H.r. 933 a.k.a. 'the Monsanto Rider' a.k.a. 'Monsanto Protection Act'. What the hell does it actually mean?

So. Big news. There's no way to get around this if you happen to be even remotely active on any social network. After the ludicrous accusation that Monsanto was 'copyrighting tomatoes' earlier this year, the big foodstuff trading, researching and engineering company finds itself once more in the cross-hairs of social network activists.

Lets have a look at how justified this action really is.

This time around, Monsanto is facing accusations of playing the U.S. senate like a puppet master, nestling laws into budget appropriation bills that allow it to continue it's evil research and the sale of poisonous foods without limits. The controversy reached nothing short of an 'explosive' status after the signing of H.R. 933. The consolidated and further continuing appropriations act of 2013 is a (nearly unreadable) document dealing mostly with defense and veteran budget allocations, so what is in there that gets people to start flipping their shit?

Section 735 seems to be the bringer of bad news. Nestled within the 120.000 word document, a little clause pops up that forces the Secretary of Agriculture to grant temporary deregulation to traders, producers and retailers of food during a time when their products are undergoing tests to see if they conform with another document: the plant protection act. If you're in the mood for wading through the trenches of U.S. documentation, this is the section in question.

"In the event that a determination of non-regulated status made pursuant to section 411 of the Plant Protection Act is or has been invalidated or vacated, the Secretary of Agriculture shall, notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon request by a farmer, grower, farm operator, or producer, immediately grant temporary permit(s) or temporary deregulation in part, subject to necessary and appropriate conditions consistent with section 411(a) or 412(c) of the Plant Protection Act, which interim conditions shall authorize the movement, introduction, continued cultivation, commercialization and other specifically enumerated activities and requirements, including measures designed to mitigate or minimize potential adverse environmental effects, if any, relevant to the Secretary’s evaluation of the petition for non-regulated status, while ensuring that growers or other users are able to move, plant, cultivate, introduce into commerce and carry out other authorized activities in a timely manner: Provided, That all such conditions shall be applicable only for the interim period necessary for the Secretary to complete any required analyses or consultations related to the petition for non-regulated status:Provided further, That nothing in this section shall be construed as limiting the Secretary’s authority under section 411, 412 and 414 of the Plant Protection Act." -source: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/hr933/text

So what the hell did you just read? Something about 'non-regulated' status right? That must mean that this IS indeed the law protecting Monsanto right? Well, the actual meaning of this tidbit of text is something quite different.

The articles of the plant protection act referenced (411a and 412c) refer to the 'movement' of plant pests and noxious weeds. That means any form of trading, transporting, planting, growing, cultivating etc. etc. etc. of plants that could potentially be considered detrimental to the health of those who consume them. Here's what sec. 735 actually says about non-regulated status under those acts:

• non regulated status is given to plants that are considered healthy after testing (and thus do not gain the status of noxious weeds or plant pests)
• Whenever the test results of a crop are questioned and submitted for re-evaluation farmers, growers, farm operators or producers of that crop gain temporary immunity until the re-evaluation is complete.
• Farmers, growers, farm operators or producers are allowed to keep transporting, planting, cultivating, trading and doing other activities as if the non-regulated status was still in place.
• This immunity is removed as soon as the re-evaluation of the crop is complete. If the re-evaluation comes back negative, all the crops will be destroyed. If re-evaluation is positive, no harm was done to the farmers, growers, farm operators or producers in possession of the crop.
• In all cases compliance to other laws regarding food, health and environmental protection are still in effect and must be taken into consideration, even when acting under temporary immunity.

So where the hell is Monsanto involved in this story? Exactly. Nowhere. This act simply states that people in possesion of a crop that is being questioned for it's health effects are not going to be screwed over by having all their crops pre-preemptively destroyed. Say farmer Bob has acquired a new FDA approved strain of tomato seeds that he plans to sow next month. As it turns out, the FDA research was not carried out properly and the seeds have to undergo re-evaluation. Bob now has a silo full of seeds that have essentially lost their approval. Before sec. 735, he would be forced to destroy all of them immediately. Now, Bob is free to at least sow his seeds and cultivate them without losing his investment, until the research is completed. If it turns out that the seeds shouldn't have been approved, Bob will still have to destroy everything. If it turns out their approval was justified, Bob hasn't lost any valuable time and can go on doing what it is he was doing in the first place.

