Universitt Potsdam Philosophische Fakultt Institut fr Anglistik und Amerikanistik Magisterarbeit im Hauptfach Anglistik und Amerikanistik 1.Gutachter: Prof.

Dr. Lars Eckstein 2.Gutachter: Dr. Jrgen Hei Eingereicht am: 27.07.2012 Note: 1,0

Digital Natives: Children of Globalization Exposing Empire

An Analysis of the Occupy Movement in the United States of America

Autor: Philip Ketzel Studiengang: Magister Artium: Ang/Am Sprache und Kultur; Religionswissenschaft; AVL Email: philip.ketzel@gmail.com

Abstract
The present study is interested in demonstrating that the constitution of the Occupy Movement in the USA can be understood in terms of Micheal Hardt and Antonio Negris concept of Empire and the multitude. I argue that the movement should be perceived as a representation of the multitude, because of the ways in which it organizes, represents and deploys itself. Since the concept of the multitude as theorized by Hardt and Negri remains quite abstract, the present study also uses the notion of the Digital Native to grasp this concept. By arguing that the use of modern forms of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have played an important role in the cultural impact of the Occupy Movement, the study hypothesizes that the practices of Digital Natives within this movement have made visible the struggle of the multitude in the United States and have helped, therefore, to expose and oppose to a certain extent the biopower deployed by the capitalist society of control that Hardt and Negris Empire represents. KEYWORDS: Digital Native, OWS, Occupy Movement, Post-Marxism, Anti-Globalization

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Table of Content

Acknowledgements 1. 2. Introduction The Digital Native A Controversial Concept

2.1 2.2 2.3 The Origin The Controversy The Potential

3 4 9
9 10 14

3.

Elucidating Empire
3.1 3.2 3.3 Empire Biopower, Biopolitics and Immaterial Labor The Multitude and the Common

16
16 21 29

4.

The Rise of the Multitude

4.1 The Context of the U.S. Occupy Movement
Arab Sping and Spains Indignados Occupy Wall Street Sparking a National Movement 4.1.1 4.1.2

37
37
37 41

4.2 4.3

The Digital Multitude & the Police Occupying the Media

46 60

5. 6. 7.

Conclusion Bibliography Deutsche Zusammenfassung laut MPO 22 (7)

74 79 89

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Acknowledgements
Writing this thesis with the aim to demonstrate that I have mastered the skills of a humanities scholar has been a demanding task indeed. I would not have mastered this task, if it had not been for the support and help of some very important people. First and foremost, I need to thank my beloved partner Luisa, who has been the best moral and motivational support one can wish for in a relationship. Her emotional warmth and strength as well as the discussions we had helped me enormously. Especially, in those times when I felt like having a million thoughts that seemed to never become a coherent whole. Secondly, I owe my gratitude to Nilofar Ansher. If it was not for her eagle-eyed proofreading and steady demands to re-write sentences, the present thesis would probably have been a terrible read. But also the numerous discussions we had, helped me tremendously to focus or to get some distance from the topic in the times when I needed to clarify my thoughts. Without a doubt, this project would never have seen day, if I had not stumbled across the video of Nishant Shahs talk at the Republica 2010 on YouTube. It was this talk that pulled me out of my misanthropic and cynic world view, into which I fell after having studied the history of the New York Times and its role in the US politics. Moreover, was it this presentation that led me to contact Nishant Shah and thereby become involved in the great project that is Digital Naitves with a Cause? Last but not least, I owe my gratitude to my parents and family for their financial and emotional support that not only enabled me to work less and focus more on writing in the last phase of my studies, but also gave me the chance to enjoy a truly Humboldtian education. Being one of the last Magister Artium students meant having the choice to select classes and set an individual pace of study that helped both my intellectual and personal development.

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1. Introduction
The year 2011 saw a wave of civil protest movements that changed the world. It was the year of the Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignados and the Occupy Movement; the year of the Facebook and Twitter revolutions (cf. Taylor 2011; Beaumont 2011; C. Smith 2011;

Duncombe 2011). As indicated in the latter, what has been so new about these movements is not the fact that citizens have marched on the streets and occupied squares to protest dictator regimes and/or social and economic injustice, but the manner in which these protests have been organized and conducted. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) such as satellite television, personal computers, mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet with its various social media networks probably the most influential product of the digital revolution have enabled ordinary people around the globe to coordinate, mediate and promote their protest in a distributed and networked manner, thereby appearing to bypass the dependency on established centralized institutions, like mainstream media outlets, unions or political parties (Tufekci 2011). Yet not everybody is able to apply these technologies in such a fashion. It needs actors who master its usage. Looking at images of the protesters of the mentioned movements, one is drawn to assume that it is mainly the young who play a pioneering role in revealing the potential of such new technologies. The tendency of young people incorporating digital technologies into their everyday life, in a seemingly natural manner, has been thematised using the term Digital Native. Since Mark Prensky coined the term in 2001, it has led to controversy and produced an interdisciplinary discourse that has dealt with the social, cultural, political as well as the biological consequences of the digital revolution (cf. Prensky 2001; Helsper and Eynon 2010; Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008; Selwyn 2009; Wiersma 2010; Shah et al. 2011). What the discourse has achieved is the fact that the idea of the Digital Native has been helpful in looking at the new practices of knowledge production, community building, sharing, participation and collaboration that have emerged with the rise and spread of digital and internet technologies (Shah and Jansen 2011a, 6). However, the term becomes highly problematic, when it is used in a universalistic way to denominate a certain group of people, because then one runs into danger of fostering sweeping generalizations or discriminatory stereotypes (cf. Shah and Jansen 2011a, 67). Shah and Jansen therefore suggest using the idea of a context-based Digital Native identity and practice (2011a, 7).

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Following this suggestion, the present study focuses on the cultural impact of ICT practices by Digital Natives in the context of the U.S. Occupy Movement, which took off with the Occupy Wall Street protests in the autumn of 2011. The key question this study asks is, How to interpret the role that Digital Natives play within this Movement? To answer this question, the study poses the hypothesis that the movement clearly shows the influential role of Digital Natives practices in shaping culture, society and politics from the bottom up. In order to prove this, the study will examine prominent examples of the practices used by Digital Natives in the Occupy Movement in the United States. Since the Movement is protesting national grievances that are deeply linked with the effects of the contemporary, global, capitalist mode of production, especially with the repercussions of the recent global financial crisis, it is also necessary to have a theoretical framework which is able to address this. The theory of Empire and the multitude,1 propounded by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, is thus considered to be the most appropriate, because it provides a framework which, on the one hand, helps contextualize the movement within the critical discourse of the political and economic aspects of globalization; and on the other hand, it helps to interpret the important role Digital Natives play within the U.S. Occupy Movement. Within the books Empire (2001) and Multitude (2004), Hardt and Negri elaborate their poststructuralist and Marxist conception of the contemporary world order and how it has been shaped by the globalization of capitalist production. In doing so, they postulate a network power, a new form of sovereignty called Empire, which includes as its primary elements, or nodes, the dominant nation-states along with supranational institutions, major capitalist corporations, and other powers (Hardt and Negri 2004, xii), and which unites these nodes under a single logic of rule (Hardt and Negri 2001, xii). They say that in the process of global economic and cultural exchanges, the sovereignty of nation-states has declined, and that Empire has instead become the political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world (Hardt and Negri 2001, xi). With the descriptive term Empire, Hardt and Negri therefore theorize how the modernist form of imperialism has been replaced by a postmodernist form of imperial rule. What this means is that the former colonial powers of the world are no longer competing against each other using military force to dominate foreign territories in order to increase their wealth; but rather, they now cooperate in decentralized capitalist networks,
1

The study follows Hardt and Negris notation by omitting the definite article in front of Empire and by not capitalizing the term multitude.

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which pose a new form of imperial hegemony that dominates the global cultural and economical sphere. This networked cooperation can be seen in multilateral organizations, such as the United Nations (UN) and their affiliated institutions, or the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other international trade agreements, which all reinforce and organize the global capitalist production and the world market (Hardt and Negri 2001, xixv). For that matter, Empires hegemonic power is not only limited to economic aspects, but its logic of rule reaches into every aspect of social life (Hardt and Negri 2001, xv). Even though this concept of a decentralized network power entails no territorial centre or an outside, Hardt and Negri attribute the United States to occupy a special place within it, because they see in the countrys constitution (the written as well as the material one) the blueprint for this network power. (2001, xiv, and chap. 2.5) However, another important aspect of globalization is that within the tendency towards an all-incorporating imperial global order there also grows a living alternative, another network power that stretches across the globe through modes of cooperation and communication, which Hardt and Negri call the multitude (2004, xiii). In contrast to the controlling, multilateral organizations that constitute the network power of Empire, the multitude should rather be understood as the plurality of individual people with distinct subjectivities who form an open and inclusive network, in which all differences can be expressed freely and equally, a network that provides the means of encounter so that we can work and live in common (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiiixiv). In other words, it is the civil society that gets managed and governed by Empire. Yet, it would be wrong to interpret this multitude in terms of an identity (like the people), or a uniform (like the masses), because in doing so, one would render the plurality of the many and distinct subjectivities that constitute it ineffective (Hardt and Negri 2004, xv). The two authors therefore speak of a plane of singularities, when they describe the idea of the multitude (Hardt and Negri 2001, 103). What connects these singularities and enables them to communicate and collaborate is the fact that there are certain things they share in common, such as language, knowledge, norms and values, and other cultural aspects. Hardt and Negri call this the common, to distinguish it from the pre-capitalist notion of the commons, and to highlight its influence in the postmodern form of labor, which is more and more immaterial, communicative and affective (2004, xv). Furthermore, the authors point out that the common is not just the foundation which makes the interactions between individuals possible, but that it gets permanently reproduced through these interactions of postmodern labor (ibid.). It is the Ketzel | 6

productivity of the multitude based on the common from which Empire feeds itself, which it consequently needs to control, and which therefore also makes possible Empires subversion and destruction (cf. Hardt and Negri 2001, 6162; Hardt and Negri 2004, 335). According to the above, it is now possible to reformulate the hypothesis of the present study. Looking at the U.S. Occupy Movement, it seems helpful to understand the contexts produced by Digital Natives as manifestations of the multitudes struggle against the control of Empire. In other words, Hardt and Negris idea of the multitude becomes visible and real through the practices of Digital Natives, who thereby play an influential role in contesting and exposing the power structures of Empire. To give a glimpse into the main analysis, one can see for example in the global spread of the slogan We are the 99% through the social media networks of the internet the playgrounds of Digital Natives the multitudes common grievance of feeling misrepresented by a government that acts according to the logic of Empire. Linking the concept of the Digital Native with Hardt and Negris notion of the multitude has not been done explicitly. Especially with regard to the currency of the U.S. Occupy Movement, the approach of the present study is considered to be a new and meaningful contribution to the humanities. The decision to use the theoretical framework of Empire and the multitude in this context is supported by the fact that Negri and Hardt have themselves been referring to the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement using the concept of the multitude (cf. 2011a; 2011b; 2011c). With regard to its combination with the concept of the Digital Native, it needs to be mentioned, however, that Adam Haupt has already acknowledged the impact of ICT practices often attributed to Digital Natives in his book Stealing Empire (2008), by focusing on such practices as file-sharing, remixing and sampling as forms of resistance against the powers of Empire. Even though he does not refer to the Digital Native concept explicitly, his work can therefore be regarded as contextual reference, when claiming that Digital Native practices in the Occupy protests express a similar form of resistance. Other scholars have been using terms like hacktivism, slacktivism or clicktivism to describe the engagement of many (mostly young) people in online petitions and other political activities via ICT (cf. Sprigman 2003; Hasham 2001; Krapp 2005; Juris 2005; Hands and Quinney 2010; Tsou 2011, 34; Morozov 2009). Yet as Prabhas Pokharel points out, such approaches seem to ignore the larger scale produced by the discursive activism in which Digital Natives engage (2010, 78). It is this discursive aspect of Digital Native activism in which the present study is interested. The methodology used should Ketzel | 7

therefore be understood as an implementation of Hardt and Negris theory on the example of the Digital Native practices in the U.S. Occupy Movement. Since the theory of Empire represents in itself an interdisciplinary approach, the present study will also be to some extent interdisciplinary. However, with regard to the focus on certain examples of Digital Native practices of producing and sharing information, affects and social relations in this particular context, the thesis positions itself in the field of cultural studies. The overall approach or structure of the thesis is as follows: The first chapter clarifies the underlying definition of a Digital Native, by highlighting the controversial aspects of the Digital Native discourse. The second chapter elucidates Hardt and Negris theory of Empire, in order to work out the necessary terminology needed for the argumentation. The main part, with the focus on the U.S. Occupy Movement, is divided into three sections; first, there is a contextualization of the Occupy Movement with regard to its early history as well as the preceding protests of the Arab Spring and the Spanish Democratia Real Ya! movement. Second, the study looks at two prominent examples of Digital Native practices that represent an opposition to the physical force of Empire, which is expressed in the police reactions towards the Occupy protests. In the third section, the study will look at examples of Digital Native practices with regard to the movements organization, representation and deployment of protest. The approach with which these examples are analyzed follows a threefold structure that looks at production, distribution and cultural impact. Given the fact that the U.S. Occupy Movement is relatively young and still ongoing, but also with respect to the analysis of its online representation, the cited sources about the movements history and constitution as well as the analyzed examples themselves mainly remain online sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles, blog posts, videos and images shared through internet platforms. The analysis of the movement will mostly cover the time span from its inception in September 2011 up to the early months of 2012. This duration saw the movement at its most visible and can be said to have had the most cultural and political impact so far. Since the movement is being treated as leaderless, which means that the various occupations are conducted in a horizontal and decentralized fashion, as well as that it is still ongoing, means that it is that much more difficult to pinpoint specific events or actions as most important. Thus, the present study must be regarded as an exemplary case study that does not claim to portray the movement in its entirety. It should rather be understood as a distinct starting point or basis for future studies that will discuss the cultural impact of the Occupy Movement.

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2. The Digital Native A Controversial Concept

2.1 The Origin
Coming from the field of education and having his students in mind, it was Mark Prensky who coined the term Digital Native in 2001. In the two essays Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part II: Do They REALLY Think Differently?, he argues that students who have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age [...] think and process information fundamentally differently (Prensky 2001a, 1). He claims that these students have therefore developed significantly new behavioral patterns, and he supports his claim by referring to insights of neurobiologists and social psychologists. The most important concept of his theoretical justification is that of neuroplasticity, which describes a constant restructuring of the brain according to the various stimuli it is presented with (Prensky 2001b, 1). By calling this generation of students Digital Natives, he interprets their different way of thinking and acting as a new form of native language, which is not spoken by those who he calls Digital Immigrants and who have the distinction of being born in the pre-digital era, circa 1980 (Prensky 2001a, 1). Throughout the two essays, he distinguishes between those two groups in order to work out the problems a Digital Immigrant teacher faces when teaching a Digital Native student. What is of importance for the overall discourse around the idea of the Digital Native, are the new skills and characteristics Prensky attributes to them. According to him, Digital Natives:
are used to receiving information really fast (2001a, p. 2), like to parallel process and multi-task (ibid.), prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite (ibid.), prefer random access (like hypertext) (ibid.), function best when networked (ibid.), thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards (ibid.), prefer games to serious work (ibid.), have been networked most or all of their lives (2001a, p. 3), are highly unlikely to become Digital Immigrants (ibid.), have an attention span that is conditioned by interactivity (2001b, p. 4), and appear to have a declined ability to reflect (ibid.).

With respect to these characteristics it is noteworthy that Prensky points out their gradual occurrence, when he elaborates that the neuroplasticity of the brain is correlated with the intensity of a certain stimulus, such as the hours spend playing video games (2001b, p.12). This already indicates the broad generalization Prensky is making by describing an entire generation. In the first essay installment, Prensky did not cite any sources for his claims, but Ketzel | 9

based them on anecdotes. In the second essay, he roughly approximated the average engagement with technologies such as video games, TV, E-mails and Instant Messenger, etc., based on sources that cannot be considered empirically sound, and he fails to provide further empirical evidence. It is typically this broad generalizing aspect of the Digital Native idea, with its weak empirical and theoretical backing, which lies at the base of most criticism.

2.2 The Controversy

Prensky was not the only one to have attributed special skills of using digital technologies to the young. As Neil Selwyn points out, this has been the practice since the 1970s, but it became more popular with the spread of internet connected computing devices that make for a new form of social computing, which is often unified under the banner of Web 2.0 (Selwyn 2009, 364). Others have used terms like Net generation, Millenials or Google generation, yet the term Digital Native can be said to have achieved the widest spread (cf. Helsper and Eynon 2010, 503; Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008, 775). The problem that many scholars have with the Digital Native discourse is rooted in the fact that its impact in popular culture, policy making and science rests more on persuading general arguments, which are mostly based on common observations and anecdotes, than on rigorous, objective empirical studies conducted with representative samples (Selwyn 2009, 371). So, before looking at the actual empirical evidence, it seems reasonable to look at those persuading arguments. Since Selwyn summarizes and analyzes the most prominent arguments elaborately in his paper The Digital Native Myth and Reality (2009), it will be used as main point of reference here. For instance, Digital Natives are said to have a higher flexibility in their lifestyle, due to their use of ICT and especially the internet, which enables them to benefit in terms of individual expression, building and maintaining relationships in multiple forms, as well as personalizing their activities and services (Selwyn 2009, 366367). Having the ability to express their individualism in an active rather than passive way, by, for example downloading, uploading, remixing and sharing photos, videos, music or text the way they like, is said to augment their control over the nature and form of what they do making them autonomous and highly sociable (Selwyn 2009, 367). This interconnected and independent lifestyle is often presented as giving young people a propensity to question, challenge and critique the world around them, which then supposedly leads them to construct alternatives to the core values of the traditional institutions and structures of previous generations (Selwyn 2009, 367). With regard to the postulated new cognitive and learning abilities, Ketzel | 10

Selwyn says that Digital Natives are seen to be able to access vast digital networks of information, resources and people, thus learning in ways that are increasingly situated within authentic contexts and webs of knowledge (ibid.) However, these new abilities have also been criticized. There have been concerns about how far overtly exposure to, or immersion in ICT, might cause actual physical and psychological harm (Selwyn 2009, 368). Examples of this can be found in debates about the influence of ego-shooter video games on high school shootings (cf. Patalong 2002), or easily accessible pornography on changed sexual behavior (cf. Heymann 2012). Resonating with Prenskys notion of a decline in the ability to reflect, there have been concerns raised over an intellectual and academic dumbing-down associated with young peoples digitally redefined relationships with information and knowledge (Selwyn 2009, 368). Having these prominent assumptions about Digital Natives in mind, it is now necessary to look at empirical data brought into the debate. Coming also from an educational background, Bennett, Maton, and Kervin published a critical review (2008) of empirical researches questioning the validity of Prenskys assumptions and his idea of the Digital Native. They focus on the main hypotheses of Prenskys argumentation, namely, that young people have developed new skills as well as new learning preferences due to their seemingly complete immersion in ICT. With regard to the postulated new technological skills, they come to the conclusion that even though the analyzed studies were limited in scope and focus, there appears to be a significant proportion of young people who do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the Digital Native idea (Bennett et al. 2008, 778-779). This does not mean that there are not those young people who are highly adept with technology and rely on it for a range of information gathering and communication activities, but that one should avoid regarding this minority as the norm of a whole generation of young people (Bennett et al. 2008, 778). Another important aspect regarding the new skills of young people, as pointed out by the authors, is that these studies suggest significant differences related to socio-economic and cultural factors that highly affect the ways in which young people use the internet (ibid.). With respect to the new learning preferences ascribed to this generation of young people, Bennett et al. mention that multitasking is not a new phenomenon exclusive to Digital Natives (2008, 779). The argument about a new mode of learning conditioned by the interactivity of video and computer games also lacks clear empirical evidence, according to them (Bennett et al. 2008, 779.). They go on referring to other research, in order to stress the Ketzel | 11

importance of the developmental key stages of infancy, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence (Bennett et al. 2008, 780). It is important to be aware of the fact that people have different learning rhythms and strategies, which makes it scientifically unsound to generalize about the ways in which people develop behavioral patterns and cognitive skills. This can be interpreted as a strong counter argument to Prenskys relatively vague reference on neuroplasticity. Altogether, Bennett et al. sum up their critique towards the postulated new learning preferences and abilities, by saying that [g]eneralisations about the ways in which Digital Natives learn also fail to recognize cognitive differences in young people of different ages and variation within age groups (2008, 779). Looking at empirical data of the 2007 Oxford Internet Survey, a more recent study conducted by Helsper and Eynon in 2010 also engages critically with the claims made about Digital Natives. Since there are significant differences in how and why young people use these new technologies and how effectively they use them (Helsper and Eynon 2010, 505), the authors approach the problematic nature of the concept, by not merely looking at the people associated with it, but by focusing on the internet practices attributed to them. In order to find out if Digital Natives exist, their study analyzes the data using as key variables not only age, but also experience and breadth of use. In contrast with previous scholars, Helsper and Eynon make a distinction in the age variable, by saying that one might expect two generations of Digital Natives, due to the advent of Web 2.0 applications (2010, 508509). They attribute the first generation as being born between 1983 and 1990, and the second as being born from 1990 onwards (Helsper and Eynon 2010, 509). However, the conclusions reached by the two authors cannot be considered to shed new light on the debate. On the one hand, Helsper an Eynon support the view that younger people do have a greater range of ICTs in their household, tend to use the Internet as a first port of call, have higher levels of Internet self-efficacy, multi-task more and use the Internet for fact checking and formal learning activities (2010, 515). On the other hand, their research method leads them to argue that it is not the age which makes up the most important indicator of a digital nativity, but the degree of immersion in a digital environment, which varies according to socio economic and cultural background (ibid.). They thereby aim at contesting Prenskys proposed dichotomy between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, by saying that it is also possible for older generations to achieve the skills attributed to Digital Natives (Helsper and Eynon 2010, 517). Therefore, one should also remember to interpret this conclusion against the context of an educational debate dealing with the moral and ethical implications around a Ketzel | 12

generational gap opened up by the different use of technology between the old and the young. What makes their conclusion somehow redundant though is the fact that Prensky himself based digital nativity on the factor of immersion in a digital environment, as was shown above. In order to prove empirically that pre-digital age generations can be as immersed in ICT as the ones of the digital age, which they suggest with their study, one needs appropriate variables to measure this immersion. If one takes a closer look at Helsper and Eynons methodology however, there arise questions concerning the validity of the study. As noted above, they try to measure the immersion in ICT with the variables of experience and breadth of use. Yet, as Wiersma points out, their notion of breadth of use is likely to lead to inaccurate statistical data, because it is very closely related to proficiency, and thus with things that would qualify Digital Natives (2010, 4). Another problematic aspect of this notion is its list of defining factors. According to Wiersma:
the list contains activities which under-18s are unlikely to engage in, such as finance, egovernment, civic participation (disengagement of youth is also an offline phenomenon) and to some extent shopping and travel, while only two categories are included that might be typical for youth (social networking and diary functions).9,8 This especially is a problem because a listing of partaking percentages per age-range is used to show that the difference between the generations is not that big at all. (Wiersma 2010, 5)

These activities listed by Helsper and Eynon need to be understood as being too general to identify different forms of usage. This becomes apparent for example, when they do not differentiate the use for entertainment purposes any further (Wiersma 2010, 5). After all, there are various ways to use the internet for entertainment purposes, from streaming video or audio to playing games. If one looks at examples such as Soundcloud.com, it becomes extremely hard to distinguish whether it is used for entertainment purposes or as a social platform, since it is designed to be both. With respect to this, Wiersma points out that the 2009 Oxford Internet Survey data still indicates big differences in the online behavior between students and adults (ibid.). There are also other critical aspects concerning the methodology of Helsper and Eynons study that Wiersma points out, but the above will be considered sufficient enough, in order to say that this study is not actually looking at the practices typically associated with Digital Natives. Accordingly, it fails at comparing the immersion in ICT of said generations. Hence, it can also be said that this study does not generate empirical insight regarding the new ways of using ICT that are said to be indicators of digital nativity.

