Immigration and settling down in a new society can be one of the most dynamic and complex processes in an individual’s life. Personal and cultural changes are enmeshed in continuous processes of discovery, upheaval and crisis. [1]With the advancement of urbanization, a lot of migrant children followed their parents to enter the city society in China. [2]Eventually, they became a group of stranger in the rural-urban fringe.The report of national urban migrant children in China issued in 2013 showed the number of migrant children increased rapidly, reaching the the scale of 35.81 million. [3]

The migrant situation in contemporary China is directly linked to two historical phenomena: the recent opening of the Chinese economy to market-style reforms, and long-term constraints on population mobility and the distribution of state-sponsored goods and services through a system of residence permits called the hukou system.[4]

Geographical migration not only cut off the geopolitical, kinship ties of the migrant children to some extent, but also broke the individual's social network of relationships. This kind of fracture has a certain effect on childhood development and the children’s future social interaction.

From the psychological perspective, migrant children are in a critical period of development in social interaction. [5]They are in an urgent need to find new ways to complete the reconstruction of the network of relationships. The motivation of the children to develop social network is more related to spontaneous demands of psychological or cultural aspects, rather than utilitarian purpose of the adults. Thus, how to find a way to build their social network and then accumulate enough social capital in the city has become an important issue of the social integration of the group.

Quantitative questionnaire survey and semi-structured, in-depth interview conducted with migrant children were the primary research methods adopted in this study.The sampling survey, was mainly conducted in primary and secondary schools. The whole process is divided into two rounds. The first round of the survey was conducted from November 2009 to March 2010, the research mainly concentrated in Nanjing. The second round of the survey was conducted from June 2013 to January 2014, the research hold in Nanjing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. A total of 2396 questionnaires were returned ,with 2268 valid, including 1537 migrant children and 731 urban children as the reference sample.Male ratio was 52.8%, the proportion of girls was 47.2%, from the ages of nine to fourteen. Given the reality, the situation of migrant children's education is divided into two different categories, one is enrolled in some special schools for migrant children, one is enrolled in some urban school on a temporary basis. The former is a typical "homogeneous" combination of education situation, the latter is a typical "heterogeneous" combination of education contexts. In those school environment, life often exhibit different characteristics to the migrant children.[6] To make a reasonable interpretation for the real living conditions of migrant children, the study took these two types of students into account in the sample.The migrant children interviewed in the semi-structured, in-depth interview part represent different profiles of the population. The snowball method applied in selecting the sample sought to attain a balance according to three primary variables: length of residence in the city, gender and age.

The analysis of the findings is presented in four sections:

1. The findings revealed that the internet was one of the favorite media for migrant children, although most of them began to use it only after immigration to the city.
2. The migrant children use the Internet to achieve the re-aggregation of strong relationship network. The study showed that 28.4 percent of migrant children usually can not meet and chat with their friends face to face. Most of the migrant children "usually communicate with friends via online chat tools ". QQ chat tool is the main one they chose to usel. Among the migrant children’s online chat list, classmates, fellow-villagers, relatives accounted for a large proportion. Internet provided the homogeneous groups a virtual platform to get together and share feelings. This link is not blurred, but the strengthening of the reality ties.
3. The internet has become an important channel for the migrant children to expand the weak ties[7] of social network,though the expansion of weak ties based on internet is difficult to turn virtual into the real. The migrant children’ s enthusiasm of using the internet to expand their social circle had some relation with their age and the real amount of peer interaction channels. Interviews showed that migrant children’s exchanges with the network of weak ties mainly focused on aspects of sharing of information, such as the information of schools, certain events, as well as the views of some pop stars. But it’s still pretty hard for the web-based weak ties to expand into the real level interaction. Network pseudonym made contacts and relations between anonymous individuals fragile. It is difficult to develop to further practical level. And once the expansion of weak ties got frustrated, migrant children tend to be more retreated into their homogeneous groups.
4. Migrant children enjoyed alternative exchanges in the participation of some online role-playing-games. [8]Migrant boys prefered games of conquer type, accumulating communicative capital between peers in obtaining alternative interactive experience[9]; though the girls prefer online virtual communities games, having fun from the integration of the dreamy community. However, the compensation got from online games is apt to make the group more addicted to the internet.

In summary, the new media weaved a reconstructive field of public communication networks for the migrant children. Here, the individual could expand the scope of social interaction to some extend, getting reach to the circle of urban people which is far away from them in reality. But after all, since the online media contact is virtual, getting too immersed into it is no good for the healthy development of the children. Media’s funtion in remodeling the migrant children is noteworthy. And the social problems cencerning the media behavior of the migrant children is worth further studying.

References

1. Nelly Elias and Dafna Lemish (2008).Media Uses in Immigrant Families: Torn between 'Inward' and 'Outward' Paths of Integration. International Communication Gazette, 70, 21
2. Zhang,Li Zhong (2007). Social integration of migrant children in the city and its countermeasures. South China Rural Area, 2,44-47.
3. Li,Haixiu(2013).“migrant childre more than 35 million”，Guang Ming Daily，2013.5.16
4. Woronov,T.E..In the Eye of the Chicken: Hierarchy and marginality among Beijing’smigrant schoolchildren.Ethnography,2004（5）:289-313
5. Lin, Chongde (2008).Developmental psychology. Hangzhou: Zhejiang Education Publishing House.
6. Ma, Liang (2007). Analysis on the interactive process between the migrating children compulsory education policy and the reality. In Gu,Xuebin,Ruan Zengyuanqi (ed.), Practice-based Chinese local social work research. Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press.
7. Mark S. Granovetter(1973).The Strength of Weak Ties. The American Journal of Sociology, 78（6）：1360-1380.
8. Yang, Yinjuan (2009) An Empirical Study on the Intrinsic Motivation of Children's Participation in Mole Online Game. Journal of International Communication, 12, 99-104.
9. Lin, Yuling (2007). Schoolchildren's Game-Playing Practices and Gender Construction: A Case Study of Elementary School Pupils in a Remote Area. Mass Communication Research (Taipei), 90, 43-99. 

It is undeniable that information and communication technology (ICT) has achieved tremendous growth in China over the past two and half decades. Domestically speaking, albeit uneven development and persistence of digital divide, Internet penetration rate has grown drastically. Globally, we have seen the rise of many Chinese ICT manufacturers and Internet companies like Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, and Alibaba. Despite these success stories, we have also seen incidents where Chinese ICT and Internet companies failed in their overseas expansion efforts. For example, Chinese search engine Baidu closed its operation in Vietnam in 2014 and the legality of its business is challenged in U.S; Huawei has been denied market entrance in Australia, Canada and the U.S; the major source of revenue and customer base of many Chinese counterparts of Western social media services such as Renren (Facebook), Weibo (Twitter), and Alibaba (e-Bay) still originate from mainland China. The goal of this paper is to ask to what degree the rise and globalization of Chinese Internet companies a demonstration of the country’s growing soft power and innovation capacity? From a political economy perspective, this paper is particularly concerned with the role of the state and its interaction with the market in this process of creating a fast growing yet strictly controlled ICT and Internet industries in China.

This paper probes into the economy of scale of Chinese Internet companies in the process of their global expansion and examines critically the role Chinese government played in facilitating the growth of scale of these companies. Overall, this paper hopes to create a dialogue with the existing literature on the role of state in globalization of media and the interaction between state and market by providing some new and emerging examples and evidences from China. The primary examples examined in this paper are three Chinese Internet companies: Baidu, Sina, and Tencent. The reason they are selected are twofold. First of all, they are dominant players in their own respective markets (search and gaming, value-added Internet service companies, and microblog) and in Chinese Internet economy overall. Secondly, they are companies that went public the earliest among a host of Chinese Internet companies thus there are a well of accessible data from their annual reports filed with U.S Security and Exchange Committee.

