Back from Amsterdam conference
March 31, 2008 Posted by stephencoleman in : Bristol , trackbackI’ve just returned from a two-day conference in Amsterdam, organised jointly by Amsterdam University’s School of Communication (ASCOR), which is the biggest communications school in Europe, and Leeds University’s Institute of Communications Studies (ICS), which is the biggest communications school in the UK. We were talking about the changing nature of political communication. Not only new media effects, but other ways in which democratic citizenship and its mediation are changing. It was a very intellectually productive conference - unlike so many others that leave one feeling frustrated and powerpointed into total numbness. I think that it would be useful - and perhaps provocative - for me to use this space to make a few comments about how I think citizenship is changing in the twenty-first century. I will know whether this makes any sense to anyone by the flood or dearth of subsequent responses.
So, point one: I think that the rules of the political game are changing in three ways. Political representatives are now more visible and reachable than ever before. They are being judged less on the basis of ideology or even policy than personal persona and integrity. And citizens expect to be able to influence them in more ways than very occasional voting. These three changes are forcing smart politicians to adopt new stategies, often utilising new media technologies to manage their visibility, appear human and suggest that citizens can influence them.
Point two: these strategies often don’t work, partly because they are not entirely intended to work. That is to say, politicians are not convinced that they need to take the new rules of the game seriously, even when they realise that there are new rules and they ought to be seen to be doing something.
Point three: citizens are more bewildered than ever. At least the old rules were clear: you voted; you crossed your fingers and hoped for the best; you voted the rotters out if/when you caught them being rotters. Now the rules seem to be different, but are unexplained. What should citizens expect from the new political-communication environment? This is about more than producing codes of conduct - although one or two well-designed codes of digital citizens’ rights wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Final point about this (for now - but we have a week to develop these points): all of this is happening at a time of profound social risk. In past times politicians not only knew the rules of the game, but also believed they understood most of the issues that were confronting them in the policy arena. Now they understand neither very well. New rules; new issues - could lead to a horrible mess; could lead to some creative thinking and policy-making. What do you think?
Comments»
I totally agree that personality and likability are key factors in us choosing politicians. I think that the Xfactor style phone voting system should perhaps be adopted as we all need to feel instantly empowered when making decisions about what we watch, so why not who governs!? I certainly would keep the Westminster village on their toes! Ok, this may seem a little extreme, but we surely need to address the total lack of interest by the general public in politics. Perhaps this is because we feel that we no longer have a say? Ref: Gordon Brown's leadership and the EU referendum.
I do like the fact that I can message my MP Stehpen WIlliams on his facebook and that he genuinely seems interested in getting back to me. Better than a soleless letter, but does it make a difference? I guess that it the hurdle new mobile and online communications have to prove in order for them to be successful…
What risks are you talking about?
For instance, I can look back to my grandparents bringing up a family in the late 1930s and see far more "profound social risk" than now.
Indeed my grandmother was left in London with two kids and bombs raining down on their heads while my grandfather was forced to follow Montgomery through North Africa and up through Italy whilst being shot at. That's risky.
What is particularly profound about the risks we face now in comparison to the past?
Matt - X-Factor is the way we do politics now. Nick Robinson is Sharon Osborne. The editor of the Daily Mail is Simon Cowell, minus the winning smirk. Gordon, David and Nick are the eager contestants, determined to convince the voters that they sing like we want them to sing. The point is to move beyond X-Factor to something more genuinely empowering. We should continue talking about how to do this.
Nuclear terrorism; ecological disasters; the spread of killer viruses; uncontainable social mobility; ideological fundamentalism and cultural incomprehension.
Of course, these are not all new risks and the 1930s is a good candidate for a previous period of risk. But I was using the term (and should have made this clear) in the contemporary sociological sense employed by writers like Ulrich Beck. What they argue is that, after the scientific enlightenment, in which humans believed they could tame nature, we now find ourselves in an age of unintended consequences where things go wrong not because of lunatics like Hitler or Stalin, but because of systemic risks that policy-makers can neither predict nor control. It was indeed risky for your grandparents, but the government of the day knew pretty clearly what it had to do. My point was that politicians today are often unable to make clear policy because they simply don't know where problems are coming from or how to fix them without making them worse.
"politicians not only knew the rules of the game, but also believed they understood most of the issues that were confronting them in the policy arena. Now they understand neither very well."
Is this a roundabout way of saying that politicians don't know what they are talking about?
If so, what makes you think that our current politicians are less informed than previous generations?
Andy - see my reply to Bristol Blogger. I prefer not to use roundabout ways; life's too short.
As you say many of these are not new risks or they're not really risks at all if you analyse them sensibly. There are arguments, from the likes of Adam Curtis for example, that these risks are in fact an invention of the political class.
