Networked Selves: Trajectories of Blogging in the United States and France

Description

Networked Selves is an original analysis of one of the most defining cultural features of our time: how people turn to the Web to construct a public self. It examines the trajectory of a practice that embodies this sociocultural shift in fundamental ways: blogging. The book traces the evolution of the Web as a means to publicly perform a self through an analysis of the emergence, development, and transformation of blogging from the mid-1990s to the early years of the 2010s. It discusses processes that have shaped practices of subjectivity on the Web over two decades in two countries: the United States and France. Through this comparative analysis, the book shows that the cultural identity of blogging as a practice of subjectivity in these countries is neither inevitable nor neutral. Instead, it demonstrates that the development of the Web required the forging of various articulations between specific conceptions of self, publicness, and technology. These articulations were responses to both transformations in the daily life of actors and larger economic, political, and cultural processes―notably neoliberalization. The book also explains how the cultural imaginary around blogs came into being in the United States and how it has also functioned as a model for actors in other countries, such as France. Networked Selves discusses how and why actors in the technology field in France have gradually abandoned traditional makers of exceptionalism that were key in the development of the country’s national identity and favored notions that characterize the United States instead. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Voicing the Web Why Blogging? A French-American Comparison Conceptual Grounds: The Web as Technology of Subjectivity Analyzing the Voices of the Web How the Research Was Done Three Registers of Voice: An Overview of the Book Notes References Chapter 2: The Emergence of the Blog Blogs and the Early Web Ecology in the United States The Early Web Ecology in the United States: A Genealogy of Precursors A “Format” for Multiple Voices: The Stabilization of the Blog Early Voices on the French Web The Early French Web Ecology Blogues, Jouebs, and Carnets: The Stabilization of the Blog in France Concluding Remarks Notes References Chapter 3: The Proliferation of Blogging The American “T-Shirt-Clad Army of Bloggers” A New Context for Blogging The Voices of Citizens: Of “News Blogging” and “Political Blogging” Organizations Begin to Blog “Blogonomics”: Making Income out of Blogging Turning Blogs into a Model The French Republic of Blogs New Grounds for New Appropriations The Voices of French Citizens The Days of Glory of the “Political Blog” in France French Organizations Begin to Blog “Blogs for the Pros”: Blogging for Income in France Turning Blogs into a Model Concluding Remarks Notes References Chapter 4: From Blogging to Microblogging Inventing “Microblogging”: Toward a New Web Ecology in the United States New Software for a New Web Ecology Reconfiguring the Web Ecology: The Invention of “Microblogging” Redefining Blogging: Tensions and Opportunities Between Blogging, “Microblogging,” and “Curation”: A New French Web Ecology Redefining Blogging: The Threats Redefining Blogging: The Opportunities New Software for a New Web Ecology: The Invention of “Curation” Concluding Remarks Notes References Chapter 5: Rethinking Self-Performance in The Digital Age Self-Performance in the Digital Age From Paris to San Francisco: A Story of Americanization? The Reconfiguration of Public and Private Lives Technology and Subjectivity: A New Scale for Voice Self-Performance in Times of Neoliberalism From Register to Regime Notes References Appendix: Research Design References Index