Before starting People Knowledge and Management, I had a strong interest in ideology and politics, in the power of the online social networking phenomenon to instigate change, and the civil, digital and privacy rights movements.
I made the decision to
take this course with the intention of possibly learning about maybe one or two of these areas of interest to me, maybe connecting a few of the dots along the line. The chance this course was offering me to
explore such relationships was a very appealing one, and arguably the
main reason I decided to take up the course.
What I’ve gained over the past semester through our weekly readings and topics is a broad theoretical and meta-theoretical engagement with a multitude of philosophies and ideas. But it has also allowed me to visit every area of interest I had hoped to look into.
I've been able to cover great meta-theoretical philosophers, like the ever salient theories of Foucault and or the extremely convoluted ontology of Zizek.
I've been introduced to new thinkers like Barlow and Dervin that have opened up (but also confused) a whole new world for me.
I've been able to bring my own knowledge and experience into the course - and have subsequently had the pleasure of introducing Christakis and Fowler, Julian Assange and even my favorite rapper and all time hero, Robert Foster.
But beyond all of all this, what People, Information and Knowledge has allowed me do is weave web of connections between all these thinkers and theoreticians. This course has allowed me to tie all of this together in a
way that significantly broadens my understanding of how information, knowledge,
society, and the people within them function.
But I don't meanto say this is the end. Quite the contrary. I have more questions now then before I begun the course:
What is the ontological and epistemological underpinning of the Social Network theories?
Can a certain type of newideology be employed to dismantle networks that are characterised
as a conspiracy?
Furthermore, is it possible to create an ideology, that will
counter a network’s tendency to be exclusionary, to function for its own interests as a super
organism?
How can Social Network theory be employed to empower marginalised networks characterised by a small world dynamic?
And furthermore, to what extent is the purpose of libraries
to provide members of a marginalised network social mobility?
Is it enough to provide social mobility to such people or must libraries also take on a critically pedagogical approach to ensure a chance for marginalised people to change the tide of dominant discourses within society?
And I could go on and on.
In a way it's funny, I started my life at uni studying
psyhchology, as a very isolated and melancholy student. I was very
instrospective back then and made little contact with others. Now I begin my
Masterswith full knowledge of the importance of social networks in
changing the very fabric of society. I hope, more than anything, that this
course will allow me to build networks that will help me pursue such questions.
Ultimately, I believe that the People, Information and Knowledgecourse has allowed me to develop a
robust intellectual framework to approach my future studies and I am grateful to have had the privilege of taking on this course.
I’d like to begin this week’s Journal with the Haynes
reading. Hayes challenges the view (proported by Hernon) that there is a clear
distinction between assessment (the process of gathering data) and evaluation
which is traditionally done during the final stages, where data is interpreted.
She argues that the entire process of needs assessment, planning, service
provision, assessment and analysis are predicated on underlying value
judgements and that such judgements strongly affect the nature of the research.
Her article focuses on evaluative research focused on service provision in the
Libraries services area. She identifies that there is a gulf between the ideas
and research that dominate library and information studies and the research
that libraries conduct for themselves.
Haynes criticises the Gap model used to measure
differences between perceptions of a service and various other dimensions (e.g.
expectations of ideal service, importance of service attributes, etc.). It is a
model that compares a service with what users want, however (as Haynes argues)
it does not account for the social role or needs of its users. She argues that
service quality can be determined not only in relation to what users say they
would like, but what the whole potential user community would most benefit
from. She stresses that evaluation must engage in dialog that will allow a
library’s mission statements and objects to evolve in response to the changing
needs of the community and their users.
I think this is an extremely important approach.
Libraries in my own area (Western Sydney) have a range for very successful
English conversation classes for people of migrant and refugee backgrounds. A
Library evaluation policy that constantly strives to engage in dialogue with
their communities to determine organisational goals dynamically and according
to the changing and developing needs of their users is essential to ensuring its role as an effective service provider to
the community. Furthermore, to what extent should libraries today be solely
focusing towards alleviating information poverty, to enable disconnected people
and groups to build social mobility, bridge the digital divide, and alleviate
Castells’ ‘fourth world’ phenomenon?
I believe the function of libraries are fast becoming
centres that don’t simply allow access to information resources, but are
centres that strengthen, include and empower disaffected and disconnected
community groups. Again, Aleph Molinari’s ‘Learning and Innovation Centre’ is a
perfect model with which modern Libraries can pursue to fulfil the information
needs and the social needs of its
users and communities.
