Parmi les revues que OpenEdition publie, 21 revues sont africaines. Elles sont localisées dans 5 pays. Seul un pays africain (Kenya) y figure. Ce sont : Nederland (1), Portugal (2), Kenya (1), France (17), Italie (1).
Les universités africaines adoptent les stratégies à suivre pour se développer au numérique. Selon Murray et Clobridge (2014), de plus en plus de revues en ligne sont diffusées sur les plateformes africaines telles AJOL, Sabinet, etc. La plateforme AJOL (African journals online) par exemple, se veut promotrice de la revue africaine en général. Cependant, l’on dénombre sur ce site, 39 revues en français (7%) sur 524 (Ajol, 2019). Ces revues sont reparties entre 12 états sur 24 (voir tableaux ci-dessous) dont le français est une langue officielle ou co-officielle (Université Laval, 2019).
Tableau 1 : Liste en % des pays cités dans Ajol
Tableau 2 : Liste des pays et nombre de revues en % des pays existants et non-existants sur Ajol
18 états anglophones détiennent la majorité absolue des revues avec 465 revues. D’autres pays (arabes (19), portugais (1)) se partage 20 revues. Voir Tableau.
Tableau 3 : Nombre de revues par pays en %
Tableau 4 : Nombre de revues par pays en %
Objectif
Notre objectif est de répertorier les revues africaines sur le Web et principalement sur les plateformes. Dans cette recherche, nous avons sélectionné la plateforme OpenEdition pour connaître les types de publications de revues africaines. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons la plateforme OpenEdition. Dans un deuxième temps, nous indiquons le nombre de documents qui y sont diffusés.
Les quatre plateformes d’OpenEdition
Au sortir de l’analyse de la plateforme Revues.org, nous observons que celle-ci devient: OpenEdition depuis 2017 pour renforcer sa dimension internationale. Elle publie quatre plateformes de publication et d’information sur les sciences humaines et sociales: OpenEdition Journals (les revues), OpenEdition Books (les collections de livres), Hypothèses (les carnets de recherche) et Calenda (les annonces d’événements académiques internationaux) (OpenEdition 1, 2019).
OpenEdition accueille 522 revues sur son portail. Environ plus de 200 000 articles, dont 92% sont accès libre (OpenEdition 2, 2019). Sur la plateforme OpenEdition Books, l’on dénombre près de 7 960 livres en sciences humaines et sociales provenant de 90 éditeurs. L’accès aux ouvrages se fait sur l’espace personnel de chaque éditeur. Ils sont librement accessibles en HTML, et imprimables (OpenEdition 3, 2109).
Quant à Hypothèses, 3 103 carnets de recherches sont recensés sous différents types et tous en accès libre. Ce sont : carnet de chercheur, carnet de terrain, carnet de séminaire, carnet de veille, etc. (OpenEdition 4, 2019).
Enfin, Calenda est le calendrier d’annonces scientifiques en sciences humaines et sociales. Il regroupe, plus de 42 619 annonces en libre accès. De plus, Calenda publie dans les actes de colloque, les programmes complets de journées d’études et de séminaires, les cycles de conférences, les appels à contributions en vue de colloques, etc. (OpenEdition 5, 2019). Voir tableau
Tableau 5 : Les 4 plateformes de OpenEdition en nombre d’articles et en %
OPenEdition offre aux bibliothèques la possibilité de choisir une politique d’acquisition dans la logique de développement du libre accès. Aucun quota de téléchargement ne s’applique à cet accès (OpenEdition 6, 2019). OpenEdition publie 274 581 en accès libre. 17 748 articles sont payant et 4219 articles sous embargo. «L’abonnement donne accès aux fichiers PDF et ePub de manière pérenne» (OpenEdition 6, 2019). Voir tableau
Tableau 6 et 7 : APC dans OpenEdition en nombre d’articles et en %
Fig:6
Fig:7
Conclusion
OpenEdition publie 4 plateformes (Revues, livres, Hypothèses Calanda) soit un total de 253 682 publications. Les revues représentent 200 000 soit 79%. 274 581 (92%) sur 296 548 articles sont disponibles en accès libre. Parmi ces revues OpenEdition diffuse 21 revues africaines. Seul un pays africain y figure: le Kenya. Nous avons observé que OpenEdition est le nouveau nom de Revue.org.
Nous présentons dans cette recherche :Hal archives. Hal est une plateforme d’archives ouvertes. Elle conserve des revues sur sa plateforme Episciences.org sur laquelle l’on trouve une revue africaine Arima. Hal anime sur une seconde plateforme: Sciencesconf.org le programme des organisateurs de colloques ou réunions scientifiques.
Les revues africaines cherchent à se faire une place par la diffusion de leur journal sur les plateformes et les archives en ligne. Les possibilités de conserver et de publier en ligne sont multiples. L’une d’elles est l’archivage électronique. Dans cette recherche nous présentons Hal archive. Quelle est la représentativité des documents africains dans cette plateforme ? Développée et administrée par le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe (CCSD), la plateforme HAL est une archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société. Le CCSD entend diffuser et valoriser des publications et des données scientifiques en fournissant des outils pour l’archivage en ligne (CCSD 2, 2019). Dans ce travail, dans un premier temps, nous définissons deux termes épi-comité, épi-revues qui peuvent aider à la compréhension des termes utilisés pour indiquer certains produits. Dans deuxième temps, nous présentons Hal archive et les plateformes qu’elle publie.
Définition
Epi-revue :
Epi-revue est une revue électronique en libre accès. Elle est composée d’articles soumis via un dépôt dans une archive ouverte telle que HAL ou arXiv.
Epi-comité :
Epi-comité désigne le comité scientifique d’experts reconnus dans leur discipline. Les scientifiques sont chargés de stimuler la création des comités de rédaction pour l’organisation de nouvelles épi-revues et de veiller à la qualité de leurs contenus (Episciences 1, 2019).
Activité de Hal archive : Episciences.org – Sciencesconf.org
Hal publie 2 principales plateformes : Episciences.org et Sciencesconf.org. Elle conserve actuellement 9 300 revues, 8 151 images, 3 421 de thèse et 3 103 Chapitre d’ouvrages. En tout 23 975 documents, dont 5 661 (24%) ont été déposés en 2018. Le nombre de 600 000 documents est dépassé depuis sa création. 11 529 de ces dépôts concernent des documents publiés en 2019 parmi lesquels 5 278 sont des articles (CCSD 2, 2019).
A travers ces deux plateformes, Hal conserve et publie 15 revues dont une Africaine : ARIMA. La revue Arima est créée des suites d’une collaboration scientifique Nord/Sud menée depuis plus d’une vingtaine d’années. L’initiative est arrivée au cours des activités de CARI (Colloque africain pour la Recherche en Informatique et mathématiques appliquées). Arima permet de publier les résultats de recherche issus de ces coopérations. Le domaine scientifique recouvre tous les sujets de recherche de l’informatique et des mathématiques appliquées (Hal, 2019). Que sont les plateformes Episciences.org et Sciencesconf.org ?
Episciences.org
Episciences.org héberge des revues en Open Access (épi-revues) et permet la soumission des articles par un dépôt dans une archive ouverte (Episciences 2, 2019). Episciences.org diffuse une bibliothèque numérique ELPUB (ELectronic PUBlishing). Elpub présente les résultats de recherches sur différents aspects de l’édition numérique sur le plan culturel, économique, social, technologique, juridique, etc. ces résultats impliquent une communauté internationale diversifiée de chercheurs œuvrant, entre autres, dans les domaines des sciences et des sciences humaines et sociales, des bibliothécaires, des éditeurs (ELPUB, 2019).
D’ailleurs, l’on trouve une publication intitulée : Global OA APCs (APC) 2010–2017: Major Trends (Morrison, 2019) de Heather Morrison, chercheuse principale de Sustaining knowledge common. Cette diversité d’acteurs montre la diversité des contributions pour Hal archive.
Cette possibilité de faire des dépôts dans Episciences.org est une avancée majeure des publications en français par rapport aux plateformes en anglais qui sont récentes. Kathleen Shearer, al. (2019) présentent dans une récente l’approche Pubfair. En matière de communication scientifique, l’approche facilite le partage et la collaboration en ligne, tout en favorisant la transparence et la confiance dans les résultats de la recherche diffusés par le biais des services.
Pubfair est un cadre de publication ouvert qui permet la soumission, l’évaluation et à l’accès à une variété de résultats de recherche. Elle permet également aux utilisateurs de créer des canaux de diffusion pour divers groupes de parties prenantes (Kathleen Shearer, al., 2019, 6). Pour Heather Morrison, le cadre Pubfair est un excellent début pour une profonde transformation nécessaire dans la manière dont les universitaires travaillent ensemble et diffusent la recherche. C’est le type d’approche le plus susceptible de générer des économies importantes en fonction des dépenses actuelles consacrées à l’édition savante.
Sciencesconf.org.
Sciencesconf.org est une plateforme Web qui s’adresse aux organisateurs de colloques, ou réunions scientifiques. Elle facilite les différentes étapes du déroulement des conférences depuis la réception des communications jusqu’à l’édition des actes en passant par la relecture et la programmation des thématiques (Episciences 2, (2019).
