We live in the digital millennium where our lives are becoming increasingly more virtual. We are connected all day long and as many as 49% of the Norwegian population are surfing the web via mobile units like tablets or smartphones. This makes us easily available, and easy targets for interruption. New technologies like Google glasses will have an even greater impact on the integration between cyberspace and reality. Social media has contributed so that marketing now reach consumers faster. Word of mouth is spreading among consumers with the speed of light. Activity we conduct on the web is being monitored all the time. Cookies allow the advertisement to be more individualized targeted to each one of us. SOPA, NSA, PRISM og DLD are just some organisations that some fear are threatening our privacy and freedom of speech.
The virtual world also creates difficulties for our physical world. Amazon forces bookstores to fire their employees, or shut down their stores completely, while printed ad revenue keep falling.
With new technology and connectivity at all times are we moving towards a society where everyone can see everything. A society where we can easily monitor each other, and easier be monitored by others. A society where we find censorship necessary and where free speech is getting increasingly restricted. Censorship are also largely determined by the law and different kind of ethic rules in society and different organizations. Even in the marketing world there are rules on what you can and can not communicate to the public. In Norway you can not play on sex in commercials, you can not target commercials to kids, and you cannot make ads for alcohol or online betting. Laws like that forces marketers to find rules around, and play on sex in creative ways. Some of the Norwegian TV-channels broadcast from other countries like Great Britain to avoid these rules and still earn money on commercials related to online betting or targeted at kids. Toys commercials are illegal. But still it’s ok to use kids in commercials for shampoo and soap?
Online the marketing laws have not been occurring in the same sense, there is still not any clear rules for hidden advertising, ethics and the use of social media. But the government is trying hard to get control over all the communication that happens online as well. What you cannot say online is getting even more strict. After the Internet’s revolution we have gained a whole new world to deal with, and legislation has a new arena to penetrate; social media. The virtual world is about to merge completely with our reality and our everyday lives. The freedom for expression and a choice to be anonymous is getting more and more difficult.
“Everyone wants everyone to know something about everyone” (Amundsen, 2012). Not only do we monitor each other via social media, we also need to be careful for what we express and communicate to the outside world. “Social Media is the media we use to be social. That’s it”(Safko, 2010). Humans are social animals by nature. We need social stimulation and affiliation. Via social media one can expand one’s social network in the virtual world. We need social stimuli in order to share our thoughts, experiences, and get confirmation of our existence. On the web, we can easily express ourself, share what we have to share and show the world that we are a part of society. Uncritical we post comments and updates on social media and write “pink-blogs” about today’s outfit. On the web one can pretend to be just the person one want to be. You can troll, discuss and promote yourself exactly as you wish. Yet the continual restrictions for what we are allowed to express online forces our online presence to become more authentic. When you need to be careful with what you express, it might oblige people to act more cautious in what the communicate to each other. Especially online. People get boring and post updates of their dinner and their cat taking a shit and what not. True thoughts hardly gets out in the open. People get afraid.
We have not always seen the world as we currently see it. Looking at art as a reflection of our reality, we can see that the expressions, techniques and portraits constantly have been changing over time. Realistic paintings is something which have come along after a long time of experimentation and fine tuning over a long, long time. Approximately 500 years B.C. painters made the greatest discovery until then; Abbreviation. The artists tried for the first time in history to paint a foot front view. This was then something that had never been tried before (EH Gombrich: 81). When this revolution had started it could not be stopped. Different ideas linked to the ideas of others, they borrowed ideas from one another and built new theories and techniques based on other peoples ideas. It would take a long time for us to illustrate the reality in an authentic way, and it was not until the photograph that we could truly make a genuine reflection of reality. When George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera in 1888 he made the photograph generally available to most people. Around the same time art changed from being something aesthetically beautiful and perfected to increasingly express something abstract and controversial. Now that we had a camera why would we paint reality? We could now use painting to express art in a different way, to express feelings or to portrait reality in a alternate way. With the photo art no longer needed to be an illustration of reality, but rather a freedom from it. “Passport portraits is viewed as an imprint of reality” (Danbolt, Meyer, 1988:30). It’s intended to illustrate who we are and whether we are those we claim to be. Even though we can’s really claim that the photograph is a mirror of our reality. A photograph is a moment caught in time and we have no information about the course of events around the image past and future. “The photography device gives us a picture of a person in a particular time in a particular light and in a given pictorial view” (Danbolt, Meyer, 1988:30). People change, places change, an image is not updated accordingly and thus becomes no more than a memory. Like the memories we post online will not always be removed or altered, and could never be forgotten or hidden.
Throughout history we have seen freedom of speech been curtailed in various contexts. Hans Jaeger’s novel “From Oslo Bohemians” were seized and burned by authorities the same day that it came out in 1885. Jaeger was by Supreme Court sentenced 60 days in prison for “blasphemy and defamation of bashfulness and sexual moral”. We might understand that something like that could happen some 150 years ago, but no later than two years ago NATO troops at Bagram base in Afghanistan burnt an unknown number of Korans. Which further led to large demonstrations where over 2,000 Afghans went to protest at Bagram Air Base and resulted in over 40 people killed as a result. The difference in the various cases is that the troops expressed a form of expression, while Jaeger was diprived his. How one should express freedom of speech become a different discussion. With free speech comes a responsibility, we have ethical guidelines to deal with, we have laws and clauses, all of which help to control what we say and how we should say it.
