When the Public Space Goes to the Internet: Tracing Political Opinions

Introduction

In the book Human Conditions, Arendt (1998 [1958]) specified the importance of the
public space ontologically, sociologically, and politically. She argued that people engaged in the
public space not only makes oneself known to others but also contribute with the realignment of
standards and persuasion of different opinions with others, which is her definition of politics.
This realignment of standards and persuasion of different opinions helps individuals to live
together and create a rich and harmonious public life, in the condition of having a public space
that is also free for the exchange of opinions. Hence, political communities are communities that
participates in public life. But these are not only select few, but she argued that every individual
must participate in this process of realignment of standards and persuasion. While this can be an
alternative way to see politics, not as the formal politics of gaining power and leading but rather
a way to consolidate opinions, persuading fellowmen, and finally realigning standards to live
peacefully together. It is helpful for us to trace how these political opinions are being shaped
within the public space, they do not merely just poof out like mushrooms. Instead, for us to know
how the fruits of engagements (political opinions) are made, we must trace where and how these
political opinions are made in the first place. Or rather, we must look not just the root but the
trunk, the leaves, the soil, the water, the sun and everything that contributes in growing the plant
itself to bear fruit. For the root does not solely produce the fruit alone, we must look at the
interconnectedness of the different elements that constructs this public space and how the
engagements in the public space bear fruit into political opinions that resonate within formal
politics. Only this kind of tracing would help us shed light on why we are producing these kinds
of political opinions at the present time. For this we must take the task of the ANT (actor-
network theory) (Latour 2005) and trace back the construction of political opinions in its earliest
form (Latour and Woolgar 1968).

Thus, in this paper I am extending the work of Arendt as she has determined the ‘sites of
production’ (Latour 2005) of political opinions yet we must go further and see political opinions
in its prenatal stage and see how political opinions does not just contain the purely consolidated
subjective opinions of individuals but acts as a ‘mediator’ which meaning is ephemeral and it
changes overtime, because so little political opinions are ‘intermediaries’ or stable (Latour 2005).
This alone is also a daunting task because observing and measuring these ephemeral political
opinions cannot be done within the traditional scientific methodology but we must go forth and
see the mess as it is (Law 2004) and understand it. But this task at hand is really daunting and
cannot be done within a single paper, it is a continuous and big project and must be consistently
and continually done. For this reason, I must only discuss the skeleton of the project and how it
can be done, and what clues do we have when pursuing this daunting task. It will only be proper
for this paper for me to focus on the clues and the different devices (Law 2004) we will use in
observing and catching this ephemeral object.

This paper will be divided into three (3) sections: first, I will discuss the concepts of
Actor-Network Theory of Latour and Law as they will provide us a guide in conducting these
traces. Secondly, I will discuss the clues that can be open for discussion and conversation when it
comes to political opinions; and finally we will discuss about the Internet and how can it help
within creation and dissemination of political opinion.

Re-tracing our steps: what is ANT anyway?

Understanding completely ANT is really a complicated task due to it being radical in a

sense that it does not think as how conventional social scientists do. For example, social
scientists take some scenario or phenomena, explaining the structures within it to explain the
‘social’, as if it was pre-existing and was waiting to be discovered. In ANT, the ‘social’ aspect is
not an element or adjective that can be used to describe something, but rather it is a collection of
the networks that composes these actors, or vice versa—the actors composed within the networks
—, and the movements between the association of the network and the actor . Latour et al (2012)
have given a good example of how Actor-Network Theory works:

“Let’s take a simple example. We all have had the experience of preparing a meeting by
searching on the web the name of the person we are soon to meet. If for instance we look on
the web for the curriculum vitae of a scholar we have never heard of before, we will stumble
on a list of items that are at first vague. Let’s say that we have been just told that ‘Hervé C.’
is now ‘professor of economics at Paris School of Management’. At the start of the search it
is nothing more than a proper name. Then, we learn that he has a ‘PhD from Penn
University’, ‘has written on voting patterns among corporate stake holders’, ‘has
demonstrated a theorem on the irrationality of aggregation’, etc. If we go on through the list
of attributes, the definition will expand until paradoxically it will narrow down to a more and
more particular instance. Very quickly, just as in the kid game of Q and A, we will zero in on
one name and one name only, for the unique solution: ‘Hervé C.’. Who is this actor?
Answer: this network. What was at first a meaningless string of words with no content, a
 mere dot, now possesses a content, an interior, that is, a network summarized by one now
fully specified proper name. The set of attributes – the network – may now be grasped as an
envelope – the actor – that encapsulates its content in one shorthand notation.”
Yet, they added that the definition is reversible, that is, a network is fully defined by its actors
(Latour et al 2012).

