Post on 02-May-2023
Preprint manuscript, please cite as follows:
Anne Kaun (2015). Regimes of Time: Media Practices of the Dispossessed. Time & Society (published before print, doi: 10.1177/0961463X15577276).
Regimes of Time: Media Practices of the Dispossessed
1
Abstract
Media technologies are structuring time and space in crucial
ways. Especially the temporal aspect has been of interest
lately, which is expressed in a growing commentary on media-
related time in terms of speed and acceleration. Taking this
discussions as a starting point, I problematize the
consequences of temporal structuring by media technologies for
civic participation and more specifically protest movements.
Drawing on two case studies – the unemployed workers movements
of the 1930s and the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011/2012 –
I explore the changing regimes of time that are related to
dominant media technologies. The main aim is to disentangle the
relationship between temporal regimes suggested by media
technologies and their appropriation by protest movements that
emerged in major economic crises. Combing archival materials
with in-depth interviews I discuss the importance of media
practices for the two movements and uncover a shift from
mechanical speed to digital immediacy having crucial
implications for democracy and civic participation.
Keywords
2
Regimes of time, media technologies, media participation,
protest movements, workers movements, Occupy Wall Street
3
Regimes of Time: Media Practices of the Dispossessed
“Why do we write this book? The reason is simple. A
torrent of lies and misrepresentations about the
Communists fills the press, movies, schools and colleges,
pulpit and radio these days. The people are being
deliberately misled by those who stand to gain by these
lies – if they have effect” (Amter & Amter 1930/1965).
“A lot had to do with technology. [(…]) They’ve organized
a fucking media center. I don’t know what they were
doing, if it was all organized through them, but they
must have done something right. Because I have never seen
something like that before. It was young people
organizing it. You know, I have been to like mass
protests in DC, in New York and in other places that had
press teams, but never like a media team with laptops,
and video fucking cameras, fucking everything. That was
so decentralized, but organized. [(…]) They seemed very
busy” (Ady, OWS activist, 2014).
The two opening quotations reflect the necessity of and
approaches to media practices for protest movements in the
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1930s and in 2011. Although situated in two distinct historical
moments, the quotations reflect that self-produced media
outlets play a major role in the work of activists then and
now. Hence, instead of asking if media practices are important
at different times, this article asks how the employed media
technologies structure particular experiences of activists and
the societies they act within.
I consider media technologies to structure temporal
experiences in fundamental ways. This is expressed in a growing
commentary on “the end of temporality” (Crary 2013; Jameson
2003), diagnosis of “hurried lives” (Davis 2013) and a culture
of speed (Tomlinson 2007). The shared tenor is that the
character and principles that guide dominant media
technologies, namely the constant flow, immediacy and newness,
have implications for our temporal experiences and meaning
production. In that context, Mark Andrejevic emphasizes a
change towards predictive marketing that “allows for
aggregation without collectivization and for exchange without
deliberation” (Andrejevic 2013, p. 65). The constant
production, collection, and analysis of data results, following
his argument, in the annihilation of interpretation.
5
I take this description of the current structure or feeling
(Williams, 1988) as a starting point and assume that the
character of temporal structuring by media technologies has not
only implications for everyday life on an individual level, but
also for protest movements and their media practices (Couldry
2004; Mattoni 2012; Postill 2010). Two case studies of
movements of the dispossessed in the USA serve as empirical
entry points to carve out changing regimes of temporality in
conjuncture with forms and function of media participation.
Starting with the Great Depression in 1929, the paper explores
the media practices of the unemployed workers movements. The
second case study investigates the latest large-scale economic
crisis the Great Recession in 2007/2008. The analysis focuses
in the latter case on forms of media participation of the
Occupy Wall Street Movement.
