Commentaries
Global Media Journal – Indian Edition/ Summer Issue / June 2011
IDEOLOGICAL NETWORK APPARATUS: MEDIA AND THE
INDIAN PUBLIC SPHERE
Sushmita Pandit
Lecturer
Department of Media Science
Pailan School of International Studies
[Affiliated to West Bengal University of Technology]
South 24 Parganas, west Bengal, India
Website: http://www.psis.co.in
E-mail: .sushmitapandit@gmail.com
Abstract: In this article I seek to discuss the changing nature of media in India and attempt to outline
the ways emerging communication technology reshape the public sphere, particularly in this present
period of rapid globalization, when the instant interconnections of the world has ensured that the
existing nation-states find itself ever more constrained and contested by transnational forces which
frequently compel it to be subservient to international treaties, multinational corporations and global
media institutions. However, in this essay, I primarily discuss the emerging social media in India,
which hold the promise to create an alternative, perhaps more democratic, public sphere. In this
essay, I revisit Luis Althusser’s theorizations on state apparatuses to make sense of the complex
relationship among social media, democracy and the nation-state amidst the neo-liberal public
sphere and in the process, I wish to suggest the notion of Ideological Network Apparatus to identify
the position of social media “networks” within the category of emerging non-state elements.
Keywords: Social Media, Public Sphere, Ideological State Apparatus, Democracy
Introduction
In this article I seek to discuss the shifting nature of media and attempt to outline the ways
emerging technology reconfigure the public sphere, especially at a time when the swift
interconnections of the world, ushered in by the present period of globalization, has made
certain that the nation-states find itself ever more restricted and contested by transnational
forces that often compel to be subservient to international agreements and treaties, global
alliances, multinational corporations and media institutions. However, in this article I
primarily focus on the emerging social media in India, which is evidently dominated by
global players. Social media can be defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that
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build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation
and exchange of user-generated content." (Kaplan, Haenlein, 2009). It is interesting to study
in what way the social media becomes a formative element in the formation of the public
sphere and how do they exert influence on one another.
Before discussing further, it is essential to outline the idea of the public sphere. Here the
concept of the public sphere is used in a very general manner, as a synonym for the processes
of public opinion or for the news media themselves. However, in its more elaborate use, as it
was developed by Jürgen Habermas, the public sphere ought to be perceived as an analytic
category, a conceptual device which, while focusing on a particular social phenomenon may
also help us in studying and exploring the experience. The concept of the bourgeois public
sphere, according to Habermas, denotes a particular social space, which came into existence
under the development of capitalism in Western Europe and hence it naturally points to a
specific historical circumstances and class character of the phenomenon. Similarly, it can be
said, that history is not static, and the public sphere in the contemporary situation is
conditioned by other historical circumstances and is imbued with other potentialities
(Dahlgren & Sparks, 1991). In this essay, I revisit Luis Althusser’s theorizations on state
apparatuses to make sense of the complex relationship among social media, democracy and
the nation-state amidst the neo-liberal public sphere and in the process I wish to suggest the
notion of Ideological Network Apparatus to identify the position of social media “networks”
within the category of emerging non-state elements.
Social Media and Indian Public Sphere
Even in a developing country like India, activists and social movements initiators are
progressively identifying e-mail, mailing lists and forums as an effective means to
disseminate alternative, at times counterhegemonic information, to mobilize both online and
offline direct action, to deliberate on pressing issues, and even occasionally use the internet as
a device for decision-making. Hence, the Internet is often declared to be a, progressively
more, important instrument for strengthening the public sphere. Consequently scholars also
argue that the internet has the potential to go beyond the local or national context and can
construct translocal or transnational (counter)public spaces (Bailey, Cammaerts, Carpentier,
2008, p. 97).
Usually the social media finds its position within the civil society model that constructs social
media as the alternative media and as part of civil society, which produces the “third voice”,
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not only between the state media and private commercial media, but also as civil society
organizations between state and market (Servaes, 1999, p.260). Many of these relatively
scattered networks of activists, social movement networks as well as more structured
networks use the internet to interact amongst themselves or with a wider translocalized or
transnationalized public. One is reminded of the Pink Chaddi Campaign of January 2009
against the militant Hindu nationalist activists in Mangalore. Nisha Susan, a journalist by
profession set up “The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women” on Facebook
and urged women to gift pink chaddis to Pramod Mutalik, the head of the ultra-conservative
Hindu group Shri Ram Sene, as an expression of nonviolent protest against the physical
assault on women in a Mangalore Pub, and his threats to disrupt Valentine’s Day
celebrations. Women as well as men not only from India but from various other countries
joined the campaign. What began as a “faintly bitter joke”, turned into one of the leading
Indian examples of how a specific community, predominantly consisting of urban women,
can come together and may make themselves politically “visible” using social media.
