Search results for social capital

Science recently published a study done by its researchers in collaboration with the Information School at the University of Michigan that finds that Facebook isn’t entirely to blame for political polarization in the United States. It found that its own news feed algorithm has a small but significant effect on filtering out opposing news content for partisan users on Facebook. More importantly for the researchers, the algorithm did not have as strong an effect on filtering opposing news as users themselves. Predictably users on the far right and far left of the political spectrum filter their news content in line with confirmation bias theory.

Zenyep Tufecki already did a takedown of the sampling problems with the study. Here is the description of the sample from Science:

All Facebook users can self-report their political affiliation; 9% of U.S. users over 18 do. We mapped the top 500 political designations on a five-point, -2 (Very Liberal) to +2 (Very Conservative) ideological scale; those with no response or with responses such as “other” or “I don’t care” were not included. 46% of those who entered their political affiliation on their profiles had a response that could be mapped to this scale.

A key problem with this study is the standard problem of “selecting on the dependent variable.” By only sampling partisans, you are likely to find people who act in partisan ways when they evaluate news content. But my problem with this study runs deeper than selection bias. The study’s underlying assumption is that Facebook is simply a neutral arbiter of political information and it’s relevance is only applicable to those heavily interested in politics. In my view, Facebook’s influence runs much deeper. It changes the ways in which we relate to each other, and in turn, the ways in which we relate to the public world.

Facebook and related social media have created a seismic shift in human relations. Facebook’s platform takes conversations between friends, once regarded as “private sphere activity,” and transmutes it into what appears to be a public sphere for the purposes of serving the dictates of market capital. Facebook has created unique and powerful tools to allow individuals with the opportunity to more carefully “present themselves” to a hand picked circle of intimates (and semi-intimates). Facebook’s particular logic is connection and disclosure. More often than not, connection happens through expressive communication of feelings (pictures, observations, feelings, humor, daily affirmations, etc.). Facebook encourages us to “present ourselves” to our networks in order to form closer bonds with our friends and loved ones. It’s part of it’s business model. But we are in competition with others to gain the attention of our circle, so we are driven to use expressive discourse that is high-valence (e.g. strong attractive or aversive) content to gain the attention of others.

I argue in my 2012 book, Facebook Democracy, that Facebook constructs an architecture of disclosure that emphasizes this type of high-valence, expressive, performative communication. To Facebook, political content is simply one more set of tools we can use to “present” ourselves. If we want to use politics to connect with others, it needs to be impactful, expressive content that sends clear messages about who we are, not invitations for further conversation or clarification on public issues. This is not to say that people don’t argue on Facebook or have useful deliberative discussion, but I’d argue they do this in spite of Facebook’s goals. Argumentation or deliberation are not typically used to bring one closer to one’s friends and family.

While the personal and emotive is a key way in which we get into politics, staying engaged requires both expressive/connection based discourse and rational/deliberative discourse that encourages “listening” rather than simply “performing.” The notion that a “click through” necessarily means engagement with the ideas presented in “cross-cutting” articles suggest sharing cross-cutting/opposing articles is done in the spirit of deliberative discussion. More likely, cross-cutting articles are intended to reinforce an identity. More useful for Facebook scholars might be to look at instances where partisans are sharing cross-cutting articles and examining how they present the article. Are they presenting it and inviting mockery of it? Or are they inviting their networks into a conversation about it?

This is the key challenge that Facebook poses to democratic life. Rather than ask whether Facebook’s algorithm presents partisans with access to opposing views, we should be asking how we use political content on Facebook to present ourselves to others (and how we can do it in more productive ways). If Facebook and other media encourages expressive discourse over deliberative discourse, we run the risk of becoming a society of citizens that talk without listening.

There’s a long road to the 2016 election, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Much is being said about changing state demographics and psychographics and how it will affect the electoral map. Chris Ladd sounded the alarm in his post-2014 analysis, noting the electorally rich Blue Wall and the electorally sparse Red Fortress. Many argue that leadership can cause blue states to turn over, but the swing state math means putting a diverse set of states into play. This would mean states like Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico from the West; Iowa, Wisconsin, and Ohio from the Midwest; Virginia; and Florida.

