Internet and hate crimes - continued redefinition of social life

Here is more in the continuing realignment of social life due to the Internet.

New York Times report headline:

"Jury Finds Spying in Rutgers Dorm Was a Hate Crime"

First paragraph:

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student was convicted on Friday on all 15 charges he had faced for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with another man, a verdict poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when laws have not kept up with evolving technology.

Please read the rest here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/nyregion/defendant-guilty-in-rutgers-case.html?_r=1

This was a closely watched event after the story emerged in 2010-2011. It is more evidence of the changes due to the emergence of the everyday surveillance society. It shows the redefinition of actions associated with everyday invasions of privacy and bullying due to the Internet. 

It is possible to see proletariainzation as I have redefined it: the Internet made it possible to surveil and "broadcast" someone's private behaviour. It is also possible to see the push back against the Internet's unregulated space of proletarianization. Theories that explore this territory are necessary now as the claw back to pre-Internet or civil society Enlightenment standards moves ahead in the US courts, as this case suggests.

The irony here is that an Indian student - as a member of a community frequently subjected to racist prejudice - has been successfully prosecuted for prejudice against a gay student for a hate crime. 

The people bleating in protest about the Nanny State should think hard about what it means to not be able to resort to the courts or public institutions for restitution in cases such as this. 

Academics and journalism

Having spent 15 years in and around US universities where journalism is taught I have some thoughts on the so-called split between academic training and in-j-house training. (This follows my blog March 12 about News Corporation's opposition to the recommendation of the Australian Media Inquiry, aka Finkelstein Inquiry for a News Media Council and News's arguments that there is a split between media studies academics and working journalists. The writer stifles a yawn, then perks up on realizing that this is serious stuff! After all I am Head of School that includes a successful journalism program.
http://www.bond.edu.au/degrees-and-courses/undergraduate-degrees/list/bachelor-of-journalism/index.htm?&fos=Journalism&cl=Your%20Degree

My experience in the academy from the US perspective is geographically grounded: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication was across the quadrangle from my office at UNC, the JSchool at Northeastern University in Boston was in the same building I was in in Communication Studies.

1. US journalists are better educated than Australian and UK journalists. This is surprising to me. After 20-30 years of university level education in journalism in Australia, News Corporation journalists still wheel out the old claim that education generates ignorance about how to do journalism. Only journalists educated on the job are to be either trusted or considered capable of real journalism. (How about another beer then?)

As a graduate of the University of Queensland Journalism program (1979 no less) this is a spurious claim by the uneducated intentionally slanted towards an ideological perspective.

Journalism education needs to be taught in the broadest possible terms, not only as technical craft. It needs to incorporate all the nuances, challenges and variety of a top quality liberal arts education so that its practitioners practice the investigation of the range of human experience. This approach will also incorporate the key concerns of critical thinking and creative problem solving.

Furthermore, journalism education needs to be incorporated into progressive institutional contexts, because journalism is probably one of the bastions of progressivism  - the perspective that includes the values of equity, tolerance and fraternity, liberalism by any other name - and involves a forward thinking commitment. The antonym is backwards looking ill-liberalism. 

Both the US institutions I taught at expected their students to embody these kinds of values and approaches. To argue that there is a split between the academy and journalism is to argue for the wrong thing.

2. On the question of journalism education and politics I have some comments.

The sense that education incorporates left or progressive politics should be neither here or there. In liberal democracies, social democracies or their derivations the purpose opf the media is to reflect on and influence the democratic opportunities available to citizens. This should be an open ended commitment, reflected through the lens of journalists educated to make decisions and judgements about what is socially good in civil society. It may be a surprise for some journalists to realize that educated people do not think of money and wealth as an end in itself.   

Australian Finkelstein Media Inquiry, Levenson Inquiry, News Corporation, Academics

Sometimes it helps to wait. A week. In this case the Finkelstein Australian media inquiry analysis that was prompted by the UK phone hacking scandal got the full treatment in The Weekend Australian, the flagship publication of News Corporation on Saturday March 10-11, 2012. It was a long week in some ways - kind of like waiting for the weekend so that there's enough time and energy for quality sex.

