Thanks all, for the helpful pointers. I read each of the suggested texts, at least in part. Here's a summary: Heather Marsh (Concentric groups, knowledge bridges and epistemic communities); Chris Kelty (Two bits, recursive publics); Anthony Cohen (Symbolic construction of community); Sebastian Benthall (Weird Twitter); and Michael Warner (Publics and counterpublics).
I posted a broader definition of "self-determined publics" to Air-L, one that allows formal boundary criteria (styles of communication, media, etc.) in addition to topical criteria. As Jack Harris notes, this broader definition would cover the Occupy movement (OccupySandy): http://listserv.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l-aoir.org/2013-July/028326.html Which got me thinking it would also cover the community of a mailing list, or of Twitter, and that this would be inconsistent. I think we can speak correctly of a self-determined public *on the topic* of Weird Twitter, but not *in the form* of weird, or *in the form* of Twitter. Restricting the public to a given form necessarily restricts access, which makes it less of a public. The weird form in particular seems more appropriate to the definition of a counterpublic (Warner). And Twitter is an external authority, something to which no self- -determined public may be bound. So I think I was wrong here and I shouldn't have introduced formal boundaries; publics are better identified by topical criteria. I constructed a prototype of a "boundary proclamation", or what I call in this case a "public mirror". Here's the front of the mirror where the public's image is reflected: http://www.reddit.com/r/MirMir/new/ The topic there is "mirroring and the self-determination of publics"; I'm thinking it might be possible to bootstrap one of these things. Mike > Folks, > > Below I define what I call "self-determined publics". Has anything > similar been attempted before? > > A self-determined public is an open, topical community that > proclaims the definitive bounds of its own communications. The > proclamation takes the form of a timely sequence of references > (e.g. web links) each pointing to a communication of the public, > such that all references together define the total of that public's > communications in time and space. For example: > > Ago Place Title (click to visit thread) > ------- --------- ------------------------------------------ > 17 min r/Foo How do we attach the doohickey? > 5 hr Foo-L The problem with so and so's proposal. > 1 day FuBarz Who are these Foos, anyway? > 1 day r/Foo This, that, and the next thing. > 2 days FooStack What's the best thingamy for such and such? > . . . and so on > > The boundary proclamation is similar in form to a conventional news > feed. It concerns a specific topic or category. Differences are > in a) the exclusion of mass communications, b) the claim to > totality, and c) the self-determination that redeems that claim. > (a) A principle criterion for inclusion is that one may immediately > join any of the referenced communications as a peer. One-way, mass > communications are excluded. > > (b) The boundary proclamation claims to cover the entire public > discussion of the topic across all communication media and sites. > It claims to be the most complete, accurate and timely overview of > the extended discussion that is available anywhere. > > (c) This claim is redeemed by the public members themselves who > submit the references, self-organize the necessary labour, and > self-constitute the necessary government. No aspect of this > redeeming self-determination is controlled by an external > authority. > > > I'm looking for brief pointers, please. I don't know of any actual > implementations of this, or projects that are working on it. I'll > share what's found. > > -- > Michael Allan > > Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 > http://zelea.com/ -- Liberationtech list is public and archives are searchable on Google. Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at compa...@stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
