Master´s Thesis
By Nina Zöpnek
Mapping the News – How an inter-disciplinary approach between the artistic
form of social mapping as implemented by Mark Lombardi and the Bureau
d´Etudes and investigative journalism can allow to re-think news
representation
A theoretical approach in the shape of an investigative article
rMA Cultural Analysis (Arts and Culture)
Supervised by Dr. Joost de Bloois
June 2017
1 Historically speaking
Staying on track with the latest news updates in any shape or form currently seems like an almost impossible task. Whether one is particularly interested in the news or not, the overwhelming fragmentation of the journalistic profession makes it a difficult endeavour to keep an overview. Updates are constantly offered as articles in newspapers, news shows on radio or television broadcasting, instant news updates on websites or apps, news excerpts in social media, podcasts on recent occurrences, images, or video clips, …
And the list of what counts as news items could be expanded.
One of the main reasons why it has become so difficult to keep up with the constant flow of information is the internet. Its introduction into our everyday lives is one of the biggest challenges journalism1 had and still has to face.
Historically speaking, it is a rather long record that is currently being disrupted. The concept which we today refer to as “the press” has had a privileged monopoly over exposing and reporting on political and economic facts, transitions, and misconducts for approximately half a millennium. Its strength was born out of a technological advancement – namely the Gutenberg Press – and is now being undermined by another progression in technology and the changes this inherently entails: the rise and spread of the internet.
With the Gutenberg Press and the concept of reproducing texts through printing, the first forerunners of today´s newspapers can be located in Europe in the late 15th to early 16th
century. The increasing spread of Protestantism and its focus on a more widespread literacy within society for various reasons2 laid the groundwork for the success of public newspapers
(Gawthrop and Strauss 39). Later, during the 18th century, newspapers “played a crucial role
in exposing scandals and investigating the wrongdoings of public officials” in Europe and the newly independent United States of America, which is still one of the roles of news outlets today (stanford.edu). The big difference between newspapers of the past and now, however, is that their standpoints today are often required to be less political and more objective (as far as objectivity can go within journalistic reporting). By the early 20th century, newspapers
had become an important medium to inform the public about important issues, to question the government, and to hold it accountable, affording the industry its role as the Fourth Estate. When radio broadcasting and later television broadcasting came into being, however, they “damaged its monopoly over the dissemination of information” (stanford.edu).
The next, and so far biggest, challenge for print journalism arrived when Arpanet, “the first prototype of the internet”, was decommissioned in 1990, and the internet was introduced for
1 In this paper the term “journalism” will refer to what would traditionally be newspaper journalism, if not stated
otherwise. Due to technological advancements it refers to more than articles in printed newspapers, but also online articles, and publications in news apps which might be supported by documentary photography and documenting video clips.
2 According to Gawthrop and Strauss, during the time of the Lutherian Reformation there was the aim to increase
education – and therefore literacy – in order to be able to choose from a higher number of educated people because “the expanding state and the aggressive church needed a large recruiting pool for their proliferating bureaucracies” (p. 39). Although the connection between the rise of Protestantism and literacy might not be as clear, and implemented due to different reasons as often believed (where common belief is that Protestantism propagated literacy so that believers were not dependent on the priesthood anymore), it still laid ground for a more educated and bureaucratic way of life.
(Gawthrop, Richard, and Strauss, Gerald. “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany”. Past and
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public usage in the following years (Cantoni and Tardini 221). Since then it has confronted the profession of journalism with a number of new challenges.
Steadily, the utilization of the World Wide Web by the public increased over the following years, leading to continuous augmentation of its capacity for quicker searches, an advance in the speed of loading images and viewing video clips on screens, an increase in complex interaction between users, and much more. All of these constantly improving features resulted in the emergence of online websites of various kinds, including those of newspapers, journals, and magazines. Within that trend, an increasing number of blogs were created, chat rooms invented, and slightly later along the timeline social media as we know it today came into being.
Simultaneously, technology kept adapting to the constant changes and advancements in the internet, maybe even creating a symbiotic relationship with it, within which the hardware and the software keep pushing each other to new heights. As much as the technological market expanded and improved, it was one invention in particular which forever changed our relationship with the internet: Steve Jobs´ first generation of the iPhone released in 2007. It was the introduction of the multi-touch smartphone exactly one decade ago which marks the turning point in technological progress and the public utilization of the online network.
Individual drops of a fluid concept
On first glance and taken individually, all of these inventions, alterations, and enhancements mentioned above might not seem very influential on the changes within the profession of journalism. A combination of them all, however, has inevitably changed the industry, “representing something of a paradigm shift in how journalists have traditionally functioned” (stanford.edu). It has progressively become an “industry in transition” (Deuze and Witschge 121) wherein the core concept of the newsroom has become “increasingly fluid” (Deuze and Witschge 128). And the individual drops seem to be impossible to collect, even by the professionals of the field, as it is not yet clear which effects the technological changes and their subsequent modification of daily modern life will have on the profession. So far it has entailed a persistent necessity to experiment and “transition” from one mode of conduct to another, and to adopt a certain “fluidity” that serves the acceleration within journalism and our contemporary lifestyle in general. In short: professional journalism has fragmented into a less homogeneous concept due to the various changes that have occurred throughout the past five decades or so. It has lost its forward momentum, trying to adapt to these alterations while simultaneously attempting to maintain its centuries-long traditions, instead of seizing the opportunity to re-invent its approach towards its manners of implementation.
Several improvements within the internet – such as the increase of its speed, its growing capacity, the expanse in connectivity between the rising numbers of users, and the mobility of the network leading to the web´s democratization – were above all seen as competition instead of as a potential tool for the profession. The increased individualization of the internet still represents an obstacle:
“Web logs, later known as blogs, became an immensely popular way for everyday citizens to update the world about their lives and news – democratizing the news reporting function outside of the small elite of journalists that had previously controlled
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the media. These blogs linked to articles and provided immediate opinions and analysis, and represented an entirely new way to report on news than previously seen.” (stanford.edu).
In other words, these improvements within technology sparked a new form of the movement of citizen journalism in which individuals who are not affiliated to professional journalism gather information and distribute it through new, personalized channels. According to Bowman and Willis, it is not inherently damaging when
“a citizen, or group of citizens, [play] an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (9).