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These empirical researches make it clear that the universal assumptions made by the proponents of the Digital Native idea should mostly be treated as populist generalizations. Universal changes in the behavioral patterns and cognitive skills of young people caused by the use of ICT have not yet been empirically verified. The studies do affirm, however, that there are those among young people who are highly apt to be using ICT for multiple purposes and therefore show characteristics associated with Digital Natives. Yet, these studies also highlight that this group of people cannot be subsumed under a general idea of a Digital Native, because young peoples abilities to access digital technologies remain patterned strongly along lines of socio-economic status and social class, as well as gender, geography and the many other entrenched social fault lines which remain prominent in early twentyfirst century society (Selwyn 2009, 372). It seems helpful to understand access in this case, not just as access to the ICT hardware and software, but also as access to the knowledge of how to use them, because there are significant differences in the ways people learn based on material as well as cognitive factors. On a side note, referring to the Digital Natives as the young generation ignores the fact that those Digital Natives born in the 1980s are today in their 30s.

2.3 The Potential

Coming back to the afore mentioned universal assumptions about Digital Natives, it should now be more visible that they are mostly grounded in an essentialist biological reading of the child and young person as somehow naturally technically skilled as well as in technological deterministic worldviews (Selwyn 2009, 371). Biological essentialism regarding the Digital Native idea should be dismissed easily, because of the empirical evidence, and, as Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen eloquently put it:
This idea of being born digital hides the complex mechanics of infrastructure, access, affordability, learning, education, language, gender, etc. that play a significant role in determining who gets to become a digital native and how s/he achieves it. (Shah and Jansen 2011b, 8)

Some of the technological deterministic hypotheses, on the other hand, can be helpful in understanding the changes and phenomena we see in societies around the world based on the multiple ways in which people engage with ICT (Shah and Jansen 2011a, 6). This is especially true with regard to the fact that ICT have become more and more relevant in so many contexts of contemporary life, as one can see in the growth of social networks like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Chinas internet policies, and the public discussions around international agreements like ACTA, to name but a very few. Yet, what one should avoid, Ketzel | 14

when following such hypotheses, is to keep using the idea of the Digital Native in a normative way. As the empirical evidence strongly suggests, there is no universal norm against which one can identify a Digital Native. This becomes even more evident when looking at places in which the digital revolution unfolds at a speed different from other places, mostly Western, to which Prensky and others refer. Nishant Shah sums it up quite well when he refers to conditions in the Global South:
In countries like India, where the digital realm became accessible and affordable to certain sections of the society as late as 2003, there is a learning curve among youth that does not necessarily match the global thinking on Digital Natives. Even though these young people might be considered Digital Natives, because they are at the center of the digital revolution in their own countries, there is no doubt they are also Digital Others relative to Global North and West conceptions of young people in digital networks. (Shah 2011)

So in order to make use of the technological deterministic hypotheses about Digital Natives as a way to help understand ICT related changes in our global society, it seems best to use the term Digital Native in a descriptive sense. When doing so, it becomes inevitable to contextualize the idea behind it and thus impossible to render it down to a single general definition. The present study will do exactly that and follow a research methodology suggested by the scholars of the Bangalore based Centre for Internet and Society in their research project Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? (Shah and Jansen 2011b, 8). Shah and Jansen also suggest keeping the name Digital Native, because replacing this name with another is only going to be an epistemic change which tries to disown the earlier legacies and baggage that the name carries (ibid.) The present study also follows this suggestion, but capitalizes the term in order to highlight its legacies and baggage. Providing a slightly new approach to the debate, the present study interprets the technological deterministic hypotheses implied in the Digital Native concept as a potential inherent in the usage of ICT, which can, but does not necessarily have to, be realized. The realization of this potential is understood to be correlated with the degree of immersion in ICT. Yet, as it was made clear, this immersion cannot be measured against a certain norm, rather it has to be treated as context-dependent. The context dependent realization of said potential will thus in turn be understood as a form of being a Digital Native. By looking at examples of how this potential has been realized in the U.S. Occupy Movement, the present study will therefore describe different Digital Native identities and practices.

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3. Elucidating Empire
The construction of the global market and the global integration of the national economies has not brought us together but driven us apart, exacerbating the plight of the poor. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

3.1 Empire
With the concept of Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri postulate a meaningful poststructuralist and Marxist theory that enables one to interpret the influence of corporate powers on contemporary global politics, economy and culture as a form of capitalist hegemony. Describing this hegemony as a new form of global sovereignty based on the globalization of capitalist modes of production and the creation of the world market, the two authors use the term Empire to postulate an entity that serves as the political subject that effectively regulates the global flows of economic and cultural goods leading to a new world order (Hardt and Negri 2001, xi). According to the them, this new world order did not spontaneously rise up out of the interactions of radically heterogeneous global forces, as proponents of a free market ideology often suggest; nor has it been controlled and planned throughout history by a single power and a single center of rationality transcendent to global forces, as claimed by certain conspiracy theories (2001, 3, emphasis in the original). This new world order is the result of the irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges (Hardt and Negri 2001, xi). This process of globalization has become visible to the extent that the independent influence of nation-states on these global economic and cultural flows has declined, because economic relations have become more autonomous from political controls of nation-states (Hardt and Negri 2001, xi). Hardt and Negri speak therefore of a decline of sovereignty of nation-states, which becomes increasingly compensated by a network power, a new form of sovereignty that includes as its primary elements, or nodes, the dominant nation-states along with supranational institutions, major capitalist corporations, and other powers (Hardt and Negri 2004, xii). A very good example of this new form of sovereignty can be seen in the global financial crisis of recent years. In Europe as well as in the U.S., this crisis has led to massive interventions on national and international levels as the result of international crisis meetings, which one can see, for instance, in the creation of the European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS) and its bailout funds. The strong international connectedness of financial speculation caused tremendous ripple effects on the world market once the traded assets Ketzel | 16

behind these speculations turned out to be much less valuable than claimed (cf. Acharya and Richardson 2009). In order to prevent a meltdown of the global economy, many states had to launch bailout programs to rescue banks that economic experts classified as being too big to fail. Following mainstream media coverage of the crisis, the consensus with which those interventions have been carried out seemed to be without any alternative (cf. Herzog 2012). The decision makers behind these interventions seemed to mutually agree that there was no intrinsic fault in the way contemporary capitalist production works on a global scale and in effect, the current system of the global market needed to be protected by all means necessary (cf. ibid.). This transnational faith in a free world market, or neo-liberalism as it is also generally called, can be regarded as one of the core aspects of the contemporary world order, or network power as Hardt and Negri describe through their theory of Empire. If one looks at the constitution of the supranational institutions Hardt and Negri speak of, such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the NATO, it becomes apparent that some nations have, what Adam Haupt calls, a better (political and economic) bargaining power (2008, 7). He refers to the illusionary aspect of a global democracy that is often tied to these institutions when they are perceived as a kind of global civil society (Haupt 2008, 7; see also Hardt and Negri 2001, 7). The influence of the U.S. seems to be the most dominating within this network of power. Consider the countrys share in the IMF, the biggest from the time the IMF was instituted (Blomberg and Broz), or its military contributions to the United Nations peace forces. Also, with respect to its involvement in the Big Wars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, there are many who argue that the U.S. uses its status of being the sole superpower in an imperialist manner (cf. N. Smith 2005; Harvey 2005). However, Hardt and Negri vehemently oppose such arguments. They admit that the U.S. occupies a very special and dominating position in this network of power, but they say that neither the U.S. nor any other nation will be world leader in the way modern European nations were (Hardt and Negri 2001, xiv). This dominating influence is, moreover, fundamentally rooted in the foundation of the U.S. constitution itself because it is in contrast to the old empires of Europe; not imperialist but properly imperial (ibid.). By using the word constitution, they refer not just to the written document, but also to the material constitution, that is, the continuous formation and re-formation of the composition of social forces (ibid., emphasis in the original). The reason why they call the U.S. constitution imperial and not imperialist is grounded in the way that power is distributed in the United Ketzel | 17

States, which, in contrast to modern imperialism, is not linear or dependent on the subordination of enclosed spaces, but instead orients itself at the transgression of frontiers by rearticulating an open space and reinventing incessantly diverse and singular relations in networks across an unbounded terrain (2001, 182). Hence, one should regard Empire as the final evolutionary stage of the particular imperial network power structure inherent in the U.S. constitution, because Empire is equally transgressing territorial, economic and cultural boarders when it incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers in a decentralized network structure (Hardt and Negri 2001, xii). According to Hardt and Negri, the term Empire should therefore not be understood in a metaphorical sense as the imperialist power of the 21st century, which aligns itself with historical existing empires, but rather as a descriptive concept that defines a new form of decentralized imperial rule altogether, which manages the economies and cultures of nations in the postcolonial, postmodern world of today without any restricted center of authority (2001, xii). However, when describing this new form of global imperial hegemony, their concept of Empire nevertheless acknowledges the historical contexts of previous existing empires:
[T]he contemporary tendencies toward Empire would represent not a fundamentally new phenomenon but simply a perfecting of imperialism. Without underestimating these lines of continuity, however, we think it is important to note that what used to be conflict or competition among several imperial powers has in important respects been replaced by the idea of a single power that overdetermines them all, structures them in a unitary way, and treats them under one common notion of right that is decidedly postcolonial and postimperialist. This is really the point of departure for our study of Empire: a new notion of right, or rather, a new inscription of authority and a new design of the production of norms and legal instruments of coercion that guarantee contracts and resolve conflicts. (Hardt and Negri 2001, 9)

What this quote also implies is that Hardt and Negris concept of Empire, as a global evolution of the U.S. constitution, is essentially characterized by an absence of limits. The previously modern, imperialist powers were dependent on territorial borders to police the purity of its own identity and to exclude all that was other (Hardt and Negri 2001, xii). Yet, in the postmodern Empire, there is no outside anymore; the network of powers established by the globalization of capitalist production poses a decentered and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that manages a world defined by new and complex regimes of di fferentiation and homogenization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization (Hardt and Negri 2001, xiixiii). On the geographical level, this means that Empires reign stretches across the whole globe, without any constraint of territorial borders (Hardt and Negri 2001, xiv). On the historicopolitical level, the limitlessness of Empire establishes an order that represents the completion of the ideal of imperial rule, making it therefore the world order that suspends history (ibid.) Ketzel | 18

From its own perspective, this has always been the way it ought to be throughout eternity (ibid.). On the socio-economic and cultural level, this concept expresses a form of rule that operates on all registers of the social order extending down to the depths of the social world (Hardt and Negri 2001, xv). What this meant is that Empire manages not just territories, people and markets, but that it also has to be understood within the framework of a constructivist paradigm that generates the very world it inhabits (ibid.). Lastly, on the political level, Empire is constantly maintaining global peace, even though the roads to this peace are continually bathed in blood (ibid.). The transition or paradigm shift towards Empire began on a juridical level with the establishing of the United Nations and its related institutions (such as the World Bank and IMF), according to the authors (cf. Hardt and Negri 2001, chap. 1.1). However, they also point out that supranational trade agreements, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and private contracts between major capitalist and often transnational operating corporations, play a similar important role in the juridical constitution of Empire (Hardt and Negri 2004, 169). It is through the forums of these supranational institutions, trade agreements and contracts that Empires juridical concept, or imperial notion of right has been formed and legitimized (ibid.). The goal of this juridical concept is to maintain global social peace and order according to its universal ethical truths, which are not just driven by a capitalist ideology, but are also seen as the necessary answer to the crisis of modern sovereignty that culminated in the two World Wars (cf. Hardt and Negri 2001, chap. 1.1). The fundamental aspects of Empires notion of right are therefore, on the one hand, the authority to constitute a world order that encompasses the boundless, universal space, and on the other, the authority to consider Empires ethical foundation as eternally valid (Hardt and Negri 2001, 11). This new legal paradigm has to be understood, according to the authors, as both system and hierarchy that constructs a distinct normativity and produces profound legitimacies on a global scale (Hardt and Negri 2001, 13). What they also highlight in relation to this is the aspect that Empire is called into being and constituted on the basis of its capacity to resolve conflicts (Hardt and Negri 2001, 15, emphasis in the original). In other words, the legitimacy of the network of powers that constitute Empire exists in their authority, provided by the participating nations and capitalist powers, to prevent another world war or similar crisis of such magnitude. According to this reasoning, one can thus say that behind this legitimization is the belief that without such a system and hierarchy of powers the world would fall apart and dissolve into chaos. Hardt and Negri speak of a permanent state of Ketzel | 19

exception or crisis on which the juridical and ethical foundation of Empire rests, which justifies international sanctions and police actions up to the so-called preemptive or just wars against those powers that threaten this system and hierarchy (cf. Hardt and Negri 2001, 1020; Hardt and Negri 2004, chap. 1.1). The necessity to guide Empires notion of right becomes so important that it leads to the establishment of a policed society. It is a form of policing that should not be understood in the typical sense of repressive totalitarianism, but rather as a policing in good faith to maintain social justice by preserving the right to private property and doing business freely. Since this aspect of controlling society against the background of a notion of right that is based on a state of permanent expectance is very important for the context of the present study (which argues that the U.S. Occupy Movement poses a threat to this very notion of right), it seems best to quote Hardt and Negris description of this aspect more directly:
Here, therefore, is born, in the name of the exceptionality of the intervention, a form of right that is really a right of the police. The formation of a new right is inscribed in the deployment of prevention, repression, and rhetorical force aimed at the reconstruction of social equilibrium: all this is proper to the activity of the police. We can thus recognize the initial and implicit source of imperial right in terms of police action and the capacity of the police to create and maintain order. The legitimacy of the imperial ordering supports the exercise of police power, while at the same time the activity of global police force demonstrates the real effectiveness of the imperial ordering. The juridical power to rule over the exception and the capacity to deploy police force are thus two initial coordinates that define the imperial model of authority. (Hardt and Negri 2001, 17)

Especially in their second book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004), the two authors delve further into how this form of control, the policing of society, has become the backbone of global capitalism. There, they go so far as to argue that the wars of today should rather be understood as police interventions, because they do not resemble the mode of war of modernity anymore, but instead resemble interventions that have the goal to maintain the status quo of the contemporary world order under the hegemony of global capitalism. This means that the war-like interventions are to maintain the concept of the global market as the regulating or mediating apparatus between nations. In the third chapter of Multitude, they elaborate how this postmodern form of policing can thus also be understood as a threat to democracy itself, because the question of who is represented in the network power of Empire has to be answered more often with the global capitalist forces, rather than the will of the people.

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3.2 Biopower, Biopolitics and Immaterial Labor

Empires juridical concept or notion of right, however, cannot alone explain it being a new form of global sovereignty, which is able to control and regulate the global economical and cultural flows. Hardt and Negri say that this notion of right has to also be seen as the reflection of the actual material condition of social reality (2001, 22). To rephrase this, the power of Empires juridical concept coincides with the materialism established through the globalization of capitalist production. They therefore analyze the extend to which capitalist production has caused socio-economic changes on a global scale, by taking up a line of reasoning that is, besides its Marxist perspective, also strongly influenced by Michel Foucaults view on power distribution in society, as well as Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattaris concept of the rhizome. Referring to Foucault, Hardt and Negri attribute the paradigm shift in sovereignty towards Empire to a historical, epochal passage in social forms from disciplinary society to the society of control (2001, 2223, emphasis in the original). Since both of these two forms of society are closely related to socio-economic aspects of capitalist production, Hardt and Negri analyze the ontological changes in production that mark this paradigm shift. It is this ontological analysis of social and economic production, which is necessary to fully grasp their concept of Empire. Also, it is th is ontology of production that is of interest to the present study (Hardt and Negri 2001, 30), because, as it should become clear later, it helps to look at the U.S. Occupy Movement as a form of resistance to the capitalist rule of Empire. Hence, it is now necessary to take a closer look at what Hardt and Negri mean, when they say that we live in a society of control. With the term disciplinary society, Hardt and Negri refer to the paradigm of social command that was conducted in the entire first phase of capitalist accumulation and which constructs social command through a diffuse network of dispositifs or apparatuses that produce and regulate customs, habits, and productive practices (2001, 23, emphasis in the original). This means that institutions of civil society, so-called disciplinary institutions such as the prison, the factory or the school, effectively structure the parameters and limits of thought and practice, sanctioning and prescribing normal and/or deviant behaviors and thereby guarantee the compliance of the people to their normalizing power and its mechanisms of inclusion and/or exclusion (ibid.). According to the authors, the reach of the disciplinary power is confined to the territorial spaces of these institutions, and it should rather be understood as a self-imposed behavioral conditioning, than as a submissive following of a direct command (Hardt and Negri 2001, 329). Therefore, these disciplinary Ketzel | 21

institutions have to be seen as places in which sovereignty is put into effect in an abstract or virtual (but it is for that no less real) manner (Hardt and Negri 2001, 330). In other words, when one enters a disciplinary institution, one behaves according to its immanent rules, such as the student who has to respect the authority of the teacher and comply with her/his requests while in school, or the factory worker who has to comply with the hierarchy and rules of the administration in fulfilling his tasks in the factory. The society of control, on the other side, describes the society at the very end of modernity up to the contemporary era of postmodernity (Hardt and Negri 2001, 23). The two authors describe this sociological form as the intensification and generalization of the disciplinary society, because now:
mechanisms of command become ever more democratic, ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens. The behaviors of social integration and exclusion proper to rule are thus increasingly interiorized within the subjects themselves. (Hardt and Negri 2001, 23)

