The World-Making Power of New Media: Mere Connection? 9780415743655, 9781315813554

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The World-Making Power of New Media

In this new work, Axford seeks to contribute to the development of global theory, particularly where it engages with the contested idea of globality; a concept which musters as consciousness, condition, framework, even system. By examining emergent globalities through the lens of world-making communicative practices and forms, the author demonstrates their transformative social power and underlines the cultural dynamics of globalization. Taking a critical view of much of the current scholarship on emergent globalities, Axford steps outside the rationalist-territorialist conceptions of association and order and takes issue with those who advise there is a widespread “myth” of media globalization. The book examines global communicative connectivity, using digital, or “new” media – especially the Internet – as the prime exemplar of global process. As well as the academic importance of such themes for theory-building, the strategic, “real-world” impacts of communicative connectivity are palpable. Thus, the welter of debate around the influence of the Internet on democracy, democratization, revolt and collective action generally, have real purchase when discussed in relation to the events of the uprisings in MENA, anti-capitalist protests in London and New York and the tribulations of the EU in recent months/years. Using such exemplars, the book assesses claims for the existence and robustness of global society, the significance of cosmopolitan communication and the extent of global consciousness. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of globalization, international relations, and media and cultural studies. Barrie Axford is Professor of Politics at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Routledge Studies in Global and Transnational Politics Series editors: Chris Rumford, Sandra Halperin Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

The core theme of the series is ‘global connectivities’ and the implications and outcomes of global and transnational processes in history and in the contemporary world. The series aims to promote greater theoretical innovation and interdisciplinarity in the academic study of global transformations. The understanding of globalization that it employs accords centrality to forms and processes of political, social, cultural and economic connectivity (and disconnectivity) and relations between the global and the local. The series’ editors see the multi-disciplinary exploration of ‘global connectivities’ as contributing, not only to an understanding of the nature and direction of current global and transnational transformations, but also to recasting the intellectual agenda of the social sciences. The series aims to publish high quality work by leading and emerging scholars critically engaging with key issues in the study of global and transnational politics. It will comprise research monographs, edited collections and advanced textbooks for scholars, researchers, policy analysts and students. For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Global-and-Transnational-Politics/book-series/RSGTP Non-State Challenges in a Re-Ordered World The Jackals of Westphalia Edited by Stefano Ruzza, Anja Jakobi and Charles Geisler The Transnational Politics of Higher Education Contesting the Global/Transforming the Local Edited by Meng-Hsuan Chou, Isaac Kamola and Tamson Pietsch Glocalization A Critical Introduction Victor Roudometof Human Rights and the Reinvention of Freedom Nick Stevenson The World-Making Power of New Media Mere Connection? Barrie Axford

The World-Making Power of New Media Mere Connection? Barrie Axford

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Barrie Axford The right of Barrie Axford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-74365-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-81355-4 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgementsvi Introduction

1

1 Mere connection or mastery without remainder?

6

2 Media and globalization: myths and counter-myths

23

3 Towards a theory of globalization as a theory of communicative connection

58

4 On world-making communicative forms and practices

81

5 “Cricket Lovely Cricket”: the mediatization of sport as emergent globality

102

6 The mediatization of politics and forms of emergent globality

124

7 The mediatization of everything as emergent globality

158

Epilogue183 References188 Index213

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Chris Rumford and Sandra Halperin for asking me to write this book. Sadly Chris died before we had a chance to discuss the full manuscript. It would have been stimulating and beneficial to have had his critically supportive comments, delivered in his unique style. I was lucky enough to traffic some of the themes set out here in an address to Manchester Metropolitan University, in November 2013, as part of its Humanities Public Festival Programme. I would like to thank Dr Paul Kennedy for inviting me to do so. In the same year I was invited to speak at the conference on “Reclaiming Democracy and Social Justice” conference in Windsor, Ontario and this afforded me the opportunity to rehearse my ideas on online activism. In May 2014 I gave a keynote talk to a workshop organized at Oxford Brookes by the Changing Turkey network, which refined my thoughts on world-making practices through communication. I would like to thank Drs Didem Buhari-Gulmez and Seckin Baris Gulmez for affording me that platform. Also in May 2014, I was invited to address the faculty and student body of the Department of International Relations at Middle-Eastern Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey. Here I was able to broach the idea of global studies as a theory of communicative connection. Professor Huseyin Bagci was a thoughtful host. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to Frances, who always thought that my semi-retirement would be observed more in the breach than in substance. Barrie Axford Oxford July 2017

Introduction

This is a book of global theory. Specifically, it essays a theory of global constitution, of globality understood as communicative connection; though not just “mere” connection. As will be seen, the latter appears throughout the book as an important qualifier. Lest the sheer scale of such an enterprise seem too daunting to the prospective reader, let me at once curb any sense of overweening ambition on my part and say that what I am interested in is the ways the inscription technology of the Internet and its social affordances offer exemplary theoretical and empirical purchase on the current state of globality; where that concept is taken as condition, state of consciousness and, with some qualifications, system. Let me be clear here. I am not suggesting that examining digital connection through the Internet – technologies still summarized rather casually as “new” media – is the only way to address the global condition and to grasp all its complexity. Rather, that such canvass permits analytical purchase on a modal facet of globalization today; one that highlights many of the issues that attend scholarship in the current phase of global constitution. As the world turns so, on the face of it, should the remit and temper of that scholarship, though there is always a danger of obsessing just on the current or next big thing. In previous work I argue strongly for scholarship of the global that involves recognition of a transformation in the conduct of affairs in the world and thus in the manner of its constitution; and a consequent transformation in socialscientific knowledge about the world and how such knowledge is garnered and employed (Axford, 2013a, 2017a). But in global scholarship overall there is a built-in social-scientific caution about the threat or promise of ascribed or predicted new times, whatever their hue, and whether or not they require changes to the ways we make social theory and conduct social analysis. Notwithstanding frequent upheavals in the material world, there is often coyness and, occasionally, outright hostility, to ascribing any novelty to the temper, pace and transformative impact of what is happening around us. Global scholarship has always attracted a weight of skepticism of the plus ca change variety when it attempts something more than a description of things as they are, where it ventures too far beyond the confines of methodological nationalism and when it treats what some authors dismiss as a zeitgeist as something considerably more than ephemeral or evanescent (Rosenberg, 2005; Axford, 2017a).

2  Introduction By choosing to focus on the Internet I can do no other than entertain the social importance and the transformative potential of the current moment. Two possible offences intrude here. The first is the sin of presentism, while the second takes the whole notion of mediatization, and certainly of media-centrism, as a variant on the vexed theme of Western-centrism; let alone the old saw of technological determinism. I plead not guilty to the offence of presentism, a sin certainly found in hyperglobalist scholarship and polemics (Rosenberg, 2005). Study of the global should never abrogate history in pursuit of the claim that the last decades of the late twentieth century and beyond constitute a complete rupture with preceding modernity, and witnessed (continues to witness) the emergence of a completely novel global ontology. At the same time, it does no service to ambitious social science to downplay the world-making and world-altering importance of events, processes and institutions whether or not they are linked to technology. Globalization is not a historically linear process and its appearance, intensity and extensiveness are variable over time. Neither is it a telos wherein more-or-less obvious processes beget an absolute condition of globality as a perfect or ruinous endgame, depending on your point of view. On the second count, and as we shall see, mediatization is a contested notion. But with only the smallest degree of equivocation at this point it can be understood as the processes through which different communication media play an increasing part in the framing and constitution of everyday experiences and wider cultural, economic and political scripts (Hjarvard, 2008; Castells, 1996; Hepp, 2015). Without giving way to technological determinism – while no doubt committing a hostage to fortune – it might be said that new communication technologies frame how we engage with them and each other by promoting and embodying the value of speed, immediacy, modal interactivity and bespoke consumption as cultural aesthetics (Castells, 1996, 2000). Globally, this is a variable and incomplete process, one that is easily mistaken for the globalization of the Western cultural account and the dominance of Western culture industries and media giants. In fact, as I say later in the book, the picture is increasingly multi-centred and kaleidoscopic. If there are many globalizations and multiple modernities (Berger and Huntington, 2005; Nederveen Pieterse, 2013), so there are plural mediatizations (Gunaratne, 2010; Nederveen Pieterse, 2013). This book is a product of some twenty-five years of reflection on concepts with a global root, and in what follows I draw on that body of work quite extensively (Axford, 1995, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007a, 2012, 2013a; Axford and Huggins, 2011). In particular I have been guided by a small number of precepts about the global and about the most fruitful way to conduct global studies, and these are set out in chapter one. Chief among them is the need for a multidimensional approach to study, where that embraces globalization as process, globalism as ideology and globality as condition, consciousness, even system. Such an approach makes no a priori assumption that one sphere of existence or social force is anterior to, or immanently more powerful for, explanatory purposes than another. But to be frank, at this point my devotion to a multidimensional account does get a little skewed. I confess to promoting a culture-sensitive understanding of

Introduction 3 global constitution and I take the realms of media and, more generally, communication, as key to an understanding of the imbrications of culture and structure in imagined and material worlds. The ways in which individual lives articulate with more encompassing structures – cultural or otherwise – are, or should be, a major focus of global studies. Yet research on globalization has been dominated by structural and material explanatory accounts, especially where knowledge about the global originates in the disciplines of political science and economics. For all the intellectual traction under the rubric of constructivism, matters of subjectivity and consciousness have tended to play second fiddle in much global theory. At points throughout the past twenty-five years I have inflected some of my work on the global with an address to the ways in which media, especially “new” media, affect social constitution (Axford, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007a, 2009, 2013a; Axford and Huggins, 1996, 1997, 2010). Increasingly over this period, I became convinced that the mediatization of politics, sociality, perhaps of everything, must have consequences for the dynamics, shape and demeanour of global constitution. Of course, “must have consequences” is a cautious and somewhat oblique way to introduce what I consider to be a concept with considerable analytical traction. That caution stems from the continuing debates on the definition and (meta) theoretical value of the concept from within media and communication studies, and because I do not want to be found guilty of the very sins I have so recently excoriated, those of uni-dimensional reasoning, privileging direct and linear causation and predicting determinate outcomes (Hepp, 2014). For all that, and caution aside, when we talk about mediatization (and cognate ideas such as media cultures), the argument has to be not only that culture is made up of communication processes, but that all cultural expression (at the least) is now mediated by communication media. It is here that any unnecessary or preemptive abrogation of history should be avoided, for the mediatization of culture has a long history. To take an obvious example, so central had different forms of print and broadcast media become to definitions of society and societal values that by the late twentieth century the sheer ubiquity of what was still called mass media gave shape to any and all definitions of publicness and of the public sphere. Regardless of one’s normative response to what is taking place, the global spread of new inscription technologies in the guise of the Internet carries the same burden now. What is generally called globalization – the making of the world into a single imagined space, through a dialectic of sameness and difference – moves to different impulses across history. As I noted above, sometimes the dynamic expansion of social systems to become inter-societal and global systems can lend a teleological cast to how these shifts are interpreted. But the dynamics of spatial and temporal compression slated by all theorists of global constitution are better understood as an historical and spatial dialectic of sameness and difference, not leading to a determinate end. The task for the observer is to identify and interrogate the forces that inflect that dialectic in different moments and phases. And if one were to identify different manifestations of the mediatization of social life as key to that understanding, that would indeed elevate the concept to the status of a societal meta-process, one deserving of large-scale, long-term analysis. My

4  Introduction contribution is far more modest, while hinting at greater explanatory compass (Lunt and Livingstone, 2013). My cautious treatment of the latest wave of mediatization as a modal, but irresolute process with indeterminate outcomes, fits with what I see as those irresolute ontologies I call emergent globalities; ones fashioned by novel communicative forms and practices. As I start to explain in chapter one, the notion of emergent globality itself syncs with the sense of an irresolute world, one comprised of increasingly complex relationalities between subjects, networks and borders, the leitmotif of a globalized world. This world, this communicative world of emergent globalities, is being made, in part, through what I call world-making practices – through networking, global scapes and the ubiquity of what Karin Knorr-Cetina designates as scopic media (Hand and Sandywell, 2002; Appadurai, 1993). In turn, these practices are revealed in a variety of empirical domains, and these I exemplify below. Finally, I should acknowledge the enduringly normative cast of much of what will be rehearsed in the following pages. In a lot of research on global constitution, empirical and normative positions are elided, both intentionally and by default. Indeed the very idea of media logic, much abroad in these debates, quickly assumes a telos, and often an unedifying one. It will be important to acknowledge the normative framing and interpretation of many of the arguments canvassed below. The book unfolds thus: In the first chapter I  rehearse my core precepts for global scholarship more fully. Here I suggest use of complexity theory as appropriate for the study of emergent globalities. This adoption takes note of its willingness to accommodate turbulence and flux as social dynamics (good) and its less than robust grasp of history and agency (bad). I then interrogate the attribution “new” media before introducing the contested notion of mediatization as a way of distancing my argument from any dalliance with the notion of media “logic” or of media-centrism as implying an over-determined global ontology. In the next chapter on media and globalization, which is the longest in the book, I begin by delineating key features of the cultural economy of globalization and the importance of fully incorporating culture to the explanatory account of emergent globalities. The plea for a multidimensional theory of global constitution is then set against some powerful strands of theorizing and empirical research on the relationships between media and globalization. Some of these are rightly critical of any kind of media-centrism, yet they too readily dismiss the theoretical significance of the idea of mediatized cultures and societies, and thus find what are actually key changes in the demeanour of actors and structures, less than remarkable, or already determined. In chapter three, I elaborate my thinking on the nature of globalization, making a plea for understanding that embraces process, consciousness and institutionalization in order to shift the locus of debate beyond “mere connection”. Here the concept of emergent globalities is developed further, along with the claim that it is vital to understand the constitution of globalities as indeterminate and volatile. I develop my argument that these attributes of emergent globalities are

Introduction 5 better understood by employing aspects of complexity theory, as this is particularly suited to the analysis of turbulence and social flux. In turn this shift allows me to attend to both the communicative capacities of society (including global society) and the scope for agency seen in the entanglements of indifferent global technologies with subjectivities. Having established that the qualities of emergent globalities reside in both connection and consciousness, in chapter four I proceed to identify different kinds (and spheres) of world-making made up of communicative forms and practices; which taken together, though sometimes independently, configure varieties of emergent globality. The chapter ends with a summary of necessary and sufficient indicators of emergent globalities and the way they map to different kinds of world-making practice. In the remainder of the book, chapters five, six and seven, I describe and analyse features of emergent globalities constituted through world-making practices as these are seen in three communicative and empirical domains. These are the globalization and the mediatization of sport; the mediatization and transformation of political space and activism and the globalization and mediatization of everyday lives – possibly of everything – along with the prospects for a posthuman future. All have occupied my attention over recent decades and provide an opportunity to flesh out the abstractions of the earlier part of the book. In the last of these I explore the imbrications of personal and global and of human and machine more fully than earlier in the book. To do so I draw on evidence provided by the juggernaut of Big Data, by various iterations of the often bruited “information society”, and through reference to intimacy, trust and community as these are practised online. It would be wrong to describe any of these empirical sites as seminal, and they are certainly not meant to be representative of a larger universe of possible domains. What they do provide is a fascinating and very rich source of observation about the intricacies of personal and global connection, consciousness and institutionalization. To reiterate, I am not claiming that my chosen empirical domains exhaust the sites at which emergent globalities can be observed, or that the study of globality per se is totally comprised of the systemic qualities and subjectivities seen in communicative connection; only that we can gain profound insights into a world in process from such address and learn more about its constitution through the interaction of human agency and seemingly indifferent technologies. One final health warning is appropriate. Journeys to the empirical hinterland of any area of research hardly ever result in unequivocal affirmation of the theoretical premises and – if such exist – the hypotheses on offer. The empirical domains I traverse in this book are just as obdurate and as maddeningly complex; but they allow me to eke out my claims with what I hope is appropriate inferential parsimony. I end the book with a brief epilogue on the inferences that can be drawn from this exploration of global constitution through media.

1 Mere connection or mastery without remainder?1

Introduction In a New York Times article written in 2012, the cultural observer Sherry Turkle warns, “(w)e live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection” (see also, Turkle, 2015). I open with this heartfelt, though by no means unusual, lament because it is a staple of critics who deplore what they see as the debilitating effects of digital culture on social intercourse – in Turkle’s case, on the art and joys of conversation – and because it evokes some of the unease felt about the consequences of digital lives more generally2 (see also Krotoski, 2012). In a world that is always connected, or has the technical capacity so to be, “mere connection” by way of messaging, texting, tweets and posts; and let’s not be coy, through the whole panoply of digital address to others, lacks richness and colour; or so she claims. Moreover, it must yield only ersatz intimacy. We look inwards instead of communing and, being myopic and a tad narcissistic, betray a key part of what it is to be human and authentically social.3 Nor have we wrought a benign solitude that is conducive for our personal well-being; still less contributed to a sense of community. On the contrary, we risk social atomization, loneliness or extreme individuation; and all because we practice only instrumental, distanced connection and largely phatic exchanges (see also, Slevin, 2000). It is worth noting that Turkle’s critique of the aesthetics of digital communication pale beside the vision of a completely “datafied” and post-human social landscape now bruited by some journalists, novelists, data-scientists and historians, and glossed with a hint of conspiracy theory when applied to the world of politics, or alarm when the economic and social impact of a roboticized workforce are predicted (see, for example, Harari, 2017; the Economist, September 1, 2016; Morozov, February 19, 2017; Cadwalladr, 2017).4 The normative component of these dystopias, as well as even more robust versions, will resurface in subsequent chapters, along with contrary arguments. But, perhaps counter-intuitively, the idea of mere connection and its use to describe (and sometimes decry) the mechanics of globalization, strikes me as a good starting point for a book on global theory that fits today’s world. For all that, I  do not mean to endorse Turkle’s jeremiad in anything like its entirety. Rather, I am

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 7 convinced that to understand the vagaries of global constitution, pace John Urry, we do have to employ a theory of connection; though not of “mere” connection and just catalogued exchange (2003; Featherstone, 2006). Of axial importance to the ontology of globalization’s current moment – perhaps for all its moments and periods – is communicative connection. All communication, even the phatic variety, carries some content and expresses subjectivity; and because of this agency, if not human agency, is ever-present, something often forgotten in studies of globalization that are over-reliant on structural explanation and material factors (Scott, 2015; Fuchs, 2013).5 That said, communication is also a structural feature of what musters as world society and, for the careful observer, a bridge over what still deploys as the analytical chasm between agency and structure (Luhmann, 1982). But even the critique of usual science implied in these statements is problematic when discussing the constitution of digital worlds and of computing power that promises both a change in the basis of knowledge production and in ways of organizing life while addressing, inter-alia, practical social, security and health problems (Latour, 2000). Here we are dealing with an epistemological shift in how the world is understood and an ontological shift when describing its features. While it is a contentious statement, focusing on the current moment repays attention because of its seminal cast and particular flavor, as these are exemplified by the inscription technologies and affordances of digital – here read Internet – connection, and visible in what Peggy Levitt calls “circulation cultures” (2016, 144).6 Such features are typical of Mark Poster’s “second media age” (1995). Of course, there is a whiff here of the presentism much deplored in critiques of global theory; but I can do no other given the recent provenance of the Internet. It may be that the impact of previous moments and periods of innovation in communication technologies has been profound and spatially and socially disruptive; but the Internet is very much a new kid on the block in this regard; its promise and threat scarcely realized. At all events, to deliver any such theory, or something resembling a convincing analytical framework around the interplay of communication and globalization, global scholarship must challenge and even step outside some of the canons of usual social science. Only then will any transformative promise be realized. That promise turns on two considerations. The first surmises a transformation in the conduct of affairs in the world and thus in the manner of its constitution. The second envisages and encourages a consequent transformation in social-scientific knowledge about the world and in how such knowledge is garnered and used (Axford, 2013a, 2016a). As Fritz the Cat once said, albeit of rather different matters, these claims make for “heavy traffic” (1973)7 mainly because they challenge the taken-for-granted status of disciplinary divides, the ontological certainty of foundational concepts such as territoriality, along with the idea of space as a timeless, static container of social action (Lefebvre, 1974; Brenner and Eldon, 2009), and because they question the sheer obduracy of received wisdom about signifiers like individuality, identity, society, culture, community and intimacy. That said, the task is to acknowledge and assess the contribution of new inscription

8  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? technologies to social change of global scope and yet remain skeptical, or agnostic, about the complete shock of the new, or the necessary socially disjunctive power of communication media. If this is, as Manuel Castells opines, the “internet age” (2012), a claim that keeps on giving when judged by the volume of literature written in both support and critique, it is one still reliant on, or glossed by, a host of other factors that influence social constitution. Leaving aside Turkle’s normative cri de coeur and aesthetic fastidiousness, “mere connection” does not pass muster as an adequate definition of globalization or the complex ontologies of the global. A key theme running through this book is the need to examine globalization as process alongside globality as condition; charting the intertwinings – the imbrications – of connectivity, consciousness and institutionalization in global constitution. Globalization seen as connectivity is a very inclusive concept, but connection and exchange, while necessary, are not sufficient indicators of globality. The latter resides in both practices and consciousness, while the very idea of institutionalization points to those cultural and organizational features of social ontology that frame action and consciousness. The same strictures apply to my call to locate globalization, and to construe globality, in a theory of communicative connection. The world now stands somewhere between a realist set and a space of flows; while global studies still fights to shake free of the trammels of disciplinary scholarship and methodological nationalism.8 Here my argument is foregrounded in earlier published work (1996, 2007, 2011, 2013a, 2016a) that tried to elaborate a social science of globality to disparage mechanistic accounts of global connection and the sense that globalization is a reified structure, with actors similarly reified as more-or-less powerful agents always in tension or accommodation with the overarching frame. In that dualism each possesses immanent and immutable qualities. The scholarship of globality that appears in this book develops a number of components that challenge these simple assumptions and convenient dualisms.9 First, the idea of transformation is precocious, but too easily abandoned in work that either dismisses globalization, or tries to normalize it under one or another rubric of usual science. For my purposes, the charge in transformative accounts of a growing, possibly modal, globality is that they see no theoretically debilitating contradiction in pointing to the systematic oneness of the world, possibly in matters of communication and consciousness, and recognizing that reflexive agents experience these things in different ways to enact them differently and with diverse consequences. Second, the idea of globality opens up, or should open up, scholarship to new ways of thinking about the limits of disciplinarity, about the sanctity of discrete levels of analysis and the worth of simplistic dualisms; including the venerable antinomy of agency and structure. Third, is recognition that increasing facets of social life are identifiable and explainable only through reference to global affordances – notably communicative affordances – consciousness and the enactment of global relations; in other words, to globality.

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 9 Fourth, is that any “order” in the global system so construed is not evidence of an organic unity, or the result of a functional fit between parts of a system, with each enshrined in the dogma that social, biological and physical systems have to be ordered. Rather, I depict a negotiated and contingent condition arising from the articulation of situated and mobile subjects and structures with more encompassing global ones. The growing density and extensiveness of these articulations and connections carry the possibility of systemic dis-order – and certainly of turbulence – as much as they conform to the requirements of a functional order. Obviously, this is a matter of consciousness as well as of connection. Processes of globalization not only make it more difficult for local and societal systems and networks of actors to effect closure, but they actually open up new imaginaries, “new practices and new institutions” (Friedman, 1993, 217). Fifth, critical studies of globality must demonstrate a concern with reflexivity. This, as James Mittelman notes (2004, 24), is “an awareness of the relationship between knowledge and specific material and political conditions”. To be reflexive in global scholarship is to take note of the historicity of globalization in its different moments and periods. As a result, both presentism – the sin of treating globalization as completely de novo –and seeing it as a teleological process played throughout world history are avoided. Reflexivity also refers to the interplay between acting in the world and awareness that actions have effects on the world, as well as on knowledge about it. This insight has purchase in debate about whether globalization is the cause or consequence of social change and cautions that, while researchers need to be clear about what version of causality they are investigating, there is no simple model of cause and effect at work. Sixth, globalization research should aspire to a through-going interdisciplinarity. Social life cannot be partitioned easily or usefully into discrete zones of experience, and nor should its study. The analysis offered here demonstrates that, good intentions or not, this is a hard row to hoe and yet it is essential for a critical understanding of the global. For, as Bill Robinson notes about disciplinary and conceptual bunkers, the “opposition of political economy to cultural analysis . . . is a false dualism that obscures rather than elucidates the complex reality of global society, insofar as our material existence as humans is always, of necessity, only possible through the construction of a symbolic order and systems of meaning” (2005, 16) – reflexivity again. When examining the place of communication media in global constitution this is a telling caution. Seventh, is the need for a truly multidimensional approach to globalization – globality; one that does not start from the a priori assumption that one sphere of existence is anterior to or immanently more powerful for explanatory purposes than another. That said, I am drawn to a more culture-sensitive take on global constitution. But even so, it is obvious that treating cultural and economic factors as mutually constitutive, and their relationship as reflexively ordered, will require stepping outside the usual confines of much disciplinary research and normative/ ideological world-views, thus risking the jibes of true believers. With this caveat in mind, some key aspects and limitations of scholarship on the relationships between globalization and media are examined in chapter two.

10  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? Eighth, the intuitively appealing idea of mutual constitution of structures and agents needs to be given more legs through middle-range empirical studies of the kind undertaken by Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson in their study of globalization and football (2007). In the latter parts of this book, I exemplify global constitution through attention to world-making practices involving communicative connection and what is labelled mediatization, in various empirical domains.10 The burden of this address is to examine the entanglements of what have been described as “indifferent technologies” with subjectivities through a dialectic of mutual constitution (Hird, 2010). Ninth, much of the above can be entertained and prosecuted through more rigorous attention to what may be the most credible meta-construction of a globalized world; namely the dialectic of identities, borders and networks (or lookalikes for them). A dialectical approach identifies how dimensions of social reality may be analytically separate, yet constitutive of each other as aspects of a more “encompassing process” (Robinson, 2005, 17). In this regard, communication and connectivity inform a raft of scholarship on global themes such as sport, terrorism, commodity chains, financial networks, elite mobility, transnational activism and “virtual” intimacy. This overall approach has three telling advantages. First of all, it grasps the complex ontologies of a globalized world. There is no attempt to root the argument either in analytically separate methodological nationalisms or in the kind of data used in standard cross-national comparisons, both of which just reproduce usual science applied to the global (Caselli, 2008). Second, the dialectic modifies the language of discrete scales and admits the possibility, indeed the existence, of multi-scalar and a-scalar modalities and identities. At the same time, the glocal nature of at least some of these new modalities – being neither local nor global – further challenges simple analytical dualisms. Because of these advantages, thirdly, it offers some purchase on ways to theorize and to investigate the imbrications of personal and global, long a goal of interdisciplinary theorists and proponents of multidimensional studies of globality. Finally, globalization as either promise or spectre always carries a powerful normative charge, and the conflation of normative and empirical-analytical approaches to the study of globalization is something of a feature of research in the field. This does not mean that there is, or can be, a neat disjunction between the two. However understood, globalization takes place in the phenomenal world and its trammels shape consciousness; while affect as well as cognition, infuses consciousness and action. Social science must pay due attention to these factors in assessing the promise and threat of new worlds established and sustained through communication.

Communication and mediatization as axial features of globalization Of course, what constitute the axial features of globalization in this or any other historical moment is a matter for debate and empirical analysis. Attention to such

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 11 detail is important to produce a more fine-grained account of what might otherwise appear – and has often been presented – as an amorphous, even a monolithic, process of secular integration. Most accounts of globalization as process usually decant into a consideration of its axial features that, in turn, permit examination of types of globalization. George Modelski gives us a glimpse of some of these axial features (Modelski at al., 2008). He describes a multidimensional process involving the expansion of world commerce and capital movements, political globalization ranging over institutional innovations from imperial forms of rule to democratic national and inter/supra national institutions, the rise of transnational social and political movements, world-wide cultural trends and the emergence of a sense of world-wide community and public opinion. These processes have not played out over the same historical time span, nor do they move along identical trajectories, but together they provide what Modelski calls a “process structure” which is leading, or may lead, to a new “level” of world organization; though “level” is not a happy term in this context. With some variations in the sort of timescales envisaged, the same features are rehearsed in most literature on globalization, so that in principle it should be possible to map historically the emerging characteristics of a globalized world and to examine its relational, even its systemic qualities, but without invoking teleology (Axford, 1996). But what is identified as an axial feature, especially where it devolves to a consideration of what I will later elaborate as world-making practices, is fraught with problems about the empirical reliability of evidence, and furrowed by normative concerns. So in turn, Leslie Sklair offers a three-fold typology of types of globalization, with the empirical referents quite different in each case and the analytical weight placed on different components also variable (2007). The trinity comprises internationalist, transnationalist and globalist perspectives, with the second preferred both on theoretical/methodological grounds and – because it depicts a contested and pluralistic world-historical project – as a normative position. He further distinguishes between generic globalization, capitalist globalization and alternative globalizations, and these categories display different forms of transnational practice that, for him and, with a rather different gloss, for me, are the most succinct expressions of global process. Generic globalization should not be conflated with, or for definitional purposes subsumed under, capitalist globalization. Undoubtedly, says Sklair, capitalist globalization is the “dominant global system at the start of the 21st century”, but generic globalization processes – what he calls the “post-colonial moment”, the emergence of transnational social spaces and the beginning of new forms of cosmopolitan practice – have much greater emancipatory potential for excluded or marginalized groups. As part of this composition, and usefully for the argument contemplated here, he also includes – as one must – the revolution in electronic communication seen in ubiquitous digital information and communication technologies. These generic elements are producing irreversible dynamics that may be a facet of capitalist expansion, but also move to implied autonomous “logics” – also a very problematic term when discussing media effects – that are susceptible to intervention by counter-cultural and counter-hegemonic forces. The final

12  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? category of “alternative globalizations” is no more than a normative trope allowing Sklair to introduce the possibility of anti or non-capitalist paths to globality, especially that of socialism (2007).11 As we shall see in chapter two, there are dangers in treating any form of mediatization as seminal in the constitution of globality, because the charge of mediacentrism weighs heavily.12 The very idea of globalization presumes integration, but some hyperglobalist accounts are too quick to privilege the definitive causal power of particular forces, including those of global media. These days no serious student of globalization assumes that processes of integration constitute a neat, unblemished teleology, whereby borders and the identities tied to them become nugatory, and territoriality as the ideational and organizational basis for political and economic life is in demise. As I rehearse at various points in the following pages, globalization is a contradictory and sometimes non-linear set of processes that simultaneously delivers sameness and difference. Arguably, the integrative trend is secular, but its dynamics over time are multidimensional and variable, wherever observed. This caveat alone should temper any urge to media-centrism when looking for signs of global integration, or when identifying its axial features in different domains. At its most encompassing in the present conjuncture, the extent and intensity of global integration, of actual and incipient globality, is traceable by way of eight trends, each visible in the phenomenal world. These are not discrete and, as always, the devil lies in the detail of their interpolation, or else their disjunction (Appadurai, 1990, 1993). The empirical trends – each a summary of more complex and cognate issues and themes – are: closer integration of the world economy; manifest and underlying crisis in the liberal global order; the transformation of production systems and labour markets; the media revolution and the mediatization of social life; an increasingly modal cultural economy of speed and immediacy; the spread of democracy as a global script; the changing character of, and variable scope for, instruments of global governance, and finally, the making of a putative world society, along with embedding global consciousness (Axford, 2016a). Scope for both synergy and tension resides in the relationships between these trends and tendencies, but taken together they underscore the multidimensional nature of global processes and point to the importance of cultural as well as economic and political factors in global constitution. In this regard, the significance of processes of communicative connection and mediatization are pervasive and will be the focus of this study. Put simply my argument is that the emergence of a global cultural economy is increasingly reliant on digital information and communication systems and the opportunities they afford to construct global structures – what Saskia Sassen calls “self-evidently global institutions” (2006, XIV, 2007) – and various “microstructures”, as well as meaning structures and subjectivities fashioned through various forms of digital media and the reflexive engagement of agents with them (Knorr-Cetina, 2007). The long-term significance of such developments for social practice resides in the reflexive use of technologies whose key attribute challenges the very idea of

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 13 place and boundaries and promotes the values of immediacy, interactivity, circulation and bespoke consumption as cultural aesthetics and lifestyle imperatives. For the most part this does not occasion angst for the technologies – and older technical cultures – we may have discarded, or which are in retreat. We might romance the idea that “video killed the radio star”, but the truth is less visceral; disappointingly mundane. For it is true that some technologies in demise leave scarcely a ripple to mark their passing. As a case in point, CDs are all but extinct in the download world and streaming culture we now inhabit, while three-dimensional television (3DTV) also looks like a passing fad. For the most part, and nostalgia aside, there is a casual accommodation to such changes, though this may disguise a deeper cultural and emotional shift; perhaps not over CDs, but in terms of the impact of technological changes more generally on consciousness and the ontological certainties that structure our lives (Connolly, 2002). In this regard, the embrace of “new” media technologies and formats in everyday life through the use of smartphones, apps, email, search engines, blogs, vlogs and social networking sites are more than means of communication and sources of information. They are investments in culturally sanctioned lifestyle choices; the stuff of a mediatized and globalized cultural economy. This too is heavy traffic,13 if not for adaptable citizens and consumers, then for social analysts and various apologists for things as they are, or were. Focus on these and other facets of communicative connection through digital media affords important insights into how a social system is possible and how it subsists. For all the talk of communication being a systemic feature of globality, in this regard it is best to avoid an uncompromising view of what constitutes a system and how it reproduces itself, while acknowledging that social relations and exchanges can display qualities of systemness, with communication playing a key role in such structuration. Perhaps the most telling complaint mounted by critics of the attempt to bruit systems analysis for use in the study of globalization is that the term implies closure. Systems are contained and delimited; they interact with their environments in limited and manageable ways, enacting a social universe that is ordered and in which boundaries are kept. But globalization and worldmaking processes are better understood as “boundary effacing”, to use Ulrich Beck and Nathan Sznaider’s phrase (2006, 18) and thus demonstrate much more complex and unpredictable relationality. As I will examine more fully in chapters three and four, exploring complex and sometimes unpredictable relationalities pushes me somewhat in the direction of complexity theory, though with some refinements about the role of agency and the nature of systemness14 (White, 1965/2008). Recourse to the temper and analytical frame of complexity theory challenges the neat sense of globality as mastery without remainder, of processes obviously complete or else describing a linear trajectory to a determinate end (Baker, 2013). The lesson is that we cannot achieve “perfect transparency” in our understanding of globalization, but that we should not desist in efforts to generate what John Urry calls “productive metaphors” for getting to grips with post-societal, or incipiently post-societal, worlds (see Urry, 2002, 58).

14  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? This approach is particularly suited to a study of communication and globalization. Under this rubric globalization commutes from being an over-determined effect of functional imperatives or neo-realist accommodation in the society of states, to a “heterogeneous field of world-making practices”, notably communicative practices (Hand and Sandywell, 2002, 213, and see chapter four of this book). These practices have a powerful, even necessary, emergent quality that is revealed in the imbrications of local and global, through the interplay of various scapes and contingent glocal actors and through various “networks, fluids and governance institutions” (Urry, 2003, 103; see also Appadurai, 2006 and Robertson, 2007a). I repeat this caution in chapter four. The approach will enable me to capture the indeterminateness of the processes under scrutiny and the mutual constitution of the actors and structures so engaged. Here, consciousness-of-the-world and embeddedness in it are factors in the constitutive account and modify an over-reliance on abstract processes and the ontological givenness of actors and structures. As Brian Arthur related over two decades ago, in dealing with global systemness we are, of course, dealing with material worlds and their ruttedness (1994) but worlds increasingly characterized by circulation, velocity, fluidity and turbulence. A  world so structured is better seen as “differentiated and polycentric” (Jessop, 1990, 320) and displaying no single integrative dynamic or logic that subsumes all others. Yet this approach still admits the global as the key point of reference for social analysis and employs concepts – connectivity, communication, institutionalization and consciousness – that must underpin any theory of emergent globality, of at least relative statelessness, and perhaps quintessentially, of boundary-less space (Albert et al., 2001; Urry, 2002; Scholte, 2005). In chapter three I introduce globality as condition, consciousness and even system as a necessary rounding out of concepts with a global root and as a way of challenging the mechanistic depiction of globalization as simply process – mere connection.15 I also marry the concept to the idea of emergence to realize the composite of emergent globality. Emergence, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy muses, is “a notorious philosophical term of art” (2002) but one that does service here because it syncs with and informs the sense of a world of increasingly complex relationalities; one in which novel communicative forms and practices continue to appear, not constituted by, or parasitic upon, more enduring structures and relations. Of course, emergent entities may still arise out of more fundamental, or entrenched, properties of social constitution and yet are novel or irreducible with respect to them and their allegedly immanent features. These I take to be key properties of global constitution and important facets of the tangled circuitry of global forms and practices. The Internet in its “human” and hyper-linked guise as the World-Wide Web is at least a metaphor for such a world, and perhaps a model (Urry, 1998, 7; Castells, 1996). As John Urry stated, it is a system that enables extensive horizontal communication, and one still able to evade or qualify control by national jurisdictions and presumptively global corporate interests; though many would disagree. Despite claims made about the re-nationalization of the Web by governments running scared of contentious

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 15 politics in the shape of portable dissent, and the market-driven segmentation and limitation of its “open” architectures, mobile, networked connection still has a liminal and dangerous feel. Depending on the focus of study these attributes can be read as both approbation and criticism. Overall, as Urry also noted, it remains “a metaphor for social life as fluid” (1998, 7). The emergent properties of the fluid Internet are a product of its complexity. This complexity comprises a plethora of networks – of people, technological hardware (or machines), but also software, programmes, text in different forms and images – in which, as Urry also notes, “quasi-subjects and quasi-objects are mixed together in new hybrid forms” (1998, 7). The networks are not solid or stable and the hybrid forms themselves are mutable, though no less potent for that quality. Understood in this way, globalization – globality – cannot be taken for granted, or seen as over-determined. Rather, as Urry argues, “it is disordered, full of paradox and the unexpected, and of irreversible and juxtaposed complexity” (2002, 58; Dillon, 2000).

“New” media and communicative connectivity So, my argument will be that a focus on what are rather loosely called “new” media – Internet technologies and platforms – allows us to examine the structuration and functioning of emergent globalities, and that this focus points up hyper-typical features of current globality.16 The term hyper-typical is a convenient, though somewhat polemical, attribution for a varied set of processes that, as Barry Sandywell writes, “generate extreme versions of the real without any origin or stable ground”, which syncs with my sense of the lightness and indeterminacy of emergent globalities (2011, 17). Obviously the expression owes a debt to Baudrillard’s reference to “hyperreality”, though perhaps without his angst (1983). But to begin, let me say a little more on terminology. It goes without saying that there is no clear-cut disjunction between “old” and “new” media in any given span of technological and cultural change. In 1999, Richard Bolter and David Grusin argued persuasively that notionally “old” media forms such as print newspapers have been “remediated” (and sometimes resuscitated) by incorporating the very technologies and platforms casually deemed to be replacing them; while “new” media are grafted on to older media formats to produce hybrid forms of communication.17 In the case of media organizations, this may be less an evolutionary process of adaptation – though it is that too – than a commercial imperative. When the businessman Jeff Bezos took over the American Newspaper The Washington Post in 2013 he summed up the economic case thus: “The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no newsgathering costs”. So the role of new, hybrid media in constituting cultures of circulation has to be set in a wider context. Marketization in the guise of ideological and practical neoliberalism is the obvious contender, along with the cultural economy of consumerism it has spawned. But just as media-centrism is a

16  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? besetting sin, so must we caution against the reductionist thesis that media effects are only a sub-set of capitalist dynamics – and thus ruinous – or in some less obvious way technologically determined. The implications of this debate for theories of the relationship between media and globalization are explored in chapter two. So, to guard against the casual logic of plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose, let’s unpack the idea of “newness” a little. Modernizing processes involving changes in technologies have always played a cardinal role in the destruction and reconstruction of cultures, including collective memories. Because of this legacy, discussing the role of new media in cultures that are now thoroughly mediatized must entertain, though also question, the possibility of major shifts in cultural production, consumption and exchange. This too will be a substantial theme in chapter two, when debates about the part played in social transformation by (mediatized) culture are rehearsed. As to “new”, the attribution certainly carries a whiff of dislocation that is both apposite and yet frequently exaggerated. Remediation is one thing, but in all engagements between communication technologies and users of technology, the unremitting presentism of new digital media runs up against the obduracy of pre-existing identities and world-views and the reflexive qualities of agents, even if one allows the postmodernist conceit that all identities are malleable – plus ca change. Of course, such engagements may be dramatic, even cathartic but – exposure to social pathologies like Web trolling and the threat of routine surveillance noted – they are unlikely to be totally discommoding. Instead, growing affordances are embraced and any downside often shrugged off or accepted by users in a rough-and-ready cost-benefit calculus.18 And the default outcome is routinely predictable; that users are unlikely to experience new information and communication technologies as dislocating and threatening because they are so easily woven into the fabric of everyday living. For all that, there are qualities of new media that encapsulate the idea, or express the potential, for social transformation. In an early foray, Ben Barber lists these as modal interactivity, immediacy and resistance to hierarchical mediation (1998, 3). On some accounts these qualities, typically attributed to the Internet and World-Wide Web, and certainly to Web-2,19 are, or are likely to be, corrosive of structures and identities “sustained by spatial containment, anchored by physical sites and reproduced by shared interactions in some particular built environment” (Luke, 1998, 23).20 Most technologies described as “new media” are digital, with the characteristics of being “manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive” (New Media Institute, 2014). In this book, the burden of address is “Internet based platforms that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content using either mobile or web-based technologies” (Margetts et al., 2016, 5). Wikipedia, itself a virtual avatar of the forms and processes under consideration in the shape of “online goods” (Margetts et al., 2016), has it thus; “. . . new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content”. Another promise of new media is

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 17 “democratization” of the creation, publishing, distribution and consumption of media content. What distinguishes new media from traditional media is the digitizing of content into bits of electronically transmitted information. There is also the dynamic aspect of content production using new media, which can be done in real time. As Margetts et al also say, these days, what is mustered under the generic label “social media” is the way that most users experience the Internet. The latter affords access to blogs and micro-blogs (Twitter, Weibo); social-networking sites (Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat and Alibaba); content-sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr; sites that specialize in the production of online goods, like Baidu Baike and Wikipedia; social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, along with the virtual worlds of online gaming (Second Life; Sim City). Even allowing for remediation and hybrid forms, what distinguishes new media so construed from old media is of more than passing concern. Media genres demonstrate both generic and particular qualities, and these may vary around whether the genre promotes monological or dialogical communication (Thompson, 1995). The pristine version of the latter relies on face-to-face interaction and, to that extent, is unmediated. Our focus here is on mediated communication, and mediated communication is a property of both old and new media. It involves use of a mode of communication – whether letter, fax or email – and an associated technical medium – for example, paper, electrical cables, satellite technology – to enable exchange between actors separated in space and time. We can further distinguish old from new media in ways that I call systemic, technological, aesthetic and, perhaps more controversially, in terms of logic (Axford, 2001). Systemic factors refer to the different organizational principles of old and new media. The old “order” was based primarily on national systems of broadcasting and national print media, a high incidence of state ownership, funding and regulation, limited availability of broadcast spectrums and – albeit variably – a public service ethos. “New” media by contrast inhabit and invest a cultural economy that is distinguished by transnational, even global communication, while still showing a great deal of local variation in terms of regulation, content and style. It is characterized by privatization and the deregulation of technical and legal barriers to ownership, production, content generation and programming. In place of spectrum scarcity there is spectrum abundance and ever-greater bandwidth. Finally, the public service ethos has been eroded by the growing marketization of media content and output and the valorization of consumerism as the global ideology of choice – at least in the global north (Axford, 2001). Technological differences are, if anything, more obvious; although remediation sometimes masks the disjunctive impact of digitization as the means to distinguish between types of media and media effects. Moreover, some systemic changes have been precipitated by technological innovations. For example, the advent of social media on Web-2 platforms fuelled both the desire for bespoke consumption and provided the technical means to realize it, as well as lowering the cost of access. Exemplary aspects of this change have been the revolution in television viewing habits of mainly younger age groups (though increasingly across the age range)

18  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? and the success of online shopping, online house and apartment swaps, and online betting. The digital encoding of sound, text and, increasingly, images (both static and moving), the use of wi-fi and breakthroughs in switching technology, are all technical features of the new media genre and these, along with earlier developments in satellite and latterly drone technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI), have made transnational communication routine and easy. To reiterate, aesthetic differences between old and new media reside in those qualities of the latter that promote immediacy and interactivity, greater scope for reflexivity and the growing dominance of images over text. These are features of media whose primary attribute is speed and the lifestyles it disposes and facilitates. In terms of the scope for interactivity alone, there are significant differences between Web-1 and Web-2 that also suggest a transformative moment for data sharing and content generation. Normatively, as we shall see, all these attributes can be read either way; occasioning ritual hand-clapping for the ways in which they underwrite personal consumption and provide a forum for the kind of dissent seen in appeals on behalf of the dispossessed  – the “99%”; or reflex hand-wringing for the world(s) we have lost.21 One more techno-aesthetic feature is noteworthy for its ubiquity and also for its invisibility. A primary characteristic of new media, and notably the World-Wide Web (or Web), is that it is freed from the linear restrictions of older formats such as newspapers, books and magazines (New Media Institute, 2014). This attribute is possible because of a feature of hyperlink organization or writing generally known as “nesting”. Nesting through the use of hyperlinks is a format that permits organization in such a way that elements interact with one another instead of simply following a linear order. This new organization of data does not require a conventional “back story” and each interactive element of information stands alone. Hyperlinks are a standard feature of websites and platforms, integral to the way in which the medium functions, crucial for its intelligibility and ease of use and – though this is not without problems – implicated in the loss of credibility vested in erstwhile authoritative sources.

Conclusion Let me end on the vexed matter of media logic. This is at once a serious consideration and a caution not to invest in any form of determinism. On balance, I prefer Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that we should explore the “repertoires of possibility” available through the Internet, rather than subscribe to any version of a technical logic being played out through the engagement of human actors with digital technology (1993, 72). This allows me to discriminate against varieties of mediacentrism, including hyperglobalist positions, and also some transformationalist arguments that may be too quick to endorse a version of globalization in which all borders are swept away in a modal deterritorialization (for a critique see Scholte, 2005). At this early point I make no normative judgement about the propriety or otherwise of any such repertoires, or about their consequences, but it is hard to resile from normative address altogether, and probably undesirable.22

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 19 When discussing the qualities of different communication technologies and those of human agents, the sin is to believe that advances in the former outstrip consciousness in such a way that actors are left well-nigh defenceless when faced with the “giddy proliferation of communications” (Vattimo, 1992, 78). So that in subsequent chapters, when I refer to the “framing” qualities of new media pace Manuel Castells (1996, 2000), or use some cognate expression, I am not claiming an ineluctable logic being played out in the direct impact of new media on consciousness and action. Of course, in all forms of mediated communication, the means of communication shape the communication itself and the manner in which it is received and experienced. John Tomlinson reminds us that watching television in its analogue phase was a highly mediated experience (1999, 155). As a visual medium it was technically defined and thus delimited, but it also carried a complex set of semiotic codes, conventions, formats and production values with which viewers engaged in different ways and out of diverse experiences. Digitalized media, as I have noted, also possess the attributes of immediacy and individualization. But in both old or new settings there is no single communicative logic at work, though we would do well to note Peter Dahlgren’s cautionary words – echoes of Manuel Castells’ ambivalence about framing, in this regard – that new media are transforming politics because political life is organized as a media phenomenon (2001, 21). Politics (and, by implication, many facets of everyday life) has embraced the “logic” of new media, and in doing so transformed itself. His is a nostrum for the rest of this book and will resurface directly in chapter six. Interestingly, Dahlgren’s position does not convey a sense of the “media’s intrusive ubiquity” in quite the way suggested by Roger Livingstone when he claimed “politics, like experience, can no longer be thought outside a media frame” (2005, 190–191). Subsequent chapters pay due attention to these features of new media to fashion an account of globalization as a theory of communicative connection. In this account the part played by new media in creating what I call emergent globalities is privileged.

Notes 1 “(M)astery without remainder” is a quote from Bernadette Baker’s valuable and manylayered book on William James’ Sciences of Modernity and Anti-Imperial Discourse. The analogy is pertinent here. 2 In research conducted by the pollsters Ipsos-Mori in February 2016, they note the global addiction to smartphones (200 or more views a day is common, with 40% of Chinese youth feeling “uneasy” if they don’t look every 20 minutes). 3 Most widely observed, at least according to cultural pessimists, in the obsession with taking and sharing “selfies”, and the existential anxiety that results when individuals are parted from, or cannot gain access to, their smartphone for any length of time. 4 Laws or conventions protecting workers from the demands of out-of-hours emails – the so-called “right to disconnect” – are part of a move to curb what some see as the excesses of digital capitalism and the burdens of always being connected. 5 Not just subjectively, of course, but as students of the anthropocene in ways that influence physical, geological and climatological global systems.

20  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 6 Levitt (2016) talks of cultures in motion and of cultural circulation taking place in social fields whose breadth and depth extend far beyond the boundaries of the nationstate; interlocking, multi-layered, unequal networks of individuals, institutions and governance regimes that connect cultural producers and consumers to multiple people and places on the basis of multiple identities. 7 Fritz the Cat was a cartoon figure in the USA from the 1950s to the 1970s who enjoyed cult status. He was (in)famous for his raunchy behaviour and scatological and sexually explicit language. Heavy Traffic was a movie-length film with Fritz as the main character. It was released in 1973. 8 Here the nub of the debate may be the difference between “globalization studies” and “global studies”. Jan Nederveen Pieterse rehearses the differences in an interesting set of exchanges with other scholars in the pages of the journal Globalizations (vol 10, 4 and 6, 2013; vol 11, 2, 2014). Briefly, the former owes too much to the imprint of particular social science disciplines on what is studied and how it is studied, while the latter is at least open to construing the global as the prime frame of reference for social analysis, and is multi-centric, rather than Euro-centric and also kaleidoscopic in its coverage and remit. 9 These components are prefigured in my book Theories of Globalization published in 2013. There, chapter nine takes stock of the condition of global scholarship and prescribes a set of features designed to revise and refine it. 10 I am grateful to David Hand and Barry Sandywell for coining the notion of worldmaking practice in their 2002 article in the journal Media, Culture and Society. My interpretation of this concept similarly derives from the interplay of technical and social (motivation), but perhaps with a more literal translation of “world” to imply planetary. 11 Modelski, along with a battery of co-authors (2008), favours a broadly evolutionary model of global emergence with its roots in world-systems analysis of the kind propounded by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1978, 2007). The evolution of the global economy, global political evolution, the rise of a global community and, somewhat confusingly, globalization itself, produce interaction that permits institutional innovation and thus change (2007, 20–28). Sklair, like Immanuel Wallerstein, and perhaps the whole gamut of world-systems analysis, proffers an intellectual, and also a strategic project. 12 I examine mediatization more fully in chapter two, and the concept informs every subsequent chapter. It musters as a ubiquitous, contested and sometimes ill-defined notion. As you might expect, studies abound, both on its definition and analytical usefulness (see Stromack, 2008; Horten, 2008; Hjarvard, 2014 by way of example) and on the alleged mediatization of pretty much every facet of life, from religion to sport. Its analytical worth lies mainly in the extent to which it focuses attention on how, or whether, the media variously permeate, influence or determine wider culture and society. Applied to the global, the concept has purchase in assessing the nature and dynamics of cultures of circulation and digital culture. 13 Prefigured, of course, in a tranche of literature. As early as 2003, sociologist Jim Beckford identified facets of information-driven globalization. The first noted the growing frequency, volume and interrelatedness of cultures, communities, information and people across time and space. The second, the increasing capacity of information and communication technology to reduce and compress time and space; while the third adverted the diffusion of routine practices and protocols for processing global flows of information, other symbolic texts and people, as well as capital (see too John Urry, 2002, on features of digitization that transform the social landscape). 14 Complexity theory – complexity science – still struggles to command allegiance in sociology and political science, although writers such as Bernard Latour enjoy a continuing vogue. In chapters two, three and four, I will elaborate those elements of complexity theory and modern systems theory pertinent to my argument in this book.

Mere connection or mastery without remainder? 21 15 The latter conforms to the intuitively plausible, yet allusive definition which critics find so frustrating (Rosenberg, 2005), such that globalization is a “complex, accelerating, integrating process of global connectivity . . . (a) rapidly developing and ever densening network of interconnections and interdependencies” (Tomlinson, 2007, 352). The sense of globalization as intensive and extensive connectivity is widespread and can be found in work with quite different theoretical and ideological pretensions. Jan-Aart Scholte’s account of globalization as supra-territoriality is a prominent example (2005; Held et al., 1999), while Hardt and Negri’s treatise on “Empire” (2000) and Manuel Castells’ epic trilogy on “The Information Age” (1996, 1996, 2000) both offer the image of a networked, de-centred and de-territorialized world of capitalism as a rejection of orthodox Marxism and state-centric models of international political economy. 16 Nor is a concern with the Internet as the engine of globalization novel. But the difference here is not to ascribe immanent characteristics to this communicative form, nor to reduce it to a proxy for capitalist expansion or hyperglobalist ideology. 17 “Old” media are sometimes called “legacy” media; traditional means of communication and expression that have existed since before the advent of the new medium of the Internet. 18 GlobalwebIndex reports that in 2016 consumers now spend 10.7 hours per day with some sort of media, 5.6 hours of which (57%) is digital. See: http://blog.globalwebin dex.net/online-time-now-exceeds-offline-media-consumption-globally/   Does this all mean that video has indeed killed the radio star, as the old song complained? Well, no, according to journalist Guy Clapperton, who argues that “(t)he fact is that every new broadcast medium, if successful, finds its niche eventually. It doesn’t supplant something else completely (physical media isn’t the same; CDs are all but gone in the download world) but everything finds a new place in the pecking order. After only five years in the mainstream we can see that social media is still finding that place, with the more traditional media fitting in around it”. 19 Web 2.0 is the term given to describe a second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 basically refers to the transition from static HTML Web pages to a more dynamic Web that is more organized and is based on serving Web applications to users. 20 Of course, the technologies to which Luke referred in 1998 have themselves undergone marked changes since then. The Web is still manifestly a text rich medium, but in its more popular guise it is now a visual and audio medium. The advent of Web 2.0 technologies, especially the mobile Internet and the explosion of social media, have transformed both its appeal and the manner of usage. The advent of virtual reality – V.R. – and the Internet of Things will produce further transformations in the routines of everyday living. 21 Take the phenomenon of fast news – 24 hours news coverage on terrestrial and satellite TV channels; or delivered through the use of bespoke apps to smart phones and tablets. Fast news obviously speeds up the news cycle and, on the face of it – makes attempts at news management less effective; but it increases the element of hyper-reflexivity in the relationships between the story being reported and any stakeholders in it, the broadcasters and the audience, leading to charges of endless repetition and trivialization (see Axford, 2001). 22 That said, some of the flavor of debate as this has played out over recent times may be useful. Internet technologies permit a range of one-to-one and many-to-many encounters, all as fleeting or sustained as cost, circumstance and preference allow. But for some critics, exchanges via the Net are robbed of their sensual qualities and moral weight; with the networks that carry them no more than “thin” contexts for identity formation and action. For all that some of this intercourse may be transnational, there is only a remote possibility that a functioning global civil society can be constructed out

22  Mere connection or mastery without remainder? of the many cases of information diffusion, political exchange and wired movements that populate the Web; or so runs the argument (Axford, 2004). These criticisms, both normative and empirical, are rehearsed in coming chapters to illuminate and challenge existing accounts of media and globalization and in relation to a set of world-making practices effected through the Internet.

2 Media and globalization Myths and counter-myths

Introduction Working at the intersection of a number of knowledge traditions, those of media and communications theory and global theory, I will argue that undoubtedly significant contributions to understanding the part played by communications media in the constitution of emergent globalities still fall some way short of a convincing multidimensional theory of world-making practices. In some measure this is a function of the difficulties of marrying the strands, of seeking theoretical synthesis across disciplines; in part it reflects the enduring power of basically reductionist or uni-dimensional positions on the provenance and drivers of global integration, and sometimes echoes the diehard skeptical argument that globalization is a shibboleth, or else morally bankrupt as a feature of capitalism’s endless search for accumulation. Two discourses are the staple fare of debates about communication and globalization, investing polemics and scholarly accounts of how particular media inflect and propel, or inhibit, globalizing processes. The first employs hyperglobalist, and sometimes transformationalist, language about the boundary destroying and relativizing qualities of “new” and fluid forms of communication (see Holton, 2005; Axford, 2001; Axford and Huggins, 2010). Such accounts diverge on the nature of the causal relationships between communication and globalization; about which is explanans and which explanandum (Rosenberg, 2005), and they also differ in terms of the approbation they accord to the integrative process. As noted in chapter one, a frequent complaint from both media theorists and globalization skeptics is that the whole corpus of globalization theory suffers from an intellectually debilitating and unnecessary media-centrism, or too avid a flirtation with the media zeitgeist, particularly where it allots the Internet a key role in social constitution (Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Ampuja, 2012; Rosenberg, 2005; Deacon and Stanyer, 2014). To complicate matters further, in some research strong, often competing, normative and/or ideological positions on the propriety of (usually liberal) globalization are rehearsed and, sometimes, these are conflated with empiricalanalytical address (Friedman, 2000, 2006; Castells, 1996, 2000, 2012). The second discourse traffics skeptical arguments in which even dramatic and wholesale changes in communication technologies and formats, as well as in their

24  Media and globalization content and use, are viewed as adjuncts to usual practices and established patterns of social constitution; or else as irrelevant to the bigger story of social change. In the latter, world-historical forces and occasional contingencies are slated to provide greater explanatory clout (Hirst et al., 2009; Chandler, 2009; Rosenberg, 2005). Skeptics also doubt the power of “cosmopolitan media” to meld the world and do battle on the empirical soundness of evidence to discern the globally integrative power of different media (Inglehart and Norris, 2009). Such complaints are worthy of consideration. Even if one accepts that the arguments of transformationalists or hyperglobalists are plausible, caution should be the default position. And on cue, Kai Hafez warns that despite claims to discern truly global media, a good deal of actual content decants into purely national modes of address regardless of the medium and the technology in use (Hafez, 2007; see also Inglehart and Norris, 2009). His injunction is clear: By all means address the contribution of “new” digital media to making the world a single place, but be wary of overstating its role in, for example, reworking the locus of sociality, transnationalizing communication, facilitating the creation of a global civil society or global public sphere and eliminating “the fundamental character of ‘ego-centric’ national media systems” (Hafez, 2007, 3; Inglehart and Norris, 2009). At the same time, few deny that major changes in communication technologies and their use are instrumental in shaping the cultural economy of the relatively new millennium. For example, John Tomlinson emphasizes the part played by “impatient and immoderate” media in constituting global “cultures of immediacy” (Tomlinson, 2007, 131; see also Boli and Lechner, 2005). In this regard the Internet is only one facet of the systematic mediatization of culture now observed, variably, across the world. It is, however, an increasingly important facet when assessing the impact of connectivity on the personalization of communication and consumption and when weighing the impact of trans-border connections on social practices and the lives of individuals (see, among many others, Baym, 2015; Orgad, 2012). As I have also noted, mediatization is a contested notion, and I shall address this important concept and approaches to it more fully later in the chapter (Hjavard, 2008; Castells, 1996; Hepp, 2014). To reiterate my earlier sentiment, and still without giving way to technological determinism, it can be argued that such technologies frame how we engage with them and each other by promoting the values of speed, immediacy, interactivity and bespoke consumption as cultural aesthetics (Castells, 1996, 2000). Globally, this is a variable and incomplete process, one that is easily mistaken for the globalization of the Western cultural account, but which is in fact, increasingly multi-centred and kaleidoscopic. To repeat, if there are many globalizations (Berger and Huntington, 2005); so there are plural mediatizations (Gunaratne, 2013; Nederveen Pieterse, 2013, 2015). Let me also underline another point already made; the aesthetics of ‘new’ media are those qualities that promote immediacy and interactivity, greater scope for reflexivity and – increasingly – the dominance of images over text. Fast and interactive media increase the element of hyper-reflexivity between actors in a way

Media and globalization 25 that confounds, or at least profoundly alters, the conventional distinction between the producers of output and those who consume it. Indeed, the great selling point of digital media is the claim to erase signs of mediation, providing immediacy and a sense of engagement and control by disguising the machine-user interface in a fusion of art and technology (Johnson, 1997). For example, Skype visual and audio connection over the Internet can mimic the familiarity and comforting nature of embodied presence, but without the sensuous and sensual qualities of the latter. That does not make the exchanges devoid of emotion, or in some way inauthentic. We are connected in all but touch, taste and smell, and while their absence vitiates the quality of some kinds of intercourse, it is not so for others. Unlike conventional mass media (most print and some broadcast), Internet technologies, especially Web 2.0 formats, also facilitate dialogical communication and a modal interactivity by permitting a range of one-to-one, one-to-many and manyto-many exchanges. In Paul Virilio’s lacerating take on social-technical change, machines, including the hardware and cultural software of media technologies, increasingly constitute our environments (1991). Even in less disturbing interpretations we are enjoined to engage with modalities that cross the seeming boundaries of technical and social, human and non-human, to comprise a world “always in process” (Leyshon and Thrift, 1997, 126). I will return to this theme more fully in chapters three and four when discussing communicative connectivity and worldmaking practices, and its implications reverberate throughout the book. For the idea of a world “always in process” is an important way of summarizing the cultural repertoires of possibility available through digital communication. Viewed in a more jaundiced light, or from a different normative stance, it is also sometimes received as a warning that accelerated lifestyles and the valorization of immediacy may be injurious to deliberative practices and reflective engagements, whether in interpersonal relationships conducted on social media or through democratic rituals practised online. In such narratives de-celeration is sometimes bruited as a new global, social good, a stance visible in resistance to fast capitalism, fast foods and faster media (Tomlinson, 2007, see also, Connolly, 2002). Of course, a politics of resistance to such trends itself may spring from little more than nostalgia, and is sometimes regressive. By no means exceptionally, William Connolly warns against pining for a return to what he calls the “long, slow time” (2002, 162). “Slow” may be the watchword for engaging and harmless cosmopolitanism, or a term of approbation when applied to the idea of a “balanced lifestyle”, but sometimes it is a sub-text for fundamentalism and scapegoating, for accusatory cultures drawn to the myth of a centred, stable world and enduringly suspicious of change. When Donald Trump embraced the social media zeitgeist and bypassed the usual mechanisms and etiquette of political communication during the US general election campaign of 2016 and into the early days of his presidency – preferring the immediacy of Twitter to deliver his invectives and bon mots – among other faults he was accused both of dumbing down the message and giving in to the sub-culture of trolling. Such riffs cut across the debates on media and globalization, and they reveal a contested social science, as well as a politics that shifts agonism onto new terrain.

