event mechanics

Mel has a very interesting work in progress paper up on her blog on “The territory of the post-professional“. We sometimes share very similar research interests. I’ve also looked at questions of territory and technological assemblages in my Communications Technologies & Change unit this semester.

In one week we looked at the relation between predictive algorithms and the individuation of subjectivity. Here is the entry for that week:

Buying Stuff Online and How Your Credit Card is You

Transformations of economy, emergence of global market. Globalisation. Function of credit cards as technology of communication/identity. eBay, Steam and online commerce. Amazon.com and the algorithmic production of surplus value.

Required reading

Merskin, D. (1998). “The Show   for Those Who Owe: Normalization of Credit on Lifetime’s Debt.” Journal of   Communication Inquiry, 22(1), 10-26. [Particularly the section “A brief   history of credit”.]Merskin offers a critical reading of the reality TV show called Debt and the ways credit card and personal debt have become ‘normalised’ in US society. Read the section “A brief history of credit” (pages 11-16) for a quasi-genealogical account of the development of the credit card. What is the ‘credit card’ assemblage?

Recommended reading

de Vries, K. (2010).   “Identity, profiling algorithms and a world of ambient   intelligence.” Ethics and Information Technology 12(1):   71-85.This is another tough reading, but useful for thinking about the way the everyday technological assemblages of communication contribute to or produce our identity. ‘Identity’ here is meant in a cultural sense. The classic example that de Vries explores to some length is the use of algorithms to predict consumer behaviour on shopping websites and suggest commodities we might be interested in purchasing through   online shop fronts like Amazon.com. The relevant section is “Identity in a world of   profiling algorithms and ambient intelligence” (pages 76-79), but it is   worth exploring at length to gain a critical understanding of the ways   complex internet-based commercial interactions can affect the production (and   prediction) of identity.

In the lecture I did a kind of archaeology of the credit card in terms of the shifting composition of socio-technological relations across the long histories of some of the elements that constitute the ‘credit card assemblage’. The required research for this, so as to do the lecture, was a bit crazy. I learnt a great deal! Then I shifted gears a bit to talk about the function of predictive algorithms that are part of online shopping platforms. The de Vries reading is very good on this (and also pretty tough for third year undergraduates). In the context of predictive algorithms and algorithmic-based platforms (that aren’t necessarily ‘predictive’) there are two points I want to make with regards to Mel’s paper, specifically the paragraph introducing ‘algorithmic living’.

Firstly, unlike previous forms of self-knowledge in familiar ‘quantifications of the self’ (Weight Watchers, etc.) determined by a medium/average (statistical sense) of rough (molar) demographic categories, algorithmic indicators are far more mobile and the level of quantification is determined by the ‘resolution’ of the algorithm. ‘Resolution’ in this sense pertains to the ‘machinic affects’ of the ‘counting assemblage’; what are the forms of machinic visbility afforded by the technological assemblage of which the algorithm is but one (protocol) level? What are the ‘actions’ or ‘gestures’ being indeed by the algorithm?

Secondly, the (algorithmic) map (of aggregate molecular ‘actions’ of user-mulitiplicities) has become the (existential) territory (for the individuating assemblage of an ‘app’ or ‘platform’ user). Yes, the map is the territory (I’m phrasing it like that just to fuck with the old school semioticians a little bit:). The classic examples of this are Amazon.com or Google. Amazon indexes various ‘actions’ by users and users this for the ‘suggestions’ section. The capacity to index such actions are one of the affordances (action possibilities) of the platform or what I would call the machinic affects of the algorithm. The machinic affects are determined by the resolution of the algorithm. What actual action does the algorithm index? Visits? Location of mouse pointer or scrolling behaviour? Maybe. Definitely (in the case of Amazon): purchases, wishlist contents, ‘Kindle’ sharing behaviour, and so on. The aggregate map is produced by a multiplicity of such actions, this map then serves as part of the ‘territory’ by which other users of the same platform are individuated (as ‘dividuals’, cf. Deleuze). ‘Territory’ in this context is derived from the later work of Guattari.