What this means is that the norms and values of society that internally animate our common and daily practices are not just confined to the spaces of the disciplinary institutions anymore, but are evermore present in the whole realm of social life (Hardt and Negri 2001, 23). Hardt and Negri root the reason for this expansion of disciplinary power or social control in the crisis of modernity, in so far as it resembles a crisis of the disciplinary institutions, which means that the borders of the disciplinary institutions are either collapsing or have increasingly become blurred (2001, 196199). As an example of this, one only needs to look at the European Bologna reform. With its strong undertone of reformed universities having to operate similar to efficient corporations in order to produce the students demanded by the economy, the identity, norms and values of the university in the Humboldtian sense seem to have become obsolete. The university now rather resembles an intellectual factory and not a place of intellectual maturation. So instead of being reliant on spatially confined disciplinary institutions anymore, the society of control exercises its power through machines that directly organize the brains (in communication systems, information networks, etc.) and bodies (in welfare systems, monitored activities, etc.) toward a state of autonomous alienation from the sense of life and the desire for creativity (Hardt and Negri 2001, 23). Referring to Foucault again, Hardt and Negri call the form of power deployed by the society of control consequently biopower, because it regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it, and rearticulating it, producing and reproducing thereby life itself (Hardt and Negri 2001, 2324). The main function of biopower is the investment of life Ketzel | 22

through and through, and its primary task is to administer life (Hardt and Negri 2001, 24). In the society of control, biopower affects the minds as well as the bodies of the population and thus the social body as a whole (ibid.). Because of this, one can say from a constructivist perspective that biopower is Empires way to produce subjectivities, bodies and identities, which make it the power that shapes societies and cultures from within. Another term Hardt and Negri use when talking about the power distribution in Empire is the term biopolitics. Also in relation to Foucault, the two authors use it in order to describe the other power of life that resists and determines an alternative production of subjectivity (Hardt and Negri 2009, 57). So there are two aspects of life regulating power, or as the authors say, there is a doubleness of power in the society of control (Hardt and Negri 2009, 56). Biopower can be understood as the power that executes control over all the various aspects of life, whereas biopolitics can be understood as the power of life itself (Hardt and Negri 2001, 24). In other words, biopolitics refers to the power of life to produce the social sphere in the first place (e.g. needs, social relations, affects, bodies and minds), and biopower is the form of power that constantly imposes control over this social production. In order to grasp this double aspect of life-regulating power in the concept of Empire and thus, also in the society of control, it seems best to follow Hardt and Negris historic redrawing of the socio-economic changes that occurred in the passage from modernity to postmodernity. They locate the first step of the transition towards the society of control in the global transformation of economical structures that took place after World War II (Hardt and Negri 2001, chap. 3.2). According to them, the export of the U.S. New Deal model to the capitalist countries led to the global disciplinary state, in which the U.S. extended its economic hegemony by making the dollar king through the Bretton Woods system (Hardt and Negri 2001, 244). One major aspect of the New Deal was the creation of the welfare or social state that enabled a greater control over social life by implementing a synthesis of Taylorism in the organization of labor, Fordism in the wage regime, and Keynesianism in the macroeconomic regulation of society (Hardt and Negri 2001, 242). Capitalism therefore increased its imperial sovereignty and biopower, because the welfare state took into account more widely and deeply the life cycles of populations, ordering their production and reproduction within a scheme of collective bargaining fixed by a stable monetary regime (Hardt and Negri 2001, 244). Yet, there are also two other important factors that Hardt and Negri tie to the imperial power of the New Deal, namely, the project of decolonialization and the decentralization of industrial production (2001, 248). Both need to be regarded as Ketzel | 23

being closely connected in the establishment of Empires foundation of postmodern imperial rule of capital. Decolonialization realized the decline of modern imperialism, and the decentralization of industrial production was driven by transnational corporations, which thus became the fundamental motor of the economic and political transformation of postcolonial countries and subordinated regions (Hardt and Negri 2001, 246). What this basically means is that the outsourcing or decentralization of capitalist industrial production to those countries and regions replaced in a way, the former modern imperialism of the colonial powers. Even though these regions and countries ceased to be controlled politically and militarily by a foreign nation, they in turn became dependent on the economic power of transnational corporations, which now directly structure and articulate territories and populations and tend to make nation-states merely instruments to record the flows of the commodities, monies, and populations that they set in motion (Hardt and Negri 2001, 31). It is in this process of consolidating the power of the world market that one can see the birth of what is today being called globalization, or to use Hardt and Negris words: The world market began to appear as the centerpiece of an apparatus that could regulate global networks of circulation (2001, 251). While this global political and economic restructuring led to prosperity and social stability in the capitalist countries throughout the first two decades following World War II, it also fostered a growing resistance on the social and cultural plane against this form of disciplinary control. The workers and people of the dominant capitalist countries, as well as the liberated postcolonial people, gained new freedoms through this process of global modernization that in turn determined the constitution of new needs, desires, and demands (Hardt and Negri 2001, 252). In other words, these struggles constituted new biopolitical realities that could not be controlled by the disciplinary global state. Global capitalism was therefore confronted with a severe crisis, in which Hardt and Negri locate the preconditions for the second step towards Empire and its society of control (2001, chap. 3.3). The various worker struggles for better wages and working conditions, as well as the feminist, environmentalist and civil rights movements of that period, all reevaluated and questioned in their own ways and on profound levels the social and environmental conditions, the norms and values or biopolitics that the global, capitalist disciplinary regime produced and maintained. The Feminist movements, for example, raised the social value of what has traditionally been considered womens work, the student movements raised the social value of knowledge and intellectual labor, and the hippies expressed their discontent with the Ketzel | 24

disciplinary society by dropping out completely (Hardt and Negri 2001, 274). Those movements and struggles thereby produced new subjectivities deviant to the mainstream. To be more specific, the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s challenged specific gender roles, family values, consumer habits and career expectations, by producing alternative live-styles based on new forms of working and living together. In order to overcome the crisis expressed in these struggles and movements, capitalism thus had to adapt to and govern the new immaterial, cooperative, communicative, and affective composition of labor power they established (Hardt and Negri 2001, 276). It had to produce a new form of biopower in order to control this new biopolitical reality, and the way the capitalist regime reacted was by shifting its paradigm of production from the disciplinary society to the society of control. On a side note, Hardt and Negri also point out that the non-capitalist countries under the hegemony of the Soviet system were similarly structured according to the principles of discipline in their mode of production (2001, 276279). The challenge of postmodernity was also present in these countries, since its proletariat produced a similar new subjectivity of labor power due to its new intellectual and communicative composition (Hardt and Negri 2001, 277). According to the two authors, the very reason for the fall of the Soviet System in the end of the 1980s was rooted in the fact that it was structurally incapable to go beyond the model of disciplinary governability because of its heavy bureaucracy (ibid.). When the Soviet system was consequently reformed toward capitalist democracies, these countries were also integrated in the system of the world market and thus in the capitalist society of control. It was just said that in order to change from the disciplinary society to the society of control, capitalism had to change its paradigm of production. Since Hardt and Negri argue that the disciplinary society was closely related to the modernization or industrialization of production, it is only logical that they describe the establishing of the society of control with the postmodernization or informatization of production (2001, chap. 3.4). What they refer to can be seen in the general shift, championed by the dominant capitalist countries, from an industrial economy to a service and information technology (IT)-based economy, or to put it differently, from the secondary to the tertiary sector. Within this shift, Hardt and Negri argue that industrial labor as the dominant form of organizing economic production has been replaced by immaterial labor, which means that now services and manipulating information are at the heart of economic production (2001, 280). They speak therefore of a hegemony of immaterial labor, that is, labor that produces immaterial products, such as information, knowledges, ideas, images, relationships, and affects (Hardt and Negri 2004, 65). Yet, while Ketzel | 25

doing so, they also stress that this does not mean industrial labor and agricultural labor as such have declined, which certainly is not the case, as one can see for instance in the outsourcing of industrial production to developing countries and in the sheer abundance of mass produced consumer goods today. By the hegemony of immaterial labor, Hardt and Negri moreover mean that in qualitative terms industrial production has been transformed on a global scale by the logic of immaterial production, just as the logic of industrial production transformed the primary, agricultural sector by implementing new technologies and modes of organizing production (2001, 285). In other words, just as the industrial revolution transformed economic production and society around 150 years ago, the information revolution has been transforming the production processes and thereby society as well. The production processes of the sector of agriculture and industry have been transformed through the computerization, scientific improvements and the involved communication towards the notion of treating their products as services (Hardt and Negri 2001, 285286). If one looks at Apple (computer hardware company) for example, their hardware products are designed in California, but assembled in China. This exemplifies manufacturing processes in the decentralized networks that are typical for the postindustrial economy, in which knowledge, information, affect, and communication play the major role (Hardt and Negri 2001, 285). It is not the location of the actual manufacturing that determines the quality and consumer demand of the Apple products, but the management, planning and designing of this very manufacturing as well. With specific marketing strategies and advertisement, as well as with a distinct plan of customer service, a postmodern company creates consumer demand by offering its products as a service to improve life, which is not limited to the realm of commodities, as one can see in the privatization of health care. Simplifying a great deal, one could say that in the modern industrial economies it was all about the mass production of goods, because one assumed that with the supply automatically comes the demand. In the postmodern informational and service economies, however, it is all about creating consumer demand in order to sell the mass produced commodities or other services in markets that are saturated to a great degree by the modernization process. Out of this arose the need to focus on the immaterial labor as a means to manage and control all other forms of production. Due to the fact that the products of immaterial labor are ideas, images, knowledges, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, Hardt and Negri say that immaterial production has to be considered consequently

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as the production of social life itself, which means that it primarily resembles biopolitical production (2004, 146, emphasis in the original). By subsuming this biopolitical production under the rules of capital, culture becomes thus directly both an element of political order and economic production (Hardt and Negri 2004, 334). In the network power structure of Empire these two areas converge in so far as the world market establishes political as well as economical order, or, as the two authors say, in Empire capital and sovereignty tend to overlap completely (ibid.). To make the biopower of Empire that controls the biopolitical production more visible, Hardt and Negri refer to the influence of the communication industries as a means to legitimize this control.
The legitimation of the imperial machine is born at least in part of the communications industries, that is, of the transformation of the new mode of production into a machine. It is a subject that produces its own image of authority. This is a form of legitimation that rests on nothing outside itself and is reproposed ceaselessly by developing its own languages of selfvalidation.(Hardt and Negri 2001, 33)

Adam Haupt interprets this as the consolidation and legitimation of Empires cultural, political, legal and economic operation via its control over technology and the means of representation (2008, 15). Referring to the work of Jean Baudrillard on simulacra, Haupt elaborates how news and television networks, the entertainment industry as well as the internet have to be seen as the means of producing the social reality on which Empire rests in an autopoietic way. Yet, also Hardt and Negri make this clear when they say that the nodes of the network power that constitutes Empire all become relevant in the perspective of the supranational juridical constitution only when they are considered within the dynamic of the biopolitical production of world order (2001, 31). In the society of control, the minds and bodies are put to work according to the logic and rules of capital and, therefore, produce the social sphere as well as the juridical legitimation of the imperial machine, because [i]n Empire and its regime of biopower, economic production and political constitution tend increasingly to coincide (Hardt and Negri 2001, 41). The media, as the literal meaning of the term implies, thus play a central role in the communication and collaboration mechanisms that constitute and legitimate Empire. In order to describe the way this regime of biopower executes control on the global scale more vividly, Hardt and Negri conceptualize the power organization in Empire in the form of a pyramid with three tiers (2001, 309314). The very top of this pyramid is occupied by the United States because of its military superpower status gained after the end of the Cold War. On a second level beneath that, but still within the first tier of the power pyramid, there Ketzel | 27

are the other dominant nation-states, which work together with the U.S. in a series of organisms the G7, the Paris and London Clubs, Davos, and so forth in order to regulate international exchanges by having the control over the primary global monetary instruments (Hardt and Negri 2001, 309310). A third level of the first tier of the pyramid is made up of a heterogeneous set of associations (including more or less the same powers that exercise hegemony on the military and monetary levels) (Hardt and Negri 2001, 310). This third level of the first tier is the one which deploys cultural and biopolitical power on a global level (ibid.). The second and broader tier of the pyramid is dominated by the networks of transnational capitalist corporations, which realize the biopolitical production according to the rules and central power determined by the first tier through the organization of the world market with its distribution of capitals, technologies, goods, and populations (Hardt and Negri 2001, 310). These actors can therefore be understood as the dominant executive forces of Empire. Also within the second tier of this power pyramid, but less powerful than the transnational corporations, there reside the general set of sovereign nation-states, which serve the function to filter and regulate the global flows conducted by the transnational corporations as well as to enforce Empires universal values and notion of right by the means of disciplinary force (ibid.). Finally, the third tier, and thus the broad base of the pyramid, is constituted by the organizations that are to represent in a democratic way the variety of popular demands and opinions of the various people within the global power structure of Empire. As mentioned earlier, this is the notion of a global civil society that Adam Haupt criticized on the grounds of representational inequity. Hardt and Negri say that these organizations of the third tier of Empires power pyramid are not just made up of all the other, mostly subordinate, nations, but also of the media and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which claim to represent the will and opinion of the people (Vlker) more realistically (2001, 311313). With regard to the power of NGOs, the two authors argue that similar to the ways in which the media constructs the order of Empire on the biopolitical realm through its capitalist structured networks of communication, also humanitarian NGOs like Amnesty International, Oxfam or Mdicins sans Frontires legitimate the need for Empire, because they represent directly global and universal human interests and thus affirm Empires universal values and notion of right by serving as biopolitical intuitions for moral interventions (Hardt and Negri 2001, 313). However, with respect to this pyramid of hierarchy, Hardt and Negri also point out that the network organization of these powers leads to a hybrid constitution, which means that the functions of these powers are not bound to their respective institution, but can also be carried out by another (2001, 316319). Ketzel | 28

To summarize the main aspects mentioned so far, it can be said that the concept of Empire expresses the contemporary juridical, political, cultural and social world order as the hegemony of global capitalism, in so far as this world order is determined by the networks of the world market and managed through the networks of supranational organizations by the means of the informatization of production and hegemony over the main communicative networks. Together, this global ordering can be understood as a society of control, because the institutions of this network of powers enforce social control over the biopolitical production of the subjects within it.

3.3 The Multitude and the Common

When we now ask: Who is the labor force behind the immaterial or biopolitical production within Empire? Who are the ones being controlled in the global society of control? We come to the second most fundamental aspect of Hardt and Negris theory of Empire, which is the concept of the multitude. The authors posit that globalization has two faces: Empire and the multitude (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiii). By this they mean that globalization did not just lead to Empires network of hierarchies and divisions that maintain order through new mechanisms of control and constant conflict, but it also created an open and expansive network in which people can work and live together by the means of new circuits of cooperation and collaboration (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiiixiv). Hence, the multitude can be understood as some sort of global community organized in the form of a network that provides the means of encounter so that we can work and live in common (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiv). At first glance, we might assume that this concept represents the many different people (Vlker) of all nations that are now structured under the regime of Empire. However, the authors make it clear from the beginning that the concept of the multitude stands in stark contrast to the concepts of the people, the masses or the working class (cf. Hardt and Negri 2004, xiv). The people is commonly understood to be the artificial, political subject of the nation, which subsumes all the immanent differences of a population, such as diverse opinions and ways of life, ethnicities, gender, races, and cultures under a common notion of identity that attributes a specific will and territory to this population so that it can be governed by the sovereign state. The multitude, on the other hand, should rather be understood as an ontological, immanent social subject, which resists such identification, because it leaves intact the various differences of its constituent individuals and acknowledges their internal and Ketzel | 29

ontological resistance against being subjected under the rule of a discrete sovereign. Hardt and Negri describe this difference between the people and the multitude accordingly:
The multitude is a multiplicity, a plane of singularities, an open set of relations, which is not homogeneous or identical with itself and bears an indistinct, inclusive relation to those outside of it. The people, in contrast, tends toward identity and homogeneity internally while posing its difference from and excluding what remains outside of it. Whereas the multitude is an inconclusive constituent relation, the people is a constituted synthesis that is prepared for sovereignty. The people provides a single will and action that is independent of and often in conflict with the various wills and actions of the multitude. Every nation must make the multitude into a people. (Hardt and Negri 2001, 103)

Therefore, the multitude is the ontological and immanent form of society in which many different people live and work together, according to the things they have in common. To make this clear, consider the following example: the people of the United States refers to the U.S. citizens who are represented and governed by their elected government(s). Yet, this artificial, political entity excludes all the existing opinions, desires, conditions, and relations that get lost in a representative democracy. The will of the various minorities that are not represented by senators or governors are excluded in the sovereign state and subordinated under the rule of the majority. The U.S. multitude, on the other hand, reflects all individual subjects of the population who share distinct commonalities, such as, most of those living within the territory of the United States, or speaking the same language and having common desires, norms and values. These commonalities and values that the population of the nation shares with each other constitute the relations that make up the U.S. multitude. Hardt and Negris second distinction of the multitude in contrast to the masses, the crowd or the mob follows a similar logic. In these concepts, both, the differences as well as the commonalities of constituent individual subjects or singularities, as the authors call them, get lost and rendered indifferent (Hardt and Negri 2004, 99). A mass, mob or crowd is nothing more than many people. It is of no concern, what kind of relationship exists between its constituent subjects. Those terms are used to denominate the average relations and incoherent movements of many people gathered at a time or place. With regard to this, the authors say that the multitude on the other hand, although it remains multiple, is not fragmented, anarchical, or incoherent (ibid.). Unlike the crowd, the mob or the masses, the multitude designates an active social subject, which acts on the basis of what the singularities share in common and thus it remains an internally different, multiple social subject whose constitution and action is based not on identity or unity (or, much less, indifference) but on what it has in common (Hardt and Negri 2004, 100). It is not being led by some sort of power, general will or mood that transcends the individual wills of the singularities. Instead, it Ketzel | 30

are the relationships between the subjects, which get established when they act in common, that drive and steer the multitude, and thus constitute a distinct form of power. Hence, the multitude is potentially capable of realizing democracy, that is, the rule of everyone by everyone, which fundamentally challenges the traditional truth of political philosophy in which only the one can rule, be it the monarch, the party, the people, or the individual; social subjects that are not unified and remain multiple cannot rule and instead must be ruled (ibid.). The third major distinction the authors make in order to conceptualize the multitude is the difference with regard to the working class. They specifically say that the multitude contrasts with the concept of the working class because, since the working class is commonly used to either denote, in a narrow sense, the industrial workforce or in a general sense all forms of waged labor, it fails to include all unpaid domestic laborers, and all others who do not receive a wage (Hardt and Negri 2004, xiv).The multitude, however, might rather be understood as a general or absolute form of working class, composed potentially of all the diverse figures of social production (2004, xv). Hence, from their Marxist perspective, the multitude poses a new and much broader proletariat that includes all those who labor and produce under the rule of capital (Hardt and Negri 2004, 107). The concept of the multitude rests on the claim that there is no political priority among the forms of labor: all forms of labor are today socially productive, they produce in common, and share, too, a common potential to resist the domination of capital (Hardt and Negri 2004, 106107). It is thus, not just the social, but also the political subject that entails all individuals who participate in the biopolitical production of capitalist society. When Hardt and Negri stress the commonalities of the multitudes singularities as the most central defining aspect of the concept besides its immanent multiplicity, they highlight the basis of all biopolitical production, which is the common (2004, xv). Although they implicitly refer with this term to the pre-capitalist notion of the commons which describes all those things that once belonged to the community in equal measures and which determined the common wealth of pre-capitalist societies before the existence of private property the common moreover expresses the fundamental aspect of production in the postmodern era (ibid.). With this notion, Hardt and Negri draw attention to the fact that our common knowledge is the foundation of all new production of knowledge; linguistic community is the basis of all linguistic innovation; our existing affective relationships ground all production of affects; and our common social image bank makes possible the creation of new images Ketzel | 31

(2004, 148). The common is the sum of all the commonalities that enables us to act and think together in society. It progresses and is reproduced whenever we engage in social interaction, because the biopolitical production of the multitude is not just based on the common, but in turn also produces all new forms of the common in an expanding spiral relationship (Hardt and Negri 2004, xv). In other words, the products of immaterial labor that shape contemporary social realities rest upon the common and at the same time reproduce new forms of it. According to this, one should conceive the capitalization of biopolitical production in Empire not just as a form of biopower over the multitude, but also as an exploitation of the multitudes constituent force, insofar as it is the expropriation of the common by the means of privatization (Hardt and Negri 2004, 150, emphasis in the original). The most prominent examples Hardt and Negri use to illustrate this are the outcomes of the informatization of production, which can be seen in the immaterial private property represented by patents on scientific knowledge, such as genetic information of plants, animals or even humans, but also in the ways in which the financial industry bets on the multitudes future productivity in order to make profits (cf. 2004, 150151).
From the socioeconomic perspective, the multitude is the common subject of labor, that is, the real flesh of postmodern production, and at the same time the object from which collective capital tries to make the body of its global development. Capital wants to make the multitude into an organic unity, just like the state wants to make it into a people. [] When the flesh of the multitude is imprisoned and transformed into the body of global capital, it finds itself both within and against the processes of capitalist globalization. (Hardt and Negri 2004, 101)

According to this, the real productivity within Empire comes from the biopolitical production of the multitude that is based on the common. Empire should therefore be conceived as a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude (Hardt and Negri 2001, 62). Hardt and Negri even go so far to say that it was the productivity of the multitude which called Empire into being, because it was its desire for liberation that constructed the alternatives to the former national, colonial and imperialist rule of capital, which were subsequently co-opted by capital in the construction of Empire (2001, 4243). Empire, as the postmodern form of capitalist rule, consequently has to constantly control the productivity of the multitude in order to make sure that it remains within the logic of capital. This socioeconomic control is the biopower over the biopolitical production in the society of control. With regard to this capitalist control over the productivity of the multitude, Hardt and Negri thus also propose a postmodern version of Marxist theory with the concept of the multitude. It is not just an ontological concept that contrasts with the people, the masses, the mob, or the crowd. It is also a political concept depicting a new proletariat that has to Ketzel | 32

overcome the hegemony of capital in the regime of Empire. In traditional Marxist theory, one could say, broadly speaking, that the liberation of the proletariat was all about giving the workers the means to produce by putting the control over the factories into their hands. Today, this is no longer the most crucial demand, insofar as biopolitical production has become the hegemonic form of labor. Potentially, the power over production is thus already in the hands of the workers. The means for a rule of this new proletariat lies in the common. Its constant reproduction by the singular figures of postmodern labor [] through communication and collaboration not just converges those subjects toward the common social being that is the multitude, but the common also enables the multitudes potential to create a new, alternative society (Hardt and Negri 2004, 159). Hardt and Negri thus attribute a political project to the concept of the multitude, when they say that through its communicative and collaborative networks arises a tendency toward [an] increasingly democratic organization, from centralized forms of revolutionary dictatorship and command to network organizations that displace authority in collaborative relationships (2004, xvi). Against the background of the important role played by the biopolitical production in Empire, this political project of the multitude has to be seen at the same time as a socioeconomic project, because the distinctions of politics, economy and culture tend to converge in the postmodern capitalist mode of production. Therefore, Hardt and Negri say that [p]olitical action aimed at transformation and liberation today can only be conducted on the basis of the multitude (2004, 99). It is the widespread demand for democracy one can witness in the struggles of the multitude around the globe, such as the ones mentioned later in this study, as well as the whole anti-globalization movement, which leads the two authors to believe that we live in a time in which this political project of the multitude has the potential to be realized (2004, chap. 3.2; Hardt and Negri 2011b; Hardt and Negri 2011a). Without wanting to give concrete descriptions on how this telos of the multitude can be realized, they do, however, postulate three fundamental rights that the multitude has to achieve in order to overcome the biopower regime of Empire from within (Hardt and Negri 2001, chap. 4.3). The first consists of the demand for global citizenship, because, such right would assure the multitudes power to reappropriate control over space and thus to design the new cartography (Hardt and Negri 2001, 401). The second political demand is the right to a social wage and a guaranteed income for all, because it would extend to the entire population the demand that all activity necessary for the production of capital be recognized with an equal compensation (Hardt and Negri 2001, 403). Finally, the most important demand of the Ketzel | 33

multitude must be, according to Hardt and Negri, the right to reapproproation (2001, 404). In accordance with traditional Marxist theory, this includes the the reappropriation of the means of production (Hardt and Negri 2001, 406). However, it is not just enough for the new proletariat (multitude) to have free access to and control over the machines and materials, but the multitude, moreover, must be able to reappropriate the common, which means having free access to and control over knowledge, information, communication, and affects (Hardt and Negri 2001, 407). In other words, the multitude has to reappropriate the apparatuses of biopower that control its biopolitical production and change them in a way that keeps the material constitution of the multitude, i.e. setup common institutions that reflect and represent the multiplicity of the singularities. One very good analogy Hardt and Negri provide, to make this proposed form of the democracy of the multitude better understandable, is the opensource movement. According to them one should conceive the realization of the telos of the multitude as an open-source society, that is, a society whose source code is revealed so that we all can work collaboratively to solve its bugs and create new, better social programs (Hardt and Negri 2004, 340). Thus, the biopolitical production of the common becomes the central point of the political as well as socio-economic and cultural organization of society. The production of the common becomes the new form of politics, when they say that it is not only a model for political decision-making but also tends itself to become political decisionmaking (Hardt and Negri 2004, 339, emphasis in the original). Hardt and Negri claim that the reappropriation of the production of the common by the multitude presents in itself a new form of democracy, because it implies a form of constituent power insofar as the networks of cooperative production themselves designate an institutional logic of society (Hardt and Negri 2004, 350). Because of these far reaching political, economical and cultural aspects, Hardt and Negri are aware that the concept of the multitude can be criticized for various reasons. Consequently, they anticipate the most likely occurring criticism in a rhetoric disputation. At first, they oppose the accusation of being anarchist, which comes especially from those who can conceive political organization only in terms of the party, its hegemony, and central leadership (Hardt and Negri 2004, 222). In defense to this, they say that the biopolitical production of the multitude based on the common is not anarchist at all, because it should rather be understood similar to the formation of habits, or performativity or the development of languages as the result of collaborative social interactions (Hardt and Negri 2004, 222). To the accusation of being Leninist or postmodern Leninist by speaking of a multitude instead Ketzel | 34

of multitudes and thus imposing a new identity that seeks to rule over others in the form of a new vanguard posed by the immaterial working class, they reply with the argument that singularity is not diminished in the common and, in more practical terms, that becoming common (the becoming common of labor, for instance) does not negate real, local differences (Hardt and Negri 2004, 222). Different opinions, desires and wills, different aspects of gender, race and sexuality, as well as different forms of labor, such as industrial and agricultural labor, are still constituent to the concept of the multitude, which makes it actually necessary to understand it as being both multitude and multitudes at the same time (Hardt and Negri 2004, 223, emphasis in the original). Yet for the sake of the political project to form a constituent power that opposes the neoliberal mode of production present in Empire, they argue that it is better to think of the multitude in the singular and focus on the socioeconomic aspect of biopolitical production, because we maintain that in order to take a constituent political role and form society, the multitude must be able to make decisions and act in common (ibid.). Then, there are also those forms of criticism, which questions the multitudes philosophical conception. From the Hegelians might come the critique that the multitude cannot exist apart from Empire; that the two concepts form a necessary dialectical synthesis. For Hardt and Negri this is however not the case, because the dynamic of singularity and multiplicity that defines the multitude denies the dialectical alternative between the One and the Many it is both and neither (Hardt and Negri 2004, 225). They argue that while Empire is constantly dependent on the multitude and its social productivity, the multitude is potentially autonomous and has the capacity to create society on its own (ibid.). To those who might criticize the concept of the multitude from a deconstructionist position by accusing Hardt and Negri to forget about the subaltern, they respond saying that the multitude transposes the exclusive and limiting logic of identity-difference into the open and expansive logic of singularity-commonality (ibid.). Those who are not yet a part of the multitude are not per se excluded from it but rather have to engage in the production of the common in order to be included in the open and expansive network that is the multitude (ibid). Somehow similar to the just mentioned position of criticism is the one in which Hardt and Negri are accused of being Global North elitists, who pretend to speak for the entire world (2004, 226). While they are certainly aware of the fact that there are tremendous differences in the world with respect to hierarchies and distribution of wealth and power, they:
refuse to accept, in any case, any vision that poses linear stages of development for political organization, pretending that those in the dominant regions may be ready for democratic forms of organization such as the multitude whereas those in the subordinate regions are condemned

