Homework 4 Winner and Ott

In His writing, “The Politics of the artefact, Langdon Winner claims that the structures of new technologies affect the political and sociological systems around them.  He claims technological advances can affect their sociological atmosphere in two ways, incidentally and inherently. Winner’s claims are intriguing and increasingly relevant as new technologies emerge.  His work can be tied to Ott’s examination of twitters sociological influence, specifically focusing on how it pertains to Donald Trump.

Incidental sociological influences are not directly connected to the purpose of said technologies.  Winner better explains this by discussing the example of low overpasses in Long Island, New York.  While many of us would not think much of these overpasses with barely nine feet of clearance, Winner takes a deeper look.  He reveals that an architect, Robert Moses, who worked from the 1920’s to the 1970’s created theses overpasses with a deliberate purpose.  Moses built these low overpasses to deter public transportation from taking less wealthy citizens to parks and other places that he wanted to save for a wealthier class of people.  Moses used these overpasses to deliberately change the sociological environment around him, to favor the wealthy people that he was biased towards.

However Langdon Winner makes is clear that, while this example may be an easy example to demonstrate inherent social change, it is not always so egregious or even deliberate.  This is demonstrated by the movement of civil rights for the handicapped in the 1970’s.  Handicap accessibility was nowhere near as commonplace as it is now, and while cities were not designed to oppress handicapped people, they did have that effect.  You can also see social change enacted in the rebuilding of parts of these cities, in order to accommodate the handicapped population.

While some technologies sociological ripple is not intended other technologies have the specific aim of catalyzing change.  The simplest example would be the nuclear bomb.  The bomb was designed to end a political and military conflict with force and it succeeded.  The lingering effect it has left politically is nearly unmatched.  There are now expansive systems and policies in place in all countries with nuclear capabilities.  Hierarchies are created to advise on and control the use of these new weapons.  The sociological footprint of nuclear weapons can also be seen in the tension between nations, dating back to the cold war.  Winner also provides a few less extreme examples of inherent sociological influence.  He explains how solar panels can be used to break away from current hierarchies.  Regardless of their economic and ecological affects, solar energy can play a role in decentralizing a society’s energy consumption.  If people are able to use solar panels to harness their own power, they are less reliant on centralized sources of power like fossil fuels.

Winner’s claims are increasingly relevant because of the age of the internet and digital media.  He discusses how printing and television both changed society as they became society primary source of connectivity.  Now sociologists must examine the effects of social media.  Brian Ott examines the effects of specifically twitter in his article, “The age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the politics of debasement”

In this Ott discusses the type of rhetoric twitter tends to enable.  I found Ott’s claims to have many similarities to my research on how twitter contributes to President Trump’s use of Demagoguery.  The claim is that twitter lends itself useful to impulsive, simplistic and malicious rhetoric.

The lack of depth required to form a tweet in conjunction with the ease of logging into, and posting on twitter, contributes to a massive outflow of impulsive and brainless ideas. Many rhetoricians have discussed   how the process of writing helps to clarify ones thoughts and twitter removes the need for this process.  Twitter attributes to an atmosphere of malice by depersonalizing interactions.  Ott believes (and I agree) that it is much easier to be generally nasty in your interactions when you have almost no chance of seeing someone face to face.  You can viciously argue with little more than a name and a profile picture of someone from across the world without fear that the interaction will ever leave its digital home.

The greater effect of the age of twitter can be seen in the rise of President Trump.  Twitter fostered and environment that fit perfectly into Trumps strategy.  His goal was to challenge the status quo in a time of disillusion   His divisive and simplistic style of argumentation flourished in the world of Twitter.  During his campaign Trump thrived off of controversy.  Twitter made it easy for Trump to make quick and impactful challenges to his opposition.  A country that was generally angry with the state of the union, wanted to support a candidate who shared their discontent.  While his logic is overly-simplistic and often very aggressive, that is what twitter conditioned people to respond to.  The way Trump, a man with very little political experience, used twitter to help win an election perfectly demonstrates Winner’s claim that new technologies severely impact the political environments of their times.

Reading Response 5: Trolls

In his book Phillips discusses the actions of an increasingly relevant group in the age of growing digital media.  In the chapter of his book, The Thin Line Between Trolling and Corporate Punditry, Phillips discusses the group we now call “Trolls”.   Trolls are known for using aggressive, and typically racist, language on the internet in order to elicit a response from others online.  Phillips’ goal is to highlight the differences and similarities between racism in media and racism in troll communities.

Phillips begins her argument by discussing the differences between overt racism and inferential racism.  She explains that inferential racism is racism that is not outright and clearly racist.  As opposed to trolls, inferential racism is used by more reputable sources including media outlets.  Trolls however rely on overt racism, because that can be used to more easily elicit an extreme response.  Phillips uses examples of both types of racism as the basis for this chapter.

Phillips compares the effects of an image of President Obama depicted as Heath Ledger’s joker, with the media’s inability to let go of discussions surrounding the president’s birth certificate.  The Image of Obama with “socialist” inscribed across the presidents chest, was meant to cause people to associate the President with chaos and disorder.  Anti-Obama groups took this image and used it to spread negative beliefs about the president.  Groups used this and similar images in campaigns fighting “Obama’s Nazi Death Care Plan.  However one of Phillip’s main arguments is that this kind of rhetoric can actually be less damaging than inferential racism.  This argument is based on the fact that overt racism advertises itself as much.  Inferential racism however can be portrayed as false information.  Phillips claims that the controversy over the Presidents Birth certificate influenced viewers of certain media to internalize racist thoughts.  This can be displayed through an interview on the Colbert Report, in which lawyer-dentist Orly Taitz, claims he cannot trust Obama because his father was born in Africa.  Taitz was on national television expressing beliefs that are both racist and xenophobic, but he is taken seriously given his reputation and the setting of the interview.

Phillips other claim that I find the most intriguing is the claim that trolls that use racism are not necessarily racist.  She says that trolls rely on the power of certain racist words, but are unaware that they are passing on racist ideologies.  She also argues that it is impossible to prove if someone over the internet is racist to the point is invalid.  I do appreciate the ideology behind the claim that the use of racist language does not inherently make one racist.  I however would argue that consistent and intentional use of racist language should be considered legitimate racism.  While these “trolls” intentions may not be to spread stereotypes, their intentional use of the language just to anger people displays a lack of empathy and some level of aggression towards whichever minority is offended by said language.   With that said, I do agree with Phillips’ point that this type of overt racism is less dangerous since it is easily identifiable.