In this case there was a lot of sex but the quality left a lot to be desired. Furthermore, the sex was a little rough, but that's the Australian way. (Cultural Studies scholar John Frow has referred to the entire nation as one defined by "rape culture.") The sex was all about making a play for quality journalism, based on the idea that consenting adults know exactly what to do and when and the state has no place in the bedroom of media production. This fanciful suggestion struggles to make sense of the human condition, namely that people try to get it however they can, but they are frequently motivated by ignorance, stupidity and prejudice. This is where the state steps in. Some things cannot be handled by anything but the combined knowledge and analytical power of the state and it's bureaucracy. (Michel Foucault called this 'governmentality.')

The statist perspective (or pro-state line) drove the News Corporation mavens into paroxysms of fear, anger, anxiety and paranoia. The Finkelstein media inquiry in Australia proposed a News Media Council that to quote the Murdoch press would "sit in judgment of media reporting." Apocalyptic imagery aside, this from an organization that is fighting for it's survival in the UK, has a reputation as a "family business" run on questionable ethical and business lines (Class B shares anyone?) - the old trope of "it's just business" - and a commitment to elitism that means that it's standard operating procedure is almost always against labour and Labour Parties, progressive politics and forward thinking. (Supporting Tony Blair was not an act of support for Labor or working people.)

Some of The Australian's commentary last weekend about Finkelstein's report read like a poorly researched undergraduate essay. It wasn't just the anti-state tone, it was knowing the history of the organization making the anti-state claims. The commentary by News journalists as well as the comments by journalists who support their party line offer an insight into the challenge faced by the public in the face of domination of News International and News Corporation.

The Australian newspaper's Associate Editor Cameron Stewart drew attention to "a widening rift in Australia between those who practice journalism and those who teach it." For academics this is a red rag to a bull - unless you live in Australia, then it's just more of the anti-intellectual, bash-an-academic lifestyle. The article, given major exposure on the front of the Inquirer section of the paper paraded itself like a virtuous child in front of the village parson. In making the case for real journalism, Stewart merely asserted the old line conservative conspiracy approach, which is that education is dangerous. Real knowledge can only be found in hard work and experience and only we know. ("We" being working journalists).

More disturbing were the quotes from various Australian journalists. The editor-in-chief of The Australian, Chris Mitchell (being quoted by the Associate Editor) made the following claim: "The media studies academic class is far removed from the concerns of viewers and readers and is engaged in a sociological project to change the world in its image. That is, to infect people with progressive left ideology."

The agenda here is two fold: one is to get me and others like me to blog about News Corporation and News International, thereby taking up valuable space; the second its to argue that the academy is irrelevant to the media because of the politics of those attracted to universities.

At another level News Corporation adopts an anti-regulation pitch in relation to news and social issues. The libertarian approach is great for News because it offers a way of constructing a free-for-all from which they as the dominant player have most to gain. Darwinian ideology is always a winner when you are a winner yourself. Of course, having no regulations about digital media got them into this hole in the first place, but News journalists are not intellectuals. They do not make logical and creative connections between various phenomena. They make assertions aimed at upholding the status quo which is this case is the supremacy of their employer.

Another News Corporation commentator last weekend was Brendan O'Neill. His argument was not about "bad" academics in media studies, but the end of press freedom! No really... He used terms like "witch hunt" and "vengence against the media." Reading this guy you'd think brown shirts just dragged him out of his bed. He was apparently writing about a recommendation from a public inquiry for a News Media Council in Australia. His article bore the headline of, on second thoughts, forget it.

The point is monopoly powers do not seem to have any trouble finding people to promote their monopoly practices. It's disappointing and shameful that journalists working for an organization like News Corporation that is in all sorts of hot water about its behaviour in the UK and possibly the US, is able to run pages of commentary attacking academics and public recommendations for regulation. Their behavior and those of their colleagues might be a whole lot more dignified if they actually had university educations and were not merely products of the old school tie set. 

It might be of interest for readers to know that News Corporation's biggest opponent and the Melbourne liberal and publisher Eric Beacher was pleased with the Finkelstein media inquiry recommendations.
    

James Murdoch leaves the UK - News goes for TV and Rupert Tweets

Whoever said the world is a simple place has been disconnected. Following the continuing unravelling of News International / Corporation in the UK, it is a challenge to get one's head around the entire enterprise of this "family business."