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to older forms until they mature. We are all capable of democracy. The challenge is to organize it politically. (Hardt and Negri 2004, 226)

Finally, there is the most common criticism that probably any Marxist theory has to face in the times after the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite Communist regimes, which is the accusation that the concept of the multitude is utopistic. Hardt and Negris rebuttal has to be seen in their historical analysis of resistance struggles that are structured in forms of distributed networks, which they elaborate in great detail in Empires follow up book, Multitude. The following analysis of the U.S. Occupy Movement should also be regarded as a suggestion to consider this criticism of the concept of the multitude being utopist as unfounded, because it aims at showing how many different individuals around the world (Global North and South and the regions on the fringe) collaborate through the use of ICT in order to resist the dominant culture.

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4. The Rise of the Multitude

Certainly, we need to recognize and protest the ways increasing numbers of people across the world are deprived of adequate income, food, shelter, education, health care in short, recognize that the poor are victims of the global order of Empire. (Hardt and Negri 2004, 129)

4.1 The Context of the U.S. Occupy Movement

4.1.1 Arab Sping and Spains Indignados In order to understand the U.S. Occupy Movement, it is very important to look at the context of previous democratic movements that have shaped 2011. One central aspect of this context is the Arab Spring. The notion Arab Spring became a common description for a series of protests and revolutions in the region of North Africa as well as the Arabian Peninsula in the first half of 2011. Countries involved in this wave of protests include: Algeria, Jordan, Oman, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, Libya, Saudi-Arabia, Djibouti, Mauritania, Morocco, Kuwait and Syria (Rosiny 2011). In general, these uprisings can be understood as reactions to the despotism, human rights violations, corruption, high unemployment and rising costs of living in the respective countries (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Politische Bildung 2011). According to many (cf. Fahim 2011; Rosiny 2011; dho/DPA 2011), the Arab Spring is said to have begun on December 17, 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, a city in Tunesia, with the death of 23-year-old fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire as a protest against systemic abuse of power in the country. His action follows public intimidation and physical abuse by the government officials who confiscated his fruits and electronic scale, because he could not show a valid vendor license (ibid.). Within a couple of weeks and due to already present discontent among citizens, the incident sparked nationwide protests that led to the eventual overthrow of the government; President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled the country on January 14, 2011 (Rosiny 2011, 2). The preparations for these protests had in part been organized by young activists who connected with other young activists from neighboring countries, Egypt for example, via the internet, in order to call for nationwide protest actions based on non-violent tactics as used by the Serbian youth movement Otpor (Kirkpatrick and Sanger 2011).

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In Egypt, the outcome of the Tunisian revolution and the collaboration between those activists led to a call of oppositional movements for mass protests on January 25 throughout the country, which turned out to be what observers called the largest display of popular dissatisfaction in recent memory (Fahim and El-Naggar 2011). The Egyptian protesters built encampments in places like Tahrir Square in Cairo as spaces for oppositional representation; discussion and organization (cf. Gehlen 2011; Fahim and El-Naggar 2011). Having these places of opposition as a means to gather tens of thousands of like-minded, committed people, the protesters succeeded in the following weeks to bring down the decade-long regime of former president Hosni Mubarak, despite his efforts to silence the opposition in various violent street battles with police forces and hired troublemakers (ibid.). Just two days after the Egyptian protesters first gathered in the thousands on Tahrir Square, the people of Yemen also began protesting in the thousands on the streets against the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled this impoverished Middle Eastern nation for more than three decades (Raghavan 2011). On March the 18, 52 protesters were killed by the forces of President Saleh, which caused a string of generals, tribal leaders, diplomats and ministers to resign or declare their public allegiance to the protesters and resulted in wide-spread protests throughout the country (Hammond 2011). According to the New York Times, the protesters efforts to overthrow the Yemeni government were achieved by the resignation of the president and the transition of power to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, a year later in February 2012 (2012a). However, as a series of bold attacks by a resurgent militant movement in the south have shown, there is still unrest in the country, which is also said to be linked to the terrorist organization Al Qaeda (ibid.). The fourth country to have overthrown its government was Libya. Also in January 2011, the people of Libya began protesting against the four decade long regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi (Weaver 2011). Amnesty International reported that the writer and political commentator Jamal al-Hajji called on the internet for demonstrations to be held in support of greater freedoms in Libya, in the manner of recent mass protests in Tunisia, Egypt and other states across the Middle East and North Africa, for which he was detained on February 1 in Tripoli by plain clothes security officers, which means that it was not the regular police who tried to stop the spread of dissident views, but the governments secret agency (2011). This makes clear that Gaddafis government tried very hard to prevent the Libyans from repeating what had happened in the neighboring countries. Al-Hajji was one of many activists who used the internet, among other means, to call for a Day of Rage on Ketzel | 38

February 17 that turned out to be a deadly day of protest for many (Al Jazeera English 2011b). Gaddafis repression methods escalated in the following weeks and led to heavy violence between protesters and government executive forces, which is why the uprisings were soon declared a civil war, prompting the United Nations to pass a Security Council Resolution, which authorized all necessary measures - except troops on the ground - to protect civilians (BBC 2011). Being backed by the NATO resolution, which included such measures as the freezing of Gaddafis financial assets, it was possible for the opponents of the regime to overthrow the government, capture and kill Gaddafi in October 2011, and form the National Transitional Council, which is supposed to lead the country into a democracy (Malone 2011). Another very violent result of the spread of civil unrest throughout so many Arabian countries can be found in Syria, where on February 2, Al Jazeera English reported on calls for a revolution in Syria similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt, which were distributed via ICT, such as the most prominent Facebook page The Syrian Revolution 2011 ( 2011). Despite the then popular disbelief reflected in this report that such a revolution could take place in Syria, it turned out to become a still ongoing and severe civil conflict with thousands of casualties because of President Bashar al-Assads repressive military measures (The New York Times 2012b). As indicated earlier, there are several other countries of the Arab nations which witnessed the wave of civil unrest. The present study does not intend to downplay the changes achieved by the protests in these other countries, but the given examples are considered to suffice, in order to explain the historic and contextual significance of the Arab Spring with respect to the present study. When looking at these examples it needs to be mentioned, however, that despite their common grievances against corrupt, despotic or autocratic governments and undesirable living conditions, they also reflected divergent economic grievances and social dynamics-legacies of their diverse encounters with modem Europe and decades under unique regimes (Anderson 2011, 23). This means that one should be careful when making generalizations about their preconditions and accomplishments. The danger of such generalizations become clear, when one looks at the similarities in the organization of the protests via ICT. As Stepanova points out, one has to be cautious about saying that social media networks played the major role, because in countries like Yemen or Libya, the percentage of internet users compared to Tunisia or Egypt remains very low (2011, 3). Yet despite this lack of a wide integration in new social media networks, there have been protests Ketzel | 39

in Yemen and Libya. In order to uphold the view that ICT served as a catalyst of the protests, we need to also include mainstream ICTs such as regular mobile phones and satellite television (ibid.). After all, it was mainly the use of mobile phones and small digital cameras that helped in disseminating the horrible images of violence that took place during the protests through satellite television stations like Al Jazeera (Stepanova 2011, 3). It is, therefore, better to interpret the use of ICTs, particularly Web-based platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, not as the main forces driving the protest, but rather as potent tools that helped the already brewing discontent in the nations to be channelized by activists who organized and succeed in their objective; this could not have taken place in such an environment where the typical, Western democratic way of dissent or protest would not have been tolerated or reached critical mass. This can be seen, for example, in the ways Gaddafi tried silencing activists such as Jamal Al-Hajji. When there are few official and legal possibilities to form oppositions to the government through political parties, or unbiased journalism, the technology and possibilities of the internet and multifunctional, digital, mobile devices seem to represent a significant alternative. Looking at the specific functions of social media networks within these protests, it is clear that they did not just help organize the protests, but also spread information about their unfolding, making Facebook the news outlet that reportedly outmatched Al Jazeera in at least the speed of news dissemination (Stepanova 2011, 2). Social media networks did not only play an important role in the Arab Spring, but also helped another protest movement to emerge in 2011. One might say that the revolutionary spark of the Arab Spring crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. In May of that year, we saw mass protests in Spain that went under the banner of Democracia Real YA! (Spanish for real democracy now), or Indignados (the indignant), and sometimes even The Spanish Revolution (cf. Ingendaay 2011; Peters 2011; Wandler 2011). Similar to the uprisings in the Arab Spring, these protests were organized and called for through social media networks like Facebook (ibid.). Another similarity is the fact that the thousands of protesters set up encampments in public squares of many different cities, like Madrids Puerta del Sol (Robinson 2011) They also used these spaces in order to have direct democracy based meetings in which discussions about the protests were held and political alternative approaches or demands were decided upon (ibid.). The reasons for these protests have to be seen in light of Spains history of governmental and institutional corruption; the de facto twoparty democracy; a 20% high unemployment rate (which is even more than twice as high among young people); the austerity measures that were implemented as a response to the Ketzel | 40

repercussions of the global financial crisis; and the burst of the construction bubble in Spain (Wandler 2011). Even though these protests were not aimed at overthrowing a despotic regime, as was the case in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, they have expressed a similar discontent in the governments inability to address and take care of the needs of the people. It therefore has to be understood as another important context for the constitution of the U.S. Occupy Movement.

4.1.2 Occupy Wall Street Sparking a National Movement

The above image was part of a blog entry entitled #OCCUPYWALLSTREET - A shift in revolutionary tactics, which was posted on July the 13th by the Culture Jammers HQ of the magazine Adbusters on its website www.adbusters.org (2011). As one can already see in this digital banner and read in the blog posting, the authors call for a U.S. protest movement that is based on the horizontal, non-violent tactics deployed by the protests in Egypt and Spain, and that takes up the cause to demand the end of corporatocracy in the USA, by which it refers to the power and influence of corporations upon the whole realm of culture. This blog post can be seen as the first spark that ignited the Occupy Movement in September 2011. It was this blog post, which raised the idea to protest in front of Wall Street, as a symbolic protest against the overwhelming influence of capital in contemporary American as well as global politics and society (Schwartz 2011). As the title points out, it was also the birthplace of the

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hashtag2 #occupywallstreet, to be deployed via social media the idea of horizontal, decentralized and nonviolent tactics of protest. Looking at the comment section of this blog post, one can see Digital Native practices in terms of discussing particular actions, sharing information and community building using web-based technology, such as hyperlinks, the very popular internet community www.reddit.com3, or the domain www.occupywallst.org, which was set up especially for that purpose. The idea to address grievances about the complex, hegemonic power of corporate capitalism over economical, political as well as various aspects of life, by symbolically occupying Wall Street, is also rooted in an earlier, polemical article by Adbusters editor Micah M. White, which was published on www.adbusters.com on April 21, as well as in the 95th issue of the magazine (2011). In this article, entitled Revolution in America, White calls for an American Revolution against the decadent, vile plutocrats driving our nation into the ground. Referring to the high unemployment rate in the United States, millions of homes that are in foreclosure due to the burst of the financial, speculative housing bubble, as well as the contemporary, corporatedriven U.S. foreign policy, he specifically argues that the whole government has become corrupt to a degree that should not be tolerated anymore by the citizens. He justifies his call for an American revolution in the last paragraph of his article as the peoples right to start a rebellion against a despotic empire that claimed to be their rightful government, by referring to the very revolutionary beginning of the nation in the 18th century. Even though he inadvertently refers to the former British Empire, from which the United States liberated itself in 1776, his way of addressing corruption in contemporary U.S. politics and economy also resonates with Hardt and Negris concept of Empire. According to the documentation Fault Lines: History of an Occupation produced by Sweta Vohra and Jordan Flaherty for Al Jazeera English (2012),4 there have been weekly meetings in New York City between activists from many places, such as Japan, Tunisia, Greece, Spain and Egypt, months before the encampment of Occupy Wall Street began on September 17. The aim of these meetings was to discuss the ways in which an inclusive, democratic movement based on the models of Egypts Tahir Square and Madrids Puerta del Sol could be established throughout the United States. Underlying these meetings was the feeling of many grassroots activists throughout the U.S. that a critical mass of discontent in
2

A hashtag is meta-information generated by adding the hash symbol in front of a desired word or acronym so that users can search social media sites for relevant content more easily by using the hashtag as a query tag. 3 Reddit.com is a social media website that was established in 2005 and has roughly ten million visitors per day, according to WolframAlpha.com (www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=reddit.com) 4 If not indicated otherwise, the facts in this paragraph are based on this documentation.

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the American public has been reached. The documentation goes on to say that it was intentionally planned to gather in front of the Chase Manhatten Bank on September 17, yet due to an already present strong police force the protesters decided to move to Zucotti Park, using texts messages and tweets5 as a way to communicate this shift. There, more than a thousand people gathered until late night and held the first general assembly, which was a horizontally structured meeting in which people used hand signals and the human microphone which is the amplification of the speakers words by the crowds repetition of these words, and which was invented because of NYCs law against electronic amplification in public spaces in order to make the direct democratic, consensus based decision to stay in the park for longer and build an encampment. One of the organizers, Sandra Nurse, who was interviewed in the documentary, said about the first day that she was exited in how far the protest had worked as a critique on Wall Street, as a critique on economical injustice, and a critique on the relationship between the state and the private corporations; and how its such an inappropriate relationship (min. 5:19-5:36, my transcription). David Graeber, another interviewed organizer and former Yale anthropologist, interprets the decision to occupy Zucotti Park as opening a space to show the government that the people do not feel represented anymore, but instead see the politicians as representatives of big money (min. 8:40-8:49, my transcription). In the following days, the protesters held more general assemblies and also formed specialized working groups or task forces in which direct actions were discussed and executed, such as building the media center and a peoples library as well as taking care of food and security, which also included actions against gender- or race-based discrimination. In the following weeks, similar organized protests spread to hundreds of other U.S. cities and communities, including Los Angeles, Boston and Portland, but also to many other cities around the globe, which is why it is also commonly referred to as the Occupy Movement instead of just Occupy Wall Street (cf. Buckley and Donadio 2011; Gabbatt, Townsend, and OCarroll 2011). Because of this broad spread, it has become the largest protest movement in the U.S. since the anti-Vietnam war movement, mobilizing hundreds to thousands of people to participate in marches or direct actions around the country, such as the shutdown of ports on December 12, 2011 (cf. Collins 2011). In the subsequent weeks the protesters have been opposed by strong police actions, which at some points seemed to even express military strategies. In one of the protests in the Californian city of Oakland, the police used flash grenades and rubber bullets to keep the protesting multitude under control, which led to a severe head injury for the Iraq War army veteran Scott Olsen. Such incidents in which
5

Tweets are the short messages of up to 140 characters used on the social network website www.twitter.com.

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the police used seemingly unreasonable strong force against the protesters caused the public to be more sympathetic with the movement. The protesters participating in the Occupy Movement can be said to represent the multitude as described by Hardt in Negri. One prominent example that supports such claim should be seen in the movements popular slogan We are the 99%. With this slogan, the protesters express the common belief that the people have to pay the price for the mistakes made by a small minority; the political and financial elite (Apps 2011). It expresses an indignation about the current socio-economic and political situation in the U.S., in which a minority of people, hence also addressed as the 1%, controls the majority of wealth, production and political power (ibid.). As it can be seen on the Occupy Movement affiliated blog www.wearethe99percent.us, this notion of disparity rests on common statistics about tax and income inequalities, wealth concentration and economic opportunities of the U.S. population. A deviant variant of the slogan, namely We, the 99%, was first used in August 2001 on a flyer for a NYC General Assembly (Lang 2011). However, it is most likely due to the micro blog wearethe99percent.tumblr.com, that the former variant of the slogan became the most popular (Hedler 2011). This blog is also another good example that the slogan should be interpreted as representing the multitude, because its purpose is to have people from around the U.S. email pictures in which they state how their socio-economical situation leads them to feel as being a part of the 99%. Browsing through this blog allows one to recognize that the people who participate in the Occupy Movement are from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. It is not a particular, coherent group or class, like the Tea Party Movement, which perceives the current U.S. system as not serving the interest of the people. Hence, the protesters represent with this slogan a protest in the name of all the diverse individuals of the U.S. population who struggle under the biopower deployed by a small minority. This popular belief of the protesters, to be part of a majority that is controlled by a minority in form of a financial and political elite, has been linked to a study of a group of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich that suggest this belief to be quite accurate (MacKenzie and Coghlan 2011). Using computer tools to analyze the complex relations of transnational corporations, the scientists found that 43.000 transnational corporations are actually owned by just 147 transnational corporations, which are mainly financial institutions (ibid.). Some of those most powerful financial global players revealed by this study are U.S. based companies, such as JP Morgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley, Bank

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of America, or Lehman Brothers (ibid.), names that should sound very familiar to those who followed the mainstream media reports about the global financial crisis. Hardt and Negri themselves referred to the Occupy Movement as a struggle of the multitude, because of the way the encampments experiment with new democratic practices and also because it has deep roots in the globalization protest movements that stretched at least from Seattle in 1999 to Genoa in 2001 (2011b). In an article about the Arab Spring, Hardt and Negri (2011a) said almost the exact same thing, which highlights that one should interpret the U.S. Occupy Movement not as a mere national but rather as a global countercultural phenomenon. In doing so, one also needs to acknowledge that this particular protest against Corporate America is at the same time a direct protest against the sovereignty of Empire. Such interpretation suggests itself, according to the United States occupying an exceptional role in the network power of Empire. With respect to the common biopolitical production of the multitude, Judith Butler points out in an interview that the Occupy Movement had the chance to learn from the Arab Springs extremely graphic, nearly hallucinatory, image of the power of the people in public assembly to stop a regime (Bella 2011). She thus affirms that the movements share and produce the common, which in this case is focused on the bringing down of an oppressive regime. Butler also says that in contrast to the protests of the Arab Spring, the Occupy protests face an oppressive regime that is much less direct and obvious, because it is constituted by new forms of capitalism, including neoliberalism (ibid.). Hence, one can say that these protests oppose Empire. When she mentions that this capitalist oppressive regime often does not produce citizen who question its institutions, but instead those who affirm the normativity produced by these institutions, as reflected in statements such as: I'm a failure; I'm not working hard enough; or, I'm not as smart as the next person (ibid.), Butler seems to express exactly what Hardt and Ne gri mean, when they speak of Empires biopower in a society of control. According to her, it is also very important that the protesters of the Occupy Movement express their economic suffering, by producing spaces in which individual narratives of slightly different subjectivities can be told (ibid.), like the wearethe99percent.tumblr.com blog. In another article about the global protest movements of 2011, Butler also pointed out how important it is to recognize that the very public character of the space is being disputed and even fought over when these crowds gather (2011). Using the terminology of Empire, one could thus say that Butlers interpretation of the Occupy Movement reflects how the protesting multitude produces an alternative form of the common in those occupied spaces that exposes and Ketzel | 45

contests Empires biopower and its institutions of control, such as the legitimizing media. Butler eloquently described the biopolitical production of the multitude, when she argues that one can see in the Occupy protests that:
politics is no longer defined as the exclusive business of public sphere distinct from a private one, but it crosses that line again and again, bringing attention to the way that politics is already in the home, or on the street, or in the neighborhood, or indeed in those virtual spaces that are unbound by the architecture of the public square. (Butler 2011)

Having said this, it is now time to look more deeply at examples of these struggles of the multitude against Empires biopower within the context of the Occupy Movement. The chosen examples will also further analyze the degree to which practices of Digital Natives are at the forefront of these struggles.

