The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 1 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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The Movement of Individual Public Relations: Using Actor Network Theory to Exploration of Social Media Free Speech, Social Media & the Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse Kristen Bostedo-Conway Communication 605 Integrated Strategic Communication Queens University Dr. John McArthur

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The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 2 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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Introduction
Social media is growing in popularity because it allows people to become small media outlets publicizing information faster than traditional media. Most people in the western hemisphere have access to social media outlets and thus are able to publish news information faster and in a more timely manner than any other type of public relations tool. Latour's Actor Network Theory allows us to explore this phenomenon and to highlight the growing importance of social media to the public relations tool box as well as the importance of each individual person in their own sphere of influence. Social media provides the common person (proletariat) the ability to engage in discourse in the public sphere. This new medium is creating dissonance in the social world, described by Habermas as the world of social relations controlled by values and norms, because there are not any formal rules to govern what is or is not the appropriate use of this media platform. February 16, a federal magistrate ruled in favor of free speech via social media tools. His is a very important step in defining the rules of social media communication. Using Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action we are going to explore what this ruling means for social media communication and how it will define the entrance of the proletariat into public discourse. Event On Sunday morning I checked Facebook. To my dismay, I learned that my best friend, Melissa's, cousin passed away. Her cousin Ray, who is also my friend on Facebook, posted a status update about his sister dying. I called Melissa immediately to find out how she was doing. Melissa was shocked by my phone call because she had just found out a few hours ago herself.
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Katherine Evans, an honor student, was suspended in 2007 from a Florida high school when she created a Facebook page about her dislike for one of her teachers. The page, entitled Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I have ever met, was created as a place for "to express your feelings of hatred." Evans removed the page after several people commented criticizing her and supporting the teacher. Despite the pages removal, the principal suspended Evans for cyber harassment and removed her from advanced classes. Evans retaliated with a lawsuit claiming her right to free speech was violated.

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The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 3 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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US Magistrate Barry Garber agreed with Evans and ruled that the lawsuit was legitimate and could continue the judicial process by saying, "Evans' speech falls under the wide umbrella of protected speech," he wrote. "It was an opinion of a student about a teacher, that was published off-campus ... was not lewd, vulgar, threatening, or advocating illegal or dangerous behavior." Evans lawyer noted that "The First Amendment provides protection for free speech regardless of the forum, being the Internet, the living room or a restaurant. Method To study this event we are going to use Bruno Latour's Actor Network Theory. Latour's theory suggests there are five types of controversies debated by actors and stabilized through three types of corrective moves until a new controversy arises. This theory is based in constructivism, which is defined as the construction of facts. Latour's five types of controversies are the nature of groups, actions, objects, facts and social science. This observation will focus on two types of controversies, the nature of objects and the nature of actions. We will use the following definitions to analyze our event. y The nature of objects is an uncertainty created by the question, "What type of agencies are participating and can objects also have agency?" y The nature of actions is an uncertainty that is defined by the question "Who are the acting agents and when they act who else is acting?" The three corrective moves necessary to stabilize the collective include relocation, redistribution and connection. Relocating means that the ANT scholar will break apart the communication to separate the interaction from the context. Redistribution is the separated context being localized and used as an endpoint. Finally, connection is the process of connecting the localized sites through the various vehicles used.
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In order to understand what types of new laws and rules should govern social media communication, we must first understand the communication itself. Using Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action this analysis will explore Katherine Evans initial communication and subsequent lawsuit by defining the type of communication as strategic or communicative acting, explore the four validity claims of intelligibility, truth, truthfulness and legitimacy, and discuss the repair mechanism of discourse. Analysis The Nature of Objects: "What type of agencies are participating and can objects also have agency?" Agency is defined as the capacity to act independently and to make free choices. Facebook is an internet based social software that has agency. The software connected me to a group of people and then based on the software's programming allows me to see updates and information about people I am connected with. The software acts independently from the collective group because it makes free choices about what updates it shows you based on algorithms that include the number

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The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 4 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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of people you are friends with, how soon the update has been posted as well as what news they believe is the most relevant to you. The Nature of Actions: "Who are the acting agents and when they act who else is acting?" The acting agents include, myself, Melissa, her Cousin Ray, and Facebook. Additional acting agents include several people whose opinion I sought regarding the topic of social media and the discovery of personal information.
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Corrective Move: Relocating and Redistribution 1. The first key communication point is Ray learning of his sister's death. 2. Ray then requests prayers for his family because his sister passed away. 3. Facebook communicates this status update in a "news stream" that I was able to see when I logged into my account. 4. I asked Melissa how she was doing regarding the death. 5. I request opinions from peers regarding their experience with social media and discovering very personal information. 6. Finally, I received responses from peers explaining that they too had learned very personal information via social networking tools like Facebook. Corrective Move: Connection The vehicles used to connect the contexts are computers, Facebook, mobile phones, Twitter and one-to-one communication. The interesting aspect here is that Facebook serves as both a agent and a vehicle for communication. The below diagram constructs how the interaction took place by connecting the contexts to each other using the communication vehicles.
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The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 5 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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Kristen requests feedback regarding peers social media experience with personal information

1-1 Comm.

Ray posts Facebook status

FaceBook

Kristen asks Melissa how she is coping

Mobile Phone
Melissa voices shock that Kristen knew about the death

Twitter and 1-1 Comm.

Peers respond with simmilar experiences

FaceBook
Ray's sister passes away

Kristen reads Ray's Facebook status

Mobile Phone

Twitter & 11 Comm.

