Beyond-broadcast-palfry

John Palfry on the participatory culture vs. participatory democracy

John Palfry, director of the Berkman Center on Internet & Society at Harvard Law School spoke for 15 minutes at the Beyond Broadcast gathering at MIT on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2007. Here are rough notes by Bill Densmore.

What is the state of the academic sense in this field.

Does partiicpatory culture lead to particpatory democracy?

"The answer is we don't know yet." .... "it is not a foregone conclusion by any means."

participatory democracy: PROS

1. open information environmente, 2. more sources of news, newassignment.net, ability to shine a spotlight by way of dsinfectant, (Sunlight Foundation).

3. Making of new networks (Global Voices, e.g.)

4. Tools for individual activites: Autonomy, Benkler, creativity of the JibJab variety. 5. Attracting new participants

CONS:

1) Too much information -- old infomedias will re-emerge 2) The daily me objection -- Cass Sunstein 3) If everyone participates, it may be less meaningful -- no real commitment 4) Who can participate? Who has literacy, sills and access? 5) Some states are fighting back - do they censor and listen in? 6) Europeans: need a post-democratic order, no tinkering with democracy

Context matters a lot

-- starting from an authoritarian standpoint -- starting from a semi-democracy

What is the baseline you are choosing -- What is the goal you are looking for?

The real goal -- the emergence of a stronger middle class, able to incentivized to agitate (e.g., Ghana)

Semiotic democracy:

-- More YouTube, more Second Life, less Disney (Jenkins, B. Noveck) Goods can be created and transformed. The creation of those spaces is where the transportation of democracy is going to come.

-- How many can really participate in that?

Takeaways:

"The version of the web that we are on now is about . . . creativity at the edges."

"Clearly big media companies are struggling with participatory culture and have no idea how to deal with it."

"The outcome is absolutely not assured that greater partipation culture will lead to greater participatory democracy." "There is a battle ovre the institutional culture of the Internet that is happening right now."

"I think that is the most powerful thing we can do is agitate through creativity."