#digitalpublicspace

Abstract

This paper is a response to my personal communication question “Learning from Gezi: What is the potential of digital public space as a medium?” The content aims to discuss the design outcome of the project, which is a Google Map overlapped by live-fed tweets with a #occupy label that are clustering around representational spaces of the Occupy movements. The aim of this project is to discuss the role of Twitter (and other digital public spaces) in the Occupy movement by archiving and analysing #Occupy tweets and occupying Google Maps with this data. The project so far is a demo and only applied to #Occupygezi as a case, but can and will be further developed to other Occupy sub-movements.

The material of this paper has been gathered by means of grounded research, including literature reviews around the subject areas of Occupy movement, Occupy Gezi, and symbolic and digital public space, Twitter and Google Maps, as well as interviews I conducted with Occupy protestors in July 2014.

Introduction

This paper investigates the question “Learning from Gezi: What is the potential of digital public space as a medium?”. As a methodological approach, a grounded research has been conducted, while the content is structured around literature reviews, as well as the interviews I conducted with Occupy protestors. The body of the paper is divided into two parts. In the former, a theoretical background of the Occupy movement is put referring to Lefebvre’s definition of representational spaces and the crucial role  physical space plays in the Occupy movement. In the latter, Occupy Gezi is mentioned thoroughly, followed by the interpretation of the use and effect of social media (especially Twitter) in the Occupy movement.

Defnition

In Summer of 2013, I took part in #OccupyGezi, the nationwide uprising that sprung in Turkey following the footprints of the global Occupy movement. This experience inspired me to designate my study around “Learning from Gezi: What is the potential of digital public space as a medium?”. The research process organically led into designing an online tool for the Occupy community that would contribute to the digital existence of #OccupyGezi as well as other movements in the future.

Occupy as Communication Strategy

Initiated in 2011 in Wall Street by the anti-consumerist online magazine Adbusters, the active online existence of #Occupy resulted into spreading of the movement very rapidly and on a global. Sub-movements from over 70 countries around the world have inspired one another into critical consciousness and uprising against current political situations. Gathered under the Occupy brand, the simultaneity of local movements has successfully resulted in solidarity, regardless of differentiating demands in different contexts. The main reason for this network might have been the formal codes that local sites adopted, as well as basic common features, such as lacking a centralised leadership. Still, one of the aspects that stayed unchanged has been the commitment to non-violence, which is followed by scholar Gene Sharp’s theoretical work on non-violent resistance. Sit-in, picketing, civil disobedience, strikes, boycott, internet activism, as well as forums have been some of the action methods. Consequently, the movement has transformed from occupying physical spaces and transformed into assemblies, or working groups. However, the efficient use of online platforms, such as social media and crowdsourcing has made the movement a significant part of our Zeitgeist. Designed for online information systems, the name Occupy itself is a metadata tag that is accompanied by a hashtag. i

Representational Space of Lefebvre

As it is initially, the Occupy movement has been about physical occupation and therefore is strongly associated with public space. The co-existance of individuals in large urban spaces has made the experience emotionally unique for most protestors. For this reason, each sub-movement is paired with a symbolic space that created an interface as well as a physical limitation to the protest. French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre defines this concept as a representational space in his book The Production Of Space (1974). Lefebvre (1974, p. 39) defines representational spaces as a "space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users’, but also of some artists and perhaps those, such as a few writers and philosophers, who describe and aspire to do no more than describe. This is the dominated - and hence passively experienced – space, which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate. It overlays physical space making symbolic use of its objects. Thus representational spaces may be said, though again with certain exceptions, to tend towards more or less coherent systems of non-verbal symbols and signs."ii Thus, grasping the magnitude of the representational space helpful in understanding the impact of the related movement, similar to measuring the impact of online activities by numbers. For instance, “As a gathering place, Taksim is the equivalent of London’s Trafalgar Square, the Place de la Bastille in Paris, Kiev’s Nezalezhnosti (Independence) Square, Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, and Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It serves a similar function as London’s Hyde Park and New York City’s Central Park for the residents of Istanbul. Aside from its ecological value and aesthetics, it has historically been an important and indispensable spot for political and social rallies and protests of all stripes and colours.”iii

The Occupy Brand

That said, Gezi protesters, along with other non-Western movements, have been keenly clarifying that their struggle should neither be seen a part of Arab Spring, nor Occupy.iv In respect to this, I deliberately mention the movements as Occupy, in urge for carrying on a unified vocabulary that has been created by the overall brand. Following an extremely well-thought communication strategy, #Occupy brand uses simple metaphors, contemporary visual codes, everyday media and therefore generates an accessible and engaging system.v It's not surprising that the most impactful political movement of our time is designed in advertising terms. In fact, the author of the book Dream, Stephen Duncombe claims that “Politics are also branded.”vi. Following an well-thought communication strategy, #Occupy brand uses simple metaphors, contemporary visual codes, everyday media and therefore generates an accessible and engaging system.vii “The cognitive linguist George Lakoff writes about how people use “conceptual categories and metaphors” to make sense of their world. These categories and metaphors allow us to translate hard information and direct experience into conceptual form familiar and comfortable to us.”viii In this sense, the Occupy extremely relevant to ours age, more so than the likemindedness on sub-movements. Hence, from a designer's perspective, it is important to understand aims to #Occupy phenomenon communicates to it's audience than to represent sub-movements, or idealize the ideology behind the movement. Nevertheless, as John Blundell, director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, suggests “Ideology is dead”.ix

