Abstract
The article employs post-hegemonic theory to reframe how power operates within online cultures. To that end, it investigates a digital marketing campaign for a Polish clothing brand, Reserved, and its reception in social media. Examining over one thousand comments on Facebook, it argues that while the initial viral success abruptly turned into public outcry, the actual response was much more varied, encompassing a multiplicity of different feelings and immediate orientations, not necessarily congruent with the backlash. In this sense, the shifting balance of power was not contingent on the emergence of a public consensus that challenged corporate hegemony, but pertained to the arrangement of affective intensities to habituate the multitude to the networked media environment. Consequently, the article approaches Reserved’s campaign and its online reception as involving a series of corporeal attunements that re-territorialized multiple and incongruent affective flows into established networked structures and corresponding relations of power.
Affect is being increasingly recognized as an inherent part of online culture, bringing attention to and elucidating the lived and deeply felt realities of digital connectivity in contemporary societies (e.g. Hillis et al., 2015; Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012). From the cultural studies’ point of view, acknowledging affect can provide an opportunity to rethink the relations between the cultural and the political in networked settings. In particular, it shifts focus from signification to corporeality, bringing into view the ways in which online culture engages the materiality of the body, and, as such, allows us to addresses the gap between meaning and action.
However, affect is also one of the messiest concepts in contemporary cultural theory, encompassing a host of approaches that can and often do entail irreconcilable ontological differences. In this article, I want to focus on post-hegemonic theory, as explicated by Jon Beasley-Murray (2010). His approach was developed first and foremost to rethink state political power in times of rampant neoliberal capitalism and the concomitant restructuration of social, political and cultural life in Latin America (Acosta, 2018). However, Beasley-Murray’s (2010) perspective is based on a much more fundamental claim about the ontology of power and, as such, can be productively expanded to different contexts. His premise is that social order is never secured through ideology; to claim otherwise is to mistake effects for causes. Instead, power acts directly on the materiality of bodies, modulating their capacities to act on one another. That is to say, power is primarily affective. Affect, then, refers not to discernible emotions of individual subjects but to intensive forces that circulate in between bodies (Massumi, 2002). In other words, it pertains not to extensive entities, but to transformative encounters whereby these entities come into being. Intensities actualize into extensities; they are becomings that give rise to beings, while continually passing through and in between them (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). This ceaseless circulation of affect shapes bodies and their capacities to act. And by channelling and organizing the flow of these forces, power concerns the very processes of emergence through which bodies become other to themselves.
Adopting the Deleuzian notion of affect as one of its central concepts (Beasley-Murray, 2010: 127), post-hegemonic theory presupposes an ontology of immanence in which relations ‘do not follow the relata, but the other way around’ (Barad, 2007: 136–7; see also Massumi, 2015: 88). In other words, relations are seen as intensive forces pertaining to ‘an ontogenesis or becoming of culture and the social . . . of which determinate forms of culture and sociality are the result’ (Massumi, 2002: 9). Consequently, power consists in modulating these forces, that is, acting on the affective dynamics of events. In particular, power operates through generating and reproducing regularized, low-intensity affects that coagulate into habits and are often aligned with institutional constraints. In fact, according to Beasley-Murray (2010: 188), the most successful strategies of power are those that ‘never emerge into discourse, that go without saying in the everyday life’s routine rhythms’. Therefore, by articulating affect with habit, post-hegemonic theory can account for the interplay between unfolding events and more enduring patterns. As such, it provides us with a more nuanced view of power that takes into consideration the complex ecology of intensive forces operating immanently within networked environments.
According to Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker (2007: 5), networks ‘exercise novel forms of control that operate at the level that is anonymous and nonhuman, which is to say material’. This materiality, however, has to be approached not as stable and inert, but as flexible and generative, that is, affective (Bennett, 2010). Networked power, therefore, is not about confinement and normativity; rather, it involves inflecting the ongoing flows in order to enable regularities to re-emerge across the variation. In other words, it has to do with a ‘new physics of organization’ (Galloway and Thacker, 2007: 29) that acts on the flux of intensive forces circulating through distributed topologies. Consequently, post-hegemonic theory, with its focus on the immanent structuration of the multitude via affect and habit, provides a novel way to cast light on and scrutinize the self-organizing logic of networked power whereby ‘no one controls networks, but networks are controlled’ (Galloway and Thacker, 2007: 39).