What is interesting about Mel’s focus on ‘time’ and its management as a mode of self-governance is that by taking into account the above process of individuating there are two versions of temporality are in play: intensive and extensive. Management of time is traditionally ‘time’ as extension; there is  a range, which is divisible into ‘units’ of time. The individuation of a subject is an intensive process and operates at the level of ‘anticipation’ (relations of futurity) and ‘retention’ (relations of pastness). The ‘past’ in this context is literally and practically active; a multiplicity of ‘pasts’ from a multiplicity of users indexed according to their actions ‘feed’ (‘feed’ in the sense of both ‘appetite’ or ‘appetition’ (Whitehead) and ‘user feeds’ ie who you follow) into the pure present of algorithmic mapping and serve as a dynamic/selective virtual architecture that scaffolds the embodied process of the individuating subject who is actively anticipating his or her ‘next’ action. The ‘next’ action is the subject of such operations; this ‘next’ is an intensive temporal relation.

Management of time is only traditionally premised on the extensive dimension, as contemporary ‘social’ platform-based apps also include a valorising function which tempers time with a qualitiative experiential dimension. If you had a good time, then you’ll ‘like’ the shared photo. If you ‘like’ the book and ‘rate’ it on Amazon, then you bestow the assumed extensive time taken to read the book with a valorised experiential quality.

“It’s Doctor Who day!” so proclaimed Hugo award-nominated Doctor Who writer Steven Moffat on Twitter last night. I had already watched the five-part “Pond Life” webisode series through the BBC’s Youtube channel, like many other Doctor Who fans, in preparation of the new series. In Australia we were able to watch the first episode of the new Doctor Who series as soon as we woke up this morning thanks to the ABC making it available on their “catch-up TV” service iView. This is exactly what I did, with a coffee in one hand and my iPad in the other. That it coincided with Father’s Day meant my Facebook and Twitter streams were full of Whovian joy crossed over with accounts of fathers watching the show with their children.

And yet there were also the haters. They were in the minority of course, but one comment struck me in particular; the poster said that Doctor Who “is made for children and simpletons”. Obvious troll is obvious, but, still, the elitist platitudes rubbed me up the wrong way… Doctor Who wears its infantile pretensions on its cross-platform global-brand sleeve. To say it is made for children (and, hyperbolically, for simpletons) is to state the obvious. Doctor Who captures a certain kind of stupid that I want to suggest is desperately needed. Hence, this is a defence of Doctor Who by way of a defence of stupidity.

We live in a world in which stupidities attempt to impinge on our mental and spiritual well-being at every turn. Indeed, I used to think of plenty of things were stupid (and still do to a certain extent): elite sport, organised religion, liberal democratic politics, pretty much everything that someone else is doing. A normative appreciation of stupidity, firstly, locates the stupid in someone else, and secondly, works to trace this stupid as the outcome of some kind of failure; a failure of thought, a failure of imagination, a failure of agency and so on.

The greatest stupid is produced by those who think they are a success. This is a kind of existential stupidity that provides security and purpose. Success as an Australian means policing borders. Success as a savvy businessperson means embodying the will of the market. Success as a moral subject means becoming an evangelist of law and order. Conservatism here is not a political category; the politics is just an expression of the ‘claptrap’ (political speech triggering audience clapping on demand) experienced as a collective pat on the back.

None of this is new. To realise this stupidity as an inescapable milieu is pretty much the only quality that is shared by all post-Boomer generations. Some resist through attempts at withdrawal, but this is insufficient. Like the coffee in a forgotten stove-top espresso machine, strategic apathy percolates into a ‘bitter’ generational cynicism. This ‘burnt’ cynic attempts to ward off being swept up in stupidities, but as a result produces their own. The cynicism of youth valorises the stupid of noseless faces.

The performative knowingness of the cynic is balanced with the performative naivety of the existentially enfranchised. This is more about the earnestness of those who transcend the collective stupidities of the individual and rather than choosing success, they choose the struggle. They are working to transcend the conditions of existence that forever turns inward back to the individualising ‘us’: the individual, the family, the nation. The stupid of the struggle is a failure to realise that resistance is futile; worse, it becomes a resource for the ‘winners’, like two cogs turning against each other.

Three forms of ideal stupidity; actual stupid is a combination of the three. If everything is stupid, how can anything or anyone escape or resist or succeed? Embrace your stupidities. In ancient Greece, Socrates called stupidity ‘ignorance’ and wisdom was the recognition of the way ignorance was an inherent character of humanity. Socrates did not live in our world, however. The possibility of ‘wisdom’ is to smuggle stupidity in through the backdoor under the aegis of philosophy. Although, Socrates was definitely on to something. Kant argued for a higher ‘pure’ rationality that transcends stupidity, but he did not recognise the conditions of rationality as being his own stupidity: the unthought of thought that haunts the modernist project. The stupid is the inescapable outside of thought that conditions the possibility of thought. Kant is the Batman of thought. “Why so serious?”