The New Protest Tools

The Occupy community, as well as its critiques, who followed and challenged the movement, consists of individuals from around the world, who are engaged in not only local, but also global politics. One of the distinctive characteristics is the internet-literacy of the demographic, especially in terms of using social media efficiently and creatively for receiving and organising information about political activities. This efficiency is not limited to social media, but also emerging tools such as open sources, crowdsourcing etc. as well. The use of these tools enabled to collectively share know-how and skillsets, that was quite appropriate against consumerism. Howard Rheingold in his 2002 book Smart Mobs states “'Open source' refers to software, but it also refers to a method for developing software and a philosophy of how to maintain a public good.”x This and other digital tools helped the movement grow in an exponential way, allowing sub-movements to adopt similar formal qualities and practical skill sets. Rheinhold also predicted “The most successful recent example of an artificial public good is the Internet. Microprocessors and communication networks were only the physical part of the Net's success formula; cooperative social contracts were also built into the Net's basic architecture. The Internet is both the result of and the enabling infrastructure for new ways of organizing collective action via communication technology. This new social contract enables the creation and maintenance of public goods, a commons for knowledge resources.”xi

Criticism on Twitter

Although #Occupy was shaped around the co-existance of individuals from various backgrounds in physical public space, the reach of the movement has often been measured by the online expensiveness of related keywords, hashtags and media and the physical and digital actions have been quite interchangeable. “The virtual, social and physical worlds are colliding, merging and coordinating.” as the book Smart Mobs suggest.xii During the peak of the Occupy movement, we all witnessed the transformation of public space from physical to digital realm. Social media acted both as an alternative to mainstream media, which seemed to strategically ignore particular news about the movement, and as an efficient tool for immediately spreading organisational information about physical protests. “Twitter, in particular, has proven particularly adept at organizing people and information.”xiii However, on their extremes, such channels overexpose users to irrelevant content, which saturates perception and become manipulative, encouraging everyone to create noise around a subject for the sake of being 'conscious'. Morozov, a firm critique of the internet revolution, argues “Internet-centralism is a highly disorienting drug; it ignores context and entraps policymakers into believing that they have a useful and powerful ally on their side. Pushed to its extreme, it leads hubris, arrogance, and a false sense of confidence, all bolstered by the dangerous illusion of having established effective command of the Internet. All too often, its practitioners fashion themselves as possessing full mastery of their favourite tool, treating it as a stable and finalized technology, oblivious to the numerous forces that are constantly reshaping the Internet-not all of them for the better. Treating Internet as a constant, they fail to see their own responsibility in preserving its freedom and reining in the ever-powerful intermediaries, companies like Google and Facebook.”xiv Hence, the impact on social media is not interchangeable with the impact of the Occupy movement itself, nor is the body of data is the projection of the protest.

Designer's Contribution

As a communication designer, I limited my subject to the extension of the Occupy movement onto digital public space, analysing and manipulating Twitter content, where the users are both the audience and the author. Every single #Occupy that is followed by a location corresponding to somewhere on Google Maps can be subject to #OccupyGoogleMaps. Along with the interactive map, a twitter account is started as well, which mashes-up and posts existing social media content. By doing so, this computer-generated Twitter account hacks both Twitter and #OccupyGoogleMaps itself. This project is an experimentation and goes along with and is inspired by my own process of learning to code, as well as gathering and analysing temporary microblogs to its extreme. Every outcome of the project is aimed to be shared on the Internet as open source to contribute to the collective know-how.

Conclusion

In conclusion, archiving content that is ephemeral by nature, would require delicacy of historical documentation. Another fascinating aspect of the project has been occupying Google Maps' online data space by #Occupy data. However, my position is not to glorify the phenomenon, but on the contrary to criticise it. The design outcome can help conserve online data that has been subjected to (self)-cencorship as well. Keeping every single tweet without hierarchy would contribute to the movement, but at the same time reveal the quality and relevancy the content. The digital impact of Occupy uprising on Twitter has failed to correspond to any significant impact and like any virtual protest, it only exist in the virtual reality, which is not necessarily translated into everyday politics. At the same time, we may also ask ourselves if Twitter, an ephemeral and disposable medium can produce anything more than a trend? Are we expecting too much from social media, by waiting for it to structure the next revolution?

i Occupy Together, 2014. About Occupy. [online] Available at: http://www.occupytogether.org/aboutoccupy/ [Accessed 22 November 2014]

ii Lefebvre, H., 1974. The Production of Space. Translated from French by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Maiden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell Publishing.

iii Global Research, 2013. The Tale of a Turkish Summer: Is there a Link between “Occupy Gezi” and the IMF? [online] Available at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-tale-of-a-turkish-summer-is-there-a-link-between-occupy-gezi-and-the-imf/5339942 [Accessed 22 November 2014]

iv Take The Square, 2013. “We have already won”. Letter from a Turk to his country #occupygezi. [online] Available at: http://takethesquare.net/2013/06/14/we-have-already-won-letter-from-a-turk-to-his-country-occupygezi/ [Accessed 22 November 2014]

vTime, 2011. The Top 10 Everything of 2011. [online] Avaliable at: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2100571_2100572,00.html

vi Duncombe, S., 2007. Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy.  New York. The New Press.

viiTime, 2011. The Top 10 Everything of 2011. [online] Avaliable at: http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2101344_2100571_2100572,00.html

viii Duncombe, S., 2007. Dream: re-imagining progressive politics in an age of fantasy.  New York. The New Press.

ixhttp://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/media-coverage/ideology-is-dead-long-live-consumer-politic

xRheingold, H., 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA. Basic Books.

xiRheingold, H., 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA. Basic Books.

xiiRheingold, H., 2002. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA. Basic Books.

xiiiJohn Gapper