Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times

Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, edited by Megan Boler, points out the dangers of being reduced to “dividuals” as well as potential for disruptions that allow for resistance to oppression. The strength of this book is that all the authors are looking at digital media through the lens of concepts of social justice, critical theory or post-structuralism, but the book refuses to provide a unified vision of digital media, democracy and dissent. It goes beyond digital resistance as promise versus peril and provides a nuanced understanding of digital dissent. What I especially like is that the book includes both academic researchers as well as work by activists. This type of collaboration is lacking in much work and it is desperately needed. Boler quotes Wark, who remarks that “perhaps theory needs to find a pace and a style that allows it to accompany the event, but without pretending to master it” (Wark, 1994 – cited in Boler, 2008, p. 13). Developing useful theory that assists people in working together to decrease inequality requires a closer relationship and collaboration between academics, journalists, and media activists. The book analyzes whether the plethora of digital dissent efforts have merely pacified or created alternative discourses that move people to action. I, like many of the authors in the volume, was particularly struck by the strength of Jodi Dean’s argument (Chapter Three) that “participation in the mere proliferation of messages is by no means necessarily engaging others in antagonistic, productive, political debate” (274). I continue to agree with Dean, but I appreciated Brun’s counter-arguments that point to the role of consensus and dialogue in democracy. I think perhaps what could enrich this discussion is an examination of different sites and types of political engagement. For example, there are a number of articles in Digital Media and Democracy about projects that aimed to involve people often excluded from media production, particularly women, youth and racialized groups (Renzi (Chapter 2), Schmidt and