Costelloe-KuehnMemo16

Contributions:

Methodological

 * The study will be based on data collected through participant observation, ethnographic interviews, analysis of tactical media "texts," and representations of alternative media in both the U.S. and India.
 * It draws insights from previous attempts to negotiate advocacy and ethnography, activism and scholarship.
 * While researching and writing this dissertation, I hope to develop innovative, more enchanting ways to display information at (and outside of) conferences. I will experiment with different "artful" uses of the data amassed through fieldwork and reading.
 * It advances multi-sited ethnography by following //practices// and //collaboration// (Marcus writes about following people, technologies, conflict, ets. but does not illuminate ways in which practices and collaboration spread across diverse communities might best be studied. Have there been multi-sited ethnographies that follow this angle since his paper in 1995? probably.)

Empirical
· This study will contribute to the historical record of ways new media technologies have been adopted and innovated, within environmental social movements in particular. · This study will contribute to the ethnographic record of media producers in different national contexts, documenting and analyzing how media producers carry out and conceive their work, its contexts and consequences, articulating new ideas about how both media and democracy should work. <-- last point is perhaps more conceptual/theoretical.
 * Focusing on tactical media production in the United States and India, this study will contribute to the empirical record of ways (alternative, independent, community, tactical) media are produced and circulated collectively and individually.
 * I will compare and contrast the strategies and communities of practice of independent, community, and tactical media in order to better map "alternative" media?
 * the expertise required and developed
 * how orientations to discursive space are generated and changed
 * the "constrablements" of collectivity around alternative media production, in and across specific cases
 * social movements knowledge production and flows
 * big goal is to open up the category of "social movements" by illuminating distributed, non-hegemonic collectivities formed around shared constrablements, stratgegies, tactics, use of tech., etc. Distributed groups (with somewhat shared ideologies, identities) are networked and draw off each other (SM's "spillover," but in much faster timeframe). Evidence: conferences on "tactical" media have participants with countless, diverse goals and social spaces.
 * 2.2A Intellectual Merit **
 * 2.2A Intellectual Merit **

Conceptual/Theoretical

 * This study will advance conceptualization of power/resistance
 * what is the relationship between new formations and technologies of power (neoliberal projects, "societies of control," other articulations?) and resistance (the "newest social movements," global justice movement, etc.)?
 * beyond the "hegemony of hegemony": what non-hegemonic (anarchistic?) forms of collectivity and practice are emerging in response to new formations of power?
 * what double binds call these new enunciatory communities into being, to speak?
 * what forms of non-hegemonic sociality are possible, or even desirable, beyond the "local" level?
 * The study will draw on and contribute ot scholarly literatures that examine the concept of "community." "Community" will be interrogated along with poststructuralist and postanarchistic insights.
 * how are communication and community articulated?
 * This study will advance understanding of how social movements develop, focusing particularly on the mutual shaping of knowledge**,** ideology and (media) technological practice.

Practical
My dissertation will illuminate particularly promising points of intervention, offer practical recommendations for local practice and broader policies, and contribute to the refashioning of STS scholars as “public intellectuals” that can “speak out” on critical issues (Stevens 2008). Documentation and analysis of new media use in relation to environmental issues in India and the United States is important today because:
 * Results of this study can help valorize, without romanticizing, alternative media production
 * perhaps increase funding?
 * point out need for autonomy in these projects (like Tacchi, et al.'s evaluation of the Kothkale Community Radio and Internet Project)
 * Drawing on epistemological insights developed within STS, this project will map out strategies for alternative media producers responding to accusations of "bias" or lack of "objectivity."
 * 2.2B Broader Significance **
 * 2.2B Broader Significance **
 * Information production and circulation is crucial for dealing with complex and critical environmental issues
 * Globalization produces both new threats and new possibilities for addressing these threats
 * There is an urgent need for innovation in new media practices and communities
 * “Development” and “modernization” are putting unprecedented ecological strain on relatively powerless communities in India.
 * “Old” media are in crisis. Increasing consolidation – especially since the Federal Communications Commission’s 2003 decision to drastically relax media cross-ownership rules – has produced a corporate media ecology that is more beholding to advertisers and powerful interests and less accountable to the wider public.