Transformation janschmidt umea_2011_print

Another structural transformation of the public sphere? On recent challenges and current research projects
Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt
Senior Researcher for digital interactive media and political communication
Ume å , January 2011

Agenda
Introducing my background
Structural transformation of the public sphere?
Current research projects at the Hans-Bredow-Institute
Personal public
Rediscovering audience
Discussion

The Hans-Bredow-Institute

The Hans-Bredow-Institute
Founded in 1950 – leading independent media research institute in Germany, funded by City of Hamburg and various other public institutions (e.g. Federal Media Authorities) as well as by competitive research grants
Named after Hans Bredow (1879-1959) – originally a broadcast technician; Commissioner for Broadcasting in the Ministry of Posts in the Weimar Republic; banned from work after the Nazis got into power; central figure in building public broadcasting system after 1945
Scope of Research: Focussing on the structure of mediated public communication - understanding the underlying determinants, assessing future opportunities and risks, and providing orientation for the actors involved
Interdisciplinary perspective : combining social sciences and legal studies within various research programmes

Research Programmes
„ Foundations of societal information“ – how does society keep itself informed?
e.g. project on the media repertoires of the german population
„ Types of public communication“ – how is the changing media system structured?
e.g. study on „ Leitmedium Internet?“ for German Parliament
„ Between reception, interaction, and production“ – how do users‘s roles change?
e.g. study on adolescents and Web 2.0
„ Long-term media effects “ – are there any, and if yes: which and how?
z.B. the role of television in forming images, attitudes & beliefs about the Holocaust

Agenda
Personal public
Discussion

Another structural transformation of the public sphere? CC-BY-SA-3.0, Wolfram Huke - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JuergenHabermas_crop2.jpg CC-BY-SA-3.0, Takk, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Televison_Hungarian_ORION_1957.jpg

The context (in brief)
Basic trends contributing to structural changes in the public sphere today:
The Technological Convergence / Digitization
The Political-Economical Globalization, „marketization“
The Social Networked Individualism
 Not only the social contexts, but also the internal structures of mediated spaces are changing
Governing / Regulating mediated spaces
Producing public spheres

Governing mediated spaces
Governing / regulating convergent digital media / mediated spaces
Law e.g. free speech; media concentration laws
Social Norms e.g. news factors; personal authenticity; community standards
Contracts e.g. personal data  service, transferring ownership rights
Software Code e.g. default settings of visibility or filtering; aggregation, the „app“ model
more universal more contextual ? Interplay of these factors

Producing the Public Sphere
Producing the Public Sphere in Digital Media
Co-produced by professional, participatory & technical intermediation (Neuberger 2009)
Changes within professional intermediation:
Shifting balance between public and private media
re-organization of journalistic practices in convergent media (e.g. newsrooms; transmedia news reporting)
Growing importance of participatory intermediation
lowered barriers for "making information public" (publishing - filtering – distributing)
new entrants / new voices – but not per se democratic/inclusive/emancipatory
Technical intermediation – the „hidden gatekeepers“
Algorithms and software code are providing deep structure of public sphere
Only seemingly neutral – but designed with (implicit or explicit) interests and assumptions

Agenda
Personal publics
Discussion

Starting point: Social Web Practices
Social Web lowers barriers for …
www.flickr.com/photos/44029537@N00/12760664/
Identity Management (Presenting individual interests, opinions, experiences, skills, etc.)
http://flickr.com/photos/mylesdgrant/495698908/
Relationship Management (Maintaining existing and building new relationships)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/axels_bilder/1267008046/
Information Management (co-creating, filtering and re-distributing relevant information / knowledge / content)

Identity management
Persistent Myth: The Internet as „cyberspace“, where people leave their bodies behind to create new identites
http://themiddleeastinterest.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/matrix.jpg

Identity management

Articulated social networks
12-24-year-old Germans using SNS (in 2008) had …
… an average: 130 friends
… of which they have personally met:
most of them: 85 percent
less than half: 5 percent
… considered close friends:
most of them: 15 percent
less than half: 62 percent
Quelle: Schmidt/Paus-Hasebrink/Hasebrink 2009

Identity Management for articulated social networks Statements on self-disclosure online (2008; 12-24-year-olds; agree/fully agree in %) Source: Schmidt/Paus-Hasebrink/Hasebrink 2009

