Introduction

Abstract

This introductory chapter provides an overview of signal traffic in the contemporary era of media globalization—an era characterized by contradictory global mediascapes and multiple media infrastructures. Signal traffic refers to the movement of electronic media across various parts of the planet. Today, broadcasting, cable, satellite, Internet, and mobile telephone systems are used simultaneously, and sometimes in coordinated ways, to route signal traffic to and from sites around the world. The content and form of contemporary media—whether television programs or online games—are shaped in relation to the properties and locations of these distribution systems. As a suggestive concept, then, signal traffic demarcates a critical shift away from the analysis of screened content alone and toward an understanding of how content moves through the world and how this movement affects content's form.

WeChat as infrastructure: the techno-nationalist shaping of Chinese digital platforms

“…On one hand, the major internet companies still rely on the properties of platforms (as described above) to achieve network effects and to gain market power. On the other hand, they constitute large-scale sociotechnical projects that are aimed at the ubiquitous and reliable provision of a service, thus becoming similar to the traditional mandate of infrastructure (Edwards, 2003;Parks & Starosielski, 2015). This phenomenon can be observed not only in Silicon Valley companies but also in Chinese companies, such as Tencent.…”

Infrastructural surveillance

“…In their work on the infrastructural disposition for understanding media, Parks and Starosielski (2015) define media infrastructures as follows:…”

“…In their work on the infrastructural disposition for understanding media, Parks and Starosielski (2015) define media infrastructures as follows:[S]ituated sociotechnical systems that are designed and configured to support the distribution of audiovisual signal traffic . .…”

“…Here, infrastructure built to aggregate data, according to specific standards, cultivates distributed knowledges in ways that other organisational forms (nation state, Fordist firm) may not. Parks and Starosielski (2015) argue that a ‘focus on infrastructure foregrounds processes of distribution ’, in which content delivery practices are foregrounded (p. 5, authors’ emphasis). Plantin argues that this constitutes a ‘decentralization’ (p. 499) in respect to Google Maps, as users contribute to the production of cartographic data by using a variety of Google Maps-based services, albeit while reconstituting a monopolistic centralisation.…”

“…This article expands on the recent debates on the intermingling of platforms (Barns, 2019; Murakami Wood and Monahan, 2019; Zuboff, 2019), infrastructures (Helles and Flyverbom, 2019; Parks and Starosielski, 2015; Plantin and Punathambekar, 2019) and modes of global governance (Bratton, 2015; Easterling, 2016). Our article takes the CAV as an object through which questions of mobility, surveillance and choice can be asked.…”