It took over 150 days for the California Legislature to hammer out an agreement to fill a 40 plus billion dollar budget shortfall this year.  The agreement resulted in a set of ballot initiatives that must go before the voters that include diverting state lottery funds to address the shortfall and increases in the state sales tax, vehicle license fees and state personal income tax.

According to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll, the state’s voters aren’t down with the program.  The voters reject the proposed tax increases by whopping measures.   The Governor calls the ramifications of a potential defeat “disastrous.”

So the voters seem to want to play “chicken” with public services. There is an underlying belief among the California electorate that enough money exists to pay for the state’s essential services, but that a wildly incompetent state government is incapable of properly allocating resources. It doesn’t help that the Sacramento Bee ran an article on the proliferation of lobbying activity in the state during the last decade. It’s hard to blame voters for their intransigence when they get data like these in their Sunday paper:

In the past two decades, the amount spent on lobbying in California has increased with each two-year legislative session, rising from $193 million in 1989-90 to more than $550 million last session, state records show.

The number of groups hiring professional advocates has also grown, from 682 in 1975 to 2,365 at the start of the 2007-08 session.

It’s hard to blame voters for being wary of Scaramento’s excesses. It seems that we’re headed towards serious cutbacks in services. How will California voters respond when we get there? Will it take a “real crisis, i.e. deep cuts to services (police, fire, corrections, schools, etc.) to get the state to enact much needed reforms in how it collects and distributes revenue?

“There is ONE medium.”

Will that be the forthcoming declarative utterance to end all utterances?  If so, let me be one of the first few to coin it.

There has been a lot of buzz on web versus print with Clay Shirky  (Shoutout to Temporaryversion) discussing the business implications of old models struggling to deal with new ones.  (Here’s an example by Shirky on why newspapers cannot adopt a iTunes-like model).  I see one of the key challenges as culture, in that (North)American culture is one of what I call “quick cuts and remix.”  You see this in talk of convergence culture and Jenkins’s book, which describes instances of the modalities and materialities (Pfeiffer) of media combining.  We see in our everyday lives the Internet is taking over TV viewing time and also offering up viewing of broadcast TV/radio shows.  We can read books online or on handheld devices like Kindle hooked to databases.  Advertising and product placement are becoming more and more ubiquitous, so that this will be not so far-fetched.  [ThickCulture is brought to you by Contexts.  Cutting-edge content provided free of charge by the American Sociological Association]

We “scan” and read “at” things.  If we (or our attention spans) are pinched for time, we get information by reading the Yahoo headlines, not the article.  We are promiscuous in our media habits and don’t want to pay for things we don’t feel we should pay for.

Enter Walter Benjamin & Roger Chartier.  Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction   (full text here) in my opinion is central to understanding what’s going on.  If we look at media content as “art,” a pattern emerges:

“An analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction must do justice to these relationships, for they lead us to an all-important insight: for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics.”

Two things.  I think that content isn’t emancipated from ritual, but rather that new rituals and culturally-driven patterns of praxis (i.e., drivers of meaning) are created, often in unpredictable ways.  Media content can now be taken and repurposed.  The mashup is a perfect example, along with user-driven meanings in Web 2.0.  The reference to politics as a basis is a nod to Benjamin’s Marxism.  I believe that media content and art now are squarely in the realm, not of politics, but of the political economy, specifically in terms of inter/actions in markets.  

Roger Chartier in The Order of Books notes that in studying print capitalism, in order to understand it within a cultural context, we need to address (1) the text (content), (2) the book (media), and (3) reading practices.  There has been a lot of attention on the first two, but less solid understanding on the reading of media.  What Jenkins teaches us through his thick description of the current media milieu is that the lines between media are blurring.  We see it in the modes and materialities, but also in the economics.  I feel we are moving towards a singularity of media.  For example, some will say print and broadcast TV are both dead, as both will soon be killed by the web.  That’s the wrong way of thinking.  This assumes a linearity akin to upshifting a manual transmission.

In terms of media praxis, success will often be about creating models of how media can be intertwined to create value.  Take any pop culture figure, such as Lindsay Lohan.  She’s in film, she’s a singer, a celebrity newsmaker and tabloid fodder, and the butt of the satirists’ joke (see left).  The Internet is moving towards collapsing all paths to Lindsay into a single LindsayÜberstraße, a vertitable autobahn of linked Web 2.0 content.

I think it is telling that the Journalism School at CUNY, which is earning a reputation for being on the leading edge, is no longer requiring students to commit to a media track.  Additionally, with integrated market communications (IMC), there will be increasing market-based pressures to view media as one.  A future post will grapple with the Deleuzean idea of singularity and how it applies to media.  I think we need to address how people are “reading” all media in this Web 2.0 age.  Why?  We finally might get a handle on figuring out how the new technologies will specifically transform culture, economics, and society.

