December 2017
Digital sociopolitics.
The roles in our society are mutating. And together with them, the set of values that define them. Since some years, in some countries like Argentina, began a process of artistic staging of politics, and I am not talking about the proselytising incorporation of artists into political projects with the exercise of public office; I am speaking precisely of the inverse, of the ubiquitous place that the politicians are being positioned in the spectrum of the culture. They are the new Rock Stars. The TV shows revolve around their sorcery, the prime time is taken by the political debate programs, which in turn generate other satellite programs re-issued throughout the following day with a medieval, courtesan hue, generating a cataract of opinions on what was told by the new Sai Baba.
Models, actresses and artists date empty politicians. Suddenly it's cool to go out with demagogues, liars and people of questionable morals. This is the current cultural and political scenario, unfortunately today is very difficult to separate the entertainment from the politics. The actors and artists are suddenly paladins of political models and the politicians are stars of programs. Let's see how it is, in the the world upside down ... It is all amalgamated and the society expectantly slavish against their snubs.
I will not mention a specific political force, it is not the purpose of this text. Do not have only one politician in mind when you read this. The purpose is to offer an objective and structural view of the process that the society in the 21st century, the century of the screens, is going through and to understand a little bit better the distribution of the roles. It is the current political scenario, is the result of 20 years of coexistence and expansion of the phenomenon of the Internet and mobile devices.
In many countries, because of all being focused and centred on what we call "doing politics", politicians are turned into the current celebrities. The spectators celebrate it and of course, consume it. Being a politician today can be summarised in a single action, hoard the screen and success is measured by any kind of digital mention. Each public figure tweets believing to be part of the digital parnassus. In addition to the prose, I do not know if we are all aware of the power that images achieved today. The power of a selfie, the power of photos. In the political inauguration acts, the politician's masterpiece is not the bridge that is seen blured behind the yellow safety hat that he/she wears for the press, the politician's obsession is the photo that can be taken, that image that seems casual but that was executed under infinite compositional parameters, so it can later be disseminated in the net more effectively. The number of pictures that each politician is submited to every day in his Herculean effort to be noted is an alarming event! We are facing a carnal frivolity, the politician has to pretend 24/7, pretend all the time to be a happy person, have the hair combed, and all the attention he/she has to put on each photo is what in his brain, ipso facto, tells him the power of the action to which he is submitting. If against an element such as a camera you can not remain normal or as simple as how you are/feel and you have to force an expression, you are recognising the power that this instrument exerts over you. There is no discussion, today the power of a person is measured in followers, the producers of events take very seriously the number of followers of an artist before offering a cachet, same the political assembler when it comes to offering positions. Hey! we too, countless times we compared the number of followers that one digital character has against another to see who has it longer, who is more powerful. This is the heart of the matter, we delegate all the power in the social networks, consolidating as the only and most faithful measuring instrument of social penetration and this measurement instrument, as a consequence, absorbs the power that is measuring. More clear, we measure the “power” in followers and likes, but we are giving to this nominal elements the power, they can dominate any public figure today, this elements are the master and on the other hand the units to measure are in the end, the virtual users (that they are not exactly individual persons in all the cases). The use of social networks is politicized, in that there is no doubt, it is not a matter of changing words, it is a matter of providing substance.
The images are ambivalent, they have favorable and adverse results, they are so powerful that they are capable by themselves of producing a schism, a renunciation, a change of life (forced or not), a separation, ostracism, suicide, murder and daily questions or appearances.
The most important thing about images, about the power we give them, is the power that tacitly resides in the observer of these images. If the politicians have so much respect and put them on that sacred pedestal, is because there, in the same place, they put those who consume those images, or rather said, their opinion. It is not that they estimate it, on the contrary, they fear it. If an image entails, among so many meanings, the effects that we just enumerated and many more, it is because next to an image, comes adjacent all what is the opinion. There really lies the weight of the images and their value. The power they have over the opinion of the receiver. The power to generate or to make up minds with comments. And today that power is measured in the media that we call "social networks". Here the ambivalence of power manifests itself over who is actually exercising it, whether the politician or the public opinion.
