Acciones estratégicas a desarrollar en los puntos de venta 91

The term digital may be clarified in relation to its antonym, analogue, which was once the standard conventional means of electronic transmission and has now been widely replaced. Analogue can be described as the real world (as opposed to the virtual world) outside computers – the transmission of continuous signal by means of media that retain its essential character. Digital on the other hand breaks down the signal, transports it in coded form, and then reconstitutes that signal in whatever way required. Digital signal and the information it carries is neither as dense nor does it have the 'real life' empirical qualities of analogue. However, the digital means of electronic transmission is more useful in that it can be condensed, manipulated, converted to other forms, and channeled into multiple networks and other media (Feldman 1997).

It is thus safe to deduce in simple terms that digital media is any channel of communication that carries digital signals: however, by virtue of the transmission

  87   and permeability of the content of digital signals, the term digital media is more than a mechanism or conduit for signals. And with the expansive nature of digital media is its expansive impact and multiplicity of effects on social, economic and political regimes of communication. In media studies, the term ‘digital media’ has assumed different nomenclatures and meanings over time; for example, a mobile phone is often defined as a device or tool (in terms of its tangible ‘hand set’ object-hood), yet can also be defined in terms of its networked function as ‘mobile media’ (Feldmann, 2005); while a (digital) space on the web or its social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube), weblogs (wordpress, blogger), are not defined as devices or tools, but in terms of space and applications, and were often referred to as the ‘virtual sphere’ (Papacharissi, 2002).

The ‘convergence’ of media content on new and multiple media platforms is one of the developments in information and communication technology that makes digital media a complex term to define theoretically. Convergence here refers to the flow of (digital) content over varied platforms, the synergy among multiple media industries and the audiences’ readiness to migrate across the platforms (Jenkins, 2006:2). To reiterate the earlier point about digital media being more than a technology but a culture, Jenkins (2006:3) argues that the convergence of old and new media, which depended largely on an active-participatory audience, should not be perceived strictly as a technological process only; rather, it should be understood in terms of a ‘cultural shift’ (Jenkins 2006:3). This

  88   is because, unlike with old media, the behaviour of the consumer or audience is internal to the technological function of the media – they way they actively seek out information and establish links between broad categories of content in diverse locations. A key aspect in which digital media is differentiated from traditional media is in interactivity – that is, the power users have to engage and involve one another (Pavlik and McIntosh, 2011:190). The very technology (both hardware and software since the 1980s) has been developed in and through extensive research and knowledge of consumer or audience behaviours and requirements. One cannot discuss digital media without the subjects that use the media, epistemically as well as ontologically.

On that note, digital media can be defined in terms of technology hardware (devices and tools), software, user-behaviour and branded products. Hardware refers to the tangible parts of digital technology, where examples are mobile phones, tablet devices, video game consoles, digital billboards, and so on. Software on the other hand is the applications, programmes, and the web in digital hardware devices, which users employ in communication processes, and often supplementary or ancillary to the central function of the hardware device (as the many available ‘apps’ are to the functioning of a handheld telephone or ‘mobile’). We must also not forget that digital media inhabits the consumer landscape as products – digital media is usually heavily branded, where even websites, blogs, social network Sites (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram) are interconnected with other products and packages.

  89   This thesis has moved beyond a fascination with the ‘new’ forms of media and its manifestations. Yet it will attempt to innovate an approach to digital media that retains the ‘cultural’ dimension of the media (its intrinsic role in the everyday life of the consumer, and as innovative branded technology it’s stimulus to creative activity). Given our subject of the public sphere, it also involves its socio-political function and impact. Digital media, as interactive communication, is intrinsically shaped by certain characteristics that have been routinely associated with ‘democratic’ behaviour – for example, participation, interconnection with sources of information, consistent commentary on daily issues and current affairs, capability for many-to-many interaction among users, free access void of immediate discrimination, and so on. ‘Theories of democracy designate political conversations as essential to democratically organized societies’ (Stromer-Galley & Wichowski, 2011:168). It is through such conversations that citizens are able to clarify their personal views, access the opinions of others and discover common problems in society. Digital media makes this conversation possible by its features of interactivity, ability to bridge the distance among citizens and freedom to speak freely (Stromer-Galley & Wichowski, 2011:170-2). On the face of it, digital media seems to enhance the basic skills of democratic systems of political life. Our task right here is to consider how such assumptions map onto empirical situations relevant to our investigation.