Is print dead?  What about the demise of the Fourth estate, perhaps a linchpin of democracy?  Well, someone else said this, not me, but I’m more interested in good journalism than newspapers.  The problem is that newspapers and the  news media are often tied to economic imperatives, which is (in my opinion) a historical trajectory that is by no means set.  We need to think about content in the age of infinite replication, which makes Benjamin such an important figure.

My friend Mimi Zeiger at Loudpaper blogged about the state of print.  I think it’s important to think about the implications of the functions of journalism and publishing and how these will be manifested, as media goes singular.  I personally feel a certain fondness for actual printed work.  It may have more to do with the specific æsthetics of the medium than anything and possibly the tactile experience.

• Do you think it’s useful to think of media as singular?
• What is the future of print?

For those who feel they have something important to say, I’ll leave you with the following, a portrait of Miranda July.

Huzzah! You tube has launched an academic channel! Now the masses will be exposed to the great ideas from Harvard, Berkeley, MIT and the University of Toledo? This comes two days after the launch of a site called Academic Earth that offers thousands of academic lecture in one convenient place.

Not sure what to make of this Dionysian Bacchanalia of knowlwedge at my fingertips. Let me play devil’s advocate to my own webtopian inclinations.  Does all this access to university lectures cheapen knowledge? If the years of accumulated knowledge required to give a careful, reflective treatment of the Civil War or The Origins of the Financial Crisis has no monetary value in the marketplace, will it provide a disincentive for people to acquire this knowledge to begin with? If I can get MIT lectures for free, what the point of MIT? Is academia facing the same dilemmas the music industry faces? Will it need to create a new business model to survive? If people get a taste of what MIT has to offer, will they’ll want to pay for more? Will the norm of putting public lectures on-line raise the bar so that all faculty have to bring their “A” game at all times (shudder)?

OK, the Internet provides citizens with new vehicles to get involved in the political process, but will people “walk through the portal”? We will soon find out. The WhiteHouse has created a site called “open for questions,” a Digg-like site where residents can submit questions and vote on their favorites. The president will answer some of the most popular questions at a Thursday town hall. Here’s a metric for how much desire there is to engage directly with the federal government — as of 6pm Eastern time on March 25th, 2009 33,040 people had submitted 34,090 questions and cast 1,226,081 votes. 32,000 out of over 300 million citizens is not much, but here’s what makes this so intriguing. Check out a random sampling of questions leading the “voting” so far:

“With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?”

“We have been forced to slowly liquidate my wife’s 401K to make our monthly mortgage payments. We dread the implications ahead when we have to file our 2009 federal tax returns. Do you foresee leniency on 401K liquidating for “qualified” candidates?”

“Will we ever see high speed passenger rail service in the U.S.?”

“I’m hard working, always make my mortgage payment on time, and bought a house I knew I could afford. My ARM is adjusting, and I’m not eligible for any great program. Why haven’t better loan options become available for the responsible middle class”

Compare these questions to those posed by the media at last nights press conference:

Apparently the demand for marijuana law reform is huge (insert Peter Tosh lyrics here). Now I’m not saying that marijuana laws should be at the top of the president’s agenda, but it’s significant that the Web 2.0 provide a new mechanism for agenda access. Rather than relying on institutions to “problematize” issues for the public agenda, individual citizens can throw their hat in the ring and potentially get a brief hearing. The serious test will be whether large numbers of people watch the Thursday morning town hall. If they do, the “on-line town hall” become a new avenue for policy entrepreneurs to reach the public agenda.

The news has been covering the testy exchange between Obama and CNN’s Ed Henry.  Henry asked a series of questions, including one of why the Obama himself wasn’t immediately outraged about the AIG bonuses.  Barack responded by saying he likes to know what he’s talking about before he speaks.  Sure, the press is covering it, but the press is also covering how Twitterers are reacting to these stories and video clips.

You can see for yourself by searching on Twitter: Obama Ed Henry.  On Wednesday, March 25, as of 11:44 EDT, the responses were trending towards Obama, with many tweets using the term “smackdown.”

There are nuances of communication that are more in the open now more than ever.  The ability for Web 2.0 multimedia to be shared quickly can help to provide context for these exchanges, as well as providing users with a fora for getting their views out there.  I would even argue that these technologies can even gauge the American zeitgeist to a certain extent.

Last night on CNN on Anderson Cooper, Ed Henry gave his side of the exchange on the AIG outrage matter:

I thought it was funny that at the end AC quipped, “you can nurse your wounds tonight, Ed.”