There is the ideological argument here against this role
for libraries however. That is, to what extent will library services (in its
attempt to build social mobility and inclusiveness) be informed by the
overarching dominant ideology that it functions under (or from an Assangian
perspective, to what extent will librarians be conspirators colluding with
larger more powerful conspiratory systems?) Isn’t the attempt to ‘educate’
community groups who are insulated by their own small worlds, merely an attempt
to hegemonise them into the over-arching ideological system?
This problem can be dealt with an educative approach
called critical pedagogy which rests its theoretical basis on the philosophies
of Paulo Freire. The short video below outlines the critical pedagogical approach.
This video is a longer interview with Paulo Freire who has some interesting
things to say:
I’ve seen a similar approach in my own professional
practice earlier in my career. Westside is an ongoing writing and publication
project that I’ve been involved in since its inception. It is a project that
was initiated by BYDS (a community arts services hub based in Bankstown) in
1998.
It was one the first publications to
have officially recognise my literary work as a teenager. The Chief Editor of
the publication Michael Mohammed Ahmad was published in the first series. He
has transformed the series from a set of yearly magazines that published the
writings of teenagers in the Bankstown region into a publishing house with the
purpose of recognising the voice of under-represented writers in the Western
Sydney region, sourcing and educating hundreds of writers from the region with
various literary programs and creating a network of established and emerging
writers. Westside has conducted countless projects that have empowered the
often misrepresented and disadvantaged communities of Western Sydney. Its
approach to improving literacy in Western Sydney can be characterised as one
with a strong concern for how dominant ideologies and discourses function to
disaffect the subpopulations of the region.
Hague argues that library evaluation systems remain
systems centred with a focused on quantitative tools and believes that a mixed
method that will supplement quantitative research methods with user centred
qualitative approaches which consider users’ social contexts. This is why the evaluative
approach she suggests is an important one. It allows practitioners to be aware
of the ideological assumptions behind their evaluation of library services and
allows them to shape their services in a way that empowers their users with the
tools and resources to shape and dictate discourse according to the users own
values and ideological background (an approach of critical pedagogy).
Wang’s Photovoice method is an excellent qualitative
method that can be used to establish an important dialogical approach to
dynamically shape organisational goals. Having moved on to this reading after
the Hague reading, I was surprised that it was also an approach that is
informed by Freire philosophy. It allows people within the community to record
and reflect on their community’s strengths and concerns through photography, promotes
critical dialogue about important issues through group discussions of
photographs and allows them to reach policy makers. The method has several
strengths.
·It accounts for a fundamental problem of
needs assessment – that what researchers think is important may neglect what
the community thinks is important.
·It uses a visual medium that can overcome
barriers of language and is thus a robust form of communication.
·It allows the sampling of different social
and behavioural settings from the perspective of the user.
·The method itself can sustain community
participation during the process of needs assessment and program
implementation. Photovoice itself can build network connections and dialogue
with researchers. The process itself provides tangible and immediate benefits
to people and their social networks through the dissemination of photographs.
·It allows the target community/users to
reaffirm or redefine program goals during the period when community needs are
being assessed through interaction with curious community members.
·It allows an opportunity for participants to bring
explanations, ideas and stories of people within their community network into
the assessment process.
·Allows participants to photograph not only
their community’s needs, but also their strengths.
Participants select photographs that most accurately
reflect a community’s needs and assets, tell stories about the meaning of the
photographs and organise them into categories based on issues or themes. Such a
participatory assessment process unveils real local needs sourced by the target
users/community themselves. Wang’s focus in the paper revolved around a case
study of rural Chinese Women, however it is easy to see how this method can be
appropriated in a variety of contexts, especially online where programs like
Instagram and crowd sourcing have become commonplace.
I’d like to move on to the final reading for this week,
Haythornthwaite’s paper on Social Network Analysis, which is an approach (as
Christakis’ and Fowlers research shows) with very important ramifications for
understanding the broad scale social phenomena of today’s world.
The approach examines both the content (contagion) and
the pattern of relationships (topology) in order to determine how and what
resources flow from one actor to another. The approach identifies relationships
and network structure before it goes about labelling groups. It then goes on to
analyse the dynamism between the dyad by trying to understand the rules and
codes that govern information transfer. Furthermore, Haythornthwaite states
that relationships can be characterised by their content (or contagion). My
earlier post (PIK Week 7.5) on Christakis examines the functionality of social
networks and the rules that govern them in more detail.
