Digital Performance in Everyday Life by Gratch, Lyndsay Michalik; Gratch, Ariel;

Short description:

Digital Performance in Everyday Life combines theories of performance, communication, and media to explore the many ways we perform in our everyday lives through digital media and in virtual spaces.

Long description:

Digital Performance in Everyday Life combines theories of performance, communication, and media to explore the many ways we perform in our everyday lives through digital media and in virtual spaces.

Digital communication technologies and the social norms and discourses that developed alongside these technologies have altered the ways we perform as and for ourselves and each other in virtual spaces. Through a diverse range of topics and examples—including discussions of self-identity, surveillance, mourning, internet memes, storytelling, ritual, political action, and activism—this book addresses how the physical and virtual have become inseparable in everyday life, and how the digital is always rooted in embodied action. Focusing on performance and human agency, the authors offer fresh perspectives on communication and digital culture.

The unique, interdisciplinary approach of this book will be useful to scholars, artists, and activists in communication, digital media, performance studies, theatre, sociology, political science, information technology, and cybersecurity—along with anyone interested in how communication shapes and is shaped by digital technologies.

"Digital Performance in Everyday Life flawlessly and effortlessly draws together performance studies, media studies, and digital studies with a theoretical sophistication and methodological precision that is both wonderfully complex and immensely accessible. Each chapter is a new journey through the central premise of the book that the notion that online and offline lives are separate is a false dichotomy and that performance is at the center of everyday digital life. By weaving together nuanced discussions of theory and concepts with personal stories and contemporary cultural critique, the book presents a remarkably compelling argument about digital performance while simultaneously making a case for the relevance of the history of performance studies theory and scholarship to media and digital studies in the 21st century." Mindy Fenske, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of South Carolina (UofSC).

"Ambitious and timely, Digital Performance in Everyday Life offers a robust and engaging theorization of the ubiquitous virtual encounters that now constitute our everyday reality."　— Henry Bial, University of Kansas

"Digital Performance in Everyday Life is a feat of rigorous interdisciplinarity. The text is masterfully composed, and amply demonstrates the capaciousness of performance theory within a framework informed by social network theories, surveillance theory, black feminism and design justice. Digital Performance in Everyday Life is a laudable accomplishment of scholarship, made all the more exceptional by its thoughtful approach to access and its subject matter. It is a vital book, and profoundly teachable one."　— Sydney Skybetter, Brown University 

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction to Digital Performance in Everyday Life  2. Digital Performances of Self-identity  3. Everyday Performances of Surveillance, Sousveillance, and Coveillance  4. Virtual Habits and Rituals  5. Digital Mourning and Memorialization  6. The Virtual Storyteller  7. “Re-”: Internet Memes as Digital Performances of Adaptation  8. Slactivism  9.Political Theatre in Everyday Life  10. Conclusion