Through the two historical case studies, I aim to trace
regimes of time surrounding media practices of the protest
movements and ask for the consequences this temporal
structuring might have for the democratic conduct. The main
objective is to disentangle the relationship between temporal
regimes as a result of dominant media technologies and their
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appropriation by protest movements that emerged in major
economic crisis. Previous historical studies of media have
often traced particular formats and practices chronologically
back in time or put current media revolutions into a historical
perspective (Gitelman 2008, 2014). Drawing on Harold Innis’
(1951/2008) notion of bias of communication, the article
suggests that media history could benefit from diachronic
comparisons of the changing, temporal structure of feeling that
is linked to dominant media technologies.
Histories of Media Participation of the Dispossessed
The latest economic crisis of 2007/2008 has spurred a renewed
debate about the flaws of capitalism not only in radical,
alternative circles, but also mainstream, commercial media
(Fuchs 2014a). Besides this, urban centers in many countries
around the world saw protests against austerity measures, which
also became micro-experiments of alternative social
organization in protest camps and community initiatives
(Feigenbaum, Frenzel & McCurdy 2013). This evokes the question
whether the crisis has opened up and demanded new forms of
social critique in different spheres of society.
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Social movement and communication scholars are considering
media practices as an important part of social movements’
repertoire of collective action (Mattoni 2013; Wolfson 2012),
which gain increasingly of importance in times of mediatization
(Hepp & Krotz 2014). Hence, in the context of new political and
social formation of protests, Twitter and Facebook revolutions,
the MoveOn effect (Karpf 2012) and netroots (Feld & Wilcox
2008) have become widely circulating buzzwords in the
discussion on how a changing media environment enables or
constraints civic practices as well as experiences.
In contrast, Vincent Mosco (2005) has powerfully discussed
the revolutionary rhetoric that has commonly appeared with
media innovations, may it be the telegraph, electricity, the
radio or television. Similarly, James Carey (1989) suggests
that “we are witnessing the imperial struggle of the early age
of print all over again but now with communication systems that
transmit messages at the extremes of the laws of physics” (p.
170). Media innovations have inspired discourses on fundamental
change in terms of the end of history, the end of geography and
the end of politics, Mosco argues. Especially in terms of
protest movements aiming at fundamental social change this
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rhetoric of newness and the participatory dream has been
palpable (Miessen 2010). The true revolutionary force, Mosco
continues arguing, lies, however, in media that have become
banal and invisible as they are engrained within our everyday
lives. In a similar vein, Carolyn Marvin (1988) proposes that
new technologies as a term is relative and that we are not the
first ones to wonder about revolutionary changes of and through
technologies. Analyzing the imaginations surrounding the
telephone and the electric light, she concludes
the more any medium triumphed over distance, time and
embodied presence, the more exciting it was, and the more
it seemed to tread the path of the future. Such
achievements were often imagined in great detail. And
always, new media were though to hail the dawning of
complete cross-cultural understanding, since contact with
other cultures would reveal people like those at home
(Marvin 1988, p. 194).
Taking Mosco’s plea to not conflate the process of
institutional change with technological change as a
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technological infrastructure cannot lead a revolution per se,
this article investigates historical forms of media
participation of protest movements that emerged in the context
of large scale economic crises. In that sense, it puts current
uprisings in a historical perspective. The aim is to provide a
historical perspective on how – often banal and taken-for-
granted1 – media technologies as means of communication
(Williams 1980) have been employed in order to promote radical
social change and how their temporal structuring affects this
aim.
Approach
Analytically the article focuses on media practices of protest
movements of the dispossessed. These practices are expressions
of media participation namely the involvement of citizens in
politics in and through the media (Carpentier 2011; Wasko
1992). The practices investigated here are consequently
“relating to, or oriented around, media” (Couldry 2004, p. 117)
and serve different purposes at different times. Media
practices are depending on strategies and tactics of the
1 The term banal is here used with reference to Michael Billig’s (1995) Banal Nationalism considering “small” practices of nationalism that receiveno special attention, but reproduce nationalism on an everyday level.