Tableau 1 : Principaux types de documents
Tableau 2 : Principaux types de documents
Conclusion
Hal est une archive ouverte qui conserve des documents d’images, de revues, de thèse, etc. Elle facilite l’organisation de conférences scientifiques. Une revue africaine (Arima) y figure parmi une quinzaine de revues.
Bibliographie
Arima, (2019). Présentation – Revue africaine de la recherche en informatique et mathématiques appliquées. https://arima.episciences.org/
As pundits increasingly speculate about the likelihood and character of another recession, I’m thinking about the one from which we’re still recovering. Specifically, I’m thinking about a certain strain of American pop music—or a certain sentiment within pop music—that it seems to me accelerated and concentrated just after the 2008 financial collapse. This strain, which obviously co-existed with many other developments in popular music at the time, takes party songs and adds to them two interconnected narrative elements: on the one hand, partying is cranked up, escalated in one or multiple ways, moving the music beyond a party anthem and into something new. On the other hand, the rationale for such a move consistently derives from an attitude of compulsory presentism, in which the future is characterized as unknown, irrelevant, or is otherwise disavowed.
In the American context, the popular (and, I argue, misguided) take on the music of the great recession is that we didn’t have any—in other words, because no one was directly singing about the crisis, there was no music that responded to it. But this is an extremely limited way of understanding how music and socio-political life interact. In this post, I consider specifically American notions of mainstream party culture to argue that the strain of party music described above and below is the music of the crash, not because it literally speaks about it but because it reflects a certain attitude expressed and experienced by those at the front of both popular music listening at the time and the collapse itself: the graduating classes of 2008-2012.
By “party music” I do not mean (exclusively) music to which people party; rather, I am trying to trace what happens to music that is about partying during the crash. When I say that these songs transform from being party anthems into “something new,” what I mean is that in their extremeness, both the represented parties and the organizing affect of these parties reflect an urgency, a crisis, or a lack of choice condition. In short, what I’m calling “Post-Crash Party Music” (PCPP) responds to the 2008 financial collapse and the broader context of climate devastation by instituting a compulsory presentism that manifests through a frenetic, extreme, nihilistic celebration, a never-ending party that is also the last party (before the end of the world).
I’ll briefly mention two prime examples, both from what might be the peak year of this trend, 2010. First, Ke$ha’s single “(and #1 on Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100), “TiK ToK” sees Ke$ha brushing her teeth with a bottle of whiskey, while the last line in the chorus reveals why this is happening: Ke$ha sings, “The party don’t stop, no,” implying that the song’s narration picks up in a moment that could be any moment, an eternal present that is non-distinguishable from any other moment.
This line captures both of the defining characteristics of PCPP: 1) the party is extreme because 2) it never ends, or is always presently occurring. Although there are multiple ways of creating the eternal present that the party represents, each song in this category is invested in denying both past and future in a way that makes the presentist attitude of the partygoers a mandatory condition. This requirement is what makes PCPP more extreme, narratively, than party pop of previous eras.
As a second example, take The Black Eyed Peas’ quintessential party anthem “I Gotta Feeling.” Throughout most of the song, listeners are set up to experience what sounds like a fairly typical party jam: although the Black Eyed Peas render this joyous, optimistic track as perhaps more formally ‘perfect’ or effective than many of its competitors, it still follows a standard EDM format and a fairly conventional sentiment.
However, near the end of the track, as if responding to the pop-culture/post-crash landscape by afterthought, the Black Eyed Peas very casually disclose that the night that has all along been referenced as “tonight” is in fact every night: “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday/Friday, Saturday, Saturday to Sunday/Get, get, get, get, get with us, you know what we say, say/Party every day, p-p-p/Party every day, p-p-p [repeat 10x]…”
Party anthems of one kind or another have been with us for a long time. But I would argue that something else is going on here. The traditional ambition to party until the sun comes up or to party all night has been eclipsed by a more extreme goal, which is to never stop partying at all. In this new space, the time of day or the day of the week is irrelevant; time itself evaporates in the indistinguishable space of an everlasting present.
My argument here is that this music–specifically in its insistence on a party’s ceaselessness–represents almost the complete opposite of its expressed sentiments: that is, rather than rapturous or celebratory moods, PCPP reflects widespread existential and economic anxiety that is shared among the entire millennial generation, but which was acutely present for the classes that graduated college between 2008 and 2012. Its insistence on partying forever is indicative of this generation’s awareness that the future is bleak.
I am not arguing that PCPP harbors any ambitions to address any such anxieties; on the contrary, this music is, on its face, also an example of the much broader genre of neoliberal corporate pop music, a commodity that aims to utilize listener sentiments to maximize profit. That is why PCPP cuts across or includes such racial and gender diversity in its performers, and why it also corresponds to broader trends in pop that elevate and glamorize conspicuous, over-the-top consumption, the kinds of caricatured displays of spending-power that are hallmarks of PCPP as well as other mainstream genres. The discourse of an endless party is also a really good one in which to promote consumption―especially consumption that is taken to the extreme, or is justified through the logic of embracing “life” while we can.
No, from the perspective of the music industry, this music is not about anxiety but is, like all corporate music, still about including as many listener-customers as possible in the cross-branded spectacle of neoliberal pop. Instead, my claim is that this music, however inadvertently, resonates with listeners in a particular, affective way, and in the encounter between neoliberal pop music and a group of anxious American listeners, an accelerated sentiment emerges and spins itself out. We are still consuming, but endlessly so; and that very ceaselessness speaks to a deeper existential dread at the heart of our voracious appetites.
Emerging from this resonance between extreme party music and extreme anxiety are several traceable tropes, each expressing the ambition to party forever. For instance, the “don’t stop” imperative is often paired with the seemingly paradoxical sentiment that “we only have tonight”; but insofar as the end of that night heralds a return to reality (the post-crash landscape) one solution is to simply refuse to stop the party. In this way, the night can “last forever” within the space of the music. Taken together, the PCPP ethos can be summarized by the phrase, as a colleague recently put it, “right now forever.”
There is a specific construction at work here that allows PCPP to impose its presentist timespace: the forever-now is not extended out of joy, but rather out of necessity. By acknowledging that our time (out there) is limited, it constructs a space (in here) that resists normative flows of temporality. PCPP simply disallows temporality into its consciousness–it refuses to acknowledge the existence of a past and especially not a future. Here the “compulsory” element of its presentism emerges: it is compulsory both because within the affective space of the music, the rules do not allow temporality to exist, and because, when our futures have been irrevocably damaged, the present is, in effect, all that we will be allowed to experience.
There are many more examples from this period, all riffing on the same nihilistic affect: “Tomorrow doesn’t matter when you’re moving your feet” (Pixie Lott, “All About Tonight”); “This is how we live/every single night/take that bottle to the head and let me see you fly” (Far East Movement, “Like a G6”, 2010); “Still feelin’ myself I’m like outta control/Can’t stop now more shots let’s go” (Flo Rida, “Club Can’t Handle Me”, 2010). In this context, assurances from Lady Gaga that “It’s gonna be ok” if we “Just Dance” seem less hopeful and more ironic, as if born from denial.
Surely, some of these songs take up the “don’t stop” imperative simply by virtue of its ubiquitous circulation through a pop-culture economy (Junior Senior’s 2003 “Move Your Feet” comes to mind here). I am not arguing that any song that expresses such a generic utterance be considered a part of this post-crash formation; what it takes to qualify, it seems to me, is a distortion whereby the generic affect is pumped so full that it breaks something, a process that sometimes introduces a dark subtext into the music, but which no matter what displays elements of excess that go beyond the pale of a celebratory dance tune. Eddie Murphy’s “girl” wants to “Party All the Time”, but this alone doesn’t qualify the tune as an anxiety anthem because it is a source of hurt and stress for the speaker’s character—ceaseless partying here is sublimated into a narrative about a certain romantic relationship. What distinguishes PCPP, on the other hand, is the sense (however vague) that the “don’t stop” imperative is urgent, and meant to protect us from the world that is waiting outside the club.
PCPP differs in this way from other genres that consciously articulate a dissatisfaction (of whatever kind) with contemporary conditions. The millennial nihilism of an everlasting party is not the same as Gen X’s cynical malaise, which had more to do with resistance to meaningless corporate employment than it did the prospects of no employment at all. PCPP is not punk-rock anarchism nor grunge’s serious grappling with the consequences of capitalism on people’s mental health. PCPP is purely affective, a manic/cathartic punishment-therapy that does not need to denotatively speak of what’s happening in the world because that world is always already experienced in an extreme way. PCPP responds by dialing up the party to a degree of fervor that is correspondingly intense, able to drown out the noise, and it achieves this effect by turning parties into a paradox that is both time-limited and never-ending.
It is true that I have mostly focused on lyrics in this argument. But first of all, other factors also contribute to the sense of PCPP as existential: see for instance the music video for Britney Spears’ “Till the World Ends” (2011), which literalizes the argument I’m making by representing people dancing as the planet crumbles. Likewise, the music video for LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” (2011) casts the band’s beat as a contagion that has afflicted the “whole world,” compelling them to dance ceaselessly in a way that resonates appropriately with post-apocalyptic genres.