Also, Benjamin Franklin said you shouldn't take my word for it either.
Go read sec 735 and do some research yourself people!

Nowhere in this act is there a reference to GMO's, GE crops and the companies producing them. Nowhere does it say that a company like Monsanto could distribute (potentially) lethal crops without being questioned by the law. It only states that crops which have ALREADY BEEN APPROVED UNDER THE PLANT PROTECTION ACT BEFORE, can still be distributed temporarily when those crops are being re-evaluated. I don't have the slightest clue where this rumor came from in the first place, but all the news sources reporting on it clearly haven't read a single word of sec. 735. So is this the rumor mill, milling away as usual? Yes. Yes it is.

Sec. 735 for all intents and purposes, is still a rider. A law nestled away into a document that would have most likely been approved for the rest of it's contents. Laws and regulations coming into effect through such means are, in my opinion, still a deplorable thing and in direct opposition to any and all integrity standards of the trias politica. Even though this might not actually be the 'Monsanto protection act' it was made out to be, I would still very much stand against it for those reasons.

Understanding New Media by Eugenia Siapera (Chapter 12). Should we leave the internet at it's own devices?

Leave somebody to their own devices (Idiom):

To let someone do what they want without helping them or trying to control them (usually passive)

- Farlex Free Dictionary

In this final, culminating, chapter, Siapera takes the time to recall all subjects of this undergraduate book and summarizes all thoughts and opinions discussed into one big potential future for new media, the internet and the world around it. One of the main talking points at the end of this chapter is the potential benefits and deficits of regulating the internet. The chapter ends with the famous words of Stiegler, claiming that the internet is and should remain a free good for all, free from corporate, governmental or other organised interests.

Perhaps the biggest argument in favor of regulating the world wide web stems from the media industry. Piracy is still a much discussed issue, and the defense of copyrights is seemingly the main goal of anti-piracy advocates. As a free and unregulated repository of data, the internet is often presented as a breeding ground for piracy and the illegal sharing of data that others have a claim of ownership to. One of the main reasons is often claimed to be that people simply don't want to pay. One subject that is often lost inside the turmoil of debate, is the innovations originating from the internet that have changed the face of the media industry. While one side is staunchly defending copyrights and artist's rights, and the other is supporting freedom and a new vision of copyrights, it's not surprising that many of these developments are overlooked.

Gabe Newell, CEO of game development house Valve and retail platform Steam, had a very different opinion on the matter. In an interview with the Cambridge University student newspaper 'the Cambridge Student', he claimed that piracy was not so much a pricing issue, but a service issue. He said the following:

"In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customers use or by creating uncertainty".

And there have been new developments of late that seem to cater to this exact problem. Game sales have moved to online distributors like Steam and Origin, music to platforms like Spotify and Itunes, and movies to Netflix. These services provide the region free, 24x7 online service that used to be exclusive to the pirates of the web. This gives providers of copyrighted material a chance to actually compete with the pirates, instead of taking a powerless victim role. Just last week a study by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre showed that legal online music retailers were not in any way harmed by piracy. In fact, they actually had a deterrent effect on piracy. (source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/131005609/JRC79605).

So perhaps this tendency to try and regulate the internet, not only when it comes to piracy but also in other cases, stems from a narrow vision of what the internet can actually provide for people, governments, corporations and interest groups alike. There seems to be an inherent lack of understanding surrounding the new media in general. Perhaps the foremost underlying factor might be the fact that the internet, and new media on the internet, are not one single technology. It's rather a patchwork of interwoven technologies, many of which are not yet fully understood and mature enough to be predictable.

Gartner's Hype Cycle for 2012. Web technologies nowhere near maturity are: Internet of things, Crowdsourcing, Big data, Gamification, HTML 5, (Hybrid/Private) cloud computing, and Internet TV.

Microblogging, Constituency Service and Impression Management by Nigel Jackson and Darren Lilleker. Is Western Democracy Broken?