26  Media and globalization In case it is not apparent, in these debates my position is cautiously transformationalist, in that I subscribe to the idea of all kinds of boundaries being shifted through circulation and use of digital media, but recognize the obduracy of, for example, the infrastructural and affective power vested in the territorial state and the national society as guardians of particular interests and parochial identities (Axford, 2013a; Mann, 1996). Furthermore, I am not always sanguine about the impact of transformative change. The prospect of globalities achieved through connection must admit both benign and malevolent outcomes (Morozov, 2013; Malcolmson, 2016). Globalities are not empty modalities, because power is vested in and moves through them, sometimes producing an unedifying, perhaps a systematic, mobilization of bias. But admitting as much does not obscure their transformative weight. I argue that the global spread and reflexive use of digital media effects, though sometimes only intimates, new global (and glocal) imaginaries; socialities and politics. As bruited in chapter one, these I call emergent globalities. Emergent globalities constituted in both practice and consciousness are states of global becoming; emergent because, quite often, lightness and uncertainty characterize their ontology and their durability. So how far this is a deeply structured world of communication is open to question. In this cautious attribution we are already some way from the staples of social-scientific description and received wisdom on the building blocks of social constitution, and it is an uncomfortable zone. The scope of emergent globalities may be variable, and in this regard their planetary reach can be extant, but also immanent, with both perhaps secondary to whether they carry global content. Globality certainly implies world-wide, and communicative links across, or heedless of, borders may well create “qualitative disjunctures” between different regulatory and socio-cultural environments that once would have been considered as primarily national (Dicken et al., 2001, 96; Sassen, 2007). But where digital connection is concerned the attribution does not, or need not, see connectivity float free of any kind of personal or local determinant or address. Media outlets and platforms may carry what can be termed “global content”, making obvious address to the global and still be, or define themselves as, resolutely “local”. As we shall see, this is where the underused and often loosely applied concept of “glocal” (glocality) has descriptive and analytical force, allowing us to consider whether the idea of the global is that of an autonomous (cultural) field, a “self-evident global scale” (Sassen, 2007, 7), or as Jonathan Friedman has it, a specific articulation – perhaps a synthesis – of “local” (cultural) conditions and practices (see discussions in Rossi, 2007; see also Sassen, 2007 and KnorrCetina, 2005; Roudometof, 2016).1 To some extent, all this has to be seen as part of the “reassertion of space” in social theory, but does not fall prey to a simplistic “abstraction of spatiality” that treats space as entirely constitutive of the social (Soja, 1989; Agnew, 2009, 79). But there is an abstract quality about much of this argument, so a brief illustration of mediatized globalization – in this case from the sport of cricket – may be useful.2 I  return to this theme in chapter five, but note here that the glocal

Media and globalization 27 nature of the sport’s reinvention in the age of TV and then the Internet is one of its most arresting features (Axford and Huggins, 2010, 2011a). Writing in 2006, journalist Chris Anderson highlighted the growing importance of the global “long tail” of media audiences for different kinds of sports content. He noted that “(i) n sports, news and entertainment we’re shifting away from thinking only about concentrated audiences in one geography to thinking about distributed audiences around the world”. In cricket the existence of cultural diasporas constitutes a distributed audience on a vast scale. Anderson continues, “(l)ong tail video will reunite diasporas through their common culture”, even if cricket is still seen as a niche culture in the wider world. Sujata Moorti, writing about the game in India, opines that the transnational mediatization of cricket simultaneously permits the assertion of a vernacular nationalism and incorporates a form of cosmopolitan and global sensibility (2004, 549; Axford and Huggins, 2010). In these respects, the mediatization of cricket is an exemplar of emergent globality/glocality (Roudometof, 2016; Axford and Huggins, 2010). The “myth” of media globalization: culture and communication in the constitutive account The preceding discussion begins to qualify overzealous claims about the nature and power of media globalization. But if the idea is a myth, it carries a powerful frisson and a casual plausibility. Kai Hafez (2007) argues that media globalization is a myth, but a necessary one. It is necessary because it is an important part of the reorientation of scholarship away from the nation-state and national cultures towards the prospects for cross-border communication and trans-cultural social formation. It remains a myth – he says – because the quality of data available makes it hard to substantiate strong claims about the alleged forms and consequences of media globalization; about its extent and intensity (see also Rosenberg, 2005; Chandler, 2009). Hafez offers a helpful cautionary statement about the possibilities of global cultural convergence through media, but it may smack of the elite nostalgia found in many commentaries on the adverse consequences of mediatization. For him the Internet has brought “a new subtlety to the global array of information”, but this generates only “virtual cosmopolitanism”, and is a long way short of the “true” variety (Hafez, 2007, 170; see also Barber, 1998; Beck, 2006 and Tarrow, 2002). In other words it does not – perhaps cannot – foster authentic social interaction, “thick” forms of communion and identification, and universality. This theme plays to different scores depending on the intellectual provenance of the argument and the normative stance adopted by the researcher. Judgements about the authenticity or “thinness” of social intercourse conducted via the Internet inflect the discussion of media effects more generally, so that ambivalence may be the only intellectually and emotionally sustainable response when faced with competing claims from cyber-enthusiasts and the special pleading of “old” media advocates, devotees of nationally regulated public service broadcasting, critics of neoliberal globalization and other varieties

28  Media and globalization of globalization skeptics. These debates have a considerable pedigree in media theory and, perhaps more subtly, in cultural studies. Indeed, the critique of the role of media in transforming culture, politics and sociality stems from Theodore Adorno’s account of The Culture Industry, a treatise born of unease after World War II, when the spread of mass industrial or “Americanized” culture was coupled with a prescription that (national) cultural policy must protect local (European) cultural traditions from these perceived threats (1991; Hall, 1971). Although the language of globalization was not used in the earliest of these accounts, “Americanization” does service as its doppelganger. In this guise the concept then morphs into a kind of reified and hegemonic global cultural structure, with most actors cast as subaltern unless they are the behemoths of the global culture industries. All are players in an elemental, but surprisingly stable politics of domination and resistance. As we shall see later in the chapter, with some variations, and in certain circles, this motif enjoys enduring credibility. The thesis of cultural convergence through media itself has a mixed provenance. Herb Schiller’s critique of global mono-culture (1989) echoes the cultural pessimism of some early Frankfurt School proponents of critical theory (Adorno, 1991), and in the influential materialist arguments of Herman and McChesney (1997; McChesney, 2006), transnational media systems are the main carriers of a commercialized and commodified  – read Americanized  – consumer culture (and from a different intellectual provenance see Barber, 2007). Similar arguments endorse the thesis that homogenization of cultural experience proceeds through consumption (Ritzer, 2012; Ritzer and Liska, 1997; Barber, 2007) and, as I noted in chapter one, in this regard changes in consumer habits across the world, including the production and consumption of media products, have to be set in the wider context of global economic changes; namely processes of marketization and de-regulation. The cultural convergence argument relies on the pervasive power of market forces and the ideology of the market to effect what Schiller calls the “corporate envelopment of public expression” (1989, 94; see also Wernick, 1991). Even Manuel Castells’ treatise on the network society (1996, 2001), which holds that digital media are transformative of social forms and relations, contains echoes of Schiller’s pessimistic realism by suggesting that all social life now takes place within the “frame” of (electronic) media. At least in part, this is an enduringly baleful image. The politics that results, or is said to result, plays to a well-worn dialectic nicely distilled by Tim Jordan to that of exploitation and liberation; although for my purposes this too rather limits the analysis to a single dimension of experience (2015). This dialectic pits the influence of commercial media and global brands against the vitality, though sometimes the nihilism, seen in countervailing attempts to protect local and traditional cultural sites, including language. The latter are most evident in the visceral responses to Westernization that muster in Arjun Appadurai’s “geographies of anger”, and surface too in Samuel Huntington’s jeremiad on the prospects for civilizational conflict (Habermas, 2006; Huntington, 1996). They also comprise softer expressions of localism or anti-/alter-globalization such as

Media and globalization 29 the slow food movement, the wonderfully branded, though sadly defunct, MeccaCola, and the non-Western world-view delivered through Al Jazeera’s English language service; none of which actually look like vehicles for aggressive or destructive polarization, while still being culturally kaleidoscopic. It is worth noting that another staple of globalization theory, the idea of multicultural fusion or hybridization, relies on widespread intermingling across geographical scales and across cultures. In one guise this involves the usual array of cosmopolitan-lite – fusion food, ethnicizing of fashion, so-called world music and global brands, including summer blockbuster movie franchises and crime dramas such as the de-racinated, but still demonstrably “foreign”, Scandi-noir genre – while in another it discerns and often applauds the aforementioned “repertoires of possibility” available to people through routine use of Web technologies and formats to promote social interaction and reinvent locality and themselves (Bourdieu, 1993, 26; Axford and Huggins, 2010). In the latter category a strain of techno-progressivism is sometimes visible (Axford, 2001; and see chapter six) which traverses quite guarded claims to discern the rudiments of an online, and perhaps a transnational, public sphere and better prospects for public interactive talk, along with elements of “virtual intimacy” achieved through social media (Crack, 2007, 2008; Habermas, 2001; Axford and Huggins, 2007; Livingstone and Markham, 2008). It also embraces much more robust assertions about the power of digital connection where “new modes of identity and community, territory and sovereignty, culture and society are emerging” (Luke, 1998, 4). But let’s step back a little. By the 1970s economic trends in the developed world led to the liberalization of economic policies, and by the 1980s to the increasing fragmentation of consumer demand and markets. These, along with flexible production techniques (Miege, 1989; Lash and Urry, 1994, 1994), facilitated a shift away from the idea of self-contained national economies and cultures towards the model of a global cultural economy based on exchanges increasingly delivered through interlocking networks of trade and information (Castells, 1996; Harvey, 1989; Soja, 1989). As I related in chapter one, these changes at least echo, and may have precipitated or accelerated, the shift from notionally “old” to “new” media systems from the 1980s onwards. Taken together the changes embody not just a cultural turn in the constitution of the world economy, but a significant spatial turn as well. The upshot is that culture and economics became closely intertwined and using the term “global” became more than a simple description of geographical span. Increasingly, markets appeared based on the demand for symbolic goods, with the Internet and the de-regulation of traditional media providing the means for both modal delivery and increasingly bespoke consumption, at least in the global north and for affluent sections of the population. Scott Lash and John Urry (1994) had already charted the growing role of symbolic consumption and of “aesthetic reflexivity” as central to processes of identity construction and global cultural economy (see also Giddens, 1990); while the culture industries became the expression of what they describe as flexible “economies of signs and space”, features of a dis-organized and global capitalism (see also Lash and Lury, 2013).

30  Media and globalization Under flexible, globalized capitalism communication, which might otherwise appear as just technical and informational, “acquires a whole cultural dimension”, as Fredric Jameson says (2001, 56). The latter is a telling phrase, intimating a multidimensional theory of emergent globality and keeping a healthy distance from a tranche of scholarship that, in a hackneyed dualism, treats cultural phenomena either as avatars of “thin” (though often oppressive) global homogeneity, or the expression of “thick” local identities under pressure and sometimes disposed to resistance. To be fair, even this stark dichotomy helps to distinguish the role of cultural factors in promoting or resisting globalization from the impact of globalization on older notions of culture (Tomlinson, 1999). At the same time it predisposes the intuitively appealing, but probably skewed depiction of globalization as playing out a simple domination-resistance model of interaction, and this has been a debilitating feature of a good deal of what passes for global theory and of the part in it played by media. Because of this two-way reductionism, globalization is seen either as a slide into nihilism or, in George Ritzer’s expression, “nothingness” (2004), or a corrosive dialectic in which hegemonic global consumer culture spawns primitivism or fanaticism, along with less visceral forms of resistance (Barber, 1996; Appadurai, 2006). In much of this kind of discourse a considered, and certainly a multidimensional, treatment of globalization is vitiated by reducing complex mutual interaction to a zero-sum game of identities or ascribed interests, so that, as JeanFrancois Bayart says, “if you are a democrat you are less of an African; if you eat McDonald’s burgers you are less French”, and so on (2007, 25). This is a tart observation and salutary; but it is one thing to argue that, as a component in social explanation, such reductionism ought to be avoided and cultural factors given due weight, but quite another to portray and then explain the imbrications of cultural, economic and political variables in the structuration of contested globalities. Even a more social-scientifically nuanced account of the part played by culture and communication in making emergent globalities must acknowledge that the drivers of cultural globalization are never purely communicational, although, as Fredric Jameson also says, globalization is a communicational concept and all culture is communication (2001). He argues that greater spread and intensity of networks around the world are the result of technological innovations in information and communication technologies, along with the variable impact of modernization in all countries, which facilitates the “implantation of such technologies” (2001, 55). The idea of communication as culture carries two powerful, but seemingly contradictory, charges for the study of emergent globalities (Jameson, 2001, 56). First, it promises standardization in many areas of symbolic consumption, of “integration . . . into a world-system from which ‘delinking’ . . . is henceforth impossible and even unthinkable and inconceivable” (Jameson, 2001, 57, 1991). Second, and not only in a militant anti-hegemonic vein, it contains the potential for a more raucous cultural pluralism seen in the flowering of alternative lifestyles, the visibility of previously marginalized and silent minorities, and a “falling away of structures that condemned whole segments of the population to silence and to

Media and globalization 31 subalternity” (2001, 57). In the first logic  – and in this book logic is a weasel word – communication technologies and formats stand as economic signifiers that might reinforce the brooding image of the Americanization and standardization of culture, and (for some) the sordid triumph of global neoliberalism. In the second, they appear as carriers of a quotidian cultural heterogeneity, sometimes grounded in the ideologies of resistance to globalization, sometimes in the rush of utopian and libidinal energy released through “individual hyper-consumption” and new communication technologies. As a (Marxist) theorist of both modernity and the postmodern, Jameson offers a complex account of the putative transition from one to the other, including, albeit rather sketchily, its political content. Modernism was the product of the age of money and of rationality; postmodernism is the product of a new era characterized by “the intensification of the forces of reification” (2001, 58). In the age of global capitalism, the utopian sublime of modernism, seen most clearly in art and aesthetics, is vitiated and the anxieties and emotional void left – along with a legitimation deficit – have been filled, at least so far, by a postmodern cultural logic of consumption (Habermas, 1975). Because of the universalization of market capitalism, the distinction between culture and economics has collapsed in a de-differentiation or blurring of fields. Culture now pervades everything and everything is subject to – though not necessarily in thrall to – the universal logics of commodification and marketization (see also Wernick, 1991). As Jameson says, postmodernity “makes the cultural economic” at the same time that it turns the economic into so many forms of culture (1983, 58). Overall, Jameson’s discussion of globalization provides an obvious and important cultural turn, and recognizing the imbrications of culture and economics is a welcome shift in theorizing globalization, moving away from simple binary models based on discrete spheres or zones of activity and privileged constitution. It even goes beyond multidimensionality to suggest a mutually constitutive dynamic in which no sphere is axiomatically pre-eminent as a causal factor in social change. So, culture is a fertile realm for the study of globalization and communication, but that understanding should not be allowed to promote further reductionism, because globalization is seldom a uni-modal process (Thomas, 2016). In like vein, the idea of globality as singularity is not a vision of, or prescription for, inevitable “uniformization” (Bayart, 2007). Caricatured accounts of globalization reject this argument because of the need to show that homogeneity is a necessary outcome of the process. In its absence, say skeptics, the globalization hypothesis is empty. And of course, some critics of globalization do see an unremitting and regressive pattern of homogenization, damaging to diversity and locality. But the balance of findings tends to the counter-intuitive and muted conclusion that globalization – multidimensional and variable as it is – implies and delivers the simultaneous production of sameness and difference. Muted, because polemically, globalization as a totalizing and universalizing process is better ideological and polemical copy than equivocation about its variable and contingent impact on social assemblages and identities; or research that comes to the conclusion that it is relativizing and essentializing at one and the same time.

32  Media and globalization The tensions, indeed the antinomy, between Jameson’s two images of an interlinked global cultural economy reflect debates on the nature and impacts of media globalization. In these debates the Orwellian tendency to admit that only one kind of explanation counts has been prominent and, in what follows, I shall offer a critique of such arguments. At root this will be a critique of uni-causal reasoning and reductionist thinking on culture (and thus communication) and globalization. When discussing the consequences of economic globalization in general and market liberalism in particular, there is often a regrettable tendency to treat culture – especially particular cultures – as the victim of a universal and debilitating cultural globalization. As Jean-Francois Bayart also opines, here “(t)he usual view of globalization is that it involves dispossession, alienation, anomie” (2007, 83), which effects are often subsumed under the rubric of “Westernization”, reducing globalization to a form of “occidentosis” (Al-e Ahmad, 1962). Rills and currents in the scholarship on media and globalization It is now time to rehearse some key elements of the scholarship on media and globalization the better to locate my multidimensional approach to globalization as a theory of communicative connection. I am not aiming for blanket coverage of a rich and complex field. Rather I want to identify some important themes in its composition, most, in one way or another, at odds with the case I intend to make, or more cautious in their attribution, and usefully so. Sometimes I take particular authors as seminal or indicative, but on balance, I am intent on exploring themes that address different facets of the media/communication and globalization nexus, albeit from diverse intellectual standpoints and with different normative goals in mind. I will start with a further evocation of the interplay between the cultural economy of communication and globalization as evidenced in accounts that depict relationships between media and globalization as over-determined by the imperatives of the global system of capitalism and the demands of ideological neoliberalism (Ampuja, 2012; Darian-Smith, 2015; Hesmondhalgh, 2009; Phelan, 2014). In this literature the alleged “media-centrism” of much hyper and transformationalist globalization theory is pilloried for its wholehearted acceptance of, or acquiescence in, the assumption that media play a key, if not seminal, part in creating one world, and its relative neglect of the fact that technological changes are just instrumentalities or cultural blinds in the systemic imperatives of capital accumulation. In some measure the critique of media-centrism is commendable, or at least understandable, being a counterweight to hyperglobalist treatments of smooth global integration through media. Having examined the part played by media in market driven globalization, I will examine a tranche of more empirically grounded arguments that dispute, and sometimes modify the claim that new communications technology is the real driver of information-based globalization. Variations on this skeptical empiricism also question whether media outlets and platforms with global reach have swept or are sweeping away barriers to mutual understanding, cultural idiosyncrasy and

Media and globalization 33 difference, thereby promoting a democratization or equalization of access and use across the world. And as we shall discover in chapter six, some critical work on the political theory of virtual globalization also takes umbrage at claims to discern even the rudiments of (virtual) political community beyond the territorial state (Chandler, 2009). This outrage is rooted in analytical and normative tenets on the appropriate locus of community and citizenship, but is skeptical too of the quality of empirical research claiming to substantiate arguments for transformative social change through media. Evidence-based skepticism grounded in a careful analysis of raw global or comparative data questions, among other things, i) just how much the technical capacity of allegedly global media has changed the local or national cast of news and other media content (Hafez, 2007; Hannerz, 2006); ii) whether or not “cosmopolitan media” actually produce global convergence in outlook, practices and values (Inglehart and Norris, 2009); and iii) the extent to which inequalities of access to new media, and in how efficaciously it is used, mitigate or entrench the global north-south divide, or empower marginal populations within core states and societies. Finally, I will address the vexed question of the relationships between mediatization and globalization. When it addresses the global, in good part this focus itself decants into a consideration of the appropriate conceptual locus of study for media scholars and also highlights a perennial issue for students of globalization. This issue turns on the nature and axial features of the process and what these tell us about the drivers and direction of social change. The disciplinary separation apparent in these two theoretical strands then actually converges around the notion of “mediatization” as a conjoint insight into the dynamics of global constitution. To a greater or lesser extent, all these positions are deficient in how they handle communication as culture and vice versa. The cultural economy of globalization as uni- or multidimensional To give the critique flavor, let’s begin with a bold statement of the tendency to see digital communication as the driver of a hyper-globalization. In his account of why The World is Flat (2005), Thomas Friedman insists that in the latest phase of globalization since the year 2000, which he calls “globalization 3.0” (2005, 10), what had previously been a process involving states and then businesses transmutes to a condition in which individuals become consciously and actively global, primarily through the affordances of the Internet. New technologies further compress and “flatten” the world. Cognate developments occur in business practices through lean and flexible “out” or “around” sourcing, and supply chains become increasingly bespoke, as individuals use the Internet to construct and maintain their own persona and lifestyle through networks of suppliers, entertainment providers and friendship groups; all without let or hindrance by the trammels of place. Markets are crucial to all this, but they take on a much more decentralized and less institutional or corporate look. Achieving effective demand, the core tenet of all market ideology and practice, becomes more reflexive than at any time in the history of

34  Media and globalization capitalism (see also, McKinsey Global Institute, 2016). This is a strong ideological and empirical claim, one well worthy of attempted rebuttal. And of rebuttals there are plenty. The problem is that they often adopt opposed but similarly reductionist positions on the role of communication/media in constituting globalities, and fail to address, or else bowdlerize, the concept of multidimensional globalization. Such positions are indelibly functionalist in tone.3 The obsession with functionality is found mainly in neo-Marxist accounts of hegemonies sustained through the ideational structures of class domination and in the more neutered attribution of systemic needs met through various discursive apparatuses. These, along with all broadly determinist positions, often look for some kind of semi-autonomous ideological or ideational dynamic to round out or soften what are still presented as compelling, or overriding, material realities. Even those arguments that display a more obvious “cultural turn” pace Antonio Gramsci, often end up in obfuscation over degrees of allowable autonomy and in the tendency either to conflate cultural structures and the interpretative practices of agents, or else to ignore the latter (Archer, 1988, 2007; Bhaskar, 1998; Gouldner, 1978). Before explicating these positions, let’s recall and underline that making and reproducing culture is, primarily, a process of communication (Kraidy, 2005). The study of culture and communication, which includes analysis of cultural production and consumption, as well as cultural convergence and difference, is crucial for building a more nuanced and telling account of global constitution and for comprehending the role of different kinds of agency – including the agency of audiences and consumers – in its enactment (Axford and Huggins, 2010). Issues that appear throughout the book – those of indigenization and glocalization, as well as the nature of symbolic power and cultural change – all involve processes of communication. Inevitably there are different views on the role of culture, and thus of mediatized cultures, as axial features of contemporary global constitution. In Immanuel Wallerstein’s macro-history of world-system formation, culture is treated as the realm of ideological support for hegemonic power, or, in special cases and particular conjunctures, a rather forlorn means of opposing it (1974, 1979, 1991). Wallerstein points to the world-integrative power of the geo culture of neoliberalism, and this is not so far from other neo-Marxist accounts which see globality as uniformity of culture and both as the necessary fallout from the spread of capitalist commodification. In many such discourses, Westernization or Americanization, either as a form of cultural imperialism or diffused cultural hegemony, proceeds through energetic exchange and consumption. Culture then reduces to a battery of convergent tastes, most obviously in branded mass entertainment, clothing and fast foods – a largely material gloss – although we might include communicative and aesthetic practices, such as “going viral”, or tweeting styles and etiquette, under the same rubric. These facets of global culture, however frivolous, are seen as functional for the reproduction, even the survival, of global capitalism and should not be construed as interest free, let alone as emancipatory. It is worth noting that these shades of interpretation are, in part, a deliberate attempt to distance consideration of media-capital relations from what are now

Media and globalization 35 seen as simplistic ideas about the role of media in promulgating cultural imperialism, or of cultural imperialism as the only way to depict the relationships between the media and capitalism (Tomlinson, 1999; Lee, as early as 1979). To that extent they demonstrate appropriate scientific caution. At the same time, “cultural imperialism” remains a powerful “evocative metaphor” for depicting the role of media in making the world in a particular image. Replacing it with something else – neoliberalism, or even some “new” form of imperialism, are prime contenders – simply relocates much the same problems of analysis and inference onto other conceptual terrain (Sreberny, 1997, 47). For across this scholarship there is an enduring impulse to subsume culture in a broadly materialist understanding of how globalization works, and to what ends. Most often this kind of reductionism occurs when authors treat globalization as a strategic project, part of the wider dynamics of capitalist accumulation, with capitalism taken as the dominant – perhaps the only – global system at the start of the twenty-first century, as Leslie Skair has it (2007). The argument that culture is constitutive of globality demurs from the view that cultural phenomena are just the ideological props of ascribed interests or imputed systemic needs and thus routinely instrumental or functional in constituting and sustaining a determinate model of global political economy. So, as always when writing about culture, it is important to distinguish what is reified as functional in a process of cultural determinism from culture as the contextual expression of interpretative practices by agents (Axford, 1996). Of course, what might then appear as no more than a constructivist or phenomenological conceit has to be weighed against the sense that reality construction always takes place in the context of cultural scripts or cultural structures (Benhabib, 2002). Agents experience cultural rules as objective or constitutive because the rules have been successfully institutionalized to become part of the intersubjective understanding of the conditions for action (Giddens, 1990). Rules or structures have both an “ ‘ontological aspect’, assigning reality to actors and action, and a ‘significatory aspect’, endowing actor and action with meaning and legitimacy” (Meyer et al., 1987, 21). So what is summarized as culture is an interpretative framework or context, a source of identity and, although this is scarcely scientific, a means “of telling people who they are” (Lash and Urry, 1994, 129). To underscore that insight, John Tomlinson notes that students of globalization and culture should keep in mind “the hermeneutic appropriation which is an essential part of the circulation of symbolic forms” (see also Schafer, 2007). All these caveats bear on the false dichotomy in which media globalization is viewed simply as a symbolic cultural resource of capitalist accumulation or else as a particularized (and counter-cultural) form of resistance to it. Globalization, media-centrism and neoliberal dogmas Neoliberal economic doctrine translated into practice is now the touchstone for discussions of the relations between contemporary globalization and capitalism. The dogma mustered originally as an ideology of late twentieth century capitalism based on an earlier philosophical treatise on the theme of negative liberty

36  Media and globalization (Buchanan, 1969; Nozick, 1974). Word was then made flesh through its adoption by international regimes such as the IMF, national governments and multi-national corporations. Many opponents of neoliberalism treat its borderless market logic and stark policy alternatives as the embodiment of a regressive globalist ideology. That ideology turned a philosophy of individual needs and how to fulfill them into an economic doctrine and, with a particular twist, into a political project aimed at advancing or restoring hegemonic power globally (Harvey, 2003, 2005a, b; Lechner, 2009). Nor are such arguments always the product of vulgar Marxism. In a sophisticated constructivist account of – as he sees it – the otherwise unaccountable success of neoliberal globalization, Colin Hay examines the pro-globalization rhetoric of Western political and economic elites, or else their resignation over its alleged inevitability (1999). He explains the supportive or acquiescent stance taken by the leaders of many countries over the marketization of the world economy as a voluntaristic, if misguided, willingness on their part to fly in the face of powerful countervailing evidence on the parlous consequences of global economic convergence through liberalization. Seemingly this is, or at least was, a theoretically precocious line to take, departing from brute structuralist and materialist accounts of what constitutes globalization because it reintroduces ideas, consciousness and agency to the explanatory account. The trouble is that one still has to explain the stance taken by those elites, while avoiding the accusation that in some way they just succumbed to, or were the (un)witting victims, of neoliberal ideology. In part the problem is obviously normative; in greater part it is methodological, because there seems no way in which notionally autonomous decisions and the accompanying rhetoric can be distinguished from the claim that agents may have been gulled by an ideological sleight of hand, display a necessary attachment to explicit or implied class interests or enact a set of abstract system imperatives. Ideological globalizers see globalization as real, whether media-driven or not, and the differences between them turn on whether they like what they see. In this pantheon, constructivist political economy raises the analytical stakes by pointing out the ideological, political and highly contingent character of that process (Hay and Rosamond, 2002; Woods, 2006; Abdelal, 2007; Cameron and Palen, 2004). Treating globalization as a discursive construction also highlights how discourse may constitute and underwrite power structures, or embed a particular mobilization of bias. It even allows for the ideational antithesis of that bias to find expression in the discourses of anti- and alter-globalization groups and movements. Ulrika Olausson (2013) has an interesting gloss on all of this in her treatment of how the very ideas of “global” and “global media” are constructed discursively. Contrasting her discourse approach to that of globalizers and skeptics (Hafez, 2007; Cardoso, 2012; Cottle, 2009), she argues that the “decisive criterion for what constitutes global media from a discourse theoretical perspective is the ability to display complex and often subtle connections between various geopolitical scales”, not geographical reach (2013, 1286; Ibold and Ireri, 2012). In other words, if a global discourse is present in what media outlets and platforms produce

Media and globalization 37 and in how they disseminate it, there is a case for treating them as global media, providing an interpretative framework that links local, national and transnational identities, and positioning a local event in a global context, or vice versa.4 This insight does service in some of the instances of emergent globality examined later in the book. Constructivism and the variants offered by critical IPE offer very nuanced accounts of what is frequently depicted as a uni-dimensional and over-determined process. For that alone their contribution to the study of global capitalism, as well as to the study of non-capitalist globalization, is noteworthy. Treatments of capitalism as a global system require attention to historical detail, to structural constraints and to crisis tendencies. They also need the insights provided by interpretative analysis wherein ideologies are enacted through discourse, while ideational structures frame action. The problem for research continues to be how to theorize and then demonstrate the articulation of these two fields. I will end this section by examining some neo-Marxist positions on the relationships between media and neoliberal globalization. This focus will highlight the tensions between different strands of globalizers and between globalizers and skeptics, before delineating the requirements of a multidimensional theory of global dynamics and constitution. In a developed and sociologically informed treatise on media-centrism and neoliberal globalization, Marko Ampuja (2012; see also Fuchs, 2013, 2014; Hesmondhalgh, 2017) notes the value of the cultural turn in global theory, but is critical of the way in which those who have focused on the cultural realm – and on that of symbolic communication via media in particular – have staked out their own brand of theoretical reductionism. Theirs may not be the raffish hyper-globalism of Thomas Friedman, although that too is media-centric, but still elevates the explanatory power of media-driven cultural globalization over material categories and Marxist tenets on the engines of social change. Ampuja castigates a battery of well-known authors – Manuel Castells, Arjun Appadurai and John Tomlinson included – for not paying due attention to both the enduring features of capitalist accumulation and to its current manifestations in the ideology and practices of neoliberalism as a global script.5 In all this he is at one with the criticisms made by Marxist theorists of international relations, such as Justin Rosenberg (2005, 2007), who has similarly pilloried the alleged superficialities of globalization theory. Rosenberg argues that those who claim to discern deterritorialization, global flows, cultural hybrids and the like, are mesmerized by the zeitgeist of modal connectivity through communications media (see Scholte, 2005, 2005).6 In fact, Ampuja understands and applauds the scholarly intent of those he calls cultural globalizers, at least where they offer a justifiable critique of the earlier devotion to simplistic models of cultural imperialism through media (for a different critique of cultural imperialism, see Nederveen Pieterse, 2003, 2015). His objections, not unlike Rosenberg’s in this respect, lie in the extent to which globalization theory has gone overboard in claiming transformative power for what is really no more than an adjustment in the spatiotemporal constitution of society, and without much evidence to support their grand

38  Media and globalization claim. In so doing, what he calls mainstream globalization theory is also guilty of reductionism and of ignoring the material basis of social organization in capitalist modes of production. In a way this is all quite refreshing, echoing as it does Rosenberg’s complaint that what “mainstream” theorists call globalization, and to which they ascribe monumental social change through the liberating force of new communications technologies, is mainly hype. But the gist of his argument is really no more than business as usual for Marxist political and cultural economy, for all that David Hesmonhalgh says that there has been a studied inattention to capitalism in recent debates about culture and about communication media (2017). Ampuja argues that the real reason why arguments about media and communication have been important for global theory stems not from their analytical and empirical weight, but more from their correspondence with certain political and ideological tendencies that define the same historical conjuncture in which global theory emerged; namely the post-1989 period defined by neoliberalism. Much culturally inflected globalization theory does little more than obscure the dominance of “corporate culture on a global scale”, as Fredric Jameson opined (1998, 66), and thus culture is a mask for ideology.7 Given its part-provenance in Jameson’s work on much the same theme, there is no doubt that this is a cultural explanation of sorts. But Jameson’s understanding of the imbrications of economics and culture is much more layered and nuanced than Ampuja’s, not least because he sees the realm of culture as providing countervailing force to the power of the global culture industries, and thus to corporate capitalism. Jameson offers a more substantively multidimensional interpretation of the economization of culture and the cultural inflection of economics. Having dismissed globalization theorists for their vapid adherence to the idea of multidimensionality – which in some respects is a valid criticism because there has been a notable failure to operationalize the idea – Ampuja then slips back to a default reductionism by telling us that while it is wrong to argue that globalization theory is a “direct mirror” of neoliberal ideology, it is still resonant with the latter (2011, 297). Now “resonance”, like “relative autonomy”, can be a weasel expression in the lexicon of neo-Marxist accounts of social dynamics. It is a tried and tested getout-of-jail card for those wishing to avoid essentialist explanation yet still opt for privileged constitution. For Ampuja, one of the problems with globalization theory is that it has switched “the theoretical frame of reference” away from analysis of the systemic travails of the capitalist mode of production, by mistaking a routine facet of that mode’s endlessly inventive search for greater accumulation for allegedly new, world-changing and undetermined social modalities – through new media and communications technologies. Instead, the social impacts of the latter are better taken as “homologous” with the individualistic and emancipatory vision of neoliberalism (2011, 297).8 If one accepts this thesis there is, of course, no need to analyse new media and capitalism through the distorted lens of globalization theory. Indeed, globalization becomes a redundant concept for all but the most descriptive accounts of social

Media and globalization 39 topology. Insofar as the idea of global culture is admitted to this spavined account, it is taken as presumptively monolithic, while the concept of multidimensionality – a systematic account of the analytically separate but interconnected and perhaps mutually constitutive dynamics of economics, politics and culture – gets lost in theoretical equivocation – or more often, essentialism – about what is deemed ultimately determinant. Such a misrepresentation of the importance of the cultural turn in multidimensional global studies does no service to good social science. Instead, let me reprise the case for a culturally informed and multidimensional treatment of globality and of the role of (digital) media in global constitution, when set against Ampuja’s thesis. First, Ampuja describes what others would call a global media culture achieved and sustained through more-or-less universal processes of mediatization. The result is a world cultural structure that would be recognized as such even by non-Marxist social theorists (Boli and Lechner, 2005; Thomas, 2016). But the culture thus produced is monolithic and imperturbable. A multidimensional theory of emergent globalities looks to bridge the ontological divide between structure and agency and is not reliant on built-in assumptions about which is super-ordinate and which subaltern. For example, world polity theory, while far from action-centred, still allows for the negotiation of global models and does not assume that the global confronts and overwhelms the local through a process of “mechanical diffusion” of global culture (Thomas, 2016, 86). Rather it proceeds by establishing discursive sites in which “actor identities, lines of action, policies, programmes and discourse are framed, articulated and contested” (Thomas, 2016). Global cultures contain “meaningful frames for organizing social life”, as Frank Lechner writes (2009, 43). These comprise “self-evidently global institutions”, including the globally diffused and widely legitimated model of the territorial nation-state (Sassen, 2007, 21). They also comprise many discursive sites of the kind identified by George Thomas, and some of these are more institutionalized and contested than others (2016; see also Hironaka, 2014; Cevik, 2015). The point to retain is that what are presented as “global” cultures have a variety of distinct vehicles and sites, and at one and the same time these are modal (in form), yet ontologically fragile (in content and practice), and thus open to challenge. For the analyst of global cultures, the task is to show the ways in which these vehicles and sites (and the scales at which they are manifest) interact with one another (Levitt, 2016, 145). They demonstrate cultures of and in motion – cultures of circulation – not fixed and bounded, despite the fact that local inflections can appear as idiosyncratic and obdurate. In this analysis neither local nor global is privileged. While it is still tempting to treat such phenomena as avatars of either an incipient or extant transnationalism, this is not a world without borders. At the same time, we must understand that cultural circulation takes place within social fields “whose breadth and depth extend far beyond the boundaries of the nationstate” (Levitt, 2016, 144). Thus, local sites are highly connected to world cultural models/scripts through a variety of media. We can advert education, markets of different kinds, diaspora and transnational networks, epistemic communities and, of course, communication

40  Media and globalization media and their output (Thomas, 2016). But the ways in which global cultures are instantiated always reveals a strong performative element, whereby rules have to be reproduced through enactment. This is never a matter of simple or unqualified diffusion of cultural scripts. At the same time, it remains an empirical question as to whether the idea of an enacted global culture must still countenance the possible “emergence of one single culture embracing everyone on earth and replacing the diversity of cultural systems” that currently obtain (Tomlinson, 1999, 71). But any such argument or prediction will always leave global culture as presumptively monolithic, if not unchallenged, and Ampuja’s position about modal neoliberalism (and, from a different perspective, Tomlinson’s more permissive interpretation) perhaps unintentionally cleaves to the hyperglobalist conceit that the world is, or can be, culturally homogeneous. The other side of the argument – not canvassed by Ampuja, but raised by Rosenberg and some other skeptics (Chandler, 2007, 2009; and with a direct focus on media, Sparks, 2012) – is that because any such cultural convergence is inconceivable, or not demonstrated empirically, there is no point talking about globalization anyway. Both accounts largely miss the point when talking about global culture and its making. Cultural globalization is a double process. Beyond doubt it differentiates through processes of localization or indigenization, so that “(p)eople interpret circulating symbols very differently according to their own needs and customs” (Boli and Lechner, 2005, 25; Breidenbach and Zukrigl, 2000). At the same time, much of what takes place locally is only intelligible when set in a global context, a position that resonates throughout the work on global norms and standards seen in the work of the Stanford School (Meyer, 2007, 2010; Gulmez, 2010; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007). The proper inference from this body of research is that global culture(s) is not allembracing or obliterating, since many lifestyles and localities are not incorporated and many differences not spanned. Global culture is not an “alien” force suppressing difference, because when global symbols are “freely appropriated” (which, in truth, may be a telling qualification) they can be part of anyone’s “authentic culture”. Overall, global culture “organizes diversity” and provides “ideas, symbols, concepts and models that seep into daily life and thus add a layer to people’s experience” (Boli and Lechner, 2005, 36). As Peggy Levitt also says, where cultures of circulation are in place, they comprise ”interlocking multi-layered, unequal networks of individuals, institutions and governance regimes that connect cultural producers and consumers to multiple people and places on the basis of multiple identities” (2016, 144). To really understand emergent globalities, the characteristics of “new” media as cultural technologies that permit local inflections, ambiguities, contradictions and tensions, and yet still have modal compass, is fruitful, perhaps seminal, ground for investigation. Such an approach questions the commonplace views of globalization as an economic-cultural rollercoaster driven by the ideology of neoliberalism, or as a loosely construed postmodern construct, endlessly and casually refashioned. It also qualifies vogue-ish and often romanticized ideas about localizing global cultures through different patterns of accommodation and resistance.

Media and globalization 41 Empirical, and profane, skepticism In this book, digital communication as a form of connectivity is privileged as the lens through which emergent globalities can be conceptualized and observed. I have noted arguments that take strong exception to this thesis from the standpoint of neo-Marxist theory and some strands of constructivism. In what follows I canvass other accounts that entertain the possibility of what has been called “cosmopolitan communication” (Inglehart and Norris, 2009) but either see it as a chimera or, with a developed normative cast, a threat to territorialist assumptions about the natural spaces of civic association, citizenship and rights. That done, I will turn to detailed empirical critiques of the idea of media globalization or cosmopolitan communication, before focusing on the vexed subject of a global digital divide as monumentally damaging to any claim that we live in a “flat world”. I will end the chapter by returning in more detail to the question of mediatization, both as a focus for media scholarship and a means of capturing the dynamics of a globalized world. Empirical skepticism 1: cosmopolitan media Empirical research and empirical skepticism obviously have implications for my treatment of the role of digital communication in constituting emergent globalities. I want to deal with skeptical positions that, on the face of it, do not have a normative agenda about globalization, at least where the role of new media is concerned. Intent on delivering a warts-and-all analysis of the social consequences of Internet connection, or of media connection more generally, this research questions the adequacy of cosmopolitan and emancipatory motifs as used in accounts of the progressive and benign effects of digital connection. It also takes on jeremiads on the likely eclipse of the local and the vernacular by the same means. Other strands of remarkably similar debates set in this terrain have a robust and distinctly polemical, not to say profane, feel; especially when conducted by activists and public intellectuals (Morozov, 2011, 2017). In Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart’s time-series study of national diversity and cultural convergence (2009), the part played by what they call “cosmopolitan communications” in eroding the former and promoting the latter is explored in a detailed comparative analysis of data gathered by the World Values Survey between 1981 and 2007. The designation “cosmopolitan communications” embraces a wide variety of media (and media products). As well as the Internet and email, there are movies, TV, magazines and books; though little on what were then only nascent social media platforms and other Web 2.0 modalities. Norris and Inglehart are less concerned with the global political economy of media production and consumption than with the effects on local culture of media dissemination across boundaries (with cosmopolitan effects in mind, see the upbeat findings of Poster, 2004). For students of globalization the scenario is familiar, as is the hypothesis to be tested: has the global spread of information and knowledge via different media eroded the integrity of national and local cultures; in other

42  Media and globalization words, has cultural diversity been replaced by cultural homogeneity – or cosmopolitan consciousness – where the former, and perhaps both, refer in essence to the universalization of the Western cultural account? The answer, culled from an impressive data set and selected indicators, is that a cosmopolitan effect is observable because communication networks do seem to bind “people living in diverse communities and nation-states together”, if only cognitively (2009, 8).9 Such a consequence is not the result of a smooth and unmediated diffusion of Western media product. Indeed, no outcome can be assumed just from evidence of growing connection. This too is familiar territory for students of globalization touching, as it does, on what it takes and means to be globalized or localized. From the literature on cultural globalization, Inglehart and Norris identify three broad scenarios for the implications of cosmopolitan communications on places and situated actors. These are convergence, polarization and fusion. The first suggests that global communication has contributed to the standardization of cultures around the world and the loss of national/local autonomy. The second posits that exposure to global media and Western lifestyles generates a backlash, especially from more conservative or traditional societies and cultures in the global south; while the third bears all the hallmarks of the hybridization thesis, a benign multiculturalism, or the kind of freewheeling, informal cosmopolitanism envisaged by David Held and Ulrich Beck (Held 2010, 2006; McChesney, 2006; Ritzer and Liska, 1997; Adorno, 1991). In this the authors receive endorsement from work that treats cultural hybridization as the signature process and outcome of cultural globalization. In one way or another, Inglehart and Norris are dissatisfied with each of these positions. But their critique is nuanced; suitably cautious about the effects of global communications and media effects more generally, while suggesting that as interconnection between societies becomes more extensive and intensive its cultural impact is very likely to grow (2009).10 Mainly, they are wary of attributing too many cultural consequences to cosmopolitan media because cultural firewalls exist which “preserve the imprint of distinctive national cultures, especially in poorer societies” (2009). In their estimation, the enduring weight of distinctive historical conditions and traditions vitiates the power of border-crossing technologies and media formats, even where, as in the case of Google, they appear modal. In itself this critique questions the idea of the Internet as both universal, or as universally accessible, and is open or agnostic on the features and even the merits of different cultures. At one remove such qualification serves only to underline the dialectic of sameness and difference that constitutes globalization. Glocal outcomes from what might otherwise look like secular convergence temper any reckoning of globally uniform, or even convergent, media effects. But the idea of, or the prescription for, a borderless world of Internet connection is also qualified by the recognition that the universal ideal of the Internet is being quite severely compromised by its origins in an American world-view, one that extends to how the Internet, and especially the World Wide Web, should be governed (Malcolmson, 2016).

Media and globalization 43 American dominance aside, the growing practice of what has been called “internet sovereignty” (censorship?) by individual nation-states, particularly in matters of surveillance, has gone some way to nationalize what, at least in the libertarian heyday of the 1990s, was still described by one commentator as a “global social space . . . naturally independent of the tyrannies (states) seek to impose” (Barlow, 1996).11 The upshot is that things are much more variable than the convergence hypothesis would predict. Transnational traffic in movies, TV, radio, music, and in some newspapers, magazines and books, is a huge, yet globally very asymmetrical, phenomenon. Its origins and drivers lie in the global north (particularly in the US, Germany, France, the UK and Canada), and its products flow from thence to the rest of the world. But many other countries are not well integrated into global or north-south exchange networks and commodity chains, have low domestic levels of media freedom and lack access to foreign news and communication infrastructures. Norris and Inglehart suggest that contextual factors like these will, and in fact do, act as firewalls, keeping global media influences at bay from certain societies. Although it is hard to cavil at their exemplary social-scientific caution, the authors’ judgment may be skewed by their willingness to endorse the old antinomies of local/global and homogeneity/heterogeneity, thereby reinforcing an either-or view of the world and its disposition. A more globally-sensitive approach would have entertained the possibility of many globalizations (pace Berger and Huntington, 2005), “third cultures” which are neither local or global (Featherstone, 2006), the idea of a heterogeneous, yet singular world culture and the “complex relationalities” revealed through the study of what John Urry labels “global fluids” like the Internet (2003, 2005; see also Ong and Collier, 2005). It is also rather surprising that they do not have recourse to the insights of glocalization theory (Roudometof, 2016). For the local, however construed, is where potential or immanent global homogeneity gets articulated with the vernacular, both actually and metaphorically. The outcome may be new cultural hybrids or syncretic forms and these are glocal, having the emergent properties of that condition (Raz, 1999; Roudometof, 2016; Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007). The existence of “glocalization projects” modifies any treatment of the global as an abstract and totalizing process. But that does not involve reifying the local. Rather, it admits a possible range of outcomes and modalities that can result when national and local identities and cultures are i) eroded through cultural homogenization in the melancholy ways described by George Ritzer (2004, 2007), ii) reinforced in a politics of cultural resistance to globalization or iii) replaced by hybrid cultures, which are the result of the interpenetration of local and global (Hall, 1992). Obviously, such outcomes cannot be predicated on the assumed and immutable properties of either localities or globalization processes. The key point here is that glocalization, as Giulianotti and Robertson argue, “both highlights how local cultures may critically adapt or resist ‘global’ phenomena, and reveals the way in which the very creation of localities is a standard component of globalization. There is now a universal

44  Media and globalization normalization of ‘locality’, in the sense that ‘local’ cultures are assumed to arise constantly and particularize themselves vis-a-vis other specific cultures” and, of course, global cultures (2007, 134; Roudometof, 2016). Although this formulation may appear elusive, it is one more indication that when discussing globalization, we have to think outside normal social science as that is applied to the phenomenon and employ new kinds of imagery and new rules of intellectual engagement. To avoid this prescription being just hortatory or vacuous, the key concept of emergent globality will be fleshed out in more detail; not least with regard to how the condition is attained through world-making practices. I attempt this task in chapters three and four. As for Inglehart and Norris, theirs is no jeremiad on the lost cultural innocence of localities, of places, when set against the melding power of global cultural flows. In many ways what they say reinforces the case for examining the loci and dynamics of world-making practices and the dialectic of difference and sameness they inscribe.12 Empirical skepticism 2: digital inequality There is a growing demand for knowledge about the global. But what constitutes global knowledge is both contested and differentiated, speaking to diverse academic and lay communities and interests (Nederveen Pieterse, 2013; Kamola, 2013). Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris offer a usefully qualified account of the imbrications of local and global through communication that has traction in theories of globalization, modernization and cultural imperialism. Intellectual as well as policy-relevant and activist curiosity about the extent and intensity of global processes is found too in discussions about digital inequality. Sometimes rehearsed under the older expression “digital divide”, the collection and examination of raw data on aspects of global integration through media access and use, or the lack of it, have fuelled both hyperglobalist and skeptical accounts. Here, the latter are of more interest. Initially, the idea of a digital divide focused on variable access to information and communication technologies. More subtly it now comprises not just access, but usage and the benefits derived from usage; as well as how, or whether, the latter may be correlated with people’s background characteristics, such as their age, sex, ethnicity, education and geographical location. Research has demonstrated that these factors, and others, are related both to the technical skills people employ when online and to how they behave (engage, consume, invent) as users (Hargittai and Hsieh, 2013; see also the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Inclusive Internet Index, 2013). The social and cultural consequences of observed variability in access, skills and use may amount to systematic inequality where it can be demonstrated that these attributes are not randomly spread across populations. Even if the “divide” and the reasons for it are not systematic, the implications of differential Internet use for human and financial capital, as well as for social capital and civic engagement, may be profound, contributing to a debilitating slew of information poverty.13

Media and globalization 45 Perhaps self-evidently, digital inequalities are visible both within countries and regions and globally (Pew Foundation, 2015; World Bank, 2016). This is hardly surprising because any sense of globalization as implying secular, not to say irrevocable, convergence still must acknowledge that some parts of the world are significantly less integrated into global networks than others, or else less beneficially enjoined. These caveats have force across the gamut of globally integrative tendencies, and have particular weight when discussing digital inequalities. As you might expect, the data is contested and the trends sometimes less than clear, making for ambiguity in rather than coherence of interpretation. The World Bank Development Report for 2016 reflects such ambiguity, and contains more than a frisson of ambivalence. On the one hand it enthuses that the rapid spread of the Internet and mobile technology around the globe has surpassed the spread of any other technology in human history, and in less time. On the other hand, this unprecedented diffusion of technology has failed to deliver, or has yet to realize, its development potential. So the persistent question in debates about information technologies and development is whether the global digital divide is widening or narrowing and, as a matter of definitional consequence, whether attempts to answer that question need only to canvass the extent and intensity of connection, or must extend to its impact on the quality of lives and the manner of its use. In this regard, and unfortunately, the figures hardly speak for themselves.14 Rather, they supply partial answers to quite different questions and allow conflicting interpretations. For example, looking at mobile telephony by the level of development of countries, the majority of highly developed countries have reached saturation levels, with little growth from one year to another. In developing countries, on the other hand, mobile-cellular subscriptions are still growing at double-digit rates, which implies that the developing world is catching up and the divide is narrowing (ITU report: ICT Development Index, 2013). Indeed, looked at solely in terms of market expansion, that is a reasonable inference. In the developing world, the ubiquitous mobile phone, or cell phone, provides an important foundation for the uptake of the mobile Internet. The International Telecommunications Union estimated at the end of 2015 that there were seven billion mobile cellular subscriptions amounting to a penetration rate of 97% (February 2016). Mobile penetration in developed nations is around 130% of the population. This means that actual and future market growth is being driven by demand in the developing world, led by rapid mobile adoption in China and India, the world’s most populous nations. Mobile penetration in developing nations is around 89% of the population, according to the ITU. It is estimated that sometime between 2016 and 2018, Africa and the Middle East will overtake Europe as the second largest region for mobile subscribers. Measured using a different set of figures – Internet access per se – a secular convergence looks less robust, or more complicated. By the end of 2015, 34% of households in developing countries had Internet access, compared with more than 80% in developed countries. In least developed countries (LDCs), only 7% of households had Internet access, compared with the world average of 46%. What

46  Media and globalization this means in raw numbers is that some four billion people, or some 60% of the world’s population, are without routine, or any, Internet access. Furthermore, the remarkable figures for mobile phone penetration in the developing world have to be set against the fact that in many such countries more families own a cell phone than have routine access to electricity or clean water. At the same time, we should not assume that these inequalities are always cumulative or pathologically synergistic. The growing rates of mobile usage in developing countries, along with consequent gains to the quality of individual lives, may not be completely offset or demeaned by the existence of other deprivations. Access to digital technologies might still be transformational, both in terms of the routines of everyday living and in playing out life’s dramas. The World Bank report for 2016 notes that 40% of adults in East Africa pay utility bills using a mobile phone, and that eight million entrepreneurs in China – a third of them women – use an e-commerce platform to sell their goods. Texting from health agencies is also proving valuable in reminding people with HIV to take life-saving drugs. Modest claims, but not risible, and perhaps indicative. Nor do low penetration rates in least developed countries mean that forms of new and dissenting politics are absent from the digital public domain. As I shall examine in later chapters, the recent focus on what initially looked like successful digitally enhanced revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa highlights both the use of digital communications technologies as tools of usual politics and the more radical claim that digital environments may actually frame new kinds of politics and spawn novel forms of political activism. For the present discussion the more pressing question, and one that offers a qualitative sense of digital disparity, is what factors explain, or else are correlated with, the consumption of online digital content compared to those that attend its production. In other words who participates in social media and what does this data tell us about digital inequalities and about emergent globalities? The acquisition of digital skills, including social networking skills, has become increasingly pervasive among Web users (Hampton et al., 2011). At the same time, the phenomenon of what is called communication multiplexity, or the use of multiple media to interact with a range of contacts, is itself closely and reflexively linked to the acquisition and enhancement of technical and social skills.15 Put simply, there is convincing evidence that skilled users are more likely to adopt and adapt social media innovatively for developing and sustaining social relationships than are unskilled ones. Of course, what constitutes digital skill admits a catholic range of attributes. Usually, the notion of digital skill or literacy is defined as the ability to access, process, understand and even create information or other forms of media content in digital environments (Livingstone, 2004; Buckingham, 2007). The range of tasks prescribed in this list is interesting for two reasons. First it encompasses a set of more-or-less passive to active engagements that may give clues as to the demeanor of the user as either consumer or producer. In turn such demeanors can be correlated with a set of environmental and other personal factors to map the intra and cross-national distribution of digital engagement (EshetAlkali and Chajut, 2009). Second, the tasks give little clue as to the emotional

Media and globalization 47 frame or temper in which engagements take place. By temper I mean the sense of personal or collective social and political efficacy that individuals feel when engaging with digital technologies and in using them as the conduit to similar, though often distant, friends and others and to various service providers and public authorities. Do they engage out of cultures already high in social capital, or does engagement produce these attributes? If the latter, is this a uniform outcome? What variables correlate with a high or low sense of efficacy and trust? Digital literacy now appears as a complex factor, possibly an independent variable (or a proxy for a constellation of factors) when explaining the personal demeanor of individual actors, and a dependent variable when trying to weigh the conditions that contribute to digital inequalities. In the case of social media usage, over the thirteen or so years since the Pew Foundation has been collecting data, mainly on the USA, the changes have been notable (Pew Foundation, 2015). Nearly two-thirds of American adults (65%) use social networking sites, up from 7% in 2005. Pew Research reports have documented in great detail how the rise of social media has affected such things as work, political deliberation, health and civic life. The picture beneath the overall increase is telling. Young adults (18–29) are most likely to use social media. Today, there is no significant difference in the proportions of men and women who use social networking sites. Video gaming is highly skewed to young male usage, though the profile is changing rapidly, notably in the USA. Higher levels of education and household income predict greater usage, but it is notable that some 56% of people in the lowest-income households now use social media. There are no notable differences in usage between white Americans and Hispanics (65%), while African-Americans muster at 56%. Globally, the picture bears some comparison, but with important twists (Pew Research Center, 2014). As I have noted, across the world Internet access varies widely. The USA shows 87% access, while in Ghana it is 21%. Even these figures cannot be taken at face value, since they do not reveal frequency of usage. At the same time, we cannot estimate penetration or effects simply by looking at computer ownership or access. To state the obvious, accessing the Internet no longer requires a fixed line to a computer. In many nations cell phones are almost universal, even where landlines are in short supply, and in some developing countries, smartphone usage rates mirror those in the USA.16 Interestingly, in light of my earlier observations on social capital, in emerging and developing nations socializing online and getting information are very popular activities. And as an indicator of the continuing power of difference, in many emerging and developing countries a median of 64% of the general population see the Internet as having a positive influence on education, but a median of only 29% say that it has a benign influence on questions of morality. What all these numbers reveal, or intimate, is not a linear, convergent trend, but perhaps a non-linear, though still secular tendency. To reiterate, integrative trends are increasingly manifest, but huge numbers of people and many regions of the globe are still not beneficially enjoined; where they are enjoined at all. The benefits – materially and in terms of emotional/psycho-social gains – remain skewed

48  Media and globalization towards the better-off and the more highly skilled, although polemicists such as Evgeny Morozov believe that we are all badly served by the world-eating power of Google and Facebook, as they privatize our data and look poised to take over the basic information structures through which the world is connected (2016).17 Even the World Bank is pessimistic, though not for the same reasons, reporting that digital technologies have spread rapidly, but digital dividends – in economic growth, jobs, services and routine interactivity – still lag behind promise (2016). Currently this shortfall in performance may look like a failure of political will or sufficient resource allocation, but it also betokens, and in the future will reveal more clearly, the redundancy of the advertising-driven and market-led model which promised to bring free and continuing Internet access to the developing world and allow millions of people to use email and search functions for free. So, a more jaundiced take on pretty much the same data holds that the global digital divide is still widening over time, dampening hopes that the Internet will serve as a liberation technology to advance democracy and as a leapfrogging technology to enhance social development (Drori, 2012; Diamond, 2010). The World Bank, which always tends to the upbeat in its judgements on globalizing, and especially liberalizing, tendencies, cautions that while ”it is an amazing transformation that today 40% of the world’s population is connected to the internet, . . . this is also an occasion to be mindful that we do not create a new underclass” (Basu, 2016).18 Sobering as that judgement is, when discussing the social impacts of digital connection, there are still reasons to be cheerful, albeit the spread of mobile telephony cannot be taken to signify a modal Internet “literacy” (since not all societies are thoroughly mediatized). But connectivity alone is not enough to guarantee that people will benefit from the Internet. The Internet must also be relevant, and people need the skills and confidence to use it. So, the transformative promise of the mobile Internet stands as another evocative metaphor for social change and maybe for social progress. But for some commentators, this remains a sanguine conclusion, and modal or not, when discussing the extent and social, political and cultural consequences of communicative connectivity, demons of one kind or another are always present or just out of sight. Profane skepticism: the dark side of communications freedom The Internet was once seen, and by some is still applauded, as a force for great good around the world, promoting connection, of course, and also commerce, peace, human rights and democracy. But there are more profane views on its impact and potential. In these accounts the transnational networks created by the Internet can be as much a force for ill as for good. Twitter and other social networking media may be useful for political activists and diasporas, for easing the routines of everyday living, but they are also seen as the tools of repressive governance, corporate ambition and the graveyard of progressive politics. Writing about the ubiquitous “smart” prefix, used to label all manner of digital platforms and environments – smartphones, smart cars, smart cities and smart homes – arch-skeptic

Media and globalization 49 Evgeny Morozov opines that smart means “Surveillance Marketed As Revolutionary Technology” (Twitter, 31 January, 2016).19 In other words, there is nothing inherently more just or more democratic about a networked world, and to think so is naïve. For Morozov the dialectic of liberation and repression tends very much to the latter pole. Profane skepticism is rightly targeted at unbridled cyber-enthusiasm and what Michael Meyer calls that self-congratulatory culture of “mutual validation” common in the world of technology gurus; a conceit also excoriated by Morozov (2011, 2013); Meyer (2014). Morozov’s role as serial curmudgeon is a necessary antidote to unguarded claims about the assumed beneficial and world-changing effects of liberation and leapfrogging technologies. In particular he has launched swingeing attacks on what he calls the folly of “technological solutionism” and the sin of “Internet-centrism” (2011, 2103). The former condition valorizes digital solutions to all the world’s problems – democracy promotion, the prospects for citizen-facing government, corporate transparency, the demand for knowledge-based employment – but is really a form of naïve, if extreme, technophilia and a dangerous ideology to boot. Internetcentrism, taken to task in his second book, To Save Everything, Click Here, parades as a misplaced but “firm conviction that we are living through unique, revolutionary times, in which the previous truths no longer hold” (Meyer, 2014). Look closely; the latter sentiment echoes to a fault the criticisms of (hyper) globalization theory we canvassed earlier, criticisms that not only question globalization’s transformative potential, but its reliance on the modus of digital connection and capitalist accumulation to effect progressive social change (Rosenberg, 2005; Sparks, 2012). Morozov’s world-view is composed of critical and polemical realism, though some would say nihilism, and in its most recent guise, tries to locate technology, media and communications within a broadly Marxist problematic. In a fierce critique of Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage (2014), Morozov avers, “technology criticism, uncoupled from any radical project of social transformation, simply doesn’t have the goods” (2015). Only those with a progressive and emancipatory agenda pass muster. Rather loosely specified, that category excludes both technology determinists, of course, and also those who espouse any version of technology criticism with a phenomenological bent. Writers such as Carr and, by implication, John Tomlinson (1999, 2007) and Andreas Hepp (2014), are castigated, or deemed in need of correction, because they address the ways in which technology frames action, but at the same time emphasize its enacted character when subject to use by agents with a diversity of identities, resources and interests. Thought-provoking as it is, this polemical candour reveals a besetting weakness in Morozov’s treatise. By relegating thoughts and perceptions, as well as consciousness and reflexivity, to the rim of explanatory worth, he is, in effect, outlawing agency and its socially constitutive role when imbricated with technology structures. By insisting on the presumptive power of structural conditions and embedded interests (in this case on the part of the data-rich giants of Silicon Valley) he is also guilty of structural determinism, albeit that his kind of determinism

50  Media and globalization looks suspiciously like the technological variety quickened with a dash of profit motive on the part of tech giants.20 For Morozov this constellation of power alone produces disturbing results. Writing in the Guardian newspaper in the spring of 2016, he intimates a dystopia in which technology firms disrupt and even supersede both governments and markets, with citizens and consumers having to pay for access to “anything with a screen or a button”. This kind of globalization spawns only a mutant globality, a dystopia that goes way beyond routine official and corporate monitoring of browsing and social networking activities to the systematic tracing of what people eat, how (or if) they exercise, drive and even make love. The scenario is either the doleful apogee of mediatization in the digital age; or, should you be less convinced by such a dolorous refrain, an unlikely and completely pathological variant.21 There are many takers for both arguments. To explore the antinomy in greater detail, I turn now to the contested and normatively charged idea of mediatization and its relationship to globalization and global theory.

