The Paradox of Liveness. From the Broadcast Media Era to the Social Media Era

Abstract

Liveness has been a persistent and much-debated concept in media studies. It has long been associated with broadcast media, and television in particular. However, the emergence of social media, following the dot-com bubble bust, has brought new forms of liveness into effect. These challenge common assumptions about and perspectives on liveness, which fail to capture these new forms, thus provoking a revisiting of the concept. This dissertation seeks to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what liveness is and, perhaps more pertinently, to clarify the stakes surrounding the category of the ‘live’. In this book, I argue that liveness is a product of the dynamic interaction of media institutions, technologies and users. It manifests itself in so-called constellations of liveness. By analyzing the constellations of liveness in four different cases - Livestream, eJamming, The Voice and Facebook - I explore the operation of the category of liveness and pinpoint the conditions under which it comes into being. In doing so, I identify a paradox inherent to liveness. This paradox derives from the fact that although liveness promises to de-mediate mediation, media institutions have a need, stemming from their reliance on schedules and tightly formatted narratives for economic viability, to ‘control’ media content (which inevitably requires mediation). The first two chapters introduce the liveness-as-constellation perspective. In chapter one the relation of liveness to media power is explored, whereas chapter two analyzes the constructedness of liveness. The attention of the dissertation then shifts in chapter three and four, where liveness is used to facilitate a comparison between the media of the broadcast era and those of the social media era. The comparative analysis of The Voice and Facebook allows for a discussion of the mechanisms of control (over content) in broadcast and social media. Instrumental in the analysis are a number of tensions surrounding liveness, which occur when its three domains – media institutions, technologies and users – don’t synch up to provide a coherent definition of the ‘live’. In comparing those two cases, I show that in the social media era control is increasingly executed through regulating distribution through algorithms rather than exercising control through media production. The cases’ selection furthermore stimulates a reflection on how social media interact with, rather than replace, broadcast media. In relation to The Voice I pinpoint tensions surrounding liveness pertaining to the rhythms and temporalities of broadcast television, which I then link to contemporary debates around television scheduling and Big Data driven artistic strategy. In addition, I locate a tension concerning audience participation, which in turn invites a consideration of how producers maintain control over the televised production. In the case of Facebook, I identify tensions concerning users as the locus of ‘live’, which I relate to several debates: that about sticky and spreadable media, about the transition from normative filtering of the broadcast era to statistical filtering through algorithms in social media, and finally, that about the emerging Like economy of the Web. In the conclusion I relay the paradox of liveness to what Michael Schudson (1987) has called “the ideal of conversation” and revisit the reflection on broadcast media and social media.