Second of all, the “music itself” never exists in isolation from the lyrics or indeed from any other element of a tune. What I would argue that the sounds and formal elements of these songs contributes to the PCPP ethos is a sense of tension and paradox: namely, the paradox between the stated dream of an unending party, and the reality that underlies said dream. It is, physically and otherwise, impossible to keep dancing indefinitely, a fact reflected in the form of this music, which still follows EDM rules of build-up and release, those forms that give one’s body time to rest and appropriate places to feel the natural climax of a song. The tension between the music (which corresponds to the body) and the lyrics (which aim into the afterlife) is the central contradiction that makes PCPP so e/affective.
Thus, the PCPP genre or sentiment, which flashes brightly from 2009-2012, meets its death in and through the track that most comprehensively embodies it: Miley Cyrus’s “We Can’t Stop” (2013). In this deeply melancholic hit, PCPP is followed to its logical conclusion: those who at first refused to stop partying are now entirely incapable of doing so even if they wanted. This is the most extreme version of the PCPP worldview, so extreme that it spread into the music, inverting the entire affect from pumped-up party jam to down-tempo lament, a lament with almost no temporality even in its form.
Although my reading of “We Can’t Stop” differs from Robin James’s, her description perfectly captures the way that song’s form finally achieves the same presentism that PCPP’s lyrics always established, a closed world of “now”. In her 2015 book Resilience and Melancholy, James writes,
Just as the lyrics suggest that the ‘we’ is caught in a feedback loop it can’t stop, the music keeps spuriously cycling through verses and choruses without moving forward or backward…In other words, time isn’t a line, it’s Zeno’s paradox; not a pro- or re-gress but involution (177-178).
If anything, this formal stagnation or inverted affect brings “We Can’t Stop” into the space of the trap music it plays at, and constitutes one of the many ways in which the song cannot sustain its contradictions. As Kemi Adeyemi makes clear, trap music certainly has to do with partying; but its intersections with neoliberal capitalism are particular to Black lives in a way that is wholly different from Cyrus’ attempted deployment. Thus, reaching to trap for a PCPP affect has the devastating effect of exploding the entire sentiment.
In other words, “We Can’t Stop” exposes all the lies that PCPP, in its heyday, furthered: the idea that the party could continue indefinitely, and (by extension) so too could the “fairy tales of eternal economic growth” and the supposed post-racial utopia opened up by neoliberal capitalism. “We Can’t Stop” gives sound to these fictions, through its own form and in various ways: from its well-documented appropriation of Black culture, to the untenable contradiction at the heart of its sentiments. “We can do what we want” but we also “can’t stop.”
Rather than hearing this tune as “painfully dull” (180), this song has always been morbidly fascinating to me, a bleak statement about our inability to move past the moment in which we’re caught. In other words, our presentism is now also compulsory because we’ve gotten so used to it that we can no longer imagine a future at all, or at least not one in which catastrophe doesn’t occur; nor can we imagine the solutions that would help us when it does. Instead, we have the iPhone 11 and self-driving cars. Instead, we have an inverted yield curve and predictions of another (perpetually recurring) market crisis. Instead, we have billionaires doubling down, grabbing every last resource they can from the planet in order to insulate themselves from the effects they have created, a final and pathological shopping spree. Seen from that perspective, while it marked the end of PCPP as a trend, “We Can’t Stop” remains striking as both indictment and prophecy.
Dan DiPiero is a musician and Visiting Assistant Professor of American Studies at Miami University of Ohio, where he teaches American popular culture and music history. His current book project investigates the relationship between improvisation in music and in everyday life through a series of nested comparisons, including case studies on the music of Eric Dolphy, John Cage, and contemporary Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K. His work has appeared in Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation, the collection Rancière and Music (forthcoming, Edinburgh University Press), and boundary 2 online. He plays the drums.
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REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
On October 10/11 2019 I presented our applied science project Make Media Great Again (MMGA) at the Post-Truth Society from Fake News, Datafication and Mass Surveillance to the Death of Trust conference on Malta; an initiative of new media teacher of the University of Malta and founding Director of the Commonwealth Centre for Connected Learning, Alec Grech. The Post-Truth conference included speakers from The Economist, Worldbank and Google.
In my talk I not only summarized how participatory journalism can be a cost-effective and inclusive solution for quality control in online publishing but also indicated how MMGA’s curated process leads to reciprocity and reflection.
The atmosphere on the Malta conference seemed a starting point for higher awareness and consciousness of the roles and responsibility all agents have on the internet when it concerns mis- or disinformation, the two pillars of fake news.
The very real impact of fake news on people lives was evident by at least two situations at the Post-Truth event. First a kaleidoscopic situation occurred when speaker and Iranian blogging pioneer who was imprisoned for 6 years, Hossein Derakhshan, held his talk named “Post-Enlightenment and the Personalization of Public Truths”; he was publically verbally attacked from the audience by co-speaker Maral Karimi who claimed that Derakhshan himself was guilty of spreading fake news that had supported people getting incarcerated or even worse.
Also, a moderator (and journalist) was under police surveillance during the event as he/she had key information concerning the offender(s) on the murdered Maltese Panama-papers journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia; a societal disruptive case due to the various investigations with an abundance of dubious reporting to the public. The social indignation concerning the handling of the Galizia case erupted at several unexpected moments on the event.
Fake news leads to real problems and is tied to social injustice. What can we do as citizens? Read my media-enriched talk below:
Public Rebuttal, Reflection and Responsibility – An Inconvenient Answer to Fake News
I’m co-founder of Make Media Great Again [3], shortened called MMGA, a Dutch non-profit initiative [4] focussed on providing a possible part of the solution concerning fake news. A Dutch project with an (according to some people) funny name [5] but with a serious mission.
And when I talk to my American friends [8] about Make Media Great Again they all agree what a great potential our endeavour has. But also they echo their main remark:
Change the name, change the name, change the name.
And to be fully honest to a large extent I must agree with this. Because for some reason, we keep getting enthusiastic emails with subjects such as: “Yeah let’s build that wall!” [9]
But nonetheless, we are not changing the name, not yet…
My personal realization for the need for MMGA started when I was confronted with “fake news” on the publicly funded national NOS website, the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation. For some of us, it might not be a surprise that a state-funded medium spreads wrong information but in the Netherlands people still put a lot of trust in them.
The case was quite remarkable. During election period the website reported that the frontman of the Labour party was asking questions in Parliament about ethnic profiling by the Dutch police. [11]
figure 1: example of misinformation on the website of the national Dutch Broadcasting Foundation concerning a political party asking Parliamentary questions concerning ethnic profiling by the Police in the Netherlands
After investigating the Parliament website and ultimately asking the Registry what these questions actually were, I got an email that the Labour Party did not at all had asked questions about ethnic profiling. It seemed that a female member of Parliament of the Democratic Party with a migration background had asked the relevant questions.
figure 2: update on Dutch Parliament website concerning the party and person that did ask questions concerning ethnic profiling by the Police in the Netherlands
This information could have impacted voting behaviour, at least it influenced mine. When I confronted the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation and asked if they would at least consider editing the headline of the concerning article the editor-in-chief responded agitated with the remark: “I’m not going to contribute to history falsification!”
How curious…
And how can anyone tell these days what is factually accurate and what isn’t? What is formulated to reveal and what is written to conceal or even to mislead? These are increasingly pressing questions, especially as a new historical round of disinformation is upon us and ‘fake news’ is flourishing in all its glory. Could critical readers help in improving the reliability of “our information”?
Our society would benefit from better news. Yet we don’t have the tools to improve this ourselves. This has changed with our open-source movement MMGA as we offer transparent tools for journalistic reporting. Where everyone can contribute and we invite everyone to join our cause. For a clearer world.
Up to 50,000 readers were involved in our first pilot, with candidates individually selected from the news organization’s readers’ commentary panel (their forum NUJij). From these readers, more than 300 are now registered as an annotator.
figure 3: screening, selection and training process overview
And from this group, we selected, screened, and trained knowledgeable and/or critical thinking readers to actually work on annotation assignments.
How we do it? Improving the quality of media through annotations? Well, we believe people have unique, diverse views and also relevant knowledge that helps the editorial process and quality. With our digital tools, people are able to detect misinformation, biased language and false contextualization. MMGA annotations are practicable suggestions, labelled notes, directly attributed to words, sentences or paragraphs. They are actionable for the editor, avoid debate based on personal preferences and, if correct, directly trigger a correction within articles.
Editors are free to implement or not. Because the annotations are immediately executable and based on the principle of journalistic objectivity, they overcome the known issue of lengthy debate due to subjectivity that arises with regular reader comments. The system differs from the well-known response form, whereby the reaction usually concerns disagreement with the online paper’s opinion or the tenor of the whole article. Annotations focus on specific elements of an article and are structured according to annotation labels. Our tests not only were to test the annotation system itself but also see how those involved respond to and work with it.
Furthermore, provided these annotations are clear, factually accurate and presented with proper transparency, they provide the necessary motivation for their immediate implementation, given that doing so will only improve the quality of the work in question.
