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Bart Cammaerts

Title of the presentation:
Critiques on the Participatory Potentials of the Blogosphere

Short abstract of the presentation:
In this lecture the often celebratory accounts of the civic, participatory and democratic potentials of the blogosphere are being critically assessed. While these potentials are not denied or minimised, it is argued that some trends and phenomena detrimental to these potentials need to be acknowledged as well. With regard to the latter, 5 distinct threats are identified. At a structural/organisational level of analysis, the colonisation of the blogosphere by the market, the appropriation of the blogosphere by cultural and political elites and strategies of control by states and employers will be addressed. At an individual level of analysis, examples of online intimidation by fellow bloggers and so-called anti-publics using blogs and online forums to disseminate discourses of hate are considered. Many of the examples provided expose the blogosphere as situated in between the public and the private sphere, which can be problematic from a participatory perspective. Above all, it is concluded that the internet is a medium rife with contradictions and cannot be separated from the tensions and conflicts present in the offline world; it is part of it.

Short biography:
Bart Cammaerts is lecturer in the Department of Media and Communications of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research interests include multi-stakeholder policy processes; media strategies of activists; alternative/community media and the emergence of new tools such as blogs. His most recent and forthcoming books include; Internet-Mediated Participation beyond the Nation State (Manchester University Press, in press), Understanding Alternative Media (with Olga Bailey and Nico Carpentier, Open University Press, 2008), and Reclaiming the Media: communication rights and democratic media roles (Edited with Nico Carpentier, Intellect, 2007). He chairs the Communication and Democracy section of ECREA and he is deputy-chair of the Communication Technology Policy section of IAMCR.

Related files:
ssc3/Cammaerts_CCCr_FINAL.doc (239.00kb; Uploaded 2008-07-29)