Alternative Editorial: Re-Occupying the Social Space
Following 45 weeks of lock down, the word “social” has taken on much greater meaning – but in a variety of ways. Many are undoubtedly yearning for more social time with friends and family. And total strangers too - in Tubes, shops, clubs!
How much we took our social space for granted - moving through the streets and shops, brushing shoulders or bumping trollies. The idea of a crowded tube train seems like a dangerous game today, rather than a routine discomfort.
And yet many are yearning to be back in it, willing to take their infectious chances, leaning on the still-wobbly bulwark of mass vaccination. Add to that the music venues, the clubs and pubs, theatres and sports hubs. We have our strangely distant memories of these, waiting to be brought back to life.
On the other hand, the same social space has also now become heavily politicized. It’s often framed as a no-go area polluted by the coronavirus – itself an escapee from a jungle habitat or a scientific lab. Should we now see this familiar old sphere as a war-zone? We wear a mask to enter into it, flickering between the need to protect ourselves and the request that we think of others more than ourselves.
When we step into it to clap the NHS or Captain Tom, are we confident we can be heard by the wider society - including politicians - in doing so? The social space has moved from being simply where other people are, to the place where your views are displayed.
In that sense, the streets outside our homes are now more like Facebook pages, dotted with emoticons. Wearing a mask is a thumbs up to the “responsible” pandemic narrative: you are prepared to do what’s necessary to get it under control. Not wearing one could be the laughing emoji or the alarmed one (or nothing) - but people can see you don’t like that narrative. When we are in a crisis you can’t easily be neutral. We are all learning to read each other better.
Giving us all food for thought, however, is the extent to which our social spaces are not really well informed or free thinking spaces. Facebook shook the world this week by banning the news – the news! – from its sites in Australia, retaliating against government legislation that compelled Zuckerberg to recompense the Australian mainstream media. While some might think that’s suicidal – how can the platform expect to keep people entertained without major news stories? – the truth is quite different.
According to this insightful piece by James Temperten in Wired magazine, Facebook claims that only 4% of the news on its ‘news feed’ is actually from established news organisations. The rest is a wild west of content, professional and amateur, pushed to generate revenue through advertising. The algorithms are set to send us stuff we react to vigorously, because our interactivity is money to them, as data they can sell to advertisers. As a public square Facebook is much more like Times Square – all flashing lights and opportunities to buy – than Trafalgar Square, with its historical plinths and galleries. As Temperten points out:
..if you’re the Epoch Times, you can game Facebook’s engagement algorithm to transform yourself from a low-budget far-right newspaper founded by an obscure Chinese spiritual movement into one of the most-read publications on the planet. If Facebook prioritised social wellbeing over engagement, this wouldn’t have happened.
It’s an interesting idea to conjure with that our very participation in those platforms is generating money for the platform owners. Once though conventional, paid-for advertising revenue, but secondly as metadata which can be sold on to all sorts of interested buyers - including government - who in turn use it to manipulate us. In a world that is driven by a still expanding consumer economy, evidence of our habits, preferences, emotional vulnerabilities and dreams is gold dust.
Still about an invite to the top table
We’ve always thought at A/UK that it’s vitally important to be aware of your own data footprint and who is making use of it. How many platforms are you currently active on where you have no idea who owns it or how your data is being used?
Many start-ups are sponsored by venture capital who are looking to make a return – an offer that the young entrepreneur finds hard to refuse, when they have a great idea the world needs. While the platform starts innocently enough, as Amazon and Uber did - just filling a gap in the market – there is no failsafe built in to stop it escalating, with software regulation often being slow-witted in the face of disruptive technology.
As connectivity accelerates, those participating ‘become the product’ – the precious data that everyone wants. What’s to stop that young entrepreneur cashing in and handing the reins over to a less ethical, trusted manager of the data? Someone who has no compunction, for example, in sharing that data with spin-doctors during elections? And though data protection laws are supposed to prohibit such behaviour, the record of leaks and exploitations speak for themselves.
On the other hand, shared ownership - between platform and user - would change the game. People on that platform could not only be safe from exploitation, but also find ways to make money ethically by sharing their data with companies of choice. Paid to participate – it’s a new world of post-labour possibility.
For the time being, more people are just finding new ways to escape. Spending time on Clubhouse this week – social media’s latest haunt for those with ideas to share – was fascinating. Firstly, for its shameless way of populating the platform by limiting participation to invite only – sneaking you behind the red rope still works!
But thereafter, Clubhouse pulls you in through what is an eclectic range of crowded conference calls, or more elegantly, live audio webcasts. To control any interruptions, the initiator is obliged to construct a top table of speakers, who technically are given the right to speak. This crew can sometimes be expanded, if the host spots her or his friends in the audience. Does this situation sound familiar?
While they may feel less manic, in fact our physical public spaces are not dissimilar from those on-line. We pedestrians are also under pressure from advertisers and with limited opportunity to speak. Where can you walk in your town or city without seeing an advert attaching some core motivation to a consumable item? Our shops are constantly beckoning us to buy stuff we don’t need but suddenly want.
As we move around, we constantly refer to our social media telling us what isn’t the news. And in the few political spaces we have – events, gatherings - the citizens are still largely required to listen to the leaders or candidates at the top table, with only limited time for questions and even less for any creative responses.
CANs consciously identify generative ways of working
So when we talk about the need for new social infrastructure – as many of us are – do we mean simply places to meet and be friendly? Or might we be more ambitious and think consciously about new ways for society to organise itself better for new results? To step away from the social spaces pre-designed for us to comply with the status quo, and design new ones that see people as the source of creative responses?
We need spaces without oppressive adverts. We also need spaces which are free of assumptions about our relative impotency, in the face of multiple crises. Why should we assume our only option is to rely on the local council for funding, or depend on volunteer labour to get essential work done? Maybe simple collaboration for creating community wealth might be much more relevant and satisfying.
This could mean setting up new food networks, reclaiming community land or property for the common good, or generating a festival of voices and crafting that calls out a unique identity for those that participate. These kinds of space are, additionally, almost always joyful and energetic – a triple win for people and society.
In the course of this week we met three new examples of such citizen/community action networks taking shape – the CANs network in Cape Town (see our blog), the Wales social enterprise community Datblygiadau Egni Gwledig (DEG) and a ‘still to be named network’ arising from the Possibility Alliance (which we’ll cover in the next few weeks).
All see their purpose in coming together as a challenge to the current authorities to respond to the crises appropriately. Not only answering their challenges adequately and sustainably, but making it comfortable and attractive for people to enthusiastically participate.
If these citizen/community action networks were only on digital platforms, this tendency would be played back out to society as extreme and polarising actions: look, a digital Spring, people power toppling the state! Instead, CANs are consciously identifying and employing generative ways of working. These networks are looking for friendly and productive partnerships with local councils – as long as the community autonomy they represent is properly valued.
For those who are part of such projects, these are genuinely new times. Let’s do our best to send the message out across social media in ways that welcome and invite participation from everyone.