FROM ARAB SPRING TO ZUCCOTTI PARK: DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES AND THE SHIFTING POLITICS OF VISIBILITY by BRIAN MAC-RAY CREECH (Under the Direction of James F. Hamilton) ABSTRACT Recent protest movements and projects of dissent have drawn attention to the ways that digital technologies and media practices create popular perceptions of political projects. This dissertation investigates the way that media practices, digital technologies, and strategies of self- representation overlap and form a “politics of visibility,” or the means by which events, issues, individuals, and phenomena are made broadly sensible. Traditional studies of media and journalism often focus on the level of professional practice, subsuming human agency to the workings of technology or relegating technology solely to the realm of inert practice. This projects attempts to keep both technological and human agency relevant by using the work of Michel Foucault, Bruno Latour, and Félix Guattarri as a theoretical foundation to argue that technologies, communication practices, and social action overlap in a way that makes events intelligible at moments of representation. By understanding visibility as something that is produced, this dissertation argues that observers can understand the shifting power relations embedded in that visibility. Furthermore, new forms of visibility may have consequences on the production of politics and the relations of power. After an initial chapter that introduces the study and offers the rationale and theoretical genealogy of the “politics of visibility,” the subsequent chapters deal with key moments in the production of the politics of visibility. Following chapters analyze the cell phone camera as a device implicated in the production of visibility, and posit both the Occupy Wall Street protests and the “Arab Spring” as key events made intelligible through shifting technological relations and communication practices. This dissertation concludes positing that visibility is a site of broadly conceived contestation, where informal rules of discourse may circulate, but the strategic apprehension of those rules and shifting technologies allows certain groups to articulate their own politics with strategic regard to their own political and historical moment. INDEX WORDS: media, communication, technology, digital studies, politics of visibility, Bruno Latour, Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault, discourse, cell phone camera, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring FROM ARAB SPRING TO ZUCCOTTI PARK: DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES AND THE SHIFTING POLITICS OF VISIBILITY by BRIAN MAC-RAY CREECH BA, Davidson College, 2005 MA, University of Georgia, 2010 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Brian Mac-Ray Creech All Rights Reserved FROM ARAB SPRING TO ZUCCOTTI PARK: DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES AND THE SHIFTING POLITICS OF VISIBILITY by BRIAN MAC-RAY CREECH Major Professor: James F. Hamilton Committee: Andy Kavoori Elli Lester Roushanzamir Casey O’Donnell Ronald Bogue Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May, 2013 DEDICATION For Lucy, Wendy, and I.B., who were a constant and comforting presence during the writing of this project. For Ida, whose well of support knows no bottom. And for all the family, everywhere, with thoughtful questions, nods of encouragement, and sincere pats on the back. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A sincere thank you to Dr. Jay Hamilton, who not only pushed the nascent ideas that became this dissertation, but also broader their scope and sharpened their expression. Furthermore, thank you for carving out a space for projects like this in the discipline and in the academy. Most of all, thank you for holding all of us to a standard of rigor that not only makes us more thoughtful and careful scholars, but also more engaged and concerned citizens. May many other students come to appreciate the long-term impact of your insights. Further gratitude to Dr. Casey O’Donnell for shining a light on the ways I can talk and think about technology, especially for waving the warning flags when my own thinking and writing began to veer too close to the traps of technological or social determinism. Thank you to Dr. Andy Kavoori for always asking, “Where is the data?” in this and other projects, thus keeping the theory in constant, productive tension with what the materials tell us. And thank you to Dr. Elli Lester Roushanzamir for always reminding me that good writing is born out of careful thought and close analysis. And my gratitude to Dr. Ron Bogue, whose class on Deleuze and Guattari was one of my most formative academic experiences. This dissertation would not have been possible without the books you assigned and suggested. My deepest gratitude to the people at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. I could not have gotten here without the support of engaged peers and a caring faculty and staff. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Method of Inquiry .........................................................................................................2 Outline of the Study ......................................................................................................6 Notes ..............................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1 THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY AS AN ASSEMBLAGE OF TECHNOLOGY, SELF-REPRESENTATION, AND MEDIA PRACTICES ..........................................10 Critical Literature Review .....................................................................................13 The Politics of Visibility........................................................................................ 27 Conclusion .............................................................................................................40 Notes ......................................................................................................................41 2 APPARATUS OF VISIBILITY: INVESTIGATING CELL PHONE CAMERAS AND THE PRODUCTION OF IMAGES .............................................................................46 Image Capture........................................................................................................ 49 Image Production................................................................................................... 59 Image Distribution .................................................................................................65 Conclusion .............................................................................................................70 vi Notes ......................................................................................................................73 3 DIGITAL SELF-REPRESENTATION: OCCUPY WALL STREET AND THE PRODUCTION OF VISIBILITY ................................................................................79 Reviewing the Literature Surrounding Occupy Wall Street ..................................81 Creating an Intelligible Object of Critique ............................................................86 Making the Exercise of State Power Visible.......................................................... 96 Occupy Identity: Managing Internal Dynamics ..................................................102 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................111 Notes ....................................................................................................................113 4 DISCIPLINES OF TRUTH: THE ‘ARAB SPRING,’ AMERICAN JOURNALISTIC PRACTICE, AND THE PRODUCTION OF MEANING ........................................120 Journalism and the Production of Publicly-held Knowledge ..............................122 Articulating a Democratic Subjectivity: The Case of Wael Ghonim ...................126 Social Media and Journalism’s Epistemological Authority ................................130 The Meaning Making Power of the Individual Reporter..................................... 139 Making Events Intelligible................................................................................... 146 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................153 Notes ....................................................................................................................155 5 CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................162 Impetus and Summary of this Study ...................................................................163 Occupy Wall Street and Failed Political Projects ................................................166 The Arab Spring and the Failure to Understand ..................................................170 vii Implications and Directions for Future Research ................................................174 Notes ...................................................................................................................178 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................180