The ideological rhetorics in #hashtaggable quips have solidified over the years to create meanings for ideological clusters. Perhaps the thorniest issue for both parties will be the size and scope of the government. Pew has been developing political typologies for about 25 years and the latest highlights political fragmentation:

The GOP is faced with two factions that want different things. The Steadfast Conservatives and Business Conservatives differ on social issues and immigration. There isn’t a core, but 2 cores that are distinct. The populist aspect of the Steadfast Conservatives can make Business Conservatives uneasy when there’s talk of going after crony capitalism and use of rhetoric like Codevilla’s “country class” versus “ruling class” dichotomy. Republicans could court Young Outsiders, but would need to moderate on social issues. The Faith & Family Left are religious and have concerns about the country’s morality, but are proponents of the social safety net, as are the Hard-Pressed Skeptics. Democrat core typologies also create factions of Solid Liberals, Next Generation Left, and the Faith & Family Left.

I think we’re guaranteed to see the Obama Administration systematically lobbing issues at the right to create tensions between Steadfast and Business Conservatives. I would surmise that part of the strategy is to get Republicans to despise their own opposing faction and set up a particularly brutal primary season with the tagline of Who Is Most Conservative? Already, the Twittersphere and punditsphere are calling into question Chris Christie or Jeb Bush’s qualifications as true conservatives. In the power struggle, it’s not as if either side will defect from the GOP (both came out or Romney in 2012 & Republican Congressional candidates in 2014). The danger is turning off the other political typologies. While Republicans made inroads with the 2014 election with respect to all of the typologies, it was without a center ring battle of what the party represents and its platform:

The Democrats might have a few more degrees of freedom with respect to strategizing in the next 20 months. They can never be a “small” or “anti” government party, but they could articulate being a “smart” government party knowing full well that they will never convince their detractors. This would allow inroads in swing states into the Next Generation Left, the Hard-Pressed Skeptics, and the Young Outsiders. Of course, a shift could occur and these political typologies might morph or dissolve with new ones forming.

It will be interesting how things shape up in 2015.

Six years ago, my wife and I moved to Fargo, North Dakota for my job at Concordia College across the Red River in Moorhead, Minnesota. Growing up in Bergen County, New Jersey, my view of the country looked a lot like the famous 1976 New Yorker cover, “View of the World from 9th Avenue.”

As a kid, a friend’s father tried to convince us that North Dakota didn’t exist (a take on the Bielefeld Conspiracy gag) and it seemed somewhat plausible. Even as I prepared to move, most of my understanding of Minnesota was informed by The Mighty Ducks and, like most people, what little I knew about North Dakota came from the Coen Brothers’ movie, Fargo. In other words, I was profoundly ignorant about the people, the culture, and the geography of our new home.

Six years later, in early June of this year, my wife and I packed up and moved back east to Saratoga Springs, NY for my new position at Skidmore College. In that time, I have had the pleasure of teaching many remarkable students and working alongside some wonderful colleagues. We have made lifelong friendships with people who are smart, progressive, and cosmopolitan, and who violate nearly all of the stereotypes of Midwesterners (except for calling soda “pop” — that’s actually real).

I’ve learned an incredible amount during these years and have come away with some perspective that I don’t think I would’ve had if I’d never left the East Coast. Here are four important things I’ve learned from living in the Midwest:

1. There is no Midwest. Ohio is different from Michigan, which is different from Minnesota. But Grand Rapids, MN in the Iron Range is also different from Minneapolis. Indeed, some of the identity of being an Iron Ranger is constructed in opposition to the culture of people from “The Cities.” While most Minnesotans and North Dakotans I know identify as Midwestern, evidence shows the percentages identifying as Midwestern are lower than for people living in Indiana. In my experience, North Dakotans especially are more likely to specify that they’re from the “Upper Midwest.”