Haythornthwaite visits some aspect of networks that I
don’t feel like I’ve covered in my previous post:
·Direction characterises the which way information
flows – It can be:
oAsymmetrical (e.g. boss to worker)
oUndirected – which is more complex and
dialogical in nature.
·Strength refers to the intensity of a
relationship or the frequency with which contagion is exchanged.
·Strength Ties describes the resilience
between two actors. It is dependent on contextual factors, like surrounding
network topology, contact frequency, duration of associations, reciprocity, intimacy
and kinship.
Haythornthwaite also covers five network principles to
examine the relational properties of a network:
·Cohesion - grouping actors according to strong common
relationships with each other (characterised by density and centralization [no.
of connections] in a sociograph)
·Structural equivalence – grouping actors
based on their similarity in relation to others (characterised as having
identical ties to and from all other actors in the network in a sociograph)
·Prominence – indicating who is in power
(characterised by centrality in a sociograph)
·Range – indicating the extent of an actor’s
network (and their subsequent influence)
·Brokerage – indicating bridging connections
to other networks (characterised by singular nodes in between two different
networks – These are the connections Assange proposes need to be targeted to
dismantle an organisation)
This approach is, in my opinion, is a very powerful
method of understanding how broad ranging communities function and will most
likely hold a lot of sway in the information science in the next few years as
computer networking analysis technologies and big data develop. It is an
approach that identifies power relations within a network, and such an approach
is fundamental when trying to understand information and people’s relationship
to it.
It would be interesting to look into the meta-theoretical and ontological underpinnings of Social Network though I don't have the time to look into it here. I do find social networking theories like Social Network Analysis, Actor Network Theory, and Christakis and Fowler's insights into social networking extremely influential however. I had begun this course with separate notions of how Ideology, power, and privacy/censorship functioned in the context of information and knowledge. My studies on Social Networking theory have truly allowed me to weave a web and seamlessly connect these seperate notions. Given a well developed ontological basis for these theories, I believe I will have a robust intellectual framework to approach my future studies. It will be an area that I will undoubtedly revisit and focus on later down the track.
References
Haynes, A. (2004) 'Bridging the Gulf:
Mixed Methods and Library Service Evaluation'. Australian Library Journal 53
(3): 285-306
Haythornthwaite, Caroline (1996)
Social Network Analysis: An Approach and Technique for the Study of Information
Exchange. Library and Information Science Research V18 , 323-342.
Wang, C. and Burris, M. (1997).
Photovoice: concept, methodology and use for participatory needs assessment. Health
Education and Behaviour. 24(3): 369-387.
Danah Boyd’s paper was specifically engaging for me
because she focuses on the all important distinction between privacy and
publicity. This issue is complex and is starting to become an extremely
important one, as surveillance and monitoring technologies are fast beginning
to develop in line with the expansiveness of the internet (thanks in no little
part to the industrial surveillance complex).
However, I’ll begin with the more subtle notions of
privacy she raises first. She cites Helen Nissenbaum, who coined the term
‘contextual integrity’ as a way in which people effectively manage privacy. The
networks that a person maintains in one context, doesn’t mean they wish to
maintain the same networks in a different context. Dismantling contextual
integrity (or rather, establishing links between the contacts of a person who
don’t know each other) without permission is experienced as a violation of
privacy.
Boyd also contests the traditional notion of ‘public’ and
‘private’ as a binary. To do away with this notion, she introduces the concept
of trust in relation to privacy. She argues that it isn’t just people we hold
accountable with the information we impart to them, we also hold the
architecture of our networks accountable (the idea that there may be others
listening in). This is where the serious issue of online privacy comes into
play, because unlike a cafe where someone may or may not be listening in to
your conversation, the internet is characterised by the persistence,
searchability, replicability and scalability of the information you
disseminate. Her argument is essentially one of security through obscurity – a
very powerful argument indeed.
Boyd
argues that privacy is fundamentally about having control over how information
flows. It is however, a very problematic area. Civil and digital rights group
will champion the privacy rights of citizens in the country, yet are always
(rather paradoxically) simultaneously arguing for freedom of speech rights and
transparency as well. Why is it that the abstract notion of ‘citizens’ have a
right to privacy, but the famous, or institutions and governmental
organisations do not? Furthermore, doesn’t controlling the flow of information
constitute censorship? How do the two (privacy and censorship) differ?