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

As a child I grew up in a southern and more rural region of the country. As was to be expected, the political alignments of my family members were predominantly conservative. Growing up there, however, their views never really affected my view of the world, since I simply did not care about politics. Albeit my parents' distrust of immigrants and aversion to homosexuals (whom they never actively opposed, luckily). I never had any problems with befriending people of varying nationalities and sexual orientations. I remained absent from the world of politics until my late teen years.

What drove me to finally develop an interest, was the way in which my parents voted. Every election period they could be counted on to vote for a conservative candidate. One who most often expressed a resentment for big government, open borders and untraditional relationships. When I asked my father why he voted like he did, the response was always something along the lines of 'He looks like a reliable guy' or 'She said some things in a debate that I agree with'. This seemed rather strange at the time. Wasn't the whole point of a democracy that you vote for those who represent your opinion and ideas?

Geert Wilders. Vote if you think muslims are kind of scary.

During my college years I learned that the vast majority of people I know vote in the exact same way. They often vote based on their perception of a politician as a person, or on a rather select set of quotes that barely had any bearing to the actual political standpoints of their chosen representative. Many people might be familiar with Geert Wilders, a man who is considered by most to be a hard right conservative with a very particular hatred for Islam and Muslims. In the 2010 dutch elections, Wilders came in third for a place in government that year. The dutch politcal landscape was divided into two camps from this point forward. Much like the American political landscape, people now, more than ever, felt as if they were divided in two camps. The republicans in favor of Wilders and the democrats in opposition.

Again, this seemed so utterly confusing. I had personally read about the political standings of Wilders at the time, and what he stood for was not exclusively conservative. Not at all even. He was very much a proponent of an even more socialised healthcare system, more benefits for the lowest income groups (albeit more so for natives than immigrants) and higher wages for lower tier public servants like teachers, policemen and health care workers. Why then, did everyone recognize him solely for his obviously racist standings when it came to immigration and integration? The point I'm trying to make is: this was a result of his impression management. People either refused to acknowledge, or simply didn't bother with learning, anything about the actual political standpoints of Wilders.

Emile Roemer. Vote for his pretty smile.

And this has, for a long time, been the case with many politicians. Very few people actually take the time to educate themselves before heading to the voting booth. In the last dutch elections a man named Emile Roemer came in second. Some of the most quoted reason for his success were his 'jovial face' and 'appearance of a relatable family man'. These factors have absolutely nothing to do with the political standings of Roemer, nothing to do with his capability of performing his task as an elected official and nothing to do with the profile of his party. This kind of voting behaviour is directly opposed to the purpose of a democracy, wherein constituents should vote for someone who will represent their ideologies, and politicians work to meet the needs of their constituents. Not a world in which politicians jump at any chance to stand under a spotlight and disclose information about their personal lives to gain sympathy votes.

Lilleker and Jackson show how politicians in the UK are slowly starting to adopt twitter as a new communication method. I hope to see them use it to prove their capability, convey their political standings and communicate with their constituents. However, this might just turn into another way to show off family photo's and make some hollow jokes. Take for instance the American system, where the vast majority of news sources are too preoccupied with showing pictures of Obama smoking weed in college, or stories about Mitt Romney once strapping a dog to his car, to actually care about their political standpoints. Ladies and Gentlemen I do fear, that our democracies are broken.

Nigel Farage (UK). Vote for what he believes in.

Understanding New Media (chapter 11) by Eugenia Siapera. The new gaming market.

What first struck me when reading this chapter, is the seemingly old-fashioned view miss Siapera provided of the computer games market. She proposes a view in which distributors have developers in a stranglehold, where funds always come from big multimedia corporations and creativity can be sacrificed for larger profits. To paraphrase one remark on page 214: "Small independent companies are unlikely to survive in a massively competitive media environment". This might have been true about 5 years ago, but things are changing for the better nowadays. In this post I would like to discuss the 3 driving factors that are liberating the independent development houses.

Funding

Kickstarter logo for funded games

Yes; there is no work without pay. This is equally true for the gaming market. Most of the larger titles in gaming require quite the investment. To even get started in the first place, there are costs like licensing for software used (e.g. 3d modelling tools) and  freelance costs for concept artists and writers. Then there's the costs for developing high quality sound, art, environments, characters, animation, scripting, coding and algorithms involved. In bygone days, developers with big ideas were forced to crawl to publishers on their knees in hopes of receiving funding.