The image itself, technically speaking, is nothing more than a description, it is a given event, transcribed on a plate or in our digital times, described in a binary code that is then executed by a computer software that reads the same code and repeat it on another device in the form of a visual image again. The same logic applies to politicians, they believe they can have that capacity for description, that at the moment when the user sees the photo on his cell phone or at home, he experiences the same sensation as the politician wants to show in that act with the yellow helmet. What he/she is interested is in showing only a part of the inauguration of that bridge (the one in which he appears, logically), and his team desperate, acts as hunting grounds trying to form public opinion with the images that have, usually with him at the center of the composition surrounded by mortals , imposing his position of a hero. Digital megalomania.
I have just touched on a concept that should also be redefined in the face of the impossibility of corroborating the weight of that opinion, so that it becomes a public opinion. And that is because of the lack of legitimacy on real users or cloned accounts. Be careful, no more than 20 years ago it was considered public opinion what journalists from some mass media could say, they were not the reflection of what people think (although journalists always thought they were the champions of the truth and like the politicians, they believe that they represent the whole society), on the contrary, they were the ones who inserted their opinion into society (or better said, the opinion of the media they represented) and there they formed comments about their opinion, what then becomes public opinion. This is in other words what journalists do. That is their job, forming opinions, because sincerely, the newspapers, news, radios, along with their characters, said plainly: they are just people giving their opinion on certain topics. In general, they are opinion leaders, people who are issuing opinions all the time on whatever the subject is established in society (or that is intended to be established). The only thing that accredits that individual to formalize his opinion is the audience of the place where he works. Not only because of their ideology and individual interests, but also because of the informative map drawn by the reporters, editors and media writers through whom they inform.
This leads us to what today seems to be essential to the human and the obsession of the press teams, which is the blessed, holy and all-mighty Opinion. A right acquired as inalienable in the century of information. By having a virtual space in which they can express their opinion, the common individual makes full exercise of that "power". They feel the same as those journalists feel, and honestly, their opinion is supported by the same criteria as of the broadcasters of large media, the audience. So here we are, in the current scenario, in which each person believes to be free to be able to express an opinion on any topic. And in truth it is, of course he/she is free to do it, if that person grew up listening to the same drunkard in the midnight program or to the hypertensive in the morning program or to the same never ending speaker in the evening. These new opinion channels are the ones exercising and defining the new conventional way of communicating, and by conventional I mean what is defined by convention, not defined by its use.
There is a real social effect of the virtual world in our analog world. Everyone has an opinion, everyone has a space and a right to constantly comment about everything. We experienced a documentation of orgies of opinions like never before. The buttons, those inoffensive instruments of the interface of social networks took control over our social behavior in the real world. About everything we have to comment, everything we have to like or not like, and against any event we can issue our opinion and even if it is not to our liking something that happens /see on that platform, we can proceed to a disengagement on that person. We have to be following everything a person thinks or does and we believe that we are all owners or capable of judging what happens to them. This are digital courts, legitimized by the public figures' obsession of the judgments and statements of those courts. When people see the public figures obsession comments, they believe the same, that indeed the comment is powerful. Comments got the status of statements. It is true, everything is instrumented for it, the issue is that we are importing these behaviors from the virtual world to the real world.The world of social networks was designed as marketing tools (click here to read DIGITAL MATERIALITY, here I explain the integral process of digital content) that gather information about the behavior of all users. And the real world, is not prepared only for images and comments. There are many more factors that do not enter in a post, which are for example the context. No one takes into account a fundamental element of the images or comments, which is THE CONTEXT in which they are developed. In social networks we are facing a single context, which is the one of virtual history. The concept of immediacy, the response time to an event or to a person went from being fast to immediate. One has to issue a statement today fleetingly, almost simultaneously with the original event. If one does not respond quickly, it is taken as lack of interest or capacity.