The concept of citizen journalism, however, became more complex since the publication of their study in the year of 2003. The fast-paced growth of the internet allows every citizen with access to the world wide web to contribute in one way or another: articles or postings of any kind can be commented on individually, virtual discussions may be sparked from these in chatrooms or on social networks, images and video clips can be uploaded as sources of proof or commentary, and personal standpoints can be easily shared with the vast amount of people in the online communities. By the end of the 1990s, forerunners of weblog publishing systems and content management systems comparable to today´s Wordpress and Wix boosted the surge in personal publishing (Gill, 1). The fact that these websites offer templates and function as homepage model kits allows for any individual who wants to spread thoughts and opinions on topics of their choice to easily build a website. This, in turn, enables citizens untrained in the profession of journalism to assume certain roles which journalists used to represent.
Technological improvements as the above mentioned, the subsequent personalization of the internet, and the increasing shift towards a prosumer capitalism have effects on the distribution of news and the formation of public opinion. Although the “concepts of the prosumer, one who is both producer and consumer, and of prosumption, involving a combination of production and consumption, are certainly not new”, there have been “various social changes (e.g., the rise of the Internet and of social networking on it) [which] have greatly expanded both the practice of prosumption and scholarly attention to it” (Ritzer et al. 379).
The fact that we now not only consume news, but simultaneously produce a publicly accessible dialogue with it, means that a potential audience does not have to rely solely on news organizations anymore in order to receive information about and interpretations of political occurrences, current social affairs, or economic developments. And while living and taking part in a prosumer capitalist society results in the circumstance that we increasingly assume the roles of professionally trained people, without having similar knowledge or being financially reimbursed for these actions, it also entails the establishment of various online services progressively more manufactured to suit every individual´s lifestyle.
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“[t]he private and the public, once a pair of opposites, have been becoming increasingly blurred for some time now: the formerly private is not only ever more present in public, but self-relations and working relations are also interlocking in such a way that new public spheres are emerging. Through communication and services, production becomes social in a new way. This transformation of production is accompanied by practices of subservient self-government, of which the self-exposure of the seemingly private self in (social) media is only one symptom” (73).
In this newly social manner of production that includes the blurring of the lines between the producer and the consumer “no material things are manufactured in the classical sense, but socialities do emerge in them” (Lorey, 75).
Within the sphere of the press, this involves increasingly well-established citizen journalism and personalization of news outlets, leading to the fact that people nowadays can search effortlessly for the presentations and interpretations of topics that are most suitable to their opinions and can easily avoid any sentiments that do not match their own worldviews. The increasing influence and reliance on citizen journalism, however, can do more harm than good if not implemented thoughtfully, as untrained individuals might lack an understanding of the journalistic code of ethics and the importance of fact-checking contributions which are meant to be published (Barnes 19).
Moreover, this kind of individualization of approaching information in combination with technological advancements such as, and especially, the iPhone, led to a radical change in the ways in which journalism is produced, consumed, and paid for, according to Joseph Lichterman (niemanlab.org).
Footage contribution by citizens had already existed before the publication of Apple´s new smart phone. For example, images, instant messages, videos, and e-mails had been sent to news outlets while and during the aftermaths of the bombing of the London metro-system in 2005 (reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk). It was the iPhone, however, with its full touch screen and its progressive technological innovations which forced news outlets to adapt their coverage to the small screens in our pockets.
Ever since the introduction of the iPhone, consumption of online news has become increasingly convenient. Newspapers have produced condensed layouts, especially designed for smartphone screens, in an increasing number of applications that allow direct access from any place in the world that offers connection to the internet.
Because of this, it has become easier for us as prosumers to consume the news, while simultaneously producing a dialogue with and around it.
These developments, however, led to a declining number of people willing to invest financially in the production of news, especially in the final daily product of the newspaper. It is the demographic group of the younger generations in particular who are unwilling to pay for it, and there is understandable fear within the journalistic profession that this generation might never acquire the habit of reading traditional newspapers (Kuhn 143).
The resulting loss of revenue, in turn, sparked changes within the working structure of journalism. Newspapers cannot afford to offer a high number of permanent positions to journalists, let alone adequate funds for investigative work, which is the most important but also most expensive branch of this industry (Houston 46). As a result, incomes are more instable; the majority of jobs are assigned on freelance basis and there is more competition
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for the few job positions that do exist. The attempt to make up for lost revenue through subscriptions has led to the creation of a mobile advertising industry, selling advertising space on newspaper websites to companies which, in turn, could attract a certain audience reading certain newspapers.
At the same time, the rapid changes experienced within the journalism industry, occuring in order to match our increased modern pace and reduction in available finances, has brought on a growing entrepreneurial mindset, starting in the early 1990s (Deuze and Prenger 245):
“Entrepreneurship is at the heart of breakthroughs in journalism, most notably when it comes to the introduction of new genres and news formats, investigative styles and techniques, and the development of an occupational ideology that can be both a flag behind which to rally in defense of tradition and routine, as well as providing fuel to release forces of change” (Deuze and Prenger 235).
Ever since this change of mind, competition has grown not only amongst distinguished news outlets but also between newly established innovative news platforms, individual journalists, and online displays for citizen journalism.
As almost half of the world´s population3 has, more or less, regular access to the internet
in some form, the content of the internet – and subsequently of the news – is more user-generated than at any given point in the past. For the press, this meant losing its monopoly over ethically correct and critical news dissemination (Srnicek 41). It implies a shift towards a system in which the collection of user data works for businesses or governments in order to be able to cater to already existing audiences and possible new interested parties on an increasingly personalized level. The production and circulation of news at specifically targeted audiences, therefore, has progressively become a new and dangerous business format which social networks like Facebook – whether deliberately or not – support and help to grow. The exact mechanisms will be explained in more detail in the next section.
