Thought Paper: September 27

Johnette Hawkins McCrery and John E. Newhagen’s “Conceptual Elasticity of the Public Sphere: Tracking Media and Psychological Determinants of Access” (E. P. Bucy & J. E. Newhagen (Eds.), Media Access, 2004) makes an interesting case for a conceptual expansion of J. Habermas’ “Public Sphere” (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989). Habermas described the public sphere as the space where citizens gather and there is an exchange of political discourse and ideas. According to Habermas, the space for this public affairs deliberation was the coffeehouses and salons of 18th century Paris. The new moneyed middle class was increasing seeking access to policy-making circles long monopolized by the ruling power elite.

McCrery and Newhagen state the nature of the public sphere, as a physical space for political discourse remains a popular concept. They point out that critics depict the American policy process as becoming more detached from public opinion, a process where professional bureaucratic and technocratic power elites increasingly create policy and in the process increasingly marginalize the citizenry.

McCrery and Newhagen suggest that this trend calls for the rethinking of the static public sphere model. They propose that the sphere be conceptually split in two, one sphere is the “opinion sphere,” a forum where citizens gather for political and public affairs dialogues, and the second sphere is the “process sphere,” the arena here policymaking decisions are actually made. Where as Habermas, defined public sphere a physical space, the authors theorize that the two sphere can actual occur in different states of reality—physical and virtual—depending on the size on the participant pool and the participants view on interactive discourse. Populating the process sphere is a relatively small number of individuals—the power elite—who are congressional members, congressional staffers, or lobbyists. These participants look at interpersonal and newspapers as interactive means of communication and are confined to a small geographic area—Washington, DC. The small number of members allows a more physical arena of discourse to be effective.

Making up the opinion sphere is “likely” voters—non-elites—and includes a large, diverse group of individuals that are or can be geographically distant from one another. This group views interactivity differently and favor medium such talk radio and the Internet as more responsive to their ideas. The opinion sphere can exist as a physical local or a virtual space.

The McCrery and Newhagen study, indicated that these two spheres do exist and that the assumed participants do populate the appropriate spheres—power elite in the process sphere and non-elites in the opinion sphere and that each sphere does have a media preference—newspapers for the power elite and talk radio for the non-elites. The study also shows that there is overlap between the two spheres indicating a flow of opinion to policy action and back.

The study or rather the question the study wishes to explore I found to be interesting and useful in probing the model of public opinion, political participation, and policymaking. The original “public sphere” model as defined by Habermas, seems too rigid and static to explain the role of political empowerment, but is a relevant conceptual foundation on which to stand. McCrery and Newhagen make a good attempt at moving beyond the idealized concept and exploring an intriguing real world question.

As a beginning exploration, I find the study useful though limiting in its sample and its media assumptions. I question the narrow definition of the power elite—congressional members, congressional staffers, or lobbyists—and it leaves out corporate leaders, government agency or department heads and staffers, and state government leaders, to name a few. It also defined political participation as having held any elected office—including non-governmental ones such as high school offices and civic organizations, but excluding appointed office or NGOs—but does not account for working on campaigns or just politically engaged non-official leaders within a community. I would like to see a more inclusive media selection that includes Internet sites and television. I find it interesting that the primary media studied are two of the oldest “traditional” media—newspapers and radio.

I find the notion that the public sphere is actual multiple spheres—including, but not limited to the two spheres proposed in the study— that intercept and interact with one another a more elastic model to examine public and political discourse. The multi-sphere model would allow for changes we are seeing in society now and would be adaptive to future changes. Throw in a bit of popular culture and resistant communities theory and McCrery and Newhagen may be on to something.

Thought Paper: September 20

I have heard that the definition of “insanity” is the act to repeating the same action, but expecting different results. Well, this thought kept going through my head as I read this week's chapters from Media Access. Early predictions of Internet adoption were overly optimistic, and the early research suggested that physical access was the primary barrier to adoption. If you get the wires strung and the terminals—television-based or computer—into the homes, schools, and work place everyone will begin traveling on the digital information super highway, it was the “Field of Dreams” "build it and they will come" approach to Internet accessibility.