The fourth response is to follow Socrates, but turn Kant into the Joker, and go ‘meta’ to recognise the limits of the other three kinds of stupidity. The antidote to aggrandised Socratic beard-stoking, while at the same time pursuing an unforgiving self-awareness, is through play. To play is to suspend seriousness in a way that is often utterly serious. Is it a surprise then, that practices of ‘meta’ in the form of play characterise much of the activity found on social networks? “Best cat video.” Or imagining politicians as anthropomorphised animals? This is stupid, without a doubt, but it is obviously so. Almost anything that exists in the online economy of memes is an exchange of stupid. This is an invitation to a playful stupidity that is utterly serious.

Hence, it is a mistake to imagine the audience for Doctor Who as children when it renders explicit its process of infantilising the audience. Using the tropes of popular family-oriented science fiction television, Doctor Who incorporates this outside of thought into an hour or so of accessible television. Doctor Who is a suspension of seriousness that is utterly serious; a playful ‘meta’ of serious television and culture more generally. It is an invitation to become aware of our own stupidities.

Post originally appeared at Limited News.

Below is a draft weekly schedule for a final year undergraduate unit I am teaching second semester this year. The unit is titled Communication Technologies & Change. I am inheriting the unit and the previous iteration focused on ‘new media’ and the various affordances of online technologies. The brief I was given was to shift from a ‘media’ focus and address ‘communication’ more broadly. There is a relatively diverse range of students, some are studying ‘communication’ and others ’public relations’, ‘marketing’ and ‘journalism’. Some could come from very different areas of the faculty (design, media arts, writing, etc.). The uni is design to engage with the everyday use of comunication technologies and to guide students to critically reflect on the technologial assemblages of which they are part.

It has not been approved as yet and I am contemplating changing some of the readings and in particular adding some ‘easier’ readings (as some of them are pretty hard core, albeit fun). If anyone has any suggestions or criticisms please leave a comment or email me at glen (dot) fuller (at) canberra (dot) edu (dot) au. The two major assessment items will be an in-class presentation and a final research essay on a particular assemblage of communication technology.

Any suggestions of film clips I can show during lectures in any of the weeks would be greatly appreciated also!

 

Lecture topics

Week	Date	Topic
1	15/8/12	Definitions: Communication as Techné
2	22/8/12	Definitions: Technological Objects & Systems
3	29/8/12	Definitions: Change: Obsolescence & Progress
4	5/9/12	Assemblages: Audience & Media
5	12/9/12	Mediated Sociality & Community
6	19/9/12	Home & Away & Work
7	26/9/12	Commerce & the Economy
Mid Semester Break
9	10/10/12	The Apocalypse & Other Lessons from Science Fiction
10	17/10/12	Government & Media Policy
12	24/10/12	Information Technologies, Memory & Memorialisation
12	31/10/12	Geographies of Communication Technologies & Reality
13	7/11/12	Crisis & Technologies of Communication
14	14/11/12	Future, practices of anticipation

WEEK 1

Definitions: Communication as Techné

 Etymology of technology, ‘techné’ and ‘logos’. Introducing themes of unit: 1) Tactical and strategic approaches to communication technologies. 2) Introducing communication technologies as assemblages.

Required reading	Unit outlineWilliams, R. (1976). “Communication” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Glasgow: Fontana. Pages 62-63. Sterne, J. (2006). Communication as Techné. In G. J. Shpherd, J. S. John & T. Striphas (Eds.), Communication as…: Perspectives on Theory London: Sage. Pages 91-98
Recommended reading	Parry, Richard, (2008) “Episteme and Techne“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/episteme-techne/
Tutorial	No tutorials

WEEK 2

Definitions: Technological Objects & Systems

Thinking about technology beyond the technical object. Brief survey of different approaches:

1. Actor-network theory and socio-technical networks, networked economy
2. Simondon, technics and collective individuation
3. Delanda and techno-historical assemblages
4. Parikka, media archaeology and rethinking media and communication assemblages

Required reading	Lury, C. (2009). “Brand as Assemblage.” Journal of Cultural Economy, 2(1-2), 67-82.
Recommended reading	Parikka, J. (2010). Introduction: Insects in the Age of Technology. Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology Minneapolis, London: University Of Minnesota Press. Pages ix-xxv [Particularly the ‘Assemblages’ section xxiv-xxvii]
Tutorial	Discussion: Introduction of unit. Details of assessments. Allocation of readings for the presentation assignment. Discussion of potential topics of the research essay assessment.

