What is the future of democracy in the era of corporate power and the military industrial state? Probably no social question is more insistent and urgent for us. Traditional notions of the public sphere or civil society as a space for the free exchange of ideas by individuals and social groups of diverse kinds, have increasingly been challenged by numerous social forces that have only intensified in recent years. Can the exchange of ideas be free when a handful of transnational corporations control the vast majority of media outlets, from cinema and the airwaves to film production and entertainment spaces? What does it mean when the public sphere is increasingly privatized by the very media it uses, when the dominant modes of communication-radio, television, and now the internet-are consumed in the private space of the home, dividing consumers from one another rather than creating a common space? Is the growth of state power and of private corporations leading to the drastic reduction of spaces for public challenges to or criticism of dominant institutions and to increasingly repressive uses of force to contain dissent? And, to borrow a phrase from Noam Chomsky, is it the case that consent to state and corporate policies is in fact “manufactured” by an increasingly compliant media? If so, what are we to make of the new spaces for independent media that advances in technology seem to be making possible-digital media, video production and cable television, the net? Do the new electronic media carry with them, like the former “Gutenberg galaxy”, the possibility of transformed public spaces and the promise of greater democracy? What will it take to preserve those spaces for free and uncensored communication? How are contemporary social movements using such media as well as older corporate media to mobilize and communicate? How have the new social movements that have arisen in the wake of the 1960s transformed our sense of the public sphere and the practices of dissent? Does the recent upsurge of protest against the undemocratic decision making practices of states, international bodies and corporations give reason for optimism about the possibilities for fuller democratic participation in the societies of the future?
Conference Participants:
4:15 p.m.
Dee Dee Halleck, UCSD, Paper Tiger Television
7:30 p.m.
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange, Green Party
Friday, November 16
9:30 – 12 noon
Walden Bello, University of the Phillipines,
Executive Director, Focus on the Global South
Eric Mann, Director, Labor/Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles
2:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Paul Chan, Independent Media Center, New York
Larry George, CSU Long Beach
John Sellers, Ruckus Institute, Berkeley
7:30 p.m.
Amy Goodman, host, “Democracy Now!”, Pacifica Radio
Saturday, November 17
10:00 a.m.
Open Forum on Social Movements, Media and Democracy