In this article, I will employ post-hegemonic theory in order to analyse a digital marketing campaign for a Polish clothing brand, Reserved, and its reception in social media. This approach is distinct from the established accounts which conceptualize marketing power as either sovereign, hegemonic or discursive (Denegri-Knott, 2019). In some respects, post-hegemonic theory aligns with Foucault’s conceptualizations of power as relational and distributed, however the Foucault-inspired accounts of ‘biopolitical marketing’ are primarily preoccupied with ideological enclosures, thus neglecting processes of organization that operate beneath or beyond discourse (see Zwick and Bradshaw, 2016; Zwick and Denegri-Knott, 2018). In contrast, the post-hegemonic approach to power is primarily concerned with modulating the flow of intensive forces so as to inflect their dynamic patterning. In digital networks, this kind of power can be said to operate not through enclosure, but spreadability (Jenkins et al., 2013). As such, it pertains not to creating bounded identities, but inflecting underlying connections that make and unmake networked topologies. That is why marketing power should be viewed as inextricably enmeshed with a host of other forces and power differentials that conjointly ‘in-form’ what eventuates (Massumi, 2015).
I will attempt to demonstrate how this complex dynamic manifested in Reserved’s digital marketing campaign and its reception online. First, I will outline how the campaign unfolded over less than a week in March 2017, from the initial viral success of a promotional video posted on YouTube to growing backlash that ultimately led to it being taken down. I will then demonstrate, drawing on the qualitative analysis of over one thousand Facebook comments, that the immediate responses to Reserved’s initial video varied considerably, suggesting a significant level of affective inconsistency with the subsequent backlash. Therefore, I will attempt to retrace the affective dynamics of the event, arguing that the outcome of Reserved’s campaign was, in fact, contingent on the ‘premediation’ of an emergent background feeling that was designed to mobilize populations and align them with the economics of the networked media environment (Grusin, 2010). In other words, the media intensified certain tendencies already inherent in the unfolding event, in order to channel the affective flow and tweak what eventuated towards a backlash. Thereby, immanent variation was transformed into a transcendent order. Instead of the multitude of bodies affecting and being affected by one another, there were now identifiable individuals equipped with subjective emotions and identities. In this sense, the backlash was contingent on the retroactive imposition of extensive boundaries on the circulation of intensive flows to create the illusion of sovereignty that confirmed the authority of the social order. It identified what was wrong and who was at fault, allowing for the resolution of tensions so that everything could go back to ‘normal’.
In the post-hegemonic framework, then, the impact of the campaign comprised a series of corporeal attunements whereby particular capacities were activated within a multiplicity of bodies, inducing them to pay attention, to interact, to attach themselves, and to be captivated by the unfolding event. This benefited mostly media outlets that reported on the controversies surrounding the campaign, allowing them to gain and sustain audiences, as well as digital platforms, like Facebook, providing them with a flow of data that could be mined for profit. Consequently, the purported backlash did not challenge networked structures of power, but reinforced them, contributing to the ongoing subsumption of life under capital via the circulation and recirculation of media content.
Designing virality: marketing, emotions and the unfolding of Reserved’s campaign
In 2017, the Polish clothing brand Reserved became a subject of controversy following its unorthodox online marketing campaign. Created by the marketing department at LPP, the retailing company that owns several brands, including Reserved, with cooperation from the Warsaw Creatives advertising agency, it initially consisted of a single video posted on a seemingly non-commercial YouTube channel ‘Dee Deee.002’. 1 In the video, entitled ‘HELP! HELP! POLISH BOY WANTED!’, a girl asks the viewers to help her find a boy she met at a concert in Warsaw. ‘He had the most beautiful eyes I think I’ve ever seen in my life, he was funny and smart and sweet, and we hit it off from the beginning’, she confides, describing how they got separated in the crowd when leaving the concert, before she had a chance to ask him for his contact information. Therefore, she makes a plea to the ‘Polish people’ to share the video with everyone they know, and provides her email address in the hope that her crush will see it and contact her.
However, she provides very little detail of the encounter, indicating only the name of the boy she is looking for – ‘Votek’, which corresponds, most closely, to the Polish name Wojtek – and the clothes he wore on that day. Although she mentions that the concert took place in Warsaw, she gives no specific date and does not name the performers or the venue. The only additional clue is that it was a brass band from New Orleans. The vagueness of her description might have hinted that finding Wojtek was not the real purpose of the video; rather, it was an invitation to play. In fact, just after its release, blogger Maciej Budzich pondered whether the video was fake, hypothesizing a marketing campaign for a dating site or app. However, he also acknowledged that ‘everything looks perfectly natural’ and Dee Dee’s call for help might as well be true (Mediafun, 2017a).
