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Carolin Wiedemann: Digital Swarming and Affective Infrastructures
Digital Swarming and Affective Infrastructures
(S. 197 – 214)
p€ 9,95

A New Materialist Approach to 4Chan

Carolin Wiedemann

Digital Swarming and Affective Infrastructures
A New Materialist Approach to 4Chan

PDF, 18 Seiten

In this essay on the notion of the online swarm I suggest that the euphoric appreciation of the democratic potential of the Internet still disregards the complex entanglements of affects and infrastructures within processes of constitution in biopolitical societies of control. In order to approach these entanglements, I investigate the online swarm with a neo-materialist perspective and consider a specific Internet infrastructure, 4chan, the board on which Anonymous first emerged, as an agent within the swarm formation. After discussing the methodological challenges implied by this perspective, I will approach the infrastructural mediators by analyzing their affective dimension. I conclude by posing a question: If we look at the phenomenon from this theoretical perspective, can we then still speak of emancipation and solidarity?

Introduction

From Howard Rheingold’s Smart Mobs1 in 2003 to Felix Stalder’s concept of Digital Solidarity2 in 2013, the Internet has inspired and still inspires the dream of new sorts of collectivity, of a potentially free and open space of information and communication that would emancipate and unite the people. These discourses often employ the swarm metaphor, the “ephemeral and apparently ‘grass-roots democratic’ conception of collectivity”3 that suggests emergent cooperation or solidarity and is therefore also used to point to new emancipatory politics.

The notion of a solidary swarm is especially interesting with regard to present forms of governmentality: On the one hand, it stands for subversive moments within societies of control or biopolitical capitalism, as it can point to new forms of sociality that overcome logics of neoliberal competition.4 On the other, inspiring swarm behavior is one way of governing in neoliberal capitalism. As the notion of the online swarm and, more generally, of constituting collectivity on the Internet has these political dimensions, it is worth approaching it again from the neighborhood technologies point of view. This project aims, among other things, to develop a more differentiated and technologically informed notion of neighborhood concepts, including swarm intelligence, a notion that takes into account the role of media technologies. The material turn partly has a similar focus: Against a cultural studies or sociological focus on semantics and meaning and the concomitant disinterest in technology as well as affects, new materialist theories ask for transdisciplinary approaches that consider agency as distributed across all things – human and nonhuman.5 Referring to this perspective, I begin by taking into account the role of affect circulation that constitutes the online swarm. In order to illustrate these constitutive forces, I will focus on one prominent phenomenon, Anonymous. I will outline a special case of swarm behavior, the creation of the LOLcats, and then, still employing a new materialist perspective I will focus on the infrastructure of the site 4chan, where these swarms are still emerging. I do not want to reduce the various (inter-)disciplinary connections and diverse undertakings that are subsumed under the label of the material turn to a set of shared qualities. I will briefly discuss the methodological challenges that they imply and highlight some of the differences in the approaches in order...

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  • Bruno Latour
  • Subversion
  • Anonymous
  • Gouvernementalität
  • Digitale Kultur
  • Internet
  • Affekte
  • Demokratie
  • Kollektivität
  • New Materialism
  • Werbung

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Deutsch

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Carolin Wiedemann

arbeitet als freie Journalistin u.a. für Missy Magazin, Spiegel Online und die FAS und ist Doktorandin am Institut für Soziologie der Universität Hamburg. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind neue Formen von Kollektivität, Subjektivität und Subversion, Theorien digitaler Netzwerke.

Weitere Texte von Carolin Wiedemann bei diaphanes
Tobias Harks (Hg.), Sebastian Vehlken (Hg.): Neighborhood Technologies
b€ 45,00 p€ 45,00

Tobias Harks (Hg.), Sebastian Vehlken (Hg.)

Neighborhood Technologies
Media and Mathematics of Dynamic Networks

Broschur, 240 Seiten

PDF, 240 Seiten

Neighborhood Technologies expands upon sociologist Thomas Schelling’s wellknown study of segregation in major American cities, using this classic work as the basis for a new way of researching social networks across disciplines. Up to now, research has focused on macrolevel behaviors that, together, form rigid systems of neighborhood relations. But can neighborhoods, conversely, affect larger, global dynamics? This volume introduces the concept of “neighborhood technologies” as a model for intermediate, or meso-level, research into the links between local agents and neighborhood relations. Bridging the sciences and humanities, Tobias Harks and Sebastian Vehlken have assembled a group of contributors
who are either natural scientists with an interest in interdisciplinary research or tech-savvy humanists. With insights into computer science, mathematics, sociology, media and cultural studies, theater studies, and architecture, the book will inform new research.

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