Here is a smattering of news from this date: March 1, 2012. All the news embodies aspects of the digital -

• James Murdoch resigns even as the UK Government inquiry continues into digital phone hacking News of the World (NOW, closed); 
• moving from newspapers to TV, which is converged digital video / applications by any other name; 
• Rupert Murdoch tweeting;
• members of the Inquiry tweeting him!

A non-digital aspect to the story stream is the news that Rebecca Brooks, former NOW editor saved a horse from the glue factory.  https://twitter.com/#!/rupertmurdoch/status/174810157082091520  This was Rupert Murdoch tweeting, so back to the digital. (This is, I'd suggest, a perfect communicative strategy for dedicated conservatives like the Murdochs - talk about animals in distress.)

James Murdoch has resigned as executive chairperson of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of News Corporation.  At least one commentator - Michael Wolff, author of a recent Rupert Murdoch biography - suggested that James may face time in prison for his role in the hacking business. For such a possibility to play out, there will need to be a significant collapse of elite support for News - that may in fact be occuring.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/feb/29/james-murdoch-exit-news-international?intcmp=239

Such an outcome would be the result of utilizing the Internet in the newspaper domain.

The standards for Internet behaviour in the un-regulated digital domain are or have been, unknown. You could do anything you wanted on the Internet - including hacking people's phones. The default is to rely on Enlightenment legalities about decency and civility - that is, allow people privacy on their telephones. (Frankly, you cannot blame the so-called journalists employed on English tabloids for doing anything but what their bosses instructed them to do or whatever was necessary to get the story. If I am correct, many of these "journalists" are uneducated well connected young people for whom the terms "critical thinking," "reflection" and "academics" are totally unfamiliar terms.  Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the Banality of  Evil offers a take on this. A reading of Arendt on Eichmann should let the implications of "I was just following orders" explain itself to this generation of the mindless).

In many ways the Leveson Inquiry is an attempt to claw back the idea of civility in the face of the digital. A similar claw back took place in the US after the commercialization of the Internet and the Telecommunication Act of 1996, with the Copyright Millenium Act, the Digital Decency Laws, Children protection laws and a multitude of other post-factum efforts to regulate the otherwise unreglated. (See Uprising for more on this).

 I want to draw attention to what is possible in the uncivilized twittersphere. I want to repeat here the tweet from the Levenson Inquiry Committee Member Tom Watson after Rupert Murdoch tweeted about the horse.  https://twitter.com/#!/tom_watson/status/174811123030298625

"@rupertmurdoch You comment on her horse but not on her insider knowledge of a criminal investigation into your company. Have you no shame?"

Then again, maybe this is more of the same: is the appeal to "shame" anything more than an appeal to the civility of Enlightened values?

News Corporation is planning to focus on television. This is understandable given that so much quality visual media is around. Given what I have seen in the 3D and games platforms dimensions, it is only going to become more engaging and immersive, perhaps even transformational. The size of the global market for Internet-based communication is vast.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/list2.htm

Rupert Murdoch in his letter about James's resignation said:
"He has demonstrated leadership and continues to create great value at Star TV, Sky Deutschland, Sky Italia, and BSkyB. Now that he has moved to New York, James will continue to assume a variety of essential corporate leadership mandates, with particular focus on important pay-TV businesses and broader international operations."

 It may as well say digital video.  Is it really possible for James Murdoch to end up in prison? If so he will have plenty of TV to watch, much of it very, very good! Complex indeed.

Proletarianization meets News Corporation

The end of journalism as an ethical practice continues. At least this could be the conclusion reached by the unravelling of News Corporation in the face of the UK government's Leveson Inquiry into the media. (I have blogged on this previously.) There is not much room to believe in the future of newspapers as established institutions for information, as the story continues to emerge about the way News Corporation journalists in the UK collected news.

They appeared to take two roads: they used whomever they could to hack into mobile phones to illicitly collect private information and secondly, they paid police and UK Ministry of Defence officials for secret information. Both sources were used to create news and sell papers.

According to old school moralists, this is not acceptable. The clear message from the moral gate keepers is that established standards of journalism should prevail even while the Internet makes that ideology obsolete. It's a case of attempting to reproduce nineteenth century reporting standards in the twenty first century of digital feeds. The two do not fit together. They cannot fit together.

Curiously, The Guardian newspapers persists with the idea that News Corporation is the embodiment of immorality. 