The risk of nuclear terrorism, for instance, is remarkably low. Building a nuclear weapon still requires vast resources and knowledge that are still only available to advanced western-style states. Believe it or not, you can't really build nuclear weapons - James Bond villain style - in the caves of Tora Bora.
The age of high nuclear risk is actually behind us at present. During the Cold War we were genuinely eyeball-to-eyeball with the Red Army - probably the most viciously effective fighting unit in human history - backed by very real nuclear weapons.
This was a whole lot more of a riskier situation than we have now with a few loud mouth, stateless, Islamist loonies broadcasting a few empty threats on Al-Jazeera while, in the real world, only having the resources to fund a few cheap rockets to fire aimlessly at Israel, plant a few roadside bombs in Iraq and run an unwinnable insurgency in Afghanistan. The present situation is more akin to a minor global security threat than the imminent end of civilisation I'm afraid.
Next on your list is ecological disaster. Are we really expected to live in fear of the weather?
Killer Viruses? In the 80s AIDS was going to kill us all if you believed the newspapers.
Uncontainable social mobility? This is a weird one. The story of the last 30 years is about vastly reduced social mobility. Its consequences, for progressives, are one of the genuine political issues really facing us.
Ideological fundamentalism? Compared to a 20th Century of Nazism, fascism, Stalinism etc. there's not much of it around is there?
Cultural incomprehension? Not sure what this is. But it sounds like it's been cooked up by liberal relativists …
No it didn't. The briefest look at the politics of the 30s reveals a remarkable cross-party/cross-ideological consensus from the political class for appeasement, here and in France at least.
Everyone from apologists for Stalin on the left like the Webbs, through to the mainstream of the Labour Party, led by a pacifist, to the Tories under Baldwin and Chamberlain and out to the far-right wing Moseley backed appeasement - the entirely wrong thing to do - all the way.
My point is that things have changed remarkably little. Then as now we have a small political class, hard-selling supposed ideological differences and "risks" to us, to disguise the fact that they all think exactly the same - to the point of having mostly gone to school and college together - and have exactly the same interests at heart.
That's why politicians have always tried to be "judged less on the basis of ideology or even policy than personal persona and integrity". Because they're all the same.
What was Chamberlain doing waving a menu around stating "peace in our time"? Try taking a look at newsreel footage of his regular political broadcasts to the nation and see how carefully they were worked to create a persona. What was Wilson doing with a pipe when he didn't smoke one? Gladstone's wood chopping? Disraeli's alleged popularity with Queen Victoria?
The political class has always created an aura of being "visible and reachable" and it's just that. An aura. They just try to con us on the internet now.
OK, then we really disagree. My comments about risk are aimed at those who would prefer to deal with contemporary social problems than those of the 1930s.
It would seem the major point of disagreement is whether the issues and their understanding of them, that politicians face have fundamentally changed over the years. The Bristol Blogger seems quite convincing on that front.
I don't however think it can be disputed that some of the rules are changing particularly relating to politicians being visible, approachable and challenged. A recent example is Hillary Clinton Trip to Bosnia "expose": http://youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4, before that and perhaps more appropriately, because it wasn't mass media who caught the moment, the downfall of Sen. George Allen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r90z0PMnKwI
Whereas Wilson brought his pipe out once a week politicians are having to be more careful about what they say and do, OR they may have to say and do what they really think. They may have to be more honest and accept the consequences like Nick Clegg's admission that he didn't believe in God (Radio Five after becoming Leader) and has slept with more women than a politician has admitted to so far (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7324541.stm).
Citizens are confused. Because they expect politics to work like X-Factor. We vote (or demo) and policy changes. How is that going to affect things at election day? Is the politician who promises to be one of us - Barack Obama, David Cameron going to win? Will that change anything?
Stephen, if you would like to discuss more then I would welcome a chat. You can find several ways of contacting me (whichever suits your hectic lifestyle best.) on this link - http://www.montagecomms.com/blogger/matt_anderson/blog.html
Stephen - you ask: "What should citizens expect from the new political-communication environment?" and highlight X-factor media as an unhelpful part of that environment. I think we need some engagement between professional journalists, proam journalists, digital citizens and politicians to help establish values and codes.
Can we hope for that discussion as part of the RSA Journalism Network that you are developing with the Reuters Institute of Journalism? It looks promising - but from information to date it is going to be a private affair for professional journalists http://snurl.com/2376u . Maybe that private pace is needed - in which case should we be looking for another forum for citizen-politico-journalism discussions?
I'm not trying to take a pop at RSA-Reuters Institute here - just raising the issue of how non-professionals best get a look in. Is that a bigger version of what's happening here?
Might the BBC plans for linking their online activity to local blogs and other sites help construct a better environment, and also provide a focus for discussing codes etc? http://snurl.com/236lo
Building on the point about social risk, you could argue that our risk perception is pretty seriously out of line. I find this graphic fascinating:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0aelecrtromshjoi9.jpg
It's interesting how cultural this is. In Europe, we are scared of GM food but relaxed about stem cell research. In the US, the reverse is true.