Will these 2.0 technologies (like Twitter) create both challenges and opportunities in future PR battles?  Undoubtedly.  (Will PR turn into pwn relations in certain circles?)  It will be interesting to see how the use of these technologies evolves over time.

rant

It’s job interviewing season, but don’t let this happen to you. But am I talking to interviewees or hiring companies? A Twitter user, theconnor {now set to private} offered up the following tweet:

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” 

Then, Tim Levad, a Cisco “channel partner advocate” chimed in:

“Who is the hiring manager[?] I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” 

Ugggghhh. Cringe. Almost immediately, there was a frenzied deluge of critical posts and Internet sleuthing. A website was even created based on a new meme, Cisco Fatty, and Helen A. S. Popkin wrote a MSNBC article blathering on-and-on about theconnor’s faux pas and how this is a cautionary tale. Really? Maybe MSNBC and Popkin should try to tweet news stories under 140 characters & get to the point more. Speaking of which…

/rant

On the eve of the president’s second news conference, he might want to take a look at John Kingdon’s classic Agendas, Alterantives and Public Policy.  Along with setting the record for most mixed-metaphors in a book (garbage cans, primeval soup, policy streams, policy windows), the study provides a key insight for understanding policy change.  In a nutshell, Kingdon argues that if you can merge policy problems, the decision-making agenda, and policy solutions brought forth by policy entrepreneurs, a policy window opens up (I know, the high school English teacher in you is cringing), that allows you to realize a policy agenda.

Kingdon’s streams imply an order to the policy process…only a handful of problems and solutions can garner the attention of policy makers at any given point in time and only a certain set of solutions are acceptable to decision makers and the public. By contrast, the Obama administration’s new budget seems to be part of a “shock and awe” approach to the policy process…flood the public agenda with a number of simultaneous problems and solutions (health care, education, climate change, etc.) in the hope that the deluge will overwhelm members and result in mass policy change.

It’s an interesting and maybe unprecedented public policy strategy. If it works, it may signal a new approach to policy change, albeit one at which the framers would cringe. Personally, I’m skeptical that we’ll get a budget that looks anything like it currently does. The Senate is already putting the brakes on the process.

What do you think of a “shock and awe” approach to policy change?

As you may be aware, much of the Red River valley here along the North Dakota/Minnesota border is facing a 500 year flood set to peak on Friday. This is not a flood where lives are at risk like the one resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Nonetheless, it is a flood bigger than the 1997 flood that caused serious damage, led to displacement of hundreds of families, and drew national coverage. It is a flood that will require the placement of more than 2 million sandbags in the Fargo-Moorhead area, filled and transformed into dikes by over 10,000 volunteers yesterday alone. As a lifelong East Coaster, I am a stranger to floods. I also currently reside in a downtown apartment building and work on a campus that are both highly unlikely to be affected by flood waters. And, as a sociologist, I’m naturally inclined to view social activity with a particularly distant lens.

So, here are a loose collection of my observations:

-My employer, Concordia College, canceled classes yesterday and today not because of any risk, but simply so that students and staff could help with the flood preparation. Moreover, the administration sent out a message on Saturday saying that all students were expected to show up at 9 am on Sunday to volunteer. Now, I’m very impressed with Concordia’s great expectations for their students, but, frankly, I’m stunned. I have great pride in my alma mater, but I know they would never, ever say that they expected (encouraged, maybe) students to do anything on a weekend –nevermind the intense manual labor of sandbagging and dike-building. I’ve been considering what might explain the difference between the two and find it difficult to say. Is it a Midwestern thing? Is it a social capital thing derived from Concordia’s status as a relatively homogeneous, Lutheran-affiliated school? Is it because Skidmore students tend to have a higher class status and approach college with a consumer model?

-The organization of sandbagging is remarkable. They have developed Sandbag Central (pictured here),

which uses a huge machine to fill many sandbags quickly. I showed up at the Fargodome to volunteer yesterday and, after filling out a form and signing a waiver, was immediately shuttled via two different buses to help build dikes. I literally have no clue where I was or whose homes I was protecting; we were just dropped off in the location where labor was needed. What’s interesting is how Fargo authorities have developed a rationalized system that makes the most efficient use of volunteer labor.