But when it comes to understanding “the culture of the Midwest,” the divides of urban and rural, major city and small city are far more profound than the differences between Midwest and East Coast. The cultural difference between Chicago and NYC is smaller than the cultural distance from Minot, ND and St. Paul, MN. The caveat I would offer is that many urban dwellers in the Midwest are only a generation or two removed from a farm and tend to have greater familiarity with rural life than I have encountered in the East.

An important lesson to an ignorant East Coaster like myself is that “The Midwest” is far from monolithic.

2. If the American Dream is alive anywhere, it’s in the Midwest. With a little help from a 577 page surprise bestseller by a French economist with a name we’re stilling learning to pronounce correctly, we’re in the midst of a national conversation about inequality. It is now well-established that income and wealth inequalities are as great as they have been since the Gilded Age and that the extent of inequality is far greater in the U.S. than in Europe. Likewise (or perhaps consequently), the United States has much lower social mobility than Europe or Canada. Many social scientists and political figures alike fear that the toxic combination of high inequality and low social mobility seriously jeopardizes the dual promises of meritocracy and middle class prosperity that make up the American Dream.

But social scientists have also shown the United States is not uniformly unequal. As the Equality of Opportunity Project has shown, the states of the western Midwest (WI, MN, ND, SD, NE, IA, MT) are among the most equal and socially mobile in the country (see figure).

Though I grew up with it, when I go back to New York or New Jersey now, I’m stunned by both the concentrated poverty and the extreme wealth. Fargo, a city of almost 200,000, has a booming economy and one of the largest Microsoft campuses and still can’t support a Banana Republic. Meanwhile, nine of the forty-five Gucci stores in America are within 20 miles of each other in the New York area. Of course, major Midwestern cities, like Minneapolis, have greater wealth and poverty, but they simply cannot compare to the intergenerational durability of wealth and permanence of poverty in either the Northeast or, especially, the South. If the American Dream of hard work and upward mobility is alive anywhere today, it’s in the Midwest (actually, it’s in Denmark or Norway where social mobility is much greater).

3. The Midwest has a deserved chip on its shoulder. The nation’s centers of power are on the coasts. The economy and the press are in New York. The government and military are in D.C. The culture industry is in L.A. And over half the nation’s population lives within 50 miles of a coast (39% live in coastal counties representing less than 10% of the country’s land (http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html)). As a result, the Midwest (especially the Upper Midwest) is too often neglected. A snowflake falls in Midtown Manhattan and CNN flies into crisis mode. It takes serious devastation (or an absolutely massive oil boom) for the Coastal press to take notice of little ol’ North Dakota.

One of the more cringe-inducing experiences in Fargo is seeing a visiting band or comedian take the stage and make a hackneyed joke along the lines of “Wow. I’m in Fargo. It sure is cold!” And here’s the thing: the crowd eats it up! Because it’s a form of recognition. All that talk about the “real America” from the likes of Sarah Palin? Those are desperate cries that “hey, we count, too!” Especially in places like Fargo, what I’d call “place entrepreneurs” engage in active PR campaigns to show that life isn’t as bad as you think way out here (e.g., the #ilovefargo hashtag on Twitter started by a local urban promoter).

There’s a defensiveness in the region that stems from a real neglect and a feeling of disempowerment. On the other hand, it’s worth noting that feeling of disempowerment is somewhat counteracted by the highly disproportional representation that these largely low population areas have in Congress (Obamacare’s “public option,” for example, was taken out of the bill by seven Senators representing 3.6% of the U.S. population).

4. It is a Christian country in the Upper Midwest. An acquaintance, a mother of two small children, told me a story about her move from Connecticut to Fargo. She enrolled her kids in a non-religiously-affiliated day care in Fargo and when she picked them up during the middle of the day, she found that they were saying a prayer before snack time. None of the parents seemed to have a problem with it. She pointed out that in CT, the parents would have flipped out. Now, it’s not because everybody in North Dakota is a pious Christian, but because Christianity is so assumed as a part of everyday life that having a quick prayer shouldn’t bother anybody. The level of diversity in CT makes that unthinkable. As one of the chaplains at Concordia College once told me, “this is Christendom.” It does not operate at the level of aggressive evangelism (in fact, most people I knew are progressive Lutherans). Rather, Christian is taken to be the default category.

