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 simon.collister@gmail.comTwitter: @simoncollister | www.simoncollister.com

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:simon.collister@gmail.com

www.simoncollister.com@simoncollister

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

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

It might be a bit…

Trajectories of Power

Three traditions of power

1. Conflictual

2. Consensual

3. Constituative

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)

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

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)

Evolution ofMedia & Power

Three approaches to media & power

1. Liberal-pluralism

2. Critical tradition

3. Networked approaches

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

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

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)

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

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

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

Where to go from here?

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

Assemblage Theory

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

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

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?

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”

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

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

Frames-as-assemblages analysis (2)

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

Questions & Feedback?

simon.collister@gmail.comwww.simoncollister.com

@simoncollister