Did you know that millions and millions of protesters world-wide took to the streets on the 25th of may to protest against GMO foods? If you didn't you could be forgiven, you haven't been helped all that much by the media regimes that seem to dictate world news... But just in case, heres alittle update, GMO foods or genetically modified organisms and their by-products, are flagshipped by the behemoth, multi-national corporation Monsanto, a company that has signalled its intentions to mute labeling requirements world-wide, mute scientific investigation into its products, set ex members of its corporation into FDA positions world-wide, sue, bully and mafia gang farmers for the use of its product, a product that has been proven to kill the pollinating bee population and cause tumors and brain damage world-wide... in short, they must be stopped before the future of their failed science murders the future completely.... [for educational purposes]
29th March 2013. Bachelor of Art student, Curtin University.
For educational
purposes
Abstract:
Activism
today has at its disposal unprecedented means of New Media representation, but
does it amplify the power and number of activists engaged in the actual
physical process? This paper attempts to identify where the new medium achieves
an international resonance and a cultural link to new media consumers political
engagement, while undergoing a theoretical examination of a case study in the
“No Maccas in Tecoma” protest.
Key words: Activism, New Media, No Maccas in
Tecoma, political engagement.
Introduction:
The complexity….
The ways in which the “active audience”
(Thompson via Jenkins, 2006) signals a shift in power from media institutions to media
consumers are varied and many.
Yet to paraphrase Bakardjieva (2012) on their quality, theorists
in the past have expressed an
over-enthusiasm for New Media’s power-political agency and its
current form and future potential has turned out to be far more complex than first
imagined (p.64). That being said,
New Media IS a significant advantage to whoever can weld
its power and, in the interest of
exploring how to do so in regards to the
protester-consumer, this essay attempts a case study of the new media savvy “No Maccas in
Tecoma” (NMIT) community (burgeroff.org, 2011). It does so in two ways; analysis of group
formation with plurality of a digital "Mediapolis” and second, how these groups form
a New Media culture that requires “direct connections” to the ‘real world’ people and
cultural practice to gain its significant consumer advantages (Savvas, 2013, Bakardjieva, 2012,
p.66).
Alert
the audience!
The first way that the “active audience”
(Thompson via Jenkins, 2006) signals a shift from the media institutions to the media consumer
concerns a new plurality
of the “Mediapolis”, which is described by Bakardjieva (2012) as a
“heterogeneous web of media technologies, actors and practices that spans the private
and the public realms” (p.66). This ‘mediapolis’ in current form enables community spheres to
‘link’ and frame new “possibilities for collective action” (Bakardjieva, 2012).Used extensively by protesters today, the
‘mediapolis’now organises and directs attention in a real time
environment previously unavailable to pre-mobile groups (Wall, 2005, Gordan, 2006,
Bakardjieva, 2012). For example, in the case of the protest against a McDonalds restaurant
made by the relatively small community of Tecoma, the communities organisation techniques
were successful in directing institutional attention which proved vital in the formation
and effective sustained community engagement.
However, the Dandenong’s community has history
of successful local political a activism without engaging new media, as poet Duggan
(2002) states in February
1992; “their message to McDonalds go elsewhere, we love the
hills and for the hills we care” (p.17) and they were “three times” successful in
dispelling McDonalds (Johnston, 2012). Therefor this communities case study can only be used
in-so-far as a marginal new media shift. What made the NMIT shift special, was the way in which citizens combined with
“netizens”(Bakardjieva, 2012, p.71) to transform individuals
in and out of existing groups to a stable network of anti-McDonalds supporters called “Burger
off”, a website and group with elite members, political supporters, finance and
media campaigns spanning events, council engagement, social media, art spheres and institutions
(burgeroff.org, 2011).
Yet in the early stages, when restaurant
planning was knowledgeable to consumers via traditional institutions in March 2011, new media
amplified it using individual spokespersons to alert an even greater public via
blogging-politician Cr. Dunn
and online members of the Tecoma Village Action
Group (TVAG) (Cr Dunn, 2011, tvag.org.au, 2013).Using
their blogs, institutional influence, and Facebook accounts, more individuals combined with these politicians and
pre-existing institutions to educate the community action, which managed to form an unprecedented council response,
with “over 1,100 individual community objections … lodged
opposing the proposal” (burgeroff.org, 2011).
