Daniel Kunzelmann (Unpublished draft, 21. December 2014)Keywords: Social media, virtual mobility /immobility, democracy, space, politics, code, software

Recommended form of citation: Daniel Kunzelmann. Coded publics, virtual im___mobilities? How social media and software co-construct politics. 2014 (unpublished draft).

Coded publics, virtual im___mobilities?

How social media and software co-construct politics.

“[T]he radio has only one side where it should have two. It is an apparatus of distribution, it

merely allocates. Now, in order to become positive—that is, to find out about the positive

side of radio broadcasts—here is a suggestion for changing the function of the radio:

transform it from an apparatus of distribution into an apparatus of communication. The

radio could inarguably be the best apparatus of communication in public life, an enormous

system of channels—provided it saw itself as not only a sender but also a receiver. This

means making the listener not only listen but also speak; not to isolate him but to place him

in relation to others.“1

The radio theory of Berthold Brecht seems to intriguingly anticipate the reality of today's social

media—be it Twitter, Instagram or Facebook—where every user, who is receiving a message, is just

one click away from socially sharing its content with a good many “others”. Of course, Brecht did

not think of such a medium to be just a nice little gadget. It was something revolutionary. If it was

possible to transform this media technology “from an apparatus of distribution into an apparatus of

communication” it would bring a significant shift to “public life”.

Now, if we consider the public to be an important part of any democratic society, one can easily

imagine that such a conception come true would indeed bring along tremendous political

consequences. This model of broadcasting would metamorphose the texture of political

communication. What had formerly been a monolithic, centralised and state-controlled monopoly of

communication—Brecht called it “propaganda”2—could become a pluralistic, decentralised and

democratic net of competing political thoughts and opinions. The externally governed mind of a

“subject” would metamorphose into the consciousness of a self-determined “citizen”.

In 1932, the idea of a public medium that places people “in relation to others” instead of “isolating”

them seemed very utopian, and Nazi Germany proved it to be.3 But just about 40 years after, it was

1 Bertolt Brecht. Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat. In: Bertolt Brecht (Ed.). Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 18. Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst. Frankfurt a.M. 1967, p. 127-134, see: p. 129, emphasis mine. The translation is from: Niels Werber. Media Theory after Benjamin – Neo-marxist? In: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Michael Marrinan (Eds.). Mapping Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Digital Age. Stanford 2003, p. 230-239, see: p.233.

2 Brecht: Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat, p. 132.3 To the contrary of Brecht's vision, “the iron band of terror”, as Hannah Arendt famously put it, destroyed all

even surpassed by the notion of one of the internet's theoretical pioneers. Theodor Holm Nelson did

not only dream of a decentralised medium of public communication that would “bring [people]

together”.4 Being an intellectual originator of the idea of hypertext, he envisioned a globally

networked storage device containing all mankind's collected knowledge, where every individual

was located just one hyperlink away from any piece of information—open access, anywhere at

anytime. It is amazing how close today`s computer mediated reality seem to be to his vision. For

Nelson, “hyper-media” meant “the greatest thing since the printing press”.5 He called this network

Xanadu believing it would bring “the freedoms of information we deserve as a free people”.6 By

giving “you a screen in your home from which you can see into the world's hypertext libraries”7 it

would eliminate “the absurd distinctio between 'teacher' and 'pupil'”8 Users—we might even say

“citiziens”—could, for example, have access to public documents.9 “Intertwined with everything”, a

networked system of this kind might reorganize and revolutionise the lives of mankind.10 It had the

potential to empower people, ultimately making them “freer through computers”.11 Civic power

through networked, easily accessible knowledge is the ethic core of his utopian conception.

Since it is not the objective of this essay to explore the general relation between utopia and reality,

why did I start with these two examples? Because the narratives of a democratic network society

based on open access and a free, pluralistic flow of information, which Brecht and Nelson have

provided, did not remain an exclusive task of utopian thinkers. Briefly looking at the contemporary

German social science literature, for example, shows that academia also seems to share the idea of a

somewhat empowering potential of media and communication technologies. Whether it is

„Democracy 3.0“12, „E-Participation“13 or „NETIZENS“14, many times—more or less explicitly—

political scientists suggest a positive effect that new media technologies might have for democracy

and civil society. Just as the equation of the dominating mobility paradigm often indicates that—

almost by default—mobilty equals freedom, virtual mobility is supposed to lead to political freedom

as in ”empowerment”, “participation” or “inclusion”. Frequently, this is explained through the

emergence of a new type of “socialized communication”, as Manuel Castells has framed it, which is

“plurality of men”. Hannah Arendt. The Origin of Totalitarianism. New York 1973, p. 466.4 Theodor Holm Nelson. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Self-Published 1974, DM p. 46. The two books ("CL" and

"DM") are bound together, upside down and back-to-back. The self-published version can be found here: http://worrydream.com/refs/Nelson-ComputerLibDreamMachines1975.pdf (18. November 2014).

5 Ibid., p. 56.6 Ibid., p. 59. 7 Ibid.8 Ibid., p. 56.9 Ibid., p. 58.10 Ibid., CL: p. 3-4.11 Ibid., DM: p. 59.12 Christoph Meisselbach. Web 2.0. Demokratie 3.0?. Baden Baden 2009.13 Ulrich Sarcinelli. E-Partizipation in der 'Web 2.0 Demokratie': Wege und Hindernisse

demokratischer Teilhabe – ein Essay. In: Wolf Schünemann, Stefan Weiler (Eds.). E-Government und Netzpolitik im europäischen Vergleich. Baden Baden 2012, p. 435-448.

