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iCES Research Articles

Network Politics, New Media and Cultural Practices

Dr Veronica Barassi

Reflections on the Thinking Network Politics Conference, 25th – 26th of March, 2010, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Networks Configurations - The New Project of the Anglia Research Centre

The understanding of the complex relationship between digital networks, political processes and cultural practices is one of the most pressuring issues of our age.

Following the rapid development of new media technologies, people in Europe and across the world have had to re-consider their political and cultural practices in order to adapt to the logic of online networks.

These socio-technical transformations have been thoroughly explored in the work of contemporary scholars such as Castells (1996, 2001, 2009), Terranova (2004), Van Dijik (2006) and many more.

However, with the extension of new media technologies, online networks have become today not only the basis for peer to peer communication practices but also the roots for more specialised and oppressive forms of surveillance and control.

In this context many questions need yet to be addressed on the nature of online networks, and the social and political processes that they create.

It is perhaps for this reason that the Anglia Research Centre in Digital Culture at the Anglia Ruskin University has just launched a research project which explores the new configurations of network politics.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and is led by Dr Joss Hands and Dr Jussi Parikka.

Departing from the idea of network, it considers how the emergence of a 'network society' is reshaping the ground upon which we think about politics and culture.

Through the creation of a website and three different events the project is aimed at exploring the intersection of politics, networks and cultural practices.

Thinking Network Politics Event

The first event took place at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge between the 25th and the 26th of March, 2010 and brought together international scholars and researchers to discuss the epistemologies, methods and processes of network politics.

With a multiplicity of papers, which covered a wide variety of themes and perspectives from across different disciplines, the conference demonstrated that network politics is itself a contested terrain that can be analysed departing from very different assumptions and methodological approaches.

Some scholars focused on the aesthetics of networks and the way in which this aesthetics is influencing digital art and cultural practices. Others have considered the logic of social media, and the way in which this logic is influencing online communication and participation.

Researching Networks

The paper that I presented contended that scholars should consider the human beliefs, practices and understandings that make network politics possible.

Hence, the paper located itself methodologically and theoretically amongst those scholars (Couldry, 2004; Ginsburg, 2002; Silverstone, 2005; Turner, 2002) who call for the importance of contextualising technologies and practices by looking at the social, cultural and political frameworks in which they are embedded.

Drawing from the ethnographic context of international campaigning organisations and the Trade Unions, the paper has argued that networks need to be contextualised by looking at the disconnections as well as the cultural meanings that make networks possible.

In particular the paper has shown that networking processes create ‘spaces of association’ as well as ‘spaces of meaning’, which are defined by clear politics of inclusion and exclusion.

In order to understand these spaces of networks, the paper has introduced the concept of ethnographic cartography.

Ethnographic Cartography

The concept of ethnographic cartography enables scholars to understand and describe networks by looking at the larger picture, and consider the boundaries and disconnections, as well as the human experiences and ideological constructions that make network politics possible.

Drawing on the work of Latour (1993, 2005), an ethnographic cartography cannot be understood as a structured reality that can be represented and analysed, but more as a networked movement, as something that is constantly in the process of being constructed rather than as something that already exist.

In this framework, the ethnographer - like the cartographer - can only capture glimpses of this movement as she attempts to describe it, and understand it.

With my paper my intention was to propose a possible way in which to re-think methodological approaches to the study of network politics, departing from an ethnographic perspective.

Within the Thinking Network Politics conference, however, mine was only one of the many different contributions that presented critical insights on how to start thinking about networks, digital technologies, and the transformation of cultural and political practices. These insights are of central importance in order to shed some light on how European and global political cultures are changing, following the advent of new media technologies.