The story in The Guardian on 11 February 2012 - apart from its self-serving claims to holier-than-thou status - was instructive because of the sheer joy The Guardian appears to derive from seeing News Corporation in trouble.  With a headline like this, why bother asking readers to read on?

"Murdoch media empire engulfed in scandal as Scotland Yard net spreads."

The more significant comment was this line in the story:
 Following the first set of arrests, a News International source suggested it was intent on "draining the swamp", a comment that provoked fury among the company's journalists.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/feb/11/rupert-murdoch-media-empire-scrutiny

Draining the swamp of what? It would be correct to assume that the higher ups in News Corporation have determined that they can get back to old fashioned journalism if they can just rid themselves of the crooks in the organization.

More strident critics than me would suggest that the entire ediface of News Corporation is a swamp. A more accurate interpretation could be that the organization may be finished as a global newspaper player because the Murdoch model of newspapers cannot be sustained, not because a few toads got into the pond to mess up an obsolete moral universe.

The fact remains that cell phones and new technology make something of a mockery of print media and its journalistic standards, even though print media continues and in some parts of the world is growing. (Latin America and parts of Asia). Draining the swamp would mean some kind of effort to find lilly-white journalists who rely on ethics as it once was. The internet has made that approach impossible.

Proletarianization means that the dirt circulates without the kinds of controls News Corporation wants to put in place. It can drain the swamp all it likes. The circulation of the vicious, the vindictive and the venemous is already here. Pretending that some kind of swamp draining will work is a fools errand.

Interview with Toby Miller - podcast

Title: A conversation with Marcus Breen about the proletarianization of the Internet.

http://culturalstudies.podbean.com/2012/01/16/a-conversation-with-marcus-breen-about-the-proletarianization-of-the-internet/

Killing the thing you love: Predator Drones and the Internet

The title of this post is not intended to be playful. It is intentionally provocative. It is the title of a plenary talk given today at the Technology, Knowledge and Society conference at UCLA.

The point to the paper was the discussion of the relationship between the communcation tool that most everybody loves - the Internet - and its dystopian manifestation, predator drones. My intention  in addressing this particular dystopian manisfestations of the Internet was to provide an opportunity to critique contemporary warfare ideology. This discussion can be set in the context of the Obama presidency, which many people hoped would mark the end of the warfare ideology that emerged during the Bush 2 presidency, the Bush Doctrine.

The hoped-for about face against the use of US military power to enforce liberalism did not diminish with Obama, in fact, it seemed to escalate. Hilary Clinton has made a habit of publicly stating in the nicest possible way that the US / NATO model of liberalism will succeed, by force if necessary. This is the weirdness of the current situation: members of the political elite appear to embody American liberalism, and have no compunction about using US military might to enforce it.

The point driving the paper is that the Internet is used to impose acceptable US standards of liberalism on the world. This is a complicated topic which I will not unpack here - Vincent Mosco has already undertaken much of that thinking. 

The use of the Internet for managing and controlling predator drones that can then launch missiles to kill purported enemies is the end point of US discipline. The French Philosopher Michel Foucault in his lengthy ruminations on human behavior surely would not have imagined that "discipline" could take such an extreme form.  But frankly, that's what drones are used for - to extend US discipline to anywhere in the world.

Predator drones (pilotless) are used by the US Air Force to kill militants, mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They do not get a court case, or a warning, as far as we know. The drones are controlled by Air Force personnel based in New York State and Nevada, who identify the target, then use the Internet and computer game-style devices to kill at will. No "boots on the ground" by US forces. Just the anonymous hum of a plane as it releases a missle over a desert somewhere.

The discussion needs to be around comprehending this shift in warfare ideology in everyday language. These two terms are taken from a 1963 essay by Hannah Arendt, "Symposium on Space," in which she talked about both of these topics as a challenge given the rise of space travel and computerization. Her comments are still applicable to the investigation of the Internet in its relationship with predator drones.

Of special note then is the way the technology of the Internet has moved beyond public interest, beyond jurisprudence and associated ideas of morality.  (These are ideas I explored in Uprising, where proletarianization is the unanticipated consequence of the unregluated Internet.)

This is where Arendt's concerns are helpful. How do we comprehend predator drones? How do we find everyday language witrh which to critique the use of the Internet to run these tools of war?

Perhaps an even better set of questions result from a conversation about warfare ideology.