Conclusion: mediatization (and globalization) The charge of media-centrism hangs heavy over accounts of the ways in which different communication media inflect and influence social life.22 To suggest that an approach is media-centric questions its empirical worth when used as a way to describe and evaluate the independent (or sometimes conjoint) influence of media on social outcomes. And to complicate matters further, there may be a normative undercurrent in the charge involving judgments about the desirability of any observed or implied effects. To say that a culture is mediatized invites the same criticisms. But whereas media-centrism (or anything-centrism) is a simplification of good science, mediatization is, or should be, a core concept in the development of media theory, a contested, but potent summary of key processes and institutions, and a meta-theory of social change when seen as an axial feature of global constitution.23 Nick Couldry and Andres Hepp point to an “increasing institutionalization of research on the wider ‘consequences’ of mediated communications on our present cultures and societies”. This institutionalization, they say, “represents a broad and ambitious re-orientation of media and communication research away from models of theorizing influence as an ‘effect’ of media texts to a more extensive understanding of ‘mediatization’ as a way of capturing the wider consequences of media’s embedding in everyday life” (2013, 4). My position is that no theory of communicative connection as the basis for emergent globalities can subsist without recourse to the concept of mediatization thus construed (Lunt and Livingstone, 2016). None of which should blind us to the need for careful specification, or to the fact that it is very easy to slip into an unreflective frame of mind wherein, rather like naïve treatments of globalization, the conceptual frame is rostered to explain everything and ends up accounting for nothing. In this guise, as David Deacon and James Stanyer say, it looks more like a rhetorical flourish or shorthand for much more complex processes (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014, 2; see also Lunt and Livingstone, 2016).

Media and globalization 51 Widely debated in recent literature (Waisbord, 2013; Lundby, 2014; Couldry and Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2008; Couldry, 2012; Livingstone, 2007, 2009), mediatization refers to the process by which communication technologies, platforms and content are critical, perhaps seminal, in the framing and constitution of individual narratives and collective experiences (Tomlinson, 2007, 131). Claiming that a society or culture is mediatized is to acknowledge the “pervasive and ubiquitous” impacts of media without giving way either to determinism, or to the kind of pessimism that informs Michel Deuze’s observation that when mediatized, inevitably we “become blind to that which shapes our lives the most” (2011, 137). As always with portmanteau concepts, the danger is that it can be taken as a summary or acceptance of the autonomous, direct and often debilitating influence of different, or all, media of communication on social and political actors, institutions and processes. Used thus the media is placed centre-stage in every kind of social process and in attempted explanations of same24 (for a useful summary of these debates, see Robertson, 2015). But such attribution must be treated with caution and glossed with more care (Deacon and Stanyer, 2014). Nick Couldry and Andreas Hepp identify two stands of theorizing about mediatization (2013). In the first strand, “institutionalist” arguments depict mediatization as a process wherein non-media social actors have to adapt to “media’s rules, aims, production logics, and constraints” (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999, 249; Hjarvard, 2008, 2008; Deacon and Stanyer, 2014). In the second “social-constructivist” strain, it is seen as a process in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) impel “the changing communicative construction of culture and society” (Hepp, 2014, 616: see also, Couldry and Hepp, 2013; Krotz, 2009). Reflecting on this distinction, Deacon and Stanyer note that the focus on “media” in each is quite different. Institutionalists privilege “big” media organizations and their centripetal power, while social constructivists look to “small” media and their centrifugal impetus.25 This categorical separation notwithstanding, the same authors are right to say that both institutionalist and social constructivist arguments emphasize the autonomous power of media to influence values and behaviour. Although somewhat broad-brush, this criticism is pertinent. Both approaches tend to rather simplistic, or one-dimensional, definitions of power relationships, treating them as the evident “power over” or “power to” capacity of certain actors and processes relative to others. In this regard, though unintentionally, they stray down the path of determinism. Not only does this approach to power privilege the independent and visible clout of media to shape outcomes and identities, which is a dubious, or methodologically fraught, proposition, but it ignores, or under-reports, the notion of power as either negotiated, and thus contingent; or immanent, but not always visible in the interface between, or imbrications of, human actors and media technologies (Lukes, 2005). Better, pace Sonia Livingstone (2009), to see the whole process as a dialectic in which media shape and are shaped by other societal actors and forces in much the same way as structurationist and world-polity theorists qualify the hackneyed dualism of action-centred versus structure-centred accounts of social constitution (Giddens, 1990; Archer, 1988; Meyer, 2007, 2014, 1987).

52  Media and globalization This more nuanced feel is usefully captured in John Tomlinson’s early description of those “impatient and immoderate” media technologies and formats to which I referred earlier in the chapter, and whose use is now increasingly routine – and as Alexa Robertson says, sometimes “invisible” – in constituting the everyday lives of many people (2015, 131; Robertson, 2015). I am less exercised by the, admittedly uneasy, sense of power being “invisible” than she is, preferring Tomlinson’s account of the ways in which new media technologies and the aesthetics they express have been “domesticated” (2007, 81), absorbed into the fabric of living and thus made integral to how we conduct most aspects of social intercourse.26 However, it remains true that because they are so resolutely mundane their transformative impact – progressive or regressive – on social intercourse and cultural production may be obscured. Yet it is undoubtedly hard to grasp how a social system can be transformed simply through the “unreflective” routine or practical orientation to rules and resources which are themselves the medium for and the outcome of action by agents (Mouzelis, 1989). A tempered judgement may be that both progressive and regressive outcomes are available through reflective and unreflective engagements with technologies. But either way this process cannot be defined as a crude media “logic”, as the institutionalist and, to some extent, the constructivist, slants on mediatization avow. Still less does it muster as an unfolding teleology or periodization comprising a shift from “lesser” to “greater” compass and influence under the charge of new inscription technologies27 (Mazzolini and Schultz, 1999; Pfetch, 2014). On the contrary, we might subscribe to a more permissive and “logic-free” take on the effects of inscription technologies and mediatization, drawing on an intellectual genealogy that is quite complex. This take includes Jacques Derrida’s (1976) ideas on the imbrications of human and mechanical agency, of course, and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1993) references to heteronymous poles of influence, as a counterweight to the imputed singular or immanent qualities of actors and structures in the constitution of discursive fields and communicative practices. It also shows some regard for Michel Foucault’s (1977) approach to power and causation. Foucault’s main contribution to these debates also reflects the insistence on heterogeneity, and on what Deacon and Stanyer call explanatory conditions that are “individually necessary but sufficient only jointly” – in other words, to complex causation (2014, 5). Here power is less inscribed in particular technologies, institutions and practices and more a property that is “reproduced everywhere in a huge network of linkages, apparatuses and habits within everyday life” (Couldry and Hepp, 2013, 3). For all this caution, the presumed “logic” of media continues to exert a powerful attraction for students of mediatization (Altheide and Snow, 1979, 1979). And it is no coincidence that opposition to the trait comes, largely, from deconstructivist and post-structural sources. While these are not without their own problems as ways of grasping social constitution, they all have the signal merit of recognizing what David Altheide, in a limited reworking of his seminal institutionalist argument, calls the “ecology of communication” (2014, 73) – a multidimensional, multi-factor intertwining of influences. And it is appropriate to see in this ecology

Media and globalization 53 the emergence of a political and cultural economy that has altered, if not entirely displaced, the “onto-political” certainties that, until quite recently, informed much scholarship and world-views (Connolly, 2002). This ecology is clearly manifest in the imbrications of different empirical and analytical domains – material, ideological, spatial, technological and, of course, cultural. It also reveals that individuals in their everyday practices connect to global outcomes, in the sense that what a person eats, wears, watches or posts online is linked to a global ecology of signs embracing, for example, advertising, retailing, fashion, mass entertainment and politics. Critically, we can also identify media ecologies through which agency uses rules and resources supplied by system structures and rules to arrive at decisions and that predicate action. Such an approach leaves no room for technological or other forms of determinism, because no technology impacts unmediated upon actors, societies and cultures, and also because there is no logic or essence to particular technologies that can be completely abstracted from their use by actors. The inferred or presumptive agency of computer algorithms may qualify that view, and we shall return to that matter in chapter seven. For students of communication and media, the big challenge has always been how to unwrap the interaction between various communication media and the changing modalities of life. Are communications media simply the conduits for other social forces and trends, or do they possess an independent logic, a power that is, in itself, constitutive of thought, identity and action? My discussion to date suggests not, while cleaving to the idea of mediatization as a seminal process in the making of discursive and social fields, including global fields. As we have seen, too often key issues are elided. First, do changes in media technologies and formats imply or even precipitate the transformation of social life, and in what directions? Second, in what ways do old, new and hybrid media enhance or negate the effects of other independent or intervening variables, and how do all such factors affect agency? Third, at what point does analysis tip over into normative engagement or mere polemic? Running through these issues is an intriguing and important double dialectic, comprising how much new media can reshape older genres to create a different dynamic (though not a logic) of mediation, and the extent to which this dynamic reshapes the fabric of social life, including its global variants. Some accounts of mediatization as a driver or logic of globalization, or its avatar in the present conjuncture, may be read in support of a theory of (hyper) globalization, wherein it is both homogenizing and flattening. Given what we have said, this too would be a mistake, even when dealing with ascribed media effects. As Silvio Waisbord says, the dynamics and effects of media globalization are uneven (2013, 186; Gunaratne, 2010), and this is not a trivial insight. Early theories of globalization pronounced continuity and correspondence between post-Enlightenment modernity and late twentieth century globality, with a strong, indeed systemic, impetus to homogenization and convergence. Messier reality identifies multiple modernities or, less dramatically, multi-centrism as a modal feature of global cultural economy (Axford, 2016a; Nederveen ‑ Pieterse, 2015;

54  Media and globalization Casanova, 2011). Globalization as a process is uneven, as are its effects. As Waisbord also notes, we have to temper gross generalizations, examine diversity as a systematic or contingent feature and identify the ways in which communication forms and practices foster emergent globalities. In so doing we then underwrite the idea of globalization as promoting both sameness and difference. Up until now, globality has been a shadowy presence in this narrative. In the next chapter I address the concept more directly, along with other terms sharing a global root, the better to lay foundations for an analysis of world-making practices.

Notes 1 Glocal – glocality, glocalism – are widely referenced in the literature on globalization, but the concepts have enjoyed a chequered career. The intuitive appeal of the concepts – neither local nor global; yet not hybrid – looks at one with the depiction of globalization as being conflicted ontologically. But concerns about operationalization and thus about the theoretical status of the concept “glocal” continue to affect its widespread application (see Roudometof, 2016). 2 More detailed analysis of the mediatization of sport as an emergent globality is provided in chapter five. 3 I will not examine theories of methodological individualism in this respect as they seldom speak to globalization direct. Such accounts privilege the explanatory power of socialization processes to explain how social order is produced from the preferences of rational individuals, a theme sometimes rehearsed in discussions over the alleged fragility of world society (Keane, 2003; Meyer et al., 1987). 4 Whether there is a minimum amount of such content, below which the outlet would cease to qualify as global, is not clear. But one can see the at least intuitive case for saying that publics attentive to global discourse are thus created, if only fleetingly. Such would be the case for audiences and readerships created and sustained by coverage of pestilence, famine, war and even celebrity. 5 Fuchs (2015, 2016) sets the received wisdom of Marx in volume 1 of Capital against the transformational claims of both globalists and cyber-romantics. In brief his argument is that ICTs have not transformed capitalism in such a way as to change its capitalist nature in the key area of extracting value from labour. At the same time, ICTs are forcing new ways of thinking about core Marxist tenets – productive labour, class, rent and so on because of the ways in which new production practices and products – seen in things like crowdsourcing, user generated content and participation – are shifting the lines between production and consumption, as well as notions of ownership and copyright. 6 Of course, while Ampuja situates his critique of global theory in David Harvey’s analysis of accumulation crisis in capitalist systems (2003; see also Hesmondhalgh, 2009 and 2017), Rosenberg roots his scholarly polemic in the need to attend to the laws of uneven and combined development as these apply to international society and to social change more generally. But the burden of critique is similar. 7 I don’t want to convey the impression that these faults are solely the province of neoMarxist theories of media effects. Deacon and Stanyer (2014) note that both “institutionalist” and social constructivist arguments emphasize the autonomous power of media to influence values and behaviour. 8 I say “get-out-of-jail”, but Ampuja is quite bullish about the need for theoretical essentialism earlier in his 2011 article. He quotes with approval Gregor McLennan (1996, 66), who argues that essentialism is key to any theory purporting to say bold and interesting things about social structure and social change. Claims for multi-causality and,

Media and globalization 55 although he does not mention it at this point, multidimensionality, leave the argument without a cutting edge. 9 The chosen indicators, all couched in individual-level survey data, bear on the attitudes and values of citizens in 80 countries and concentrate on the range and intensity of what they call “media use”, meaning regularity of use. There are some problems with this indicator, because it does not take into account things like intensity of use or level of interest. Neither does it provide insights into any evaluation of content or emotional response to it. What a large, over-time data set like the WVS does permit is large-scale, long-term comparative analysis and correlations between respondents’ exposure to media content and other attitudes and values, such as trust in outsiders, national pride, and so on. 10 Even this is a much more cautious attribution than can be found in the host of mainly hortatory – or evidentially light and anecdotal – endorsements of the idea that global media or the revolution in global communications has fostered/is fostering a global mentality or the rudiments of global solidarity (Beck and Levy, 2013; Delanty, 2009; Kaldor, 2002; Held, 2010; Woodward and Skrbis, 2012). 11 The phrase “internet sovereignty” was coined by Chinese president Xi Jinping and, at least for China, constitutes a systematic attempt to offset American dominance of the architectures and protocols of the Web. It parades as an attempt to assert national control over a highly networked and decentralized system of information and exchange. At the same time, it is clear that the commercial power of big Web platforms, like Google and Amazon, continue to challenge any idea of pristine digital sovereignty and intimate that the designation “sovereign” has now shifted to, or embraces, powerful non-state actors. 12 There is now a large body of work on the compilation of measurable indicators of globalization. Inevitably such attempts are subject to criticism; not only on the adequacy of what might be taken as “hard” indicators of globalizing trends and tendencies, but also with regard to their neglect of matters of consciousness and affect. Useful and exhaustive analysis of quantifiable global trends and tendencies can be found in the work of Marco Caselli (2012), along with a variety of co-authors. 13 As early as 2001, Daniel DiMaggio and Eszther Hargittai described five dimensions of digital inequality – in equipment, autonomy of use, skill, social support and the purposes for which the technology is employed. 14 In other words what the data tells us is far from obvious and often turns on the specific indicator chosen and the method used to measure/assess it. 15 Multiplexity is a concept derived from social network analysis (Portes, 1995). It refers to the ways in which relations between actors include overlapping institutional spheres. 16 In many developing countries, smart phones have yet to replace completely standard mobile phones. In the Pew research for 2015, a median of only 24% say they own a cell phone that can access the Internet and applications. In the US, 58% owned a smart phone as of early 2014. 17 In July 2016, when Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, requested to see the personal data that Facebook stored on its servers, he was mailed a CD-ROM containing a 1,222-page document. That file, which would stretch nearly a quarter of a mile if printed and laid end-to-end, offered a glimpse into Facebook’s appetite for the private details of its 1.65 billion users. The information included phone numbers and email addresses of Mr. Schrems’ friends and family; a history of all the devices he used to log in to the service; all the events he had been invited to; everyone he had “friended” (and subsequently de-friended); and an archive of his private messages. It even included transcripts of messages he’d deleted. Mr Schrems’ experience vividly illustrates the challenges we face in a digital age full of messaging apps, social networks, tailored search engines, email clients and banking apps, all collecting personal data about us and storing it, somewhere, in the cloud.

56  Media and globalization 18 So, the emergent globality that is the Internet, or more narrowly the World Wide Web, demonstrates many of the social affordances associated with modal interconnectivity; not least that of “always-on” connection. Many developed countries are fast becoming broadband-based information societies, although that phrase is problematic. The simultaneous use of devices and the ownership of multiple – and increasingly “smart” – devices per person and household is becoming the norm. 19 As an example of the routine surveillance of daily routines and of the ubiquity of oversight, Morozov cites the case of Oral Roberts University, a Christian university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, which announced in 2015 that all first-year students must wear Fitbits – watches that track how much activity a person does. Apparently, their fitness will be tracked by the university and will affect grades. 20 I say besetting weakness, but the cautionary value of Morozov’s arguments in both his books and a host of articles and interviews is that it questions the implied virtue contained in the notion of being always connected. Implicit, perhaps explicit, in the claims of tech-solutionists is the idea that supplied with enough information and freedom of connection to online resources, individuals will make better, more informed choices, and may even “solve” whatever is the problem. Problems are thus individualized, with solutions born out of resilience and a digitally-enhanced sense of empowerment. Obviously the notion of digital empowerment is, or should be, capable of empirical demonstration, but Morozov’s point is that what this process and ideology do is to privatize issues that ought to be available for public solution by responsible authorities. Worlds predicated on a systematic and networked individualism are based on a double blind; that of solutionism and Internet-centrism. 21 In Tim Wu’s critical examination of advertising through media – print, broadcast and the Internet – the medium is servant to profit-making impulses. In the Internet age, the scope for tailored advertising approaches its apogee. Wu is closer to Morozov than Glass or Shirky, almost, but not quite despairing of the attention grabbing power of online communication. Not quite, because he discerns evidence of a backlash among a more savvy and skeptical public; witnessed, for example, in the rise of ad-blocking software, a development that threatens the primary revenue stream of the commercial Internet. 22 In communication/media theory, there is a lot of discussion about whether the use of the neologism mediatization is just a gloss on, or really adds nothing to examining exactly the same issues under the rubric of the concept “mediation”. I will not enter this discussion save to say that for me, mediation is a property of all communication that is not face-to-face, whereas mediatization implies a process of social change, of dynamism that also carries with it strong normative overtones. In the Encyclopedia of Communication, Mazzoleni (2017) argues that “Mediatization of politics is a complex process that is closely linked to the presence of a media logic in society and in the political sphere. It is distinguished from the idea of ‘mediation’, a natural, preordained mission of mass media to convey meaning from communicators to their target audiences. To define politics as ‘mediated’ is a simple truism, in that communication and mass media are necessary prerequisites to the functioning of political systems”. For purposes of this note, if not more generally, we can ignore the suspect reference to media “logic”. 23 See, for example, the six-year, DFG staged project on Mediatized Worlds, coordinated by the University of Bremen. 24 And clearly it is a ubiquitous concept, seen in the plethora of studies that have examined the mediatization of areas such as health, education, sport and, of course, politics. 25 They rightly say that at work here is the influence of different intellectual heritages, in one, the work of Altheide and Snow and in the other, medium theorists like Innis and McLuhan. 26 I am reminded here of the previously frenetic and still potent debates on the nature of modernity–postmodernity as these informed intellectual energy in the 1990s.

Media and globalization 57 Pathological images of the failures of western modernity to live up to the emancipatory promise of Enlightenment doctrine often place blame on communication media as the carriers of a democratically neutered and bankrupt morality that has robbed citizens of their birthright and replaced it only with the instrumental morality of consumerism (Habermas, 1987; Bauman, 1992). Against such bleak visions, theorists such as Anthony Giddens and Franco Mongardini (1990, 1992) recognize a more fluid and unbounded and therefore riskier world, but see this as countered by the reflexive nature of individual address to technological and other encompassing structures and the opportunities provided by ICTs for people to conquer separation (space) and “regain control of time” (Mongardini, 1992, 59). 27 Here there is more than an echo of Derrida’s fascination with the assumed antithesis between human and technological modes of interaction. In his notion of techne, the basic opposition between human and technological/mechanical dissolves (1976; see also Mazzolini and Schulz, 1999).

3 Towards a theory of globalization as a theory of communicative connection

The concept of digital mediatization as an axial feature of current globalization carries weighty normative baggage and encourages transformative thinking, even if some of it is quite pessimistic or ambivalent when applied to the modus of digital worlds. For example, Slavoj Žižek expresses ambivalence over Internet culture as “this neo-Jungian idea that we live in an age of mechanistic, false individualism”, echoing Sherry Turkle’s complaint (1998). Yet he also discerns a possible mutation whereby cyber-connection predicates the emergence of a “collective mind”, and “thinking humanity” is freed from the confines of an organic body – thus enabling the return of the human. This return is afforded through Web 2.0 technologies and formats, through the inventiveness and fecundity of apps, through blogs, vlogs, social network sites, photo-sharing, video-sharing remixes and mash-ups; all evidence of content generation, circulation and writing and distributing new applications (Dean, 2013). For critics, these same mutations of the Internet are also charged with relativizing the past and leaving humans culturally bereft, effectively atomized and routinely speechless (Sandywell, 2011; Ritzer, 2004, 2007). And such is the burden of critical commentary on the dehumanizing; indeed the post-humanizing; qualities of Big Data, of “datafication” conveniently distilled in the Internet of Things and concerns over the widespread application of artificial intelligence (AI) (Chandler, 2015a; Couldry, 2012; Braidotto, 2013 and Latour, 2005). Unless one counts the “agency” of computer algorithms – and as we shall see in chapter four and chapters six and seven, this may be unwise, or premature – Big Data is not the outcome of a “conscious process of knowledge production”, but “generated from complex life or reality itself in the data trails left from our digital footprints as we go about our everyday lives” (Chandler, 2015a, 837). Typically, Žižek’s view can be read as either critique or approbation, as can Hardt and Negri’s argument that in their Empire material production is inseparable from the immateriality of social and cultural worlds (2000). Here, the production of things is increasingly overtaken by the production of information; and the production of information is dispersed and bespoke (Sandywell, 2011). There is, say Hardt and Negri, “an informational colonization of being” (2000, 51) and, as I have noted, this syncs with work on the postmodern economy of signs and on the networked information society, found in other strands of sociology and cultural

Towards a theory of globalization 59 studies. In all these accounts globalization is the elephant in the room for students of social constitution; its status as explanans or explanandum infuriatingly presumed, moot or dismissed out of hand. In this chapter I want to entertain concepts – connectivity through communication and consciousness, as well as mediatization of course – that should inform any theory of emergent globalities. I will argue that we need to go beyond charting mere connections to explore cognition and affect on the part of situated and mobile actors, where the relationship between them – indeed, the very constitution of their actor-hood – is indelibly tied to communication and communication technologies. And as always, we must not assume a hypodermic effect (Axford, 2012). Such an approach does not privilege actors at the expense of structures, or vice versa, because it reveals the mutual constitution that takes place through the routine entanglement of human agents with communication technologies, especially the soft technologies of the Internet.

On global theory After almost four decades in the intellectual spotlight, the concept of globalization still suffers from definitional imprecision, although it continues to enjoy popular, if not always academic, cache as a convenient shorthand for the way we now live. Inter-alia, conceptual imprecision follows from a tendency to conflate globalization as process, globalism as ideology and globality – by far the most nuanced of the three as condition, consciousness, frame of reference or emergent system. In chapter two we examined some of the consequences of this and other imprecision for the scholarship on media and globalization. For the truth is that each concept has both semantic and methodological implications and these should not be ignored or conflated (Schafer, 2007). As components of a burgeoning field – that of global studies – they have occasioned a good deal of intellectual sleight of hand, or conceptual slovenliness, as practitioners and scholars slip unreflectively between them. That said, conceptual ambiguity is rife across the social sciences, and even understandable, leading to lively engagement around contested themes and topics. As a result, the career of concepts with a global root have flourished. But, as Justin Rosenberg opines in his premature interment of globalization scholarship; good social science relies upon conceptual rigour to produce sound theory (2005, 2007). In this respect the three-fold classification bruited above offers some typological clarity and stakes a claim for sound analytical weight in any theory of what I understand as multidimensional globality. Any attempt at rigorous and methodologically sound global studies – moving from concept specification through careful research design and delivery to sound inferences – must also designate where to look for globalization, how to explain it and consider what it – globalization – entails and might explain (Rosenberg, 2007, 418). In these pages and beyond, I build on the preliminary indicators of emergent globality set down in the introductory chapter to begin to specify a variety of world-making practices that – variably – constitute, vivify and sustain emergent globalities in various empirical domains. Doing this allows me to identify the

60  Towards a theory of globalization presence or absence of sufficient and necessary components of emergent globality, when set in social contexts and played out in relation to current issues in the cultural and political economy of a world in process. What results is the specification of globality as a theory of communicative connection and its exemplification in relation to illustrative analytical and empirical domains. Chapter four will then delineate the variety of world-making practices in greater detail. In this, as in any canon, what we cannot describe and thus delimit, we will struggle to explain (Ruggie, 1998). Yet, as our thoughts to date testify, a word of caution is necessary. Some important concepts remain enduringly volatile, almost untamable. Because of this it is wise to tread cautiously when attempting theory construction. The language of simple cause and effect, of independent and dependent variables, along with precise operationalization, may not be suited to a robust – or at any rate, a nuanced – understanding of “global” constitution. Consequently, I do not want to subscribe to the either-or version of global theory; that is, one where globalization is treated as an independent or else as a dependent variable; as either cause or effect. For as I have noted elsewhere, unless scholars are willing to specify invariant relationships between such variables, social change always musters as the tortured outcome of reflexive and sometimes recursive engagements between agents and the conditions for action (Axford, 2013a, 18). Revealing complex relationality between actions and structures is the guiding principle for all social research. On the ground there may be few givens, still less any trans-historical truths, and many contingencies. The claim that globalization is either cause or effect is beggared by this insight,1 and theory building must accommodate such complexity, taking sustenance from its messiness. That said, it is useful to separate terms with the same “global” root, the better to analyse – grasp the imbrications of – subjectivities, structures, processes and ideologies in global constitution. So let me expand a little on the signal differences between globalization as process, globalism as ideology and globality as consciousness, condition or system. At root, we have to distinguish them the better to grasp the articulation of, or disjunctions between, normative and sometimes ideological treatments of global phenomena and processes and empirical/ analytical modes of address. In too much writing scholarly differences between these approaches are blurred and immanent tensions obscured. This too is easy to understand. Even the most “scientific” of concepts – those found in stark positivism – may still carry a normative burden. Where emotionally and morally charged ideas such as globalization and mediatization are in play, it is hard to resile from judgment about their propriety and impact, even if analysis is not couched as an activist project or in some intellectual gestalt. Normative/ideological engagements with globalization are common in themes such as global justice and cosmopolitanism; or else appear as apologies for one or other kind of globalization – whether neoliberal or jihadist – as well as in critiques of same. Empirical-analytical approaches frequently have used the concept just to describe the growing intensity and extensiveness of global connections. In the latter globalization is a process or set of processes moving to an integrative dynamic

Towards a theory of globalization 61 or logic, and the idea of world-wide connection is said to predicate the appearance of one world. Whether valid or not, it is hard to avoid the normative/ideological charge in that description. Interconnectedness, along with ideas such as supra-territoriality (Scholte, 2005) and space-time compression, clearly do service in locating globalization in a theory of connections (Urry, 2003). They also remind us that it is very hard to separate careful social-scientific endeavour from the ways in which ideology often frames scholarship. This tension was noted in the treatments of media and globalization in chapter two and will be a recurring theme in what follows. As James Mittelman wrote over a decade ago, normative positions and ideologies embrace quite different “truths” about globalization depending on where you stand in the hierarchies of power and privilege (2004, 47) and on which intellectual position you adopt. As analytical categories, connection or connectivity are more than deadpan description, or a simple way of recording geographical scope (Axford, 2011). Many apparently descriptive accounts comprise a direct or immanent critique that looks to reveal the progressive nature of globalization or lament its regressive character. In full canvas they paint a picture of intensified and increasingly extensive exchange and/or a process involving the diffusion of world-wide institutional rules. Sometimes, processes of connection and institutionalization are located as part of a wider theoretical commitment to social and societal evolution (Modelski et al., 2008). In this lexicon, though by no means confined to it, institutionalization points to the cultural and organizational features of social change, while connectivist accounts privilege spatio-temporal factors. Address to consciousness favours a constructivist interpretation of social structuration, but never as simple empiricist phenomenology. Let’s pause for a moment. The preceding remarks advise caution for scholars of the global in their attempts to harness knowledge about the processes of largescale, long-term social change.2 At the same time, they hint at ways forward when construing globalization as a theory of communicative connections; ways that utilize the conceptual distinctions between global process, global ideology and global condition – globality. Recently, critical global scholarship has tried to distance itself from globalism as a teleology and thus from any sense that globality is the necessary outcome of one or many linear processes of globalization, of connection or mediatization (Bartelson, 2009). I have suggested already that there may be an irreducible normative/ideological burden in any discussion of global process (including mediatization) and, even by itself, this argument confounds the notion of “mere” connection, or of connection as a neutral or purely descriptive, category. In like vein, in his treatment of media ethics, Roger Livingstone is critical of the idea that increasing media connectedness in itself will improve our overall moral state or foster a cosmopolitan cultural outlook (2007). In arguing that we need to go “beyond connection”, he raises the broader issue of what sort of cultural condition an intensely connected world presages, and poses questions about the kinds of relatedness, sense of belonging, moral horizons and awareness of responsibilities that such a condition entails.

62  Towards a theory of globalization A different, but equally telling, gloss on, admittedly different, processes of connection is offered by Alison Hulme in her engaging account of the journey of bargain store products from global East to global West (2015). Far from being a dessicated treatment of how a global commodity chain works, she embraces and develops Arjun Appadurai’s injunction to “follow the thing”, where that promises a truly global anthropology of materiality and meaning (1986, 5). The outcome is a layered description and analysis of how global processes are inflected by, and reproduced through, the intertwining of local lives and the paradigmatic forms of consumer capitalism. She does not just evoke the familiar argument that more encompassing imperatives are indigenized when they bump against the vernacular – because of the essentializing pull of local culture and the like; or suggest that locality is obliterated by global processes. Rather, the book is an empirical endorsement that globalization, and what I have bruited as “emergent globalities”, not only subsist through connection and integration, but through “micro psychosocial” incursions and ruptures, as individuals adopt tactics (in the realms of production and consumption) that, variably, “make sense” of the world in which they live (2013, XIII). These are nuanced accounts of global process and of the idea of unremitting global integration, tempering theoretical or normative excess, as well as dataladen, but often superficial, flights of fancy about global convergence. Yet they are a long way from the skepticism often found in treatments of the “myths” of media globalization we discussed in the preceding chapter. Livingstone notes both the material and symbolic importance of connection, but remains exercised about the kind of mediatized world that will ensue or, in some accounts, has ensued.3 For him, there is no escaping the normative implications of connection. Hulme underscores what must always seem intuitively obvious about globalization; namely that individuals situated at points along global commodity chains and in networks can be, and often are, continually inventive and spontaneous in making their worlds. Obviously, there is scope to romanticize this notion, using it as a veneer that covers up structural inequalities and systematic discrepancies in power, but I take it as a profound insight into the ways in which globalities as world-making practices emerge and subsist. As James Mittelman opines, globalization is about more than material structures. It constitutes and is constituted by ways of interpreting and representing the world (2004, 97). Before we take up that insight, let’s examine the idea of connection in more detail.

Global processes of connection Most definitions of globalization as process rely on connection to describe the extension of social relations across the planet. Used thus the concept is ubiquitous, embracing all kinds of exchange and linkage – capital, people, texts, images, knowledge, crime, disease, fashions and beliefs – which traverse, reshape and, sometimes, obliterate local and national boundaries and identities (Axford, 2012). Applied to the social world, connectivity implies links between actors and between actors and various media. The medium of connection could be trade or

Towards a theory of globalization 63 movements of capital, human media in the shape of travelers, or, most pertinent to this book, digital technologies and platforms that enable instantaneous connection and interaction. Connectivist accounts of globalization as process are legion and theories of globalization as a web of increasingly extensive and intensive connectivity still dominate much of the theoretical literature, although they are by no means unchallenged (Axford, 2012, 2013b; Meyer, 2007). Some transformationalist positions employ the image of a networked, decentred and de-territorialized world in a precocious motif that rejects orthodox Marxism and state-centric models of international political economy. In the most sophisticated (and occasionally fanciful) of such arguments, globalization is portrayed as a set of processes that extend, intensify and speed-up flows and connections, with at least the potential to refashion existing organizational principles and societal determinants.4 As we saw in chapter two, such claims are contentious, so to avoid any sense that connection as process simply floats free of context, it is often quite modestly theorized as rooted in organizational and institutional arrangements – norms, epistemic communities, governance regimes and so on – which monitor, regulate and otherwise manage connections, movements and flows. In this pantheon, some “strong” positions on the explanatory value of globalization as a theory of connections are available, and these too have relevance in discussions of communicative connectivity. For example, in the pioneering structurationist scholarship of Anthony Giddens, two key dimensions of modernity appear as synonyms for globalization. The first is the idea of “space-time distanciation”. This concept refers to the complex relations between embodied copresence and interactions across distance (the connection of presence and absence) in which conventional notions about immediacy and intimacy are transformed. In the second, the relations between local and distant social forms, actors and events become stretched, producing social relationships that are “disembedded” from particular contexts (Giddens, 1981). The “stepping out” of time characteristic of space-time distanciation uncouples – or partially so – social relations from local contexts of interaction and “stretches” them across much larger spans of time and space. Where connection is taken as a purely descriptive term, a common take on the various exchanges, networks and flows that traverse local and national boundaries is that they are just instrumentalities having no serious or lasting implications for the constitution of social life and for the construction of new imaginaries. Either that, or pace some of the accounts examined in chapter two, the reductionist claim that such phenomena are no more than an effect of, or affordance for, capitalist reproduction and neoliberal dogma translated into policy (Ampuja, 2012). An alternative interpretation, more radical because it engages with the idea of global transformation, has connectivity as much more than exchange between the container space of one territory and another, or as conveniently instrumental in playing out determinate versions of international political and cultural economy. Instead, such processes intimate, at the least, a “de-nationalization” of national competence, identities and practice, and at most, a transformation to post-national scales of political and economic governance, sociality and identity (Sassen,

64  Towards a theory of globalization 2008). I will say more on such matters in the next chapter. Transformationalist positions on the re- or de-spatialization of social life and “stepping outside” the usual parameters of social formation and enclosure are attempts to challenge conventional approaches to knowledge production and its skewed political and intellectual economy (Kamola, 2013). The differences between these two broad versions of connectivity are a convenient summary of much globalization scholarship, reflecting tensions between more-or-less hyperglobalist, skeptical and transformationalist positions, all of which endorse one or other version of globalization as connectivity. As Paul James and Manfred Steger suggest, the idea of connection, and through it that of global integration, is almost foundational for global studies (2016). Their concern, echoed here, is that the subjective dimensions of connectivity have received little attention, even though a sense of globalization as intensive and extensive connection abounds. Of course, this is not the only referent or measure of integration. But connectivist accounts predominate, and sometimes they rely on the idea that connection facilitates the diffusion of world-wide institutional rules and standards or cultural scripts. Where this occurs, as in strands of sociological institutionalism and some variants of constructivism, the upshot tends to a macro-morphology, sometimes only rounded out by what I earlier presented as a crude empiricist phenomenology.5 This is not to disparage such reflection in anything like its entirety, but to caution against the conceit that only one explanatory framework or metatheory – say forms of structuralism or methodological individualism – of social constitution is permissible. For the most part, though not entirely, connectivist and even institutionalist accounts of globalization are rather shy of agency and the vagaries of action, unless it is the ascribed agency of shadowy actors such as the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2001; Robinson, 2009), a romanticized global “multitude” (Hardt and Negri, 2000), some pathological vision of a media-enabled individualism (Žižek, 1998, 6), or an increasingly systematic, but still “thin” networked individualism practiced over social media by people with too much time on their hands (Wellman et al., 2003; Margetts et al., 2016). Motivation and identity, indeed the whole realm of the subjective, are much less theorized, let alone operationalized. Which is why a truly multidimensional global theory has to deal with the matter of consciousness, including global consciousness and meaning (James and Steger, 2016). Global consciousness is the awareness by actors of global constraints and, as Roland Robertson first put it, their propensity to “identify with” the global condition. Without consciousness, connectivity musters as no more than “mere connection”. But when the concepts are taken together, they not only traverse the conceptual boundary between globalization and globality and the hackneyed dichotomy between agency and structure but, through a relational sociology, unlock the dynamics of mutual constitution, allowing us to identify new, or possibly hybrid, imaginaries and assemblages that are of differing scope and mostly networked.

Towards a theory of globalization 65

Globality and global complexity This book is an exercise in building global theory seen as a theory of communicative (mediated) connection. It does not subscribe to the simplistic and erroneous notion that globality is simply the sum or outcome of processes of connection. But I do contend that communicative connectivity is the seminal way to comprehend globalization and the construction of globalities in the present conjuncture. It is privileged, perhaps hypertypical, because of the modal, or burgeoning, mediatization of societies and cultures. More foundationally perhaps, social interaction proceeds and relationships are realized, primarily, through communication, and that truism admits the (inter)subjective in the shape of cognitions, evaluation and affect. Admitting such still allows us to treat communication as a system requisite in a necessary, but still largely abstract sense, and yet see it as a bridge between subjects, with media usage providing the means for interdiscursivity and shared meanings (consciousness) among actors. Furthermore, all social relationships and social networks arise from communication of one kind or another (Tilly, 2005). Critically, the idea of all systems possessing a communicative capacity is some way from accepting that there is a technical logic of media that drives globalizing processes in a particular direction regardless of agency (Hepp, 2014; Luhmann, 1982) As I noted in chapter one, I am also committed to a theory of emergent globalities and how these are made; one that has its provenance in communication and complexity theory, but with greater regard for agency and subjectivity than the latter allows. To that extent I also adopt a constructivist take on reality construction, thus rounding out one of the great weaknesses in complexity models of global constitution. Let’s expand on this a little. Much work on globalization as a process of connection presumes that there are entities with separate and distinct essences that, through communication, but also other media, are brought into “external juxtaposition with each other”, as John Urry says, and with a “linear metaphor of scales, such as that stretching from micro to macro”. The hackneyed dualism of local-global is an example. Such formulations, argues Urry, are better replaced by a “metaphor of connections”. But what is that metaphor, and is the notion any more than glib, or just obfuscatory in the charge directed at so much global theory? The radical core of Urry’s thinking about global complexity is that phenomena usually denoted by terms such as “individual”, “local”, “global” and “identity” have to be rethought as a “constellation of complex, reflexive systems and self-organizing exchanges and transactions linked to wider systems of power and influence”, as Hand and Sandywell opine (2002, 46). This formulation avoids any implication that interaction between an integrated and relatively stable global system (structure) and derivative or otherwise subordinate local and networked actors is configured by the immanent qualities of structures and agents (local-global). In Urry’s formulation, globalization commutes from being an over-determined effect of capitalist relations, cultural domination or hegemonic aspiration, or any strictly ordered causal

66  Towards a theory of globalization or path-determined sequence, to what Hand and Sandywell call a “heterogeneous field of world-making practices” (2002, 213). These practices have a powerful emergent quality that is revealed in the imbrications of personal, local and global, through the interplay of global scapes and contingent glocal actors and through various “networks, fluids and governance institutions” (Urry, 2003, 103). For critics this still seems very allusive, but it affords a number of insights useful in the study of global constitution. First, agency retains its analytical weight in explaining global dynamics, but not as part of a dualism that reduces questions about relationality and reflexivity to arguments about shades of dominance. Admittedly, one of the complaints about Urry’s complexity thesis, seen too in the critique of Niklas Luhmann’s systems analysis (of which more later) is that the agency conjured is pretty anodyne, with what are actually enduring questions about the distribution of power and resources parlayed into the much more forgiving notion of “complex relationality”. Second, in global complexity, the ontological autonomy of local systems is modified by the variety of formal and informal networks – communicative, interdiscursive, economic, political, religious and so on – that cross both phenomenal and imagined boundaries. In global complexity, agents (individual and collective) not only interact with a dominant – and possibly territorial – set of cultural and structural properties, but with intersecting, overlapping and sometimes contradictory sets and the identities and power relations tied to them. The result is to problematize what constitutes a political sphere, and still more, a social and cultural order. There are similarities here with “new” cosmopolitan thinking from writers such as David Held (2010), although Urry has no normative agenda on the re-spatialization of interest and affect. If anything, his ideas sync best with Appadurai’s imagery of fluid global scapes and contingent glocal actors, and that is a telling judgement on its strengths and its weaknesses (Ampuja, 2012). Perhaps the main strength of Urry’s account of global complexity is that he blends the analysis of globalization and complexity theory so well that he goes some way to making a convincing case that globalization is inexplicable without it. So, to be clear, I am happy to acknowledge the importance of connection as a key process in the making of globalities, especially where we are dealing with the dynamics and effects of human and non-human (technologies) relationality. But globality is not just about connection. Rather it is a more subtle concept, some might say almost fey. Contrary to the reductionist treatments reviewed in the previous chapter, globalization is a multidimensional process and globality, as Bob Jessop reminds us, a chaotic conception (2007) rather than a distinct and linear causal process. Chaos or disorder is certainly a property of the dynamism of all social systems but not a statement of their necessary fragility. Such systems are characterized by discontinuous behaviour rather than evolutionary continuity and are constituted by highly iterative, recursive and dynamic structuration through forms of reproductive and transformative practice (Axford, 1996). As I will illustrate in chapter four when I unpack the idea of world-making practices, this interpretation of social dynamics stands older wisdom about ordered systems and the functional requirements needed to sustain them on its head. It

Towards a theory of globalization 67 draws on complexity science and borrows from sociological institutionalism to discern global social constitution in such practices, including those of communication. Whether social practice is always conscious and intended, or sometimes shaped by the “unacknowledged conditions of action” – thereby taking place behind the backs of actors – or by way of highly visible institutionalized rules, are enduring questions for social theory (Archer, 1988; Mouzelis; Axford, 2015). But it is hardly radical to say that social constitution is a matter of both the conscious and unconscious enactment of rules and of reflexive engagement with them. The fey quality of globality alluded to above is at once intriguing and difficult because it speaks of worlds and a sense of worlds beyond connection6 and simple spatial referents. When discussing the part played by communicative connectivity in global constitution, this is a key observation. Any concept that admits both cognitions and sentiments on the part of fully formed actors and acknowledges the influence of “indifferent globalities” – of non-human organisms and technologies – on human action, is likely to prove troublesome for scholarship; or at least just troubling7 (Hird, 2010; Clark, 2005). Indifferent globalities are perhaps most worrying to usual social science because they can be seen as subsisting apart from, or are not predicated on, human consciousness and action. This is often the case when discussing the presumed causal “logic” of technology, and, as Myra Hird says, extends to the discussion of microbes, whose flows “dwarf those biophysical, economic, social and cultural overflows of national boundaries on which globalization theories concentrate” (2010, 62). This is a world of connection (diffusion, contagion) that knows no boundaries and it is a world not made by humans. Such globalities may point up the indifference of non-human life and non-human forms to human life. But as I will argue – and microbes aside – the distinction is too stark, standing as just another convenient analytical dualism. Because the fact is that – at the least – the idea of connection morphs easily into that of contagion, a much more organic notion, and thus acquires a more visceral or sanguineous feel. Contagion is a concept entirely familiar in the realm of digital media, especially social media, where the almost organic spread of memes – signs that have gone viral on the Internet – is a modal phenomenon. Here too agency is present and a jobbing collective consciousness built and sustained through forms of online sharing. Routine and banal as many social media exchanges can seem, they are still evidence of social connectivity and perhaps a form of “emotional contagion” (Gerbaudo, 2016, 254). Participants in many social media networks seem to prefer, or are happy to employ, “empty” or phatic exchanges to the silence that might otherwise threaten the survival of their network and lead to isolation. All in all, there is a great deal of sociality taking place on social media, but critically, this sociality requires a new kind of sociological imagination to make sense of it (Gerbaudo, 2016).8 This assessment is underscored by a tranche of work on “media multiplexity” which confirms that most relationships, certainly most close relationships, are characterized by the routine use of more than one medium (Baym, 2015). In other words, people are not exercised by the idea of a media hierarchy or by the singular qualities of social media as opposed to the telephone.

68  Towards a theory of globalization As Nancy Baym says, people in close relationships have high quality (satisfying?) interactions regardless of the medium of interaction (2015, 156). But as we have seen, when discussing the interaction of human agency and technologies, the direction of travel is never very far from determinism and the spectre of a dehumanized world, because of the ascribed “logic” in/of technologies and their use (Lundby, 2014), and this is the burden of some work on mediatization. But for all forms of mediated communication, it is vital to address the interface between humans and non-human technologies. Seemingly indifferent technologies may then appear as susceptible to, even constituted by, human action; while human action can be framed – Tim Jordan says “embraced” – by such technologies (2015, 17). Once again we enter the world of mutual constitution or, less extravagantly, of symbiosis, and what that can tell us about the structuration of social life. These are not trivial matters because they point up enduring tensions in social theory. So, a permissive treatment of how globalities are made through practice must embrace human and non-human realms, whether there is symbiosis or not (Haraway, 2008). When symbiosis occurs, neat categorical distinctions such as organicinorganic and nature-technology have to give way to more visceral depictions of the engagements between social and conscious and biophysical and technological (Clark, 2005). And in some cases contagion or contamination may better describe the imbrications of elements in the composition of an “indelibly interconnected biosphere” such as can or will be found in the Internet of Everything (IoE) (Hird, 2010, 62). We are still talking about connectivity, and about globalization needing a theory of connections, but one that is more than a description of the state of affairs or a purely spatial referent (Urry, 2003). Only then can we make better sense of what Bernard Latour calls the biospheric “parliament of things”, that is certainly comprised of human domains, consciousness and actions, but whose totality is not limited to them (2000, 144). This task is not simple, and for mainstream globalization theory still resides on the outer reaches of much scientific address.9 The concept of globality is often used to denote the emergence of a single socio-political space on a planetary scale. But this depiction can be problematic, implying singularity and systematic integration achieved through linear processes of globalization. In more subtle definitions it musters as a possible outcome, an immanent potential, or a multiple condition marked by disjunctions, rather than an ontological unity. Richer in tone, as a description of global complexity, the idea of globality also offers a permissive take on what constitutes evidence for global systemness. As the basis for theory building, we might deem such permissiveness appropriate. But questions remain about whether globalities are, in fact, ontologically distinct and the outcome of processes and engagements that transcend the international system and even modernity? Transcendence is a strong attribution and I do not want to dally with hyperglobalist cant. Indeed more cautious and “middle-range” arguments have become increasingly popular as the force of grander narratives of globalization decline. For example, John Ruggie (2004) sees the new global public domain as not

Towards a theory of globalization 69 coterminous with the international system, but existing in “transnational nonterritorial, spatial formations and anchored in norms and expectations as well as institutional networks and circuits within, across and beyond states” (2004, 519). Similar treatments on the imbrications of local and global and humans and machines can be found in the work of Saskia Sassen (2006), although her account actually qualifies the idea of globality as completely sui generis, while still not reducible to a condition originating just in the international system. Appadurai’s “scapes” and Castells’ take on new social movements – “networks of outrage and hope” (2012) – each portray globalities somewhere between the society of states and a smooth networked world of diffuse power and countervailing forces. The key features of emergent globality reside in world-making practices, as these refer to the engagement of actors with more-or-less visible and enduring rules and institutions, as well as to consciousness (Shaw, 2001). But what are the referents and how do they qualify or depart from the usual limits of social theory that set boundaries around concepts such as intimacy, community and society? In one well-known account globality resides in “thick economic, political and cultural interconnections and global flows that make currently existing political borders and economic barriers irrelevant”, and that is entirely plausible (Steger, 2005, 31). But as I have noted elsewhere, looking for “thick” associations to approximate the ontologies of national and societal imaginaries may be too skewed to territorialist assumptions about the natural spaces of civic association and emotional commitment to provide a purchase on emergent globalities afforded and sometimes constituted by digital/Internet platforms (Axford, 2012, 2013b). For one thing, it jibes with the idea of any meaning being possible through other than thick exchanges and solidarities; probably localized. Which argument severely moderates, even rules out a sense of community or identification achieved and sustained through social media heedless of borders and prior identification. Globality also suggests new spatial geography, but, crucially, is more than a spatial category or referent. It is also – certainly at its most encompassing – a matter of consciousness and comprises a “self-consciously common framework of human society worldwide”. As Martin Shaw notes, such views are not unique to recent scholarship on globality (Shaw, 2001, 62). They are prefigured in the universalist claims of both religious and, in the case of cosmopolitanism, secular world-views. The idea of a “common framework” is given substance too in the cooperative responses of political elites and groups of citizens to the threats of planetary destruction, while a more “practical consciousness” resides in the existence of the widespread perception that today we are all subject to global constraints as a matter of routine. Without pushing the comparison too far, there are also similarities with the tenets of world-polity theorists and with Beckian thinking on the emergence of “cosmopolitan consciousness”, such that people live a cosmopolitan reality even though they may not subscribe to a set of high-flown ideals (Thomas, 2016; Beck and Sznaider, 2006). David Inglis and Roland Robertson argue that the notion of globality is applicable where “the world is taken as a whole, where all parts of the global are seen as increasingly interconnected and where individual experience is

70  Towards a theory of globalization connected to worldwide forces and circumstances” (2004, 23). Which nicely conjoins spatial, cognitive and affective elements of global experience, even where global, or world-wide, cannot be taken as always equivalent to planetary compass. More prosaically, but perhaps better suited to aspects of banal or quotidian globalization, Arjun Appadurai’s (2006) description of “cellular globality” admits “disorganized”, virtual capitalism, terrorist networks and emergent, sometimes “utopian”, forms of grass-roots networking across or regardless of borders, in the shape of social movements and personal communication and virtual communities on the Web. These are useful pointers to relevant empirical domains at which to observe world-making practices and emergent globalities and will be taken up in more detail in chapter four.

Global consciousness and globality The idea of global consciousness sits uneasily with the allegedly indifferent globalities to which I have referred, despite the tendency to infer that modal interconnectivity links everything to the human, an analytical stance reinforced by the idea of mutual constitution. The concept of consciousness is integral to these discussions, but elusive. To complicate matters, the idea of global consciousness also musters as a deeply normative and occasionally ideological motif in discourses that are concerned to make a better world but often blind to the demands of scientific inquiry.10 Pared down, consciousness refers to an individual’s ability to know and perceive. Through consciousness individuals have knowledge of the external world and of themselves. In other words consciousness is the state of being mentally conscious. Consciousness does not, of itself, imply affect, although the expression is often used transitively to suggest “conscious of . . . something” in a way that presumes meaning. And this is clearly the case with the idea of global consciousness, where the burden of address is that people – as individuals and collectively – are not only aware of global conditions, of global constraints and so on, but respond to that knowledge emotionally, as well as through an evaluation of how best to subsist. In other words, they have adopted a global mentality. With this in mind Martin Shaw defines the global as a “common consciousness of human society on a world scale: an increasing awareness of the totality of human social relations as the largest constitutive framework of all relations”; always remembering that the notions of emergent globalities and world-making practices should embrace the lofty, the exotic and the mundane (2003, 146; Axford, 2016). In related vein, Jonathan Friedman argues that an analytical focus on globality or global systems as a constitutive framework for consciousness and action entails “a theoretical framework within which the institutional structures of the world are themselves generated and reproduced through global processes” (2000, 142). And, as I have argued, this formulation does not discriminate between the definitional ascendancy of either agency or structure, since these institutional structures and processes, as well as the consciousness through which they are linked reflexively, together demonstrate qualities of global systemness because the entirety of

Towards a theory of globalization 71 flows, networks, interactions and connections stimulates a shift in the organization of human affairs and in ways of thinking about, as well as enacting, social relationships. In both these accounts globality – rules and consciousness – are reflexively linked. In chapters five, six and seven, I will discuss the ways in which and the extent to which global consciousness is afforded through a variety of media forms and representations in texts, images and discourses that, as Shani Orgad tells us, “travel across cultural and national boundaries” and whose meaning and significance may be transformed when appropriated by other people (audiences?) in other cultures (Orgad, 2012, 39). By this means we will gain insight into the constitution of globalities and the routines of world-making practices. One of the key questions, and one increasingly exercising media theorists, is how media representations that circulate in global public space feed and influence individual and collective imaginations and forms of action (Orgad, 2012; Taylor, 2004; Hepp, 2014; Axford, 2016a).11 These are useful refinements of an important concept because they point up the ways in which the term consciousness is used and the room for obfuscation that attends its use. At one remove we are talking about individual awareness and choice, along with the opportunities afforded for the construction and articulation of self-narratives. At another, consciousness is almost institutionalized and refers to a state of affairs, a context for everyday behaviour (consciousness of . . .) and a constraint on or impetus to action (Axford, 1996). Agents not only enact and thus vivify the rules that make up different contexts for living, but, in certain circumstances and reflexively, can effect a critical distance from them. Here we might advert another basic tenet of world-polity theory that emphasizes the sociocultural character of the global system (Meyer, 2007, 262). The very existence of a world polity is premised on evidence of widespread and growing cultural consciousness of what John Meyer calls “civic virtue” on a world scale. The world society prefigured in such accounts is not a stable construct, and this is an important insight to bring to bear on questions about global structuration/constitution. In fact, world polity theory offers a provocative theoretical account of the processes through which world culture is established and a perspective on the sort of culture that results. The critical point is that the process may not, perhaps cannot, produce the same ontological “thickness” or sense of community and identity ascribed to national varieties of culture, and the adoption of cultural norms by different states and societies is not the much-rehearsed story of how “a people” can be formed out of a common, imagined past, pace Benedict Anderson (1983). Rather, the idea of world culture or world society suggests a more fragile or possibly “thinner”, but no less compelling, source of legitimacy and motivation whereby, increasingly, people believe they live in one world under universally valid and applicable standards or norms. In some respects this may tend to global isomorphism, but there is still room for disjunction and difference, because globalities can be congruent or divergent in the way described by Appadurai in his treatment of fluid global scapes (1993, 1996, 2006). And this brings us back nicely to the matter of emergent globalities.

