La teoría de los campos, el cambio mediático y los nuevos movimientos ciudadanos: el giro hacia la «democracia real» en España como una serie de campos y espacios

A revised, post-Bourdieu version of field theory can help to produce more nuanced analyses of the relationship between media change, the rise of new citizen movements and ongoing struggles for democratic renewal around the world. Taking as my example Spain’s indignados (15M) movement and its political offshoots, I explore the potential uses of a range of field concepts, including a pair of contrasting notions introduced here for the first time: ‘field of civic action’ vs. ‘dispersed civic space’. I argue that Spain’s 15M movement is best understood not as a continuous flow of events but rather as a series of discrete, ephemeral fields of civic action separated by a long hiatus of dispersed civic space. These transient, complexly mediated fields can be regarded as socio-political games of a certain kind, namely as contests in which civic ‘players’ with unique skillsets, including techno-political skills, enter into relationships with other individual and collective players in pursuit of specific goals and rewards. Of particular salience in Spain is the rise of citizen-led initiatives (e.g. PAH, Podemos, Barcelona en Comú) that have managed to bridge the alternative vs. establishment media divide to great social and electoral effect.Una versión de la teoría de campos post-Bourdieu puede producir análisis matizados de la relación entre el cambio de los medios de comunicación, los nuevos movimientos ciudadanos y las luchas por la renovación democrática actuales. Partiendo del movimiento de los indignados en España (15M), exploro los usos potenciales de una serie de conceptos de campo y propongo una distinción conceptual entre «campo de acción cívica» y «espacio cívico disperso». Los recientes cambios políticos en España no son un flujo continuo de acontecimientos, sino una serie de campos discretos y efímeros de acción cívica separados por un largo período de dispersión del espacio cívico. Estos campos complejamente mediados son «juegos» sociopolíticos en los que actores cívicos con habilidades tecno-políticas y de otra índole interactúan con otros jugadores en busca de metas y recompensas específicas. Como resultado, las nuevas iniciativas dirigidas por los ciudadanos (por ejemplo, PAH,Podemos o Barcelona en Comú) han sido capaces de salvar las distancias entre los medios de comunicación alternativos y los principales medios de comunicación de masas y han tenido un gran efecto social y político

Diyakronik Medya Etnografisi: Toplumsal Değişimden Fiili Toplumsal Değişimlere

In this article I address the challenge of how to study media and actual social changes ethnographically. To do so I draw from the relevant media ethnography literature, including my own research in Malaysia and Spain. I argue that ethnographers are well positioned to contribute to the interdisciplinary study of media and social change. However, to do so we must first shift our current focus on media and ‘social changing’ (i.e. how things are always changing) to the study of media in relation to actual social changes, e.g. the suburbanisation of Kuala Lumpur in the 1970s to 2000s, the secularisation of morality in post-Franco Spain, or the success of new indignados parties in Spain’s 2015 local government elections. This shift from the ethnographic present continuous to the past simple – a move from potential to actual changes – does not require that we abandon ethnography in favour of social history. Rather, it demands new forms of ‘diachronic ethnography’ that can handle the biographical, phase-by-phase logic of actual social changes. It also requires that we conduct not only multi-sited (Marcus, 1995) but also multi-timed fieldwork on specific congeries of media practices, forms and agents. Bu makalede medya ve toplumsal değişimler gibi zorlu bir meselenin etnografik olarak nasıl incelenebileceği sorusuyla ilgileniyorum. Bu amaçla bu konuya odaklanan medya etnografisi literatürünün yanı sıra Malezya ve İspanya’da yürüttüğüm kendi çalışmalarımdan da yararlanıyorum. Etnografların medya ve toplumsal değişime dair disiplinlerarası incelemelere katkı sunabilecek bir konuma sahip olduklarını ileri sürüyorum. Öte yandan bunu başarabilmek için mutlaka dikkatimizi medya ve “toplumsal değişim”den (yani her şeyin sürekli değişim halinde olduğu yönündeki tespitten) medyanın fiilî toplumsal değişimlerle ilişkisi bağlamında incelenmesine çevirmemiz gerekiyor—1970’li yıllardan 2000’lere Kuala Lumpur’da yaşanan banliyöleşme, İspanya’da Franco sonrası dönemde ahlâkın sekülerleşmesi ya da yine İspanya’da yeni indignados partilerinin 2015 yerel seçimlerinde gösterdikleri başarı bu tür değişimlere örnek teşkil edebilir. Etnografik anlamda şimdiki zamandan geçmiş zamana—muhtemel değişimlerden fiilî değişimlere—doğru böylesi bir geçiş toplumsal tarih adına etnografiden vazgeçmemizi gerektirmez. Aksine bu tür bir yaklaşım fiilî toplumsal değişimlerin aşama aşama ilerleyen biyografik mantığını kavrayabilecek yeni “diyakronik etnografi” türlerine ihtiyaç duyar. Bunun üstesinden gelebilmek için medya pratikleri, medya biçimleri ve faillerine dair sadece çok-alanlı (Marcus, 1995) değil aynı zamanda çok-zamanlı saha çalışmaları yürütmemiz gerekir.

