Communication Technologies - Essay Example

Introduction Citizen Subjectivity involves the coercion of policy makers to formulate policies that please the citizens. The subjective is a kind of representation that does not originate from constitutional institutions and do not respect institutionalized timelines and programs (Aleinikoff & Klusmeyer, 2001). Citizen subjectivity is achieved through protest, encampment and rioting. Other means of achieving citizen subjectivity is the use of contemporary media to direct public opinion and expectations (Sakr, R). In recent years, citizen subjectivity has been enhanced through the application of technology and use of social media (which has arisen as a result of technology). The combination of technology and social media has made citizen subjectivity more influential in world politics. This essay explores the citizen subjectivities as evidenced in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the Hong Kong 2014 protest. The OWS and the Hong Kong 2014 Protest shall be explored to reveal the flaws and efficiency of citizen subjectivity in today’s politics. Moreover, empirical aspects of the protests shall be explored to show how technology plays a key role in shaping political climates in various world territories. Activism Assemblage According to Syirsky (2013), assemblage is the interaction of bodies, practices and modes of operations. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) have mentioned that assemblage has no superstructure, no superficiality nor depth (quoted in Syirsky (2013)). Occupy Wall Street and Hong Kong 2014 protests presented an assemblage where citizens came together and camped in public places without clearly structured leadership. Furthermore, Occupy Wall Street protest lacked a definite way of negotiating with the party they were addressing. Despite the seeming superficiality, the protest addressed in-depth conflict between the corporate community and the rest of the community. Discourse is a form of representation that generates cultural and historic meaning in populations (university of Washington, 2014). Discourse functions in the form of codes conventions and languages that communicate specific meanings. Examples include ‘occupy’ in the Occupy Wall Street. The code continually communicates the particular meaning originated around the historical time of Occupy Wall Street protest. Effect on the other hand means the ability of an individual to transmit experience to another and also tap experience from another hence forming a relationship (DeLanda, 2006). Citizen subjectivities involve the combination of human forces that are not institutionalized but which generate influence on the policies and actions of the governments (Staeheli, 2014). These subjectivities originate from non-centralized sources and often are untraceable to specific individuals but are attributed to the population that eventually adopts them as their political positions. Citizen subjectivities create a climate within which governments decide on the policies that are attractive to the majority (Fischer, Miller & Sidney, 2007). the National People's Congress The policies that affect the citizens are usually formulated and communicated through constitutional institutions occupied by the representatives of the citizens. The positions of the representatives are generally taken as the positions of the people they are representing. However, such positions at some instances vary gravely with the inclinations of sections of the population and that creates the need for the formation of groups and movements that agitates the wishes of the respective groups The Hong Kong protest is one such instance where the National People's Congress Standing Committee, NPCSC goes against the wishes of the people of Hong Kong hence provoking the protestors (Shadbolt, 2014) The extreme difference between the government policies and the wishes of the various groups in the population may end up in physical confrontations through protests, riots and mass actions (Bmartin.cc, 2014). These actions can be done through street marches or encampments in the public spaces or squares. The degree of dissatisfaction is manifested by the length of time the actions last, the technology employed and the resources involved. Occupy Wall Street is one such movement that made use of technological and human resources to provoke the government into reaction Hong Kong Protests 2014 Hong Kong 2014 protest is a Pro-democracy protest that was staged in the month of September by the students in Hong Kong. The grievance of the students was the lack of electoral freedom in the city of Hong Kong. In the opinion of the protesters, it was not proper for the Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee NPCSC to set electoral policies that limited the people from exercising electoral freedom. They felt that with the established conditions, the mainland will always be favored by the elections rather than the people of Hong Kong. Occupy Wall Street Protest Occupy Wall Street protest was a movement that started in September 2011 and ended in November 15, 2011 (Welty, 2012). It was a protest against the influence of democratic processes by the corporate community. The protesters were of the opinion that politics of the United States favored the capitalistic corporate world. The slogans such as ‘we are the 99%’ attempted to portray the disadvantaged community as being the majority at 99% against the rich at 1%. The protests took place in Zucotti Park and along major streets of New York and in banks and business premises of the suspect corporations. Technology and Contemporary Media in Production of Citizen Subjectivities Technology involves a combination of devices and innovations that help individuals working for an objective to