4.2 The Digital Multitude & the Police

According to Hardt and Negris reasoning, Empire has to treat the forces of the multitude that contest its ethical and juridical universal values and its world order as a threat that could break the status quo at any time. It thus has to contain and frame these forces with respect to its capacity to resolve conflicts. It has to execute its biopower and thereby preserve its universal values. As mentioned in chapter two, one of Empires tactics to intervene and control the multitude is to use police force. It was also mentioned that this police force is at times even becoming indistinguishable from actions of war, especially when oppositions that challenge the fundamental aspects of Empire are considered to be terrorist currents. To some degree, this is also the case with regard to the Occupy Movement. The Department of Homeland Security targeted the movement from the earliest stages (Leopold 2012), framing it as a threat to civil society that has to be dealt with as if it were a terrorist movement. A reflection of this assessment could be seen in those situations where the police opposed the protesters with methods like full body armored officers, flash grenades, sound canons and rubber bullets, as depicted in the mentioned documentary of Al Jazeera English. It was also already mentioned that it were these harsh methods with which the police reacted to certain events of the Occupy Movement that propelled many to be more sympathetic with the protesters. One very important aspect that made this public support altogether possible has been the way in which the protesters used mobile phones, digital cameras, blogs, and other social media networks to share videos, pictures and text in order to help exposing, sometimes even in real time, the interventions of the police. Since these discourse changing practices Ketzel | 46

presuppose a certain degree of knowledge in dealing with ICT, and thus reflect a certain immersion in ICT, the present study interprets them as Digital Native practices. In the following section, the study will take a closer look at two prominent examples that represent this kind of Digital Natives feedback. The first example that shows how Digital Native practices influenced the discourse of the Occupy Movement is a 40-second video entitled PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet, which was uploaded on YouTube (a video sharing portal owned by the U.S.-based transnational corporation Google) by the user account TheOther99Percent6 on September 24 (2011). In this video, one can see a small group of women participating in an Occupy Wall Street protest, which, according to the video description, took place the same day on the streets of New York near Union Square. The women are being surrounded and penned on the sidewalk by police officers using an orange plastic net, while they articulate their concern for the surrounding police action; meaning that they made use of their First Amendment Right to Free Speech. Without any clear sign of illegal behavior on the side of the women, a high-ranking, white shirt7 officer of the New York Police Department (NYPD) then suddenly pepper-sprays the group of women, causing them to scream in pain and rub their eyes. According to the statistics of the video provided by YouTube, it received nearly one-and-a-half million views within a couple of days and so far (as of May 2012) a total of nearly 18.000 comments. Almost 650.000 of these views were generated by being embedded or referred to from websites like Facebook, The Guardian or The Huffington Post. Also noteworthy is the fact that nearly 120.000 of the total views were watched on a mobile device, such as a Smart-phone or tablet computer. As those statistics and the video itself indicate, the reason why the present study interprets the video as a result of Digital Native practices is because of its production, distribution and cultural impact. In terms of production, the quality of the video indicates that it was shot with a mobile digital device such as an average digital camera, or a mobile phone, and also that it was uploaded the way it was, meaning unedited raw footage, because there are no visible cuts or edits. This raw footage shared via YouTube is very similar to the many, partially very explicit YouTube videos shot by protesters of the Arab Spring, who also recorded the events just as they unfolded. One of the technological deterministic generalizations about Digital Natives mentioned earlier was that they use ICT in a highly
6 7

According to an article by Sean Captain (2011), this channel is produced by Tim Pool and Henry Ferry. Apparently, the NYPD used mainly high-ranking officers, so called white shirts, to enforce its tactics against the Occupy Movement (Baker and Goldstein 2011).

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personalized way, which enables them to criticize the institutions and values of the world around them and thereby construct alternative perceptions. This raw video, being shot by someone right in the middle of the protests and thereby providing a certain objective perspective of reality, is doing exactly that. By recording the seemingly misbehavior of a police officer from such a perspective, the videos anonymous producer8 contests the common notion of the lawful policeman, whose task it is to protect and serve the citizen according to his oath to uphold the constitution. The producer of the video thereby also contests Empires notion of right, which legitimizes this kind of police force as a means to keep the social order. Yet, the videos contestation is not just present on the visual level of the video itself, but also on a meta-level in its title. When one takes a closer look at how the video was titled, two aspects become apparent that suggest Digital Native activism on the side of the producers of the YouTube channel. The first aspect is that the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet was used. This indicates the producers immersion in social media networks to the degree that they are familiar enough with the previous context of the movement, as in either having read the Adbusters article, or other texts around the idea on the various platforms and forums set up in preparation for the organization of the protests. In addition, the use of the hashtag also indicates that they are familiar with the relatively new form of providing meta-information. The use of hashtags in tweets should be considered a relatively new and popular phenomenon (cf. Parker 2011), and the fact that they transferred this way of marking content to the platform of YouTube suggests a high involvement in social media networks altogether. The second aspect that supports the interpretation of the YouTube channel producers to be Digital Natives is the capitalization of the rest of the title. In accordance to the netiquette which is an unofficial social convention for how to act politely on the internet the capitalizing of whole words, phrases, or sentences should be understood as a linguistic discourse marker that indicates shouting; as Erika Darics points out, it is thereby used as a strategy to clarify the message or the relational intention (Darics 2010, 136137; see also Hoffman 2011). Usually, it is not considered polite to use all caps in online conversations (ibid.). Thus, one can interpret the decision to capitalize the whole title as an expression of urgency. The producers of the YouTube channel indicate thereby a strong indignation about the event, by shouting it into the virtual space of YouTube, and also amplifying it, by using an exclamation mark at the end of this virtual shouting. Having Prenskys notion of a Digital Native as being someone who speaks a certain digital language in mind, this practice appears to be a literal example of that.
8

According to Sean Captains article, the producer of the video remains anonymous (2011).

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However, it seems helpful to understand Prenskys notion of a digital language in a much broader sense, when looking at the production and distribution of this YouTube video. It is not just about what is being communicated and how this is done, but also what kind of technology was being used to communicate. As already indicated above, the unedited recording of the event from an on-the-ground perspective can be understood as an expression of this digital language, because the digital camera was used as an extension of the body. Instead of just providing an eye witness report, the anonymous protester produced objective evidence of what had happened in the form of a video. One has to of course remain critical of such evidence, in that it is limited to a certain perspective and time span, but it is nevertheless evidence that can be analyzed objectively. When the video was uploaded to YouTube, it was contextually framed by the producers of the channel with the mentioned linguistic expression of indignation and the hashtag. Being then distributed via YouTube in a decentralized (many to many) manner, however, is what makes this practice an even better example of this digital language, because by using YouTube as a medium to communicate, the people behind the user account started an online conversation with others. Those who replied to this communicative act by merely watching the video might not necessarily be considered Digital Natives, although one could argue that this is less the case for those who watched it on a mobile device. But those who really engaged in this digital conversation by replying to the video with comments or sharing it together with related links on blogs, websites and other social media networks should be considered Digital Natives, because these practices represent in their individual manner of expression a more democratic way of shaping the discourse around this particular event. As we shall see in just a moment, the replies of other Digital Natives produced a public discussion about the appropriateness of the police officers behavior. If it had been published solely by traditional (one to many) media outlets, such as television stations, it would have been firmly framed according to that mediums particular world view. Yet, with regard to the videos statistics, it becomes clear that the video has been framed in multiple ways. On the one hand, it has been framed by the thousands of comments on YouTube itself, and on the other hand, it has been framed by being embedded, shared and commented on in other network-based media, such as Facebook, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, or occupywallst.org. Hence, it also becomes apparent that this form of distribution has a reinforcing influence on cultural impact, because by being distributed and re-distributed in this decentralized fashion, the message of the video is not just spread throughout the multitude, but is also reproduced by it each time in relation to the many entailed different subjectivities. This form of distribution produces a discourse, which should Ketzel | 49

be understood to reflect the cultural impact of the original video. This online conversation around the video can thus be regarded as a form of discursive activism (as referenced by Prabhas Pokharel). One needs to be aware that, when looking solely at comments, one will also find many utterances or speech acts that should probably not be considered typical examples of political activism. Yet, even though they might not express what can be considered political speech, they nevertheless are part of this discourse. They are part of the process that produces the common around this particular incident captured on video. As an example of this discourse on a small scale, one can look at the conversation of YouTube users KotoOnno and TurtleShroom in the comment section underneath the video. TurtleShroom argues that the video does not entail the whole context and therefore does not serve as a reliable source to say that the police acts unjustified against the Occupy protests in general. KotoOnno argues in reply that it should not be interpreted as a generalization of unjustified police force, but that [t]his video is making a point of the misuse of force in this very specific incident by showing that the pepper-sprayed women were not outside of their rights (TheOther99Percent 2011). As one can see in TurtleShrooms reply to this comment, KotoOnno thereby convinced TurtleShroom of his opinion, which shows that the practice of commenting on social media can be regarded as a discursive way to frame news. A more prominent example that reflects the discursive activism and the cultural impact of the video comes in form of a YouTube video response. It is a slow motion version of the original video and was uploaded on the same day by the user account USLAWdotcom, which is the YouTube channel of the online provider for legal information USLaw.com (2011). Looking at the statistics of this video, one can see how it caused the mainstream media, such as the New York Times and The Atlantic, to report about the indecent, but also that this version was watched more than 850.000 times and received almost 6.000 comments. The relevance of this slow motion video lies in it showing more accurately that the protesting women did not violate any laws and that the officer therefore acted with unjustified force. USLaw embedded this slow motion video along with other videos of the same incident, thus providing different perspectives, in a blog post on their website (USLaw 2011b). In that blog post, they come to the conclusion that their video analysis provides legal evidence that shows the female protesters were in no violation of the law. They also provide the information that led to the identification of Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, who used the pepper spray against the women without following the official police protocol for the use of pepper spray (ibid.). Furthermore, the blog post links to the mainstream media outlets that cited USLaws Ketzel | 50

analysis, such as the TIME Magazine, The New York Times, The Guardian, CBS, and MSNBC. If one follows these links and reads the respective comments of internet users, it becomes obvious that in addition to the original video, the analysis and the slow motion video provided by USLaw has caused a national conversation about the treatment of demonstrators by the New York Police Department with particular attention on the actions of the senior officer wielding the pepper spray canister in the video (USLaw 2011a). This national conversation about the misuse of force by Anthony Bologna in this incident can consequently be called to have gone viral, meaning to have spread far and wide in a short interval of time, according to the word-of-mouth effects specific to the decentralized networks of the internet. Part of this viral, national conversation is also the discussion about the consequences of this incident. When the name of the officer in question was made public, there have been online campaigns to encourage people to complain about officer Bologna by calling his supervisor (Martin 2011). Spreading this information through social media networks like Facebook and Twitter should thus be considered as a form of Digital Native activism. The internet activist collective Anonymous even took it a step further and released a variety of information about Deputy Inspector Bologna. The crucial information leak that led to the most controversy was a plain text document on the website www.pastebin.com just two days after the incident, which includes personal contact information, family details and filing details to a civil lawsuit (A Guest 2011). This release of information via the internet can be considered a direct action in retaliation to the incident, because the collective claims that the pepper sprayed women have the right to know who harmed them (ibid.). It can also be considered a warning or threat to other police officers, or the society of control in general, to withdraw from such police tactics, because of the statement: Before you commit atrocities against innocent people, think twice. WE ARE WATCHING!!! Expect Us! (ibid.). Whether Anonymous wanted to instigate other people to harass Bologna and his family remains unclear, according to an article by Elinor Mills on the tech media website CNET News (2011). However, Mills referral to a tweet by the YourAnonNews Twitter account suggests that the collective wanted to use this information to harass the officer and his family. Apart from this rather radical consequence to Bolognas action, prot esters of the Occupy Movement and other sympathetic parties have also demanded juridical consequences. From the organizers side, this becomes visible in a blog post dated September 26 on the website www.occupywallst.org (OccupyWallSt 2011). In this blog post, they argue decidedly with the aid of videos and other photos that high-ranking, white-collar officers acted Ketzel | 51

unjustified not just in this particular incident, but also in other interventions with the protesters on the same day in New York. They demanded the resignation of New Yorks Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, jail time for Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna and others like him, that no blue-collar police is charged for the crimes of their supervisor, as well as an apology for those events addressed to the General Assembly of the Zucotti Park Occupy encampment by Mayor Bloomberg (ibid.). A more realistic approach to demand juridical consequences to the actions of Anthony Bologna is proposed by Charlie Grapski on the website of the political online community Daily Kos (2011). There he calls for the people to collect further evidence, also by filing for police video material of this incident under the Freedom of Information Act, in order to get Anthony Bologna suspended as quickly as possible. According to The New York Times, the NYPD reacted by stating that the police had used pepper spray appropriately and that the video posted by the user account TheOther99Percent had either been edited, or inaccurate, leaving out the context that legitimized Bolognas reaction. (Goldstein 2011). Both claims were contested by the staff from USLaw, who repeated that the video had not been edited, that it clearly shows no signs of illegal behavior of the protesters prior to Bolognas action and that his use of pepper spray has to be considered contradictory to the common police protocol, which allows the use of pepper spray only in order to make an unwilling person to comply in an arrest (USLaw 2011b). However, the pepper sprayed women had not resisted an attempted arrest as the video clearly shows, nor had they been medically taken care of, as the police protocol also demands (ibid.). As the press pressure increased, the New York Police Department conducted an internal investigation on the case, which, two month later, led to the conclusion that Deputy Inspector Bologna broke the rules when he used pepper spray (Masnick 2011). According to a Huffington Post blog, he was fined with a docking of his payment for the equivalent of ten days and transferred to Staten Island, which is where he lives (2011). If one looks at the comments of this blog post, as well as at the comments of similar coverage of this outcome, it becomes obvious that many see in these consequences rather a reward than a punishment (cf. Dienst and Prokupecz 2011; Doll 2011; Grant 2011; Parascandola and Kappstatter). With respect to the above, it should have become clear that the original YouTube video had such an impact on the public discourse in such a short time, because of the ways in which Digital Natives realized the democratic potential of social media networks in order to voice their criticism. It is safe to say that the nationwide conversation about Anthony Bolognas unreasonable use of pepper spray against the Occupy Wall Street protesters would not have Ketzel | 52

been possible without the uploading, sharing and commenting of this video, its slow motion version, as well as other videos and images of this incident. Hence, one can also say that this discursive activism of Digital Natives played a very important role in the representation and framing of the protesting multitude. The Digital Natives in this context used the common, corporate fabric of ICT to contest the biopower of the police by spreading information, sharing opinions and expressing indignation about this specific incident in multiple ways. They thereby contested the self-legitimizing media apparatuses of Empire by subverting or co-opting from within its distributed networks of communication and representation. What is meant by this is that editors of the mainstream media simply could not ignore the attention and common indignation this incident produced in the alternative media networks of the internet. It was most likely the cultural impact of this particular incident, or to put it differently, it was this new national awareness of disputed police tactics against the Occupy Movement, which helped disseminate in a similar, yet much broader way another questionable event in which a police officer used pepper spray to manage a protest. This event serves as the second example of the present study, in order to show how Digital Native practices in the context of the Occupy Movement contest the biopower of Empire. The YouTube video that captured it and which has been spread the most was uploaded by the 26 year old9 user terrydatiger under the title Police pepper spraying and arresting students at UC Davis on November 18 (terrydatiger 2011). This video was, like the previous example, shot with a mobile device to provide unedited, raw footage of the police force used against the protesters and it has also been spread through popular social media networks on the internet. According to its statistics, it received more than two and a half million views within a short period after its upload, as well as thousands of comments. The context of the video is the organization of several protests by branches of the Occupy Movement at the University of California, where faculty members were also involved (Golden 2011). They were aimed against massive financial cuts in the education sector in general, as well as against those which directly affect them, but also against the problematic of exorbitant tuition fees and the consequential debt burden of student loans (ibid.). In some of these protests, the police also used unreasonable force, like club beatings and hair pulling, to disperse the protesting multitude, which has stoked outrage among some faculty and legal experts (Gollan 2011). Then on November 18, UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi ordered the police to clear the Occupy UC Davis encampment
9

According to the user profile on YouTube.

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(Golden 2011). Even though the protesters had complied with the police enforcement by removing their tents, the police began arresting some of them (Johnston 2011). In the tradition of the student movements of the 60s and 70s, some of the surrounding protesting students then formed a sit-in circle around the arrestees and some policemen. What happened next is documented by the video and shows, as per the video description, how a police officer unnecessarily pepper sprays the students to open a path for the rest of the officers. This video, along with many others showing the same incident from different vantage points, caused a similar national discussion and indignation, as the pepper spray incident in New York did. Chancellor Linda Katehi was put under pressure by the press and the protesting student body to explain this unreasonable use of police force, some even demanded her to resign (Memmot 2011; Gollan 2011). There was also a similar informational retaliation by the Anonymous collective that was mainly aimed at revealing the identity and contact information of the pepper-spraying officer, Lt. John Pike (Stevens 2011). Since the various YouTube videos of this incident are quite similar to the previous example in their production and distribution, it is not considered necessary to focus on them in detail, but rather to understand them as the visual pretext for the cultural impact that followed. Because what is more interesting, with respect to Digital Native practices in the Occupy Movement, is how the reaction of Lt. Pike has sparked a specific cultural phenomenon in the form of an internet meme that has been labeled the Pepper Spray Cop or the Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop (cf. Scott 2012). Yet, before talking about this particular internet meme, it needs to be clarified very briefly what an internet meme actually is. Referring to the theory of Richard Dawkins, elaborated in his book The Selfish Gene published in 1976, a meme is a unit of cultural information, like an idea, a habit or custom, that is replicated and spread through communicative practices in an evolutionary, gene-like manner, which means that memes are very likely to change or mutate in the process of their spread (cf. Heylighen 1996). With the advent of digital technologies and decentralized communicative networks as the internet, more and more media in which memes are embedded are present in digital form. This makes it easier, on the one hand, for memes to spread extremely fast, as in a picture or video that goes viral. On the other hand, the digital form of the medium also allows the meme to be altered really quickly using computer technologies. To exemplify this with respect to the Occupy Movement, one can regard the slogan We are the 99% or the hashtag #occupy as a meme which has been altered in numerous ways, by either producing derivates of the slogan or of the hashtag. The meme that Ketzel | 54

was inspired by Lt. John Pike pepper spraying the Occupy protesters, however, can probably be considered the most creative meme in the history of the movement so far. In just three days, it spread widely throughout the internet via social networks and very popular media outlets, such as Wired Magazine, Boing Boing, KnowYourMeme.com, Gawker, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. The first four of these media outlets have to be regarded as highly influential with regard to the popularity of the meme, because their social status among Digital Natives should be considered very high, due to their orientation towards internet and technology news and trends. Another important channel for the spread of the meme is the blog www.peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com, which is solely dedicated to archiving the various images it produced. According to KnowYourMeme.com, a website that specializes in the documentation of internet memes, The Pepper Spray Cop meme started with the photo posted below, which was photographed by Louise Macabitas and uploaded to the Occupy Wall Street sub forum of the Reddit.com community very shortly after the incident took place (Scott 2012). What made this photo the point of departure for numerous following variations is its qualification as source material to be photoshopped10 and the fact that it depicts Lt. John Pikes action as a very casual one. With the live footage of his previous actions captured on video, this picture captures very vividly a kind of apathy with which Lt. Pike executes his task. It seems reasonable to interpret this notion of apathy as the cause for the outrage that led, within just two days after the incident,11 to the first derivates of this image that started the meme. In these derivates,12 Lt. John Pike was edited out of the original and put into other images with varying contexts.

10

By photoshopped, the present study means the manipulation of images and photos using the Adobe software Photoshop or similar software. 11 There has no scientifically sound history of this particularly meme been published so far, which is why the present study uses the documentation on KnowYourMeme.com as the main reference. 12 If not indicated otherwise, all of the mentioned examples of this meme can be found on the blog www.peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com.

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One of the earliest variations that was uploaded to Reddit.com by the user jefuchs and then spread widely over the internet (Scott 2012), is also one of the most fitting contextualization of this incident with regard to the Occupy Movement. As one can see in the image below, Lt. Pike was placed in the 1819 painting, Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull, pepper spraying the draft of the Declaration of Independence. This variant of the meme is so contextually relevant to the movement, because, by depicting such scenery, it refers to the earlier mentioned justification of a protest or revolution against the contemporary socio-economic situation of the United States given by Micah M. White in his article Revolution in America. By pepper spraying the very document that made the early United States of America legally independent from the British Empire, Lt. Pikes action nullifies in a metaphorical way this independence. He represents the force that acts on behalf of the new Corporate America and which has led to the corruption of the nation as described by White.

