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Hillary Clinton declared that she is running for the Democratic Party nomination in a Tweet that was sent out Sunday, April 12. This ended pundit conjecture that she might not run, either because of poor health, lack of energy at her age, or maybe she was too tarnished with scandal. Yet, such speculation was just idle chatter used to fill media space. Now that Clinton has declared her candidacy, the media and political pundits have something real to discuss.

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By José van Dijck

In 2006, there appeared to be a remarkable consensus among Internet gurus, activists, bloggers, and academics about the promise of Web 2.0 that users would attain more power than they ever had in the era of mass media. Rapidly growing platforms like Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006) facilitated users’ desire to make connections and exchange self-generated content. The belief in social media as technologies of a new “participatory” culture was echoed by habitual tools-turned-into-verbs: buttons for liking, trending, following, sharing, trending, et cetera. They articulated a feeling of connectedness and collectivity, strongly resonating the belief that social media enhanced the democratic input of individuals and communities. According to some, Web 2.0 and its ensuing range of platforms formed a unique chance to return the “public sphere” — a sphere that had come to be polluted by commercial media conglomerates — back in the hands of ordinary citizens.

Eight years after the apex of techno-utopian celebration, a number of large platforms have come to dominate a social media ecosystem vastly different from when the platforms just started to evolve. It’s time for a reality check. What did social media do for the public — users like you — and for the ideal of a more democratic public space? Do they indeed promote connectedness and participation in community-driven activities or are they rather engines of connectivity, driven by automated algorithms and invisible business models?  Online socializing, as it now seems, is inimically mediated by a techno-economic logic anchored in the principles of popularity and winner-takes-all principles that enhance the pervasive logic of mass media instead of offering alternatives.

Most contemporary social media giants once started out as informal platforms for networking or “friending” (Facebook), for exchanging user-generated content (YouTube), or for participating in opinionated discussions (Twitter). It was generally assumed that in the new social media space, all users were equal. However, platforms’ algorithms measured relevance and importance in terms of popularity rankings, which subsequently formed the quantifiable basis of data-driven interactivity wrapped in “social” rhetoric such as following, trending, or sharing. In this platform-mediated ecosystem, sponsored and professionally generated content soon received a lot more attention than user-generated content. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook gradually changed their interfaces to yield business models that were staked in two basic variables: attention and user data. By 2012, once informal social traffic between users had become fully formalized, automated, and commoditized by platforms owned and exploited by fast growing corporate giants. Although each of these platforms nurses its own proprietary mechanisms, they are staked in the same values or principles: popularity, hierarchical ranking, quick growth, large traffic volumes, fast turnovers, and personalized recommendations. A like is not a retweet, but most algorithms are underpinned by the norms of popularity and fast-trending topics.

The cultivation of online sociality is increasingly dominated by four major chains of platforms: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. These chains share some operational principles even if they differ on some ideological premises (open versus closed systems). Some consider social media platforms as alternatives to the old mass media, praising their potential to empower individual users who can contribute their own opinions or content to a media universe that was before pretty much closed to amateurs. Although we should not underestimate this newly acquired power of the web as a publishing medium for all, it is hard to keep up the tenet that social media are alternatives to mass media. Over the past few years, it has become increasingly obvious that the logics of mass media and social media are intimately intertwined. Not just on the level of platforms mechanics and content (tweets have become the equivalent of soundbites) but also on the level of user dynamics and business models; YouTube-Google now collaborates with many former foes from Hollywood to turn their platform into the gateway to the entertainment universe. Newspapers and television stations are inevitably integrated in the ecosystem of connective media where the mechanisms of data-driven user traffic determines who and what gets most attention, hence drawing customers and eyeballs.

This new connective media system has reshaped the power relationships between platform owners and users, not only in terms of who may steer information but also who controls the vast amount of user data that rushes through the combined platforms every day. What are the larger political and social concerns behind deceptively simple interfaces and celebrated user-convenient tools? Where in 2006 the notion of user power still seemed unproblematic, the relationship between users and owners of social media platforms is now contentious and embattled. In the wake of the growing monopolization of niches (Facebook for social networking, Google for search, Twitter for microblogging) it is important to redefine and reappraise the meaning of “social,” “public,” “community,” and “nonprofit.” The ecosystem of connective media has no separate spaces for the “public”; it is a nirvana of interoperability which major players argue for deregulation and which imposes American neoliberal conditions on a global space where boundaries are considered disruptions of user convenience. Common public values, such as independence, trust, or equal opportunities, are ready for reassessment if they need to survive in an environment that is defined by social media logic.

José van Dijck is a professor of Comparative Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam; her latest book, The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media has just been published by Oxford University Press (2013).

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Image credit: 3D little human character X9 in a Network, holding Tablet Computer. People series. Image by jojje9999, iStockphoto.

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Review: Rudolfo Anaya. Billy the Kid and other plays.



Rudolfo Anaya. 
Billy the Kid and Other Plays. Afterword By: Cecilia J. Aragón , Robert Con Davis-Undiano. Norman: UOklahoma Press, 2011.
ISBN: 9780806142258
384.

