Greece and the agoras. Public spaces for democracy where political debates took place. Germany during the Second World War. The squares full of people to listen Hitler speak. The mass. Television. The mass media. The Internet and the virtual space. New tools and users expressing opinions. In different moments of history, people from diverse societies organized themselves, interacted and discussed political and social issues in various ways. The new interactive media brings new possibilities for public participation in debates in a global scale. The question of our moment is what can be done in this new scene and if this new virtual space can become a venue for democratic discussion, ideas exchange and social change.

In the eighteenth century, capitalism and technical reproduction changed society. The machines, production in series, the factories and the industrial cities determined deep changes in the social relationships. In the beginning of the last century, new communication tools brought more transformations and with them a lot of speculations about their role and their power. Art also changed and at that time it gained other spaces besides the museum, its sacred place, and started being printed and reproduced in series.

In the first half of the last century, some very important thinkers from the Frankfurt School were studying these topics. Walter Benjamin believed that the mechanical reproduction of Art, or its democratization through wide distribution, would serve as an instrument to educate the mass. For him, Art in the era of technical reproduction, more specifically the cinema, was bringing a strong possibility of social change. Conveying information to thousands of people would start a social process of thinking, demanding and changing. On the other hand, Theodor Adorno developed the concept of Cultural Industry. In his point of view, the new communication technologies would be held in the hands of those currently in power and would be used with the purpose of maintaining the capitalistic social model the way it was. Viewers didn’t have the skills to respond critically to the products of the Cultural Industry and, therefore, there was a clear division between thinkers and the masses. Because culture was now being produced just like any other commercial product, Mass Media was then called Cultural Industry and the viewers seen as an uniform mass: they didn’t differ one from the other, they were equal in their position of dominated and unable to realize that.

In a more recent study about Communications, Cultural Studies, Stuart Hall developed a different theory about how viewers behave towards media. In his opinion, the audience doesn’t simply accept media content. The person negotiates the meaning and this process is related to his/her cultural background. Therefore, there is a plurality of possible interpretations and meanings for the same media discourses. According to Hall, there are three different types of behavior: the dominant reading, the negotiated reading, and the oppositional reading. The meaning suggested by the media is the preferred meaning.

“‘Dominant’ readings are produced by those whose social situation favours the preferred reading; ‘negotiated’ readings are produced by those who inflect the preferred reading to take account of their social position; and ‘oppositional’ readings are produced by those whose social position puts them into direct conflict with the preferred reading. Hall insists there remain limits to interpretation: meaning cannot be simply ‘private’ or ‘individual’”.

Nowadays, the concept of passive mass audience doesn’t apply anymore and there are probably more possibilities of viewers behaviors and interpretations than the ones pointed by Stuart Hall. The Internet has shown that receivers have different opinions and they have been expressing them in different ways. It’s very unlikely that the viewer from the 21st century is different from the viewer from the last century in what concerns the desire of expression. What seems to be more true is that new tools are available to express and publish opinions and that people are using them. Means of production and distribution are becoming more accessible to everyone and traditional media is facing a huge change. (BLAU, p.4, 2004). The Internet, computers, software, social networks, online games, mobile phones, and digital cameras allow a new era of digital storytelling. In the digital scene users are viewers, producers, and distributors of content. They exchange information and ideas creating a new public space for debates, discussions, and exchange.

Although some people insist that television and mass media are dying, the media companies will probably be able to adapt themselves to this transformation because they own a big capital to invest and replace themselves in the market. Besides that, in the history of mass media a new medium hasn’t yet led an old medium to death. New media technology usually adds to old media and transforms it. Photography didn’t end painting, but it definitely freed painting from realistic reproduction allowing more experimental attempts that ended up in some of the artistic movements in the beginning of 20th century. The participatory media will also transform traditional media and new content will be developed to fit the possibilities brought by the interactive technology.

