In First Monday Kylie Jarrett provides an interesting account (and critique of Andrew Barry) of the ways participatory media discipline: Jarrett. Here's an excerpt:
Participatory media can thus be associated with the production of flexible subjectivities, aligned with the needs of the culturally intensive capitalist industries associated with neoliberalism or advanced liberal economies. Interactivity therefore, is a technology which enables the reproduction of neoliberal regimes of power by producing subjects fit for the continuation of that system of power and its particular regimes of control. The interactive Web 2.0 consumer is, therefore, not only the subject of advanced liberal government as previously argued, but is also subject to that particular form of governance.
Would you mind expanding on that idea?
Posted by: IndieFaith | July 25, 2008 at 03:26 PM
What do you have in mind? I posted it because I like the way it is critical participatory media, the way it describes how what seems to be emancipatory is another form of control. One might think of Debord, who writes as if the problem of the spectacle is a result of mass, top-down media. In that context, participatory media is a medium of liberation. The passage above disagrees.
Posted by: Jodi | July 25, 2008 at 07:02 PM
Participatory media is associated with "the production of flexible subjectivities, aligned with the needs of the culturally intensive capitalist industries."
Is this simply the idea that the format of PM simply creates subjectivities that will fit into ever increasing markets?
I guess I am not sure how this happens is all.
This statement also seems too large,
"Interactivity therefore, is a technology which enables the reproduction of neoliberal regimes of power"
Perhaps I do not understand how "subjectivity" is being used here.
Posted by: IndieFaith | July 25, 2008 at 08:58 PM
MySpace is teh evils. Film at 11.
Posted by: Dominic Fox | July 28, 2008 at 02:32 AM
wonderful use of typos (I mean this seriously)--makes part of the argument visually.
Posted by: Jodi | July 29, 2008 at 10:27 AM
I'm pretty sure "teh" is now standard net usage for a really significant "the."
Posted by: Kenneth Rufo | July 29, 2008 at 10:57 AM