Occupy Movement

As I was reading the article by DeLuca and Peeples (2002) about the WTO protests in Seattle, I kept drawing comparisons to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Just like in Seattle, the protests on Wall Street and in cities across the country only started getting major media traction once the violence began to escalate between police and protesters, and generally only in those places where confrontations and arrests occurred like in Oakland. Even right here in Fort Wayne, the media has mostly dismissed the movement's goals and objectives and has instead focused on the tangential issue of Occupiers camping out in public parks in violation of park rules. As Harold (2004) points out in his article on cultural jamming and media activism, the media has a hard time ignoring a good "spectacle." It could be argued, as DeLuca and Peeples do in their article, that if it wasn't for the "spectacle" created by these confrontations between police and protesters, the story would likely have died a quicker death (Although Occupiers in Fort Wayne were moved out of Headwaters Park to a more visible location in Freimann Square, news coverage itself has practically disappeared).  Like with the WTO protest stories, coverage of the Occupy protests invariably includes some discussion of why the Occupiers are there in the first place. The Occupy movement itself is born out of a frustration many Americans (the so-called 99%) have in feeling like don't have a say in, or even access to, the decision-making process of their government. Clearly, the Occupiers understand the important of visual discourse or "images" in a hypermediated world as they have staged their protests largely in public spaces where they could be visible to the masses and an irritant to corporate and municipal authorities.  It's only because the Occupy movement has had moments of spectacle that the traditional media has bothered to pay attention. If it weren't for the episodes of violence and police brutality, the Occupy movement might have faded completely from view.

The Golden Circle - Simon Sinek

I just listened to this video while I was at work today and I thought that there might be some applications to our classroom discussions. Last night we touched on movements and how people form opinion and how that grows. Sinek applies his ideas mostly to commerce and the selling of good but he also uses MLK Jr as an example. Watch the video if you have time. Regardless of whether it applies to class, it is though provoking nonetheless.

The Golden Circle as presented by Simon Sinek

Dissecting Habermas

On its face, Habermas gives a pretty sound theory for how democracy operates through the public sphere.  His notion that there is a cycle to the democratic process and that change starts with ideas discussed in intimate spheres which eventually move through literary spheres and ultimately into the political public sphere seems logical to me. I can even see his point about how The State apparatus can constrain or loosen the economy and  how unfettered capitalism can lead to concentrations of wealth and influence which can ultimately short-circuit the democratic process. We have certainly seen that in the form of powerful lobbying groups which represent the interests of Big Business.

Putting aside my skepticism about the economy's singular role in influencing the democratic process (what about religion/morality, education...?) and the somewhat antiquated notion of the literary public sphere (do all social and political movements start at Starbucks?), where I have the most trouble with Habermas is in his insistence on critical-rational thought and civility as essential elements of democracy.

Habermas says democracy depends on critical-rational deliberation which is completely devoid of emotion or personal identity. I wonder how easy that is to achieve, or even how necessary. When was the last time you heard two people discussing or debating an issue that didn't involve some element of emotion or personal identity? Although emotion should not get in the way of logic or reasoning, I think passion and a sense of personal stake have always been an essential part of social and political movements.

The second requirement of democracy, according to the model, is that there be civility and decorum. If we are all supposed to abide by Parliamentary procedure and not speak out of turn, there would seem to be little room in the model for protest. An event like the Boston Tea Party could be considered quite uncivil, but it was not doubt highly effective at inspiring others to take up the cause of liberty. The civil uprisings that occurred across the Arab world in 2011 as part of the "Arab Spring" could hardly be considered civil, yet these uprisings resulted in significant political change for the peoples of those countries.

I'll leave it to someone else to take up the question of whether there is an online public sphere. On a side note, I think it is interesting how Habermas uses the term "publicity" to refer to the speaking out in support of ideas or change. We generally use the word publicity to mean drawing attention to someone or something for commercial purposes.

Narrate Your Day Off

Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument

By: Walter R. Fisher

Everyone has a story to tell and in this article, Fisher explains how people are narrative individuals through the narrative paradigm. The narrative paradigm branches from argumentative and persuasive themes.

The word “narration” in this sense is a theory of symbolic actions such as words or deeds according to the author. Along with this statement, Fisher also believes that communication is based off of story telling, however, not all stories are the same. In order to argue that all told stories are not the same Fisher created the narrative paradigm to differ from rational world claims.