The paper proceeds with a section on the concept of state and a contextualization of media and ICT regulation in China. It is then followed by literature review on myriad conceptualizations of the role of state in the buildup and globalization of hi-tech industries in developing countries. For the analysis section, I will first provide an overview of current market development in China and the political economy of the three main companies, outlining their ownership structure, board of directors and their inter-linkages to global media, finance, and innovation networks, and conclude with my own analysis.

It is argued in this paper that domestically speaking, with favorable government policies and incentive, these top Chinese Internet companies quickly gained economy of scale in domestic market. Globally speaking, to say the least, the globalization and overseas expansion of Chinese Internet companies only received limited success against the mission to expand globally, either abetted by the government or driven by goals of capital accumulation amidst a relatively saturated and concentrated market in China. In light of media commercialization and privatization processes in China, scholars have criticized the government artificially staging market competition through merging media organizations together to create large scale, overlapping, and inefficient media organizations to compete with foreign challenges (Yu & Lee, 2003; Lee, 2003). The developmental path of Chinese Internet companies follows suit of such tendency.

While many mainstream news media have observed the rise of Chinese Internet companies, they nonetheless failed to state the caveat that much of the growth and stock value are evaluated by the sheer size of market in China, hence, economy of scale. Although the press routinely called China a “juggernaut”, only 35 Chinese companies (30 of them are state owned) were on the 2008 top 500 list of Fortune Magazine. Although scholars such as Eric Harwit (2007) argues that the term of “international competitiveness” is too narrow in gauging success of Chinese Internet and telecommunication development, the focus on improving international competitiveness of hi-tech companies in China is going to be priorities given China’s pursuit of sustainable development, its increasing public diplomacy efforts and soft power, its aspired transition from world’s factory to innovation hub, and even the companies’ priority given current concentrated and saturated market. The private sector still had a long way to go in joining the world’s largest companies, noted not only for their scale economies but increasingly for their knowledge acquisition (Chandler et al. 1997, as cited in Amsden, 2013, p. 16)

Introduction

Inter-cultural communication can be a topic worthy for examination for several reasons. It is not rare that the encounter of different cultures result in information-related “improvements”. Such improvements may have many faces (e.g. technological transfer or adoption of new customs). This, as a historical phenomenon often can be traced, for instance, near the border regions of empires, around diasporas, or along trade routes. The European expansion of the early modern era gave an especially important boost to such encounters. This chain of events created connected cultures that not at all or hardly had any communication with each other up to that time.

Methods

In my presentation I would like to take a look on the development of navigational knowledge at the early stage of the European expansion. Though I mostly focus on a specific region (namely, on Asia) and on one set of information within the mentioned broader picture, this examination can be interesting from several aspects. These were the decades when the major European powers of the age (in this context they are: Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and England) discovered this region for themselves. In this case the actors involved in the communication were not completely unknown to each other (like in the case of America), but they were far from being well-known as well. On the other hand, the mentioned European nations met with several cultures that had advanced and significantly different navigational knowledge in these decades. This created a favourable atmosphere for inter-cultural communication. Though there were several points where Asia and Europe contacted each other, before the end of 15^th century no European ships reached Asian waters. This means that the intercultural transfer of information related with navigation started in this era. Finally, European navigational knowledge (the intended and declared focus of this presentation) transformed significantly in this time. This transformation was twofold. It had internal roots, too, but the mentioned encounters with other navigating cultures often resulted in mutual changes as well.

I would like to touch upon different aspects of navigational knowledge in the given context. First of all, I will go into some details of the internal changes of the “national” (i.e. Portuguese, Dutch etc.) segments of the navigational knowledge. From this aspect several transformations can be traced in the mentioned decades, which were important for creating widespread practices. The most important problems worthy for a highlight probably are the movement from experience-based practices to “scientific” ones, or the changing emphasis of written and unwritten knowledge.

The other primary focus will be the movement of navigational knowledge between the mentioned European actors. This leads towards the topic mentioned in the title of the presentation: the formation of a set of navigational knowledge – in this case a European set of knowledge. Though the individual national practices probably differed significantly, so one cannot speak of a strictly “European” knowledge, I try to go into the details of some events of information transfer between the mentioned European powers.

In the next point I will leave Europe, and focus on another stage. I still will focus on the European powers, but now I try to show how they acted when they had to find their ways in a terra incognita. From this aspect the individual European powers differed very much, as they did not reach the region at the same time or from the same direction. The Portuguese were the first, so they could not use former European experience. The Spanish acted mostly in the south-eastern part of Asia. The Dutch and the English arrived almost a century later than the Portuguese. In this part, I try to examine how the mentioned powers acted when they first faced a significant lack of knowledge on their destinations. The Portuguese example probably leads us towards the final part of the presentation – the transfer of knowledge between Asian and European cultures. The Dutch and English example points backwards: their tapping of Portuguese knowledge was mostly an information-transfer between Europeans.

The exact topic mentioned in the title will be touched at the final parts of the presentation. I will focus on the cross-cultural changes between European actors and Southeast Asian navigators. On the Asian side not states were the primary parties involved in this transfer, as states themselves (at least the two biggest, Japan and China) seem to have been less interested in this communication. Instead, other actors should be mentioned, for instance merchant houses of individual (sometimes freelance) navigators. I will emphasize the two-way communication between Asian and European parties, and will enumerate some instances that can be comprehended as products of both cultures, that is, as imprints of a shared, common navigational knowledge.

Conclusions

After checking the mentioned individual stages, significant changes of navigational knowledge can be mentioned. First of all, we can find a tendency of “merging” in Europe: the different national sets of navigational knowledge tended to influence each other, actors borrowed different practices from each other. Another important tendency is the movement from experience and unwritten knowledge towards scientific and written forms. Finally, we can find a “merging” process, similar to that of the one mentioned in Europe—this time in Asia. We can find several clues that the manifold contacts between Asian and European experts, methods, technical materials etc. tended to create another “cosmopolitan” set of navigational knowledge. However, this time the change did not include only European communities, but Asian ones, too.

Selected bibliography

1. Baldwin, C.D.: The interchange of European and Asian navigational information in the far East before 1620. In Five hundred years of nautical science 1400-1900. Howse, D. ed. Greenwich, 1981. pp. 80-90.
2. Bennett, J. A. The Divided Circle: A History of Instruments for Astronomy, Navigation, and Surveying. Oxford 1987.
3. Bleichmar, D. – De Vos, P. – Huffine, K. – Sheehan, K. (eds.) Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. Stanford, 2009.
4. Brotton, J. Trading Territories. Mapping the Early Modern World. London, 1997.
5. Camino, Mercedes M. Producing the Pacific. Maps and Narratives of Spanish Exploration (1567–1606). Amsterdam–New York, 2005.
6. Davids, Karel A. Zeewezen en wetenschap. De wetenschap en de ontwikkeling van de navigatietechniek in Nederland tussen 1585 en 1815. Dieren, 1986.
7. Mörzer Bruyns, W.F.J. Navigatie-instrumenten van de zeebodem, 16e tot 19e eeuw. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Techniek. 1987, 4. 263-282.
8. Randles, W.G.L. Geography, Cartography and Nautical Science in the Renaissance. Aldershot, 2000.
9. Shapinsky, P. Polyvocal Portolans: Nautical Charts and Hybrid Maritime Cultures in Early Modern East Asia. Early Modern Japan 4–26.
10. Waters, David W. Science and the Techniques of Navigation in the Renaissance. London, 1976.
11. Zandvliet, K. Mapping for Money. Amsterdam, 2002.
12. Karvalics László: A természeti katasztrófák információtörténeti és tudásszociológiai megközelítéséhez. Néprajzi Látóhatár. 2013, 1. 86-106.