14 Claus Leggewie. Kultur im Konflikt: Claus Leggewie revisited. Bielefeld 2010.

“self-generated in content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many that

communicate with many.“15 Yet—what does it really mean for democratic practices to have

2.802.478.934 globally networked media users16, who keep sending and receiving incredible

amounts of information through their keyboards, smartphones and webcams; to have 703.000.000

mobile Facebook citizens, who communicate in virtual spaces while, simultaneously, moving from

one place to another physically17; and to have more than 5.000.000 tweets18 sent out into the digital

ether—day after day after day? Has the barely 20 year old assumption of individuals' separation

from community already been proven wrong?19

Ethnography, media and democracy: three case studies of micropolitics

This article seeks to answer how today's apparently boundless communication changes media

culture, and thus ultimately, how “socialized communication“ might help to redefine the boundaries

of politics within contemporary democracies. Beyond all utopian thoughts, ethnography seems to be

perfectly equipped to undertake such a task by looking at the daily life modes of politically engaged

individuals. How do social media and digital technologies transform their democratic practises on

the local level? Are digitalization and virtual mobility capable of empowering these citizens? Or is

there—to the contrary—a new form of virtual immobility evolving, which leads to political

exclusions even broadening the digital devide?20

In order to answer these questions, rather than looking at the macro level of millions of acts of

communication, this article seeks to understand socially mediated spaces of micropolitics from an

ethnographic perspective drawing on field work from three local political contexts. For several

weeks, empirical research on democratic practices was done in Germany, Israel and Spain, on-site

as well as on-line. The methodology consisted of three elements: network analysis, participant

observation and discourse analysis of various media contents. The political context of all three case

studies would be worth an entire article. However, for the purpose of this analysis, all contextual

descriptions will have to be reduced to a minimum. The argument is not about one particular

empirical example, but to exemplify today's socially mediated spheres of politics using insights

15 Manuel Castells. Communication, power and counterpower in the network society. In: International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p. 238-266, see: p. 248, emphasis mine. It should be noted that Castells is not one of those apologists.

16 http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (18. November 2014).17 http://newsroom.fb.com/company-in fo/ (18. November 2014).18 http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513390321/d564001ds1.htm (18. November 2014).19 Cf. Robert D. Putnam. Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital. In: Journal of Democracy 6 (1995, 1), p.

65-78.20 William Friedman. The Digital Divide. AMCIS Proceedings (Paper 401) 2001; Matthew S. Hindman. The myth of

digital democracy. Princeton 2009. "Virtual immobility" is often also called "digital illiteracy". Recently, the EU's Commission published data suggeting that almost half of the European population has insufficient digital skills and might be labelled "digital illiterate": http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-14-383_en.htm (18. November 2014).

from all three of them.

In Munich, taking the example of a traditional democratic institution, negotiations of internal party

politics within the Pirate Party (PIRATES) were analysed. “In the course of the digital revolution of

all spheres of life” the party members' vision is to re-think and re-do democracy.21 In Spain political

action was explored on the net, and by means of networked technologies, within a social movement:

the local branch of the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) in Murcia.22 Its main

political goal is to prevent the enforcement of evictions, which have been ruled and executed by

state authorities for more than 5 years. The PAH does this both, physically and virtually, through

non-violent occupations of flats and houses, and by providing the necessary legal information to

affected families. Finally in Israel, within the city politics of Tel Aviv the focus of research was on a

party list called City for All. Its political activists—most of them ordinary citizens of Tel Aviv—seek

to cut out the all-dominating national conflict with the Palestinians on the municipal level, and to

fight jointly for sustainable city policies beyond all ethnical, religious and social boundaries.

It seems obvious that the briefness of an article may only allow a first glimpse on such socially

mediated spaces of micropolitics—a spotting of phenomena so to speak. To be able to do this, a

conceptual framework need to be introduced. It will allow us to analytically grasp the relation

between media culture and politics.

“Texture of politics”: media culture, communication and democratic boundaries

What does communication within political spaces look like if we approach their “blurred

boundaries” from a cultural anthropological point of view?23 At first glance, there seems to exist the

metaphor of a “constant flowing”. The notion of something or someone always “being in motion”—

the new paradigm of mobility24—is reflected and discussed in various shades within social theory,

whether in Manuell Castells concept of „spaces of flow“25, Mimi Sheller and John Urry's description

of global „fluids (...) of people, information [and] objects“26, or Zygmunt Bauman's diagnosis of a

„liquid modernity“27. Everything is flowing? So are there no structuring elements?

The working hypothesis of this analysis is that the socially mediated forms of communication

within today's “liquid democracies” also do have borders, they set limits and generate boundaries.

And being complex, multilayered, resistive even, these demarcations shape political spaces and

21 They explicitly define this in their manifesto: http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Parteiprogramm (15. November 2014).22 The translations would be something like “platform for all people affected by mortages” (resp. by the “mortage

crisis”).23 Nancy Baym. A call for grounding in the face of blurred boundaries. In: Journal of Computer-Mediated

Communication 14 (2009), p. 720-723.24 See: John Urry. What is the mobility turn? http://vimeo.com/55355753 (18. November 2014).25 Manuel Castells. The rise of the network society. The information age: economy, society and culture.

Vol. I., Cambridge 1996. Emphasis mine.26 Mimi Sheller, John Urry. Mobile Transformations of 'Public' and 'Private' Life. In: Theory,

Culture & Society 20 (2003, 3), p. 107-125. Emphasis mine.27 Zygmunt Bauman. Liquid modernity. Cambridge 2000.

actions in a distinctiv manner. From a cultural anthropological point of view is seems just very odd

to believe that the countless acts of opinion, information and communication, which one can

observe from a macro statistical bird's-eye view, have swept away any structural elements of

contemporary mediated micropolitics. If social media and digital devices are to represent more than

just an infinite rushing of hypermobile individuals how can we understand this supposed

informality and formlessness of political communication. How can we grasp the cultural meaning

of digital democratic action?

To lay bare some structural elements of socially mediated politics it may help to have a look a

concept of Lutz Musner understanding culture “as being the texture of social phanomena”—„Kultur

als Textur des Sozialen“.28 In his article on urban anthropology he defines culture—in the tradition

of Max Weber—“as a process that 'translates' the social into the symbolic (…) inscribing lived and

experienced meaning into the social fabric”.29 Musner uses this images of “culture” being

something like a “texture” for analytical purposes. He calls it a “heuristic metaphor”, which helps to

appropriately focus and to better understand social phenomena.30 After having sharpened his focus

of research conceptually, Musner looks at various Viennese urban development and planning

projects realised over the last 150 years like the Viennese light rail system (“Wiener Stadtbahn”), a

huge housing complex at the “Karl-Marx-Hof” or the famous “opera passage”. He noticed that the

economic structures (Market Liberalism, Fordism, Post-Fordism, etc.), which had been at work at

the time of construction, and their corresponding regulatory principles (Municipal Socialism,

Horizontal or Vertical Redistribution, etc.) also produced a very specific symbolic texture—a

cultural formation.31 To give an example. The Viennese light rail system was built between 1894

and 1900. According to Musner it was one of the most important infrastructure undertakings of the

Municipal Socialism era. This public transport project did not only lead to an “extensive

appropriation of urban space, that is a widescale and efficient integration of dwellers into the urban

loop of motion“, it symbolised more:

“For a regime of accumulation which essentially depends on the quick and cheap availability

of labour power, [this infrastructure project] created the logistic foundations. It did not only

28 Lutz Musner. Kultur als Textur des Sozialen. In: Lutz Musner (Ed.). Kultur als Textur des Sozialen. Essays zum Stand der Kulturwissenschaften. Wien 2004, p. 77-112.

