Series 1 - Episode 2 "The Fundamental Error"
"Series 1: Freedom and the Internet"
2024-11-10 24 min
Description & Show Notes
In this episode, Luisa Conti and Roman Lietz explore how individuals and communities are evolving in a postdigital and globalized society.
We begin with a reflection on the freedom of movement that characterizes the digital space: our plural and dynamic identities unfold day by day, click by click, in a culturally hybrid space where the local becomes increasingly less relevant and defining. However, even in the digital space we are confronted with limits: picking up the discussion from the first episode, we examine key factors that frame our (inter)actions online. While some of these apply to everyone, such as algorithms, others manifest themselves in varying ways: introducing a multi-dimensional understanding of the 'digital divide', we give hints about how the quality of postdigital life differs between people. This difference is rooted in social inequalities which, we argue, are both reproduced and actively reinforced in the digital space, not least through the discourses that emerge in anti-pluralist filter bubbles, which gain power by offering simplistic explanations for complex phenomena. After describing the mechanism we have observed in social media, we reflect on the importance of intercultural competence in dealing constructively with unfamiliarity and uncertainty. After presenting a new understanding of intercultural competence, we conclude the podcast with a call to rethink the internet as a whole.
We begin with a reflection on the freedom of movement that characterizes the digital space: our plural and dynamic identities unfold day by day, click by click, in a culturally hybrid space where the local becomes increasingly less relevant and defining. However, even in the digital space we are confronted with limits: picking up the discussion from the first episode, we examine key factors that frame our (inter)actions online. While some of these apply to everyone, such as algorithms, others manifest themselves in varying ways: introducing a multi-dimensional understanding of the 'digital divide', we give hints about how the quality of postdigital life differs between people. This difference is rooted in social inequalities which, we argue, are both reproduced and actively reinforced in the digital space, not least through the discourses that emerge in anti-pluralist filter bubbles, which gain power by offering simplistic explanations for complex phenomena. After describing the mechanism we have observed in social media, we reflect on the importance of intercultural competence in dealing constructively with unfamiliarity and uncertainty. After presenting a new understanding of intercultural competence, we conclude the podcast with a call to rethink the internet as a whole.
For more information see: www.redico.eu
Transcript
SPEAKER 1 - (00:00:00)
Hello and welcome to ReDICo, the podcast for digital interculturality. What does ReDICo stand for? So ReDICo stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Cooperatively, and it's the name of a project that looks to bring intercultural communication and internet studies closer together. I would personally say that it's all about exploring how digitalization impacts identity, culture, and society. My name is Luisa Conti, and I am one of the core members of ReDICo, based at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Over the past 20 years, I've been fascinated by the dual nature of digitality. On one hand, the digital offers incredible opportunities for transformative education, as people can connect and evolve as individuals and as communities. On the other hand, though, digital spaces often become dangerous echo chambers where hate and division thrive. In order to best explore these complexities, joining me today is Roman Lietz, another key member of the ReDICo project.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:01:16)
Hi Luisa, and of course, hello to all our listeners. I'm Roman Lietz, and I'm based at the University of Mainz. My research focuses on how digital media reshapes communities. Particularly, I'm interested in how the diverse people in society connect, participate, and how they share ideals and interests through the internet. Especially, what role the internet plays for migrants and their possibilities to participate and to create identity. I'm really looking forward to diving deeper into this now with you, Luisa.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:01:50)
Thanks for being here, Roman. So, today, we are building on the conversation from our last podcast with Fergal Lenehan. He has explored in dialogue with Yolanda L\'f3pez Garc\'eda, junior professor at the University of Chemnitz, what he calls the patchwork of platforms. This patchwork of platforms structures the digital space. The two of them also discussed the mechanisms limiting and orienting cultural practices in post-digital societies, and they were arguing how our perception of agency needs to be rethought in the digital context. In this podcast, Roman and I want to shift the focus more towards
us
, the humans who live in such an extended life world, whose structure was described last time. Indeed, the digital realm isn't just a tool or a space anymore, it's a vital part of us and our experience. So now the first question for you, Roman, is what do you think: How are we as humans transformed by the digital space?