72  Towards a theory of globalization

Emergent globality revisited For as I noted in chapter one, emergent globalities are states of global becoming; emergent because of the uncertainty that often invests their ontology and their durability. Emergent globalities can be found in many domains and are reliant on virtual connection.12 One such is the rise of the gig economy, sometimes called the sharing economy. The gig economy designates use of smartphone apps to summon services – almost any service. Uber, the “click’n’go” taxi operator, Deliveroo, Handy, Taskrabbit, Airbnb, Etsy and Tailster, a dog walking service, are all current examples and have become the fastest growing business sector the modern world has seen.13 As a variant on market practices that cut out the middleman, and successful because the services they offer are frequently cheaper than traditional rivals, they appear just as mutations on usual practice, and on the kind of subject-object relations that underpin mainstream social theory. Yet they can be seen as de novo – new sociological categories, hardly prefigured in earlier forms and practices, let alone in classical social theory. Such emergent phenomena are characterized by constant transition and morphing. Critically, where they are not evanescent, or just some kind of techno-wheeze – and sometimes even when they are – their impact can, or is likely to be, transformative, if not always benign. But for usual social science, there is a problem with such indeterminate ontology, for the multiple circuits that provide shape and substance are rarely deeply structured. This impermanent feel renders them institutionally light and, for some, hardly fitted to the demands of systematic structuration (Knorr-Cetina, 2007). Instead, and with something of a Bourdieuian feel, they constitute liminal “fields of practice” and should not be mistaken for complex institutional structures (Knorr-Cetina, 2007, 214). These new modalities of a mediatized world rely on routine and speedy interconnectivity, “visual images, stylistic connotations and symbolic associations” and, to reiterate, comprise a world more and more in process (Gruneau and Whitson, 1993, 137). But this is a world not “globalized” through systematic integration, if by that is meant becoming homogenized or uniform. Nor does it move to the presumed, and always sufficient, power of particular forces or ideas (James and Steger, 2016). There is no narrative of inevitable and irreversible integration or a counter narrative of assured entropy. Instead, the emergent worlds described in this book, while often palpable and certainly meaningful, are often irresolute and contradictory, subventing sameness and difference at the same time. This is staple fare for reflective globalization theory and it is also very unsettling. In a recent foray on the kind of politics that currently displays such features, both locally and transnationally, and to which I will return in chapter six, Helen Margetts and her co-authors suggest a resulting modal turbulence which tends to “chaotic pluralism” and is characterized by diversity and heterogeneity, by non-linearity and, of course, by high interconnectivity (2016; see also Sandywell, 2014).14 Turbulent politics is far more disorganized, unpredictable and unstable than the architects of pluralist, neo-pluralist or revisionist theories of politics ever envisaged, and the logic of collective action scarcely describes or explains it

Towards a theory of globalization 73 (Olsen, 1965; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012). Nor is the turbulence motif reserved solely for descriptions of contentious politics. The analogy can be extended to governance structures and practices, notably where governance of the Internet is concerned. Global Internet governance is best described as a case of “structured polycentrism” (Scholte, 2015). Polycentrism means that the global Internet is regulated through many institutions in a fairly scattered, fluid, ambiguous and horizontal way. Yet this seeming chaos remains structured, inasmuch as governance of the global Internet still demonstrates striking patterns of geographical, social and cultural power (most obviously, the dominance of American rules and processes). Operating quite differently to old-style international organizations, global governance of the Internet also acquires legitimacy, but in alternative ways. In short, the Internet holds many intriguing clues about the workings of governance in the global system. To these examples we might juxtapose theorists of the global still wedded to territorialist and rationalist (Cartesian) assumptions about the ontology of the world. The problem for social science lies in having to identify, describe, explain and then evaluate new mutations, and how they further instantiate or transform the environments in which they are found. In this endeavor social science is inhibited by its continued use of concepts and language that are unsuited to the task (Axford, 2005). First in chapter four and then chapters five–seven, I will examine the kinds of emergent globalities – both structures and narratives – conjured by turbulence and by global complexity, but we can essay a taster here. In recent years, there have been several imaginative forays into the kind of theory relevant to the idea of emergent globalities. Many of these interventions focus on the part played by different media, in particular on the networked worlds of the Internet; but others do not. I will not take up the latter strands directly here, but concentrate solely on interventions that examine the communication/media and globalization nexus. Despite my earlier pessimism about the limitations of usual science, there have been transformationalist accounts; some more robust and convincing than others. I will mention only a few to illustrate their variety and as a way of introducing a battery of arguments about the imbrications of communication media and globalization that do not start from one or another skeptical position. Barry Wellman’s research on digital media and the rise of networked individualism identifies the “social affordances” available through Internet connection and the ways in which these contribute to the shifting of cultural boundaries, away from “thick” solidaries and territorialist enclaves to a societal trope in the guise of “networked individualism” (Wellman and Haythornthweait, 2002; Wellman and Rainie, 2012; see also Baym, 2015, 2015). On a bigger canvas, one that is more systemic in feel, Arjun Appadurai’s intuitively powerful, but highly allusive schema for understanding the disjunction and interplay of various global “scapes”, including media-scapes, offers a conceptual map of an emerging cellular globality (1993, 2006). Other more middle-range work on the existence of global civil society or on forms of transnational activism (Keane, 2003; Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Crack,

74  Towards a theory of globalization 2008; Sassens, 2006, 2007) endorses the idea that enduring and mutable networks of actors – often across or heedless of borders – are capable of being mobilized and sustained through media connection (see Axford, 2004 and 2005). Whether these incursions predicate or reflect a post-ideological shift in the nature and conduct of politics is still open to question (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, 2014). So, for the analyst, it is appropriate to ask whether the global audiences on social media for, say, the unfolding tragedies in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are any more than fleetingly attentive publics, side-shows in the theatre of usual politics, or portend a more profound shift in political consciousness and modalities; even in what constitutes “the political” and the sites where it is practised. As an empirical matter these kind of questions are difficult enough, but to add to the analytical burden, transformationalist accounts are often riven by angst and by the kind of moral ambivalence found, for example, in Manuel Castells’ epic on the networked connection in the information society (1996). Castells is a confirmed transformationalist, but very uneasy about the consequences of the “framing” of social life by media. So, across the piece we are beset by plausible but incomplete or contradictory visions of a media connected world. On the one hand it is possible to glimpse or else surmise the architectures/ontologies of some emergent globalities as I have couched these. On the other hand critics can and do find plausible grounds to dismiss them as no more than myth, shibboleth or a strain of social pathology.

Towards a theory of globalization as communicative connectivity: insights and blind alleys from modern systems theory As I noted in chapter one, much of the academic literature on connectivity, as well as a good deal of research on globalization takes communicative connectivity as seminal when describing globalization as a process and explaining its dynamics and axial features. For the most part, this focus addresses various types of mediated communication that permit interaction not reliant on co-presence (Giddens, 1990; Sandywell, 2011). There are, of course, various treatments of the communicative capacities of society and inter-societal systems, but for my purposes these often founder on the limited scope for agency and subjectivity found in many accounts. Notable in this regard is the austere interpretation of the ways in which social systems and sub-systems use communication “to constitute and interconnect events (actions) which build up systems”, a position that sees communication as a functional systemic attribute. This position is found in the work of modern systems theorists (MST) and, in exemplary form, in Niklas Luhmann’s corpus (Luhmann, 1990, 176). The basis of Luhmann’s argument, applied to the possibility of creating and sustaining world society through communication, is that while it is possible to conceive of a world society, its existence and survival cannot be predicated on the same attributes of stability, consensus and unproblematic cultural wholeness found in most functionalist treatments of social order and seen in many histories

Towards a theory of globalization 75 of state and nation-building (Albert, 2007). Instead, as I have previously noted, the global system is characterized as differentiated and polycentric. While all this seems eminently sensible and appears to hold clues as to the constitution of world society, the devil lies in being able to move from a critique of existing theory to a viable – as opposed to just plausible – alternative. Classical theories of society stress the importance of normative integration to explain why such entities hold together despite their heterogeneity, but (despite what world polity theorists argue) this dynamic is not readily available beyond the nation-state, because the modal social form is either network based or comprises only sporadic and probably unpredictable outbursts of empathy or solidarity expressed through world public opinion on issues of pressing concern such as global warming, famine and human rights. Arguably, the mobilizing dynamic of interactive social media evidenced in the spate of insurrections across North Africa and the Middle East and, before that, in Iran and Moldova, are typical of this kind of phenomenon. And in passing we should also note that some research on the ethnography of social networks in general and transnational networks in particular suggests that they may well be contexts in which strong and enduring identities can be formed, although such claims are vehemently contested. Moreover, the idea of attentive, if not enduring, global publics is increasingly canvassed in literature on global civil society and the “new” cosmopolitanism or, more narrowly, in relation to notions such as a sense of European identity and the possibility of transnational public spheres (Risse, 2010). Such modalities challenge our understanding of society as conventionally “thick”, and that may require us to rethink what we mean by and ask of notions such as intimacy too. Luhmann’s model of the structuration of world society depends on two related processes. The first is, of course, functional differentiation both within and between social systems, and this involves interactions and exchanges between systems, sub-systems and their complex environments. Nation-states have other nation-states, international organizations and civil society groups in their environment with whom they must interact, while producers and consumers in any market negotiate the terms of and then enact the transactions between them. In addition there is intensive and extensive communication between social systems and the sub-units of social systems, which all “use communication to constitute and interconnect the events (actions) which build up the systems” (Luhmann, 1982, 47) The received model of communication, of communicative connection, implies the intersubjective transmission of messages between members of a community, or participants in an exchange. But Luhmann does not like the “metaphor of transmission” because it suggests that communication is the bridge between subjects and thus underwrites a model of consciousness – possibly of agency – that is alien to most systems-theoretic accounts (Luhmann, 1982; Maurer, 2010). Almost from the outset then, his treatment of communication is at odds with those positions on global connectedness that see communicative dialogue, and some forms of monological transmission, as key to the growth of an increasingly modal cultural consciousness of global interdependence and of personal and collective embeddedness in world society.

76  Towards a theory of globalization While I am skeptical that because of his neglect of inter-subjectivity and consciousness Luhmann can be judged as entirely neglectful of agency, he sends mixed signals about the nature of communication and particularly communication as a process of selection that comprises information, utterance and understanding; which brings us to the matter of language. Luhmann argues that each system has its own language and signals and that these are unique to each system’s environment. Just as an educational system has its own environment and language, so a political system has the equivalents, and so on. All systems and some sub-systems have their own language, and that language is, in its fullest sense, recognizable only to those who are members of the system. Yet every environment must interact with others to ensure its survival and because of this, exchanges with other systems in other environments must be intelligible. How do systems that share an interface communicate intelligibly with others? Luhmann’s answer to that question is the idea of structural coupling, of communication as a process of selection and observation. In other words, he privileges a rather anodyne process of communicative connection. It will be useful to unpack this notion somewhat. Luhmann’s argument here owes an intellectual debt to that branch of systems theory called autopoiesis, which is the product of pioneering work in physics and biology (for a summary see Urry, 2003). Autopoietic systems are characterized by internal functional differentiation, but the key thing about them is that their autonomy and ability to survive are dependent on the ways in which they interact with the increasingly complex environments in which they are located. These environments act as sources of disturbance, even chaos, and thus of potential change. A system’s ability to survive and retain its own identity is thus premised on the capacity to organize and manage its environments through a variety of means. In Luhmann’s sociology the primary means is the communicative capacity of world society, whose sub-systems, whether states or other formal and informal organizations, engage in “structural coupling” with other such systems and subsystems. Communication is the vital ingredient of structural coupling, linking actors across multiple social systems regardless of space and time. When discussing the role of mass media in constructing a world, as opposed to a set of discrete worlds, Luhmann emphasizes that a singular world is dependent on the emergence of certain technologies (printing press, radio, television, satellite, the Internet, etc.) and the communications that are embedded in the exchanges made possible by these technologies. So, technological innovation allows what he calls a new form of Common to emerge. The Common, however, is not just shared content in the sense of shared information, perhaps in the shape of news. It also constitutes a spatio-temporal modality and thus facilitates, even demands, enmeshing the everyday lives of people separated in space and time with each other and with the various “hyperobjects” – for example, terrorism, oil and financial crises and famine – that invest their worlds in different ways (Maurer, 2010). For Luhmann it is not important that mass media produce the same content by tracking shared assumptions or beliefs, or even through the same coverage of events. Indeed, differences in all these things may actually enhance the possibility of further communication, thereby allowing the media system to reproduce itself

Towards a theory of globalization 77 autopoietically. Undoubtedly this is a unity of sorts. But society, or what musters as society in classical sociological theory, now floats free of many, or all, such determination. As Bechmann and Stehr opine, this “is not a moral unity, not one based on consensus or any rational integration (of whatever kind); it is formed solely by ongoing communication” (2002, 71). Moreover it is a unity configured without hindrance, or necessary hindrance, by borders or any other ontological givens. Society is constituted through the key reference points of functional differentiation and communication and is now resolutely global. Luhmann’s world is a closed, communicative complex, and in this his disposition even looks a little hyperglobalist. Interconnection and technical capacity in principle make any point on the globe accessible to communication, though Luhmann does not intend to convey such communicative unity simply as achieved smooth space. Rather his trope for world society is the expression, maybe just the expected denouement, of the world in communication. As Bechmann and Stehr say, “world” is the sum of “the communication structure of the fully differentiated functional systems, and moreover, ‘world’ as the total horizon of sensory experience is not an aggregate, but rather a correlate, of the communicative operations occurring in it” (2002, 72). Luhmann’s thesis on the communicative structuration of society is valuable, but problematic, because it omits any serious mention of consciousness, and thus underplays agency. In constructivist or phenomenological accounts, communication and its affordance through different media is a privileged, even seminal, realm in which to trace the entanglements of indifferent technologies with subjectivities in a process of mutual constitution or symbiosis. Of course, to give any such proposition analytical purchase when describing and explaining emergent globalities, we have to demonstrate that communication “carries content”; that is, can provide for both interdiscursivity and shared meanings (Thomas, 2016, 116). As a contribution to global theory, empirically, the focus must be on the ways in which digital communication technologies and platforms enable us to surmise and relocate distant contexts and relate to people, things and events that are remote from, even alien to, our everyday lives (Orgad, 2012). Among other things, this focus raises the analytical stakes when it entertains the prospects for, say, “mediated intimacy” or some trope for it, perhaps in the language of “friends” or “likes” now ubiquitous across social media. There are issues of course; though these may be simply variations on the modal theme of opportunities and threats opened up by Internet-enabled communication. Even so, in this respect the notion of “carrying content” needs qualification. For example, as I noted earlier, the “meaning content” of communication in social media may be very light, almost without substance, when set against other kinds of “thick” socio-linguistic intercourse. But the meaning of any communicative interaction – including the mundanities of what Malinoski calls “small talk” – can be less important than the “rapid viral spread of particular signs”, where the actual content of these signs – their intrinsic qualities, one could say – is secondary to establishing or reinforcing some kind of collective persona (Malinowski, 1923; Varis and Blommaert, 2014, 35). The phatic interaction found on Facebook

78  Towards a theory of globalization and in Twitter exchanges are shared intensively and extensively (especially when they go viral) to establish “bonds of personal union between people brought together by the wish or need for companionship and (do) not serve any purpose of communicating ideas” – and this too is a form of content (Malinowski, 1923, [1936], 316). Yet even where the intrinsic properties of the mediated communication are of more significance for users, for critics this remains a “thin” kind of collective interaction, one that privileges the construction of self-narratives, not collective consciousness and firm identification. Nonetheless, it is clear that many people do find it emotionally sustaining to be part of a constituency that “likes” and “shares” items posted by others. Ignorance of the personas and identities of other network participants does not seem to matter, being less valued than the expression of membership through phatic “likes” and “shares”. Writing in 2014, Mike Bulajewski talks about the “cult of sharing” rehearsed when many users of online services such as Uber and Airbnb feel emotionally attached to what are obviously commercial operations, seeing them as safe spaces, vehicles for solidarity and routine trust. I take up this matter at greater length in chapter seven. Such allegiance goes beyond phatic communication, although the affective and evaluative qualities of the transaction are likely to be mediated by experience of the standard of service and value for money provided, rather than simply by the act of online communion or virtual intimacy. But as so often when analyzing social media styles and etiquette, the danger is that we may look for meaning and for significance not intended or even recognized by participants. Against claims for the meaningfulness of exchanges in the eponymous “sharing economy”, the sense gained from different spheres of engagement suggests that when children are involved in online “world games”, “friending” can be no more than adding people to a list of contacts.15

Conclusion What does all this tell us about the structuration of the world through communicative connection? First, that key properties of global integration are usefully, maybe paradigmatically, displayed through attention to emergent globalities as features of a world in process. Second, that approaching the processes of structuration through the lens of communicative connectivity requires address to the systemic attributes of communication and also to the intersubjective nature of communicative interactions – to consciousness as a feature of globality. Third, that the systemness thus revealed is likely to be a more permissive, and less institutionalized, construct than key strands of social theory allow. Recourse to complexity science and other permissive frameworks for the analysis of social systems shows, in Margaret Archer’s words, “that action and structure presuppose one another, structural patterning is inextricably grounded in practical interaction. Simultaneously, social practice is ineluctably shaped by the unacknowledged conditions for action” and by acknowledged ones too (1988, 59). In what follows, this permissiveness, although analytically risky, gives us the latitude to explore the conditions that produce and the practices that constitute emergent globalities.16

Towards a theory of globalization 79

Notes 1 Nor do I want to claim that simplifying causal relationships is unique to globalization scholarship. As I have shown, pertinent concepts such as mediatization are also subject to contrasting claims that media play a dominant role in transforming organizational principles and social interaction, or are just an effect of other social forces. 2 Of course, there are other considerations to be borne in mind and addressed when trying to build global theory. Elsewhere, I have expanded on what seem to me to be key requirements of good social theory applied to globalization; namely the need for a multidimensional and interdisciplinary approach to knowledge construction and a non-western-centric perspective. See Axford, 2013a and b. 3 As noted, “mediatized” is a loaded term in the lexicon of media/communications theory. I want to reemphasize that here as a kind of health warning relevant to the ways in which the concept is used throughout the book. 4 By way of example, we should note the detailed and empirically rich transformationalist argument offered by Held et al. (1999) and the more sweeping historical sociology of Martin Albrow (1996, 2007). 5 The idea of macro-lite is intended to convey provocative attempts to conjoin the insights of sociological institutionalism, modern systems theory and complexity analysis – including network approaches to social constitution – with aspects of constructivism and phenomenology. See Axford, 2015. 6 See my article on “Mere connection: do communication flows compensate for the lack of world society” in Preyer and Krausse (eds) (2012). 7 Such discussion reflects on the analytical redundancy of many received dualisms, including human–non-human, and suggests a completely interconnected biosphere, made up of “human entanglements with nature” (Hird, 2010, 62). 8 Altogether more alarming to those of a nervous disposition is the indifferent globality conjured by the promise or spectre of the “Internet of Things”, the ubiquity of harvested meta-data and the promise/threat of robotics and other systems of artificial intelligence. Is this designer anxiety or substantive concern about the prospects for a completely monitored life? 9 Not entirely of course. Complexity theory, at least in some of its variants, looks to cross the divide between human and non-human to challenge the dogma that social, biological and physical systems have to be ordered. I will return to the contribution of complexity theory to globalization research later in the book. 10 See Jeremy Rifkin’s tome on The Empathetic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (2010). 11 Recently, Roland Robertson has addressed Benedict Anderson’s much referenced notion of “imagined community” as a way of highlighting what he sees as the differences between consciousness and imagination. See Robertson, 2011. I touch on this distinction in chapter four. 12 For example, John Urry (2003) mentions the physical mobility of travellers, while Arjun Appadurai’s notion of cellular globality – an idea entirely at one with the ontologies and affordances of digital connection – includes all manner of grass-roots movements with a global agenda and multiple local roots (2006). 13 And not uncontroversially. Among a battery of complaints about the business models employed is the precarious nature of employment in these companies and the general lack of protection afforded to workers in them who are almost always classified as selfemployed and often subject to less social protection. 14 In the book Political Turbulence (Margetts et al., 2011), the address is not specifically to the global. Indeed, the index makes no mention of globalization. But the whole argument is an evocation of complexity theory, not least its emphasis on the increasing ubiquity of disordered systems and fluid identities. 15 Bulajewski is at pains to counter the sanguine feel of these consumption communities, likening the relationships between users and purveyors of product as that between a

80  Towards a theory of globalization dystopian cult and its members. See also Evgeny Morozov on this phenomenon in his “Beware: Silicon Vally cultists want to turn you into a disruptive deviant”, theguardian online January 3, 2016. 16 Risky, because when closer to the actual grain of communicative connectivity, and when discussing the imaginaries afforded by the Internet in general and social media in particular, we must be alive to the scope for making (and changing) individual and collective narratives in digital contexts that are likely to be institutionally light and relatively unstable when set against the “thick” and solidaristic qualities often assumed when discussing the attributes of community and society. The social effects of the sometimes dense and often extensive circulation of signs online challenge and sometimes qualify definitions of social staples such as community and society as stable forms of organization and identity. In the next chapter I expand on the merits of complexity theory as a way of examining the ecology of socio-technical communicative worlds in process and identify a set of world-making forms and practices that comprise that ecology.

4 On world-making communicative forms and practices

Introduction Digital culture has become “continuous, ubiquitous and global”, to borrow from Barry Sandywell (2011, 14).1 Reviewing the rise of ubiquitous digital media, he opines that “ ‘(M)edia’ are no longer ‘intermediaries’ between significant social agents, no longer channels or conduits of meaning, rather, they transmute into generative social apparatuses, machines that produce ‘the social’. Digitalization – the displacement of analogue technologies by digital technologies – places this new global order . . . within reach of everyone”. We should add the important caveat, “or potentially so” (Sandywell, 2011, 14–15). This is an uncompromising claim, almost an endorsement of the idea of media logic; though such is not the author’s intent.2 However, it is not too far adrift from more circumspect, but still transformationalist, positions found in the work of Castells and Tomlinson, among others (1996, 1999, 2007). It also echoes my argument that there is a transformative dynamic in these changes that invests current processes of globalization and the structuration of emergent globalities. But in this, as in other ambivalent accounts, transformation is deemed to come at a cost. And Sandywell’s phenomenology of the aesthetics of digital media is clearly ambivalent about some of its features. Chief among these is the implied homogenization of visual culture seen, for example, in the branded, global imagery for entertainment and fashion products. In the writing of cultural critics such as Walter Benjamin (1976), Paul Virillo (1992) and Jean Baudrillard (1983), this same imagery is testament to a civilization brought low through an unhealthy fascination with spectacle. But cultural apocalypse or not, most pertinently for my account, Sandywell also argues that new information technologies are designed for a borderless world, stating that, “the images of life, nature and relationships they promulgate tend to take a universal form” (2011, 15). Leave aside that this formulation may well downplay the ways in which global cultural scripts and artifacts are often appropriated and then indigenized by local actors to produce glocal outcomes and imaginaries, it is still a robust statement of the systemic and aesthetic features of mediatized, global cultures. The Internet and the World Wide Web are inscription technologies of planetary scope, shaping the temper of everyday life, the conduct of politics and governance and

82  On world-making communicative forms the production and circulation of values. In all, as Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin say, “(u)biquitous computing means the constant monitoring of the quotidian, . . . (and) . . . insists even more aggressively on the reality of media in our social and physical world” (1999, 219; Scott, 2015). This “reality” is nothing less than a “seismic mutation of social life” (Sandywell, 2011, 17), and it has two obvious features. First, of course, is the centrality of coded (digitalized) information in almost every facet of life; such that everyday things become the carriers – Sandywell says the “mere” carriers – of digital codes, relays in complex networks and nodes in the transmission of information. Citing Zygmunt Bauman with approbation, he notes that the upshot is an age of febrile change in which the “very fabric and rhythms of everyday life have been mobilized and liquefied” (Sandywell, 2011, 18). Such, of course, is the flavor of Bauman’s thesis on “liquid modernity”, and both accounts evince the same cultural pessimism. For commentators like Zygmunt Bauman, and also Jurgen Habermas (2001, 1975), cultural change on this scale is at best dislocating and, at worse, pathological; leading to surrender of the core emancipatory values of modernity for a life of consumption. Actors retreat from the goal of moral community founded on communicative competence to the abject status of victims of, or supine audiences for, culture as spectacle and (post-truth) politics as habitual and stylized lying. But in globalized modernity or late-modernity, the proliferation of information through digital means need not be interpreted as – or even seen as intimating – a modal social pathology.3 It is true that human connectivity across every area of space and time is “overwhelmingly mediated and reshaped by new digital machines” and their software (Sandywell, 2011, 18; Scott, 2015). But, as I argued earlier, this should not give rise to an a priori assumption that the experience spawns atomized individuals, unreflective agents or selves cut off from collective consciousness. Neither should it presume lives forever played out in a supermarket of brittle meanings and identities, with individuals reduced to the status of gullible (persuadable?) consumers or witless neophiliacs. Rather, we might take as an analytical, or at least plausible, starting point for argumentation, the proposition that information technologies afford an increasingly efficient means of “regaining control of time” (Mongardini, 1992, 59) and conquering space, as well as supplying resources for increased reflexivity and control. At any rate, such an interpretation will be addressed when we explore empirical sites and processes in later chapters. The second feature of the seismic mutation is also testament to its transformative capacity. Globalization “morphs together” the core processes of classical sociology; industrialization, urbanization, even modernization, along with staple signifiers such as community and society. Or rather it dissolves the boundaries around them and thus challenges their assumed ontological solidity or conceptual “givenness”. Ubiquitous digital communication technologies like the Internet and the Web have become unremarkable appurtenances of living, as well as the grain of pretty well everyone’s future. As Sandywell argues, increasingly, they are the medium of globalized production, consumption and circulation, and very

On world-making communicative forms 83 little escapes their compass, from entertainment to art, from shopping to personal security.4 All this adds up to a ”phenomenology of space-time, a transformation of previously ordered structures and social relationships to create a disordered world of interfaces and networks” (Sandywell, 2011, 18–19). The conceptual language that informs this new phenomenology is a litany of all that globalization skeptics find both absorbing and perennially infuriating: deterritorialization, network society, rhizomatic culture, hybridization, glocalization, fractalization and hyperreality.5 But the litany is not testimony to an unabridged process of specular globalization, nor yet entries in a catalogue of empty concepts. The ideas employed are too grainy to justify any such dismissal, and they may carry profound content, producing significant effects and yielding insights into transformed or transforming sociality. Where I can agree with Sandywell is on the extent to which what is taking place is a digital aestheticization of globalization, propelled through the kindred (perhaps even prior) aestheticization of culture, politics and economics (Sandywell, 2011). We are enwrapped in – though not, I think, suborned by – new modes of representing and experiencing the world that, for growing numbers of people, are not restricted by time or place. Arguably, these have few, if any, parallels in previous analogue cultures. The virtual inscriptions of cyberspace are creating new spaces and times of politics, governance and leisure, new business practices and new kinds of imagined community. These changes are perhaps most advanced and dramatic in visual worlds – and if the buzz is to be believed, especially in the seductiveness and growing availability of worlds through virtual and augmented reality technologies.6 But in truth, they are everywhere, mainly because digital information is accessible at any point on the planet – if not always easily – and thus supplies resources for personal and institutional innovation and greater reflexivity. This process is never going to be a tale of bland homogenization. The globalization of digital culture is variable and contested in terms of its liberating potential, its repressive and dehumanizing possibilities, and its variation across localities. The mediatization of personal worlds and cultures demonstrates the same features.7

Performing emergent globality But what does this look like in the quotidian? How and where is the global performed and instantiated through world-making communicative practices? To reiterate, I am expounding a theory of global forms and practices that demonstrate features of complexity models of global (dis)order. Digital communication, notably through the Internet, displays many such features, and is (hyper)typical of what Bernard Latour calls “circulating entities” (1999, 17). Such entities are characterized mainly by complex mobile connections. They are more or less networked and at a distance (Urry, 2002, 58; Dicken et al., 2001, 12), circulating through “speed, velocity, waves, continuous flow, pulsing, fluidity and viscosity, rhythm, harmony, discordance and turbulence” (Dillon, 2000, 12). The digital mediatization of culture is the modus of this address as well as (somewhat perplexingly) its

84  On world-making communicative forms outcome. Crucially, while mediatization must be seen as a modal process, or set of processes, it too may take different forms and move to different historical and cultural impulses and rhythms across the globe and over time (Gunaratne, 2013; Rakow, 2013; Waisbord, 2013; Lundby, 2014; Krotz, 2009). As John Urry notes, the very idea of “social order” is rendered problematic by this complexity (2002, 59); and so are what Ilya Prigogene called the “two alienating images of a deterministic world and an arbitrary world of pure chance” (1997, 189). So, to underline the point, complexity science is entirely suited to an analysis of emergent globalities as I have described them and the world-making practices that give them shape. Through the notion of world-making practices I want to convey the strong performative element in social constitution that obtains when, in their everyday engagements with each other and with communication technologies, agents use the latter as resources that nourish and enable individual and collective repertoires of possibility online. This is not a paean to cyber-utopia but, when talking about globalization, does have the distinct advantage of not fetishizing relationships between what is otherwise too simply presented as an “integrated and stable global system” and its “derivative and local recipients”, where the latter are, by definition, passive and unreflexive users and victims of information technology (Hand and Sandywell, 2002, 213). From other sources the conceptual language of glocalization, vernacularization, indigenization, hybridization and syncretism already captures some aspects of this intent, but in the global field it will be important, as both Urry and Hand and Sandywell say, to see the interplay between technology, agents, local and global as a “constellation of complex reflexive systems and self-organizing transactions linked with wider systems of power and influence” (Urry, 2003; Hand and Sandywell, 2002, 215). About a decade ago Saskia Sassen argued that this more complex understanding of global constitution moves way beyond accounts that just rely on evidence of growing interdependence (interconnectivity) or a focus on self-evidently global institutions (2007, 4–5).8 But for some disciplines, notably political science and international relations, though in some respects sociology too, the shift remains difficult because of their “canonical framing” of the national and the ontological centrality of the territorial state and society. Sassen argues that the continued strength of this canon makes it hard to accept the theoretical potential in the emergence of multi-scalar and a-scalar modalities and of the global as a socio-spatial phenomenon. Her thesis is clearly one of epochal transformation in train, albeit that the transformative potential is being realized through the ways in which globalizing dynamics are taking place “inside the national” (2007, 1), rather than eclipsing it. In fact, Sassen writes about the state and territory out of the same sociological tradition as Henri Lefebvre, George Simmel and Karl Marx, but applied to the global age (Albrow, 2007). Like many other students of globalization, she wants to abandon a framework for analysis that relies on the simple dualism of national and global. Instead she focuses on the interplay and tensions between two main concepts and processes, denationalization, which involves playing down or deconstructing the national frame of reference in all its guises, and embeddedness,

On world-making communicative forms 85 which holds that global processes are located in particular times, material places and social conditions. These ideas are by no means unique to Sassen’s work and, as I noted earlier, can be found in Tony Giddens’ pioneering use of embedding as a feature of space-time distanciation (1990). Sassen uses this conceptual scheme in pursuit of a better understanding of globalization as a complex and variable process. As well as noting the existence of self-evidently global institutions, her attempt to map an analytic terrain for the study of globalization requires a second set of dynamics which are not “global” in the same way as, for example, the WTO is global, but “take place deep inside territories and institutional domains” that are usually designated as national (2007, 6). These dynamics – they include cross-border networks of activists fighting eminently local struggles and the use made by national courts of international law and conventions – demonstrate that as a process, globalization “inhabits” and relies on the national and yet challenges the received wisdom that the territorial-state is the natural container of all social process. Indeed, the overall aim of this conceptual strategy is to escape what Martin Albrow calls “the intellectual cul-de-sac that equated the nation-state with society tout court and inferred that globalization, in challenging nation-state control, also meant the disembedding of society from any kind of material foundations” (2007, 6; see also, Robinson, 2009; Albert, 2007; Thomas, 2016; Robertson, 2016). The key point in Sassen’s schema, and one especially relevant here, is that a good deal of globalization consists of what she calls “micro-processes” which serve to “denationalize” “what had been constructed as national” (2006, 1). This idea marries with our focus on world-making communicative practices when it identifies what she calls “new digital assemblages” that are producing distinctive and complex spatialities – and, though she does not say it, new subjectivities too – that cannot be subsumed completely under the national or the global. As we noted in chapter one, these “have their own sociological reality” (2006, XIII). For example, Sassen refers to the “virtualization of economic activity” (1996, 22) and cites the instance of currency markets which trade without much let or hindrance from national regulators, including central banks. In later work, she also discusses the part being played by the Internet and mobile telephony (increasingly, the mobile Internet) in the creation of networks of political activists who are players in a novel kind of transnational politics and are contributing to new forms of citizenship (2005 and see chapter six of this book). Digital architectures constitute one of the strands that comprise her “new geographies of power”, inscribed – if that is not a contradiction in terms – in the rootless or “footloose” nature of all manner of social interactions. Through financial networks, digital architectures affect the very geography of capital accumulation such that “many of the newer objects of capital accumulation flow through spaces” (Scholte, 2005, 398). Sassen has also turned her attention to the ways in which digital architectures – digital assemblages – are modifying, even transforming the routines and structures of governance (2006, 2007). She is concerned, primarily, with the emerging complexity of social practices and authority relations seen in the use of technologies

86  On world-making communicative forms whose key property is a challenge to the very idea of place and of boundaries, but which enable actors to refurbish or reinvent the idea, and perhaps the ideal, of locality or community, sometimes tied to territory (Axford, 2006). The focus of this work is the way new mobile communication technologies and the globalization of production are still rooted in localities (often, though by no means always, in big cities), which themselves become global through their networked communicative connections and their cosmopolitan or multicultural lifestyles. In her account, the political and cultural economies that constitute the national subsist in and, at the same time, constitute the global; they are not separate scales in practice, or for purposes of analysis. In this respect, her conceptualization of globalization is at one, at least in spirit, with the treatment accorded to glocal processes by Roland Robertson (1992, 2007a, 2016; Roudometof, 2016). Both authors reject the idea of local and global being distinct zones of activity, self-contained or discrete geographical scales. Sassen’s intriguing notion of “analytical borderlands” that subsist between the national and the global is intended to capture the sense that new spatio-temporal orders constituted by digital networks work to disrupt the “national project of containment” (2006, 379; Roudometof, 2016). Never immaculate, the national is now routinely disrupted by the speed and density of digital communicative practice and by the subjectivities so engaged and created, from the proto-global constituency of human rights, through cyber crime and cyber-leaks, to environmental or libertarian activists mobilized through the Internet. But even this does not, or need not, stand outside the national in the sense of constituting a separate global modality, and certainly not a global “level”. As a concept or heuristic device, her idea of communicative traffic operating in, or even constituting, “analytic borderlands”, helps us understand the emerging character of the global and the changing face of the national, by identifying a “mixed condition, an in-between type of spatio-temporal order” (2006, 379). By contrast, in the landmark work on Global Transformations, David Held and his co-authors depict globalization as one end of a continuum, at the other end of which lies the local (1999). We should be clear here; these are not differences that turn simply on the volume of interconnections between entities located at either end of an analytical continuum, but a difference in interpretation of what is meant by globalization and how it is structured. As Sassen says, “(n)either the national nor the global represents a fully stabilized meaning today “ (2006, 379). The spaces thus created exist beyond national borders to realize what in other discourse would be called “glocal”, or “inter-glocal” entities. Locality (seen as scale) is now the outcome of different forms of network interaction, while “scale fragmentation” means that in such contexts the local is no longer a discrete scale for purpose of governance, maybe even identity (Lissandrello, 2003). This is not an either-or model in which a) scale no longer matters, or b) must always be at the core of the explanatory account. Instead, it involves “rejecting the notion of scale as a bounded, territorially complete concept, and of any notion that social relations are contained at particular scales” (Bulkeley, 2005, 884). As Neil Brenner

On world-making communicative forms 87 argues: “scales evolve relationally within tangled hierarchies and dispersed interscalar networks” (2001, 605). Sassen’s is a signal intervention in identifying and mapping digital communication as key to the structuration of emergent globalities. She points up those forces that are altering the frame of agency and rendering conventional territorialities and subjectivities ambiguous, sometimes nugatory. However, she has only a jobbing, or implied, sense of globality, and one that is curiously neglectful of the process of globalization as discursive or subjective (Albrow, 2007). Yet the modalities and processes she describes are clearly forms of world-making practice and muster as components in, and maybe exemplars of, incipient globalities. The task now is to build on these insights to offer a richer array of such practices as the capillaries and membranes of emergent globalities. Before embarking on this journey, let me restate and expand on the characteristics of emergent globalities as they have been revealed in previous chapters. In turn this determination will bear on the choice of empirical sites to be examined in chapters five to seven. Emergent globalities subsist through action, consciousness and some degree of institutionalization. They are not simply the implied or necessary outcome(s) of a set of globalization processes; neither are they an ideological construct or the end point of a crude teleology. In this respect I endorse Martin Shaw’s reference to globality as “common consciousness on a human scale” because it points up the inclusiveness of the global frame, always allowing that globalities may be contested, with all outcomes possible (2003, 142). Paradoxically, I also accept the notion of globality as systematic, even systemic, bearing in mind that this has to rely on a pretty laid-back notion of what systemness comprises. At its most inclusive globality, and thus the idea of global systemness, embraces the totality of global flows, networks, interactions and connections and triggers a shift in the organization of human affairs and in ways of thinking about social relations and enacting them. But, and this is a crucial qualification, there may be bespoke or idiosyncratic versions too, revealed in communicative forms and practices that have a powerful, even necessary, emergent quality, and are, as I indicated in chapter one, visible in the intertwining of local and global, through the interplay of global scapes and contingent glocal actors and through various “networks, fluids and governance institutions” (Urry, 2003, 103). Emergent globalities of the kind exemplified in subsequent chapters share the following characteristics. Indeed, the features described below are the ontological building blocks of any and all emergent globalities. First, they are the communicative expression of the “intensification of moreor-less worldwide connectivity and increasingly reflexive global consciousness” (Robertson, 1992). As Roland Robertson also says, the condition of globality so defined is instantiated by the compression of the world through different media. In this process, not only the Internet, but communication media in general, are playing a key, though not exclusive, part. Second, the compression is of planetary scope. But this attribution, while obvious and understandable, is misleading, or rather, too limited. To be sure, it draws

88  On world-making communicative forms attention to the planetary geography of global processes and to changing patterns of social, cultural, economic and political space. But as David Inglis and Roland Robertson (2004) argue, notions of globality – “where the world is taken as a whole, where all parts of the global are seen as increasingly interconnected and where individual experience is connected to worldwide forces and circumstances” (2004, 47) – mean different things at different times. The features of globality to which they refer were extant in the Greco-Roman world, some two millennia ago, when the sense of “worldwide” did not mean planetary, as it does today. What this seeming terminological permissiveness highlights is that different conceptualizations of the global and of globality are tied to particular historical moments or periods; so that while the character of global as denoting “worldwide” consciousness and practices remains the same, particular conceptions and spatial configurations, as well as the forces driving them, can change. So that, third, while the global may well equate to the idea of being planetary (or even ex-orbitant), it may not. But this is, or may be, less critical for definitional and practical purposes than the criterion that any version of emergent globality must carry or display what was canvassed in chapters one and two, as global content or global address. In the case of communication technologies and platforms this requires that they can provide for both shared meanings and interdiscursivity (among, say, online communities and networks). Empirically, the address to global content must focus on the ways in which digital communication technologies enable us to surmise and relocate distant contexts and relate to people, things and events that are remote from, even alien to, our everyday lives (Orgad, 2012; Baym, 2015). Fourth, the idea of carrying global content, or having global address, brings us back to the issue of consciousness as it was developed in chapter three. Of course, globality cannot be taken as a synonym for global consciousness. But consciousness is integral to the structuration of globalities, regardless of definitional elusiveness. I am clear that it is required to support any claim made for the contribution of subjectivity to global constitution and is key to depicting that structuration as a reflexive process. Fifth: For all the emphatic structuration implied by some uses of the concept mediatization, the paradigmatic digital communicative forms and practices that subvent current emergent globalities are institutionally light. In what follows I pay due attention to the dictum that “genuinely global forms . . . fields of practice that link up and stretch across all time zones” (or have the potential to do so) may not imply any expansion in social institutional complexity. In fact, they may become feasible only if they avoid “complex institutional structures” (KnorrCetina, 2014, 40). These are the new modalities of a digitally connected world, and rely on routine and speedy interconnectivity, “visual images, stylistic connotations and symbolic associations” and, to reiterate, comprise a world more and more in process (Gruneau and Whitson, 1993, 137). Sixth: My fourth and fifth criteria are a deliberate affront to the reductionist thesis of methodological globalization (Holton, 2005) in that they underline the importance of consciousness and institutionalization to a multidimensional

On world-making communicative forms 89 account of global constitution. Also key to this account is the form and the practice of glocality. Just as there is a need to bridge agency and structure in accounts of global constitution, so it is important to understand the ways in which localglobal relations are crystallized through refraction, wherein the global is refracted through the local (Roudemetof, 2016). In this regard glocal entities and processes “reveal the way in which the very creation of localities is a standard component of globalization” (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2006, 134). When local meets global the outcomes can be a smooth assimilation or uneasy mix, with national and local identities and cultures i) eroded through cultural homogenization of the sort described by George Ritzer (2004, 2007), ii) reinforced in a politics of local cultural resistance to globalization or iii) replaced by hybrid cultures, which are the result of the interpenetration of local and global (Hall, 1992). Once again, such outcomes are not predicated on the assumed and immutable properties of either localities or globalization processes. Seventh: Glocality now appears as a characteristic, though not exclusive, outcome of global-local interaction or process of mutual constitution.9 In this scenario, the Internet, and specifically, what has become known as Web 2.0, (which is both interactive and in some respects actor-driven) is a clear example of digital glocalization (Roudometof, 2016, chapter 6). Dannah Boyd has it thus: “(g)localized structures and networks are the backbone of Web 2.0. Rather than conceptualizing the world in geographical terms, it is now necessary to use a networked model to understand the interrelations between people and culture, to think about localizing in terms of social structures not in terms of location” (2005, 181). Consequently, the Internet’s glocality is plain to see. When listing its features, perhaps the most poignant is that it has not obliterated local identities, including idiosyncratic markers of difference such as language. In part this outcome is the result of the Internet’s still uneven spread across the globe in terms of access and in quality of usage. In large part too, such variability highlights the resilience in local ways of doing things. And in no small measure it also underscores the fragility of seemingly remorseless universal constraints or secular convergence, and recognizes that while locals exist in a global framework, nonetheless they “selfconsciously draw on globalized strategies” to subvent and legitimate their sense of difference (Phipps, 2009, 28; Kearney, 1995). Anthropologists and ethnographers have known this for a long time. Of late so have communication theorists, whose exponents have embraced both the idea of mediatization as a meta-theory of globalization (Waisbord, 2013) and begun to temper excesses about its explanatory importance and causal primacy (Hjarvard, 2013; Hepp, 2014; Lundby, 2014). Not always, of course, as we have seen, but with sufficient intent and conviction to defuse the idea of media “conquering” everything (Waisbord, 2013, 182); while becoming attuned to the more subtle argument that “(s)ocial fields have become ‘media-tropic’ as they adjust their goals and functioning to media requirements and characteristics” (Waisbord, 2013, 182). As Silvio Waisbord relates, mediatization and globalization are two different yet related phenomena. Here, the former is extracted as a hyper-typical feature of

90  On world-making communicative forms globalization in its current phase, but cannot be taken as the sole begetter of globally integrative processes, or the only modus of emergent globalities, because there is no mastery without remainder. With the exception of mediatization – which is a sufficient causal factor, but not a necessary one – the features of emergent globality outlined above are indisputably necessary, but not sufficient, factors in the constitution of globalities. All world-making forms and practices exhibit these characteristics, though in variable array. I now turn to the ways in which emergent globalities are constituted through the imbrications of a variety of communicative, world-making practices and forms; visiting constructs that move from a greater to a lesser range of generality in terms of their address to macro, meso and micro morphologies of social life.

World-making practices and forms World-making practices and forms lie at the confluence of connection, consciousness and institutionalization, and variably congeal the relationships between individual (and often local) subjects and structures and more encompassing global ones. In what follows I will map cognate ideas and note some elements of conceptual imprecision, conflation and overlap. But the different concepts muster intellectually around the claim that they provide access to and – when applied to the empirical realm – understanding of, the increasing penetration of information and communication technologies in different areas of social life. I begin with a discussion of network forms and practices, often taken as the default position from which to describe and analyse global ontology and dynamics, touching on cognate – and often under-specified – concepts such as global fluids, before moving to the much-touted theme of global scapes (Urry, 2003; Baumann, 2000, 2005; Appadurai, 2006; Albrow, 1996). Finally, I will rehearse the cognate, but still quite precocious, line of thinking expressed in the claim that scopic media transform social situations into synthetic situations and replace faceto-face relations by face-to-screen relations and network coordination by scopic forms of coordination (Knorr-Cetina, 2014, 2009; Woermann, 2011). Jointly or severally, these forms and practices exemplify the complexity and dynamism of Internet-afforded globality.

Varieties of networked connection To begin at the beginning: A network is an arrangement of nodes tied together by relationships – some instrumental, others affective – that serve as channels of communication, resource pools and coordinating mechanisms (Axford, 2012). As Karin Knorr-Cetina tells us, the ontology of the network consists of cooperation of various kinds, strategic alliances, exchanges, emotional bonds, kinship ties, personal relations and other forms of grouping and entrenchment (2007; see also Axford, 2012, 2016a). Sociality is thereby constituted in networks of relationships; although it may not be the conventionally “thick” engagement or sense of

On world-making communicative forms 91 intimacy implied – or taken as read – when terms such as society and community are broadcast. Moreover, networks constitute a “relativisation of scale” (Jessop, 2000), and thus exemplify the current global political and cultural economies because they are both mobile and mutable. Once again, the gamut of networked relationships between actors is not confined to the digital variety (White, 1965; Emirbayer, 1997). That said, where globalization is concerned, digital connection nicely points up contemporary features of the interplay of culture and network structure. Where global cultures are concerned, cultural structures and practices are as much formed by networks, as vice versa; while networks are, or may be, replete with cultural meanings (Fuhse, 2015). Whereas borders underwrite formal organization, hierarchy and, of course, boundedness, networks challenge and subvert them. In short, networks offer alternative topologies of the global, characterized not by fixity or closure, but by movement. In practice, networks are various and variable, both in their intensity (of connection) and their extensiveness. In globalization scholarship, the complex topologies of networks are ubiquitous because, although some networked relationships are relatively contained by geographical and territorial boundaries, others are manifestly trans-boundary or global. When discussing globalization, the concept network carries an especially powerful analytical charge (Singh Grewel, 2008). Yet, it is clear that the network metaphor, or the use of the concept as an analytical or empirical category, is now widespread across the social sciences, where it is referenced with a good deal of freedom, often appearing alongside, or else conflated with, cognate notions such as chains, flows, liquids and hybrids. Such syncretism underscores the ways in which these terms now inform the conceptual landscape of the social science of globalization (Hannerz, 2002). And there is no doubt that the idea of network does carry a transformative charge, both in terms of its presumed re-spatializing potential and because of its status as an analytical and empirical alternative to the once standard modern social forms of hierarchy and market. In other words, networks are often seen as a new kind of social space and expressions of a new relational sociology. Because of this potential, some analytical caution is necessary just to temper what Bob Holton (2005) calls “an excessive emphasis on purportedly new features of social life” where networked, circulating entities replace the conventional architectures of borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as identities. This is appropriate modesty, but there is no escaping the perception that whereas borders speak to territoriality (place), fixity and ontological thickness, networks speak of interconnection and fluidity. As Peter Dicken and his colleagues (2001) note, networks “enable social relations that cross space at all scales”, and, as I intimated above, when discussing globalization, this is their most potent attribute. The actual type of network is contingent on issue-area and circumstance. Transmission networks enable the flows of material things and agents, and include the sort of multi-scalar commodity chains at the heart of world-systems research;

92  On world-making communicative forms social networks comprise the links created through social relations; actor-networks involve both the movement of material things and the simultaneous creation of social relations, with the emphasis on practices rather than structures; and topological networks describe the complex spatiality of actor-networks (Painter, 2004; Axford, 2009). Such complex topologies and structures produce a variety of networked relationships. John Urry further distinguishes between networked relationships that muster as globally integrated networks (GINS) – “complex enduring and predictable connections between peoples, objects and technologies across multiple and distant spaces and times” (2002, 65)  – and what he calls “global fluids”. The former comprise arrangements in which network outcomes are invariant across its span. Global networks like Amazon or McDonald’s fall into this category. Although networked, this world is quite resolute. His second category is a metaphor for more irresolute global space, and much more in tune with the emergent qualities of communicative connection we have bruited here. It includes “world money, global media, digitized information, the Internet, social movements and travelling peoples”, as well as global terrorism and migration flows (Urry, 2002, 65). These fluids, says Urry in a rather picaresque description, “roam the globe, possessing the power of rapid movement, across, over and under many regions; disappearing then reappearing, transmuting their form” (Urry, 2002). Global fluids tend to produce heterogeneous outcomes, whereas networks tend more to homogenization or systemic harmonization. Urry has the Internet as a global fluid, demonstrating no necessary end state or purpose, and possessing an “elegant, nonhierarchical rhizomatic global structure”, based on lateral, horizontal hypertext links that render boundaries between objects quite fluid (Urry, 2005, 247).10 How networked relationships actually work provides insight into globalizing processes and the formation of emergent globalities. Without doubt, the presumption is that much more is happening in networked relationships than transfers between actors – just another version of mere connection. But is it safe to say that through their functioning we are actually privy to more complex, transformative, relational ties that link social and technological, human and nonhuman, over time and across space, thus constructing a world that is, to repeat the mantra, “always in process”? (Thrift, 2006). Scholarship on networks as key modalities of the global has addressed these questions by investigating micro, meso and macro features of network ontology and their implications for global ontology. Analytically separate perhaps, these features still should not be read as depicting discrete networked worlds. At the micro-level, some research on networks and globalization identifies the increasingly modal significance of “global microstructures” (Knorr-Cetina, 2007), which are forms of network apparent in domains as separate as global terrorist networks and traders in finance houses, examples also noted by Urry. And as I have noted already, they are feasible only if they avoid complex institutional structures. Other research also informed by the transformative potential of information and communication technology (ICT) adopts more of a meso-level approach to network connection, and here, once again, we can advert Saskia Sassen. In her account

On world-making communicative forms 93 of the constitution of different historical assemblages and spatio-temporal frames for social activity, Sassen (2006) develops an argument about the imbrications and mutual constitution of digital and non-digital domains and networked actors by focusing on three key components of the social embeddedness of computercentred interactive technologies. These are the complex interactions between digital and non-digital domains, the destabilizing of existing hierarchies of scale made possible by such technologies, and the mediating cultures that organize the relations between technologies and users. Finally, full-blown macro-morphological accounts of global network interaction are rare, but strong claims for the descriptive and analytical power of the network approach can be found in Manuel Castells’ (1996, 2000) treatise on the emergence of the network society in the information age. At the heart of his thesis is the idea that network morphologies and network dynamics overtake other forms of social organization, and this impetus permeates and transforms all realms of social and economic life. In other words, this is a powerfully transformationalist argument. In the much-trafficked notion of “space of flows”, he develops the somewhat problematic idea of there being a “placeless” logic of networks that precipitates the disappearance of time and space as constraints on social relationships. Once again, the use of the term “logic” may not be apposite for what are irresolute structures and indeterminate outcomes. Whatever their character, these changes do not presage a benign, featureless, global future, and Castells sounds a warning note, such that while the space of flows can appear to be anodyne or neutral, in social, cultural and historical terms, places are still “condensations of human history”, where culture and memory matter. Among other possible outcomes, any shift may precipitate a new kind of local-global politics, built around digital inclusion and exclusion, and forms of resistance to the obliteration of place, including the space of the nation-state.

Global scapes In the lexicon of globalization, networks obviously carry a transformative frisson. Minimally, such assemblages are likely to be highly disruptive “insertions” into national and regional scales, and they possess the capacity to abrogate strict scalar organization (Dicken et al., 2001). In a gloss on this kind of argument applied to the relationships between situated collective actors such as the nation-state and mobile networks, Peter Dicken and his collaborators opine that, rather than completely unmake the state’s integrity and competence, network links, especially where they cross borders, are more likely to create “qualitative disjunctures” between different regulatory, sociocultural and political environments, at the same time as they enable routine connection between actors separated across time and space (Dicken et al., 2001). To repeat a caution: In practice, networks are various and variable, both in their intensity (of connection) and their extensiveness, and in terms of whether they are material, informational, ideational or symbolic. They are also ubiquitous. Bob

94  On world-making communicative forms Holton writes that the “typology of networks now extends to business and trade, policy and advocacy, knowledge and the professions, together with empire and terror, kinship and friendship, religion and migration”, but even these examples only hint at the possible diversity of networked worlds (2005, 46, 2008; Taylor, 2004). The ubiquity of networks and their diverse ontologies are crucial to the way in which our examination of world-making practices now unfolds. Some images of a networked world paint a hyperbolic picture of achieved smooth space with discourses of flow, movement and flight to match. But in Arjun Appadurai’s well-known and undoubtedly transformationalist argument, attention is given to the synergies, but critically, the disjunctions between five global “scapes” that he names: ethnoscape, technoscape and finanscape, along with mediascape and ideoscape.11 Each of these “scapes” is perspectival, created by social actors as imagined worlds, and thus not dissimilar to Benedict Anderson’s idea of the nation as imagined community (1983; Appadurai, 1990, 1993, 2006). Appadurai believes that we live in such globally imagined worlds and not simply in imagined localities. We also live in a world in which de-territorialization, or the breaking-down of existing territorial connections, is the major force. Scapes are imaginaries for this borderless world, yet pure imaginings that are still trammeled by various markers around people, things and places. His account of the conflict between the “vertebrate” and “cellular” geographies of the world after 9/11 has the protagonists, respectively, as the realist geographies of nation-states and new forms of connection, solidarity and organization (2006, 116). Both orders are global in reach, and the encounters between them have the potential to transform the “morphology of (the) global economy and politics” (Appadurai, 2006, 28). Vertebrate geography is built on generalized norms of conduct, international organizations such the UN and, of course, the international system of states (Appadurai, 2006, 25). Cellular geography comprises “disorganized”, virtual capitalism, terrorist networks and emergent, sometimes “utopian”, forms of grass-roots networking across or regardless of borders, in the shape of social movements and virtual communities on the Web. Sometimes these geographies are in conflict, but Appadurai does not traffic a facile division of the world into national redoubts and fluid global processes (Axford, 2007b, 321). In such naïve, but widely trafficked, interpretations, global and national are treated as separate levels or scales and globalization is the force or process through which sub-global actors variously succumb to, resist or accommodate the global. More subtle, or less stark, interpretations of the relationships between globalization and the national and sub-national, or between global processes and situated actors, are available. Appadurai himself recognizes that many spatial-temporal forms and orders do not fit neatly into one or other of his global geographies. Thus, of transnational firms and global markets, he says that they “display a split personality that resembles and relies on the vertebrate features of the nation-state system, but also is the laboratory for new forms of cellularity, de-linkage and local autonomy” (2006, 28). But the disjunctive relationship among scapes bequeaths an uncomfortable shape and demeanour to the emerging global cultural economy. In this regard

On world-making communicative forms 95 Appadurai’s scenario reprises the dialectic of sameness and difference rehearsed throughout this book and at its most visible in the eight global trends or tendencies set out in chapter one. Despite the claims of hyperglobalists, and even the more cautious attribution of world-society theorists (Drori et al., 2006; Meyer, 2007), his imagery of disjunctive scapes suggests a lack of isomorphism around global cultural themes or scripts. So, this is truly a world in process; or, as he says, “multiple worlds that are constituted by the historically situated imaginations of persons and groups spread throughout the globe” (Appadurai, 2006, 86). Basically, all five scapes rely on the exchange of ideas, information and identities, as well as movement of bodies and things. Consider the two scapes most clearly pertinent to the theme of this book. Technoscapes bring about new types of cultural interaction and exchanges through the power of technology, which now happens at unprecedented speeds. Mediascapes denote both the distribution of the electronic capabilities to produce and disseminate information and “the images of the world created by these media”. The spatial “scape” metaphor truly highlights the fluid and fragmented nature of people’s (media) environments as a result of intensifying and extensive global flows (Kuipers, 2012, 987). In their intriguing book on Locating Emerging Media, Germaine and Aslinger report on the ways in which a video game – the Streetfighter series – subsists in a global context through software that can entertain themes and messages typical of a particular culture. Being “typical” includes a depiction of heroism and masculinity bound to a specific geographical context – in this case China – while being distributed to, and made sense of by, players far outside that context (2016, 171). As they note, the portability and instantaneity of digital flow enables cultural identities to be played out on a global scale (2016, 173). From the point of view of the analyst the question now is how to categorize the video game in terms of the cultural mix it portrays and enacts when players invest their digital avatars with more-or-less bespoke and culturally specific, or else hybrid personas. Clearly it is hard to characterize the game as either Chinese or global since both cultural relativization and cultural essentialism are at work here. Yet the outcome is not a clear-cut illustration of disjunction between scapes. Rather, as the authors suggest, the game as played is an “active performance of the scapes themselves at work” (2016). The server, connected to remote players around the world, acts as a conduit for the globalization of what are still recognizable as particular cultural identities. Ethnoscapes, mediascapes and technoscapes both meld and fragment the perception and experience of players. Cultural markers or signifiers, which locate the game and its characters as Chinese, run alongside global video game signifiers seen in generic and stylized violence, full-on battle scenes and futuristic weaponry. I return to video games when discussing Esport in chapter five.

Scopic media and synthetic interaction Communication structures are not just structures of coordination between members of a network. They also involve ways in which communication media become mechanisms of group production (auto-genesis) and thus demonstrate features

96  On world-making communicative forms of social complexity (Adlet-Nissen, 2015; Knorr-Cetina, 2014). As Karin KnorrCetina says, address to micro-sociological concepts is increasingly relevant for the analysis of global forms, flow processes and the “fateful expansions of social situations” (see also Goffman, 1969). A willingness to admit the importance of scopic media to the constitution and functioning of global forms is now quite advanced in the sociologies of global finance, the military, medicine, extreme sports and telepresence-based interaction (Knorr-Cetina, 2014, 2014; Woermann, 2011). Still something of a niche approach to the consequences of digital connection and material infrastructures, the study of scopic media directs attention to “screen-based technologies of observation and projection that render distant and invisible phenomena situationally present, unfold remote spaces and information worlds, and shift the boundaries between situation/system and the environment” (Knorr-Cetina, 2014, 40). The working hypothesis is that scopic media transform social situations into synthetic situations, replacing face-to-face relations by face-to-screen relations and network coordination by scopic forms of coordination. In this it musters as something of an alternative to the network model, at least in its Castellsian macro-form; though both approaches advert the pervasiveness of information and communication technologies in all areas of social life. Knorr-Cetina has a rather mechanical view of networks, referring to them as the “hardware”, “piping” and “infrastructures” of communication and information. Instead she proposes her own version of the phenomenology of “electronic infrastructures” as these are made and experienced in practice. And this is where the idea of mediatization becomes relevant, encompassing both the cognitive and sensual experience of participants (political activists, terrorists, gamers and, in her own research, traders in finance houses) and the medium in which they are working – conjured as “screenworld”. In this scenario the presence and use of screens – trading screens, smartphone screens or marginally less smart television screens – is key to understanding the social forms, the scopic forms, which emerge through such interaction. Although she uses the term “confront” to describe, inter-alia, the demeanour of traders towards trading floor technologies, more apt descriptions of the relationship are that agents “inhabit” or are “immersed in” technical environments and the content they traffic. The mediatization of specialist or otherwise bounded worlds, as well as their more open counterparts, then proceeds through screen technologies that are reflexive mechanisms for observation and projection. She uses the example of the trading floor to make the point that scopic coordination enables a projection of “reality” that is available to everyone connected to the system simultaneously. In other words, participants are sharers of an identical world, but at the same time one that is bespoke. Other engagements come to mind, as, for example, when individual punters practice in-game betting, or when players in Esports customize their identity and their contribution to the game being played. This, says Knorr-Cetina, is not networking, but scopic mediatization, and it has the following attributes. First, scopic media visually “present and project events” and actors that would otherwise be separate and distanced. Remote events and

On world-making communicative forms 97 things (in her case mostly on-screen numerical data, but also news sites, images of events and so on) effectively become “localized” or personalized when they are perceived together; or rather the distinction between local and global and personal and global collapses when the local is “augmented” to become a generic “local”, or compressed to a transferable modal particular. Of course how aboriginals or denizens react to the same texts still may be culturally inflected. Here we have a gloss on the idea of glocality as well as an insight into how a specific global form becomes, as she says, “culturally fashioned and integrated” through address to an audience’s or participant’s “visual attention and the technological, spatial and temporal structures that sustain it” (Knorr-Cetina, 2014, 42). Second, in scopic media coordination, screen content comes in a sequential, streaming fashion (43). The speed of flow mirrors the unfolding of events, as seen quite clearly in the monitoring of financial data and related information. In what may be a limiting case she talks about the incessant monitoring of screens that obtains on the trading floor of a bank or hedge-fund. But perhaps routine, even systematic, monitoring is not so exceptional a case after all, if one includes the volume and range of situations and exchanges now reliant on screen-based interactions to comprise and sustain both personal and professional identities. Where normative considerations intrude, for example about the possible degradation of the autonomous self when humans are reliant on or in thrall to machines, the key philosophical and empirical issue is always the extent to which reflexivity, rather than algorithmic logic, continues to inform any process of monitoring that consists of interaction between the two “agencies”, one machine, the other corporeal and emotional. Third, scopic media increasingly rely on algorithms – sets of digital instructions or rules for accomplishing tasks – and these may expand or retard human agency. Normatively this quality is fraught, since algorithms thus construed may be the tools of human agency or (and this may be the same thing judged differently) the means whereby human functions are taken over and either fulfilled or sidelined. In this (not so?) limiting case do algorithms effect a kind of agency? Certainly they incorporate the key attributes of digital culture: speed – even instantaneity – interactivity and compression, to “outperform” human agents, at least in the febrile world of trading interactions. Fourth, scopic media mix up scales. Local situations can be global at the same time when non-presence is compensated for or rendered nugatory by the use of techniques such as video-conferencing through Skype or Google Hangout. Fifth, scopic media transform face-to-face situations into “synthetic situations” and thus alter our sense of what it takes to be social. This is an elemental change bearing, as it does, on how trust is generated and sustained. Not only is the phenomenal nature and visceral quality of co-presence absent in screen-based interactions but, unless avatars are used, the attributed agency of algorithms and software is always unseen. But it is as well not to overstate these effects, or to treat them as entirely novel. Trust in expert systems – in that which is, or may be, unseen, impersonal, disembodied and at a distance – is a feature of the complexity of modern social systems; indeed, of modernity. Non-digital, or pre-digital

98  On world-making communicative forms globalization, also relies upon the use of and trust in expert systems that are not local or palpable. Loss of trust – in authoritative sources and all manner of expert systems – is often bruited as part of the crisis of political modernity, but the scale of disaffection, as well as its singular effects, are hard to quantify, especially when set against the ease and enthusiasm with which digital culture is embraced by growing numbers of people worldwide. If we are slouching to the digital apocalypse, to mangle W. B. Yeats and echo Morozov and Harari (2013, 2017), then we are more than willing travellers along that road. Finally, although this is an outcome rather than a feature, scopic systems have world-making effects when participants become immersed in “screenworlds” in various guises. With varying degrees of approbation there is much talk of online exchanges, especially on social media, that instantiate a highly self-referential world, or a set of digital redoubts, and this malaise (if such it be) extends from the pathological narratives constructed by terrorists, through the online cult of personality nourished by avid Corbynistas in the British Labour Party, to the devotees of MumsNet.12 The “partisan internet” is much in evidence.

