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

4

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

8

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

11

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),

12

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).

15

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

17

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

19

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

21

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

26

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,

28

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.

31

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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Figure 3: Hunger-Fighter California, July 1931; Communist Party

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Figure 5: Call to occupy Wall Street launched by Adbusters in

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47