29 See ibid., p. 82: „Kultur als einen Prozess, der das Soziale ins Symbolische 'übersetzt' (...), d.h. dem Gewebe des Sozialen lebensweltliche Bedeutungen aufprägt. (…) Für ein Akkumulationsregime, das wesentlich von der raschen und kostengünstigen Verfügbarkeit von menschlicher Arbeitskraft bestimmt wurde, schuf [es] die logistische Grundlage.”

30 Ibid., p. 89.31 See ibid. p. 85-90. The economic strucure and the regulatory principles are called “regime of accumulation”

(“Akkumulationsregime“) and “mode of regulation” (“Regulationsmodus“). Musners notion of a cultural correspondence of social phenomena is certainly not unique. His Weberian influenced “Kultur als Textur des Sozialen” seems somewhat similar to the Cultural Studies' concept of "conjunctures" or the Bourdieuian idea of “homologies”.

revolutionise the all-encompassing movement and—as a result—full exploitation of the

factor 'labour', but also fundamentally changed the linkages between Vienna's many local

sub-centres thereby fostering trade as well as the industrial and commercial manufacturing,

which were typical around 1900.“32

In Musner's examples, the Social—which seems to be identified mostly as being the Economical in

his work—can be read or readout, because of the intrinsic, corresponding cultural texture of its

architecture. It is this feature of his concept—the heuristic metaphor of a “cultural texture of social

phenomena”—that will be applied in the following analysis.

If we, generally, define “politics” as a historically specific mode of social practices which organizes

ultimately inevitable contradictions of values in a particular material and symbolical manner, for

example “transparency” vs.“anonymity” or “participation” vs. “exclusion, we may heuristically

understand media culture as being an important element of a translation process: it “charges

artefacts (texts, discourse, media), things and devices of everyday life resp. material culture as well

as cultural practices (habits of consumption and communication) with significance and meaning”

thereby politicising them.33 At first glance, the term “media” in this quote—defining that “media

culture” charges “media” as well—might seem a little odd. But, of course, a medium does not only

refer to “events” or “things” that have somewhat physically occurred (first-order observations), it

might also address other media and their referring to or politicising of those events (second-order

observations).34 One of the upcoming ethnographical examples will precisely proof this point. The

standards of technological infrastructures as well as, for example, general terms and conditions of

social media companies are equally part of such media politics. Media technologies are used for and

the target of political negotiations, or to frame it with Pierre Bourdieu, they are at the same time

ends and means of ongoing:

“...struggles over the monopoly of the power to make people see and believe, to get them to

know and recognize, to impose the legitimate definition of the divisions of the social world

and, thereby, to make and unmake groups.”35

32 See ibid., p. 92-93: „Eine extensive Aneignung des Stadtraums, d. h. eine möglichst umfassende und effiziente Integration der Menschen in den urbanen Zirkulationskreislauf. (…) Für ein Akkumulationsregime, das wesentlich von der raschen und kostengünstigen Verfügbarkeit von menschlicher Arbeitskraft bestimmt wurde, schuf [es] die logistische Grundlage, welche nicht nur die flächendeckende Bewegung und damit umfassende Verwertung des Faktors 'Arbeit' revolutionierte, sondern auch den Austausch zwischen den vielen, lokalen Subzentren der industriellen und gewerblichen Produktion und des Handels beförderte, die für Wien um 1900 typisch waren.

33 See ibid., p. 89: „(...) [einen Übersetzungsprozess] durch den Artefakte (Texte, Diskurse, Medien), Gegenstände und Vorrichtungen der alltäglichen bzw. Materiellen Kultur sowie kulturelle Praktiken (Kommunikations- und Konsumpraxen) mit Wertigkeit und Bedeutung aufgeladen [werden]“.

34 See: Niklas Luhmann. The Reality of the Mass Media. Cambridge 2000.35 Pierre Bourdieu. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge 1991, p. 221. Emphasis mine.

To sum this point up. Similar to a historically concrete architectural project, for example the

Viennese light rail system, which does not seem to have an arbitrary cultural form, but rather

corresponds to the social and economic order of that particular time—to its Zeitgeist—, today`s

media culture might also consist of a particular texture symbolising a certain mode of the Political.

Likewise, just as a novel culture of urban mobility had to almost unavoidably transform labour and

economy at that time, one could argue that the virtual mobility of today`s (locative) media culture

will reorganises politics.36 These media cultural contours of political action will now be at the centre

of attention. Taking the example of a political controversy about public space in Tel Aviv, the first

ethnographic section describes what might analytically be called the “horizontal” fibres of today's

media culture.

„This is a public place!“ Polymedia and hybrid spaces of political action

Already well before the internet existed—or at least before it had its commercial breakthrough—,

citizens of Tel Aviv fought against what they called the “privatization of public space”. The areas

close to the city's beaches have often been cause and subject of these struggles. Due to their central

location close to the sea, these lands appear fairly attractive to most of the residents.

Rachel Gilad-Wallner has been a political activists for several decades. She was one of the city

council members of the party list City For All in 2013. That year, in October, Rachel was taking a

walk to the harbour of Tel Aviv—“on public space” as she emphasised several times—when she, all

of a sudden, spotted “a private event”.37 The whole area was closed off. Somebody had even

ordered security guards. Being “a citizen of Tel Aviv”, she did not want to “put up with this

intolerable event”, and confronted the organisers. Being physically there—at a place representing

what she considered to be “public space”—, and digitally equipped with the video camera of her

tablet, she recorded the following discussion:38

Rachel [filming]: “Citizens of Tel Aviv, please, all of you look how our accessibility to pass

here is blocked by these two giant men, because there is a wedding of the rich! This wedding

is taking place here, and it's against the law!”

A security guard: “Hey lady, what do you care? 10 minutes and this is over.”

36 For a profound analysis of the relation between physical and virtual mobility from an urban anthropological perspective see: Adriana de Souza e Silva, Mimi Sheller. Mobility and Locative Media: Mobile Communication in Hybrid Spaces. Changing Mobilities. Oxon 2015.