Crowd funding initiatives like Kickstarter have revolutionized the way in which developers of all sizes can obtain the required funding. Kickstarter gives developers a page on which they can present their work so far, and ask for donations from interested users. This allows independent developers to avoid the judgement and involvement of big publishers in their creative process.This week alone, another two big budget games have passed their required budget goals. Dreamfall: Chapters ($1.540.000 out of required $850.000) and Torment: Tides of Numeria ($2.350.000 out of required $900.000) have been cleared for liftoff.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redthread/dreamfall-chapters-the-longest-journey

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

Distribution

So creating a product is one thing, but getting it out there to your customers is another. Siapera seems to assume that the traditional bricks and mortar store or ordering it to your home is still the only way. Digital distribution services like Valve's 'Steam' have grown rapidly in recent years, and the latest estimates show that digital distribution now accounts for roughly 25% of the total games market (NPD Group annual report).

Minecraft in action

Digital distribution means that you won't be getting a nice box in your hands with a disk in there. Like all modern media, the data of a game can be transported purely in the form of bits and bytes, with no need for a physical carrier. This also means that there is no need to ship your product into stores and warehouses across the world. Global digital distributors like Steam have reduced the entire distribution process to one simple upload on a server. This means that independent developers now have a chance to get their games to customers without having to rely on the established networks of publishers. Similarly, the Swedish independently developed Minecraft has sold 9.650.000 copies, purely through digital distribution.

Marketing

According to Siapera, Kline (2008) claims high intensity marketing to be one of the critical success factors for games. This is still true, but the marketing game has also undergone some significant changes in recent years. It is true that a small budget won't buy you television adds and billboards  but there are many free marketing alternatives out there thanks to social networks.
In addition to word of mouth becoming a force to be reckoned with on Facebook, YouTube is also an essential marketing tool to be reckoned with. Lets play series (in which YouTubers record themselves playing games) have become an invaluable source of free marketing. Not only in terms of quantity, but also quality. Famous examples are:
BlueXephos (1.7 billion views) playing the independently developed game Minecraft.
RoosterTeeth (1.85 billion views) playing a variety of independently developed games.
Pewdiepie (1.2 billion views) playing the independently developed games Happy Wheels and Amnesia.

In conclusion, the gaming market is moving more to a dynamic, customer-oriented market, where big publishers no longer define the inner workings. This shows great promise and opportunity for the future, for an entertainment form that I hold very dear.

Understanding Digital Culture (chapter 4) by Vincent Miller. Could we benefit from returning to state owned communication services?

Chapter 4 of Millers book, an undergraduate text book mind you, discusses the problems of the so called 'digital divide'. A disparity between people, both domestic and global, when it comes to access to communication networks. The main talking point of this chapter is the growing divide between the developed west and developing nations worldwide, but it also briefly touches on the subject of domestic divides. Selweyn appends this gap by taking into account other factors such as the quality of available hardware, internet speed, experience with digital media and a perceived benefit of using these technologies.

The main problem addressed in this chapter is that the growing importance of modern communication technology might widen the gap between the wealthy west and the poor 3rd world even further. What interested me most was that the text mainly sees communication services as a product of private companies. I would therefore like to look deeper into the domestic digital divide, and propose the notion that a state owned communications network might be preferable in some cases.

The Iconic British red phone booth.

One might remember the days (I certainly don't but many before me might do) in which telephone services weren't provided by corporations, but by national and local governments. The first thing that comes to mind is the iconic telephone booth, but there were times in some nations where even the phone in your own home was connected to a public network. The same was once true for internet access in America. Those familiar with the history of the web will immediately remember ARPANET and NSFnet. Both were government owned networks which provided access to universities and scientific insitutions.

Those days are long gone now, and communication services are now provided, as in most western nations, by telecom companies. The question is: Do these companies have the interests of consumers and quality standards in mind? One look at the twitter account of Time Warner Cable, AT&T or Verizon in the US would suggest that this is not the case. These pages are riddled with complaints about slow speeds, downed connections and terrible stability.

