Convergent Supersurfaces: Notes toward Theorizing the Relationship between Convergence and the (new) Political. Association of Internet Researchers, Gothenburg, October 2010.

1. Notes towardTheorizing the Relationship between
Convergence and the (new) Political
Zizi Papacharissi, PhD
Professor and Head
Communication, U of Illinois-Chicago

2.  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)

3.  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

4.  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

5.  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

6.  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

7.  No sense of place
 Doubled-up
space
 Multiplied space
 Supersurfaces
Images used courtesy Sophia Vyzoviti 2009

8. Images used courtesy Sophia Vyzoviti 2009

9. 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
Image used courtesy Sophia Vyzoviti 2009

11. 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

12. Chapter available in A Private Sphere,
out now on Polity Press.