WEEK 3

Definitions: Change: Obsolescence & Progress

How to think about ‘change’? Think beyond individual objects to the broader networks and social assemblages of whom they are always part. Disruptive innovation, not a new ‘object’ but a different network of relations. Fetishisation of the ‘new’. Planned Obsolescence.

Required reading	Packard, V. (1960). “Progress Through Planned Obsolescence.” The Waste Makers. Brooklyn: Ig Publishing. Pages 65-78.Slack, J. D., & Wise, J. M. (2005). Progress. Culture + Technology: A Primer. New York: Peter Lang. Pages 9-25.
Tutorial	Discussion: When was the last time you ‘upgraded’ anything? Why? Is Packard’s critique still relevant? Do you take photos with your phone? Do you use Instagram or similar? How does the aestheticisation of ‘old’ technologies as ‘new’ change our sense of progress?

WEEK 4

Assemblages: Audience & Media

This week we think about the relation between technology, media and audiences in terms of assemblages. Further develop assemblage theory. Techno-historical assemblages of the media. Power of the audience, audience studies. Attention economy.

Required reading	Goggin, G. (2009). “Assembling media culture.” Journal of Cultural Economy, 2(1-2), 151-167.Crogan, P., & Kinsley, S. (2012). “Paying Attention: Towards a Critique of the Attention Economy.” Culture Machine, 13, 1-29. http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/463/482
Recommended reading	Bratich, J. Z. (2005). “Amassing the Multitude: Revisiting Early Audience Studies.” Communication Theory, 15(3), 242-265.
Tutorial	Discussion: What is your involvement in media assemblages? How does your participation relate to Crogan and Kinsley’s four ways of “thinking about how attention is commodified, quantified and trained” (3)?

WEEK 5

Mediated Sociality & Community

Community and communication. Scales of community, local, national, international. Collective intelligence

Required reading	Levy, P. (1999). “From the Molar to the Molecular: The Technology of Collective Intelligence” Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Pages 39-55.
Recommended reading	Shirky, C. (2010). “Means” Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. London: Penguin Books. [Chapter 2]
Tutorial	Discussion: What does Levy mean by ‘molecular’ and ‘molar’? How is the ‘national’ imagined in the contemporary era if it is in part a consequence of the communication technologies of modernity (telegraph, print newspapers, then radio etc)? Do you think the character of friendship has changed because of social media?

 WEEK 6

Home & Away & Work

Constitution of the ‘home’, production of domestic space. New composition of relations premised on the separation of public/private, work/home. Intervention of the telephone. The flexible workplace. 

Required reading	Gregg, M. (2011) “Selling the flexible workplace” Work’s Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chapter 1. Pages 23-38.
Recommended reading	Yates, J., & Orlikowski, W. J. (1992). “Genres of Organizational Communication: A structurational approach to studying communication and media.” Academy of Management Review, 17(2), 299-326. [Examination of the history of the 'email' as genre of organizational communication.]
Tutorial	Discussion: Do you juggle various work responsibilities with other aspects of your life? Could you do this without contemporary communication technologies? Would you feel comfortable using your Facebook account for work purposes? What relation does Gregg describe between communication technologies and workplace intimacies?

 WEEK 7

Commerce and the Economy

 Transformations of economy, emergence of global market. Globalisation. Function of credit cards as technology of communication/identity. eBay, Steam and online commerce. Amazon.com and the algorithmic production of surplus value.

Required reading	Merskin, D. (1998). “The Show for Those Who Owe: Normalization of Credit on Lifetime’s Debt.” Journal of Communication Inquiry, 22(1), 10-26. [Particularly the section “A brief history of credit”]
Recommended reading	Roberts, J. M. (2012). “Poststructuralism Against Poststructuralism: Actor-Network Theory, Organizations and Economic Markets.” European Journal of Social Theory, 15(1), 35-53.
Tutorial	Discussion: Have you used your credit card online and felt anxious? Do you have a credit card debt? How important is reputation for online commerce? Have bought items directly from overseas?

