One of the things that struck me as a little silly as I was working my way through the Castells reading was his conclusion that political institutions and agencies must move beyond their traditional tactics in terms of appealing to civil society and embrace "public debates in the global political sphere." By this, he primarily suggests that social networking sites, i.e. Facebook, Myspace, and blogs like this one will allow civil society to reach the inevitable point where they not only become a very loud voice in the debate over the global attitudes towards public policy, but will threaten the concept of archaic nation-state based political systems.
Urm...
Admittedly, half of Castells' prediction seems to have come to pass, as it could be conceivably argued, at least on the American side that these networks are responsible for "stimulating dialogue regarding specific initiatives" and his concept of public diplomacy, if represented by the internet does allow for "a public sphere in which diverse voices can be heard in spite of their various origins, distinct values, and often contradictory interests." The exposure to a greater amount of ideas, ignoring the often poor spelling and grammar that often compose them in Youtube comments and Myspace quotes does encourage a lot of growth in knowledge of what's out there and what humanity has to offer.
I believe Kastells ignores several key factors in his analysis though; concepts of the other, and the factual nature of the information being distributed on these networks. Waisbord spoke of the mainstream media when he explained that "audiences are typically indifferent to the plight of others portrayed in the world news, particularly when news reports suffering among populations to be geographically and culturally different," so it's hard to believe that a shaky cell-phone camera video uploaded to Youtube would have a significantly more powerful influence on public policy and global involvement in nationally-based conflicts.
Kastells seems to think this media will promote a global political system or global governance, but he ignores the fact that social media systems are not only highly constrained by language barriers (and by proxy, context), and remain highly divided on nation-state lines. He mistakes passive service user growth for enthusiasm for globalization when in fact, it just may reflect the expansion of global networks. But most of all, he doesn't account for the short attention span of what he sees as a global community. In the wake of the rigged Iranian presidential elections in 2009, thousands of Facebook and Twitter users proudly proclaimed their solidarity with the Iranian people by changing the color of their avatar, a mostly-passive process that takes two clicks of a mouse. Is that all that's required for a global imagined community? And what happens to that community after all those green flags have changed back into beach and party pictures?
I agree with the statement by Kastells that says that audiences can be indifferent to the plight of others when the news report may be geographically and culturally different. However, I think that the example of the shaky cell phone video changes things. A shaky cell phone video of a political riot in Iraq may get more attention in the US because the event was made more personable. The viewers can put themselves in the shoes of the Iraqi for a moment, seeing what they saw through the lens. Many videos like this were able to hit the internet before censoring caught up, and have been broadcast in the United States. That fact alone was able to make a political statement. Especially where government censorship is concerned, I think social media like youtube provides an outlet for political dissenters that will be hard to control.
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