In order to somewhat contain false or targeted contributions, keep an overview over them, and to ensure the maintenance of high quality, professional journalism is increasingly attempting to incorporate citizen journalism and a dialogue with the public into their own work, therefore gradually adapting to the demands of our already highly virtualized lifestyles. This constant attempt of regaining the position of the gatekeeper within the world of the news amongst trying to optimize coverage for the small screens of smartphones and adapting to people´s demands, while still maintaining quality reporting in condensed form on small budgets, has led to a fragmentation of journalism. News organizations and their editors are no longer considered to be the sole decision makers within the industry of information dissemination, nor the main sources for it due to the internet. Everyone, including reporters themselves, approaches the web for information and a multiplicity of sources. “If knowledge is power, the web is the greatest tool in the history of the world” (theguardian.com).
To help strengthen the position of information which has been researched in the ethically correct manner within this powerful tool and increase its educational capabilities, therefore, it will be the aim of this thesis to provide the theoretical outline of an inter-disciplinary
3 Considering that there are approximately 7,5 billion people currently living on this planet, about 3,7 billion
people used the internet on the 31st of March 2017 (“Internet World Stats”. Internet World Stats,
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approach between the visual arts and investigative journalism that could possibly allow us to halt the fragmentation of journalism and to re-think the representation and distribution of news and knowledge.
What´s Trump got to do with it?
The current state of fragmentation and disorientation in the profession of journalism was surely a slow and creeping development happening over decades, without outside observers consciously being aware of it or professionals knowing how to combat it.
It was only during the 2016 Presidential campaign of the United States of America, and after the election, that the actual scale of the crisis which journalism is presently facing revealed itself to the public. Although the newspaper industry has had to fight for its acknowledgment since radio and television broadcasting were introduced in the early to mid-20th century, it was still considered the most prestigious and effective branch of journalism.
It was the New York Times, for example, that revealed Lyndon B. Johnson´s lies about the Vietnam War in the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Washington Post exposed the Watergate scandal around President Nixon, leading to his resignation from office in 1974. And it was again the Washington Post which picked up the matter of the Lewinsky affair connected to President Clinton from the website of The Drudge Report and introduced it to the greater public in 1998.
Occasionally, the investigative branch of newspapers still gets to follow in its own footsteps. This was illustrated, for example, by the publication of the Panama Papers in April 2016, where various collaborating news outlets researched and released information on the issue of widespread tax evasion, connected to the company Mossack Fonseca in particular. Online platforms like WikiLeaks, however, offer the possibility for whistleblowers to circumvent direct communication with news organizations and to simply upload confidential documents anonymously, thereby redistributing the significance newspapers used to have until a few decades ago.
After the 8th of November 2016, however, when the world found itself faced with newly
elected U.S. President Donald John Trump, it was not only the already crumbling significance of newspapers that was called into question, but also their abilities to adequately question and interpret global events.
News organizations and their readers started to question the coverage of events and polls of the preceding months. It seemed incomprehensible and unlikely that the majority of political journalists and political scientists had read the polls wrong up to the date of the election. In the months following the aforementioned coverage debacle, the reasons for it were gradually revealed. Again, these were linked to the internet and the high degree to which it individualizes the news and updates one receives. The so-called filter bubble or echo chamber created through algorithms, tracking peoples´ online interests and search histories make it difficult, or sometimes almost impossible, to leave this individually created news-universe and get insight into occurrences on the other end of the political spectrum, according to Eli Pariser (youtube.com).
As briefly mentioned above, this isolation is owed to an underlying business and advertising model of social networks like Facebook, and is meant to personalize our internet content in order to increase revenue of all companies taking part in this concept. The way it works is the
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following: large internet platforms like Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, and others collect data from their users, such as personal information, search preferences, and suspected interests based on search results. This data is then sold to other companies aiming to attract our attention through individualized advertising. By directing our attention towards commodities that largely fit the interests we have revealed on one of the data-collecting platforms, they anticipate more purchases leading to greater returns (Srnicek). For example, if my search history on Google discloses my potential interest to fly to Delhi with a budget airline, for the next week or so, I will be targeted with advertising about cheap flights to India and potential places to stay on any website where travel platforms owning my information have bought an advertising spot.
The same concept – in a slightly altered form – applies to news dissemination on social media and search engines. In these cases, newspapers do not pay for the listing on our personal news feeds or list of results. It is based on the brands and news outlets we like on Facebook or search for in Google, the public personae we follow, and the type of postings we like and comment on, that the content of the personalized internet gets manufactured to our taste.
The information we are fed, therefore, is not meant to broaden our horizons. Rather, individual filter bubbles are created to only intensify the views and opinions we already have. This also ensures higher revenues and more clicks for various platforms and companies. It does not result in a balanced image of our environment, according to Pariser (youtube.com).
The months before and after the 2016 U.S. election made very clear that everyone who is part of an online community is affected by these filter bubbles. It so happens that professional journalism, which would ensure its own ethically correct implementation and maintenance of high quality standards, is especially endangered by these processes.
“Once the exclusive source of news for people across the world, newspapers today are confronting greater competition from more places than ever before. At the same time, there is growing concern that journalism on the internet is failing to uphold the basic values of journalism and that […] democracy is increasingly at risk due to the lack of quality information” (stanford.edu).
An online project by the MIT Laboratory for Social Machines called The Electome (fig. 1) lays out rather clearly how filter bubbles can affect research and information distribution. By means of maps and data analysis
they show how the election narratives of the candidates, the public, and the media interacted throughout the 2016 presidential election campaign. One of their maps, featured in a Vice article published on the 8th of December
2016 (news.vice.com), visualizes the danger our filter bubbles can have on responsible media
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The vast majority of verified journalists mainly interacts with a less conservative, centre to
centre-left audience and therefore cannot offer a well-balanced analysis of public preference. It is owed to the individualization of news gathering and to social media platforms like
Facebook, adding an additional layer to the news industry, that the information circulated is carefully selected to cater to every individual´s interest and political stance.
Moreover, based on the business model explained above, misinformation can circulate more widely and more easily than ever before. Due to the fact that Facebook does not consider itself to be a news platform and, therefore, did not so far fact-check the information spread on its site, the rise of fake news – especially during the heated months of the presidential campaign – was another symptom of the illness from which professional journalism currently suffers.