The two facts that define New York and New Jersey where I grew up are incredible diversity and extreme inequality. I grew up with a lot of secular Jews and, during the December holiday season, the schools took great pains to have as many menorahs as Santas. Like the rest of the country, all parts of the Midwest are becoming more racially and religiously diverse. So, Christendom is in decline even the Upper Midwest, but there is not the public secularity of the East or the West coasts.

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To many Midwesterners, these points may be blindingly obvious, but they are things I couldn’t see as an East Coaster. From my conversations with other coastal folk, I’m not alone. So, thank you to my Midwestern friends who put up with a loudmouthed New Jerseyan and taught me more about my country. To my East Coast friends and family, let’s try to reject that New Yorker cover vision of America.

On Monday night, Jon Stewart said something I’ve heard a lot of lately: “These people are crazy.” The “these people” in question are the Congressional Republicans who have refused to allocate appropriations or enact a continuing resolution for the 2014 fiscal year until Democrats agree to defund Obamacare. As we all know, the disturbing consequence has been the government shutdown due to get worse next week if the current debt ceiling isn’t raised. Of course, Stewart doesn’t mean that they are literally insane. Like most Lefties who use that term, he means that their ideology is radically outside the mainstream and their tactics are unusual and highly risky. But Republicans rarely use “crazy” to describe Democrats, instead using “dangerous,” “radical,” or “socialist.”

Explaining Conservatives

It seems that the world according to Democrats is more comprehensible to Republicans than vice versa (an assertion supported by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s controversial studies of the moral foundations of political views). So, in recent months, Left-leaning publications, commentators, and academics have begun to ask, What has happened to the Republican Party? Paul Krugman makes a moral claim, arguing that “an almost pathological meanspiritedness” has infected “the soul” of the GOP. Others have written about the radicalization and politicization of institutions of conservative intellectualism like the Heritage Foundation, once a legitimate think tank and now the propaganda wing of the GOP. Some commentators like Slate’s Dave Weigel and the New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza have argued that the extremism of the Republican Party stems from gerrymandering that produced disproportionately white, conservative, Christian, low population districts all too willing to elect radical anti-government congressmen. This perspective is certainly supported by a fair amount of empirical evidence showing that most of the partisan polarization of recent years is on the Republican side.

Conservative intellectuals (who tend to be more moderate) have also gotten in on the act of explaining the current crisis by pointing out the weakening of party power and the simmering resentment of “forty years of failure” in overturning the “New Deal-Great Society Leviathan.” As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat writes in an usually thoughtful op-ed, “So what you’re seeing motivating the House Intransigents today…is not just anger at a specific Democratic administration, or opposition to a specific program, or disappointment over a single electoral defeat … it’s a revolt against the long term pattern.”

What Can Sociology Tell Us?

This mad scramble to understand what’s going on in the Republican Party is reflective of the fact that we (perhaps especially sociologists) have done too little to theorize and document the dynamics of the American conservative movement. That is one of the central claims of an outstanding 2011 review by Neil Gross, Thomas Medvetz, and Rupert Russell. Here are three key take-aways from the article that can help us understand current developments:

1) Be careful defining “conservative”: Gross et al. reject three common definitions of conservative. The first sees the conservative movement as a “backlash” against progressivism (“attempting to stuff a rapidly changing American society back into the box of a white, theologically conservative small-town vision of the good”). They argue this definition assumes static definitions of progressive and conservative, which don’t match the historical reality. The second flawed definition is that conservatives are “supporters of free market capitalism” who simply exploit race and religion to secure working class support. Gross et al. claim that this definition gives short shrift to the sincerity of social claims of the conservative movement. A final definition holds that conservatives have different assumptions about human nature (it’s unchanging) and the moral order (there’s objective morality) from progressives. This definition assumes homogeneity and intellectual coherence within the movement.