Structure of personal publics Personal Publics emerge when and where users make available/filter information which is… (a) personally relevant to them , [instead of being selected according to news factors / news values] (b) directed to an (intended) audience of strong and weak ties , [instead of a disperse and unknown audience] (c) presented to engage in conversation . [instead of to publicise]  Personal publics are public in the sense of „accessible“, but not necessarily in the sense „of general interest“

Structure of personal publics
Blurring of communicative roles - „sender“ and „receiver“ becomes „produser“ (A. Bruns)
Twitter and Facebook have popularized the idea of the „stream“ – the more or less constant flow of information about your social network instead of rather static text

Journalistic Publics & Personal Publics Within the personal publics, Anschlusskommunikation (=„follow-up communication“) of the former audience is becoming visible:  Users comenting, linking, bookmarking, (re-)tweeting, digging, sharing or liking content provided by mainstream media Online-platforms of established media outlets get a lot of attention within these new publics  Personal publics and the „traditional“ public sphere are complementing each other „ Twittercharts“ nach Verweisen

Structure of personal publics
Personal publics (being a subtype of networked publics) have a specific communicative architecture (boyd 2008), being…
Persistent
Replicable
Scalable
Searchable
   

Architektur netzbasierter Öffentlichkeiten
These technological characteristics not only afford the emergence of personal publics, but also change the balance between self-disclosure and privacy – via the concept of „audience“
    Intended audience: What is my general idea of an audience when using a specific tool or service? Addressed audience: Which people do I address in a specific situation? Empirical audience: Which people do actually read/view any given information? Potential audience: What is the „technological reach“ – who might possibly read/ view any given information?

Agenda
Personal publics
Discussion

Journalism and Audience: a Complicated Relationship
Journalism as a practice is still rooted in the “condition of mass communication”
journalists’ knowledge about and attitudes toward the audience used to be formed without direct experiences and interactions
Research on the journalism-/audience-relationship used to be based on mass-media-assumptions: asymmetry between journalism and audience
Sociological inclusion theory (and its application to journalism) has considered the audience as being included into journalism by “merely” accepting communication offers, by being the necessary counterpart to acts of publishing

Problems of Inclusion in Journalism
Journalism has to deal with two factors: the restriction of journalism’s ability to include the audience, and increasing demands for inclusion of the audience.
The ability of journalism to include the audience is decreasing (indicators: e. g. decreasing faith in the mainstream media, declining audiences as to the news, ‘journalistic’ activities of the audience within their personal publics)
Through their own engagement with journalism within networked publics, the “people formerly known as the audience” (Jay Rosen) not only become an active part of the public sphere, but also form expectations about journalism and its inclusionary practices

Heuristic Research Model (proposed research) audience inclusion performance
participatory practices
degree of community orientation
inclusion expectations
motives for participation
evaluation of the own influence
inclusion performance
forms of audience participation
journalistic products/output
work processes/routines
inclusion expectations
attitudes towards the audience
journalistic role perception
strategic relevance of audience participation
journalism inclusion level inclusion divergence

Conclusion / Summary
The public sphere is changing – and our concepts and theories have to change, too.
Analyzing, explaining and understanding public spheres within digital, converging media has to take new agents into account
the former audience and their personal publics
the architecture of technical mediation – software code and its affordances as well as the underlying interests and power structures
There have been times where being a media sociologist has been less interesting! :-)

Thank you!
Dr. Jan-Hinrik Schmidt
Hans-Bredow-Institut
Warburgstr. 8-10, 20354 Hamburg
[email_address]
www.hans-bredow-institut.de
www.schmidtmitdete.de
www.dasneuenetz.de

Relevant Literature
Benkler, Yochai (2006): The Wealth of Networks. How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven/London.
boyd, danah (2008): Taken out of context. American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics. Berkely. Online: http://www.danah.org/papers/TakenOutOfContext.pdf.
Bruns, Axel (2008): Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and beyond. From production to produsage. New York.
Jenkins, Henry (2006): Convergence Culture. Where old and new media collide. New York.
Neuberger, Christoph/Christian Nuernbergk/Melanie Rischke (Hg.) (2009): Journalismus im Internet. Profession – Partizipation – Technisierung. Wiesbaden.
Papacharissi, Zizi (2010): A private sphere. Democracy in a digital age. Cambridge.
Schmidt, Jan (2009): Das neue Netz. Merkmale, Praktiken und Konsequenzen des Web 2.0. Konstanz.
Schmidt, Jan/Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink/Uwe Hasebrink (Hrsg.) (2009): Heranwachsen mit dem Social Web. Berlin .

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Transformation janschmidt umea_2011_print

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