accomplish it with more ease and within less time. Technology makes available gadgets and applications that meet production in specific and broad scopes. The technologies that have made citizen subjectivities possible include media technologies such as Facebook, twitter among others media technologies and boosted by the use of Smartphone (Haimson & Cartagena, 2013). The Smartphone allows individuals to convey visuals, audio and video messages to the target groups. The messages are quickly shared among individuals who have handsets that support similar applications. Furthermore technology itself provides the means of producing Smartphones in large quantities and at low costs. The production of low cost Smartphone makes it possible for the majority to access the applications. Occupy Wall Street made extensive use of technology in the management of the movement and encampment (Haimson & Cartagena, 2013. The first application of technology was the development of its website. The website provided the movement with a platform with which to mobilize forces, raise funds and report their grievances. The success of the movement relied heavily on its ability to communicate the daily events and archive their experiences. The contemporary media includes the social media or the platforms that allow individuals to share everyday experiences and occurrences in real time. The social media includes Facebook and twitter among other social sites. It is reported that social media played a key role in the Arab Spring[Oli13]. The regimes that held close control over the regular media could not halt the information that was rapidly changing hands through social media. Social media facilitated the coordination of revolutions, motivated the protesters and brought the subject countries under focus of the rest of the world. Furthermore, the protesters fed the rest of the world with information that was withheld by the regular media especially with regard to the brutal administration of force by the incumbent government on the protesters (Gelvin, 2012). For the purpose of the protest, social media provided the protesters with information on the possible attacks by the regime forces, escape routes and the kind of weapons at their disposal. The eventual overthrow of the dictatorial regimes in the Arab countries was a product of the subjectivities propagated and conditioned through the social media[Oli13]. The current leadership of such countries that include Egypt and Tunisia formulate policies within the expectations of the citizens who overthrew the past regimes through social media mobilization. The character of citizen subjectivity is, therefore, made evident by the regimes’ lack of independence to modify the policies to fit a broader and objective dimension. That explains the continued struggle by the current regimes to meet the expectations of everyone who participated in the overthrow of past regimes. It might be pointed out that this is the weakness of citizen subjectivities (Rotberg, 2004) The messages that are communicated through social media supplement those that are conveyed through regular media. Other times, the information circulated becomes the sole information the users rely on to draw conclusions. To a certain extent the social media provides information that the users do not bother to confirm through the regular media (American Library Association, 2014). The information is therefore synthesized and consumed by the users and used by them to propagate a social and political condition that the government is forced to put up with. The policies that will be adopted by the government will always have traces of social media influence. The traces are the manifestation of citizen influence or citizen subjectivities (Coyne and Leeson, 2009) Social media as a platform provides users the opportunity to communicate journalistic information (Mallia, 2012). The generation of journalistic information through social media is considered as Citizen Journalism[Oli13]. The information shared in the social media is generated by unsatisfied citizens. This is part of citizens and consumer information regarding the services offered by their governments. Considering a situation where the generated information is political, it is possible that the consumers of such information will rely on the one posting the information as the opinion leader. The Majority of the world’s leaders have Facebook accounts and twitter accounts through which they interact with other users informally[Dig13]. The end product of such interaction is a policy structure with inputs from individuals that interact with such leaders in social media. The social media also provides the leaders with information on the mood of the electorate on daily basis. Comparing HK2014 and OWS Protest of Technology The Hong Kong protest was meant to achieve electoral democracy for the dwellers of the city of Hong Kong[Pet14]. The Occupy Wall Street on the other hand was meant to curtail the influence of the corporate community on the democratic processes in the United States. The protesters in both ends of the world wanted to secure the best from the democratic allowances in the capitalistic backyards. Both protests made a great use of technology to bolster their significance (Resources, 2011) The Hong Kong protest made use of a recently developed application called FireChat. FireChat worked as software that allows the users to exchange information without the aid of the internet. Every individual protester who had a phone and a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection could use the application. The technology involved made it easy for the protesters to exchange information amongst themselves hence greatly facilitated coordination. The efficiency of the FireChat lay in the fact that it