Instead, they offer this definition: “conservatism is not a fixed category of belief or practice but a collective identity that evolves in the course of struggles…over meaning…” But it is an identity that is organized through social structures like social networks and formal organizations like the Republican Party or Tea Party groups. So, in analyzing the current situation, we must keep in mind that while conservatives tend to share an identity, ideology is not and never has been uniform either within the movement at any given moment or over time.

2) Framing Matters: One the main points of the article is that sociologists have not sufficiently recognized the contributions of conservative intellectuals to the movement. One of the main tasks for conservative intellectuals was to “[carve] out a viable identity for the movement” that would bridge the divide between libertarians (limited government in both fiscal and social issues) and traditionalists (social issue conservatives with free market concerns). Conservative intellectuals addressed this problem by reframing the concept of “elites” in a way that would satisfy both groups of conservatives:

“The danger in America lay not in great concentrations of wealth but in the growth of a political and cultural elite…that was more cosmopolitan than patriotic, soft on communism, driven to favor ill-fated social engineering schemes, and supportive of pernicious social trends like secularization.”

The success of this particular framing of “elites” help us understand how House Republicans would see themselves as taking a stand against elite power, while their liberal opponents also see themselves as standing up for the little guy.

3) Institutionalization Matters: As a movement almost entirely encased in the Republican Party, unlike, say, Occupy Wall Street, the American conservative movement has typically adopted electoral solutions. In other words, they’ve tried to back candidates and take control of the institutions of government. At the same time, seeking to counter “the dominance of liberal elites” in academia, the media, and policy institutes, conservative intellectuals encouraged the business community to help fund a “conservative counter-establishment.” This meant think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and media outlets like Fox News. Today, Occupy has left behind some taglines (e.g., “the 99%”), but the radical wing of the conservative movement has a powerful place in Congress. The institutionalization of conservative views in media and think tanks have shaped the prevailing ideas among the conservative movement constituents, but also helped frame debates more widely. In other words, the effort to institutionalize as succeeded.

Taken together, the American conservative movement should be seen as an ever-changing and heterogeneous movement that has adopted effective framing and has been wildly successful in institutionalizing the movement. In other words, the movement has been anything but “crazy.” Holding aside the question of whether the movement’s ideas or tactics are good for society, they have been successful at doing what all movements aim to do: gain power.

JD Hildebrant in SD Times makes the case that piracy is actually good for content providers because it serves as a “try before you buy” mechanism.   While that may or may not be true because you can’t prove a counterfactual, the ethical question remains.. “why shouldn’t content creators be compensated for their work?”  Don’t those who produce content and those who provide content have a right to monetize the web?

Critics of SOPA point to the real danger that companies could be liberal with their efforts to “take down” sites that might be violating copyright and as a result unduly dampen the exercise of free speech on the web.  The basis of the on-line protests against SOPA and PIPA was rooted largely in the belief that shutting down sites like PirateBay and BitTorrent were akin to a prior-restraint free speech violation.   An interesting study by the Oxford Internet Institute finds an emerging global internet culture that increasingly sees Internet access as a fundamental right:

But the problem arises when you define “data” as “speech.”  Indeed, most data is speech.  But just like in the US where we have tiered level of speech protection (e.g. commercial speech has less protection than political speech), it would seem fair to suggest that content creators have a right to fully monetize their product.  This is the basis of liberal capitalism.  If you create a good, you should be entitled to be compensated for your labor.  But because the Internet is oblivious to the type of data being disseminated, treating data as speech becomes a challenging nut to crack.  It is preferable to an alternative view of data as product or data as commerce.

The province of Ontario is increasing funding for 6,000 graduate students in high demand areas such as engineering, health, and environmental sciences. Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government is set to increase funding for 60,000 total students by 2015-2016.