Resilience in Psychotherapy

„Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” Elizabeth Edwards, a name that is tied to the concept of resilience.  Factors connected to a person’s resilience are: reality orientation, confidence in one’s own abilities, communication and the ability to regulate one’s own impulses and feelings.

As a psychoanalyst, I am struck how similar these factors are to the process, developments and goals of psychoanalytic treatment. Let us take a look at the goals of psychoanalytic treatment:

1. Reality orientation: one of Freud’s main quotes is “Where Id is, there shall be Ego”. A translation of this quote for the lay would mean: where life is filled with fantasies and illusions – this area should be replaced by an orientation to reality. This is often a painful process since dreams are a substitute for painful reality.
2. Confidence in one’s own abilities: ambiguities, which are central to the erosion of confidence are a central issue in psychoanalysis. The defeating forces at work here are constantly an object of our work.
3. Communication: there is nothing that is not communication in psychoanalysis. The patients entrance into a room is already a statement! In psychoanalysis we constantly try to understand the scene which the patient is trying to show us or themselves.
4. Regulation of feelings: Becoming the subject and not the object is one of the goals of psychoanalysis.

The phoenix is a symbol for resilience. A bird rising from the ashes, reborn to rise to a new life.  A trauma depicted by a fire had destroyed one life which, now comes back to life.  This motif lives with us as form of our mythology. This myth lives with us in a broad width of meanings. The range of the meanings of the phoenix in our lives goes from the pathological to the benign. Pathological would be the fantasy or general assumption of rebirth or resurrection with 72 virgins and at the more healthy end of the spectrum would be a wish or fantasy of just being able to sit in a wheel-chair and have a normal conversation with beloved ones again.  

Belonging to the features of resilience is the desire to resist the pull to the end of all and the resulting decay.  In this thought we can recognize Freud’s dichotomy of the life and death drives which are with us until our own death.

Resilience may be the fight against Thanatos, Freud’s deathdrive. As individuals and members of a species in development we all face death and thus decompose.  Libido – the drive of love is the unifying force in us connecting to parts to ever larger wholes.

Psychotherapy, especially psychoanalysis, which incorporates the life and death drive, is a method to examine these dynamics in us. It is also a method to enhance and develop the main factors contributing to the development of resilience.

The purpose of the following case presentation is to illustrate consequences of the choice: Either Thanatos or Libido!

Case Presentation

The following case was considered in more ways than one as ‘hopeless’. Regular psychotherapy was questionable and to think of this patient as a psychoanalytic patient was beyond imagination. Even though the conditions for beginning a therapy were difficult, if they were there at all, the therapy turned out to be a success.

The patient Univ. Prof. Dipl. Ing. DDr. S., who is now 81 years of age was admitted with a subarachnoid hemorrhage at the age of 77 to a Viennese geriatric hospital in which I work. His prognosis was negative if not hopeless in all aspects – he was somnolent, could neither speak, swallow, control his bowels, connected to a PEG-tube as well as a suprapubic cathetus. The most his daughter and companion B., a Viennese psychoanalyst, expected was to sit with S in a modern wheelchair under a tree, holding his hand and to have simple conversations. However, it all changed and took a different development.

After 1 ½ years in our care hospital, after many different therapies in which I was involved S was released to a rehab and then released home, still having an organic brain syndrome, however having complete control over his speech and language functions, his thinking processes were still slow, without a PEG-tube, continent, being able to walk a few steps.

Six months after his release from the rehab, in the mean time I had no contact with S. I received unexpectedly a call from B., asking if I could continue the talks I had with him. She stated that the conversations I had with him had helped a lot, mostly he had become much more sociable and loving...

The call delighted me, I accepted the offer, and felt honoured and was curious to hear from S.  He called and the therapy could start.

S.’s initial objectives were to help him regain his memory of the time before his massive trauma which had torn him out of a very successful life. In the course of the therapy this initial objective continued to widen to an understanding of his self, his relations and the dynamics of his conflicts. The symbolic equation of the first phase after his subarachnoid hemorrhage with a regression in the autistic-contiguous position, following the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive position as well as the regaining of control over his oral, anal and genital functions made it possible to connect his life history with his here and now and to think about options of his future. The focus of the topics included the relationship to his parents; the cold hearted mother; the loving, creative weak father; his unresolved oedipal conflict; his relationship to his children; his relationships to women and his sexual life. It was especially exciting to also follow the neuroscientific aspects. Early defense mechanisms such as denial of reality, omnipotence and idealisation, which were also caused by his brain damage, changed within the course of therapy to more mature ones as intellectualisation. Freud’s statement “Where Id was, Ego should be” (Freud, [1933] 2000 , S. 516)  applies to the process of S.’s therapy Ego-functions were strengthen so that he could deal with reality, the results of his trauma and ageing much better.

For the past 2 ½ years S. was treated by myself in a psychoanalytic treatment twice weekly in his Viennese apartment. Especially challenging in the work with S. was the intellectual challenge: S. is a scientist and philosopher, his resistances, his defences, his transferences and my countertransferences, as well as the abstinence, which is defined by an inner attitude take on new contures. This case is a prime example of how psychotherapy is a process resembling resilience: overcoming extreme difficulties and regaining a new and hopefully better life.

References and Notes

1. Auchter, T., & Strauss, L. V. (2003). Kleines Wörterbuch der Psychoanalyse. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
2. Ermann, M. (2007). Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
3. Freud, S. ([1914] 2000). Studienausgabe Schriften zur Behandlungstechnik (Vol. Ergänzungsband). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
4. Freud, S. ([1914] 2000). Zur Einführung des Narzißmus. In Studienausgabe Psychologie des Unbewußten (pp. 37-68). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
5. Freud, S. ([1933] 2000 ). XXXI. Vorlesung: Die Zerlegung der psychischen Persönlichkeit. In Studienausgabe Vorlesung zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse Und Neue Folge (Vol. 1, pp. 496-516). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.
6. Kaplan-Solms, K., & Solms, M. (2007). Stuttgart: Klett Cotta.
7. Loch, W. (1989). Die Krankheitslehre der Psychoanalyse. Stuttgart: S. Hirzel.
8. Möller, H.-J., Laux, G., & Deister, A. (2009). Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie. Stuttgart: Thieme.
9. Willi, J. (1975). Die Zweierbeziehung. Reinbek: Rowohlt

The question what is the essence of information must be answered for philosophy of information and information science and technology research. However, views on this issue are still divergent. This paper has made the analysis and argumentation about the essence of information by the method of dialectical materialism, and points out that the essence of information are the relations between things and internal things, and this relationship formed information. Due to the connection between the protean and endless things, thus produce the endless, dazzling and variant information. To grasp the essence of information, much attention should be paid to the specific form of information and information processing, the reorganization, transmission, storage, utilization.

During the past decades, technology has been becoming an integral part of everyday life and slowly shaping mathematics and science teaching and learning (e.g. Heid & Blume, 2008). Although there have been enormous investments on educational technologies in many countries technology has yet to make a sizable impact on education (e.g. Drijvers et al., 2010). On the one hand students are becoming increasingly proficient users of technology while on the other hand opportunities offered by technologies have still little been utilized. Nevertheless, as technologies are becoming more integrated into education, they are providing new opportunities for pedagogical approaches and classroom organization. For example, mathematicians stated that they use technology because in this way they can more easily treat students as mathematicians and nurture their knowledge through discovery and experimentation (Lavicza, 2010). To utilize the opportunities technologies offer we developed a large-scale project, GEOMATECH (http://geomatech.hu), in Hungary integrating teaching traditions of the country as well as good practices from around the world.