relied on an independent network that could not be jammed regardless of the number of users (Shadbolt, 2014). The Occupy Wall Street protesters on the other hand made use of Social media. The Twitter hash tag #OccupyWallStreet became the simplest official platform for coordination and exchange of information among the protesters. Furthermore OWS protesters used Google maps to navigate through Zuccotti Park against the actions of the New York Police Department (Shiffman, 2012). There was a slight difference between the technology used in Hong Kong 2014 and the OWS. OWS relied on the internet for social media exchange while Hong Kong protesters used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi application. In addition, the OWS used Google maps to help protesters change locations every time the police blocked them from using their preferred location (Haimson & Cartagena, 2013). Despite the varieties of applications used in both Hong Kong and OWS protests, the fact remain the same that they are technology based. Technology became handy in both instances and achieved great external attention for both protests. Beyond the protests, the applications succeed in creating a political climate that will always influence the policy directions in the United States as well as China. Conclusion Citizen subjectivity is an indirect exercise of power by the citizens over the government which ends up in directing policies of the latter (Urbinati, 2008). The subjectivity has been achieved through protests which started off with the use of barricades in the 19th century to the current use of social media. The current protests are no longer limited to instances of physical confrontation with the policy makers. The current protests are contained in a timeless political climate that affects all the citizens. The policies that are adopted have the influence of undefined power that does not originate from a definite source but certainly originate from the governed. OWS and the Hong Kong 2014 protests are not one time events but will continue to haunt the policy makers in their subjective uprising (Van Gelder, 2011). The uprising and their utilization of technology will still make use of technology to sustain the spirit beyond the Zucotti Park and the streets of Hong Kong. The citizen subjectivity is a contemporary reality that affects all the nations that utilize technology and whose citizens are members of virtual social community. It is expected that the democracy that OWS wished to refine and the democracy that Hong Kong 2014 hoped to establish will remain the citizens’ subjective goal. References 1. Aleinikoff, T., & Klusmeyer, D. (2001). Citizenship today. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 2. American Library Association. (2014). The role and limitations of social media as an information. Retrieved from ala14.ala.org: ala14.ala.org/node/14555 3. Bmartin.cc, (2014). Paths to social change. Retrieved 28 October 2014, from http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/06eolss.html 4. Coyne, C. and Leeson, P. (2009). Media, development and institutional change. Cheltenham: E. Elgar. 5. DeLanda, M. (2006). A new Philosophy of society: Asssemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. 6. Digital daya. (2013). Ranking Report: World Leader on Twitter - digitaldaya. Retrieved from www.digitaldaya.com: www.digitaldaya.com/admin/modulos/galeria/pdfs/.../157_601g3qkp.pdf 7. Fischer, F., Miller, G., & Sidney, M. (2007). Handbook of public policy analysis. Boca Raton: CRC/Taylor & Francis. 8. Gelvin, J. (2012). The Arab uprisings. New York: Oxford University Press. 9. Haimson, O., & Cartagena, J. (2013, February). Information Occupation: Uisng Information Science to Explore Occupy Wall Street. Retrieved from www.ideals.illinois.edu: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/42045/353.pdf?sequence=2 10. In Mallia, G., & IGI Global,. (2014). The social classroom: Integrating social network use in education. 11. Resources, A. (2011). My Day with Occupy Wall Street; and Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Bernie Sanders on OWS. [online] Peace and Justice Online. Available at: http://peaceandjusticeonline.org/2011/10/23/my-day-with-occupy-wall-street-and-naomi-klein-chris-hedges-bernie-sanders-on-ows/ [Accessed 10 Nov. 2014]. 12. Rotberg, R. (2004). When states fail. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 13. Sakr, R. (2013). 'Anticipating' the 2011 Arab Uprisings: Revolutionary literatures and political geographies. 14. Shadbolt, P. (2014). FireChat in Hong Kong: How an app tapped its way into the protests. Retrieved from edition.cnn.com: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/16/tech/mobile/tomorrow-transformed-firechat/ 15. Shiffman, R. (2012). Beyond Zuccotti Park. Oakland, CA: New Village Press. 16. Srhe.ac.uk, (2014). [online] Available at: http://www.srhe.ac.uk/downloads/events/77_McGregor-Knox.docx [Accessed 10 Nov. 2014]. 17. Staeheli, L. (2014). Education, Political Subjectivity - School of GeoSciences. Retrieved from www.geos.ed.ac.uk: www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/.../citstudies.pdf 18. Svirsky, M. (2013). Arab-Jewish Activism in Israel-Palestine. Ashgate Publishing Limited. 19. University of Washington. (2014). Definition: Discourse. Retrieved from faculty.washington.edu: https://faculty.washington.edu/mlg/courses/definitions/discourse.html 20. Urbinati, N. (2008). Representative democracy. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press. 21. Van Gelder, S. (2011). This changes everything. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 22. Welty, E. (2013). Occupying political science: The occupy Wall Street movement from New York to the world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Read More