National World Paradigm:

- People are rational

- Human decision making is clear cut

- The speaking situation can determine the argument

- Rationality is measured by how much we know and argue

- The world is a set of logical puzzles that we can solve through rational analysis

Fisher’s viewpoint:

- People are storytellers

- Make decisions on the basis of good reasons

- History, biography, culture, and character helps us consider what is good reason

- Narrative rationality is determined by the coherence and fidelity of our stories

- The world is a set of stories from which we choose, and thus constantly re-create, our lives

After this eventful weekend of Super Bowl preparations, Sunday was the day to enjoy the game and watch the infamous commercials. My favorite of the night was Mathew Broderick’s Cr-V ad. . For those who have not seen the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , it is about a high school senior who decides to play hooky yet again. This movie is quite different as the main character breaks the “fourth wall” to speak in most in depth thoughts and his decision-making. Now, many years later, Mathew Broderick has taken that senior from high school and recreated the character to tell the story again of Ferris Bueller to an audience that has grown up to someone that normally gets up and travels to work every day. However, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”

Deliberative Rhetoric - Uncertainty and the State of the Public Sphere Today

The Personal, Technical and Public Spheres of Argument: A Speculative Inquiry into the Art of Public Deliberation – by Thomas Goodnight

First and foremost, I apologize for the delay in my blog post. I was holding out to see if I could tie this discussion in with the Super Bowl ads but nothing struck me as I watched the game and the commercials last night. It would not be a stretch to say that the Super Bowl festivities including the game, halftime show and commercials provide a ‘perpetual swirl of stimuli’, but I would like to focus less on the middle finger of a controversial Sri Lankan rapper and more on the arena of online deliberation. The main objective for me in this piece is to generate discussion. If the topic is public deliberation, hopefully the material presented would lend itself to a discussion. I believe our classroom blog is an interesting forum for this discussion and we may be able to identify personal, technical and public spheres within this one discussion.

The Goodnight piece was filled with a lot of thought provoking material. One could easily write an in-depth research paper with the information provided but we are limited to a blog posting, so I apologize in advance if I left out any information you find pertinent. In this article, Goodnight breaks the piece into three sections (Uncertainty and the Grounding of Disagreement, Distinctions among Spheres and the Status of Deliberative Argument). Two of these sections struck me more than the other and I will not spend too much time discussing the distinctions among spheres. These distinctions may naturally be used to discuss the other two sections but an in-depth analysis of these classifications will be absent from this blog. Before moving on to analysis of the piece and topics for discussion, it would be helpful to provide Goodnight’s definition of deliberative rhetoric. He said:

Rhetoric is an art, a human enterprise engaging individual choice and common activity, and deliberative rhetoric is a form of argumentation through which citizens test and create social knowledge in order to uncover, assess and resolve shared problems.

Now that the definition has been stated let’s take a look at uncertainty as grounds for disagreement. One of the theories offered by Goodnight was that all activity has uncertainty for its principle. If we analyze our actions and look at the root cause, perhaps we can find some uncertainty buried deep within. For instance, one could pose the question, “Why do I have a job?” Now, this could be argued in many ways, but in this line of thinking, (the uncertainty line) perhaps we could answer in the following ways.

“I work because I am uncertain that I have an identity apart from my occupation.”

“I work because I am uncertain how my bills will be paid.”

A more technical basis for work beyond the personal may create a question like, “I work because the root causes of cancer are uncertain and we are trying to find a cure.”

Or the salesman could say, “I work because my customers are uncertain as to what products and services they need.”

Some of these questions may be more or less of a stretch, but they should generate some thought about your own occupation. You may find that none of these questions of uncertainty exist in your occupation, but Goodnight says that all activity, not just work, has uncertainty for its principle. He makes the claim that members of the society participate in vast superstructures which invite them to channel doubt through prevailing discourse practices as an attempt to reduce the unknown.

If the argument is taken even deeper, it could go as far to ask, “Why do I exist?” or “What is my purpose?” Now these may be questions that have a clear foundation of uncertainty. Arguments and deliberation about the existence of a god and the creation of the universe are rooted in uncertainty. If there was a certain answer to these questions, many people would be unemployed, many books would not be published and many public debates would be non-existent. 

By this point I hope that I have developed some grounds for discussion and the existence of uncertainty as a cause of deliberation. The next area of discussion is deliberative argument today. When I read the line that I paraphrased earlier, that individuals participate in vast superstructures of public discourse, the first forum that came to mind was YouTube and other digital forms of communication offered to the public via the World Wide Web. While these technological advances have offered many positive contributions to the world, some argue that it comes at too great of a cost. Goodnight used a quote from Susanna Langer in his article highlighting her opinion that each new advance is bought with the life of an older certainty. Building on that statement; anything we may have held as a certainty twenty or thirty years ago may now be uncertain as a result of the information presented in this new discourse.