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Such an interpretation of lost traditional values and notions of right is also applicable to Lt. Pikes many other appearances in images of historic and patriotic moments of the United States. For example: in Archibald Willards The Spirit of 76, he pepper sprays one of the independence fighters who, in the struggle of his death, raises his hat to celebrate the victory over the British Empire. In Benjamin Wests unfinished painting of the delegations at the Treaty of Paris in 1783, he pepper sprays the American signatories John Jay, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, and in Currier & Ives Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he sprays the former president, who has played a major role in the abolition of slavery, and thus, in the U.S. history of human rights movements, right in the face. One Photoshop artist even went so far as to swap the Statue of Liberty with Lt. Pike, depicting thereby the U.S. not as the land of the free, but as a police state. As the intrinsic virility of the meme concept suggests, the Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop meme is not just limited to such patriotic and historic contexts, but instead Lt. Pike has also been inserted into other famous paintings, like Georges Seurats A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Edvard Munchs The Scream, or into The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, in which he pepper sprays gods face. In Pablo Picassos Guernica, Lt. Pike was even adapted to fit the colors and aesthetic of the painting. These examples should also be interpreted as an expression of indignation about the pepper spray incident at UC Davis, however, this time it is more abstract. Again, the underlying and fueling idea of the meme should most likely be attributed to the distinct impression of apathy left by Lt. Pike. Xeni Jardin, a co-editor of what can be considered a very popular Digital Native blog Boing Boing, expresses this quite fitting in her own words:
I mean, look at the guy. He's not braced for imminent attack by a foe; he does not move with tension as if navigating a hostile environment. He's administering punishment, and his face says: "Meh." (Jardin 2011b)

In order to process this inconceivable impression, the various variants of the meme turn to humour and mock this very incident, making it a viral satire. If one takes Michelangelos painting for example, the Photoshop artist has expressed her/his outrage in the form of Lt. Pike countering gods creation of Adam, the prototype human, with a batch of pepper spray. This image thereby not just implies a universal notion of right, by which Lt. Pike is given the power over god and thus the power over life; it also implies that this form of biopower is considered to be inhumane, violating the very Christian values that many of the U.S. multitude believe in. Seeing him in Munchs The Scream, one could interpret the infinite Ketzel | 57

scream passing through nature13 as the anxiety of the 99% to master their seemingly bleak future with burdens of dept, facing unemployment or homelessness and feeling powerless in a world order designed by a small elite; and in that scenery of fear, there is Lt. Pike pepper spraying the outcry of the citizen in his unconcerned attitude, as if they had bad breath. The actual magnitude of this meme is best visualized by performing a Google image search with the query Pepper Spray Cop Meme, which returns more than 4.000 entries, of which, the vast majority perfectly exemplifies the memes cultural impact. Some of those images show that Lt. Pike has also found his way into mainstream pop culture, by being inserted into movie scenes from Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, onto album covers of Pink Floyd or The Beatles (music bands). The Pepper Spray meme is also applied on one of Star Wars most noted characters, Jedi Master Yoda, who blesses his protg with the saying, May the force be with you.' Placing the caption 'MAY THE EXCESSIVE FORCE BE WITH YOU' below an image in which Yoda gets pepper sprayed by Lt. Pike is a pungent use of satire (cf. Davis 2011). It champions that such police tactics have to be fought against, just as the Jedi and the rebels fight the emperors evil empire. When Lt. Pike is thus depicted as a disciple of the Dark Side, this variation of the meme resembles how the good have lost their power over society due to the corruption that led to the rise of Empire. In other mutations of the meme, Lt. Pike was mashed up with previous famous internet memes like LOLcats, 1960s Spider-Man, Keyboard Cat, My Little Pony, or The Hitler Reacts YouTube video meme. But the meme is not just limited to visual media (Scott 2012). As listed by knowyourmeme.com, the voice actor Harry Shearer, who plays Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, has recorded the Ballad of the Pepper Spray Cop, a rock-n-roll song that depicts the imaginary life of Lt. Pike out of his perspective as the normal way of life (ibid.). Shearer thereby created a social satire that picks up and supports the grievances of the protesting multitude. Another variation of the meme that should also be considered a Digital Native practice are the spoof reviews on Amazon.com (U.S.-based e-commerce portal) for the pepper spray used by Lt. Pike (Scott 2012). In this example, one can see clearly how Digital Natives made use of the possibilities of ICT to express their individual world view, by subverting the socio-linguistic norms of the review genre. Probably one of the most abstract variations of the Pepper Spray Cop meme is a reaction to a comment of Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. As a political commentator on the Bill OReillys talk show of November 21, she downplayed the incident by questioning the harmfulness of being pepper sprayed. Her words, according to knowyourmeme.com (Scott
13

This quote of Munch is taken from Peter Aspdens article So, what does The Scream mean? (2012).

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2012), were: Its like a derivative of actual pepper. Its a food product, essentially. This comment caused another wave of discomposure, which is reflected in the internet meme that followed shortly after her comment. The essence of that offshoot meme is a snapshot of her appearance on that show with various captions that follow the semantic structure of her original statement, as for example: Rape? Its surprise sex, essentially (ibid). Lastly, the meme also found its way back into the physical world, when print outs of its derivates where used as protest sings by Occupy protesters on a subsequent UC Davis protest against chancellor Katehis mismanagement (Jardin 2011a). If one looks at all the variants of the Pepper Spray Cop internet meme, it becomes apparent that the meme is a perfect example of what Hardt and Negri described as the biopolitical production of the multitude in our contemporary society of postmodernization or informatization. The immaterial labor put into this meme by Digital Natives created awareness, distinct subjectivities and affects. It created an aspect of common indignation in the multitude. This commonality has been produced and expressed by the global spread of the meme. Even though some of the memes variations might be considered as being rather shallow or superficial because of their pop cultural referrals and iconic focus on one particular officer (which tends to blend out the much deeper systemic flaws that led to the incident), this internet meme contests and exposes the biopower of Empire from within. It is a social expression of resisting the dominant culture. Jardin came to a similar conclusion in her article about the meme for The Guardian, when she said that the internets way of dealing with that kind of upsetting dissonance is to mock it (Jardin 2011b). The Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement delivered Photoshop justice to Lt. Pike and the system he represents, by creating a kind of folk art or shared visual joke that is open to sharing and reinterpretation by anyone (ibid). All of these variations of the meme reflect in one way or another and with respect to the core values of the U.S. material and written constitution how the protesters feel misrepresented and at times even betrayed by government and media institutions. The meme can therefore be interpreted as the multitudes answer to the decline of traditional U.S. sovereignty caused by the construction of Empire. Empires ethical and juridical universal values that legitimate and demand such police interventions are being exposed and questioned, when Lt. Pikes casual way of maintaining the social order is being depicted in such a cynical way. By creating and disseminating this meme, the Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement protest the corruption of the very democratic values that the United States was founded upon. Ketzel | 59

4.3 Occupying the Media

The previous chapter looked at Digital Native practices that represent a form of resistance against the authority of the police. The given examples showed how the protesting multitude dealt with this physical form of biopower in Empire by sharing information, knowledge and affects in a decentralized and leaderless fashion through the use of social networks on the internet. These social networks can be interpreted as the immaterial side of the movement, because within these virtual formations, the immaterial labor of Digital Natives has played a major role in making the protesting multitude visible. However, such practices have not just been limited to various forms of response to police authority but have become even more important with respect to the overall organization, deployment and representation of the Occupy Movement itself. This does not mean that the movement should be considered predominantly an online phenomenon, which certainly is not the case. Occupations in the form of encampments, marches and other direct actions made possible through the gathering of many people in certain places should be considered the most powerful form of protest deployed by the movement. Yet, in order to resist the forms of biopower deployed by the media apparatus that sustains and legitimizes Empire, social networks on the internet have turned out to be very important and effective, because their very structure reflects the collaboration and constitution of the multitude. The underlying technologies, which have enabled those social networks to become an important tool for the movement, were made available by the informatization and postmodernization of capitalist production. This means that the possibility to access and use Smart phones, digital cameras, computers and internet services such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and live video streams in order to communicate and collaborate has to be seen as a result of the globalization. This is also the reason why title of the present study views the actors of the Occupy Movement as the children of globalization, metaphorically. They are those who grew up in the consolidating process of Empire, who are now protesting the political, socio-economic and cultural inequities tied to it by using the very technologies and networks this process has established and made possible. Of course, this also entails the use of various collaborative networks that have commonly been associated with anti - or counterglobalization movements, as it was mentioned earlier with regard to the context of the movement. The Occupy Movement should, therefore, be interpreted as another form of resistance by the multitude from within Empire. According to Hardt and Negri, resistance against Empire is not possible otherwise, because there is no outside to it anymore. As they Ketzel | 60

say, the globalization of economic and cultural relationships, means that the virtual center of Empire can be attacked from any point (2001, 59). The Digital Native practices within the U.S. Occupy Movement can be interpreted as a form of attacking Empires biopolitical control, because they produce a new form of the common, which expresses alternatives to the medial self-legitimization of Empire and thereby exposes and challenges the order of Empire. This form of resistance can be seen especially when one compares the ways in which the movement is discussed and represented in the U.S. mainstream media to the ways in which it represents, reflects and organizes itself according to this new common. Regarding the perspective of the mainstream media, it can be said that it has difficulties in dealing with the Occupy Movements decentralized, horizontally structured and leaderless constitution. Because of that, many news reports have criticized the protesters as lacking a concrete political position with clear and reasonable demands, even though they certainly acknowledged their indignation about the contemporary, unequal socio-economic situation caused by the influence of capital in politics (cf.: Harcourt 2011; Bellafante 2011; Ellis 2011). On the other hand, this complexity of the movement also led to the accusation from the side of the protesters that the mainstream media would deliberately blackout important aspects of the Occupy protests (cf. Pompeo 2011; Yu 2011). Although there have been reports about the protest in New York as early as September 17, 2011, it can be considered true that critical and insightful journalism had not taken place until the first questionable encounters with the police, because when looking at these news reports, it becomes apparent that the coverage of the movement shows a relatively strong bias according to the political positioning of the respective media outlets. Such bias is not really surprising given the fact that the U.S. mainstream media outlets are mostly owned by large private corporations (cf. Lorimer and Scannell 1994, 8796), which reflects the self-legitimizing apparatus of Empire. As Betty Yu from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting points out, the conservative media outlets framed the protests by depicting the protesters as drug-abusing hippies, while such liberal outlets as the New York Times strongly focused on the lack of clear and coherent demands, by describing the protesters as directionless naifs with no message (2011). Some commentators typically associated with a politically right wing or conservative position, especially on the Fox News network, went so far as to describe the protesters as socialists, worse than the ones of the French Revolution, un-American and even claimed that their agenda resembles a form

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of fascism (Stewart 2011).14 The fact that these media outlets opt for such harsh, populist exaggerations implies that the criticisms of corporate influence in society, as deployed by the Occupy Movement, is perceived as a fundamental threat to the norms and values of Empire. A theoretical approach that suggests an overall inability of the mainstream press to reflect the constitution of the Occupy Movement is given by political science scholar Bernard Harcourt in The New York Times and The Guardian, where he describes its form of protest as political disobedience that demands a new vocabulary and also calls for an entirely new grammar (2011b). With this notion he highlights that the movement is not just a form of civil disobedience, but a structural resistance against the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-war period (Harcourt 2011a). Harcourt thereby refers not only to the diversity of subjectivities that constitute the movement, which makes the coverage difficult for the press, but he suggests, moreover, that any unmistakable categorization, any cooption or steering of the movement through media and/or other political institutions is rendered impossible, unless they participate in the rhizomic resistance of the movement and in its various forms of consensus-based direct decision making (2011b). In a New York Times blog post by public editor Arthur S. Brisbane, one can see a reflection of this structural difficulty of the press to cover the complexity of the movement, because he asked other editors as well as the readers how the New York Times should be addressing the many different aspects of the protests (2011). By speaking in a more general way of new collective networks of alternative subcultures and other new modes of social expression that resist the dominant culture, Hardt and Negri reflect this structural difficulty of the press in a similar way (2004, 263). They argue that it is misleading and counterproductive to conceptualize these forms of resistance as expressions of public opinion, because
[p]ublic opinion is not the adequate term for these alternative networks of expression born in resistance because, as we have seen, in the traditional conceptions public opinion tends to present either a neutral space of individual expression or a unified social whole or a mediated combination of these two poles. We can only understand these forms of social expression as networks of the multitude that resist the dominant power and manage from within it to produce alternative expressions. (Hardt and Negri 2004, 263)

14

Even though this source (The Daily Show with John Stewart) is unscientific and biased, due to the fact that it is social satire, it is nevertheless considered legitimate here, because of its compilation of video clips from the respective media outlets, and moreover, because its point of critique or social satire rests on the very notion of the bias in the U.S. corporate mainstream media.

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The notion of public opinion is in so far relevant for the given argument in that it is commonly said of the press to be the Fourth Estate, which reflects the public opinion and thus gives a voice to the people in order to check and balance the other three branches of government. Yet according to the above, the many different backgrounds, ideologies and motives of the Occupy protesters should not be perceived as an expression of public opinion. The movement should not be interpreted as something like the Tea Party of the Left or the unified voice of the people (cf. Tarrow 2011), but as the many, different voices of the multitude that discover and produce the common in a shared struggle against the contemporary socio-economic and political order of Empire. The below posted screenshots of Facebook posts by the Occupy Wall St. group (2011d) and the Occupy Together group (Occupy Together 2011b) support such interpretation.

Hence, the resistance and protests of the Occupy Movement can be thought of as networks of the multitude that produce alternative social expressions, which subvert Empires medial selflegitimation. In order to make the structure and content of this resistance, or to use Harcourts Ketzel | 63

term political disobedience visible, it is therefore necessary to take a closer look at the networks of the protesting multitude. Unfortunately, the very character of the network (being made up of distributed and complex relations) makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to analyze those alternative social expressions completely. This becomes even clearer with regard to the alternative social expressions of the Occupy Movement that take place on the internet. There are numerous websites, blogs and social media services through which the Occupy idea is disseminated, discussed and realized by the collaborating individuals of the multitude. What is commonly denominated by the term Web 2.0 is the fact that the very structure of these social media services is designed to increasingly interconnect all of the more or less closed forms of online community or representation. To give an example, one does not need to be a registered Twitter user to see tweets of a Facebook friend, as soon as this friend connects his Twitter account with his Facebook account. Similar interconnections are made when one uses the more common way of sharing hyperlinks to other websites or services within ones social media network. Information can therefore be spread in a highly complex network of connected individuals. Consequently, the present study needs to limit itself when looking at the networks of the Occupy Movement. The scope of analysis is thus narrowed by looking only at the impact of the movement on Facebook and how this platform has been used as a means of communication, organization and representation. Since this impact and activity alone makes up a vast amount of content, it can only be analyzed here in a qualitative manner with the use of representative examples. As verified in a study by Neal Caren and Sarah Gaby (2011), Facebook can be regarded as one of the most important networks (nodes) of the protesting multitude (which in itself should also be seen as a network), since it has facilitated, especially in the first months of the movement, the communication, collaboration and organization of the protesters online. The two scholars conducted an analysis of most of the publically available user involvement on Facebook related to the Occupy Movement within the timeframe of September 23 up to October 22. Within this duration, they found that more than 400 unique pages have been established in order to spread the movement across the U.S., including at least one page for each of the 50 states (Caren and Gaby 2011, 1). Through these Facebook pages more than 170.000 Facebook users have actively participated in this online form of the movement by posting or commenting, while more than 1.4 million have shown their support by liking these Facebook pages (ibid.). Until October 22, the active users generated 1,170,626 total Ketzel | 64

posts or comments associated with Occupation pages (ibid.). However, the two authors also highlight that [t]he majority of Facebook activity happens on personal pages, which could not be included in the study due to privacy restrictions (2011, 4). This suggests the overall cultural impact of the movement on Facebook to be much greater. But with regard to the movements aim at using Facebook as a tool to reach as many as possible, those public pages should be understood as the main means of communication and collaboration. When we perform a Facebook search with the term occupy as a query, we find that these Facebook pages are distinguished. Most prominently, there are pages that represent the original idea of symbolically occupying Wall Street. Others have adapted this idea by symbolically occupying other national institutions such as the Federal Reserve banking system. Yet, the majority of Facebook pages reflect the organization of various local occupations, where some focus on the state level and most at the regional level. Caren and Gaby categorized these different Occupy Facebook pages accordingly into four types depending on their areas of focus, which are: the Wall Street Occupation (e.g. Occupy Wall St.); efforts to symbolically occupy national institutions (e.g. Occupy the Media) or spread the Occupy Wall Street nationally (e.g. Occupy Together); state or regional Occupy coordination pages (e.g. Occupy Florida); or pages on specific local occupations (e.g. Occupy Denver) (2011, 4). Interestingly, they identified 13 different Occupy Wall Street groups (ibid.), which demonstrate the leaderless and distributed character of the movement, because these 13 different pages reflect that there are multiple opinions on how the movement should be represented and conducted. The existence of such offshoot pages thus resembles the multitudes diversity, while at the same time they share a common idea.

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As one can see in the above cropped version of Caren and Gabys table of the Top 50 Facebook Occupy pages (2011, 14), the page associated with the initiating Occupy Wall Street activists has been the one with the widest reach and participation. If one looks at the earliest date column, one can see that the activists of the Occupy Wall St. group used this page to spread the idea of occupying Wall Street one month prior to the encampment in September 2011. Concrete examples of this are two posts of this group from August 15 and 16 in which they use captions such as YES WE CAMP or OCCUPY WALL ST. BEGINS SEP 17th over photos of New Yorks stock exchange market (Occupy Wall St. 2011a; Occupy Wall St. 2011b). Furthermore, these two posts entailed links in the form of the original hashtag, the website www.occupywallst.org and, on the latter post, even a Quick Response code15 encouraging digital connections with others and to gather more information about the idea of the protest. According to these two examples, one can see how the Digital Native practices of creating these pictures with image editing software and sharing the call for protest via Facebook also encourages further Digital Native practices in order to spread the various aspects of the idea. Such practices also become apparent with regard to the second largest Facebook page associated with the Occupy Movement. Caren and Gaby point out that the aim of Occupy Together is to spread the occupation tactic across the country by encouraging its participants to use the website www.meetup.com/occupytogether to join or start local occupations (2011, 4). This website has thereby managed to draw close to 16.000 registered online occupiers in nearly 2.000 cities across the world (ibid.). However, if one compares the numbers from meetup.com (social network site) with those of the above excerpt of Caren and Gabys list, it is apparent that Facebook has been by far a more effective tool. This should come as no real surprise with respect to the general popularity and cultural impact of Facebook around the world and especially in the United States. The fact that there are more than 150 million Facebook users in the U.S. alone (Socialbakers.com), of whom almost half are between 18 to 34 years old (ibid.), and who contribute to making it the second biggest website on the internet with its 6,7 billion daily views, 16 qualifies this social network not just as a perfect environment for Digital Natives, but moreover holds a vast potential to use it as a means for mass communication and collaboration. In order to see how this potential has been realized by the Occupy Movement, it is helpful to take a closer look at the activity of the Facebook users who interacted on the
15

A Quick Response code is a 2D Barcode which can be scanned with a smart phone using a certain software in order to get more information, as in being linked to a certain website or video (cf. Riepe 2012). 16 According to WolframAplha (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=facebook).

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mentioned pages. According to Caren and Gabys research, a majority of the Occupy-related Facebook pages were set up and grew the most in terms of active users in the period between September 23 and October 6 (2011, 5). They assume that this rapid expansion was most likely caused by a combination of the efforts of Occupy Together and Occupy Colleges to facilitate local occupations, combined with the increased media attention that the movement received on September 24th and October 1st (Caren and Gaby 2011, 56). While the former date refers to the already mentioned pepper spray incident in New York, the latter date refers to the mass protest on New Yorks Brooklyn Bridge, in which approximately 700 hundred Occupy protesters were arrested (Baker and Moynihan 2011). By excluding those who only liked or shared a page or post, Caren and Gaby identified a total of 172.029 active users who posted comments on Facebooks Occupy pages and/or contributed to them by posting new links (2011, 6). Taking a closer look at these posts and comments, one can interpret the active users as Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement because of the ways in which they communicate and collaborate on Facebook. With their practices of sharing information, knowledge and affects via this web interface, they create new aspects of the common by producing alternative narratives. It is thus of interest to focus at some examples that make the production of these alternative narratives visible. As Caren and Gaby point out, the activists use Facebook as a means of recruiting others, which, apart from the already mentioned general calls for protest, also takes the form of pleas to bring more supporters, offers for carpooling to sites, request to contact government officials, and sharing information of where supporters should go, often containing an emotional component (Caren and Gaby 2011, 10). Because of the specific design of Facebook, this can take place not just as a regular post to the Wall 17 of the respective pages, but also through Facebooks note or event function. For examples, on October 21, Occupy Los Angeles posted a note in order to call for applicants willing to support its social media team (2011). An example of promoting an event via Facebook can be seen in the call by Occupy Boston to gather for the towns first General Assembly on September 27 (2011). Closely connected to the recruiting aspect, is the use of Facebook as a communicative tool to request resources and to discuss the tactics of the movement. Caren and Gaby give an example in which the Occupy Seattle group ask its users to donate insulin urgently needed at their site in Westlake (2011, 11). More generally, they say that other requests commonly ask
17

The Wall of a Facebook page describes the default space in which the administrators of the page or the users make posts and comments.

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for encampment resources such as tents and sleeping bags, food donations, or books for the libraries that are often set up in the encampments (ibid.). The way in which Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement use Facebook in order to discuss its tactical deployment becomes visible in the screenshot of the post below put up by the Occupy Wall St. group (2011c).

Not just within the text of this post, but even further within its communicative feedback made up of the 708 comments, more than 4.000 likes and 900 shares, one can see how the Occupy activists use Facebook to spread information about civil disobedience and to position the movement in the tradition of previous civil rights protests. When reading the comments to this post, it also becomes clear that a majority of the commentators believe such tactics to be the most effective in order to be taken seriously by the rest of the population as well as by the opposition. In addition, this form of direct communication also allows its participants to correct each other, as it can be seen in a comment to the above post by Naomi Klein, in which she asks the administrators of Occupy Wall St. to correct the fact that it was not her who said those words but Naomi Wolf. Another important way Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement make use of Facebook lies in the dissemination and compilation of Occupy related-news stories and other news worthy information (Caren and Gaby 2011, 10). In the below screenshot of a post taken from the Occupy Together Facebook timeline (2011c), the activists encouraged the protesting multitude by reporting on what they had achieved together, when they mobilized many to participate in a march in Oakland.

