Media in Transition 8: "Counterpublics: Self-Fashioning and Alternate Communities"

Notions of a "public sphere" have always incited skepticism and qualification, in particular the recognition of "counterpublics" that operate inside and at the margins of consensus discourse. Counterpublics can be spaces of political opposition - sites of resistance, civil disobedience, disruption - or spaces of play and self-fashioning, enabling the emergence of alt-, sub-, and fan cultures and alternative forms of community and identity. How is digital technology - and social media in particular - generating categories of identity and belonging that define themselves in opposition to established norms of personhood or community? How do the counterpublics of the digital age differ from those of the past? Cristobal Garcia, P. Universidad Catolica (Chile) Eric Gordon, Emerson College Henry Jenkins, USC Maria San Filippo, Harvard University Moderator: Noel Jackson, MIT