  90   From about year 2000, participation, user-empowerment, ‘people coming together’, increasingly became key themes shaping debates in digital media. Participation, a term that concerned Habermas’ early work in the early 1960s, is central to digital media theory and emerges in various forms, from consumer’s participation on digital media platforms in entertainment (see Jenkins, 2006), to elections and politics (see Fox and Ramos, 2012), civic engagement, social movements and activism (see Walch, 1999; Earl & Kimport, 2011) etc. American journalist Clay Shirky is one of the prominent proponents of digital media fostering participation and serving as a people-empowerment tool. In his popular book, Here comes Everybody (2008), he considers the astonishing ease with which people come together to take group action that defies corporate or state powers and to argue that people can indeed ‘transform their world’, socially and politically, through ‘everyday’ behaviours. In the marketing copy on the recto side of the first edition of his book, it stated: ‘the revolution will not be televised – it will be emailed, texted, blogged, wikied…’ (Shirky, 2008). Similarly, Tim Gee following the Arab Spring (celebrated for its groundbreaking use of social networks), recognized that ‘revolution is on the tip of every tongue’, and decided to study how campaigns as ‘counterpower’ may be more effective – as 'a revolution is the result of a series of successful campaigns’ (2011:10). Gee defined a ‘revolution’ as the simple transition of power from one elite to another. In his opinion, counterpower does not need to be violent to be effective (2011:13).

  91   In Zimbabwe, Last (2011:745) examined the use of blogs in mediating the experiences of citizens during a violent election. With particular reference to citizen journalism, he proposed that digitization has generated new ‘counter- hegemonic spaces’, where public debate itself has now gained a new powerful resistance function. Harlow (2011) found that the social network site Facebook was used to form an online political protest that then moved offline, visibly articulating in the public realm a highly contentious posthumous video where a lawyer, Rodrigo Rosenberg, accused Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colon, of murdering him (Harlow, 2011:225).

In the recent past it was perhaps all too easy to become excited about the potential for digital media to stimulate or replace actual forms of social or political change. Morozov (2011) declared that the ‘counter hegemonic’ power of digital media is a ‘delusion’. He continued, that ‘to salvage Internet’s promise to aid and fight against authoritarianism, those of us in the West who still care about the future of democracy will need to ditch both cyber-utopianism and Internet-centrism…’ (Morozov, 2011). He argued that the rhetoric of internet revolution operates on a flawed set of assumptions, unstable methodology, generating a widespread ‘Net Delusion’ even among academics and intellectuals. Rather, for Morozov, we need a realistic assessment of the risks and dangers the Internet poses, equally matched with an assessment of local context (where change can only happen) (Morozov, 2011:xviii). Succinctly put, Morozov is calling for an end to cyber-utopianism, to be replaced with cyber-

  92   realism.

Without doubt, digital media enhances certain powers of communication and interconnection, publicity and the dissemination of information and opinion; and yet it also has ushered in new restrictions, some of which take the form of unrealistic expectations – or a degrading of actual political skills where political activity is shifted to Internet platforms, for example. Communication, participation, empowerment and freedom, are surely characteristics of many forms of digital media, and yet we need to reconsider this within the stringent demands of a public sphere. Fenton (2012:160) raises an important point when she states that ‘democracy means different things to different people in different places’; and so in considering how Africa has adopted digital media technologies, behaviours and language, will critical African commentators say ‘we are falling prey once more to a thoroughly westernized interpretation of theory and politics?’ (Fenton, 2012: 160). Digital media, she observes, may offer easy tools for participatory or even direct democracy, allowing even ‘radical, oppositional and progressive social and political imaginaries to emerge’ (Fenton, 2012: 160). Yet, we cannot neglect the material and social-institutional conditions of actual politics – where digitally mediated political behaviours must be reconciled with the complex task of addressing the ‘highly coordinated, deftly administered and systematic limitations of the structures of capitalism’ (Fenton, 2012:170).