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. It is a typical example that shows how Facebook is used to share images and information that produce affects in favor of the movement. Hence, this form of use should not really be regarded as separated from the other forms of use. Although such posts focus on the distribution of relevant information, they also often contain an affective force to become sympathetic with the movement. The movement thereby produces alternative narratives, news and truths deviant from the perception and impact of the movement in the mainstream press. In addition to this form of citizen style journalism, the various Occupy Facebook pages are mostly used as channels of press reviews to reflect local and national media reports on the movement or the respective Facebook group itself, by linking to and commenting on such reports (Caren and Gaby 2011, 10). Caren and Gaby state that such posts are either proud proclamations of recognition in the mainstream media, or criticism of such reports, whereas both forms are very likely to cause great engagement through comments or re-postings via other Facebook pages related to the Occupy Movement (ibid.). One clear example the two scholars provide to illustrate this is an image posted by Joey Lopez to the Occupy Wall St. Ketzel | 69

page on October 1, depicting excerpts of two different blog entries by the New York Times from the same day side by side. Both blog posts cover the mass arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge mentioned earlier, using the same photo. Over this image, Lopez layered a bold pink caption that reads: it only took 20 minutes to shift the blame (2011). In the copied and pasted section of the earlier New York Times blog post, Lopez highlighted the statement: After allowing them onto the bridge, the police cut off and arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, while in the later one she highlighted the statement: In a tense showdown over the East River, police arrested hundreds of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators after they marched onto the bridges Brooklyn bound roadway (ibid.). The first statement suggests that the NYPD purposely led the protesters onto the bridges roadway in order to arrest them, while the second suggest that the NYPD was surprised over this move of the protesters. According to Caren and Gaby, this image was reposted on many other Occupyrelated Facebook pages and received the highest number of comments on the Occupy Wal l Street page (2011, 1011). The two scholars also say that this image was used by the commentators as an opportunity to express their suspicion of the media, the police, and the legal system (ibid.). An example of that can be seen in the comment by Scot VoteforRonpaul Rogers posted on October 2 underneath the original post by Lopez, which reads:
The NYT is considered one of the most liberal papers in the nation when it comes to popularity and print. Think about that people. If the Liberal media outlets like MSNBC and the NYT are taking more than a week to report this, then getting caught changing the way that a story was written, we have a much bigger problem than what people call "left and right".

Suspicion about the objectivity and professionalism of the mainstream press should be regarded as a common phenomenon within the Occupy Movement, which can be interpreted as an attack against the self-legitimizing apparatuses of Empire. This suspicion is mostly reflected in accusations against corporate media outlets to withhold information and being negatively biased. A good example of this can be seen in the slogan of a poster created by Occupy Together and posted on Facebook on September 26 (2011a), which states: IF YOU DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON OR WHAT WERE TALKING ABOUT TURN OFF THE NEWS AND TUNE IN TO THE MOVEMENT. Another, often shared image, drawing upon this suspicion is the poster below created by Samuel O., which was also posted by the Occupy Together Facebook page (2011).

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It is of course factually wrong to say that the mainstream media has not been reporting on the movement, as the above poster suggests at first sight. However, there certainly are instances in which the expected objectivity of professional journalism in the U.S. mainstream media seems to be corrupted, such as the event when the news stations ABC and CBS stopped their live broadcast of an Occupy Oakland march in October just before the police began using tear gas to disperse the peaceful protest (Loofbourow 2011). The posters address such forms of censorship or more generally, the bias of the corporate media networks. By promoting and referring to alternative forms of medial representation, such as live streams, blogs and social media sites, as well as by calling for actual participation in the protests; by asking the people to tune in to the movement, these posters seems to support Harcourts earlier mentioned assumption that in order to rightfully cover the true character of the movement one needs to actively participate in it. One needs to become a part of the network of the protesting multitude, a part of the 99%. Ketzel | 71

Examples of such participation can be seen in the various alternative press channels that have formed around the movement and which also use Facebook as a means to publish, connect and promote their other output channels. As addressed in the last chapter, the various videos on YouTube can be seen as a rudimentary form of such individual civic journalism. However, the use of live video streams became a much more important way to visually cover the protest from within, as seen in the almost 700 Occupy-affiliated live stream channels that are mostly produced and watched on mobile phones (Preston 2011). According to Sean Captain, the live video stream of Tim Pool became world (wide web) famous when he captured much of the early morning raid and diaspora from Occupy Wall Street's Manhattan encampment, staying on and webcasting for most of the 20 hours straight (2011). On this day, his video stream drew more than 20,000 simultaneous viewers and 250,000 unique visitors, and it was later rebroadcast by Al Jazeera English and other outlets (ibid.). Interestingly, the high level of transparency made possible by this form of reporting also shed light on instances of questionable tactics from the side of the protesters. As Tina Dupuy points out, Tim Pool also covered with his live stream that some of the Occupy protesters parted from the common tactics of non-violence and engaged in vandalism (2012, 2). This shows that this form of transparency can also be used as a self-correcting method by the multitude. There are also other examples of Occupy journalism produced by the protesting multitude, such as the print and online news sources The Occupied Wall Street Journal, The Boston Occupier or the Occupied Chicago Tribune. As one can see by visiting their respective websites, the coverage of these press institutions is based on common journalistic standards of the development of the Occupy Movement at the local, national and international level, as well as many other political, cultural and economical issues that are related to the idea of the movement. A good example for such coverage is the weekly section #Occupied: Reports From the Front Lines published by The Occupied Wall Street Journal and often re-published by the other press outlets, providing a roundup of the events and actions undertaken by the various groups throughout the country. Another example of alternative journalism that should also be mentioned is the Facebook presence of the blog occupymonsanto360.org in the form of a page called Occupy Monsanto, seen as quite influential in the movement, because it has more than 54.000 Likes (as of May 2012). The editorial orientation of this media outlet can be described as specialized, investigative journalism, because it makes its readers aware of the political, economical and cultural influences of the biotechnology industry as well as of the various negative aspects tied to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The Facebook post Ketzel | 72

given below exemplifies this investigative journalism, by addressing the conflict of interest that can be assumed when employees of the influential Monsanto Company, which specializes on the bioengineering of GMOs, are also involved in governmental institutions (Occupy Monsanto 2011).

This post reflects the common accusation made by participants of the Occupy Movement that many politicians are not acting in the interest of the people, but rather in the interests of corporations. This example hints at the political and corporate elite that are portrayed as the 1% who corrupt the socio-economic, political and cultural order of the United States.

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5. Conclusion
The aim of the present study is to look at the U.S. Occupy Movement through the theoretical lens of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negris concepts of Empire and the multitude. The decision to do so is based on the conviction that their theory poses a very helpful means to understand the complexity of the movement. It is helpful to understand its contextual embeddedness in the critical discourse about the process of globalization as well as to understand it as a protest against the neo-liberalism that led to the contemporary global financial crisis. But it is also regarded as a very helpful theory to explain the structural constitution of the movement. Using the framework of Empire certainly entails looking at the Occupy Movement from a specific Marxist perspective. Yet, it would be wrong to argue the movement resembles a traditional left wing revolution that wants to systematically abolish capitalism. As one can clearly see in the analyzed examples, the multitude of the Occupy protesters should neither be understood as a unified social body with a distinct political ideology and agenda, nor do the protesters seem to neglect the core idea of private property. They instead decidedly oppose the consequences and power of the capitalist mode of production that is present and propelled in contemporary society and that Hardt and Negri reflect in their theory of Empire. They are part of the new proletariat that is the multitude. The Occupy Movement is first and foremost a protest against corporate greed, against the overwhelming influence of global-operating, capitalist corporations (most of which are financial institutions) over political, educational, social, and cultural dimensions. It is not a protest against the small, capitalist business owner who wants to make a living. Consequently, this protest or struggle should be interpreted more in terms of a broad social rights movement than as a mere workers movement. By working together in a common process of finding alternative solutions to the biopower of Empire, it is a movement that wants to re-appropriate the lost power over core aspects of social life in a democratic way. However, the present study does not aim at an in-depth analysis of the movements political dimension with regard to the theory of Empire. From a culture studies perspective, it is to a greater degree interested in demonstrating that the constitution of the Occupy Movement can be understood in terms of Hardt and Negris concept of the multitude. In the third chapter, the study argues that the movement should be perceived as a representation of the multitude, because of the ways in which it organizes, represents and deploys itself. Since Ketzel | 74

the concept of the multitude as theorized by Hardt and Negri remains quite abstract, the present study also uses the notion of the Digital Native to grasp this concept. By arguing that the use of modern forms of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have played an important role in the cultural impact of the Occupy Movement, the study hypothesizes that the practices of Digital Natives within this movement have made visible the struggle of the multitude in the United States and have helped, therefore, to expose and oppose to a certain extent the biopower deployed by the capitalist society of control that Empire represents. Following the analysis of the given examples, one should regard the practices of Digital Natives as playing an integral part in the cultural production of the movements alternative social expressions that expose and oppose Empire. In contrast to the corporate-owned, traditional, one-to-many news outlets, the YouTube video, which depicts how Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna misused his authority by pepper-spraying peaceful protesters, makes clear that the practices of capturing, sharing and commenting raw footage produce and frame news in a more democratic way, making it an alternative form of investigative journalism. On the example of the Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop meme, we can see how the creative Digital Native practices of image manipulation express indignation about the misuse of police force in a very satirical and cynical way. The broad dissemination of these affects via various social media networks reflects the multitudes common, cultural refusal of such police tactics. But also the organization, reflection and representation of the Occupy Movement through various social networks on the internet, as analyzed with the example of Facebook, has enabled the protesting multitude to produce alternative values, narratives and knowledge. All of these alternative social expressions not only rely on the usage of the various distributed networks on the internet and related digital technologies, but they also constitute in themselves distributed networks of communication and collaboration. It is because of this that these practices can be understood as expressions of the multitudes network power that opposes the biopower of Empire from within. As it was pointed out in Chapter 2.3., Hardt and Negri say that a democratic political project of the multitude must entail the re-appropriation of the control over the biopolitical production in a way that leaves the plane of singularities intact. The ways in which information, knowledge and affects have been produced and shared in the various online networks of the Occupy Movement show that the creative and common use of ICT can play an important role in the realization of this re-appropriation. As Jonathan Askin puts it:

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The digital natives coming of age with Occupy Wall Street grew up in virtual online communities, playing "What If" games. It's second nature to them to imagine countless potential futures. They have now left their computer simulations and have taken to the streets. They are serious and ready to deploy their skills to engage us in building a real-world forum for civic discourse to explore alternatives for a better future. (Askin 2011)

Digital Natives of the Occupy Movement have partially reappropriated or occupied control over the media and thus opposed the biopower of Empire to a certain extent, in so far as their practices of producing, sharing and commenting in common has forced and influenced a public discussion around socio-economic inequity and political corruption in the United States. At the same time, they have used the possibilities of ICT in order to connect and organize the different distributed branches and affinity groups of the Occupy Movement. Hence, these Digital Natives do not just chant with their fellow Occupy protesters at marches that another world is possible (cf. Molina 2011), but they actually take the first steps toward another possible future in which the biopolitical production of the multitude remains in the hands of the many. Whether or not the U.S. multitude will be able to realize a full reappropriation of the biopolitical production and the establishment of a more democratic means of representation depends on how the Occupy Movement will develop and connect itself to other important struggles of the multitude. If there is the chance for an open-source society that is run by the productivity of the multitude the way Hardt and Negri propose remains to be seen. The Digital Native practices within the Occupy Movement covered by the present study show, however, that there is a growing possibility for the realization of such a democratic society. These practices also show quite vividly what is meant when the title of the present study speaks of children of globalization exposing Empire. Corporations and corporate networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google that faced the ire of the protesting multitude, were also hijacked by the same movement as a tool of protest. In effect, they occupy the semipublic sphere made available by these companies services when they produce a vast amount of ones and zeros in who knows how many gigabytes that get stored on the enemy servers. Ironically, these practices can in turn also be co-opted, controlled and regulated by Empire, when the network powers share the content and user information or block specific content and services, according to their corporate interests or subpoenas from governmental executive institutions. With regard to the aspect of the Occupy Movement being a true leaderless, horizontal struggle, one can raise the concern that there are nodes within the virtual Occupy network, Ketzel | 76

which seem to take on the function of leaders (cf. Tufekci 2011). After all, the organization of the movement is not spontaneous, but rests on the work of such groups as www.occupywallstreet.org, the Culture Jammers of the Adbusters Magazine, or Occupy Together. Unfortunately, the scope of the present study did not allow a deeper analysis of the hierarchical structures of such groups, which makes it necessary to have further studies addressing this issue. However, the analyzed examples strongly suggest that these groups are sustained by the common will of individuals to participate in the movement. These examples highlight that no Occupy group or protester is considered to be a representative spokesperson for the entire movement, but can only speak on its/her/his behalf. Hence, the influence of the various groups depends on the collaboration of all. For instance, if the Facebook page of Occupy Wall St. were to lose its followers if the administrators were to post something that does not resonate with the common goal of the protesting multitude, this node would also lose its influence and voice within the Occupy network. Another aspect tied to the leaderless and horizontal structure is the fact that the participants need to have access to the used technologies. Those who are excluded from this access seem to be dependent on the ones who have access. It would therefore be necessary to also study the offline organization and deployment of the movement in more detail to ascertain whether it is a truly horizontal movement. As for the present logistics of the movement, given the fact that the Occupy Movement weakened when the police dispersed the various local occupations and that the mainstream media eventually weakened its coverage, it also becomes more important for the movement to reorganize itself in different ways. The opportunities to educate each other, communicate and collaborate via ICT seems to become increasingly necessary with regard to a mainstream press that is rather only focused on sensationalist stories about the movement, such as police violence and other forms of direct conflict with authorities. Looking at the mainstream coverage of the upcoming presidential election also makes it clear that the fundamental systemic issues criticized by the movement are not being covered and discussed in the way that represents the multitude. The issues about economic injustice, unreasonable high student fees, fraudulent foreclosures, political corruption, and a struggling middle class in general are indeed present in the public debates. Yet, the desire of the protesters to regulate and put in check the very financial institutions and big corporations that have caused many of these problems; the call for systemic changes, such as the rejection of the Citizen United court

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ruling or the prosecution of bankers and CEOs who broke the laws, are not the focus of the press in a way professional investigative journalism is suppose to work. Due to its focus on the practices of Digital Natives within the Occupy Movement, the present study needs to be understood as only one specific interpretation of this struggle. With respect to the global connections of this movement, it would also be highly interesting to look at how the movement represents another historical stage of previous struggles. What are the similarities and differences of this movement in comparison to the civil rights and worker movements of the 1960s and 1970s? In how far does the movement actually engage the multitude on a scale that includes all minorities; whether disabled, of different gender or race, or being an illegal immigrant? Is there empirical evidence that one can actually interpret the movement as a global evolution of previous anti-/counter-globalization movements? But there are also other important questions around the usage of ICT as a means of protest that could not be covered in the present thesis due to its limited scope, such as: Will informational activism as deployed by the controversial collective Anonymous be a benefit for the struggle of the multitude, or will it lead to even stricter regulations in Empire as the result of a conflict that has to be solved? Even though the Anonymous collective seems to be another great example of Hardt and Negris concept of the multitude, it is not covered in the present study, because such an analysis would have extended its scope. As a starting point for such further scientific studies that aim at analyzing the historical, social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of the Occupy Movement in the United States as well as on a global scale, the present study hopes to have provided a meaningful contribution. The author believes that the concepts of Empire and the multitude as well as that of the Digital Native bear a strong potential to help understand the sociological changes one witnesses in contemporary history. In a world that becomes increasingly interconnected and interdependent on economic, political, social, and cultural ties and ways of being, the humanities are inevitably faced with the logics of networks. Recognizing society as being dependent on the productivity of the multitude is therefore seen to be very important, when one tries to propose theories and alternatives that tackle the problems we face as global community today.

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dho/DPA. 2011. Vor Einem Jahr Brach Der Arabische Frhling Aus: Ein Gemsehndler Entfacht Einen Flchenbrand. Stern.de, December 17. http://www.stern.de/1763916.html. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Dienst, Jonathan, and Shimon Prokupecz. 2011. Pepper-Spray Cop Transferred to Staten Island. NBC New York, October 26. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/PepperSpray-Cop-Anthony-Bologna-Tony-Transfer-Occupy-Wall-Street-132629613.html. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Doll, Jen. 2011. Anthony Bologna, Pepper-Spray Cop, Exiled to Staten Island. The Village Voices. Runnin Scared. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/10/anthony_bologna_staten_island.p hp. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Duncombe, C. 2011. The Twitter Revolution? Social Media, Representation and Crisis in Iran and Libya. Australian Policy Online: Australian Political Studies Association. http://apo.org.au/node/27208. Accessed on: 4 December 2011. Dupuy, Tina. 2012. Rise of the Livestreamer: Telling the Truth About Occupy in Real Time. AlterNet, February 23. http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst/154272/rise_of_the_livestreamer:_telling_the_tr uth_about_occupy_in_real_time?page=2. Accessed on: 16 July 2012. Ellis, Lauren. 2011. Is #OccupyWallStreet Working? Mother Jones. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/09/occupy-wall-street. Accessed on: 19 June 2012. Fahim, Kareem. 2011. Slap to a Mans Pride Set Off Tumult in Tunisia. The New York Times, January 21, sec. World / Africa. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/world/africa/22sidi.html. Accessed on: 8 May 2012. Fahim, Kareem, and Mona El-Naggar. 2011. Broad Protests Across Egypt Focus Fury on Mubarak. The New York Times, January 25, sec. World / Middle East. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/world/middleeast/26egypt.html. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Gabbatt, Adam, Mark Townsend, and Lisa OCarroll. 2011. Occupy Anti-capitalism Protests Spread Around the World. The Guardian, October 15, sec. World news. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/occupy-protests-europe-londonassange. Accessed on: 7 May 2012. Gehlen, Martin. 2011. Tunesien, Libyen, Syrien: Sechs Monate Spter Was Vom Arabischen Frhling brig Ist. Die Zeit, July 13, sec. Ausland. http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2011-07/arabien-revolutionrueckblick/komplettansicht. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Golden, Cory. 2011. UCD Rally Ties Tuition Fight to Occupy Movement. The Davis Enterprise. http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/rally-ties-tuition-fight-tooccupy-movement/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Goldstein, Joseph. 2011. Videos Show Police Using Pepper Spray at Protest. The New York Times, September 25, sec. N.Y. / Region. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/nyregion/videos-show-police-using-pepperspray-at-protest.html. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Gollan, Jennifer. 2011. UC Berkeley Pledges to Investigate Police Response to Occupy Cal Protest. The Bay Citizen, November 11. https://www.baycitizen.org/occupymovement/story/uc-berkeley-pledges-investigate-police/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Ketzel | 81

Grant, Drew. 2011. Pepper Spray Leads to Romance, Bologna Transfer. The Observer, October 27. http://observer.com/2011/10/27/pepper-spray-leads-to-romance-nycdetective-transfer/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Grapski, Charlie. 2011. ACTION PROPOSAL: No Phoney Baloney Suspend Tony Bologna NOW. Daily Kos. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/27/1020542/ACTION-PROPOSAL-No-Phoney-Baloney-Suspend-Tony-Bologna-NOW. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Hammond, Andrew. 2011. NEWSMAKER - Yemen President Saleh Fights to Keep Grip on Power. The Star Online, June 4. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/6/4/worldupdates/2011-0604T010231Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-574889-1&sec=Worldupdates. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Hands, Joss, and James Quinney. 2010. Activism in a Digital Culture. New Left Project. http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/print_article/activism_in_a_digital_cultu re. Accessed on: 9 January 2012. Harcourt, Bernard. 2011a. Occupy Wall Streets Political Disobedience. The New York Times. Opinionator. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wallstreets-political-disobedience/. Accessed on: 19 June 2012. . 2011b. Occupys New Grammar of Political Disobedience. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/30/occupy-newgrammar-political-disobedience. Accessed on: 19 June 2012. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2001. Empire. London: Harvard University Press. . 2004. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. London: Penguin (NonClassics). . 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Havard University Press. . 2011a. Arabs Are Democracys New Pioneers. The Guardian, February 24, sec. Comment is free. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/24/arabsdemocracy-latin-america. Accessed on: 9 January 2012. . 2011b. The Fight for Real Democracy at the Heart of Occupy Wall Street: The Encampment in Lower Manhattan Speaks to a Failure of Representation. Foreign Affairs. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136399/michael-hardt-and- antonionegri/the-fight-for-real-democracy-at-the-heart-of-occupy-wall-street. Accessed on: 5 January 2012. . 2011c. Hardt and Negri on The Problem of Transition. Harvardpress.typepad.com. Harvard University Press Blog. http://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2011/11/hardt-and-negri-on-theproblem-of-transition.html. Accessed on: 9 January 2012. Harvey, David. 2005. The New Imperialism. Oxford University Press. Hasham, Mariyam. 2001. Review - To Know Is Not Enough: Human Rights on the Internet by Halperin; Hicks; Hoskins. The World Today 57 (2): 15. Accessed on: 1 December 2011. Haupt, Adam. 2008. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council. Hedler, Ken. 2011. Occupy Prescott Protesters Call for More Infrastructure Investment. The Daily Courier, November 17. Ketzel | 82

http://www.dcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=10017 6. Accessed on: 7 May 2012. Helsper, Ellen Johanna, and Rebecca Eynon. 2010. Digital Natives: Where Is the Evidence? British Educational Research Journal 36 (3) (June): 503520. doi:10.1080/01411920902989227. Accessed on: 8 January 2012. Herzog, Roman. 2012. Der konomische Putsch - oder: Was hinter den Finanzkrisen steckt. Dossier. Germany: Deutschlandfunk - dradio.de. http://www.dradio.de/dlf/programmtipp/dossier/1701931/. Accessed on: 13 May 2012. Heylighen, F. 1996. Evolution of Memes on the Network. Springer, Vienna/New York. Heymann, Hannes Heine und Nana. 2012. Youporn Erschwert Eine Sichere Identitt. Der Tagesspiegel Online, April 4. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/werbinich/jugendliche-und-internetpornosyouporn-erschwert-eine-sichere-identitaet/6473308.html. Accessed on: 19 July 2012. Hoffman, Erin. 2011. What Is Netiquette? wiseGEEK. http://www.wisegeek.com/contest/what-is-netiquette.htm. Accessed on: 11 May 2012. Huffington Post. 2011. Anthony Bologna, Pepper Spray NYPD Officer, Transferred To Work In Staten Island. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/anthony-bologna-nypdoffi_n_1033382.html. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Ingendaay, Paul. 2011. Proteste in Spanien Handbuch der berrumpelung. FAZ.NET, May 24, sec. Feuilleton. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/proteste-in-spanienhandbuch-der-ueberrumpelung-1637958.html. Accessed on: 10 May 2012. Jardin, Xeni. 2011a. Massive Rally at UC Davis, Some Protesters Carrying. Boing Boing, November 21. http://boingboing.net/2011/11/21/massive-rally-at-uc-davis-fol.html. Accessed on: 23 May 2012. . 2011b. The Pepper-spraying Cop Gets Photoshop Justice. The Guardian, November 23, sec. Comment is free. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/23/pepper-spraying-copphotoshop-justice?CMP=twt_gu. Accessed on: 18 May 2012. Johnston, Angus. 2011. Ten Things You Should Know About Fridays UC Davis Police Violence. Student Activism, November 20. http://studentactivism.net/2011/11/20/ten-things-you-should-know-about-fridays-ucdavis-police-violence/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Juris, Jeffrey S. 2005. The New Digital Media and Activist Networking Within AntiCorporate Globalization Movements. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 597: 189208. Accessed on: 2 December 2011. Kirkpatrick, David D., and David E. Sanger. 2011. Egyptians and Tunisians Collaborated to Shake Arab History. The New York Times, February 13, sec. World / Middle East. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/middleeast/14egypt-tunisia-protests.html. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Krapp, Peter. 2005. Terror and Play, or What Was Hacktivism? Grey Room 21: 7093. Lang, Daryl. 2011. Who Coined the Phrase The 99 Percent? Breaking Copy. http://www.breakingcopy.com/the-99-percent. Accessed on: 7 May 2012.

