The New Visibility

Considered for a literature review assignment, and of great interest to dissertation topic/field of inquiry. Plus, Thompson is my supervisor.

Overview

 * Thompson traces a theoretical history of "visibility" meaning both optical perception and accountability for actions in a "seen" public through a history of communication media.
 * Thompson believes that communication media can be read as a history of making things more "visible" even when those medias were not necessarily visual.
 * Thompson concludes that the advent of mass communication media teamed with changes in culture (journalistic and consumptive) have made politics into a theatre of scandal.

Theoretical Framework

 * Thompson argues for a taxonomy of media/mediated interactions between human beings


 * 1) Face-to-Face (co-present/dialogic)
 * 2) Mediated (letter-writing, telephone: time or spaced is "stretched")
 * 3) Mediated Quasi (mass media, newspapers, etc. : one to many, monologic)
 * 4) Computer Mediated (email, chat, video conferencing, each of which borrows from previous regimes)

Critique of Foucault

 * Thompson critiques Foucault's celebrated "panopticonism" by saying that communication media reverses the one-watches-many surveillance fear, by making all-watch-one as a cultural form

Link
Article can be found here