The video was posted on YouTube on 17 March and attracted over 1.7 million views in just two days. Additionally, several media outlets in Poland ran a story about it, expanding its reach. Consequently, the response in social media was massive. The video was re-posted by sporting celebrities, vloggers, and ordinary people, becoming a viral sensation that generated a torrent of reactions, comments, and shares. Speaking on 21 March, Paweł Walicki of Warsaw Creatives agency expressed his contentment with the responses to the video so far, saying: ‘generally, we achieved everything we wanted, and even more’ (Mediafun, 2017b).
However, that day, a second video was posted on Dee Dee’s YouTube channel revealing that the search for Wojtek was, in fact, a marketing ploy (Reserved, 2017). Forsaking the low-key aesthetics of its predecessor, the follow-up was professionally shot and montaged, recounting the girl’s trip to Warsaw, together with members of The Hot8 Brass Band, to find her crush. At the end of the video, the couple is shown together, as they dance to the band’s music, followed by Reserved’s logo. The reveal met with mixed reactions, often veering toward the extreme. On the one hand, many people who had become emotionally invested in Dee Dee’s search for true love felt deceived and taken advantage of. Therefore, Reserved’s Facebook page and Dee Dee’s YouTube channel were flooded with comments like: Toying with people’s emotions. Another reason to steer clear of you.
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Honestly I felt duped . . . maybe it’s naïve but that’s how I felt and thank God there are million other clothing stores because Reserved is now dead for me! Capitalizing on such basic feelings as love the desire to help others is beneath contempt.. . . Did you have a laugh as half of Poland were looking for Voytek? Now that half will refrain from buying in your stores . . .
On the other hand, a good number of commenters applauded the campaign, praising its ingenuity and freshness while ridiculing the gullibility of other viewers. As one person put it, ‘If you want to ban Reserved now, because you feel duped, then maybe you should ban yourselves from the internet since you trust everything in it lol.’ Such responses might indicate the increasing normalization and mainstream-ization of trolling (Phillips, 2015). They posit that because the internet affords its users with anonymity and freedom to post almost anything, online culture is no place to express emotional attachment or sentimentality; rather, any content should be approached as potentially deceptive and always met with detachment and sneering.
Despite numerous instances of such attitudes, however, the comments that expressed disappointment and resentment received much more attention and generated more interactions from the public, occupying top spots on Reserved’s Facebook page as well as on Dee Dee’s YouTube channel. Subsequently, myriad stories about the backlash circulated through the media. And while the ensuing controversy produced another spurt of interest in the original video, bringing the total number of views to over 3.5 million by the end of March, the number of ‘dislikes’ also rose exponentially from 2000 to 14,000, ultimately accounting for over 25% of all likes/dislikes. The extent of the public outcry eventually prompted LPP’s executives to take responsibility and apologize for the campaign. As Adam Babinek, the brand’s creative director, conceded: ‘We took too lightly the mechanism whereby we engaged so much the emotions of internet users. We never intended for any viewer of this campaign to feel deceived. We are sorry that it happened and we apologize to everyone affected’ (Noizz.pl, 2017). Consequently, the campaign was completely revamped: the character of Dee Dee never appeared again in any further promotional materials, and most of the company’s efforts were directed at counteracting the backlash and reiterating the intended positive message about the value of Polish men. Additionally, Babinek declared that part of the profits from selling Reserved’s spring collection will be donated to charitable causes.
However, in the meantime, the campaign was reported to the Advertising Ethics Committee, which ruled in August that it was ‘not carried out with a sense of social responsibility’, calling for LPP to modify it (Komisja Etyki Reklamy [Advertising Ethics Committee], 2017). The company responded the only way it could at this point, by completely removing Dee Dee’s channel from YouTube.
Betrayed feelings? The ambivalences of online reception
In the apology interview released soon after the start of the public outcry, Babinek concluded that the campaign’s failure was ‘a lesson for the future for all of us, how very careful one has to be, considering the high the level of trust among Poles regarding the content on the internet, when choosing what to post’ (Noizz.pl, 2017). His statement straightforwardly assumed that everyone, or almost everyone, who watched the video sincerely believed in Dee Dee’s appeal and wanted to help her. However, considering the sheer scale of interactions that the video generated, subsuming them all under a single sentiment seems questionable, to say the least. Therefore, to understand the nature of the backlash, as well as its wider ramifications for the functioning of power in networked culture, we need to investigate the reactions to Dee Dee’s video before it was outed as fake.