To understand what might be causing the apparent lack of quality that these providers 'sell' to their customers, one must first look at the underlying network. Compared to a nation like Sweden or the Netherlands, the US is lagging far behind when it comes to the adoption of fiber-optic cable. Most of the infrastructure in the US consists of low quality and outdated copper cables, most of which haven't been replaced for over a decade. This infrastructure is almost in constant need of maintenance and repair. Then why not replace it? The unearthing of a vast underground cable network and the placement of a fiber optic network is a daunting and costly task. Apparently, it's more profitable for Internet service providers to repair the existing networks than to replace them. This might be one of those cases in which the quest for profitability in an open market might hold the growth of a technology back.

Average download speeds in the world. Image courtesy goes to CNET.

It is in situations like these where a repossession of the national communications network by the government might not actually be a bad thing. Many believe that a private market outperforms the public sector, because the competition in the open market promotes quality and innovation. In the case of the US internet infrastructure, this competition is actually holding innovation back, because the most innovative option isn't the most profitable one. Rebuilding the nation's entire infrastructure would only lead to short term losses, and in the dynamic crisis market of today short term performance is everything.

The government in this case could be seen as a non-profit organization. It is not bound by the need for profit and competitive advantages. With only the interest of the public in mind, the government could work to finally bring the much needed innovation of fiber optics to the American internet users. When looking at the possibilities from a public sector perspective, this would be an enormously beneficial investment for the US government. An improved infrastructure can provide market wide benefits, both to corporations and citizens, by providing a competitive edge for the information age. The education and research sectors can also greatly benefit from an improved infrastructure. This could also provide some long needed economical growth and a vast amount of short term jobs.

*Author's note: This is in no way a promotion of governments regulating the internet. This is a summary of the potential benefits from a government providing the service, not regulating the usage. Like any other government service, transparency and availability of information are of the utmost importance. 

Living in virtual communities by Denise Carter. How real do you want your virtual reality?

In this article Carter sets out to make a surprising claim. Most of us would probably expect an article about online friendship to end with statements like "online friendships aren't real", "online friendships have no value" or even "online friendships are damaging". Denise Carter defies expectation by providing qualitative evidence of why an online friendship is in may ways the same as an offline friendship. Even though the context and environment are radically different, that does not mean that the essential building blocks of what constitutes friendship are any different. She even argues that the accelerated forming of bonds and intimacy might even give online friendships an advantage.

I do agree with Carter that online friendships are still very much real. A critic like Clark would claim that trust and commitment aren't necessary online. Only a false sense of intimacy. I stand with Carter in saying that this is not true. We are all social beings and our behaviour won't fundamentally change when the environment does. Sure, in some ways we'll adapt to this new environment, but the underlying desires, personal morals, ethical codes and behavioural patterns will remain intact.

However, something that Carter does not address is the possibility of other forms of bonding and emotional attachment that can exist in online environments being real (or at least perceived as being real). Very recently a friend of mine has voluntarily admitted himself into a 10 week internal treatment in a Belgian psychological institute. The reason for this, is his addiction to a video game. World of Warcraft to be exact.

Right before he would take off I had an elaborate phone call with this old friend, in which we discussed not only the reason behind his decision, but also the events that led up to this. He claimed that 'real life no longer seemed to give him a sense of purpose'. When I asked him where this view came from, he explained to me how important his enrollment in a guild had become to him in his daily life.

A Guild taking a group 'photograph'

Most of you reading this will by now probably be familiar with the premise and workings of World of Warcraft as a role-playing game. A guild within this game is actually much like a stonemasons guild or a writers guild from medieval times. Players join together under the name and logo of a guild, in which they cooperate to achieve shared goals and visions for the group. This involves taking guild missions, fighting or befriending other guilds and improving your rank on the global guild leaderboards.

This friend of mine always seemed to have an endless supply of motivation available to him. Whenever he set a goal for himself, he wouldn't back down until he succeeded. When he joined this guild, this was no different. He wanted to improve his ranking and reputation within the guild, and help the guild itself thrive and improve in the process, no matter what it took. This eventually led him to be so invested in the daily interactions with his fellow guild members that his online life started to take primacy over his offline life. And who can blame him? With 2 failed educations, he was now working as a farmhand for minimum wage with very little prospects of seeing his life improve significantly on short notice. But in this online world he was one of the few with a captain rank, in a guild containing over 200 members. He was respected for his dedication and praised for his achievements. He a major contributor to the guild's high ranking and was always the number one choice for taking along on a mission due to his skill and prowess.