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specific movement, e.g. aiming towards social change in general
through sharing experiences of dispossession or mobilization
for concrete protest events. In this context media practices
are shaped by the double articulation of technology and
practice or as Langlois et al. (2009) put it
(…) online publics and issues result from linking,
assembling, connecting, and thus hybridizing diverse
code and politics elements and actors. As such, there
is a need to pay attention to how politics mobilize
code at the same time as code formalizes politics
according to specific informal logics (Langlois et
al. 2009: 417).
Juris (2012) refers to cultural logics that produce and
reproduce discursive practices and their semiotic framework
through concrete interpretational practices. These
interpretations are shaped by the technological, social and
economic context. Extending this understanding of cultural
logics, he suggests that 1990s and 2000s social movements were
characterised by the cultural logic of networking and
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aggregation (Juris 2012). The cultural logic of the network
refers to the framework of how to understand the actions and
practices of others. This understanding is shaped by the
interactions with networking technologies and gives rise to
particular forms of political networking practices. In that
sense the cultural logic of the network puts horizontal rather
than vertical connections forward and helps other political
actors to understand and interpret such networking practices.
The logic of aggregation refers to the physical co-presence of
social movements in a shared space that require tactics that
might be different from networking practices.
Rather than focusing merely on the active appropriation
process of media technologies through practices including forms
of resistance, the article stresses the temporal regimes that
are suggested by media technologies reflecting a structure of
feeling in a specific historical moment. Analytically, I
distinguish between structuration of time that is related to
production, distribution and consumption of media.
The applied approach is hence somewhat different from
earlier studies considering media practices of protest
movements that have focussed on spectacle (Kellner 2012),
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mobilization and knowledge sharing (Mattoni 2012). The aim is
to investigate the temporal structuring of media technologies
that can be both enabling and constraining for the purposes of
activists. Hence the focus is slightly shifted and extends the
agenda of media practice research by considering material
aspects of the employed media technologies.
In so doing, the article draws on a variety of methods
ranging from in-depth archival work investigating documents of
central organizations2 that aimed to organize the dispossessed,
but also to personal papers’ collections of political
organizers3 (Carl Winter, Sam Winn, Sam Adams Darcy and JBS
Salutsky) and autobiographies of central figures such as
William Z Foster (General Secretary of the Communist Party
USA)4, Sadie van Veen Amter and Israel Amter (founding members
of the Communist Party USA)5 in the 1930s to in-depth
interviews with activists being involved in the OWS encampment
and more particularly with the work of the media group. Beyond
2 Communist Party of the United States of America Records (TAM.132), Greenwich HouseRecords (TAM.139), League for Industry Democracy Collection (TAM.049), Labor Research Association Records (TAM.129), Welfare Council of New York City manuscript collection (1837-1937, Brooklyn Historical Society).3 Sam Adams Darcy Papers (TAM.124), J. B. S. (Jacob Benjamin Salutsky) Hardman Papers (TAM.050), Sam Winn Papers (WAG.203), Alfred and Hortense Wagenknecht and Helen and Carl Winter Family Papers (TAM.583), 4 William Z Foster (1939). Pages from a Workers Life. New York: International Publishers; William Z Foster (1937). From Bryan to Stalin. New York: International Publishers.5 Israel and Sadie Amter Autobiographical Typescript (TAM.079).
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the in-depth interviews in the case of Occupy Wall Street, I
also analysed central publications and outlets of the OWS media
group, including their websites and the collectively written
book Occupy Wall Street. The inside story of an action that changed America.
These materials were gathered to identify central media
practices and their role for the respective movement
organization in general, to investigate the purpose of the
employed practices and to identify the media technologies that
had a prominent place in their media work.
Time and Media Technologies
I assume that media technologies play a central role for the
experience of time, i.e. temporality (Stiegler, 1998). Not only
do they enable the organization and experience of time, they
also allow for what Paddy Scannell (2014) has called “common
public time”. Hence, media technologies are not only relevant
for individual experiences of time, but also crucial in terms
of the shared structure of feeling in a given society as well as the
organization of political life. Paul Virilio (1986), for
example, argues that politics becomes less about physical
space, but about the time regimes of technologies, which is
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what he calls a shift from geo- to chrono - politics. Hartmut
Rosa (2003, 2013) further theorizes social acceleration and
distinguishes between technological acceleration, acceleration
of social change and acceleration of the pace of life. All
three forms of social acceleration are interlinked. Hence,
(media) technologies play a crucial role for the speeding up of
society.