These questions became particularly salient to me after Alan Jones’ remarks
(made privately at a public liberal party convention) about Julia Gillard’s father
‘dying of shame’ was leaked to a national newspaper. Alan Jones consequently
received a significant backlash, particularly from an online Facebook group
which successfully campaigned to stop advertising on 2GB. In this context, is
it not hypocritical to argue that ‘Alan Jones had it coming’ but at the same
time champion the rights of abstract citizens (of whom Alan Jones [despite the
fact that I don’t think he’d pass the citizenship tests migrants are forced to
take] would be considered one)?
Boyd in this situation would seemingly have a problem with Alan Jones’
comments being publicised as it constitutes a clear breach of privacy. As she
states: “Just because something is publicly accessible does not mean that
people want it to be publicised”. I’d like to contest this by making my own
statement: Just because people don’t want something to be publicized, doesn’t
mean it shouldn’t be publicized.
Boyd
seems to be assuming here that the main perpetrator of publicisation are
technology companies, she seems to miss the fact, that publicisation is
occurring because people want to know
– and publicity on the internet occurs as a direct result of online public
interaction. Is this not precisely what we mean by ‘the public interest’ (as
opposed to the paparazzi (which Boyd refers to a lot in her article) who
dictate public interest)?
The
very fact that some people are more public than others endows them in a
position of privilege and power – it seems to me that publicisation is a
convenient and emergent balancing mechanism to counteract the hierarchical
structure that publicity entails. I would go so far as to argue that it is a
fundamental property of the internet as a communicative medium. To try and
limit the publicisation of information in this sense, would amount to the precise
definition of censorship (and all its associated negative connotations). It is
either a matter of censoring the information of precisely those within the
network who are gaining positions of power, or allowing everyone to adjust to
increased publicity (which Boyd concedes is
what happens when people are faced with such changes).
Protecting
the privacy of figures like Alan Jones, or Miley Cyrus (whom Boyd uses as an
example in the article) seems to me to be precisely what we shouldn’t be doing. Holding such central
positions within a network where such figures can be incredibly influential
(like inciting racial hatred for the Jones, or setting a bad role model for
young female children for Cyrus )
entails the responsibility to be
scrutinized publicly at such a high level. It’s interesting to note here that
both these figures have used traditional media to establish their fame, and
both have suffered as a result of new media technologies. Arguably, public
figures of the future will be much better informed about how they carry
themselves privately, and the internet will be a place (given the absence of
strict privacy/censorship laws that protect the privileged) where there will be
many more pseudo-famous people who haven’t forged their positions of power
through autocratic and asymmetrical communication mediums as today’s superstars
have done.
Boyd asks a very important question however. She asks whose voice counts in a
world where information is increasingly publicised. I can’t help but feel Boyd
takes a terrible approach here. She argues that marginalized people (she cites
stories of immigrants and Domestic Abuse victims) shouldn’t be expected to fight
for their right to speak. She argues that most marginalised people aren’t
comfortable speaking up in public nor are they likely to be heard. Yet isn’t
this precisely the problem? Boyd
seems to insinuate that censoring the stories and discourses of marginalised
people will help insulate them from the consequences of public scrutiny, yet
isn’t this the same exclusionary approach that causes these people to be
marginalised in the first place? The solution to making marginalised people
feel more comfortable in the public sphere is to propel them into to the public
where they have to engage in
discourse, not the opposite. Remaining comfortably marginalised only serves to
reinforce the privilege of those in power.
Essentially,
I think Boyd’s concept of privacy through obscurity is an excellent one,
because it ensures a system where those who are most marginalised in a network
are also the ones who are least scrutinized. In fact, I would go so far as to
argue for a Right to Obscurity. The more isolated a person is within a network,
the greater their right to remain private should be. This is why the rise of
surveillance technologies and their adoption by secret services around the
world post an extremely serious threat to those who are most vulnerable in
society. It allows powerful, opaque and closed networks to reverse this process
of privacy through obscurity and create a mechanism of public self-censorship
(Foucault’s Panotopicism). Relevantly, networks like ASIO are already proposing
large scale surveillance powers be handed to them. Senator Ludlam raises an
inquiry as to why ASIO require such powers:
Heretofore (with possibly the exception of Castells), the social networking
literature I have come across predominately analyses how networks form and
function effectively. Christakis and Fowler in particular see social networks
in a very positive light, and focus on the importance of becoming ‘connected’.
