“People don’t want to get involved. They’d rather watch on TV,” said Troy Simmons, 47, who joined demonstrators as he left work. [1]
“The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”
The crowd resounds, chanting condemnation in unison to an army of police abusing Occupy Wall Street protesters.They are, of course, referring to a contingent of protesters and media armed with still and video cameras, who appear to outnumber those protesters without.
Let’s consider this chant, and what’s being said.
The crowd is referring to the capturing of incidents of police brutality and their likely rapid distribution, virally through the internet and possibly syndicated throughout news stations as “user-submitted news.” Clearly, police brutality and its threat is ubiquitous at Occupy Wall Street. Protesters are tasked with how to respond to these acts being performed on them and others. The videography and its dissemination represents a techno-fix for this dilemma.
Soon, “the world” will see these videos. They’ll be “watching.”
Who populates this “world”? In what is their “watching” expected to result? What can we legitimately expect from the viewership of these distributed images?
The chanters appear to believe that these videos will capture a popular viewing audience. That this belief is founded in a social reality is an empirically demonstrable one. I’d be curious to see this considered more formally. My prediction is that the viewership is more narrow than most would presume. Considering that all political content consumed online represents less than 1% of internet traffic, and that less than a quarter of 1% of U.S. citizens watch the Rachel Maddow Show, I’d be willing to argue there is considerable empirical basis for my impression.
I’m wondering if the chanters expect the video, sans commentary and context, and with the ability for broadcasters and viral sharers to reframe the incident with their own, conveys a clear and obvious message. This would be more than naive; it would demonstrate a fundamentally flawed understanding of media, the internet, and social cognition.
It would be in error to think anyone, let alone most viewers, will make the same sense of the videos as the videographers and those surrounding them had of the situation. The removal from the situation, the simulation on the screen, the lack of presence in the situation and all the affective reactions it would inspire, the missing context, and so on; all these demonstrate the many reasons why the experience of the viewer is altered.
But lets assume that some of the most appropriate possible viewership sees the videos and comes to understand the situation as the videographers experienced it. What are these people expected to do with their viewership? They are watching, but so what?
Perhaps more pernicious is what these expectations do to those present in the situation. Here we have a crowd of hundreds – maybe thousands – who seem to be convinced that a worldwide viewership will see this video and do something about it. We have no reason to suspect the desired result will be the identification of the brutal police and massive public pressure resulting in their being detained, tried and jailed. All evidence and experience points to that expectation being ridiculous.
Over the past decade, the likelihood of any police activity falling outside of the view of a video camera – whether a dash cam, surveillance camera, or cell phone camera held by a civilian – has approached zero. Yet police brutality reports have been on a steady climb. Several cell phone videos captured from multiple angles the point-blank shooting by a police officer of an immobilized and unarmed Oscar Grant. This badge-bearing assassin was released with time served after 11-months.
We have no evidence to suggest that video surveillance reduces police brutality. We have no evidence to support the belief that such footage will result in punitive responses. It seems the chanters are expecting the watching world to actualize an end to this brutality by their mere viewership, or some form of punishment for those who engaged in it. But if this is the extent of the expectation, it amounts to a misplaced faith. So is there an additional expectation? Is there reason for their expecting it to be fulfilled?
I’ll put forward a different impression of this scenario: people – perhaps the majority of the crowd – are beginning to experience these acts of brutality performed directly in their presence as a simulation, experienced on the viewfinders of their cameras. It is not a person being beaten and abused, but pixels depicted a scripted act of mediated entertainment.
Without any well-established rationale being put forward, I am left to support the position that the widespread videography is a failed techno-fix. Further, it comes with some troubling unintended consequences, namely that the protesters are opting to engage in this failed technique rather than another tactical response. I’m not going to suggest what another response should be. I will only suggest that most (not necessarily all) of the people present in the situation leave their cameras behind, engage in the presence of their situation and do what feels appropriate. Then we can evaluate the effectiveness of these alternate responses. We already have enough reason to believe the current response is impotent.
Certainly, videographers should continue to capture footage of the events and of incidents of police brutality. This is an essential aspect of any well-planned above-ground political action for a multitude of reasons. But when the front lines of the protests are exclusively populated by videographers – and not people employing other tactical responses – the uniformity of the tactics and their consistent past failures is problematic on various levels.
1. Reuters, “Rome Protests Erupt: Cars Torched, Windows Smashed.” October 15, 2011. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/15/rome-protests-pictures-photos_n_1013203.html#s411057
This reminds me of a line I read in a Baudrillard essay from his ‘Utopie’ years, (60s-70s). Thinking back on Nantes 1968 he commented ‘The students fell in love with their own aural image on the radio.’ (I think the line can be found in his essay Play and the Police)
And this line, “The pedogagic illusion, this through that forgets that – the political act deliberately targeting the media and expecting power from it – the media itself is deliberately targeting the political act to depoliticize it.” (p82 Requiem for the Media).
I wonder what Vrillio would say on the ‘real-time’ of the live streams and the videos?