Twilight of The Leaders

“When we forge a link… What are the ripples?”

The above question is the origin of my research. The video “Twilight of The Leaders” is a representation of what I discovered. My original focus for research surrounds the social movements and revolution that occurred within Egypt. New forms of social media are establishing platforms for collective action. As I watched the occurrences in Egypt, I began to ask another question. “Where are the leaders within the social movement?” My scope for social movements had to be broadened historically. The video I have created is developed through a historical study about forms of “medium” and how we us said medium for social movements.

Through my research, I discovered a trend that moves toward the disappearance of a single ‘unit' leader. My blog develops the historical instances in which medium shifts the agency of individuals. If the medium changes, then so does the approach. We are truly redefining 'how we operate and how we make decisions' as individuals and groups. This new dynamic has fantastic outcomes, but it also has its caveats. Through a systems comparison, I attempted to depict a representation of social media change and its effects on agency.

“Theory suggests that the accuracy of a decision often increases with the number of decision makers” (Conradt).

“However, there are three caveats about the benefits of decision sharing. First, if the abilities of potential decision makers vary widely, it might still be better to listen to one 'expert' (List). Second, there is the danger of information cascades, whereby decision makers no longer contribute independent information but instead amplify shared misconceptions (Sumpter and Pratt). Finally, in many decisions, the goals of individual decision makers differ: that is, different members of the decision-making group favour different outcomes” (Conradt and Roper).

Sources:

Abstracting Reality by Mark J. Wolf

Beyond Boundaries by Miguel Nicolelis

Collapse by Jared Diamond

The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer

Democracy in animal groups: a political science perspective by Christian List

Group decision-making in animals by Larissa Conradt and T. J. Roper

Mediated by Tomas De Zengotita

The Medium is The MASSAGE by Marshall Mcluhan

Quorum responses and consensus decision making by David Sumpter and Stephen Pratt

Revolution and War by Karl Marx

Smart Mobs by Howard Reingold

When it Pays to Share Decisions by Larissa Conradt

Wired for Chang Remix: Session 2 - Dispatches From the Wired World: Technology for Social Good

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Update to VOST2011 Project:

Quote from Parker Palmer's "The Courage To Teach": The mythical dominant model of truth-knowing and truth-telling has four major elements.

1. Objects of knowledge that reside "out there" somewhere, pristine in physical or conceptual space, as described by the "facts" in a given field.
2. Experts, people trained to know these objects in their pristine form without allowing their own subjectivity to slop over onto the purity of the objects themselves. This training transpires in a far-off place called graduate school, whose purpose is so throughly to obliterate one's sense of self that one becomes a secular priest, a safe bearer of the pure objects of knowledge.
3. Amateurs, people without training and full of bias, who depend on the experts for objective or pure knowledge of the pristine objects in question.

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Video Project for Digital Ethnography:

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