Harold Innis considering both time and space as central
configurations of civilizations suggests that pre-modern
societies are characterized by a time bias, while modern
societies are obsessed with space, i.e. the expansion over
large territories (Innis 2007/1950). In that context, he
distinguishes between media technologies that emphasize time
and those that emphasize space (see Paine 1992):
Media that emphasize time are those that are durable in
character, such as parchment, clay and stone (…) Media
that emphasize space are apt to be less durable and light
in character, such as papyrus and paper. The latter are
suited to wide areas in administration and trade (Innis
2007/1950, p. 26).
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Innis argues that ideally different media technologies
supported by social policies would be present simultaneously
and consequently balance these biases. In that sense, social
policy should serve both space and time and prevent the excess
of one over the other. What follows from his argument is that
changes in media technologies have consequences for communities
and democracy. This latter argument on the importance of media
technologies for cultural change is of particular interest
here. According to Innis, media technologies alter “the
structure of interest (the things thought about) by changing
the character of symbols (the things thought with), and by
changing the nature of community (the arena in which thought
developed)” (Carey 1989, p. 180).
While assuming the multi-layeredness of temporal
experience as proposed by for example Henri Bergson and his
notion of duration (durée), I am interested in regimes of time
that are suggested by (media) technologies allowing for
specific experiences of time to emerge (for a distinction
between time and temporality see Connerton 2009). Recently the
idea of the annihilation of duration or the end of temporality
16
as proposed by for example Fredric Jameson (2003) and Jonathan
Crary (2013) has gained more attention. This argument is,
however, not new. Harvey (1990) has, for example, discussed the
consequences of contradictions of capitalism for the time and
space configurations. He argued that inherent crises of
capitalism find its’ expressions in temporal or spatial
displacement. In terms of temporal displacement, he referred to
the acceleration of turn over time. Similarly, other scholars
have suggested that technologies that are of importance for
structuring time and experiencing temporality are connected to
the general mode of production in society (Fuchs 2014b;
Manzerolle 2014). As John Durham Peters (2013) pointed out,
calendars and clocks are central media technologies for
creating and maintaining the temporal regimes of modern
society.
Tomlinson (2007) links the discussion of speed to the
temporality of (media) technologies. During the industrial era,
speed was mainly associated with social progress. With the
post-industrial era, the acceleration of speed is increasingly
dictated by global capital and culture that is facilitated by
means of communication. Tomlinson argues hence that we are
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witnessing a development from effortful speed to effortless,
immediate delivery. Vincent Manzerolle (2014) suggests –
building on Tomlinson – that ubiquitous computing ‘tending
towards real-time, networked communication and a collapsing of
spatial distance, tendency of contemporary media to accelerate
the circulation of information’ (Manzerolle, 2014: 211), which
leads to the condition of immediacy. The transition between
mechanical age and the condition of immediacy is of course not
total. There are still overlaps and features of mechanical
speed that remain visible in our current culture of immediacy
as Tomlinson argues. However, I am using his distinction
between mechanical speed and digital immediacy to carve out the
regimes of time that characterize the forms of media
participation of the two case studies of movements of the
dispossessed.
Empirical Entry Points: The Case Studies
The analysis builds on two case studies that consider the –
according to the appearance in mainstream newspapers and
secondary sources – most relevant protest movements that
emerged in the context of major economic crises in the USA: a)
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the Great Depression 1929 and the unemployed workers movement
and b) the Great Recession 2007/2008 and the Occupy Wall Street
Movement.
Unemployed workers movement in the 1930s
As indicated, I am suggesting economic crisis situations and
protest movements that emerged in reaction to them as empirical
entry points to study histories of media participation. The
first case study concerns the unemployed workers movements and
more specifically the mobilization of unemployed workers that
emerged in the context of the 1930s Great Depression in the
United States.