Conclusion: mediatization, world-making practices and emergent globality Obviously the three broad types of world-making practice identified above, and the forms they predicate, display different features. But notwithstanding KnorrCetina’s definitional nuances on the differences between scopic and network forms of mediation, and the highly allusive feel of Appadurai’s scapes, where the role of digital media is concerned, it is valuable to see all three as contributing to, and being the expression of, the mediatization of everyday life; along with both the prospects for and sometimes the actuality of borderless worlds through digital mediatization. In addition, they share features that are critical for such constitution, notably, an understanding of what it now takes and means to be social and the consequences of being social in these ways; the willingness to countenance multi- or a-scalar modalities and the ability to interconnect, present and project events and actors that would otherwise be separate and distanced. Finally, all three reveal different aspects of the dialectic of networking, borders and identities that informs most scholarship on global constitution. These are powerful common attributes. Moreover, and critically for my insistence that the structuration of emergent globalities must display a combination of connectivity, consciousness and (lightness of) institutionalization, all three exhibit a regard for the systemic aspects of social constitution through communication – albeit by adopting a permissive take on the idea of system – and the contribution of agency variously conceived; of inter-subjectivity. This is nowhere more clear than in the acknowledged, though sometimes implicit, attention to what others would call the “glocal” cast of “global” constitution. As I signaled in chapter one, I now propose to vivify these features of emergent globality and their formative practices through attention to three empirical domains or sites; each conceived so as to

On world-making communicative forms 99 be broadly illustrative of recognizable fields involving the interaction of human agency and indifferent technologies in complex social constitution.

Notes 1 Digital culture is often vaguely defined. An influential, although still rather loose, attempt to give the idea form can be found in the foreword to a UNESCO publication (Uzelac and Cvjeticanin, eds, 2008). They say, “Digital culture is a new complex notion: today digital trends are increasingly interloping with the world of culture and arts, involving different aspects of convergence of cultures, media and information technologies, and influencing new forms of communication. The new possibilities created by ICT – global connectivity and the rise of networks – challenge our traditional ways of understanding culture, extending it to digital culture as well. So, culture today should be understood as an open and dynamic process that is based on interactive communication, and we cannot think of it as an enclosed system which makes up a ‘cultural mosaic’ with other similar or diverse cultural systems. ICT and especially the Internet, has given these interrelations a new dimension, by changing our relation towards knowledge and knowledge society, by intensifying the flow of cultural goods and services, and by causing a new understanding of cultural creativity”. 2 As we have seen already and will explore more directly in chapters five, six and seven, there are a host of problems with the idea of there being a media “logic”; just as there are with the notion of Internet-centrism. Castells, for example, has ridden a storm of protest over his insistence that we now live in an “Internet age”, while the attribution “media age” is no less condemned for its alleged neglect of what Christian Fuchs calls “the multidimensionality of society”, i.e. that we live in capitalist societies, information societies, hyperindustrial societies, crisis-ridden societies etc. at the same time (2012, 776). 3 This is a judgement fraught with tensions, because liberation technology or not, there are clear and sustained instances of social pathology played out on social media. See, for example, Jon Ronson’s riveting account of the shaming culture of Internet trolling and instant justice, in his So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed? (2015) and Mark Lawson’s novel The Allegations (2016), a thoughtful and coruscating story of the moral and social consequences of interactivity. 4 How much of this process is driven by, or in thrall to, neoliberal economics and the ideology of the marketplace as a kind of consumer spectacle, is one of the enduring questions. My argument so far questions the automatic assumption or casual inference that it must be so, on the grounds that such a position is reductionist and, for all its address to digital engagements between agents and technology, still caught in the trap of seeing culture and motivation as always ultimately determined by material factors. 5 Most of these terms will be familiar to students of globalization and mediatization; though a couple may not. Identified closely with the work of Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (2001) the concept of rhizome refers to principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything. A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power and circumstances relevant to the arts, sciences and social struggles. The rhizome is anti-hierarchical and a-centred. No single organizing principle predetermines the consistencies and compatibilities between the network of its elements. In the context of cultural and communication studies (and in mathematics) fractalization refers to objects that are broken, irregular, fragmented, grainy, ramified, strange, tangled, wrinkled. 6 Virtual reality (VR) is an artificial, computer-generated simulation or recreation of a real life environment or situation. It immerses the user by making them feel like they are experiencing the simulated reality firsthand, primarily by stimulating their

100  On world-making communicative forms vision and hearing. Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that layers computergenerated enhancements atop an existing reality in order to make it more meaningful through the ability to interact with it. AR is developed into apps and used on mobile devices to blend digital components into the real world in such a way that they enhance one another, but can also be told apart easily. See: www.augment.com/blog/ virtual-reality-vs-augmented-reality/ 7 Sandywell makes the interesting point that deterritorialization – a much-contested idea in the annals of global studies – becomes our “contextless context”, and this strikes me as a plausible rendering of the consequences of digital affordance. Loss of context is much discussed in the scholarship on postmodernity and it is almost always reprised around notions of ontological (in)security. Applied to mediatization the sense is that a feeling of powerlessness is the corollary of any feelings of empowerment that obtain in a world where routine access to information (knowledge) removes the haven of ignorance, let alone the bounds of locality. In such an environment, what looks like empowerment, or the freedom to search for new sources of meaning – in lifestyle solutions to designer problems, in religion, in workplace practices, in regimes promising to return control of one’s body – may be just forms of therapy. But should we give way to angst, even when it stems from and underwrites hyper-reflexivity, or aesthetic reflexivity? 8 As Sassen notes, obviously there are “explicitly global institutions” – the WTO, the IMF; the UN Human Rights regime, and global financial markets. These have empirical and analytical heft and all scale well beyond the national. Media conglomerates such as Comcast, Google and Disney dominate world markets and offer a mix of old and new media genres (Institute of Media and Communications policy, 2015). In 2015, eight of the top ten media corporations were American owned. Baidu, China’s equivalent of Google is ranked at 14th in 2015 (Zenith Optimedia, 2015). Google has strengthened its position as the number one media owner. All these organizations are clearly institutionalized in the sense that they may be carriers of the principles of accumulation, or else formal embodiments of an overarching social norm on the sanctity of the nation, or the will of the party. 9 By way of example, Carsten Ochs (2016) also adverts that whereas early globalization studies tended to equate digital globalization with sociocultural homogenization, research has gradually become more sensitive towards the interplay between globalizing and localizing tendencies. He exemplifies this interplay in digitization processes by drawing on an ethnographic study of a “technical development” project that was carried out in Pakistan and aimed at generating digital networking practices from scratch. He argues that the production of these practices may be best understood as the simultaneous and paradoxical generation of global sociality via local culture and calls this the paradox of digital glocalization – which may not quite capture the mutually constitutive dynamic of glocalizing forces. 10 Of course, the image of the Web has changed. In the 1990s it was presented and hailed as unfettered, undifferentiated and democratic, descriptions much less entertained today. 11 Ethnoscapes arise from multi-directional movements between local settings, including those of refugees and other migrants. Such groups are rarely able to form fixed imaginary identities because of constant movement. Technoscapes arise from rapid technological diffusion and flow across national boundaries. Appadurai believes these flows are increasingly complex and multi-directional, in contrast to older models of technological dependency. Finanscapes arise from rapid financial flows and the emerging global political economy. Mediascapes are results of the diffusion of the ability to produce media images and the global spread of media images themselves. Mediascapes are deemed to provide “large and complex repertoires” of images and narratives to local groups around the world, which are used in creating local narratives, and providing metaphors through which people live. Fictional and factual representations often

On world-making communicative forms 101 blur into each other in providing such repertoires. Ideoscapes are similar combinations of images used by states and opposition movements. They are often constructed from variants of Enlightenment ideas such as rights and democracy, used as “keywords” in local ideologies. 12 “Corbynistas”, a mildly satirical label for ardent supporters of the far-left leader of the Labour Party in the UK.

5 “Cricket Lovely Cricket” The mediatization of sport as emergent globality

Introduction Richard Giulianotti writes that “(g)lobalization has become one of the most important analytical themes in the sociological investigations of sport” (2016, 127). By the same token, the mediatization of sport can invest our understanding of global constitution in its current phase. While the salience of mediatization as a privileged concept in both media research and global studies remains contested, when used to summarize the interplay of different world-making communicative practices, as a way of unpacking some of the complexities of glocalization in different spatial and cultural settings, and for drawing attention to the digital infrastructures, scapes and interactive screenworlds that comprise everyday lives, it is hard to jibe at its illustrative value (Roudometof, 2016; Waisbord, 2013). Equally obvious, the study of culture and communication, which includes analysis of cultural production, distribution and consumption, as well as cultural convergence and hybridization, is crucial to a multidimensional account of globalizing processes. Here we will focus on the role of different media of communication and the agency of different kinds of sports participant in creating emergent globality. The former include Web 2.0 platforms, within-game monitoring and feedback technologies, pay-per-view and subscription television, video gaming, and a variety of digital, screen-based media (including miniature TVs, smartphones, smart watches and tablets, along with live streaming services) (Axford 2011; Frandsen, 2014). The latter contrives different kinds of audience for sport, a permissive definition of what constitutes a player and, of course, the agency of different kinds of producer, including media and sport businesses. In increasing measure the application of digital technologies to sport is producing a global ecology of commerce, connection and consciousness that is changing the techno-aesthetic environment and the agency of both players and audiences. In the case of some versions of Esport, it is either dissolving that distinction altogether, or introducing the intriguing phenomenon of the meta-player and the meta-meta-audience. In what follows I will use the mediatization of sport to exemplify discrete, but usually conjoint, features of communicative world-making practices and their part in constructing emergent globalities. I will address three areas of sport or, to be suitably catholic in definition, sporting activity. The first is the mediatization

The mediatization of sport 103 and globalization of cricket, a game that has changed dramatically in recent decades due, in large part, to media technologies and commercial imperatives that cater to a distributed audience on a global scale. The second point of address will be the phenomenon of Esport (sometimes called electronic sport, competitive video gaming or professional – “pro” – gaming). Esports subsist through multi player video game competitions, enjoyed by players and audiences in virtual communion as well as, counter-intuitively, in steel and concrete stadiums. This area too musters as a glocal phenomenon and as a way of connecting individuals to global technological and cultural scripts and screenworlds. The final exemplar is that of digital sporting fandom without borders. Fandom is a phenomenon that manifests far wider than sporting allegiance, and it delivers sharp insights into cultural globalization through media. Overall these exemplars reveal cognate, but sometimes discrete, facets of mediatization, and thus allow a better understanding of the social and cultural traction delivered through different world-making practices. I will spend more time on examining cricket as a mediatized and globalized sport because it encapsulates many of the features of emergent globality rehearsed in chapter four. But let’s begin by revisiting the concept of mediatization; initially with specific reference to sport, but noting that what is said here has relevance to the different focus in later chapters.

Mediatized cultures and mediatized sport As we know, the concept of mediatization has its provenance mainly in work from cultural and communication studies, and such work paints a broad and sometimes detailed canvas of actual mediations (Axford and Huggins, 2010; Mazzolini and Schutz, 1999; Hjarvard, 2008; Livingstone and Lunt, 2016). Never a purely descriptive concept, mediatization carries with it overtones of approbation or disquiet depending on the context in which it is used and the intellectual provenance or normative/ideological stance of the observer (Tomlinson, 2007; Axford and Huggins, 2011; Hafez, 2007; Berker et al., 2006; Hjarvard, 2014). And to hymn the by now familiar refrain, the main charge carried by the concept is that media technologies and formats, especially those labeled “new” media, actually frame how we engage with them and each other by promoting and embodying the value of speed, immediacy, interactivity and bespoke consumption as cultural aesthetics. By doing so, and inter-alia, they challenge received cultural mores about delayed gratification and product scarcity, while eroding the distinction between cognoscenti or die-hard fans and all manner of parvenu; between audiences and players and between the producers of content and its consumers (Axford and Huggins, 2010; Castells, 1996, 2000). Finally, in Castells’ potent coining they muster as cultures of “real virtuality” (1996,, 2000)1 Such claims are contested. But applied to the social and cultural roles of media in general and “new” media in particular, they trigger important questions about how culture is mediated, about the particular mediation of sport as culture and about the potency of different kinds of agency involved in the process. In this meld of complex issues, a Foucauldian stance would be to argue that media technologies,

104  The mediatization of sport if not all forms of mediation, have “no essence” or at most an “essence that was fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms” and through practice (1977, 142). As the critique of media-centrism advises, such sentiments undoubtedly qualify the temptation to turn attributes of media into a logic that simply spills over into the transformation of cultural forms and practices, including how borders are eroded, identities are shaped and consumer preferences formed and sustained or altered. As I noted in chapter one, the analytical and normative complexity of mediatization as process does not end there. The relationships between media and cultural production and consumption are shaped not just by what is communicated, but through how it is communicated. Which, confusingly, throws the onus back upon the qualities of any medium and its implied logic. However, the uses and perceived social and cultural effects of media technologies and media content are also contingent on the prevailing understanding of culture and the parameters within which any given culture functions (is produced and reproduced), which include the perspectives of agents. In their analysis of globalization and football Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson note that oblique or sweeping statements about global issues have given way to “more middle-range explanations (which) account for the complex manifestation of global processes within particular social realms”, including religion, health, sexuality and, of course, sport (2007, XIII; see also the special edition of the journal Global Networks on Sport and Globalization, 2007). In this chapter I will examine the mediatization of sport as a way of providing further analytical purchase on, as well as some interesting empirical referents for, the “manifestation of global processes” as couched by these authors.

The mediatization of sport The significance of “new” digital media for constituting John Tomlinson’s “cultures of immediacy” is generally acknowledged (2007, 94; Hjarvard, 2008). As part of this process, the digital mediatization of sport has confounded an older communicative model comprising producer – text – audience (Hjavard, 2008; Baudrillard, 1983; Krotz, 2009). The undoing of this linear, hypodermic model is due, in large measure, to the emergence and spread of digital communication technologies, especially the Internet, and to the growing commercialization and globalization of sport. As Mahan and McDaniel note, the Web has “essentially changed the ways in which sport media is produced, distributed and consumed” (2006, 409). The old media model comprised a transactional form in which the mediation of content produced by sports organizations, and then packaged by media professionals, was delivered to mass audiences (Wenner, 1998). This model, called a “relay device” by John Corner (1991, 273), was informed largely by research on the production and consumption of American sports. More generally, it accurately depicts the flow of communication and the temper of authoritative mediation between a “mediated sports production complex” (Wenner, 1998, 41) and audiences during much of the last half of the twentieth century.

The mediatization of sport 105 But this state of affairs was in a process of rapid transformation even before the turn of the millennium, by dint of several contributory factors that continue to be significant. First is the systematic commercialization and globalization of sport and of media, not least in the case of cricket. Notable in this regard is the opening up of large Far-Eastern and South Asian markets for sports and entertainment. Second is the formidable array of technical and consumer opportunities now available to audiences for, and at, sporting events. Last, is the impact of these changes on the consumer as agent, whose role as a mere receptacle for news and entertainment has morphed into that of participant in bespoke networks and online communities, and is apparent in only a slightly more passive mode as part of a television audience for different kinds of programme. As I have noted elsewhere (Axford and Huggins, 2010), in most sport television was, and to some extent remains, the primary medium of consumption for sport and entertainment. But by the 1980s the “primitive mode of representation” that Umberto Eco playfully labelled “paleo-television”, was giving way to the more technically flexible and adroit, heavily marketed and audience-centred style of representation that he labelled “neo-television” (1983, 19). In 2008, a report from the Economist newspaper noted that there were more and more opportunities for people to follow sports on computers and smartphones; not least via the then in-vogue Blackberry (2008; see also NationMaster, 2010), and to augment that experience through various social media. In the same year Sky Mobile TV was already available as an App on Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, while video-streaming sites such as the BBC’s iPlayer, Hulu, YouTube and Facebook were all recording significant growth in the numbers of videos watched; of course, not all for sport. The same trend was observed for sports games available on cell phones (WorldTVPC.com, 2010). Blogs too proliferated, exemplified by cricket’s Left-Arm Chinaman, King Cricket and Line and Length. On the then relatively new social phenomenon of Twitter, sports hashtags started to appear. These platforms began to facilitate global conversations among fans (see, for example, @cricketNDTV). Such developments presaged, or seemed to presage, the death of televised sports, because, ran the argument, millions of viewers would, henceforth, receive their TV over the Internet; while paying far less for it. This prediction applied not only to sport, but to the gamut of entertainment and news provision. The reasoning was based largely on the high cost of cable TV, especially in the USA, and the growing availability of on-demand streaming services. But in fact, the predicted demise has been much more of a “slow bleed”, to quote the Economist of July 16, 2016, with subscribers leaching away from cable TV at a noticeable, but hardly profuse rate. That said, the secular trend still looks set. In 2016, two technology giants with a global footprint, Amazon and YouTube (the latter owned by Google), along with Hulu, the video-streaming service co-owned by Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, started to negotiate rights to screen live US television over the Internet by 2017. As part of the deal, they proffer America’s major broadcast networks and the leading sports and entertainment channels at a competitive price aimed at cutting

106  The mediatization of sport in half the typical monthly bill to consumers. Given viewing trends, such a move looks like a tenable business model but, at the time of writing, its longer-term success is still unproven. Nonetheless, there are some clear pointers. In the USA particularly, the consumption of Netflix services has boomed, and more than half of American households now subscribe to one or other streaming service, notably Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and HBO. During the period 2013–2016, in the USA, revenues for video-streaming services rose from US $3.1 billion to US $6.7 billion. In the UK in 2015, 62% of Internet users either downloaded or streamed music, TV shows, movies, games and e-books (Department of Communications and Skills, 22 July, 2015). Since the millennium the world of neo-television and consequently that of sports such as cricket has undergone further revolution. Reflecting the growing fragmentation of the market and of supply, as of 2015, in India alone there are more than 800 television channels, many anxious to claim audience share for coverage of cricket, India’s sporting religion and, arguably, the key symbol of national unity.2 The process and outcome of intense commercial bargaining for TV rights on the sub-continent stands as a paradigm for the way in which the sport has developed as a mediatized commodity, attracting a plethora of commercial stakeholders, some resolutely domestic, some international and others global, both in their self perceptions and their acquisition strategies. For example, in 2008 Rexel-Nimbus, a media and sports marketing company and part of the ACCO Brands Corporation, which specializes in office products, paid some US $600 million for the rights to India’s international matches and domestic cricket, initially until 2010. ESPN, the American-based and Disney owned doyen of sports coverage on TV, shows events staged by cricket’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), including World Cups. Zee TV, an Indian broadcaster which also bills itself as the largest media franchise serving the South Asian diaspora, went so far as to sponsor its own competition, the Indian Cricket League (ICL), in 2007. The sport’s national governing body, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), then countered with its own competition, the Indian Premier League (IPL), and Sony Entertainment Television, very conscious of the size of the potential audience for fast cricket and the prospects for advertising revenue, then bought the rights for US $1 billion for the next ten years. In 2006, BSkyB was awarded the rights to show English test (international) matches on its sports subscription channel for the next four years, and by doing so struck a further blow against terrestrial and free-to-air channel coverage of major sporting events; in other words, against the vestiges of paleo-television.3 Except for mega-events like the Olympics and the football (soccer) World Cup, very large audiences are no longer the norm across sports coverage. But fragmentation of the provider and customer base has allowed smaller sports to find an appreciative and dispersed audience who are willing to pay for the privilege of watching them. At the Olympics, and even at less obviously “global” tournaments such as the Rugby (Union) World Cup, multiple audiences can be catered for simultaneously through the use of digital channels which allow fans to switch between events using the “red-button”. Websites and other digital platforms carry

The mediatization of sport 107 streamed live coverage and, via “on demand” and “catch-up” services, offer the chance to view contests as downloads for days after they have ended. High Definition Digital television (HDTV) and lately, Ultra HDTV, add new aesthetics to the norms of good production; though 3D television has proved less successful. If not the only wave of the future, HDTV may well have been the saviour of television coverage of sport. Even a modest example may suffice to show the impact. One HD, a 24-hour HD sports channel owned by Australia’s Network 10, launched its service in 2009 and soon doubled the expected enrolment of 1.2 million viewers. In 2016 Network 10 went a step further by launching its own high definition simulcast, Ten HD, featuring sports and general entertainment. Industry insiders attribute the avid embrace of HDTV largely to the appeal of sports and, in America, sports programming remains the most popular content for HD viewing. By 2016, 80% of American households had at least one HD television (Evolution Digital Blog, March 24, 2016). Moreover, American homes that have HD technology watch some 20% more sport than those that don’t (NationMaster, 2012). The continuing popularity of HDTV brings sharply into focus the impact of digital television on the global market. Digital television or DTV can be understood in two ways. In one guise it refers to the digital transmission of television signals by television operators. But in a second version DTV refers not only to current TV formats, including HDTV, but, perhaps more significantly, to interactive television (ITV). The second version of digitalization is more germane to assessing the importance of the global impact of digital television. In brief, that impact lies in the speed with which DTV is replacing analogue terrestrial and satellite technologies and thus the kind of television services found in homes. Integrated network boxes and home servers are now able to distribute video and Internet services throughout the home. TV viewing has become bespoke and individualized, contributing, at least for some critics, to the mild social pathology identified by Sherry Turkle at the start of our journey in this book. At the same time, the “digital switchover” across the globe remains patchy, with regional agreements to effect the change from analogue services by 2017 still observed more in the breach than in substance.4

The globalization of sport Sport is a booming business and a global one.5 But, as the Economist newspaper notes, this was so “long before globalisation was invented. International sport dates back to the 19th century and the commercial exploitation of sport is older than that” (2008, 2). Such caution is a salutary reminder that when discussing globalization and its attendant ideologies not everything should be taken as novel. What is undoubtedly new is the extent of the commercialization of sport and, significantly, its spread to emerging markets. As the Economist goes on to say, one sign of all this is that capital is enthusiastically chasing sporting profit, wherever that is to be found.6 When this occurs, the sports segment of foreign direct investment sometimes is undertaken for philanthropic reasons, or as the realization of

108  The mediatization of sport a life-long devotion to club or sport, but mainly as an outlet for sovereign or personal wealth and as a way to secure media rights, ticket sales and merchandising opportunities. Markets for sporting product are becoming ever more global as Western businesses and world sports peak associations target the newly affluent in developing countries. In 2010 YouTube announced its first big live sporting deal to host live Indian Premier League cricket matches in the UK, a deal which brought into question the value of British TV broadcast rights (Sweney, 2010) and was another palpable increment in the emergence of a post-television cultural economy. Significantly, the deal involved every country outside the USA, and the two-year contract gave the Google-owned YouTube the exclusive rights to stream IPL matches online, with the two companies sharing revenue from sponsorship and advertising. In the UK, broadcast rights had been held by the Setanta Sports Channel, which, in turn, was sold to ESPN in 2009. A spokesman for the IPL then said that a TV rights deal for the UK would still go ahead, as “(t)he dedicated loyal fan base will still want to watch on TV”. Meanwhile, Shailesh Rao, then Google’s managing director in India and CEO for media and platforms in the Asia Pacific region, announced, “(w)e are thrilled to have the IPL as our global partner and bring to the YouTube community around the world and here in India an interactive, unique experience building greater awareness around the world for the sport” (quoted in Sweney, 2010).7 While this episode smacks of the further “Google-ization” of world culture, and looks like a variant of what George Ritzer disparages as “grobalization”;8 a number of developing economies – notably India for cricket – have created strong sports businesses of their own. Moreover, the tale of international cricket and its emergence as a global and globally marketed sport has not followed the path of other transnational sports and sporting events, which are dominated by developed countries. This change can be seen as a paradigm shift for the prospective shape and balance of interests in the post-Western global economy (Gupta, 2004; Arrighi, 2007; Rumford and Wagg, 2010). More than any other sport, cricket is the game which non-Western countries dominate; although not always on the field. Instead, as Arvind Gupta noted over a decade ago, their domination lies in shaping the economics and politics of the game and expanding its cultural reach (2004).9 Atypical of international sport in general, this is not as aberrant as it might appear, and may be more in tune with economic trends in a globalized world, where the successful – though scarcely unblemished – rise of China and India as economic powers may not intimate another shift in hegemony and a new hegemonic cycle, but a different kind of “world market” or multi-polarity characterized by greater levels of equality among global regions (Arrighi, 2007; Axford, 2013a). While these instances of local power should not be interpreted as a simple inversion of the domination–resistance motif of globalization, they do stand as evidence of the glocal cast of both processes and outcomes. As to this, as Richard Giulianotti says, “(g)localization processes are central to the making of global sport, and global sport is itself a key driver of processes of globalization” (2016, 129).

The mediatization of sport 109

The mediatization and globalization of cricket Shifts in the world balance of power in cricket as a marketable and mediatized commodity have occurred because of processes which are properly understood as a form of glocalization. These are the rise of transnational communities and networks, including diasporas, which can support teams across frontiers, the spread of technology that provides real time coverage of the sport and the decline of the sport in its homeland, (England), thereby allowing alternative centres of power to emerge (Ghosh, 2008). Critically, Twenty20 cricket, born in England in 2003 as a marketing ploy to revive the flagging domestic county game, now owes its appeal to its enthusiastic take-up by South-Asian audiences following the first World Twenty20 Cup in South Africa in 2007.10 Indeed the business model continues to rely for its success on the millions of mainly Indian television viewers who watch the IPL franchises do battle. A deal for a new Twenty20 competition announced in the UK during the early spring of 2017 is the latest iteration in the attempt to glamorize the sport and extend its appeal. The business strategies of the culture and communication industries are vital in spreading the global cultural script of the market (Moog and Sluyter-Beltrao, 2001; Hafez, 2007; Lash and Urry, 1994). The force of these observations is unassailable, and it would be easy then to draw inferences about the kind of cultural consequences that the globalization and mediatization of cricket might entail. But unlike other cultural commodities packaged as global brands, which many commentators assume must empty them of local content, meaning and status, cricket as sport and brand does not conform (Ritzer, 2004). While Twenty20 cricket may be a business formula offensive to the sensibilities of many cricket purists, its televisual and commercial success – including its ability to attract celebrity players from around the world to the various Indian franchises – now marks India as the world cricketing super power. As Australian historian of cricket Gideon Haigh once remarked, “It is no longer correct to speak of the ‘globalisation’ of cricket, we face the ‘Indianisation’ of cricket, where nothing India resists will occur, and everything it approves of will prevail” (2010, 6). It also stands as a paradigm for the culture of speed – fast cricket delivered to dispersed audiences in real time by ever faster media – and how this appeals to the aesthetic sensibilities of audiences for whom choice, immediacy and spectacle are key cultural requisites and consumption “must-haves”. In the matter of Twenty20 cricket, the enterprise must be seen as a vehicle tailored for consumption by a mediatized and increasingly branded global business. This is a business that frees consumers from the perceived trammels of limited choice, cultural nostalgia (since the teams are made up of mobile sporting cosmopolitans or cultural entrepreneurs) and, in some respects, national idiosyncrasies, to achieve a nearly perfect model of effective demand. In other words, the sport travels as culturally light. Over the past couple of decades, global markets for sport more generally have emerged, and in these markets media have played a seminal role in the commodification and aestheticization of sport, through marketing, branding, technical innovation and ever higher production values. Such developments have to be seen as a global phenomenon, but continue to be inflected by

110  The mediatization of sport local constraints in the guise of patterns of state (de) regulation and the temper of local “cultural governance”, as John Horne has put it (2007). Thus from the 1980s onwards, the growing appeal of cricket in India is inextricably linked to mainly local conditions, through the establishment and expansion of the Indian television industry and the confluence of other factors. These include the creation of a large, increasingly leisured and aspirant middle class, economic reforms, especially in the realm of media deregulation, the politics of nation-building, which sought to return late millennium national identity in the country to nonthreatening, pacific icons and the birth of the satellite television industry. At the same time, at least some of these factors are only understandable as local facets of broader trends in globalization, including migration and the role of diasporas in linking global south to global north; global east to global west (Mehta, 2009). Of course, at another remove, the advent of Twenty20 cricket can be seen mainly as a survival formula, driven largely by economic imperatives, and that view has some validity.11 But it is also an increment in the Easternization or postWesternization of global cultural economy and an expression of post-colonial élan on the part of dynamic economies such as India’s, regardless of the continuing medium-term effects of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 (Rumford and Wragg, 2010). Both these perspectives are crucial to understanding the significance of the sport as a cultural and economic scape, now played on a world stage through scopic media and to dispersed audiences, often in real time. In fact, Twenty20 is an exemplar of cultural change in a sport which has run the gamut from colonial symbol with arcane and, for many, un-teachable, rules to a spectacle aimed at lay audiences and global markets. This shift has involved changes to its governing laws and regulations, its use of technological advances in communication, social media savvy and the changing make-up and character of its fans/audiences. As Roger Callois says, it is clear that the games that cultures play and, critically, how they play them, reflect the cultures themselves and how they are represented through different media (Callois, 1961; Orgad, 2012). At variance with its own history, structure and culture, in the past two decades cricket has rapidly adapted to technological advances and economic exigencies and, in the shape of Twenty20, has become a zeitgeist for the glocal, connected and often cosmopolitan cultures that follow the game. Some detail of these changes will be useful. Of late the more traditional and buttoned-up mediation of the game by a small cohort of professional journalists and ex-players has been replaced by hyper-mediation and hyper-analysis delivered by a coterie of recent, high profile ex-players drawn from across all the main cricket-playing nations. These celebrity interlocutors and their production teams use both static and moving images taken from multiple camera positions around the ground, and via satellite to track, replay and sometimes to digitally reconstruct what has happened on the field. Nor do the technological innovations stop there. TV screens showing sport now mimic the split or multiple screen formats of news and current affairs programmes, complete with updates on other events, sophisticated computer graphics on the niceties of the game (time in opposition territory, speed of ball delivery)

The mediatization of sport 111 and injunctions to press the red button in order to participate in an online, ongoing discussion with fellow viewers and pundits. The use of an array of software such as “super-slow-motion”, “hot-spot” and “hawkeye” – a computer system used to track the path of the ball and display a profile of its most statistically likely trajectory as a moving image – to deconstruct passages of play and arbitrate in disputes over whether a player has been dismissed, is now standard. These, along with the use of earth-scanning satellites to provide additional information on the state of the pitch, make for hyper-reflexive viewing, with members of the audience acting as consumer and producer, critic and fan.12 On the way the age of neo-television has morphed into the age of post-television and of “symbolic globalization” (Ghosh, 2008, 6). But this is no secular, let alone inevitable, transformation, whether we are referencing the game itself or the social and cultural environment in which it is played. There is even an extant politics of resistance to qualify the image of a mediatized and commercialized juggernaut. On various social media platforms and bespoke cricketing websites and blogs, the theme of a game gone astray in pursuit of commercial advantage and material gain is widely rehearsed. And for all the talk of a post-colonial ethos visible in the shift of economic and cultural power from west to east, sometimes the views expressed lament a game still in thrall to its colonial past. In a posting on Instablogs in 2009, one devotee decries what he sees as the destruction of the game through an “unholy nexus of cricket boards, market forces and the ICC” (International Cricket Council). Meanwhile, particular incidents reignite the charge that cricket still harbours elements of institutionalized racism and a colonialist ethos. When Darrell Hair, the Australian test (international) match umpire, accused Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq of ball tampering in 2006, the blogosphere resounded with claims that his behaviour was racist. As always, social analysts need to be careful about how to interpret these discourses, not least when discussing cricket and the vagaries of cricket fandom. Very little of the actual exchanges found on the substantial number of cricketing blogs such as King Cricket, Line and Length and Left Arm Chinaman or on the major web-sites like Cricinfo, conforms to a “thick” or holistic model of social interaction. More often there is a kind of banal, though mostly unthreatening, nationalism/localism/team-ism, where existing world-views are simply reinforced through exposure to the opinions of others and social learning is limited by the tendency of contributors to respond to the last posting they read. Mostly, there is a good deal of post-match hand-wringing or impassioned analysis when, as the landing page of Cricket.Blog.com, tells us, “cricket tragics rant about their country’s players, umpires, sledging, the ICC, the World Cup, Twenty20 and whatever else gets us going”. No doubt the participants would classify many of these exchanges as banter. But there is also evidence of a common framework of understanding – the empathy of true fans perhaps – often unabashed by differences in allegiance and nationality, even where it is mediated out of different traditions and meaning structures. But, in another piece posted on Cricinfo on February 15, 2010, Gideon Haigh argued that far from marking the end of nationalism, the IPL is the ultimate triumph of

112  The mediatization of sport that principle, with India as the beneficiary and Pakistan the most obvious loser. The detail and validity of his argument need not concern us here, although, as the author notes, it raises interesting questions about just how far a self-consciously global tournament, made up of multi-national or perhaps cosmopolitan teams, put together on a franchise basis, is actually capable of producing a “post-national cricket utopia”. The point is that the article triggered a spate of more-or-less critical responses, many, though by no means all, from India and Pakistan, demonstrating a willingness to engage and deliberate not only the specific claims made in the article but the more abstract principles which undergird it. Does this kind of exchange provide evidence of a global ecumene; a knowledge community, or a more down-home form of consciousness and exchange by fans? Many exchanges attest to the usual anorak qualities of devotees, seemingly regardless of country or culture. Technical, as opposed to polemical or philosophical, exchanges about ball tampering, reverse swing and the use of “Hawk-Eye”, even about Afghanistan’s qualification for the World T20 competition in 2010, are legion. For purposes of analysis, while it has become easier to pinpoint the geographical location of those who blog, even in the age of Big Data, their nationality, ethnic identity and gender can remain quite elusive for the most part, although the last may be reasonably surmised, along with the educational and economic status of those who contribute to online discussions mainly through the medium of English. It is also difficult to assess the import of these discursive practices other than that they suggest patterns of communication and perhaps forms of publicity in which “speakers and listeners treat with each other as legitimate actors in common discourse”, and where they manifest a common consciousness (Risse and Van de Steeg, 2003, 2). As we noted in chapter two, Inglehart and Norris are cautious about the globalizing effects of communication, and about media effects more generally, while suggesting that as interconnection between societies becomes more extensive and intensive, its cultural impact is very likely to grow (2009; Hafez, 2007; Sparks, 2007). At the same time their insistence on the potency of cultural firewalls that “preserve the imprint of distinctive national cultures, especially in poorer societies” (2009, 14) is a suitable caution when looking to attribute cultural consequences to cosmopolitan media. In their estimation, the enduring weight of distinctive historical conditions and traditions vitiates the power of border-crossing and border-obliterating technologies and media formats, even where they are modal. This caution is appropriate despite what is now an appreciable body of work on the ethnography of online civic and especially sports networks, on their origins, composition and development, as well as on the motivations of participants. It is also sensible to be cautious about key issues in globalization theory, such as how far exchanges on social media promote dialogue across ideological, national and ethnic divides, or, pace Inglehart and Norris (2009), result in further polarization.13 The growing number of cricketing blogs such as King Cricket, Line and Length and Left Arm Chinaman, along with networks such as Sixer-TV and MySpace for Cricket also fall into category of scopic media because the worlds they

The mediatization of sport 113 create are fluid and a-processual. In some cases they are a-territorial too, and exhibit elements of technical culture in the sense first bruited by Michel Foucault (1977; Barry, 2001).

Esport On October 15 2015, the Forbes Magazine SportsMoney website reported that only a year previously the word “Esport” had no real significance, except to those already immersed in the culture of video games.14 Indeed, video gaming per se was, until recently, just a niche market in the entertainment sector (Chandler, 2015b). Nowadays, across the board, the video game industry generates billions of dollars and is a global phenomenon. In 2016 it had a total global value of $101.62  billion, a figure estimated to exceed $118.60  billion by 2019 (Sherry, 2016). Such rapid development is due to a host of factors that enable gaming to reach a global audience. Chief among these is the technology used and media platforms on offer, which are not only at the cutting edge of innovation, but designed to maximize global sales through continuous improvements in communications technology and digital downloads.15 As Heather Chandler, author of The Game Localization Handbook says, it has now become standard procedure for developers to plan to take a game global from the outset, whereas ten years ago, this was not the case. Games are increasingly produced, played and valued worldwide rather than in just a handful of countries (Chandler, 2015b, 42). That said, some 20 or so countries still dominate global game revenues; with China and the USA at the top of the list. Video gaming is a rich and varied field of entertainment. In 2015, the USA’s favourite genre of game was “shooters” – where the label is probably self-explanatory – such as Call of Duty. This genre comprised 24.5% of total video game sales. Action games are only slightly less popular, while sports games and RPGs are also relatively high on the list. However, favourite genre does not always correlate with the overall favourite or top-selling games. In the UK for example, Grand Theft Auto (GTA) V has maintained its position as the top-selling game consistently since 2014. In fact, GTA V is also the most successful entertainment product of all time. According to video game sales tracking site VGChartz, the world-wide bestselling games for 2016 were Uncharted 4, The Division and Call of Duty: Black Ops III. While most individual country charts reflect this ranking, Japan is an exception. Seven of its top ten selling games utilize handheld platforms (3DS and PS Vita), with the Nintendo 3DS game Yokai Watch 3 the country’s best-selling game of 2016. The difference suggests that cultural background – including the “nationality” of the game developer – still influences purchasing habits. But the variety of choices may also show that gamers using different platforms actually prefer different types of games. For example, 2015’s best-selling games included GTA V, Minecraft, Black Ops III, FIFA 16 and Fallout 4, but the top PC game of the year was The Sims 4. Meanwhile, in the mobile arena, Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga featured heavily.

114  The mediatization of sport In line with the general trend for video games, global Esport is also a burgeoning commercial success. In 2016, revenue from Esport world-wide reached some US $900 million, with global media companies such as ESPN strongly backing the new sub-genre. Of late it has been harnessed to the marketing strategies of traditional sports. From basketball to football (soccer), professional sports clubs have become involved in the Esports genre. Paris Saint-Germain (football), Philadelphia 76ers (basketball), Ajax, PSV Eindoven, Santos and Manchester City (all football clubs with an international status) have recruited Esports professionals and ventured into the expanding market for games such as FIFA, Overwatch and League of Legends. While few of these games mimic, or are avatars for, conventional sports, games such as FIFA Football, Madden NFL (American football) and Trackmania (motor sport) do. FIFA has been the official game of the World Cyber Games tournament since 2001. In recent years the proliferation of professional competitions and bigger audiences supports an increasing number of professional players and teams. Most competitions take place in South Korea, Europe, the USA and Canada, and China. But much of the growth in the sector is due to its appeal to audiences rather than to amateur players. The growth is fuelled by very high-profile events such as the Dota16 2 World Championship, and League of Legends (LoL) (Horne, 2015), all available on Twitch TV, the world’s leading video platform and self-styled community for gamers, which catered for more than 100 million viewers worldwide each month in 2015 (www.twitch.tv/year/2015).

Transnational sports fandom The overlap between phenomenal and virtual worlds and the dialectic of presence and absence as mediated by the Internet, is neatly captured in the homely guise of myfootballclub (MFC), an Internet venture that uses crowdsourcing and crowdfunding to support the running of a real football club – non-league Slough FC in the United Kingdom.17 MFC is a computer game, website, online networking experiment and business model. It also describes itself as an “online football community”, which is an aspiration beyond paid-up membership. Projects similar to MFC exist outside the UK, for example in Brazil, Denmark, France and Germany. Inevitably, membership retention has not been an unqualified success for all these ventures, a fate common to many voluntary associations. A peak membership worldwide of some 30,000 in 2008 declined to a distinctly more modest 900 by 2014. That said, it would be wrong to depict the history of the club/community as one of secular decline, or the playing out of a brief vogue dictated by the presumed logic of the issue-attention cycle. MFC was and remains an expressive ambition, one that sprang from the professionalization and mediatization of sport and a desire to preserve or reconstruct a sense of community around supporter participation in the ownership and running of their team, regardless of distance (Hutchins et al., 2009). The “hybrid reality” of MFC is a modest, glocal realization of sport as media; an outcome of the increasing interpenetration of digital media content, sport and networked information and communications

The mediatization of sport 115 technologies. But we need to cast our gaze wider in order to appreciate the variety of digital fandom. The rise of a global middle class with increased spending power, along with migration, tourism, clever marketing and near universal access to broadcast and social media, have unearthed millions of potential fans across the world, seemingly regardless of – often without harm to – vernacular tradition, and heedless of location. Notwithstanding that local idiosyncrasy sometimes renders cultural translation exotic, and possibly fraught, these factors are responsible for a blurring of older cultural demarcations and regional/local preferences, wherein football/soccer was once the sport of choice in Latin America, baseball in the USA and Japan, and hockey in Canada and northern Europe. Fans, it appears, are still obsessed (by sports teams, by team rivalry, by celebrity and by TV entertainment programmes such as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad), but the objects of their desire, affection and allegiance are less and less constrained by geography or culture. On a broader canvass, this has been so since the advent of cinematography in the early twentieth century, when the Hollywood star was a global cultural icon long before scholars weighed the concept of globalization. But today we see further disruption in, or at least some tempering of, the often assumed correspondence between territory and culture. One outcome is the construction of distinctive, glocalized cultures of fandom. For example, the “Ultra” phenomenon – a notably performative variant – has become one of the most pervasive types of football/ soccer fandom in the past decade or so. Ultra culture is a visual and audial spectacle involving its devotees in chants, drumming, flag-waving and flare shows. It is also a very masculine genre, fiercely allegiant to club and locality. Born in Italy in the 1970s, it is now a global phenomenon where professional football is played. Yet its spread globally is not the simple result of copying any specific ideology and aesthetic; in this regard it wears its Italian legacy lightly. In Japan, for example, the ultra influenced J-League took American and particularly European influences to build a distinctive glocal culture. The Internet has become the platform for the growth of transnational digital fandom, of what in chapter one I called “transnational practice”, or trans-local practice wherein in fans from a diversity of cultural backgrounds engage with global content and fashion “different significations from the same content” (Hutchins et al., 2009) (Doidge and Lieser, 2013). Fans are immersed in a variety of screenworlds, as well as being avid consumers of team merchandise. Ninety-seven per cent of Real Madrid’s fans will never see their team in person, and three of the top five countries that generate the most traffic on the club’s website are not Spanish speaking nations. Distance is no barrier to allegiance. In this process, global media, such as YouTube, allow fans to observe and then adapt the performance of other fans, to create bespoke identities from generic codes, taking consciously, and always reflexively, from the latter. And such, of course, is the analytical burden of Roger Callois’ previously quoted injunction that the games cultures play and, critically, how they play them, reflect the cultures themselves and how they are represented and constructed through different media (Callois, 1961).

116  The mediatization of sport

The mediatization of sports and the globalities that result These three examples of the mediatization and globalization of sport still suggest the need for caution when importing concepts used in the study of globalization and culture to inform our analysis of emergent globality. At the same time concepts such as “glocal” do seem to offer a much more relational take on the processes under scrutiny. Other well-tried concepts which have played a significant part in developing culturally sensitive interpretations of the globalization and mediatization of sport include relativization and indigenization (Robertson, 1992; Nederveen ‑ Pieterse, 2003), with both as useful qualifiers of the naïve depiction of globalization as monolithic and imposed on localities and situated actors. In such jaundiced interpretations culture is an inert category, empty of reflexivity; rather than, as Clifford Geertz says, a context in which “events may be meaningfully interpreted” (1973, 97). When discussing the relationships between culture and globalization, it is, of course, the complexity and the “instabilities and fluidity of the global order” (Tomlinson, 2007, 150) that exercise cultural commentators. With this in mind John Tomlinson advises a heuristic approach to the treatment of culture in this climate, one which draws on the ways in which “the hermeneutic tradition of cultural analysis . . . attempts to interpret and contextually understand rather than systematically to explain the social world” (2007, 150; Beck, 2007, 2006). Moreover, cultural analysis is best suited to generating concepts that can be used to interpret “new orders of experience” (2007, 150) and thus is eminently suitable for analysis of fast, digital media and the mobile consumer cultures they invest. The point, as always, is to recognize that culture and communication are “intrinsically constitutive” of globalization (Tomlinson, 2007, 151) while still retaining a distinction between that insight and their consequences for globalization; thereby avoiding any simple attribution of causal power. But we still may not be able to analyse these communicative forms and their effects by relying wholesale on concepts bruited in other studies of globalization and culture. Here the notion of relativization seems an obvious candidate for further, critical, reflection. In part this is because the routine use of digital media in one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication may not so much relativize existing cultures and identities – although there must be a modicum of that – as redefine the idea of agency and particularly that of audience. There are a number of considerations. First, an obvious effect of the mediatization and commercialization of visual culture is the fragmentation of an audience once seen as unified nationally and, during the age of paleo-television, as approximating the ideal of a unified public. Second, audience research now stresses the active role of the audience in creating meaning from viewed content, including content shared online through social media (Livingstone, 1998). Sonia Livingstone writes convincingly that our experiences as members of media audiences is a crucial site of conflict over definitions of the social, and that our participation as citizens is increasingly mediated through our “audiencehood” (1998, 194). The repertoires of possibility available

The mediatization of sport 117 on the Web, whether for activism, participation or fandom, seem to corroborate this view. Admittedly these repertoires include the opportunity to practise rather voyeuristic and anodyne forms of sexual gratification through the use of Webcam, but also admit the morally elevating and aesthetically pleasing prospect of directing camera angles and replays at test matches and limited over games (50 overs and Twenty20 matches). For some critics, particularly those who see the idea of virtual interaction as a parody of social intercourse, these exotica are poor compensation for the alleged loss of sociality. The very fact that much intercourse takes place in private, as it were, with only a screen and an ISP mediating profound and banal thoughts, for many robs Web exchanges of their sensual qualities and even their moral weight. Digital communication networks are seen as thin or light contexts for identity formation, common feeling and civility. Once more, these concerns echo Sherry Turkle’s distress, as broached in chapter one. In this scenario the outcome is, at best, a simulacrum of conviviality, of fellow feeling, and a million miles from realizing either private intimacy or a vibrant publicness. Being home alone with the Web, or on a cell phone, is depicted as a-social, instrumental and narcissistic. And even without this baleful gloss, the libertarian and individualist cast of much early cyber-ideology still underwrites the suspicion that the Web is a medium through which people construct and reconstruct their individuality rather than a means to foster civic association and communities of affect, whether local, national or global. Of course, and as we shall see in the next chapter, this gloss can be read with approbation or disquiet. But in the case of cricket and probably for sport in general the vision of an isolated and insulated individual may not actually ring true or accurately convey the complex worlds of “audiencehood” and fandom. These days, the embodied and communal act of being at the event and watching the action is further mediated by media (screenworlds) which provide instant replays, a battery of statistics about speed of delivery and, of course, Hawk-Eye animation. Spectators send images of the action, the crowd and themselves to those not present – and sometimes to friends who are – and there is an incessant electronic chatter through mobile phone conversations, texting, emailing and tweeting, not always, of course, about cricket. And as well as transforming sports, mobile technologies and social media are also transforming sports businesses and how they interact with fans. Barcelona FC has become the world’s largest sports club on social media, with some 150 million followers in 2015 (Daily Telegraph, June 23 2015). In motor racing the Formula E Championship for electric cars introduced FanBoost, where devotees vote for their favourite driver to receive a power boost during a race. The wisdom that having the crowd behind you can affect the outcome here takes on a whole new meaning. Social media also offers sports businesses the opportunity for greater dialogue with the fan base. Of course, much of this “dialogue” decants into opportunities for revenue generation, but cell phones and tablets have allowed social media to flourish. Football stadiums such as Liverpool’s Anfield and the Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City football club, offer fans Wi-Fi, enabling not only more interactions at live events but more commercial activity,

118  The mediatization of sport too. Spectators now have the ability to make additional purchases or seat upgrades while at the venue. What does all this signify? The truthful, but vaguely unsatisfactory, answer is that it is hard to tell. Given the modal status of digital technologies in everyday life, their use at sport venues for purposes of advertising, routine communication and commentary is unsurprising. However, it might be argued that fans are not so much supplementing their first-hand experience of the occasion as sampling a completely other experience; for some, only contingently related to cricket and other sports – a form of cultural multi-tasking. Yet a more jaundiced and perhaps disturbing take on the mediatized audience still has it that we are less and less willing to subsist emotionally through unmediated experience, perhaps because we feel less able to derive pleasure from being part of the collective public experience of the crowd at a great sporting occasion. A rather different and far more optimistic take on the mediatization and globalization of cultures and on the impact of digital connection through the Internet and social media can be found in the extensive research on connectivity by Barry Wellman and his associates. We canvassed his ideas briefly in chapter three. Wellman depicts changes in society “away from groups and towards networked individualism” (Wellman et al., 2003). He argues that change is not only occurring at the interpersonal level but at the organizational, inter-organizational and even the world-systems and global levels. Put simply, “it is the move from denselyknit and tightly-bounded groups to sparsely-knit and loosely-bounded networks” (2003, 3). Networked individualism has Internet use in a positive feedback loop with the shift from “solidary, local, hierarchical groups and towards fragmented, partial, heavily-communicating social networks” (Wellman et al., 2003). In other words it is synergistic with the move away from the mores and practices of both paleo and even neo-television eras. Wellman’s research also details the “social affordances” available through Internet connection, and these underscore our sense of boundaries being shifted, even eclipsed. In this respect the key affordances are always being connected or having the capacity so to be; the personalization of communication, such that “the ensuing interactions are more tailored to individual preferences and needs, furthering a more individualized way of interacting and a way of mobilizing as fluid networks of partial commitment” and globalized connectivity, where this “facilitates transnational connectivity, be that migrants staying in touch with their homeland or transnational networks mobilizing around issues” and matters of common interest. All of this paints a post-TV world that is more diverse, contingent and connected than previously, while in some regards still being grounded and ontologically whole. These are quite strong claims, but even in qualified form Wellman’s enthusiasm for a connected and mediatized world is some way from George Ritzer’s pessimism about cultural globalization as a process of homogenization, commodification and domination (2004). In Ritzer’s case local subjects must always rehearse a simple choice between cultural annihilation on the one hand or – and this at least suggests some form of agency – a forlorn and romantic quest for cultural autarky on the other (Axford, 1996). As I have argued, globalization is always

The mediatization of sport 119 an accommodation between sameness and difference; so it is hard to accept the notion that one can be globalized – where this is routinely taken to mean homogenized culturally – just by consuming the product, watching the show or joining the social network. Giulianotti and Robertson perhaps are closer to the mark when they argue that we have to examine the actual impact of cultural commodities on the consciousness of subjects in different historical and cultural contexts before concluding that they are injurious to identities and cultures, or that they produce a subaltern form of (global) consciousness (2006; Postill, 2008). Here, notions of indigenization, or conscious appropriation, are pertinent, although the concept of glocalization as a gloss on the purely anthropological idea of cultural diffusion may be more apposite. The latter captures the “real world” “endeavours of individuals and social groups to ground and recontextualize global phenomena or processes with respect to local cultures” (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2006, 46). When this happens the outcome may not be hybridity, which often parades as the only normatively acceptable fall-back position for those who want to reject both the homogenization thesis and the idea of irreducible heterogeneity. Instead, like Ulf Hannerz, we might point to the “reciprocity” of globalizing processes (1992a and b). While local consumption of global products may be relativizing, when natives embrace the branded icons of the fashion and entertainment industries (including televised sport and sport carried via the Internet), the particular form of the transaction still can be seen as the “assimilation of some global or western product to the particular expression of a process that is entirely” – African, Indian, Muslim, Bangladeshi and Caribbean, to adapt Jonathan Friedman (1993, 2). At the same time, and this is where analytical reciprocity has to kick in, what is going on is only imaginable when set in a global context. These outcomes constitute neither a sell-out to global culture industries and their commercial imperatives nor, interestingly enough, an obvious form of hybridization. As I noted above, the latter remains the default position of globalization optimists and for those who want to use hybridity as a way of addressing the complex and contradictory facets of cultural globalization. In essence this means rejecting any sort of essentialism and claims to exclusiveness or exceptionalism, including racism and the notion that there are “authentic” cultures waiting to be rescued. And in cricket, even what constitutes “western” product is problematized further once one admits that its mediatization, along with that of football (soccer), has proceeded in part through the agency of footloose Indian, Middle Eastern, Far Eastern and Russian capital. Similarly, as I noted in chapter four, where eSports video games are concerned, it is often hard, if not impossible, to label the game and the experience as either local or global. The mediatized world of sport and the globalities that are extant also correspond in some ways to Appadurai’s highly plausible but still very allusive formulation in which he points to the creation of a non-spatial global order being fashioned at the intersection of various “scapes”. Both cultural relativism and cultural essentialism are extant in this scenario. But in Esport games the upshot is not an illustration of stark disjunctions between scapes but an

120  The mediatization of sport “active performance of the scapes themselves at work” (Germaine and Aslinger, 2016, 141). Further, the relationships between scapes produce a “complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes” inflected by the vernacular differences between locations and cultures (Appadurai, 1990, 35). These landscapes are constructed through scopic media; “screenworlds” that render distant and invisible phenomena situationally present, unfold remote spaces and information worlds, and “shift the boundaries between situation/system and the environment” and, of course between the audience and the environment (KnorrCetina, 2014, 40). By communicating distant occurrences in identical fashion to distributed audiences – and never assuming a bland, uniform reception – scopic systems have world-making effects when participants become immersed in sporting screenworlds that are themselves global microstructures.18 These worlds too are fluid and a-processual. The concepts of global microstructures, scopic mediation and screenworlds (2007) offer further analytical purchase on the role of digital and other information technologies in describing and explaining the mediatization and globalization of cricket, as the latter conform to the features of an emergent globality. As Karin Knorr-Cetina argues, these are “genuinely global forms . . . fields of practice that link up and stretch across all time zones (or have the potential to do so), but that need not imply further expansions of social institutional complexity. In fact, they may become feasible only if they avoid complex institutional structures” (2007, 65). So, when online networks of sports fans interact through blogging, tweeting and posting, there is no need to interpret this as constituting or even approximating a cosmopolitan moment of thick, affective identity creation, especially when connectivity crosses borders and cultures. This kind of microstructure, and this version of scape, tends to appear too fast, changes too quickly and is too dispersed to be completely “contained by institutional orders” (2007, 156), save possibly the deeper structures of market capitalism, and it may not be terminally corrosive of those orders. Microstructures are extant in what has been called “response-presencebased social forms”, where participants are capable of responding to one another and common objects in real-time without being physically present in the same place. Typical of eSports, this is now a characteristic of online sport in general. All response-presence-based social forms are bound together by information technologies, which, in sport and other arenas, are the arteries of global connectedness and the catalysts for and carriers of glocal consciousness (2007, 66 and Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger, 2002). These concepts also have purchase in the areas covered in the next two chapters.

Conclusion: a normative – and downbeat – afterthought For apologists, the core aesthetic attributes of new media as scopic media – speed, interaction, immediacy and reflexivity  – are seminal virtues. However, critics remain anxious about the “reductive simplicity” of media whose primary attribute is speed. In large measure any such judgement turns on what is seen as the unconscionable dumbing down or popularization of allegedly authentic, superior

The mediatization of sport 121 or more morally and aesthetically taxing representations of sport, politics or art, with the practitioners and administrators of each seen as at least acquiescent in their fall from grace. Aside from the obvious sense that technological innovations in communication and their use have to be located as part of the de-regulatory and border-eroding consequences of a marketized version of globalization, there is also the essentially aesthetic judgement that one of the key outcomes of marketization and mediatization has been to reduce citizens to consumers and sport, politics or art to mere spectacles, robbed of their core identity. Which charge rehearses the complaint that mediatization and marketization have contributed to a trivialization of sport, politics and art, even where they have not managed to undermine its foundational principles or, as in the case of Twenty20 cricket, allegedly betrayed its birthright.

Notes 1 Castells’ opus The Information Age (1996, 1998, 2000) examines new media and communications technology based on networks, and argues that they are contributing to a fundamental change in culture. The new development is a “culture of real virtuality”, which describes a culture that is organized around electronic media and is the material basis of a new kind of culture—that of the network society. 2 The USA, by comparison, has in excess of 2000. In India, of the 800 or so TV channels, at present some 200 are pay channels. The central government launched a series of economic and social reforms in 1991. Under the new policies the government allowed private and foreign broadcasters to engage in limited operations in India. This process has been pursued consistently by all subsequent federal administrations. Foreign channels like CNN, STAR TV and private domestic channels such as Zee TV, ETV and Sun TV started satellite broadcasts. Starting with 41 sets in 1962 and one channel, by 1995, TV in India covered more than 70 million homes, giving a viewing population of more than 400 million individuals through more than 100 channels. There are at least five basic types of television in India: broadcast or “over-the-air” television, unencrypted satellite or “free-to-air”, Direct-to-Home (DTH), cable television, and IPTV. Over-theair and free-to-air TV is free with no monthly payments while Cable, DTH, and IPTV require a monthly payment that varies depending on how many channels a subscriber chooses to pay for. Channels are usually sold in groups or a la carte. All television service providers are required by law to provide a la carte selection of channels. 3 Other sports show similar developments. For example, in Europe, Sky was succeeded by telecoms giant BT in securing the rights to screen the European Champions League Rugby Cup competition. 4 In 2006, state representatives attending the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) regional meeting in Geneva agreed to a switchover date of June 17, 2015 for 119 countries belonging to ITU Region-1 (Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia) and the Islamic Republic of Iran. By the cut-off date, countries such as Bangladesh, Belize, Liberia and Turkey had not started the process; while no information at all was available about Djibouti, Chile, Vanuatu, Yemen, North Korea and some 50 others. 5 In 2015, in the UK alone the business of sport has become a £20 billion industry. According to consultancy Oxford Economics, the London Olympics will have contributed £16.5bn to Britain’s gross domestic product by 2017. Cycling now brings in £3bn annually to the UK economy, while the amounts paid to televise English Premier League football break records at each negotiation. See May 13, 2015, The Daily Telegraph.

