Truthiness and digital dissent (Boler keynote AoIR)
Truthiness and digital dissent: sense making in politics
“How to make sense of social media practices as they unfold, even as we live them”…
Political and social context of the research is war on terror, representations of war, etc;
“how do we take what is often dismissed as so much ‘noise’ and make it audible?” – can ‘cyberspace’ provide the place where we can recover the repressed? – shows remix production from net – critique of reaction to 9/11 in relation to Hussain, Iraq etc.
Asserts that contemporary world is mix of increased demand for truth accounts, but stronger sense of the fabrication of the word’s accounting – ironic doublebind. Cites Bush aide saying “we create our own reality”; cites supreme court decision that news stations don’t have to (with force of law) tell the truth – only a policy of the FCC.
This leads to the research project “Rethinking Media, Democracy and Citizenship” – ‘new media’ responses and critiques. (and claims bloggers’ approach to truth – agonistic, debate, pluralism – is not the same as video video producers). – REsearch is content analysis, discourse, interviews, textual readings etc.
Struggle for justice waged in terms of content (which is true and which is not) is an epistemological battle, but increasingly hard to fight; ontology of truth is a better location for struggle – how claims for truth bring into life new forces and processes. Complex argument about how it’s not a question of whether something is true or not but the productive forces which make truths salient and compelling.
Reporting on Bush in 30 seconds campaign, on which coding analysis has been done; claims that most were to do with claims Bush was not telling the truth. but says reading this as epistemological issue is less interesting as reading it into ontology of truth; what particular truths produce.
“how and when can the noise of social media be turned into something which can be heard?” – well, when something becomes intolerable and this moment ‘intervenes’ in the “police order” (Ranciere); the difficulties of making sense of it all are social battles between “incommensurable modes of perception” stemming from the “distribution of the sensible
Boler then reads several interviews with the Bushin30 seconds producers; trying to understand how people in these productions think about and discuss truth; “in the ontology of truth, we are able to engage practices which do not forget the importance of history” (which for her is an argument in favour of remix, since it does tend to allow an archiving of news).
Long video show from Jon Stewart: showing the extraordinary shift in Glen Beck‘s views on healthcare system in 16 months. Then really telling use of the Joe Wilson “you Lie” comment which Boler asserts is NOT about truth, but about force; not “you really DO lie” but “I will not be placed in this relational position of subordination” – this is linked to Foucault also – relations of force precede relations of knowlege.
Claims that her research participants struggle with the language of truth – don’t quite know how to discuss it; they regularly use the word ‘sense’ – truth is what makes sense and so on. Thus, the claim to be listened to, and believed, is not a claim to truth but a claim to ‘what makes sense’ and, indeed, this closes her argument – voices of progress and protest do not have access to ‘sensibility’, so progressive politics requires that we redistribute sensibility, so more than just the dominant actors in society can ‘make sense’.
So, basically, there’s too much discussion of epistemology at the moment; too much desire to compete for making truth in content. Instead consider how claims have ontological power – force to compel or destroy. And, as well, we need affect – there’s insufficient attention to affective elements in the way that is exemplified by Colbert – both “I feel it to be true AND I feel it to be true” – truthiness.
Ends: how can we find and build new forms of politics that have not existed before