Social platforms can, on the one hand, be a new way to reach a greater audience. Referring back to the business and advertising model these networks are based on, however, it is no wonder that professional journalism is facing the loss of its role as gatekeeper. Through the personalization of web content, its function as the Fourth Estate is currently endangered.
The Fourth Estate
In order to understand the significant role journalism has historically occupied within the social life of democracies, it is necessary to elaborate on its function as the Fourth Estate.
This role is highly demanding, as it expects the industry to thoroughly investigate and examine the occurrences in our environment, while preferably taking an objective standpoint within the representation of facts and actualities.
It is not quite clear by whom the term “the Fourth Estate” was originally coined. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (oxforddictionaries.com) it might have been first used by the Irish political theorist and philosopher Edmund Burke in the Annual Register of 1789, which is a reference work that annually records and discusses important occurrences and has been published without disruption since 1758. Others say the term was not officially introduced until the early 19th century.
Regardless of its origin, “the Fourth Estate” refers to an additional position next to the existing three estates of society: the church, the nobility, and the lay people; or, in modern society: the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches of government (thoughtco.com). The supplementary estate, in the current usage of the term, refers to the press and all its contributing members who have taken on the responsibility within journalism to “make the actions of the government known to the public” and to “expose people to opinions contrary to their own” (stanford.edu). Democracies require informed citizens, if they are to work in the deepest sense of the underlying Greek word “dēmokratía”, which literally means “rule of the commoners”. As “[n]o governing body can be expected to operate well without knowledge of the issues on which it is to rule, and rule by the people entails that the people should be informed”, upholding journalism and adapting it to outside changes is an essential public good (stanford.edu).
Whether or not the press is currently performing its duties in regards to its role as the Fourth Estate to the best of its ability is debatable. That does not, however, diminish the fact that, without qualitative journalism, “the feedback loop is broken and the government is no longer accountable to the people” (www.stanford.edu). Unfortunately, it is partly correct
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when Kathy Gill states in her short article about the definition of the Fourth Estate and its current suitability in connection to the press that it “is somewhat outdated unless it is with irony given the public's mistrust of journalists and news coverage in general” (thoughtco.com). But this current situation, which has been on the rise during the course of the past years, does not entitle journalism (or whatever its future equivalent will be) to give up the responsibility of its role as the Fourth Estate. Or to say it in Anderson´s words,
“[m]ore than any one strategy or capability, the core virtue in this environment is a commitment to adapting as the old certainties break and adopting the new capabilities we can still only partially understand, and to remember that the only reason any of this matters to more than the current employees of what we used to call the news industry is that journalism – real reporting about whatever someone somewhere doesn´t want published – is an essential public good” (Anderson et al 122).
The type of journalist performing his duties within the Fourth Estate, and who would concur with Anderson´s statement with a high probability, is called the detached watchdog and is still dominating the journalistic field in most western countries. “A defining characteristic of this cluster is the relatively high regard the journalists in this group pay to their social position as detached observers. It is this position from which they articulate their sceptical and critical attitude towards the government and business elites” (Hanitzsch 485).
It is also the journalists who are part of the group of the detached watchdog, who are highly likely to abide by the guidelines of the journalistic code of ethics. Although there are several foundations dedicated to ensuring and securing the implementation of ethical journalism (e.g. the Society of Professional Journalists in the USA, the European Federation of Journalists, or the International Federation of Journalists), their ethical guidelines are a set of abiding principles that do not vary greatly from each other. The three core values of international journalism are “truth, independence and the need to minimise harm” (ifj.org).
It is the aim of this theoretical exploration to work towards a new concept of journalism based on an inter-disciplinary approach with the visual arts that upholds these principles, while attempting to re-think the channel through which the Fourth Estate is currently being implemented.
Noticeable action
Returning to the topic of the current fragmenting and disorientation of the press, after having elaborated on its historically grounded significance as the Fourth Estate, it needs to be mentioned that the revelation of the current shortcomings of journalism did not go unnoticed – neither by professionals, nor by the public.
In response to the predominantly negative news about the state of the media, there has been an increased hunger for finding creative solutions by professionals themselves. There is an overall consensus that journalists and media professionals in general need to re-focus on their role as society´s watchdog in order to report on events as transparently as possible and thereby feed the national or global population the information that true democracies demand.
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As a result of this reclaimed awareness of the responsibility of the press, lately there has been a growth in the publication of new critical online media, an increase in crowdfunded business models, and an overall dedication to fact-checking news reports. One such example that combines all the aforementioned concepts is the newly launched online newspaper WikiTribune, called into life by the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales (wikitribune.com). It is his aim to establish an online newspaper that is fully funded by supporters, does not receive its revenue from advertising, and bases its professionally authored articles on evidence provided by volunteers, which is then fact-checked and compiled into articles by the hired journalists.
In addition, not only those representing the profession of journalism have reacted to the unveiling of the problems of the media, but also the consumers have taken noticeable action. The prevalent manner in which this shows is the increase in newspaper subscriptions since the end of 2016, especially for newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post (niemanlab.org). The gradual return of willingness to invest in well-researched daily reports after months of being served wrong or controversial news shows the public interest in being correctly informed and up to date. Journalists and media professionals have been rather surprised by this widely-felt public reaction, as insight into the fragmentation of the media simultaneously sparked an increase of public distrust towards the profession – if the general sentiment voiced publicly after the election is to be taken seriously.
Now the question arises if the time we are facing under a U.S. presidency that promotes alternative facts itself and takes liberties with the truth necessarily means the downfall of ethically conducted journalism, or if it could rather be an opportunity for the profession to re-invent itself and establish new relations with its readers?
As much as the internet has contributed to the current fragmentation and disorientation of the industry of newspaper journalism, it can also be viewed as an opportunity. “The internet needs to be seen not as a replacement for newspapers, but rather providing these with an additional platform for the provision of a broader range service to existing and new audiences” (Kuhn 151). In combination with innovative ideas it could provide the industry with a chance to improve itself and cater to new societal needs. Although it is currently hard to define the term newspaper journalism, we are now given the chance to coin it anew.
Inter-disciplinary approaches
Various journalistic innovations have been released on the market in the past few years, attempting to move towards a new definition of the fragmenting concept of newspaper journalism.