To me, a digital native (thanks UdK not a digital naive) a student of communication in one of the most prestigious universities, at least for me (I do not mention it to pretend, but so that you understand where all this reasoning comes from), it is hard for me to believe or perhaps it is difficult for me to assimilate, the power that networks exercise over society. I speak not only of the power of penetration that has an individual with resources (remember that although you believe that what you write on facebook reaches the whole world, it reaches 20% of your audience, one has to pay to make it more effective , therefore you need a certain capital to reach more people, simple equation, more money, more impact ... nothing changed), nor do I talk about the control of politicians over the media, I am talking about the power exercised by the so-called social networks over the politicians and public figures. It is common to believe that politicians are those who exercise power over people, but considering the existence of the so-called virtual trolls, encouraged and financed by them, being the existence of all this manipulators vox populli, it is incredible that politicians, the new Louis XVI, the center of everything, are themselves the victims of what I called the digital jury. Said more plainly, it does not get into my brain that if in social networks the behavior of the politician Juanito is mentioned, he exposes himself to try to defend himself or talk about that attitude, as if social networks were legitimate juries and the users real. If they are aware of the effort made by their party to soak networks with manipulated information, why do they feel as affected as if it were real? How many times, from officials, companies, agencies and even official institutions, a communicate begins with "... because of the comments that are of public knowledge of social networks ..." BECAUSE OF THE COMMENTS !!!!! !
It is hard for me to assimilate it, forgive me! Banality in the highest point, and everybody seems to be fine with it! but it goes far beyond the manipulation and the false information that can be created in different platforms, that we can leave to conspirators bloggers; what is interesting is how officials and people exposed to these networks react. Some can confuse with reputation, but reputation has more body, is not such a comment. Reputation can be build in the digital world and import it to the real with the same level? If some day someone with enough accounts or contacts in a social network issues information, the other person has to go out, make a statement and defend himself or herself because is mentioned in social networks. A person or institution can be put in check-mate and someone achieve the impossible, until the most stubborn can rectified himself about some behavior simply because they are questioned in a couple of bits! I have something that comes to mind, but it is a deeper process, not random. The alienation of the personality suffered by political and public exposed figures, specifically in this example the first ladies. They are turned into mere props (this is how in photography is called the objects that are used to fill the composition of an image). They are no more than companions of their husbands. Because imaging if they still have their profession...how could that affect to the image of the president? Image advisors need to be updated on their criteria.
To such a point comes the reification that they suffer, which lend themselves to anything that the almighty image / press team of their husband asks of them; like the case of the vaunted kitchen gardens of government houses. They want to impose an image that is false. As if the first ladies water every day the potatoes for the mash of the workers of the government house, or to take care of the plagues that their vegetables suffer. They keep on putting the woman in the same place of the housekeeper, and the team doesn´t realise? and she?. When posing for the photos, they are relegated to become objects, they are not much more than the scarecrow that poses behind. This is the power of the images to which all the people who participate in politics are subjected today, but they do not know the reality of what they are doing, or maybe they think about it, but they are imposed by a team that is "expert of influencers". They seem to have no ability to object that show. I want to emphasize this action because demagogy is an evil that affects the political class in equal measure than corruption, promoting a sectarianism with consequences as strong as marginality. Also, if everything today is oriented to the opinion of the networks and to the production of acts, images, videos, etc. for the virtual world, what happens to the people who are marginalized from that world? And all those who do not have access to the platforms? whether due to ignorance, lack of education, geographical situation, lack of devices or because of not being able to pay for data consumption. Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist, coined the term of the Fourth World, which denotes the socially excluded subpopulation of the global society.
What we are experiencing as a society is the uncovering of the receivers/recipients. In the traditional media there was a communication in only one direction, in the 21st century we are living what is the coaxial communication and everything what it implies. What is the purpose of the readers comments below the journalistic articles? I see them as a relief (I admit that many times I spend more time reading the comments of the people than the note itself, like a kind of cultural thermometer). It would be necessary to measure its effects, all the newspapers use this modality, but I did not find studies on the results in terms of affiliation, increase of readers, loyalty or simple cognitive reactions. I wouldn´ t know when writing this article. We might think so, but to be honest, we return to the same thing. Everybody repeat what takes place in the digital world without thinking. If one expresses his opinion on a note (whatever the medium, digital or analog) is expressing his opinion on the opinion of an opinionist on a given event. Then we are in a vicious circle in which the only thing that is discussed are the perspectives before the same event, occupying the opinion the focus of attention, displacing the event itself. Here is another quality of the opinion, it displaces the real actors and positions the opinologist on stage as a legitimate and essential part of the news, absorbing even the repercussions of the note. The opinion as I marked before, is also supported today by the amount of likes of the person that issues it, and proportionally to the amount of followers or likes that the sender has, his verbosity and incontinence of opinion. Followers are today the element of legitimacy.