Using CrowdTangle, an online tool that measures how content is performing on different platforms, I determined that most of the interactions related to Reserved’s video took place on Facebook. In particular, there were 35 Facebook pages – representing media outlets, public figures and internet micro-celebrities – where the video was re-posted or reported on (see Figure 1).
Facebook pages which re-posted or ran a story on Reserved’s video. The size of each sphere corresponds to the number of followers of a given page, while the depth of colour corresponds to the number of interactions that Reserved’s video generated on that page.
My research sample comprises content from six media pages where Dee Dee’s video met with the most interactions. These are pictured on the graph in darker colours, and include:
‘Radio Zet’, a commercial radio station with the second largest market share in Poland;
‘Demotywatory’, a popular entertainment website that collects satirical user-generated images and clips;
Fakt, one of the best-selling newspapers in Poland, commonly regarded as representative of tabloid journalism;
Glamour, a Polish edition of the monthly women’s magazine;
‘Noizz.pl’, an internet portal addressed to ‘post-Millennials’;
‘Warszawa w pigułce’, a local news site.
On the grounds of qualitative analysis of over 1100 comments posted on these Facebook pages between 17 and 20 March 2017, I identified six prevalent patterns (see Figure 2) of responding to the video.
The frequency distribution of all the responses to Reserved’s video
Rooting for the couple
Undoubtedly, many people did become emotionally invested in Dee Dee’s search for love, and expressed their hope that the story would reach a happy ending: Keeping my fingers crossed that he is looking for her as well She’s so beautiful! Damn! Wojtek, Wojtek! Please be found!!! The fate will certainly bring them together. I want this for them from the bottom of my heart.
and if not, then maybe she will find her true love anyway. A round of applause for her bravery.
This strand of comments indicates a strong emotional investment, manifesting as hope, sympathy, kindness, willingness to help, etc., that might have led to feelings of disappointment and betrayal when Dee Dee’s search turned out to be a fabricated story. However, such reactions account for only 10% of all responses to the video. While the angry accusations of toying with people’s emotions dominated the public discourse, they might have, in fact, represented the feelings of a minority of viewers.
Playing along
A lot of people simply tagged someone who, more or less, fitted the description provided by Dee Dee: Tall, dark-haired, handsome, sexy, intelligent, funny, cute. 
In fact, this type of reaction accounted for almost half of all the responses. This was mostly manifested on two pages, ‘Noizz.pl’ and ‘Warszawa w pigułce’, with the largest number of comments overall. On these pages, tagging someone named Wojtek comprised over 60% of all responses, strongly affecting the aggregate outcome. However, on pages with a larger number of followers, like ‘Demotywatory’, ‘Radio Zet’ and Fakt, these reactions accounted for a smaller fraction of comments (16%, 41% and 3% respectively).
While referencing potential candidates generally suggests acceptance of the narrative provided by the video, it does not necessarily mean that people really wanted to join in on the search or were motivated by a genuine desire to help, as some comments clearly indicate:
The jocular subtext makes such comments emotionally ambiguous. Admittedly, by tagging another Wojtek they effectively expand the scope of the search and, consequently, increase the chances of a happy ending but, at the same time, the commenters evidently reference individuals whom they do not believe to be the right one. In other words, it would seem that these people were not really preoccupied with finding the ‘correct’ Wojtek and, therefore, did not necessarily feel disappointment when the story was revealed as fake. The ambiguity of their comments, however, makes it difficult to definitively assess the nature of their investment in the story.
Mocking the video
Some comments, in turn, were unequivocally sarcastic. As such, they were not intended to help the cause and, in fact, might have hindered the efforts to find Wojtek. For instance, by providing misleading evidence: It was me, Paweł. I just gave her the wrong name. The most important thing, I am here now. She’s looking for Witek
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not Wojtek. She must have heard it wrong because the concert was loud. But I did not promise her anything. . . just a brief acquaintance. 
False identifications as the Wojtek that Dee Dee was looking for were a recurring theme among the commenters. Some also took joy in suggesting implausible matches, including public figures and celebrities. That there was a lot of banter and mockery should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with online culture (Phillips and Milner, 2017). At first glance, these comments might even seem more commonplace than they really were. This is because they generated the most reactions and, therefore, were usually displayed on top of each comment section. However, in the sample, mocking accounted only for 16% of all responses. Yet, aside from tagging other people named Wojtek, it was still the most frequent reaction and, considering the politics of visibility on Facebook, it can be regarded as the most prominent type of response.