Strategic Communication & Communicative Acting: Habermas Strategic communication is defined by Habermas as communication used to achieve goals without regard for others involved. Habermas defines communicative acting as consensus oriented activity where communication is used for understanding not influencing (Burkhart). In the case of Katherine Evans she was using communicative acting to create a consensus among her peers about her teacher using the popular social networking site, Facebook. The communication is not considered strategic because she was not pursuing a specific goal, such as having the teacher fired. Based on these definitions it is conclusive that Evans was performing a communicative act meant to build a consensus that her teacher was not liked. The second piece of communication is considered strategic. By filing a lawsuit against the school, Evans is seeking to achieve the goal of retribution without regard for the other parties involved. Intelligibility: Intelligibility is defined as being able to use proper grammatical rules (Burkhart). Without viewing the Facebook page it is difficult to say whether or not this rule of communication was met. However, based on the CNN article and the lifted content, the page did follow grammatical rules. An important point to note is that social media is a new form of communication that is rewriting the rules of written communication. For the purpose of this paper the assumption is that the information CNN reported in quotes proves the intelligibility of the page. If there was any doubt that the communicative act was potentially not intelligible, there is no doubt that the strategic communication occurring in the form of a lawsuit is intelligible. In order to process this communication through the courts it would need to be grammatically correct and adhere to state and federal guidelines. Truth: Truth, defined as discussing a topic that all parties believe exists, is where this communicative action begins to break down. After Evan's posted the page several people criticized her and praised the teacher. Therefore, her communicative act was seen as something that other participants did not believe exists.

The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 6 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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Free speech, on the other hand, is a truth that everyone believes exists. Therefore, the entire public sphere believes that this principle exists and therefore Evans lawsuit is based on a foundation of truth. Truthfulness: Truthfulness is defined as being honest and not misleading. (Burkhart). From the facts in this case it is hard to determine if the validity claim of truthfulness was met. We don't understand Evan's relationship to the people that criticized the Facebook page. They could believe that Evans was being honest regarding her experience with Phelps, and still disagreed with her. The very nature of our court system is to seek truthfulness through factual information. At times the truthfulness of lawyers may come into question. Despite this, the federal magistrate demonstrated that truthfulness was met when he agreed to allow the lawsuit to move forward. Legitimacy: Legitimacy, defined as acting in accordance with mutually accepted values and norms, is another area where the validity of the communication breaks down. Once the page was in place, Evans was criticized by people for creating the page in the first place. Communicating her dislike for a teacher on the internet was seen as not normal and certainly not accepted based on mutual values. Legitimacy is also part of the reason that Evans was punished for creating the page in the first place. Although it can be argued that Evans did not act according to mutually accepted values and norms, her pursuit of a lawsuit is done so within the bounds of legitimate communication. Suing someone for grievances is normal and accepted in the United States of America. The lawsuit is also verified as legitimate because Evans is seeking little compensation other than a nominal fee of $100 and the expunging of her record. The interesting part about Evans's case is that if she wins, the original communicative act will be redefined as legitimate. Discourse: Discourse is the repair mechanism that occurs when one of the four validity claims has not been met. Evans's original communication created a discourse regarding the truth, truthfulness and legitimacy of her dislike for Ms. Phelps. The discourse created a consensus, but it was not with Evans. Instead Evans's communicative acting encouraged a consensus that the teacher was likeable. This discourse created additional discourse which took the form of Evans's lawsuit. At this date we do not know the outcome of the discourse other than the that the federal magistrate upheld the legitimacy.

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Conclusion Facebook is a social media application that is both an agent and a vehicle. It acts independently to communicate information entered into its system using complex algorithms. This allows individuals to bypass traditional communication vehicles and agents and instead become tiny public relations agents inside their own personal spheres of influence. In the past the only way to publicize a death would be via the newspaper or through one-to-one communication using a telephone. Now, in a matter of hours communication can be disseminated through social media outlets without the use of traditional media. By

The Movement of Individual Public Relations Free Speech, Social Media, & the Bostedo-Conway 7 Legitimization of Proletariat Discourse

Kristen

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using Actor Network Theory to exam social media communication we can understand easily and simply how the process of communication occurs and the effect that social media has on communication patterns. What we discovered is that all of the communication, even an examination of the communication, took place without any use of traditional public relations tools such as television, radio and newspaper. What is harder to understand, and requires additional exploration, is exactly what type of condensed time frames news travels now that social media is both an agent and a vehicle as well as the consequence of certain information being publicized globally. Evans's initial communication was a communicative act seeking to build consensus regarding dislike over her teacher. The communication violated key validity claims which created discourse and subsequently discredited the communication. A completely separate issue that it raised, however, was whether or not Evans had the right to conduct the communicative act. Evans, and many people in the public sphere, believe that she did indeed have that right and that her right was violated due to the mutually accepted value of free speech. The discourse is just beginning regarding free speech and social media communication because the internet is not just a way to communicate, it is also a publishing platform which takes the dissemination of communication out of the hands of the elite and places into the hands of the proletariat. Garber's upholding of the lawsuit is a critical step in formally defining rules around internet and social networking communication. It is not a surprise that we see the legitimacy Evans Facebook page questioned, because values and norms have not been defined for the social world regarding social media communication. Habermas believes that an elite group of people are the ones that define and disseminate communication to the masses. This observation has typically been true particularly with older forms of communication like newspapers and books. Therefore, it is my prediction that the proletariat will have to use members of legitimize social media communication using Habermas's four validity claims. Once this process is complete, a new communicative theory will have to be developed in order to include social media communication.

References Barker, C. (2005). Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-4156-8, 448. Latour, B. (2005b). Reassembling the Social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
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