Six - From networks to complexity: two case studies

Summary

Introduction

From the noticeboard in the newsagent's window to multilayered online networks using social networking technologies, citizens access networks of support that uncover previously invisible opportunities. Such networks, online and offline, are facilitated by the use of social networking platforms but also through the everyday face-to-face interactions made possible by communities within localities. These overlapping networks are complex and dynamic and in this chapter we present two case studies where the micro-level actions of creative citizens generate impact within their communities and beyond. We consider how such actions, supported by and amplified by networks, often have wider impacts for the creative economy and for the relationship between citizens and those in power, taking us into territory illuminated by complexity theory.

In our first example we consider how a highly networked creative citizen has worked to fashion a ‘milieu’ to serve a community's creative needs and grow its cultural capital. We then turn to the way that citizen journalists, through a rejection of traditional journalistic practices and discourses, use networks to provide insight into everyday life, countering what Parker and Karner have described as externally-imposed ‘negative reputational geographies’ (2011: 309). In both cases these creative citizens enact a deft utilisation of their online and offline networks. Our intention here is to see beyond debates that tend to situate the affordances of networked technologies as the determining factor for success and instead ask how such technologies are put to use by creatives working in specific fields of cultural production. How do the networked actions of creative citizens create impact for themselves, their communities and for their practice? We begin by looking at debates about how the internet has by turns created and narrowed the opportunities for greater civic participation, before identifying useful frameworks to examine our case studies of networked creatives.

The civic potential of the internet

We might presume that in articulating a case for the importance of networks we take at face value the digitally enhanced role of technology as a transformative tool for positive change – a tool that seemingly allows those previously cut off from cultural or political participation to voice their concerns or engage in creative acts that will find global audiences.