[Air-L] Reading list on (media) politics of visibility/invisibility

Thu Sep 8 06:28:02 PDT 2016

Hi Daniel, 

A very fascinating topic. 
I have personally found very useful the works of Claire Birchall who has published vastly on the topic of the invisible and the secret. See for example her more recent articles
"Shareveillance: Subjectivity Between Open and Closed Data" Birchall, C. 19 Jun 2016 In : Big Data & Society. 
and "Managing Secrecy” Birchall, C. 6 Jan 2016 In : International Journal of Communication. 10, p. 152-163

Taina Bucher has also written on the subject, see for example: 
Bucher Taina (2012) Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook. New Media & Society 14(7): 1164–1180.

I have also adressed the topic in an article part of a special issue on The Economies of the Internet, coming out this October in First Monday, edited by Kylie Jarrett and Dylan Wittkower. I am writing in it about how open cultural production online produces both openness and secrecy and how both are tied to issues of power. I can email you the draft if you find it relevant. 

Best,
Julia 

-------------------------------------------------------------
Julia Velkova, PhD Candidate 
Department of Media & Communication Studies
Södertörn University                                        Tel: +46 8 608 5149
S-141 89 Huddinge, Sweden                        E-mail: julia.velkova at sh.se
URL: www.sh.se/mkv 
Twitter: @jvelkova
Profile: http://bit.ly/1N7WQWH

> On 8 sep. 2016, at 11:55, Daniel Kunzelmann <kunzelmann.daniel at yahoo.de> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> I felt like starting another list of literature :) Here is the
> question/thesis at stake: We live in a hyper-mediated world, in which
> the *speed and sheer amount of media posts *(Facebook, your favorite
> newspapers, Twitter, blogs, you name it...) suggest that political
> impact, relevance and importance is connected to "being visible" or
> "making something visible". Vice versa, *if something is **not
> visible**in today's social-media-democracy it does not exist, thus has
> no meaning, thus has no political power/impact/relevance**.*
> 
> Yet, I feel - and so far it's only really a feeling - that *these
> invisible spaces and actions enable, generate and allocate as much
> political power as their visible twins.* Against the backdrop of
> "social-media-everywhere" and the *dominant daily narrative of the
> visible* (which we all experience when we look at our smartphone), I'm
> now looking for *authors and concepts that explore/reflect/challenge/*
> 
> - that either the *politics of the visible*
> - or the *politics of the invisible*
> - or even the *relationship between visibility and invisibility* with
> regards to political power.
> 
> It might be *authors and concepts that already reflect on today's
> (hyper) social media worlds**, as well as "classical" approaches on
> visibility/invisibility of power.* To give you two examples:
> 
> Thinking about today's social media, we could have a closer look at the
> power of images (e.g. a meme) on our interfaces (visible) or at the
> algorithmic structures that sort and "deliver" these images (invisible).
> Both layers of power are real, in the sense that they affect us in our
> daily live, but one is visible and one is invisible. And of course, they
> are certainly connected.
> 
> Same goes for something that existed before social media, let's say
> party politics. There have always been official press releases and
> interviews about how well e.g. a party congress went and what wonderful
> values this party now stands for (transparency, inclusion, etc.), but at
> the same time, at the congress in question, there also existed back-room
> meetings and private phone calls to influence internal party currents
> (opacity, exclusion, etc.). Again, both spaces and actions are real, in
> the sense that they have power effects on the party's members and/or
> possible voters, but one (media) space is visible and the other one
> invisible. And, here too, both layers work together perfectly.
> 
> So, anyone wants to share their must-read with me?
> 
> *...on "new" Cultural and Social Anthropological approaches and authors
> that already reflect on the politics of visibility/invisibility against
> today's backdrop of "social-media-everywhere". **
> **
> **...and/or "classical" ***approaches and authors* that do NOT
> explicitly talk about today's political (social) media contexts, but
> which you would consider highly applicable to understand such phenomena.
> 
> *Either directly drop your recommendations in here:
> *https://danielderkunzelmann.piratenpad.de/airl-mediaoverload-politics-visibility-invisibility*
> or reply to this message via the list or a pm :)*
> *
> Of course, when the literature list is done, I will be sharing it with
> all of you!
> 
> kind regards,
> Daniel
> 
> *Daniel Kunzelmann,
> Ph.D.c / Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich / Institute of Cultural
> Anthropology/European Ethnology
> twitter       @der_kunzelmann <https://twitter.com/der_kunzelmann>
> blog            http://transformations-blog.com/daniel-kunzelmann/
> web            http://unibas.academia.edu/DanielKunzelmann
> linkedin     https://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-kunzelmann/7b/426/9a5*
> 
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> 
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/