-The rhetoric of the flood and dike-building is fascinating. Though no human life is at risk, during the entire week leading up to the flood, residents have anticipated it with immense fear and growing panic. I would dare say that some of my fellow volunteers even got a pleasurable rush from the emergency scenario. On my first shuttle bus, I was seated next to a bunch of college guys (not Concordia students!) who had done shots of Jager before showing up to build dikes and had no shortage of homophobic puns about the activity. At the actual dike-building site, there was no expert or official clearly in charge, so there was hyper-masculine jostling for a leadership role. Volunteers got into minor squabbles about the proper method of laying sandbags, engaged in unnecessary demonstrations of manly strength, and attempted to out-veteran each other (“You may have been here for 1997, but let me tell you, I was here for the ’73 flood”). There was also an overwhelming sentiment that real success was achieved by common folks, not by the government. “This is how houses get saved, not by the government spending money — and that’s all they know how to do.” By contrast, I think in a similar situation in New York City, there would be much greater trust in the government, but also a sense of entitlement that it was the responsibility of the government to protect us.

-Though I can’t say I enjoyed the presence of my fellow volunteers, the strength of the community and the willingness to help unseen strangers was very inspiring. And it hearkens back to a sort of society that Robert Putnam claims died off half a century ago.

There seems to be a consensus emerging that California’s initiative process is broken.   Access to the ballot is too easy (you need the signatures of 5% of the voters in the last gubernatorial election to get on the ballot).  The initiative process is vulnerable to unreflective emotional appeals (initiatives dealing with children do particularly well).  Many people blame the initiative process for initiating an era of ballot box budgeting where citizens appropriate public funds to specific policy areas through the initiative process.  Proposition 98, passed in 1988, calls for 40% o the state’s budget to go towards education.

At the same time, California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978 which reduces property taxes and significantly raises the bar on the legislature’s ability to raise new revenue.  As a result of Proposition 13, the legislature requires 2/3ds of the California voters to agree on most tax increases.  The result, some would argue, is a state that has no restrictions on spending, but serious limits on the ability to raise revenue.

It’s easy to fault an “ignorant” electorate who doesn’t understand the broader implications of increasing spending but lowering taxes.  But recently I’ve been interested in the ideas of deliberation scholars like Diana Mutz and Cass Sunstien who argue the need for cross-cutting social networks in Democratic societies.    Cross-cutting networks allow people to engage in discussions where they are able to vet ideas and develop a broader sense of the possible unintended consequences of their policy positions.  The more we retreat to homogeneous ideological networks, the less likely we are to get this necessary check on our world view.

Sunstien argues that the Internet, particularly blogs and social networks, reinforce homogeneous groups that reinforce their pre-existing world view.  As we move our public conversations to what Anthony Downs refers to as “sought for” mediums of information like political blogs, listserves, and Facebook groups, we get less of our information from:

“unchosen serendipitous, sometimes disliked encounters with diverse ideas and topics,” as well as “shared communications experiences that unify people across differences.” Public spaces such as city parks and sidewalks provide the “architecture of serendipity” that fosters chance encounters with a “teeming diversity” of ideas.

So let me throw out a preliminary discussion question: functioning deliberative democratic systems are more likely to occur in places with a vibrant “architecture of serendipity.” In other words, the key to a vibrant functioning California is more places where people of different political orientations can have “accidental” conversations about politics.   Is our problem that the Interned allows up to retreat to our “warm corners of rectitude” where the correctness of our views can be mutually reinforced? If this is true, how to we encourage more “serendipitous” conversations about politics? Or should we just sit back and enjoy the polarization?  How do we encourage “serendipity” online?  StumbleUpon for everyone!

Discuss.

The new season of South Park started up full steam taking aim at Disney and the Jonas Brothers (available after 4.11.09) and this week the “dark” superhero genre and…Obama?  Cartman’s voiceover narration as a raccoon-costumed crimefighter:

“…Then a black man was elected President.  He was supposed to change things.  He didn’t.”

The episode reminded of a post last fall, Post Racial?  Quoting the sagacious José:

“Post-racism indulges in racist stereotypes while at the same time not engaging the moral dimensions of racism. In practice, you can engage in all the racism you want as long as you are being ironic about it.”

The Coon (Full Episode is available here) focuses its humor mostly on the superhero genre, but people are picking up on the use of the loaded term, as evident in comments on EW.  Controversy is bound to increase Internet hits (and viewing of Electronic Arts and Capcom Resident Evil 5 ads) and Stone & Parker are no strangers to using race as fodder for comedy squarely in a “post-racial” manner, in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

I’m not interested in debating whether this was racist or not, but rather the idea of whether  this type of satire allows us to have a “collective national laugh at the absurdity of race.”   Does the outrageous Cartman as a raccoon and the use of the term follow that trope?  In the blogosphere and in discussion fora, I see back-and-forth on the subject of race.  Typically, along the lines of “__ is racist” countered with “you should get over it” or other arguments based on irony, satire, or free speech.  

What are the implications, if any, of racial satire if everyone doesn’t “get” (interpret broadly) the joke?