Selected from a wide range of novel ideas, Quartz, for example, is a digital news outlet that engages with its audience mainly via a smartphone app designed like a messaging service, sending brief messages with the hard facts of the daily news to its readers, also including entertaining GIFs or short riddles. Vox Media, on the other hand, made it its goal and business concept to “explain the news”, as stated in their slogan. It offers a wide range of explanations about politics and culture with varying degrees of length and in-depth research.
These two examples represent not even a handful of attempts to reform journalism, but already, they provide a taste of the increased entrepreneurial mind-set within the industry, which Mark Deuze and Mirjam Prenger refer to in their collaborative essay (2016).
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The majority of novel ideas again cater to individual needs rather than establishing a new monopoly within the journalistic industry and might be contributing towards its fragmentation, rather than halting it. However, we might either have to face a completely new and unfamiliar structure of the media landscape in the future, or we will be confronted with a major fragmentation before a renovation and reassembly of it.
Innovation, however, can only come from trial and error. And as none of the newly formed concepts for the industry have their basis in the visual representation of the news, this is where the idea of an inter-disciplinary approach between the arts and investigative journalism might fill a gap.
Due to a personal frustration with the concept of the news I started searching for news outlets, websites, and applications that could satisfy my needs in regards to updates and accompanying elaborations. My dissatisfaction was based on a constant sensation of irritation grounded in the fear of having overlooked essential information that could tie various lose strands of social, political, and economic occurrences together. As I didn´t find what I was looking for within journalism, I needed to expand my search into other disciplines. It so happened that the conceptual art works by Mark Lombardi sparked an inspirational thought on how to possibly re-think what we nowadays associate with the definition of “the press”. Could a visual approach towards news representation, supported by the traditional textual implementation, allow a more inter-connective understanding of our political, social, and economic environments?
The basic concept of this theoretical experiment is based on the following: In an increasingly globalised and complex world with constant news updates in multiple shapes and forms it can be very easy to lose track of what is happening in separate parts of the world and how these events might be connected to each other, or to things that have happened in the past. It is even harder to predict how these occurrences might spark reactions or influence developments in the future. With journalistic articles mainly being presented in the linear form of texts, audibly via podcasts, or sometimes with the help of visual documents such as photography and film, it would require additional effort to keep an overview (as if from aerial perspective) so as to have solid insight into the complexity of world politics. Inspired by the works of the artists Mark Lombardi (fig. 2) and the Bureau d´Etudes (fig. 3), I have come to the conclusion that world news could be more revelatory if presented as a map or a visual network that indicates how all individual strands are interconnected.
Figure 2: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy
and Jackson Stephens c. 1979—90, 5th Version, 1999.
(see appendix A)
Figure 3: Bureau d´Etudes, Infowar/Psychic war, 2003. (see appendix B)
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The map-like structures of the art works of the aforementioned artists, and the dedication to revealing and visually representing information that can only be obtained through intense personal and timely efforts, must also be possible in an innovated journalistic endeavour. What these visual arrangements could allow – and what I believe is currently missing in the news – is a clear explanation of interconnections between political, social, and economic occurrences. The works of the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes are inspirational examples of attempts to inter-disciplinarily combine the fields of investigative journalism and the visual arts in order to create a symbiosis that allows both disciplines to thrive within the project, while simultaneously creating a new space for processing information. In order to perform real inter-disciplinary work, a space free from the institutional boundaries of both disciplines would need to be created for the experimentation with and expansion of their respective limitations, while adhering to the ethical code of the profession of journalism.
Attempts to visually represent daily news as maps, similar to the ones created by the aforementioned artists, could allow for a new kind of media production in which information is revealed to the public that would normally be inhibited by certain market structures, political or economic dependencies, and technological limitations. If the attempts by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes at mapping out the structures of the world were transferred into the journalistic field, they could look like networks in which the nodes would be individual occurrences of various natures and the threads would stand for their inter-connections.
Re-thinking the representation of information in this manner could uncover massive blind spots and vast amounts of information that have been cast aside due to various reasons such as not fitting the scheme of popular news values, not fitting into certain news companies´ agendas, and specific manners of framing certain topics.
The investigative work done by Mark Lombardi, the Bureau d´Etudes, and numerous other artists has the power to reveal information that is usually kept from the public due to set political and economic structures without having to undergo the same censoring process as journalistic articles. Art works are not created by the standards of news values that need to be satisfied, nor on the same basis of adhering to capitalist concepts such as generating revenue. Art is created for art´s sake.
And that might be the strengthening and liberating element news maps could add to ethically conducted journalism. I argue that the revelation of insightful and connective information is necessary for public education on which, in turn, the maintenance and strengthening of democracy depends. Perchance, presenting it in visual form could be one of many solutions to the current disorientation of journalism. It is at least worth a try.
Obsessing over revelation
In order to arrive at new ideas that could potentially help to re-think the current concept of journalism and to rebuild it from its fragmented and disoriented state, I draw upon various sources for inspiration. The origin of the idea that will be explored in this thesis lies in the arts, or more specifically, in the inter-disciplinary works by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes.
Being not only an inspirational source for a possible new kind of information distribution, the investigative approach of these artists is also a symptom of their time. Both, the
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contemporary fine arts and the media, have become more diverse, less uniform, and difficult to keep up with over very similar and largely overlapping timeframes. Artistic processes and journalistic production have been influenced by the same aspects at the same time such as an increasingly globalized environment that is “culturally diverse, technologically advancing, and multifaceted" (getty.edu). While journalism has fragmented into various different projects which approach the profession from numerous angles, contemporary art is characterized by its multiplicity of mediums (getty.edu). A combination of the two, therefore, is a logical union in order to make the arts more politically critical again and the media more aesthetically attractive to a wider audience.
Let us look at the sources of inspiration for this thesis chronologically.
