social web | Re-public: re-imagining democracy

Towards a critique of the social web

Is exploitation still the key social relationship that structures immaterial labour and peer-to-peer production? What type of sociality does the ‘Social Web’ produce? How does this sociality address the question of cultural difference? What types of activism would be more productive in relation to Web 2.0? How far are we from substantially connecting this type of activisms with offline critical practices? Launched with a debate between Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog, this ongoing issue aims to explore the larger political questions that are often neglected under the web 2.0 hype.

Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog: Toward a critique of the social web

In the debate that launches the homonym special issue, Paul Hartzog and Trebor Scholz attempt to outline a critique of the social web organised along five axes: production, expoitation, individuality/collectivity, cultural difference, activism.

Michel Bauwens – The social web and its social contracts: Some notes on social antagonism in netarchical capitalism

The social web is based, argues Michel Bauwens, on an underlying, but unstable social contract. From the point of view of the users this social contract stipulates that their attention is to be monetized through advertising, as long as it does not interfere with their sharing. If the interference crosses a certain line of acceptability, users will either revolt, or go elsewhere.

Axel Bruns – Who controls the means of produsage?

The conversation between Paul Hartzog and Trebor Scholz that frames this issue of Re-public begins with a discussion of whether the traditional critical focus on who owns the means of production still means anything in a networked world driven by user-led content creation, or what I would call produsage. What’s curiously absent from the debate, though (and of the other authors included here, only Michel Bauwens engages with it in detail) is any consideration of who controls the means of distribution – a question which, I think, is crucial to any understanding of power structures in the social Web.

Ned Rossiter – ‘YourSpace is mytime, or, what is the lurking dog going to do – leave a comment?’*

You might know my second space, but do you know my first? Do I even know? In this time of ubiquitous media, the territory of offline existence is increasingly harder to define. These days you’ve made it when you’re able to log off. Google narcissism services our curious and always fragile egos, but after 50 pages the attraction has either worn off, run out or turned into Japanese.

Juan Martin Prada – “Web 2.0″ as a new context for artistic practices

The economic model for what is called “Web 2.0″ is based on promoting the desire to share and exchange things, an attempt to make profits from the voluntary collaboration of its users and its potential for compiling data and making them available to the public. The new companies operating on the Internet base their role on promoting cooperative communities and managing access to the data and files contributed. This business model increasingly tends not to sell any product at all to the consumer, but rather sells the consumer to the product, integrating the user and the files he or she contributes into the actual service being offered.

Dimitrios Zachariadis – Public information belongs to the public

Collective blogs, Tilaphos and Tilaphos-reforest are two of the few cases in the Greek web where it becomes obvious that the collective intelligence of the users might put a remedy to some of the lingering deficiencies of the central state. Dimitrios Zachariadis, the driving force behind the two projects, explains that their aim is to disperse, through the Greek web, reliable public information regarding the loss of forest land, so that it becomes clear and substantiated with evidence, that the decline of forests in this land is an everyday issue so close to us all.

Luke Heemsbergen – From utopia to eutopia via the social web of new media

The term dystopia first appeared in a speech before the British Parliament by Greg Webber and John Stuart Mill in 1868. Mill’s knowledge of Greek suggests that he was referring to a bad place, rather than simply the opposite of Utopia, or non place, making a pun out of eutopia: a region of happiness, or appropriate to this study, region of emancipation. Through the exploration of 3 new media projects, Luke Heemsbergen analyses the possibilities of the social web to bring utopian dreams of digital democracy, to an eutopian place of emancipation.

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