Throughout my Data Analysis & visualization program at Pratt, my courses, peers, readings, and projects continue to shape how I might envision myself as an information worker, and Shoshana Zuboff’s “information civilization” is the latest concept evoking my curiosity around what it means to be an information worker, and how an information worker fits into today’s society (2015). According to Zuboff, “In an information civilization individual and collective existence is rendered as and mediated by information.

But what may be known? Who knows? Who decides who knows?” (2022, p. 3). In an attempt to (partially) answer Zuboff’s ubiquitous questions, I explore the role of a societal “Fifth Estate” through a case study on a 2012 Canadian policy that demonstrates individual's' role in Internet governance and accountability, and consider the role of information workers as another source of that accountability within the context of today’s information civilization (Dutton, 2009, p. 2).

A Fifth Estate Emerges

Before getting too deep into the Fifth, let’s briefly discuss the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Estates. The concept of “Estates” originates from feudal societies in pre-Revolutionary England and France – the First, Second, and Third Estates, respectively, were considered representative of the clergy, the nobility, and the commons – and has been updated in the 21st Century as a way to conceptualize developments in society (Dutton, 2009, p. 2). In the 18th Century, Edmund Burke identified reporters, journalists, and the press as an independent institution comprising the Fourth Estate: since then, mass media such as radio and television have also been considered part of the Fourth Estate, the overall group functioning as a sort of “checks and balances” system for government and other institutions (Dutton, 2009, p. 2).

Over the following months, several accounts – “VikiLeaks”, “TellVicEverything”, and “Anonymous” – went viral on Twitter for identifying and sharing information around bill C30 that traditional media were not covering, demonstrating how an individual could harness the power of the Internet to amplify communication and information that ultimately influenced public opinion on controversial government legislation (Dubois & Dutton, 2012, p.91). Ultimately, bill C30 was tabled and pronounced “dead” within the year.

The Power of Networks in the Fifth Estate

What stood out the most to me in Dubois & Dutton’s (2012) case study around bill C30 was how quickly these online networks of individuals acted when faced with legislation that could significantly impact how they leveraged the Internet as a resource. The Internet infrastructure, capabilities and networks supporting and comprising the Fifth Estate enable individuals to leverage methods of communication and information-sharing in ways that can hold other organizations accountable and influence public and social agendas.

The Fifth Estate & Information Workers in an Information Civilization

The continued evolution of the Internet, vast changes to mass media culture, and development of the Fifth Estate over the past decade have all contributed to what our information civilization looks like today. Citizens are grappling with the “datafication” of, well, everything, and are forced to reckon with how interdependency between public and private actors and “surveillance capitalism” impact them on an individual level (Zuboff, 2022, p. 56). Often, I find myself doing the same as I envision the present and future of information workers.

The Internet is truly a double-edged sword: it can be used as a technology of freedom or technology of control. Isto Huvila (2023) said that “information work is infrastructural,” and has always called for multidisciplinary collaborations. Considering the research, design, data, engineering, and more that goes into all that is the Internet, I’d argue that information workers are and will continue to be foundational in today’s information civilization.

References

• Dubois, E., & Dutton, W. H. (2012). The Fifth Estate in Internet Governance: Collective Accountability of a Canadian Policy Initiative. Revue Française d’études Américaines, 134, 81–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43830991

• Dutton, W. (2009). The Fifth Estate Emerging through the Network of Networks. Prometheus (Routledge), 27(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/08109020802657453

• Huvila, I., Lloyd, A., Budd, J. M., Palmer, C., & Toms, E. (2023). Information Work in Information Science Research and Practice.

• Payton, L. (2012, February 18). “Tell Vic Everything” tweets protest online surveillance. CBCnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tell-vic-everything-tweets-protest-online-surveillance-1.1187721

• Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75-89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5

• Zuboff, S. (2022). Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? The Death Match of Institutional Orders and the Politics of Knowledge in Our Information Civilization. Organization Theory, 3(3).