> Wouldn't Lovink/Rossiter say that they aren't talking about a subset of tactical media, but that the concept has been conflated with other stuff like Culture Jamming, as in the Jacobin article?
>
> Culture jamming is tactical media transplanted to North America with most of its theoretical organs removed and the incisions sutured up with threads from Mad Magazine and Candid Camera.
I don't have a scanner here, and am also missing Lovink's book _No Comments_, but I'd have two responses to this:
1) I don't think one can make things easy on oneself by trimming a cultural category down to the definition one would like. All of this stuff is mixed up together in common parlance for a reason. (On the other hand, you can't just uncritically accept the widest definition of the term "Tactical Media".)
For example, I don't know if you're familiar with the art/music category "Glitch," but it's been expanded well beyond Kim Cascone's succinct definition of "failure of expectations" to include circuit- and data-bending as part of its big tent. Unfortunately, I think you have to do some categorical clarification before you can proceed.
2) Here's some stuff from Lovink's _Dark Fiber_ which I think was published between the dotcom crash and 9/11:
"Others position infowar from below in the realm of culture jamming, tactical media, net.art, visual arts practices or performance art. In part these are creative, but nonetheless artificial constructs to compensate for the absence of lively social movements. Hit-and-run actions need a mass base to operate from; out of context, though, these semiotic sabotages are merely survival tactics with which small groups bridge long periods of boredom and lack of direction." (p. 312)
Which also makes my point about social context.
"RTmark, Luther Blissett, Adbusters, the Electronic Disturbance Theater and the Critical Art Ensemble are just a few of the groups offering-and practicing-infowar strategies." (p. 316)
So Lovink is prepared to give NA groups a little more credit than you are as Tactical Media.
He also uses the Critical Art Ensemble's description of Tactical Media as his own:
"There has been a growing awareness that for many decades a cultural practice has existed that has avoided being named or fully categorized. Its roots are in the modern avant-garde, to the extent that its participants place a high value on experimentation and on engaging the unbreakable link between representation and political and social change. Often not artists in any traditional sense refusing to be caught in the web of metaphysical, historical and romantic signage that accompanies that designation. Nor are they simply political activists because they refuse to take a simply reactive position and often act in defiance of efficiency and necessity." (p. 257)
Lovink, then is prepared to see Tactical Media as something more than journalism or propaganda, encompassing "art" as well.
"While refusing to leave globalism to the investment houses and multinationals, these groups were combatting global capital with global campaigns. And present in these strategies was the faint hope that if a campaign generates enough velocity and resonates with enough people, it might just take on some of the qualities of a movement. Simulation vs. 'real' action. The urgency of some of the questions tactical media groups are facing generate an angry skepticism around any practice that raises art and media questions. For old-school activists the equation is simple: discourse plus art equals spectacle."
Lovink is entitled to evolve his views on this subject (which I think he has), but that doesn't invalidate what he said at the time about the subject.
> On 10/3/11 8:23 AM, Charles Turner wrote:
>> In MENA then, you have Twitter and YouTube posts being taken up by Al-Jazeera in a way that Rossiter and Lovink had dismissed in the context of their 2005 essay:
>>
>> "Networks will never be rewarded and 'embedded' in well funded structures."
>>
>> Never say "never," I guess.
>
> I don't see the connection between R/L's assertion about networks and the comparison to Al-Jazeera's use of social media tools.
Yes, I can understand that. Depends on what's meant by "rewarded" and "embedded." I imperfectly recall Lovink's essay on IndyMedia (in _No Comments_?) where he analyzes their self-marginalizing actions with the rise of Twitter and YouTube; such that activists largely abandoned IndyMedia for these corporate versions of social media. So Al-Jazeera is making use of the commercial transformation of what could have been a public institution.
I should clarify that the use of Twitter and YouTube made by Al-Jazeera is the broadcast of tweets and videos from MENA. This apparently came about because Al-Jazeera has better local contacts than many news organizations, and also because they were kicked out of (initially) Tunisia, and then other Arab nations. They then looked to trusted local contacts who were using Twitter and YouTube to maintain their coverage of the events. Perhaps these citizen journalists haven't been "rewarded" by and "embedded" in the "well funded" institution that is Al-Jazeera, in a way that would satisfy Lovink and Rossiter. But especially in a world of free software development, I think it would cause Raymond Williams' to note an institutional configuration. Given the length of the Arab Spring, that relationship might have a considerable future.
But my point is that kind of relationship is pretty much non-existant in the U.S.. News media very rarely pickup "amateur" news footage unless of a tornado or a stunt-flying accident.
Thanks, Charles