[Commlist] new book: Performance of participation

New book:

The Performance of Participation in Russian Alternative Media: 
Discourse, Materiality and Affect in Grassroots Media Production in 
Contemporary Russia (Doctoral thesis, monograph)

by Filimonov, Kirill

The text is open access, and can be downloaded here:
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1507855/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Abstract [en]

This doctoral dissertation analyzes participation in alternative media, 
taking the reader to the Russia of the late 2010s. Bringing together 
discourse theory, media and communication studies and political theory, 
it approaches participation in media production through the lens of 
performativity. The conceptualization of participation as a performance 
helps explore the material, embodied and spatial enactments of 
discourses that sustain the fragile and unstable process of production. 


The data of this study comprise several months of participant 
observations, interviews with media producers, and textual analysis of 
media content. The research employs a case-study method and focuses on 
media that explicitly delegate their participants the right to co-decide 
on matters of content production and internal organizing process. The 
three cases under study are Russia’s oldest anarchist medium Avtonom, 
the student medium DOXA, and the web-based zine Discours. Data analysis 
integrates qualitative content analysis and a discourse-theoretical 
approach, informed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse 
theory alongside its subsequent developments within the Essex School. 


The study looks into the distribution of power in alternative media 
amidst an internal diversity, material constraints, and an antagonistic 
relationship with the state. The analysis constructs a model of 
participation, which shows its embeddedness into multiple and partially 
overlapping communities. A vibrant sociality and the potential for a 
further expansion of the media communities emerge as two of the key 
conditions of the participatory process. Furthermore, participation is 
supported by an ongoing performance of a multiplicity of identities, in 
which the more elitist articulations of journalism are intertwined with 
some empowering and counter-hegemonic notions of media production, media 
producers, and the audience.

Retaining a critical-explanatory focus, the dissertation explores the 
limits of power-sharing, such as the persistence of journalistic 
professionalism, the scarce resources of the media and vulnerability 
inflicted by the state. The static representation of the state as the 
major confronting force reveals the paradoxical nature of social 
antagonism: while mobilizing the limited resources, it also reduces 
participatory intensities and triggers a politics of trust that 
restricts access to media production.

This dissertation offers a number of theoretical and empirical 
contributions to several fields. Some of its key insights relate to 
participation beyond institutional politics, the hybridity of mainstream 
and alternative media, the interconnection of discourse, materiality and 
affect, and an empirical applicability of discourse theory.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2021. , p. 200
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