Michael Sedano

There's a burden on Rudolfo Anaya's back that rivals Sisyphus' rock: being "El abuelo" the "founding father" de Chicana Chicano Literature. It is his fault, after all, that Bless Me, Ultima is the megaseller it has become so he must accept that responsibility. Fortunately, unlike that accursed's mythical burden, an ever-inspired Anaya easily shoulders his on to myriad heights.


2012 marks the fortieth anniversary of publication by TQS of Bless Me, Ultima. (Look for a special announcement later at La Bloga.) Aside from illustrating that quality surpasses the limitations of a tiny obscure publisher, Bless Me, Ultima helped bring Chicana Chicano cultura into United States Literature on our own terms.

As if that weren't sufficient career achievement--Harper Lee, recall, published only a single novel in her career--Anaya goes beyond Ultima to bring readers childrens books, warm folktales, travel writing, and edge-of-your-seat detective novels.

Every family should own Serafina's Stories, read it to the kids for bedtime storytime. Once you've read all the way through it, expect the kidlet to request you read it again.

The lesser-known A Chicano in China documents ways a chicano uses his US-bred xenophobia to find bridges across the cultures and personal enchantments. Then there's the uniqueness of it all; how many chicanos are writing about the PRC?

Every reader of detective fiction will want to devour the Sonny Baca novels. From Sonny's first appearance in Alburquerque through the seasons, Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, to Jemez Spring. Baca's a great character plus there's fun seeing Anaya in the character "Ben Chavez," and CHICLE-founder Teresa Marquez appear as herself.

Now Rudolfo Anaya's playwriting has been collected in the University of Oklahoma's 2011 Billy the Kid and other plays. The volume is the 10th in the Press' Chicana And Chicano Visions Of The Americas Series. The title piece and "Who Killed Don José?" appeared in The Anaya Reader. Five plays will be new to most readers.

"The Season of La Llorona" is a fitting opening piece for the collection. It echoes the actos of movimiento teatro, and, like any YA piece is transparently designed to instruct. The piece is a visual treat, too, whose setting alternates between Abuelo's lap on Hallowe'en night, and 500 years earlier to Doña Marina and her slavemaster.

A reading through the collection to its final two works, "Billy the Kid" and "Angie,"tracks refinement in the playwrite's art. "Billy" reads vividly. Irrespective of the formalities of a printed script, the narrative flows effortlessly. One hesitates to praise the play for reading like a novel, but Anaya gives the speeches a coherency that fills in the absent narrative.  A play is not prose, but speech. Anaya's ear so effective his characters jump off the page with distinct voices.

Anaya's intent to soften the historical image of cold-blooded murdere

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by tatiana de la tierra

It’s a big gray lump in the living room, a has-been that now attracts dust and random clutter—CDs, pens, cinnamon gum, a magnifying lens, a red dragon, notebooks, DVDs, coins, colorful glass figurines, a purse, a salt lamp, a silver bracelet. My very own eyesore. Gone are the days that I worshipped its light into the night. How midnight quickly became three in the morning. How my pulse raced with suspense. How I yelled, outraged. How I got hooked on predictable stories, sappy sentiments, and bimbos. How I attempted to multi-task, working and watching, eventually dropping the “working” part.

How I swore, every time I got the cable bill, This is the last time! No longer will I pay an insane amount of money to submit my subconscious to psychic and mental pollution! How I fantasized giving Charter the finger. How I would chop, chop, cut, cut.

I thought about it seriously for three years, replaying the chop-chop-cut-cut fantasy every month. I thought about all the money I’d save. All the time I’d have to write. All those hikes I was going to do. How I’d make up for all the lost time. How I would sleep a good eight hours each night. How I’d be cooking soups and baking cakes from scratch. How I’d hang out with friends. How I’d go out to poetry readings, live performances, art movies. How I’d read all those novels on my bookshelves. Maybe I’d take up water coloring or spin clay bowls with my hands. Go horseback riding. Who knows. Anything is possible, right?

A writer I know ditched TV. I wrote to her on Facebook and asked her the big question: Is there life after no-TV? Yes! She raved about the 600-page novel she edited and whittled down to 470 pages with no-TV. The article she wrote for publication. The talk she gave at a conference, the workshop she did at a library, on and on. All of this during one month of no-TV.

The TV was her surrogate soul mate. She had several sets on at the same time, so she wouldn’t miss anything as she went from room to room. She sped home to catch her shows. She fell asleep under its glow. And now that she was healed with no-TV, she was rediscovering her soul. Words were pouring out of her. She became attentive to bird song and sunshine. She joined humankind again and became a social butterfly. She even got a little TV in with friends, for special occasions—the Super Bowl, the Oscars, some great flick.

Clearly, her TV grip was even stronger than mine. If she could do it, I could do it. She recommended a 21-day TV fast, to start.

I thought about it for another year. In that time, my no-TV fantasy grew. I would write a novel! Learn how to play the harmonica! I would compost and become an urban farmer! I’d write songs and record a CD! I’d volunteer for hospice care, take in a few foster kids, become a shaman, help save Mother Earth!

Two months ago, I called Charter and did the chop-chop-cut-cut.

Television, my perverse meditation, how I miss you.

Forgive me the cliché, but life hasn’t been the same without you. None of my gr

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