Why we do it? To improve the credibility of media and strengthen the bond with their audience. The credibility of the media is being questioned more and more, whereas the media are seen as the first party to protect us from wrong information. This fundamental role of media is essential to enable proper functioning of democracy and constructive social debate, thus fortify social cohesion.
The potential of this idea goes beyond journalism; in fact, any organization or body that provides information as a ‘public service’ could benefit from it, be they governmental institutions or museums. And it is arguably becoming increasingly important to use the openness of the internet to facilitate the representation and participation of diverse and hitherto underrepresented groups in media and society at large.
Editorships, newsrooms and the army of opinion leaders typically reveal a skewed distribution in their composition with respect to gender and place of origin and residence, among other things. Whereas MMGA, with its “diversity panels” geared towards the nuanced use of language in journalism and its emphasis on multiple perspectives in reporting, holds the possibility of genuine balance. True quality is arguably impossible without diversity. We find it important that our group of annotators is as diverse as possible. Men, women, people from various ethnic backgrounds and minorities of all sorts. This minimises the chance of overlooking particular contexts. A more diverse group can, according to scientific research ([12] see pages, 21, 31 and 38), improve the quality of news offerings and build trust in the sources of these offerings. Trust, in particular, is now one of the major issues in mainstream journalism. The study that yielded the findings involved globally recognized names such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC and, last but not least, The Guardian. We, therefore, invite anyone who shares our concerns and wants to help to contact us [13].
The fact that media organizations themselves are beginning to admit the need to fight fake news to maintain their readership’s trust opens the door for collaborations. And this is how we hope to work, too. After all, the idea isn’t to destroy existing organizations but to improve the quality of what they produce.
So there you have it! MMGA is cost-effective (because we mainly work with volunteers) and a value-added layer of contributors who create a safety net against misinformation, thus giving the hardcore fake news no change. We collaborate with universities, well-known investigative journalists and impactful media for a maximum reach [14]. Solution found it’s even politically correct because it’s all-inclusive… Yep, case closed… Couldn’t anybody else come up with this? Oh well. No problem, we got it covered…
At least… we thought. Before the post-truth reality punched me in the face!
An American alternate history television series [16] depicting a parallel universe where the Axis powers (Rome–Berlin–Tokyo-axis) win World War II – so the Nazis and their partners won instead of the Allies. It is produced by Amazon Studios and based on Philip K. Dick‘s 1962 science fiction novel of the same name [17]. Dick is popularly known as the writer of the books behind movies as Blade Runner and Minority report.
So back to me and the series. During the period I’m binge-watching the series I’m using Facebook and there – for some reason – I’m directed to a journalistic looking Facebook-post with the purport that Bill and Melinda Gates are not trying to save the world from malaria or polio but instead actually are testing experimental medicines (on behalf of large pharmaceutical companies) on poor Indian kids…just like the Nazi’s would do!
But then I remembered MMGA’s code of conduct, inspired by the journalistic ethical code the Bordeaux Declaration, multiple Dutch guidelines concerning journalism and prevention of improper influencing by conflicts of interest and last but not least the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. Our first directive states:
“Your annotations are based on facts for which you can indicate a reliable source (which thus are verifiable and can be held accountable), as completely as possible and regardless of the opinions expressed about this source.”
I couldn’t even find one reliable source backing up the claims made in the Facebook-post. Thus even so how much I felt I was obliged to spread this “news” I also did not want to have the responsibility for an unverifiable article.
And this reminded me of the results of one of the first MMGA tests we conducted concerning our Trustmark on 500 random internet users. The Trustmark signifies and guarantees that all articles are under audit of an independent community, sources are easily viewable to the public and any alterations to the article are also tracked and viewable by the public.
figure 5: test results adoption indication MMGA Trustmark
To create more transparency and trust. From our survey with these 500 readers, nine out of ten stated they experience an article with a Trustmark as more trustworthy. Also, more than 6 out of ten were likely to share an article with a trust mark.
figure 6: overall function MMGA Trustmark
So what will happen when people become more aware when such trustmarks are missing in the article they are reading? Would they be more conscious when they are sharing unmarked articles?
Without the network effects of the Internet wrong information would probably have the same damaging effects as simple “false gossip” in the contained context of let’s say a school class. We are keen to look at platforms such as Facebook and news media like the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation as guilty parties for the fake news problem. And reach for all kinds of tech-related solutions to save us.
But based on my own Man in the High Castle experience I suspect we still need to make a leap in our societal consciousness if we are going to survive this post-truth era:
“We are not merely using the technical infrastructure of the internet, as if it is something outside of us. Beyond our own power and responsibility. We are an integral and decisive part, the living nodes, of this global information network.”
figure 7: Quote of Daphne Caruana Galizia at the protest memorial in Valetta on the night before the conference
And therefore the name of our organisation stays as it is. To remind us of the easily overlooked fact, another inconvenient truth, that we all individually have to play our part – as reflective and responsible citizens – to make media great again.
Figure 8: MMGA co-founder Ruben Brave being interviewed at the post-truth conference “From Fake News, Datafication and Mass Surveillance to the Death of Trust” held 10-11 October 2019 in Valetta on Malta. Copyright photo’s by Harry Anthony Patrinos, Practice Manager World Bank for Europe’s and Central Asia’s education global practice.
According to the Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet) website, the article processing charges (APCs) for almost all the listed journals dropped from 625 USD in 2018 to 325 USD in 2019 which is 48 percent decrease. Only the ‘International Journal of Pharmacology’ dropped from 1000 USD to 625 USD, about a 38 percent decrease. On the contrary, two journals experienced a slight increase for their article processing charges (APCs) from 250 USD to 275 USD. This is good news for authors who do not have enough funding but try to publish through Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet). From the journal number perspective, 3 new journals have been added in the Asian Network for Scientific Information (ANSInet).
ANSInet is included in our study as this publisher was formerly in DOAJ. ANSInet no longer listed in DOAJ now; we do not know whether this publisher did not complete the re-application process or if ANSInet applied and was not accepted.
Abstract De Gruyter is a well-known traditional academic publisher with 270 years of experience. We first noted the dramatic expansion of De Gruyter into open access publishing in 2016 (French: Dumais-DesRosiers, M. & Brutus, W. (2016); English: Morrison (2016). In 2014, there were no De Gruyter titles listed in DOAJ; by the end of 2015, De Gruyter was the third largest publisher in DOAJ. In 2019, De Gruyter’s expansion into open access is even more remarkable, primarily through De Gruyter’s new imprint Sciendo, which has added more than 300 OA journals in 2019. The majority of De Gruyter / Sciendo journals (57%) do not charge APCs. In many cases we were not able to ascertain whether or not there is a fee.
Details Both De Gruyter and Sciendo publish journals through either Open Access or Paid access model.
The analysis of Open Access journals for these two publishers reveal that especially Sciendo is expanding its number of open access journals significantly, as almost 300 new journals were added to their database in 2019 alone.
Out of the new journals, 33 titles were published for the first time in 2019.
A deeper glance into the list of Sciendo journals shows that most of them are published through collaboration with different universities and academic societies and institutions in Europe.
There is not a clear pattern for pricing model of open access journals for authors by Sciendo. About 57 percent of the open access journals published by Sciendo are free of charge to publish in for authors, while almost 14 percent charge processing fees to publish articles. We were unable to find information regarding the rest of the journals.
For the open access journals with article processing charge (APC) model, the range of processing fees was approximately 50 Euros to 1000 Euros, depending on the journals in which the authors want to publish their articles (To write this blog post, we converted the cost from local currencies to Euros).
On the other, there were less changes in De Gruyter open access journals, though we found 21 new journals in the list of their journals comparing to the previous year. The data regarding their publishing model could be seen in the following chart.
For the journals with article processing charge model, the range was almost between 500 to 2000 Euros, with the average cost about 1000 Euros.
On a side note, there were some journals that were transferred between De Gruyter and Sciendo as the publisher, so it could be beneficial to authors and people who are interested in finding journals if De Gruyter was more clear in pointing out this on their website.
For a number of semesters, I invited composition students to explore the idea of using the mixtape as a lens for envisioning a writing assignment about themselves. Initially called “The Mixtape Project,” this auto-ethnographical assignment employed philosophies from various scholars, but focused on Jared Ball and his concept of the mixtape as “emancipatory journalism.” In I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto, Ball pushed readers to imagine the mixtape as a counter-systematic soundbombing, circumventing elements of traditional record industry copyright practices (2011).
Essentially, a DJ could use a myriad of songs from different artists and labels to curate a mixtape with a desired theme and overarching message, then distribute the mixtape as a “for promotional use only” artifact. Throughout the 1980s, but predominantly in the 1990s and early 2000s, many DJs used mixtapes as the medium to promote their DJ brands and generate income. It wasn’t long before labels began to give hip-hop DJs record deals to release “album-style” mixtapes where the DJs record original content from artists made specifically for the DJ album (see DJ Clue, Funkmaster Flex, Tony Touch). This idea evolved into producer-based compilation albums, best depicted today by global icon DJ Khalid. Rappers also hopped on the mixtape wave, using the medium to jump-start their careers, create a “street buzz” around their music, and ultimately gauge the success of certain songs to craft and promote upcoming albums.