Many Hungarian mathematicians, scientist and mathematics educators have a world-wide respect. In addition, mathematics education theorist and practitioners; among others George Pólya, Zoltán Dienes, Imre Lakatos, Tamás Varga; are often quoted as great innovators and founders of modern theories and practices in mathematics education. In the GEOMATECH project, we are developing new approaches for technology integration into Hungarian schools utilising Hungarian teaching traditions, successful international examples, and experiences of Hungarian teachers. The GEOMATECH project (owing to the generous 8million Euro EU Funding, TÁMOP-3.1.12) is developing high-quality teaching and learning materials for all grades in primary and secondary schools in Hungary (http://tananyag.geomatech.hu/). These materials (1200+ Mathematics, 600+ Science) will be embedded into an on-line communication and collaboration environment that can be used as an electronic textbook, a homework system, and a virtual classroom environment. In addition to material development, we are offering 60-hour professional development courses for more than 2400 teachers in 800 schools in Hungary. Furthermore, we are organizing a wide-range of teacher and student activities including competitions, maths and science fairs, and developing a network of schools for the long-term sustainability of the GEOMATECH project. The technology background of the project is offered by GeoGebra (http://geogebra.org), which is an open-source, dynamic mathematics software widely used around the world.

The accredited GEOMATECH courses including both mathematical and natural scientific modules and are intended for primary and secondary school teachers, covering all K-12 levels. The training takes place in small, 10-12 person groups. The most important goals of the course that the participants familiarize themselves with the GEOMATECH education materials in order to implement them successfully in their own teaching practice, and also to learn the advantages that new technologies can offer to their teaching. The training focuses to three main areas:

• Geogebra in education: to become able to design own Geogebra applications.
• Familiarizing with the GEOMATECH materials and preparing to use them in everyday-work.
• Learning and practicing new pedagogical approaches (http://komplexinstrukcio.hu), developing IT competences, studying methods for experience-centered mathematics education (www.experienceworkshop.hu). The mathematical training is based on problem-based approaches and the natural scientific modules are supporting inquiry-based learning. 

GEOMATECH offered not only teacher training and development programs. GEOMATECH launched national student competitions to support the dissemination of GEOMATECH materials and to motivate and inspire Hungarian students living inside and outside the borders of Hungary. The organizers of the competitions prepared tasks for six different age groups, between 6-18 years. Groups of maximum 5 students could participate in the competition. There were competition rounds for 9 months, and each round had a central topic.

Competition organizers had to comply with several requirements during the design of the appropriate tasks and problems for the competition:

• Tasks should be complex enough that the teams could work on it for a full month.
• Tasks had to allow everybody to join in, not only the best students in mathematics. Tasks had to be exciting enough for the most gifted students as well.
• Tasks had to be new and interesting to motivate and inspire students to join.
• The use of IT and GeoGebra had to be central in finding the solution to the task. (This was the most difficult to achieve in the case of task design for lower-primary school students.)

In some of the competition rounds, instead of solving traditional mathematical tasks and problems, students could create various kinds of compositions by the toolkit offered by the GeoGebra software. In many cases, during the solution of these creative tasks, participants mobilized much deeper mathematical knowledge than they would have done in the case of a traditional mathematical task or a problem. Many of the solutions illustrate GeoGebra’s high potential in creating representations of various connections between mathematics and the arts.

In the framework of our presentation, besides introducing GEOMATECH, we will compare it to other large education development projects from the Central-European region, which are using GeoGebra, such as the Slovakian EMATIK projects (Dillingerová & Koreňová, 2007).

References and Notes

Andrews, P., & Diego Mantecón, J. (2014). Instrument adaptation in cross-cultural studies of students' mathematics-related beliefs: Learning from healthcare research. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education.

Artigue, M., & Blomhøj, M. (2013). Conceptualising inquiry based education in mathematics. ZDM—The International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45(6). 901-909.

Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design experiments in educational research. Educational Researcher. 32(1), 9-13

Drijvers, P., Kieran, C., Mariotti, M.-A., Ainley, J., Andresen, M., Chan, Y. C., … Meagher, M. (2010). Integrating Technology into Mathematics Education: Theoretical Perspectives. In C. Hoyles & J.-B. Lagrange (Eds.), Mathematics Education and Technology-Rethinking the Terrain (pp. 89–132). Springer US.

Dillingerová M., Koreňová L. (2007). Inovačné trendy vo vzdelávaní budúcich učiteľov a vďalšom vzdelávaní učiteľov matematiky (e-learningovou formou). Zborník príspevkov konferencie E-LEARN 2007. Žilina. Žilinská Univerzita.

Heid, M. K., & Blume, G. W. (2008). Algebra and function development. In M. K. Heid & G. W. Blume (Eds.), Research on technology and the teaching and learning of mathematics: Research Syntheses (Vol. 1, pp. 55-108). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Jaworski, B. (2006). Theory and practice in mathematics teaching development: Critical inquiry as a mode of learning in teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 9, 187-211.

Lavicza, Z. (2010). Integrating technology into mathematics teaching: A review. ZDM: The International Journal of Mathematics Education. 42(1), 105-119.

Civilization is always developing with the accurate cognition of human being about world and life, we can say the development of human civilization is the development of accuracy pursued by human being. However, along with the coming of the age of big data, the crisis of pursue of accuracy which come from scientific rationalism in modern times is more and more highlighted in front of us. The cognition of pursue of accuracy take the value and meaning of our life into a transparent dimensional society, it is destroying our nature of freedom. If the nature of freedom is based on the representation of the value and meaning of life, it is a deviation for us to walking on the road of pursuing accuracy by scientific rationalism. Now that the full digital memory is the pink of this deviation, we need to keep some kind of oblivion intentionally, and this kind of oblivion will leave us the last space for the variety of possible life in an irreversible possible Ubiquitous Age.

During the last decades, Capitalism has been undergoing a metamorphosis, resulting in a change of stage, from Industrial Capitalism to Cognitive (Boutang, 2000; Vercellone, 2012) or Informational (Castells, 1996; Fuchs, 2013) Capitalism. Within this context, the widespread opposition to the dramatic expansion of intellectual property -and particularly to the copyright transmogrification- helped to boost the diffusion and legitimacy of concepts such as “free knowledge”, “intellectual commons”, “open access”, “p2p production”.   Along with the emergence and growth of the General Public License (GPL), Creative Commons (CC), and other licenses, this phenomenon has had a well-known consequence: the growth of a quasi-public sphere of non-commercial informational goods (Benkler, 2005; Ostrom and Hess, 2006; Bauwens, 2006). Nevertheless, the flows of “free knowledge” also enabled the development of a (partially) unexplored region of the private and for-profit sphere. A new kind of business method is being shaped, and the management literature has already offered a warm welcome to this novelty (Tapscott& Williams, 2005; Leadbeater, 2007; Anderson, 2009). Somehow, it is based on the disguised exploitation of unpaid digital labour, carried out mostly during leisure time, with non-commercial purposes. This `exploitation side´ has only received specific attention recently (Pasquinelli, 2008; Petersen, 2008; Van Dijck and Nieborg, 2009; 2006; Langlois et. al., 2009; Lovink & Rossiter, 2010; Fuchs, 2013, Scholz, 2013).

