The Performative Possibilities of New Media

Abstract

We understand new media as performative*a medium that is an active participant in a political dialogue. 1 It is political in its iterability; it performs, over and over, passing as/with information. We see this in our Facebook NewsFeeds and ReTweet of Tweets long gone. In this forum, we hope to show how new media scholarship can be purposefully enacted within performance studies (perhaps marking a slippage . . . perhaps not) to work towards larger critical goals. New media changes what it means to be a performance studies scholar.This forum germinated from our own discussions about the role that new media played in our scholarship. We were curious as to how other performance/critical communication studies scholars might articulate their own relationship to the shifting landscape. We contacted five other scholars who embrace new media in their scholarship. We asked them to reflect on the performativity of their own new media projects. The responses we received were provocative and enlightening.Michael Levan and Marcyrose Chvasta reflect on the performance and politics of distribution in the online journal Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. Jonny Gray considers how the online performance group @Platea exemplifies the possibilities of Web 2.0 for interactivity and innovation in the production of art. We contribute an essay that centers around our podcast (The Critical Lede) that explores how new media breaks down barriers of access that have long been present in academia. Ted Striphas addresses how his blog Differences and Repetition (and a companion wiki) trouble the idea of peer review and collaboration. Finally, Craig Gingrich-Philbrook offers a response to these projects and the essays that accompany them by reflecting on how their use of new media transforms scholarly conventions. This forum will not only reside within these pages. We will incorporate new media into this project and, keeping in line with Gingrich-Philbrook's exploration of the

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