This is not the end

It took a tremendous effort on his part to finally admit to himself that no matter how good this online life seemed, he would never be able to escape reality. I have personally witnessed how real emotions relating to an online existence can be. Many would claim that the problem lies with these emotions being fake. Hollow illusions created by desire and a need for escapism. That is not the case. The problem is that these emotions are very real. The internet, social media, virtual worlds and all the new ways of staying connected can be a tremendous addition to our lives. For some unfortunate people however, these can become a replacement to our lives.

Social Media and Revolution by Julia Skinner. A multi-disciplinary look at the Haren riots.

I'm going to be honest here. This paper is so general that it basically becomes immune to scrutiny. All it really attempts to do is offer three paradigms that could be used to research social media as a communication platform during times of revolution. It never claims any of these three paradigms (physical research, cognitive research and social informatics) to be superior or better in any way, and provides legitimate criticisms to each of them.

Again this is a paper focusing on the importance of taking a multi-disciplinary approach to research. One single field or paradigm is not capable of answering all the questions, so getting 'disciplinary-tunnel-vision' and neglecting any field outside of your own expertise, will make you prone to missing out on valuable information.

Image courtesy goes to dutch news channel 'Hart van Nederland'

I feel that this was a very prominent problem in the public sector analysis of the Haren riots in the Netherlands that took place last year. For those of you who are not familiar with this riot, here's the skinny: A teenage girl living in the town of Haren had a birthday coming up, and invited her friends through a Facebook event. She forgot to manage the privacy settings on this event, making it a public event for the world to see. Within a very short amount of time, hundreds of people decided it would be fun to go, even though they did not know her. Pretty soon the local media caught on to what was happening, and the event page was immediately taken down from Facebook. At this point thousands of people had pledged to be present, so it wasn't long until new events made by others, detailing the party time and location under the name 'Project X Haren', popped up. During the day of the party there were thousands of people Face-booking and tweeting about it, and the government decided to severely limit public transport to Haren in an attempt to prevent chaos. Regardless, a mob of nearly 25.000 people showed up in the small town. The night ended in riots, looting, clashes with riot police and 25 arrests.

Image courtesy goes to dutch news site Nu.nl

Perhaps as expected, for a small country like the Netherlands this was big news. It wasn't long until several politicians had public statements to make about the riots in Haren. Chief of which was ex labor party leader Job Cohen, who pledged to lead an inquiry committee that would research the riots. Those who have seen interviews with Mr  Cohen at the time will probably remember his position on the matter; Facebook played a crucial part in this. A rather surprising comment came from the German minister for consumer protection, Ilse Aigner, who claimed that Facebook should  be partially held accountable for the damage caused in Haren on that night.

Me, and many peers, would openly discuss this view on the matter in days following his announcement. My major argument against Mr. Cohen and Mrs. Aigner remains that Facebook had no major part in the events and can not be held accountable. Their views seem to be grounded in the Physical paradigm, as described by Skinner, because they seem to discount the fact that it was people who responded to the event and went to Haren in the first place. To blame the main communication medium Facebook for these riots is like blaming the telephone for the battle of Beverwijk (a massive football hooligan riot in 1997).

As proposed by skinner, to provide answers to a question, one should not limit themselves to only one view. Yes, Facebook did play a part in these riots, in the sense that it made communications about the event possible. If we'd all be dependent on the mail service for communication these days these riots would arguably never have happened. This does not take away the social and cognitive aspects of the situation. From a cognitive perspective there's a lot to say about how people found out about the event, what drove the massive gain in publicity and what effects the underlying context had. A look from the social informatics could yield an even deeper people-centric understanding of this event. Skinner goes on to say "during the Egyptian revolution, Internet service was stopped in an attempt to hinder protests. As a response, protesters turned to older technologies such as citizen band radios, fax machines, and modems to connect and share information". This further supports my point that a medium can not be the sole blame for any event of this nature. Perhaps it's a bit extreme to compare the revolution in Egypt to a small town riot, but this does show how a tool is not necessarily to blame for its uses.