However, the critical literature has not stabilized yet a name and a definition of the phenomenon, a sound theoretical foundation and an empirical description of its varieties. Thus, this contribution tries to shed some light in these three regards by:

1. Advancing and defining the concept of Informational Cognitive Exploitation (ICE), underlining the similarities and differences regarding the Marxist concept of exploitation;
2. anchoring the CE in the Double Freedom of Knowledge (not restricted/ not paid, related to Marx´s double freedom of labor power); and
3. analyzing three modes of inclusive appropriation, those associated with software, contents and data, respectively.

i) Cognitive Exploitation is a form of capitalist exploitation. However it is different from the traditional Marxist notion of exploitation, which depends on the appropriation of the labour time or the energy of the worker. On the contrary, cognitive exploitation is based on the appropriation of knowledge and information flows (in both labour and leisure time). In this particular presentation we are concerned just with a subtype of cognitive exploitation, which is informational cognitive expoitation (ICE) –that related to the exploitation of digital labour carried out in order to produce informational goods. Other forms of cognitive exploitation have been studied [1]. Thus, informational cognitive exploitaion refers to an appropriability mechanism by which capitalist firms exploit the double freedom of knowledge regarding informational goods (i.e., those made of digital information). Since ICE appears as an alternative to business methods based on the privative exercise of copyright, the comparison may be useful. Both mechanisms try to increase profits in a context of high sunk costs and tending to 0 marginal costs. But while the privative model fights to pull up the price of outputs, ICE focuses on pushing down (close to 0) the price of inputs. In other words, privative scheme rests on creating scarcity of knowledge flows and charging for the access to them.  In contrast, ICE harnesses the abundance of knowledge, without charging directly for access, and collects money from targeted advertisement, data selling and related businesses [2].  Whereas copyright-based production processes exploit the workers within the labor time, ICE is to a great extent based on the exploitation of workers leisure time. This, of course, agrees with one of the main thesis of Italian Autonomism and Cognitive Capitalism theory. Certainly, the privative model rests on respecting copyright, and its practitioners are not all ashamed of saying so. ICE, instead, depends on circumventing –or directly violating- copyright law. More interestingly, it resorts on other intellectual property rights (trademarks, patents, industrial secrets). Hiding both procedures is a part of the ICE model.

The ideological base is also different: where copyright is based on rhetoric of individuals, property and exclusion, inclusive appropriation talks about communities, inclusion and freedom.

ii) What does the aforementioned “double freedom of knowledge” mean? At a first glance, the idea is quite simple: whereas the usual voices (from management literature to hackers) emphasize one freedom, we think we are unwittingly discussing about two very different but inseparable freedoms.  Here is where Marx comes back. One of the key factors for the birth of Capitalism has been what Marx called the double freedom of labor power. On the one hand, the worker is freed from the feudal order, free to move and free to sell his labor-power where, when and how he wants to. By the time of Marx, this had been the only freedom mentioned by Political Economy, Contractualism and Liberalism. But, on the other hand, as it is well known, the worker is also freed from the means of production. What matters for this paper is the Hegelian reasoning: Marx underlines the necessity of two contradictory freedoms. In the first case, freedom refers to empowerment; in the second, to the lack of power.

Now, we want to bring this type of reasoning by advancing the concept of double freedom of knowledge. Knowledge translated to digital information licensed with GPL, CC, or simply shared voluntarily without licensing is free, on the one hand, because it can be copied, modified, shared, etc. But, on the other hand, it is also free from any obligation of paying for it. As in the case of labor power, we see the two sides of the coin. One is widely promoted; the other is, in some cases, silently exploited [3]. To be sure, knowledge which has the double freedom can follow two (non-exclusive) paths: if it is not used for profit, it enlarges the quasi-public sphere. If it is used for profit, it ends up as a piece of the ICE machine.

iii) This paper presents empirical information regarding three types of ICE. The first is related to Free Software. We show how companies such IBM and HP have benefited from the unpaid work of thousands of workers who developed Linux. The second type concerns contents (music, texts, videos). Here we resort to the cases of YouTube, Flickr and some blogs to illustrate how voluntarily shared videos, pictures and texts are used as a part of a business strategy. The third type deals with data. Not surprisingly, we have chosen Google as the best example of collecting data of user activities freely and earning money from them. Of course, the three types of ICE have their own peculiarities. Therefore, the paper will not only describe, but also compare the various examples involved.

References

Anderson, C. (2009) Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Nueva York:  Hyperion.

Bauwens,M. (2006)“The Political Economy of Peer Production” Post-autistic economics review, issue no. 37, 28 April 2006, article 3, pp. 33-44. http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue37/Bauwens37.htm

Benkler, Y. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press: Boston.

Boutang, Y. M. (1999), ¨Riqueza, propiedad, libertad y renta en el capitalismo cognitivo¨, en Rodríguez, Emanuel y Sánchez, Raúl (Compiladores) Capitalismo cognitivo, propiedad intelectual y creación colectiva, Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños.

Fuchs, Ch. (2013) Class and exploitation on the Internet. In Digital labor.The Internet as playground and factory,ed'Trebor'Scholz,211-224.New'York: Routledge.

Lazzarato, M., (1996), ¨Inmaterial Labor¨ en Virno y Hardt (comps) Radical Thought in Italy, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

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Marx, K. (1996) [1873] El Capital, siglo XXI, México, Tomos I, II, III, volúmenes 1 a 8.

Ostrom, Elinor & Hess, Charlotte (Ed)(2006) Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Petersen,Søren Mørk(2008) Loser Generated Content: From Participation to Exploitation, First Monday, Volume 13, Number 3 - 3 March 2008; http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2141/, 1948.

Rullani, E. (2000) ¨El capitalismo cognitivo ¿un déjà- vu?,¨ Rodríguez, Emanuel y Sánchez, Raúl (Ed.) Capitalismo cognitivo, propiedad intelectual y creación colectiva, Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños. 

Scholz, Trebor, ed. 2013. Digital Labor. The Internet as Playground and Factory. New York: Routledge.

Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. (2005) Wikinomics La nueva economía de las multitudes inteligentes, Barcelona: Paidós Empresa.

Van Dijck, J & Nieborg, D ( 2009)Wikinomics and its discontents: a critical analysis of Web 2.0 business manifestos, New Media Society 11; 855.

Zizek, S.(2003) El sublime objeto de la ideología, Siglo XXI, Buenos Aires.

^[1] In previous work we have discussed three additional forms, based on the kinf of knowledge involved: labour, traditional and scientific)
^[2] Naturally, the difference between inclusive appropriation and the traditional business of broadcasting companies lies in the origin of the knowledge flows used to conquer an audience: in the second case, it comes from professional, better or worse paid workers; in the first, it stems from the double freedom of knowledge involved
^[3] Certainly, this kind of partial truth is a cornerstone of ideology (Zizek, 2003). Moreover, in both cases (double freedom of labor power and double freedom of knowledge), and by definition, capitalist exploitation implies necessarily some degree of consent of the worker.

Introduction

Citizen empowerment is one of the great promises of the ‘digital age’, often framed as a tale of emancipation and liberation in a digitally enabled democracy. The vigorously emerging field of critical internet studies has begun to interrogate the celebratory and unreflected assumptions about the unequivocally emancipatory essence of the ‘participatory’ web and expose the ideological nature of these discourses that conceals the various forms of domination and exploitation online e.g. [1-10]. However, what has unevenly progressed is the theorization of the structure-agency dialectics in ways that would enable a critical understanding and empirical study of user agency in the contemporary online ecology. Attempting to respond to the need for a renewal of critical cultural studies to understand web 2.0, this paper addresses the following questions: how can we understand user agency and where do we have to look for forms of resistance in web 2.0 spaces, taking into account the multiple layers in which these online environments structure, condition and curtail users’ activity? Are the concepts of semiotic power and resistance, inherited by traditional cultural studies, adequate to account for the structure-agency dialectics in today’s complex and multifaceted online media? To begin answering these questions, this paper outlines a conceptual framework that identifies the distinct levels on which network power operates, drawing on recent critical studies of the internet and web 2.0. At the same time, thinking of (network) power and (user) agency as a continuum, it draws on fundamental traditions within social and cultural theory to identify the various modes of resistance that could be meaningful in the contemporary media ecology. The ultimate aim of this paper is to introduce a nuanced conceptualization of user agency and provide a conceptual roadmap for critical empirical analysis.