Questioning the narrative
There were also numerous comments that challenged the premise of the video, for example, by questioning the sincerity of Dee Dee’s call: read between the lines. . . ‘Dear Wojtek! You became a dad. . .’ She’s probably four months pregnant and is looking for the perpetrator 
The intimation of pregnancy was one of the most frequent responses in this category. Some people went even further, suggesting an additional financial motive for Dee Dee’s search: We’re not going to fall for it. You’d have to be an idiot to get caught for alimony in such a stupid way 
However, many people also hinted that Wojtek, in fact, might not want to be found, as he is not who he seems to be: He probably has a girlfriend/wife and that’s why his keeping quiet Wojtek has a wife and four kids, he doesn’t need another acquaintance 100% he’s gay 
All these reactions indicate disbelief in the happy ending to the story. While they fit within the narrative framework offered by the video, they question its authenticity by pointing to hidden motives or highlighting potential challenges that the couple might face. As such, they suggest that Dee Dee’s account is not necessarily what it seems and should not be taken at face value.
Expressing contempt
Despite Walicki’s claim that Dee Dee’s appeal met with an overwhelmingly positive response, receiving ‘only nice words’ (Mediafun, 2017b), some commenters undeniably felt upset with the video, even before it was outed as a marketing ploy: Oh my fucking god, if I were to fall in love with every handsome man after meeting him for the 1st time I would be in love 24/7 every week with another one Lol The world has gone crazy, platonic ‘love’ comparable with real feeling If it failed then that’s how it was supposed to be.You can’t cheat destiny .Besides the guy should be looking for her if he cares. For me it’s a derogative role for a woman . . . If I were him, I wouldn’t call back. If the girl cannot cough up anything more than lovely eyes and cool jacket then she’s not the sharpest one (her e-mail address confirms it).
Some people expressed their animosity without providing a rationale, simply deeming the video ‘idiotic’ and ‘preposterous’. Others questioned the girl’s beauty, sometimes employing blatantly sexist or racist vocabulary to make their point. This was most prominent on Fakt’s Facebook page. However, overall, such prejudiced comments comprised a very small subset of responses.
Exposing the hoax
Finally, a perceptive 1% of commenters managed to recognize the video for what it really was: Haha today every one of us is Wojtek What a treacherous clickbait First, she did not mention the day, the hour or even the city or the band that played. Based on this I can assume that it’s a cunningly plotted viral. Second, if the said Wojtek was interested, he wouldn’t let go and he would at least take a phone number from her. The end of Love Story. . .
by the way it’s probably some good marketing campaign
These commenters radically challenged the authenticity of Dee Dee’s appeal, rejecting the whole narrative framework of the video. Accordingly, when it was outed as a marketing ploy, they might have felt content, since it confirmed the validity of their suppositions.
Overall, most of the responses seem to accept the general premise of the video – the girl’s search for a boy – while, at the same time, disputing particular details of the story. In this context, the assumption that the campaign’s failure was due to betraying a commonly shared feeling of hope, expressed as a genuine belief that the lovers will find each other, seems implausible. Those rooting for the couple comprised only 10% of people commenting on Facebook, while the majority appeared to be unconcerned about how the story ends, instead drawing upon its popularity to have fun and engage in a variety of ways. These findings suggest that the public consensus should not be taken for granted, forcing us to rethink how power operates within viral media events of that sort.
This requires shifting attention from emotions to affect. The identified patterns of responding to Reserved’s video pertain to acts of capture whereby the circulating intensities are transformed into fixed expressions. In other words, these patterns rise from a field of emergence that is already astir with affective tendencies ‘pointing to the potential for different modes of structuration’ (Massumi, 2015: 104). As such, they correspond to attractors, implicating a multiplicity of coexisting end points inherent in the unfolding of the event. They suggest there was a continuum of immediate, affective orientations to the video that do not fit into a linear narrative of betrayed feelings and subsequent backlash. Instead, from the outset the event was pulled towards different outcomes. Therefore, to understand why the campaign ended the way it did, we must inquire into how one of those potential outcomes was selected and actualized. This requires a retroductive mode of inference that goes beyond observed patterns to think through what morphogenetic forces might be at work in producing and/or modifying them (Danermark et al., 2002). As an intensity, affect is never directly accessible; it can only be inferred from the qualities it gives rise to. Consequently, the above-mentioned expressive patterns orient us to affective inconsistencies and incongruences between the way the event unfolded and its final outcome. From this, we might attempt to map out the underlying intensive dynamics. However, this entails a different, more speculative way of attending to the empirical material, investigating not only what there is, but also what might be (Blackman and Venn, 2010; Knudsen and Stage, 2015a; Stewart, 2007). In other words, we need look beneath expressive patterns to consider how affective potentials resonated and interfered with each other to modulate what eventuated. This will not provide us with the full and definite account of how these patterns emerged as – when it comes to affect – something always escapes (Beasley-Murray, 2010; Massumi, 2002). However, I will attempt to demonstrate that post-hegemonic theory can provide us with a more comprehensive understanding of how power fed into the event’s unfolding.