As a closing statement, here's one last quote from Skinner that Mr. Cohen and Mrs. Aigner should read.
It is hoped that readers will also consider the value in drawing from multiple approaches and will understand the importance of tailoring a method to a question, rather than the other way around.

-Julia Skinner

Addendum to the EU skeptic post [N]

As you may or may not know, this blog is for the time being still a part of a University class I'm following. This does not mean I intend to hold back on any opinion I have, during the next 6 weeks. With that in mind, I would occasionally like to make a post that is not in any way connected to the class matter. For the time being I will mark these posts with the [N] suffix, like this one.

Leaving Castells by the wayside for a moment, I would like to come back on some statements I have made in the previous post. Primarily my claim that the EU parliament is a non democratic institution and that they have far more power over member states than what should be allowed.

You might be familiar with the attempt the EU made at ratifying a constitution of their own in 2005. This constitution was at the time marketed as being a document that would further unite and support the people of Europe, and would make the EU flag and anthem officially recognized by all member states. This constitution also included a promise that all member states would uphold various commonly agreed upon policies, like the equal treatment of sexes, no support for the death penalty and the promotion of peace. The contents however, went much further than this. Various measures were included that would increase the power of the EU over its member states. Chief among which a demand stating that EU law would get primacy over national law, extended by 6 policy areas in which only EU law can exist.

Surprisingly enough, most of the member states demanded that the EU constitution would be ratified through a referendum. This was one of the few occasions on which the EU has ever bothered to include citizens in their policy making. Perhaps not surprisingly, the EU constitution was rejected by referendum in both France and the Netherlands. Since no EU policy can be accepted without agreement of all member states, the EU constitution was cancelled.

2 Years later, a new treaty was proposed. Signed in Lisbon, this treaty is now known to the world as the treaty of Lisbon. Many of the contents were nothing more than rewritten text that was seen 2 years earlier in the suggested EU constitution. This time, only Ireland was allowed to ratify it through a referendum, since their constitution demanded it. After an initial rejection, Ireland went on to ratify the treaty of Lisbon in a second referendum, after some minor alterations had been made. With all the member states now in 'full support' of the treaty, the EU gained its common currency, the European Central Bank became an officially recognized institution and the member states had submitted their legal system to the scrutiny and demands of the EU.

The European Union in it's current form is NOT democratically elected, has gained its power through NON democratic means and is able to intervene in the democratic procedures of all member states. This is why I am a Euro Skeptic.

The new public sphere by Manuel Castells (and why the European Union is playing a dangerous game)

Manuel Castells is considered by many to be an expert on the subject of the information age we currently live in. He is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, a frequent visiting professor of technology and society at MIT, publisher of 25 distinguished books and the owner of 15 honorary doctorates and university medals. It's safe to say that after reading his article there weren't much criticisms I could levy at his work.

In this article Castells sets out to define the concept of a global civil society, the sphere in which global organization and policy making takes place, and the lack of grip that most national governments have on global scale. This global civil society is very similar to the national civil society he describes earlier in his article.

The image proposed by Castells is this. Not only is a government responsible for providing security and governance to it's citizens, but it also has to draw on discourse with these very citizens as a way of validating their choice of policy and process. This happens within the Public Sphere. The Public Sphere consists of all space where discourse can take place between a government and its citizens. The collective expressions within the Public Sphere is what's known as the Civil Society.

In order for a government to be considered a democracy, there must be a free civil society in place. One that is not censored nor controlled in any way. The government should limit itself only to the promotion of proper behavior and mutual respect. To quote Castells: "the relationship between the state and civil society is the cornerstone of democracy".

As you have probably read in the title, this post is probably not going to end up with a very positive view towards the European Union. Before I delve into those ravings I would like to point out one more element from the article, which I probably can't stress enough. Global policy should only be considered with global affairs. It should therefore not be desired, or indeed possible, for international governance to overrule democratically chosen national governments! This means that international and global governance should focus on commonly agreed upon policies, such as the counteracting of global warming and the protection of human rights.