A phenomena by which this influence is exerted on a given population is called Agenda Setting and it is very frustrating to see the degree of penetration from the media that exists in our country. The only thing that is talked about is what is in the news (whatever the platform) and today the news in Argentina are all political, they are the Greek gods, they are the Mayan priests, the archangels. We all became repeaters proclaiming a thousand voices what they informed us at the morning without mediating the intentionality of that information. And there are counted the times that we are informed about positive things. The traditional agenda setting theory (yes, if I learned it is because it was analyzed, developed and transferred) is simply to manage the influence or informative interest of a certain event and its diffusion to form an opinion. There is a place and a suitable moment to start "informing", and while the current topic is being reported, the next one is already in the oven.
I could write hundreds of pages on this subject, but I will be concluding, I have the theory that in the century of immediacy, nobody spends more than 15 minutes on a text.
Conclusion:
We are experiencing a substantial change in the system of relevance. The main product produced worldwide today is information. It does not mean that everyone has access or the same access to it. Neither does it mean that everyone is affected in the same way, right there lies its value. Nowadays information finds its highest values not when it brings news or knowledge, today information reaches its climax when it can directly affect the image of a subject, a group, a company or a government. This leads us to develop new conditions of practice and social awareness. Society today is an opinion. Then the information is manipulated to create opinion, and it is with the opinion that the desired objectives can be achieved. Let's not forget that success today, however laconic, is the mention.
McLuhan said "artists are the early warning radar of society." When the politician occupies the role of the artist, the natural essence of the artist is lost, which is to awaken consciousness. Politics should not be the entertainment of an entire country, it is not beneficial for anyone.
Social networks are defining the way we relate. Digital inclusion is not social inclusion. There is a very isolated segment of the society and the problems are still the same.
The conditions of practice and consciousness changed, the image becomes everything, the photo is the most appreciated element of the culture. The way to approach the politician to the people makes him a stranger, an outsider of that reality. There is no doubt that power is measured in seconds on the screen. Size ego of the politicians of today, that even the key and intelligent figure of the spokesman tend to disappear. The one that absorbs the erosion and assumes the risks of the communication. And it is not that a more sincere communication is being made, they commit mediatic suicide in order to star 5 more minutes of screen, they do not analyse the elements of the communication. Luhmann forgive them, they do not know what they are doing!
In Argentina today the communication policy of the United States is being imitated, which consists in making a show of any event, but ignoring the media structure they have in the North (it is not an opinion, it is a fact, it was strictly imitated from the #YESWECAN #SISEPUEDE to the way to present the scenarios and proposals, even the definition of "the crack" was already used in the second campaign of Obama). So, when we import a foreign model without the corresponding structure or adapting it to the local scale, the effect that produces, is a saturation of the national media, turning them into full instruments of the groups that are fighting among themselves; and together with them by effect of snowball, the receivers become full hostages of their snubs, assuming these same discrepancies as their own, simply by being constantly exposed to their discussions, which increases the irritability and social unrest. A similar scenario to the bipolar world of a few decades ago, that the small countries of the world had to oppose or embrace a system simply because of the fact that the 2 world superpowers confronted each other. The social and cultural effects of this communication practice are catastrophic, alienating cultural identity and exposing society to a banality that is assumed as a common norm.
We speak of influence as if it is a mathematical science, to more information more influence, that seems to be the premise. The influence is confused with the ability to penetrate. But in this confusion, what I believe they are neglecting beyond modes, above all and very underestimated, is the capacity of the receiver; because there is a given and clear moment in which the consumer of information realizes the narrative tactics to which one is subjected by the media he/she consumes, taking it to a point of no return of abstraction for all future interactions with that medium of communication.Producing a break and a point of no return in the habit of informative consumption of that receiver. Once you see it, you do not stop seeing it.
2017
DIÆGO ARIMAYN CAPALBO
„durch die Macht der Wahrheit habe ich als Lebender das Universum erobert"