The organization of online networks’ power

Drawing on recent critical accounts of how corporate online networks and platforms exert power over users, we identify the following six axes:

1) Economic-structural power: Web 2.0 environments are socio-economic structures that encompass certain ownership, governance and business model configurations, which demarcate the forms of usage, content and social relations within these environments (corporate ownership, targeted advertising and interpersonal marketing, unpaid user labour, monetization of user data and social relations [9, 7].

2) Algorithmic power: New media environments function as mediators actively shaping the performance of social act [7]. By the use of algorithms, they come to ‘produce’ everyday life, structuring and sorting people, relations, places and things in often unseen and concealed ways [2]. The operation of software without the users’ awareness of its structuring power has led to the notion of power being ‘post-hegemonic’ in the information era, as domination works ontologically instead of discursively [11, 2]. The decision-making power of algorithms often eludes reflective thinking, being perceived as neutral mediators reflecting instead of organizing and thus producing everyday life (e.g. the perception of search engines as neutral mechanisms rather than as powerful agents operating with opaque and complex rules, making some aspects of the world visible but concealing others altogether). The ‘post-hegemonic’ nature of algorithmic power creates a substantial challenge for human agency, rendering the possibility of resistance at the same level at which power operates all the more difficult.

3) Institutional power: Content management systems consist also of social protocols, which take the form of consolidated and complicated policies that govern and regulate user behavior. Most often, control over these rules is primarily in the hands of owners who can adjust conditions at any time, without the users’ prior consent [7].

4) (Post)discursive/semiotic power: Unlike traditional media industries, in web 2.0 the content is either co-produced by professionals and users or produced entirely by users (e.g. social media). Although the opening up of the sphere of symbolic production to amateurs or ‘ordinary’ voices has transformed the public space formerly dominated by cultural industries, early promises about the ‘liberation’ of content and informational diversity are mitigated by several factors. To take the example of ‘participatory’ journalism, user-generated content does not seem to dismantle traditional hierarchies and open up user engagement in the spheres that matter mostly e.g. news-making and constitution of journalistic values [12, 13]. In social media, similar trends can be observed: (a) the standardization of content so that it becomes manageable and sellable [7]; (b) the commodification of huge amounts of content through data mining technics; (c) the steering of users’ behavior toward consumer activities that legitimizes consumer culture and constitutes citizens as capitalist subjects [14]; (d) the diminishing of information diversity as users are locked in ‘filter bubbles’ [16]; (e) the unequal distribution of online attention and visibility, often directing users toward corporate sources, promoting more “valuable” people and filtering out less popular contributions (8, 14]. Most importantly, because corporate actors translate all content into manageable and sellable data, it can be argued that they acquire a form of post-discursive or post-semiotic power, rendering content as meaning almost irrelevant, in the sense that even user-generated discourses that subvert dominant ideas are subjected to the same treatment and principles, neutralizing their dissident potential.

5) Socio-cultural power: Sociality and collective will formation is at the heart of social media. At this level, the main stakes can be summarized in three points: first, a significant commodity in online ‘social’ media are social relations themselves, as almost all kinds of sociality are coded into proprietary algorithms and are moved from public to corporate space [7]. Second, the notion of sociality itself is transformed to what van Dijck [7] calls the “culture of connectivity”, a form of online sociality resting on coded structures and neoliberal economic principles, such as hierarchy, competition, a winner-takes-all mindset and the resetting of boundaries between private, corporate and public domains (p. 20). This logic affects also the alternative media realm, as traditional grassroots media do not have the resources to ‘play the Facebook game’ in their own terms¹. Third, despite the fact that social media can function as mobilization conduits for collective action, their capacity to sustain networked communities capable of political action is seriously disputed: networked communities in commercial online platforms are seen as mainly being about achieving one’s own individual needs and interests in post-political, post-antagonistic forms of community, offering "pacifying modes" of existence and absorbing potentially resistant energies in fantasies of action [14].

6) Ideological power: All these forms of power cannot be sustained without a sixth axis, that of ideology, namely the consolidation of a hegemonic, common-sense meaning regarding the very nature of web 2.0 and its profound necessity in everyday life. The rise of web 2.0 was accompanied by myths related to collaboration and social interaction, built on the core concepts of ‘sharing’, ‘community’, ‘user participation’, transparency and openness, and online sociality as the prevalent and inescapable form of establishing social relations [15]. These narratives, dissipated through popular and academic discourses, operate to conceal the ideological tenets from which commercial online platforms operate and the multiple aspects of pseudo-participation and exploitation defining the reality of many web 2.0 environments [8].

Dimensions of user agency

The approaches highlighted above substantiate the exploitative nature of web 2.0 but leave little room for understanding emerging forms of user agency. As van Dijck [7] argues, “it is functional to regard user agency not as an actor distinct from technology, but as an analytical category that requires delineation on its own terms” (p. 32). From a critical cultural perspective, we need to identify the axes on which resistance and counter-power can be built, taking into account the forces that structure, condition or curtail user agency. Such an approach requires a combination of culturalism and structuralism in cultural studies [8], similar to the encoding/decoding model advanced by Stuart Hall [17]. However, in web 2.0 environments, production and reception ‘moments’ are no longer distinct processes and the structured tempospatial breaks between production and reception [18] take on different meanings. Furthermore, the multifunctional nature of new media renders a sole emphasis on content inadequate as a critical analytical framework. That said, we draw on fundamental critical theories to outline a nuanced conceptualization of user agency and a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of web 2.0 users. The proposed conception of user agency consists of six dimensions, analogous to the six axes of network power identified above. Each dimension is placed on a continuum, with two opposing poles: a pole where agency is minimal (or non-existent) and a pole where agency is maximal.

1) Socio-economic agency can be defined as the capacity of users to become aware of, resist, oppose or subvert the dominant economic logic from which the commercial web 2.0 operates. An empirical inquiry at this level involves the study of knowledge, attitudes and practices of users regarding the role and implications of current ownership models in web 2.0 spaces in terms of data privacy and data mining, economic and state surveillance, unpaid user labour, the commodification of relations through user recommendation systems, and the role of targeted advertising as a business model. User agency can thus be operationalized along a continuum between awareness, resistance/appropriation, opposition and subversion. Empirical studies of users’ attitudes and practices can show which positions users occupy along this continuum, e.g. whether users are conscious of how commercial media shape their experiences and exploit economically their labour (awareness), whether and how they are involved in active resistance (e.g. by using applications to block or bypass advertisements), whether they take part in campaigns aiming at limiting companies’ invasive practices or put forth claims to partial ownership of contributed content (opposition), and their readiness to opt-out and embrace alternatives currently being created online (subversion).

2) Informational or algorithmic agency signifies the capacity of users to become aware of, refuse, resist or actively challenge the ways in which power is embedded in technical structures, codes and rules of ‘participatory’ spaces and interfaces. At the level of awareness, a question to explore is the extent to which the ‘technological unconscious’ becomes conscious, that is, if the rule-making power of software becomes evident, perceptible or transparent to users. Implicit participation [15], which is usually unconscious as it is built-in in the system, can turn into active resistance if it becomes conscious. Changing a default setting or filling out false profiling information can be considered mild acts of resistance [7]. Reflexive and skilled users may play with algorithmic power to their own advantage, actively shaping the content they produce so as to direct the way the software reacts to them, anticipating the effects and steering things in the direction they wish ([2], p. 997). Oppositional agency can be manifested in hackactivist practices, such as the modification of software to change or deconstruct existing rules and the design of subversive apps. Maximalist forms of technological agency refer to the development of alternative software and technical infrastructures for creating online spaces outside of corporate or state control.

