-------- Original Message -------- Subject: <unlike-us> please fwd: Invitation to Join the Unlike Us Research Network on Social Media Research & Alternatives Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2012 15:07:16 +0200 From: Geert Lovink <[email protected]> To: [email protected]
Unlike Us: Understanding Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives Invitation to join the Unlike Us network (a series of events, a reader, workshops, online debates, campaigns etc.) The aim of Unlike Us is to establish and maintain a research network of artists, designers, scholars, activists and programmers who work on 'alternatives in social media'. Through workshops, conferences, online dialogues and publications, Unlike Us intends to both analyze the economic and cultural aspects of dominant social media platforms and to propagate the further development and proliferation of alternative, decentralized social media software. Unlike Us has two aims: 1. To study online social networks and to debate and dissiminate critical research into this field. 2. To promote and further develop alternatives in social networks. If you want to join the Unlike Us network, start your own initiatives in this field or hook up what you have already been doing for ages please subcribe to the email list. Traffic is modest. List info:http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/unlike-us_listcultures.org Website: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/unlikeus/ Videos of the UU#2 Amsterdam event: http://vimeo.com/album/1774005 Please keep in mind that you can only contribute to this email list if you are subscribed and post from the email address you have used to subscribe to the list. Background Whether or not we are in the midst of internet bubble 2.0, we can all agree that social media dominate internet and mobile use. The emergence of web-based user to user services, driven by an explosion of informal dialogues, continuous uploads and user generated content have greatly empowered the rise of participatory culture. At the same time, monopoly power, commercialization and commodification are also on the rise with just a handful of social media platforms dominating the social web. These two contradictory processes – both the facilitation of free exchanges and the commercial exploitation of social relationships – seem to lie at the heart of contemporary capitalism. On the one hand new media create and expand the social spaces through which we interact, play and even politicize ourselves; on the other hand they are literally owned by three or four companies that have phenomenal power to shape such interaction. Whereas the hegemonic Internet ideology promises open, decentralized systems, why do we, time and again, find ourselves locked into closed corporate environments? Why are individual users so easily charmed by these 'walled gardens'? Do we understand the long-term costs that society will pay for the ease of use and simple interfaces of their beloved 'free' services? The accelerated growth and scope of Facebook’s social space, for example, is unheard of. Facebook claims to have 700 million users, ranks in the top two or three first destination sites on the Web worldwide and is valued at 50 billion US dollars. Its users willingly deposit a myriad of snippets of their social life and relationships on a site that invests in an accelerated play of sharing and exchanging information. We all befriend, rank, recommend, create circles, upload photos, videos and update our status. A myriad of (mobile) applications orchestrate this offer of private moments in a virtual public, seamlessly embedding the online world in users’ everyday life. Yet despite its massive user base, the phenomena of online social networking remains fragile. Just think of the fate of the majority of social networking sites. Who has ever heard of Friendster? The death of Myspace has been looming on the horizon for quite some time. The disappearance of Twitter and Facebook – and Google, for that matter – is only a masterpiece of software away. This means that the protocological future is not stationary but allows space for us to carve out a variety of techno-political interventions. Unlike Us is developed in the spirit of RSS-inventor and uberblogger Dave Winer whose recent Blork project is presented as an alternative for ‘corporate blogging silos’. But instead of repeating the entrepreneurial-start-up-transforming-into-corporate-behemoth formula, isn't it time to reinvent the internet as a truly independent public infrastructure that can effectively defend itself against corporate domination and state control? Agenda Going beyond the culture of complaint about our ignorance and loss of privacy, the proposed network of artists, scholars, activists and media folks will ask fundamental and overarching questions about how to tackle these fast-emerging monopoly powers. Situated within the existing oligopoly of ownership and use, this inquiry will include the support of software alternatives and related artistic practices and the development of a common alternative vision of how the techno- social world might be mediated. Without falling into the romantic trap of some harmonious offline life, Unlike Us asks what sort of network architectures could be designed that contribute to ‘the common’, understood as a shared resource and system of collective production that supports new forms of social organizations (such as organized networks) without mining for data to sell. What aesthetic tactics could effectively end the expropriation of subjective and private dimensions that we experience daily in social networks? Why do we ignore networks that refuse the (hyper)growth model and instead seek to strengthen forms of free cooperation? Turning the tables, let's code and develop other 'network cultures' whose protocols are no longer related to the logic of 'weak ties'. What type of social relations do we want to foster and discover in the 21st century? Imagine dense, diverse networked exchanges between billions of people, outside corporate and state control. Imagine discourses returning subjectivities to their 'natural' status as open nodes based on dialogue and an ethics of free exchange. To a large degree social media research is still dominated by quantitative and social scientific endeavors. So far the focus has been on moral panics, privacy and security, identity theft, self- representation from Goffman to Foucault and graph-based network theory that focuses on influencers and (news) hubs. What is curiously missing from the discourse is a rigorous discussion of the political economy of these social media monopolies. There is also a substantial research gap in understanding the power relations between the social and the technical in what are essentially software systems and platforms. With this initiative, we want to shift focus away from the obsession with youth and usage to the economic, political, artistic and technical aspects of these online platforms. What we first need to acknowledge is social media's double nature. Dismissing social media as neutral platforms with no power is as implausible as considering social media the bad boys of capitalism. The beauty and depth of social media is that they call for a new understanding of classic dichotomies such as commercial/political, private/public, users/producers, artistic/ standardised, original/copy, democratising/ disempowering. Instead of taking these dichotomies as a point of departure, we want to scrutinise the social networking logic. Even if Twitter and Facebook implode overnight, the social networking logic of befriending, liking and ranking will further spread across all aspects of life. The proposed research agenda is at once a philosophical, epistemological and theoretical investigation of knowledge artifacts, cultural production and social relations and an empirical investigation of the specific phenomenon of monopoly social media. Methodologically we will use the lessons learned from theoretical research activities to inform practice-oriented research, and vice- versa. Unlike Us is a common initiative of the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam University of Applied Science HvA) and the Cyprus University of Technology in Lemasol. An online network and a reader connected to a series of events initially in Amsterdam and Cyprus (early 2012) are already in planning. We would explicitly like to invite other partners to come on board who identify with the spirit of this proposal, to organize related conferences, festivals, workshops, temporary media labs and barcamps (where coders come together) with us. The reader (tentatively planned as number 8 in the Reader series published by the INC) will be produced mid-late 2012. The call for contributions to the network, the reader and the event series goes out in July 2011, followed by the publicity for the first events and other initiatives by possible new partners. Topics of Investigation The events, online platform, reader and other outlets may include the following topics inviting theoretical, empirical, practical and art- based contributions, though not every event or publication might deal with all issues. We anticipate the need for specialized workshops and barcamps. 1. Political Economy: Social Media Monopolies 2. The Private in the Public 3. Visiting the Belly of the Beast 4. Artistic Responses to Social Media 5. Designing culture: representation and software 6. Software Matters: Sociotechnical and Algorithmic Cultures 7. Genealogies of Social Networking Sites 8. Is Research Doomed? 9. Researching Unstable Ontologies 10. Making Sense of Data: Visualization and Critique 11. Pitfalls of Building Social Media Alternatives 12. Showcasing Alternatives in Social Media 13. Social Media Activism and the Critique of Liberation Technology 14. Social Media in the Middle East and Beyond 15. Data storage: social media and legal cultures Contact details: Geert Lovink ([email protected]) Korinna Patelis ([email protected] / [email protected]) _______________________________________________ unlike-us mailing list [email protected] http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/unlike-us_listcultures.org _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list [email protected] Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. 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