department of philosophy sangamner college, sangamner s eptember 4, 2012 s hriniwas h emade s...

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

S H R I N I W A S H E M A D E

S A N G A M N E R C O L L E G E , S A N G A M N E R D I S T R I C T A H M E D N A G A R 4 2 2 6 0 5 ( M . S )

Social Media in context to Rousseau’s

Social Contract And

Gandhian Media Ethics :

A Perspective

2MY CONTENTION :

(AN ATTEMPT TO ARTICULATE .. .. )

To observe the relationship, if any, between the Social Contract and the social-media like FACEBOOK, Blogs, Forums etc.

To observe and underline that, though in weak form, that the structure of Social Contract and the Social Media are to some extent isomorphic.

To observe that, the realm of Media today, makes Rousseau significant and keeps him so, in new form, for, the next generation of mankind and generation of media to come.

To offer Gandhian Media Ethics as a possible solution against the corruption in Media at large today.


3 WHY AND HOW TO BE MORAL ?

It should be noted, that Rousseau did not

philosophize that, humans in their natural state

were actually "good", but rather humans who are

without a Social Contract , have no morality or the

concepts of good and evil and as such; will act in

their own self interest , but cannot do so

maliciously.DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

4

FORMS OF LIBERTY IN

ROUSSEAU’S WRITINGS

First : there is the liberty of man in the state of nature, before the development of a moral sense and of a social sense going beyond compassion

Second : there is the liberty of man in a perfect society – the society described in the Social Contract, in which man is part of a community ruled by the general will.

Third : when society is corrupt and decadent, there is still a third kind of freedom : not that of the citizen, but that of an individual, now endowed with a sense of morality, and trying to live (along with his family).

Ref. : Rousseau and Freedom , Edited by Christie McDonald and Stanley Hoffmann, Cambridge University Press


5THE ESTATES :TRADITIONAL & MODERN

Middle Age – French Classification (before the French Revolution)

First Estate : the entire clergy

Second Estate : the French nobility - 2%

Third Estate : Urban & Rural – 98 %

Modern Classification

Executive (Government)

Legislature (Parliament & State Assemblies, etc)

Judiciary (Supreme Court, High Court & Other Judicial centers)

Media


the peasantry of Europe as "the Fourth Estate"

6 THE THEORY OF SEPARATION OF POWERS

A legislature

An executive

A judiciary.


Montesquieu 18 January 1689 –10 February 1755

Responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire.

Implemented in many constitutions throughout the world.

7STRUCTURE OF THE ESTATES (THE SOCIETY) BEFORE MONTESQUIEU

the French Monarchy: the clergy, the aristocracy, and the people at large represented by the Estates-General.

Montesquieu divided French society into three classes : the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the commons.

Montesquieu saw two types of governmental power existing: the sovereign and the administrative. The administrative powers were the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.

This was a radical idea because it completely eliminated the three Estates structure.


Ref : 'On the Spirit of Laws‘

8“WHAT IS THE THIRD

ESTATE?

The unfairness among the three estates : the first step toward the French Revolution.

The first and second estates didn't have to any pay tax at all !

The third estate had to pay all taxes in full.

A philosopher, leader of the early Revolution, was Abbe Sieyes, who proclaimed: “What is the third estate? "


Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (3 March 1748 – 20 June 1836)

9 THIRD ESTATE : THE MANIFESTO OF THE REVOLUTION

The pamphlet asked the questions & answered :

What is the Third Estate?

Everything.

What has it been until now in the political order?

Nothing.

What does it ask?

To become something.DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

10 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF ESTATES

First Estate : Executive (Government)

Second Estate : Legislature (Parliament & State Assemblies, etc)

Third Estate : Judiciary (Supreme Court, High Court & Other Judicial centers)

After Montesquieu

Fourth Estate : "The Press“

After Edmund Burke

Media today : 20th century coinage. DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

11THIRD ESTATE : ACCORDING

TO ROUSSEAU

“ The lukewarmness of patriotism, the activity of private interest, the vastness of States, conquest and the abuse of government suggested the method of having deputies or representatives of the people in the national assemblies. These are what, in some countries, men have presumed to call the Third Estate. Thus the individual interest of two orders is put first and second; the public interest occupies only the third place.”

Ref.: BOOK III, 15. DEPUTIES OR REPRESENTATIVES


12ROUSSEAU: THE PARTIALITY UMPIRE

“The writer of The French Revolution claims that The Abbye Sieyes and the Duke of Orleans were proclaiming Rousseau's view that the Third Estate was essentially – the Nation!”

On the other hand, Will Durant quotes Bread claiming that, Rousseau , the father of democratic theory, wished to exclude all women, and then all propertyless persons, from political power, and did not include them in the term "people".

Ref 1 : Symes, John Elliotson, 1847-1921 The French Revolution, 1789-1795, Chapter 2 "The Prelude to revolution" page 20, 1904

Ref 2 : Will Durant, Pleasures of Philosophy, "Is Democracy a Failure'', Chapter 15, Simon and Schuster, NewY ork, Seventh Paperback Printing, 1962, page 228


13

Print Media –

Newspapers and Magazines

Electronic Media:

Cinema, Radio and TV + cable , Internet – blogs, web pages etc.

Mass media

Newspapers and Magazines, Cinema, Radio and TV + cable , Internet.