But that definition above is quite vague and only shows how the concepts work with each
other. Now, Latour (2005) discussed further in his book Reassembling the Social: Introduction
to Actor-Network Theory “…that actors can propose their own theories of action…”:

“…to explain how agencies’ effects are carried over. Being full-blown reflexive and skillful
metaphysicians, actors—as ANT’s new default position proposes—also have their own
meta-theory about how agency acts and more often than not it leaves the traditional
metaphysician totally bewildered. They will not only enter into a controversy over which
agency is taking over but also on the ways in which it is making its influence felt.” (Latour
2005:53)
Actors are also able to download different social theories “…as effectively as they do
MP3 files.” (Latour 2005:231):

“And of course the very idea that ‘we are members of a society’, that we are ‘accountable’,
that we have ‘legal responsibility’, that ‘gender is different from sex’, that ‘we have a
responsibility toward the next generation’, that we have ‘lost social capital’, etc., does
circulate through conduits that intellectual historians can reconstruct almost as precisely as
their colleagues do for the International clock, the ohm, the meter, double-entry
bookkeeping, or the spread of ISO-9000 standards.”
This shows that actors are well aware of what they are doing in their lives, in contrast to
conventional social scientists who thinks that these people are deceived or they do not know
what they are doing and must be explained to them for them to be aware. Furthermore, Latour
(2005:207) discussed the concept of plug-ins1 where the competence of people does not come in
bulk but rather ‘… in bits and bytes.’ This means that people subscribe to these plugins and have
a new perspective in seeing the world and how they interpret it.

Network, on the other hand, is not an out-there object like the actor. But rather it is the
concept of the actual tracing itself of the actors and what is in between them. Latour (2005:132)
briefly gave the different elements of the concept network:

1
Let me use Latour’s way to explain plug-ins “When you reach some site in cyberspace, it often happens that you
see nothing on the screen. But then a friendly warning suggests that you ‘might not have the right plug-ins’ and
that you should ‘download’ a bit of software which, once installed on your system, will allow you to activate what
you were unable to see before” (Latour 2005:207)
 “…a) a point-to-point connection is being established which is physically traceable and thus
can be recorded empirically; b) such a connection leaves empty most of what is not
connected, as any fisherman knows when throwing his net in the sea; c) this connection is
not made for free, it requires effort as any fisherman knows when repairing it on the deck…
fourth… a network is not made of nylon thread, words or any durable substance but is the
trace left behind by some moving agent.”
Network, then, is, again, the list of associations of actors, their interconnectedness! (Latour
2005:133).

ANT, then, is seeing the different actors and their relationship together and how they are
interconnected. Thus, society, for ANT, is not pre-existing, sui generis being that is waiting to be
discovered, and that actors are not just mere members of a society (Latour 2005:247). But rather,
they are a collective that must be assembled, and we must trace the associations for us to
understand what it means to be ‘social’.

But what does this got to do with political opinions and the public space? As I said
earlier, Arendt (1998 [1958]) pointed out that political opinions are produced at the public space.
This statement of Arendt gave us a geographical mapping of where these political opinions are
being shaped, or to be exact, where they are being produced. She provided a clue for us on the
questions that needs to be asked by looking at the public space. This is where ANT steps in, we
must understand that political opinions are indeed shaped and produced in the public space, but
we must also see the process of its production. Again, determining the root of the tree does not
give us answers of how the fruit was produced, nor that the root is not the sole purpose of the
tree’s ability to bear fruit. In this case, we must learn the interconnectedness of ‘actors’ and how
they interact with each other in terms of political opinions and trace their ‘social’ aspect for us to
understand how individuals produce the kind of political opinions that are present now. For that
to happen we must take a closer look at the public space and whether there are new platforms
that people can engage in, these ‘production sites’ will help us see where political opinions are
made and connect them together to help us how these prevalent ‘political opinions’ are present.
But for the purpose of this paper, let us focus on the internet ‘production site’ for political
opinions. As this is an uncharted area when it comes to politics (Rappler 2016).