37 All case studies in this article were composed of the author's field work diaries. Direct quotations are usually “marked”. To the extend that they exist, hyperlinks were added to all media contents.

38 The author first heard about this particular controversy on Twitter while he was doing field work during the 2013 city council elections' campaign of City For All. The video can be found on YouTube: http://youtu.be/yOivE2J232E (18. November 2014). Even without knowing any Hebrew, one can tell that Rachel was quite outraged. Emphasis mine.

Rachel: “No! I want to know whose wedding this is! I couldn't get married here, and this is

a public place!”39

Rachel's demands to respect things like open access to a public place, transparency of any events

that might happen there, as well as the adherence of the rule of law and its principle of equality are

precisely no novel themes of politics. They represent traditional democratic values. What is novel,

however, is the particular texture of the media culture, and the way these values resp. their breaches

are addressed. Its fibres permeate the political space of Tel Aviv horizontally like a set of discursive

threads. Rachel's on-site confrontation of the wedding was uploaded to a social media video

platform by City For All, and subsequently shared on-line through a set of socially mediated

channels (Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.). And yet, the linked YouTube video was just a tiny facet of

socially mediatised micropolitics. As a matter of fact, social media were just the beginning of this

controversy. Mobile technologies individually enabled Rachel to start doing politics, but they did

not automatically bring along political impact. If City For All had solely sticked to social media,

and had not broadened their strategy using other fibres of communication as well, the whole

political incident would have most likely stopped at that point. Their original tweet had two shares

(one retweet and one favorite). The video itself is very unprofessional and really hard to watch.

Being unbelievably jittery, it was seen by about 300 people receiving two likes. This is not to

underestimate its impact. Using her web-enabled device to shoot and upload it on-line was the first

thing Rachel naturally thought of when she was on-site. It was the most effective way to document

what she considered a breach of democratic values. And she did this by drawing on the latest

contemporary media technology personally available to her—quite a nice example what virtual

mobility could mean.

As it was mentioned before, Youtube was just a starting point of City for All's political endeavour in

that matter. Afterwards City For All decided to try to hook-up to another media channel by

informing local newspapers and TV stations. This is when classic mass media entered the political

stage interconnecting two different types of media fibres. As you can see, one of City For All's

tweets for example contains a hyperlink to the news overage of Haaretz, one of Israel's most

important newspapers.40

39 Translation mine. 40 See tweet: https://twitter.com/City4All/status/385641300789559296 (18. November 2014).

Wiring up different media fibres: City For All in Tel Aviv

What made this incident particularly compatible to mass media interest was its “public outcry

factor”. As things turned out, the groom did not only close off a public place, but he also happened

to be the son of a well-off Tel Avivian hotel owner. He was, as Rachel put it, “more than a 'normal'

citizen”, because he and his father were “closely tied up with the political establishment”. This

“well-off son” was celebrating a private wedding on public grounds. Rachel's assumption proved

right that mass media would bite the bait. Local newspapers, radio broadcasts and TV stations

addressed this controversy several times. And why shouldn't City For All stick to classic mass

media (strategies) within this novel media cultural texture? But there is even more to it. Being a

formal party list and having city council members, City For All wired up another fibre: formal and

institutionalised politics. As a councilwoman Rachel had the legal authority to introduce a bill to the

respective city council committee. And this is precisely what City For All did demanding a rigorous,

legal prohibition of “the use of public areas for pure private purposes”. This third string of discourse

—to be more precise we would have to call it third “type of media fibre”, since it was still the same

discourse—paving its way into the city's space of politics took place far from any virtual channels:

it was injected on paper, through a committee sitting and discussing in a small dusky room in Tel

Aviv city hall.

Now, how are we to understand this entire political space of mediatised communication

conceptually that the briefly described ethnographical example represents? How can boundaries of

politics beyond all floating metaphors possibily be defined if we take virtual mobility seriously, but

do not want to fall back to utopian notions of boundless democratic participation? Drawing on

ethnographical examples from a comparative migration study of Filipino and Caribbean

transnational families, in Polymedia Daniel Miller and Mirca Madianou point out that media

cultural practices are precisely not and have never been monomedia.41 Consequently, it makes sense

to conceive the texture of today's media culture as being polymedia as well. This is precisely what

the above microethnography of a Tel Avivian space of politics has shown too.

A second insight that the Tel Aviv case has demonstrated is the fact that the distinction between

“real” and “virtual” continues to become increasingly blurred. We might still use this differentiation

for analytical purposes, but ontologically it does not make any sense. Reality exists as “hybridity”,

and political action happens as much on-site as it does on-line. These two spheres are mutually

interlocked in many ways.42

“If someone makes a fraudulous phone call, nobody would say it is a crime committed in

phonespace. It is a crime committed in the real world and someone used a phone. Similarly,

the Internet exists in real space, where there are laws and land and switches and societies.”43

The horizontal media cultural texture is hybrid, and it is polymedia. Understanding this spatial

hybridity of reality seems central to any contemporary media ethnography of politics—but not only

there.44 Thus, studying im/mobility should pay attention to its virtuality and vice versa. Equally

important, we have to take the polymedia nature of today's mediatised world seriously as well in

order to not overestimate the enabling democratic potential of social media. For a content of

communication to take effect within a certain context politically, for example a fight for the value of

public access, it needs to wire up with other polymedia fibres.

41 Mirca Madianou, Daniel Miller. Migration and new media. Transnational families and polymedia, Abingdon 2012. 42 Marion Hamm vividly describes the concept of “spatial hybridity of politics” using the example of global protest

cultures. See: Marion Hamm. Reclaiming virtual and physical spaces. In: Open 11 (2006), p. 96-111.43 Eben Moglen. Freedom and the Future of the Net: Why We Win. Speech held at New York University 2002:

http://punkcast.com/156/moglen1_24k.mp3 (18. November 2014). Qtd. in: Hamm: Reclaiming virtual and physical spaces, p. 111.

44 See: Marianne Pieper, Brigitta Kuster, Vassilis Tsianos. Making Connections, Skizzen einer (n)ethnografischen Grenzregimeanalyse. In: Oliver Leister, Theo Röhle (Eds.). Generation Facebook. Über das Leben im Social Net. Bielefeld 2011, p. 221-248.