SPEAKER 2 - (00:03:00)
Oh, well, that's a fascinating question, Luisa. In our times, the digital is so deeply integrated into our everyday lives that we often don't notice it as a separate sphere anymore. That is what we call
post-digitality
. That is the era after digitalization has taken place and shaped society. Nicholas Negroponte envisioned this in the 90s and he wrote a statement which became, I guess, one of the most quoted descriptions of the postdigital era. He said: \'93Like air and drinking water, being digital will be noticed only by its absence, not its presence\'94.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:03:42)
Yeah, it really became a very, very present reality. It's like\'85 I don't know if you know that situation when you grab your phone without thinking, like some sort of compulsion, even when there is no real reason to.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:03:59)
Yeah, I know that situation! What I find particularly intriguing in relation to the digital is how digital spaces allow us to experiment and to express multiple facets of our identity and this simultaneously. For example, for a recent article, I have immersed myself into the online Star Trek fandom and I could see how Star Trek fans reproduce their Trekkie identity in the online community and they engage, for example, at the same time for the visibility of queerness within this fandom and outside. We can inhabit different cultural contexts. We can engage with diverse groups and even redefine who we are in ways that might have been unthinkable in the purely physical world.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:04:42)
Yeah, you're right. The internet offers us really a lot of freedom. And actually,
freedom
is not by chance the topic of this year's
Wissenschaftsjahr
, the Science Year in Germany. In particular, digital spaces offer new dimensions to freedom, extending the possibilities and spaces to explore, to create, but also to connect across borders. Even languages are not borders anymore with those add-ons which translate anything into your language. For me, it was really a revolution when I could ask the students to finally collect their own first-hand data on Italian profiles in Instagram. Everything was automatically translated. They could really grab their own first-hand data. So I guess that my first association with freedom in digital space is freedom of movement. Though, not just in the literal sense of moving from one space to the other, but in a more philosophical sense, too. If you think about the freedom that gets along with it, the freedom to express different facets of who we are, as you said, but also the freedom to constantly learn and evolve.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:05:57)
Wow, freedom, that's a powerful idea. We can inhabit multiple worlds online, but Luisa, aren't there some limits?
SPEAKER 1 - (00:06:07)
Yeah, sure. Take digital inequalities, for example. Van Dijk highlights three levels. The first one is access to technology. Have you got an internet connection? How stable is it? What device do you have? Can you choose among different devices or you have just one? So then he identifies a second and a third level. The skills \'96 here we have things like media literacy, which is very different from person to person. But also the usage \'96 what do you do with this device? Where do you surf? Van Dijk reflects also, and this could be, I think, a fourth level of the digital divide, on the outcomes or benefits of our digital engagement, but also on the general impact of digitalization on our life. Here there are things like there are people who are able to find and use the right platforms to get a job, but there is also a wider reflection we could open about, for example, the consequences of digitalization \'96 If I still will have a job?
I would argue that beyond this fourth level, we could say of the benefits of digitalization for different persons, there is also quite a fifth one, I would say, that is the quality of experience, that it's very different from person to person. That is one thing to be online, but another to really have a meaningful, enriching experience there. So freedom in digital spaces, and here we go back to your question, isn't always as limitless as it seems. Think about the famous philosophical principle, my freedom ends where yours begins. In the digital world, we may think this rule is clueless, because we are not really interfering with somebody else's physical sphere. But of course, that's not true. Now in the digital world, this boundary is so frequently violated, for instance, hate speech and trolling restrict absolutely very much others' freedom and intimidate them to simply be online. So freedom online often clashes actually with the darker realities of the digital world. And for many, especially marginalized groups, digital spaces become, on the one hand, better grounds for identity and self-expression, but on the other, their experience can be marred by discrimination or exclusion.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:08:42)
That's an interesting point, Luisa, and I'm actually very curious to listen to our next episode of this podcast, in which our colleague Anna Finzel is going to interview the extremely popular Nigerian queer activist Abebisi Alimi on this. But now, going back to what you were saying... Digital spaces, of course, can sometimes reinforce divisions instead of breaking them down. And your reference to Van Dijk's levels of inequality reminded me a lot of how these inequalities manifest in real time. We often assume that once people are online, they have equal footing. But as you said, technical equipment, skills and usage patterns play a huge role in determining if people are actually included or excluded from participation and what people actually gain from these spaces.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:09:28)
Yeah, \'c7i dem Bozda in our encounters was saying that she could really identify patterns of social digital disadvantage, observing the usage different people do of their smartphone. So we were talking about the freedom of movement we have online and we came up now to talk about the limits which are different depending on who we are. This highlights the fact that our diversity in society englobes also a difference in matters of power. In Germany, there is actually a quite big discourse on
Differenz