Following the crash of the stock exchange in 1929, the
number of unemployed exploded from 429,000 in October 1929 to
4,065,000 in January 1930 and the numbers kept growing to 9
Million in October 1931 (Piven & Cloward 1977). Unemployment
and shrinking salaries of those still in employment had
devastating effects on the daily lives of the people, which was
indicated by growing malnutrition and diseases such as
tuberculosis. Although the number of people in need of
financial and social support grew, there was no coherent social
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relief system in place. As Piven and Cloward argue “formal
arrangements for relief of the indigent were sparse and
fragmented” (Piven and Cloward, 1977: 41). Piven and Cloward
also argue that in the beginning of the depression unemployed
workers mainly suffered alone, lived from their savings and
borrowed money, lined up for every job, but in general suffered
in silence. This changed with the depression worsening and
whole neighbourhoods being out of work. At the same time
political actors started to organize the unemployed aiming to
redefine their hardships not as individual misfortune but as
collective experiences that are consequences of the political
and economic system.
The figure below represents a number organizations and
political groups that aimed to organize the unemployed and
mobilize them for direct action such as marches,
demonstrations, occupations of relief offices. The different
groups also aimed to spread information about rights to relief
and how to achieve it.
Figure 1 around here
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The main aims and approaches of the organizations were very
diverse (Rosenzweig 1975, 1976, 1979). While the Labor Research
Association, for example, focused mainly on gathering information
on unemployment and its conditions, the Socialist and Communist
Parties aimed to establish organizational structures and
advocated for improved relief programs.
The League for Industrial Democracy (out of which the SDS
– Students for a Democratic Society emerged in the 1960s)
organized nationwide lectures, lecture circuits and chapter
meetings that were partly broadcasted as the radio was
considered as one of the most important channels. However the
main forum to inform members and non-members remained printed
outlets. From 1932, for example, clip sheets containing major
news were introduced. They had the major purpose to be
reprinted by ca 500 farmers and workers papers (1932). Smaller
local organizations such as the Greenwich House in New York City
focused specifically on the local conditions, housed meetings
of unemployed from Greenwich Village as well as the National
Unemployment League (ca. 1932)
In order to organize and mobilize the unemployed workers
these organizations used a sophisticated set of different media
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ranging from shop papers written by unemployed workers and
distributed in the factories to radio talks as Harold Lasswell
and Dorothy Blumenstock show in their extensive study of
communist media in Chicago that was published in 1939. The
study provides a comprehensive overview over media practices of
activists at that time emphasizing the role of printed outlets
such as leaflets, brochures and pamphlets that will be of
particular importance in the analysis that follows.
Occupy Wall Street in 2011/2012
The second case study -- the Occupy Wall Street movement --
emerged in the aftermath of the so-called Great Recession
(Foster & McChesney 2012). Although OWS has been explicitly
multi-voiced and there exists a variety of narratives that aim
to characterize the movement, I will try to briefly provide an
overview of the major, formative events of the movement.
In July 2011, AdBusters, the notorious facilitator of
anti-consumerism campaigns, launched a call to occupy Wall
Street by introducing the hashtag #occupywallstreet on Twitter.
After online mobilization, a few dozen people followed the call
on 17 September 2011. Since the Wall Street was strongly
22
secured by police force, the occupiers turned to the close by
Zuccotti Park. The small privately owned square became the
place for camping, campaigning and deliberating for the up-
coming weeks until the first eviction in November 2011
(Graeber, 2013). Initially there was only a handful of
activist. The numbers grew, however, quickly and the encampment
developed into a diverse group of occupiers being based on what
has been characterized as leaderlessness and non-violence
(Bolton et al., 2013). At the same time there was a ‘division
over conventional politics, over reform and revolution’
(Gitlin, 2012: XV). This group of diverse activists with
different political visions and ideas about how to organize the
movement appropriated elaborated ways for deliberation,
including the human microphone amplifying the individual
speaker’s voice through a repeating choir; the hand sign system
to organize discussions in large groups; as well as a system of
working groups and breakout sessions that all gathered at the
general assembly to reach consensus (Graeber, 2013). Although
describing themselves as representing a variety of demands, the
Occupy Wall Street movement could in general be characterized
23
as a critique of accelerated financial capitalism and the
growing inequalities in the US-American society.