Image by Flickr User Backpackerz: “K7 mixtape – Exposition Hip Hop, du Bronx aux rues arabes (Institut du monde arabe)” (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The assignment revolved around mixtape framework in the earlier portion of my teaching career. Most recently, I began to realize as my students evolve (and I simultaneously age), that the “mixtape” – a sonic artifact distributed on cassette tape or CD – is becoming more remote to students. This thinking led to revising the assignment with a more contemporary twist. Thus, “The Playlist Project” was born: the first in a set of four major writing projects in a first-year writing classroom. The ultimate goal of the assignment was to immediately disrupt students’ relationships with academic writing, and to help them (re)envision the ways they embrace some of the cultural capital they value in college classrooms. Be clear, this was a particular type of mental break for students, a shift that was welcomed yet also uncomfortable for them.
“I Get It How I Live It”: Framing and Foregrounding the Assignment Set-Up
The course started with readings on plagiarism, intertextuality, and the hip-hop DJ’s use of sampling, curating, and storytelling. Next were readings by hip-hop artists describing their creative process and detailing their artistic choices sonically. These early readings helped pivot students from their stereotypical notions of what college writing courses – and writing assignments – looked like, and how they could enter scholarly discourse around composing. This conversation was foregrounded in students’ knowledge that they bring with them into the new academic space in the college classroom. My goal was to really focus on student-centered learning and culturally relevant pedagogy; ideally, if you are immersed in hip-hop music and culture, I want you to share that knowledge with the class. This sharing begins to create a community of thinking peers instead of a classroom with an English professor and a bunch of students who have to take the course “cuz it’s required in the Gen Ed, so I can’t take anything else ‘til I pass this!”
My research is entrenched in both hip-hop pedagogy and culture, specifically looking at the DJ as 21st century new media reader and writer. I liken my role as instructor to that of the DJ: a tastemaker and curator for the ways we understand sonic sources we know, and couple them with new and necessary soundbites that become critical to the cutting edge of the learning we need. I’ve engaged in the craft of DJing for more than half of my life, and use DJ practices as pedagogical strategies in my classroom environments.
The outcome of this curatorial moment was “the Playlist Project.” Students were asked to create their own playlists, which served as mixtapes that either “described the writer as a person” or “depicted the soundtrack to the writer’s perfect day.” This assignment was due during Week 6 of a 16-week semester, and was the first major writing assignment within the course. The assignment called for two specific parts: an actual playlist of the songs and an essay which served as a meta-text, describing not only the songs, but also the reasons why the songs were chosen and sequenced in a specific order. As an example, the guiding text we used was a DJ mixtape I created called “Heavy Airplay, All Day.”
“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: DJ Mixtape by Todd Craig
My playlist was a DJ-crafted tribute to a family friend who passed away in the summer of 2017: Albert “Prodigy” Johnson, Jr. Hearing the news of his untimely death reverberated through my psyche on that warm June afternoon; I remember meeting Prodigy when I was 15 years old. Many avid hip-hop listeners not only know Prodigy as one of the signature vocalists of the 1990s New York hip-hop sound, but also as one of the premier lyricists responsible for a shift in sonic content from emcees in New York and globally. His voice is one of the most sampled in hip-hop music.
One of the most anticipated moments of the mid 1990’s was the release of Prodigy’s first solo album, H.N.I.C. P was already shaking the industry with his lethal and bone-chilling visuals in his verses. But everyone knew he was on his way to dominance upon hearing the single “Keep it Thoro.” On this Alchemist-produced record, P basically broke industry rules in regards to typical hip-hop song construction; his verses were longer than the traditional 16-bar count, and the song had no chorus.
He returned to hip-hop basics: hard-hitting rhymes with undeniable visuals served atop a sonic landscape that kept everyone’s head nodding. P ends the song with the classic line “and I don’t care about what you sold/ that shit is trash/ bang this – cuz I guarantee that you bought it/ heavy airplay all day with no chorus/ I keep it thoro” (Prodigy 2000).
It was only right for me to create a tribute mixtape for Prodigy. And it felt right to start the Fall 2017 semester with the Playlist Project that used a shared text that celebrated and honored his memory. It highlighted the soundtrack to my perfect day: having my friend back to rewind all the memories that come with every song.
Fan Memorial to Prodigy, Image by Flickr User Nick Normal (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“I Got a New Flex and I Think I Like It”: (Re)inventing Mixtape Sensibilities in the Comp Classroom
The Playlist Project was aimed at achieving three different outcomes. The first goal was to invite students to use audio sources to envision a soundscape that explains a thread of logic. These sonic sources would hold as much value in our academic space as text-based sources, and would allow them to (re)envision what “evidence-based academic writing” looks like. Thus, students could utilize their own cultural capital to negotiate sound sources of their choosing.
The second was to get students to use DJ framework to think about sorting, sequencing and organization in writing. In our class discussions, one of the critical objectives was to get students to understand the sequencing of divergent sound sources could drastically alter the story one is trying to tell. Overall aspects of mood, tone, and pacing all become critical components of how a message is expressed in writing, but it becomes even more evident when thinking about the sonic sources used by a DJ. Each song – a source in and of itself – is a piece of a puzzle that constructs a picture and tells a story. Starting with one source can create a completely different effect if it is reconfigured to sit in the middle or the end. Explaining these sonic choices in text-based writing would be the second step in the assignment.
Finally, students would engage in editing by joining both sound and text based on a theme they have selected. Again, sequencing becomes a critical DJ tool translated into the comp classroom. Using this pedagogical strategy echoes the ideas of using DJ techniques such as “blends” and “drops” as viable teaching tools (see Jennings and Petchauer 2017). Students would need to critically think through an important question: in creating the playlist, how does one manipulate and (re)configure sound to create a sonic landscape that “writes” its own unique story?
DJ Sai by Flickr User Mixtribe (CC BY 2.0)
“But Does It Go In the Club?”: Outcomes and Initial Findings of The Playlist Project
The first iteration of the Playlist Project bore mixed results. Students found it difficult to think of this project as one whole assignment consisting of three different parts. Instead, they envisioned each of the three different pieces as isolated assignments. So the playlist was one part of the assignment. They picked the songs they liked, however ordering and sequencing to convey a logical theme or argument fell from the forefront of their composing. The essay then became its own piece divorced from the organic creation of the playlist. Thus, students weren’t “engaged in telling the story of the playlist.” Instead, students were making a playlist, then summarizing why their playlists contained certain songs.
For students who were more successful integrating the elements of the assignment, we were able to have rich and fruitful classroom conversations about both selection and sequencing. For example, one student chose the theme of “the Soundtrack to the Perfect Day.” Within that theme, the student chose the song “XO TOUR Llif3” by Lil Uzi Vert.
In the song’s hook, he croons “push me to the edge/ all my friends are dead/ push me to the edge/ all my friends are dead” (Vert 2017). When this song came up in class discussion, we were able to have a formative conversation around the idea that a perfect day entailed all of someone’s friends being “dead.” This also sparked a conversation about the double meaning of the quote; it didn’t stem from traditional print-based sources, but instead arose from a student-generated idea based in the cultural capital of the classroom community. In this moment, I was able to learn more from students about the meteoric rise in relevance of both the artist and the song which seemed to depict an extreme darkness.
“Big Big Tings a Gwaan”: Future Tweaks and Goals for The Playlist Project
Moving forward with this assignment, I have considered breaking the assignment up into three pieces for more introductory composition courses: constructing the playlist, sequencing the playlist, and writing the meta-text. In this configuration, the meta-text would truly become the afterthought (instead of the forethought) of the sonic creation. As well, more in-depth soundwriting could emanate from the playlist construction, manipulation, (re)sequencing and editing. I also plan to use the assignment with a more advanced-level composition course to gauge if the assignment unfolds differently. Using an upper-level course to attain the trajectory of the assignment may be helpful in walking backwards to calibrate the assignment for students in introductory-level classes.
Another objective will be to move away from just a “playlist” and back into a “digital mixtape” format, where the playlist songs and sequencing become the fodder for a one-track, “one-take” DJ-inspired mixtape. While students don’t have to be DJs, creating a singular sonic moment digitally may imbed students in marrying the idea of soundwriting to depicting that sonic work in a meta-text. This work may also engage students in constructing sonic meta-texts, thereby submersing themselves in soundwriting practices. This work can be done in Audacity, GarageBand and any other software students are familiar with and comfortable using.
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Featured Image: By Flickr User Gemma Zoey (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
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Dr. Todd Craigis a native of Queens, New York: a product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City. He is a writer, educator and DJ whose career meshes his love of writing, teaching and music. Craig’s research examines the hip-hop DJ as twenty-first century new media reader and writer, and investigates the modes and practices of the DJ as creating the discursive elements of DJ rhetoric and literacy. Craig’s publications include the multimodal novel tor’cha, a short story in Staten Island Noir and essays in textbooks and scholarly journals including Across Cultures: A Reader for Writers, Fiction International, Radical Teacher and Modern Language Studies. He was guest editor of Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education for the special issue “Straight Outta English” (2017). Craig is currently working on his full-length manuscript entitled “K for the Way”: DJ Literacy and Rhetoric for Comp 2.0 and Beyond. Dr. Craig has taught English Composition within the City University of New York for over fifteen years. Presently, Craig is an Associate Professor of English at Medgar Evers College, where he serves as the Composition Coordinator and City University of New York Writing Discipline Council co-chair.
