This blog is a series of two blogs dealing with the issue of Campaigning Space.
Shrinking Campaign Space On-Line
Hilder assessed “the evolving social, legal and political environment today” (Paul Hilder, 2007, p. 42) in relation to campaigning. He evaluated the role/relations of the celebrity and the media; government and corporate co-opting of issues; coalitions and networks; and the growth of international campaigns as well as local action. However he failed to bring any attention to the fundamental issue that the main dimensions to campaign in are being systematically diminished.
This blog will address campaigning space on-line only.
The rules of supply and demand apply to Twitter . Time, space, how many followers you have and how much they retweet contribute fully to how many ‘impressions’ a tweet you send will get. Facebook is a different story, nothing is transparent about it.
In late May 2014 a dramatic drop in the organic reach of collective ‘Post(s) Reach’ (see Figure 01) occurred . In the figure below you see that for the Occupy London Facebook page for which I have access, the plummet was from around a 1.2M per day to 100,000.
FACEBOOK… IS NOT A GOOD FRIEND ANYMORE 🙁
On-line campaign mass communication and the potential for the resonance of any campaigns (Vowe, 2006 cited in Sigrid Baringhorst, Kneip, & Niesyto, 2009) were spectacularly culled in May 2014 and apart from the odd blog (Drum) about it, it was barely mentioned anywhere including the Third Sector.
Alternative narratives and framing have lost one of their main publishers, Facebook. No longer is Facebook a virtual public park to set your soap box on, but it is now an enclosed space for which you have to pay to enter. The more you pay the more populated that park will be. The public sphere is captured once again.
‘Tactical media’ – a participatory, dissenting, do-it-yourself form of communication (Lester & Hutchins 2009) had provided refreshing, opinionated, shamelessly bias, alternative framing on many issues not least dictatorships, the financial crisis, women’s rights etc. Facebook barely half a decade old in 2011 had spread the voice of the people with magnificent electronic efficiency and had played a significant role in the global 2011 protests that inspired each other’s campaigns. Yet in mid 2014 the era was over and we did not even have a goodbye party.
For the record, my condolences to all lovers of the public domain. RIP Facebook 01.
Facebook in its former configuration was part of what Habermas, Lennox, & Lennox (1974) called the ‘public sphere’. Back then it was arguably just the creator of the space, not the actor and creator like the main stream media is (Gamson & Wolfsfeld 1993) (Stekenlenburg,2015) . It was always an ‘invited’ space (Gaventa 2006) One needed an internet connection to join and in that way only people with internet had a voice. Still that is quite a number! It’s surreal success was achieved by assisting, facilitating, maintaining, and supporting accessibility for individuals to communicate. These are all ‘actor’ activities but it did so with electronic neutrality – no editorial – based on a rumor mill algorithm, that was distributed by a decentralised system of user engagement. Also account holders were largely aware of the potential spread of their posts.
Now however there can be no question that Facebook is both actor and creator of the space. It now facilitates with the interests of its share holders (in its new business model). It is essentially no different to its corporate media counter-parts.
Facebook now charges an account holder to boost their posts and charges them more to boost their posts among their own followers. Based on the insights of the Occupy London Facebook page, it seems that Facebook plays a role in stopping posts from organically spreading. The roots of ‘organic reach’ have been uprooted and the soil made toxic. The new virtual space to campaign shrunk dramatically and judging from the haunting silence of the third sector about it, it is possible that many did not quite notice.
References
Gaventa, J. (2006). Finding the Spaces for Change; A Power Analysis. IDS Bulletin , 37 (6).
Gamson, W. A., & Wolfsfeld, G. (1993). Movements and Media As Interacting Systems. ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Soical Science (528), 114 – 125.
Habermas, J., Lennox, S., & Lennox, F. (1974, Autunm). The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article. New German Critique , 3, pp. 49-55.
Paul Hilder, J. C.-G. (2007). CONTENTIOUS CITIZENS CIVIL SOCIETY’S ROLE IN CAMPAIGNING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE. The Young Foundation.
Lester, L., & Hutchins, B. (2009). Power Games: Environmental Portest, news media and the internet. Meida Culture and Society , 31, 579-595.
Sigrid Baringhorst, Kneip, V., & Niesyto, J. (2009). Political Campaigning on the Web. In S. Baringhorst, V. Kneip, & J. Niesyto, Introductions Political Campaigning in Changing Media Cultures (p. 6). Verlag, Bielefeld.
Stekelenburg, J. v. (2015, Novemeber 30). People protest for many reasons, yet we don’t know how effective protests are. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from The London School Of Economics and Political Science: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-effective-are-protests/