Retracing politics

Our main clue when it comes to the project is that for political opinions, according to
Arendt (1998 [1958]), we must first take a look at the public space and whether there is
countenance in regard to the exchanges of opinions. Democracy is vital within these areas for the
true exchange of political opinions to happen. But rather to be concerned with whether these
public spaces are quality public spaces, it is fit for us to analyze these spaces and see the key
elements or players within those public spaces. Now, for us to start seeing the bones of our
skeleton project we must look different ‘production sites’ of political opinions. I brought up the
internet sphere because this ‘production site’ is quite interesting and uncharted.

A working paper from Oxford University reported that different countries and politicians
have been manipulating public opinion in social media (Bradshaw and Howard 2017). This is
quite interesting because for some reason, these politicians touched this uncharted land—Web
2.0 started in 2010—and creating propagandas that have helped them win over people. It is quite
a surprise that even with the ease-of-access and the wide-scope of these social media platforms,
it took them years to finally tapped on to these platforms. Though Arendt may disagree that
‘public opinions’ that are present in surveys, or in this case in social media, does not capsulate
what are the individual’s actual political opinions are (Arendt 1998 [1958]:324) but this does not
mean that they cannot be persuaded. Anyway, the internet is an extension of the public space,
thus, here people can persuade each other as equals with there political opinions. But as
Bradshaw and Howard (2017) have insisted in their paper, public opinion is manipulated by the
creation of ‘fake accounts’ and these ‘fake accounts’ comments vigorously on social media
material to support a certain candidate or politician. They sometimes produce social media
content that favors these candidates and politicians.

But these ‘fake accounts’ does not just create content that are for the candidates they
report to but also they create content that are against different targets (Rappler 2016). Rappler
(2016) have discovered this phenomenon with a black ops campaign employed against
#SmartFreeInternet which was met by #LieMore/LieMorePa. According to Rappler (2016),
Smart was met by bots that tried to curtail their marketing campaign: “In a nutshell, if you use
the hashtag [#SmartFreeInternet], it signals a bot to message your account – to sow fear and
doubt to trigger anger – a classic FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] campaign. That’s coupled
with fake accounts which continue the campaign.” The figure below is the map conversation that
shows how the operations against the marketing campaign of Smart was employed. According to
Rappler (2016) it resembles ‘a familiar communist strategy: “surround the city from the
countryside” – effectively shutting out the Smart Twitter account from its targeted millennials.’

In the same manner, the social media campaign of Rodrigo Roa Duterte employed these
bots and fake accounts that increase tweets mentioning Rodrigo Roa Duterte which was hinted
with peculiarity due to the fact that the bot-like Twitter accounts were also filled with KathNiel
content, an analysis did by Thinking Machines (Rappler 2016). And like the #LieMorePa black
ops campaign, more and more fake accounts continued their social media campaign for Duterte
which includes attacks against the media through disinforming news, or labeling them ‘fake
news’, that they are ‘bayaran’ or corrupt and can be paid, they have vested interest, or that they
employ these ‘clickbait’ for these journalists to earn cash due to a ‘provocative’ headline. Even
when it comes to online surveys of Rappler, different politicians employ bots from different
countries which made up 99 percent of the votes, these votes were for Mar Roxas and Rodrigo
Roa Duterte. Furthermore, it is not just creating more support and curtailing the critics of
Rodrigo Roa Duterte that these ‘fake accounts’ or bots do. But according to Ong et al. (2019)
they are influential in shaping political conversations. These ‘fake accounts’ continue the
campaign in reclaiming the social media geography into their favor. They do not only use ‘fake
accounts’ but they also use blogs and different outlets to create content that is favorable to
Rodrigo Roa Duterte. Not only ‘fake accounts’ are being employed but even nano-micro
influencers (like Thirsttrap Instagrammers, Pop Culture Accounts, or Political Parody Accounts)
are being tapped by different parties to be able to support different candidates (Ong et al. 2019).
They are also used to criticize different politicians and create oppositions, but unfortunately this
also triggers ‘hyper partisan politics’ (Ong et al. 2019). It is also worth to mention that Rappler
(2016) have argued that even the algorithms of Facebook can impact the public space in the
Internet, due to the fact that it does not able to tell what is fact and what is fiction. This
algorithmic ‘defect’ may cater cognitive bias, which means the subconscious gravitation of
oneself towards those who echo what they believe.