I think this is a step in the right direction for Ontario and Canada to address the innovation and productivity gaps that plague the economy. AnnaLee Saxenian, author of Regional Advantage, examined the innovation clusters of Silicon Valley and Route 128 in Massachusetts. Historically, both are areas with strong technical universities that were generously funded during the Cold War, but what emerged in California was a culture of innovation.

“In the 1970’s both the Route 128 complex of Boston and the Silicon Valley were centers of high technology industry, but by the 1980’s the Route 128 area was stagnating while the Silicon Valley, after experiencing economics shocks, was moving ahead to become the unchallenged global leader in high technology. The difference in the two areas was not in resources or location but in their commercial culture. Route 128 firms tended to be insular and proprietary, whereas the Silicon Valley firms were open and linked by social and economic networks which enabled them to adjust to the vissitudes of market shifts.”

In today’s Toronto Star, an article on a Toronto Board of Trade report cited a need for increased regional coöperation among the economic development entities in the Greater Toronto Area. The report cites the regional transportation planning of Metrolinx as an exemplar of regional planning. I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for the development of Toronto as an innovation cluster, but I think the big challenge won’t be in terms of funding, but in terms of creating an innovative localized culture that permeates the regional institutions, including government, higher education, hospitals {in medicine and healthcare}, and business. So, I can see the Ontario Liberals touting plans to integrate their higher education policy with one for regional innovation incubation. The MPP for Toronto Centre, Glen Murray, is the Minister for Research and Innovation, which runs the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE). One on the ONE members is MaRS, an organization designed to bridge science, government, and business, which the Ontario Liberals have committed funding to::

“To continue to foster that environment, Murray announced a $2.25 million commitment over the next three years for MaRS so that it may continue its mandate to foster innovation in Toronto by harnessing expertise from across academic and business sectors to aid in launching and developing companies. MaRS will become one of 14 centres in the province-wide ‘Network of Excellence’ being built to foster innovation.”

Toronto is a confluence of different types of capital and global flows, with high levels of educational attainment, being a landing area for immigration, serving as a financial centre, and being a hub for the culture industries. What I’ve been reading is that much of Canada’s innovation occurs in extraverted industry clusters, which would tend to dilute regional advantages that take advantage of localized networks. The exception being the entertainment and culture industries. What I don’t know is what the business culture is like in innovative sectors in Ontario–is it more like California {informal, open, networked, greater mobility} or Massachusetts {formal, closed, hierarchical, and path dependent} in the 70s and 80s? The stakes are high, given the state of the economy and hopes pinned on innovation for future growth in GDP and jobs, which Murray is keenly aware of::

It’s been two weeks since I returned from Port-au-Prince.  I’ve been using the term “grim” to describe conditions there.  As the official tropical storm/hurricane season draws to a close next week, the sigh of relief I’ve been waiting to exhale is on hold.  Instead of a threat from hurricane force winds and flooding and mudslides, the 1.3 million residents of tent camps face a cholera epidemic.

Ansel Herz of Inter Press News reports that heath workers are scrambling to bar cholera from the crowded camps in and around Port-au-Prince.  As of yesterday, at least 160 people have died in the central Artibonite region, according to Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian arm of Partners in Health.

Cholera, a waterborne bacterium, stands to devastate the camps by contaminating the drinking supply.  The Haitian government says that the bacterium can incubate in the human body for days and rapidly cause death by dehydration.  Spokespersons from the Pan American Health Organization said Friday that laboratory tests had confirmed the outbreak.

Acting like generals responding to an invasion by hostile forces, authorities have sped medical personnel to St. Marc, about 70 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, where a single hospital is overwhelmed with cholera patients.  Villagers from remote areas are sprawled on the floors, intravenous lines in their arms.  In the meantime, patients queue up outside the gates.

