Re-Assembling Mediated Power

28
Re-Assembling Mediated Power: Exploring the moment of crisis and opportunity Simon Collister Royal Holloway, University of London Full paper available. Email me at [email protected] Twitter: @simoncollister | www.simoncollister.com

description

This paper takes as it starting point the tension identified in the conference’s call for papers which speculates whether recent political events such as the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement and the diverse range of global anti-austerity protests should be understood as new forms of power or simply “an intensification of the old battlelines.” It argues that such political events are an articulation of the trajectory plotted by contemporary accounts of power, but which the majority of political science scholarship has arguably overlooked in recent years. Such a reality, the paper contends, represents both a crisis as well as an opportunity for political scientists, media and communications and social movement/activism researchers.

Transcript of Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Page 1: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Re-Assembling Mediated Power: Exploring the moment of crisis and opportunity

Simon CollisterRoyal Holloway, University of London

Full paper available. Email me at [email protected]: @simoncollister | www.simoncollister.com

Page 2: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Point of origin

• Snapshot into an early section of my PhD

• Interested in howpower is mediatedwithin contemporary communications networks

• Hope to focus initialanalysis on anti-austerity social movements

Contact me:[email protected]

www.simoncollister.com@simoncollister

Page 3: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Introduction • Theories of mediated power

facing moment of crisis

• Evolution of power outstripped accounts of mediated power

• Limiting analysis of contemporary mediated politics

• Need to identify opportunities for mapping mediated power’s engagement with contemporary theories of power

Page 4: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Today’s aim

1. Plot the comparative trajectories of power and media research

2. Identify limitations of current approaches to mediated power

3. Outline a revised model for analysing mediated power in an age of networked movements

Page 5: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

It might be a bit…

Page 6: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Trajectories of Power

Page 7: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Three traditions of power

1. Conflictual

2. Consensual

3. Constituative

Page 8: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Conflictual tradition• Wedded to positivist, observable

democratic power where “A gets B to do something they wouldn’t otherwise have done” (Dahl 1957)

• Augmented by Bachrach & Baratz (1962) who argued for inclusion of “non-decision making power” – i.e. institutional bias

• Critiqued by Lukes who identified a Marxian false-consciousess exerting a “contradiction between the interests of those exercising power and the real interests of those they exclude” (1974, 28)

Page 9: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Consensual tradition

• Lukes’ focus on ‘power over’ conceals power’s ability to dominate by creating consensus

• Lukes’ admits as much (2005) and points to Gramsci’s hegemony as founding theory

• Duality of social structure/agency developed further by Giddens’ ‘Theory of Structuration’ and Bourdieu’s Field and Habitus

Page 10: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Constitutive tradition• Foucault identifies ‘productive power’

“rooted in the whole network of the social” and constituting society discursivelyand disciplining apparatuses or ‘dispositifs’. (Foucault 1983)

• This networked approach to power developed by Deleuze (& Guattari) and Actor-Network Theorists, such as Latour, Callon and Law

• Accounts for how social field is continually produced and transformed through the association and interaction of actors (Law 1998, 2)

Page 11: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Evolution ofMedia & Power

Page 12: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Three approaches to media & power

1. Liberal-pluralism

2. Critical tradition

3. Networked approaches

Page 13: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Media and Liberal Pluralism• Media power lies in watchdog

function and supporting democratic discourse - typified by Habermas’public sphere (1996)

• Idealised vision challenged by professionalisation of media andpolitical actors and media commercialisation (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999)

• ‘Strategic news management’ undermined by internet-empowered non-institutional media actors, e.g. bloggers, citizen journalists

Page 14: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

The Critical Tradition• Early political economic critiques

delivered by Marx & Engels (1932); later Horkheimer and Adorno (1947)

• Contemporary analyses introduced subtler accounts of globalised media industry exerting power through lifestyle or non-contentious content (Curran 2002; McChesney 2004)

• Stuart Hall’s cultural critiques (1986) further identified media power as contested; actively shaped by cultural encodings/decodings

Page 15: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Networked approaches• Networks are “archetypal

form of contemporary social and technical organisation” (Livingstone 2005, 12)

• Approaches wedded to an outdated “elite-mass media-audience paradigm” (Davis 2007)

• Media “hybridity” proposed as conceptual escape route (Chadwick 2011)

Page 16: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Media hybridity• Emergent and networked

hybridity challenges notions of elites, institutional actors, mainstream media and notion homogenous audiences (Chadwick 2011a; 2011b; 2013)

• Hybridity characterised by a “betweenness” with mediated power operating through interaction between old and new; material and immaterial actors

Page 17: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

The material turn• Media research increasingly

influenced by materialist turn in humanities and social sciences, viz. Deleuze & Guattari and Actor-Network Theory

• Terranova (2004) suggests representation accounts forhalf of communication

• Can be infrastructure,physical space, algorithms, etc

Page 18: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Where does this leave us?

• Lacuna around how networked communications and materialist ontology is shaping contemporary mediation

• Emerging concept of media ‘hybridity’ can be combined with media’s ‘material turn’

• Presents opportunity for developing analytical model capable of investigating contemporary mediated politics

Page 19: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Where to go from here?

Page 20: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Framing Theory

• Dominant media and communications research theory (Bryant and Miron 2004)

• Central to mediated power (Caragee and Roefs 2004)

• Functions as ‘bridging project’ (Reese 2001) allowing us to use it as building block for developing new approaches to mediated power

Page 21: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Assemblage Theory

• Propose ‘bridging’ framing with Assemblage Theory (DeLanda 2006)

• Assemblage Theory is an ontological schema for interpreting reality based on Deleuzian concept

Page 22: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Framing & assemblages (1)

• Processes of assembly operating on two fundamental axes:1. Territorialization <>

Deterritorialization2. Material<>Expressive

• Offers dynamic and materialist framework to augment Reese’s notion of framing as gaining/losing organising value?

Page 23: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Framing & assemblages (2)

• Additional sub-processescontest stability, identity & durability of frames-as-assemblages

• Exterior relations connect assemblage parts creatingnon-linear emergence

• Coding stabilises identity & universal singularities structure enduring frames-as-assemblage’s “long-term tendencies”

Page 24: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Putting this to work

• Currently analysing of NUS’ #Demo2012 to understand how demonstration was framed through assemblage of material and expressive actors, objects and content

Page 25: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Frames-as-assemblages analysis (1)

• Conduct analysis of three distinct milieux in which mediation processes occur

• Applying:– content analysis of social and traditional media– enthnographic observation of media events – follow-up interviews

Page 26: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Frames-as-assemblages analysis (2)

Page 27: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Understanding mediated power

• Short-term: Analyse mediated power by accounting for the material & expressive components territorializing and coding frames-as-assemblages

• Longer-term: identify & map ‘ideal types’ of frames-as-assemblages or process of production to gain insight into mediated power’s longer-term tendencies behind the hybrid media environment

Page 28: Re-Assembling Mediated Power

Questions & Feedback?

[email protected]

@simoncollister