122  The mediatization of sport 6 Witness BT’s enthusiastic take-up of the shared right to show Premiership football in the UK, the Champions’ Cup (football) and the European Rugby Cup ERC); along with its exclusive right to screen Aviva Premiership rugby. 7 And in a similar vein, in November 2016, Bill Beaumont, Chair of World Rugby, noted that to continue its growth momentum rugby union must continue to “innovate and engage with fans in a digital world, grow in new markets, and maximise the Olympic opportunity”; where that referred to the notable appeal of the seven-a-side game so popular to a global audience during the 2016 Olympics. 8 Grobalization refers to the universally homogenizing power of what others call globalizing forces. Big media in the shape of Google, NewsCorp or Viacom fall into the category of such forces. Ritzer claims that their impact goes beyond the relativization predicted by many theorists of culture, to the possibility (at least) of cultural annihilation. See Ritzer, 2004, 2007. 9 In this respect, one could cite the growing incidence of emerging nations hosting sporting mega-events. BRICS countries and, for example, Qatar see such moves as a critical aspect of their soft power. See Giulianotti, 2016. 10 Twenty20 cricket deliberately sets out to appeal to a broad audience, especially, although by no means exclusively, in India. With the whole match over in no more than three hours, it has become a family-oriented or “pop-corn” event, unlike the 50-over format and the even longer three or five-day schedule for matches between regional and national sides, which attracts a predominantly male audience. 11 The shape of the traditional “summer game” played over three to five days and governed by a veritable primer of arcane rules and techniques, sits uneasily in cultures of speed and immediacy. Twenty20 cricket, sometimes dismissed as a “hit and giggle” game, is still subject to a wealth of rules, but has the evident appeal of shortness and sustained excitement. Each team has no more than 20 “overs” (balls bowled, with six balls per over) to record a final cumulative score. Caution in batting technique, while still practised, is secondary to the need to establish a winning number of “runs” quickly (the batsmen, upon hitting the ball, run the length of the “wicket” to record one run. Hits that reach the boundary attract four or six runs and do not require the batsman to scurry the 22 yards or 20.11 metres that is the wicket). 12 Among changes to the way in which the game is played and umpired is the new system of review. While the third umpire has played a part in cricket for some time now, it has only been recently that they have implemented a review system for the players. If a player is given out, but believes he/she is not out, they can appeal the decision to the third umpire. He will then use replays, hot-spot and sound indicators to attempt to decide if the player is actually out. This can be done the same way with the bowling team if they think a player was out, but he was given “not out” by the umpires on the field. 13 It may be sensible to qualify this judgement somewhat. For example, look at the number of articles now being published on all aspects of social media usage. These range from insights into the effects of dialogue with customers using social media (Colliander et al., 2015), through the generation of social capital in the Chinese virtual community (Kim et al., 2014) to the vexed question of trust in online social networks (Grabner-Krauter and Bitter, 2014). 14 The BBC iWonder site posed the question “Is computer gaming really sport?”. The case against included the claim that sport is about being out of breath, getting muddy and not having injuries limited to overuse of your thumb on a controller. The arguments in favour stress the tournament feel of the contests, investment in skills and training and the adrenalin rush afforded during competition. 15 The increasing globalization of gaming is also a part of the general diversification of the medium’s consumer base. Not only are games being played in more countries, but they’re also being played by a larger variety of people than ever before. Fifty-eight per

The mediatization of sport 123 cent of Americans aged 30–49 and 38% of Americans aged 50 and over play video games in some form, for example. And games are no longer stereotyped as being “just for kids”. On the contrary, the reputable Entertainment Software Association have determined that average age of American gamers is 35. Meanwhile, more women than ever before are gaming, with a split of 59% male to 41% female gamers in America and 58% to 42% in the UK. As of 2015, China became the world’s largest games market, overtaking the USA. According to a study by Newzoo, China’s gaming market is worth $24.4bn as opposed to the USA’s $23.6bn. This lead is only expected to increase as gaming further takes root in China over the coming years. Following a little further behind these two gaming giants are Japan, South Korea, Germany and the UK. 16 Dota2 (Defence of the Ancients) is a multiplayer online battle arena involving teams from around the world who, at tournaments, contest for prize money. In 2016, the International 6 tournament had a prize pool in excess of US$20 Million. League of Legends has the same pedigree and is also financially successful, but on a lesser scale. 17 Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are related but different things. The former, as defined by Wikipedia, is the process of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Wikipedia itself is a crowdsourced encyclopedia. At the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, there is a project called the Climate CoLab, where you can work with people from all over the world to create and submit proposals for what to do about climate change. The latter is the sourcing of funds from a crowd. So crowdfunding is actually a specific type of crowdsourcing. Platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo are crowdfunding platforms and allow backers to contribute money in exchange for rewards. Thus, crowdsourcing is the sourcing of anything . . . from a crowd. Crowdfunding is the sourcing of funds . . . from a crowd. 18 Increasingly routine immersion is now apparent in exotic media formats in the shape of entertainment and gaming genres such as the World Cyber-Games (WCG), as well in the bespoke and integrated systems found in areas such as global finance (knorr-Cetina and Bruegger, 2002). These examples are taken up later in this chapter and in chapter seven.

6 The mediatization of politics and forms of emergent globality

Introduction: some thoughts on the mediatization of politics The claim that politics has been mediatized is no longer that contentious as an empirical statement, save on the part of those who are critical of or eschew use of the concept anyway.1 Normatively, any such recognition remains loaded, although the simplistic aphorism that while politics is national, power is now resolutely global still subsists in the vestiges of hyperglobalist thinking. But even a committed transformationalist like Manuel Castells entertains doubts about the democratic propriety of some aspects of informationalized politics (1996, 2000). That said, his recent excursus in support of “new forms of social movement” inextricably tied to the creation and use of “autonomous communication networks”, suggests a tempering of erstwhile doubts with a degree of optimism (2012).2 But across the board the democratic credentials of mediatized politics have always been questioned, and the questions look at once empirically challenging and normatively or ideologically fraught. Have electronic media in general, and Internet and wireless communication in particular, altered the spaces of politics; and if so, can a politics so configured supply effective resources and outlets for discursiveness and deliberation; that is, sites where speech and action are instantiated and narrative enacts a world that is made and remade reflexively? (Axford, 2001, 9; Margetts, 2016; and, of course, Arendt, 1998). As always in this disputed terrain there are both zealots and skeptics. For example, Hardt and Negri’s opus on “Empire”, which is really an anthem to alterglobalization, has the countervailing force of the “Multitude” – clearly the virtuous public of populism’s more progressive strand – as its nemesis (2000, 2004; see also Axford and Huggins, 1997; Juris, 2008; Gerbaudo, 2014). Although Hardt and Negri offer what many see as an impossibly naïve thesis about the existence and emancipatory potential of the global multitude, the burden of their argument lies in claiming that this key concept is not prefigured in any social theory. Nor does it stand in line of descent from previous types of political mediation. In fact, they actually depict a hyperglobalist world, but strenuously deny its logic as bruited in neoliberal arguments. Instead, their Empire is globalization without the determination. Really, it is barely a bio-political and economic order at all, but one that is de-centred and networked. This world, as I have already noted, is deemed

The mediatization of politics 125 more informational than material, a compass that extends to the demeanour and conduct of politics. And in the age of manipulable Big Data, questions of democratic potential and propriety still resonate in any discussion about digital communication on the political Internet. Consider the debates about “filter bubbles” and the coming of age of “post-truth” politics in those febrile months in 2016 before the UK voted to leave the European Union and Donald Trump became president-elect of the United States. The thesis, simply put, is that the information users receive online has been filtered – personalized – by website algorithms to deliver only bespoke messages; ones that reinforce familiar or sympathetic world-views (Gagain Jr, 2016; Pariser, 2012; Pasquale, 2015; Cadwalladr, 2017; Sunstein, 2017).3 Separated from opinions with which they might disagree, more and more citizens and consumers are said to live in an insulated world; albeit one of information plenty. But the access they enjoy does not dispose them to understanding or tolerance; still less a cosmopolitan outlook.4 If true – and for all the handwringing the evidence for such effects is conflicted – is this damaging for democracy? Of a certainty it challenges received wisdom that independent, authoritative sources can, and perhaps should, set the temper of debate and curate the political agenda; assumptions implicit in the founding myths of democratic elitism.5 But such a change still might be seen as democratizing in its own right or, more contentiously, popularizing; with the latter a loaded term in this discourse because it admits a modal rejection of sundry experts and “establishment” voices. In a very recent foray into the relationship between the Internet and democracy, Cass Sunstein catalogues the ways in which the norms of brokered conflict and the politics of accommodation in a pluralist democracy are (he says) being violated in the online world. He argues that instead of tolerance and mutual comprehension social media promotes mutual incomprehension, social fragmentation and intolerance of others (2017). A few years earlier Eli Pariser was one of the first to record that the Internet is highly effective at bringing like-minded people together, but ill-equipped for creating space wherein differences between them can be debated and either resolved or accommodated (2012). Although this remains an empirically moot thesis even for Trump’s election, for those worried about the democratic integrity of politics framed by digital media, it raises questions about whether the segmented Internet can ever function as a zone of public deliberation; let alone an uber-Habermasian public sphere (Dahlgren, 2013; Fuchs, 2014; Zuckerman, 2013; Papacharissi, 2010) based on rational discourse and manifest across or heedless of borders.6 I shall return to this theme later in the chapter. Framing, we should recall, allows actors to simplify their environments by “encoding objects, situations, events, experiences and sequences of action” (Snow and Benford, 1992, 137). Castells’ early pronouncements on the process were attuned to the idea that if digital media have become the privileged space of politics – and maybe the forcing ground for a “postmodern” variant – in a period still characterized by the forms and values of political modernity, the scope for disruption and no little angst, is very large. On the up side he applauded the potential for a new

126  The mediatization of politics and modular politics to emerge, including the promise to cross or ignore borders in search of democratic gain and common understanding. And, as noted above, he also identified the role of information technology in spawning and sustaining innovative forms of grass-roots movement. His more recent anthem to “networks of outrage and hope” (2012) explores the ways in which information technologies allow previously invisible constituencies of hitherto unlooked-for “activists” to register their presence, and all without the kinetic structures of usual, organized and brokered politics and the trammels of strong identification (see also Margetts et al., 2016; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Bimber and Davis, 2003; Chadwick and Howard, 2009).7 In these new spaces of politics, the use of information technology by citizens and consumers (citizens as consumers?) is said to confound the mobilization of bias found in any brokered politics. At the same time, this challenge to the onto-political certainties and norms of usual politics, including territorial politics, begets its own critique (Connolly, 2002). And in that critique, the temper of a politics framed by media is often dismissed as immanently “anti-political”, whether in the Baudrillardian sense, or through damage to the canons of the liberalterritorialist paradigm, the etiquette of representative democracy and the accommodative temper of pluralistic political discourse (Balandier, 1992; Axford and Huggins, 1997). And in the rich world of conspiracy theorists the Internet has made it easy to propagate rumour and supposition on a global scale. Social networking sites allow conspiracy theorists to seek out and link with like-minded individuals. But a further, especially piquant comparison comes to mind in the claim that electioneering through social media always leads to “know-nothing populism” (Diamond and Silverman, 1995, 14). This claim certainly dogged the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016, even though many commentators hailed the Internet savvy shown by Barack Obama’s Democrats in 2008 and 2012 as the acceptable wave of a no less mediated political future.8 Even if we set aside complaints that anonymous posts via social media and the advent of Twitter diplomacy sometimes lower, or even destroy, standards of debate and civility, treating them as no more than an irritant on the body politic, or a seedy form of electioneering or governance, critics are still quick to defame what Žižek called the “mechanistic, false individualism” nurtured by digital politics (1998, 6). But, as I argued earlier in these pages, the idea of networked individualism does not, or need not, imply any kind of social pathology, because Internet gatherings can be at least a trope for collective consciousness when they manifest as virtual congregations in which individuals muster and yet still perform everyday acts of subjectivity. It will be pertinent to examine variations on this theme to see how, or whether, collective consciousness subsists in technological and cultural environments that privilege the expression of personal narratives and vernacular experience, but are modal at the same time (Hayles, 1999).9 It is obvious that issues of this complexity and normative weight will be subject to different social constructions and world-views (Axford, 2001). In past work, I noted a variety of discourses evident in the scholarly and activist treatment of

The mediatization of politics 127 new media and politics, and these have purchase here. Broadly speaking these discourses turn on whether changes are seen as transformative or not, or as having transformative potential, and on the normative judgments made about any prospectus for change. Among those who discern radical, or at least, identifiable, shifts in the space, conduct and modalities of politics, three positions are apparent (Axford, 1999, 2001, 2009). Two of these recognize the transformative impacts of new media on politics, albeit from different normative positions. The third strand rejects any sense of transformation. The first, which I called techno-progressive, has always credited digital media with a restructuration of political space and identity, and a renewal of democratic energy. Tim Luke was one of the earliest advocates of this thesis. In 1998 he opined, “in boosting human actions in the digital domain, new modes of identity and community, territory and sovereignty, culture and society are emerging” (1998, 4). Around the same time, Michael Shapiro, with particular address to the potency of networks, also pointed to the undoing of the “neo-Tocquevillian” paradigm for what constitutes society and community, due to the respatializing of interest and affect afforded through network connection (1995; see also Juris, 2008). Subsequent commentary and empirical investigation covers much the same ground, now enlivened by claims and counter claims – sometimes little more than imaginative extrapolations – about whether the Internet is immanently democratizing or oppressive (Benkler, 2006; Shirky, 2012; Morozov, 2011). At the heart of debate is the nature and direction of change in the dominant liberal-territorialist model of politics and political community, and of the reliability of received wisdom on the drivers and correlates of political mobilization and identification. At one remove the burden of all such discussion is robustly empirical. It turns on how to weigh the volume of evidence that collective action has been informationalized, and how far, and with what degree of approbation, to gloss this change as having transformed politics (Margetts et al., 2016; Bennet and Segerberg, 2012). Writing about political mobilization, Helen Margetts and her colleagues cite many instances of the recent digitalization of collective action (2015). They range from neighbourhood campaigns to global political movements, including Castells’ heavily romanticized networks of outrage and hope. These mobilizations – comprised of “tiny acts of participation” – pose a two-pronged challenge to social science (Margetts et al., 2016). The first challenge is to understand their ecology – where and how do they originate and how do they subsist? Why are some durable and others not? The second challenge is where to locate them in the pantheon of social theory as possible avatars of transformative political change. This latter task perhaps is more daunting. In what follows, we shall address both challenges. And if there is a necessary empirical cast to this reflection, there is also a second normative strand, identifiable in retro-nostalgic discourses on the debilitating effects of new media on politics and governance. Make no mistake, retro-nostalgics harbour few doubts about the transformative impact of new media, but see the changes as regressive, or aesthetically, and possibly terminally, damaging to the canons and style of a relatively unmediated, or more benignly mediated, past (Balandier, 1992; Franklin, 1994, 1994; Robins and Webster, 1999; Barber, 1996,

128  The mediatization of politics 1998, 2007; Morozov, 2011; see also Axford, 2001; Axford and Huggins, 1997). In this gestalt, the aggregative functions of programmatic, mass political parties, the articulation of collective and bespoke interests by organized groups, the “authentic” solidarity of offline social movements, the mythology of a deliberative politics effected through the public sphere and the public interest ethos of some print and broadcast media, are seen as icons under threat in the register of democratic elitism and contentious politics, or already in demise. Less dramatically, the emergence of the “thin” networks and protean identities said to be characteristic of the interactive Web is understood as at least discommoding for any politics configured by notions of bounded space, ontological thickness and a regard for truth when making claims publicly. Philip Howard, among legions of critics, is viscerally affronted by the volume of fake news stories and false factoids now masquerading as news, and laments that social media provides the only structure for what he terms “political conversation” (November 15 2016).10 Sadly, he avers, instead of delivering public goods, this structure “permit(s) too much fake news . . . (and) . . . encourages our herding instincts” (Axford and Huggins, 1997). This too is heavy traffic, but can be tempered by the more cautious empiricism shown in the recent Oxford Internet Institute study of political turbulence (2016). In its view, Internet politics – Internet enabled politics – may be “unstable, unpredictable and even unsustainable” (2016, 197), but the use of social media also “extend the range of political activities that citizens can undertake” (2016) and lower the costs of being active. Such evidence-based testimony is unexceptional these days, but even if social media are the wave of the democratic future rather than its doom, as the study also argues, this still has to be taken as a normative statement rather than, or as well as, an inference based solely on the interpretation of data. Which leaves my third and skeptical discourse, one that does not accept the transformative motif at all, especially where it smacks of cyber-utopianism. Skeptics evince less of the intensity of vision seen in the accounts of either technoprogressives or retro-nostalgics. But new trends in political communication are noted and variously applauded or denigrated. Skeptics also have little truck with the imputed “logic” of mediatized politics; while “Internet-centrism” gets short shrift, not just because it fuels claims that are wildly exaggerated, but for aiding and abetting a willful – and intellectually debilitating – misreading of the actual evidence (Morozov, 2015; Freelon et al., 2015; Gladwell, 2010; Fuchs, 2013). I have already canvassed Evgeny Morozov’s caustic dismissal of technological solutionism for political and other ills (2011, 2013), a mantra echoed by Christian Fuchs in the wake of what turned out to be the annus normalis of 2011. The promise and the legacy of that year of revolutions, the putative “rebirth of history”, as Alain Badiou opined (2012), set amidst the continuing global financial and trading crisis and Russia’s early adventurism, now looks sadly tarnished in light of events across much of North Africa and the Middle East. For realists that outcome is hardly surprising. Moreover, there is the obvious, but still key, point, that even if one accepts the premise of an “Internet revolution”, the fact remains that the

The mediatization of politics 129 use of Internet platforms, as well as the benefits that flow from their use, cannot be confined to those on the side of the angels – however construed. Contingency or local conditions and material resources, along with other structural and cultural factors, determined the outcome of the misnamed “Arab Spring”, and we will look at that frenetic and short-lived period of revolt later in the chapter11 (Howard and Hussain, 2013). So, by and large, skeptics are not overly troubled by the world-historical weight that informs the other two discourses and, in part, we can endorse such inferential caution. Skeptics may applaud or cavil at changes (in communication technologies and styles) thought more or less desirable and effective, but cleave to the argument that “new” media possess no independent logic, no immanent dynamic that displaces established practice and the nostrums of usual politics; nor confounds the entrenched interests attached to them. New media are simply different instrumentalities for the more-or-less efficient delivery of politics as usual. No doubt a piece of necessary social-scientific caution, this is a mite curmudgeonly and too readily dismissive of any hint of transformative potential, whether good or bad. So at this point it is meet to recall Peter Dahlgren’s caution first rehearsed in chapter one (see also Chadwick, 2013) for a more sobering assessment, one redolent with both promise (of transformative potential) and incipient sadness (for the world we are losing or have lost). You will remember his counsel that new media are transforming politics because political life now deploys as a media phenomenon (2013). Politics (and, by implication, many facets of everyday life) has embraced the gestalt of new media, and in doing so transformed itself. Sobering indeed, though far from a jeremiad. The transformative motif is also richly apparent in Castells’ empirical polemic on social movements as communication networks. In this regard his focus is on the role of the Internet in contemporary movements and rebellions (Fuchs, 2013). But the analytical burden of his oeuvre is far wider and linked to the premises of earlier research on the network society and the network state in Europe (2001; Axford, 2009; Barry, 2001). This work is grounded in a theoretical and empirical account of the emergence of network societies and rehearses the advantages of a network perspective for a systematic understanding of social change and development. Although this account traffics at the meso-level for much of the empirical detail used, especially where that entertains new kinds of political activism, it is really a macro-morphological and transformationalist argument. Network morphologies and, whisper it, network logic, overtake other forms of social organization, and this logic “permeates and transforms all realms of social and economic life” (Crozier, 2006, 17). In what Castells terms the “internet age”, networks subsist as forms of social linkage between humans, with the Internet functioning as a global network of computer networks. Networks conceived as technologies are bruited as the solution to problems of communication, empowerment, community and democracy; while networks paraded as social and political relations are construed, among other things, as functional responses to globalization, as well as being expressions of it. In Castells’ vision, to all intents and purposes networks become society, whether in national or transnational guise.12

130  The mediatization of politics In the realm of politics, as elsewhere, these insights raise questions about network construction, about individual motivation and identity, about borders around identities, and about the structuration of social systems through communication. They also appear as normative dilemmas. Such broad compass embraces changing patterns and forms of political mobilization, where new media frames motivation and action, and new kinds of spatial politics that result from the destabilization of existing hierarchies of scale (Sassen, 2006). In what follows I will rehearse my argument about the mediatization of politics and the constitution of emergent globalities by examining the creation and functioning of digital political worlds in three analytical and empirical domains and by way of different exemplars. All of them afford insights into transformative world-making practices. The First identifies features of the “logic of connective action” as coined by Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg in their reworking of Mancur Olson’s seminal thesis on the rules governing political mobilization, activism and membership. These rules identified the logic of collective action (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Olson, 1965). In particular, Bennett and Segerberg’s account of the organization-less qualities of Internet activism seen, for example, in the Occupy movement, Los Indignados and across North Africa and the Middle East in recent years, highlights the prospects for solidarity and (political) community away from, or not predicated on, received ideas about society and community as stable forms of organization. Other illustrative material, including the nature and sustainability of epistemic and activist networks, of “new” social movements and the changing meaning of identification in vernacular politics, expressed in what Margetts’ et al call “tiny acts of participation”, will provide evidence from the exotic and the mundane reaches of Internet politics. As Bart Cammaerts says, in this milieu there is ample room to examine the ways in which social media and digital networks are contextualized and assessed in relation to social movements and activism (2015, 1). Second, and in related vein, the prospects for a global civil society effected through new media. This is a persistent theme in the annals of globalization theory and has fuelled the aforementioned dispute about the adequacy of the “neoTocquevillian” bent of much social theory when set against the presumptions of “new” cosmopolitanism and other conceits which envision a cellular, networked globality with processes of identity formation to match (Appadurai, 2006; Shapiro, 1995; Axford, 2007a: Archibugi and Held, 2011; Held, 2010; Delanty, 2009). Finally, extrapolating from the previous two issues, we shall look at the vexed, but intriguing, example of Europe – primarily the European Union (EU) – as a communication space, to weigh the contested evidence for a transnational public sphere constituted through/structured by the Internet. In chapter seven I will return to this theme and examine the idea of network Europe as a paradigm case of a post-territorial space of communicative flows; one which, through its information society programme, is allegedly citizen and consumer facing. In all three domains, the focus is on different kinds of politics from below, which might be thought to skew the discussion as it omits the extensive field of governance online,

The mediatization of politics 131 including the vexed matter of Big Data as a tool of public and private interest politics and governance. Some of those issues are taken up in chapter seven.

Reflections on the logic of connective action as a trope for emergent networked globality The focus here is the growing literature on the part played by Internet technologies in political mobilization (see for example, Gonzalez-Bailon et al., 2011; Bennett and Segerberg, 2012; Margetts et al., 2016). While research is often more local or comparative than global in its remit, the findings have obvious implications for the themes investigated in this book. For the most part the empirical focus has been on network formation, sustainability and decay, as afforded through social networking and micro-blogging sites (SNSs) such as Twitter and Facebook. These investigations challenge much received wisdom about the basis for collective action and collective identity formation, shedding new light on the connections between online networks, social contagion, collective dynamics and spatially unlimited politics. The empirical detail of this growing body of work both underwrites and qualifies claims that platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are helping to fashion, and themselves may constitute, vehicles for global collective consciousness.13 Once again, the argument turns on the claim that sustained protest using digital media delivers a politics that transcends the mere sending and receiving of content between individuals. As we have noted previously, the very act of exchange is said to engage participants in a form of inter-subjectivity, which includes awareness of shared consequences and common fates. Of course, when examining the part played by digital media in mobilizing activists and building consciousness, it is a mistake to limit the politics occasioned by virtual connectivity to insurrectionist or contentious strains, because connectivity raises the visibility and awareness of shared problems and enables mobilization across the gamut of conventional and unconventional politics. All such instances share features of network-enabled association. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg’s work on alternative models of collective action depicts a modal shift from group-based to network-based association as a new kind of social movement; one that demonstrates the logic of connective action (see also Wellman et al., 2003). Sustainable and effective collective action, from the perspective of the seminal thesis on the logic of collective action, typically requires varying degrees of resource mobilization to be deployed, when organizing and through leadership, so that common action frames can be developed alongside brokerage functions that bridge differences between actors and interests. In other words formal organization is deemed necessary to coordinate action, mobilize resources and forge collective identities before collective action can occur. On the other hand, the logic of connective action suggests that participation becomes self-motivating, as personally expressive content is shared with others who, in turn, repeat and thus valorize

132  The mediatization of politics the very act of sharing. Not entirely regardless of content, to be sure, but without a great deal of prior determination; whether in the shape of ideological commitment or other affective or historical constraints. When these interpersonal networks are enabled by technology platforms that coordinate and scale the networks, the resulting mobilizations look like collective action, but without formal organization or strong social identification. The action frames are successful because they traffic easy-to-personalize frames (for example, “we are the 99%”) where everyone is invited to tell their own story within the undemanding and inclusive frame. The frames also differ from collective action frames because they do not require identification shifts but let individuals express bespoke, though perhaps fleeting, identities.14 In all this, “sharing” is the operative word. Social media enable frames and stories to be shared – and sharing may be no more than making visible – easily, through repetition and, of course, extensively. While the range of possible large-scale actions is not exhausted by such developments, the appearance of what Bennett and Segerberg call “self-organizing networks” – of which Occupy Wall Street is a prime example – is discommoding to the familiar logic of collective action, which is reliant on strong organizational coordination and firm ideological identification or predisposition. Between the two poles they discern the “organizationally enabled network”, and it is this in-between variety that characterizes action-networks abroad in G20 protests in recent years. Organizationally enabled networks display only loose coordination of action. It remains true that action frames may be instigated by organizations but, crucially, not to the exclusion of personal frames. In G20 protests many people not affiliated with traditional organizations and NGOs felt able to narrate their personal stories under inclusive and ideologically neutral, or unthreatening, themes, such as “put people first”. When messages circulate, two kinds of action frame are available: personal frames (send your own message) and collective, though still quite permissive, frames (sign up to our message, as in “eat the bankers”). In digitally networked actions the meme is the basic unit of communication. Memes – the cultural analogue to genes, as they have been called – are shared through imitation and adapted to personal emotional and aesthetic expression. In turn these are passed on to others who likewise imitate, and variably adopt and share them. Twitter and Facebook are exemplary carriers of this kind of meme. Bennett and Segerberg also note that there are two kinds of memes: inclusive personal memes and exclusive collective memes. The former, memes containing personal action frames, travel farther and are less culturally loaded because they are inflections of personal narratives made public. At the same time, and sometimes through serendipity, the stories told achieve coherence and express collective consciousness, even purpose, as people share similar experiences. Exclusive collective memes, that is, memes containing collective action frames, also traffic in the same way, but are more likely to run up against barriers at the intersections of social networks already defined by established political organizations, by ideology, class, gender, race, ethnicity and national identity (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012). Perhaps crucially, such barriers remain the stuff of much usual politics.

The mediatization of politics 133 Skeptical interpretations of the same data still cleave to the plus-ca-change argument about the impact of new political technologies. But interventions from what has been dubbed the “new mobilizations” thesis (Benkler, 2013; Shirky, 2008; Bimber, 2012) are more convinced of the galvanizing effects of the Internet, if only in the specific matter of making it easier for erstwhile non-participants to become active. In this gestalt, Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks (2006) stands as a seminal contribution to research on the “organizationless” quality of activism through the Internet. Moreover, his research is not just a descriptive account. He argues that Internet-based platforms not only allow participants to produce content and collaborate with others, but also enhance the scope for practical citizenship by pushing out the boundaries of, and enhancing the repertoires of possibility for, what some would call “low” or vernacular politics (see also Cammaerts, 2015; Cammaerts, Matoni and McCurdy eds, 2013). Along with Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody (2008), Benkler’s is a powerful statement of the transformative power of new media.15 For critics, such enthusiasm is largely groundless, or at least premature, and this is a recurring complaint, especially where it bears on the impact of connective action. There is some weight to these more cautious views. As early as 1993 Nancy Fraser wrote glowingly of the emerging countervailing power of “subaltern counter cultures” (124). Prior to the full blossoming of the Internet, certainly before social media, she argued that the proliferation of competing publics would only improve the quality of democratic discourse. But the skeptic in us may cavil that all it actually achieves is to expand the number of players and fleetingly glamorize the status of victims. If we are to judge the success of such mobilizations, what is, or should, be measured? In what circumstances and by way of which contingencies does access to, and use of, the Internet actually mitigate against any prevailing mobilization of bias? These are telling questions, but should we always measure the impact of political mobilizations by results? Must success equate to winning? With greater inferential caution, but no little approbation, Duncan Watts’ Six Degrees (2003) offers an alternative way of looking at the effects of connective action. He draws attention to the “science of networks”, wherein high local clustering and short global separation produces small-world network structures of communication. In the conceptual language used throughout this book, where such activism has a provenance in local issues, but where what is communicated carries global content or resonance and attracts a globally distributed audience, these muster as emergent glocalities; albeit of rather frail constitution (see also; Watts, 1999; Granovetter, 1973). Moreover, as a tranche of work has shown, clustered hyperlink structures actually demonstrate a considerable amount of self-organization, reflecting the concerns of issue-focused communities of affect and interest and the engagement of even passingly attentive publics, both within and across borders. Leaving aside the recent upsurge in alt-right politics seen on the Web, where this variety of loosely networked – large scale, individualized – activism has manifested as a local and global phenomenon (if only through sharing or “liking”) often it presents as a critique of neoliberal globalization, the shortcomings of economic justice and the

134  The mediatization of politics peccadilloes of authoritarian regimes – to effect a low cost, but still radical, chic, or model of resistance. More routinely, features of network connection and network consciousness are apparent in the structuration of quotidian politics on the Web. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the “tiny acts of participation” identified by Margetts et al (2016). Such acts are hardly confined to the digital realm. There are “micro-donations” of money, time and effort across the gamut of political sites and spaces, both phenomenal and virtual (2016, 31). Critically, their argument is that such donations are likely to be insignificant on their own, but they scale up when replicated by thousands and, on the Web, even millions of people. In what follows I will try to illustrate this phenomenon, bearing in mind that any choice of illustrative material is easily cast as invidious, or not representative. Nonetheless, it is still useful to capture the variety of such interventions. In temper and scope they range from legal, low cost activities to mobilize local and national constituencies, through more morally charged and sometimes illegal kinds of “hacktivism”, to the sustained use of social media to coordinate protest actions locally and globally. Some enthusiasts believe that such acts may even coalesce to a new kind of public sphere, though this is still an audacious claim. In the UK, the Web platform 38 Degrees hosts online petitions on a range of social issues and addresses these to government, quasi-governmental agencies and the private corporate sector. An eponymous “people-powered” vehicle for public opinion, it has no membership beyond its email mailing list. Also active offline, 38 Degrees presents itself as non-partisan – or not reliant on partisan support – and bent only on mobilizing disparate respondents in relation to issues and causes of current moment. This claim is disparaged by critics, who locate it as consistently left of centre in both its choice of issues and its gloss on them. The model of political intervention favoured by 38 Degrees owes a debt to the more self-consciously global phenomenon that is Avaaz. The latter, described by the Guardian newspaper (March 2, 2012) as the world’s “largest and most powerful online activist network”, claims 44 million “members” in 194 countries and also styles itself as “people-powered”, dedicated to bringing matters of public concern to the attention of decision makers. It too eschews any formal political or ideological affiliation, preferring the inclusive and benign, if rather long-winded, meme that “our mission is to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. Idealists of the world unite” (2016). Avaaz is catholic in the range of campaigning techniques it uses, some of them offline.16 Inevitably, its penchant for online petitions and email campaigns have attracted the ire of those who see such interventions as participation-lite, or devoid of those character-forming rites of passage that mark the career of the more conventional, or more traditional, activist. Both NGOs display features of organization, including quite compelling leadership styles. In this they are closer to the organizationally enabled network identified by Bennett and Segerberg than to pristine self-organizing networks such as Occupy, or even the Tacsim Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013. The latter relied on the contagion effect of platforms such as Facebook to “coordinate” action on

The mediatization of politics 135 the ground and to bring the protest to the attention of wider and more dispersed audiences globally. By June 15th 2013, the Facebook page Diren Gezi Parki (Resist Gezi Park) was recording 622,000 “likes” with a further 707,000 “talking about this”; while the hashtag #OccupyGezi trended in social media. Again, in both cases the protests took various forms on the ground – protest “camps”, posters, vigils, strikes, direct confrontation with the authorities and some violence – and put in place a modicum of infrastructure, including pop-up kitchens. What is also interesting, at least about the Gezi protests, is the politically ecumenical composition of those protesting, both online and offline.17 A more distanced, but arguably no less visceral, politics is evidenced in disruptive acts of civil disobedience usually labelled Distributed Denial of Service actions (DDoS), along with sometimes darker and, for some, morally equivocal, interventions by hackers that result in leaks of classified or private data and communications from governments, international organizations, religious bodies and commercial enterprises (Sauter, 2014; Zuckerman, 2013).18 DDoS attacks involve many computers flooding an Internet server with traffic in order to make it unavailable to users and effectively shut it down. For example, Dyn, a company that controls much of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) infrastructure, was attacked on October 21, 2016. The result was that many sites reliant on it, including Netflix, Reddit, CNN, PayPal and Twitter, were unusable for most of the day. The raid was orchestrated using a piece of software (malware) called the Mirai botnet, which is able to infiltrate Internet of Things devices such as digital cameras and DVR players.19 Perpetrated by an unidentified non-state group, the effects of the attack were felt mainly in the USA and across Europe. Obviously there are major concerns about the scale and increasing frequency of such attacks, not least on some of the companies that provide crucial Internet services, as well as on consumers of their products. The key focus in this regard is on the legality and on the practical and principled objections to denial of service actions, regardless of the motives of activists who often see disruption as a legitimate means of raising awareness for some quite other cause. Here I am more interested in what these crowd-based acts of civil disobedience, as they are romanced, tell us about the changing nature of political action, especially direct action, and what they say about the political morphology of global mobilizations (Jordan and Taylor, 2004). Writing in The Coming Storm (2014), Molly Sauter addresses both what DDoS actions bring to an understanding of the morphology of political activism and how these interventions foster the identity of individual actors taking part in collective action. Her text is a committed, but still nuanced, apology for anonymous DDoS actions, with the activities she describes illustrative of what Tommy Shelby engagingly calls “impure dissent” (2016), complete with the cool symbolism of the “outlaw persona” (Sauter, 2014, 92). The latter is nowhere better observed than in the raffish guise of the activists known collectively as Anonymous.20 The burden of the claim made by and on behalf of impure activists is that their acts of disruption alert the wider public that the usual channels of political participation have been compromised or, in certain environments, defiled altogether.

136  The mediatization of politics While such a claim may have validity when applied to cases in which any form of dissent is proscribed, it carries less moral weight in more pluralist contexts, especially when articulated by activists who often disdain visibility and thus avoid accountability for their own behaviour. So, just how far Sauter’s conviction that DDoS actions “reinstate a deliberative environment” (2014, 93) holds water, except perhaps among devotees, is open to challenge. Many critics take such claims as risible, even offensive, and cite cases of what would now be called “false news” or deliberate lying as revealing a dark and capricious side to Anonymous’ boast to oppose censorship and promote freedom in the name of a global grass-roots and democratic impulse (Quinn, 2012). Less challengeable is the argument that DDoS tactics and the strain of activism they express allow for the expression of dissent that is not constrained by geographical boundaries and corporeal activism. If Anonymous is a virtual gathering of activists (hacktivists), it is also a global community; or perhaps a maverick global epistemic network, as coined by Peter Haas (1992). And its ontology is light, not to say frail. Steffano Caneppele and Francesco Calderoni have it thus: “Anonymous is the first internet-based super-consciousness. Anonymous is a group in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they’re a group? Because they’re travelling in the same direction. (But) at any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely” (2015, 235; Coleman, 2014). Both the tiny acts of participation delineated by Helen Margetts and her colleagues and the example of Anonymous serve to underline the fragile though not always ephemeral nature of internet-enabled politics, especially where it involves protest activity. At the same time, they also provide evidence, sometimes exotic, often banal, of the ways in which the Internet and social media are now “inextricably intertwined” with the political behaviour of both ordinary citizens and dedicated activists (see Farrell, 2012; Dahlgren, 2013).21 There is an obvious effect of this intertwining, which is to make the motivations for, the demeanour of and the scales at which activism is practised much more unpredictable than in pretty much any strain of usual politics; regardless of the success of particular mobilizations, or indeed, their democratic credentials. In other words, unpredictability is the most obvious characteristic – an irresolute politics for an irresolute world. A number of features serve to distinguish this unpredictable variant. The first is that the social media and other Internet platforms chosen for participation – whether for tiny acts of social conscience or newly awakened sensibilities – are not for the most part dedicated activist sites. The latter do exist in the guise of Avaaz, Kiva, MoveOn and others; but the more popular platforms are either the usual suspects of Western informational capitalism – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Mixi, Cyworld and Orkut, or the state-sponsored equivalent exemplified by Weibo. The second feature, already flagged, is that participation through these vehicles is personalized and bespoke. Third, as Helen Margetts notes (2013), social media sites extend the range – and lower the costs – of participatory acts

The mediatization of politics 137 available to citizens and thus may rework the paradigmatic calculus whereby people decide whether to get involved politically.22 Finally, tiny acts of participation must scale up to achieve critical mass, and thus the contagion effect of social media is a notable feature of the ontology of Internet activism. While the notion of contagion implies a lack of agency, it would be a mistake to paint all these interventions – micro-blogging, tweeting, friending – as always taking place “behind the backs” of individuals who variously use social media to share news and information, discuss issues and advertise and coordinate activities within and across borders. Nor is such intercourse confined to liberal democracies. The biennial Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) for 2013 reports that In Arab countries more than 60% of users of social networking sites say that they use the sites to share views about politics and 70% employ them for discussing community issues. But for critics, perhaps even for some apologists, this is a politics that, much like Topsy, “just grew’d” and is barely agential. Being politically active means no more than re-tweeting or liking the post; content is secondary to the act of sharing and no (ideological) commitment is necessary. Being knowledgeable about an issue is an optional extra. Such criticism often betrays an aesthetic objection to Internet activism as an authentic form of political participation, although complaints are usually couched in terms of its efficacy (Axford, 2004, 2005). The frame of politics thus conjured by such complaints is very narrow and the scope for (authentic) activism likewise severely proscribed and prescribed. Sentiments underlying such caution have a long pedigree and sometimes they even produce a worthy aphorism. Over four decades ago the American “godfather of hip-hop”, Gill Scott-Heron, opined of a previous era of electronic political communication, “the revolution will not be televised”. Today critics of the aesthetics and effectiveness of Internet activism might well enjoin that neither can it be tweeted (1970; see Axford, 2013b and Megenta, 2011; Gladwell, 2010; Howard, 2015).23 As we shall see later, similar caveats have been used to disparage the prospects for global consciousness (political and otherwise), global activism and new spaces for engagement in the shape of a global civil society, agonistic or otherwise. But to reiterate, participation through social media delivers unpredictable politics; not world-changing for the most part, but discommoding for established players and seemingly promiscuous in its take-up of issues, causes and platforms that can trouble the bastions of usual politics and rub against its more predictable grain. Helen Margetts argues that these “mobilizations, consisting of massive numbers of small donations of time and effort, are qualitatively different from traditional, offline mobilizations” (2013). She also reflects that when mobilizations begin and gain some momentum, they are very prone to the vagaries of critical mass and tipping points, which means that few of them succeed, while the vast majority fail altogether. In itself this makes them unstable and unpredictable. For participants, social media platforms are at once intimate, since one can know immediately how many have signed the petition or liked the tweet – thus making visible the participation of others – yet also unmanageable and perhaps

138  The mediatization of politics untamable because of the absence of commitment and authoritative voices and texts. It is clear too that individuals on social media platforms are influenced by information about what other people are doing online (Salganik and Watts, 2009), and this effect is apparent in political contexts (Margetts et al., 2011). Margetts and her co-authors later conclude that this understanding “explains to some extent why the mobilizations that have characterized the last decade have caused so much surprise. Conventional institutions of politics, such as political parties and pressure groups are organizational actors about which we know quite a lot and whose behaviour we may be able to predict, but these are leaderless mobilizations with their own dynamic” (2016). More varied and intense dissent online may indeed contribute to a sense of shared grievance, common cause and even personal efficacy. But to restate my earlier caveat, all it may really achieve is to glamorize the status of victims and provide them with a little down-home group therapy and fellow-feeling. Talking about – tweeting – a revolution, even where that includes calling on citizens to play a part in, or to bear critical or outraged witness to the conditions that occasioned it, is likely to be more about the ways in which controls on the flow of information have been weakened and the consequent freeing up of democratic, or at least popular, energy, than about directly changing governments, toppling regimes and, in their aftermath, securing and sustaining democratic rule. Yet, as the election of Donald Trump shows, perhaps the rules of the game are changing because the conceptual and ideational landscape over which politics is conducted has changed too, along with the nature of its mediation.

The Arab Spring . . . Internet-centrism or new sites of contention? The use and impact of internet-mediated communication, along with its unpredictability, is nicely illustrated in the waves of insurrectionary action seen across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during 2011 and bracketed by cognate actions in Moldova and Iran in 2009, the history of the Occupy movement and its offshoots, and in Brazil and Turkey more recently. In varying degrees what all these events underline is that digital communication is key to understanding the dynamics of activism across the globe, even though the contribution of digital media to the outcome (success) of such activism is variable or undetermined. This contribution is never (or hardly ever) a matter of creating online spaces that subsist heedless of borders and regulatory provision. Barriers abound to accessing and creating content before it can be shared. Some such are relatively benign, or driven by legitimate concerns for copyright protection, individual privacy or commercial privilege. For example, at present access to the BBC’s iPlayer content is restricted to viewers in the UK, and there is ample evidence that in many other ways the Internet is being nationalized in the alleged interests of national security (Malcolmson, 2016). But restrictions on accessing content and sharing it across national boundaries have become part of the political struggle for freedom of information and expression in both liberal-democratic and authoritarian regimes (Cammaerts, 2015).

The mediatization of politics 139 During the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011, the part played by social media can be addressed both as the battleground for information freedom and freedom of expression and as a coordinating mechanism in political mobilization. The difference between the two itself may demarcate new and old styles of politics and separate transformative interpretations of Internet politics from more cautious attributions. As I have noted, the use of social media fulfills, or can facilitate, efficiencies in internal organization, or else displace the need for formal structures of coordination altogether. Where the movement or mobilization is ontologically Internet-based, as opposed to technically enabled or supported by the Internet, it can be seen as constitutive of politics and not just as an adjunct to it. But these are quite abstract notions, or rather, they depict a neatly bifurcated world of political engagement, rather than a more convincing, if messier, hybrid constitution. Of the online activism that took place across MENA countries in 2011, we might say that the use of social media greatly increased the ability of social movements and protesters to coordinate across borders and to link up with other organizations, building larger networks that overcame space-time constraints, and contributed to what has become known as movement spillover. But this piece of inferential caution could be glossed more robustly. Bart Cammaerts provides just such a gloss when he says that the protests in Tunisia that spread to other Arab countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Libya and, in the early days, Syria, are a striking example of movement spillover, as is the “rapid diffusion of the occupation of symbolic public spaces” that followed from direct action in the Arab World which then spread to the indignados in Spain, to the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the shape of the Occupy movement (2015, 6; Atentas, 2016; Iosifides and Wheeler, 2015). In the case of the MENA uprisings, a medium-term assessment of the nature and role of social media has a number of issues to address (Axford, 2011). First is the importance of context when assessing the impact of social media with global reach. How significant was local variation in the flowering and career of the uprisings? Second is the extent to which “old” media in the guise of print and broadcast journalism have been displaced or downgraded as forums for public talk – a consideration that has a different resonance in Donald Trump’s attempts to denigrate and bypass old media during his election campaign and into the first heady days of his presidency. Third is the variable use and perhaps significance of different information and communication technologies and formats. The fourth issue concerns the composition and demeanor of activists in and audiences for the events – who participated and why? Finally there is the actual impact of social media on the conduct of the uprisings and on their outcomes; although that is not central to our discussion here (Axford, 2011; Beaumont, 2011; Megenta, 2011; Howard, 2015). Let’s deal with issues one to four in turn. First, the matter of context and how it inflects what might have appeared as a modal online politics of insurrection and democratization. We should always recognize the variability introduced by different local conditions even though the uprisings in MENA were part of the first wave of democratization to be played out since the full flowering of global digital communication technologies (Megenta,

140  The mediatization of politics 2011). The mediating influence of context is important not only to underline significant differences between the uprisings in, say, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, but to guard against technological determinism. The affordances supplied by communication technologies in general and participatory media in particular impacted differently in countries with diverse histories, constitutions, political cultures and policies towards freedom of expression and in the development and sophistication of technical infrastructure. Secondly, it is wrong to underplay the role of older print and broadcast media in reporting and analyzing the uprisings. Media organizations such as Al Jazeera English provided coverage that was close to the action, visually stimulating and, for many viewers, authoritative; characteristics also present in the fare provided by some strains of online citizen journalism, but often lacking in casual voyeurism on the Web. At the same time gaps in the print and broadcast coverage from conflict zones (due, in part to under-threat regimes banning foreign journalists) were filled by YouTube, photographs taken on cell phones then uploaded to social media platforms and interviews with eyewitnesses on satellite phones. The third issue is the relative salience of different technologies and formats in the uprisings. The defining images of the events were visual, and this was true regardless of the provenance of the images. Some images were of crowds gathering in Tahrir Square in Cairo, or – in a later episode – of Gezi Park in Istanbul; others were of the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. All had a deeply personal and visceral quality. Like the video of Neda Agha-Soltan in Tehran in 2009, YouTube and Flickr postings of these events then brought them to a global audience. This is not a trivial point. As well as the immediacy afforded by publicity through social media, the impact of these vignettes of revolutionary action or state brutalism appealed to, or resonated with wider audiences, in part because they were touched by the human tragedies and stories being played out. At the same time, support for the causes encapsulated in the images may have been intense and widespread, but still fleeting, as the rhythms of the issue-attention cycle unfolded and the contagion of going viral subsided. Many such images were taken by protestors or passers-by using cell phones or the then fashionable Blackberry. Now, smartphones and tablets seem the modus operandi of the street protestor and proto-revolutionary alike. As Peter Beaumont opines, “(t)he barricades today do not bristle with bayonets and rifles, but with phones” (2011). Bouazizi’s family told Al Jazeera that local people protesting in the street had “a rock in one hand and a cell phone in the other”. Perhaps that is the signal message for students of political mobilization. Being implicated just through being there and taking the picture, sending the tweet or receiving either may be an unusual apprenticeship for political action, but very much attuned to the cultural and technological zeitgeist. Tweeting, cited as catalytic in the Moldovan crisis in 2009, achieved almost totemic status in the MENA uprisings. In fact, in Tunisia then, it was less of a mobilizer than Facebook, although in Egypt there is evidence that local activists

The mediatization of politics 141 tweeted lists of telephone numbers to journalists around the world so that they could contact Egyptians directly. In Bahrain, largely ignored by mainstream old media and those core states interested only in the strategic stability of the microstate, Twitter provided one of the few means of interrogating official accounts of repression. More generally across MENA, Twitter users communicated the satellite frequencies of Al Jazeera, which were often disrupted by national governments. Old-fashioned email connection and text messaging were also widely used in this respect. The fourth question addresses the profile and demeanour of the activists themselves. It is always tempting to treat dissident voices as an undifferentiated whole, part of a loosely structured, but extant, digital public sphere, and there is some value in that depiction, not least as a hortatory device. However, we can learn more about the vagaries of online politics and about the dynamics of the uprisings if we identify different motivations for and categories of activist, as well as variations on the theme of audiences, with the latter increasingly vital for understanding the nature of a digitally interconnected world, as we have noted in the previous chapter. Writing about the Arab blogosphere before the events of 2011, Marc Lynch (2007) identified three categories of blogging  – activists, bridgers and public sphere bloggers. Activists are media savvy and use blogs and other online affordances as organizational tools to coordinate political action and circulate information. Bridgers write for Western audiences and mainly in English; they are attuned to the idea of a global audience; while public sphere bloggers are, for the most part, politically non-aligned, but deeply engaged with Arab issues, often of a religious variety. This is a useful typology with which to interrogate online participation in the 2011 uprisings, but rather limited. Its virtue is that it does identify real categories of online users – albeit in a particular online discipline/genre – all of whom were implicated in the MENA uprisings and were moved to communicate during it. It is limited to the extent that it draws too tight a boundary around what constitutes the public sphere and because it is unduly exclusive about the type of medium that contributes to the Arab online public sphere and thus the kind of participant enacting it. In addition to Lynch’s categories we should advert wider and certainly looser, but still attentive, publics who are drawn to the issues – the nature of rule, the quality of citizenship – engaging with them through social networking sites. There are also those who are drawn to the issues almost by chance, because they happen to light on videos or pictures with the biggest number of hits on YouTube or Flickr, or were alerted by postings from friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter. It may be true to say that the attention of such users is fleeting and thus easily diverted, yet, they were clearly exposed – perhaps newly exposed – to political stimuli and thus are part of an extended political universe that countervails the tenets of information censorship and control at the heart of authoritarian regimes (Shirky, 2012). To fully comprehend their wider significance, however, these mobilizations must also be assessed in relationship to more complex webs of shifting and

142  The mediatization of politics sometimes contested identities and their meaning in the quotidian; in other words, in relationship with processes through which “global convergences . . . still take their force from configurations of value, ethics, and religion that are strikingly local and variable” (Appadurai, 2013, 42). What can the example of social movements and networks of activists constituted or enabled online tell us about the relationships between globality and locality? In the case of the MENA uprisings, and in other cases too, action takes place in an environment that is at once local and global. Activists may have resolutely local concerns and their politics is thus context specific. At the same time, they occupy an imagined (and often sought after) global space with respect to the implied audience for the events and the empathy engendered in that audience. And this empathy is not just of the tabloid, human-interest variety. Greater issues of freedom, public expression and political accountability are often explicit in the welter of online traffic during the uprisings and beyond. Even where the processes of transcultural communication and exchange are limited to casual acts of sharing online, reportage of state violence and the other routines of suppression still bear witness to the conduct of and prospects for any progressive politics denied access to the more usual channels of political opposition and processes of elite succession. If not a global movement in all its panoply, this betokens a quite advanced degree of global consciousness. Indeed, it may not be too fanciful to suggest that some individuals who intervened online during the struggles were actually establishing their position within what they perceived as the global imaginary of liberation politics. And the globality so imagined (as well as the glocality actually played out) was always likely to disappoint, if overthrowing a regime is the sole criterion of success. Scarcely institutionalized, it was perhaps over-reliant on exchange and passions mostly generated at a distance (Garcia Canclini, 2014). This looks like the kind of proto-globality visible too in the outbursts of solidarity that were occasioned by the Charlie Hebdo killings and the subsequent terrorist attacks in Paris in January of 2015. As early as January 8, 2015, Twitter France announced that the “Je suis Charlie” hashtag had already generated 3.4 million messages of solidarity – a rate of nearly 6,500 tweets per minute – by the end of the day. In all, in excess of 5 million tweets would be sent using that hashtag (Darling-Wolf, 2016, 3). This suggests less a spontaneous global village – although, it would be wrong to deny that possibility altogether – than a further illustration of the complex imbrications of local and global, in this instance through the flows of the digital mediascape. In the response to the attacks on Hebdo and other attacks in Paris, we see the articulation of particular sentiments and identities quite discernible as local; and at the same time the affordance of a global mediascape that is bespoke (since the impulse was unique to these events) and yet modal (the imagined community made possible only through the medium of social media of global scope). Peradventure, and perhaps ironically, as we will see below, these same dynamics inform the appearance of a more profane political other in the shape of terrorism.

The mediatization of politics 143

Traders and terrorists If there are elements of the dynamic (if not the logic) of connective action seen in the previous interventions, as well as insights into the construction of glocal forms and practices; it is clear that some of them also repay Karin Knorr-Cetina’s definition of global, or proto-global microstructures. To remain true to Knorr-Cetina’s lead in this respect, I will widen the illustrative focus of the discussion a little, going outside the political realm conventionally understood, before coming back to it when discussing terrorism and what Arjun Appadurai calls the angry politics of small numbers that have global and local resonance (2006, 2013). Attempts to demonstrate that communication “carries content” in the sense I described much earlier in this book find valuable corroborative evidence in the sociology of financial markets and the recent academic engagement with financial sociology more generally (Knorr-Cetina and Preda, 2005). This work utilizes largely ethnographic research techniques to examine the sociological character of global information technologies. In 2002, Knorr-Cetina and Nathan Bruegger coined the serviceable concept of global microstructures to canvass the duality of Internet technology systems as “sequentially and culturally specific social actions performed repeatedly at a global distance” (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger, 2002, 921). They were at pains to stress that the cross-national/global fields of transaction so described are at most proto networks – more like horizontal associations or intersubjective associations and “rich” and “textured” communities – not systems of governance and rational structures of bureaucracy. And to repeat a key feature of their ontology, global microstructures are usually institutionally light and, because they are digitally constituted, able to achieve global penetration quickly (immediately in the case of financial transactions) and cheaply. In short they constitute “fields of practice” and should not be mistaken for complex institutional structures; or judged using the criteria that attend evaluation of offline organization (Knorr-Cetina, 2005, 214). The same is true of the online social movements we canvassed above. Financial micro-global structures are obviously elements in the re-spatialization of economic life and they are also based on a process of “temporalization”; that is, the continuous, iterative, 24-hour cycle of time zones that, in this sector at least, has replaced the rationality of modern institutional structures. At the same time financial markets still show “a level of intersubjectivity that derives from the character of these markets as reflexively observed by participants in temporal continuity, synchronicity and immediacy” (Knorr-Cetina, 2005, 217). From my standpoint this is a telling observation, one that underscores the notion of “carrying content”. For traders in financial markets all kinds of quotidian social forms, including conversation, remain important media for global transactions. In other words the routines practiced by market traders go far beyond mere connection and the exchange of information; and the same is doubtless true for members of different kinds of epistemic communities and politically-oriented networks online. The ethnographic practices observed by Knorr-Cetina and her co-authors reveal quite densely textured social systems and an environment reliant for its

144  The mediatization of politics dynamism and success on creating and sustaining intersubjective, reciprocal relationships between actors. In financial markets trust (or its absence) is crucial for the functioning of the market, and this comprises inter-personal as well as institutional reciprocity. Here we have a classic instance of what might be summarily dismissed as technical and post-social interactions actually retaining features of routine and cohering sociality; in part reminiscent of a society of rules, even a jobbing gemeinschaft. Consciousness, even collective consciousness pervades, and local and global, social and technical, human and non-human agency are afforded and mutually constituted.24 Of course what we could be seeing is little more than imitative behaviour that is “thick” only in the instrumental sense that it is necessary to avoid the destruction or decay of the circuits of global finance. Nonetheless, the outcome is much the same. The melding of personal, and often instrumental or strategic, narratives with institutional mission (in the case of financial traders, the imperative to establish and sustain markets) demarcate a global field that, in turn, relies on a form of collective consciousness to subsist (Knorr-Cetina, 2009). When discussing terrorist networks, Knorr-Cetina identifies a quite different kind of emergent globality and global ecology, albeit one(s) no less reliant upon consciousness and on the construction and maintenance of transnational networks of activists and acolytes online. Like networks of financial traders and brokers, contemporary terrorist activity demonstrates pretty much all the features of the virtualization of organization. The latter comprises four main characteristics. First, the development of relationships with a broad range of potential partners, with each having a particular competence or disposition that complements the others. Second, virtual organizing utilizes the mobility and responsiveness of information and communication technologies to overcome problems of distance. Third, timing is a key aspect of relationships, with actors using responsiveness and availability to decide between strategic courses of action. Finally there must be trust between actors separated in space and time. Here too the alleged post-social implications of virtualization and mediatization – a loss of affect and a disengagement from immediate experience – does not seem to apply to agile networks of terrorists who are very dispersed and small in number, and yet display a rude collective solidarity which looks like a variant of collective consciousness and identity. More prosaically, social media sites are used to attract recruits to the cause of ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and also in cadet offshoots of its brand of Islamist terrorism found in Nigeria and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa. This too may be seen as part of a global strategy, albeit one born of circumstance; the ambition to construct a virtual Caliphate, even as its territorial purchase erodes. In Arjun Appadurai’s essay on the geography of anger in a connected world (2006), it is the dislocating and identity threatening aspects of globalization that fuel sources of severe unrest – principally terrorism and ethnic strife within countries and across borders. These forces challenge not only the modernist goals of national and societal integration, but also any notion of secular globalization. At the same time a lubricant for anger, notably for terrorists and their sympathizers,

The mediatization of politics 145 is afforded by new information technologies, which speed up, circulate and recontextualize mainly local, and sometimes personal, grievances into global scripts or manifestos. In a further paradox, the globality exemplified by networks of terrorists, along with their acolytes and sympathizers, is the same cellular variety found in global capitalism; with both in tension with the “vertebrate” structures and defined borders characteristic of a world of states. The global condition identified by Appadurai (2013) is also full of anxieties and uncertainties. In the imagined globality of terrorist networks, activists and apologists envision and experience the global through their engagement with flows of cultural product, images and information that are increasingly disconnected from their place of origin. Mediascapes channel the narratives through which such imagined worlds are constructed. These imagined worlds are “chimerical, aesthetic and fantastic objects”; characteristics likely to be intensified when the stakes are seen to involve existential threat to localities, beliefs and collective world-views (Appadurai, 1996, 77). More prosaically, global terrorism is abetted by the sheer ubiquity of communication technologies, including the so-called “deep” and “dark” Webs that enable routine ease of communication and exchange anonymously.25 Overall, the example of terrorism depicts a connected, though pathological, globality of anxiety and threat, along with implied violence. But it is not the only global imaginary.

A networked world as a trope for global civil society (GCS) Starting from a quite different perspective, though still adverting an alternative model of globality to the neoliberal version or the society of states, is the elusive case of global civil society, a much bruited, but often ill-defined construct. Global civil society is a description of and a prescription for a fluid world, a world in process (Axford, 2013a). As John Keane opines, it is a complex world of global connectivity, comprising many connective forms, from face-to-face links to virtual engagements (2003). Let me examine the idea by reference to a powerful form of doctrinal skepticism about the possibility of GCS addressed to the presumed democratizing and socializing logic of digital connection and its contribution to the creation of a society lookalike across borders. In an acerbic commentary on the prospects for political community beyond the nation-state, David Chandler takes both liberal cosmopolitans and post-structuralist critics of same to task for having developed political projects, but very little in the way of hard data or convincing theory with which to back up their claims (2007, 2009). When discussing globalization, and especially when demarcating or prescribing a global civil society, this is not an unusual complaint. A good deal of commentary on these themes ignores the boundary between normative and empirical-analytical positions with a little too much ease for scholarly comfort. Moreover, it is clear that what constitutes sound evidence for a vibrant – or any – global civil society and concomitant public sphere is contested, leaving aside any definitional imprecision that attaches to the concepts. Such imprecision attends any discussion of the extent to which global civil society, or a trope for it, is being fashioned out of social intercourse on the Web.