These actions can be done through street marches or encampments in the public spaces or squares. The degree of dissatisfaction is manifested by the length of time the actions last, the technology employed and the resources involved. Occupy Wall Street is one such movement that made use of technological and human resources to provoke the government into reaction Hong Kong Protests 2014 Hong Kong 2014 protest is a Pro-democracy protest that was staged in the month of September by the students in Hong Kong.

The grievance of the students was the lack of electoral freedom in the city of Hong Kong. In the opinion of the protesters, it was not proper for the Chinese National People’s Congress Standing Committee NPCSC to set electoral policies that limited the people from exercising electoral freedom. They felt that with the established conditions, the mainland will always be favored by the elections rather than the people of Hong Kong. Occupy Wall Street Protest Occupy Wall Street protest was a movement that started in September 2011 and ended in November 15, 2011 (Welty, 2012).

It was a protest against the influence of democratic processes by the corporate community. The protesters were of the opinion that politics of the United States favored the capitalistic corporate world. The slogans such as ‘we are the 99%’ attempted to portray the disadvantaged community as being the majority at 99% against the rich at 1%. The protests took place in Zucotti Park and along major streets of New York and in banks and business premises of the suspect corporations. Technology and Contemporary Media in Production of Citizen Subjectivities Technology involves a combination of devices and innovations that help individuals working for an objective to accomplish it with more ease and within less time.

Technology makes available gadgets and applications that meet production in specific and broad scopes. The technologies that have made citizen subjectivities possible include media technologies such as Facebook, twitter among others media technologies and boosted by the use of Smartphone (Haimson & Cartagena, 2013). The Smartphone allows individuals to convey visuals, audio and video messages to the target groups. The messages are quickly shared among individuals who have handsets that support similar applications.

Furthermore technology itself provides the means of producing Smartphones in large quantities and at low costs. The production of low cost Smartphone makes it possible for the majority to access the applications. Occupy Wall Street made extensive use of technology in the management of the movement and encampment (Haimson & Cartagena, 2013. The first application of technology was the development of its website. The website provided the movement with a platform with which to mobilize forces, raise funds and report their grievances.

The success of the movement relied heavily on its ability to communicate the daily events and archive their experiences. The contemporary media includes the social media or the platforms that allow individuals to share everyday experiences and occurrences in real time. The social media includes Facebook and twitter among other social sites. It is reported that social media played a key role in the Arab Spring[Oli13]. The regimes that held close control over the regular media could not halt the information that was rapidly changing hands through social media.

Social media facilitated the coordination of revolutions, motivated the protesters and brought the subject countries under focus of the rest of the world. Furthermore, the protesters fed the rest of the world with information that was withheld by the regular media especially with regard to the brutal administration of force by the incumbent government on the protesters (Gelvin, 2012). For the purpose of the protest, social media provided the protesters with information on the possible attacks by the regime forces, escape routes and the kind of weapons at their disposal.

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