Que the EU. An international body of governance that, as we may know, consists of members from each of its member states. These members, known as MEP's, are elected in whatever way member states decide is appropriate. Sadly in multiple cases MEP's are elected through Party-List PR, like in Belgium and France, or through national election results in Germany, Italy and Poland. My second strife with this system is how the nations are represented by each getting to elect an arbitrary number of MEP's based on some degressive proportionality (similar to the electoral votes system used in the US). The thing is, as a dutchman I never voted for any of the Italian MEP's or German MEP's. To be accepted as a democratically elected body of governance the EU MEP's should be elected by ALL european citizens. Sadly, a skewed process based on the size of nations is implemented, many of which never even get the opportunity to elect their own MEP's.

Now I wouldn't object so strongly to this election system if it weren't for the fact that the European Union has the power to actually govern Europeans. A quote from the EU website blatantly states the following: "EU law - which has equal force with national law - confers rights and obligations on the authorities in each Member State, as well as individuals and businesses. The authorities in each Member State are responsible for implementing EU legislation in national law and enforcing it correctly, and they must guarantee citizens’ rights under these laws."

So not only is this international governing power elected through non-democratic procedure, but it also has the ability to propose laws equal in force to national law, and the power to force its member states into enforcing these laws as if they were their own. And we're not just talking about commonly accepted policies like counteracting global warming either. The EU has created several international laws dealing for instance with local economies such as an enforcement of budget deficit limits. In the words of Simon Hix, the EU is now a quasifederal polity (Hix, Simon. The Political System of the European Union (2nd ed.). p. 123).

As my closing statement I would once more like to turn to the work of Castells, who proposes that public governance, just like national governance, should be based on the knowledge within the global public sphere. A sphere in which discourse can take place between everyone in the public and the government, and from which a governing institution must draw justification and inspiration for their decisions. Not a sphere with skewed representations, and especially not with the absence of this sphere. 


"Because we live in a globalized, interdependent world, the space of political
codecision is necessarily global. And the choice that we face is either to construct
the global political system as an expression of power relationships without cultural
mediation or else to develop a global public sphere around the global networks
of communication, from which the public debate could inform the
emergence of a new form of consensual global governance. If the choice is the
latter, public diplomacy, understood as networked communication and shared
meaning, becomes a decisive tool for the attainment of a sustainable world order."
                                                                                                    - Manuel Castells

Unpacking the social media phenomenon - a review

One question that researchers are intensively dealing with today is 'how do we analyse social media?' The social media of today are undoubtedly large, complex and dynamic. This makes analysis a daunting task for those who want to build a deeper understanding of a certain platform. Jan H. Kietzmann and colleagues provide a basic honey comb shaped framework in their 2012 paper: "unpacking the social media phenomenon: towards a research agenda".

The honeycomb 'lenses' as suggested by Kietzmann et al.

When reading this paper it becomes very clear that even Kietzmann et al. don't have all the answers, but that is not the purpose of this text. What it tries to achieve is nothing more than a basic framework, a guideline if you will, that might help researchers to get started. There's nothing I appreciate more than researchers who are willing to take a multi-disciplinary approach, instead of focussing solely on their own limited field of expertise. Kietzmann et al. have more than succeeded at this, by blending this technology-heavy field with influences from social science, psychology, behavioral science and cognitive science.

But through all this well structured, well referenced and multi disciplinary information I can't help but feel there's something missing. The seven parts of the framework, or 'lenses' as they are called in the paper, can't be this separate from each other right? Though Kietzmann et al. do note that these lenses are not mutually exclusive, it seems to me that there are more interesting relations at play between these lenses. Relations that are worth mentioning and might yield more information for potential researchers.

For instance, when looking through the groups lense, certain group dynamics might influence other lenses. A group in which sharing is a much loved and appreciated practice, the group dynamic itself will strengthen the motivation for individuals to share. Similarly, when the reputation lense yields that the overall perceived reputation of a platform is low, we'll most likely see a decrease in the frequency of conversations, because people might not trust that their conversations are private.

As a whole, I have nothing but praise for the honeycomb model provided by Kietzmann et al. I would however like to suggest that an extended version is made, which takes these lense relations into account. Perhaps a honeycomb with weighted relations depending on influence.

Suggestion for a honeycomb with weighted relations