, so difference. With Van Dijk, I listed the main ways in which the digital divide appears: socio-economical differences don't just reflect online, but also get reinforced by digitalisation. And here we come to a very important point: identity. How it is and how it is perceived. That's a very relevant topic for me and you, actually. Categories of identity still have a fundamental impact, whether you will be more likely to experience discrimination or a privilege in a certain context. So here is a clash between how I perceive the others and how the other actually is. Well, we still use very monolithic categories to perceive the others based mainly on their name or their appearance, while identity is more and more dynamic and multifaceted. We were saying at the beginning how much the digital makes us free to connect, to learn and evolve in an extremely diverse space. And that makes us who we are.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:11:05)
Yeah, that's true. That's true, Luisa. And scholars of digital migration studies and digital diaspora studies like Sandra Ponzanesi and of course ourselves, too, in our research, we try to capture, for example, how migrants use online media to create and negotiate participation and identity. I want to give you an example. A person from El Salvador in Germany may listen to Salvadorean podcasts or have regular video calls with her relatives in San Salvador. And on another level, the very same migrant might use the Internet in order to establish new contacts with Salvadoreans who also live in the diaspora and with whom they might never have connected under other circumstances. And the same person very probably also uses the Internet to find ways to engage with the new local context here in Germany, for example, in a local Facebook group for secondhand offers. So studies show indeed a plurality of activities connected to a plurality of identities and belongings of the very same individual.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:12:08)
Yeah, thanks for your example, Roman. This shows very well how it is far from reality, the idea that national cultures describe us or that any categorization \'96 like \'91migrant\'92 or the Salvadorean origin \'96 can do it. They say just a little bit of the person, but it doesn't say much about who this person really is, how this person thinks and feels in certain situations. Indeed, everything we do, how we speak, dress, think and so on isn't just a reflection of
one
static culture, of
one
category in which we can put in \'96 like an idealized national culture\'96. It's instead the product of countless cultural elements we've been absorbing over time in countless different contexts through a process of what I would call
lifewide learning
. I might engage with my local community, but I'm also deeply influenced by the translocal, even global flows I encounter daily online. And the food I like, the media I consume, even the emojis I use, the way I dress, all come from this mix of local and translocal cultural influences. So the fact that what I experience and learn online stays with me, even when I put my phone back into my pocket, means that it will also influence my local community. It changes me and I change my surroundings. So in this sense, the digital is not a separated extension of our physical world. It is so tightly connected that it's reshaping it, I'd say.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:13:44)
That's true. And that's making a connection with what Fergal pointed out in the first episode of this podcast series. So the digital gives us new tools to construct our identities, but it also boxes us in through platforms and algorithms. Actually, in the physical and the digital, in the postdigital, it's always the same struggle between freedom and control, between individuality and conformity.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:14:08)
Yes, indeed. Our digital habits, guided by our need for familiarity, which algorithms satisfy very well, I'd say, shape much of our online experience. While we have the chance online to get in contact with new ideas and perspectives, algorithms actually tend to reinforce our existing views by trapping us in echo chambers. So this is where I think the danger lies. When these echo chambers amplify extreme views or hatred, it can lead to a dangerous tribalism, which goes far beyond the digital space. Now, here lies a central paradox, actually: while our identities are becoming increasingly diverse and cultures most hybrid, the myth of belonging to homogeneous cultural groups grows stronger at the same time somehow. So in this time of complexity in which we live, it seems we crave certain things and cling to
imagined
ones.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:15:11)
Let me guess, are you referring to Benedict Anderson's concept of imagined community here?
SPEAKER 1 - (00:15:15)
Indeed, very well guessed. So we are witnessing a resurgence of national identity as it satisfies the need of belonging to a community, though this community is imagined as homogeneous and fixed. And that is the problem, instead, as I was saying before, it is heterogeneous and dynamic. So an essentialist concept of cultural identity is actually instrumental in this phenomenon. Now, it is exemplified by the idea that if you tell me where you come from or where your ancestors come from, I can tell you who you are. That's obviously nonsense. This perspective completely ignores the dynamic and plural nature of identity. Cultural identity isn't a box we check. What are you? Tick tick tick. It's something we are constantly building every day. So, for example, if I didn't choose Germany 20 years ago, but another country, I'd be another person today. But that's obviously true for all other elements which have been constituted in my life until today. So, for example, if I chose one city instead of the other, or if I got a job instead of the other, met one person instead of the other. I met you instead of others and that changed me. So even if I was following different accounts on social media than the ones I do, or I would read my news on other news portals, that actually makes me what I am. And the other possible
me
s are not me because I've taken different choices or I had different encounters.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:16:53)
Yeah, Luisa, that's right, there are a lot of hybrid possibilities. But anyway, we are often not aware that we keep thinking in groups,
you
versus
us
, don't you think?