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Leopold, Jason. 2012. DHS Turns Over Occupy Wall Street Documents to Truthout. Truthout. http://truth-out.org/news/item/8012-dhs-turns-over-occupy-wall-streetdocuments-to-truthout. Accessed on: 21 May 2012. Loofbourow, Lili. 2011. The Livestream Ended: How I Got Off My Computer And Onto The Street At Occupy Oakland. The Awl. http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/thelivestream-ended-how-i-got-off-my-computer-and-into-the-streets-at-occupy-oakland. Accessed on: 8 July 2012. Lopez, Joey. 2011. It Only Takes 20 Minutes to Shift the Blame. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/184749301592842/posts/286107748083800. Accessed on: 5 July 2012. Lorimer, Rowland, and Paddy Scannell. 1994. Mass Communications: A Comparative Introduction. Manchester University Press ND. MacKenzie, Debora, and Andy Coghlan. 2011. Revealed the Capitalist Network That Runs the World. NewScientist - Physics & Math. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalistnetwork-that-runs-the-world.html. Accessed on: 7 May 2012. Malone, Barry. 2011. Gaddafi Killed in Hometown, Libya Eyes Future. Reuters, October 20. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/us-libya-idUSTRE79F1FK20111020. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Martin, Adam. 2011. Anonymous Goes After the Pepper Spray Cops Personal Info. The Atlantic Wire, September 26. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/09/anonymous-goes-after-pepperspray-cops-personal-info/42960/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Masnick, Mike. 2011. NYPD Finally Admit That Police Broke The Rules With Pepper Spraying; May Slap Anthony Bologna On The Wrist. Techdirt., October 20. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111020/11394916437/nypd-finally-admit-thatpolice-broke-rules-with-pepper-spraying-may-slap-anthony-bologna-wrist.shtml. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Memmot, Mark. 2011. UC Davis Pepper-Spraying: Police Chief Put On Leave, Chancellor Speaks. NPR.org, November 21. https://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwoway/2011/11/21/142586964/uc-davis-pepper-spraying-police-chief-put-on-leavechancellor-to-speak. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Mills, Elinor. 2011. Anonymous Exposes Info of Alleged Pepper Spray Cop. CNET, September 26. http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20111813-245/anonymousexposes-info-of-alleged-pepper-spray-cop/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Molina, Feliz L. 2011. We Are Unstoppable, Another World Is Possible. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/feliz-l-molina/ows-eviction-we-areunsto_b_1095642.html. Accessed on: 16 July 2012. Morozov, Evgeny. 2009. The Brave New World of Slacktivism. Foreign Policy Blogs. NET.EFFECT. http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/05/19/the_brave_new_world_of_slackti vism. Accessed on: 18 July 2012. Occupy Boston. 2011. 1st Boston General Assembly. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/events/271282812892230/. Accessed on: 9 July 2012.

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Occupy LA. 2011. Help Wanted: Join Occupy LA Social Media Team! Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/notes/occupy-los-angeles/helpwanted-join-occupy-la-social-media-team/296696607009797. Accessed on: 14 July 2012. Occupy Monsanto. 2011. The Disturbing Revolving Doors. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=208171025924854. Accessed on: 15 July 2012. Occupy Together. 2011a. If you don't know.... Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=296198243727991&set=a.295505263797 289.91019.294421993905616. Accessed on: 7 July 2012. . 2011b. We Should Remember... Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/OccupyTogether/posts/302952873052528. Accessed on: 16 July 2012. . 2011c. Occupy Oaklank - November 3rd. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=315650388449443. Accessed on: 16 July 2012. . 2011d. WE ARE THE 99%. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=295505283797287. Accessed on: 16 July 2012. Occupy Wall St. 2011a. Yes We Camp. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=187967231271049. Accessed on: 9 July 2012. . 2011b. Occupy Wall St. Begins Sept 17th. Public Facebook page. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=188282304572875. Accessed on: 9 July 2012. . 2011c. Remember, This... Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt/posts/211144472286658. Accessed on: 14 July 2012. . 2011d. We Just Want to Remind Everyone. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt/posts/215120085222430. Accessed on: 9 July 2012. OccupyWallSt. 2011. A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Eight). OccupyWallStreet. http://occupywallst.org/article/A-Message-From-Occupied-WallStreet-Day-Eight/. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Parascandola, Rocco, and Bob Kappstatter. NYPD Inspector Who Pepper-sprayed Wall Street Protester Transferred to Staten Island. NY Daily News. https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-inspector-pepper-sprayed-wall-streetprotester-transferred-staten-island-article-1.968320. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Parker, Ashley. 2011. Hashtags, a New Way for Tweets: Cultural Studies. The New York Times, June 10, sec. Fashion & Style. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/fashion/hashtags-a-new-way-for-tweetscultural-studies.html. Accessed on: 11 May 2012. Patalong, Frank. 2002. Verbot Fr Ego-Shooter? Spiegel Online, April 29. http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/debatte-verbot-fuer-ego-shooter-a-194086.html. Accessed on: 19 July 2012. Ketzel | 85

Peters, Katharina. 2011. Spaniens Jugend berrumpelt Die Mchtigen. Spiegel Online, May 19. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/massenproteste-spaniens-jugendueberrumpelt-die-maechtigen-a-763489.html. Accessed on: 10 May 2012. Pokharel, Prabhas. 2010. Talking Change (And Not Just Campaigns). In Position Papers Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon 2010, 7591. The Hague: Hivos Knowledge Programme partners. Pompeo, Joe. 2011. The Occupy Wall Street Media Blackout Myth: Plenty of Stories, None of Them Big. Capitalnewyork.com. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2011/09/3533389/occupy-wall-streetmedia-blackout-myth-plenty-stories-none-them-big. Accessed on: 25 June 2012. Prensky, Marc. 2001a. Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon 9 (5): 16. . 2001b. Do They Really Think Differently? On the Horizon 9 (6): 19. Preston, Jennifer. 2011. Occupy Movement Shows Potential of Live Online Video. The New York Times, December 11, sec. Business Day / Media & Advertising. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/business/media/occupy-movement-showspotential-of-live-online-video.html. Accessed on: 15 July 2012. Raghavan, Sudarsan. 2011. Inspired by Tunisia and Egypt, Yemenis Join in Antigovernment Protests. The Washington Post, January 27, sec. World. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2011/01/27/AR2011012702081.html. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Riepe, Michael. 2012. QR-Codes Generieren - Stempelmacher. Heise.de. http://www.heise.de/ix/artikel/Stempelmacher-1541731.html. Accessed on: 5 July 2012. Robinson, Andy. 2011. Spains Indignados Take the Square. The Nation, June 8. http://www.thenation.com/article/161229/spains-indignados-take-square. Accessed on: 10 May 2012. Rosiny, S. 2011. Ein Jahr Arabischer Frhling : Auslser, Dynamiken Und Perspektiven. GIGA Focus 12. http://edoc.bibliothek.unihalle.de:8080/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/HALCoRe_derivate_00005845/GIGA_gf _nahost_1112.pdf. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Samuel O. 2011. Sorry, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Public Facebook page. Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=298053903542425. Accessed on: 14 July 2012. Schwartz, Mattathias. 2011. Pre-Occupied. The New Yorker, November 28. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/28/111128fa_fact_schwartz?currentPag e=all. Accessed on: 8 May 2012. Scott, Maxwell Carl. 2012. Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop. Know Your Meme. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop. Accessed on: 16 May 2012. Selwyn, Neil. 2009. The Digital Native Myth and Reality. Aslib Proceedings 61 (4) (May 7): 364379. doi:10.1108/00012530910973776. Accessed on: 8 January 2012. Shah, Nishant. 2011. The Digital Other. Centre for Internet and Society, December 15. http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/the-digital-other. Accessed on: 11 January 2012.

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Shah, Nishant, and Fieke Jansen. 2011a. Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?: Book 1 - To Be: Preface. In Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?: Book 1 - To Be, 67. Bangalore: Hivos & Centre for Internet and Society. . 2011b. Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?: Book 1 - To Be: Introduction. In Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?: Book 1 - To Be, 89. Bangalore: Hivos & Centre for Internet and Society. Shah, Nishant, Parmesh Shahani, Leandra (Cole) Flore, Shafika Isaacs, Kerryn Mckay, Anat Ben-David, Seema Nair, and Nilofer Shamin Ansher. 2011. Digital AlterNatives With a Cause?: Book 1 - To Be. Bangalore: Hivos & Centre for Internet and Society. Smith, Catharine. 2011. Egypts Facebook Revolution: Wael Ghonim Thanks The Social Network. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/11/egyptfacebook-revolution-wael-ghonim_n_822078.html. Accessed on: 8 January 2012. Smith, Neil. 2005. The Endgame Of Globalization. Routledge. Socialbakers.com. United States Facebook Statistics, Penetration, Demography. Socialbakers.com. https://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/united-states. Accessed on: 9 July 2012. Sprigman, Chris. 2003. Democratic Hacks. Foreign Policy 138: 90. Accessed on: 2 December 2011. Stepanova, Ekaterina. 2011. The Role of Information Communication Technologies in the Arab Spring - Implications Beyound the Region. PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 159 (May). Stevens, Matt. 2011. Anonymous Hackers Target Pepper-spraying UC Davis Police Officer. Los Angeles Times. L.A. NOW. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/anonymous-targets-uc-davis-coppublishes-his-contact-information-.html. Accessed on: 20 May 2012. Stewart, Jon. 2011. Daily Show: Parks and Demonstration. The Daily Show with John Stewart. Comedy Central. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-52011/parks-and-demonstration. Accessed on: 19 June 2012. Tarrow, Sidney. 2011. Why Occupy Wall Street Is Not the Tea Party of the Left. Foreign Affairs (October 10). http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136401/sidneytarrow/why-occupy-wall-street-is-not-the-tea-party-of-the-left. Accessed on: 10 March 2012. Taylor, Chris. 2011. Why Not Call It a Facebook Revolution? CNN, February 24. http://articles.cnn.com/2011-02-24/tech/facebook.revolution_1_facebook-waelghonim-social-media?_s=PM:TECH. Accessed on: 8 January 2012. terrydatiger. 2011. Police Pepper Spraying and Arresting Students at UC Davis. YouTube.com. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM&feature=youtube_gdata_player . Accessed on: 16 May 2012. The New York Times. 2012a. Yemen. Topics.nytimes.com. The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/yemen/index. html. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. . 2012b. Syria News. Topics.nytimes.com. The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.ht ml. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. Ketzel | 87

TheOther99Percent. 2011. PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTORS PENNED IN THE STREET AND MACED!- #OccupyWallStreet. YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA. Accessed on: 14 July 2012. Tsou, YiPing (Zona). 2011. Digital Natives in the Name of a Cause: From Flash Mob to Human Flesh Search. In Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?: Book 2 - To Think, 3246. Bangalore: Hivos & Centre for Internet and Society. Tufekci, Zeynep. 2011. Can Leaderless Revolutions Stay Leaderless: Preferential Attachment, Iron Laws and Networks. Technosociology.org. http://technosociology.org/?p=366. Accessed on: 11 January 2012. USLaw. 2011a. USLaw.coms Analysis of Occupy Wall Street Participants Pepper Sprayed by New York Police Department. USLaw.com. http://www.uslaw.com/occupywallstreet. Accessed on: 6 May 2012. . 2011b. Occupy Wall Street Participants Pepper Sprayed by New York Police Department. USLaw.com. http://www.uslaw.com/occupywallstreet/092411. Accessed on: 11 May 2012. USLAWdotcom. 2011. NYPD Police Pepper Spray Occupy Wall Street Protesters (Anthony Balogna). YouTube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ05rWx1pig. Accessed on: 6 May 2012. Vohra, Sweta, and Jordan Flaherty. 2012. Fault Lines: History of an Occupation. Documentary. AlJazeera English. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4VLYGfGDZg&feature=youtube_gdata_player. Accessed on: 22 March 2012. Wandler, Reiner. 2011. Jugendrevolte in Spanien: Schluss Mit Der Farce! Die Tageszeitung, May 18, sec. Europa. https://taz.de/!70967/. Accessed on: 10 May 2012. Weaver, Matthew. 2011. Muammar Gaddafi Condemns Tunisia Uprising. The Guardian, January 16, sec. World news. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/16/muammar-gaddafi-condemns-tunisiauprising. Accessed on: 9 May 2012. White, Micah M. 2011. Revolution in America. Adbusters.org. http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/95/revolution-america.html. Accessed on: 11 January 2012. Wiersma, Wybo. 2010. Digital Natives: Mythical Tribe, or Savvy Youth of Nowadays? Wybowiersma.net. http://wybowiersma.net/pub/essays/Wiersma,Wybo,Digital_natives_mythical_tribe_or _tech_savvy_youth_of_nowadays.pdf. Accessed on: 12 December 2011. Yu, Betty. 2011. Media Justice and the 99 Percent Movement: How Net Neutrality Helped Occupy Wall Street. Fair.org. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4440. Accessed on: 21 June 2012.

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7. Deutsche Zusammenfassung laut MPO 22 (7)

Im Jahr 2011 konnte man sehen, wie sich eine Welle von brgerlichen Protestbewegungen ber die Welt ausbreitete. Es war das Jahr des Arabischen Frhlings, der spanischen Demokratie Jetzt! Bewegung und der globalen Occupy Proteste. Diese Proteste wurden von einigen als Facebook oder Twitter Revolutionen bezeichnet (cf. Taylor 2011; Beaumont 2011; Smith 2011; Duncombe 2011). Das neue an diesen Protestbewegungen war nicht unbedingt die Tatsache, dass viele Menschen auf die Strae gingen und ffentliche Pltze besetzt haben, um gegen diktatorische Regierungen und/oder soziale und konomische Missstnde zu demonstrieren. Vielmehr wurde an diesen Proteste allgemein deutlich, dass moderne Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (ICT), wie etwa Satteliten Fernsehen, privater Computern (PCs), Mobil- und Smart-Telefone, digitale Kameras und das Internet mit seinen verschiedenen sozialen Netzwerken der wahrscheinlich bedeutendsten Entwicklung der digitalen Revolution es normalen Menschen weltweit ermglicht haben, ihre Proteste auf eine dezentrale Weise zu koordinieren, zu reprsentieren und voranzutreiben. Es schien so, als ob die Menschen dadurch nicht mehr auf die Hilfe und den Einfluss von etablierten Institutionen, wie etwa Parteien, Gewerkschaften oder die Leitmedien angewiesen seien. Jedoch sollte man nicht sofort davon ausgehen, dass jeder in der Lage ist, das Potential dieser Technologien auf solch eine Art zu nutzten, sondern es braucht Menschen die sie zu bedienen wissen. Vor diesem Hintergrund war die vorliegende Arbeit daran interessiert, den Einfluss der Nutzung von ICT im Kontext der U.S. amerikanischen Occupy Bewegung zu untersuchen. Die zugrundeliegende Kernfrage war dabei folgende: Wie sollte man die Rolle der Digital Natives in dieser Protestbewegung interpretieren? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, wurden zwei theoretische Anstze herangezogen. Zum einen wurde das Konzept des Digital Native benutzt, um damit die spezifische Nutzung von ICT in diesem Kontext zu beschreiben. Weil dieses Konzept aufgrund seiner oft zu verallgemeinernden Verwendung wissenschaftlich umstritten ist (cf. Prensky 2001; Helsper and Eynon 2010; Bennett, Maton, and Kervin 2008; Selwyn 2009; Wiersma 2010; Shah et al. 2011), wurde zunchst im ersten Kapitel die Kontroverse darum erlutert und anschlieend die zugrundeliegende Arbeitsdefinition dargelegt und legitimiert. Dem Vorschlag der Kulturwissenschaftler Shah und Jansen folgend, bezieht sich die Arbeit auf konkrete Praktiken im Umgang mit ICT. Der Begriff des Digital Natives wird demnach nicht universell verwendet, sondern beschreibt durch seine kontextuelle Einbettung spezielle Identitten und Praktiken. Der zweite theoretische Ansatz Ketzel | 89

ist von noch grerer Bedeutung fr die vorliegende Arbeit, denn er ermglicht es, die Occupy Bewegung in ihrer dezentral und horizontal strukturierten Zusammensetzung besser zu verstehen und als eine weitere Form der Globalisierungskritik aufzufassen. Es handelt sich dabei um die Theorie, die Michael Hardt und Antonio Negri in ihren Bchern Empire (2001) und Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (2004) ausarbeiteten. Demzufolge wurde im zweiten Kapitel diese Theorie errtert, um die fr die Argumentation bentigten Begriffe bzw. Konzepte zu klren. Mithilfe dieser beiden theoretischen Anstze wurde die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass die Praktiken der Digital Natives in der U.S. amerikanischen Occupy Bewegung die Multitude sichtbar machen und gleichzeitig das politische Projekt zum Teil realisieren, welches Hardt und Negri mit diesem Konzept verbinden. Das bedeutet, dass diese Praktiken als eine Form des Widerstandes gegen die neoliberalen Machtstrukturen von Empire interpretiert werden knnen. Durch die kollektive Produktion und Verbreitung von Nachrichten, Informationen und Affekten in den verschiedenen sozialen Netzwerken der Bewegung im Internet werden die normativen Werte und Anschauungen, die der globalen Gesellschaftsordnung von Empire zugrunde liegen, auf eine basisdemokratische Weise enthllt und angefochten. Der argumentative Beweis dieser Hypothese findet im dritten Kapitel statt, welches in drei Teile gegliedert ist. Zuerst wird kurz der Arabischen Frhling und die spanische Demokratie Jetzt! Bewegung als relevanter Hintergrund errtert, und wie sich die U.S. amerikanische Occupy Bewegung als eine weitere Stimme in einem globalen Protest versteht. Anschlieend werden zwei spezielle Beispiele von Digital Native Praktiken dieser Bewegung analysiert, die zeigen, wie mithilfe von sozialen Netzwerken im Internet erfolgreich gegen die physische Gesellschaftskontrolle (Biomacht) von Empire, in Form von fragwrdiger Polizeigewalt, vorgegangen worden ist. Das erste Beispiel bezieht sich auf die Produktion, Verbreitung und Auswirkungen eines speziellen YouTube Videos, in dem zu sehen ist, wie ein New Yorker Polizeibeamter seine Autoritt durch den illegitimen Gebrauch von Pfefferspray missbraucht. Mithilfe von internetbasierten Medienplattformen, wie etwa den sozialen Netzwerken Facebook und Twitter, konnten die Digital Natives der Occupy Bewegung dieses Video unabhngig von den Hauptstrommedien verbreiten und kontextuell einrahmen. Das zweite Beispiel beschreibt einen hnlichen Vorfall, auch hier nutzte ein Polizeibeamter unrechtmig Pfefferspray, um einen friedlichen Occupy-Protest aufzulsen. In diesem Beispiel war es jedoch nicht die mediale Verbreitung des Originalvideos, sondern die Verbreitung der satirischen Verarbeitung dieses Vorfalls, die als oppositionelle Kraft zur Ketzel | 90

physischen Gesellschaftskontrolle (Biomacht) von Empire interpretiert werden kann. Es waren die von Digital Natives produzierten und verbreiteten, vielen Variationen des InternetPhnomens Casually Peper Spray Everything Cop, die eine weitreichende Gesellschaftsund Kulturkritik ausbten. Im dritten Teil des dritten Kapitels wird am Beispiel von Facebook gezeigt, wie die Protestierenden der Occupy Bewegung soziale Netzwerke im Internet auf noch allgemeinere Art und Weise benutzen, um sich zu organisieren, selbst darzustellen und sich gegenseitig ber die zu bekmpfenden Missstnde aufzuklren. All diese Formen der Kommunikation fhrten nicht nur zu einer viel greren medialen Aufmerksamkeit gegenber der Protestbewegung, sondern forcierten und prgten einen ffentlichen Diskurs ber soziale, konomische und kulturelle Ungerechtigkeiten in den Vereinigten Staaten und sorgten somit fr mehr Befrwortung von Seiten der Bevlkerung. Die analysierten Beispiele beantworten demnach die zugrunde liegende Kernfrage der Arbeit wie folgt: Anhand der Praktiken der Digital Natives in der Occupy Bewegung kann man erkennen, wie die Nutzung von ICT auf basisdemokratische Weise die amerikanische Gesellschaft, Politik und Kultur beeinflusst haben, weil sie alternative Gesellschaftsmodelle, Normen und Werte produzierten. Um die dezentrale und basisdemokratische Form dieses Einflusses besser verstehen zu knnen, zeigt die vorliegende Magisterarbeit, dass es uerst sinnvoll erscheint, Hardt und Negris Konzept der Multitude zu verwenden. Das Konzept der Multitude ermglicht es einem den Netzwerkcharakter dieser Protestbewegung als die Grundform gesellschaftlicher Produktion zu interpretieren. Weil die Produktion von alternativen Sichtweisen und Werten nicht auerhalb der Gesellschaftsordnung von Empire stattfinden kann, sondern genau dieselben Netzwerke und Technologien benutzt, die von der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise durch die Globalisierung erzeugt worden sind, spricht die Magisterarbeit in ihrem Titel auch metaphorisch von den Digital Natives als Kinder der Globalisierung. Es sind die speziellen Praktiken der Digital Natives, die von innen heraus die Gesellschaftsordnung von Empire blostellen und anfechten.

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