146  The mediatization of politics Chandler has a strong agenda in this regard. In particular he wishes to promote a quite strict definition of what constitutes or might constitute evidence for global society through specific and demanding attention to the factors that underpin political community. He argues that both liberal- cosmopolitan and a variety of post-structuralist positions on world society and political community constitute a “degradation of the modern liberal conception of the rights-bearing subject: (because) once the connection between citizenship and political community is broken then political community lacks any clear conceptual grounding” (2009, 17). Regardless of this presumption, cosmopolitans still cleave to a universalist discourse, using a social constructivist framework that, in turn, privileges the “power of ideas” and the modality of global information networks to substantiate their claims. By contrast, in post-structuralist arguments, cosmopolitanism is seen as just another version of repressive bio-power masquerading under the banner of a progressive politics that claims to emancipate the universal subject. In a faint echo of Castells, Chandler is prepared to accept that emancipatory potential exists, but must be harnessed to a politics “from below” – perhaps via networks of outrage and hope – to escape the danger of co-optation and subordination by various statist and some non-statist regulatory mechanisms and interests. But as we shall see, there is a paradoxical sting in the tail of this qualification. For Chandler, both sets of argument rely less on evidence than on their own normative assumptions and aspirations. In this, his account syncs with much skeptical thinking about globalization; namely that its existence is empirically suspect and its claims to universality and emancipation bankrupt. For the conundrum is that a global civil society is conceivable only by discarding core principles and degrading the very contexts that nurture authentic political community. In his schema, political community cannot be instantiated, let alone sustained, without the rights and duties of citizenship, and these are entirely reliant upon the specific political and legal framework of rights found in liberal territorial states and societies. And there lies the rub; for it is precisely the abrogation of that philosophical and geo-political context – that global cultural script – which is necessary “to enable the move to post-territorial constructions of political community” (2009, 24). For students of globalization, and certainly for supporters of the existence of global civil society, such a move is crucial, but – he maintains – impossible. So are they confounded by Chandler’s argument? The logic, of course, is impeccable. If citizenship and the basis for the rights of the universal subject can be secured only in specific institutional and normative contexts and if both these are the necessary underpinnings for political community, then there can be no such thing as post-territorial world society or any meaningful trope for it. However, the imaginary suppositions of democracy and community Chandler uses are tied ineluctably to the liberal territorialist model of the organization of political space, to liberal discourses about the boundaries of political community, and thus to Michael Shapiro’s previously reported “neoTocquevillian” assumptions about the natural spaces of civic association and communication.26 Understandable from the standpoint of particular strands of

The mediatization of politics 147 normative political theory, this is also a besetting weakness in attempts to construe how global constitution is possible and may actually occur. There are other objections to his account that have relevance for the role of digital media in constituting globalities. These objections turn on the very idea of community itself and, as we have already ventured, have especial weight when discussing, for example, transnational – or any – political activism via the Internet. In this regard the discussion is burdened with received notions of the distinction between notionally “thick” (authentic) and presumptively “thin” (inauthentic, or brittle) conceptualizations. By thick conceptualization I mean the jumble of meanings and interactions that tie people to particular places and to the past. Thick identities constitute a group of people, closing the gaps between them. By implication, “thin” implies more apparent instrumentality in relationships and an emphasis on procedures that open up spaces for and between individuals, thereby respecting their autonomy. In much normative political theory thick cultures are seen as the natural basis for a cohesive, though possibly exclusive, form of community, whereas thin constructs owe more to the observance of a common set of rules or protocols that override or disguise elemental attachments. Although liberal theory is by definition thin, some brands of “new” cosmopolitanism suggest or prescribe much thicker attachments. But the extension of social relationships across borders is deemed likely to produce only thin networks of communication and association, although some exceptions may be allowed in the case of diasporas and cults, and, as I have also noted, perhaps in terrorist networks and certain epistemic communities. But, are there more than a priori reasons to assume that intimacy, trust and reciprocity are absent from these and many other networks, not least when they are facilitated by, perhaps even constituted as, virtual and perhaps enduring connections? Chandler, like Sidney Tarrow, is largely dismissive of communicative dialogue when that is taken as the medium through which the reproduction of global civil society is instantiated, and the “space for morally guided, non-instrumental dialogue outside the sphere of government and formally institutionalized political processes” secured (Chandler, 2009, 26).27 Much of what I have argued in earlier parts of this chapter is a qualification and sometimes a rejection of this line of thinking. That said, does the idea of global civil society muster as even a simulacrum of an ideal typical civil society? Not, I think, if we assess either of those modes as extant in received wisdom. What we can say first of all is that the global affordances described by Barry Wellman and Helen Margetts have facilitated new and sometimes unlooked for kinds of politics. This novelty embraces – but is not limited by – the mobilization and then the visibility of previously unconnected and unheard constituencies of subalterns, whether in Moldova, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt or Libya and Turkey, as well as in the bastions of liberal democracy. In all these cases, quotidian connectivity serves at least to focus and crystallize anger and dissent. And sometimes it produces quite brutish strains of politics. Across the board connectivity raises awareness of shared problems and mobilizes common impulses.

148  The mediatization of politics Second, connectivity, especially via the Internet, plays a role in capturing and then mobilizing attentive publics. Such publics are likely to be issue based and thus subject to the vicissitudes of the issue-attention cycle. But while so engaged these new forums for public talk are contributing to novel forms of public-ness. The deliberative, as opposed to the purely informational or hortatory qualities of such forums remains open to question, but much of the opposition towards or anxiety about such developments is articulated by the legislators, interlocutors, peerreviewers and gatekeepers of good taste and received wisdom, when confronted with the uncontrollable, the populist and, as Tom Wolfe once said, the downright low rent (1970; Axford and Huggins, 1997). The latter designation, given a patina of respectability in the US elections of 2016 by the label of Jacksonianism, obviously still leaves many people uneasy. In a discussion of the public sphere as the communicative field of civil society, Manuel Castells opines that “(t)he process of globalization has shifted the debate from the national domain to the global debate, prompting the emergence of a global civil society and forms of global governance. Accordingly, the public sphere as the space of debate on public affairs has also shifted from the national to the global and is increasingly constructed around global communication networks” (2008, 78). In this respect, as we have noted, Castells is a transformationalist, albeit one whose approbation for an inter-connected world is tempered by some downhome realism on the dangers of fast communication technologies and formats. Yet he talks with approbation about, and even prescribes, those developments in information and communication technologies that are contributing to a new form of “public diplomacy”, of which he says: “The implicit project behind the idea of public diplomacy is not to assert the power of a state or of a social actor in the form of ‘soft power’. Instead it is to harness the dialogue between different social collectives and their cultures in the hope of sharing meaning and promoting understanding. So, the normative goal of the practice of public diplomacy is not to convince but to communicate, not to be declaratory but to listen. Public diplomacy seeks to build a public sphere in which diverse voices can be heard in spite of their various origins, distinct values, and often contradictory interests. The goal of public diplomacy, in contrast to government diplomacy, is not to assert power or to negotiate a rearrangement of power relationships. It is to induce a communication space in which a new, common language could emerge as a precondition for diplomacy, so that when the time for diplomacy comes, it reflects not only interests and power making but also meaning and sharing” (2008, 91). One might argue that Castells elevates the communicative ideal of public diplomacy too much above its station and beyond the range of realistic expectation. Critics point to the banal exchanges and “non-truths” that often traffic in social media as providing scant evidence for what he prescribes. But, rough edges or not, if this does not muster as a form of citizenship practice, then we may need to re-examine our definitions of citizenship, civil society and political community. And to do that we need to treat the communicative forms and processes that are both ordering everyday lives and momentous events with more analytical rigour

The mediatization of politics 149 and with greater imagination. Overall, the idea of GCS challenges received wisdom about the nature and firmness of boundaries around political community and, wider still, sociality. In normatively loaded arguments that are sometimes light on empirical evidence, the meat of liberal or “new” cosmopolitanism invests cognitive awareness and connectivity with the capacity for thicker and longer-term affinities (Archibugi, 2008; Beck, 2006, 2007).

The EU as a public sphere or putative digital cosmopolis The theme of the public, and thus of publicness, is apparent in any discussion of global civil society and the democratizing and transnationalizing dynamics of Internet politics (Splichal ed, 2002). I want to extend that discussion to include reflection on the systemic and spatial consequences of being connected with reference to a global region, the European Union (EU). Usefully these strands come together in consideration of the role played by new media in building a European (primarily an EU) public sphere (Gil De Zuniga, 2015; Axford, 2009, 2007; Fishkin et al, 2013; Schlesinger, 2003). Even if we can dispense with epistemological blinkers around how we imagine democracy, society and community, there is still no easy transference of the liberalterritorial paradigm to non-territorial spaces such as the European Union (EU). But to undo reliance on these assumptions about the requirements of an ideal democracy we have to relax the concept of a unified demos and a unified public sphere and focus instead on the construction of variably attentive publics, seen in a growing volume and diversity of public talk on new media at different or multiple scales and spaces. The focus here is the structuration of public talk, and on the multiple communication spaces in which Europe/EU may be discursively created or modeled (Axford and Huggins, 2007; Splichal ed, 2002; Lunt and Livingstone, 2013). But let’s say a word first of all about the more exacting idea of the public sphere and its importance to students of communication and democracy. Conceptual vagueness has always sullied definitions of the public sphere, sometimes leaving it as little more than a hortatory device or a gestalt in which robust dialogical and deliberative communication practices are presumed to inform and elevate usual politics through expressions of public opinion (Habermas, 1975, 1989; Axford, 2001). The ideal public sphere is the space of communication where shared meanings are slated to emerge from an interactive and deliberative demos and citizens muster as both social analysts and critics, routinely enacting a kind of institutional reflexivity (Sassi, 2001; Volkmer, 2014). On the face of it the EU has never met, and perhaps cannot hope to achieve, the conditions and the temper necessary for the institutionalization of a public sphere conceived in anything like this way. If true, this looks like bad news for students of democracy seeking evidence of popular engagement and legitimacy to undergird EU governance, and for those hoping to discern traces of Europeanization in common media address and discourse. Because of these doubts, revisionist treatments of the pristine ideal have painted a less resolute and more pluralistic universe of communication.

150  The mediatization of politics Jurgen Habermas himself (2001, 2006) admits that in polyarchic societies there are more likely to be multiple publics and thus multiple public spheres, than a single unified construct. Moreover, the universality prescribed in the public sphere ideal must suffer from the lack of “linguistic capital” available to marginalized groups. And even where it actually obtains, in Habermas’ terms, deliberation may well promote communicative rationality but, tellingly, not the purposive variety; with the latter still subject to systematic, though sometimes contingent, mobilizations of bias. Finally, publics cannot be understood as just locations where politics is discussed, but as networks of individuals and groups that practice citizenship. So conceived, these networks need not be conceptually and spatially limited by reifying the public sphere as a cohesive and unitary space, which is no more than analogous to the equally ideal national and territorial strain (Splichal, 2012). As Philip Schlesinger notes, “(s)uch a neatly demarcationist theory of social communication and public space is no longer tenable” (2003, 10). Instead, publics can emerge anywhere because they are multiple, relational (networked) and interstitial (Cohen and Arato, 1992). On the face of it, these qualifications allow for a more permissive definition of what constitutes, or might constitute, a transnational public sphere or communications space, or a proto-global assemblage. In practice, discussions about the EU as an imagined communicative space have taken full note of Erik Eriksen’s stricture that the lack of a collective identity renders the prospect for a viable European public sphere rather bleak. There is no agreement on common interests; different languages and disparate national cultures make opinion formation and common action unlikely. The intermediate structures of civil society are lacking as well as a “common language . . . (a) common public debate – which enables citizens to take a stand on the same issues, at the same time and under the same premises – is, thus, not achievable” (2005, 343). Yet two counter imperatives continue to bolster the search for just such a space or set of spaces; some would say forlornly. The first holds that there is a pressing, and largely unresolved, need for a European public sphere to match the (still) growing institutional competence of the EU and thus to address its democratic deficit. The second emphasizes the need to “Europeanize” discourses and thus instantiate “the idea of a transnational public sphere” as a trope for a transnational demos (Fraser, 1993, 2; Sicakkan, 2012). In 2017, taking these normative goals seriously is challenging, not least because the EU is beset by what many describe as an existential crisis. After 2008, global financial troubles extended to the travails of the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis, a state of affairs then exacerbated by conflicts over enforced and voluntary migration. Distilled in the politics of Brexit and its possible extension to other EU countries, a near perfect storm has arisen for what was once bruited as an incremental but secular exercise in polity building beyond the territorial state. So, one might be forgiven for rehearsing a quite different set of portents – all alien to the integrative or Europeanizing ideal.28 But insofar as it bears on the prospects for and instantiation of a/the European public sphere(s), the evidence for qualified optimism is varied and occasionally robust.

The mediatization of politics 151 In a timely collection published in 2014, Thomas Risse and his co-authors argue – perhaps counter-intuitively – that the Euro crisis has led to an unprecedented Europeanization and politicization of public spheres across the continent. They make two claims. First, that transnational cross-border communication in Europe has been encouraged through the gradual Europeanization of national as well as issue-specific public spheres. Second, the politicization of European affairs – at the European Union (EU) level and in the domestic politics of member states  – is firmly embedded and irreversible. Europeanized public spheres, whether through elite media, mass media or social media on the Internet, provide the arenas in which the politicization of European and EU issues takes place (Risse, 2014, see also Risse, 2010). Without even invoking Habermas’ aphorism about the solidarity of strangers (2006), these are still quite strong claims, although much of the work done for the studies pre-dates the apparent surge of populism, nationalism and anti-EU sentiment evident by 2017. Writing about national media as arenas for transnational discourse, Cathleen Kantner (2015) argues that we can observe transnational political communication – public talk – to the extent that in different countries the same transnational issues are addressed, at the same time and using similar interpretative frames, though not necessarily with the same opinions. But these are quite permissive criteria for transnational publicness, allowing a good deal of room for, and accommodation of, agonistic positions that still retain peculiarly national flavor, but within a generic frame – the legitimacy of the European project. Such a gloss is only possible because it subscribes to a processoriented definition of a transnational public sphere. So that even when the temper of debate seems to fracture the solidarity of strangers implied in the ideal-typical public sphere, the process model remains intact as testimony to the power of a pluralistic and rules-driven polity that is still deemed legitimate and thus viable. While this may appear as a logical absurdity, or a limiting case, the tension between the apparent isomorphism of process and possible divergent outcomes (in terms, for example, of hostility to, or support for, free movement of people into and across the EU) points to other attributes – perhaps functional requisites – that are necessary for social integration and system survival. So that if a general sense of system legitimacy is high, but political discourses are conflicted, there may be dislocation but no real systemic threat. Where the opposite is the case, the prospects for a legitimation crisis are much greater. The same theme informs what Barbara Pfetsch and Annett Heft call the “conditional Europeanization” of various debates through national media platforms (digital and non-digital) and suggests a communication landscape which is variable to the extent that it is confined to or transcends national political and communication space (Pfetsch and Heft, 2015; Koopmans and Statham, 2010), and that is more or less agonistic by way of content and style. But there is a rather different and somewhat more cautious take on much the same themes using data from elections to the EU parliament in 2014. This focuses on the part played by social media – principally Twitter – in the communication

152  The mediatization of politics strategies of political campaigns (Nulty et al., 2016; Chadwick, 2013; Theocharis et al., 2015).29 In the past, elections to the European Parliament were dominated by national politics and platforms, with EU politics and policies playing a more limited, not to say marginal role, not least in terms of the amount of media coverage. Of late, the greater salience of the EU as a topic of contestation in domestic politics has contributed to its growing visibility and to a more pronounced temper of agonism over the shape and direction of the integrative project and the Union’s ills following the contagion of the global economic crisis and the populist surge. Nulty et al posit that the 2014 elections to the European Parliament see the emergence of something resembling a common public sphere across the EU on European issues. This shift replaced a weaker, but still extant, version of publicness better understood as a “parallelization” of public spheres, with similar issues being debated in national forums in the same time frame. But the latter still do not sum to an EU-wide debate. Their hypothesis is that the spread of social media carries the potential to change this state of affairs because the communication patterns of social media are immanently transnational and European, sharing content across countries, rather than taking place on topics fully contained within national media and local political environments.30 Findings from the study both confirm and partly confound or modify the hypothesis. On the matter of national versus European dialogue, Twitter conversations across and within countries lend some support to the claim that a European dimension does figure as a topic of contestation. EU-related hasthtags appear among the ten most popular hashtags in all the countries canvassed, though EUwide election hashtags generally rank lower than nationally specific hashtags about the same election. Thus the EU-wide hashtags ♯eu, ♯telleurope and ♯ep are popular “connectors” of the debates between countries, but they do not head the list of within country tags. Cautiously, the study observes that “parallelization” still obtains, vitiating the scale and depth of a unified transnational public sphere online (see also Kreisi and Grande, 2014). Interestingly, analysis of the content of communications suggests a more subtle effect. Speaking of the emotional tone of the content, the authors conclude that “political communication through social media reflects a discourse about European issues and politicizing debate over the future and shape of EU institutions and policies, rather than providing an extension of political competition over traditionally national issues” (Kresi and Grande 2014, 36). This is properly cautious social science and some way short of being definitive. All of which is some way from early debates on and hopes for a European public sphere, which turned on the creation of a pan-European media infrastructure in print, broadcast and hybrid forms that could address and energize transnational audiences. Early optimism has been toned down; perhaps lost altogether. Such transnational media as exist (or were once extant) are products of older media genres, albeit sometimes in remediated form. There have been a tranche of newspaper and broadcast attempts to establish pan-European media, including multi-lingual channels such as Euronews and Arte and august print vehicles such the Financial Times, the Economist and the (less revered) European Daily. For

The mediatization of politics 153 the most part these are reliant on an Anglophone and specialist audience. Any mediation taking place seems to enjoin only elites – the transnational press, EU institutions and transnational elite publics (Koopmans and Statham, 2010) – in a recognizable public space. The advent of the Internet always promised to be more popular and inclusive in its mediation, offering a medium that would promote transnational communication and, as Pfetch and Heft say “also include a range of actors independent of their material resources and national background” (2015, 44). But even here one has to tread with caution. Koopman and Zimmerman’s investigation of search engines and hyperlinks is skeptical of any such promise (2010). On the one hand, in their study, the coverage and thus the visibility of various transnational actors and issues was higher in online sites than in traditional newspapers. On the other hand, the opinions of actors from other countries were given less coverage on the Internet than in the national press. The authors conclude that there is strong evidence of a segmented European public sphere, which accords with the idea of multiple publics within countries as well as between them, but suggests, paradoxically, it is national print and broadcast media that actually convey European issues to general national audiences. Again, the idea of Europeanized audiences is not a statement about any subsequent convergence of affect, but about the simultaneity of diffused information and resulting awareness; sometimes tinged with animus.

Conclusion In this chapter I have focused on how the Internet and social media in particular are impacting on the spaces and conduct of politics, where that encompasses the correlates of political mobilization and more abstract notions like the public sphere. We have ranged over the ways in which tiny acts of participation scale to a more unpredictable politics, considered the vagaries of online activism seen during the Arab Spring and ended with some modest conclusions about the desideratum and presumed morphology of a European public sphere. In this journey, caution has been the watchword. On the question of what effects digital technology has on political mobilization and on the demeanour of both usual politics and the more exotic reaches of activism, we have been duly careful, while pointing to the transformative potential that resides in such framing. As Bennett and Segerberg conclude, it is not necessary to resort to claims about the ineluctable logic of connective action to entertain the possibility that “the rise of personalized forms of political participation is perhaps the defining change in the political culture of our era” (Bennett and Segerberg, 2012, 37). As these link to global scripts, so the mutual constitution of actors and cultural structures is enacted. For the most part this is not a claim for the world-changing power of these modalities in terms of achieved outcomes; rather, we may be able to discern something more profound, though occasionally more banal, than simply making one’s intervention count; or being able to mobilize effective resources to carve out a piece of the action. Such changes point to the loosening of the bonds of place and the shading of borders around identity, community and polity.

154  The mediatization of politics To be sure, too many contingent factors, as well as some that are less mutable, tend to intervene between mobilization, coalescence and then augmentation of tiny acts across the Web, to support any simple theory of a connective logic that always captures the castle. As John Postill sagely observes of the Bennett and Segerberg thesis, in this regard, one has to be very careful not to veer “too close to morphological determinism by presuming that the network form begets contentious action type”; and, more to the point, that any such action sweeps all before it (Postill, 2015, 24 June). So any turbulence in the politics thus afforded is due largely to its untutored quality, and sometimes to its contingent features as these affect the plasticity of opinion formation, and when social media are both the medium of expression and part of its ontology. In the case of online and transnational public talk, the empirical work referenced above supports arguments that favour a modal transnationalization of anger and ambition seen most clearly in the Arab Spring uprisings, through Occupy and many other instances of combined virtual and phenomenal mobilization. Almost always this politics has a glocal feel, despite the generality and the universality of the claims being made and regardless of the cause being fought. Even the emergence of a possible European public sphere may be less well understood through rehearsing the usual antinomies of national and European than in tracing a messier ecology found in the mediation of rooted subjects with more encompassing regional and global institutions and scripts. The latter comprise older media and the plethora of Internet platforms exemplified throughout this book. In a review of state-of-the-art research on the Internet and politics published in 2012, Henry Farrell delivers what may read like an audacious claim. He argues that over the next decade, the relationship between the Internet and politics will become increasingly important for the discipline of political science. Paradoxically, he opines, it is likely that there will be ever fewer scholars specializing in this field. However, this will not be because political scientists lose interest in the Internet and related technologies. Rather, it will reflect the fact that these technologies have become so integrated into political life that it will be impossible to study, e.g., the politics of fundraising, election advertising, political action, public diplomacy or social movements without understanding that assimilation. Internationally, and in relation to the global condition, the Internet is no less pertinent (Newman, 2010). In the next chapter I turn to the relationships between personal and global as evidenced in the ubiquity of Internet technology/the imbrications of Internet technologies with everyday lives, and how this too informs our understanding of global constitution.

Notes 1 And, of course, the mediatization of politics can refer to many things. Here I am less concerned with, for example, the ways in which new and old media invest celebrity politics, or influence voters, than with the personalization of activism and the space of, or boundaries around, political discourses. 2 Castells’ thesis in this respect, to which I shall return, has been the subject of a great deal of approbation and criticism. Christian Fuchs, among many others, offers a painstaking critique of Castells’ vision for progressive politics via the Internet, one that

The mediatization of politics 155 deplores his techno-euphoria and techno-determinism, his willingness to build a theoretical edifice on the basis of patchy data and his suspect normative stance on the theme that new social movements are – can only be – reformist within the systemic parameters of global capitalism (2012) 3 The main platforms here are Google and Facebook; now, of course, truly global media and hardly platforms at all. 4 This phenomenon is not confined to predicting and catering for consumer preferences. The scope for and alleged impact of “fake news” was much bruited during the US presidential campaigns in 2016. Did fake news on social media play a part in Donald Trump’s victory? Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook argued not, but still promised that the platform would do more to tackle it. Similar discussion attended the aftermath of the unexpected Brexit vote in the UK on June 23, 2016. 5 But are search engines such as Google to be taken as authoritative sources? Google attempts to juggle its commercial duty to generate advertising income and satisfy shareholders and its implied “duty of care” where the accuracy and moral propriety of its search function are concerned by arguing that any search activity is just a reflection of the content that exists on the Web. The fact that, for example, hate sites appear in search results is not something it can avoid, and it is not actually endorsing any of the content so revealed. But the notion of “algorithmic accountability” coined by Frank Pasquale argues that a search result is not just a list of sources, but in many cases an attempt to answer a specific question. Google’s denial of responsibility where content is concerned is shirking that responsibility (Pasquale, 2015; Shirky, 2012). 6 Interpretative caution is always good advice. Writing in a blog on the US elections of 2016, Helen Margetts qualifies the thesis that social media exchanges construct a closed world, or an echo chamber. She claims instead that people are exposed to crosscutting discourse on social media across ever larger and more heterogenous social networks. See OII Policy and Internet Blog for November 15, 2016. 7 Of course, taking part is not the same thing as winning. Greater ease of access to the political contest and more visibility may not be a telling resource when weighed against the clout of any wider and deeper cultural mobilization of bias that debilitates outsiders. Then again, other resources – money, expertise and weapons, or a sense of political competence and efficacy – may be more suited to the task of winning in particular issue-areas. 8 The trouble – the inevitable trouble – with trying to pin down the etiquette and appropriate moral code through which to conduct Web exchanges is that people tend to applaud, or at any rate, tolerate what they like and admonish what they don’t like. Which tendency itself fuels the desire, or the convenience, of participating only in those social media sites and networks that play to one’s prejudices. For example, on Gab, an alt-right social media platform, the promise of free speech regardless of offence taken has commuted into a “safe” space for supporters of the far right to conduct “free” speech no matter how offensive. 9 Katherine Hayles wrote one of the most influential early works to examine the likely impact of computers and artificial intelligence on embodied sociality. Information is becoming disembodied as the “bodies” that once carried it melt into virtuality. I deal with the prospects of a posthuman globality in chapter seven. 10 By the beginning of 2017 it had become clear that summoning up the mantra of “fake news” was de-rigueur for pretty much any brand of politician wishing to disparage claims made by a rival or by any or all of the “mainstream media”. The Trump White House was ever active in this regard, but, for example, the UK Labour party MP Emily Thornbury was also quick to blame “fake news” as a telling factor in her party’s loss of a long-term safe parliamentary seat at Copeland in the English Lake District on February 23, 2017. 11 Interestingly, 2016 has also been dubbed a year of revolutions, largely due to the seeming success of, or else the moral panic engendered by, Brexit, the Trump election and some electoral gains for the far-right/alt-right, mainly in Europe. Interesting too,

156  The mediatization of politics because of the weight accorded to social media in spreading the appeal of “populist” messages and candidates. 12 Castells’ traverse over conventional micro, meso and macro levels of analysis is refreshing, and whatever its flaws allows us to think seriously about political space as highly connected. His argument rejects any sense of ontological closure and boundedness just because of the topologies of network connection. His position, however, does have networks as uncoupled from various social, material, physical and even biological contexts/environments. Writers such as Messner, (1997) and Van Dijk, (1999), (and see Sassen, 2006), are much more exercised by the threat of technological determinism and see social action as not subsumed by the complexity of network morphology. 13 Much of the evidence for these claims lies in the use made of so-called “liberation technologies” in the various instances of popular mobilization against oppressive regimes in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey (Axford, 2011), as well as in relation to the “networks of outrage and hope” that figured in the Occupy protests in some major western cities – global cities (Castells, 2012). 14 In the manner of a lot of criticism of this kind of mobilization, such identities and allegiances would be termed ersatz. 15 Other noteworthy contributions to this genre include Bruce Bimber’s Information and American Democracy (2003), and Andrew Chadwick’s more nuanced take on what he calls “hybrid politics” (2012). We have already canvassed Bennett and Segerberg’s detailed empirical contribution (2012). 16 Wikipedia notes that “Avaaz global campaigns are managed by a team of campaigners working from over 30 countries, including the UK, India, Lebanon and Brazil. They communicate with members via email, and employ campaigning tactics including online public petitions, videos, and email-your-leader tools. In some cases Avaaz also uses advertisements and commissions legal advice to clarify how best to take a campaign forward”, and stages “sit-ins, rallies, phone-ins and media friendly stunts”. Examples of stunts include taking a herd of cardboard pigs to the doors of the World Health Organisation to demand an investigation into the link between swine flu and giant pig farms and creating a three-mile human chain handshake from the Dalai Lama to the doors of the Chinese Embassy in London to request dialogue between the parties. 17 On June 3, 2013, Der Spiegel said that said that protests were “drawing more than students and intellectuals. Families with children, women in headscarves, men in suits, hipsters in sneakers, pharmacists, tea-house proprietors – all are taking to the streets to register their displeasure”. 18 Obviously the Wikileaks phenomenon and the revelations of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are the most publicized recent examples. Apart from the important matter of the nature of leaked content and the effects of leaking, what is interesting about both is the breadth of support for them across the anti-war left and the libertarian right, as well as among the liberal establishment. See also affiliated groups such as Lulzec and Antizec. 19 A botnet (also known as a zombie army) is a number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the Internet. 20 Wikipedia describes Anonymous as a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as “an Internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives”. The group became known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious and corporate websites. 21 It is important to note that the mediatization of politics is not confined to agonistic strains, but invests many aspects of routine government–citizen relationships, including the widespread phenomenon of e-government. 22 As Margetts says, “(i)t is not uncontroversial to describe these new micro-donations of time and effort as political participation. Many commentators think that participation

The mediatization of politics 157 primarily happens face-to-face or in closely allied activities, and that online activities are inevitably less important and peripheral. A ‘politics as pain’ principle pervades much of mainstream political culture, which informs the view that contributing to politics should involve hard work and some kind of rite of passage” (2016). See the arguments of Malcolm Gladwell (2010) and Evegeny Morozov (2013) on this notion of Internet activism as politics-lite. 23 In his critically acclaimed rallying call to black American protest first released in 1970, he mused that “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Scott-Heron was not so much exercised by the enervating effects of television on critical political consciousness as by the political costs that, he felt, must ensue when citizens abjure activism for the relative passivity of the audience. The message is clear; either people watch the action or they are part of it. 24 Žižek’s 1998 intervention on the affordances and perils of cyberspace argued that they produced loss of trust and a failure of social responsibility. See Telepolis, October 7, 1998. 25 The deep web is really the invisible side of the Internet. It cannot be accessed by regular means through standard web browsers and search engines. The dark web is that segment of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is for users for whom anonymity is essential. 26 Where does this leave the concepts of “citizenship” and “society” when given a global referent? On these terms there is no such thing as a global citizen or a global (civil) society. Should we change the terms of reference? 27 I want to return to what are, in effect, criticisms of Chandler’s thesis towards the end of this chapter. There the address will be to what is meant by “mediatization” when discussed in global contexts and under global conditions. 28 The idea of Europeanization has always proved elusive, or multi-faceted, depending on where you stand. Notionally “weak” forms of Europeanization have been identified in the “meta-cultural” spaces of shopping practices, Europe-wide sport and in travel (Roche, 2001); even in the composition of “hybridized” or cosmopolitan professional football teams. Stronger – or just more conventional – variants include the European Parliament as a deliberative forum. The systemic features of “old” media are less obviously suited to the demands of transnational polity building, and linguistic difference still serves to separate cultures and their representation through media. We shall discuss how or whether the attributes of new digital media are more conducive in this respect. 29 This study provides a systematic exploration of the social media space in Europe-wide politics, by examining election-related content on Twitter, the micro-blogging platform with more than 316 million active users worldwide. 30 The data used in this paper was collected as part of the European Elections Study 2014, Social Media Study. Using a platform with direct access to the Twitter firehose, the study collected all the social media communication centred around the candidates. In the specific case of Twitter, this implied every tweet, re-tweet and response of a candidate as well as all the responses to these tweets. They also collected all the tweets that mentioned the candidates in any form. The data collection procedure lasted for four weeks from May 3, 2014 until June 1, 2014, covering the last three weeks of the electoral campaign and the week following the elections. This produced a database consisting of approximately 3.8 million tweets that may accurately represent the total extent of election-related political communication through Twitter during 2014 EP elections campaign.

7 The mediatization of everything as emergent globality

Introduction Much of what I have said to date distills to this. In the imagined internet-framed, post-human digital landscape conjured by some commentators, and which we partially inhabit already, there is still room for agency in the constitution of social worlds. The nature and quality of such agency may be endlessly disputed and we should entertain the possibility of the non-human variety, but the practices I have described seldom look like a forlorn rage against the dying of the light in the much-touted battle between humans and machines. In the two preceding chapters we exemplified the relationships between human agents and the seemingly indifferent globalities of machines and digital software through reference to quite divers realms of experience and practice. To be sure, the mediatization of everything is a rather broad canvas. In this final chapter I want to further illustrate the gamut of relationships with address to the constitution of emergent globalities as these are manifest in everyday worlds. I begin with the world of Big Data (along with the Internet of Things), which displays its own qualities of mediatization and contains the seeds of a post-human globality that may be regressive, liberating or both. On the ground, in the quotidian, many of the issues are familiar. For example, take the deployment of emerging ICT technologies for health and welfare provision, especially those based on cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Computational Intelligence. These applications are helping to solve many practical problems in different policy areas and contribute to well-being.1 At the same time the routine use of such technologies raises important issues of privacy and security when personal data is processed in the cloud. Because the “cloud”, which in popular imagination and advertisers’ dreams is the acme of information being everywhere and nowhere is, in fact, always somewhere; chiefly in the vast server farms built by companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook in the high deserts of the western United States. Philosophically, Big Data and the prospects for a post-human globality also raise important questions about the ways in which “knowledge about the world is produced and about the ways in which it can be governed” (Chandler, 2015a, 2). Secondly, and slightly more distanced from the everyday, I want to examine the information based network society as this is manifest in EU policy and

The mediatization of everything 159 programmes for the information society. This focus allows me to adopt a new, or hybrid, approach to Europe-making, as well as demonstrating a form of digital governmentality and technical culture. A quite technical discussion bleeds into consideration of the everyday where it touches on the affordances of the information society for citizens and consumers. Finally I will pay attention to the elementally human realm of personal relationships involving intimacy, security, trust and community as these are affected by the seepage of information and communication technologies into personal and group relationships to enact what might look like a mediatization of everything (Livingstone, 2009).2 In all these examples, the aim will be to show how the personal and the global are imbricated through the mediatization of everyday life, and apparent in personal relationships and mundane practices which valorize, or else just inscribe, ceaseless communication or routine data exchange. Scary as this sounds, for some critics it is far too anodyne a description of the human consequences of communicative connection. As Marion Adolf muses, discussing the social impacts of Big Data is to entertain the “involuntary mediatization of everyday life” (2014, 26). This is an ambiguous image at best, though we also have to recognize that for many users, the prospect of de-connection stands as an even more worrying loss and occasion for grieving. Of a certainty, when we address Big Data we are drawn willy-nilly to the post-human future it might presage. Such a prospect also highlights the hitherto anthropocentric nature of much social knowledge generation. More often than not we assume – as I have done – that human agency is present and reflexivity practised, while continually questioning its efficacy relative to other constraints. But as Arthur Kroker says (2014, 7), the “current technology-centred discussion about the potential transformation of humans into something else”, as exemplified by the role of Big Data in fashioning a post-humanist ontology, is no longer entirely fanciful. What constitutes the everyday is also difficult to pin down because the idea is ubiquitous (Kramp et al., 2014; Livingstone, 2009; Mazzolini, 2017).3 In the material we examined in chapters five and six, there is a strong quotidian, and often personalized, component. People watch and play sport routinely, increasingly through bespoke online access. Many also think about politics and engage in political activity, using much the same digital tools as enliven their leisure activities and invest their workplaces. Political engagement may be central to the warp of their lives or kindled in and just for the moment. Global screen-worlds and microstructures, as well as different kinds of techno-scape mediate both routine and exotic engagements between humans. The everyday component of such relationalities is comprised of their appearance and their consequences in mostly routine encounters – where data collection and application affect social, mental and physical well-being; where new spaces of sociality and governance are imagined and when personal relations are mediated by smart machines. Throughout the book I have demonstrated how world-making practices are performed and globalities constructed, which is often without fanfare and sometimes without obvious intent, despite the agential and reflexive qualities of social

160  The mediatization of everything constitution. The previous chapters also show that emergent globalities subsist mostly through a mix of action, consciousness and a modicum of institutionalization. This is never “mere” connection, but still sees connectivity as key to the ontology of such imaginaries. Here I want to take the analysis further to show more of the interfaces and the relationality between what is personal and local – in terms of identity, affect and interest; and what is global – in terms of scope, consciousness and power. As throughout, mediatization is the fluid that lubricates the connections between the systemic and the subjective. Of course, how one interprets that process shades any articulation in particular normative ways. In the round, we are dealing with what are banal and profound as well as trivial and disturbing facets of global constitution through digital communications technology. People are heavily implicated in the playing out of these features of globality; sometimes consciously and as a matter of choice; at other times not. And when people are implicated just through being there, need we assume a modal social pathology or mobilization of bias, with unwitting agents as the victims of corporate media giants, criminals and information-ravenous states? Such has often been argued in critical accounts of neoliberal globalization through media, in arguments that traffic a strong line on media or technological logic, and in reflection on the advent of post-humanism. In all this, the variable quality of action (individual and collective) and normative interpretations of same have as their backdrop an important, but obviously contested, thesis for research on globalization; namely that we are at the start of a new era of all-encompassing and either liberating or oppressive digital globalization (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016; Morozov, 2013). Far from globalization having stopped (Hirst et al., 2009), the argument put by supporters of this thesis is that the world is now more interconnected than ever, and more conscious of that condition. Primarily – and somewhat dispiritingly – this is often seen as a purely economic phenomenon and musters a global economy increasingly based on data flows that carry information, ideas and innovation. Global flows of data comprise information, searches, communications, transactions and video and intraorganizational traffic among business enterprises. Individuals too are enjoined in global networks directly and promiscuously, using digital platforms for leisure, to learn, to combat or guard against illness, find work and build inter-personal relationships. In 2016, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated that over 900 million people have international connections on social media and 360 million take part in cross-border e-commerce.4 Digital platforms provide the means whereby individuals can participate directly in global processes and be part of a global ecumene, however trivial the engagement. The numbers are not entirely conclusive, but telling nonetheless. On Facebook, 50% of users now have at least one international friend; Adele’s song Hello generated 50 million views on YouTube in its first forty-eight hours and nearly 400  million have posted their professional profiles on LinkedIn. Instagram has 600 million users worldwide; two thirds of whom use the app daily (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016; OECD, 2016; World Bank, 2016). No area of human interaction is ruled out. In the culture of music streaming there is a playlist for pretty

The mediatization of everything 161 much every occasion. A female student at an American university put together a Spotify playlist of songs, the titles of which together spelled out the end of her relationship with a boyfriend. Her sister, with whom she shared the account, then posted it on Twitter where it went viral (BBC News “Newsbeat”, April 10, 2017). But as we know, seeing evidence of intensive and extensive connection tells us little about the content, meaning and social consequences of connectivity, even when we are able to map it in detail. Two examples of complex digital ecology – tying personal to global – and of the everyday, banal and disturbing sides of connection will be illustrative. First, in 2017, a self-published ebook called Just Friends written by a seventeen-year-old male called Billy Taylor went viral and became a global success, topping the Apple US iBook chart. The book was publicized initially though the author’s Twitter account and some social media videos he made using the now defunct Vine app.5 Satisfying for Taylor, who, it was reported, gave up his job to become a full time writer, the viral spread of the book on Twitter demonstrates some interesting features of digital information ecology. The first, of course, is the ease and speed of acquired, and possibly fleeting, celebrity and its bottom-up, populist and seemingly democratic character. The second, obviously linked, is the apparent randomness of going viral, although some research suggests a variety of factors that might predict a meme’s popularity (Menczer et al., 2016; Berger and Milkman, 2011). So that third, in Taylor’s case, but probably more widely, the seeming randomness of his book’s success perhaps is belied by the more systematic and less wholesome effects of “social influencer” marketing as effected through social media. This phenomenon and its variants involve the creation of fake social media or “bot” accounts that aggressively and repeatedly promote a product. Tweets selected for retweeting are more likely to be seen by other users and then reposted. After a few iterations, a tweet becomes significantly more prevalent than ones that went unnoticed. Of course, Just Friends may have had a legion of dedicated fans, all committed to its promotion. But the phenomenon of fake social media accounts, the so-called “zombie army”, is based on a business model in which customers (producers) pay botnet owners and writers to promote a particular product. The zombie army is no more than large numbers of computers talking to each other. Tweets and retweets occur based on algorithms; but the virality that results could be seen as artificial because it is at best light on human agency, and thus on intent. These are not cognitive, emotional, let alone visceral, engagements between humans, but the intercourse of machines, and testament only to their learning capacity. Cisco, the multinational technology conglomerate, estimates that machine-to-machine connections will account for more than 40% of global devices and connections by 2019 (Cisco Visual Networking Index, May 2015). Of course, theirs is no lament for a putative loss of human involvement, but approbation for routine and increasingly low-cost business transactions. Faced with examples of rapid technical advances, the social analyst has to tread carefully to avoid conspiracy theory or science fiction (Harris, 2011). And the

162  The mediatization of everything normative minefield gets more perilous when entering the field of computational propaganda and the scope for manipulating public opinion; whether for electoral gain, to underpin a technical culture of governmentality or to influence the climate of debate on sensitive issues of public concern. Computational propaganda refers to the generation and compilation of large amounts of data and its subsequent use in political campaigns, as well as in other marketized fields. Sometimes, social media users are aware that data about them is being harvested and consent to that cull.6 More often, information about users derives from the information trails and affective clues they leave when using, for example, Facebook and Twitter. Facebook profiles, notably where “likes” are registered, can be correlated across millions of others to construct a preference map for whole populations. Individual “personality” and collective emotional traits are also revealed through the collection, collation and manipulation of this data.7 The purpose of data generation in this regard is to consign the targeted world – maybe a national electorate, or a segment thereof – to predict its behaviour and then influence it.8 Automated social media accounts, the aforementioned “bots”, can be used to try to fix or skew perceptions online, including political sentiments, and prolific and sustained retweeting seems to invest even outlandish claims with a spurious legitimacy or plausibility. We have rehearsed arguments that interrogate the impact of computer algorithms on social life, and here their implied agency is seen as increasingly modal and sometimes malign. Just how malign (in terms of actual influence, if not intent) remains both a normative and an empirical judgment. Work conducted by the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) during the US elections in 2016 suggests that computational propaganda is growing, efficacious (at least for its perpetrators) and destructive of the democratic process, even if these conclusions rather underplay the critical and reflexive capacities of citizens and reinforce the hackneyed image of the voter as terminally gullible (Woodley and Howard, 2016; Margetts, 2017). The Institute’s research examined hundreds of websites hosting a small number of links to material supportive of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The aim of these was to create and reinforce a pro-Trump ethos by bulk-buying domain names and using “sleeper” bots – often Twitter accounts – to disseminate an alt-right message to the exclusion of different world-views. They were, say the OII, dedicated to creating a bespoke truth, and seem to have been successful in forming, reinforcing or at least insulating opinion among those disposed to support Trump where previous attempts at agenda setting and message “spinning” were deficient. We might choose to question the whole-hearted acceptance of any such inference as a way of explaining the outcome of that election and of the Brexit vote in the UK, but that is not my purpose here. More pertinent to the concerns of this chapter is that everyday worlds – those enacted through smartphones, tablets, laptops and apps; not to say a host of domestic appliances – are now made through the imbrications of human agency with indifferent technologies of global reach. Sometimes the imbrication enacts and reproduces familiar and predictable worlds; but sometimes, perhaps increasingly, it does not (Kroker, 2014).

The mediatization of everything 163 I do not subscribe to the simplistic notion that in this milieu, humans as citizens and consumers are always acted upon, and thus doomed to subalternity. But there is no doubt that our social media feeds, our online conversations, our hopes and fears expressed in the safe language of “likes” and “friending”, along with growing reliance on Internet connection, render us more open to mediation and thus more vulnerable than in the past. Ulrich Beck, without much reference to the Internet, adverted a tranche of similar anxieties and hopes in his depiction of riskladen second modernity, so we are not on entirely new territory here (2006, 2007, 2009). Our current vulnerability (and the opportunities it affords) clearly is testimony to what Laurence Scott calls the full emergence of the “four-dimensional human” (2015). In the fourth dimension humans are simultaneously inside and outside (beyond) the space they occupy at any given time; and this “everywhere person” (2015, 1) is embodied and disembodied; empowered and at risk. Scott says that digital technology reshapes responses to phenomenal worlds, creating all kinds of new sensitivities. To reprise Fritz the Cat’s aphorism one last time, this really is heavy traffic, speaking to new ways of being in the world, to the constitution of personhood, matters of belief and perceptions of the efficacy of all forms of governance. It also registers unease about the risks of total exposure and modal surveillance, of understanding and emotion perhaps completely mediated by digital connectivity or – and this is a quite different inference – agency rendered invisible or redundant by computational algorithms. Let’s open up these issues first by looking at the realm of Big Data and the Internet of Things, as expressions of mundane and profound globality and hidden mediatization.

Big Data and the mediatization of everything: post-human globality9 Any discussion about Big Data is likely to be ambivalent, redolent with the threat and promise of a post-humanist future in a “datafied” world (Chandler, 2015a; Kroker, 2014; Virilio, 1992; Foucault, 1977). As David Chandler opines, such a world “blurs the distinction between human and non-human and subject and object. It articulates a posthuman ontology of self-governing autopoetic assemblages of the technological and the social” (2015, 835). Arthur Kroker is even more vehement when he says that the “technological posthuman is that historical moment when the power of technology turns back on itself, effectively undermining traditional concepts such as subjectivity, privacy, and bounded consciousness in order to render all things truly uncertain and unknowable” (2014, 6–7). This is a world of “information everywhere, connectivity pervasive, bodies augmented and self-monitored by cybernetic systems, perception illuminated, truth a purely phantasmagorical effect, perception coded by media feeds, attention fully wired” (Kroker, 2014, 178). Echoing some of the culture pessimism of the early Frankfurt School, as well as the critique of skeptics such as Evgeny Morozov, these are views of some weight, and the world they depict is seen

164  The mediatization of everything variously as a form of regressive governmentality, a technological dystopia or one in thrall to the neoliberal manifesto as played out in the commercial strategies of Internet corporations (Kroker). The rise of Big Data is a paradigm for the complex world of emergent globalities we have outlined in this book (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2014). Narrowly conceived as a set of techniques about how to manage large amounts of data, Big Data approaches to knowledge generation are witness to the diversity and multiplicity of the world. Datafication embraces an ever-greater number of individual and social practices, ranging from personal bio-data to the monitoring of climate change. Internet connectivity and biometric sensors are now the modi of the datafied society. Of the latter, some commentators predict that humans will monitor and consult their biometric data ever more frequently to decide what to eat and drink and how to drive and play; in effect outsourcing agential discretion to biometric readings of neurochemical signals (Harari, 2017). At one and the same time this practice downgrades the status and practical clout of some authoritative sources – clinicians, lawyers, teachers and maybe realty brokers, travel agents and mainstream politicians – and instantiates the power of others – software engineers, data scientists, machines that learn and clever polemicists. Individual discretion is at once enhanced and given over to the agency of apps and algorithms. Evgeny Morozov has it thus: “Thanks to sensors and internet connectivity, the most banal everyday objects have acquired tremendous power to regulate behaviour”, which is a charged description of the Internet of Things (The Observer, July 30, 2014). Moreover, as David Chandler also notes, “Big Data ontologically asserts that the world is complex, not bound by generic laws and rules but by feedback loops and changes through iterative and complex relational processes” (2015, 18). This is a global technoscape inscripted both large and small. Let’s look more closely at the idea, its relationship with the widely referenced Internet of Things (IoT) and posthumanism, before assessing how the concept should inform our understanding of global constitution. Big Data and its philosophical bedfellow post-humanism are an intimation of the fully realized technological society or socioscape; a construct not reliant on notions of bounded space and modal subjectivity (Kroker, 2014). At one remove, the era of Big Data is creating a revolutionary opportunity for turning very large datasets with high-velocity and diverse structures into real practices across many domains, such as finance, weather forecasting, disaster prevention, education and health care. Leave aside the fact that vast amounts of accessible and usable data can now be generated from household equipment – smart televisions, smart toys, smart refrigerators and smart automobiles are often cited – studies also show that on average Web users spend almost three hours daily online (UKOM, 2015). The Global Web Index for June 8, 2016, reports that social media accounts for 30% of that time, rising sharply for younger age groups. Whilst online their activity reveals a great deal about them as social actors. Online social networks are important sources of “Big Data” about people, including their demographics, location, interests, tastes and habits. One of the

The mediatization of everything 165 biggest challenges in exploiting Big Data is how to capture knowledge from a massive and expanding amount of data that cannot be handled by conventional management techniques, and then to marshal that knowledge effectively for those who will use it, or who will be subject to it. Margetts et al (2016) note that while possibly over-hyped as a new approach to data generation and use across academic and policy fields, the availability and harvesting of real-time transactional data offers great potential for a better understanding of human behaviour and for the more efficacious use of scarce resources. In this regard, Bolette Blaagaard sounds a more cautionary note on the aesthetics and safety of post-human experience when she opines that interrelation and dependency between technology and subjectivity means digital media allow us to know the world through an array of technological others to an unrivalled extent (2015). In turn, we are known to the world more extensively and thoroughly than ever before. Contrary to an anthropocentric view of social constitution, this describes a global ecology that is far from entirely human made. Offered as a critique of the fashionable idea of the anthropocene, which has privileged the power of human intervention in planetary processes, this approach goes some way to reinstate the idea of indifferent globalities, seen in the ubiquity of sensors, machine learning and algorithmic monitoring and regulation of action. A posthuman globality in this guise privileges “informational patterns over material instantiations. . . . (I)t considers consciousness . . . an evolutionary upstart . . . thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate . . . (and) configures human beings so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines” (Hayles, 1999, 122). But I do not think that we need to subscribe to such a seamless dismantling of the idea that agency matters in accounts of social constitution to recognize that changes in technology are shaping, defining and establishing the future of the global system and self-identities with increasing velocity and impact. Roland Benedikter and James Giordano have a novel way of looking at this interface when they suggest that, “from a systemic standpoint, the overall process consists of a two-fold movement, in which an outer process of transition is joined by an inner transformational drive” (2011, 1). New social media, like Facebook, Twitter, webcams, smartphones, tablets and the algorithmic preference maps of Big Data, change the outer dimension of how we perceive, interpret and manage our social lives in various spheres of production and consumption, including cultural consumption. Meanwhile, “contemporary brain and consciousness research are changing the inner dimension of the contemporary social by dramatically re-shaping the self-perception and interpretation of the individual through the findings, cultural distribution and practical applications of neuroscience and neurotechnology, thus questioning the conceptual cornerstones of sociality as conceived by Western modernity” (2011), including a fundamental change in the self-image of humans and in the nature of what we call society. The post-human features of the planetary future (Kroker, 2014; Benedikter and Giordano, 2011) blur the distinction between human and non-human and subject and object (Chandler, 2015a). This is obviously so in a world that is increasingly

166  The mediatization of everything datafied, and in such a world, global studies – incorporating the social sciences, natural science and perhaps neurological science too – should countenance – though not necessarily endorse – algorithmic agency and the indifferent globalities of the Internet of Things. Arthur Kroker’s view of such a world, quoted earlier, is certainly hyperbolic, an aestheticized construct. But it contains enough accuracy to make the remarks telling. On his account the idea of being “fully wired” or always connected depicts an already debilitated socioscape (2014,178; Albrow, 1996). For Kroker, Big Data and social media are dehumanizing forces; virtual carriers of the “bare life” reviled by Giorgio Agamben (1998).10 But writing of the “posthuman predicament” faced by subjects and analysts in an age of Big Data and information capitalism, Rosi Braidotti counsels a more affirmative, or vitalist, stance on what it is to be post-human (2013; see also Herbrechter, 2013 and Haraway, 2008). Braidotti is fully aware of the threat posed to Enlightenment humanism by post-humanization processes augmented through new technologies, scientific development and economic change. But she offers a brand of transformational and affirmative thinking that prescribes a post-humanist secular cosmopolitanism, one that requires reaffirmation of an essential humanity in face of generalized negativity and the thanatopolitical rigours of contemporary biopolitics. The latter comprises intensive farming, animal mass slaughter, biocapital, data-mining, drone-led wars and hyper-surveillance glossed as marketing or socially responsible data gathering.11 This is a broad and rich canvas, albeit one perhaps given to flights of conceptual fancy on the basis of limited evidence and light too on detailed prescription. There is clearly an element of raging at the dying of the humanist light in Braidotti’s thesis, but nonetheless, she holds out the possibility of post-human subjectivity. In this scenario, the post-human condition is, or could be, liberating, one in which new forms of planetary politics and ethics can be founded. High-flown as this may seem, when tethered to everyday practices of citizens and consumers, it looks less fanciful and much in accord with the humanizing effects of everyday online social intercourse and practices, which invest technology with a jobbing but energetic subjectivity. Thus the citizen journalist and the casual bystander online during climactic events may be absent in body, but present and engaged in digital form and connected with – in some respects indistinguishable from – technology (Blaagaard, 2015). In such circumstances the human is not demeaned, let alone lost, and post-humanism is neither a rabid anti-humanism nor some hybrid technoutopian form of trans-humanism.12

The European Information Society as a paradigm for networked society Existential threats notwithstanding, the political ecology that is the European Union (EU), or more accurately its implied ecology, is post-national, or at least transversal (Habermas, 2006; Paunksnis, 2015; ITU, 2015). Other concepts with a “post” prefix – post-secular springs to mind – may paint a quite different picture, depending on

The mediatization of everything 167 whether the designation is part of a commitment to a post-colonial and kaleidoscopic scholarship of European and global cultural economy, or a description of a renewed and visceral politics of difference. For her part, Braidotti envisions a postEurocentric and post-humanist Europe, and her vision looks to redefine Europe/EU as a “site for transformation” (2013, 52). A focus on the idea of network Europe, a notion that confounds determinate models of European integration and examines the less demanding theme of Europeanization, will allow me to assess her ideas with a particular appreciation of the significance of new media in fashioning a postnational space of flows and mobile subjectivities (Axford, 2015). That said, much of the discussion of network Europe takes place at a fairly high level of generality, with the aim of informing theories of Europe-making from different, and sometimes competing, perspectives (Axford, 2015). It sustains both notionally macro and micro positions on making Europe. Here I want to retain Braidotti’s vision of how post-national spaces can be created through network connection and still pay attention to the detail of interconnectivity as seen in the information society project in the EU, having due regard for agential and systemic constraints in what may be new forms of social constitution. I will explicate the idea of the network society as this appears in debates about the morphology of European integration and Europeanization. To begin let’s remind ourselves of the intellectual and policy contexts of such debates. In 2005, a report for UNESCO opened by saying that it is clear that currently “humanity lives in a period of remarkable transition. A transition from simple to complex, from fragmented, mechanistic, linear and sectoral Newtonian understanding to systemic, holistic, self-organizing, nonlinear and evolutionary ‘Prigoginean’ understanding, from unsustainable to sustainable, from industrial technologies to information and biotechnologies, from material to immaterial, from hierarchies to networks, from majorities to minorities, and from industrial societies via information societies towards something new” (Mannermaa, 2005, 52), possibly the bio-society. Here we have the very stuff of complexity science as it has informed our reflections on emergent globality, and it challenges not only conventional scholarship on mediatization and globalization, but received wisdom on the dynamics of Europe-making. Complexity science points up the institutional lightness or mutability of network formation and thus allows us to treat the processes of Europe-making without undue hindrance from the usual suspects of integration theory; indeed, of social theory in general – state-society, local-global and agent-structure binaries – as well as rigid levels of analysis. Such an approach benefits from direct address to the global and to global scholarship; because like theories of European unity the raison d’etre of global theory is the question of how, or whether, society and polity can be structured beyond the national scale and with due regard to the relationality between agents and structures; personal and global. An EU focus is also appropriate here because the Union is a very sophisticated form of non-state governance, a proto-polity at the least, and the most developed attempt to achieve a transnational community of affect using methods for integrating societal entities that lack a common culture but display ever more interconnections.

168  The mediatization of everything Attempts to apply global scholarship to the science of Europe-making have always entertained mildly exotic positions. For example, some authors have reimagined Europe/EU as a “space of flows”, rather than as a territory to be governed (Ruggie, 1993; Castells, 2000). A strong reading of the dynamics and processes of integration can be seen in John Ruggie’s early account (1993). Here, a “united” Europe is seen as a space created and reproduced through local, regional and global networks of interaction. One need not agree fully with Ruggie, or similar positions, to recognize the need to account for and weigh new forms of spatial practice as these emerge to interrogate received definitions of key modern concepts such as community, society and identity; as we have done throughout this book. These new forms have to be seen as part of a dynamic reshaping of world and European society through the opportunities they provide for re-imagining the scale of social and political organization and because of the scope they offer for re-defining the behaviour and possibly the identity of actors. In other words, they provide raw material for new ways of thinking about the diverse material and subjective worlds implicated in globalization. The idea of network Europe conjures a vision of European unity and of Europeanization in which “neither boundaries nor relations mark the difference between one place and another” (Mol and Law, 1994, 643). As we saw in chapter four, when discussing globalization and transnationalism, the concept “network” obviously carries a potent analytical charge here, whether used as a metaphor or as an analytical or empirical category (Axford, 2009). In rather more modest guise for the most part, it also informs theories of Europe-making. Networks of all kinds constitute a “relativisation of scale” (Jessop, 2000, 325) and thus are exemplars of the current global political and cultural economies because they are both mobile and mutable. In short, networks offer alternative topologies for modalities structured beyond the national and the territorial, and these are characterized not by fixity or closure, but by movement. In practice, networks are various and variable, in both their intensity (of connection) and their extensiveness. From the perspective of European integration and global studies, a network perspective has great potential (Axford, 2009; Barry, 2001; Castells, 2001). It offers a picture of a Europe in which networks constitute social and technological infrastructures of an increasingly fluid communication space, one expressed through “relationalities” as much as formal structures (Sassen, 2006). Such usage allows an account of European integration that is not bracketed by received models and theories rooted in bounded territoriality or simplistic images of linear, nested scales. The upshot is a more textured understanding of processes of coordination, complexity, acceleration and control, as well as of those promoting interdependence across borders, all without making teleological assumptions about particular European endgames or endorsing ideological prescriptions on the demeanour of the emergent European polity. Transformative in feel, this approach intimates a systematic morphological account of polity building in contemporary Europe, in which network types are ubiquitous, routine and varied (Painter (2004). We are witnessing a form of complex relationality linking social and technological, human and non-human; in

The mediatization of everything 169 other words, and as always, this is a world “in process” (Thrift and Olds, 1996, 126). Network Europe consists of what John Urry terms “complex, enduring and predictable, networked relationships between people, objects and technologies stretching across multiple and distant spaces and time” (2003, 57). These networks may be “significantly de-territorialised” (Urry, 2003, 58), though they may well be inserted into territories across all scales (Axford, 2006). Moreover, network Europe may, but may not, be predicated on the existence of the project for European integration through the European Union. Only the strongest analytical claims attempt a systematic morphological or social action account of transformative societal and inter societal change through networks. Of these, as I have intimated, Manuel Castells’ treatment of Network Europe, or the network state in Europe, to which we alluded in chapter six, comes closest to being a macro-morphological account of polity making (1996, 2001). In fact, Castells’ theory of Europe-making is a developed theory of connections, but his image of a networked Europe does not have it floating free of any determination in the guise of territorial constraints and national agendas. The Europe so created is not achieved smooth space, but rather a model of complex relationalities across many types of border. At the heart of Castells’ thesis – and in some measure both its greatest strength and most obvious weakness – is the idea that network morphologies and network logic overtake other forms of social organization, and this logic invests all social and economic life (Barry, 2001; Axford, 2009). Communication technologies in particular exert transformative effects on “the organizational arrangements of human relationships of production and consumption, experience and power, as expressed in meaningful interaction framed by culture” (2001). New communication technologies inform the temper of change in societies, and all processes of transformation – in economy, in the reworking of states and state power and in culture – are implemented through networks, particularly informational networks. This is no simple description of organizational change, because Castells insists that we now live in a network society, with global networks as key factors in social change, in the operation of power – including the nature and functioning of state power – and in configuring relationships between structure and agency. Andrew Barry adds that the EU is “a political institution in which the model of the network has come to provide a dominant sense of political possibilities” (Barry, 2001, 101). For Castells, the network state is a product of globalization and, as a consequence, his argument about its emergence in Europe is disappointingly functionalist in tone (Axford, 2009). He says, “(the) core, strategic economic activities are globally integrated in the Information Age through electronically enacted networks of exchange of capital, commodities, and information. It is this global integration that induces and shapes the current process of (among other things), European unification, on the basis of European institutions historically constituted around predominantly political goals” (2001). The network state is characterized by the sharing of authority along a network, and a network, by definition, has nodes rather than a centre. Nodes may be of different sizes, producing asymmetrical relationships within the network.

