The concept of a networked counterpublic is certainly useful in the arc of history—it helps us gain an appreciation for the means by which counterpublics fought for mass-media attention in the past. As a contemporary concept, however, it is significantly less so. It is hard to imagine a group, marginalized by the dominant narrative, fighting for attention by the greater publics, that is not doing so with the help of any of the technologies called out by Benkler.
Instead, I think it’s more important to consider a number of factors that contribute to or detract from a cause’s effectiveness as a networked counterpublic. The extent to which a marginalized sphere is connected via networked technologies, the speed with which its cause spreads into and throughout the main-stream or dominant media sphere, and the cause’s ability to keep a dominant’s public attention via an intriguing narrative all dictate whether or not a networked counterpublic will gain mass-media attention towards its cause.
The most obvious example of a new media counterpublic at work is the Arab Spring of 2010-2011 which saw the video of Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi setting himself on fire go viral in a matter of days, triggering protests in the name of his cause. The movement eventually spread around other Middle Eastern countries, many of which saw their own protests sparked amongst the populous. The result of these various protests, however, is a testament to the variable nature of a counterpublic’s success. While Tunisia and Egypt gained much global attention and coverage, eventually leading to their respective movements’ “success” (the ousting of the current government), Syrian, Bahraini, and Yemenite protestors continue to fight, risking massacre at the hands of their government.
Notably missing from that list is Libya, as I feel its unique situation is important in proving the point I would like to make here. The Tunisian and Egyptian narratives unfolded quickly. They picked up mass-media attention (thanks, in part, to Al-Jazzera’s well prepared social media discipline) and held it through the entirety of what most would call the first chapter of their stories (from protest momentum growth to government ousting). The other three are hardly mentioned in mass-media news outlets today (evening news features, front page articles, and so forth), even as dozens of protestors are killed on a weekly or daily basis. But the media (and dominant public) have lost interest in their narrative. The sexiness of overthrowing government at a rapid pace via protests organized by networked devices and systems no longer exists in our daily discourse. As for Libya, it took a serious advancement by the anti-government rebels—their push into Tripoli and Muammar Gaddafi’s compound—to regain any worldwide media attention—a story which quickly took a backseat to the next day’s headlines.
Yochai Benkler would most likely point out that what happened during the Arab Spring—from Tunisia to Bahrain—would not be possible with a singular mass-media driven public sphere. And he’s most likely right. But as we enter winter time in the northern hemisphere, one wonders what it will take to bring the three aforementioned “failures” of this networked counterpublic back into the spotlight.
The Arab Spring, however, is an easy one. Of course it was a counterpublic, of course it was networked; it even had its own hashtag. So in considering the usefulness of the concept of a networked counterpublic, I sought out a modern movement that is not explicitly built around a network—one that did not attempt to use technology in furthering its cause.
I thought back to an article I had read in analog form two weeks ago in The New Yorker (subscription required for more than the abstract) about the budget battle that occurred this spring and summer in Costa Mesa, CA. The story is not uncommon in today’s economy: a constituency is frustrated with the current state of local services, it elects a new government which, with the help of scare tactics, convinces its populous that a complete overhaul of the current system is necessary. In this case, the new city council implemented mass layoffs across all government agencies, opting instead to contract the work out to private organizations. The story gained national attention, however, when one of the laid off government employees jumped off the roof of City Hall.
The counterpublic, in this case the unions which fought against the privatization, did not gain access to the greater public sphere via a hash tag or YouTube video. Instead, it was a human action that spread via mainstream news. But this is where the line between networked and non-networked counterpublics becomes fuzzy enough to disregard it altogether. As I searched for more information on the story, one of the first Google results that popped up was a blog post from The Daily Kos—a networked tool for counterpublics called out by Benkler himself. The Kos piece links to another post by a blogger who writes for Calitics.com, which links to an Orange County Register piece.
In the end, the union driven counterpublic in Costa Mesa did not prevail (the privatization continued). In fact, very little attention has been paid to it beyond the piece in [the openly liberal] The New Yorker. And while the post on The Daily Kos has a comments section—a main feature in Benkler’s “writable Web,” the number of comments on the post (19) is dwarfed in comparison to other posts on the site which tackle national issues (President Obama’s recent announcement regarding a tax hike for millionaires, for instance, features 244 comments as of this afternoon).
I’m not trying to compare the oppression and massacre of innocent people in Arab nations to the suicide of a civil employee in Orange County. Rather, I am working to contrast them. But both counterpublic stories garnered national attention as the networked media moved them into more dominant spheres. Two severely different stories, both inevitably networked. But as their story-lines became less relevant, less sexy, and less networked, the attention paid to them by the main-stream dwindled.
So I return to my original assertion: the concept of the networked counterpublic is important to understand how the way marginal spheres have gained mainstream attention has changed significantly over the past decade. Benkler’s piece alone seems borderline irrelevant due to its conception in a time before Facebook and Twitter’s prevalence in our society. As a contemporary concept, however, we must assume all counterpublics will start off or eventually become networked. Their eventual success or failure still hinges on marketability as mainstream stories—a factor that existed well before networked technologies.