These ‘fake accounts’ and ‘bots’ are considered as non-human actants (Latour 2005)
these does not mean that they do not contribute within the environment of the internet sphere.
According to Latour (2005:79) these objects must be considered as long as they are
commensurable within social ties and also ‘… to accept, an instant later, their fundamental
incommensurability.’ These non-human actants, or objects, must be made to speak, for they are
not able to speak for themselves which analysts are tasked to do so:

‘To be accounted for, objects have to enter into accounts. If no trace is produced, they offer
no information to the observer and will have no visible effect on other agents. They remain
silent and are no longer actors: they remain, literally, unaccountable… Objects, by the very
nature of their connections with humans, quickly shift from being mediators to being
intermediaries, counting for one or nothing, no matter how internally complicated they might
be. This is why specific tricks have to be invented to make them talk, that is, to offer
descriptions of themselves, to produce scripts of what they are making others—humans or
non-humans—do’ (Latour 2005:79)
These non-human actants though do not prolong to be actants as long as they are not included
within the accounts of social ties, thus unlike humans, their activities and movements are
momentary (Latour 2005:80). Thus, these ‘fake accounts’ ‘bots’, even though operated by
people, must be considered as objects rather than human beings that are constantly having
movement due to the fact that ‘fake accounts’ and ‘bots’ are used to achieve a certain purpose.
There are more non-human actants that must be accounted which has great impacts within the
internet sphere concerning political opinions, internet memes.
Internet memes

The Internet has used the word ‘meme’ since early 2000s and is no longer exclusive to
insiders. Wikipedia registered the relation between the concept ‘meme’ of Dawkins and the
Internet’s concept of ‘meme’ in 2001 for the first time, and it was extensively been done in 2004
(Hodge 2000). Constine (2009:1) argued that the idea of ‘Internet meme’ has been established as
the overarching term to identify a wide range of texts that circulates in the internet, such as
‘popular themes, catchphrases, images, viral videos, jokes’ or, in other words, ‘culturally shared
pieces of media. According to folk taxonomy, Internet phenomena are memes, in a metaphorical
sense as they are deliberately altered by human creativity though still presents proper memetic
features The boom of social networks like Facebook and video sharing platforms like Youtube
helped Internet memes spread outside their native ‘Internet geek’ womb, though Internet memes
preceded the web, with the so-called ‘Web 2.0’, Marino (2015) have briefly chronologize
Internet memes:

 Proto-Internet memes (1990s): At the dawn of the Internet as a social and cultural
phenomenon, early Internet memes circulate via emails (e.g., chain-letters and virus
hoaxes, such as the Goodtimes spread in 1994) and discussion groups on Usenet
(wherein, in 1982, Scott E. Fahlman had created the emoticons, reported by some as the
first example of an Internet meme; cf. Davison 2012).
 Internet meme subculture (late 1990s-2005): In a second phase, Internet memes circulate
mostly via message boards, image boards, and personal blogs. The most important among
the boards are by far 4chan (a true memeplex – a ‘factory of memes’ – created in 2003 by
15-year old American geek Christopher Pool aka moot) and Reddit (created in 2005).
4chan has set the standard for contemporary Internet memes.
 Global Internet memes (2005-): The third and latest is the ‘industrial’ and
simultaneously ‘self-reflexive’ phase (still displaying subcultural traits). It is marked by
the birth of social networks and their worldwide boom (2007-2010), and by the creation
of Internet meme- dedicated resources; namely, thematic websites with structured
 galleries, usually offering semi-automatic tools for the ‘dummy-proof’ creation of memes
as well. The most important among them are I Can Has Cheezburger (2007),
Memegeneator (2009), Quickmeme (2010), and Know Your Meme (2008). The latter is a
systematic census of Internet memes that collects, catalogues, and studies them using
qualitative and quantitative-statistical methods.