The American artist Mark Lombardi started his Narrative Structures in 1994, in a time when the internet had only very recently become publicly accessible and did not yet offer the convenience of online news dissemination, easily accessible information, or the immediateness we profit from today. Hence, reliant upon the more time-consuming processes of conducting research in the pre-internet era, his networks were hand-drawn over the course of several years. He continued working in this manner until his unfortunate death in 2000 (Hobbs 13). For him, drawing his narrative structures was a way to understand his own thoughts, to “get the story straight” in order to produce “cartographies of the social terrain in which he lived” (youtube.com). Accurately described by Lombardi´s artist friend Greg Stone, his drawings are spherical and delicate images which, at closer proximity, reveal their heavy content for which these structures seem almost too fragile (youtube.com).
The main topic of his works are high-level political intrigues which span the globe and reveal direct or indirect connections of various companies, organizations, or individuals to these widespread manipulations. The content of his cartographic drawings is always based on facts about various political scandals surrounding such institutions and issues as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the Vatican Bank, the arms deal of the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, and many more (Hobbs).
Through intense research on numerous contemporary and highly topical occurrences, he is able to represent his findings in network drawings of centralized information which had previously been fragmented among a wide range of sources.
All of the connections he exposed were embedded in public information available to anyone with the same interest in being politically updated. Because of his research and his attempts at working out the world´s political and economic ties, he “sorted current information which made him seem almost prophetic” and offered us an understanding of the world that is still valid today (youtube.com).
One of Lombardi´s most famous Narrative Structures is George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90. The timeline of the drawing covers the decade between 1980 and 1990 and reveals many connections between several oil companies, George W. Bush, and other firms, banks, and individuals of financial, corporate, or political nature. Simultaneously, the concept of the timeline allows for a visualization of gaps within the artist´s findings and serves as a basis for the spatially overwhelming illustration of the temporal dimension of the chosen decennium.
Although at times hard to follow and time-consuming to read, the drawing unveils the rough structure of direct and indirect ties between dozens of beneficiaries of the global political and economic systems.
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The map is set in a time before George W. Bush became Governor of Texas, and later President of the United States. It deals with his ties to the worldwide oil industry, and starts two years after he had founded his own oil drilling company called Arbusto Energy in 1978 (fig. 4).
Figure 4: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, 5th Version,
1999, detail.
Roughly speaking, the network drawing reveals that another Texan oil company, Spectrum 7, bought George W. Bush´s enterprise a few years after he had established it but named him general manager of the merged enterprises, affording him stock shares at the value of $1.1 million (Hobbs 99). Several years later, and despite financial losses, Spectrum 7 in turn was bought by another small Texan oil-drilling company known as Harken Energy, which also assigned George W. Bush a seat within its board and, additionally, paid him to work as an advisor. Shortly after he was assigned this position, the Harvard Management Fund invested a sum of $30 million into the company, which was probably “linked to Bush being a graduate of the Harvard Business School” (Hobbs 99).
Besides Bush and the oil companies he was involved in, it mainly features the former director of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) James R. Bath, ties to Osama bin Laden´s half-brother Sheik Salim bin Laden, interference by Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh4,
connections to Anton Rupert5, and many others of their collaborating partners. In the last year
of the 1990s, the timeline comes to an end with the notation of “$848K” and “July 1990: Bush bails out with profit” (fig 5).
4 Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh was a close associate of the Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mafouz, through who, it
seems he bought the Main Bank of Houston which, in turn, had close ties to the businessman James R. Bath (“Bush, the Saudi billionaire and the Islamists: the story a British firm is afraid to publish”. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/31/pressandpublishing.saudiarabia. Accessed 31 March 2017.).
5 Anthony E. Rupert was a South African businessman and millionaire, who established the tobacco company
Rembrandt and connected investment group (Remgro) and holding of luxury ware (Richemont) (“Anton Rupert”.
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Figure 5: Mark Lombardi, George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, 5th Version, 1999, detail.
This leads to the assumption that George W. Bush very conveniently backed out of this nebulous network with a financial profit of $848.000 by the end of the decade. A move which made him seem guilty of insider trading, as Harken Energy announced bankruptcy only shortly afterwards (youtube.com), or as Zdebik formulates it in Networks of Corruption
“Lombardi shows how Bush, with the help of George Bush Sr., Yale friends, his ties to the Harvard Business School, certain Saudi investors, and Bahrain officials, kept a network afloat just long enough to cash in at the expense of American taxpayers under the cover of the Gulf War” (66f.).
The Gulf War mentioned by Zdebik happened in the same year, and only two weeks after Bush took himself out of the deal. The notations at the end of the drawing maintain that the Iraqi then-head of state, Saddam Hussein, invaded the small neighbouring country of Kuwait.6
All of the information given and the connections revealed in Mark Lombardi´s drawings were derived from the artist´s own archive, consisting of 14.000 index cards that held the information of his years-long research, as stated in the documentary Kunst und Konspiration. (youtube.com). Besides art theory, in-depth research and archive creation were his forte, due to his background as head researcher at a revelatory exhibition called Teapot Dome to Watergate in 1973 in Syracuse, curating the Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM) in Houston, and working as a librarian and archivist at the Houston Public Library (Hobbs 15).
This experience and his passion for high-level political intrigues led Lombardi, in the end, towards the creation of art that included his research from the past years. What he created from that were not only drawings abstractly critiquing the political and economic systems, but his
“delicate graphite drawings elaborately detail the myriad of interconnections of financial corruption that extend beyond national boundaries and form the basis of a new
6 The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990 is seen as a controversial move by the then head-of-state Saddam
Hussein. Kuwait was accused of stealing petroleum from Iraq, which was not only theft of property. But the small country´s production of petroleum also capped profits of Iraq, which was dependent on high revenue to finance its war with Iran (“Invasion of Kuwait”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Kuwait. Accessed 20 February 2017.).
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supranational political force, thus frustrating any nation´s aspiration for world hegemony, even the United States” (Hobbs 19).
Despite consisting of pure revelatory fact at their core, Lombardi´s Narrative Structures are still nebulous and demand a high degree of attention from their audience. They do not include biographies of the individuals or descriptions of the mentioned corporations and only roughly state their connective natures through visual distinctions between the connecting lines and arrows.7 The art historian Robert Hobbs states correctly that
“[a]lthough the ostensible subject of these works appears to be the unveiling of conspiracies – and certainly the criminal component of the work continued to be an important factor for this politically motivated artist – his work began to transform his major goals from those of a sleuth to those of an architect of knowledge. In the process of developing his art, he became fully aware that information never constitutes an enumeration of mere facts, because the act of cataloguing is itself a means of redirecting, constraining, and reshaping such data” (Hobbs 17).