Politics in Spain: A Case of Monitory Democracy

Analysing the current political context in Spain is a major challenge to political theory. Spain is experiencing the accumulation of trends that in recent years have focused the attention of most theorists and political scientists: discrediting of the major parties, falling numbers of party members, disaffection, etc. In parallel, this trend has been accompanied by citizen mobilisations that, since 15 May 2011, are manifest in numerous channels and strategies. The aim of this paper was to analyse the complex Spanish context from the monitory democracy proposal. The results show how in recent years processes of public scrutiny have been consolidated through a range of citizen initiatives. The study offers an in-depth analysis of the main characteristics of the most notable cases and monitoring initiatives, and also reflects on their democratising potential.El análisis del contexto político actual en España es un reto importante para la teoría política. España está experimentando la acumulación de tendencias que en años recientes han centrado la atención de la mayor parte de teóricos y científicos políticos: desacreditación de los principales partidos, caída del número de miembros de los partidos, desafección, etc. Paralelamente, esta tendencia se ha visto acompañada por movilizaciones ciudadanas que, desde el 15 de mayo de 2011, son manifiestas en numerosos canales y estrategias. El objetivo de este documento es analizar el complejo contexto español desde la propuesta de democracia monitorizada. Los resultados muestran que en años recientes se han consolidado los procesos de escrutinio público mediante una serie de iniciativas ciudadanas. El estudio ofrece un análisis en profundidad de las principales características de los casos e iniciativas de monitorización más notables, y reflexiona también sobre su potencial democratizador

Digital methods for ethnography: analytical concepts for ethnographers exploring social media environments

The aim of this article is to introduce some analytical concepts suitable for ethnographers dealing with social media environments. As a result of the growth of social media, the Internet structure has become a very complex, fluid, and fragmented space. Within this space, it is not always possible to consider the 'classical' online community as the privileged field site for the ethnographer, in which s/he immerses him/herself. Differently, taking inspiration from some methodological principles of the Digital Methods paradigm, I suggest that the main task for the ethnographer moving across social media environments should not be exclusively that of identifying an online community to delve into but of mapping the practices through which Internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g., a brand). In order to support the ethnographer in the mapping of social formations within social media environments, I propose five analytical concepts: community, public, crowd, self-presentation as a tool, and user as a device

Researching the Internet

The turn of the millennium saw the publication of four important Internet ethnographies: Hakken's Cyborgs@cyberspace?(1999), Zurawski's Virtuelle Ethnizität(2000), Hine's Virtual ethnography (2000), and Miller and Slater's (2000) The Internet: an ethnographic approach. The authors of those pioneering studies grappled with difficult questions that still occupy Internet researchers today, such as interaction and identity in cyberspace, the virtual vs the actual, technological appropriation and obsolescence, the digital divide, and the prospects and limitations of on-line ethnography