Het internet is niet alleen alomtegenwoordig, ook boezemt het ons steeds meer angst in: zijn onze data wel veilig, en kunnen we nog wel zonder onze smartphone? Patricia de Vries gaat online met Søren Kierkegaard, de angstfilosoof par excellence, en laat zien dat we de invloed van het internet pas kunnen begrijpen als we het als deel van onze werkelijkheid beschouwen.
Waar cyberspace eerst de mogelijkheid van een utopische ruimte leek voor te stellen, lijkt het internet vandaag de dag meer op het paard van Troje. Van de talloze internetkritieken is de meest voorkomende dat een handjevol sociale media- en tech giganten het internet domineert en astronomisch rijk is geworden door onze persoonlijke gegevens te verzamelen, op te slaan en te gebruiken als handelswaar. Wij zijn geen gebruikers van het internet, wij worden gebruikt door the Big Five: Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft en Amazon. Wij zijn het product, en de inkomstenbron. Het scala aan beangstigende scenario’s waar deze situatie toe kan leiden spant van kleine rampen tot dystopische vergezichten: van aan individuele levensstijlen gekoppelde verzekeringspremies en inkomensafhankelijke vliegticketprijzen, tot onderdrukking door harteloze en vrekkige werkgevers of zelfs door rechts-radicale despotische politieke regimes.
In een tweede populaire vorm van internetkritiek staat een angst voor de invloed van ons internetgebruik op de kwaliteit van ons leven en cerebraal welbevinden centraal. Dergelijke ‘internetangst’ heeft zich gedurende het afgelopen decennium gemanifesteerd in een groeiende stapel boeken. Ergens onderaan die stapel ligt The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (2007) van Andrew Keen. Boeken over internetangst vonden een paar jaar later een groot publiek, met onder meer The Shallows:What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, van Nicholas Carr (2010) en Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011) van Sherry Turkle. Carr stelde dat ons geheugen en onze cognitieve vermogens eroderen wanneer we urenlang van de ene webpagina naar de andere springen. Turkle waarschuwde voor de psychosociale gevaren die schuilen in onze toenemende afhankelijkheid van technologie voor betekenisvol sociaal contact, waardoor we continu alleen zijn – zelfs in gezelschap. Naarmate deze afhankelijkheid toeneemt, zouden mensen het vermogen verliezen om authentieke en betekenisvolle relaties met elkaar te hebben. We staan aan de vooravond van een ‘robotmoment’, stelt zij, waarna robots plaats zullen maken voor ‘real life interactions’.
Ergens bovenaan de stapel boeken over internetangst ligt The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2018) van Shoshana Zuboff, waarin zij ervoor waarschuwt dat techgigant Google met onze gegevens toegang krijgt tot ons dagelijks leven, onze ‘realiteit’, waardoor het ons gedrag kan voorspellen en – uit winstbejag of machtswellust – kan beïnvloeden. In Zullen we contact houden. Hoe we de geest uit ons wereldbeeld verwijderen – een recente Nederlandstalige vertegenwoordiger van het genre – stelt ook Rob van Gerwen dat zich een zogenaamde ‘dementificatie van ons wereldbeeld’ voltrekt, gekenmerkt door het verlies van onze geest en subjectiviteit. De menselijke leefwereld wordt steeds meer gestuurd door een voortdurende mechanisering en kwantificering, versterkt door een neoliberale marktstructuur en ‘de digitale wereld’. Van Gerwen ontwaart een ‘digitale wereld’ die is losgezongen van de ‘leefwereld’. In deze digitale wereld maken de algoritmen van Twitter, Facebook en Google de dienst uit. In zijn boek beschrijft hij wat dat met onze geest en subjectiviteit doet. Hij schetst een somber beeld waarin mensen wrijvend over oplichtende rechthoeken veranderen in ‘smartphone-zombies’. Voortdurend afgeleid door binnenkomende WhatsAppberichten en notificaties van socialemedia-apps, hebben we geen echte aandacht meer voor elkaar. We zijn continu ‘online’ en als gevolg daarvan altijd ‘afwezig’, meent Van Gerwen. We lopen rond, of erger nog, we fietsen en rijden rond, met onze ogen gericht op onze apparaten. Voorrang verlenen we alleen aan onze smartphones: menselijke verstandhoudingen zijn ontdaan van oogcontact en lichamelijke en geestelijke aanwezigheid. Doordat we almaar ‘online’ zijn verleren we zelfs het converseren, want gesprekken op het internet bestaan vooral uit losse expressies of emotioneel commentaar gekenmerkt door slordig taalgebruik. En dit zijn volgens Van Gerwen slechts enkele van de zorgwekkende gevolgen voor onze dementerende geest en verdrukte subjectiviteit.
In de verschillende uitingen van internetangst ligt het accent steeds net anders, maar het refrein luidt al tien jaar hetzelfde: het internet helpt alles wat werkelijk van waarde is naar zijn grootje, en wij graven, scrollend en klikkend, ons eigen graf. Internetangst kent een lange voorgeschiedenis, met een vrijwel ongewijzigde structuur. Wetenschappers, schrijvers en critici buigen zich al eeuwenlang over de consequenties van technologische ontwikkelingen op het menselijk leven. Kort samengevat luidt de formule: de opkomst van een specifieke technologie wordt verketterd door haar in verband te brengen met negatieve effecten op onze cognitieve vermogens en de sociale vaardigheden van met name toekomstige generaties. Bovenal is de angst voor afnemende autonomie en (keuze)vrijheid een gouwe ouwe binnen zulke technologiekritieken.
De veronderstelde negatieve effecten van ‘het internet’ worden dikwijls in de schoenen van een of meerdere technologiegiganten geschoven. Zonder die vervloekte platformmonopolisten en hun slimme dragers zou het echte leven er beter uit zien. We zouden weer wat rechterop lopen, en wat meer aandacht hebben voor elkaar. We zouden weer moeilijke boeken lezen en goede gesprekken voeren tijdens de lunchpauze. Onze filterbubbels zouden kunnen barsten en polarisatie en fragmentatie zouden plaats kunnen maken voor een breed gedragen waardesysteem. Misschien zouden we ons weer wat vaker vervelen, wat de deur zou kunnen openen naar nog veel meer groots en moois. Kortom: de manier waarop wij de wereld waarnemen zou niet langer afhankelijk zijn van de algoritmen van op winst beluste internetbedrijven.
Maar een fixatie op ‘het internet’ als almachtige overheerser veronderstelt een vals dualisme tussen de digitale of virtuele wereld enerzijds en de werkelijke wereld anderzijds. Die visie laat weinig ruimte voor een problematisering van ‘het internet’ als onderdeel van de complexe en rommelige socio-technische kluwen waarin wij leven, die onder meer bestaat uit grootheden als geografische locatie, kapitaal en arbeid, politiek en economie, maar ook uit kleinere eenheden, zoals u en ik – en alle verwachtingen, ideeën, verlangens en aspiraties van de voornoemde betrokken spelers. Belangrijker nog: we hangen maar al te gemakkelijk de oorzaak van onze angsten op aan iets dat buiten onszelf ligt en daarmee buiten ons bereik. Deze gedachte onderzocht de grote angstfilosoof Søren Kierkegaard al. Door angsten buiten onszelf te plaatsen verliezen we de onderliggende oorzaken van onze angsten uit het oog, want zoals hoogtevrees niet over hoogte gaat, zo heeft internetangst geen directe betrekking op het internet.
Kierkegaard over angst
In Het begrip angst beweert Kierkegaard dat momenten van angst onvermijdelijk een fundamenteel onderdeel zijn van het menselijk bestaan en zelfs dat ons begrip van de wereld geworteld is in angst. Anders gezegd, onze relatie tot de wereld – onze kennis ervan, ons handelen in de wereld en onze ideeën erover – zijn gegrond in angst. Hoewel we angst in het lichaam voelen, en in het hier en nu ervaren, is het een toekomstgerichte emotie. In De ziekte tot de dood stelt Kierkegaard dat angst wordt gevormd door het onbekende, door iets waar we geen kennis mee durven te maken. Dat kan angst zijn voor een mogelijkheid van het bestaan of een angst voor jezelf. De voorwaarde voor angst, zo betoogt hij, is de onmogelijkheid om in de toekomst te kunnen kijken; het is de openheid en onbekendheid van de toekomst die ons angst inboezemt.
