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Little Messages That Matter, Part 1
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...a talk on literacy, democracy, blogging, and Twitter, by Ken Smith. The April 6, 2010 Lundquist Lecture at Indiana University South Bend.
A study of some examples of little messages that were meant to matter in the public sphere -- the postcards left on the streets of Berlin in 1941-2 in protest against the Nazi government and the tweets that helped break open the Trafigura/Ivory Coast super-injunction in Britain in 2009. Building on work by Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and Dave Winer, this talk considers the social conditions that are necessary for one's literacy to become a force of active citizenship.
Topics in Part 1
0:00 — A very basic introduction to Twitter and blogging.
2:00 — Twitter hashtag for the talk: #lundq
2:38 — Focus of the talk: literacy as it becomes powerful in the public sphere. Dr. Rusnock’s 4/6/10 letter in the NY Times.
3:35 — The three movements of the talk: contexts of literacy, two cases (Hampel, Trafigura), consequences.
3:55 — Language like a coin vs. language requiring interpretation. The problem and bounty of interpretation.
5:05 — Whitman’s poem, “A Font of Type,” helps us distinguish between the very literal medium and the far-ranging human expression and interpretation it supports and requires.
6:45 — Literacy and acts of public speech when they take place in realms of power. The slave auction and its many participants, each involved very differently in the speech and writing presented in the image.
8:10 — Frederick Douglass as an example. The bill of sale that named him as property and against which he could not speak.
8:42 — Learning to read from Mrs. Auld. Mr. Auld forbids it and explains why. Douglass learns from Mr. Auld the role of literacy in creating personal authority and autonomy, thus the hope for ending his enslavement.
10:25 — Colonel Lloyd traps one of his slaves in a roadside conversation, discovers the man’s opinions of his enslavements, and goes on to punish him. The preference of the powerful for the silence of others. The structure of society may not be welcoming of public speech even for those who are literate.
11:55 — Douglass is asked what he would do if he were president.
13:25 — Interpreting Douglass’s answer. His preference for public exchange rather than silencing and domination of contesting voices, in a context that offers some protections for speech by law and other social structures.
14:25 — Singlejack Little Books, a series about work in the United States, and their manifesto. The need for having one’s life and identity recognized by the wider society, but the realization that being literate in itself is no guarantee of achieving that. Literacy is essential for democracy but requires other social structures and connections to empower it fully.
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Little Messages That Matter, Part 2
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...a talk on literacy, democracy, blogging, and Twitter, by Ken Smith. The April 6, 2010 Lundquist Lecture at Indiana University South Bend.
A study of some examples of little messages that were meant to matter in the public sphere -- the postcards left on the streets of Berlin in 1941-2 in protest against the Nazi government and the tweets that helped break open the Trafigura/Ivory Coast super-injunction in Britain in 2009. Building on work by Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and Dave Winer, this talk considers the social conditions that are necessary for one's literacy to become a force of active citizenship.
Topics in Part 2
0:00 — German novelist Hans Fallada writes about a Gestapo file in 1946, in a novel recently published in English as Every Man Dies Alone. The story of Elise and Otto Hampel, fictionalized, but the true story of a working class couple that becomes disenchanted with the Nazi government after the loss of a brother in the conquest of France. They seek a way to protest in Berlin in 1940. They decide to leave postcards with messages of protest in the streets. Some film versions of the story exist too.
2:50 — Nazi propaganda postcards provide a context for the Hampels’ postcard protest. One postcard celebrated the Nazi party rally planned for September 2, 1939.
4:35 — W. H. Auden writes about the need for brave voices at the same moment in his poem, “September 1, 1939,” composed in the first few days after the Nazi invasion of Poland on that date, starting World War II.
5:45 — An actual postcard left by Otto Hampel on the streets of Berlin. Along with a call for a free press and condemnation of Nazi leaders, the card calls for the German people to believe in themselves. This echoes the understanding of literacy and autonomy of the individual found in parts of the Frederick Douglass story.
6:20 — The Hampels’ mug shots from the Gestapo file. Roland Freisler, who helped corrupt the German legal system on behalf of Nazi goals and values. Freisler presided over the People’s Court, the site of major Nazi show trials, where he was filmed in action, frequently screaming at great length at defendants. Again, the powerful are greatly attracted by the chance to silence others.
8:50 — Plotzensee Prison, where many of Freisler’s victims were executed. The room itself, with hooks for hanging and a guillotine. Elise and Otto Hampel were murdered in this room.
9:25 — Literacy and public speech at times completely overwhelmed by the power structure of the society. At least in this case we must recall the assertion by the Hampels of their own right to speak.