WEEK 8

Mid-semester break

 WEEK 9

The Apocalypse & Other Lessons from Science Fiction

Apocalypse as ultimate ‘planned obsolescence’. Technological change of the apocalypse. ‘Industrial-military complex’. Internet as communication technology of the apocalypse. 

Required reading	Jameson, F. (1982). “Progress Versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future?” Science Fiction Studies, 9, 147-158.
Recommended reading	Grusin, R., 2004. “Premediation.” Criticism, 46(1) 17-39.Stockwell, S (2011) “Messages from the apocalypse: Security issues in American TV series.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 25(2), 189-199
Tutorial	Discussion: What is your favourite representation of the apocalypse? What aspects of this apocalyptic setting are Utopian? Would a world of perfect communication be Utopian? Why or why not?

 WEEK 10

Government & Media Policy

Guest lecture. TBA

Required reading	Tapscott, D. & Williams, A. (2010). “The Rise of the citizen regulator.” Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. London: Atlantic Books. [Chapter 15]
Tutorial	TBA [Check Moodle closer to the date.]

 WEEK 11

Information Technologies, Memory & Memorialisation

 From the ‘Kodak moment’ to the ‘Facebook moment’. Branded behaviours, branded memories. Have our memories become commodified? Databases and access.

Required reading	Stokes, P. (2011). Ghosts in the Machine: Do the Dead Live on in Facebook? Philosophy & Technology, 1-17.Munir, K. A., & Phillips, N. (2005). The Birth of the ‘Kodak Moment’: Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Adoption of New Technologies. Organization Studies, 26(11), 1665-1687.
Recommended reading	Geissler, C., (2010) “Pix or It Didn’t Happen: Social Networking, Digital Memory, and the Future of Biography.” In V. Chan, C. Ferguson, K. Fraser, C. Geissler, A.-M. Metten & S. Smith (eds.) The MPub Reader. Vancouver: CCSP Press, 135-141. [Also available at  http://tkbr.ccsp.sfu.ca/bookofmpub/pix-or-it-didnt-happen-social-networking-digital-memory-and-the-future-of-biography-by-cynara-geissler ]
Tutorial	Discussion: Are we suffering from societal ‘TMI’? What moments do you hope to remember and do you try to capture these moments using technology? Do you ‘share’ these moments?

WEEK 12

Geographies of Communication Technologies & Reality

 Maps, spatiality. Political economy of belonging. Borderspaces. Locative media. Augmented reality.

Required reading	Buliung, R.N. (2011) “Wired People in Wired Places: Stories about Machines and the Geography of Activity.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101,1365-1381.Williams, R. (1976). “Communication” Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society Glasgow: Fontana. Pages 62-63.
Tutorial	Discussion: Do you use satnav or a ‘map app’ to help you find where you are going? What about planning for holidays, do you know exactly where you are going to go? When was the last time you were ‘lost’? What does Buliung mean by the ‘extinction of experience’?

WEEK 13

Crisis & Technologies of Communication

Social media and communication. Data visualisation. Queensland floods and twitter. Japanese tsunami and Google.

Required reading	Bruns, Axel, Burgess, Jean E., Crawford, Kate, & Shaw, Frances (2012) “#qldfloods and @QPSMedia: Crisis Communication on Twitter in the 2011 South East Queensland Floods.” [Research report] ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane QLD Australia. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/48241/1/floodsreport.pdf [Particularly pages 7-18]
Tutorial	Discussion: Have you been caught up in a crisis event? How have you communicated your wellbeing to friends and/or family? How have you found out about and then followed recent natural disasters? What communication channels do you use?

WEEK 14

Future, practices of anticipation

Techno-historical assemblages are not only ‘historical’ but co-present. What shall exceed us? What assemblages are not yet fully present but currently emerging? What comes ‘next’? ‘New’ iPhones. What are the new assemblages? Has the future become commodified?

Recommended reading	Jones, S.E., 2008. “Anticipating Spore” The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Studies New York: Routledge. Chapter 6. Pages 150-173.
Recommended reading	Grusin, R., 2004. “Premediation.” Criticism, 46(1) 17-39.
Tutorial	Summary and Q&A. Final paper related questions and feedback

 

Over the weekend I led a session as part of a workshop camp training youth media advocates for ReachOut.com. ReachOut.com is an advocacy group that seeks to raise awareness about issues relating to youth mental health and suicide, and is part of Inspire.org.au. I was very happy to donate my Saturday morning and the couple of days it took to put together my session. Like most people, I’ve had some personal experience with a loved one struggling to overcome the ‘black dog’. It has been good to see depression and mental health issues receive proper media attention over the last few years as struggles with mental health issues transcend social and cultural boundaries.