Affect, habit and power in online culture
According to post-hegemonic theory, analysing Reserved’s marketing campaign would require shifting attention to bodily capacities that are transformed through encounters with images and narratives transmitted by the media. In this sense, power operates via attunement, aligning affective potentials with particular trajectories of the event’s unfolding. However, this process should not be conceived of in terms of delineated individual responses, but in terms of a continuous impersonal flow of intensities in between and across bodies that can be channelled and structured in order to nudge the multitude towards the perpetual consumption of media content.
According to Angel and Gibbs (2006: 26), one way to account for how the media can engage corporeality and sensation, acting as conduits for affect, is to conceive of ‘the use of the human face in digital and electronic forms of communication’ as ‘a form of biomediation where the media remediate the human body’ in order to draw users into circuits of information and capital. In other words, the face functions as a mode of expression to establish affective relations between remediated and receiving bodies. This was a key component of Reserved’s campaign. The initial video comprised just one shot, focusing entirely on the girl and her expressions. When Babinek explained the reasons for choosing model, Destene Kinser, to play Dee Dee, he said they were looking for someone ‘with an original look, warm voice, and that extra “something” that would evoke positive sensations in viewers’ (Noizz.pl, 2017). Each of these features can produce affective relations through attraction or repulsion. For instance, some people engaged with the video on Facebook by complimenting or questioning the girl’s beauty. However, intensive forces often remain unacknowledged, bypassing conscious apprehension. All the minuscule movements and corporeal transformations – the way she smiles in particular moments; the way her gaze oscillates between looking down or sideways or straight into the camera; the way the tone of her voice changes, etc. – can provide cues for affective involvement. It is these sequences or even fragments of motion, rhythm or tempo that make up the intangible ‘feel’ of the video, which often drives virality (Munster, 2013).
The arrangement of intensive forces in Reserved’s video might convey a sense of vulnerability which, as Knudsen and Stage (2015b: 2) argue, constitutes ‘a powerful way of attuning . . . the spectators and, at the same time, an unruly force that creates discursive ruptures and conflicts’. In other words, while vulnerability can produce experiences of sympathy and ‘feeling alike’, the defencelessness of the biomediated body can also trigger contempt or cruelty. This is because each receiving body brings its own capacities to affect and be affected into the encounter, altering the ensuing outcome of the interaction. Reserved’s video, then, should be approached in terms of ‘differential attunement’, whereby bodies are ‘induced into inhabiting the same affective environment, even if there is no assurance that they will act alike in that environment’ (Massumi, 2015: 57). This explains the differing responses to the video as delineated in the previous section. However, these particular patterns should also be conceived of as derivative, resulting from the individuation of networked affectivity within the research set-up. The ontological focus on relationality and becoming means that affect cannot simply be delineated and parsed into stable formations. By definition, it escapes any attempts to confine it. Therefore, the identified patterns are already products of affective capture within the research assemblage, resulting from the selection of particular tools, technologies, methods, concepts, etc. (Coleman and Ringrose, 2013: 17; Fox and Alldred, 2017: 155–6). As such, they present a retrospective and incomplete snapshot of the affective dynamics in this particular media event.
Approached affectively, the exercise of power involves a ‘direct capture of attention and energies by the event’ (Massumi, 2015: 115). This entails the intensification of media circulation in order to create a centripetal force that draws individuals in, albeit differentially. Thereby, it is impossible to coordinate the affective capacities of each and every body involved in the interaction. There is no way to control how the event will be experienced, contextualized and politicized. However, as Jodi Dean (2010: 101) notes, the goal is not to elicit specific outcomes, but rather ‘spreading, diversifying, and intensifying the message force’. That is to say, power works pre-emptively, luring individuals in by creating multiple and divergent opportunities for involvement. Exercising power, then, is not about evoking particular responses while excluding others, but about opening onto new potentialities by expanding the range of possible engagements. In this way, power can extend over the processes of emergence, augmenting particular tendencies to precipitate affective publics (Anderson, 2012; Papacharissi, 2015). Its target, therefore, is not individuals, but the relational, emergent multitude – it works by immanently modulating the impersonal correlations of bodies connected by affective flows and organized into recurring patterns of behaviour by habit (Beasley-Murray, 2010).