Mechanical Speed: Unemployed workers movements
Distribution Time
Figure 2 and 3 represent typical media outlets of the workers
movement: bulletins and shop papers that were either
distributed in the neighbourhood or factory. They were mainly
reproduced with the help of mimeographs.
Figure 2 around here
Figure 3 around here
Shop papers and bulletins included information about relief
programs, the structure and contact details of unemployed
councils as well as block committees. Besides information
sharing as resource, the outlets also gathered experiences of
unemployment, poverty and precarity contributing to a
collective experience rather than leaving the unemployed
suffering alone. The shop papers and bulletins were sold at a
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price between 1 to 3 cents. They often appeared monthly, but
most of them for no longer than seven months, as Lasswell and
Blumenstock (1939) found for the Chicago area.
The production of bulletins and shop papers was self-
organized by unemployed workers. Harold Lasswell and Dorothy
Blumenstock remark in their 1939 study of World Revolutionary
Propaganda that “the shop unit was usually responsible for
gathering the material, and a special shop-paper committee was
usually formed in the unit” (Laswell and Blumenstock, 1939:
60). Most of the texts were published without mentioning the
author. At the same time a majority of the papers and bulletins
also included calls for contributions to the content, such as
the following: ‘send in a letter to let us know what you think
of the bulletin. Try to make it better because it is your
bulletin as well’ (Mimeographed Bulletin. October Issue 1931;
Communist Party of the United States of America Records
TAM.132).
Consumption Time
In that sense, shop papers and bulletins were collective
efforts aiming to gather shared experiences of the unemployed
25
and information on how to organize collectively. These
mimeographed publications were central to the organizing
strategies especially of the Communist Party that included
paragraphs on the importance of shop papers in handbooks for
organizing the unemployed:
Figure 4 around here
During the peak time of organizing, there were hundreds of shop
papers and bulletins all over the country that were produced
collectively and distributed in the factories by workers that
were often threatened with losing their job.
Besides mimeographed media outlets, media practices of
organizers of the unemployed workers included creative forms
such as poems. Sadie van Veen Amster, for example, wrote
numerous poems that were partly published in the Daily Worker,
the nationwide daily news outlet of the Communist Party (see
Lasswell & Blumenstock 1939). Furthermore the radio – much
discussed as a medium having renewed participatory potential by
for example Brecht (1932) – served as an important channel for
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the organized workers movements to reach out to broader
publics6. However, the peak of mobilization of unemployed
workers coincided with the battle about the organization of the
radio as commercial or public service entity, which had crucial
consequences in terms of access to airtime (McChesney 1992,
1993).
Production Time
What are then the characteristics of the production process in
the era of mechanical speed that the above mentioned examples
are illustrations of? It is useful to turn to media critic
Walter Benjamin and his notorious essay on The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction from 1936.
Benjamin points out that art has always been reproducible.
However, what has changed is the speed of the reproduction
process. Quoting Paul Valery he states:
Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our
houses from far off to satisfy our need in response to a
minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or
6 Some radio scripts of Sam Darcy are preserved in the Tamiment collection (Sam Darcy Papers TAM.124).
27
auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a
simple movement of the hand hardly more than a sign
(Benjamin 1936/2008).
Through reproduction process, the artwork loses its specific
aura, as “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art
is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its
unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Benjamin
1936/2008). The fact that an art work and media image no longer
has a unique place in time, coincides with its increased
mobility. Benjamin suggests “(...) technical reproduction can
put the copy of the original into situations which would be out
of reach for the original itself. Above all, it enables the
original to meet the beholder halfway, be it the form of a
photograph or a phonograph record” (Benjamin 1936/2008).