One may cite similar examples from other countries, but it is undeniable that in contemporary
times the internet has become a vital medium in the media and communication strategies,
allowing self-representation but evading the involvement of the mainstream media. The
internet also provides the platform for different networks of activists to engage and organize
themselves locally and also beyond borders. In addition, the internet does play an
“intriguingly schizophrenic role in these complex socio-political evolutions” (Bailey,
Cammaerts, Carpentier, 2008, p. 98). Nonetheless, the social media can be considered to be
inclusive in that it enables social movement organizations and networks of activists to
develop common “frames of meaning” as well as actions. Then how the social media invest
in the democratic system and why are so desirable for civil society? As Scott and Street
(2001, p. 46) asserts, it allows for: Firstly, “mesomobilization”, in other words, coordination
between networks across borders and without the need for a transcending hierarchical
organisational form; second, capable of having a high impact without needing major
resources; third, the organizations may retain editorial control over content and external
communication; and finally, may bypass state control and can communicate in a secure
environment. Moreover, the social media plays a formative role in strengthening the public
sphere through the mediation of political debate and thus expanding the political space. For
example, “Free Binayak Sen Campaign”, which involved a number of websites, forums,
email lists, social media communities and blogs by well wishers and supporters of Dr
Binayak Sen— sentenced to life imprisonment for “sedition”— demanding his unconditional
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release and “to bring the injustice being done to him by the government of Chhattisgarh to the
attention of people around the world” is quite emblematic of many current “pro-democracy”
political struggles online (Aravind, Sivaraman, Sasi, 2011)
Here it is important to remember that there are serious constraints from a democratic
perspective on this increased cyberization of participation, especially in a developing country.
One of the major constraints is that access to the internet is very limited and there is an
unequal distribution of the capabilities and means to allow every individual to have access to
these communication tools efficiently and effectively, and certainly not if looked at from a
global or transnationalized perspective (Norris 2001). Furthermore, the internet may also
invest in the fragmentation of the public sphere and to a ghettoization of (often male) likeminded individuals and of course it is damaging for democracy. As Chantal Mouffe (2006)
explains,
I do not think that this is at all good for democracy, because for me democracy is
precisely this agonistic struggle where you are being bombarded by different views.
The new media are not going into that direction. It reminds me of a form of autism,
where people are only listening to and speaking with people that agree with them. To
put it in a nutshell, I do not see that the new media would automatically be supportive
to the creation of an agonistic public space. And for me that is what democracy is
about. I am not saying that they are necessarily unsupportive, they could of course be
used in a way which supports an agonistic public space, but so far I do not think that
they are being used in this way. And that is why I am really skeptical about their
impact.
However, in the context of social movements the internet can be conceived as a “political
opportunity structure”, capable of promoting participation in the sphere of largely informal
and non-institutional political processes and social movement networking, often encouraging
more flexible and short-term participation (Meyer and Minkoff, 2004). The social media in
India has often been involved in such activities— from the eyewitness reports of terrorist
attacks and general elections to online protest campaigns— Indian social media has arguably
constructed itself as an emerging, assumed to be non-state, apparatus, fostering a promising
public sphere for better democratic participation.
Democracy in late Capitalism: Social Media and the Indian Citizen
The emergence of social media in India first came into significant focus during the 2008
Mumbai attacks, when Twitter and social network sites became the source of information
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about the attacks even for Indian mainstream media and the world. Again in May 2009 the
social media in India was in spotlight as for the first time online voter registration and
transparency campaigns started for the national elections. Furthermore, almost all the
political parties engaged with social media or internet in general to reach out to the young
voters, who have a significant presence in the social networking websites. Interestingly, the
Twitter tag "#indiavotes09" remained the number one topic on the trends list of Twitter
search during election.