Mark Lombardi´s Narrative Structures are more than a means to organize and interpret the gathered publicly available information. They also hint at a lack of information, at holes and inconsistencies within certain narratives, a characteristic only rarely seen in journalistic work. Where journalism is eager to avoid reference of inconsistencies still in accordance with a certain set of old news values, which calls for unambiguous stories (Galtung and Ruge 1965), the art works of Lombardi are intended to pinpoint where the need for clarification exists. “With their minimal diagrammatic aesthetic, Lombardi´s artworks represent what he sees as nebulous, clandestine, and often invisible corruption” (Zdebik 66). Inconsistencies within ongoing research and missing information on a topic are normally concealed by the way the press currently handles reporting in order to simulate clarification of intrinsically complex structures and to come across as a structuring authority over information.
Instead of clarifying information by forcing it into chronological and linear structures, however, I will explore the possibility of promoting the revelation of inconsistencies within a news narrative and the more natural rhizomatic structures of simultaneity and disorderliness.
Endorsing these concepts as the basis of his artworks, Mark Lombardi had to apply clean and minimalist manners of visual representation in order to facilitate the process of reading his mappings. He therefore draws on the aesthetic means of conceptualism, an art movement that became prevalent during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. During these tumultuous years in politics, which will be examined more closely later in this thesis, artists “attempted to bypass the increasingly commercialised art world by stressing thought processes and methods of production as the value of the work” and expressed the widely felt dissatisfaction with political, social, and economic occurrences in their art works (tate.org.uk). However, the aesthetic representation of the final artistic product had become less important than the
7 The rough visual description of connections by means of various kinds of arrows include the following: Influence
or control, interdependent relations, cash flows and credits, sale or transfer of assets, blocked or incomplete transactions, and sale or outsourcing of realty (“Kunst und Konspiration – Mark Lombardi”. YouTube, uploaded by Augen auf Hirn an, 21 April 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMrPZ0hz3Q4.).
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underlying idea. The use of scripture, diagrams, maps, and readymades were the predominant manners of artistic articulation for conceptual artists.
German artist Hans Haacke, one of the main representatives of the conceptual art movement, served as an important inspiration for Mark Lombardi, especially the implementation of Haacke´s investigative art works about two New York real-estate groups. Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971 on the one hand, and Sol Goldman & Alex DiLorenzo, Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System as of May 1, 1971 on the other show the enormous influence conceptual art had on the aesthetics of the representation of Lombardi´s own investigative work (Grasskamp et al. 47). Throughout these works, Hans Haacke “documents the ownership and control of urban space” in New York by two real-estate firms which “represented the biggest concentration of real estate” in the city (macba.cat). The aesthetic representation of the work resulted in a kind of archive, consisting of numerous photographs of the houses owned by above mentioned companies and detailed information recovered about their acquisition in New York public records. These he synthesized into diagrams and maps (macba.cat).
This structured representation of a research archive was the basic inspiration for the works of Mark Lombardi. He did, however, take this investigative approach to a grander level by focusing on global scandals which he translated into spatially overwhelming drawings to reveal their scope in visual detail and size.
Public vs. institutionalized
Similarly, and yet with different execution, the artist duo Bureau d´Etudes offers another way of mapping out the structures of the world. However, “[if] Lombardi´s work has an obvious focus on the aesthetic (and if it circulates mainly within the art world), Bureau d´etudes seems to make aesthetic subservient to the transmission of information to the public” (Zdebik 71). Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt established Bureau d´Etudes in Paris in 1998. Since their founding they have
“been producing maps of contemporary political, social and economic systems that allow people to inform, reposition and empower themselves. Revealing what normally remains invisible, often in the shape of large-sized banners, and contextualizing apparently separate elements within new frameworks, these visualizations of interests and relations re-articulate the dominant symbolic order and actualize existing structures that otherwise remain concealed and unknown” (bureaudetudes.org).
The self-chosen name Bureau d´Etudes implies that they see their projects as a study site that dedicates itself to the analysis and description of global connections in political, economic and societal matters. Like Mark Lombardi, they make use of publicly available information for their maps and arrange it in new, insightful ways (hausderkunst.de). They thoroughly research a range of topics that have a direct or indirect effect on the global society. However, the nature of the content of their maps varies slightly from Lombardi´s maps, as they do not specifically investigate how individuals and companies are involved in dubious or scandalous interrelations. Rather, they examine political, economic, and societal interconnections on a
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grander scale. Some of their organigrams8, for example, depict and explain the global
administration of terror (2014), the workings of world politics (2005), or how our planet´s resources are governed (2007) (bureaudetudes.org).
Although the aim to better understand the complex structures of world politics is similar in terms of artistic approach, it is the execution of the maps that reveal Lombardi´s and the Bureau d´Etudes´ different methods and understandings of the research material gathered and visually implemented.
First and foremost, the bodies of the maps vary, as mentioned above. While Mark Lombardi´s focus lies on the detailed dissection of interconnections between individual players within the political and economic spheres of global society – which are often closely entangled – the maps of the Bureau d´Etudes explain the overarching structures of various sections of global politics and economics. Although company names and names of individual people playing important roles in these structures are still mentioned in their maps, the emphasis lies on the illustration of the mechanisms of various industries and political endeavours, and their influence on society.
Additionally, the aesthetic approach of the Bureau d´Etudes to constructing their map-like structures differs from Mark Lombardi´s. The final artworks do not adopt the minimalist, conceptual style we encounter in Lombardi´s pieces. Rather, they apply colours, short explanatory texts, visual symbols suiting the topics of the individual maps, and the diagrams are composed digitally.
The differences in visual representation and modes of composition are based on differences in the artists´ approaches and result in distinctive manners of application.
Primarily, Mark Lombardi´s fragile map-drawings were the results of a years-long research he conducted himself in order to understand the political and economic events occurring during his lifetime. His method was a highly personal one, started during a time when a digital representation of his archive would have been highly complicated and requiring extraordinary technological skills.