So which of these is right?
Is GM food a profound social risk, or not? Nuclear power? (We say yes, the French say no) Asteroid attack? Terrorism?
Are we talking about the reality of social risk, or the perception of it?
Another take on the whole risk debate is the relationship between risk and innovation. One person’s risk is another person’s opportunity? If we spend lots of time 'professionalising risk' by constructing Risk Logs and finding ways to mitigate these risks, there is an even greater risk that we won’t deliver anything other than beautiful project plans. Personally, I blame PRINCE Project Management. We need to move to more Agile and Rapid methods, where risk is mitigated by just getting on with it, accepting that it won’t be perfect at the start and being prepared to make lots of rapid changes. The Prince really is dead…
Andy - my point about risk society is descriptive; it refers to the current perception of profound social risks. Politicians find these risks new and highly challenging. They don't have pat ideological responses to them. That's why so much of contemporary government is devoted to research and consultation, with both experts and lay citizens. In the 1930s there was much greater clarity about what constituted risk. In 2008 risk is itself a risky topic. Beck's work on 'Risk Society' is worth reading.
Stephen - I agree with you that the most immediate response to contemporary risk is excessive caution and bureaucratic control. But I understand where governments are coming from; they are genuinely uncertain about the consequences of much that they are currently doing. E-government is a good example of this - and e-participation an even better one. Everyone wants to be a pioneer, but no-one wants to make mistakes. You mentioned in your introduction to me that my evaluation of the UK Government's local e-participation project led to some anxiety. (In fact, it led to attempted censorship.) The reason for this is that, having spent money on a number of not always well-conceived pilot schemes, some civil servants became absurdly defensive and closed to critical evaluation. That is absolutely understandable, because government bureaucracies operate in an environment where claims to have succeeded are valued more than claims to have learned new lessons. I'm thinking of starting a blog strand on the curious case of ICELE. Any interest?
If it is 'job done' for the BBC in terms of e-democracy, can the same be said for the International Centre of Excellence in Local e-Democracy (ICELE)? I am sure it will be a fascinating blog strand.
Stephen C - I think a blog strand on ICELE would be fascinating. What's happening? Public Sector Forums celebrates the great work by Bristol and a few other local authorities, but asks: Local E-Democracy: Dead, Alive or in Hiding http://tinyurl.com/32p3q4
[…] However, Stephen doesn't blog himself, so it is a delight to find him available for discussion back in Bristol - virtually at least - guesting at Connecting Bristol. […]
I imagine that part of the reason for political caution is that there are a different range of pressures on politicians than were the case in the past. Public pressure, now amplified by a much more dispersed media, including publishing platforms like blogs, is only part of the picture.
International treaties, conflicts in policy objectives, a mass media that has the attention span of a gnat, and public opinion that rarely seems settled as well as a generation of politicians who've emerged through think tanks and as SPADs makes for cautious politics.
It's not cautious politics; it's high-risk profligate politics for the private sector that's the problem.
Here in South Bristol what's needed are simple and straightforward redistributive policies around, for instance, transport, health, housing and education.
How can it possibly be incautious for politicians to invest £100m into public transport in south Bristol but it's not apparently a risk at all to squander more than that on a doomed PPP for the London tube, Metronet?
Or why is it impossibly risky for them to spend money on providing simple ante-natal physiotherapy classes but not a risk at all to throw hundreds of millions at a failed NHS computer project?
They seem to love risk.
"Here in South Bristol what's needed are simple and straightforward redistributive policies around, for instance, transport, health, housing and education."
If we're talking about the changing nature of citizenship in the 21st century, it's helpful to think about how the state itself is changing. The consensus view is that its redistributive role is being replaced by an enabling one, in 'partnership' with a plethora of other actors, including citizens themselves. But a lot of citizens, and maybe a lot of councillors too, don't always buy into notions like shared accountability, co-production, pooled resources and joint working practices. They see only blurred responsibilities and that unsettles them. Isn't this the source of a lot of the 'bewilderment' - the lack of clarity about where the important decisions are being taken and which arenas or channels of participation it's worth our while using to try to influence anything?
Moreover, the Bristol Blogger might well be right that in a lot of situations a politics of distributed power and knowledge isn't a very effective way of getting the things people want done. On the other hand, the call for straightforward redistributive policies presupposes that the local state has the authority and legitimacy anymore to direct resources unilaterally.
My question is this: can you cordon off some policy spheres (transport, health, housing and education were mentioned) for 'traditional' types of state intervention (and 'traditional' modes of citizenship (voting the rotters in and out while leaving them to get on with it in between times)?
