Convergent supersurfacesir11

Notes toward Theorizing the Relationship between
Convergence and the (new) Political
Zizi Papacharissi, PhD
Professor and Head
Communication, U of Illinois-Chicago
Convergent Supersurfaces

Democracy and Technology
The mythology of the new
Technology and space
Public and private
fantasies of control and autonomy
A control is not a discipline. In making highways, for example, you don’t enclose people but instead multiply the means of control. I am not saying that this is the highway’s exclusive purpose, but that people can drive infinitely and ‘freely’ without being confined yet while still being perfectly controlled. This is our future.
(Deleuze, 1998, p. 18)

Contemporary Democracies
Nostalgia for past forms of civic engagement
Limitations to civic involvement presented by the representative democracy model
Aggregation of public opinion
Declining civic participation through formal channels of political involvement
A cynical public

A New(er) Civic Vernacular
Developing across spaces publicly private and privately public
Resting upon convergent media, spaces and practices
Suggesting newer modes of citizenship
Reforming metaphors of the past
A private sphere

Private Citizens in Domains Public, Private, and Hybrid
Private expressions of citizenship
Retrofitting old habits into new media
Retreating to private space to go public
Private and self-enclosed individuals, mobile privatization
Personal fantasies of autonomy, expression and control
Alone, connected

The architecture of convergent spaces
Convergence: Technological/industrial/cultural/social confluence in how media circulate within our culture. Multiple media systems co-exist, content flows across platforms, audiences migrate toward newer entertainment experiences, multiple media industries cross-finance and cross-promote. A process and not a fixed relationship (Jenkins, 2006)
Remixed and remixable content (Manovich, 2005)
Not just a technological, but possessing a cultural logic of its own, blurring the lines between production and consumption, between making media and using media, and between active or passive spectatorship of mediated culture” (Deuze, 2007, p. 74).
Not a defining characteristic of all technology
Not a characteristic exclusive to technology

Convergent media/spaces/practices
No sense of place
Doubled-up space
Multiplied space
Supersurfaces

Convergent Supersurfaces
Convergence of technologies
Convergence of spaces
Convergence of practices
Political activity migrates to architectures that are technologically sustained, upon the surface of pre-existing civic structures
What happens to citizenship?
Structured around acts of expression and connection

5 New Civic Habits
1. The networked self and the culture of remote connectivity
2. A New Narcissism: Blogging
3. The Rebirth of Satire and Subversion: YouTube
4. Social Media News Aggregators and the Plurality of Collaborative Filtering
5. The Agonistic Pluralism of Online Activism

THANK YOU!zizi@uic.edu

Convergent supersurfacesir11

by Zizi Papacharissi

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