Therefore, besides important changes like cheaper means of production, television content being streamed online, or user generated content, there is the change in the position of the audience. The cyberspace stretches the possibilities of encounters and discussion toward a global scale. A new place for discussion and expression of thoughts and ideas, a new agora for social and political debates, is emerging.

The cinema, the radio and the television transformed our society in different ways but they were all controlled and edited by a small group of people and target to a huge number of viewers. The participatory media and the Internet have a new aspect that any medium has had before: they bring the possibility of speaking for those that had only been reading, listening and watching until now. Now that the receiver is not passive as in the mass audience of Cultural Industry, or even more, can have more reactions than the ones pointed by Stuart Hall, new social transformations are possible, even if still inside the same macro capitalist system that created the mass media.

References:
http://www.wright.edu/~gordon.welty/Adorno_84.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hall_(cultural_theorist)
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html
BLAU, Adrew. Independent Media, 2004
PALMER, Shelly. Television Disrupted, 2006
SCHREIBMAN, Vigdor and CHRISTAKIS, Alexander N. New Agora: New Geometry of Languaging And New Technology of Democracy. Publication forthcoming in International Journal of Applied Systemic Studies (IJASS)
http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/loversofdemocracy/NewAgora.htm

I found this website and I think it’ interesting. It lists links to cameras in different locations around the world streaming live images. A voyeur desire?

http://marcussharpe.com/vidstream.htm#New

The only problem is that we keep spying and nothing happens. That’s where the newspapers come and become a wonderful tool. Journalists filter (in good ways and sometimes in bad ways) where the news are, and with that I mean where things are different from the regular routine. Of course there are a lot of issues about the way that’s done, but my point is that people need filters to get to any information.

It happened in Brazil a little while ago this very interesting case about this guy that put security cameras in his house and connected them to the internet streaming live. He was in Europe (I guess) and decided to take a look at his house. He saw a thief at his place, called the police and the guy was caught. Unusual, I would say.

In the age of on-demand video, it’s hard to think about things that really need to be live and come up with a new idea to use streaming for a “non-television” purpose. I can see personal uses, like skype for example and video conferences. However, that would probably happen among people that already know eachother. I’m wondering how can we gather a group of people that don’t know each other at the same time on a website using video? I know that we are not supposed to think about television for this homework, but I can’t help remembering this website in Brazil that presents news shows and have user participate. The commercial model is also different. The newsmen use the advertised products live during the show, like for example, ordering food. It is explicit that what they are doing is advertising tough. I remember from the TV station where I worked in Brazil, in the programming department, that the only shows broadcasted live were news, sports, a morning cooking show (kind of a Brazilian Martha Stewart), and special events, like carnival or any other very important festival. They used to say that the audience demands some kind of information live. I believe that for sports it’s really important, but I’m not so sure about the TV News because they repeat the same images all over the day and the Internet is already a better tool to get information. For the cooking show it’s really not so important, besides the fact that if it wasn’t live people wouldn’t be able to call and participate. So, to really have the need to be live, I think it has to be something close to a conversation, when people are exchanging ideas and their presence (virtual or not) is required. The only things I can think about right now are debates, e-learning and games… I hope I can break this ideas bounders hearing my classmates opinions in class today. There must be something else!

By the way, for the streaming homework, Liz and I are going to work together and stream TNO! It’s carnival week, we’re going to host it and stream it live on the Internet!

I decided to make my first video about cooking. Yes, it is a theme that I’m always going back to. Maybe because I like to eat… and to cook. Anyway, on this video I’m gonna teach you how to make brigadeiro, a Brazilian chocolate candy that we have at every child’s birthday party. It’s delicious and it’s usually served with the cake after singing the Happy Birthday song. Of course, you can try to steal one before the song…

This is also the first step for a project that I have: a recipe and cooking website where people can put their own videos and teach other user how to make their favorite dishes.
Brigadeiro Recipe

Ingredients:

Condensed Milk - 1 can

Chocolate powder - as much as you want

Butter - 1 spoon