3) Institutional or communicative agency: To explore user agency at the institutional level (the sphere of rule-making or governance) we draw on participatory and deliberative democracy theories. Participatory democracy theorists (Held, 1996; Macpherson, 1973; Pateman, 1970) stress the ability of individuals to take part in decision-making, have an equal chance to affect outcomes and thus acquire control over the structures in the various systems that concern and affect them (in [8], p. 260). The Habermasian notion of communicative rationality and discourse ethics is also revelant here as a normative yardstick, as it stresses the rational-critical, instead of instrumental, criteria for the process of decision-making which is essentially dialogical in character. That said, institutional or communicative agency can be defined as the capacity of users to equally participate in rule-making processes and act as deliberating agents (namely, being able to introduce any issue, express any attitude or need, question any assertion, and engage in argumentative discussion). In conditions of maximal agency, we would expect to encounter conditions for inclusion of all, discursive mechanisms for decision-making with user control over the rules of discussion, and an orientation toward rational-critical argumentation and public-oriented concerns. Examples of oppositional agency at this level can be found in the various organized protest actions and confrontations between users and powerful industries (the early anti-Microsoft and the current anti-Facebook campaigns), which may lead to political awareness, as users start acting like citizens and claim civil rights for their actions (e.g. Pirate Parties) (see [15] pp. 130-133).

4) Representational and semiotic agency: The fourth axis is related to the duality of users as content producers and recipients. The notion of representational agency is informed by post-Marxist discourse theory, articulated mainly by Laclau and Mouffe, and signifies the capacity of users to engage in discursive political struggles, disrupt dominant discourses, develop counterdiscourses, negotiate and reconstitute identities and subject positions, and develop autonomous self-representations. When researching agency at this level, the main question is whether social actors, especially those classes most vulnerable to exclusion and exploitation, find ways to bypass the steering mechanisms of web 2.0 environments to articulate subversive discourses that can acquire visibility and become influential in the broader public sphere. An interesting example tapping on gender relations, which stands at the intersection between algorithmic and representational agency, is the hacking of the video game ‘Legend of Zelda’ to reverse the roles of male and female characters in order to make Princess Zelda the hero and Link (the male hero character) the imprisoned damsel. Such practices challenge hegemonic gender discourses and thematize the broader issues of male dominance in software development and modification.

Many users, however, continue to be content consumers rather than ‘produsers’. Semiotic agency operates at the level of reception and refers, first, to the power to make meanings, the ability to think differently [19] or produce oppositional readings [17]. Second, an additional layer of semiotic activity should be added in the context of web 2.0, noticeable in the commenting culture of most mainstream media online spaces. Here, users mediate content produced by mainstream media or other authoritative sources, inserting a new layer of meaning between the original messages and the recipients of these messages. A question that needs to be asked in this context is the extent to which the forms of expression allowed to users in ‘participatory’ online spaces render them able to influence other users’ readings of messages through interjecting oppositional readings between media and audiences.

5) Collective agency: The mediation of collective action by communication technologies is of great significance and the relation between new media and protest/movement activity is a complex issue which cannot be discussed here. Looking for collective agency in web 2.0 environments entails an inquiry on the capacity of users to horizontally develop social relations, discover common positions, establish collective identities, form politicized communities and affinity groups, and mobilize collectively for online or offline action. We suggest that such activity would stand in contrast to the kind of individualism (even if it is networked) typically promoted by commercial online platforms, the type of pseudo- or consumer communities brought together by automated processes and interaction with technology without social interaction [15] or phenomena of ‘slacktivism’ considered by critics a form of inconsequential online political action (e.g. [20]).

6) Counter-ideological agency: Last but not least, an empirical inquiry on user agency needs to tap into the capacity of users to deconstruct naturalized meanings and popular myths about the nature and effects of web 2.0, for instance, regarding the unlimited and equal opportunities offered to everyone (especially less privileged actors) to acquire visibility, receive attention and exert political influence [21]. Recent developments (e.g. the Snowden revelations, the European Privacy Class Action against Facebook) have thematized issues of surveillance and privacy resulting in a heightened level of concern among users (see [22]. However, other aspects of exploitation and control remain largely unaddressed among common users (e.g. the issue of user labour, the perceived impossibility of opting-out). The empirical study on attitudes and cultures needs also to extend to counter-cultures of users that have quitted corporate platforms and moved to non-commercial alternatives.

Conclusion

Empirical research is urgently needed in critical internet studies, in order to open the ‘black box’ of user agency. The multilayered nature of web 2.0 calls for an equally multifaceted analytical approach, combining political economy, cultural studies and the critical analysis of technical infrastructures. The conceptualization of user agency laid out above is intended to contribute to the renewal of critical cultural studies regarding web 2.0, in order to identify repertoires of resistance and ultimately strengthen emerging oppositional user attitudes and cultures.

Notes

1 The closing down in 2014 of the alternative weekly Schnews in the UK is attributed, among other factors, to the detrimental effect of corporate social media: In their own words, “playing the Facebook game demands a huge amount of energy […] With complex advertising deals and algorithms determining what you do or don't see, maintaining an impact on social media requires hours and hours per week of social networking. For us, that hasn't been feasible” (http://www.schnews.org.uk/stories/AND-FINALLY/).

References

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Introduction

As mobile technology, social media, and converged web content drive the new information economy, critical media education for a digital generation has become paramount. As a critical cultural studies educator committed to fostering critical thinking and informed engagement at all levels of ICT, I have created a framework of key questions and issues to formulate a critical pedagogy of digital media literacy education. The goal of my paper is to advocate for the use of this framework to lead us forward into the 21^st century by providing meaning and purpose in our classrooms and communities for citizens and individuals to engage in transformative communication in the information age.

As part of a longstanding globalized movement, critical media education for a digital citizenship is predicated upon the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce media content and communication in a variety of forms. Rather than teach one-dimensional approaches for using media platforms, critical media education offers us a way to become digitally literate by providing us with the tools through which to examine the political, cultural, historical, economic and social ramifications of all media in a holistic way[1]. While many media literacy approaches overemphasize the end-goal of accessing digital media content through the acquisition of various software, apps and analytics, I argue that the goal for comprehensive and critical digital literacy requires grasping the means through which communication is created, deployed, used, and shared, regardless of which platforms or tools are used for meaning making and social interaction.Drawing upon the intersecting matrices of digital literacy, media literacy, and information literacy, I provide a framework for developing critical multi-literacies by exploring the necessary skills and competencies for engaging as citizens of the digital world. Specifically, I will present a “Top-Ten” list of questions that effectively propel our pedagogical efforts for critical digital literacy forward.

1) What does it mean to be digitally literate in the media age?

For some, the answer to this question means accessing and using the latest technology and apps to keep up with an ever-changing global market economy. Yet I argue that the motivations for this behavior uphold a bandwagon effect designed primarily to use technology for its own sake without analyzing the purpose and communication goals associated with using digital tools and platforms. As several scholars have forewarned, the technology industry manufactures a pedagogy of commercialization that prioritizes the acquisition and use of digital technologies for their own sake rather than for transformational possibilities that could emerge from the creative interplay of these forms outside of capital[2]. Others advance technology’s inherent social possibilities to stimulate the creative production and distribution of content to create self-expression and social connections[3]. I argue for a dialectical approach that carefully questions and examines the benefits of innovative, decentralized digital media that enable self, social and civic participation within a paradigm that values digital media for its transformative potential.

2) What do we mean by social with(in) social media?

