Taran of Know Prose has written a follow up comment to my post “Executives, Investors and Activists“. First of all I have empathy with his feelings of “disenfranchisement” both from the corporate world and from those who claim to speak for the grassroots and his post raises many qestions. In my piece I mentioned the corporate media’s attempt to appropriate the grassroots media whether via the technology (blogging) or via events such as We Media in which the MSM and citizens media come together supposedly to exchange ideas and build bridges. Questioning the democracy of such events Taran writes
Democracy is based on what is dominant, and democracy can mean two wolves and sheep voting on what is for dinner..
Who really benefits and who are the wolves and the sheep remains to be seen. Which brings me to the question: how grassroots is the grassroots media or rather those that claim to represent that community? Are we not in danger of becoming a sort of giant appendage of the corporate world, a sort of other side of the corporate coin so to speak. This is where the negotiation comes into play and as Taran writes
When you get funding for projects as an activist, what price do you pay? There is a negotiation, and I think the We Media forum was one of those ‘negotiations’…….
The negotiation that takes place can be beneficial to both parties. One has the kudos of being associated with the grassroots media with the implied participation of activists, whilst the other has access to funds from a giant media corporation whilst maintaining the illusion of independence and activism and thereby attracting support and invovlment by individual activitsts. However, one of the problems with grassroots and activism is that both of these have now become mainstream activities and opportunities to make money. Being an activist has in many instances become a profession and you get paid for it and at some point this will impact on how the activist carries out her or his work and the choices they make. Not that this is a problem as long as it is made clear and the organisation or individual is upfront about other interests that have to be satisfied.
An alternative arguments is that the grassroots or citizens media is affecting change in the MSM. One example is that there is far more interaction between MSM and citizens via the MSM blogs that are attached to online publications. However I am not sure how much monitoring takes place and anyway the opinions of the writers are still tied to the interests of the corporate news business. In reality this is playing at citizen participation rather than doing anything really meaningful.
More interesting is the monitoring of blogs by the MSM and this is where an organisation such as Global Voices becomes particularly useful via its daily and weekly compilation of blogs from across the world. Another argument is that one has to work from within the establishment to change it. My response to this is summed up in a quote from Audrey Lorde “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, which brings me back to the title of this post “how do we keep the grassroots green”? Taran suggests we become “well armed sheep” by which I believe he means for us to find ways to empower ourselves and build strong networks so that next time dinner is up for discussion the wolves are out manouvered and outnumbered.