Private media :

mobile, phones, email, blogs, forums, discussion groups.


NATURE OF MEDIA TODAY

James Mill : the “watchdog” role of the press

14

FIFTH ESTA

TE

"Fifth Estate" : no fixed meaning, but is used to describe any class or group in society in cyberspace.

Media outlets (including the blogosphere) that see themselves in opposition to mainstream media (the official Press).

Bloggers as the Fifth Estate : Media researcher Stephen D. Cooper

Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an extension of the media, but 'networked individuals‘ : Media researcher William Dutton

Different in origin and meaning from "Fifth Column", which is used to describe subversive or insurgent elements in a society.

Political pundits constitute a Fifth Estate : Media researcher Nimmo and Combs

15FACEBOOK AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

This idea of a free and equal society, closely mirrors the ‘World Wide Web’ as devised by Tim Berners Lee, and the collaborative construct that is Wikipedia.

But if The Social Contract is a classic example of how social interaction and engagement between individuals should work , how does it compare with the great social engagement tool of our times – social media and specifically Facebook?

How similar is Facebook to The Social Contract, and what can Zuckerberg learn from Rousseau?

What then, are the similarities between the two systems?

16

WHAT THEN, ARE THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE

TWO SYSTEMS?Similarities

They both involve the signing of a contract.

In both, individuals sign over rights and privileges to a central body, in return for greater benefits in return, such as membership of the community and benefitting from an effective system of control.

In Rousseau’s Social Contract, individuals co-operate to build a mutually beneficial community – for it’s own sake, and although Facebook’s priority as a business is to make money, there also has to be effective co-operation for the community to function.

Dissimilarities


Rousseau’s community :

shared and owned by all.

Facebook : individuals

surrender their rights and no aspect of shared ownership

17

WHY DOES FACEBOOK NEED TO LISTEN TO THE SOCIAL

CONTRACT?Says Mark Zuckerberg “ Because, all systems of

government and control, however powerful or beneficial to their subjects at a given point in time, will inevitably fall away, unless they allow ‘the people’ an opportunity to positively engage with and develop the community in question.”DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

http://wallblog.co.uk/tag/mark-zuckerberg/

http://wallblog.co.uk/tag/mark-zuckerberg/

18 WOULD ROUSSEAU LOVE WIKILEAKS?

Luc Ferry, a French philosopher said,

“What is very interesting in this story is, and I come back to what Jacques said we are all for transparency. there is a big difference between legitimate transparency in a democracy, and voyeurism.”

I agree. What is disturbing in the Wikileaks affair is not so much the disclosed details—they hardly come as a surprise—but the possibility that the value of transparency might turn into a kind of tyranny in which privacy gets lost.


A discussion on French television entitled “The Tyranny of Transparency.”

19 LIMITS OF FIFTHE ESTATE: FACEBOOK, BLOGS ETC

Rousseau criticizes the theatre

“the people in the theatre have no connection to one another except via the intermediary which is the stage. In the theater, the spectators are seated in the darkness, so they can’t see one another. They are not transparent to one another. They are lodged in the darkness, they are stuck in the darkness. And the communication passes by a third intermediary separate from the individuals.”

For Rousseau, this was a metaphor for the monarchyDEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

20NOT THEATRE BUT

FESTIVAL!

So, Rousseau replaces the theatre with the festival. There is no stage in a festival. He said plant a pike into the ground in the town square and arrange to have music played, and the people will dance.

And this [festival] is the metaphor for the democracy in opposition to the metaphor of the monarchy, so that all individuals can see each other in perfect transparency … , Perfect transparency is a horror … maybe you can say a word about Saint-Just, as a historian, because he is all about this ghastly idea of Rousseau’s …”


21ETHICS OF

TRANSPARENCY ?!

we have to realize that in times of limited mass communication and even more limited education of the masses, the need for freedom of speech, bridging the gap between rulers and people, and empowering people by connecting them was much more pressing than the need for privacy.

Judged in its historical context, one can find Rousseau’s desire for transparency quite understandable and even praiseworthy.

Would he voice the same need in our digital age in which the "ethics of transparency" means that recording devises are all around you and anything you say or do might end up on the web and be seen by people on the other side of the world in a matter of minutes ? !! .


22

A PHILOSOPHER FOR THE FACEBOOK GENERATION A

SOLITARY WALKER

“Here I am, then, alone in the world, with no longer a brother, neighbour, or friend, but only myself, for company. The most sociable and loving of humans has been banished from society by unanimous agreement.”

confessions

By Theodore Dalrymple


23

24 EVIL IN MEDIA

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good

men to do nothing“

Edmond Burke

25NEGATIVE BUT REAL

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses”

- Malcolm X


26 MALCOLM X : MALIK SHABAZZ

Known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

An African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist.A courageous

advocate for the rights of African Americans. Indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black

Americans.


Has been called as one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965

27 KNOWLEDGE IN ITSELF IS POWER


28UNDERSTANDING MEDIA

(1964)


“the medium is the message”

Marshall McLuhan

29POSITIVE BUT

DIFFICULT


(An Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, p. 211)

“The sole aim of

journalism

should be service”

2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948

30

Shriniwas HemadeDEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY SANGAMNER COLLEGE, SANGAMNER SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

department of philosophy sangamner college, sangamner s eptember 4, 2012 s hriniwas h emade s...

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