If we want to answer the question, “What is social about social media,” we must examine human agency. Although the rise of Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia offer collaborative information production, critical digital literacy means asking if virtual social media reduce interpersonal face-to-face sociality, and if so, to what extent and at what cost. I contend that it is not the properties of any medium that determine the social outcomes of communication technologies. Rather, critical digital literacy requires an assessment of the language of social media that interpolates us through signifiers, such as “fans,” “friends” “social networks,” “likes” and our “status updates,” so that we may determine whether networked social interactivity promote the engagement of meaningful human agency, or attest to our need to feel accepted in a digital culture.

3) In what ways have we moved from a homogenous society to a fragmented one?

In the 1970s pre-Internet culture, sociologist Herbert Gans made a case for the democratic value of cultural pluralism[4]. Specifically, he called for media content that was less homogenized—less dominated by the television networks, large movie and record companies. His work resonated with those who thought media content was too mass oriented and that subcultural programming should accommodate different taste publics regardless of their size and economic standing. Without question, Web 2.0+ now offers cultural niches of all types for various audiences and fans. Yet followers of the Frankfurt School theorists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer would argue that capitalism is using the same digital technology to market niche economies as part of a new Web 2.0+ business model, thereby fragmenting us beyond the ideals of connected society, or as Benedict Anderson would argue, an imagined community[5]. As I’ll explain in greater detail in my paper, digital literacy must grapple with the varied ways in which fragmentation enhances targeted marketing and fandom groups while reinscribing formulaic trends in homogenous ways to appeal to commercial trends and algorithmic imperatives[6].

4) How creative and engaged are users of digital media content?

In their book Groundswell, Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff establish important data sets that provide a benchmark survey of online activity among adults age 18+ in the United States and in Europe[7]. Despite all of the euphoric headlines claiming hyper-interactivity among a digitally literate society[8], Li and Bernoff present us with a startling reality that documents that less than one-quarter of online U.S. and European consumers are “creators.” Creators are defined as those who publish a blog or their own web pages, upload videos or audio that they create, or post articles / stories that they write. Given these findings, I advocate for a critical pedagogy of digital literacy that inquires about the range and level of creative engagement of online users and content curators before presuming a particular utopian or dystopian view on educational technology.

5) What are the benefits and costs of “fun” and “play” in the digital world?

In his trailblazing critique of social media, Christian Fuchs describes the process of exploitation that defines the relational conditions between contemporary online media producers and distributors. In this new virtual playground, Fuchs explains how the “fun” and “play” that we partake in unwittingly enslaves us into producing surplus value labor and profits for large global corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube[9]. I content that critical digital literacy must include an assessment of the social, physical, psychological and economic costs and benefits of engaging in the digital world. My paper addresses the labor practices, working conditions, safety violations and rash of suicides within the Chinese factories that supply Apple’s products[10].

6) What impact will commercialization and consolidation of digital content have on information?

Given the consistent ways in which new media technologies have historically been colonized by capitalist forces over educational ones, I believe that critical digital literacy requires an assessment of the fundamental ways in which social uses of media are impacted by the capitalistic goals of profit and productivity. In my paper, I argue that a critical pedagogy of digital literacy mandates a fair and clairvoyant assessment of how digital content is affected by commercial and conglomerate providers of online and mobile networks. Addressing the opening of net neutrality rules that were meant to guarantee an open Internet would be instrumental in helping users of digital media understand the immense lobbying pressure of the corporate telecommunications sector as it seeks to alter the free-flow and equanimity of online data (Net Neutrality).

7) In what ways can Creative Commons promote and enhance collective knowledge publically and affordably?

Over the last decade, efforts have been underway to make use of distributive networks that allow others to freely or affordably copy, display, perform and remix digital works, provided that original sources are attributed. Founded by Lawrence Lessig eleven years ago, Creative Commons (CC) is the predominant public licensing initiative that provides a way for millions of global content producers to choose a license that meets their goals and allows them to release their work under the terms of that license without registration needed[11]. I contend that critical digital literacy curricula should be based on a praxis of media production and access that honors fair use, public domains, and creative commons as instrumental means to maintain collective knowledge and cultural participation by members of online publics.

8) What about privacy issues?

As I expand upon in my paper, critical digital literacy requires the scrutiny and application of best practices to ensure privacy. In addition to learning age-appropriate strategies for protecting online privacy, I argue that digital citizenship requires critically analyzing the ways in which governments and commercial online providers like Google and Facebook use surveillance of users and privacy violations to track user likes, purchases, behaviors, trends, and habits for social control or profit.

9) Within a globalized, pluralized, digital-enabled world, are we taking full advantage of our unprecedented access to varieties of taste cultures, political opinions, and worldviews?

I argue that we must assess how much progress we have made as individuals and members of social publics in embracing new forms of knowledge and global perspectives on a wide-range of important issues. I believe a critical digital literacy approach means asking the difficult question of whether or not we are using each medium for its revolutionary potential (McLuhan’s global village), or whether we are retreating to a homophilic, narcissistic enclave of like-minded friends from our inner circles who like us for what we buy or where we take exotic trips[12].

10) How can digital media serve education, democracy and human rights?

While the colonization of digital media by capitalistic forces is predominant, digital media have paved the way for democratic groups and educational movements to thrive, and have amplified the goals of human rights advocates from around the world. In my paper, I will provide several examples effective crowdsourcing campaigns that break free of the formal structures imposed by capitalism and the cooptation of ICT. In conclusion, while most mainstream media references focus on individualized and commercial uses of social media in apolitical ways, I argue that a critical pedagogy for digital literacy is well served by addressing the profound ways in which people can use technologies to advance the ideals of democracy and human rights in the 21^st century.

References

1. Frechette, J. D. (2002). Developing media literacy in cyberspace pedagogy and critical learning for the twenty-first- century classroom. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
2. Frechette, J. D. (2002). Developing media literacy in cyberspace pedagogy and critical learning for the twenty-first- century classroom. Westport, Conn.: Praeger; Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media: a critical introduction. London: Sage; Rushkoff, D. (2013). Present shock: when everything happens now. New York: Penguin Press.
3. Grossman, L. (2006, December 25). You, Yes, You, Are TIME's Person of the Year. Time; Parks, M. (2011). Social Network Sites as Virtual Communities. A networked self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (pp. 105-123). New York: Routledge; Rheingold, H. (1993). The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
4. Gans, H. J. (1974). Popular culture and high culture; an analysis and evaluation of taste. New York: Basic Books.
5. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment. New York: Herder and Herder; Anderson, B. R. (1991). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. and extended ed.). London: Verso.
6. Campbell, R., Jensen, J., Gomery, D., Fabos, B., & Frechette, J. (2014). Media in society. Boston: Bedford St Martin's (pp. 214-215)
7. Li, C., & Bernoff, J. (2011). Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business Press.
8. Shiffman, D. (2008). The age of engage: reinventing marketing for today's connected, collaborative, and hyperinteractive culture. Ladera Ranch, CA: Hunt Street Press; Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press; Jenkins, H., & Ford, S. (2013). Spreadable media creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York: New York University Press.
9. Fuchs, C. (2014). Social media: a critical introduction. London: Sage.
10. Duhigg, C., & Barboza, D. (2012, January 25). In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad. The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0;Enloe, C. (2014). Bananas, Beaches and Bases Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press; Guglielmo, C. (2013, December 12). Apple's Supplier Labor Practices In China Scrutinized After Foxconn, Pegatron Reviews. Forbes. Retrieved June 1, 2014, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/12/12/apples-labor-practices-in-china-scrutinized-after-foxconn-pegatron-reviewed.
11. Lessig, L. (2014, May 14). Lawrence Lessig. - Creative Commons. Retrieved June 1, 2014, from http://creativecommons.org/tag/lawrence-lessig
12. Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2009). Connected: the surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. New York: Little, Brown and Co.; Rushkoff, D. (Director). (2014). Frontline: Generation Like [Documentary]. USA: Public Broadcasting Service.