Goodnight extended Langer’s argument and wrote that the public sphere was steadily eroding by the elevation of personal and technical groundings of argument. This means that the public sphere (where topics are brought to the masses, items are discussed and debated and an understanding is developed) is losing out today to the personal sphere (individuals placing value in their own experience) and the technical sphere (philosophical giants, as Plato would call it, discussing topics that do not include the general public). Goodnight made the poignant statement that the celebration of personal lifestyle has created a ‘me generation’ or ‘the culture of narcissism’. Now, I know what some of us are thinking because I had this thought as well. The argument is this; we are not a narcissistic culture, look at all the messages on the internet fighting for the common good.

This idea is not new. In the late 1920s, progressive historian Charles Beard, argued that modern technology offered many opportunities to serve the common good but also carried new problems like falling aircraft, machine gun banditry and submarine smuggling. Okay, so his time was a little different than ours, but the idea is that good is accompanied by bad. Regardless of how many powerful movements, arguments and forms of deliberation exist in the digital forum, there are just as many pointless, mindless and harmful items. 

Take a break from the reading and travel to YouTube or visit your favorite website for news. In one instant you are reading a moving story about lives being saved by the Coast Guard in the Oregon wilderness and the next minute you are reading an article about a super model with a potty mouth and a frustration for football blunders. The possibility of contributing to a better society is lost in the noise. As Goodnight wrote, “What could be a way of sharing in the creation of a future is supplanted by a perpetual swirl of exciting stimuli. This is deliberation replaced by consumption”.

There are many thought-provoking arguments made like this in the Goodnight reading. I can think of many instances where I shared the sentiment of the author. The advance in technology can be great for the public if it is used correctly. However, individuals like me have to stop and analyze what it is we are doing and critique the present practices. Goodnight would say this action of pause, analysis and recognition is what can help technology contribute positively to the public sphere and if this happens, deliberative rhetoric may not be a lost art. 

Coming Soon...

I will be posting my blog tomorrow and I will be discussing the Goodnight piece. Stay tuned.

Bitzer Article

What does it mean to engage in public communication? Bitzer lays out a theoretic framework for understanding the difference between public communication and simply communicating in public.  Public communication, as Bitzer defines it, has five key features: 

1. Public communication is concerned with civic affairs. 

So according to Bitzer, Mitt Romney  making a stump speech on the campaign trail would constitute public communication, but George Clooney discussing his latest movie role on Letterman would not. Although both are public figures using mass media to communicate a message, only one is actually concerned with the people’s business.  

2. Public communicators (and their audiences) represent the public and serve its interests. When Scott Pelley does a hard-hitting interview on 60 Minutes, he is engaging in public communication, according to Bitzer.  With her ‘10 Most Fascinating People ” specials, Barbara Walters is not.  Same for a politician who casts her vote based on the wishes of her constituents. When a politican uses his position for personal gain, such as the case of Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich, he is not adhering to the principles of public communication by Bitzer's standards. 

3. Public communication must observe the artistic principles of creation and judgment, as well as a commitment to rigorous inquiry and a search for truth.  

While the recent Republic primary debates may help the public clarify the candidates’ positions, one could argue whether a rigorous inquiry is truly at work.  (Notice how ABC uses the tagline “Your Voice/Your Vote” during its debate coverage.) Most debates are an opportunity for politicians to engage in the kind of pandering and priming effects described in the Chambers article.

4. Public communication requires both communicator and audience to be participants.

A jury is a classic example, so too is the floor of the Senate or a City Council meeting (Here, I'm reminded of the concept of 'mini-publics' from the Chambers article). President Obama’s recent hangout session on Google Plus is one example of how social media has made it possible for everyday citizens to engage with politicians. But more often than not, there remains a distinct separation between the communicator and the audience, as most of us don't have access to the machinery of the mass media system. Despite the extraordinary amount of options available to us today, media power is still relatively concentrated in the hands of the few.

5. Public communication has elevated the role of journalists into a special class of rhetors. 

If media communication was in its "infancy" at the time of Bitzer’s writing (p. 426), it would have to be reaching adolescence by now.  Bitzer’s description of the model journalist is high praise, if a little naïve.  He almost makes journalists seem like Plato’s philosopher kings engaged in a never-ending, Holy Grail –like quest for the truth. The best journalists may live up to these lofty principles, but I question whether this is more the exception that the rule. Is the news, as filtered through major media conglomerates, such as Fox News or MSNBC providing information that is essential to the public? Is it truly objective or impartial? Having been a journalist for 8 years, I know of many journalists who are engaged in a thoughtful and responsible search for the truth. But I also know of many so-called journalists who are just as interested in a good story and will accept some facts and ignore others which support that story. 

The Bitzer raises as many questions as it answers, but it provides a good starting point for discussing public communication in the media age.