This argument suggests a democratization of the media
image through its reproduction, but also political potential to
spread it to the masses for resistance against fascism.
Benjamin writes:
If the natural utilization of production forces is impeded
by the property system, the increase in technical device,
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in speed, and in the sources of energy will press for an
unnatural utilization, and this is found in war (Benjamin
1936/2008).
Benjamin’s arguments resonate, hence, with the experience of
acceleration of speed with the possibilities of mechanical
reproduction in the 1930s. At the same time, he remains hopeful
of the potential that comes with reproducibility for political
mobilization of the masses.
Digital Immediacy: the Occupy Wall Street Movement
Consumption Time
Many commentators have started to tell the story of Occupy Wall
Street – as I did – with the AdBusters launch of the call to
occupy Wall Street (see Figure 5), although there are roots of
the movement to be traced to earlier mobilizations, such as
Bloomsbergville7, as illustrated in Occupying Wall Street a
collectively written book by a group of occupiers (99% 2011).
However, starting with the hashtag and mobilization on Twitter
is a powerful illustration of how the movement has been
7 Bloombergville was a smaller occupation against the budget cuts proposed by then major Michael Bloomberg that was arranged in June 2011 (99% 2011).
29
imagined and described itself (see figure 6), namely as a
social media supported phenomenon, similar to its predecessors
in North Africa and Europe (Castells 2012; Gerbaudo 2012). The
focus here is however not so much on the techno-deterministic
underlying tone of these description, but rather the question
what are the consequences of a connective media ecology (van
Dijck 2013) for a movement in terms of temporality.
Figure 5 around here
Figure 6 around here
Distribution Time
Some figures might be of help to illustrate the importance of
social media for the movement in terms of distribution. DeLuca
and his co-authors (2012) suggest that the first eight days of
occupation were accompanied by a total news black-out in the
mainstream outlets (biggest dailies and TV channels). However,
social media were quickly filling up with Occupy Wall Street:
On the first day of occupation more than 4,300 mentions of OWS
on Twitter were counted exploding to 25,148 until 2 October
2011. After three months there were 91,400 OWS-related videos
30
uploaded on YouTube (DeLuca 2012). DeLuca et.al. suggest that
not mainstream media, but social media provided visibility for
the occupiers, which resonates with reflections by one of my
informants, who was involved with the Media Working Group and
was, for example, responsible for streaming live from many OWS
events. He recalls that the importance of social media was
reflected in how the media tent looked like:
So you entered the park and turned left and then there was
the media tent. And there the people were sitting with
their laptops and not talking or discussing that much.
Just glued to their screens really (Josh8).
Early on the Media Working Group contributed to a constant
stream of tweets, blog and Facebook posts. They also set up a
24-hours live stream from the camp, with programming elements
including scheduled interviews with occupiers and passers-by,
talks, music sessions etc. The group and affiliates produced a
constant flow of images, memes and texts to be circulated.
Besides digital media, OWS also produced The Occupy Wall Street
Journal, which had six issues.
8 Name changed by the author.
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Production Time
Out of necessity the activists had to adapt the logic of
social media including programmability, popularity,
connectivity and datafication (van Dijck & Poell 2013) that
characterizes the current form of capitalism. Aiming for
visibility of the movement and its discussions, the occupiers
contributed to the production of digital media content being
partly constitutive of current capitalism, that Jodi Dean
(2008, 2012) calls communicative capitalism. Communicative
capitalism predominantly builds on the circulation of messages
and the logic that the ‘exchange value of the messages’
dominates, rather than the ‘use value’. Dean suggests that
network communication technologies, which are based on ideals
of discussion and participation intertwine capitalism and
democracy. Communicative capitalism expanding with the growth
of global telecommunications becomes hence the single
ideological formation (Dean 2012).