170  The mediatization of everything Yet “regardless of these asymmetries, the various nodes of the European network are interdependent, so that no node, including the most powerful, can ignore the others in the decision-making process. If some political nodes do so, the whole political system is called into question” (Castells, 2001, 5). This is the crucial difference between a political network and what he calls a “centred political structure”, and it is a difference which suggests to him that what is happening in the EU as a response to the challenges of globalization may be “the clearest manifestation to date of this emerging form of state, probably characteristic of the Information Age” (2001, 7). We can applaud his insights into the making of new modalities in governance and sociality while finding his treatment of the network state in Europe little more than a sophisticated take on the Europe of borders. For all that, the radical take on social organization contained in the idea of a network society is, as Castells himself opines, because the “key social structures and activities are organized around electronically processed information networks. So it’s not just about networks or social networks, because social networks have been very old forms of social organization. It’s about social networks which process and manage information and are using micro-electronic based technologies” (2004, 4). Interestingly the network theory espoused by Castells has a great deal of time for agency. His social universe – the network society – comprises the social structures of information capitalism and social agency manifest in identity politics and identity-based movements. While structures can and do frame agency, resistance identities – also informationalized – have great transformative potential (Castells, 2012). Of course, much of his empirical focus on agency lies in the realm of contentious politics and so might be thought peripheral to the “everyday” character of our concerns in this chapter. So, now I want to turn to a feature of network Europe – the European Information Society – that is both systematic and resolutely everyday in its aims and appearances. Along with the final segment of the chapter, it will allow us to exemplify the mediatization of everything and ways of being in the digital world (Livingstone, 2009; Scott, 2015).

The European Information Society as a paradigm for network Europe The European Information Society Project (EISP) and its offshoots, such as the eEurope initiative, offer useful insights into the dynamics of the network – and especially the digital network – paradigm applied to Europe and EU integration; if only to underline the complex reflexivity between social actors, material conditions and the implied “logic” of digital technologies. From its origins in the early 1990s (European Commission, 1993 and 1994), the EIS was the child of two powerful and apparently contradictory impulses (Axford and Huggins, 1996 and 1999). The first impulse contains two models of EU making. The more powerful in terms of driving Information Society policy is the liberalizing credo of the market, embodied in the Single Market process and designed to foster an open,

The mediatization of everything 171 transnational economic space to compete in a networked – and informational – world economy. Jan Servaes (2003, 12) notes the starkly pragmatic origins of the EIS in “a reaction to Japanese and American initiatives in information technology”. In this regard the early thrust of Information Society policy was to emphasize the liberalization of markets, not least with respect to telecommunications and information technology, and thus appears as a proto-paradigm for a technology and market-driven model of EU political economy (Bangemann, 1994). Until 1997 much EIS policy was dominated by “issues relating to the technological and infrastructure challenges and the regulatory economic environment” (European Commission, 1997, see also Archibugi and Coco, 2005). Alongside this primary model, although not always at ease with it, sits the related aim of promoting a “re-imagination of community and identity in Europe” – a community of consciousness (Robins, 1994, 102) – through the creation of a Europe wide communications space. From the mid 1990s onwards, there has been growing attention to the social impact and promise of information society development seen as a cultural project (see, for example, European Commission, 1997). As part of a concern to “put people first”, the Commission espoused basic aims to “improve access to information, enhance democracy and social justice, promote employability and lifelong learning, strengthen the capacity of the EU economy to achieve high and sustainable growth and employment, achieve equal opportunity between men and women, promote inclusion, support people with special needs and those lacking opportunities to improve their position and improve quality and efficiency of public administration” (quoted in Servaes, 2003, 13) Both these strands of policy and the ideological/normative models of EU polity that inform them envisage the Europeanization of economic and communicative behaviour and of large areas of social practice – or at least their profound de-nationalization – through networking. As an implicit corollary, they augur a “formal devaluation of the vast political resources which have come to be organised in and around the state”; including identity formation (Schmitter and Streeck, 1991, 142). Put another way, these are models of the information society that envision a shift from the “state of territory and the state of population” to the state of networked Europe, without being evangelical about or directly espousing a particular model of EU polity building (Lovink and Schneider, 2004; and also Sassen, 2006). At the same time it is too extreme to say that these models of the information society fully countenance the ideal of a borderless Europe. But it is implicit, at least, that scales cease to be a major factor in configuring key elements of the integrative project and the consciousness of divers actors. In many respects this remains the dominant motif of the Information Society process, though it is rarely articulated in such radical terms, when the more instrumental language of organizational efficiency, development of human capital (skills) and good governance does service in a sensitive political environment. The second major impulse also has two strands. The first envisages European unity as a process akin to nation-state modernization, resulting in the isomorphism of people, territory and culture. Scales, and in this case a super-territorialist

172  The mediatization of everything scale, are at the heart of this conception and national governments are key agents in its delivery. The second traffics a discourse about Europe/EU in which the key themes have been sustaining cultural diversity and, until quite recently, enhancing subsidiarity. Here too the language of scale is pre-eminent and, as opposed to liberal market discourse, a marked preference for regulation, even Europrotectionism – where certain kinds of cultural policy are concerned (KaitaziWhitlock, 2000). In fact, as we noted in chapter six, some accommodation between the two logics has been achieved by promoting the EIS as a major factor in creating, for example, truly Europeanized publics, who in time will “imagine the new community of Europe” (Robins, 1994, 125). However, the implied accommodation has always been problematic for two reasons. The first is the familiar complaint that it is much too reliant on neo-functionalist spill-over between zones of experience as the trigger for radical social change. The second is that it still underwrites a holistic or “thick” spatial model of European identity, rather than a definition of communities in social or virtual and not spatial terms; as “networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity” (Wellman, 2001, 228). Overall, the ways in which the EIS has developed up to the present day continue to subvent the original principles of accelerated economic integration through interconnectivity and building greater social cohesion along with a sense of European identity (Bangemann, 1994 and 1997; Digital Single Market Strategy, 2015; Digital Agenda, 2017).13 The other policy and normative impulse embodies principles now held dear by the Commission and member states, wherein the language of localism, regionalism and multi-scalar governance are paramount and only a jobbing transnationalism can be found in the agency of cross-border regions, in trans-city virtual space and in some other forms of trans-European network (TENs). On this reading, the sweep of EIS development can be viewed as the playing out of competing, or at least distinct, narratives of Europeanization; some of them closer to the everyday experience of citizens than others. Undoubtedly such images have profound macro theoretical implications for the morphology of networked Europe. But for many practitioners and researchers, at any rate, the burden of much of the EIS policy strand has been couched firmly at the meso, and occasionally at the micro level, which is most pertinent here – being exercised by the “good governance” motif and predicated on a strictly “internalist” and organizational take on the dynamics of integration (Dai, 2003; Shahin, 2004). Often, particular policy initiatives (for example, Dialogue, Eris@ and Telecities) have been charged with smoothing out the kinks in the EU politics of scale, notably the still deficient involvement of sub-national actors in EU policy matters and processes.14 As Andrew Barry notes, in such a focus, rather than networks being conceived as the means through which the self-government of populations and the re-spatializing of affect is constructed via a web of micro-connections, the main concern is with a variation on the sovereign power of states in relation to other (sub-national) scales of government/governance (2001). This focus is much in line with the burden of a good deal of meso-level research on the contribution of

The mediatization of everything 173 political technologies to the coordination and communication problems of modern states and other ”levels” of governance (Barry, 2001). Recent work on the idea of communication spaces in Europe, including research on the prospects for a European public sphere through ICT, also displays all the conceptual and analytical tensions noted above (Axford and Huggins, 2007). Very little in the complicated policy strands of the European Information Society (EIS), eEurope and the Digital Agenda (European Commission, 2002a, 2015a), or in key strategic documents (European Commission, 2000a, b, 2002a, b, 2004a, b, 2006a, b, 2010, 2014, 2015b, 2017) intimate more than creating enabling conditions within which European-wide public talk among citizens and civil society actors can take place. At the same time it is true that the enabling and empowering potential of ICT continues to be invoked by Brussels. In response to the Commission’s eParticipation Initiative under the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan (2006), the Council of Ministers called upon researchers and member states to “experiment with innovative eparticipation schemes aiming at increasing participation in democratic processes focusing on tools and addressing citizens’ demands” (COM, 2006, 7). The spatial remit of this initiative was local, trans-regional and EU-wide. Partly, this agenda was driven by the contribution of valuable research projects launched under Frameworks 5 and 6.15 Among other things, these projects explored the information society in Europe from the perspective of the routine use of ICT by people in various facets of everyday life (EMTEL, 2003) and their contribution to transnational civil society building (TERRA, 2015). Participation (eparticipation) research also carried out under FP5 funded projects to enhance citizens’ participation in urban planning explored the practicalities of evoting and edeliberation. Under FP6, this agenda was continued with the aim of developing tools and solutions for the use of ICT in legislation, and in political processes at local, regional, national and EU levels. During the FP7 round of projects up until late 2016, greater attention was paid to the use and effects of social media on matters of personal security and other aspects of day-to-day living. In truth, as with much of the detailed policy agenda of the EIS, the eparticipation initiative was a support mechanism for the achievement of the i2010 agenda for egovernment in the EU. Primarily, this agenda was to create an entrepreneurial business environment for growth and employment, to support this through attention to elearning and eliteracy, and, through the application of ICT, to contribute to the building of a modern public administration, one that is, to use a well-worn phrase, citizen-facing. At the same time, other programmes such as Eris@, Telecities and Dialogue – all dedicated to building social networks, online practical citizenship and improving governance structures – have gone some modest way to intimate the ways in which electronic networks can configure a more fluid pattern of Europeanization; although such language would probably not be meaningful for participants. In this fluid Europe there is a complex imbrications of local and European; of communication spaces populated by civic networks, provincial, national and regional networks, as well as functional networks organized around service provision, and which all constitute “circulating entities” of information exchange and public knowledge (Urry, 2003, 122; European Commission, 2013).

174  The mediatization of everything None of the programmes listed above look(ed) to enhance the European public sphere per se, but many have contributed to the growth of multi-scalar communities of communication, at the least. The same is true of the plethora of online and otherwise mediated communications that take place between NGOs, social movements and other individuals and collectives, as well as via forms of Indymedia, often across borders, to instantiate forms of transnational practice. At its most pristine, the idea of Network Europe prescribes a breadth of analytical vision that confounds the territorial basis of much theorizing on the dynamics of European unity, while not constituting, in itself, a theory of European or global integration. At its least radical it subsists in that large, but congested zone of research and reflection on the changing governance structures and practices of the EU, including concerns about its democratic deficit. The intricacies of these debates may counsel a suitably cautious conclusion in which, adverting Andrew Barry, we might vouchsafe no more than the belief that in the EU and Europe, “the network has come to provide a dominant sense of political possibilities” and the communication network a paradigm for the wider sense of being networked (2001, 101). However, while true, this may be too timid a conclusion, and three bolder statements (partly of intent and research prescription) are in order. The first is that the nature of authority, territoriality and identity (not least of the state) are being rearticulated and rescaled through networks of all kinds. Use of Sassen’s notion of mixed assemblages and Knorr-Cetina’s insights on microstructures are pertinent when applied to empirical investigation in the EU/Europe context. In this regard the scope of empirical work must venture beyond the confines of much conventional policy network research to engage with the fluid worlds being constructed in Europe and globally in various mediascapes, ethnoscapes and finanscapes (Appadurai, 1993), and in the construction and functioning of networked “small worlds” and “second lives” on the Internet, in epistemic communities, among diasporic audiences and networked individuals (Urry, 2002; Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger, 2002). The communication networks established under the EIS also constitute prime sites for analysis of the transnationalization and, of course, the virtualization of governance and civil society. It may be that, through ethnographic research and research informed by complexity theory, claims that the EIS is a form of “technical culture” (Barry, 2001) can be better grounded, provided that note is taken of the strictures of Sassen and others that the creation of digital, social worlds is not just a matter of some neat “interface” between human organisms and hard/soft machines. In general, students of European integration and those concerned to access how social worlds are routinely made and re-made should pay more attention to the rigours of network analysis, so that the messy imbrications of social morphologies and social action, digital inclusion and exclusion are better understood (Sarikakis, 2003). The second is that there is no need to resort to technological determinism, or even Hardt and Negri’s bold formulation to recognize that the networked world is likely to be more informational rather than material (2000). In one sense this recognition simply requires paying more attention to communication networks

The mediatization of everything 175 and spaces in and across Europe and the globe, but perhaps more profoundly, it suggests a greater attention to scopic media as mechanisms which permit “flow architectures” not limited territorially and which can act – in themselves – as mechanisms of coordination and control; maybe of community. As Knorr-Cetina says, this phenomenon can be seen in the operation of electronic markets and the agile networking of online activists and terrorists and it is also visible in less charged, or more benign, “architectures” such as those that sustain communities of music lovers or MS sufferers. None of these need be construed as obviously or exclusively European and, as we saw in chapter six, need not be “Europeanizing” in terms of a consequential promotion or underpinning of a putative common identity; but that is the whole point. Informational microstructures and the communicative spaces they span enable actors to move “in and through spaces in ways that transform space and time” (Urry, 203, 57; for an early treatment of EU as a communicative space, see Deutsch, 1966 and also Schlesinger, 2003). The third bolder statement is that the idea of Network Europe opens up the possibility of a critical European and global studies conducted through the dialectic of networks and borders and the virtual and actual passage of people across them. Borders are now often conceived as mobile, carried, as Sassen notes, in the “product, the person, the instrument” (2006, 416; see Rumford, 2013). Such ideas intimate a fluid Europe in which the “question of territory as a parameter for authority and rights has entered a new phase” (Rumford, 2013). Communication networks intimate new forms of sociality across scales and new assemblages of power. At a time when the EU is under severe challenge in the vertebrate world of states and borders, this remains a potent vision.

The mediatization of the everyday as emergent globality In 2009, Leah Lievrouw and Sonia Livingstone stated an inescapable truth; to wit: “No part of the world, no human activity, is untouched by the new media. Societies worldwide are being reshaped, for better or for worse, by changes in the global media and information environment. So too are the everyday lives of their citizens. National and subnational forms of social, political and economic inclusion and exclusion are reconfigured by the increasing reliance on information and communication technologies in mediating almost every dimension of social life” (2009, 1). If we hark back to the insights of Peter Dahlgren and, with a more jaundiced feel, Roger Livingstone (2007) on the nature of and prospects for a completely mediatized politics, of agonisms played out on the Internet, we can find much the same sentiments. The address in all these interventions is to the cumulative and pervasive impacts of new media seen in the circulation of symbols to ever more receptive and engaged audiences and constituencies (Thomson, 1995). As Lievrouw and Livingstone also state, the scope of this attention embraces “(t)he artefacts or devices used to communicate or convey information; the activities and practices in which people engage to communicate or share information; and the social arrangements or organizational forms that develop around those devices and practices”

176  The mediatization of everything (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2006, 2; Kaun and Fast, 2014). We might add a fourth consideration, one that signals the psychological and emotional repercussions of always being connected. The (everyday) meanings and social implications of the use of mobile technologies by embodied agents are the grist of social constitution in a globally networked context where we are emplaced and distant, separated and in communion all at the same time. For example, in a fascinating account of those they call global travellers traversing Nepal and India, Howard and Kupers (2017) focus on the role played by mobile technologies in mediating perceptions and performance of place. Following Heidegger, their argument is that mobile subjects are relationally “interplaced” – between somewhere and everywhere; embodied and disembodied – enjoying a world that is “digitally enframed”, having forms of virtual mobility overlapping with and affecting corporeal existence. Theirs is a clear instance of the fluidity and complexity of the global-modern existence. The case of a recent commercial phenomenon, the egame Pokémon Go, offers further insights into digital globalization in the time of the four-dimensional human (Scott, 2015, XVII). A re-vamp of the older Pokémon egame with new augmented reality features, the app uses a smartphone’s camera to overlay exotic digital creatures on the screen and locate them in actual places – New York, Tokyo, London, Sao Paulo, Grimsby or Wyoming. According to Nintendo’s official website, “Pokémon Go is built on Niantic’s Real World Gaming Platform and uses real locations to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokémon characters. Pokémon Go allows you to find and catch more than a hundred species of Pokémon as you explore your surroundings”. The take-up by smartphone users the world over was unprecedented. Over 200 million people engaged in 1.1 billion interactions that mentioned Pokémon Go on Facebook and Instagram in July 2016, shortly after its launch and, predictably, there was much talk of “pokemania”. The numbers clearly attest to the global scale of the phenomenon, and it was a stated aim of the designers that “the game was to remove national and cultural boundaries”. Their mantra was “don’t find any difference in kids’ feelings nationwide or worldwide” (Kline et al., 2003, 190). And yet in Pokémon Go what they actually marketed played on the familiar dichotomy of sameness and difference. This strategy was inspired by the perceived need to retain some elements of cultural particularity even as the brand was marketed as a global product. As a consequence a small number of Pokémon creatures are scripted as locals. Thus a creature called “Mr Mime” is portrayed as a master of pantomime, and in Germany Mr Mime’s name is localized to “Pantimos”. In Japan, the Pokémon called “Farfetch’d” is known as “Kamonegi”. The latter is Japanese vernacular for “a stroke of luck”. These symbols and attributions may sit lightly on a culture, but even if one questions the cultural depth of what is, after all, a marketing ploy, the creatures are still low-wattage evidence of a “meeting and hybridization of eastern and western popular cultural forms” (Lister et al., 2003, 268). Along with those other long-standing favourites of egaming, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) and Manga cartoons, Pokémon, in its early and late guises, is a highly portable facet of

The mediatization of everything 177 the post-Westernization of global culture (Rumford, 2013), product of the “webwork of a synergistic, multimedia, globe-spanning distribution network” (Kline et al., 2003, 240; Bateman, 2011). It goes almost without saying that this attribution attracts praise and blame in equal measure. Attracting mostly blame and opprobrium because of its use by global networks of paedophiles, terrorists and criminals, the Dark Web, to which we referred in chapter six, also empowers all those who legitimately want control over their online footprint (Chertoff and Simon, 2015). As well as a space for more suspect denizens, the positive side of the Dark Web is seen in its use by actors such as corporate whistle-blowers, human rights activists and parents’ groups trying to fashion a safe way for their children to explore the Web. Even governments use the resource to exchange documents secretly. Of course, being able to traverse the Internet with complete anonymity provides huge opportunities for a range of illegal activities, from market places for controlled substances, to identity theft and leaks of sensitive information. For example, Silk Road (and Silk Road 2.0) was an online marketplace that dealt in contraband drugs, narcotics and weapons and catered to criminal gangs, terrorist groups and other users anxious to avoid surveillance and regulation. American security agencies eventually shut down the website, but others, for example, Hidden Wiki (money laundering services, cyber attacks and contract killing), still subsist. In a perverted logic, these examples of illicit trafficking offer a pathological version of ideal-typical neoliberal globalization, in which true markets or proto-markets not only operate regardless of national jurisdictions, but in direct contravention of the rules governing international trade, finance and the movement of people.

Trust, intimacy and the mediatization of the everyday If you are a global skeptic or a serial curmudgeon, it is easy to depict these everyday facets of global/glocal cultures as the spawn of venal imaginations; cultural scripts written by bad capitalists, criminals and the terminally deranged or morally corrupt.16 On this accounting the Internet has rendered the everyday liminal and dangerous. Sherry Turkle’s lament, with which I opened proceedings, is not quite so dire, although it shades into Nicholas Carr’s jeremiad on the ineffable shallowness of social intercourse on the Web (2012). Of course, these are designer concerns, but press them a little further and it is all too easy to see the fourdimensional human, the everywhere and nowhere person, abroad in a desert of the soul and spirit. Writing about the “illusion of intimacy” fostered by social media, Michele Redmon wonders at the extent to which “normal” social behaviours have changed to the extent that it is now considered routine to “meet” people online and carry on platonic or romantic relationships, the latter sometimes spiced with nude “selfies” and other exotica (2015). Her judgement that this kind of intimacy is an illusion, or too crafted and lacking spontaneity, stems from a sense that what you read, and even see, online about a person is a character tailored for a purpose, though

178  The mediatization of everything usually, but not always, benign. At best this is contrived intimacy, at worst, a recipe for emotional detachment. All of which may be true, even though Erving Goffman noted the same performative or dramaturgical urge when cataloguing the ways in which a public persona is constructed and presented by adroit and self-aware actors (1956). Self-disclosure – revealing personal information to others – in social media looks like the polar opposite of the desire for anonymity. But research shows that the promise of anonymity online increases the willingness to self-disclose (Ma et al, 2016). Even this oblique and possibly ersatz form of intimacy – revelation without attribution – can be qualified. Further evidence suggests that people selfdisclose more to those in physical proximity, seemingly because of the propinquity or, perhaps more likely, because they share common frames of reference. A range of apps for cell phones – Rumr, Wumi, Yik Yak and Whisper – have been tailored to allow disclosure only to a local or otherwise “close” audience. In Yik Yak posts are geo-tagged and organized by location. Social media “encapsulate people in an ambient intimacy” in which “not only can we observe the personal thoughts, feelings, life experiences of our friends by reading their daily or hourly updates, but we can also subject our daily rhythm to our friends on SNS by disclosing ourselves” (Zhang and Ling, 2015, 16). As ever, “Friend” may be a casual, or at most, polite, attribution, rather than a status that signifies intimacy. But what is novel about the use of social media to selfdisclose is that it involves one-to many messages, where people are posting their private affairs to spatially distributed others who are connected to the discloser through varying degrees and qualities of closeness. For social media users this is a common experience and not, for the most part, psychologically and emotionally discommoding; so we must not assume an ambient social pathology born of isolation, loneliness or even desperation. Rather such reflection serves, or might serve, to qualify our sense of what is strange and modify our reception of the figure or even the idea of the stranger. As Chris Rumford would have said, such cultural encounters are afforded by digital globality and perhaps their most potent charge is that any sense of community or affinity is “released from any necessary ties to locality” (2013, 78).17 For most participants in social media exchanges the digital world they occupy is not strange, if by that is meant alien or forbidding. Yet, and this is especially true when they self-disclose, they have altered the meaning of and crossed many of the boundaries that police the conventional sense of what it means to know someone. Nor should we dismiss the possibility that, in some cases, there may be a disjunction between the willingness to self-disclose online, to open oneself to the gaze of strangers, and still hold robust opinions on the desirability of phenomenal open borders and open communities. At the same time, there well may be an accommodation, or a sublimated dissonance, between self-revelation and the willingness to effect insulation from diverse others. On balance there is no reason to assume that an intimate disposition online predisposes a welcoming stance to the embodied other; especially where the latter can be categorized and perhaps stigmatized, as in some way undesirable and threatening.

The mediatization of everything 179 In the globalization of strangeness Rumford would also say that this kind of accommodation, and even its lack, is typical of the stranger who is “here today, gone tomorrow”, which implies only casual engagement and bonds easily shed. But despite qualifying what counts as intimacy in online encounters, it would be wrong to say that there is always, or even often, a lack of emotional investment in acts of self-disclosure on social media, even when they are crafted; or that there is no habitual behaviour. His cosmopolitan stranger feels everywhere “at home”, but it is not clear whether this would include accommodation between individuals and groups who may feel more elementally divided. For if the Internet enabled or Internet constituted cosmopolitan can feel at home anywhere and everywhere, there is still a sense that for many sojourners on social media the experience is aimed mainly at reconstituting or reinforcing older and stronger ties; some scarcely remembered and seldom articulated; but all looking back and most looking within. “Is there a home in cyberspace?” asks Heike Greschke (2012), and her benign answer is a qualified “yes”, at least in the case of the ethnic Paraguayan diaspora she studied. Internet connection has enabled a common virtual space among people physically located in different parts of the world. Of course, the same would be true of many diasporic communities and networks. Recognizable as a strain of glocal identity construction, this is also an emerging form of globality, of living together while demonstrably and irreversibly living apart. Participants are normalizing physical separation and mitigating its emotional travails. Through such connections the everyday lives of this migrant population have been thoroughly mediatized, making theirs a global lifeworld; one that is poignantly revealed in Greshke’s Internet ethnography. In the phenomenal world intimacy implies trust, and trust may be portable if the individual’s decision to be trusting of others is supported by reliable processes of connection and the sharing of content that is deemed mutually appropriate. All social networks are a collectivity of individuals among whom exchanges take place; that are supported only by shared norms of trustworthy behaviour, and this is clearly the case with online social networks (OSNs) where the relative invisibility of other participants is taken for granted and the scope for many species of insecurity is rife (Hine and Kapeleris, 2006). Life at a distance is possible (and tolerable) only with a substantial degree of trust in expert systems and the goodwill of participants. Of course, not all online spaces need display these attributes, and for most people the gift of trust is not consciously given on a daily basis, but is implicit in their actions. For the most part, despite being afraid of harmful kinds of exposure, alarmed at the risk of being trolled or ridiculed, we still come back for more in these new social spaces. The blog, more akin to written intercourse in the phenomenal world, has been defined as just such a social space, and it takes many forms, from diaries of personal minutiae, through advice on eating choices and methods, to the interventions of professional and citizen journalists on matters of current moment. Blogs can be agonistic in intent and tone, hortatory and proselytizing, not least where lifestyle choices are concerned – witness Gwyneth Paltrow’s blog Goop – and provocative as well as mind-numbingly boring.

180  The mediatization of everything Shared information and opinion comprise the common thread through all blogs and their audience pitch, though sometimes bespoke, is predicated on the assumption that “anyone can play”. Users are often promiscuous in their attention to different blogs and catholic in the variety of topics on which they have an opinion to impart. Critically, in Barry Wellman’s corpus on Networked Individualism the blog, along with other online social networks, is not another world, always alien to the user’s everyday life, but a further opportunity to promote new forms of sociality in the increasingly blended existence of the Internet user.

Conclusion All these instances betoken fluid worlds, and may, but only may, intimate malleable identities and bespoke personas. Without doubt they portray myriad worlds of everyday experience as these are enacted for the most part through small engagements and evanescent interest. Sometimes they take place in the interstices of what still passes for conventional social intercourse and exchange. Increasingly they are modal, and thus integral to who we are and how we present ourselves. That this is a global phenomenon in terms of its planetary compass is not in doubt; but the more subtle understanding is that we cannot comprehend the often unremarkable and usually unremarked cast of a globalized world without reference to these small engagements and the everyday affordances through which they subsist and flourish (Baym, 2015). In such engagements the dialectic of sameness and difference that is at the heart of the notion of globality is played out. In our address to them we learn much more about the cultural construction of emergent globalities and about the ways in which personal and global, as well as local and global, are both articulated and imbricated. The everyday use of social media and other Internet platforms also allows us to see how consciousness of the world obtains (Robertson, 1992, 8). This is no simple matter of technical connectedness. Rather the idea of a modal compression of the world is only possible through consciousness of the world, whether to embrace or reject its wiles. The protean cast of online social space produces and embraces what John Tomlinson calls a unique “phenomenology of modern social existence. The latter, not only in terms of the experience of mobility and deterritorialization, but also in terms of the constant dissolution of fixity in value and of a different ‘texture’ of life” (2007, 75). Yes indeed.

Notes 1 Cloud computing refers to the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. Computational intelligence (CI) usually refers to the ability of a computer to learn a specific task from data or experimental observation. 2 I will talk in detail about both Big Data and the idea of the information society later in the chapter. Here we need advert of the former that it does not refer to the availability

The mediatization of everything 181 of a lot of information, but to the generation of real time transactional data from a variety of digital sources, usually compressed as the Internet of Things. The phrase or concept of the Information society as defined by Jan Van Dijk (2006) has it as a network society; in other words, as a “social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels (individual, group/organizational and societal). Hence the use of capitals. Increasingly, these networks link all units or parts of this formation (individuals, groups and organizations)” (Van Dijk, 2006, 20). Both concepts carry an ideological burden. 3 In Nancy Baym’s excellent journey through the complexities of personal connection in the digital age (2015), she remarks on the great variety of Internet mediated relationships. 4 The Mckinsey report notes that after twenty years of rapid growth, traditional (nondigital) flows of goods, services and finance, after 2008, have declined relative to GDP. By contrast, flows of data and information have been accelerating in the same period. They also underpin and enable every other kind of cross-border flow (2016). By 2020 it is estimated that there will be 44 times more data in the world than there was in 2009 (Suominen, 2014). 5 Vine was a video-sharing app  designed to allow users  to film super short clips that could be linked together in one video for a total of six seconds. Each short video played in a continuous loop. They could be embedded and viewed directly in Twitter’s timeline or any web page. The Vine app was discontinued by Twitter (its parent company) on January 17, 2017 after failing to keep pace with competing apps like Instagram. 6 In 2007 Cambridge University’s Psychometric Centre developed an online personality quiz on Facebook to produce data. Over six million people took part, producing over four million individual profiles. 7 Regulations govern the uses of such data, but these are variable, and in terms of privacy protection, security and the responsibility of service providers, often formed on the hoof, in relation to the most recent outrage. 8 In this regard a great deal of recent attention has been on the use made of social media data in the presidential election in the USA and on the issue of “cognitive warfare” as this manifests in disinformation and “fake news” about presidential candidates, immigration and Russian policy in Ukraine. 9 Here I do not intend to deal with the use of Big Data as a research tool and as a novel way of generating social-scientific knowledge, although these too might be understood as facet of the modal digital globalization of knowledge. 10 Antonio Agamben’s concept of bare life refers to a conception of life in which the sheer biological fact of life is given priority over the way a life is lived, by which Agamben means its possibilities and potentialities (1998). 11 Foucault introduced the concept of bio-power to explain how something like “thanatopolitics”, the mobilization of entire populations “for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity”, became the norm in the twentieth century (1977, 137). 12 Transhumanism is the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology. In some interpretations it is the transitional or intermediary form between humanism and post-humanism. 13 The Digital Agenda presented by the European Commission forms one of the seven pillars of the Europe 2020 Strategy, which sets objectives for the growth of the European Union (EU) by 2020. The Digital Agenda proposes to better exploit the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in order to foster innovation, economic growth and progress. 14 All seen as promoting dialogue between localities, and regions, sometimes across borders. In different ways each was also seen as a contribution to an emerging model of ecitizenship.

182  The mediatization of everything 15 EU Frameworks (now replaced by the Horizon 2020 formula) were the principal means by which research funding was provided by the EU for the research community. 16 Bearing further witness to the malign globalities afforded by software; in May 2017 a widespread attack on the records of UK healthcare Trusts was occasioned using socalled “ransomware”, whereby criminal perpetrators locked down networked computer systems and denied access to users except on payment of a ransom through the virtual currency of “bitcoin”. Other organizations across the globe were attacked on the same day (May 12). 17 I say “would have said” because during the writing of this book, and before we had discussed it properly, my friend and colleague Chris Rumford died after a short, but terrible, illness. I cannot do justice to his extensive oeuvre here, but for scholars of the global his address to the rich concept of strangeness opens up many doors to greater understanding of complex social and cultural processes.

Epilogue

In this book I have undertaken a quite ambitious and, I hope, suitably nuanced excursion into the kind of global theory that fits today’s world – a theory for the present conjuncture, if you like. In truth, I hope the preceding pages speak for themselves, so that these final remarks need be only briefly summative, as well as an occasion for a little further reflection on global theory. Throughout I have privileged the idea of globality as the locus of investigation because it focuses attention on the imbrications of connection, consciousness and institutionalization, all key to a multidimensional understanding of global constitution. In this task I have plundered research in media and communications studies, as well as the corpus of global studies, mainly from sociology and cultural studies. Much work on globalization describes connection as more-or-less seminal to global constitution across different historical periods, before judging effects as well as the desirability of modal connectivity on situated and mobile actors and on social practices and institutions. I have been at pains to paint what others call global connectivity as more than “mere” connection, where that implies just quantum transactions and catalogued exchanges that are ever more extensive and intensive. Communicative connection is central to any idea of the global as “made”, and various media are its capillaries. But such understanding should never be used to describe or predict a path-determined model of social constitution. Neither should media effects be assessed in isolation from matters of consciousness and reflexivity, both individual and collective. The concept of globality is not only multidimensional, but exhibits salient features of all social worlds; though ones played down in most theories of social change and stability as these have dominated the canon on social change. These salient features are turbulence and flux in the relationships between agency of various kinds (situated and mobile) and more encompassing structures. In such relationships, and like John Gray, I observe an intractably disordered world, but one in which disorder is a facet of all functioning systems, not an index of necessary demise or signifying a global entropic field (2001). And while globalization does require a theory of connection, this need not predicate a model of secular integration. Hence theory building has to acknowledge those qualities of social constitution that are indeterminate and volatile. In this regard I have argued that complexity theory allows us to grasp those “strangely ordered systems that are

184  Epilogue complex and non-linear” (Urry, 2005, 83). My device of “emergent globalities” further captures what I take to be the irresolute nature of much global constitution, and when discussing the part played by “new” media in such constitution, that is crucial. Let me reiterate: The idea of emergent globality does service here because it syncs with and informs the sense of a world of increasingly complex relationalities; one in which novel communicative forms and practices continue to appear and subsist. These forms and practices are not constituted by, or parasitic upon, more enduring structures and relations. While this claim plays up the neophiliac mentality I cautioned against in the introduction, I stand by the strong argument made in chapter four pace Barry Sandywell, to the effect that digital culture has become “continuous, ubiquitous and global” and in a remarkably short space of time (2011, 14). At the same time, a little down-home caution may not go amiss. Sandywell says that digital media are “generative social apparatuses, machines that produce the social” (2011, 14–15), and that carries a very strong transformative feel. How far such media are sui generis in their transformative potential is hard to say, but here too caution is probably sensible; for there is nearly always a provenance. As early as 1976 Jean Baudrillard outlined his vision for the emerging society of the sign. He presented this vision as a new stage of history and a new realm of experience, due to the proliferation of media and the sheer speed of communication. Baudrillard saw these changes as the shift from modernity – characterized as the production of “things” – to postmodernity, characterized by a radical semiurgy and the production of signs. The result is an aestheticization of everyday life because of the saturation of even the most routine experience by a constant and rapid flow of signs and images. Digital communication and the Internet as its seminal expression share this provenance even if the genetics often claimed for it are those of complete novelty, dislocation and discontinuity. Like many of the critics of Internet sociality, Baudrillard was at best ambivalent about the effects of such developments. Certainly, he argued, both sets of changes fragment the dominant “truths” of the modern era and emphasize the contingent qualities of life and life choices. As I noted in chapter one, the emergent properties of the fluid Internet are a product of its complexity. This complexity comprises a variety of networks – of people, technological hardware (or machines), but also software, programmes, text in different forms and images – in which, as John Urry also notes, “quasisubjects and quasi-objects are mixed together in new hybrid forms” (1998, 7). The networks are not, or may not be, solid or stable and the hybrid forms themselves mutable, though no less potent for that quality. Understood in this way, globalization – globality – cannot be taken for granted, or seen as over-determined, whether by communication media or some other constitutive force. Rather, as Urry argues, “it is disordered, full of paradox and the unexpected, and of irreversible and juxtaposed complexity” (2002, 58). In other words the Internet is a signifier for life as fluid and in some key regards, boundary-less.

Epilogue 185 In this milieu the idea of world-making practices also imparts a strongly performative element to the idea of global constitution, so that my argument in chapter four and in the subsequent empirical chapters is that in their everyday entanglements with each other and with communication technologies, agents use the latter as resources that nourish and enable individual and collective repertoires of possibility online. This is not an anthem to cyber-utopia but does have the distinct advantage of not fetishizing relationships between what is otherwise easily depicted as an “integrated and stable global system” and its “derivative and local recipients”, where the latter are, by definition, passive and unreflexive users and victims of information technology (Hand and Sandywell, 2002, 213). And here, some widely bruited concepts from the body of global theory also have purchase. So, when I refer to a performative element and to globality being enacted through digital media rather than given, the active component of social constitution is underscored. Talking about world-making practices I adverted not only those that have a powerful emergent quality seen in the imbrications of local and global, through the interaction of various scapes and contingent glocal actors and through various “networks, fluids and governance institutions” (Urry, 2003, 103), but the whole gamut of accommodation and resistance seen in processes of vernacularization, indigenization and syncretism. All these are messy and indeterminate processes. To further underwrite my argument in chapter four, emergent globalities subsist through action, consciousness and some degree of institutionalization. They are not simply the implied or necessary outcome(s) of a set of processes; and neither are they an ideological construct or the end point of a crude teleology. The features of emergent globalities identified in chapters one to four and their instantiation through a variety of world-making practices have been accessed and then given empirical purchase by reference to how they play out in specified empirical domains. Key here is what should be taken as global, and in this regard too some permissiveness must rule. David Inglis and Roland Robertson lend support to that wisdom, and I repeat their injunction here. They say that notions of the global, of globality, where the “world is taken as a whole, where all parts of the global are seen as increasingly interconnected and where individual experience is connected to worldwide forces and circumstances” (2004, 47) – mean different things at different times. While the character and perception of global as denoting “worldwide” consciousness and practices remains the same, particular conceptions and spatial configurations, as well as the forces driving them, can change. What constitutes the global may or may not equate to planetary scope, but this is of less definitional importance than whether a world-making practice carries global content or has global address. These too are elusive notions. But for practical purposes decant to this. In the case of communication technologies and platforms, the requirement is that they can provide for both shared meanings and interdiscursiveness (among, for example, online communities and networks). Empirically, the address to global content refers to the ways in which digital communication technologies enable us to surmise and relocate distant contexts and

186  Epilogue relate to people, things and events that are remote from, even alien to, our everyday lives (Orgad, 2012; Baym, 2015). Which, of course, reintroduces the theme of glocality, as this has run throughout this book. Many of the empirical examples used in these pages demonstrate features of glocality – the condition that arises when local-global relations are crystallized through refraction, with the global refracted through the local (Roudemetof, 2016). As I argue in chapter four, glocality appears as a characteristic, though not exclusive, outcome of global-local interaction or process of mutual constitution. In this scenario, the Internet, and specifically Web 2.0 (which is both interactive and in some respects actor-driven) is a clear example of digital glocalization (Roudometof, 2016, chapter 6). The communicative world-making practices I identify in chapters five, six and seven lie at the confluence of connection, consciousness and institutionalization. They breathe life into the idea of emergent globality. Much of what I say in these chapters is an evocation of the fine and often pioneering work done on networks, scapes, scopic media and global microstructures in the field of global studies by luminaries such as Manuel Castells, John Urry, Arjun Appadurai and Karin Knorr-Cetina. What might then appear as an eclectic harvesting of material from empirical sites as widely separated as cricket blogs, DDoS interventions and the European Information Society Project was, in fact, guided by a more rigorous and systematic intent. I aimed to give a sense of the sheer ubiquity of global constitution as a process of communicative connection, using what seems to me to be the paradigm field of Internet connection in digital cultures. Sometimes the analytical connection is direct and unequivocal; sometimes it is implied and diffuse. Always, I believe, it is intriguing and indicative. The conceptual band that holds all this together is the concept of mediatization. Leave aside the fact that the concept is undergoing continuous refurbishment, it is crucial to the forms of emergent globality I advert, standing as a driver of new patterns of social constitution and an expression of globality. The sense that everyday life is mediatized speaks to its ubiquity. The empirical sites examined above are features of changing social practice, and modify understanding of what constitutes the social and where and how it is practised. In addition they highlight the normative issues that arise when humans and machines interact. Above all they are auguries of a world not bound by philosophical and phenomenal borders and the knowledge bases contained by these. Sometimes that points to a shining future; sometimes the slough of despond seems more inviting. As Andreas Hepp and Nick Couldry say, researching the cultures of mediatization so construed is a necessary and quite daunting task for students of media and of globalization (Couldry and Hepp, 2013). In this intellectual milieu, as well as for reasons of sound common sense where the quality of life is concerned, researching “communicative figurations” is likely to be a pressing research agenda. The notion of communicative figuration is taken from the work of Norbert Elias, where figuration is “a simple conceptual tool” (Elias, 1978, 130) to be used for understanding social-cultural phenomena in terms of “models of processes of interweaving” (Elias, 1978, 130). For Elias, figurations are “networks

Epilogue 187 of individuals” (Elias, 1978, 15) which constitute a larger social entity through reciprocal interaction – for example, by joining in a game, or a dance. The locus could be the family, a group, the state, a political party or society itself; however and wherever construed. “Due to this kind of scalability, the concept of figuration traverses the static levels of analysis of the micro, meso and macro” (Couldry and Hepp, 2013, 4). All this is good news for global scholarship, a further indication of the potential that resides in truly interdisciplinary and multidimensional research; goals greatly to be desired.

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Index

abstraction of spatiality 25 actor-networks 92 Adolf, Marion 159 Adorno, Theodore 28 aesthetic reflexivity 29 aesthetics of new media 24 – 25 Agamben, Giorgio 166 agency 66, 68, 76 Airbnb 20, 72 Albrow, Martin 85 Al Jazeera 140 alternative globalizations 12 Altheide, David 52 Amazon 92, 105, 106, 158 Americanization 28, 31, 34, 42 – 43 Ampuja, Marko 37, 38, 39, 40 Anderson, Benedict 71, 94 Anderson, Chris 27 anger, geographies of 28, 143, 144, 145 Anonymous (group) 135 anti-globalization movements 28 – 29 Appadurai, Arjun 37, 62, 66, 186; on cellular globality 70, 94; on fluid global scapes 69, 71, 94 – 95, 119 – 120; on geography of anger 28, 143, 144, 145 Apple 105, 161 Arab Spring 129, 138 – 142 Archer, Margaret 78 Arte 152 Arthur, Brian 14 artificial intelligence (AI) 58 autopoiesis 76 Avaaz 134, 136 Badiou, Alain 128 Barber, Ben 16 Barry, Andrew 172, 174 Baudrillard, Jean 81 Bauman, Zygmunt 82 Bayart, Jean-Francois 30, 32

Baym, Nancy 68 BBC 105, 136 Beaumont, Peter 140 Bechman, G. 77 Beck, Ulrich 12, 163 Benedikter, Roland 165 Benjamin, Walter 81 Benkler, Yochai 133 Bennett, Lance 130, 132, 134, 153, 154 Bezos, Jeff 15 Big Data 58, 112, 125, 131, 158 – 159, 162; mediatization of everything and 163 – 166 Blaagaard, Bolette 165 Blackberry 105, 140 blogs 17, 58, 111, 141, 179 – 180, 186 Bolter, Jay 82 Bolter, Richard 15 Bouazizi, Mohamed 140 Bourdieu, Pierre 18, 52 Boyd, Dannah 89 Braidotti, Rosi 166, 167 Brenner, Neil 86 – 87 Brexit 125 broadcast networks 105 – 107 Bruegger, Nathan 143 Bulajewski, Mike 20 Calderoni, Francesco 136 Callois, Roger 110, 115 Cammaerts, Bart 130, 139 Caneppele, Steffano 136 capitalist globalization 11 – 12 Carr, Nicholas 49, 177 Castells, Manuel 8, 19, 20, 37, 81, 146, 148, 186; on informationalized politics 124, 125 – 126; on network society 28, 74, 93, 169 – 170; on new social movements as networks of outrage and hope 69, 129

214 Index cellular globality 70, 94 Chandler, David 145 – 147, 163, 164 Chandler, Heather 113 chaos 66 chaotic pluralism 72 – 73 Charlie Hebdo (magazine) 142 circulating entities 83, 173 circulation cultures 7, 83 civic virtue 71 CNN 135 collective action, digitization of 127, 130, 131 – 138 Coming Storm, The (Sauter) 135 common framework 69 communication: dark side of freedom of 48 – 50; ecology of 52 – 53; hyperglobalists and 23 – 24; mediated 20, 77 – 78; and mediatization as axial features of globalization 10 – 15; scopic media and synthetic interaction 95 – 98; transformationalists and 23 – 24, 25 communicative connection 7, 8, 10, 12, 41, 61, 78, 183 – 184; mediatization and 50; new media and 15 – 18; repertoires of possibility and 19; towards a theory of globalization as 74 – 78 communicative figuration 186 – 187 complexity theory 4 connection, global processes of 62 – 64; varieties of networked connections 90 – 93 Connolly, William 25 consciousness: cosmopolitan 69 – 70; defined 70; global 64, 69 – 70, 70 – 71, 87; globality and 70 – 71 conspiracy theorists 126 constructivism 37, 64 consumer culture 28 content-sharing sites 17, 58 convergence 42 conversation, sacrifice of 6 Corner, John 104 cosmopolitan consciousness 69 – 70 cosmopolitan media 33, 41 – 44 Couldry, Nick 50, 51, 186 cricket 106, 108, 186; mediatization and globalization of 109 – 113 critical theory 28 cult of sharing 20 cultural economy of globalization as unior multidimensional 33 – 35 cultural globalization 40 culture: digital 81 – 83; hybridization of 176 – 177; mediatization of 24; ultra 115

Culture Industry, The (Adorno) 28 cyber-utopianism 128 – 129 Cyworld 136 Dahlgren, Peter 20, 129, 175 Dark Web 177 Deacon, David 50, 52 dehumanization through new media 58 – 59 Deliveroo 72 denationalization 84 determinism: cultural 35; ecology of communication and 53; structural 49 – 50 Deuze, Michel 51 Dicken, Peter 91, 93 digital culture 81 – 83; glocality 89; performance of emergent globality and 83 – 90; virtualization of economic activity and 85 digital inequality 44 – 48 Disney 105, 106 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks 135 – 136, 186 Eco, Umberto 105 ecology of communication 52 – 53 economic activity, virtualization of 85 Economist (magazine) 105, 107, 152 Elias, Norbert 186 – 187 embeddedness 84 – 85 emergent globalities 4 – 5, 14 – 15, 20, 98 – 99; achieved through connection 25; chaotic pluralism and 72 – 73; characteristics of 87 – 89; characteristics of new media as cultural technologies and 40; cosmopolitan media and 41 – 44; gig economy as 72; global theory and 59 – 62; logic of connective action as trope for 131 – 138; mediatization and 50; mediatization of the everyday as 175 – 177; performing 83 – 90; scope of 25; social affordances and 73; transnational activism and 73 – 74 emotional contagion 67 Eriksen, Erik 150 ESPN 106 Esport 113 – 114 Etsy 72 Euronews 152 European Daily (newspaper) 152 European Information Society: as paradigm for networked society 166 – 170; as paradigm for Network Europe 170 – 175 European Union as public sphere or putative digital cosmopolis 149 – 153

Index  215 Facebook 77 – 78, 105, 141, 158, 160; Big Data and 162; logic of connective action and 131, 132, 134 – 136 fandom, sport 114 – 115, 116 – 117 Farrell, Henry 154 figurations 186 – 187 Financial Times (newspaper) 152 Flickr 17, 140, 141 Foucault, Michel 52, 113 Fox broadcasting 105 Frankfurt School 28 Fraser, Nancy 133 Friedman, Jonathan 25, 70, 119 Friedman, Thomas 33, 37 Fuchs, Christian 128 fusion 42 Game Localization Handbook, The (H. Chandler) 113 generic globalization 11 – 12 geographies of anger 28, 143, 144 Gezi Park protests 134 – 135, 140 Giddens, Anthony 63, 85 gig economy 72 Giordano, James 165 Giulianiotti, Richard 10, 43 – 44, 102, 104, 108, 119 Glass Cage, The (Carr) 49 global civil society (GCS) 145 – 149 global complexity and globality 65 – 70 global consciousness 64, 69 – 70, 87; globality and 70 – 71 global content 25 global culture 40; hybridization of 176 – 177 globalism 59 globality 8 – 10, 59, 183 – 184; cellular 70, 94; global complexity and 65 – 70; global consciousness and 70 – 71; new spatial geography in 69; that results from mediatization of sport 116 – 120 globalization 4 – 5; alternative 12; communication and mediatization as axial features of 10 – 15; as communicative connectivity, towards a theory of 74 – 78, 183 – 184; cultural economy as uni- or multidimensional 33 – 35; empirical critiques of idea of 41; generic versus capitalist 11 – 12; globality and 8 – 10; global scapes and 93 – 95; global theory and 59 – 62; hyperglobalists and 23 – 24, 77; mediacentrism and neoliberal dogmas 35 – 40; mere connection as description of mechanics of 6 – 7; movement

of physical products through 62; multicultural fusion or hybridization in 29; myth of media 27 – 32; normative/ ideological engagements with 60 – 61; as playing out a domination-resistance model of interaction 30; relationship to mediatization 50 – 54, 89 – 90; rills and currents in scholarship on media and 32 – 33; of sport see sport; transformationalists and 23 – 24, 25, 74, 148 global knowledge and digital inequality 44 – 48 globally integrated networks (GINs) 92 global microstructures 92, 143, 174 global neoliberalism 31 global processes of connection 62 – 64 global scapes 69, 71, 93 – 95, 94 – 95, 119 – 120, 185 global theory 59 – 62, 183 – 187; cultural turn in 37; empirical critiques of idea of media globalization 41; global complexity and 65 – 70; metaphor of connections in 65; multidimensional 64; presentism in 2, 16; rills and currents in 32 – 33; and scholarship 1 – 4 Global Transformations (Held et al.) 86 glocality 89, 186 glocalization 43 – 44, 86 – 87 Goffman, Erving 178 Google 42, 105, 108, 158 Goop (blog) 179 Gramsci, Antonio 34 Gray, John 183 Greschke, Heike 179 Grusin, David 15 Grusin, Richard 82 Guardian (newspaper) 50, 134 Gupta, Arvind 108 Haas, Peter 136 Habermas, Jurgen 82, 150, 151 Hafez, Kai 24, 27 Hahari, Y. 98, 128 Haigh, Gideon 111 – 112 Hair, Darrell 111 Hand, M. 65 – 66, 84 Handy 72 Hannerz, Ulf 119 Hardt, M. 58, 124, 174 HBO 106 Heft, Annett 151, 153 Heidegger, M. 176 Held, David 66, 86 Hepp, Andreas 49, 50, 51, 186

216 Index Here Comes Everybody (Shirky) 133 Herman, E. S. 28 Hesmonhalgh, David 38 Hidden Wiki 177 high definition digital television (HDTV) 107 Hird, Myra 67 Holton, Bob 91, 93 – 94 Horne, John 110 Howard, C. 176 Howard, Philip 128 Hulme, Alison 62 Hulu 105, 106 Huntington, Samuel 28 hybridization 29, 184; of eastern and western popular cultural forms 176 – 177 hyperglobalism 23 – 24, 33, 37, 68, 77 imperialism, cultural 34 – 35 indifferent globalities 67 indigenization 116 individualism, methodological 64 inequality, digital 44 – 48 informational colonization of being 58 – 59 Inglehart, Ronald 41, 42, 43, 44, 112 Inglis, David 69 – 70, 88, 185 Instagram 136 institutionalism 64, 67 interconnectedness 61 Internet access: Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks 135 – 136, 186; social affordances 73; statistics 45 – 46, 47 Internet-centrism 49, 128; Arab Spring and 129, 136 – 138 Internet of Everthing (IoE) 68 Internet of Things (IoT) 58, 135, 158 Inzamam-ul-Haq 111 ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) 144 James, Paul 64 Jameson, Fredric 30, 31 – 32; on culturally inflected globalization theory 38 Jessop, Bob 66 Jordan, Tim 28, 68 Just Friends (Taylor) 161 Kantner, Cathleen 151 Keane, John 145 Kiva 136 Knorr-Cetina, Karin 4, 120, 186; mechanical view of networks 96; on

networked society 174, 175; on ontology of the network 90; on relationships between actors 143 – 144 Koopmans, R. 153 Kroker, Arthur 159, 163, 166 Kupers, W. 176 Lash, Scott 29 Latour, Bernard 68, 83 Lechner, Frank 39 Lefebvre, Henri 84 Levitt, Peggy 7, 40 Lievrouw, L. A. 175 LinkedIn 136, 160 Livingstone, Roger 20, 61, 62, 175 Livingstone, Sonia 51, 116, 175 localism 28 – 29; glocalization and 43 – 44 Locating Emerging Media (Germaine and Aslinger) 95 logic of collective action 131 – 138 Los Indignados movement 130 Luhman, Niklas 66, 74 – 77 Luke, Tim 127 Lynch, Marc 141 Mahan, J. E., III 104 Malinowski, B. 77 Margetts, Helen 17, 72, 127, 130, 147, 164; on logic of connective action 134, 136 – 138 Marx, Karl 84 Marxism and neo-Marxism 36, 37 – 38, 39, 63 – 64 McChesney, R. W. 28 McDaniel, S. R. 104 McDonald’s 92 McKinsey Global Institute 160 media, cosmopolitan 33, 41 – 44 media-centrism 12, 15 – 16, 50; globalization and neoliberal dogmas 35 – 40; literature on 32 media globalization, myth of 27 – 32 mediascapes 95 mediated communication 20, 77 – 78 mediated intimacy 77 – 78 mediatization 2, 3 – 4, 10, 98 – 99; adverse consequences of 27; circulating entities and 83 – 84; and communication as axial features of globalization 10 – 15; as contest notion 24; of culture 24; of the everyday as emergent globality 175 – 177; global content and 25; institutionalist arguments on 51; of

Index  217 politics see politics; relationship to globalization 50 – 54, 89 – 90; socialconstructivist arguments on 51; of sport see sport; sports content and 27 mediatization of everything 158 – 163; Big Data and 163 – 166 mediatization of the everyday: as emergent globality 175 – 177; trust, intimacy and 177 – 180 memes 67 mere connection 6 – 8 metaphor of connections 65 metaphor of transmission 75 Meyer, John 71 Meyer, Michael 49 micro-blogs 17 microstructures, global 92, 143, 174 Mittelman, James 9, 61, 62 Mixi 136 mobile penetration 45 Modelski, George 11 modernism 31 modern systems theory 74 – 78 Moorti, Sujata 27 Morozov, Evgeny 48 – 50, 98, 128, 163 – 164 MoveOn 136 multicultural fusion 29 multidimensional globalization 33 – 35 multidimensional global theory 64 myth of media globalization 27 – 32 NBC Universal 105 Negri, A. 58, 124, 174 neoliberalism, global 31; globalization, media-centrism and dogmas of 35 – 40 Netflix 106, 135 Networked Individualism (Wellman) 180 Network Europe 170 – 175 network society 28, 74, 93; European Information Society as paradigm for 166 – 170; logic of connective action and 131 – 138; varieties of networked connection in 90 – 93 new media: aesthetics of 24 – 25; communicative connectivity and 15 – 18; dehumanizing qualities of 58 – 59; digital culture and 81; globality through 1; mediatization of sport and 104 – 107; mediatized cultures and 103 – 104; politics and 126 – 127; retro-nostalgics and 127 – 128; transformative power of 133

New York Times (newspaper) 6 nihilism 30 Norris, Pippa 41, 42, 43, 44, 112 Obama, Barack 126 Occupy movement 130, 132, 134, 154 Olausson, Ulrika 36 online gaming 17, 113 – 114 Orgad, Shani 71 Orkut 136 Oxford Internet Institute (OII) 162 Paltrow, Gwyneth 179 Pariser, Eli 125 PayPal 135 performance of emergent globality 83 – 90 Pew Foundation 47 Pfetsch, Barbara 151, 153 Pinterest 136 planetary processes 180; human intervention in 165; post-human features 165 – 166 Pokémon Go 176 polarization 42 politics: Arab Spring and 129, 136 – 138; cyber-utopianism in 128 – 129; digitization of collective action and 127, 130, 131 – 138; European Union as public sphere or putative digital cosmopolis and 149 – 153; global civil society (GCS) and 145 – 149; introductory thoughts on mediatization of 124 – 131; logic of connective action as trope for emergent networks globality and 131 – 138; retro-nostalgics and 127 – 128; traders and terrorists in 143 – 145 polycentrism 73 Poster, Mark 7 post-human globality 163 – 166 Postill, John 154 postmodernity 31 practical consciousness 69 presentism 2, 16 profane skepticism 48 – 50 reassertion of space 25 Reddit 17, 131, 135 Redmon, Michele 177 reflexivity 9 reification 31 relativisation 116; of scale 91 repertoires of possibility 18

218 Index retro-nostalgics 127 – 128 Rexel-Nimbus 106 Risse, Thomas 151 Ritzer, George 30, 89, 108, 118 Robertson, Alexa 52 Robertson, Roland 10, 43 – 44, 86, 88, 104, 119, 185; on global consciousness 64, 69 – 70, 87 Robinson, Bill 9 Rosenberg, Justin 37 – 38, 40, 59 Ruggie, John 68 – 69, 168 Rumford, Chris 178 – 179 Sandywell, Barry 15, 65 – 66, 81 – 83, 84, 184 Sassen, Saskia 12, 69, 84 – 87, 92 – 93 Sauter, Molly 135 Scandi-noir genre 29 scapes, global 69, 71, 94 – 95, 119 – 120, 185 Schiller, Herb 28 Schlesinger, Philip 150 scopic media 95 – 98 Scott, Laurence 163 Scott-Heron, Gill 137 second media age 7 Segerberg, Alexandra 130, 132, 134, 153, 154 self-disclosure 178 – 179 self-evidently global institutions 12, 25, 84 Servaes, Jan 171 Shapiro, Michael 127 Shaw, Martin 69, 87 Shelby, Tommy 135 Shirky, Clay 133 Silk Road 177 Simmel, George 84 Six Degrees (Watts) 133 Sklair, Leslie 11 – 12, 35 Sky Mobile TV 105 Skype 25 Snapchat 136 social affordances 73, 118 social bookmarking sites 17 social media 25, 151; cult of sharing on 20; as dehumanizing force 166; logic of connective action and 131 – 138; mediated intimacy on 77 – 78; selfdisclosure on 178 – 179; sociality taking place on 67 – 68; usage statistics 47 social networking sites 17, 58; conspiracy theorists and 126; political mobilization

using 131 – 138; skills and literacy with 46 social networks 92 social order 84 Sony Entertainment Television 106 space-time 82; compression 61, 63; embedding and 85; phenomenology 83 sport 27, 102 – 103, 120 – 121, 186; Esport 113 – 114; globalities that result from mediatization of 116 – 120; globalization of 107 – 108; mediatization of 104 – 107; mediatized cultures and mediatized 103 – 104; transnational fandom 114 – 115, 116 – 117 SportsMoney (website) 113 Spotify 161 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 14 Stanyer, James 50, 52 Steger, Manfred 64 Stehr, N. 77 structuralism 64 subaltern counter cultures 133 supra-territoriality 61 symbiosis 68 synthetic interaction 95 – 98 Sznaider, Nathan 12 Tailster 72 Tarrow, Sidney 147 Taskrabbit 72 Taylor, Billy 161 technoscapes 95 television broadcasting 105 – 107 thanatopolitical rigours of contemporary biopolitics 166 38 Degrees 134 Thomas, George 39 Tomlinson, John 19, 24, 35, 37, 49, 81, 180 topological networks 92 Topsy 137 To Save Everything, Click Here (Morozov) 49 transcendence 68 – 69 transformationalism 23 – 24, 25, 63 – 64, 74, 148 transmission networks 91 transnational activism 73 – 74 transnational practice 11 trolling 25 Trump, Donald 25, 125, 126, 138, 139, 162

Index  219 trust, intimacy and mediatization of the everyday 177 – 180 Tumblr 136 Turkle, Sherry 6, 8, 58, 177 Twenty20 cricket 109 – 110 Twitter 25, 48, 78, 126, 141, 142, 151 – 152, 161; Big Data and 162; logic of connective action and 131, 132, 135, 136 Uber 20, 72 Ultra culture 115 unidimensional globalization 33 – 35 Urry, John 7, 12, 14 – 15, 29, 169, 186; on global complexity 65, 66; on globally integrated networks (GINs) 92; on hybridization 184; on metaphor of connections 65; on social order 84 vertebrate geography 94 video gaming 17, 113 – 114 video-streaming sites 17, 105, 115, 140, 141 Virillo, Paul 25, 81 virtual intimacy 29 Waisbord, Silvio 53 – 54, 89 – 90 Wallerstein, Immanuel 34

Washington Post, The (newspaper) 15 Watts, Duncan 133 Wealth of Networks, The (Benkler) 133 Wellman, Barry 73, 118, 147, 180 Westernization 34, 42 Wikipedia 16 Wolfe, Tom 148 World Bank Development Report, The (2016) 45 World is Flat, The (T. Friedman) 33 world-making practices 4, 5, 11, 98 – 99, 185 – 186; and forms 90; global scapes 69, 71, 93 – 95, 94 – 95, 119 – 120, 185; heterogeneous field of 14; scopic media and synthetic interaction 95 – 98; varieties of networked connection 90 – 93 world polity theory 71 Yeats, W. B. 98 YouTube 17, 105, 108, 115, 136, 140, 141, 160 Zee TV 106 Zimmermann, A. 153 Žižek, Slavoj 58, 126