<nettime-ann> Democratization and the Networked Public Sphere (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[Trebor Scholz <trebor@thing.net>]

.
Democratization and the Networked Public Sphere
* Panel Discussion with dana boyd, Trebor Scholz, and Ethan Zuckerman

Friday, April 13, 2007, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
New York City
Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff, and 
alumni with valid ID

This evening at the Vera List Center for Art & Politics will discuss 
the potential of sociable media such as weblogs and social networking 
sites to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad 
participation.

danah boyd will argue four points. 1) Networked publics are changing 
the way public life is organized. 2) Our understandings of 
public/private are being radically altered 3) Participation in public 
life is critical to the functioning of democracy. 4) We have destroyed 
youths' access to unmediated public life. Why are we now destroying 
their access to mediated public life? What consequences does this have 
for democracy?

Trebor Scholz will present the paradox of affective immaterial labor. 
Content generated by networked publics was the main reason for the fact 
that the top ten sites on the World Wide Web accounted for most 
Internet traffic last year. Community is the commodity, worth billions. 
The very few get even richer building on the backs of the immaterial 
labor of very very many.  Net publics comment, tag, rank, forward, 
read, subscribe, re-post, link, moderate, remix, share, collaborate, 
favorite, write. They flirt, work, play, chat, gossip, discuss, learn 
and by doing so they gain much: the pleasure of creation, knowledge, 
micro-fame, a "home," friendships, and dates. They share their life 
experiences and archive their memories while context-providing 
businesses get value from their attention, time, and uploaded content. 
Scholz will argue against this naturalized "factory without walls" and 
will demand for net publics to control their own contributions.

Ethan Zuckerman will present his work on issues of media and the 
developing world, especially citizen media, and the technical, legal, 
speech, and digital divide issues that go alongside it. Starting out 
with a critique of cyberutopianism, Zuckerman will address citizen 
media and activism in developing nations, their potential for 
democratic change, the
ways that governments (and sometimes corporations) are pushing back on 
their ability to democratize.

About the Panelists:

danah boyd is a doctoral candidate in the School of Information at the 
University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the USC Annenberg 
Center for Communications. Her dissertation focuses on how American 
youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, 
Xanga, etc. In particular, she is interested in how teens formulate a 
presentation of self and negotiate socialization in mediated contexts 
amidst invisible audiences. This work is funded by the MacArthur 
Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal 
learning.
http://www.zephoria.org/

Trebor Scholz is a media theorist, artist, and activist who is 
interested in the economics of sociable media and networked social life 
in relation to politics and education. As founder of the Institute for 
Distributed Creativity (iDC), he contributed essays to several books, 
journals, and periodicals and co-edited "The Art of Free Cooperation" 
(forthcoming). He is currently professor and researcher in the 
Department of Media Study at the State University of New York at 
Buffalo and research fellow at the Hochschule fuer Kunst und 
Gestaltung, Zurich (Switzerland).
http://collectivate.net/journalisms

Ethan Zuckerman is a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and 
Society at Harvard Law School. His research focuses on the distribution 
of attention in mainstream and new media, and on the use of technology 
for international development. With Rebecca MacKinnon, he leads a 
project called "Global Voices" which focuses on using weblogs around 
the world to close gaps in mainstream media coverage. In 2000, Ethan 
founded Geekcorps, a technology volunteer corps that sends IT 
specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on 
West Africa.
http://ethanzuckerman.com/

* This event is presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s  
program cycle on “The Public Domain.”



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