The approach of the French artist duo, on the other hand, is based on a more communal grass roots thinking with the aim of creating tools for society to empower itself. For this purpose, the digital creation has a great benefit. Whereas Mark Lombardi´s art can mainly be appreciated in its entirety in its original form when exhibited, the majority of the maps created by the Bureau d´Etudes are available on their website and downloadable as PDFs.
Consequently, the digital availability of the Bureau´s maps allows for an easier dialogue with society. They have been distributed at protests and public gatherings in order to inform people about underlying structures of the current topic of protest (spatialagency.net). In this sense, the maps are in line with the historical development of newspapers and share characteristics with their precursors: newsletters. As the name already suggests, these were newspapers, in the form of a letter or manuscript, that were read out to the public at fairs, markets, and inns (Arblaster, 22).
The fact that the maps of the Bureau d´Etudes can be digitally altered and expanded whenever necessary as political, economic, or social structures and interconnections develop means that they share great conceptual resemblance with what the old newsletters
8 An organigram is an organization chart. It was one of many possible expressions to refer to the mappings of
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developed into: the digital newspapers of today. Their digital nature allows both, the newspapers and the maps, to be updated according to necessity. The artistically created diagrammatic structures, however, tend to reveal their status as a work in progress, contrary to newspaper articles. Where journalistic work is inclined to present a coherent narrative, the mappings of the Bureau d´Etudes – similar to those of Mark Lombardi – expose gaps and inconsistencies.
These basic shared features between the digital maps and newspapers were helpful in developing a potentially viable idea for an interdisciplinary approach between investigative journalism and the visual arts.
The characteristics of being constant works in progress meant to educate society from within are, however, also the reason why a majority of their pieces cannot be found in the institutionalized spaces of museums or art galleries, as these tamed environments would defeat their revolutionary purpose. The philosopher Brian Holmes states:
“Activities like those simply can’t appear on the walls of the art world. In this sense, half the work of Bureau d’Etudes remains underground: the refusals and denunciations are clear, the cooperation and subjective play remains almost invisible. And maybe it’s better that way: how could you successfully represent an alternative, radically democratic experience?” (springerin.at).
The Bureau d´Etudes´map with the title Infowar / Psychic War – Marrying the Mission to the Market, for example, illustrates and explains the global structures of the world of the media (fig 6). The concept of the media in this particular case includes newspaper organizations, radio and TV
broadcasting, as well as entertainment media like magazines and film production. It is, therefore, the perfect example for the exploration of this thesis. Created in 2003 – so presumably not depicting the latest state of the media system – it shows the interconnections and interdependencies of media companies worldwide.
Figure 6: Bureau d´Etudes, Infowar/Psychic war – Marrying the Mission to the
Market, 2003.
Its structure is not based on a timeline, like Lombardi´s George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens c. 1979 – 90, as it does not analyse changes that have happened within the
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world of the media during a certain period of time. Rather, it illustrates the structures of the media system as they were in 2003. The information is arranged in a circular diagram at the centre that then branches out into international media organizations according to the influence the core enterprises exert on them.
In the main circle the Bureau d´Etudes located companies and individuals with great influence and control over most international media, which are mainly based in the United States of America. The shaded boundary of the circle contains international media and broadcasting companies directly influenced by the central organizations (fig. 7). Unsurprisingly, the main companies within these two spheres of the diagram are predominantly Western. In the peripheries of the circle there is a wider selection of global media players which are directly and indirectly influenced by the companies in the central circle and its shaded boundary. Media in Brazil and media in Japan seem predominantly independent, whereas the media of rest of the world are intensely intertwined (fig. 8 and fig. 9).
Figure 7: core circle with shaded boundary
Figure 8: Brazilian media seemingly only influenced by Walt Disney
Figure 9: Japanese media standing independently at the top right corner of the diagram
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Although created with the purpose of clarifying the international media system, the map demands thoughtful consideration from its audience. Similar to Mark Lombardi´s drawings, the overall structures of the depicted system are quickly revealed, while a more in-depth understanding would require an immense background knowledge of the topics presented. While the confusion and lack of disentangling description of the illustrations are probably intended and indicate the hidden structures on which world politics are widely based, I would argue that a fruitful symbiosis of image and text could allow for a more effective performance of both concepts, respectively.
These nebulous characteristics within the artistic form of social mapping of Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes, based on extensive omission of verbal descriptions of their findings, make evident my supposition that cognitive maps could not be the sole source of public information within the project of re-inventing the representation of the news. Journalistic articles alone could not fulfil the requirements of explaining the interrelated structures of global occurrences to their full extent, either. By creating a synergy between textual explanation and diagrammatic illustration, however, it is the aim to design a new manner of conducting journalism that could enable the people to literally imagine global political occurrences for a more holistic understanding.
The concept of the map
As unique as the maps created by the artists Mark Lombardi and the Bureau d´Etudes may be, they are part of a widespread movement in contemporary art. But before elaborating further on that matter, we should have a closer look at the concept of the map.
In historical terms, maps are visualizations of landmasses and bodies of water. They are meant to illustrate the size and shape of countries, continents, and territories and “are a way of conceiving, articulating, and structuring the human world” (Harley 129). However, an additional purpose behind the creation of maps is not as innocent as it may seem on first glance. Rather, their creation often relates to the illustration of power – power over a certain territory, the people inhabiting it, and the culture they embody. Maps as such have existed since antiquity for bureaucratic and military reasons, and have helped geography grow as a discipline. Their increase in importance during the past centuries is again linked with changing power structures and goes hand-in-hand with the ascent of the nation state in the modern world where they were used as a sign of supremacy within the continuous implementation of European imperialism. Often land was claimed on paper before it was physically brought under the leadership of a Western nation, and lines were drawn as boundaries to visualize the containment of the subject of conquest. But more importantly, maybe, “[m]aps were used to legitimize the reality of conquest and empire” (Harley 132).
Nowadays, the majority of maps are Western-centred, and the sizes of a number of countries are distorted due to the fact that their visual representation has not been adjusted from spherical to one dimensional depictions. The type of map which is maybe the most