According to Marino (2015), that internet memes have not been systematically studied
yet by any of the possibly pertinent disciplinary perspectives like philosophy, sociology,
anthropology, linguistics, semiotics or, surprisingly even memetics. According to Marino (2015),
none of the 45 articles published by the Journal of Memetics, established in 1997 and closed in
2005, concerns the Internet. But in recent years, internet memes have been discussed by
linguistics which analyzed the language employed in them (Zappavigna 2012) and specific
memes (Gawne and Vaughan 2012, Fiorentini 2013) but these did not produce and systematic
studies on the topic. The most advanced in the field of internet memes is media studies who
operates at the intersection of sociology, critical theory, ethnography, and marketing.
Quantitative research and analyses (Burgess and Green 2009; Berger and Milkman 2012),
theoretical elaborations (Metahaven 2012; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013), and definitions
(Constine 2009, 2013; Davison 2012; Milner 2012) have been given, as well as the best attempt
by Shifman (2013) at a general systematization to date. By this Marino (2015) used this ground
to establish a semiotic systematic study of internet memes. But not much have been studied when
it comes to internet memes and its relation to politics. Though there was a dissertation studied
that talked about the impacts of Internet memes in the Crimea crisis in Russia (Denisova 2016).
In her study, she analyzed different internet memes that talked about the Crimea Crisis
and how internet memes affected the perceptions of people within the internet sphere (Denisova
2016). Her primary concerns were whether (a) satirical communication, or in this case internet
memes, facilitate political talk? (b) Can inside jokes that raises awareness of political issues to
people in the internet? (c) Can memes connect people and assist in community building? (d)
What themes and ideas do social networks users promote by the means of memes? (e) Do
supporters and opponents of the government employ political memes differently? What
narratives do memes contribute to the pro-government and resistant communication flows on
Russian Twitter. She observed that internet memes were able to create critique through
employing internet memes which disrupts deceitful propaganda. They used these flexible
communication vehicles to articulate their alternative view at Russian politics and invited others
to reflect, juxtapose and accept different truths (Denisova 2016). The different layouts of internet
memes also became beneficial in including people in the exchange which again brought an
awareness boost to people on what is happening within Russia, according to the meme makers
that Desinova interviewed, these internet memes enabled them to blow off steam and locate like-
minded individuals and restore confidence in one’s principles, political beliefs and aspirations
(Desinova 2016). The advantage for meme-making is it is an equalizing tool:
The accessibility of memes to citizens of different social backgrounds links them to the
carnivalesque resistance. Anonymous, entertaining and easily consumable, most memes
travel in between various communities. Meme making is not restricted to creative elites, as
anyone can craft a successful joke and encourage artistic contributions from other users. This
means that memes provide the ever-flexible possibilities for the change of power relations,
they are not fixed or limited to elites or intellectuals. (Denisova 2016)

Internet memes, according to Denisova (2016), shows a collective digital identity to people.
Even though internet memes are not able to unite groups, it helps in exposing more ideas which
can propagate different groups and communities. Most of all, the flexibility of memes is really
advantageous ‘as they ingest the existing moods and trends in society and politics; they
vigorously echo the main points of the offline agenda in the virtual space. Memes cannot survive
without public demand; they represent public request and interest in certain types of
information or debate in the present moment.’ But with all these advantages, there are always
disadvantages as how the pro-government individuals in Russia can amplify and strengthen the
points of the government through the creation of memes. Overall, internet memes are now new
weapons that can be used either parties (opposition or the pro-government) in creating these
conversations and influencing people inside the internet as a public space.