So government agencies have funded Internet in library access programs, foundations have funded schools and community centers, and local governments, such LaGrange, GA, have created there own initiatives (p. 131)—Austin and San Marcos, TX are both exploring citywide free WiFi access—but the results are still the same. There is still a significant portion of the American population (Pew, 2000) not connected to the Internet and a percentage of them have no interest in connecting. Most of this week’s chapters try to explore with the whys behind non-adoption. Moreover, to be honest, most of these studies just left me at the door. I mean, is it significant to the literature on New Media studies to know that a user’s personality will indicate their level of willingness to adopt new technologies (p.73), or that peer pressure, parental influence and conflicting messages from authority figures and the media can hinder adoption (p. 107). These conditions have been restricting and influencing media adoption from the beginning of mass media. Yes, it's more complex in its structure and interactivity, but why would New Media technologies fundamentally cause unique reactions?

Now, the article that deals with Internet user frustration and its impact on usage and continued adoption seems more appropriate (p. 47). Studying what leads to user frustration and their adaptive or non-adaptive reactions to these stimuli seems like a worthy area of inquiry. The finding that interactivity can actually create disorientation for the user and this in turn can lead to the user choosing to not access the technology is fascinating. Interactivity is a fundamental characteristic of the Internet and maybe a significant component in user non-adoption. By adding more links, video, or audio to a web site and actually causing disorientation to a percentage of site user is an interesting research topic and a practical bit of information to know when designing a web experience.

Much of this rant comes from my opinion that expecting the Internet will act significantly different from other media is flawed. Even television—over 50 years from its introduction—does not have 100% penetration and adoption, so why would you be surprised that the internet does not have a greater adoption rate after only 10 years? Additionally, Agenda Setting theory suggests that peer and parental pressure (opinion leaders) can influence the actions or opinions of a medium user. Again, why would Internet users or potential users and their usage be immune?

Thought Paper: September 13

Of the essays (chapters) in Critical Cyberculture Studies for this week's readings, Beth Kolko’s “Cultural Considerations in Internet Policy and Design: A Case Study from Central Asia” really hit home with me. My background in design and my cynical view of the American-centric our-way-is-the-best-way approach to dealing with the rest of the world made me receptive to Kolko’s argument that culturally appropriate design (often overlooked and understudied) can be a “powerful avenue for intervention.”

Often the debate about adoption and use of information and communication technology (ICT) is only about cables and computers. It is a “build it, they will come” attitude, without considering the broader social and community norms and conventions. The author uses her work and research in Central Asia as a case study of technology usage in a non-Western society. A society without the assumptions and meanings of Western metaphors and iconology; so she asks, is the Windows' desktop interface—with its filing cabinet, folders and trash can—the most appropriate graphic user interface (GUI) for a non-American/European to use to interact with the technology? For that matter, is it the most useful metaphor for America’s rural, blue collar or the economically disadvantaged people to use for accessing and interacting with computers?

Everett Rogers describes the process of diffusion as a series of steps a population takes to make the move from non-users to users. First, the innovators become users, followed by early adopters, early majority, late majority, and finally laggards. Rogers describes innovators as being risk takers and are willing to adapt to systems that are outside of traditional social norms. Kolko suggests that good design should be geared to late stage adopters through to the laggards, the very people that the advocates of ICT are trying to reach, and not to the risk takers and innovators.

The essay reminded me of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program that is working to provide computers to children in third world countries. One of its challenges was to recreate the user experience, as its website states:

The desktop metaphor is so entrenched in personal computer users' collective consciousness that it is easy to forget what a bold and radical innovation the Graphical User Interface (GUI) was and how it helped free the computer from the “professionals” who were appalled at the idea of computing for everyone.

OLPC is about to revolutionize the existing concept of a computer interface.