SPEAKER 1 - (00:17:03)
Oh yes, that's actually very true. We know from social identity theory, people really need somehow to define themselves and we do it in relation to the groups to which we feel we belong. And that leads off to this in-group favoritism and out-group hostility. So we really have to be very reflective about how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive \'91the others\'92 and help ourselves to really see heterogeneity in the out-group too. And online, these dynamics are even more intense\'85 for this reason, we're talking so much about that! So platforms are designed to promote engagement and that often results in the amplification of divisive content that strengthens group identities, but in opposition to others.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:17:54)
Yeah, Luisa, you're right. That's really a little bit depressing. And I suppose not only for me or for us. The more people engage with like-minded individuals in digital spaces, the more entrenched these divisions become.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:18:09)
Yeah, that's right. And these dynamics are particularly dangerous when they fuel practices of othering.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:18:16)
Yeah, yeah, because the consequences are so real.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:18:19)
Yes! For this reason, I call this tendency of oversimplifying reality by projecting negative traits onto scapegoats, while simultaneously reinforcing a sense of belonging to an imagined community,
the fundamental error
. It is a
fundamental
error, not only because it undermines individual well-being, but also it destabilizes the very foundations of society. Society relies on mutual trust and reciprocity and this mechanism breaks it down. So analyzing the chats, for example, of the Facebook profile of the German newspaper Bild became very evident how the fundamental error is really, really popular and powerful to really kind of fuse people together, but against the other ones.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:19:05)
Yeah, Luisa, you speak about this fundamental error in your article in the book coming out in February and for whom it may be interesting in February our next e-book on these topics will be published and it will shed light on cosmopolitanism in the postdigital times. It will be open access. The title is Reimagining Digital Cosmopolitanism. \'85OK, and that was a short advertisement blog I used here!
SPEAKER 1 - (00:19:31)
So congratulations to you, Roman, and also to Fergal, obviously, for editing it. I'm actually very curious to read the other chapters\'85 But going back to us, so: digital spaces and tools have indeed immense potential to bring people together to foster intercultural dialogue, to foster transformative education, therefore, and to break down the very divisions they often reinforce. So we really need to cultivate intercultural competence. And I mean with intercultural competence, not just the competence to deal in a positive way with someone who is activating different cultural knowledge, but actually here I mean intercultural competence in a wider sense as the ability to engage constructively with unfamiliarity, as that is what we are consciously facing. If you think of the time of complexity we live in, the crisis we have to cope with so we cat panic and be afraid of anything or we can say: OK, it is as it is and let's find ways, let's tolerate ambiguity, let's find solution in a way that they are positive, not just for me against you, but for all of us. So and we know that's absolutely important because it won't be less, but more of this crisis, of these challenges. It\'92s a challenge, though, that this doesn't happen automatically \'96 this ability of developing intercultural competence \'96 and it really requires an intentional effort.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:21:05)
Yeah, that's a very important, very good point, Luisa. Digital cosmopolitanism indeed is about recognizing that we all share this hybrid space. But to achieve a mutual commitment, we need both: critical media literacy and the willingness to step outside of our comfort zones. We need to actively seek out different perspectives. We need to question the algorithms that shape our online experience and challenge an oversimplified view of identities.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:21:34)
That seems to be such a big challenge \'96 to resist that attraction towards confirmation, familiarity, certainty \'96. So, actually, maybe it is time to rethink the whole Internet. So that the digital world will become a place of freedom without producing restrictions.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:21:52)
That could be our statement for the Science Year of Freedom. Actually, that's the key thought of cyber-utopia back from the 90s. There is a need to make the digital world a place for freedom that does not endanger freedom.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:22:05)
Yeah, so Roman, we won't get bored in the next years, I guess, busy with disentangling such dangerous mechanisms that are at play. So I'd say now, thank you for joining me today.
SPEAKER 2 - (00:22:19)
Yeah, thank you, Luisa, for this insightful and very interesting conversation.
SPEAKER 1 - (00:22:23)
And then we also have to thank our listeners for being part of this conversation somehow. For more information on this and other topics relating to
digital interculturality
, please check out our website. That is www.redico.eu. You can find the link in the description of this podcast. On the website, you can also find information about our activities, such as publications, videos from our past conferences, EduCasts and also a link to our ReDICo Hub, which is to be found at https://hub.redico.eu. The hub connects scholars, people drawn from practical fields and also policy makers interested in the intersection of intercultural communication in a wider sense, as we explained it today, and the digital world. So feel free to join! And don't miss the next episode: Anna Finzel, as also Roman said before, has conceived a case study which will give us the chance to transfer our theoretical discussion of this episode and of the last episode with Fergal Lenehan and Yolanda L\'f3pez Garc\'eda. So that will help to put these theoretical discussions into practice. She will interview the popular actor and activist Adebisi Alimi, who will share his knowledge and experience bringing us to Nigeria first and to the World Wide Web afterwards. So thank you very much. Stay tuned and goodbye!