This paper argues for the Bricolage aesthetic, one that seems contingent to rather than emergent of the current performance of democracy of the “democratisation of democracy. Using social media as the object of study, the paper uses Deuze’s understanding of digital culture and shows how the emerging aesthetic during the protests illustrates the components of participation, mediation and bricolage. I do this by deconstructing the time-bound gestures through which the content is produced, and the manner in which it is shared, edited, remediated, and distributed. This touches upon embodied bricolage identity (of the self, community, and knowledge production and participation (using Deuze, Kulynych and Liam Bullingam and Ana Vaconcelos) that is emerging as (not so new yet accelerated) rhetoric to the argument of traditional notions of credibility “chaotic, disorganized, and random display and practice of online information poses[ing] clear challenges to determining what credible information is, or how to break through the clutter in order to prevent information overload, and para- phrasing Baudrillard again, an “implosion of meaning.” I argue that the very chaotic, disorganised and random display of online information has the potential to expand upon and transform some of the concerns that emerge in Carpentier’s understanding of a Maximalist Democratic participation.
Read paper here.