an important political issue, Jenkins suggests, as ‘participation is an important political right’ (Jenkins, 2006: 257). Jenkins argues that the First Amendment, in protecting rights such as freedom of speech, press, assembly and belief, protects the right to participate in democracy. Thus this incident becomes a prime example of how the increasing power of individual citizens in the public sphere has caused tension between old elite forces of power and new collective forces of power. It also suggests a new mechanism of control that traditional paradigms of power are exercising in order to control their loss of power to media consumers. This is not the only incident where a corporation has attempted to use copyright laws as a mechanism to control participation. Jenkins points to the Harry Potter Wars where fan fiction writers saw this as an attack on their right to free speech (see Jenkins, 2006: 169-205). However, as Jenkins, in the fight for participation, media audiences no longer have to remain passive because they now have an outlet for their own agenda and are active contributors to the public sphere (Jenkins, 2006: 205). Nevertheless, the potential that corporations have to establish such a restricting mechanism of control should not be ignored.
In the Middle
However, while the absence of a gatekeeper was originally considered an improvement, it is also a disadvantage. Without gatekeepers, there is the potential that offensive remarks are posted and even threats. This led to the current model of publishing a blog first and then filtering it later. For example, In the Middle has this rule on its site (In the Middle, 2007):
Any comment that espouses violence, hatred, racism, sexism, and/or generally abusive language is subject to removal. Any comment that aims to silence other points of view through intimidation, ad hominem attacks, and/or other methods is subject to removal. Any spam, advertisements, and lengthy posts flooding the section are subject to removal.
Throughout this essay it has been argued that, in terms of blogs, participatory gives media audiences a voice and re-engages citizens by allowing them to participate in discussion and as an extension, democracy. However, the fact that the administrators are able to remove comments is a new mechanism of control. It is an old mechanism of control in the fact that it is a form of gatekeeping, which is customary in traditional media production, but it is also a new mechanism in that the control is being enforced by an ordinary citizen on other ordinary citizens. Without the claim of objectivity, Jarrar has the potential to silence any voice he disagrees with. In fact Jarrar has taken this further, and has arguably removed reader’s right to participate by actually disabling readers to comment (In the Middle, 2007). Where traditional media has the ability to mold how we see the world, bloggers have the ability to completely silence others’ views.
Bloghosts, however, have reserved the same rights as Jarrar has to remove blogs and blog pages that are considered offensive, thus silencing participants in the same way that Jarrar did. This links back to my argument that corporations are gaining a much more extensive ability to control the public sphere, despite the apparent shifting of power within the public sphere. As media ownership concentrates, corporate reach extends, and conglomerates hold the power to potentially silence citizen voices in the public sphere by removing their ability to be heard. This can be done through lawsuits, or even simply removing “offensive” pages. This argument may seem cynical or exaggerated, however when media tycoons/tyrants give speeches that talk of the potential of the net to “expand our reach,” as Rupert Murdoch did in 2005, it is hard not to be (McNair, 2006: 120).
Conclusion
Work Cited
- Abcarian, R. (2006) 'Perez Hilton Take their Best Shots' in LA Times Dec 17, http://www.latimes.com
- Habermas, J. (1992) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of a Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity Press
- Hassan, R. (2004) Media, Politics and Network Society. Maidenhead: Open UniversityPress
- In the Middle (consulted 22 May 2007): http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com
- Jenkins, H (2004) 'The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence', International Journal of Cultural Studies 7(1): 33-43
- Jenkins, H. (2006a) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press
- Jenkins, H (2006b) Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press
- McKee, A. (2005) The Public Sphere: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambride Universityu Press
- McNair, B. (2006) Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge
- Papcharissi, Z. (2002) 'The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as a Public Sphere', New Media and Society 4(1): 9-27.
- PerezHilton.com (consulted 22 May 2007): http://perezhilton.com
- Simon, L. (2002) Democracy and the Internet: Allies or Adversaries?. Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press