A number of empirical research findings state several examples that prove that social media
in India has become substantially popular and influential in diverse spheres. The use of
Facebook and Twitter by several ministers and especially the Indian foreign ministry for
public diplomacy, and the numerous blogs being written by celebrities emphasize the
increasing influence of social media in India. According to a report on sify.com, in the past
six months through the Twitter account, Indian diplomacy has sent out 186 tweets and
gathered over 4,400 followers. The Foreign Ministry has also uploaded 31 video clips of
commissioned documentaries on YouTube (Aftergood, 2010). Often the social media have
functioned as a parallel often more effective communication channel for politically volatile
issues. Recently, compelled by overwhelming pressure from social media, the Indian
mainstream media was almost forced to report on the alleged links between some noted
journalists and a lobbyist for their role in an alleged telecommunications spectrum allocation
scandal. As Times of India (Desai, 2010) reported “the blanket silence that was achieved on
mainstream media, give or take a few exceptions, was undone by the noisy roar of Twitter
outrage”. However, as a number of social media commentators explain that it cannot replace
the role played by media as of now and social media is most likely to supplement rather than
supplant mainstream, traditional media. However, the rising importance of social media in
India is confirmed by the fact that almost all the conventional media have registered their
presence on the social networking websites (Aftergood, 2010). In a recent survey by
Geomeme Strategic Consulting, India is ranked as the 6th fastest growing social media user
community in the world growth of 47% in 2010, twice as much as the overall growth rate of
23%, globally. The survey has revealed that there is higher penetration of social media among
Indian internet users.1 Of the 10 million users, 51 % log into social networking sites each day
and more than 90% of the social media users in top 10 Indian social media site are in the age
group between twenty-one and forty, with household income much higher than the national
average and 60% of social media users come from middle class/upper middle class segment.
Hence it is an apparatus nonetheless but a very class specific apparatus. Perhaps one of the
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ways to understand this emerging apparatus is to reconsider the notions of state apparatus
described by Luis Althusser. However, drawing from his works I wish to suggest a
reconfigured perception of contemporary social media and its specific location within the
neo-liberal pubic sphere of India.
From Ideological State Apparatus to Ideological Network Apparatus
Before I clarify in details, what I wish to contend as Ideological Network Apparatus, it is
important to delineate Althusser’s theorization about State and its apparatuses. According to
classical Marxists, the State is conceived as the State Apparatus.2 And Althusser points out
the State (and its existence in its apparatus) has no meaning except as a function of State
power and the State is explicitly conceived as a repressive apparatus. In other words,
Althusser (1989) proposes the notion of Ideological State Apparatuses and makes it clearly
distinct from the (repressive) state apparatus, and states that
They [Ideological State Apparatus] must not be confused with the (repressive) State
apparatus. Remember that in Marxist theory, the State Apparatus (SA) contains: the
Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc.,
which constitute what I shall in future call the Repressive State Apparatus
Ideological State Apparatuses is defined as a certain number of realities which present
themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions. To
illustrate, Alhuser also furnishes a list of institutions as Ideological State Apparatuses— the
religious ISA (the system of the different churches), the educational ISA (the system of the
different public and private ‘schools’), the family ISA, the legal ISA, the political ISA (the
political system, including the different parties), the trade-union ISA, the communications
ISA (press, radio and television, etc.), the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).
While the above list remains seminal in its analysis, recent emerging communication
information technologies especially the increasing expansion of social media calls for a
reconsideration of the notions of the State and its apparatuses. It is somewhat clear at a glance
that there is a plurality of Ideological State Apparatuses but all these are evidently centralized
and hence authoritative, like the state itself. However, I hasten to add that the world order of
nation states and the form of sovereignty it represents is undergoing significant alteration,
ushered in by the period of rapid globalization. Since this transformation is a continuous
process of negotiation which is dependent on the particular actors engaged in the process, one
may comprehend it better by a careful analysis of the points of contact between the nation-
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state and the forms of power that are challenging it, including the newer forms of Ideological
Apparatuses.
