I love it when class topics overlap completely by accident! This week in Intro to Feminist Theory, the group presenting tied the readings to the news coverage of Egyptian protests, the internet kill-switch, and the visibility of women. Given the overlap with Anna Everett's "Digital Women: The Case of the Million Woman March Online and on Television" I want to focus on this chapter within Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace.
Everett uses this chapter to explore the scant television coverage allotted for the 1997 Million Woman March on Philadelphia compared to the reports coming from the internet. I think it's important to keep the historical and technological timing of this disparity at the forefront of our understanding; the internet was not nearly as commonplace in everyday life in 1997 as it is now or even over the course of the past ten years. We had been debating interactive media and social networking's efficacy in motivating people. We ended up differentiating between its ability to ignite versus maintain a movement and how to assess exactly what these ideas suggest about internet technologies in motivating a movement. Frankly, at this point in time, I am very skeptical at the success rate of a predominantly technologized movement because for every amazing thing I see people getting out and doing on the internet (I'm thinking flash mob videos for whatever reason), I am met with a resounding vacuum of apathy expressed by students, colleagues, etc. Enter A.E. with an example of how the internet could at one time do amazing things by connecting people and providing a genuine alternative to the mass media.
So during the Million Woman March, CNN gave it hardly any air time (between 1-3 minutes per half hour) and predominantly ran the same snippets of footage. Not only did it cease to update, but it took a sensationalized angle regarding drugs in the black community instead of focusing on the major points expressed by the group. Frequently, the news reported 300,000-500,000 participants while other sources suggested that it was more like 1.5 million. Additionally, the reporters were all white and the information presented did not take into account the Afrikan perspective. Participants were shocked by the lackluster and limited presentation of the television news media, especially contrasted to the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement and the Million Man March coverage in previous years. Granted, the representations put forth on TV in those examples still struggled to convey full disclosure of the groups' motivations, but the presence was there. A.E. also mentions that the public and domestic spheres in representations of women have never justly demonstrated a women's roles. She argues that this invisibility to white eyes is what allowed so many black women to seize such dramatic, active roles in the civil rights movement (54).
To compete with this willful blindness toward black women gathering and fighting for their rights, the Million Woman March actively sought video footage, photographs, and personal stories in order to self-construct the memories of this event. Women who were in support of the event but unable to participate physically searched the news networks for coverage, but could only see the stilted and minor footage already discussed. Instead, people started to run their own commentary about the news media's crappy coverage of this important event. It is in this way that the internet really becomes a site for "black women's dissenting voices and cultural image" in order to disrupt mainstream media's occlusions of black women's difficult realities (73).
Cut to the monumental presence of women protesting in Egypt and the coverage of this event. Granted, given the global representations, this topic is even more troublesome than the Million Woman March because the levels of mistranslated information, misunderstandings regarding historical, social, and cultural aspects to these events, and misuse of the imagery coming from the streets. There is a lot to consider when attempting to empathize or access an affective connection to the struggles and outrage of the Egyptian people. Can we expect any semblance of truthful reporting to come out of the notoriously biased news media? Can we expect anything better from a highly corporatized internet? Andrejevic has made me incredibly dubious of Facebook's ability to connect beyond the superficial or supersocial levels and the amount of data collecting to me suggests that our political actions on the web will one day be used against us. Hells bells, didn't that teacher get fired for calling her students a bunch of germ bags in a blog; that is a far stretch from saying that the president is doing a bad job and should be deposed. And the "temporary" aspect to temporary autonomous zone is disconcerting - it seems that we assumed the autonomy of the internet is permanent and that is part of why it is so easy for corporations and bigger thought entities to move in and take over these spaces. Creativity was such a huge part of the feeling of belonging, I worry that the combustive energy inherent to a revolution will be rerouted for some capitalistic goal. I know this is a negative way to approach the internet's potential, but I just feel like there are some serious issues with the people using the technology and until some systemic analysis and self-awareness or reflexivity occurs in a major way, the power of the medium and the message are both squandered.
Everett uses this chapter to explore the scant television coverage allotted for the 1997 Million Woman March on Philadelphia compared to the reports coming from the internet. I think it's important to keep the historical and technological timing of this disparity at the forefront of our understanding; the internet was not nearly as commonplace in everyday life in 1997 as it is now or even over the course of the past ten years. We had been debating interactive media and social networking's efficacy in motivating people. We ended up differentiating between its ability to ignite versus maintain a movement and how to assess exactly what these ideas suggest about internet technologies in motivating a movement. Frankly, at this point in time, I am very skeptical at the success rate of a predominantly technologized movement because for every amazing thing I see people getting out and doing on the internet (I'm thinking flash mob videos for whatever reason), I am met with a resounding vacuum of apathy expressed by students, colleagues, etc. Enter A.E. with an example of how the internet could at one time do amazing things by connecting people and providing a genuine alternative to the mass media.
So during the Million Woman March, CNN gave it hardly any air time (between 1-3 minutes per half hour) and predominantly ran the same snippets of footage. Not only did it cease to update, but it took a sensationalized angle regarding drugs in the black community instead of focusing on the major points expressed by the group. Frequently, the news reported 300,000-500,000 participants while other sources suggested that it was more like 1.5 million. Additionally, the reporters were all white and the information presented did not take into account the Afrikan perspective. Participants were shocked by the lackluster and limited presentation of the television news media, especially contrasted to the 1950s and 60s civil rights movement and the Million Man March coverage in previous years. Granted, the representations put forth on TV in those examples still struggled to convey full disclosure of the groups' motivations, but the presence was there. A.E. also mentions that the public and domestic spheres in representations of women have never justly demonstrated a women's roles. She argues that this invisibility to white eyes is what allowed so many black women to seize such dramatic, active roles in the civil rights movement (54).
To compete with this willful blindness toward black women gathering and fighting for their rights, the Million Woman March actively sought video footage, photographs, and personal stories in order to self-construct the memories of this event. Women who were in support of the event but unable to participate physically searched the news networks for coverage, but could only see the stilted and minor footage already discussed. Instead, people started to run their own commentary about the news media's crappy coverage of this important event. It is in this way that the internet really becomes a site for "black women's dissenting voices and cultural image" in order to disrupt mainstream media's occlusions of black women's difficult realities (73).
Cut to the monumental presence of women protesting in Egypt and the coverage of this event. Granted, given the global representations, this topic is even more troublesome than the Million Woman March because the levels of mistranslated information, misunderstandings regarding historical, social, and cultural aspects to these events, and misuse of the imagery coming from the streets. There is a lot to consider when attempting to empathize or access an affective connection to the struggles and outrage of the Egyptian people. Can we expect any semblance of truthful reporting to come out of the notoriously biased news media? Can we expect anything better from a highly corporatized internet? Andrejevic has made me incredibly dubious of Facebook's ability to connect beyond the superficial or supersocial levels and the amount of data collecting to me suggests that our political actions on the web will one day be used against us. Hells bells, didn't that teacher get fired for calling her students a bunch of germ bags in a blog; that is a far stretch from saying that the president is doing a bad job and should be deposed. And the "temporary" aspect to temporary autonomous zone is disconcerting - it seems that we assumed the autonomy of the internet is permanent and that is part of why it is so easy for corporations and bigger thought entities to move in and take over these spaces. Creativity was such a huge part of the feeling of belonging, I worry that the combustive energy inherent to a revolution will be rerouted for some capitalistic goal. I know this is a negative way to approach the internet's potential, but I just feel like there are some serious issues with the people using the technology and until some systemic analysis and self-awareness or reflexivity occurs in a major way, the power of the medium and the message are both squandered.
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