Virtual mobility does not generate political impact by default, it rather adds another (technological)

point of entry into a political discourse—another low-threshold layer of potential democratic

empowerment. “Low-threshold” thereby does not refer to the technical knowledge of using digital

technologies, but to the fact that, at least in democratic societies, there is usually no political

authority that hinders their usage. The means of media production—to frame this from a Marxist

point of view—are easily obtainable. As the next section will show, the perils of virtual immobility

and digital iliteracy are another side of the coin.

„More than just a link!“ Glocal regimes of information and virtual im/mobility

If we shift the focus of attention to the vertically running media fibres of contemporary spaces of

politics, which means to analyse the relation of local forms of action with regards to other levels of

political practices—regional, national, European or even global—, we may also find a specific

texture. The reason to do this is not to state that today's digital infrastructures physically enable

global networks—a trivial fact. This section rather seeks to ethnographically focus on a special type

of knowledge that these networks are able to provide: glocal regimes of information. What is this

type of knowledge that could politically empower citizens? Through which media cultural practices

might they be able to use it? And which (meta-)knowledge is needed to be capable of doing this in

the first place? Reflecting on the relationship between political ability and practical capability, the

following argument demonstrates that virtual mobility is about both the knowledge through

technology and the knowledge of (the usage of) technology.

As just mentioned, the vertical dimension of media culture may take the shape of a glocal

information regime. What does this mean? Barry Wellman's concept of “glocal networks” describes

that social spaces within today's network societies, while possessing global connections, still tend to

have a form of local situatedness. „The Internet”, as he puts it, “both provides a ramp onto the

global information highway and strengthens local links within neighborhoods and households.“45

Location—place—remains important, yet “social closeness” does not necessarily mean “physical

closeness” anymore.46 The “boxes” in Wellman's graphic represent these local places whereas a

“line from one box to another” symbolise a global connection between two locations. The “dots”

are the acting individuals.

45 Barry Wellman. Little boxes, glocalization, and networked individualism. In: Makato Tanabe, Peter van den Besselaar, Toru Ishida (Eds.). Digital cities II: Computational and sociological approaches. Berlin 2002, p. 10-25, see: p. 13.

46 Ibid. The graphic can be found on page 212. Although it is hard to illustrate verticality using a two-dimensional medium, Wellman's chart hopefully helps to visualise the upcoming argument.

Understanding glocal regimes of information

What exactly is the relationship between glocal networks and the texture of today's media culture?

The key to understand this connection is the particular mediation of knowledge which they enable.

To quote Wellman again: „Knowing how to network (on and offline) becomes a human capital

resource, and having a supportive network becomes a social resource“.47 What he labels

“networking”, “human capital” or “social resource” can be utilized politically through glocal

regimes of information as the following case study of the Spanish Plataforma de Afectados por la

Hipoteca (PAH) will demonstrate.

PAH activists exist in almost every Spanish city. They support the countless people who have been

affected by the Spanish housing crises, and who have either lost their homes or—threatened by

evictions—might be about to lose them, because they just cannot afford to pay the interest rates to

their banks anymore.48 My first encounter with the local offshoot PAH Murcia took place in 2013.

The activists were holding one of their weekly events in a thick-walled room that rendered any

attempt to access the internet basically impossible. As every Tuesday, they had organised this four-

hour support meeting in the basement facilities of the Murcian Red Cross—en “La Cruz Roja”.

These events are more than just a way to inform about general prospects, legal rights or possible

strategies to, for example, deal with banks. The PAH's support meetings embody something like a

self-help group. Often for the first time, there affected people get the chance to tell their worries,

fears and feelings to each other. This almost always unveils social and psychological hardhips

incredibly sad to listen to and exposing the abysses of a society: a 50-year old Spanish father crying

47 Ibid., p. 14. Emphasis mine.48 Even if the Spanish government, so far, has not been able to provide any official figures to assess the overall scope

of the many individual tragedies, valid sources suggest that until 2012 there might have already been up to 400.000 evictions that have been taking place in the shadow of the euro crisis: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1547095/0/se-disparan/desahucios/517-diarios/ (18. November 2014). For more information about the relationship between Spanish evictions and the European banking crisis see: http://transformations-blog.com/what-does-1000000000000-mean/ (18. November 2014).

like a little child, physically breaking down in front of 38 strangers. First he had lost his job. Since

he couldn’t pay the interest rates of his house anymore, his parents agreed to use their own

mortgage to cover his debt. But their son still couldn’t afford to pay the exploding rates. Ultimately,

he ended up not only losing his own home, the house of his parents was also evicted; a young

mother who has been living with two small children in her flat without any water or electricity for

more than a year; or an old man threatening to shoot himself if he should really lose his house. In

Spain, quite frequently, affected people commit suicide during the process of an eviction (“un

desahucio”).49

All three just mentioned stories were told during this first ethnographic encounter with the PAH in

the basement of the Red Cross. Next to a bunch of lockers, maybe 10 tables and two rows of chairs,

the only piece of furniture one could find was an old flipchart. On it were a mobile phone number, a

handwritten updated email address and an “uniform resource locator”—an URL. The website was

refering to something called „documentos útiles“: useful documents. And this is where the glocal

regime of information starts.

Materialisation of a glocal regime of information: PAH Murcia

No beamer. No powerpoint. Just a hyperlink materialised on a piece of paper. However, on the

virtual side of this amateurishly looking poster emerges a powerful political weapon: special legal

knowledge. This link does not lead to a local Murcian activists' website, but rather it connects

individuals from Murcia with a Wordpress-based national cyberspace that contains the cumulative

collected knowledge of the social movement as a whole—ready to be called up at any time.

49 On the one hand, this has probably to do with “feeling ashamed” about their own situation as activists have stated many times. On the other hand, it might also be due to the fact that evictions in Spain are particularly hard. Until November 2014, a personal insolvency law does not exist. Once evicted, affected citizens not only physically lose their home, but also have to keep the debt. Being the bank's property now, this “home” is being transformed into “real estate” again. Sometimes shelterless and often without a job, these evicted people are supposed to keep paying their loan back to their bank while their (former) house usually remains unpeopled.