The newspaper Nordlys wrote last fall about a man in his 20’s who has been arrested with suspicion of violation of the Norwegian Penal Code section 135a, which deals with racism. The man called himself BlackRanger on the social media Twitter. These kinds of events illustrates how freedom of speech has its limitations and enter into crime offenses. Perhaps some of our expressions are to be something we keep to ourselves and write down in your diary instead of uttering us on social media. Many limitations in freedom of expression may in time cause us to censor ourselves more frequently, and it may in a way create a fear of opinion. Lawyer Jonas Haugsvold suggested in an article in Minerva that we must be the classic speech faithful and encourage citizens to give their opinion rather than to warn them not to do it – even though it is never so bad, stupidly or offensive what might ultimately be expressed from them. There are several proponents of free speech. Organizations like the Freedom of Expression and Norwegian P.E.N. are fighting for freedom of speech when the light turns out to be absent, especially in media and journalism. Hacker Society Anonymous has long been a proponent of a free network and has frequently demonstrated digitally. Recently, Yahoo said that they want to encrypt all information that moves between the organisations data centers.
Various books and movies have over the years been considered to be indecent, pornographic, racist and blasphemous, and authorities have therefore found it necessary to apply censorship to many of them. The “Mykle-case” from 1957 is Norway’s biggest literary process in Norwegian history, Agnar Mykle was accused of portraying pornographic in the book “The Song of the Red Ruby”. Mykle was eventually acquitted. 10 years later, Jens Bjørneboe got convicted for pornographic depictions in the book “Without a Stitch”. Bjørneboe himself said that the book was intended as a parody to speed up the debate about pornography in this country. Today, books like “Fifty Shades of Grey” is one of the most sold books. Time is changing, and what we censored before is not the same as today. The limits of free speech are constantly metamorphic. Yet we continue to set boundaries of what we think is good for the public, rather than being more liberal. As recently as 2011 Media Authority forbade three movies for sale and show in Norway, including “A Serbian Film”. The Norwegian tabloid newspaper VG said the film was “the world’s worst film” and wrote that the film flirts with necrophilia and depicting child pornography.
Through social media such as online forums you can anonymously discuss and ask a whole multitude of things you might not dare to ask about otherwise. The Norwegian underground forum Freak Forum have discussions on controversial topics such as pyro, hacking and drugs. DinSide referred in 2009 to the forum as a place “where the bad guys are discussing”. Paul Rune Sørensen Tuv, owner of Norwegian Freak Forum, defends the site to DinSide that they do not accept solicitations to crime, but legal descriptions of how things can be done they publish, and explain that they are ideologically for free expression.
Internet forums are not only a place for free speech about taboo subjects, but are also easy prey for spam and viral marketing. A number of online forums in 2006 became victims of disguised advertising from Coca Cola for the launch of their new product Coca Cola Zero. The concept is called Undercover Viral marketing, and is a term for marketing that spreads via social media. “Coca Cola tries with this type of marketing to bypass the laws, norms and regulations applicable in other media”, wrote forum user NoRemorse. Viral Marketing is something marketers increasingly make use of. They make videos that are spreading like a virus through social media such as Youtube and Facebook. Studies show that 53 percent of the users do not realize that the viral videos have a commercial message. Viral Marketing can in many cases be a violation of Norwegian Marketing Control Act § 3, but are in many cases neglected without further consequences.
“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”, said George Orwell. The Internet is a social platform, a marketplace, a dream world and a virtual world of opportunities and disappointments. An increasing censorship and limitations of expression creates a glossy picture of our reality and ourselves. Privacy must give way for marketers and for monitoring humankind. For the benefits of us all. In a world where we know everything about everyone, there are no secrets. In the shadow waits the anonymous to strike to save our rights. We must never forget that it is we who decide the outcome and the future ahead. “The greatest danger is ourselves, little brothers who together form the 21th century’s Big Brother” (Bénilde, Marie, LeMonde Diplomatique).
References:
Cammaerts, Mansell og Bingchiin Meng. “A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing”, MEDIA POLICY BRIEF 9, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Media and Communications, September 2013;
http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/documents/MPP/LSE-MPP-Policy-Brief-9-Copyright-and-Creation.pdf (25.11.2013)
Dagbladet. «NSA overvåker datatrafikk i Danmark», mandag 25. november 2013, kl.04:11;
http://www.dagbladet.no/2013/11/25/nyheter/politikk/nsa/danmark/usa/30499708/ (25.11.2013)
Danbolt og Siri Meyer. «Når bilder formidler», Universitetsforlaget, 1988.
Gombrich, E.H. «The Story of Art». Phaidon Press Limited, 16th edition, 2012.
Medie Norge – Fakta om Norske Medier . «Bruk av mobilt medieinnhold». http://www.medienorge.uib.no/?cat=statistikk&medium=it&queryID=369&aspekt=nyheter (26.11.2013)
Nrk.no “40 år siden dommen”, 29.06.2007;
http://www.nrk.no/kultur/40-ar-siden-dommen-1.2839527(25.11.2013)
Rahimi, Sangar, «Koran Burning in NATO Error Incites Afghans», The New York Times, 21.02.2012; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/world/asia/nato-commander-apologizes-for-koran-disposal-in-afghanistan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0(24.11.2013)
Safko, Lon. «The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success», John Wiley & Sons 2nd edition, 2010.
No Name Zero 