In a blog post by Partners in Health Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee called cholera “a disease of poverty” (80 percent of Haitians live in poverty).  She asserted that loans from the Inter-American Development Bank meant for the development of a public water supply in the affected region were blocked on political grounds during the tenure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The background section of the the PIH website, relates how the “dire” public health situation in recent years was worsened by a U.S.-backed embargo against the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and then by the coup that drove him from office.  Further, “dismal health outcomes are especially pronounced in Haiti’s rural interior, where deforestation, erosion, and lack of infrastructure have crippled the agricultural economy.”  The region supports only 10 percent of the population, but they are the poorest people in the nation, a condition that makes them a perfect target for cholera.

The disease is transmitted by drinking water contaminated by the feces of infected persons.  Only ten percent of those drinking such contaminated water come down with the disease.

Back in the capital of Port-au-Prince, Herz reports that it is not clear that prevention measures have been implemented.  Mark Snyder, a development worker with International Action Ties, has not seen “any general information distributed on the streets or in the camps at this time.”  Snyder pointed out that the U.N. peacekeepers patrol the streets to provide security, not to supply information.

So, while smaller storms have harassed the camp residents, the feared hurricane season is taking second place to the specter of a cholera epidemic.

What can you do to help?  Organize an event to show solidarity with the Haitian people.  Donate to Partners in Health, http://www.pih.org/ or Konpay, http://www.konpay.org/, a Haitian organization that “builds networks and collaborations so that technology and expertise can be shared and used to strengthen Haitian solutions to social, environmental and economic problems.”

It’s been two weeks since I returned from Port-au-Prince.  I’ve been using the term “grim” to describe conditions there.  As the official tropical storm/hurricane season draws to a close next week, the sigh of relief I’ve been waiting to exhale is on hold.  Instead of a threat from hurricane force winds and flooding and mudslides, the 1.3 million residents of tent camps face a cholera epidemic.

Ansel Herz of Inter Press News reports that heath workers are scrambling to bar cholera from the crowded camps in and around Port-au-Prince.  As of yesterday, at least 160 people have died in the central Artibonite region, according to Zanmi Lasante, the Haitian arm of Partners in Health.

Cholera, a waterborne bacterium, stands to devastate the camps by contaminating the drinking supply.  The Haitian government says that the bacterium can incubate in the human body for days and rapidly cause death by dehydration.  Spokespersons from the Pan American Health Organization said Friday that laboratory tests had confirmed the outbreak.

Acting like generals responding to an invasion by hostile forces, authorities have sped medical personnel to St. Marc, about 70 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince, where a single hospital is overwhelmed with cholera patients.  Villagers from remote areas are sprawled on the floors, intravenous lines in their arms.  In the meantime, patients queue up outside the gates.

In a blog post by Partners in Health Chief Medical Officer Joia Mukherjee called cholera “a disease of poverty” (80 percent of Haitians live in poverty).  She asserted that loans from the Inter-American Development Bank meant for the development of a public water supply in the affected region were blocked on political grounds during the tenure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The background section of the the PIH website, relates how the “dire” public health situation in recent years was worsened by a U.S.-backed embargo against the elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and then by the coup that drove him from office.  Further, “dismal health outcomes are especially pronounced in Haiti’s rural interior, where deforestation, erosion, and lack of infrastructure have crippled the agricultural economy.”  The region supports only 10 percent of the population, but they are the poorest people in the nation, a condition that makes them a perfect target for cholera.

The disease is transmitted by drinking water contaminated by the feces of infected persons.  Only ten percent of those drinking such contaminated water come down with the disease.

Back in the capital of Port-au-Prince, Herz reports that it is not clear that prevention measures have been implemented.  Mark Snyder, a development worker with International Action Ties, has not seen “any general information distributed on the streets or in the camps at this time.”  Snyder pointed out that the U.N. peacekeepers patrol the streets to provide security, not to supply information.

So, while smaller storms have harassed the camp residents, the feared hurricane season is taking second place to the specter of a cholera epidemic.

What can you do to help?  Organize an event to show solidarity with the Haitian people.  Donate to Partners in Health, http://www.pih.org/ or Konpay, http://www.konpay.org/, a Haitian organization that “builds networks and collaborations so that technology and expertise can be shared and used to strengthen Haitian solutions to social, environmental and economic problems.”

