Get Ready to Meet the Fifth Estate: How Networked Individuals and

Get Ready to Meet the Fifth Estate:
How Networked Individuals and Institutions are
Reshaping Academe
Bill Dutton
Professor of Internet Studies
Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
Presentation for a workshop on ‘Academic Blogging’, Department of
Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, 20 Feb 2014.
The Fourth Estate
“[Edmund] Burke said there were Three Estates in
Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder,
there sat a Fourth Estate more prominent far than
they all. It is not a figure of speech, or witty
saying; it is a literal fact – very momentous to us
in these times.”
Thomas Carlyle (1831), Heroes and HeroWorship, at www.gutenberg.org.etext/1091
Feudal Estates into the 21st Century
Estates
‘4th Estate’
Feudal
Modern
Clergy
Public Intellectuals
Nobility
Business, Industry
and Economic Elites,
including Internet
Industrial Elites
Commons
Government and
Politicians
Press
Journalists and the
Mass Media
Mob
Civil Society,
Consumers, Citizens,
Protest Groups, Mobs
The Fifth Estate
 Press since the 18th Century the ‘Fourth Estate’
 Internet in the 21st - enabling a
Fifth Estate
−−
Enabling a critical mass of individuals to source
their own information, and network with other
individuals in ways that support distributed social
accountability in business and industry, academe,
government, politics, and the media.
First Port of
Call
Collaboration
Search v Sites
Communicative
Power of
Networked
Individuals
Trust
Social Cues
Centrality
Significance
Networked Institutions v Networked
Individuals
 Networked Institutions, such as universities, e.g., a
departmental or project blog, institutional repository
 Networked Individuals:
 a student going to the Internet to source information,
e.g., challenge the instructor, take a MOOC, view Khan
Academy
 an academic/student creating a blog, Webcast (VOX)
 networking students, e.g., Rate My Teacher
 networking faculty, e.g., personal Web sites and
blogs, blogging lab notes, post papers on a subject
matter repository, sharing syllabi, …
Arenas:
Networked Institutions
Networked Individuals
News
Online journalism, BBC
Online, Live Micro-Blogging
Netizens, Citizen
Journalists, Bloggers,
Whistleblowers, Leaks,
Churnalism.org, Hacking
Blacklash
Government
Digital Democracy, EConsultation, e-Voting,
Surveillance
Obama campaign, Aung
San Suu Kyi, Arab Springs,
Anti-Bribery Websites, 38
Degrees
Education
Online Degrees, Multimedia
Classrooms, MOOCs,
SNOCs, Institutional
Repositories, Web sites
Backchannels, Informal
Learning, Rate My Teacher,
Khan Academy, Personal
Websites and blogs
Health and Medical
NHS Direct, Signing Up for
Affordable Healthcare, emailing safety alerts
Going to the Internet for
health information, networks
of patients, physicians
Fifth Estate Strategies
Sourcing
• Find through search or social media
• Patient or citizen finds information about problems
Creating
• Individual creates information
• Martha Payne’s NeverSeconds
DistributingLeaking
• Distribute or leak information to networks
• Whistle Blowers, WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, Edward Snowden
• Generating Media Coverage
Networking
• Self-selected collorative networks
• Sermo, Patients Like Me
Collective
Intelligence
• Aggregate information, observations
• Rate My Teacher, Bribery Websites, Environmental Sensors
- Martha Payne, 9 yr old girl in
Scotland, writes a blog for
school project: ‘NeverSeconds’
- Produced content: photos &
reviews school lunch in 2012
- Posted on her blog:
neverseconds.blogspot.com/
- Censored by her institution
(her primary school’s council)
- Over 10 million page views
- Fostered debate over the
quality of school lunches
nationwide and worldwide
Fifth Estate Strategies
Sourcing
• Find through search or social media
• Patient or citizen finds information about problems
Creating
• Individual creates information
• Martha Payne’s NeverSeconds
DistributingLeaking
• Distribute or leak information to networks
• Whistle Blowers, WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, Edward Snowden
• Generating Media Coverage
Networking
• Self-selected collorative networks
• Sermo, Patients Like Me
Collective
Intelligence
• Aggregate information, observations
• Rate My Teacher, Bribery Websites, Environmental Sensors
In the movie,
Daniel DomscheitBerg’ with an editor
of The Guardian:
‘The New
Information
Revolution’ – with
WikiLeaks ‘charting
a course’.
Enemies of the Fifth Estate
Business &
Industrial
Elites
Public
Intellectuals
Government
and
Regulatory
Agencies
Press
Attacks on
the Fifth
Estate
The ‘Mob’
A New Organizational Form:
Enabling Networked Individuals
Source
Information
Join & Create
Networks
Enhance
Communicative
Power
Fifth Estate Perspective on Academic Blogging
Value
• Empirically Anchored
• More Pluralistic Accountability
Challenges
• Enabling the 5th Estate
• Enemies of the 5th Estate
• Technology, Policy and Regulation
New
Perspective
• Communicative Power of Individuals
• Critical Mass v Universal Access
• Orientation to Policy & Regulation