Beginning with Seymour Papert's simple observation that children are knowledge workers like any adult, only more so, we decided they needed a user-interface tailored to their specific type of knowledge work: learning. So…we created SUGAR, a “zoom” interface that graphically captures their world of fellow learners and teachers as collaborators, emphasizing the connections within the community, among people, and their activities. (link)

Not only is the hardware important for this new venture, but the OLPC needed to radically rethink the metaphors and icons that the children would use to interact and utilize the technology. Instead of forcing the children to adapt to the old metaphor of the desktop in order to successfully use the laptops, the new OLPC GUI would adapt to the community—multi-languages, icons based on international symbols—and the goal of the laptops to facilitate learning and collaboration—icons that visually represent the community of laptops (users) and activities being joined, not an office or business environment.

Design will not solve all of the digital divide issues—infrastructure and hardware is still an obstacle to adoption—but design can help to bridge the gap. As long as the individual and a community is expected to adapt to the pro-Western system of metaphors in order to use ICT, there will always be laggards, resisters and non-adopters. Maybe it is time to stop expecting the world to march to America’s technological drumbeat.

Thought Paper: September 6

The digital divide, cyberculture, media access, online research methodology, new media, Internet or internet, media usage, online commerce, virtual societies, online surveys, the politicizing of new technologies, and as the King of Siam would say “etc., etc., etc.” Will more broadband connections and computers enable more people to use the Internet? If we educate older persons on the use of new technologies, will there be an improvement in their lives? Do we need other people to contact us 24/7 with a touch of a button? Cell phones, computers, Blackberries, the Internet, iPhones—are they enabling or constraining? These topics, concepts, and questions are just a few of what new media research is studying.

Are these ramblings of a Luddite? No, I embrace new media. I have taught new media design and I use new media technologies, but one brief statement from the Media Access preface peeks my curiosity:

Yet there are indications that [Internet] adoption has reached a plateau, with some new users opting out of the cyberworld after a period of initial, frustrating use…. Despite its popularity, the Internet does not appear to be an economically self-sustaining medium in the sense that mass media such as television and newspapers are. We suspect this may have more to do with the user’s ability to benefit from the content than physical access to technology (p. x).

Does new media usage and adoption have more to do with factors of sociology, and culture than just availability and access? Why have the new media technologies not been universally adopted? Why are thousands of blogs being created daily and then quickly abandoned by their creators? Are we expecting the Internet and other technologies to follow the path set by television, radio, and newspapers? Is using the models and paradigms of traditional media studies an appropriate approach to view and study new media and cyberculture? New media communication defies simple classification—is it a tool of mass or interpersonal communication, education or entertainment, self-expression or mass conformity, or is it the voice of the masses or the power elite.

It seems that much of the recent study of new media focuses on the systems and technologies; I look forward to the search of why people choose to use the technology and why they choose one technology while ignoring another. My and my wife’s usage of and adoption of various new media illustrate many of the questions raised in the field. I have designed and taught the design of Web sites for the last six years, yet in our household we continued to use dial-up service even thought broadband was readily available. I have used a cell phone for many years, but my wife has only recently acquired one and still resists using it. I have created a blog and must admit I fall into the category of those that have done little to continually update it. I have pages on social networks, such as Facebook.com and MySpace.com, and an avatar in Second Life, yet have largely abandoned my participation.

The readings talk to the complexity of the issues surrounding the study of new media and new media technologies. As David Silver states in Critical Cyberculture Studies:

Internet studies. New media studies. Digital media studies. Digital arts and culture studies. Cyberculture studies. Critical cyberculture studies. Networked culture studies. Informatics. Information science. Information society studies. Contemporary media studies.

Naming, not to mention mapping, an academic field is a tricky proposition (p. 1).

If merely naming the field is complex and a challenge, studying this field will at least be interesting.

Hello World

In homage to the digital ASCII pioneers of old, my first post is "Hello World."