Crossposed on rhizomicon.

The Hitler “rant” meme has been around for a few years, but recently it has been targeted on YouTube for copyright violations thanks to a new YouTube tool, Content ID. The original content is from The Downfall/Der Untergang {2004}, a German language film about the last days of Hitler.  The above video is an example of the meme and takes a few good jabs at the recent spate of copyright takedowns. Knowyourmeme has posted a video on how to resist these copyright “trollings”.

Exceptions to copyright infringement often hinge upon arguments to allow critique and creativity. While a Hitler parody may not be “high art” and many would scoff at its creativity, where should the lines be drawn? Old media rules of intellectual property are all about the property and gaining revenue streams from property right. Like it or not, those days are over and deep pockets for lawyers notwithstanding, taking that approach is in the long run futile. The music industry is slowly learning that the music is the loss leader. The real money is in touring, merch., licensing, and capitalizing on the relationship with the fanbase. Filesharing can feed the new model by providing an avenue to cut through the clutter.

So, how to deal with all of this “new” media stuff {which isn’t all that new nowadays} and social media when you’re trying to make a buck. Well, I’ve actually seen The Downfall. It’s pretty good, but not for everyone. If I were Constantin Film or advising them this is what I would tell them to do::

1. Get the film on a site like The Auteurs, which allows Internet pay-per-view
2. Use the parody videos to market the film on Internet PPV & DVD and capitalize on the ongoing buzz
3. Use inline ads on YouTube to get users to view/purchase

Everybody wins. Creative mashups live on. Low-cost marketing can drive additional revenues, albeit in dribs and drabs, but why leave those dollars on the table? What kind of capitalists are you?

While some in entertainment might balk at the idea of work being repurposed and parodies may do violence to the “brand”, don’t we live in an era of the death of the author.

Song:: Beastie Boys-‘Cookie Puss’

Twitterversion:: “Hitler rant” meme takedowns in force, but why not leverage the buzz, remarket, & allow creative expression?#ThickCulture @Prof_K

I found this YouTube video from the UK to be interesting, as it shows a young person trying to sort out politics and questioning democracy in light of the media and capitalism. The video description by Annika sets up the current situation in the UK {from 2 January 2010}::

“Only 76% of Brits bother to vote. Even worse, only 54% of Americans vote.

The present Parliament which first met on 11 May 2005 is scheduled to expire at midnight on 10 May 2010. The next United Kingdom general election is due to take place on or before Thursday 3 June 2010. The governing Labour Party will be looking to secure a fourth consecutive term in office and to restore support lost since 1997. The Conservative Party will seek to regain its dominant position in politics after losses in the 1990s, and to replace Labour as the governing party. The Liberal Democrats hope to make gains from both sides; although they too would ideally wish to form a government, their more realistic ambition is to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.”

The distrust of the institutions of political parties is an issue in the US, Canada, and the UK, which causes Annika to discount the rhetoric, as well as the spin by the institution of the media. My concerns are that the political institutions and infotainment are turning people off of politics.

While the use of social media, such as YouTube and what Annika is doing, can decentralize information dissemination and foster dialog, does the attention economy bring us right back to large numbers of people going to “destination websites” and what does this do to the signal-to-noise ratio? Also, how can social media be used to foster civil discourse and the exchange of ideas, as opposed to shouting at each other?

While some may think Annika’s thoughts about democracy to be rather cynical, I think it’s a good point of departure for politicians to address the issue of why democracy does matter despite the influence of media and capitalism that can serve to make citizens feel as though it doesn’t. Particularly in the midst of the Big Recession, where government is the bearer of bad news regardless of ideological leaning.

Twitterversion:: Politics & distrust of political parties and media’s influence. Can democracy be made salient? Can true dialog be fostered by social media? #ThickCulture @Prof_K
Song:: Sparklehorse-‘Getting It Wrong’