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Mass gatherings and the positive or negative phantasms of the masses instigate various discourses and practices of social control, communication, and community formation. Yet the masses are not what they once were. In light of the algorithmic analysis of mass data, the diagnosis of dispersed public spheres in the age of digital media, and new conceptions of the masses such as swarms, flash mobs, and multitudes, the emergence, functions, and effects of today's digital masses need to be examined and discussed anew. They provide us, moreover, with an opportunity to reevaluate the cultural and medial historiography of the masses. The present volume outlines the contours of this new field of research and brings together a collection of studies that analyze the differences between the new and former masses, their distinct media-technical conditions, and the political consequences of current mass phenomena.
List of contents
9 - 15 An Introduction in Ten Theses (Inge Baxmann, Timon Beyes, Claus Pias)17 - 22 I. Which Crowds? (Inge Baxmann)23 - 34 Crowd Mediation (Christian Borch)35 - 52 From Masses to Collectives (Christiane Heibach)53 - 74 Inertia, Acceleration, and Media/Theory (Florian Sprenger)75 - 100 Creating Subsets of the Masses (Irina Kaldrack, Theo Röhle)101 - 116 Augmented Crowds (Roland Meyer)117 - 122 II. Which Media? (Claus Pias)123 - 134 Discharged Crowds (Wolfgang Hagen)135 - 150 "Open" and "Free" (Michael Andreas)151 - 172 The Sociology of Media (Dirk Baecker)173 - 192 Reality Mining (Sebastian Vehlken)193 - 218 Human Terrain System (Christoph Engemann)219 - 223 III. Which Public Spheres? (Timon Beyes)225 - 246 The Ornament of Mass Customization (Sascha Simons)247 - 266 Collectivity without Identity (Carolin Wiedemann)267 - 284 Unstable (Counter)Publics (Mirko Tobias Schäfer)285 - 306 Toward an Ethics of the Leak? (Christoph Bieber)307 - 328 Between the Madness and the Wisdom of Crowds (Peter Krapp)329 - 336 Short-Circuiting the Masses (Marie-Luise Angerer)337 - 342 Falling Between Two Chairs - or Three, or ... (Charles Ess)343 - 348 List of Contributors
About the author
Timon Beyes ist Organisationsforscher und wissenschaftlicher Leiter des Projekts 'Fernsehen 2.0' an der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.
Claus Pias, geb. 1967, ist Professor für elektronische Medien an der Universität Essen.
