As foreshadowed in my post last week, a lot of people across the world realise we are on the brink of enormous social change. After around two decades the world is finally grasping the potential of digital technology and the burgeoning social network to instigate change on all level of societies. As a result social activists are emerging in an attempt to call people together through social media to use their skills, knowledge, ideas and sheer numbers to address large social problems.
But will it work?
The Knife Party in its video entitled “The Coalition of the Willing” it highlighted the difficulty for Western governments seeking to address global warming as being its reliance on and unwillingness to alter the capitalist processes of production and consumerism that are at the heart of global warming itself. The video called for an approach to the problem “that mobilises the creative energy of the global population.” It proposed the development of potentially brilliant digital infrastructure for assisting people across the globe fight climate change. In his blog post titled “the Evolution will be Socialised”, Douglas Rushkoff called for people to come together to discuss and hopefully develop a whole new internet structure free from the hierarchical control by government that ultimate plagues change through social media (for example the taking down of Wikileaks in the US or the suppression of social networking in Egypt) (Rushkoff 2010).
In both these examples above there has been a semi-revolutionary call for change through digital media and the social network in opposition to generally capitalistic but also mainly democratic government. This call is supported through brilliant, yet at this stage, idealistic ideas that can’t help get someone with a social conscience excited for the future. But one question strikes me: are calls for change in opposition to democratic government the most effective?
Micropoltics is characterised by the action called for by the Coalition of the Willing and Rushkoff, that is, the use of power of individuals through groups to achieve political goals. The Coalition video likened it ‘swarming’ as was seen through the changes that occurred in the 1960s. But the democratic structure of government has been the one in which great change has ultimately occurred in the post-colonial world. Is it really the right idea to disregard and try to fight its influence, macropolitics itself, in the wake of some poor decisions and a seemingly inability to adapt to the digital age defined by a new level of transparency in government action?
I believe the greatest change will be achieved when the calls for micropolitical action include calls to improve our democratic participation in government. Successful micropolitics is about power in numbers. Likewise effective democratic government needs majority support to govern. What we need is a movement to a new type of government structure; one that recognizes that in the new digital age, transparency and increased citizen participation in government is inevitable.
And what is the overall beauty of combining micropolitical movements for social change with already existing democratic macropolitical structures? The infrastructure for change already exists. Government has power, has money and has the ability to draw a population together. The brilliant ideas posed by The Coalition and others move further away from idealism and closer to reality. Thus while ideas on how to achive social change in the digital age don’t need to be changed, the opposition does. Government has in the past and can continue to be the hero for change. Because in a democratic society in which new media is used to maximise our participation in the structures of government, government becomes us.
Referennces
Coalition of the Willing Wiki [Online, accessed 27/04/2011] http://cotw.cc/wiki/Coalition_of_the_Willing
Knife Party and Rayner, Tim and Robson, Simon (2010) Coalition of the Willing [Online, accessed 27/04/2011] http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/
Rushkoff, Douglas (2011) ‘The Evolution Will Be Socialized’, Shareable: Science and Tech [Online, accessed 27/04/2011] http://www.shareable.net/blog/the-evolution-will-be-socialized
