Saying 'No': On the rejection of consensus-oriented communication on the Internet.

Franz Beitzinger, Natascha Zowislo and Jürgen Schulz:
Saying 'No': On the rejection of consensus-oriented communication on the Internet.
Presented by Franz Beitzinger.
It is a somewhat naïve and normatively-burdened idea that the purpose
of communication is to create consensus. However, it is easily
overlooked that is precisely the ‘No’ and the lack of a goal to reach
agreement by no means eradicate communication, but in fact increase the
communicative options and connectivity among the participants as
conflicting interests and alternative points of view, rather than the
aspiration for agreement and harmony, constitute a communicative
relationship. Firstly, this paper seeks to illustrate theoretically how
the ‘No’ on the Internet can lead to a) the maintenance of the
communicative system, b) to the establishment of identity for those
actors saying ‘No’, and c) to their gaining meaning in the real world
away from the Internet. Secondly, with the help of examples from
Internet-based political and anti-corporate protest movements the means
and strategies that the Internet itself enables individual and group
actors to use the ‘No’ to establish and secure their own identity will
be examined. Thirdly, this paper analyses how the targets of the
protest, the antagonists of the protest movement (corporations or
political parties), can successfully deal with dissent-oriented protest
on the Internet in order to avoid having their own prominent position
exploited for the purposes of the protest group in the aforementioned
way.

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