Kierkegaards visie op angst ligt besloten in zijn idee van menszijn. In De ziekte tot de dood stelt hij dat de mens zelf een verhouding is, namelijk een verhouding tot het zelf. Deze zelfverhouding stelt een synthese tussen eindigheid en oneindigheid voor, tussen het tijdelijke en het eeuwige, tussen noodzakelijkheid en mogelijkheid. Volgens Kierkegaard wordt deze synthese door God gedragen en door de mens gesteld. Doordat de mens een verhouding is, een synthese van tegenstellingen, is hij vatbaar voor angst. Mogelijkheid, oneindigheid en het eeuwige maken dat de toekomst radicaal open en onbepaald is. De mens heeft wat dat betreft niets in de melk te brokkelen. Onder meer sekse, etniciteit, economische klasse, geografische positie, burgerschap, gezondheid, en uiteindelijk sterfelijkheid begrenzen de mogelijkheden van de mens, maar deze begrenzingen zijn nooit absoluut noch allesomvattend. Mogelijkheid omvat al het mogelijke, en ‘al’ omvat zelfs het ondenkbare, onkenbare en onvoorstelbare. Zou dat niet zo zijn, dan zou de toekomst in zekere mate berekenbaar, voorspelbaar en waarschijnlijk worden. Angst is daarom ook mogelijkheid van verandering, het mogelijke verlies van iets en het begin van iets anders – het toekomstige, het onvermoede. De onvoorspelbaarheid van de toekomst weerhoudt mensen er niet van haar te voorspellen, maar dat verandert echter niets aan de fundamentele openheid van de toekomst, benadrukt Kierkegaard. Wat maakt angstwekkende toekomstvisioenen over het internet een populair genre? Wat winnen we als straks alles verloren gaat aan het internet? In Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2013) beweert Douglas Rushkoff dat apocalyptisch denken houvast biedt. En, nog belangrijker, het geeft inhoud en richting aan een open en onvoorspelbare toekomst. Dit is wat er gaat gebeuren. We staan nu hier. Op deze manier gaan we ten onder. Speculeren over waar het heen gaat met het internet biedt die illusie van houvast in een onstandvastig leven. Maar daarmee kom je niet van je angst af, je moet er namelijk doorheen, meent Kierkegaard.
Internetangst als IRL-fetisjisme
Angst komt voort uit een scheve verhouding van de mens tot zichzelf, een scheefstand in de synthese waarbij de ene kant van de tegenstelling de boventoon voert ten opzichte van de andere. Wanneer iemand zich bijvoorbeeld verliest in grenzeloze fantasieën en dromen, wanneer hij denkt dat hij onbegrensd is, is er sprake van een gebrek aan eindigheid, en een teveel aan oneindigheid. En omgekeerd, wanneer je nadruk legt op je beperkingen en op noodzakelijkheid, kun je verzanden in determinisme, fatalisme of nihilisme. Wat dan ontbreekt is een gevoel van verbreding, van mogelijkheid. In angstige toekomstvisioenen lijkt er dan ook sprake van een wanverhouding tussen het eindige en het oneindige, noodzakelijkheid en mogelijkheid. Meer concreet: internetangst berust op een vals dualisme tussen de virtuele en de werkelijke wereld, waarin de nadruk met name op de virtuele wereld komt te liggen. Dat leidt iemand als John Cheney-Lippold, auteur van We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves (2017), ertoe te stellen dat we worden onderworpen aan een ‘algoritmische regeringsvorm met biopolitieke dimensies’. En diezelfde wanverhouding verklaart waarom Jamie Susskind in Future Politics: Living in a World Transformed by Tech (2018) beweert dat ‘we will be who the algorithms say we are.’
Er bestaat ook een schat aan literatuur die het denken in termen van online versus offline en mens versus machine problematiseert. Dominic Fox, bijvoorbeeld, hoort in de tegenstelling tussen technologie en verbeeldingskracht vooral de echo’s van een romantisch humanisme. Technologieën die zijn ontworpen om onze geestelijke ervaring te verrijken, zouden die uiteindelijk juist verarmen. Het probleem met dergelijke tegenstellingen is dat zij een complexe verhouding samenvatten in een tweedimensionaal verhaal over hoe we onze geest en verbeelding hebben verloren aan de sirenen van het gemak. Nathan Jurgenson spreekt in dit verband van een in real life– of IRL-fetisj. Deze kijk op de wereld maakt een hard onderscheid tussen mens en machine, tussen objectiviteit en subjectiviteit, tussen virtualiteit en werkelijkheid, offline en online, en tussen ervaring en informatie. Online wordt begrepen als niet-offline, als niet-aanwezig, als ergens anders. Waar offline staat voor ‘echt’, ‘authentiek’ en ‘werkelijk’, wordt online afgedaan als ‘virtueel’ en ‘niet-werkelijk.’ IRL-fetisjisten klagen dat mensen, en vooral millennials, de rug hebben gekeerd naar het ‘echte leven’. Ze hebben werkelijk contact ingeruild voor online contact, en echte vrienden voor Facebookvrienden. Volgens de fetisjisten leeft de toekomstige generatie daardoor in simulacra: iedereen heeft een eigen virtuele werkelijkheid in zijn tas zitten die we overal mee naartoe slepen en vervolgens op tafel leggen. IRL-fetisjisme laat zich daarom beschrijven door een fixatie op de ‘werkelijkheid’, ‘het echte leven’ en de ‘ongemedieerde ervaring’. De IRL-fetisjist schept graag op dat hij niet of niet meer op Facebook zit, geen Instagramaccount heeft, niet aan Twitter doet en nog nooit van TikTok heeft gehoord. Hij wil niet langer beïnvloed worden door de algoritmen van sociale mediagiganten; hij is de internetverslaving de baas. Met zijn telefoon diep in de tas en volledig uitgelogd, staat hij met beide voeten in het ‘echte’ leven. IRL-fetisjisme is een wanverhouding tussen het eindige en het oneindige. De wanverhouding bestaat er onder meer in dat er magische krachten aan het ‘echte’ en het ‘werkelijke’ worden toegeschreven. Er is inmiddels zelfs een verdienstelijke markt ontstaan die zich richt op de IRL-fetisjist, bestaande uit stapels boeken en publicaties over de magie van verveling, en reisjes naar Digital Detox Camps waar je met je partner, vrienden of het hele gezin eindeloos lang stenen op elkaar kunt stapelen, ver weg van een wifi-signaal.
It’s complicated
Internetangst stelt ons voor de taak om werk te maken van de wanverhouding tussen begrenzing ten koste van verbreding, tussen mogelijkheid en noodzakelijkheid. Wanneer we de digitale wereld en de leefwereld als verstrengeld zien, als een synthese, kunnen we genuanceerder naar het internet kijken. Dan kunnen we zien dat het internet geen monoliet is. En dat onze online bezigheden onlosmakelijk verbonden zijn met wat we offline doen. De echte wereld is juist een synthese van online en offline, van mens en machine, van lichamelijkheid en virtualiteit. Het internet is het echte leven: het is de scheiding tussen offline en online die ‘on-echt’ en ‘on-werkelijk’ is.
In It’s Complicated (2014) bespreekt Danah Boyd de typische Grote Verhalen die over de internetgeneratie worden verteld. Het onlinegedrag van jongeren blijkt al gauw gecompliceerder te zijn dan vaak wordt beweerd. It’s Complicated verlegt de aandacht naar wat jongeren uit hun smartphones halen en de betekenis die zij aan online-zijn toeschrijven: zo biedt de smartphone een manier om weerstand te bieden aan de druk en beperkingen die zij op school en thuis ervaren. Tegelijkertijd vormen apps hangplekken voor vriendengroepen waarmee jongeren hun leefwereld delen: ze zoeken er steun bij elkaar, en vinden de mogelijkheid om zich zonder de bemoeienissen van ouders uit te drukken – vaak in een eigen taal. Ze maken geregeld gebruik van verschillende socialemediaplatforms waarop ze vorm geven aan verschillende persona’s. Dat neemt niet weg dat dezelfde smartphone een middel tot (cyber)pesten kan zijn en toegang biedt tot de goorste uithoeken van het internet. Bovendien, aangezien socialemediaplatforms zichtbaar zijn voor derden, en de gedeelde data doorzoekbaar is, dienen jongeren ook rekening te houden met de mogelijke langetermijngevolgen van hun online presentatie. Impressiebeheer en groepsdruk spelen hierbij een belangrijke rol. Het internet, legt Boyd uit, is hierbij noch het probleem noch de oplossing – het is inderdaad gecompliceerd. Dat punt is sterk en actueel: de overspannen bezorgdheid van ouders en leraren duidt niet alleen op bekommernis over de toekomstige impact van ‘het internet’ van nu, maar laat ook zien dat zij het internetgedrag van jongeren veroordelen aan de hand van overtuigingen, verwachtingen en ideeën uit hun eigen generatie en leefwereld. Daarmee riskeert hun zorg niet alleen een morele vingerwijzing te worden, maar dragen zij ook onbedoeld bij aan angstbeelden over ‘het internet’.
Beweging op de plaats
Kierkegaard stelt de taak om kennis te maken met angst, en om onze angsten te leren kennen dienen we onze innerlijke bewegingen, onze zelfverhouding, te doorgronden – onze verhouding tot verandering te ontrafelen. Wie met een kierkegaardiaans oog naar internetangst kijkt, beseft hoezeer de angst die we op het internet projecteren samenhangt met de bestaansonzekerheid die we in onszelf terugvinden. Angst is de botsing tussen de menselijke zoektocht naar houvast, rede en zekerheid – desnoods in apocalyptische verhalen – en de oorverdovende stilte van de toekomst. Zou het kunnen dat het IRL-fetisjisme van Van Gerwen en de zijnen symbool staat voor hun eigen angst voor het verlies van grip op de werkelijkheid? Angst voor vervreemding van het bekende? Is het wellicht een angst voor de mogelijkheid om zelf dement te worden?