In my session I introduced the youth advocates to the concept of a ‘complex media environment’. It builds on well established concepts within media studies from key figures such as Marshall “The medium is the message” McLuhan (see this video of McLuhan in Australia from ABC Open) and Neil “Media Ecology” Postman. The key outcome from my session was to get the advocates to realise that as media advocates they are no longer simply ‘consumers’ of media content, but nor are they properly ‘producers’ within the media industry. Instead, they are somewhere in between, what I described as being ‘operators’.

ReachOut.com’s own media advocacy kit for the workshop was put together (EDIT: 13/12/11) under the direction of co-manager Nathalie Swainston by Phoebe Netto and it is a brilliant practical guide for working with journalists and other content producers within the media industry. For example, it presents the well known values of news worthiness (timeliness, proximity, impact, etc) in an inverted form so media advocates know how to position their message so as to be useful for journalists working on producing a story.

I built on the media advocacy kit by reaching out to the youth media advocates’ existing mode of engagement with the media — as mostly ‘crticial consumers’ — to point out ways this could be extended and intensified so as to spot and plan for ‘opportunities’ for their message. I focused on two methods for doing this. The first involves working within the constraints of the journalistic ‘news cycle’ and also tracking the rhythm of the media activities of other social institutions, such as governmental authorities or the NGO sector publishing relevant reports.

The second involves appreciating the strucutral dimensions of the media industry. The commercial media industry basically operates as an ‘apparatus of capture’: it produces content so as to ‘capturre’ an audience, and then sell this audience to advertisers (or others). The questions the media advocates need to work through are, what sort of audience can I help produce and who would want the traffic/metrics/listeners/viewers/readership that my message can help deliver? The session after mine was delivered by the lovely and talented Pheobe Netto (who also took the phone camera snap above during my presentation!) and it was about the practical skills of crafting one’s media message. The ‘complex’ bit of the ‘complex media environment’ comes from the structural changes that the Australian media industry has undergone over the last decade or so. There are increased opportunities for engagement for those with the necessary skills to turn out good copy for many media outlets.

One of the qualities of this complex media enviroment that I discussed in my session was the way media stories can cascade across multiple channels and platforms. Most people are familiar with the concept of an ‘echo chamber’, but a more general example of a similar phenomenon is the way various media outlets will pay attention to what other media outlets are reporting on. This doesn’t only happen amongst competitors (or ‘co-opetitors’) but also sub-jacently related channels, such as local radio stories picked up by larger ‘talkback’ radio, picked up by print journalist, picked up by TV journalists, etc.

I think it was a very good day and the feedback I’ve received from participants is that they found my session to be very productive.

In my Media Inquiry submission I attempt to isolate a problem that is emerging involving the fabrication of debate in the specific context of the complex media ecologiez of cross-platform media enterprises. One way to think about this is that journalists or media personalities operating as part of different platforms address each other in such a way as to produce a micro ‘echo chamber’. I describe this as an ‘apparatus of capture’ as it is a way to use niche or specialist media channels and correlative media platforms to assemble a ‘mass’ audience from the aggregated niche audiences.

This can happen ‘accidentally’ as a ‘real’ news story can emerge that is actual news and to some nonsense propaganda produced for the purposes of shifting, for example, political discourse. An example of this is the current furor over Kyle Sandilands’s comments about a News.com.au journalist. How is this an example?

Original story by Alison Stephenson published on News.com.au

Sandilands abusive on-air comments. Sandilands writes for News Ltd platforms.

Story broke by mUmbrella, a non-News Ltd online media enterprise servicing the advertising and media industries.

There were a number of tweets about the mUmbrella story last night. If I have time when I am not at a conference, then I’ll add links to these.

David Penberthy (@penbo) at the News Ltd publication, The Punch, launches a resolutely vitriolic attack at Sandilands and his on-air behaviour.

News.com.au editor Paul Cogan publishes a ‘breaking’ story at roughly 10am the day after that addresses Sandilands’s comments.

As more is published I shall return to this post and add more detail. It will be interesting to see which media outlets publish stories on this.