What I aim to suggest is that the social media networks constitute a key element among
emerging non-state actors. It is important to remember how in 2005 Google ignored repeated
requests from Indian government and various other governments, to remove online high
resolution images of highly secured territories and which proved the lack of legal, technical
or diplomatic means of the nation-states to influence Google.3 As they smoothly transgress
borders and bypass traditional controls on information flow, digital media institutions such as
Google restrain the nation state in exceptional ways (Waisbord and Morris, 2001). They
wield, what scholars have termed, “network power”— an amorphous web of treaties,
organizations and institutions— that operates by showing its private interest as a global one
(Hardt and Negri, 2000). The swift interlinking of the world ushered in by the present
conditions of globalization has made sure that although the nation-state still enjoy substantial
power but it also finds itself more and more confined by transnational forces and compelled
to be subservient to global alliances, multinational corporations and media institutions. These
changes effect in global flow of capital and aims at getting unrestricted access to resources
and markets around the world. Global treaties promoted by bodies such as the IMF and
multinational corporations often make much-needed aid and foreign investment dependent
upon access to national markets and resources, reducing the ability of nations (particularly
smaller ones) to protect their resources (Kumar, 2010, p.156). The post-national global order
is steadily making its way into the domain of the nation-state system. Contemporary alliances
that go beyond geo-political borders by forming flexible, horizontal pan-global networks
provide a hint of those future global arrangements. These networks confront the nation-state
both from above and below, forming sub- and supra-national hierarchies (Sassen, 2007).
Kyoto Protocol, and other treaties, along with international bodies such as the United
Nations, World Trade Organization are examples of the supra-national hierarchies existing
above the nation-state, while a global network of cities, as well as of non-state entities such as
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), would be examples of sub-national hierarchies
existing below the domain of states. Similarly social media represents such “network” which,
instead of working as a “State Apparatus”, challenges the nation-state both from above and
below.
Moreover as Althusser (1989) notes, the Ideological State Apparatuses are part of the private
domain. “Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural
ventures, etc., etc., are private”.4 However, the public private dichotomy is also not very
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crucial regarding networked society. The social media offer the space and tool respectively
for advocacy, where the personal can truly be political. Wendy Harcourt (2002, p. 154) citing
incidents from India, Mexico, Thailand, Armenia, East Timor argues that women are
gradually developing an influential layer of support through social media from moments of
need and social crisis, “to safe spaces where personal struggles can be discussed and
solutions shared”. The social media offers the opportunity for women who may either solicit
or yield support from the privacy of their homes, dodging public censorship. The social
media has been utilized as a ready lobby tool to prevent violations against women. Harcourt
claims, “Local women’s groups gain strength from support solicited at the global level”. In
spite of the unquestionable limitations and apprehension around access and control, women,
especially in the urban regions, are increasingly adapting the social media and using it as a
potent tool for women’s place-based politics in developing countries. Thus movements like
these to a certain extent disseminate women’s collective experiences and invest in the
realignment of the political domain, and the public sphere, for gendered social change.
Considering these aspects I seek to illustrate a very sketchy outline of what I mean as
Ideological Network Apparatus. The social media is positioned as an emerging non-state
actor, and its exceptionality is derived from a network that is intended to be a centerless
diffused arrangement, which permits them to construct itself as a network where, if
necessary, each node has as much control as another. Thus Ideological Network Apparatus
appears to be more democratic yet outside the nation-state’s jurisdiction. This network also
enable them to declare that they represent the global decent, as opposed to the local or
national interests of a particular territory, since ideally all nodes of the network can be
uniformly used to participate. However, to state the obvious, although this networked
structure permits individual interactions, uncontrolled by a center but considerable inequality
in relation to the access to the online public sphere or the “digital divide” restrict that
communication. This leads us to contend that Ideological Network Apparatus functions
primarily and predominantly by ideology and secondly by a network which is often
exclusionary. As I have discussed earlier, citing survey findings, the very nature of the
internet is such that it only allows the upper class and the aspiring upwardly mobile
middleclass to be significantly involved. More than ninety percent of the Indian social media
users are with household income much higher than the national average and sixty percent of
social media users come from middle class and upper middle class segment. Thus even in the
context of social media we have to accede with Althusser that the ideology by which they
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function is always in fact is the ideology of “the ruling class”. This is where the Ideological
Network Apparatus still remain “ideological” in truly Althusserian terms.
Conclusion
It would be gravely erroneous to assume that the social media can act as a panacea for
democracy in a developing country. However, it has the potential to form a public sphere for
the dissemination of counter-hegemonic discourses, or to mobilize public opinion outside the
centralized authoritative state control, although that does involve its specific danger and of
course, the need to establish those discourses and interaction outside the online realms and to
the offline world of the realpolitik. The notion of Ideological Network Apparatus, which I
have tried to explain in this article, draws on the concepts of Althusser’s theory of the State,
but I have argued that it is necessary to distinguish between the Ideological State Apparatus
and the Ideological Network Apparatus, especially considering the emerging social media
and the increasing non-state, transnational forces, that seek to displace the “state” with
“network”.