Werk maken van internetangst begint met beweging. ‘Beweging ter plaatse’ welteverstaan, een begrip dat centraal staat in Kierkegaards denken over het zelf. Kierkegaard drukt beweging vaak uit met begrippen zoals ‘geloofssprong’, of de ‘beweging van oneindigheid’, en doelt dus niet op voorwaartse beweging, noch op lineaire of progressieve veranderingen. Beweging heeft geen doel, noch een adres of bestemming: beweging ter plaatse, legt Kierkegaard uit, ‘beweegt zich niet van de plaats waar het is noch komt het ergens aan’. In zekere zin is beweging ter plaatse een manier om stilstand tegen te gaan, om te voorkomen dat je vastloopt in ofwel noodzakelijkheid ofwel mogelijkheid.
Kortom: een manier om begrenzing en verbreding tegelijk te denken en daarnaar te handelen. Terwijl zijn tijdgenoten zich concentreerden op overkoepelende denksystemen en theorieën van vrijwel alles, verzette Kierkegaard zich tegen dit soort filosofie door in zijn schrijven anti-systemisch te denken. Dit deed hij onder meer door zichzelf tegen te spreken, verschillende posities in en binnen zijn oeuvre in te nemen, evenals door te schrijven in verschillende stijlen en genres. Zodoende spiegelt de vorm van zijn oeuvre zijn overtuiging dat we ‘denken’ en ‘zijn’ moeten synthetiseren. Door middel van een constant spel van posities en standpunten desoriënteert hij zijn lezers en helpt hij hen open te staan voor andere perspectieven en verschillende manieren van denken. Kierkegaards eigenzinnige opvatting van beweging is niet alleen een theoretisch construct. Bewegen – of preciezer, wandelen – was essentieel voor de manier waarop hij zijn filosofie leefde, zowel een eerbetoon aan zijn grote inspirator, Socrates, als een manier om stagnatie, vernauwing en verlamming in zijn denken te voorkomen. Zo voerde Kierkegaard tijdens zijn wandelingen door Kopenhagen regelmatig socratische gesprekken met zijn stadsgenoten.
Beweging ter plaatse kan weerstand bieden aan cultuurpessimisme, internetdeterminisme, en heimwee naar een geromantiseerd verleden. Aan zijn schoonzuster schrijft Kierkegaard dat hij elke dag van zijn kwalen wegloopt en hij geen gedachte kent die zo omslachtig is dat je er niet omheen kunt lopen. Beweging is wat vorm geeft aan de vormloosheid van de toekomst. Voor Van Gerwen en de zijnen, die het verlies van de geest en subjectiviteit aan het internet betreuren, zal het wellicht een geruststelling zijn te weten dat je iets wat je niet bezit ook niet kunt verliezen. Mocht ook beweging ter plaatse geen rust bieden: online kun je stapelstenen bestellen.
The Amsterdam Design Manifesto by Mieke Gerritzen and Geert Lovink is one of three nominees for the Simon Mari Pruys Prize for design criticism.
The Pruys jury, consisting of Kirsten Algera (design historian, critic and editor-in-chief of MacGuffin magazine), Jan Boelen (rector at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design), and Hicham Khalidi (director of the Van Eyck, Maastricht), nominated the following texts:
Florian Cramer – ‘Welcome to the Crapularity: Design as a Problem’. The text is a provocative argument for the design of problems instead of solutions.
Mieke Gerritzen and Geert Lovink – ‘Made in China, Designed in California, Criticized in Europe. Amsterdam Design Manifest‘. Well-written overview of the inflation of design: “the discipline has been democratized from cross-discipline to anti-discipline”.
Alice Twemlow – ‘Conflicting Definitions of Key Terms’. This timely essay convincingly shows that design history can serve as a mirror for contemporary design issues.
The winner will be announced during the Pruys-Bekaert Event, Saturday 16 November at 19.30 at TENT, Witte de Withstraat 50, Rotterdam.The Pruys-Bekaert Event takes place during the Design Chewing Festival, which runs from 15‒17 October at TENT. Admission to the festival permits access to the Pruys-Bekaert Event.
Why a book on The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya and why now? The title of the book might provide some answers. As the title indicates, the contributions to the book address: 1) politics, 2) language contact, and 3) the Himalaya region. Most important are the connections between the three.
Let’s start with the connection between politics and language. It was George Orwell with his novel 1984 who made us all aware of the connection between politics and language. But there’s another way to think about politics and language, namely, despite the ubiquity of the Western European nation-state model as a political ideal, most states in the globe are multinational, multicultural and multilingual.
“Multiculturalism” became a politically preferred global buzzword, with intellectuals and academicians engaging with its linguistic aspect. The Canadian political theorist, Will Kymlicka, connected with applied linguists with his seminal 2003 article entitled “Language Rights and Political Theory.” Significantly, this article wasn’t in a political theory journal but instead in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. This intervention in the field of Language Policy and Planning (LPP) had such an impact that many applied linguists assume that political theory and the study of politics are synonymous—that is, they assume that political theory is the whole of political science.
While The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya, particularly the first chapter, titled “Language Contact and the Politics of Recognition Amongst Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China,” offers a distinct political theory take on Tibetan languages, the book as a whole focuses on the politics of language not just theoretically but in the real-world context of the Himalaya—making it an important and timely expansion of the academic discourse on the politics of language of the past decade or so.
Moreover, the book focuses not just on the politics of language but rather on the politics of language contact. Language contact is both a socio-political and linguistic phenomenon by which speakers of different languages (or different dialects of the same language) interact with one another, leading to a transfer or shift of linguistic features and potentially language itself. This added focus on linguistic features is a much needed contribution to studies of the politics of language—one reason being that non-linguists, particularly political scientists including political theorists, rarely have an understanding of linguistic phenomena. While there have been more recent attempts by applied linguists to explain language to political theorists—witness Tom Ricento’s 2014 article in the journal Language Policy titled “Thinking about language: what political theorists need to know about language in the real world”, the focus on language contact in this volume brings linguists into the dialogue, and not just applied linguists and sociolinguists working in the LPP field.
Let me offer but one example of the type of dialogue that the book has generated, drawing on my own research. In my chapter, entitled “What Happened to the Ahom Language? The Politics of Language Contact in Assam,” I focus on the politics of the language shift from a Tai-Kadai language to an Indo-Aryan language—the shift occurring on account of language contact—in the pre-colonial Ahom kingdom of the 17th-18th century in what is now the state of Assam in Northeast India. I explain the shift in political terms and argue that the state traditions of the Ahom kingdom were transforming from a non-territorial concept of the state to a territorial one and that the rigid, steep sociopolitical hierarchy of the kingdom’s nobility was flattening out. One of the contributing authors to our volume, Gerald Roche, put me in touch with a linguist, Stephen Morey, who is one of the very few experts on the Ahom language. Here follows some of our recent email exchange about my chapter:
I wrote to Stephen: “I’m a political scientist, so have a
different take on language issues than you, as a linguist, has. So I’m always a
bit nervous—and curious—about what linguists have to say about my work. But I
think it’s an important conversation to have, one reason being that most
political scientists writing about language politics know nothing about
language(s). So any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated.”
Stephen
responded: “You’re right that your work is a very different sphere from mine; after
23 trips to Assam I try to steer clear of politics as much as possible although
as various articles in the book indicate, language is an inherently political
matter and it’s clearly necessary to understand the political aspect.” He then
made some comments about the phonology and script of the Ahom language which
I’m still pondering, without fully comprehending the linguistics!
This brings me to the third element in the book’s title, the Himalaya, and its significance for the politics of language contact. The Himalaya is a trans-border area of immense linguistic diversity that is undergoing rapid sociopolitical change—making the area a timely context for the study of the politics of language contact—and the perfect context for a dialogue on the politics of language outside of the usual Western European milieu. As Rémi Léger, a Francophone Canadian political theorist, noted in his comments on The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya at the book’s launch, the Himalayan context of our book is a critical intervention in the dialogue.
Equally important, scholars working on and in the Himalaya have constituted it, in recent decades, as a field of area studies, providing a forum for interdisciplinary exchange of the type exemplified by our edited volume. Himalayan studies is a smaller forum than other area studies, but and a very active one as exemplified by the UBC Himalaya Program, the Tibet Himalaya Initiative at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Himalayan Studies Conferences sponsored by the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies. All of these platforms, programs and intellectual spaces played a significant role in the conception and realization of the book, bringing together in creative and interdisciplinary dialogue scholars such as the contributors to this book and those who joined in the conversation through its launch.
Bio
Selma K. (“Sam”) Sonntag is Professor Emerita of Politics at Humboldt State University in California and Affiliate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her extensive research and publications focus on the politics of language, primarily in South Asia, but also in the United States, Europe and South Africa.
You can now read ‘The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya’ by Selma K. Sonntag and Mark Turin here. You can also read the first post of this series ‘Why the politics of language needs examples from beyond the Global North’ by Rémi Léger here and the second post ‘The Shifting Politics of Representations of the Himalaya: From Colonial Authority to Open Access’ by Mark Turin here.
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