Content or the use value of the exchanged messages becomes
secondary or even irrelevant. Hence, any response to them
becomes irrelevant as well, and any political potential
32
disperses into the perpetual flow of communication (Dean 2009,
2010). One of the major principles of communicative capitalism
is furthermore to accelerate the speed of circulation in order
to minimize turn-over time and increase the production of
surplus value (Manzerolle & Kjøsen 2012). As digital media
enhance personalization, they enable new trajectories and
pathways between production, exchange and consumer. In that
sense, personalization as an organizational principle of
digital media enhances the already accelerated speed of
exchanges, which is taken to its extreme, namely the suspension
of circulation. Manzerolle and Kjøsen identify “as new is how
the logic of acceleration is being taken to its logical end in
the conditions of ubiquity and immediacy engendered through
digital media” (Manzerolle & Kjøsen 2012, p. 217).
However political projects such as OWS -- that was also a
micro experiment of social and political organization in a
shared space -- need time. The need for time is reflected in
the numerous stories of endless meetings of the General
Assembly to develop group consensus. Accelerated capitalism
however does not allow for these time consuming procedures,
which is reflected in the constant request for clear demands
33
and goals of the movement in public discourse. In that sense,
the dominant logic of current accelerated capitalism and the
time consuming practices of participatory democracy came to
stand in stark contrast to each other, although the movement
adopted parts of communicative capitalism so successfully.
The outcomes or impact of OWS as a micro-experiment in
democracy have been questioned by different commentators
(Roberts 2012). However its consequences and impact is still
under negotiation while the current structure of feeling requests
outcomes immediately and constantly. In its way of organizing
the everyday life in the park OWS hence formed a counter-
picture to the dominant culture of speed, in its media
practices, however, it had to adopt the logics of communicative
capitalism. Following Innis (2004) idea of biases, digital
media that were crucial for OWS could be considered as space
biased media as they connect localities over vast distances.
This spatial excess results in an annihilation of time towards
presentness and immediacy.
Conclusion
34
The article shows that media practices have played central
roles both for the unemployed workers’ movements in the 1930s
as for the Occupy movement in 2011/2012. In both cases the
content production is self-organized, volunteer based and
relies on contributions from citizens without professional
media experiences. Consequently the content itself shares
certain characteristics such as creative contributions that
reflect the everyday experience of dispossession and
precariousness, i.e. in poems, aphorisms and images. What,
however, has changed is the kind of temporality that the media
technologies employed imply; shifting from effortful,
mechanical speed to effortless, digital immediacy in terms of
production, distribution and consumption time. As I have
discussed, the shift from effortful speed to digital immediacy
goes in hand with an increased number of messages circulated.
This development is closely link to changes in the capitalist
production process in general, which since the 1930s has
experienced an acceleration and intensification involving and
depending on media technologies towards so called information
based societies and communicative capitalism.
35
The acceleration of speed in production, distribution and
consumption of media content has consequences for democracy and
the political process. In the current culture of immediacy that
is characterized by datafication, we are experiencing a shift
from questions of causation to prediction without
interpretation (lacking the time for interpretation)
(Andrejevic 2013; Mosco 2014). This constitutes a disjunction
of temporal regimes suggested by accelerated information-based
capitalism and the temporalities of participatory democracy.
Occupy Wall Street can therefore be seen as both a form of
resistance against market ideology and the temporal regime it
dictates as Occupiers claimed time for meetings to realize an
experiment in participatory democratic organization (Polletta
2002). However, the movement had to comply with the rules of
communicative capitalism in its media tactics.
Media technologies enhance the experience of speed at the
work place and in everyday life, but also the conditions for
political organizing. In the 1930s capitalism did not yet
permeate all spheres of life, only with the emergence of
neoliberalism in the 1970s the idea of the free market came to
dominate more and more spheres of society (Hassan 2010) leading
36
to the acceleration of circulation towards immediacy. Shifts in
the production process and acceleration of turn over time are
hence mirrored by the media practices protest movements engage
in. Reflecting and incorporating temporal regimes, they are
expressions of and contribute to a general structure of
feeling.
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Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).
44
Figure 1: Organizing the Unemployed; mapping by the author
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47