Refering this to Wellman's graphic again: it is the global line out of the local box. And this digital

path is tremendously empowering. It leads to the cognitive essence of all political and legal

experiences that PAH activists from Barcelona to Santiago de Compostella have gone through since

2008. It leads to a glocal regime of information. The empowering potential is so high, because it is

so difficult and complicated to fight an imminent eviction. If a family has trouble paying their

mortage it is very important to initialise appropriate legal steps at the proper time in the proper

sequence. Through many years of locally situated experiences, the PAH has figured out how these

social negotiations between a bank, the state and its citizens effectively work. Using their

Wordpress-based website, they have broken this legal, yet abstract process of an eviction down into

a set of easy to handle information which can be applied by any individual no matter where he or

she is located in Spain, and without being an expert or a specialist.50 Thus, affected people do

indeed find “documentos útiles“ that might protect them from being evicted. One can come upon

things like a draft for a “letter of information” to send to your bank, templates containing correctly

drafted “letters of objection”, or an important piece of advice that tells you how to integrate the

latest European Court of Justice's decision—which has just ruled certain Spanish banks' practices

“to be illegal”—into your legal dispute. All this can be done by non-professionals mostly using the

cultural technique of “copy and paste”.

In Spain, this kind of special legal knowledge is not provided by the state, but rather by a glocally

networked social movement whose activists do politics in their local neighborhoods (e.g. by

“occuying houses”)51, but also on a regional (e.g. “organizing demonstrations”) , national (e.g.

“internal coordination”) and European level (e.g. “lobby work at EU institutions”).52 The glocally

provided information of the PAH was thereby openly accessible and it could take effect if one knew

where to find them and how to use them. The amounts of data were rather small, all you needed was

a temporary internet access point and the formats of all shared documents were widely distributed.

Yet still, affected people quite often did have problems and difficulties related to issues of

technology, because they could not open, find or print a document. Activists of the PAH had to

constantly provide this technological knowledge as well dealing with outdated software, the poor

designability of their own website or a difficult usability of hardware.

50 In this context, it is interesting to have another look at the supposedly utopian thoughts of Theodor Holm Nelson, because he precisely described this empowering potential against a system of expertocracy. “Knowledge is power and so it tends to be hoarded. Experts in any field rarely want people to understand what they do (...).” Nelson: Computer Lib/Dream Machines. CL: p. 2.

51 A sad ethnography showing such local activities of neighborhood politics can be found here: http://transformations-blog.com/civil-disobedience/ (18. November 2014).

52 Even the “global” applies here, since the PAH helps many citizens from Latin American countries that, too, are quiteoften affected by evictions in Spain. In Murcia, for example, the local activists work together closely with the Ecuadorian consulate.

If we shift our focus from the “citizens as user” to the “citizens as producers” of this glocal regime

of information the point becomes even more obvious. Whether to correctly handle Wordpress to

maybe upload a new “letter of objection”, to edit an appealing yet educational video for Youtube, or

to administrate the local Facebook group, polymedia and polymediatised work was always a central

activists' part of doing hybrid politics within their glocal spaces.53 The mediation of this typ of

media competence seems to be essential—a key competence so to speak—if the emergence of a

new form of discrimination ought to be avoided: political exclusion through virtual immobility.

It's not that this peril is something like a direct consequence of somewhat exceedingly complicated

technologies. The argument is not about any technological determinism. Just as language—being a

medium too—has to be leaned, using and applying digital media can be learned, and has to be

taught as well. To illustrate this point here is another ethnographic example from a PAH meeting.

During the session of a self-help group, an older woman tried to catch the speaker's eye. “Tried”

because she hardly spoke any Spanish while also showing a very strong Eastern European accent.

Realizing that noone was getting her, she then bursted out crying. Only when another randomly

present Bulgarian participant started translating, the older woman could tell about her eviction case,

and the activists finally managed to help her with relevant information. Before, they were just not

able to understand what she was trying to say. Or, to change perspectives, the woman was not

capable to express herself using the appropriate medium correctly, which in this case was the

Spanish language.

Glocal spaces of politics do not by default generate democratic participation. They first and

foremost produce another potential, technological barrier: a novel techno-ontological layer of

action. Within these spaces empowering civic practices may occur, as the example of the PAH's

glocal regime of information has proven. Yet, there also exist new posibilities of failing—„Error

404: The requested URL was not found on this server.“

„We are cyborgs!“ Coded publics and [the structures underneath their] infrastructures

Spaces of politics feature a third media cultural dimension which can be framed as meta-mediality

based on code. This terminology refers to the structuring elements that reside behind—or better:

underneath—optical fibre cables, touchscreens and data processing centres. The concept of

“software-like situations” will be used to illustrate this dimension.

In Cutting code: software and sociality Adrian Mackenzie addresses a very specific type of social

configurations that might be subsumed as human-interface-relations.54 Beyond any technicism, he

53 In a way the PAH activists represent something like the prototyp of a political media entrepreneur. 54 Adrian Mackenzie. Cutting code: software and sociality. New York 2006. Mackenzie's concept is more specific with

regards to digital media than, for example, Actor-Network Theory-based approaches which are usually applied in such technological contexts, and may contain any human-non-human network whatsoever—even cars. See e.g.: Michel Callon, M. (1986). The Sociology of an Actor-Network: the Case of the Electric Vehicle. In: Michael Callon,

asks what type of agency is produced by resp. through the usage of software, and whether this could

also represent something like an operating system of social action? Mackenzie conceives software

and its structuring code precisely not as abstractly defined (mathematical) set of operations, but

embeds them into social and cultural situations.

„Software in its specificity is not a given. What software does is very intimately linked with

how code is read and by whom or what, that is, by person or machine. Sociologists and

anthropologists of technology have established that any formalization needs to be

understood 'in use'“55

Any time an interaction involves the use of software, one could sum up his concept, code does pre-

or co-structure this action to a certain degree. Code is culturally “in use”. So what could a software-

like situation in politics look like, and how does code texturize a political space of action?

This fragment of code is from the interactive democracy software LiquidFeedback which is used by

the Pirate Party (PIRATES) to shape internal party opinions. It defines—to put this simply—how

the software calculates the weighting of votes.56

Line source

152 if (logging && candidates[i].score < 1.0 && !candidates[i].seat) log_candidate = 1;

153 if (log_candidate) printf("Score for suggestion #%s = %.4f+%.4f*%.4f",

candidates[i].key, candidates[i].score, scale, candidates[i].score_per_step);

154 if (candidates[i].score_per_step > 0.0) {

155 double max_scale;

156 max_scale = (1.0-candidates[i].score) / candidates[i].score_per_step;

157 if (max_scale == scale) {

158 // score of 1.0 should be reached, so we set score directly to avoid floating point

errors:

159 candidates[i].score = 1.0;

Mackenzie's concept helps us to understand the cultural dimension of these abstract symbols

distinguishing between four elements that define any software-like situation: code, originators,

John Law, Arie Rip (Eds.). Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology: Sociology of Science in the Real World. London 1986, p. 19-34.

