How is digital multimedia used to create organized networks of dissent in relation to mainstream media? What are the motivations of the hundreds of thousands of people using the Social Web to express their political views and share creative political productions? “Rethinking Media, Democracy and Citizenship” has spent three years investigating these questions through careful study of online media, interviews with user-producers, an extensive online survey, and collaborative analysis of our findings with a savvy research team of scholars, journalists, and activists.

The project was sparked by a paradox I observed when I began to study online “digital dissent” during the years after September 11, 2001. A professor at Virginia Tech at the time, I spent long hours on the Internet during those dark years surfing and searching for alternative media accounts about the U.S. invasion of Iraq (see also my web-based project Critical Media Literacy in Times of War). Here’s the paradox I noticed with increasing frequency: on the one hand, I witnessed increased public demands for truthful accounts from media and politicians expressed across the blogosphere–in online discussion threads, viral videos, and animations (see Who We’ve Talked To for examples). But alongside this demand for “truth” one also sees “postmodern” scepticism–that all accounts are constructions. Truth?? In short: the only thing that is certain is that we’re being lied to.

The crisis of media reflected in the paradox of desires for truths and awareness of the limits of truth-telling led me to launch this qualitative study of the motivations of those engaged in producing what I call digital dissent–tactical online expressions that seek to supplement and subvert corporate news and infotaintment.

We spent the first year studying public expressions related to media, war and politics across four sites of digital dissent, and in Year Two conducted interviews with 35 user-producers of digital dissent, and surveyed 159 online producers. Currently in Year Three, we are in the process of analyzing and theorizing our data. On this site you can find our conference papers, publications, and research data and findings. Everything is linked from the right sidebar.

Meanwhile, exciting new findings are rolling in as we conclude three years of SSHRC-funded research on “Digital Dissent”: What motivates people to blog, post movies, engage in online political activities? To what extent does frustration with corporate-owned media motivate those who engage in such practices as the MoveOn.org Bushin30Seconds contest, writing political blogs, blogging about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and producing creative/political digital art?

We have now presented our research findings at national and international conferences and published our analyses in journals and books. Through close analysis of online productions, an online survey to 157 online author/producers, and interviews with 35 digital media artists/writers, our findings include that:

• increased online engagement requires that we redefine what counts as political citizenship
• online web-based practices do NOT take away from offline organizing or activism
• digital media does impact practices and industry of journalism
• people from all sides of the political spectrum are frustrated with media and politicians, and that this skepticism and lack of faith is a key factor in motivating online political expression
• satire and “fake news” has extreme appeal in an era characterized by crises of truth, evidenced by the flagrant lies and abuses of media by politicians which are now daily “evidenced” through digital media practices such as remix.

For more on Rethinking Media, Democracy, and Citizenship, see our conferences papers, publications, and findings under “Projects“.