According to Dean (2010), digital media operate, to a large extent, by creating a repetitive circuit of affect that draws its users in a circular movement of clicking, liking, sharing, commenting, etc. These activities do not stand in for anything; rather, they mark a feeling, registering aspects of the intensity of a particular event. And with the constant proliferation and circulation of content propelling the flow of affect in digital networks, they gradually accrue in bodies, becoming habitual. Habits, as Massumi (2015: 64) argues, comprise ‘ways of not attending-to, while still acting according-to’. As such, they sustain ways of feeling and responding that tend to be aligned with the workings of power. For instance, the habitual clicks, likes, shares, status updates and comments carried out on social media, can be made quantifiable, manageable, and commodifiable by converting them into data and reselling them to advertisers and other interested parties (Fuchs, 2014; Hrynyshyn, 2017). The exercise of power within online culture, then, does not just entail the capture of affect but also involves habituating users to the perpetual change within digital networks in order to develop ever new dependencies that can be mined for profit (Chun, 2016). Thus, the logic of digital media is, to a large extent, congruent with contemporary capitalism: the potential to generate value is maximized by harnessing the combinatorial potential of the networked media environment.
In this context, we can re-evaluate Reserved’s marketing campaign, approaching it in a way that ‘addresses the complex interaction of affect and habit within ongoing material processes of transformation’ (Pedwell, 2017: 154). On the one hand, the emotional appeal in the video did affect many people, albeit in different ways. However, it was this immanent variation that afforded the ongoing accretion of feedback. Consequently, the vague description of Wojtek in Reserved’s video can be read as an attempt to maximize the potential of new connections and experiences, as it allows for multiple forms of engagement that, in one way or another, facilitate collective attunement in the immediacy of the affective event. On that account, the comments made on Facebook should not be approached in terms of conveying particular meanings, congruous or not with the brand image, but as expressions of being (differentially) drawn in by the event. Accordingly, almost half of the responses comprised in referencing people named Wojtek, often without providing any context or additional commentary, simply passing on affect and proliferating connections within the intensive network.
While the flow of affect underlies the dynamics of virality, habits provide the embodied infrastructure wherein such processes can take place (Chun, 2016). In his interview, Walicki of Warsaw Creatives claimed that in planning the campaign they extensively studied how their target demographic engages with digital media (Mediafun, 2017b). By registering users’ habits, the company attempted to insert their brand in the self-perpetuating affective loop that territorializes the networked multitude.
However, affect operates in a mode of continuous variation, always exceeding and escaping apparatuses of capture that attempt to control and organize it. In the case of Reserved’s campaign, this ‘affective surplus’ partly coagulated into emotions and meanings that challenged the brand’s message. Amplified by media narratives, they formed the bedrock of the backlash. In this sense, the public outcry over Reserved’s campaign should be viewed not in terms of social consensus, but in terms of premediating a collective feeling in order to capitalize on its affective pull (Grusin, 2010). By selectively reiterating particular minoritarian experiences the media created a refrain (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). This entailed folding the affective flow back on itself in a way that augmented the intensity of the event, generating even more views, clicks, shares and comments that could be mined for profit. As Andrejevic puts it: ‘the more emotions are expressed and circulated, the more behaviour is tracked and aggregated, the greater the ability of marketers to attempt to channel and fix affect in ways that translate into increased consumption’ (2011: 615). This is why the technological infrastructure of social media, comprising both visible interfaces as well as invisible algorithms and protocols, is designed to enable and facilitate data sharing (Fuchs, 2014; van Dijck, 2013). Consequently, the proliferation of responses initiated by the backlash provided additional opportunities for the platform to record and index users’ profiles even more comprehensively.
On that account, even if the backlash introduced a short-term disruption to the aggregation of value, the networked structures involved in channelling and structuring the flow of intensities in digital media remained intact and quickly absorbed it. The backlash became an affective attractor that propelled the multitude to further engage in the consumption of media content. However, this development cannot be attributed to actions of particular institutions alone. It emerged immanently via ‘distributed mediation’ (Grusin, 2010: 90). In the post-hegemonic framework, then, power is not wielded and exercised by distinct and autonomous actors, such as marketers, broadcast media, social media platforms, regulatory bodies, individual users, etc. Rather, it subsists in the relational dynamics of the network itself (Galloway and Thacker 2007). It is in this sense that the mechanisms of power involved in the unfolding of Reserved’s campaign had primarily to do with the production of bodies that are constantly attentive and attuned to the vicissitudes of media events, thus habituating the multitude into the always-on networked media environment.
