Constructing Digital Democracies: Facebook, Arendt, and the Politics of Design

Deliberative democracy requires both equality and difference, with structures that organize a cohesive public while still accommodating the unique perspectives of each participant. While institutions like laws and norms can help to provide this balance, the built environment also plays a role supporting democratic politics—both on- and off-line. In this article, I use the work of Hannah Arendt to articulate two characteristics the built environment needs to support democratic politics: it must (1) serves as a common world, drawing users together and emphasizing their common interests and must also (2) preserve spaces of appearance, accommodating diverse perspectives and inviting disagreement. I, then, turn to the example of Facebook to show how these characteristics can be used as criteria for evaluating how well a particular digital platform supports democratic politics and providing alternative mechanisms these sites might use to fulfill their role as a public realm.

Track 2.d Introduction: Power and Politics in Design for Transition

This track sought to contribute to design’s potential to shift, redirect and transform power relations to achieve sustainability. We sought to direct attention to the political potential in and politics of transition design with a focus on the many ways that power flows through the systems in which design operates. Our intention was to address, directly, the commentary from the DRS2018 track on Designing for Transitions, which noted that authors had tended to “stay on the safe and perhaps conventional side” of the subject. Instead, we hoped that the papers in this track would address “‘politicised issues such as migration, decoloniality, the politics of climate change mitigation… and other complex and controversial problems” (Boehnert et al. 2018) that must be considered in planning and implementation of ongoing sustainability transitions. The politics of design transitions remains marginal in design research. With our call, we hoped to receive contributions that problematised design’s current roles and conceptualised new roles for design in the context of sustainability transitions to attend to issues related to how power is and should be dealt with.

Track 3.b Introduction: Measuring and communicating the value of design

Although design has become synonymous with innovation, a tool for good leadership and is seen as a critical factor in the success of many high performing organisations, it is still considered by many as a luxury that comes at the expense of stakeholder resources and speed to market. Many organisations must still be persuaded to employ design. Design strategy, or the politics of design, is emerging as a critical issue required to overcome the powerful forces that often inhibit the implementation of good design. Some organisations have attempted to measure design, but it is still an inconclusive practice. How do we make design impact, visible and measurable? How do designers convince decision makers of the tangible and enduring benefits of good design? How do organisations know that their designs are having the desired impact? This track explored the theme of transforming business strategy, organisational practice and culture, influencing management decisions and impacting citizens through design evaluation. We were particularly interested in describing and providing metrics for the value of design. We were also looking to explore the ways that practitioners and academics have evaluated the success of design in organisations and society. The papers presented in this track were widely dispersed under this theme using a arrange of qualitative and quantitative research approaches.

Black Arts Publishing and the Politics of Design

The Black Arts movement heralded an important turn in the history of African American literature. Between 1965 and 1975, a loose confederation of African American poets, playwrights, artists, and intellectuals set out to remake the world in their own image. Fed up with what they considered to be the oppressive logic of Euro-American cultural standards, these practitioners theorized and executed a program of black aesthetic self-determination. Contemporary critics followed suit, emphasizing Black Arts’ conjoined investments in nationalist politics and radical poetics—the discursive level at which the movement reshaped African American letters. That remained the dominant way of understanding the movement until the early 21st century, when scholars began examining Black Arts’ publishing networks and institutions, or the material conditions for creative expression. Since then, scholars have shown how the movement’s effort to redefine the black voice was achieved through a concomitant effort to redesign the black text. Their research has pointed to the need for historicizing the politics of design in this moment of literary transformation. For Black Arts publishers, the work of photographers, illustrators, and graphic designers was important not only for bringing specific literary texts to life but for inviting everyday readers into a robust, race-affirming literary culture.