Thus, it could be argued that had not council
objection instructions and promotions’ spread across new media with such timeliness and
visibility by these ‘netizens’ online, that such numbers would not have been previously
possible.This line of civic agency
inherit in the internet merges with Bakardjieva’s‘private and public Mediapolis’ in a new way
to produce what Dahlberg (via Bakardjieva, 2009)
calls the “emergence and growing visibilityof
“counter publics” composed of groups and interests that are not represented in
the mainstream public discourses.” (p.91).
Despite minor initial mainstream institutional engagement, the protest today represents
the ‘active audience’ as a major emergence of a politically
empowered grassroots organisation (burgeroff.org, 2013). For this is an organisation
that was able to build collectively, enough momentum to direct the ‘Mediapolis’ of
worldwide institutions, from California to Japan and has initiated a permanent political
act with a
“new planning statement” to prevent further planning developments (burgeroff.org,
2013).
The
cultural context: Should we be Gardening?
The second way that the contemporary “active
audience” (Thompson cited in Rosen, 2006) signals a shift from the media institutions to
one of the media consumer, concerns a contextually cultural engagement of an online “living space inhabited not only by images and discourses, but also by people
with their daily thought and action” (Bakardjieva, 2012, p.67). In a working paper
on creating engaging sites such as these, research by Bukowski, Newcomb & Hartup (2006)
has found that “friendship ties were a key motivation for members to join such groups and
stay involved.” (via Vilenchik & Shresthova, 2012, p.19).
Yet to engage the friendship groups that make
an online community as vibrant and richly frequented as the NMIT community,
Vilenchik & Shresthova (2012) outline
three methods; method one: “Build Communities:
Build, encourage and sustain community affiliations and friendships, not only to
promote civic goals but as valuable in their own right.” Method two: “Tell Stories: Create and
use narratives in ways that encourage emotional investment and connection to the
organization” method three; “Produce Media: Encourage and sustain action through media
creation and circulation” (p.19).
As has been stated in the NMIT case, the first
method; ‘building communities’ had already (partially) occurred, even in the youth, yet as
one NMIT Facebook participant Elicia Savvas (2013) has commented; “Young people [in
Tecoma] are highly politically engaged,
despite the rhetoric from some older people, but it
doesn't seem successful without making direct connections beyond social media.” This mirrors
Westlakes (2008) view that generation Y has increased levels of political interest but
tend to recoil at the point of protest action (pp.37-38). So, the question was; how can one thread
youth and seniors together to make a group with these ‘direct connections’?
This was when the protest came up with a
brilliant game changing idea. After the civic council action had failed to stop the
restaurant in a late McDonalds appeal to the
powerful institution the “VCAT tribunal’, the community
rallied around the grassy public space that was now undemocratically scheduled for
destruction and on October 14th 2012, they planted a community garden (burger.org, 2011).
This action not only gained massive public
attention as it borders a major arterial road for the Dandenong’s, but it also claims a very
public space as community owned
instead of privately owned, an action similar to the
Occupy Movement, but with a more permanent result. Shortly after, the gardens peak media moment
occurred when the story made the “seven nightly news” and it is clear in that
report that NMIT encompassed all generations in true grass roots activism, including many
students from across the road at the primary school (egymoh52, 2012). After that the garden
continued to form a central meeting point for the campaign and truly ‘built, encouraged
and sustained personal relationships to promote civic goals and as a value in their
own right.’
But as these sites proceeded to ‘share the
storey’ on social media, a counter culture developed at the same time.This formed as a rather abusive Pro McDonalds
site simply labelled “Tecoma McDonalds” (2011). Here,
unless one counts a single case of arson vandalism to the NMIT garden, (Webb, 2012) ‘Tecoma
McDonalds’ group actions remained mostly in the private level of the mediapolis,
in what is known as “subactivism”, (Bakardjieva, 2012) a level of activism where “identity construction
[takes place] through subject positioning vis-Ã -vis social and political discourses and relations,
[and] friend–enemy distinction and identification with collective formations [are
made]” (p.71).