55 Mackenzie: Cutting code, p. 6. Emphasis mine.56 http://www.public-software-group.org/mercurial/liquid_feedback_core/file/tip/lf_update_suggestion_order.c#l152

(18. November 2014).

recipients and prototypes.57 When analysing a given situation that involves the use of software, it is

important to equally focus on all four elements, because they are in fact interrelated. Together code,

originators, recipients and prototypes shape social agency.

“Code” symbolises more than semantics and syntax of a computer language. It is a „direct

expression of human agency in relation to things“, precisely because it does not remain formal or

abstract, but actually acts: something does “start”, “move” or “stop”.58 Code is also part of a wider

net of social relations while, in turn, defining these relations in a specific manner itself. Being

executed—.exe—it may then change this very composition. To bring back the above mentioned

code fragement: it defines „if (logging && candidates[i].score < 1.0 && !candidates[i].seat)“. And

it does not define „if (logging && candidates[i].score < 2.0 && !candidates[i].seat)“. Of course, the

symbols „< 1.0“ or „< 2.0“ represent a formal and abstract relation between things, but being social

symbols as well, they actually define the weighting of votes. Once used they change the internal

power relation of a group of individuals—in this case of a political party. Code „as a material” has

then become “a significant way of distributing agency“.59

“Originators” is the second element of Mackenzie's concept. It describes that code usually does not

act independently. Software needs someone (a person/actor) or something (a machine/actant) to

write, programme and update it.

„Recipients“, thirdly, refers to the fact that in software-like situations there always exist actors or

actants that do code (someone votes) or get done by it (someone gets voted on).

Conclusively, „prototypes“ implies that software resembles a set of operations “representing

something else“ ideally—which is not code. This seems a little cryptic, but it basically means that,

as a prototyp, software embodies a social configuration virtually. It could be a specific electoral

procedure, or to draw on Mackenzie's example, „a set of operations relating to a photographic

workshop equipped with instruments such as scissors, brushes, pencils and paint.“60

To the recipients who do LiquidFeedback the above mentioned lines of code, which have been

discussed and programmed by the originators way ahead of the event, are at work “unconsciously”

during the actual voting process. One may even say “automatically”. Or to frame it with Mackenzie

again:

„What is visible to a programmer working on a piece of software may be almost totally

invisible to users, who only see code mediated through an interface or some change in their

environment: the elevator arrives, the television changes channels, the telephone rings.“61

57 See: Mackenzie: Cutting code, p. 11-16.58 Ibid., p. 10.59 Ibid., p. 8. Emphasis mine.60 Ibid., p. 16.61 Ibid., p. 13. Emphasis mine.

One cannot argue that code does not have an effect. It works. LiquidFeedback is used by PIRATES

to vote, and thus, ultimately, to decide. During the course of voting, a specific weighting of votes is

used while many different procedures are ruled out. Code is not the election, but it defines a

prototype that co-structures the actual acts of voting. In this sense software possesses a form of

„secondary agency (…) supporting or extending the agency of some primar agent“.62

The very same thing, which a recipient experiences as infrastructure or interface, symbolises

something fundamentally different to his originator. For him it a medium based on code that can be

charged culturally—and thus politically—in many ways depending on the procedures that a

programmer inscribes into its texture. Once the originator writes a line of code within a political

context, for example the prototype of a voting procedure, he defines a precise instruction to do

politics which primary agents cannot simply ignore.

This type of „secondary agency“ exists in every human-interface-situation occurring within

digitally mediated spaces of politics. Thus, we seem bound to take these software-like situations

into account, once we decide to analyse today's media culture—not only within political contexts.

Yet, this “black box code” remains strinkingly untouched in qualitative social science. To formal?

To abstract? To complicated? Only at first glance. If we open our eyes and focus on software-like

situations in use we can see the novel techno-ontological layer emerging again that has already been

introduced briefly in the last section. Behind those cold infrastructures appear flesh-and-blood

cyborgs, who are capable of switching on a socially mediatised part of there consciousness, blurring

the already fuzzy devide between organism and technology ever more.63 What could this mean with

regards to politics?

Party convention of the Bavarian PIRATES. Unterhaching, a small town close to Munich. January

12th, 2013. 4:30pm. The setting: A small, ill-lit rural gym usually used for basketball. About 100

participants. Lively. Noisy. Somebody yells asking for silence. Tables and chairs are packed with

digital equipment. Cabels, speakers, laptops, mobile phones everywhere. A huge screen on a

provisional gallery onto which the latest agenda item is projected. A crew of technicians—party

members as well—live streams the happening, so that all PIRATES who did not physically make it

into the gym are still able to be up to date. The official aim of the party convention is to take a vote

on the party's programme, and to decide on its political positions.

One of the most headed debates flared up when members were supposed to vote on a position paper

called “Game Changer: Neutral Societal Platform”.64 This draft—which finally got accepted with a

tiny majority—was against any affirmative action for woman justifying its postion by arguing that

62 Ibid., p. 8. Emphasis mine.63 Donna J. Haraway. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s. In: Donna J.

Haraway (Ed.). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. New York 1991, p. 149-181. 64 In German it was called "Gamechanger: Neutrale gesellschaftliche Plattform“—just as cryptic as in English:

https://wiki.piratenpartei.de/BY:Landesparteitag_2013.1/Antragsfabrik/Positionspapier_003 (18. November 2014).

“female quotas” would not eliminate the reason for social injustice, but only treat its symptoms. In

addition to all the loud and buzzy debates that were taking place either through the stage's

microphone or simply by yelling across the tables, there existed another sp@cial layer of discussion

where PIRATES could simultaneously argue and exchange opinions—Twitter:65

@der_kunzelmann: Are you in favor of female quotas? I'd be curious to know :-)

@cmrcx: I think quotas may be a possible mean if they are used for resonable ends that can

realistically be achieved through them.

@cmrcx: ”To have more women somewhere”, for example, is just not a reasonable end.

@der_kunzelmann: When someone talks about the issue of quotas, I'm less interested in

“yes” or “no”, and more interested in his reasoning.

@cmr_cx: I'm against the usual implication that men generally oppress women.