Internet sphere, Philippines, and the public space

What does this say about the Philippines and the internet sphere as a public space? In
analysis above, it is beneficial for anyone who wishes to undertake a tracing of the public space
in the Philippines to consider the internet sphere in their tracing. For it will leave a huge chunk of
their analysis if they do not try to engage with what consists of the internet sphere. It is worth
noting that the non-humans actants must also be taken in consideration i.e. ‘bots,’ ‘fake
accounts,’ and ‘internet memes.’ In this section, I will briefly engage within the ideas presented
above and try to consolidate them and how we can view them as we analyze and trace the
internet sphere and how political opinions are being exchanged and shaped within the Philippine
society. Again, the internet sphere is not just what consists of the public space of any society. But
through this we can engage on how the internet sphere can affect different areas of public spaces.
As we have seen, there are a lot of ‘obstacles’ within the exchange of political opinions in
the internet sphere, due to the influence of ‘fake accounts’ and ‘bots’ that bombards within the
social media platforms. Bradshaw and Howard (2017) claimed that the Philippine government
paid approximately $300,000 in deploying trolls (people who manage these fake accounts) for
pro-government propaganda. They use different ways like spreading disinformation through
blogs and websites that produces content that either supports the government or shames critics of
the government. See in the example below the internet memes that shames or defames different
political oppositions against Duterte, or critique against Facebook moves, or as simple as an
‘online survey’ through sharing of whether someone is satisfied with the work of the President
and the former chief of police. But at the same time, the opposition uses the same platform in
sharing their political opinions through the use of internet memes. But there are problems that the
internet sphere faces for anyone to freely exchange their political opinions. Like the proposed
Anti-Terror Bill which punishes anyone who creates internet memes that opposes the
government, or like some problems when it comes to the RA 10175 or Cybercrime Prevention
Act of 2012 here there is a question whether internet memes can be considered for cyberlibel? In
a court case (Disini Jr., et al., v. Secretary of Justice, et al., G.R. No 203335, February 11, 2014)
they problematized internet memes and cyberlibel. They problematized whether the author must
be liable or whether the Likers or Commenters must be taken into consideration too.

“The question is: are online postings such as "Liking" an openly defamatory statement,
"Commenting" on it, or "Sharing" it with others, to be regarded as "aiding or abetting?" In
libel in the physical world, if Nestor places on the office bulletin board a small poster that
says, "Armand is a thief!," he could certainly be charged with libel. If Roger, seeing the poster,
writes on it, "I like this!," that could not be libel since he did not author the poster. If Arthur,
passing by and noticing the poster, writes on it, "Correct!," would that be libel? No, for he
merely expresses agreement with the statement on the poster. He still is not its author. Besides,
it is not clear if aiding or abetting libel in the physical world is a crime.” (G.R. No. 203335,
February 11, 2014)
Unfortunately, the article ill-defined internet memes taking back from Dawkins (though it shares
its affinities with its definition but internet memes are more than copies of culture) which was
discussed earlier. This is a problematic issue since either the opposition or pro-government can
use this flaw in defaming and creating malicious content to each other. Thus, I will briefly give
my take on to this matter:

1. The elements of internet memes must be taken into consideration: the comedic spiel,
culture (i.e. values and etc.), satirical overlay, and its form. Thus, if we talk about
'internet memes' are these elements present?
2. We must also consider the target of the internet meme that is presented to us. It will only
contain malicious content if there is an intent to defame a certain individual that is
targeted within that internet meme rather than the culture that is being criticized, i.e. the
meme presented in the preview is a critique against corruption, which the pictures of the
politicians are seen as faces of corruption. What is problematic with this is that internet
memes, when it has a satirical overlay, must not be conceived as malicious or defaming
content, because these posts can be an expression of 'dissent'.
3. The commenters and likers are knee-jerk reactions. It is either they are enabled to say
those due to the content made against a person or that they are also propagators of it. But
determining that is rather a hard issue.
 At the end, there is so much problematic issues that must be considered in this light when
it comes to the free exchange of political opinions in the internet sphere, as a public space. Now
the political opinions here are connected on what is being shown in traditional media, saying that
“the ‘netizens’ despise or like this or that…” and scholars surely will take notice of these
political opinions and take on researches. Politicians respond to these opposing forces that are in
the internet sphere and employ different machineries to rectify their positions. This just shows
how the relationship of different ‘production sites’ creates meaningful connections and
interactions between different individuals and the exchange of political opinions. The project’s
output would help us understand how individuals create these political opinions and what kind of
‘modalities’ (Law 2004:27; Latour and Woolgar 1986:76) are latched onto these political
opinions presented in Philippine society. Through this, we can understand a part of how the
Philippine society is being built and what are the parts that are being destroyed to be built up new
things with.
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