Progress or not: Two examples of Convergence Culture from Denmark

On www.youtube.com you can hear a then four-year-old boy called “Oliver” tell how his grandfather among other things sexually abuses him.

By going onto www.facebook.com you can join a group by the name “Help Oliver NOW!!” if you believe he is telling the truth and you want to support him. On www.skrivunder.net you can use your signature to try and make a difference that way. On www.caremaker.dk you can donate money to help the cause.

The sound files with “Oliver” have been listened to by more than 20 000 people and the Facebook group has more than 7000 members. Around 4000 signatures have been collected as well as around 28 000 CZK.

It is “Oliver”'s mom who has the custody over “Oliver”. It is the child's father Kim Buch-Madsen who has recorded his son on tape. It is also him who started suspecting that “Oliver” is being abused and he has been the main force behind the cause. Kim Buch-Madsen criticizes the authorities and says that their case work has not been good enough.

When Henry Jenkins focuses on shared problem-solving in an online community, he writes that collective intelligence refers to an “ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members. What we cannot know or do on our own, we may now be able to do collectively” (source: Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, p. 27).

In this case the most active people have divided themselves into groups. The different platforms have then been used to for example get in contact with social workers, teachers and policemen. The strategy is to use their assessments to strengthen the cause, to inform the group's followers and to get in contact with and/or influence politicians and different media. 

Hjælp Oliver NU!! on Facebook. It is Kim Buch-Madsen on the right and Manu Sareen, the Danish social minister, on the left (photo: Facebook).

Kim Buch-Madsen has been able to tell his version of the story several times in traditional media. For example multiple times in BT: 1, 2 and 3 and in a program at the radio station Radio24syv 

The authorities and the police disagree with Kim Buch-Madsen. According to them there is no signs that the boy is unhappy, no prove that he has been abused and therefore no reason to remove him from his mother. 

The local authorities have set it as a target not to let the accusations stand unchallenged. Some of the arguments have been that the community's actions are hurting a little boy and other people they - the members of the community - have never met or spoken to, and that “Oliver” has told the police that he made the accusations to make his father happy (source: http://journalisten.dk/pest-og-kolera).

The local authority - Gladsaxe Kommune - answering Kim-Buch Madsen on Facebook. They write that "Oliver" is doing fine, but that he is starting to think more about the situation as he grows older (photo: Facebook).

Another community that is active in order to change something they find unjust is “Klemte Borgere” and the campaign “Sygt Valg i Aalborg” (it can be translated into Sick/Wrong/Boring Election or Choice in Aalborg). 

According to them their municipality - Aalborg - violates legal rights for sick citizens who have lost the ability to work. The community was especially visible during the local election in Denmark in November 2013 and their Sygt Valg-Facebook page is continuing to be active. Their aim is to share knowledge, cases, experiences and skills to put their cause in focus, hold the municipality responsible and get them to change.

The main communities are https://www.facebook.com/sygtvalg and http://www.sygtvalg.dk/. By the use of for example case stories on the homepage, handing out very direct materials, commentaries, a manifest and demonstrations they have managed to get several politicians to react. More traditional media focused on their cause several times and in that way they have influenced the agenda.

Material from Klemte Borgere. "Vote again for the alderman if you are healthy enough", it says (photo: www.sygtvalg.dk).

“Klemte Borgere” was - perhaps not surprising - criticized by several politicians, but the man, who worked as a journalist as well as being responsible for the groups way of communicating, won a journalistic award for his efforts. After receiving the award he expressed how insecure he had felt making a campaign while working as a journalist at the same time. He added that it would have felt more right to win it for traditional journalism (source: http://journalisten.dk/vinder-journalistpris-politisk-aktivisme).

Although both “Hjælp Oliver NU!!” and “Klemte Borgere” would probably always wish they had been more successful, it is two examples of the quite powerful possibilities of influencing agendas that journalists or other people - the people formerly known as the audience - have today.

Old consumers/new producers use the possibilities to break into more traditional media, make people active in the process and see how their content spread (relatively) fast from page to page from media to media.

It is changing the old rules/borders for activists, authorities, journalists “on both sides” and for all the people around them. A lot of things are happening today that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago, and the current development can be both good or bad.

The ideal journalist's (or the idea of his or her) role - the objective journalist who “filtrates” information and chooses between right or wrong - has certainly been weakened. Such a filter does not exist in the same way. Instead people who are no longer just an audience act. That can be a good thing, but things perceived as progress are sometimes overestimated.

The old social communities are breaking down, says Pierre Lévy, and he believes that there will emerge a new sort of political power and “sees ... knowledge communities as central to the task of restoring democratic citizenship” (source: Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, p. 29). He calls his model of collective intelligence an “achievable utopia” (source: Henry Jenkins: Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, p. 29).

But although the changes are not complete, people are likely to use new tools or opportunities in many different ways - and access to internet communities or the possibility for a former audience to no longer be an audience does not in itself guarantee better communication or more equality amongst people. It does not prevent 10 000 from being just as wrong as 10 people. Neither does it necessarily make life more simple or people more intelligent or well behaved. Perhaps the outcome will be the opposite.