In order to understand politics in all its media dimensions—in this case: the shaping of internal

party opinions—one cannot simply ignore this techno-ontological layer of debate. Taking the

example of the party event, the novel layer produced something like a locally situated

simultaneousness during the ongoing discussions. Sp@ce and place were overlapping eachother.

The recipient @cmr_cx was physically and virtually present at the same time, discussing across the

tables while discussing on Twitter.66 Without being able to conclusively answer this arising

question, but to what extend may such locative media change micropolitical spaces of discussion?

Coded publics, virtual im____mobilities. A conclusion.

Starting over. Back to Brecht. The three ethnographic sections have illustrated that digital media are

neither a radio technology, nor can everyone use them on an equal footing. Just imagine that each

and everyone of today's 2.802.478.934 internet user would have their own radio frequency through

which he or she would broadcast. Which channel would you select?

This article has used three ethnographical examples of micropolitics from Munich, Murcia and Tel

Aviv to demonstrate the relationship between media culture and politics. Drawing on the heuristic

metaphor by Lutz Musner, who conceives “culture as being the texture of any social configuration”,

three dimensions of today's media cultural texture could be analytically identified that co-structure

spaces of political action: “horizontal”, “vertical” and “meta” running fibres.

Democratic microrealities really are in a state of flux, but boundless they are not—rather complex,

65 The conversation can be found here: https://twitter.com/der_kunzelmann/status/290103402149601281 (18. November 2014). @der_kunzelmann is the author's account. Since anyone who registers at Twitter may read the conversation anyway, it was decided to keep the original names of the avatars. The quoted messages are public. Due to ethical reasons, private messages were not used.

66 The hashtag „#lptby“ was used to create this supplementary, common sp@ce of on-line discussions.

resistive and multilayered. Borders, barriers and boundaries still exist in this virtual mobile world.

What has changed is their specific cybertechnological and media cultural fabric. It was the purpose

of this article to partly unfold these shifts. Thus, it was never about technology-as-technology, but

rather about the place and space contemporary media technologies take up within political contexts.

Looking at the horizontal dimension of media culture, the Israeli case study, which described a local

political struggle about a public place at the harbour of Tel Aviv, has shown that today's spaces of

politics are polymedia and hybrid. As it was the case with City For All, political action gets

channeled through a variety of media, on-site as well as on-line. It goes from a public place to social

media to mass media while also integrating traditional, institutionalised democratic practices.

“Real” and “virtual” spheres of action might be analytically distinguishable, but they are de facto

manifoldly interlocked. To paraphrase Deleuze, the real is the virtual and the virtual is the real.67

Any contemporary media ethnography should take the concepts of polymedia and hybridity

seriously. If not it might just miss an important structural part of space, and declare something to be

“blurred” while actually doing the blurring itself.

The second, vertical dimension of mediatised politics has addressed the field of tension between

knowledge through technology and knowledge of (the usage of) technology. Using an example of

ethnographic research in Murcia (Spain), the glocal regime of information of the Plataforma de

Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) was analysed to reflect on the relationship between virtual

im/mobility and political exclusion/inclusion. Political action within this polymedia and hybrid

space consisted of both doing media as well as providing knowledge and understanding about

(effectively) using media. In the case of the PAH, knowledge mediated through new media

technologies has indeed generated a way of civic empowerment, and it has lead to an increase of

democratic participation, since many formerly affected people turned to be political activists after or

during their own process of eviction. But digital media might also produce a novel form of potential

political exclusion that has to be taken seriously. Because any information that was vertically

conveyed through the PAH's digital media fibres—from “local” to “global” and back—has required

a special type of (meta-)information that was somewhat co-conveyed: knowledge of the usage of

media technology. In order to be able to use media one has to be capable of using it. Political ability

and practical capability are two sides of the same coin. Within glocal spaces of politics, virtual

mobility and civic empowerment might just be one click away, but so are virtual immobility and

political exclusion.

The third and final empirical section of this analysis has illustrated what can be labelled meta-

mediality based on code. This dimension of media culture refers to the structuring elements that

reside behind today's infrastructures and digital devices. Applying the concept of “software-like

67 Gilles Deleuze. The actual and the virtual. In: Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet (Eds.). Dialogues II. New York 2002, p. 148-152.

situations” by Adrian Mackenzie on a third German empirical case study—a party convention of the

Pirate Party (PIRATES)—another textural layer of mediatised mircopolitics emerged: a locally

situated sp@ce of discussion. Using this sp@ce, individuals could argue and exchange political

opinions while simultaneously debating on-site as well. The relation of this third section to the

previously described horizontal and vertical texture of contemporary media culture seems almost

trivial, but every social medium (Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, etc.) and every digital technology

(Wordpress, tablets, etc.) is based on code, and is thus co-structured by this “invisible” meta-

mediality as well. What we read, in let say a political Facebook group discussing gender issues, is

neither “natural” nor coincidence. And for everything we read or see, there is something we do not

read or see. Who or what decides what we read or see? Social media content is co-structured by

code and algorithms, and—as the code fragment of a PIRATES's piece of software has shown—

being social and cultural anthropologists, we are able and capable to lay bare such social situations

understanding the secondary agency of such software-like situations in use.

Today's spaces of politics are still media culturally structured. Communication does not just freely

flow. What we term “social media”, “digital technologies” and “virtual mobility” create a specific

polymedia and hybrid texture that might enable new glocal ways of democratic participation and

empowerment. But at the same time, this very texture also defines new possible ways of failing:

virtual immobility and thus, at worst, political exclusion. As political practices become increasingly

technologised and mediatised, these perils will grow. Coded publics thus become a question of

democracy. Equally, if cyborgs are able to locally hook-up their consciousness into a simultaneously

existing virtual space of discussion, thereby effectively mediatising their political views and values

“twofoldly”, what about those non-cyborgs that are not capable of doing so, be it because of a lack

of technological knowledge (cf. 2nd ethnographic section), due to an infrastructural breakdown (“no

WiFi”) or even for political reasons?68 Future talk? The more prominent such coded publics will

become, the more relevant such questions will get.

68 Taking the example of the Twitter Trends Algorithm, Tarleton Gillespie illustrates how meta-mediality based on codetakes effect as an object of politics itself showing the magnitude of discursive power it might unfold. See: Tarleton Gillespie. Can an algorithm be wrong? Twitter Trends, the specter of censorship, and our faith in the algorithms around us. In: Culture Digitally (Oct 19, 2011). http://culturedigitally.org/2011/10/can-an-algorithm-be-wrong (18. November 2014).