  93   ‘The Habermasian Public Sphere encounters Cyberreality’, he was far more sceptical in stating that cyberspace (a term now anachronistic in denoting the realm of digital media) is useless to the conception of a public sphere. Perhaps on account of the rudimentary form in which digital media still appeared (where in 2001, the World Wide Web was the dominant and often exclusive sphere of digital communication for most people), he expressed hesitation in defining too closely the ways in which the internet altered the very form of social interaction, and how in time this must be taken into account by theory (2001:83). Yet Boeder (1995), in his even earlier study of the public sphere, asserted that the future of ‘Habermas’ coffeehouse discourse’ was in the digital networks of the new ‘network society’ (a term routinely ascribed to Manuel Castells). He observed that the public sphere was always ‘virtual’ in the sense that as an entire entity the concept of ‘public sphere’ is, ‘abstract in meaning’ (1995: no pagination). Where more powerful power structures indeed exist, digital media offers a new capacity for instigating change. Digital public spheres make provision for a multiplicity in the communicative dimensions of a public sphere, and in Fraser’s view, significant counter-public formations. For Calhoun, new social movements could be facilitated, while perhaps contrary to Habermas’ bourgeois ideal of a coherent singular process of deliberation, the multiplicity could address so many different levels and layers of social and economic experience. In a slightly later article, Buchstein (1997), with some foresight, set down the potentialities of a digitally enhanced public sphere, which I adapt here:

• Resistance against authoritarianism

  94   operation in the marketplace, is a relatively inexpensive opportunity to generate content and communication (i.e. as compared to the spectrum of old media, such as TV, radio or print media).

• A critical public sphere – Individually initiated interaction through digital media subverts the traditional power structures embedded in old media by enhancing citizens' independence from large organisations, government agencies and big business. Digital media offers a realm of communications not dominated by ‘spin doctors’, advertising executives, and public relations managers

• Universal access – digital media to some degree redefines citizenship, in the sense that it is a medium in which people can communicate directly, quickly and reliably, and can further form distant, but diverse and cohesive political communities not bound by the nation state.

While acknowledging these characteristics, scholars continued to argue against viewing digital media as providing for a fully functioning public sphere. To Dean (in 2003), the notion of public sphere is damaged when applied to democracy. For the ‘techno-culture’ of late capitalism subjects actual change and development to a regime of information, generating a ‘communicative capitalism’ not amenable to democracy (Dean, 2003). Poster (2004) similarly observes that forces like the Internet serve to decentralise communication, and therefore ‘the networked future might be different from what we have known’; for the internet is an entirely new medium and its effects on democracy cannot be predicted via historical precedent (Poster, 2004:online).

As Bohman (2004) puts it, the Internet becomes a public sphere only through agents who engage in reflexive and democratic activity, otherwise, it would become a mere aggregate of users operating on an endlessly variable and expansive realm of communications. For a public sphere, it would require subjects ‘whose interactions exhibit features of dialogue and are concerned with its publicity’ (Bohman, 2004:140). Similarly, the more contemporary Rheingold

  95   (2012:1) asserts that the future of digital media depends on how well we learn to use that media, for while digital media in itself does not offer the full conditions for a public sphere, it is ‘dangerously nihilistic’ to dismiss it as ‘irredeemably destructive’ (2012:2). Against Poster’s scepticism (above: Poster 2004:online) there is no reason to assume that digital literacy cannot be as powerful in forming an informed and active public as other print-based literacies have done in the past. (Rheingold, 2012:3).