Abstract
In this talk, Tommaso Venturini will consider a recent and troubling phenomenon observed by media scholars during and in the aftermath of the Covid19 pandemic: the convergence of several previously separated controversy theories around the same narrative template, echoing the same antagonists (transnational organizations and their elites), the same heroes (alt-right celebrities), the same damsels in distress (national citizens and their traditional way of life). To make sense of this phenomenon, he will discuss the transformation of the attention regime that online media have undergone because of the rise of social media platforms. He will argue that this transformation has favored the emergence of repetition-with-variation dynamics that resemble those of preliterate societies. Internet memes are the clearest example of this dynamic, yet digital memesis is a much deeper phenomenon that characterizes most online subcultures and that have taken a particularly dark turn in some far-right and conspiratorial communities.
About Tommaso Venturini
Tommaso Venturini is Associate Professor at the Medialab of the University of Geneva and a researcher at the CNRS Centre for Internet & Society. He is also an associate researcher at the médialab de Sciences Po Paris and a founding member of the Public Data Lab. His research is positioned at the interface between social and human sciences and digital computation and design. His research activities focus on digital methods, digital media studies, controversy mapping, science and technology studies and social modernization. His current research focuses on the attention economy (and its acceleration in online media) and internet subcultures (and secondary orality phenomena). Read more about him here.
How to participate
This will be an online seminar. Join via ZOOM by clicking here.
It will also be possible to follow the seminar from meeting room 1040 in TIK's premises (10th floor, Eilert Sundts hus, Blindern Campus).