Abstract
Self-representation and Digital Culture investigates self-representation in the increasingly pervasive digital culture, proposing to understand this ubiquitous phenomenon as a genre. In doing so, Nancy Thumim draws on the analytical concept of the mediation process to examine various cases of mediated self-representation in different sites, including broadcast TV, museums and art worlds, and the Internet.
The introductory Chapter 1 conceptualizes the key notion of self-representation. The author points out the inextricable link between self-representation and digital culture, and suggests that digital culture should be viewed as a set of cultural, social and political processes. With the more active involvement of audiences in the production of their own self-representations, the analytic boundaries between the three sites (production, text and reception) distinguished in Hall’s (1973) encoding/decoding model have become blurred. In response, the author adopts the notion of the mediation process (Silverstone, 2005), distinguishing three dimensions of mediation – the institutional, the cultural and the textual – that shape self-representations of various kinds.
Chapter 2, ‘Histories of self-representation’, provides a historical overview of the representation of ordinary people in media and cultural spaces from the late 18th century to the present day. It identifies a shift from representing the public as part of a nation to an increasingly highlighted emphasis on representing ordinary people. The author shows how social, cultural, political, economic and technological contexts have worked together in bringing about the ubiquitous self-representation of ordinary people, and suggests using the mediation process as an analytical concept to approach the phenomenon of self-representation.
Chapter 3, ‘Mediation’, elaborates on the conceptual framework presented in the introduction. The author discusses how research on the relationship between production, texts and audiences has led to a renewed understanding of mediation as a process. Through an exploration of the four senses of ‘mediation’ used in media and communication studies (technological developments as mediators of meaning; meaning-making and circulation in cultural contexts; the textual construction of representations; people as mediators), the author points to the fact that self-representation in digital culture is unavoidably mediated. Discussion of the three key dimensions of mediation processes – institutional, textual and cultural processes – links directly to the subsequent analyses in Chapters 4 to 6.
These chapters offer a range of empirical discussions of mediated self-representation in different sites. Chapter 4, ‘Broadcasters’, examines self-representation in public service broadcasting with the BBC’s digital story-telling project Capture Wales as an exemplary case. Drawing on the analytical framework of mediation processes outlined in Chapter 3, the author tries to show how ordinary members of the public make representations of themselves, instead of being represented by others in broadcasting sites, through the analysis of processes of textual, cultural and institutional mediation. Self-representations across broadcast spaces are perceived as an innovative generic mode to facilitate audience participation, give voice to ordinary people and hence promise a more authentic reality.
Chapter 5, ‘Museums and art worlds’, investigates how self-representation is mediated institutionally, textually and culturally through case studies of funding bodies, artists and artistic institutions. Interviews with participants in the museum project London’s Voices are analysed to shed light on the cultural aspects of the mediation, while a critical textual analysis of self-representation in London’s Voices is presented to account for the textual dimension. The author shows the struggles in the self-representations of ordinary people, and reveals the tensions over the different functions of self-representation – the therapeutic function of self-expression and the democratic function of difference-making and community-building – and, consequently, the problem of ascribing value to self-representation.
Chapter 6, ‘Self-representation online’, explores self-representation in online social networking. Arguing against the view that the Internet is a site for unmediated self-representation, the author holds that institutional, cultural and textual mediating forces are still at work in online environments, drawing on data obtained from social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. The author argues for the necessity to explicitly address the issues of representation and media literacy. It is clear that media literacy skills are of paramount importance in order for users to understand the implications of their online activities, and to exert control over their own digital representations.
The concluding chapter, ‘Self-representation, digital culture and genre’, seeks to articulate two key concepts – mediation and genre – by viewing self-representation as a ‘multidimensional and intertextual genre’ (p. 166). While the functional similarities of the genre make it recognizable across platforms and media, the author acknowledges that differences in the politics, purpose and conditions of production in various environments introduce very significant variations in how the genre is realized.
The volume offers a contemporary and useful approach to consider key dimensions of the mediation processes that operate in various communicative contexts like broadcast TV, art worlds and the Internet. Nevertheless, the argument for considering self-representation as a genre seems too great a leap from the preceding analyses. Perhaps a more thorough engagement with the actual linguistic features of the texts involved could have provided more conclusive evidence; the author focuses on the processes of mediation to the detriment of the discourse-analytic aspects of the issue. But, in spite of this, scholars with an interest in the self-representation of the public in the digital age will doubtlessly find the author’s arguments engaging and thought-provoking.