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Little Messages That Matter, Part 3
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A study of some examples of little messages that were meant to matter in the public sphere -- the postcards left on the streets of Berlin in 1941-2 in protest against the Nazi government and the tweets that helped break open the Trafigura/Ivory Coast super-injunction in Britain in 2009. Building on work by Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and Dave Winer, this talk considers the social conditions that are necessary for one's literacy to become a force of active citizenship.
Topics in Part 3
0:00 — Elise and Otto Hampel tried to use little messages to reach out and speak out, but without any known success. Now, a case where the not-so-different little messages of Twitter made a difference.
0:20 — Trafigura, an international corporation, introduced.
1:00 — The difficulty of disposing of petroleum by-products on the Probo Koala in 2006. The Ivory Coast is selected for the site of disposal. Some international coverage of the effects of the disposal on the local population. The challenges of protesting against a corporation working from several parts of the planet.
2:30 — The story of the Minton report on the likely contents of the ship. Trafigura seeks to keep the report secret and secures a “super-injunction” preventing publication of the report.
3:30 — The workings of the super-injunction, where the names of the plaintiffs are suppressed. The penalties for disobeying the injunction. The restrictions: not only forbidding publication of or about the Minton report, but also any mention of the injunction itself.
5:00 — MP Paul Farrelly asks about superinjuctions, including this one, during the regular workings of Parliament. His question is published in the Hansard, the daily record of Parliament, on the web.
5:55 — The Guardian seeks to publish the Minton report, now that its existence has been revealed in the Hansard, based on the precedent established by John Wilkes and others that verbatim reports of parliamentary debates may be published by newspapers. Carter-Ruck, the law firm representing Trafigura, writes the Guardian and asserts that the injunction is still completely binding upon them, forbidding any mention of the report or the injunction.
7:00 — Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger composes a tweet lamenting that the paper is prevented from reporting on Parliament for reasons that cannot be disclosed. He links to a witty report listing all the things the journalists cannot discuss in this case.
8:35 — Richard Wilson follows up on Rusbridger’s tweet with a search of the Hansard, locates Farrelly’s question, and posts it on Twitter, setting off an Internet-based search for information about Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, the Ivory Coast episode, and more. The secret of the injunction is out, widely published on an informal network of blogs and Twitter posts within hours.
10:10 — The injunction collapses and the Minton report is published by the Guardian within days. The new tools for publishing, not used in isolation but as part of a social web that includes traditional institutions, invite wider citizen participation and disrupt to some degree the imbalance of power familiar to us in many episodes of contemporary life.
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Little Messages That Matter, Part 4
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...a talk on literacy, democracy, blogging, and Twitter, by Ken Smith. The April 6, 2010 Lundquist Lecture at Indiana University South Bend.
A study of some examples of little messages that were meant to matter in the public sphere -- the postcards left on the streets of Berlin in 1941-2 in protest against the Nazi government and the tweets that helped break open the Trafigura/Ivory Coast super-injunction in Britain in 2009. Building on work by Clay Shirky, Jay Rosen, and Dave Winer, this talk considers the social conditions that are necessary for one's literacy to become a force of active citizenship.
Topics in Part 4
0:00 — Newspapers closing or struggling in part because of a loss of younger readers. Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor, discusses the declining interest in “this business of words on paper.”
2:10 — Jay Rosen of NYU defines “citizen journalism.” The possibility that the term “audience” is no longer right for those who use new web publishing tools to speak to and inform one another.
4:10 — A quick look at some of those tools, some shaped by computer data processing and others shaped by tags given and judgments made by human readers. Automated delivery of information shaped by either of these two means. Web publishing itself now no more complex than sending an email.
7:55 — Facebook and other tools invite us to consider whether we are using the web for our private or public lives. Educators should teach the difference between these two sets of goals.
8:45 — As Dave Winer and Jay Rosen have discussed, computers not only perform fabulous computations, but they also extend the power of our senses and the reach of our voices. But they also create completely new opportunities for social affiliation, as Clay Shirky has explored in much depth.
10:35 — Flash mobs as affiliation. Some examples, including the Minsk October Square episode Shirky has discussed in the context of dictatorship: “the problem with the group eating ice cream isn’t the ice cream; it’s the group.” The Philadelphia youth flash mobs considered as a political protest by an underemployed group. Another example of public speech not sufficiently woven into a broader social web of speech and institution to make a difference?
14:15 — How does a university accommodate itself to these new tools, with their far-reaching implications? One new blogger, Alex Trembath, describes the social space he inhabits with the help of these tools for citizenship. What models of literacy, active citizenship, and democracy should we aim for in order to acknowledge not just the existence of social media but the contexts they create and the affiliations they require to rise above the trivial and the personal to become messages, admittedly little messages, that matter?
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