What
I’d like to do here is to visit the views of a thinker who analyses how
networks actively exclude and come undone. He takes a very different approach
to understanding networks. I’ll allow my favourite rapper Robert Foster to lead
us in before I take a deeper look into the theories of our guest thinker:
Julian Assange’s views borrow from recent work on network theory, emergent
systems and work on self-synchronizing systems. He, however, for the purposes
of his role, characterises networks – specifically closed networks that hold a
certain level of power, as conspiracies.
He argues that individuals within a network are acting in concert, whether by
plan or not, and the secrecy ensures that the benefits of the network accrue to
those inside the network and not outside it. Here, we can see individual actors
who exercise trust in their contacts with information that is valuable when it
is withheld from the public. Assange ascribes the concept of ‘weight’ to an
information flow; the more valuable the information flow between a dyad, the
more ‘weight’ it can be considered to have. Assange explains:
“The ‘importance’ of
communication passing through a link is difficult to evaluate apriori, since
its true value depends on the outcome of the conspiracy. ...The weight of a
link is proportional to the amount of important communication flowing across
it.”
Furthermore, Assange characterises these closed networks
as being able to outthink the same group of individuals acting alone – he
characterises conspiracies as an entity with emergent properties (an argument
which is also made by Christakis and Fowler).
In a certain sense closed networks are ubiquitous. The
problem occurs when they become extremely powerful, because whatever the
intentions of the individuals within the network, the network itself is
optimized for its own success, and not for the benefit of those outside of the
network. Given a networks position of power and privilege, it functions to the
detriment of much more marginalised closed networks by virtue of its
exclusionary nature. I alluded to the idea that people in Castells ‘fourth
world’ could be characterised as a part of small, individuated social networks
in an earlier post. These small isolated networks are disconnected from
powerful conspiracies which work to exclude and keep such individuated social
networks at bay, only interacting with them in a way that reinforces the
network’s power and privilege.
Actors that don’t benefit their network partners in the
network will eventually be expelled from the system as their network partners
will minimize contact. Those collaborating with conspirators will form stronger
ties and will benefit from the information that participation in the network
delivers. This holds even at the edges of the network. Reporters with sources
or contacts within a conspiracy (thus conspirators themselves) that violate the
trust of their network partners will be cut off from the network and will thus
not receive vital scoops to report on.
Assange outlines several
ways of dismantling a conspiracy.
·Separating Weighted Conspiracies - Assange makes
the rather intriguing point, that targeting the most influential conspirators
(the most central) is ineffective. Rather, targeting the bridges of such
conspiracies (a topological feature of a network where a few connections
connect larger more centralised sections of a network) is much more effective
as such a division significantly undermines the emergent cognitive faculties of
a conspiracy.
·Throttling Weighted Conspiracies – Throttling
involves constricting the information flow high weight links bridging
centralises parts of a conspiracy together.
·Attacking Conspiratorial Cognitive Ability –
this approach involves deceiving or blinding a conspiracy through distortion or
restricting the information fed to it.
Assange in fact uses the
connected graph models of mathematicians hired by the U.S. to look at terrorist
conspiracies to inform a lot of his theory about how existing conspiracies are
used to maintain authoritarian power structures. Of course, unlike targeted
suicide bombings, or CIA drone strikes, Assange uses leaks as a means to
dismantle dominant conspiracies. Interestingly, Wikileak’s means to attaining
information from its source is done though an anonymous electronic drop box
system, no doubt an important technical mechanism specifically designed to keep
Wikileaks apart from the conspiracies with whose information they deal with.
This is specifically why in terms of Journalism, the arrival of Wikileaks has
been so revolutionary – Wikileaks as an editorial organisation can publish
materials according to their own criteria with complete impartiality – a
liberty that other journalistic organisations (who often conspire with powerful
conspiracies for their sources) do not have.
I thought Assange was a particularly
noteworthy thinker for analysing privacy/secrecy and its relation to power, not
only because of the appropriateness of his theories, but also because his work
with Wikileaks really does attest to the role that social networks have in
instigating changes that ripple throughout the world and cause societal change.
I’d like to finish off this
post with an additional video that examines the role of the internet in
analysing the political agency of youth and how autocratic regimes are making
use of the internet to serve their own ends. It is critical of the optimism
commonly portrayed by technocratic internet activists:
References
Boyd, D. 2010, 'Making
Sense of Privacy and Publicity', paper presented to the SXSW, Austin, Texas,
March 13, 2010. http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2010/SXSW2010.html