In contrast the ‘subject positioning’ only
strengthened this media savvy community and they continued to share the storey of the unanimous
council-VCAT rejection via
the garden site which ballooned media creation onto online
spaces such as Youtube.An example of
this is the evocative “remediation” (Bolter, 1999,
p.45) “reclaiming Tecoma” which can be seen linking a community cultural heritage of
healthy organic food with the garden and aiming this statement at the McDonalds restaurant
(MrTJsmith79. 2012). These combined cultural acts mirror what Bakardjieva, (2012) describes
of in her anti-logging case study, where public spaces where used for similar,
effective “physical … dimension[s] of the mediapolis [which] proved to be an essential space of
appearance … [bridging] the online and the traditional media” (p.71).
Conclusion:
A strong Community reverberates
Despite the fact that the McDonalds restaurant
will probably go ahead without a massive high court apeal, that in complexity, it could be argued that without the “active
audience” (Thompson cited in Rosen, 2006) engaged in new media the NMIT protest would still have
been as large and as passionate as ever, it must besaid that the shifting powers to the
media consumer is there in this strong
example.Strong because in this essay the ‘No Maccas in
Tecoma’ community provides stable evidence suggesting an increased level of
participation from well organised, informed and internationally recognised online groups
engaged in a Mediapolis that has positively and permanently affected the local and state
governmental process. Strong because the Tecoma community culture is now firmer than ever in
its cross generational social ties of both new media and real space and the spin off effect
of grassroots health food culture has been spread far and wide. Strong because in the interest
to further research, this article suggests the idea of the new media political family agency
and identifies interest-action borders to be explored in a greater depth so as to ensure
the audience is always not only politically active, but potent where and when it counts.
Reference
List:
Bakardjieva, Maria. (2012). Reconfiguring the mediapolis:
New media and civic agency New Media Society.
14(63). Pp. 63-79. DOI: 10.1177/1461444811410398.
_______________. (2009). Subactivism: Lifeworld and
Politics in the Age of the Internet. The Information
Society. 25(1). Pp.91–104. DOI: 10.1080/01972240802701627
Bolter, J. D., & Grusin. R. (1999). Remediation:
Understanding New Media . Cambridge,
Duggin, Francis. (2002). No, They Don’t Want McDonalds in
Belgrave. Songs of Sherbrook. AUS. Self-published.
p.17.
Dunn, Cr. Samantha. (2013).Cr Samantha Dunn: The official
blog of Greens Councillor Samantha Dunn, Shire of Yarra yanges. Blog
Posts May 21st 2011 to present. Accessed: 21stMay 2013:
http://crdunn.blogspot.com.au/2011_05_01_archive.html.
Gordon, J. (2007). The mobile phone and the public
sphere: mobile phone usage in three critical situations.
Convergence. 13(3). pp.307-319.
Singer, J.B. & Ashman, I. (2009) ch. 19:
User-Generated Content AND Journalistic Values. In S. Allen & E. Thorsen (Eds.), Citizen Journalism: Global Perspecitves.
New York: Peter Lang. pp. 233-242.
Rosen, J. (2006). ‘The People Formerly Known as the
Audience’. Press Think.
Wall, Melissa. (2005). Blogs of war: weblogs as news. Journalism. 6 (2), pp.153-72.
DOI:
10.1177/1464884905051006.
Westlake, E.J. (2008). Friend me if you Facebook:
Generation Y and performative surveillance.The Drama Review. 52(4). pp.21-40. Accessed 23rd May 2013:
Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, usually spherical objects which vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter. It is usually associated with thunderstorms, but lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many of the early reports say that the ball eventually explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences, leaving behind the odor of sulfur [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning]
-of interest, I read in a book I didn't buy, a book on crop circles, that they have been photographed many many times in and around these mystical sites of communicated symbology...
are they interdimensional beings/interdimensional points of communication? for if anything could break the rules of the quantum field and jump the spines of the planck scale, these mystical centres of power would be it... this poem leaps to the ideas of the elder watch, the beings hoping and guiding us, time after reincarnated time to reach their awareness power and take our place...
a poetic attempt to capture and respect the immense ritual of the confest fire circle in poem, this feels close to me, but compared to that feeling, that grace of dance and togetherness, only the now can know it, so go to it... Nameste my beautiful tribe...
Only once the last tree has been chopped down,
Only once the last river has been poisoned,
Only once the las fish has been caught,
will humanity realise that one cannot
eat money....
With respectful thanks to The Cree Nation, the following youtube has been made with this poem, this prophecy, this warning of mammoth proportions of consequence and responsability for our modern world, the music is by Xavier Rudd and the shaman therein is my lovely fiancee Elise O'Connor...