The communicative politics embedded in the deployment of communicative frames that
structure and give shape to social media networks also run through the global treaties,
transnational alliances and multinational corporations, concerned with questions about global
dominance and an emergent global public sphere. Here I hasten to add that, I am neither
proposing that the promises, which social media hold is entirely fallacious nor that the social
media may bring an unmixed blessing for a more democratic, participatory public sphere.
Although I do underline the nature of power that these networks wield, but I deliberately
refrain from any hasty predictions about the impending demise of the nation-state. Rather, I
have aimed at emphasizing the fact that it is time to engage much more directly with exactly
how different issues, activities and movements in India are mobilized and disseminated
through the communicative and ideological structures of social media network. Only then we
may produce a more measured and reliable evaluation of the possibilities and implications of
social media and its possible contribution to a more participatory democracy and perhaps a
new public sphere.
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References
Aftergood, S. (2010) OSC Media Aid: Overview of Leading Indian Social Media. Retrieved February 9, 2011,
from http://www.fas.org/blog
Althusser, L. (1989). 'Ideology and ideological state apparatuses' in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays.
London: New Left Books pp 170-86.
Carpentier, N. and Cammaerts, B. (2006). Hegemony, democracy, agonism and journalism: An interview with
Chantal Mouffe, Journalism Studies 7(6): 964–75.
Dahlgren, P. & Sparks, C. (1991) Communication and citizenship: journalism and the public sphere in the new
media age. London: Routledge.
Desai, S. (2010, November 28). Of Twitter outrage & media silence. The Times of India. Retrieved February 9,
2011, from http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Citycitybangbang/entry/of-twitter-outrage-mediasilence
Geomeme Strategic Consulting. (2010). Research findings on Indian Social media. Retrieved from
http://www.geomemeonline.com/downloads/Indian_social_media-2011.pdf
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kaplan, Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media.
Business Horizons, 53 (1): 59–68.
Kumar, S. (2010). Google Earth and the nation state : Sovereignty in the age of new media. Global Media and
Communication, 6: 154.
Meyer, D. S and Minkoff, D. C. (2004). Conceptualizing political opportunity, Social Forces 82(4): 1457–92.
Morris, N. and Waisbord, S. (2001). Rethinking Media Globalization and State Power, in N. Morris and S.
Waisbord (eds.) Media and Globalization: Why the State Matters, (pp. vii-xvi). New York: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Norris, P. (2001). Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet in Democratic
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Sassen, S. (2007). A Sociology of Globalization. London: W.W. Norton.
Scott, A. and Street, J. (2001). From media politics to e-protest? The use of popular culture and new media in
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Notes
1. According to the report, total use of social networking sites increased by 43% from 2009 to 2010;
while the total internet users increased only by 13%.
2. To summarize the “Marxist theory of the state” Althusser points out Marxist classics have always
claimed that (1) the state is the repressive state apparatus, (2) state power and state apparatus must
be distinguished, (3) the objective of the class struggle concerns state power, and in consequence the
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use of the state apparatus by the classes (or alliance of classes or of fractions of classes) holding state
power as a function of their class objectives, and (4) the proletariat must seize state power in order to
destroy the existing bourgeois state apparatus and, in a first phase, replace it with a quite different,
proletarian, state apparatus, then in later phases set in motion a radical process, that of the
destruction of the state (the end of state power, the end of every state apparatus). See: Althusser, L.
(1989). 'Ideology and ideological state apparatuses' in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays.
London: New Left Books.
3. The disagreement between Google Earth and India was lingering for over a year and a half and finally
a Google cooperated only after its vice president visited India. The issue was made public through a
news report when The Times of India on 27 September 2005, reported that the high-resolution images
of Indian security installations are available online through Google.
4. Althusser is quick to point out in his essay that the distinction between the public and the private is a
distinction internal to bourgeois law, and valid in the subordinate domains in which bourgeois law
exercises its ‘authority’. The domain of the State escapes it because the latter is ‘above the law’: the
State, which is the State of the ruling class, is neither public nor private; on the contrary, it is the
precondition for any distinction between public and private. The same thing can be said from the
starting-point of our State Ideological Apparatuses.
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