Witnessing distress: Cultural workers’ processing of pandemic experiences on social media platforms

Anne Soronen, A. Koivunen
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Abstract

This article examines the ways in which Finnish cultural workers experienced and responded to their colleagues’ and peers’ distress on social media platforms during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The theory of media witnessing as mundane world-witnessing is employed to analyse cultural workers’ modalities of experience as audience-like followers on social media. The data comprise 26 focused interviews conducted via Zoom and over phone in 2021 with cultural workers representing the fields of theatre, television and film industry, literature, music and circus. We argue that various modes of affective and politicised witnessing offered cultural workers the mechanisms to articulate and reflect on their own and others’ experiences of inequality and vulnerability as well as develop a sense of responsibility. In the context of the pandemic, mundane world-witnessing involved engagement and identification with distress, peer support and activism, as witnessed and evaluated by cultural workers on social media. Furthermore, this article theorises a new mode of witnessing prevalent on social media platforms – speculative witnessing – which carries a reflective and hesitant approach to social media ‘bubbles’, obscure algorithmic agency and imagination of absent audiences. In other words, speculative witnessing captures a dimension of metacommunicative scepticism in media witnessing that reflects a specific condition of knowing in the context of social media platforms.
目睹痛苦:文化工作者在社交媒体平台上对大流行病经历的处理
本文研究了在 COVID-19 大流行期间,芬兰文化工作者如何在社交媒体平台上体验和应对同事和同行的痛苦。文章采用了媒体见证作为世俗世界见证的理论,来分析文化工作者作为社交媒体上的受众式追随者的体验模式。数据包括 2021 年通过 Zoom 和电话对戏剧、电视和电影业、文学、音乐和马戏等领域的文化工作者进行的 26 次重点访谈。我们认为,各种情感和政治化的见证模式为文化工作者提供了表达和反思自身及他人不平等和脆弱性经历的机制,并培养了他们的责任感。在大流行病的背景下,世俗的世界见证涉及参与和认同痛苦、同伴支持和行动主义,文化工作者在社交媒体上见证和评价了这一切。此外,本文还从理论上提出了一种在社交媒体平台上盛行的新的见证模式--推测性见证--它对社交媒体的 "泡沫"、模糊的算法机构和缺席受众的想象力进行了反思和犹豫。换句话说,推测性见证捕捉到了媒体见证中的元交流怀疑论维度,反映了社交媒体平台语境下的特定认知条件。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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