Or does the extolled 'new' settlement between state and citizens, based on power-sharing and all the uncertainties and risks as well as the potential for innovative solutions that come with it, necessarily apply across the board (if one accepts it applies at all)?
PS I really must stick my head next door for a chat one of these days, Stephen (C)
Yes, Simon, I think that you've put your finger on a key dilemma in contemporary governance; the role of the state has changed and politicians are not always good at adapting to the new rules of the game. There are some services that are best provided by traditional central-state actions, but these are not as clear in 2008 in ways that they were in, let us say, 1978. Notions of co-governance are fine if non-state actors possess the resources, knowledge and time to make things happen for themselves. But a key problem of contemporary citizenship is that citizens are expected to take more responsibility while lacking the tools to co-govern. E-participation could exacerbate this problem - and it could, if coupled with a serious commitment to political democratisation, redress it.
(Yes - it's odd that we're doing similar work in next-door offices within the Leeds University Centre for Digital Citizenship and it takes a Bristol-based blog to get us exchanging ideas. Let's meet.)
If we're talking about the changing nature of citizenship in the 21st century, it's helpful to think about how the state itself is changing. The consensus view is that its redistributive role is being replaced by an enabling one, in 'partnership' with a plethora of other actors, including citizens themselves.
'Enabling' is one of those words that's littered around local government without its meaning ever really being pinned down accurately by those that use it.
But what you seem to be talking about is the decline of that old deal that most of us have signed up to where we pay the tax and the state delivers the services. If this has changed then this has not been terribly well communicated to us and when do we get our money back?
Most of us are paying around 40%-45% of our incomes in taxes for services. If the state is no longer willing/able to deliver them then we obviously need that money to enable ourselves to buy the services don't we? Otherwise we are effectively being 'disenabled'.
To give a slightly soppy example: last week Stephen Hilton wrote about the government setting up interactive health and wellbeing websites. This amused me because I was sat there at the time with toothache, courtesy of a chipped tooth, because I can't afford to get my teeth fixed while feeding my two year old son cheap and nasty Nestle yogurts full of chemicals from Asda because it was the end of the month and we had no money left.
Now I know what to feed my son - Rachel's Organic Yogurts (no sugar kids!) - but I am simply not able to because I'm handing the money I could buy them with over to the government so that they can enable me to make informed healthy choices that I then can't afford to take! Bonkers isn't it?
At present we don't seem to have an enabling state. We have a we'll-have-our-cake-and-eat-it-state whereby we pay for through the nose for a service that tells us we have to go out and buy services.
Why does the cheap "enabling state" cost as much - if not more - than an expensive "redistributive state"? I don't understand.
A lot of citizens, and maybe a lot of councillors too, don't always buy into notions like shared accountability, co-production, pooled resources and joint working practices. They see only blurred responsibilities and that unsettles them. Isn't this the source of a lot of the 'bewilderment'
It's not bewilderment. It's outrage. Most of these organisations you refer to - SWRDA, West of England Partnership, the Regional Assembly, PCTs, Safer Bristol Partnership etc, etc - are quite obviously government organisations quite obviously spending huge sums of government money but they're appointed rather than elected and therefore not accountable. A democracy without accountability is not a democracy is it? And a democracy based on patronage is better called an oligarchy.
On the other hand, the call for straightforward redistributive policies presupposes that the local state has the authority and legitimacy anymore to direct resources unilaterally.
Well they seem to be able to when they want to - the Olympics, Millenium Dome, Channel Tunnel rail link, billions gone into the NHS etc.
My question is this: can you cordon off some policy spheres (transport, health, housing and education were mentioned) for 'traditional' types of state intervention (and 'traditional' modes of citizenship (voting the rotters in and out while leaving them to get on with it in between times)?
Or does the extolled 'new' settlement between state and citizens, based on power-sharing and all the uncertainties and risks as well as the potential for innovative solutions that come with it, necessarily apply across the board (if one accepts it applies at all)?
To be honest I find the idea that the state is somehow unable to run schools, straightforward health services, build transport infrastructure and influence planning and housing slightly unbelievable.
For a thread that's proclaimed the end of ideology, there's an awful lot of it about isn't there?
I believe that a new genereation of politicians will be connected with real life issues and play by modern rules of communication. The older generation will fade away in the end. So there's hope, I think.
Maarten (whom I met at the Amsterdam conference, incidentally) offers an optimistic thought. This raises two questions for me:
1. How long will the fading away take?
2. Are the 'modern rules of communication' likely to lead to a better quality of democracy or a slicker PR machine?
This process may already be underway if you're prepared to look in the right places:
Fat Man on a Keyboard
[…] Here is a summary of what the changes mean for politicians, subjectively and in their practice, by Prof. Stephan Coleman: […]
[…] However, Stephen doesn't blog himself, so it is a delight to find him available for discussion back in Bristol - virtually at least - guesting at Connecting Bristol. […]