Conclusion
If power is understood as hegemonic, that is, pertaining primarily to the processes of establishing or challenging a shared set of meanings and representations, then the sequence of events that comprises Reserved’s digital marketing campaign would be read in terms of an ideological struggle. Accordingly, the public outcry would be indicative of the emergence of a counter-hegemonic challenge to the symbolic order, governed by powerful corporations. However, as I tried to demonstrate, such an account would be misleading, as it posits consent where there was none. Instead of acknowledging the multiplicity of divergent reactions to the video immediately after it was posted on YouTube, it elevates the expressions of outrage as representative of the social mood, disregarding the extent to which they were actually shared among the viewers.
In this sense, ascribing hegemony can be considered as an act of coding that contracts immanent variation into pre-established identities, such as the corporation and the people, the villain and its victims. In other words, it is a retrospective fiction that allows order to be imposed on a complex event (Massumi, 2002: 78). By determining who was involved and in what capacity, and assigning blame accordingly, it confirms the authority of social institutions.
In contrast, a post-hegemonic approach argues that this illusion of transcendence and sovereignty is produced through ‘folding the constituent power of the multitude back on itself’ (Beasley-Murray, 2010: ix). Instead of a counter-hegemonic challenge to power, the emergence of the backlash involved a movement of re-territorialization that created an affective feedback loop, drawing the multitude towards increased consumption of media content. In this sense, the mechanisms of power involved in the unfolding of the event required neither consent nor coercion, but pertained to the ways media, bodies and affective processes become intertwined and coagulate into patterns. These mechanisms operate primarily not through ideological articulations but through corporeal attunements that immanently re-arrange the multitude via affect and habit.
In the post-hegemonic framework, then, the surplus affect generated in the course of Reserved’s campaign did not lead to social change. Rather, despite its transformative capacities, it was almost immediately re-assimilated into habitual everyday routines that sustained networked power structures. When bodies enter into recurring interactions, their affective potentials contract into relatively consistent sets of corporeal tendencies and propensities that immanently structure their emergent behaviour. Habits, then, can be approached in terms of regularized, low-intensity affects aligned with the quotidian activities that, in most instances, pose no challenge to the established social order. This is because, every event unfolds in relation to enduring patterns within the network that form the context in which it may or may not gain impact (Boulton et al., 2015: 31). The outpouring of affect following Reserved’s campaign was contingent on habitual patterns of social media use and never attained the level of intensity that would push the multitude over the threshold whereby its behaviour changes. In other words, while causing an interruption in networked dynamics, the campaign was not affectively charged enough to destabilize enduring networked structures. Thus, in the end, it contributed to reinforcing them.
To sum up, hegemony is only possible if people think the same things in the same ways; it necessitates a shared worldview that underpins sociocultural unity. However, with the increase in social complexity, ‘nonsharing’ becomes an immanent feature of social interactions (Hannerz, 1992). This is particularly relevant in digital networks which collapse diverse contexts via the endless proliferation and differentiation of content, as well as the scale and speed of its circulation. As a result, online interactions are increasingly shrouded in ambivalence (Phillips and Milner, 2017). In fact, observing how multiple and divergent meanings spread and clash in digital networks, it can be hard to overcome the impression that hegemony is always in the eye of the beholder.
Consequently, the notions of power that retain the foundational dualism of people versus the power bloc, or vernacular versus institutional agency, regardless of how much dialectical work is put into relativizing this opposition, seem ill-fitted to capture the non-linear dynamics of interactions within networked environments (Szarecki, 2020). In contrast, post-hegemonic theory argues that power operates immanently, via continuous variation, and that is why it can help us make critical sense of media events like Reserved’s digital marketing campaign and its reverberations online. In this instance, it has allowed us to see how potentially counter-hegemonic articulations were expressive of power structures adapting dynamically to the ongoing intensive fluctuations that make up the networked multitude. Therefore, despite the public outcry, the flow of affect and the work of habit reinforced the ongoing subsumption of life – in the form of attention, engagement, emotion, etc. – under capital via the circulation and recirculation of media content.
Footnotes
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in the Republic of Poland [grant number: 0107/NPRH3/H12/82/2014].