ECREA16-Abstract

Thursday, November 10

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CDE03

Materiality, Agency and Digital Media

PP 112

Acting on Materiality – Media Technologies and Engagement

S. Kubitschko

, S. Kannengießer

University of Bremen, Centre for Media- Communication and Information Research, Bremen, Germany

Ever more people use media technologies in an increasing range of contexts and circumstances (work, leisure, protest, etc.). One might even go as far as

arguing that life per se has become inseparably interwoven with media. This growing pervasiveness of media use, however, does not necessarily imply that

more people engage with the very devices and platforms they make use of. But we also notice a pluralisation and diffusion of actors who go beyond the“in‑

terface level”by engaging with the materiality of media technologies. Engagement here denotes a critical, creative, reflective and/or subversive handling

of media technologies. The line of argument we want to bring forward in our presentation is that acting on the material dimension of media technologies

is a meaningful and significant form of contemporary political engagement. While media and communication scholars have discussed and investigated

extensively what people do with media, the way people act on media technologies remains an underexplored facet of analysis. If we intend to gain a clearer

picture of the entanglements of media technologies and societal change, we need to draw our attention to media technologies as sites of intervention in

itself (Lievrouw 2011: 102; Milan 2013; Gillespie et al. 2014). More concretely, there is need to look at how actors act on the materiality of media technol‑

ogies. We aim to contribute to this task by presenting findings from qualitative case studies on two civil society initiatives: the Chaos Computer Club (CCC)

and Repair Cafés. The former is the oldest European and one of the world’s largest hacker organizations, the latter is a rather new initiative scattered all over

Western Europe and North America where people come together to fix their everyday objects (media technologies being among the most common goods).

To analyze these two case studies, we conducted qualitative interviews with members of the CCC (2011–2013) as well as organizers and participants of Re‑

pair Cafés (in 2014–2015) and participant observations with both initiatives. We analyzed our data according to the three-step coding process of grounded

theory (Corbin/Strauss 2008). The data presented in this paper allows us to reflect on the political implications of the material encounters between actors

and technology. Through acting on media technologies the two initiatives, each in their own way, ‘continually refuse heteronomy and passivity’ (Purcell

2013: 314), establish alternative fields of action and co-determine the discourse on media technologies. Critically reflecting on these findings also allows us

to argue that we need to widen our understanding of media as practice (Couldry 2012) by including actors’material encounters with media technologies.

////////////// Work cited: Couldry N (2012) Media, Society, World. Cambridge: Polity. // Corbin J and Strauss A. (2008) Basics of Qualitative Research. 3

ed.

London: Sage. // Gillespie T, Boczkowski P and Foot K (eds) (2014) Media Technologies. Cambridge: MIT. // Lievrouw L (2011) Alternative and Activist New

Media. Cambridge: Polity. // Milan S (2013) Social Movements and their Technologies. London: Palgrave. // Purcell M (2013) The right to the city. Policy &

Politics 43(3): 311–27.

PP 113

‘The Internets’ as Medium of Reverse Agency: Political Economy of Digital Media in the Frame of Bennett and Segerberg’s ‘Connective

Action’

J. Nowak

Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Department of Journalism, Lublin, Poland

My paper explores ambiguities of today‘media citizenship’in this peculiar current historical conjuncture in which digital companies have become algorithm-

and space-providers for seemingly all actions performed in online environments. Specifically, I analyze internet’s complicated status as medium of civic

engagement by drawing upon the social semiotics analysis of people’s online anti-ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) engagement in Poland in

2012 (body of data comprises 900+ images/audiovisuals analyzed). The protests seem to fit the patterns of Bennett and Segerberg’s (2013) ‘connective ac‑

tion’, which focuses on individualized processes of personalized content being shared across media on contentious issues. However, the status of internet in

this context is far from being obvious: it was not only a tool and space of the anti-ACTA protests; but also a complex set of services offered by market agents

involved in the issue, and – as the analysis reveals – the people’s popular perception of the conflict framed internet as one the commons endangered by

ACTA. Political/citizen agency rises as the key aspect of the issue: ‘connective action’was performed by the protesters with, within, and on terms of market

services of agents interested in the collapse of ACTA. This is not to downgrade people’s agency, who appropriated global pop-cultural online resources to

express (and eventually achieve) their goals. More the opposite: I explore how the protesters performed actions being at the same time civic engagement

and participation in popular culture – all within the complicated system of technologies, market services and socio-cultural protocols of today ‘internets’.

The latter, however, can be described as medium of reverse agency: software algorithms of digital services (closed to public and discursively naturalized as

pure/mere technology) co-decide about visibility of digitally-mediated items and by this they influence on these items’ actual online presence. Interest‑

ingly, this mechanism of reverse mediation of agency (from users to algorithms’depositaries), although profoundly touching the very core of today ‘media

citizenship’, does not seem to weaken agency of the protesters in the analyzed case. People used global pop- and counter-cultural modalities to effectively

build not only their political stance but also – as the analysis’results show – they have built, by a complex system of pop-cultural and historical metaphors,

a self-portrait contributing to their group cultural (generational) identity.