The Arizona 9/11 Memorial: a case study in public dissent and argumentation through blogs.

• Author: Smith, Christina M.
• Position: Essay

Increasingly, the use of digital media technologies by publics to generate support, circulate dissent, and/or disseminate their message has shaped the political process. In the 2004 election, citizen-consumers used their digital media skills to engage in political activism and candidates such as Howard Dean conducted fundraising and other campaign activities online (Jenkins, 2006; Kerbel & Bloom, 2005). The use of digital media increased significantly in the 2008 election cycle. Of note were the YouTube debates, the Barack Obama-inspired Macintosh 1984 mash-up featuring Hillary Clinton as the evil overlord, and the Five Sons Blog of Mitt Romney. During this time, the so-called mainstream broadcast media were supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by blogs as a primary source for citizens' political information. This evolution in information seeking highlights the growing importance of such alternative forms of access and participation. Participatory forms of media production and circulation also have contested understandings of the citizenry as merely passive receivers of media content and political rhetoric. Rather, citizens are taking an active role in political and public participation through the use of digital media such as websites (McDorman, 2001), internet chat rooms (Weger & Aakus, 2003), and video dissemination sites such as YouTube (Hess, 2009). Therefore, scholars of media and political communication must explore new ways of theorizing the argumentation and deliberation processes in an age of digital media.

In the digital media environment, the arguments constructed and disseminated by news organizations and political elites are opened up to contestation by a wide variety of audiences and constituencies. Non-mainstream, web-based political groups such as bloggers are taking an active role in shaping public opinion-and often, the mainstream news coverage of particular issues or events. This essay analyzes one instance in which bloggers took a leading role in influencing public discourse. Specifically, it addresses the public deliberation and blog-circulated dissent surrounding the controversial Arizona 9/11 Memorial.

The memorial was approved with public input and the consensus of planners, but once erected, it produced an outcry of conservative, blogger-generated opinion against the structure, ultimately forcing significant design modifications. Bloggers also critiqued the mainstream news coverage of the memorial-leading some local and national news organizations to in turn analyze and critique the important contributions of these digital intermediaries. The Arizona 9/11 Memorial controversy demonstrates the impact of a small group of conservative bloggers on the mainstream media, local politicians, and public policy. Conservative bloggers were so effective at creating outrage and digitally disseminating their outrage to networked publics, key news outlets, and local politicians that they were able to reverse the outcome of the institutional public deliberation process. Arguments produced and circulated online engendered offline, embodied participation at the memorial site and through local political activism.

This case study illustrates the growing tension between public participation via technology and public participation through embodied political discourse inherent in traditional Habermasian conceptions of deliberation. Additionally, there is evidence that the mainstream news coverage was impacted by the critiques of bloggers. Such interaction between nonmainstream, web-based news environments and mainstream news organizations offers an opportunity to begin an exploration of argumentation in the digital media age, becoming a site for answering particular questions about new forms of political participation. Does the addition of angry voices of opposition, expressed from the safety and anonymity of a disembodied and distanced medium, help or hinder the flourishing of democracy? Does it enrich or diminish the deliberative process? We argue that in this case, the small minority of conservatives opposed to the memorial were smaller but louder-their voices (over)empowered by the accessible and widely dispersed technology employed to disseminate their message. Though in the past technology has assisted marginalized groups and counterpublies, this case study suggests that long-standing methods of democratic deliberation within institutions can be overwhelmed by tightly coordinated patterns of argumentation emerging from digital intermediaries.

Our analysis proceeds in the following manner. First, we review the literature on digitally mediated deliberation and participation in order to emphasize both the opportunities and constraints of argumentation in a digital media environment. Next, we analyze blog and mainstream media argumentation surrounding the memorial and the impact on the public deliberation process. Finally, we offer conclusions and implications for further research.

PUBLIC DELIBERATION AND DIGITAL ARGUMENTATION

Conversations about public deliberation are typically traced back to the English translation of Habermas's (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The public sphere was identified by Habermas as a discursive arena in which a collection of concerned individuals bracket self-interest and rationally discuss issues of civil society, serving as a check against state power. Scholars of communication and political theory have critiqued the narrow view of political participation in Habermas's original conception for its focus on embodied dialogue and rational argument (see Dahlgren, 2005; DeLuca, 1999; Finnegan & Kang, 2004; Fraser, 1992; Greene, 1998; Hallin, 1994; Phillips, 1996; Welsh, 2002). A notable characteristic of the Habermasian public sphere is the privileging of reasoned dialogue as the preferred means of deliberation. As noted by Peters (1999), "dialogue has attained something of a holy status" that maintains its position as the "medium of participatory democracy" (p. 33). This model defines democratic participation as argumentative, embodied discourse and promotes a dialogic model of deliberation (Asen, 1996; DeLuca & Peeples, 2002; Gastil & Black, 2007).

The often-cited work on deliberation by Bohman (1996) makes the deliberation-dialogue connection explicit: "it is only in dialogue with others-in speaking with them, answering them, and taking up their views-that the diverse capacities for deliberation are exercised" (p. 24). Hauser (2007) further suggests that citizens engage in dialogue about relevant issues in everyday exchanges that "constitute a vernacular rhetoric of sorts, an everyday form of deliberation among ordinary citizens who engage in polyphonous conversation on issues that intersect with their lives" (p. 336). Hauser (2007) still gives weight to the influence of political elites and the media, noting that powerful institutions often shape the agenda and provide the vocabulary for these conversations. Thus, vernacular deliberation simultaneously replicates and questions authoritative sources and information, but in Hauser's view, it still involves dialogic engagement.

In the Habermasian public sphere and the vernacular exchanges of Hauser's publics, conversation and dialogue are privileged. However, this privileging of embodied, rational discourse does not sufficiently address the technological changes in contemporary society and the shifting forms of political participation enabled by digital media technologies. Digital modes of publicity such as blogs, chat rooms, and YouTube commentary sections are increasingly important locations in which publics are constituted and in which participatory democracy is enacted. In the networked world in which we live, dissemination is as prevalent as dialogue. Peters (1999) contends that dissemination, though often viewed negatively, is arguably a more open and democratic model of deliberation. DeLuca and Peeples's (2002) concept of the public screen offers an effective supplement to the Habermasian public sphere because it emphasizes dissemination and recognizes that public deliberation is often produced and constituted by the media. The public screen, which begins with dissemination, is a supplement to the public sphere meant to account for these fundamental technological changes. The public screen recognizes that most public deliberation occurs through screens, primarily computer and television. (1)

Yet, the notion of screens can now be extended beyond television and computer screens to encompass the screens of digital cameras and video playback windows, equally crucial to the dissemination of politically influential images. These multiple public screens open up possibilities for new forms of social organization, new modes of perception, and new methods of participation that can work to circumvent obstacles created by media conglomeration and government control. Groups traditionally marginalized from public debate can utilize image events and other forms of publicity to hold state powers accountable (DeLuca, 1999). Yet, it is not the "refeudalized," spectacle-based public sphere feared by Habermas (1989). Rather, it is critique through spectacle: "image events are a central mode of public discourse both for conventional electoral politics and alternative grassroots politics in an era dominated by a commercial, televisual, electronic public screen" (DeLuca & Peeples, 2002, p. 144).

Digital participation on the public screen can take a variety of forms. Blogs serve as fragments for public debate over contested public memory and its representation in physical structures such as the Arizona 9/11 Memorial. Thus, the discourse surrounding the Arizona 9/11 Memorial provides another means to examine how deliberation on political issues occurs on the public screen. Even though participation is increased with access to technology, it may be problematic for democratic procedure when...