The Kardashian Moment: Hashtag, Selfie and the Broken Internet

• Authors: Pisarski Mariusz
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article focuses on a hashtags as a tool of networked culture and networked social movements, and – at the same time – on self-expression phenomenon of a selfie. Although today hashtags, in particular, can been seen as a frequently used weapon in information wars and a tool of propaganda 2.0, seen from historical perspective, this very tool aligns itself first and foremost with emancipatory forces in the Internet history. These forces, expressed in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and in participatory ideals of Web 2.0 are now in withdrawal. As the Internet is now in a peculiar development phase, ruled by the logic of surveillance capitalism, those early ideals of free speech and exchange of ideas are now overshadowed by a “darkening of the digital dream (Shoshana Zuboff). The central argument suggests that the “Kardashian moment” on the one hand, and Occupy Wallstreet, on the other hand, constituted a point in time where new media affordances and social phenomena were aligned. At the same time, both hashtag and selfie can be viewed as a response to the betrayalof individualization processes started in the 1960s, then carried on and amplified by the early Internet, and in the end commodified by the growing Internet giants and established structures of power

Keywords

EN

hashtag; hypertext; selfie; activism; Internet history

• Publisher: Wyższa Szkoła Informatyki i Zarządzania z siedzibą w Rzeszowie
• Journal: Social Communication. Online Journal
• Year: 2019
• Issue: 2(20)
• Pages: 53-61

Dates

published

2019

Contributors

author

Pisarski Mariusz

• Wyższa Szkoła Informatyki i Zarządzania z siedzibą w Rzeszowie

References

• AMERIKA M. (1997), Hypertext Consciousness [online: December 1, 2019], http://www.cyberartsweb.org/cpace/111/htc/mtv.html;
• BARLOW J. P. (1996), A cyberspace independence declaration. [online: December 1, 2019], http://www. samizdat. com;
• BAUMAN Z. (2000), Liquid Modernity, Cambidge, Blackwell Publishing;
• BERNERS-LEE, TIM (2019), The World Wide Web Turns 30 Today. Here’s How Its Inventor Thinks We Can Fix It[online: December 1, 2019],https://time.com/5549635/tim-berners-lee-interview-web/;
• CASTELLS M. (2012), Networks of outrage and hope: social movements in the Internet age, Cambridge, UK;Malden, MA, Polity Press;
• CASTELLS M. (2013), Communication Power, Oxford, Oxford University Press;
• CHOULIARAKI L. (2010), Self-mediation: New media and citizenship, “Critical Discourse Studies”, 7(4), 227;
• CZARNECKA, K (2018), Prof. Agata Bielik-Robson o tym, jak internet zabija cywilizację, „Polityka” 30.01.2018[online: December 1, 2019], https://www.polityka.pl/tygodnikpolityka/spoleczenstwo/1735694,1,prof-agata-bielik-robson-o-tym-jak-internet-zabija-cywilizacje.read;
• EMMAO. U. (2015), The Hashtag as channel of International Communication: A Study of the #bringbackourgirls hashtag, “Communication Panorama African and Global Perspectives”, 1. [online: December 1, 2019], http://rex.commpan.com/index.php/cpagp/article/viewFile/17/17;
• HARARI, N., Y. (2016), Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow, London, Harvill Secker;
• GABLER, NEAL. (2011), _The Elusive Big Idea, “New York Times”(13.08.2011) [online: December 1, 2019],https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html;
• GUNNING J., BARON I. Z. (2014), Why Occupy a Square, Oxford, Oxford University Press;
• HALAVAIS, A. (2014) Structure of Twitter. Social and Technical[in:] K. A. Weller, Bruns (ed.), Twitter and Society(p.37), New York, Peter Lang;
• JOYCE, M. (1996), Of Two Minds, Boston,University of Michigan Press;
• JURGENSON N. (2012),When atoms meet bits: Social media, the mobile web and augmented revolution. “Future Internet”, 4(1), 83-91. [online: December 1, 2019], https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/4/1/83/pdf;
• KARDASHIAN K. (2015), Selfish, New York, Universe Publishing;
• KUNTSMAN A. (2017), Selfie Citizenship, Manchester, Springer;
• MCCULLOUGH B. (2018), How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone, Newy York, Liveright Publishing;
• MEHITA I., & JONATHAN E. S. (2016), #selfie: digital self-portraits as commodity form and consumption practice. “Consumption Markets \& Culture”, 19(5), 405-415;(2006). Race to the Bottom. Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship. “Human Rights Watch”[online: December 19], https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/08/09/race-bottom/corporate-complicity-chinese-internet-censorship;
• RETTBERG J. W. (2014), Seeing Ourselves Through Technology, New York, Springer;
• SALAZAR E. (2017), Hashtags 2.0-an annotated history of the hashtag and a window to its future, “Revista
• ICONO14 Revistacientífica de Comunicación y Tecnologíasemergentes, 15(2)”, 16-54;
• SOROKOWSKA A., OLESZKIEWICZ A., FRACKOWIAK T. (2016),Selfies and personality: Who posts self-portrait photographs? “Personality and Individual Differences”, 90, 119-123;
• THOMPSON, B. (2015), Facebook and the Feed. “Stratechery” [online: December 1, 2019], https://stratechery. com/2015/facebook-and-the-feed/;
• VAIDHYANATHAN S. (2012), TheGooglization of Everything, Berkeley, University of California Press.
• ZUBOFF, S. (2019), The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, London, Profile Books Ltd.

Identifiers

EISSN

2450-7563